The Safety Net

by Heinrich Böll

  “Well, he might be right—he’s fond of his own sons, no question, but he’s always spoken enthusiastically about Rolf. He would have appointed Beverloh as his adjutant if there weren’t—if there hadn’t been that sudden switch, and if he had met him early enough—could have, might have—it just didn’t happen. I would be happy if I could find a spot on the paper for Rolf, my own son, as a night watchman or sweeper. Yet of course he should be on the staff of the financial section, as a specialist in real profits—he once showed me some figures to prove that a share in the Deutsche Bank had yielded fifteen thousand percent profit between 1949 and 1969—fifteen thousand in twenty years—that should interest people with savings accounts.”

  “But it doesn’t—and is it correct?”

  “It is correct—and it doesn’t interest them—almost everything Rolf calculates is correct. If you were to figure out what the paper was worth when we took it over, and what it is worth, or would be worth, today, you would probably arrive at similar percentages.”

  “Yes, I can remember Rolf’s calculations for Eickelhof. And what about Tolmshoven—how much will we get for that?”

  “What makes you think of Tolmshoven?”

  “I can see the dredges on the horizon, and I know there’s no stopping—you’ve said yourself that there’s no stopping the proliferation. I can hear whispers and jokes, I can hear my son-in-law’s insinuations—and I can see Tolmshoven, not the village, just the manor house, like an island in a vast pit—helicopter service to the mainland—conveyor belts, noise, pumps, and dredges all around us, the moat with no natural water supply, stagnant, swampy, the ducks looking sickly—and your grandchildren will be flown in by airlift to feed the last of the ducks. But there’s one thing that’ll be guaranteed, Fritz, one thing we can really be sure of: security—unless some engineer or miner working down there around us on dredges and pumps and belts gets some silly idea—but how could he reach us, climb up the three or four hundred meters of wall? No, we’ll be safe, unless the helicopter crashes just when we’re flying out in the evening for a visit—to our sons, our daughter, our grandchildren—we’ll be safe all right, and how safe the foundations will be, for the manor I mean, in this wobbly layer of gravel, clay, sand—they’ll build us a huge concrete block—and in fifty or a hundred years, when they’ve excavated everything, Tolmshoven will be standing in the middle of an idyllic lake, and your great-grandchildren will be able to catch fish from the window—is that how it’s going to be, Tolm?”

  “No, Käthe, that’s not how it’s going to be. They’ll tear it down and bury it, and we’ll be living somewhere else—provided we live to see it.”

  “Will we live to see it? Will energy needs permit us to die here—in security, from security—who knows how? You needn’t spare me, Fritz. I’d rather hear it from you than pick it up from whispers and stupid jokes—wouldn’t it be better to move out now? Move somewhere else with Sabine, Kit, and the new baby, maybe with Rolf and Katharina, Holger—and Herbert if we can persuade him? Go ahead, have a cigarette—I won’t tell anyone.…”

  She pushed the malachite box toward him, and he lit up. “Sabine,” he said, “she’s been on my mind all day, and I didn’t know why—she’ll miss Blorr, Kit won’t be able to play here properly, fortunately Fischer is off again tomorrow on one of his long trips—Pottsieker told me at lunch—Tunis, Romania, some Far Eastern refugee camps where they’re setting up their knitting machines. At any rate, we’ll be rid of him for the next couple of weeks and have time to think things over, perhaps she could even go back to Blorr during that time?”

  “She won’t do that, I’m sure—I’ll bring her over, you have a talk with her while I stay with Kit.…”

  He went to meet her, waited in the open door, nodded to young Hendler, who was strolling back and forth between their own rooms and the guest apartment. It was very quiet, the only unusual thing being the sound of voices from Blurtmehl’s room—Miss Klensch must have already arrived. Käthe’s vision of the manor-island in the pit preoccupied him: helicopter shuttle service, the swampy moat—no houses, no church, probably no more trees either, no birds, perhaps just a few crows—cracks in the walls.…

  Sabine sank onto his chest, not so much a penitent sinner as a confused young woman; she shook her head when he tried to draw her into the room, looked at him, without tears. “Oh, Father,” she said, “I’m so glad to be away from there. It was impossible—I’ll move to Rolf’s for the time being, don’t worry. The garden there has those high walls around it, Kit gets along fine with Holger, and we’ll see—I’ve already spoken to Rolf.…”

  “It’s pretty cramped there, I don’t know …?”

  “Katharina’s finding me a room nearby—in the daytime I’ll be with them, I’ll give Katharina a hand, I’m good with children.…”

  “Have you notified Holzpuke? I mean—he has to know.…”

  “He growled a bit, said everything was running so smoothly in Blorr, and in Hubreichen, well, he knows the circumstances there, the facts—don’t be angry with me for not staying, I’ve spoken to Erwin too, he’s off on another trip—we can leave the serious problems till later … later. Mr. Hendler will take me to Hubreichen and stay there today—I asked Holzpuke for this, you know he’s Kit’s favorite. I already feel much better, much easier, I’m not thinking yet of the serious problems ahead of us, for the next three weeks Erwin will be away.…”

  She resembled Käthe, also his mother—and him—and whom else, someone he didn’t know? Had no sadness in her eyes, they just looked serious, and now joyful in a way that made him think almost affectionately of the man whose child she was expecting. He must be very good to her. He thought of Beverloh, with whom she had been so violently in love, of Fischer, who had thrust his way so boyishly into all her “speculative talk” and taken her so to speak by storm; dynamic, Catholic, an entrepreneur—quite witty, too, at times—but not once in all the five years had he seen Sabine’s face looking like this: serious and full of joy, the regular features that had given her the reputation of a beauty, moved and mobile—and determined, too. “No more TV, no idiot box—good, very good.…”

  “No, I was only confused for a while.…”

  “And the other thing?”

  “What other thing?”

  “The—I mean, the religious aspect—your whole attitude—I mean, perhaps you feel a sense of guilt—wouldn’t you like to talk about it? Perhaps this evening at Rolf’s, if we were to go over there?”

  “Yes, do come—that would be lovely—come—no, don’t worry, Mr. Hendler may hear it all, but—” She turned and looked out into the corridor, smiled. “I see he’s withdrawn—discreetly—I do feel a sense of guilt, not toward Fischer and not toward you and Mother, only toward his wife. We’ll talk about it … And how about you, what will you be doing now that they’ve put you right at the top?”

  “I shall make speeches and give interviews. I’m not scared anymore, only for you, for the family—we’ll be there this evening.…”

  Kit, that was obvious, and it hurt a little, was looking forward to Hubreichen more than to Tolmshoven. There she would be able to roast her chestnuts in the garden over an open fire and play with Holger, would also be allowed to go for the milk, and help sort the apples that Rolf sold. He had never understood how one could call a child Kit, even if it might be a variation of Käthe—if he remembered rightly it had a different, less flattering meaning. With Käthe’s arm in his, he watched them go down the stairs, Kit with her little bag of walnuts and chestnuts, Sabine with her little suitcase, and the young police officer carrying Kit’s dolls, two of them, holding them by the legs, bundled together, the doll dresses hanging down over their heads, revealing their underwear.…

  “She was a different person when I saw her just now,” said Käthe, “something must have completely changed her, made her almost happy—anyway she’s made up her mind.…”

  “He must be a very nice man, the father of this child—perhaps she talked to
him on the phone—in any case: he is in her.…”

  “What odd things you say, and you can even laugh.…”

  “I’m happy for her—but he’s married, she told me so. And probably a man like that also has a nice wife. That’ll complicate things—and when Fischer gets back there’s going to be trouble.”

  “I don’t know, perhaps we should leave her alone today with Rolf and Katharina. I’ll try to get hold of Herbert—incidentally, let’s hope she didn’t phone him, whoever he may be. For then Holzpuke would know what we don’t—who it is, perhaps he knows anyway: if anyone knows, surely it must be the security people, considering how closely she’s guarded—she must’ve met him somewhere—and more than once, I’m sure.”

  “You’re right—Holzpuke should know—she must’ve met him, must’ve arranged a meeting, and all that.…”

  “Shall we ask him?”

  “No, and anyway he wouldn’t tell us—wouldn’t be allowed to—he’s not allowed to pass on any information picked up in the course of duty that is of an intimate nature: the only thing he must do is to check out that man for security purposes. Let’s hope the man knows what kind of circuit he’s landed in. If she’s really been under watertight surveillance—which I presume she has—only the security people can know who the father of our future grandchild is: if the surveillance is really functioning, the tape will know who the father of our grandchild is.”

  “Shall I call Herbert now?”

  “Ask him whether he couldn’t come here—just this once? If we are to drive over to Herbert in his high rise, I’ll have to let Holzpuke know in good time. For that place they’ll need practically a whole company of guards, which is quite logical: there are all kinds of groups and types hanging out in there, not only students and Communists but Communist students, even anarchists and Maoists—and God knows what; entrances and exits would have to be secured, they’ll probably need helicopters—and we’ll be sitting there with our son, who won’t move out if it kills him because that high rise happens to be part of the Tolm holdings and he wants to keep proving to me what kind of inhuman housing-machine I’m a partner in. They’ll be standing there with their machine pistols in front of the doors and on the balconies, occupying the lobby—they have no choice. Visiting Rolf means a much simpler production, only one or two men around the vicarage. But the people in Hubreichen care for that as little as the people in Blorr and the occupants of Herbert’s high rise. It bothers them, makes them uneasy and bad-tempered, those highly strung reactions occur not only with Kortschede but also with the police officers, who are under tension for months on end, tension and boredom, tension although or because nothing is happening. And then a few shots may suddenly go off, at random, when a dog runs through the hazel thicket or some boy from the village climbs over the wall and fires his toy pistol. The best we can do is acknowledge the fact that we are prisoners—that we’ll perish in security, perhaps from security.”

  “So that means staying at home—or visiting people who are as closely guarded as we are—the Fischer parents, where I always feel ready to throw up. They’re forever conjuring up the Red peril, they’re pathological about it and pathologically boring, they see starvation staring them in the face when sales rise by only twenty-nine million instead of thirty-five million, they defend the middle classes, to which they don’t even belong, against the Socialist threat while knowing perfectly well that their very concentration represents the greatest threat to the middle classes. I’ve read myself that the banks are an even greater threat to the middle classes, and Germany is always doomed when even one Communist becomes a city councillor someplace. And with luck there’ll also be a bishop among the guests, a quiet one who nods and nods and nods to everything—and they all dress and behave and smile like Amplanger, who looks the way I imagine the ones they’re trying to protect us from do—and when you think that Rolf almost became a bank manager and that Beverloh certainly would have—with the latest in briefcases, tennis racket, and maybe a little dog under one arm.… It’s always the same: they happen to have heard twelve and a half words on the radio and five and a half words on TV, and already starvation is staring them in the face and they see the revolution at the door. Oh, Fritz, dear Tolm, why must they all be so boring?”

  “Not all—Kortschede and Pottsieker and even Amplanger senior—there are a few—nor Bleibl, you can’t call him boring.”

  “And yet you’re longing to visit your children too and can’t, won’t, you’ve had to hand yourself over to a security in which you don’t believe—which you are really only enduring out of courtesy.…”

  “And they’ll find some other way through all security measures—the bomb flying like a bird, a really ‘hot’ owl, wild geese sweeping through the night—or they’ll send my grandson Holger to do me in, well drilled, hardened by Alpine and other training, twelve, fifteen years old, he’ll arrive unarmed, pass through all the checkpoints: grandson visiting grandfather—and he may well throttle me, won’t even need a knife—and if by that time they’ve reached the point of tying the hands of unarmed visitors, even if it be a grandson, his head will be his weapon, like a ram he’ll butt his head against my heart, over and over again against a heart weakened by several coronaries, jabbing, jabbing.…”

  “If Holger is not going to be sent to you as a well-trained butting ram until he’s twelve or fifteen, you still have five or eight years to go.”

  He laughed, now did reach again for the cigarette box: “It won’t be long—anyway I’ll be president for two years, and I’ve long stopped imagining that there is such a thing as security, internal or external, or within me either, for that matter.”

  “So I won’t be catching you anymore in the morning in front of the bathroom mirror, whispering to yourself: ‘I don’t want to go on.’ Do you?”

  “Yes, I do, I want to go on with you—yet they’re probably already practicing strangleholds, looking into hypnosis, drugs, perhaps with drugs they’ll persuade a security officer to ‘grab me.’ He will be a nice, well-drilled, thoroughly healthy, thoroughly vetted young policeman who will suddenly throw himself upon me with an apparently protective gesture that conceals the murderous grip. There is no security—computers, rockets, rocketlike artificial birds, psychomanipulations, remote psychoterrorism—so we might as well resign ourselves to the loneliness of extreme, luxurious imprisonment. Remember my attempt—that went from the absurd to the ridiculous—to take up one of my old pleasures, cycling. Two police cars in front, one behind me, and a helicopter circling overhead—too ridiculous to be endured. And when did we have our last big family dinner where each person was responsible for one course: you took care of the soup and salad, I took care of the meat, Rolf of the potatoes, Katharina the gravy, Herbert and Sabine of the desserts—and I was responsible for the coffee. We all did the dishes together, kitchen and dining room had to be spanking clean before coffee was served, and on those occasions Erwin Fischer was even quite nice, surprising us by producing an additional dessert in the form of fantastic crepe suzettes—until that baby arrived whom they named Holger. Until then he had been able to bring himself to sit at the same table with a ‘car arsonist’ like Rolf and a Communist like Katharina—but he couldn’t stand the idea of a second Holger in the family, and things got so bad that Sabine and Katharina and Rolf could only meet secretly, without Kit of course, who might have talked—not only under complete surveillance but informing on each other too merely because someone had named a child Holger. How about settling for staying here—we could invite Blurtmehl and his girl for dinner if they aren’t doing anything and he can forget that he’s a servant and allow himself to be waited on for a change. I think we’d better leave Katharina, Sabine, and Rolf to themselves—let’s have a quiet evening here.”

  “We really ought to ask Katharina’s parents over sometime.”

  “Of course, they’re Rolf’s parents-in-law, in a way, and Luise—I can remember her as a child, fortunately she was never one of my father’s pupil
s, so I’d be spared that topic of conversation … Will you have a word with Blurtmehl? I’m curious to meet this Eva.…”

  “So am I—I didn’t get the impression that they had any plans. I’ll have to leave you now for a while, do some phoning and see what I have in the way of supplies.”

  Sometimes he had made an unexpected, unannounced visit to Rolf in Hubreichen, asking Holzpuke for a reduced escort and telling Blurtmehl to park the car on the empty school playground. He had walked the hundred paces to the vicarage and gone into the garden where the young people lived in a small separate building known for some mysterious reason as “the annex.” He would walk as fast as he could, trying to stay ahead of swift tongues, while his protectors, swifter than he, took up positions by the vicarage wall inside the garden. He would then pause in the hazel thicket, look into the ground floor of the annex, see his son Rolf playing with Holger: building blocks of wood, of stones, wooden vehicles, handmade (he didn’t even dare to think the word “hobby”—to them that word was insulting, they insisted on “handmade”).

  Rolf would be squatting on the ground beside the boy, a happy young father, relaxed, smoking as he sat on his heels, gently guiding the boy’s play and, to judge by the movements of his lips and hands, encouraging him too, and he seemed to be singing softly while painting stones, pasting colored paper on wooden blocks. Once too, while Holger was quietly watching him, he hollowed out a turnip into a lantern, giving it eyes, mouth, nose, and moustache, using his knife to cut a holder for the candle. Everything was very quiet, relaxed, and the two were enjoying themselves—and then inevitably had come the memory of Eickelhof, where he had sometimes played truant from the newspaper to play with the children.

  One evening, before he had time to walk to the door and knock, he had been surprised by Katharina, just back from shopping. She exclaimed: “Good heavens, Father”—yes, she called him Father!—“why are you standing around here like an outcast? Come on, you won’t disturb us, you never do.” And he had almost felt tears in his eyes because she was so kind, called him Father, took him by the arm, and led him into the house on that dull, misty November evening. He was surprised at the warmth of Rolf’s greeting, and on the bench that he had been unable to see from the outside he discovered a whole gallery of hollowed-out turnips as well as lanternlike torches consisting of black cardboard frames pasted with colored paper, all made by Rolf for the private kindergarten. He also learned that Rolf had been picked to ride through the village as Saint Martin, escorted by torchbearers, Roman legionaries with silver breastplates and swords, red cloaks. He was offered tea and gingerbread, allowed to smoke a cigarette, sit by the stove, put on more wood, wood that Rolf had gathered with his own hands in the nearby forest—with permission, of course—and had chopped and cut up, also sacks of fir cones, baskets of shavings. Rolf went around the farms collecting waste lumber, lumber that as a result of rapid modernization (all too rapid, in Rolf’s opinion) lay around ready to be thrown away—roof timbers, planks, also discarded furniture that he collected and either cut up for firewood or repaired for sale in some student secondhand store. That particular evening Rolf had spared him his analysis of stock-exchange reports, had merely used examples to explain the principle of throwing away and what has been thrown away. For the first time and with an undertone of regret he had declared Eickelhof to have been thrown away and the energy gained by that throwing away to have also been thrown away.