“Still no notion.”
“But you’d have to do something! Suppose you had a month’s time?”
“Very likely I’d go on living the way I do now,” Georg says. “Otherwise I’d have the miserable feeling all month that I’d lived my life wrong up to then.”
“You’d have a month’s time to correct it.”
Georg shakes his head. “I’d have a month to regret it.”
“You could sell our inventory to Hollmann and Klotz, rush to Berlin, and for a month live a breathtaking life with actors, artists, and elegant whores.”
“The funds wouldn’t last a week. The ladies would only be barmaids. And besides, I prefer to read about it. Imagination never disappoints you. But how about you? What would you do if you knew you were going to die in four weeks?”
“I?” I say, caught off my guard.
“Yes, you.”
I glance around. There lies the garden, hot and green, in all the colors of midsummer. There the swallows sail, there is the endless blue of the heavens, and upstairs old Knopf goggles down at us from his window, just emerging from his drunk and clad in suspenders and a checked shirt. “I’d have to think about it,” I say. “I can’t answer right away. There’s too much. Right now all I have is a feeling I’d explode if I understood it all as I’d like to.”
“Don’t think too hard; otherwise well have to take you to Wernicke. And not to play the organ.”
“That’s it,” I say. “Really that’s it! If we could grasp it fully we would go mad.”
“Another glass of beer?” Frau Kroll asks through the kitchen window. “There’s raspberry jam here too. Fresh.”
“Rescued!” I say. “ Gnädige Frau, you have just rescued me. I was like an arrow on its way to the sun and to Wernicke. Thank God everything is still here! Nothing has burned up! Sweet life continues to frolic around us with flies and butterflies, nothing has been reduced to ashes, it is here, it still has all its laws, even those we impose upon it like a bridle on a thoroughbred! However—no raspberry jam with beer, please! Instead, a piece of runny Harz cheese. Good morning, Herr Knopf! A fine day! What’s your opinion of life!”
Knopf stares at me. His face is gray and there are sacks under his eyes. After a while he gesticulates at me angrily and closes his window. “Weren’t you going to say something to him?” Georg asks.
“Yes, but not till tonight.”
We go into Eduard Knobloch’s restaurant. “Look over there,” I say, stopping as though I had run into a tree. “Life seems to be up to its tricks here too! I should have guessed it!”
Gerda is sitting at a table in the wine room with a vase of tiger lilies in front of her. She is alone and is hacking away at a venison steak that is almost as big as the table. “What do you say to that?” I ask Georg. “Doesn’t it smell of betrayal?”
“Was there anything to betray?”
“No. But what about unfaithfulness?”
“Was there anything to be faithful to?”
“Oh stop it, Socrates!” I reply. “Can’t you see Eduard’s fat paw at work here?”
“I see it all right. But who has betrayed you? Eduard or Gerda?”
“Gerda! Who do you think? The man’s never responsible.”
“Nor the woman either.”
“Then who?”
“You.”
“All right,” I say. “It’s easy for you to talk. You don’t get betrayed. You are a betrayer yourself.”
Georg nods with self-satisfaction. “Love is a matter of emotion,” he instructs me. “Not of morality. Emotion, however, knows nothing of betrayal. It increases, disappears, or changes—so where is the betrayal? There is no contract. Didn’t you deafen Gerda with your howling about your sufferings over Erna?”
“Only at the beginning. You know she was there when we had our row in the Red Mill.”
“Then don’t yammer now. Give up or do something.” Some people get up from a table near us. We sit down. Freidank, the waiter, veers away. “Where’s Herr Knobloch?”
I ask.
Freidank glances around. “I don’t know—he had been here all along, at that table over there with the lady.”
“Simple, isn’t it?” I say to Georg. “That’s where we stand now. I am a natural victim of the inflation. Once again. First with Erna, now with Gerda. Am I a born cuckold? Things like this don’t happen to you.”
“Fight!” Georg replies. “Nothing is lost yet Go over to Gerda!”
“What am I to fight with? Tombstones? Eduard gives her venison and dedicates poems to her. In poems she can’t see differences of quality—in food unfortunately she can. And I, fool that I am, have only myself to blame! I brought her here and aroused her appetite. Literally!”
“Then give up,” Georg says. “Why fight? One can’t fight about emotions anyway.”
“No? Then why did you advise me to a minute ago?”
“Because today is Tuesday. Here comes Eduard—in his Sunday best with a rosebud in his buttonhole. You’re done for.”
Eduard is taken aback when he sees us. He peers over toward Gerda and then greets us with the condescension of a victor. “Herr Knobloch,” Georg says, “is loyalty the badge of honor, as our beloved field marshal has declared, or isn’t it?”
“It all depends,” Eduard replies cautiously. “Today we have Königsberger meat balls with gravy and potatoes. A fine meal.”
“Does a soldier strike his comrade in the back?” Georg asks, undeterred. “Does a brother strike his brother? Does a poet strike a fellow poet?”
“Poets attack each other all the time. That’s what they live for.”
“They live for open battle, not for stabs in the belly,” I interpose.
Eduard grins broadly. “To the victor the spoils, my dear Ludwig; catch as catch can. Do I whine when you come in here with your miserable coupons that aren’t worth peanuts?”
“Yes, you do,” I say, “and how!”
At this instant Eduard is pushed aside. “Why, there you
are, children,” Gerda says affectionately. “Let’s eat together! I was hoping you would come!”
“You’re sitting in the wine room,” I reply venomously. “We’re drinking beer.”
“I prefer beer too. I’ll sit down with you.”
“With your permission, Eduard?” I ask. “Catch as catch can?”
“What has Eduard’s permission to do with it?” Gerda asks. “Why, he’s delighted for me to eat with his friends, aren’t you, Eduard?”
The serpent is already calling him by his first name.
Eduard stammers. “Of course, no objection, naturally, a pleasure—”
He makes a fine picture, red, raging, and making an effort to smile. “That’s a pretty rosebud you’re wearing,” I say. “Are you going courting? Or is it simple delight in nature?”
“Eduard has a very fine feeling for beauty,” Gerda replies.
“So he has,” I agree. “Did you have the regular lunch? Detestable Königsberger meat balls in some sort of flavorless German gravy?”
Gerda laughs. “Eduard, show them you’re a cavalier. Let me invite your two friends to lunch! They keep saying you’re dreadfully stingy. Let’s prove they’re wrong. We have—”
“Konigsberger meat balls,” Eduard interrupts her. “All right, invite them to have meat balls. I’ll see that they’re extra good.”
“Saddle of venison,” Gerda says.
Eduard now resembles a defective steam engine. “These are no friends,” he declares.
“What’s that?”
“We’re blood brothers like Valentin,” I say. “Don’t you remember our last conversation at the Poets’ Club? Shall I repeat it? In what verse form are you writing now?”
“What were you talking about?” Gerda asks. “About nothing at all,” Eduard replies abruptly. “These two never say a word of truth! Jokers, miserable jokers, that’s what they are! Don’t you ever realize the seriousness of life?”