The Collected Stories of Heinrich Böll

by Heinrich Böll

  I manage to race up the steps at nineteen and a half minutes past one. But I still have to be on the alert, I have to watch out like crazy. There comes the train, black and snorting against the city’s gray horizon. My heart is silent at the sight of it, but I am in time, that’s the main thing. In spite of everything, I’ve managed to get here in time.

  I keep well away from the joker with the baton. He is surrounded by people, and suddenly he’s caught sight of me, he calls out, he’s scared, he waves to the clique hiding in his signal house, waves to them to catch me. They dash out, they’ve almost got me, but I laugh in their faces, I laugh in their faces, for the train has pulled in and before they get to me she is in my arms, my girl, and all I own in the world is my girl and a platform ticket, my girl and a punched platform ticket …

  MY SAD FACE

  While I was standing on the dock watching the seagulls, my sad face attracted the attention of a policeman on his rounds. I was completely absorbed in the sight of the hovering birds as they shot up and swooped down in a vain search for something edible: the harbor was deserted, the water greenish and thick with foul oil, and on its crusty film floated all kinds of discarded junk. Not a vessel was to be seen, the cranes had rusted, the freight sheds collapsed; not even rats seemed to inhabit the black ruins along the wharf, silence reigned. It was years since all connection with the outside world had been cut off.

  I had my eye on one particular seagull and was observing its flight. Uneasy as a swallow sensing thunder in the air, it usually stayed hovering just above the surface of the water, occasionally, with a shrill cry, risking an upward sweep to unite with its circling fellows. Had I been free to express a wish, I would have chosen a loaf of bread to feed to the gulls, crumbling it to pieces to provide a white fixed point for the random flutterings, to set a goal at which the birds could aim, to tauten this shrill flurry of crisscross hovering and circling by hurling a piece of bread into the mesh as if to pull together a bunch of strings. But I was as hungry as they were, and tired, yet happy in spite of my sadness because it felt good to be standing there, my hands in my pockets, watching the gulls and drinking in sadness.

  Suddenly I felt an official hand on my shoulder, and a voice said, “Come along now!” The hand tugged at my shoulder, trying to pull me round, but I did not budge, shook it off, and said quietly, “You’re nuts.”

  “Comrade,” the still-invisible one told me, “I’m warning you.”

  “Sir,” I retorted.

  “What d’you mean, ‘sir’?” he shouted angrily. “We’re all comrades.”

  With that he stepped round beside me and looked at me, forcing me to bring back my contentedly roving gaze and direct it at his simple, honest face: he was as solemn as a buffalo that for twenty years has had nothing to eat but duty.

  “On what grounds …” I began.

  “Sufficient grounds,” he said. “Your sad face.”

  I laughed.

  “Don’t laugh!” His rage was genuine. I had first thought he was bored, with no unlicensed whore, no staggering sailor, no thief or fugitive to arrest, but now I saw he meant it: he intended to arrest me.

  “Come along now!”

  “Why?” I asked quietly.

  Before I realized what was happening, I found my left wrist enclosed in a thin chain, and instantly I knew that once again I had had it. I turned toward the swerving gulls for a last look, glanced at the calm gray sky, and tried with a sudden twist to plunge into the water, for it seemed more desirable to drown alone in that scummy dishwater than to be strangled by the sergeants in a backyard or to be locked up again. But the policeman suddenly jerked me so close to him that all hope of wrenching myself free was gone.

  “Why?” I asked again.

  “There’s a law that you have to be happy.”

  “I am happy!” I cried.

  “Your sad face …” He shook his head.

  “But this law is new,” I told him.

  “It’s thirty-six hours old, and I’m sure you know that every law comes into force twenty-four hours after it has been proclaimed.”

  “But I’ve never heard of it!”

  “That won’t save you. It was proclaimed yesterday, over all the loudspeakers, in all the papers, and anyone”—here he looked at me scornfully—“anyone who doesn’t share in the blessings of press or radio was informed by leaflets scattered from the air over every street in the country. So we’ll soon find out where you’ve been spending the last thirty-six hours, comrade.”

  He dragged me away. For the first time I noticed that it was cold and I had no coat; for the first time I became really aware of my hunger growling at the entrance to my stomach; for the first time I realized that I was also dirty, unshaved, and in rags, and that there were laws demanding that every comrade be clean, shaved, happy, and well fed. He pushed me in front of him like a scarecrow that has been found guilty of stealing and is compelled to abandon the place of its dreams at the edge of the field. The streets were empty, the police station was not far off, and, although I had known they would soon find a reason for arresting me, my heart was heavy, for he took me through the places of my childhood which I had intended to visit after looking at the harbor: public gardens that had been full of bushes, in glorious confusion, overgrown paths—all this was now leveled, orderly, neat, arranged in squares for the patriotic groups obliged to drill and march here on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Saturdays. Only the sky was as it used to be, the air the same as in the old days, when my heart had been full of dreams.

  Here and there as we walked along I saw the government sign displayed on the walls of a number of love-barracks, indicating whose turn it was to participate in these hygienic pleasures on Wednesdays; certain taverns also were evidently authorized to hang out the drinking sign, a beer glass cut out of tin and striped diagonally with the national colors: light brown, dark brown, light brown. Joy was doubtless already filling the hearts of those whose names appeared in the official list of Wednesday drinkers and who would thus partake of the Wednesday beer.

  All the people we passed were stamped with the unmistakable mark of earnest zeal, encased in an aura of tireless activity probably intensified by the sight of the policeman. They all quickened their pace, assumed expressions of perfect devotion to duty, and the women coming out of the goods depots did their best to register that joy which was expected of them, for they were required to show joy and cheerful gaiety over the duties of the housewife, whose task it was to refresh the state worker every evening with a wholesome meal.

  But all these people skillfully avoided us in such a way that no one was forced to cross our path directly. Where there were signs of life on the street, they disappeared twenty paces ahead of us, each trying to dash into a goods depot or vanish round a corner, and quite a few may have slipped into a strange house and waited nervously behind the door until the sound of our footsteps had died away.

  Only once, just as we were crossing an intersection, we came face to face with an elderly man, I just caught a glimpse of his schoolteacher’s badge. There was no time for him to avoid us, and he strove, after first saluting the policeman in the prescribed manner (by slapping his own head three times with the flat of his hand as a sign of total abasement)—he strove, as I say, to do his duty by spitting three times into my face and bestowing upon me the compulsory epithet of “filthy traitor.” His aim was good, but the day had been hot, his throat must have been dry, for I received only a few tiny, rather ineffectual flecks, which—contrary to regulations—I tried involuntarily to wipe away with my sleeve, whereupon the policeman kicked me in the backside and struck me with his fist in the small of my back, adding in a flat voice, “Phase One,” meaning: first and mildest form of punishment administerable by every policeman.

  The schoolteacher had hurriedly gone on his way. Everyone else managed to avoid us; except for just one woman, who happened to be taking the prescribed stroll in the fresh air in front of a love-barracks prior to the evening’s pleasures, a
pale, puffy blonde who blew me a furtive kiss, and I smiled gratefully while the policeman tried to pretend he hadn’t noticed. They are required to permit these women liberties that for any other comrade would unquestionably result in severe punishment; for, since they contribute substantially to the general working morale, they are tacitly considered to be outside the law, a concession whose far-reaching consequences have been branded as a sign of incipient liberalization by Professor Bleigoeth, Ph.D., D.Litt., the political philosopher, in the obligatory (political) Journal of Philosophy. I had read this the previous day on my way to the capital when, in a farm outhouse, I came across a few sheets of the magazine that a student—probably the farmer’s son—had embellished with some very witty comments.

  Fortunately we now reached the police station, for at that moment the sirens sounded, a sign that the streets were about to be flooded with thousands of people wearing expressions of restrained joy (it being required at closing time to show restraint in one’s expression of joy, otherwise it might look as though work were a burden; whereas rejoicing was to prevail when work began—rejoicing and singing), and all these thousands would have been compelled to spit at me. However, the siren indicated ten minutes before closing time, every worker being required to devote ten minutes to a thorough washing of his person, in accordance with the motto of the head of state: Joy and Soap.

  The entrance to the local police station, a squat concrete box, was guarded by two sentries who, as I passed them, gave me the benefit of the customary “physical punitive measures,” striking me hard across the temple with their rifles and cracking the muzzles of their pistols down on my collarbone, in accordance with the preamble to State Law No. 1: “Every police officer is required, when confronted by any apprehended [meaning arrested] person, to demonstrate violence per se, with the exception of the officer performing the arrest, the latter being privileged to participate in the pleasure of carrying out the necessary physical punitive measures during the interrogation.” The actual State Law No. 1 runs as follows: “Every police officer may punish anyone: he must punish anyone who has committed a crime. For all comrades there is no such thing as exemption from punishment, only the possibility of exemption from punishment.”

  We now proceeded down a long, bare corridor provided with a great many large windows. Then a door opened automatically, the sentries having already announced our arrival, and in those days, when everything was joy, obedience, and order and everyone did his best to use up the mandatory pound of soap a day—in those days the arrival of an apprehended (arrested) comrade was naturally an event.

  We entered an almost empty room containing nothing but a desk with a telephone and two chairs. I was required to remain standing in the middle of the room; the policeman took off his helmet and sat down.

  At first there was silence; nothing happened. They always do it like that—that’s the worst part. I could feel my face collapsing by degrees, I was tired and hungry, and by now even the last vestiges of that joy of sadness had vanished, for I knew I had had it.

  After a few seconds a tall, pale-faced, silent man entered the room wearing the light-brown uniform of the preliminary interrogator. He sat down without a word and looked at me.

  “Status?”

  “Ordinary comrade.”

  “Date of birth?”

  “1/1/1,” I said.

  “Last occupation?”

  “Convict.”

  The two men exchanged glances.

  “When and where discharged?”

  “Yesterday, Building 12, Cell 13.”

  “Where to?”

  “The capital.”

  “Certificate.”

  I produced the discharge certificate from my pocket and handed it to him. He clipped it to the green card on which he had begun to enter my particulars.

  “Your former crime?”

  “Happy face.”

  The two men exchanged glances.

  “Explain,” said the interrogator.

  “At that time,” I said, “my happy face attracted the attention of a police officer on a day when general mourning had been decreed. It was the anniversary of the Leader’s death.”

  “Length of sentence?”

  “Five.”

  “Conduct?”

  “Bad.”

  “Reason?”

  “Deficient in work enthusiasm.”

  “That’s all.”

  With that the preliminary interrogator rose, walked over to me, and neatly knocked out my three front center teeth—a sign that I was to be branded as a lapsed criminal, an intensified measure I had not counted on. The preliminary interrogator then left the room, and a fat fellow in a dark-brown uniform came in: the interrogator.

  I was beaten by all of them: by the interrogator, the chief interrogator, the supreme interrogator, the examiner, and the concluding examiner. In addition, the policeman carried out all the physical punitive measures demanded by law, and on account of my sad face they sentenced me to ten years, just as five years earlier they had sentenced me to five years on account of my happy face.

  I must now try to make my face register nothing at all, if I can manage to survive the next ten years of Joy and Soap …

  CANDLES FOR THE MADONNA

  My stay here was a brief one. I had an appointment in the late afternoon with the representative of a firm that was toying with the idea of taking over a product which has been causing us something of a headache: candles. We put all our money into the manufacture of tremendous stocks on the assumption that the electricity shortage would continue indefinitely. We have worked very hard, been thrifty and honest, and when I say “we” I mean my wife and myself. We are producers, wholesalers, retailers; we combine every stage in the holy estate of commerce: we are agents, workmen, traveling salesmen, manufacturers.

  But we put our money on the wrong horse. There is not much demand for candles these days. Electricity rationing has been abolished, even most basements now have electric light again; and at the very moment when our hard work, our efforts, all our struggles, seemed about to bear fruit—the production of a large quantity of candles—at that precise moment the demand dried up.

  Our attempts to do business with those religious enterprises dealing in what are known as devotional supplies came to nothing. These firms had hoarded candles in abundance—better ones than ours, incidentally, the fancy kind, with green, red, blue, and yellow ribbons, embroidered with little golden stars, winding around them, like Aesculapius’ snake—and enhancing both their reverent and aesthetic appeal. They also come in various lengths and sizes, whereas ours are all identical and of simple design: about ten inches long, smooth, yellow, quite plain, their only asset the beauty of simplicity.

  We were forced to admit that we had miscalculated; compared with the splendid products displayed by the devotional-supply houses, our candles look humble indeed, and nobody buys anything humble-looking. Nor has our willingness to reduce our price resulted in any increase in sales. On the other hand, of course, we lack the money to plan new designs, let alone manufacture them, since the income we derive from the limited sale of the stock we have produced is barely enough to cover our living expenses and steadily mounting costs. I have, for instance, to make longer and longer trips in order to call on genuinely or apparently interested parties, I have to keep on reducing our price, and we know we have no alternative but to unload the substantial stocks still on our hands and find some other means of making a living.

  I had come to this town in response to a letter from a wholesaler who had intimated that he would take a considerable quantity off my hands at an acceptable price. I was foolish enough to believe him, came all the way here, and was now calling on this fellow. He had a magnificent apartment, luxurious, spacious, furnished in great style, and the large office where he received me was crammed with samples of all the various products that make money for his type of business. Arranged on long shelves were plaster saints, statuettes of Joseph, Virgin Marys, bleeding Sacred Hear
ts, mild-eyed, fair-haired penitents whose plaster pedestals bore the name, in a variety of languages and embossed lettering (choice of gold or red), Madeleine, Maddalena, Magdalena, Magdalene; Nativity scenes (complete or sectional), oxen, asses, Infant Jesuses in wax or plaster, shepherds, and angels of all ages: tots, youths, children, graybeards; plaster palm leaves adorned with gold or silver Hallelujahs, holy-water stoups of stainless steel, plaster, copper, pottery, some in good taste, some in bad.

  The man himself—a jovial, red-faced fellow—asked me to sit down, affected some initial interest, and offered me a cigar. He wanted to know how we happened to get into this particular branch of manufacturing, and after I had explained that we had inherited nothing from the war but a huge pile of stearin which my wife had salvaged from four blazing trucks in front of our bombed-out house and which no one had since claimed as their property, after I had smoked about a quarter of my cigar, he suddenly said, without any preamble, “I’m sorry I had you come here, but I’ve changed my mind.” Perhaps my sudden loss of color did strike him as odd after all. “Yes,” he went on, “I really am sorry about it, but after considering all the angles I’ve come to the conclusion that your product won’t sell. It won’t sell! Believe me, I know! Sorry!” He smiled, shrugged his shoulders, and held out his hand. I put down the half-smoked cigar and left.

  By this time it was dark, and I was a total stranger in the town. Although, in spite of everything, I was aware of a certain relief, I had the terrible feeling that I was not only poor, deceived, the victim of a misguided idea, but also ridiculous. It would seem that I was unfit for the so-called battle of life, for the career of manufacturer and dealer. Our candles would not sell even for a pittance, they weren’t good enough to hold their own in the field of devotionalist competition, and we probably wouldn’t even be able to give them away, whereas other, inferior candles were being bought. I would never discover the secret of business success, although, with my wife, I had hit upon the secret of making candles.