The Clown

by Heinrich Böll

  No, the safest hypocrisy, and the one I would enjoy the most, was to “gamble on the Catholic card.” There every number was a winner.

  I glanced once more over the roofs of the University to the trees in the park: that was where Marie would be living, over there on the slopes between Bonn and Godesberg. Good. It was better to be near her. It would be too easy for her if she were able to think I was always on the move. She should always have to reckon with the possibility of running into me and blush with shame every time she realized how unchaste and adulterous her life was, and when I met her with her children, and they were wearing raincoats, parkas, or loden coats; her children would all of a sudden seem to her naked.

  They are whispering in the city, Madam, that you let your children run around naked. That’s going too far. And have you forgotten one little word, Madam, at a crucial point when you say you only love one man—you ought to have said which man. They also whisper that you are smiling at the sullen resentment harbored by everyone here against the one they call Der Alte. You think that in a distorted kind of way they all resemble him. After all—you think—they all regard themselves as indispensable as he does, after all, they all read mystery stories. Naturally the jackets of these books do not go with the tastefully decorated homes. The Danes have forgotten to extend their designs to the jackets of mystery stories. The Finns will be clever enough to do this and adapt their jackets to go with chairs, sofas, glasses, and pots. Even at Blothert’s there are mystery stories lying around that hadn’t been hidden carefully enough the evening we went over the house.

  Always in the dark, Madam, in movies and churches, in dark living rooms listening to church music, avoiding the bright light of the tennis courts. Such a lot of whispering. The thirty or forty-minute confessions in the cathedral. Ill-concealed indignation on the faces of those waiting their turn. Heavens above, how on earth can she have so much to confess: she has the handsomest, nicest, most reasonable husband. A really nice man. An adorable little daughter, two cars.

  The exasperated impatience in there behind the grill, the endless whispering back and forth about love, marriage, duty, love, and finally the question: “Not even religious doubts—then what is your trouble, my daughter?”

  You can’t put it into words, can’t even think it, the thing I know. What you need is a clown—official description—comedian, no church affiliation.

  I hobbled from the balcony to the bathroom to put on my make-up. It had been a mistake to face Father standing, sitting, without my make-up, but his visit was the last thing I could have expected. Leo had always been so keen to see my true opinion, my true face, my true self. Now he was going to see it. He was always afraid of my “masks,” of my clowning, of what he called my “flippancy,” when I wore no make-up. My make-up box hadn’t arrived yet from Bochum. The moment I opened the white cabinet on the bathroom wall, I realized it was too late. I ought to have remembered the fatal sentimentality inherent in objects. Marie’s tubes and jars, bottles and lipsticks: there was nothing left in the cabinet, and the fact of there being so unmistakably nothing left of her was as bad as if I had found one of her tubes or jars. All gone. Perhaps Monika Silvs had been merciful enough to pack it all up and put it away. I looked at myself in the mirror: my eyes were utterly empty, for the first time I didn’t need to empty them by looking at myself for half an hour and doing facial exercises. It was the face of a suicide, and when I began to put on my make-up my face was the face of a corpse. I smeared Vaseline over my face and ripped open a half-dried tube of white make-up, squeezed out what was left and painted myself completely white: not a stroke of black, not a spot of red, all white, even my eyebrows painted over; my hair above it looked like a wig, my unpainted mouth dark, almost blue, my eyes, pale blue like a stony sky, as empty as a Cardinal’s who will not admit to himself that he has long since lost his faith. I was not even afraid of myself. With this face I could become a success, I could even be hypocritical about the thing which in all its helplessness, in its stupidity, relatively speaking appealed most to me: the thing Edgar Wieneken believed in. This thing at least would have no taste, in its tastelessness it was the most honest of all the dishonest things, the least of the lesser evils. So in addition to the black, dark brown and blue there was another alternative, which it would be too euphemistic and too optimistic to call red, it was gray with a soft shimmer of sunrise. A sad color for a sad thing, where perhaps there was even room for a clown who was guilty of the worst of all clown sins: that of arousing pity. But the trouble was: Edgar was the last person I could betray, the last person I could pretend to. I was the only witness to the fact that he really had run the hundred meters in 10.1, and he was one of the few people who had always taken me as I was, to whom I had always appeared as I was. And the only faith he had was faith in certain people—the others believed in more than people: in God, in abstract money, in things like nation and Germany. Not Edgar. It had been bad enough for him that time I took the taxi. I was sorry now, I ought to have explained it to him, there was no one else to whom I owed any explanations. I left the mirror; I liked what I saw in it too much, I didn’t think for an instant that it was me I was looking at. That was no longer a clown, it was a corpse acting a corpse.

  I hobbled across to our bedroom, which I hadn’t gone into yet for fear of Marie’s clothes. I had bought most of them myself, even discussed the alterations with the dressmakers. She can wear almost any color except red and black, she can even wear gray without looking mousy, pink suits her very well, and green. I could probably make my living in the world of women’s fashions, but for someone who is monogamous and not a pansy it would be too much of a torture. Most husbands just give their wives crossed checks and advise them to bow to the “dictates of fashion.” If purple happens to be the fashion, all these women who are fed with crossed checks wear purple, and when all the women at a party who “take pride in their appearance” run around in purple, the whole thing looks like a convocation of laboriously animated female bishops. There are very few women who can wear purple. Marie looked very nice in purple. While I was still at home the sack dress suddenly became fashionable, and all the poor old hens who had been told by their husbands to dress “smartly” ran around at our At Homes in sacks. I felt so sorry for some of the women—especially the tall, stout wife of one of the innumerable presidents—that I wanted to go up to her and hang something—a tablecloth or a curtain—around her like a mantle of mercy. Her fool of a husband noticed nothing, saw nothing, heard nothing, he would have sent his wife shopping in a pink nightgown if some pansy had decreed it was the fashion. The next day he gave a lecture to a hundred and fifty Protestant clergymen on the word “know” in marriage. Probably he didn’t even realize his wife has much too knobbly knees to be able to wear short dresses.

  I flung open the door of the wardrobe so as to avoid the mirror: there was nothing left of Marie, nothing, not even a shoetree or a belt, the way women sometimes leave them on a hanger. Scarcely even a trace of her perfume, she ought to have been merciful and taken my clothes too, given them away or burned them, but my things were still hanging there: green corduroy trousers, which I had never worn, a black tweed jacket, some ties, and three pairs of shoes on the shoerack at the bottom; in the small drawers I would find everything, everything: cufflinks and the little white collar stays, socks and handkerchiefs. I might have known it: where property is concerned, Christians are relentless, fair. I didn’t even need to open the drawers: everything of mine would be there, everything of hers would be gone. How kind it would have been to take along my stuff too, but here in our wardrobe it had all been done fairly, with excruciating justice. No doubt Marie had felt sorry for me too, when she took away everything that would remind me of her, and no doubt she had wept, the tears that women in divorce films weep when they say: “I’ll never forget the years I spent with you.”

  The tidy clean wardrobe (someone had even gone over it with a duster), was the worst thing she could have left behind for me to f
ind, tidy, divided, her things divorced from mine. The inside of the wardrobe looked like after a successful operation. Nothing left of her, not even a button off her blouse. I left the door open, to avoid the mirror, hobbled back into the kitchen, put the bottle of cognac in my coat pocket, went into the living room and lay down on the sofa and pulled up my trouser leg. My knee was badly swollen, but the pain got less as soon as I lay down. There were four cigarettes left in the box, I lit one of them.

  I thought about which would have been worse: if Marie had left her clothes here, or this way: everything tidy and clean and not even a message anywhere: “I’ll never forget the years I spent with you.” Maybe it was better this way, and yet she might at least have left a button or a belt on a hanger, or have taken the whole wardrobe with her and burned it.

  When we got the news of Henrietta’s death, the table was just being set at home, Anna had left Henrietta’s napkin, which she didn’t think was quite ready for the laundry, in the yellow napkin ring on the sideboard, and we all looked at the napkin, there was a bit of marmalade on it and a small brown spot of soup or gravy. For the first time I sensed how terrible are the objects left behind when someone goes away or dies. Mother actually made an effort to eat, no doubt it was supposed to mean: Life goes on, or something of that sort, but I knew very well: that wasn’t so, it isn’t life that goes on but death. I struck the soup spoon out of her hand, ran into the garden, back again into the house where the screaming and shouting was in full swing. The hot soup had scalded my mother’s face. I tore up Henrietta’s room, flung open the window and threw everything I could lay hands on into the garden: boxes and dresses, dolls, hats, shoes, caps, and when I flung open the drawers I found her underwear and among it some queer little things which must have been precious to her: dried ears of wheat, stones, flowers, scraps of paper and whole bundles of letters tied up in pink ribbon. Tennis shoes, racquets, trophies, as fast as I picked them up I threw them out into the garden. Leo told me later I had looked like “a madman,” and that it had all happened so fast, so terribly fast, that no one had been able to stop me. Whole drawersful I just tipped out over the windowsill, ran into the garage and carried the heavy spare can of gasoline into the garden, tipped it over the things and set fire to it: everything that lay scattered around I kicked into the tall flames, gathered together all the scraps and pieces, dried flowers, ears of wheat and the bundles of letters and threw them into the fire. I ran to the dining room, took the napkin with the ring from the sideboard, threw them into the fire! Leo said later that it was all over in less than five minutes, and before anyone realized what was happening the flames were burning skyhigh and I had thrown the whole lot in. An American officer even appeared on the scene, he thought I was burning secret documents, records of the German Werewolves, but by the time he arrived everything was scorched, black and hideous and stinking, and when he tried to grab one of the bundles of letters I struck his hand and tipped the remains of the gasoline in the can into the flames. Then even the fire trucks turned up with ridiculously big hoses, and in the background someone shouted in a ridiculously high voice the most ridiculous command I have ever heard “Water—forward march!” and they were not ashamed to play their hoses on this pathetic funeral pyre, and because a window frame had caught fire a bit one of them turned his hose on it, everything inside was awash, and afterward the parquet floor warped, and Mother moaned about her ruined floor and phoned all the insurance companies to find out if it was water damage or fire damage or whether it came under the heading of general insurance.

  I took a drink from the bottle, put it back in my coat pocket and gently felt my knee. When I lay down, it hurt less. If I was sensible and put my mind to it, the swelling and pain would go down. I could get myself an empty orange crate, sit in front of the station, play the guitar and sing the Litany of Loreto. I would lay my hat or my cap—as if by chance—on the step beside me, and as soon as it occurred to anyone to throw something into it, others would be encouraged to follow suit. I needed money, if only because I was almost out of cigarettes. The best thing would be to put a few nickels and pennies into the hat. Surely Leo would bring me at least that much. I pictured myself sitting there: my white face in front of the dark station façade, a blue jersey, my black tweed jacket and the green corduroy trousers, and I “lifted up my voice” against the street noises: Rosa mystica—ora pro nobis—turris davidica—ora pro nobis—virgo, fidelis—ora pro nobis—I would be sitting there when the trains from Rome came in and my conjux infidelis arrived with her Catholic husband. The wedding ceremony must have required a great deal of agonizing thought: Marie was not a widow, she was not divorced, she was no longer—this I happened to know for a fact—a virgin. Sommerwild must have been tearing his hair out, a wedding without a veil was enough to ruin the whole esthetic concept. Or did they have special liturgical regulations for fallen girls and former clowns’ concubines? What had the bishop who performed the ceremony thought? They wouldn’t settle for anything less than a bishop. Marie once took me along to a bishop’s vestry, and all that back and forth with take off miter and put on miter, put on white band and take off white band, put the crosier there, put the crosier here, put on the red band, take off the white, had made a great impression on me, my sensitive artistic nature has a feeling for the esthetics of repetition.

  I also thought about my pantomime with the keys. I could get some Plasticine, press a key into it, pour some water in the hollow form and bake a few keys in the refrigerator; it shouldn’t be too difficult to find a small portable one in which every evening before my show I would bake the keys which were to melt away during the performance. Perhaps the idea was worth something, for the moment I discarded it, it was too complicated, made me dependent on too many props and technical contingencies, and if some stagehand happened to have been swindled during the war by a Rhine-lander he would open the icebox and spoil my show. The other was better: to sit on the Bonn station steps, with my true face, painted white, sing the Litany of Loreto and srike a few chords on the guitar. My hat beside me, the one I used to wear for my Chaplin imitations, all I needed was the come-on coins: a nickel would do, a nickel and a dime would be better, but best of all three coins: a nickel, a dime, and a penny. People must be able to see that I was not a religious maniac who would spurn a modest donation, and they must see that every mite, even a copper one, was welcome. Later on I would add a silver coin, it must be apparent that larger donations were not only not despised but also given. I would even put a cigarette into the hat, most people found it easier to reach for their cigarettes than for their wallets. At some point, of course, someone would turn up to put forward principles of order: streetsinger’s license, or someone from the Anti-Blasphemy Executive Committee would take exception to the religious content of my offering. In case I should be asked for identification I would have a coal briquette beside me, everyone knew the inscription “Warm up with Schnier,” I would underline the black Schnier with red chalk, maybe draw an H. in front of it. That would be an impractical, but unmistakable, visiting card: How do you do, my name is Schnier. And there was one thing my father really could do for me, it wouldn’t even cost him anything. He could get me a streetsinger’s license. All he needed to do was call up the mayor, or speak to him about it when he played skat with him at the Union Club. He must do that for me. Then I could sit on the station steps and wait for the train from Rome. If Marie could bring herself to walk past me without putting her arms around me, there was always suicide. Later I hesitated to think of suicide, for a reason which may appear presumptuous: I wanted to save myself for Marie. She might leave Züpfner, then we would be in the ideal Besewitz situation, she could remain my concubine since in the eyes of the church she could never be divorced from Züpfner. All I needed then was to be discovered by television, acquire new fame, and the church would close its eyes. After all I didn’t feel the need of being married to Marie in church, and they wouldn’t even have to let off their worn-out Henry the Eighth cannon at me
.

  I was feeling better. My knee was less swollen, the pain was less, headache and depression remained, but I am as used to them as to the idea of death. An artist always carries death with him, like a good priest his breviary. I even know exactly what will happen after my death: I shall not be spared the Schnier vault. My mother will cry and maintain she was the only person who ever understood me. After my death she will tell everyone “what our Hans was really like.” To this very day and probably to all eternity she is firmly convinced that I am “sensual” and “grasping.” She will say: “Yes, our Hans, he was gifted, but sad to say very sensual and grasping—unfortunately completely undisciplined—but so gifted, so gifted.” Sommerwild will say: “Our good friend Schnier, a remarkable man, unfortunately he was hopelessly anticlerical and had absolutely no feeling for metaphysics.” Blothert will be sorry he didn’t get his capital punishment through in time to have me publicly executed. For Fredebeul I shall be “a unique type, of no sociological consequence whatever.” Kinkel will weep, sincerely and without restraint, he will be completely bowled over, but too late. Monika Silvs will sob as if she were my widow and be sorry she didn’t come to me at once and make me that omelette. Marie will simply not believe I am dead—she will leave Züpfner, go from hotel to hotel and ask for me, in vain.

  My father will make the most of the tragedy, full of regret that he did not secretly leave at least a few notes on the hall table as he left. Karl and Sabina will weep, uncontrollably, in a manner which all those at the funeral will find offensive. Sabina will grope furtively in Karl’s coat pocket because she has forgotten her handkerchief again. Edgar will feel obliged to hold back his tears, and after the funeral perhaps he will pace out the hundred-meter stretch in our garden again, go back alone to the cemetery and lay a big bunch of roses at the memorial tablet for Henrietta. Apart from me no one knows that he was in love with her, no one knows that the bundles of letters I burned showed only E.W. as sender. And there is one other secret I shall take with me to the grave: that I once watched Mother go secretly into her storeroom in the basement, cut herself a thick slice of ham and eat it down there, standing, with her fingers, hurriedly, it didn’t even look disgusting, only surprising, and I was touched rather than horrified. I had gone into the basement to look for old tennis balls in the luggage room, which was forbidden, and when I heard footsteps I switched off the light, I saw her take a jar of homemade applesauce off the shelf, put the jar down again, saw merely the cutting movement of her elbows, and then she stuffed the rolled-up slice of ham into her mouth. I never told anyone and I never will. My secret will rest under a marble slab in the Schnier vault. Strangely enough I like the kind to which I belong: people.