“Nonsense! I’m not impotent! But women are funny when you’re a coffinmaker. They get the horrors. Don’t want to come into your workroom when there’s a coffin there. Not even if you serve Berlin pancakes and port wine.”
“Where do you serve them!” I ask. “On an unfinished coffin? You certainly don’t on a polished one; port wine leaves rings.”
“On the bench by the window. You can sit on the coffin. Besides, it isn’t even a coffin. It doesn’t become a coffin until there’s a dead body in it. Until then it’s only a piece of carpentry work.”
“Correct. But sometimes it’s hard to make the distinction!”
“It all depends. Once in Hamburg I had a girl who was equal to it. Even enjoyed it. She was keen to try. I filled a coffin half full of those soft white pine shavings that always smell so woodsy and romantic. Everything went fine. We had magnificent fun until we wanted to get out again. Some of the damned glue on the bottom hadn’t quite dried, the shavings had been pushed aside and the girl’s hair was stuck fast. She pulled a couple of times and then started to scream. She thought it was death who had got hold of her hair. She screamed and screamed, and people came running, including my boss; she was pulled out and I lost my job in a hurry. Too bad—it might have become a beautiful relationship! Life isn’t easy for people like us.”
Wilke throws me a despairing glance, then grins briefly and grubs appreciatively in the box without offering it to me. “I’ve heard of two cases of sprat poisoning,” I say. “It’s a particularly horrible and lingering death.”
Wilke dismisses the thought. “These are freshly smoked. And very tender. A delicacy. I’ll share them with you if you’ll get me a nice, unprejudiced girl—like the one in the sweater who sometimes comes to visit you.”
I stare at the coffinmaker. He undoubtedly means Gerda. Gerda for whom I am waiting at this moment. “I’m no procurer,” I say sharply. “But I’ll give you a piece of advice. Take your women someplace else, not into your workshop.”
“Where would you suggest?” Wilke is picking bones out of his teeth. “That’s just the hitch! To a hotel? Too expensive. Besides, there’s the danger of police raids. Into the city parks? The police again! Or here in the yard? My shop is better than that.”
“Haven’t you an apartment?”
“My room isn’t safe. My landlady is a dragon. Years ago I had an affair with her. In extreme need, you understand. Only for a short time—but even today, after ten years, that bitch is still jealous. All I have left is my shop. Well, how about an office of friendship? Introduce me to the lady in the sweater!”
I point silently at the empty box of sprats. Wilke throws it into the court and goes to the faucet to wash his paws. “I have a bottle of first-class blended port upstairs,” he volunteers.
“Keep the stuff for your next orgy!”
“It will turn into ink before that. But there are more sprats where these came from.”
I point to my forehead and go into the office to get a drawing pad and a folding chair so that I can sketch a mausoleum for Frau Niebuhr. I sit down beside the obelisk-there I can listen for-the telephone and at the same time keep an eye on the street and die courtyard. I plan to adorn the drawing of the memorial with this inscription: HERE, AFTER SEVERE AND PROLONGED SUFFERING, LIES MAJOR WOLKENSTEIN, RETIRED. DEPARTED THIS LIFE MAY, 1923.
One of the Knopf girls comes out and admires my work. She is a twin and can hardly be told from her sister. Their mother can do it by smell; Knopf doesn’t care, and the rest of us can never be sure. I begin to speculate about what it would be like to be married to a twin if the other were living in the same house.
Gerda interrupts me. She is standing laughing at the entrance to the court. I put my drawing aside. The twin disappears. Wilke stops washing. Behind Gerda’s back he points to the sprat box which the cat is pushing across the courtyard, then to himself and lifts two fingers. Silently he whispers: “Two.”
Today Gerda is wearing a gray sweater, a gray skirt, and a black beret. She no longer, looks like a parrot; she looks pretty and athletic and cheerful. I look at her with new eyes. A woman who is desired by someone else, even a love-starved coffinmaker, immediately becomes more precious than before. Man, as it happens, lives by relative rather than absolute values.
“Were you at the Red Mill today?” I ask.
Gerda nods. “That stinking hole! I was rehearsing there. How I hate these dives full of stale cigar smoke!”
I look at her approvingly. Behind her, Wilke is buttoning his shirt, combing the shavings out of his mustache, and adding three fingers to his bid. Five boxes of sprats! A handsome offer, but I pay no attention to it. Before me stands a week’s happiness, clear and definite, a happiness without pain—the simple happiness of the senses and of the disciplined imagination, the short happiness of a two weeks’ night-club engagement, already half over, a happiness that has freed me from Erna and has even made Isabelle what she should be, a painless fata morgana awakening to unrealizable desires.
“Come, Gerda,” I say, suddenly filled with an upwelling of natural gratitude. “Let’s go and have a first-rate meal today! Are you hungry?”
“Yes, very. We can get—”
“No potato salad today and no sausages! We’re going to have a splendid meal and celebrate our jubilee, the mid-point of our life together. A week ago you came here for the first time; in another week you will wave me farewell from the station. Let’s celebrate the former and not think about the latter!”
Gerda laughs. “As a matter of fact, I wasn’t able to make any potato salad. Too much to do. The circus is not the same as that silly cabaret.”
“Fine, then today we’ll go to the Walhalla. Do you like to eat goulash?”
“I like to eat,” Gerda replies.
“That’s the thing! Let’s stick to it! And now forward to the celebration of the high mid-point of our short life!”
I toss the drawing pad through the open window onto the office desk. As we leave I see Wilke’s infinitely disappointed face. With a hopeless look he is holding up both hands—ten boxes of sprats—a fortune!
“Why not?” Eduard Knobloch says obligingly, to my amazement. I had expected bitter opposition. The coupons are only good at noon, but, after a glance at Gerda, Eduard is ready to accept them and he even lingers beside our table: “Won’t you please introduce me?”
I am forced to do it. He has accepted the coupons, and so I must accept him. “Eduard Knobloch, hotelkeeper, restauranteur, poet, billionaire, and miser,” I explain casually. “Fräulein Gerda Schneider.”
Eduard bows, half flattered, half annoyed. “Don’t believe a word he says, gnädiges Fräulein.”
“Not even your name?” I ask.
Gerda smiles. “Are you a billionaire? How interesting!”
Eduard sighs. “Only a businessman with all a businessman’s worries. Don’t pay any attention to this silly character! And you! A beautiful, resplendent image of God, carefree as a trout swimming above the dark abysses of melancholy—”
I can’t believe my ears and gape at Eduard as though he had spit up gold. Today Gerda seems to have a magical attraction. “Never mind the plaster-card phrases, Eduard,” I say. “The lady is an artist herself. Am I supposed to be the dark abyss of melancholy? Where is the goulash?”
“I think Herr Knobloch speaks very poetically!” Gerda is looking at Eduard with innocent admiration. “How can you find time for it? With such a big establishhment and so many waiters! You must be a happy man! So rich and talented too—”
“I manage, I manage!” Eduard is beaming. “So you are an artist too—”
I see a sudden doubt lay hold of him. Unquestionably the shadow of Renée de la Tour has slipped in like a cloud across the moon. “A serious artist, I assume,” he says.