The Black Obelisk Read Online Free Page B

there has ever been. The revolutionaries were so terrified by themselves that they at once cried for help from the magnates and the generals of the former government to protect them from their own fit of courage. The others did it. Generously too. A bunch of revolutionaries were executed, the princes and officers received magnificent pensions so that they would have time to plan future riots, the officials received new titles—high-school teachers because academic counselors, school inspectors became educational counselors, waiters were given the right to be addressed as " Ober " or headwaiter, former secretaries of the party became excellencies, the Social Democratic minister of the army, in seventh heaven, was entitled to have real generals under him in his ministry—and the German revolution sank back into red plush, Gemütlichkeit , and a yearning for uniforms and commands.
    " Herr Ober! " Georg repeats.
    The waiter remains deaf. It is one of Eduard's childish tricks; he tries to disconcert us by telling his waiters to ignore us.
    Suddenly the dining room resounds to the thunder of a first-class Prussian barrack-room roar: " Ober! You there, can't you hear?" It has the instant effect of a trumpet call on an old war horse. The waiter stops as though shot in the back, and spins around; two others dash up to the table, somewhere there is the sound of heels clicking, a military-looking man at one of the nearby tables softly exclaims, "Bravo!"— and even Eduard Knobloch, with his dress coat streaming, rushes in to investigate this voice from the higher spheres. He knows that neither Georg nor I could sound so commanding.
    We ourselves look around speechless at Renée de la Tour. She is sitting there, calm and maidenly, wholly uninvolved. But she is the only one who could have shouted—we know Willy's voice.
    The waiter is standing at our table. "What may I do for you, gentlemen?"
    "Noodle soup, goulash, and pie for two," Georg replies.
    "And be quick about it, otherwise well burst your eardrums, you slug."
    Eduard arrives. He can't make out what is happening. He glances under the table. No one is hidden there, and a ghost could hardly roar like that. Nor could we, as he knows. He suspects a trick of some sort. "I must urgently insist," he says finally, "that such an uproar must not occur in my establishment."
    No one replies. We just look at him with empty eyes. Renée de la Tour is powdering her nose. Eduard turns around and departs.
    "Innkeeper! Step over here!" The same thunderous voice suddenly summons him.
    Eduard whirls around and stares at us. We still have the same empty smile on our mugs. He fixes Renée de la Tour with his eye. "Did you just—?"
    Renée closes her compact with a click. "What's that?" she asks in a delicate silvery-clear soprano. "What is it you want?"
    Eduard gapes. He no longer knows what to think. "You haven't been overworking, have you, Herr Knobloch?" Georg asks. "You seem to be suffering from hallucinations."
    "But someone here just—"
    "You're out of your mind, Eduard," I say. "You're not looking well either. Take a vacation. We have no wish to sell your relatives a cheap headstone of imitation Italian marble, and that's certainly all you're worth—"
    Eduard blinks his eyes like an old horned owl. "You seem to be a strange sort of person," says Renée de la Tour in her flutelike soprano. "You hold your guests responsible for the fact that your waiters can't hear." She laughs, an enchanting swirl of bubbling silvery music like a forest brook in fairy tales.
    Eduard clasps his forehead. His last support has collapsed. It cannot have been the young lady either. Anyone who laughs like that can't have a barrack-room voice. "You may go now, Knobloch," Georg remarks casually. "Or did you intend to join in our conversation?"
    "And don't eat so much meat," I say. "Perhaps that's what's wrong. Remember what you were saying to us a few minutes ago? According to the most recent scientific