I say nothing, just to annoy him. “Broke, I say,” he explains. “And I know what I’m talking about.”
“Really?” I look at him encouragingly. “Then why defend yourself? Everyone believes you.”
“Defend myself? I don’t need to defend myself! But what happened in Wüstringen—”
“Have they found the murderer?”
“Murderer? What’s that to us? Why talk about murder in a case like that? It was an accident. The man has only himself to blame! What I’m talking about is the way you treated Mayor Döbbeling! And on top of that to offer the carpenter’s widow a tombstone gratis!”
I turn toward the window and gaze into the rain. Heinrich Kroll is one of those people who never have any doubt about their own views—this makes them not only tiresome but dangerous as well. They are the bronze core of our beloved fatherland that makes it possible to keep on starting wars again and again. They are incapable of learning; they are born with their hands at the seams of their trousers and are proud to die that way too. I don’t know whether the type exists in other countries—but surely not in such numbers.
After a while I listen again to what the little muttonhead is saying. It seems that he has had a long interview with the mayor and has cleared the matter up. Thanks solely to his personality, we are once more permitted to sell tombstones in Wüstringen.
“And what are we supposed to do now?” I ask him. “Worship you?”
He throws me a venomous glance. “Look out, you’ll go too far someday?”
“How far?”
“Too far. Don’t forget you’re an employee here.”
“I forget it all the time. Otherwise you’d have to give me a triple salary—as draftsman, office manager, and advertising manager. Moreover, we are not on a military footing or you’d have to stand at attention in front of me. But if you like I can always give our competitors a ring—Hollmann and Klotz would take me on instantly.”
The door opens and Georg appears in bright red pajamas. “Were you talking about Wüstringen, Heinrich?”
“About what else?”
“Then go down to the cellar and stand in the corner. A man was killed in Wüstringen! A life was ended. Someone’s world was destroyed. Every murder, every killing, is the first killing in the world. Cain and Abel repeated again and again! If you and your fellows could only understand that, there’d be fewer battle cries on this otherwise blessed earth!”
“There would be servants and slaves, groveling before the inhuman Treaty of Versailles!”
“The Treaty of Versailles! Of course!” Georg takes a step forward. The smell of mulled wine is strong around him. “If we had won the war, then of course we would have deluged our enemies with love and gifts, wouldn’t we? Have you forgotten what you and your friends wanted to annex? The Ukraine, Brie, Longwy, and the whole iron and coal basin of France? Has the Ruhr been taken away from us? No, we still have it! Are you going to maintain that our treaty of peace would not have been ten times harsher if we had been in a position to dictate one? Didn’t I myself hear you jabbering about it as recently as 1917? France was to be reduced to a third-rate power, huge slices of Russia were to be annexed, and all enemies were to pay in goods and treasure until they were bled white! That was you, Heinrich! But now you join in the chorus roaring against the injustice that has been done us. Your self-pity and your cries for vengeance are enough to make one sick! Always someone else is to blame, not you. You stink of self-righteousness, you Pharisees! Don’t you know that the first mark of a man is that he stands for what he has done? But with you and your fellows it is always some tremendous injustice that has befallen you, and the only difference between you and God is that God knows everything but you know everything better.”
Georg glances about as though waking up. His face is now as red as his pajamas and even his bald head is rosy. Heinrich has recoiled in alarm. Georg follows him. He is furious. Heinrich retreats farther. “Don’t come near me!” he screams. “You’re blowing your germs right in my face! What would happen if we both had grippe?”
“Then no one would dare die,” I say.
The battling brothers make a fine picture. Georg in red satin pajamas, sweating with rage, and Heinrich in his little morning suit, terrified of catching the grippe. There is another witness to the scene: Lisa in a print dressing gown decorated with sailing ships is leaning far out the window in spite of the weather. In Knopfs house the door is open. In front of it the rain hangs like a curtain of glass beads. It is so dark inside that the girls have turned on the light. It would be easy to take them for Wagner’s Rhine Maidens swimming there. Under a huge umbrella Wilke, the carpenter, wanders around the courtyard like a black mushroom. Heinrich Kroll disappears, literally pushed out of the office by Georg. “Be sure to gargle,” I shout after him. “Grippe is deadly to people of your consititution.”
Georg stands still and laughs. “What an idiot I am,” he says. “As though you could ever tell people like that anything!”
“Where did you get the pajamas?” I ask. “Have you joined the Communist party?”
Applause comes from across the street. Lisa is expressing her approval of Georg—a serious disloyalty toward Watzek, the loyal National Socialist and future director of the stockyards. Georg bows, his hand on his heart. “Get into bed, you clown,” I say. “You’ve turned into a fountain of sweat!”
“It’s healthy to sweat! Just look at the rain! The sky out there is sweating. And across the street that sample of life, in its open dressing gown, with white teeth and full of laughter! What are we doing here? Why don’t we explode like fireworks? If we really knew what life is, we would explode! Why am I selling tombstones? Why am I not a comet? Or the great roc, sailing over Hollywood and snatching the most delectable women out of their swimming pools? Why must we live in Werdenbrück and do battle in the Café Central instead of fitting out a caravan for Timbuktu and setting forth with mahogany-colored bearers into the spacious African morning? Why don’t we own a bordello in Yokohama? Answer me! It is important to know at once! Why aren’t we racing with purple fish in the red evenings of Tahiti? Answer me!”
He reaches for the bottle of schnaps. “Hold on!” I say. “There’s still wine. I’ll heat it up at once on the alcohol stove. No schnaps now! You’re feverish! Hot red wine with spices from the Indies and the Sunda Islands!”
“Fine! Heat it. But why aren’t we ourselves on the Islands of Hope, sleeping with women who smell of cinnamon and whose eyes turn white when we mate with them under the Southern Cross and cry out like parrots and like tigers? Answer me!”
The flame of the alcohol stove burns like the blue light of adventure in the semidarkness of the office. The rain roars like the sea. “We are on our way, Captain,” I say, taking a hefty swig of the whisky to catch up with Georg. “The caravel is just passing Santa Cruz, Lisbon, and the Gold Coast. The slaves of the Arabian Mohammed Ben Hassan Ben Watzek are staring out of their cabins and waving to us. Here is your hookah!”
I hand Georg a cigar out of the box kept for our best agents. He lights it and blows a couple of perfect smoke rings. His pajamas show dark wet spots. “On our way,” he says. “Why aren’t we there yet?”
“We are there. One is there always and everywhere. Time is a prejudice. That is the secret of life. People just don’t know it. They keep trying to arrive someplace!”