I am greeted by a wave of tobacco smoke and the smell of beer. Karl Brill gets up and embraces me, staggering slightly. His head is just as bald as Georg Kroll’s, but to make up for it he wears all his hair under his nose in a huge mustache. “You’ve come at just the right moment,” he exclaims. “The bets are down. All we need is some better music than this miserable phonograph? How about the ‘Beautiful Blue Danube’?”
“It’s a deal!”
The piano has already been brought in and is standing beside the resoling machines. In the front of the room the shoes and leather have been pushed to one side and straight and easy chairs have been placed wherever possible. A cask of beer stands ready; several bottles of schnaps are already empty. A second battery stands in readiness on the workbench. There, too, lies a big nail wrapped in cotton beside a large cobbler’s hammer.
I pound out the “Blue Danube.” Karl Brill’s drinking companions stagger about through the haze. They are already well loaded. Karl puts a glass of beer and a double Steinhäger schnaps on the piano. “Clara is getting ready,” he says. “We have over three million in bets. I only hope she’s in top form; otherwise I’ll- be half bankrupt.”
He squints at me. “Play something very spirited when the time comes. That always warms her up. You know she’s crazy about music.”
“I’ll play the ‘March of the Gladiators.’ But how about a small side bet for me?”
Karl glances up. “Dear Herr Bodmer,” he says in an injured voice, “surely you’re not going to bet against Clara! How could you play with any conviction then?”
“Not against her. On her. A side bet.”
“How much?” Karl asks quickly.
“A measly eight thousand,” I reply. “It’s my whole fortune.”
Karl thinks it over for a moment. Then he turns around. “Is there anyone here who wants to bet another eighty thousand? Against our piano player?”
“I do!” A fat man steps forward. Taking some bills out of a small suitcase, he slaps them down on the workbench.
I put my money beside them. “May the God of thieves defend me,” I say. “Otherwise lunch is all I’ll have tomorrow.”
“Let’s get going!” Karl Brill says.
The nail is shown around. Then Karl steps to the wall, places the nail at the height of the human buttocks, and drives it a third of the way in. He pounds less vigorously than his gestures would suggest. “It’s driven in good and strong,” he says, pretending to give the nail a powerful tug.
“We’ll just see about that.”
The fat man who has bet against me steps forward. He moves the nail and grins. “Karl,” he said, laughing contemptuously, “I could blow that out of the wall. Just give me the hammer.”
“First blow it out of the wall.”
The fat man does not blow. He gives a strong tug and the nail comes out. “I can drive a nail through a table top with . my hand,” Karl Brill says. “But not with my rear end. If you make conditions like that, let’s call the whole thing off.”
The fat man makes no reply. He takes the hammer and drives the nail into another place in the wall. “Now, how’s that?”
Karl Brill tests it. Some six or seven centimeters of the nail still protrude from the wall. “Too hard. You can’t even pull it out with your hand.”
“Take it or else,” the fat man declares.
Karl tries again. The fat man puts the hammer on the workbench, overlooking the fact that each time Karl tests the nail he loosens it a little. “I can’t take an even-money bet on that,” Karl says finally. “Only two to one and I’ll lose anyway.”
They agree on six to four. A pile of money rises on the workbench. Karl has tugged indignantly twice more at the nail to show how impossible the bet is. Now I play the “March of the Gladiators” and shortly thereafter Frau Beckmann comes rustling into the workroom in a loose salmon-colored
Chinese kimono enbroidered on the back with peonies and a phoenix.
She is an imposing figure, with the head of a bulldog. She has abundant, curly black hair and bright, shoe-button eyes—the rest is pure bulldog, especially the chin. Her body is huge and all of iron. Her breasts, hard as stone, project like a bulwark, then comes the comparatively slender waist and after that the famous bottom, the present point of interest. It is powerful and it, too, is hard as stone. A blacksmith is said to have failed in an attempt to pinch it when Frau Beckmann contracted her muscles; he would have broken his fingers. Karl Brill has already won bets on that subject too, just in the circle of his most intimate friends to be sure. Tonight, with the fat man present, only the other experiment will be tried: the extraction of the nail, from the wall with her seat
Everything is conducted in a very sportsmanlike and gentlemanly fashion; Frau Beckmann greets the company, of course, but is otherwise reserved and almost aloof. She regards the occasion solely from a sporting and business angle. Calmly she places her back against the wall behind a low screen, makes a few expert adjustments, and then stands still, her chin raised, serious and ready, as befits a great sporting event.
I break off the march and strike two deep quavers, which are supposed to sound like the roll of drums that heralds the death leap in Kine’s circus. Frau Beckmann stiffens, then relaxes. She stiffens once more. Karl Brill grows nervous. Frau Beckmann stiffens again, her eyes turned to the ceiling, her teeth gritted. There is a tinkle and she steps away from the wall; the nail lies on the floor.
I play the “Virgin’s Prayer,” one of her favorites. She acknowledges it with a gracious inclination of her powerful head, says melodiously, “Good night all,” pulls her kimono closer around her and disappears.
Karl Brill distributes the cash. He hands me mine. The fat man inspects the nail and the wall. “Unbelievable,” he says.
I play the “Alpine Sunset” and the “Song of the Weser,” two more of Frau Beckmann’s favorites. She can hear them on the floor above. Karl grins over at me proudly; after all, he is the proprietor of those impressive pincers. Steinhäger, beer, and schnaps flow. I have a couple of drinks and continue to play. I want not to be alone just now. I want to think and at the same time that’s the last thing in the world I want to do. My hands are full of an unaccustomed tenderness, something swirls about me and seems to press against me; the workroom disappears and the rain is there again, the mist and Isabelle and the darkness. She is not sick, I think, and yet I know that she is—but if she is sick, then all the rest of us are sicker—
A noisy altercation rouses me. The fat man has not been able to forget the figure Frau Beckmann cut. Inflamed by numerous drinks, he has made Karl Brill a triple offer—five million for afternoon tea with Frau Beckmann—one million for a short conversation now, during which he no doubt intends to invite her to an honorable dinner without Karl Brill—and two million for a couple of good grasps oh the showpiece of the Beckmann anatomy, here in the workshop among brothers in happy comradeship, therefore completely honorable.
But now Karl’s character asserts itself. If the fat man had no more than a sporting interest, he could perhaps have had his grasps in return for some such nominal sum as a hundred thousand marks—but such a gesture with lascivious intent strikes Karl as a serious insult. “You miserable bastard!” he roars. “I thought everyone here was a cavalier!”
“I am a cavalier,” the fat man says thickly. “That’s why I made the offer.”
“You’re a pig.”
“That’s true too, otherwise I wouldn’t be a cavalier. You ought to be proud of the impression the lady makes—have you no heart? What can I do if my nature grows unruly? Why are you insulted? After all, you aren’t married to her?”