The Black Obelisk Read Free Page B

Finest Pastries, Home Deliveries.
    "Is Riesenfeld really coming?" I ask.
    "Yes. He telegraphed."
    "What does he want? Money? Or has he something to sell?"
    "We'll find out," Georg says and locks the office door.

Chapter Two
    2.
    We step outside. The strong sun of late April pours down as though a gigantic golden basin full • of light and wind were being emptied on us. We stop. The garden is aflame with green, spring rustles in the young foliage of the poplar tree as in a harp, and the first lilac is in bloom.
    "Inflation," I say. "There you have one too—the wildest of all. It looks as if even nature knows that now you can only reckon in ten thousands and in millions. Look what the tulips are up to! And that white over there and the red and yellow everywhere! And what fragrance!"
    Georg nods, sniffs, and takes a puff of his Brazilian; for him nature is doubly beautiful when he can smoke a cigar at the same time.
    We feel the sun on our faces and we look at all the splendor. The garden behind the house is also the showroom for our monuments. There they are drawn up like a company behind Otto, the obelisk, who stands like a thin lieutenant at his post beside the door. It is Otto that I urged Heinrich to sell, Otto, the oldest tombstone of the firm, our trademark and a prodigy of tastelessness. Directly behind him come the cheap little headstones of sandstone and poured concrete with narrow pointed socles, for the poor, who live and slave in honesty and naturally get nowhere. Then come the larger but still inexpensive ones, with two socles, for those who are always trying to improve themselves, at least in death, since in life it was not possible. We sell more of these than of the perfectly plain ones, and one doesn't know whether to find this belated ambition on the part of the survivors touching or absurd. Next come the monuments of sandstone with inset plaques of marble, gray syenite, or black Swedish granite. These are already too expensive for the man who lives by the work of his hands. Small businessmen, foremen, artisans who own their own businesses are the clients—and of course that eternal bird of ill omen, the petty official who must always pretend to be more than he is, the honest white-collar proletarian of whom it is impossible to say how he manages to exist at all today since his raises always come far too late.
    All these tombstones are still in the class of trifles—it is only behind them that you come to the blocks of marble and granite. First, those polished on one side, with front surfaces smooth but sides and backs roughhewn and socles rough all around. That is the sort for the more prosperous middle classes, the employer, the businessman, the larger store owner, and of course that diligent bird of ill omen, the higher official, who just like his lesser brother, must pay out more in death than he earned in life in order to preserve appearances.
    But the aristocrats among the tombstones are those of marble and of black Swedish granite polished on all sides. Here there are no more rough surfaces and unfinished backs; everything has been brought to a high polish no matter whether one sees it or not, even the socles, of which there are not just one or two but often a third put in at an angle; and, if it is a showpiece in the real sense of the word, there is a stately cross of the same material on top. Today, of course, these are only for rich farmers, property owners, profiteers, and clever business people who deal in long-term promissory notes and so live on the Reichsbank, which keeps paying for everything with constantly replenished and unsupported paper currency.
    Simultaneously we glance at the only one of these showpieces that, up to a quarter of an hour ago, still belonged to the firm. There it stands, black and glistening like the lacquer on a new car, the perfume of spring drifts around it, lilacs bend toward it; it is a great lady, cool, untouched, and, for one hour more, still virginal—then