The Safety Net

by Heinrich Böll

  Holger loved going to the manor, where there were ancient cellars with old bits of armor lying around, and the tower with its battlements, pagoda-shaped summerhouses on the grounds, and parts of old cannons and stone cannonballs.

  Of late there had always been tears, at least moisture in Father’s eyes when they said goodbye, yet it was only eighteen kilometers to Hubreichen, twenty to Cologne and Herbert, and seventeen to Blorr and Sabine. Of late Käthe, too, had been inclined to moist eyes.

  And of course, once he was in Tolmshoven, he had also to visit Katharina’s parents, word got around right away when he was there, “Rolf, who had been such a nice boy, so devout,” who, all on his own, without Papa’s help, had almost been made a bank executive, if he hadn’t—if only he hadn’t—set fire to cars and thrown rocks. Old buddies would emerge from farmyards and sheds, men he had played football with, shared altar-boy duties. They would clap him on the shoulder, run their hands over him in imitation of frisking police, and ask in astonishment: “Tell us now, where d’you keep all that dynamite and the hand grenades?” And Holger was admired, sometimes being “a true Schröter,” the next time “a true Tolm,” and given candles and greetings to his mother by nice, head-shaking young women who used to sing in the church choir with Katharina, and then of course the boy wanted to throw stones into the Hellerbach, the village stream. The dogs chained up in the Kommertz yard were quite vicious, Holger didn’t like walking past them. And more hellos and tears even before they left, and more coffee, and tins were brought out and crisp little cookies distributed, and of course Holger had to go with Grandpa to his workroom, where all kinds of outlandish things were welded together. There old Schröter would sit, heaping abuse on the Communists, who had killed his brother, and almost more on Adenauer, who had betrayed everything, every damn thing, sold it all for a mess of pottage. “And just look at that mess, my boy—is it to your liking? I wouldn’t think so, otherwise you wouldn’t have … oh well, it’s gone but not forgotten.”

  He would show Holger everything, couplings and connections, screw threads, fiddle around on a contraption made of old war material, and it really was a bit eerie the way he repeatedly stressed that from his shed he could take “perfect aim, and I mean perfect, at your other grandpa’s window, absolutely perfect, especially the bathroom window”—no, he didn’t feel at ease at the Schröters’, Luise too pious, pietistic you might say, old Schröter forever carrying on about his old dream of the “left Center”—and in the end, when he had fulfilled all his duties, he felt positively homesick for Hubreichen, the high-walled vicarage garden, the red-enamel milk pitcher, their garden, the fruit trees, the stove, and playing with his young son, for Katharina, who, though she could account for the strained atmosphere in her old home, wouldn’t deny it. “You must put yourself in their place, understand that bitterness of the leftist Catholics toward the gains the rightist Catholics have made toward their triumphal march. They, the leftist Catholics, have always had to limp behind, footsore, bitter, frustrated, they could never feel happy, had no reason to. And now: just look at that mess.”

  He was a bit scared by this nostalgia for Hubreichen, for cottage and garden, for being alone with Katharina and the boy, for that sense of security behind the great woodpile that he kept replenishing; and the daily ritual ending with the evening walk to pick up the milk, the generous titch added by old Mrs. Hermes. Yes, he was scared by this nostalgia for a sense of security that might have been understandable when he came out of the slammer and was being hounded by the Zummerling mob, who had even tried to rouse the village people against himself and the priest. But now, four years later, with Holger already three years old, now he should be wanting to get away from Hubreichen—and he didn’t. Was he to—did he want to—spend the rest of his life in Hubreichen, restrict his delight in planning and calculating to the garden, to salvaging old lumber, to picking the crops and playing with his son? Possibly become some sort of unpaid, unofficial adviser to the villagers, a person to be rewarded with some fresh-killed meat, a basket of eggs?

  He found himself shocked by the routine that had developed from going for the milk: opening the door, placing the milk on the counter, kissing Katharina’s cheek, taking off the boy’s jacket, warming his hands at the stove, looking into the saucepan that today happened to smell of meat: stew with vegetables and mushrooms, checking to see whether the open bottle of wine would be enough for the evening or whether he should open a new one, closing the shutters, hooking them from the inside, testing the soil in the geranium window boxes. Outside it was damp and foggy, which absolved him from his evening walk. He was relieved to hear that Dolores wouldn’t be coming for the Spanish lesson, she was organizing some demonstration or other for Chile or Bolivia, had said over the phone that she was satisfied with their Spanish, on principle spoke only Spanish with them now, ending up with “Venceremos.” Where? Who?

  They were both startled by a knock on the door and glanced up in alarm, they had been looking forward to an evening of speaking Spanish and listening to music and were surprised when Sabine came in with Kit and the young security officer they were sometimes seeing these days at the manor—in the corridors, the park, the courtyard. Sabine with luggage, that had never happened before: a suitcase, an overnight case, a bag of knitting, Kit carrying two dolls and her ragged old cloth lion from which she never parted. Sabine, her manner appealing, almost embarrassed: “I know it’s a bad time to come—but I must see you, talk to you, and—I don’t mind sleeping with Kit in the little room.…” It was a good opportunity once again to admire Katharina’s unfailing openhearted warmth; not for a fraction of a second did her face show surprise or dismay. “Come on in and have supper with us! There’s something good tonight, and it’ll be very good for Holger to play with Kit for a change, instead of with us. Come on in! But I wonder—your security—and you know I don’t mean to be facetious …”

  “I’m being guarded,” said Sabine with a smile. “Mr. Hendler—you’ve met him, haven’t you?—was kind enough to come with me, in Mother’s car—I’ve left my old bus at Erwin’s—on Mr. Holzpuke’s instructions Mr. Hendler has taken over my security.…”

  The young officer merely nodded and said: “I’ll have to take up my post now, I’ll report to my superior on the new situation—most likely he’ll send along another man—the responsibility—the vicarage is very large—the garden is enormous.”

  “It’s pretty chilly outside,” said Rolf, “looks like rain, anyway fog is dripping. Come along, I’ll show you a good spot,” then qualifying: “in my opinion good. We must let the priest know too.” He took Hendler along the garden path to the cellar overhang of steel and wired glass. “I think you’ll find that from here you can keep an eye on both the garden and the wall, as well as our cottage, and if you—may we bring you something to eat?”

  “Thanks,” Hendler said, and stood against the wall testing his field of vision. “I think this’ll do till the other officer arrives—but, I wonder, would you have an outside light on your cottage?”

  “Yes?”

  “Would you mind turning it on?”

  “Of course not.”

  “Thanks, and—I hope you understand—nothing to eat, much as I’d like to.”

  At that moment light blazed up in the church, falling from the tall windows into the garden, and for some reason that he would never be able to explain, Rolf was frightened. He ran to the vestry door, rattled the handle, then ran back through the garden, out through the little gate, saw Roickler’s car outside the door, the trunk open, the back shelf propped up, and a young woman whom he had never seen before coming out of the hallway carrying two suitcases, a bag dangling from each shoulder—she nodded, hurried past him, and he turned around to watch: the pale severity of her face, the long, loose brown hair, her movements. As she put down the suitcases, half turning before placing the bags in the trunk, she smiled. He walked toward her and was about to introduce himself, but she shook her head and said: “I know who
you are—I’m Anna Plauck—go in and see him, he won’t be coming back, he wanted to leave quietly and write to you—he’s only afraid of one thing—that they’ll kick you out if he’s no longer here. Go in and see him, he’s in the church.…”

  It was a long time since he had been in a church, although he lived so close to one and the priest was, one could say, a good friend of his: yet he was afraid as he walked down the hallway, felt the draft, and entered the chill of the neo-Gothic church nave. Involuntarily he looked for the stoup, dipped in his first and middle fingers: it wasn’t really that long, only ten years, ten out of thirty. He even crossed himself and was startled to see Roickler in his surplice standing beside the altar. He was afraid something blasphemous was about to happen, some stupid sacrilege, and was surprised to see Roickler remove the altar cloth, carefully fold it up, take out the chalice from the tabernacle, kneel down, snuff out the candles, and calmly go into the vestry, from which he shortly emerged in street clothes. Rolf was still standing there rooted to the spot when Roickler touched his arm, saying: “I didn’t want to go just like that, I wanted to leave everything in order, the chalice in the safe, the vestments and altar cloth in the closet, I’ll send the key to the safe to the bishop—and I’m not leaving because I’m tormented by my sexuality but because I love that woman, I love Anna, I don’t want to leave her in loneliness and make myself lonely. I can’t go on, my dear Tolm, I can’t go on doing secretly what I forbid others to do, what I have to chalk up against them as a sin. It won’t affect the people in the village very much, I only hope they’ll soon get a new priest.… Come, I’ve something to settle with you.”

  “What are you going to do?” asked Rolf. “How are you going to manage, what are you going to live on …?”

  “For the time being I’ll live at Anna’s, she’ll support me, maybe my brother can give me some sort of a job—he’s an electrical contractor. And I can read and write, even do some arithmetic. Don’t look at me so sadly: because of you, your wife, and also your parents, also because of the people here, I’m very sorry to leave. Maybe I can come back secretly some evening, sit by the fire and smoke my cigar—are you shocked?”

  “Yes,” said Rolf, “in spite of my own findings, in spite of my systems analysis, I am shocked—I always thought, we always thought … Katharina …”

  “That I was a good priest—I know, and actually it’s true: I wasn’t a bad one, only I can’t go on like this, and I’d like to take proper leave of my church.… Come along—”

  They each crossed themselves, almost simultaneously, Roickler smiled as he did so, Rolf did not. Quite obviously Roickler hadn’t even taken his books, the shelves were still full, the smell of cigars still hung in the room. “Here’s a document I’ve prepared, but I don’t know whether it’s valid or whether its validity will be accepted. What it does is extend the lease we signed—you’ll have to put in the date—by five years. Today’s date, Ferdinand Roickler, priest—I’m still that, I still have that ecclesiastical status—and you sign here: Rolf Tolm. The local church council won’t, or I should say: shouldn’t raise any objections, the people here like you, and Hermes is reliable. But I don’t know what pressure will be exerted from above, and I don’t know either how much authority they have up there. Probably it’s a matter of interpretation, might mean a court case, but it won’t be so easy to throw you out—I wanted to be sure you understood this.… Still sad, Rolf? Still sad: we’ll meet again, here or in Cologne when you come to see me at Anna’s. By the way, I’ll give you the vicarage key, and you can use the bishop’s room as a guest room in case your parents might like to stay overnight.… You know about the record cabinet, the stereo set, and where the wine’s kept—and it would please me to think of someone having a bath in the bishop’s bathroom, where no one, let alone a bishop, has ever taken a bath. Don’t be sad, my friend, and remember me to Katharina and the boy. I took the precaution of sending my aunt off on a holiday, she’ll survive.…”

  Rolf managed to stammer out his thanks for the wonderful time they had had here. “I don’t know what would have become of us, where we would have ended up—and without you the people here certainly wouldn’t have—come around to accepting us, to being so nice to us—I mean.…”

  Out in the car Anna Plauck was already sitting at the wheel, smiling, nodding. And then they did embrace, shed a few tears, waved, a car driving off, he turned and went back into the church again and looked at the bare altar, noticing for the first time that the Perpetual Light had gone out too. Fear of this change, fear of the new priest, fear of the fear that seized him at the thought of being driven out; he locked the vicarage door and put the key in his pocket.

  Kit was already playing with Holger when he returned, suggesting suitable spots for the accommodation of the lion and Holger’s beloved wooden dachshund, a frightful Disney-type creature. Sabine was sitting on the bench beside the stove, smoking a cigarette—he hadn’t often seen her smoking lately; was she flushed from the stove or from embarrassment? She had always retained something childlike, not naïve but childlike, and he had never been able to understand why she had to pick Fischer. Not only were there nicer men in that category but there were really nice ones—Pliefger’s grandson, for instance, whom he had once met at Father’s, and also—like it or not, one must be fair—young Zummerling, who didn’t seem terribly intelligent but was genuinely thoughtful, considerate, the kind one might call a “caring” person—and she could certainly have had him: he was a first-rate horseman, and that, of course, would have been a fantastic match: the little paper and Zummerling. And why not, come to think of it? Since it made no difference anyway which paper one read. And now as he watched Sabine with a smile he felt a pang and would have wished her more happiness than she seemed to have had with Fischer. But then Fischer used not to be as obnoxious as he was now—always a reactionary, of course, and obsessed with profits, so what, perhaps they were all like that, had to be like that—but at one time he had been more moderate, less ruthless; he had used up his charm very quickly—had sometimes even had a wistful look in his eyes. But the nicest of the lot was certainly Zummerling.

  “What are you smiling at?” asked Sabine; she was having trouble with her cigarette and stubbed it out in the ashtray.

  “I’m smiling because I have much better quarters for you than that little room of ours. I have a genuine bishop’s room with a bishop’s bathroom”—and he took the key from his pocket and toyed with it. “The priest has suddenly gone off on a trip, he had to leave in a hurry, sends his regards to you, Katharina, and to Holger too. He’s offered me the use of his house—in case we have guests.… Incidentally, I’m delighted to see you, you’re looking extremely well, almost as if you were in love, even your pregnancy suits you—it’s becoming quite obvious.…”

  She blushed. Perhaps his answer had been too flip. “Don’t mind me. I take it you’re staying for a while?”

  “For a few days anyway, I’ve already explained to Katharina—Erwin is off again on one of his long trips, and I’m sick of always being alone in that big house. So, if it’s all the same to you two, I’d rather not have either the bishop’s room or the bishop’s bath—I’d just be alone in a big house again, surrounded by police.… Please, if you don’t mind, not the bishop’s room.”

  She smiled, was oddly embarrassed, helped set the table, even remembered where they kept the bowls for the stew, the spoons and the paper napkins. Meanwhile he cored some apples, filled them with jam, and put them in the oven, gave another stir to the bowl in which he had mixed vanilla and eggs, milk and sugar, for the custard sauce.

  “This’ll remind you of Eickelhof,” he said.

  “Do you also think so often about Eickelhof? I thought you never wanted to hear of it again.…”

  “No, not that often, but I know you do, and I want you to feel at home here. Maybe what we have here is a bit of Eickelhof—though only a thirtieth as big. All right, everybody, supper’s ready!”

  “Yes, it
does remind me of it. It must be the wall—and your warm welcome.”

  She sighed with contentment during the meal—stew, braised vegetables with mushrooms, and salad—put the kettle on for tea without being asked, kept touching Katharina’s arm, smiling, almost in tears, at any rate with moist eyes, and although he told her that the officer had declined any food she insisted on taking out “his bowlful.” “And later on a baked apple, when they’re ready—I know he’ll accept that from me, we’ve known each other for quite a while.” By this time it was raining hard, she pulled the hood of Rolf’s parka down over her head and carried the bowl of stew under the protection of the dangling garment; she refused an umbrella and closed the door carefully behind her.

  Katharina shook her head as he was about to speak. She had never been able to bring herself to send Holger out of the room when they wanted to discuss something. He said softly: “The priest, Roickler, will be away for a long time—a very long time,” and he placed the lease, the supplement to the lease, in front of her. They were both equally surprised to see Sabine’s blissful smile when she returned, took off the wet parka, shook it out, and sat down again by the stove. Then came the baked apples in Holger’s favorite little dishes, brown pottery with red borders, the custard sauce, and it was all so intimate, so gay, as if Saint Barbara and Saint Nicholas were hovering together above the house, the garden, and the village: still fall, yet already wintry, and again he was scared by all that snug security. Sabine shook her head when Katharina held out a little dish of apple and custard for the officer.

  “No,” she said, “he’d rather not, he’s a stickler. I must tell you something—that camper the officers have been living in recently, they’re going to move it away from Blorr and park it here—I’m a disturbing element.…”