The Collected Stories of Heinrich Böll

by Heinrich Böll

  A shell landed in the cesspool, a wave splashed over him, soaking him with that disgusting liquid; he could taste it on his lips, and he sobbed more bitterly than ever, until he noticed that the farmhouse was in the tanks’ direct line of fire. Shells were whining right past his ears, over his head, incredibly hard round balls that caused a great rush of air. Glass tinkled behind him, timbers shattered, and inside the house a woman screamed, chunks of plaster and splinters of wood flew all around him. He tipped forward, ducked behind the wall surrounding the cesspool, and carefully buttoned his pants. Although his bowels were still convulsively releasing tiny amounts of that terrible pain, he crawled slowly down the steep little stone path to get away from the immediate vicinity of the farmhouse. His pants were fastened, but he could crawl no farther, the pain was paralyzing him. He lay where he was, and for a few seconds his whole life spun round him—a kaleidoscope of unspeakably monotonous pain and humiliation. Only his tears seemed important and real to him as they flowed freely down his face into the muck, that muck he had tasted on his lips—straw, excrement, mud, and hay. He was still sobbing when a shell hit the center beam of a barn roof, and the great wooden structure with its bales of pressed straw collapsed and buried him.

  VII

  The green furniture van had an excellent engine. The two men up front in the cab, who took turns driving, did not talk much, but when they did, they spoke almost exclusively about the engine. “Isn’t she a beaut,” they would say from time to time, shaking their heads in amazement and listening spellbound to that powerful, dark, regular throbbing with never a false or disquieting note to it. The night was warm and dark, and the road, as they drove steadily northward, was sometimes choked with army vehicles or horse-drawn carts, and every now and again they had to jam on the brakes because they suddenly came face to face with marching columns and almost drove into that strange formless mass of dark figures whose faces were lit up by their headlights. The roads were narrow, too narrow to allow furniture vans, tanks, and marching columns to pass, but the farther north they drove the emptier became the road, and for a long time there was nothing to stop them driving the green van as fast as it would go; the cones of their headlights lit up trees and houses, sometimes, in a curve, shooting into a field and making the tall corn or tomato plants stand out sharp and clear. Finally the road became quite empty, the men were yawning now, and they stopped somewhere in a village on a side road for a rest; they opened their packs, gulped the hot, very strong coffee from their canteens, opened flat round cans of chocolate, and calmly made themselves sandwiches, opening their cans of butter, sniffing the contents, and spreading the butter thickly on the bread before covering it with slabs of sausage, the sausage red and ingrained with peppercorns. The men took their time over their meal. Their gray, tired faces revived, and one—the man now sitting on the left and the first to finish—lit a cigarette and drew a letter from his pocket; he unfolded it and took a snapshot out of the folds: it showed a charming little girl playing with a rabbit in a meadow. Holding the picture out to the man beside him, he said, “How d’you like that—cute, eh? My kid,” he laughed, “a home-leave kid.” The other man went on chewing as he answered, staring at the picture and mumbling, “Cute—home-leave kid, eh? How old is she?”

  “Three.”

  “Haven’t you got a picture of your wife?”

  “Sure.” The man on the left took out his wallet—but suddenly paused, saying, “Listen to that, they must have gone nuts.” From the interior of the green van came a deep, angry mumbling and the shrill screams of a woman.

  “Go and make them shut up,” said the man behind the wheel.

  The other man opened the cab door and looked out onto the village street. It was warm and dark outside, and the houses were unlit; there was a smell of manure, a very strong smell of cow dung, and in one of the houses a dog barked. The man got out, cursing under his breath at the deep soft mud of the village street, and walked slowly around the van. From outside, the mumbling was only faintly audible, more like a gentle buzzing inside a box, but now two dogs were barking in the village, then three, and suddenly a light went on in a window somewhere, and a man’s silhouette became visible. The driver—his name was Schröder—couldn’t be bothered to open the heavy padded doors at the rear, it didn’t seem worth the effort, so he took his machine pistol and banged the steel butt a few times against the side of the van; there was silence at once. Then Schröder jumped up onto the tire to see if the barbed wire was still securely in place over the closed opening in the roof. The barbed wire was still securely in place.

  He climbed back into the cab. Plorin had finished his meal; he was drinking coffee now and smoking, and the picture of the three-year-old girl with the rabbit was lying in front of him. “Cute kid all right,” he said, raising his head for a moment. “You’re not saying anything—don’t you have a picture of your wife?”

  “Sure.” Schröder took out his wallet again, opened it, and removed a well-thumbed snapshot: it was of a woman, short, grown a little stout, wearing a fur coat. The woman was smiling inanely, her face was rather haggard and tired, and the black shoes with the heels that were much too high looked as though they hurt. Her thick hair, heavy and brownish, had been permed. “Good-looking girl,” said Plorin. “Let’s get going.”

  “Right,” said Schröder, “start her up.” He gave another glance outside; by this time a lot of dogs were barking in the village, and a lot of windows showed lights, and people were calling out to each other in the darkness.

  “Let’s go,” he said, slamming the door. “Start her up.”

  Plorin turned the key in the ignition, the motor started at once; he let it idle for a few seconds, then pressed down the gas pedal, and the green furniture van maneuvered itself slowly onto the highway. “She’s a beaut all right,” said Plorin, “a real beaut.”

  The noise of the engine filled the whole cab, their ears were full of the steady hum, but after a short distance that deep murmur from the inside of the van became audible again. “Let’s have a song,” Plorin said to Schröder.

  Schröder sang. He sang lustily, lifting up his voice, not very beautifully and not altogether accurately, but with real feeling. The emotional parts he sang with special fervor, and in some parts his voice was so emotional it sounded as if he were about to cry, but he did not cry. One song he seemed especially fond of was “Heidemarie,” it was clearly his favorite. For a whole hour he sang at the top of his voice, and after an hour the two men changed places, and now Plorin sang.

  “Good thing the old man can’t hear us singing,” said Plorin with a laugh. Schröder laughed too, and Plorin resumed his singing. He sang almost the same songs as Schröder, but he seemed to like “Gray Columns on the March” best, this was the one he sang most often; he sang it slowly, he sang it fast, and the especially moving parts, the ones stressing the misery and nobility of a hero’s life, he sang very slowly and dramatically and sometimes several times in a row. Schröder, now at the wheel, stared fixedly at the road, driving the van at top speed, and softly whistled an accompaniment. They heard nothing more now from the inside of the green van.

  It was getting chilly up front; they wrapped blankets around their legs, and from time to time, as they drove, they gulped coffee from their flasks. They had stopped singing, but inside the green van it was silent. Everything was silent, for that matter. Outside, everything was asleep; the highway was empty and wet—it must have been raining here—and the villages they drove through looked dead. They were caught briefly by the headlights in the darkness, a house or two, sometimes a church on the main road—for an instant they would leap up out of the darkness and then were left behind.

  About four in the morning they stopped for a second breather. They were both tired by this time, their faces gray and drawn and grimy, and they hardly spoke; the hour’s drive still ahead of them seemed endless. They made only a brief halt by the roadside, wiped their faces with schnapps, listlessly ate up their sandwiches, and
swilled down the rest of the coffee. They finished the chocolate from their flat cans and lit cigarettes. Somewhat refreshed they drove on, and Schröder, now at the wheel again, whistled softly to himself, while Plorin, wrapped in a blanket, slept. Not a sound came from the inside of the green van.

  A light rain started to fall, and dawn was breaking as they turned off the main road, wound their way through the narrow streets of a village out into the open country, and began driving slowly through a forest. Ground mist was rising, and when the van emerged from the forest there was a meadow, with army huts on it, then another little forest and a meadow, and the van stopped and impatiently sounded its horn in front of a big gate consisting of beams and barbed wire. The gate was flanked by a black-white-and-red sentrybox and a tall watchtower on which a man in a steel helmet was standing beside a machine gun. The gate was opened by the sentry, who grinned as he looked into the cab, and the green van drove slowly into the fenced enclosure.

  The driver nudged his neighbor. “We’re here,” he said. They opened the cab doors and got out with their packs.

  Birds were twittering in the forest; the sun came up in the east and shone on the green trees. Soft mist covered everything.

  Schröder and Plorin walked wearily toward a hut behind the watch-tower. As they climbed the few steps to the door, they saw a whole column of trucks parked on the camp road ready to leave. It was quiet in the camp; nothing moved but the smoke that came pouring out of the crematorium chimney.

  The SS lieutenant was sitting crouched over a table and had fallen asleep. As he woke up with a start, the two men gave him a tired grin, saying, “Here we are.”

  He got up, stretched, and said with a yawn, “That’s good.” He sleepily lit a cigarette, ran his fingers through his hair, put on a cap, straightened his belt, and glanced into the mirror as he flicked the grains of sleep from the corners of his eyes. “How many are there?” he asked.

  “Sixty-seven,” said Schröder, tossing a sheaf of papers onto the table.

  “Is that the lot?”

  “Yes—that’s the lot,” said Schröder. “What’s new?”

  “We’re clearing out—tonight.”

  “Is that definite?”

  “Yes—it’s getting too hot around here.”

  “Where to?”

  “Toward ‘Greater Germany—Subdivision Austria’!” The SS lieutenant laughed. “Go and get some sleep,” he said. “It’s going to be another tough night; we’re off tonight at seven sharp.”

  “And the camp?” asked Plorin.

  The SS lieutenant took off his cap, carefully combed his hair, and with his right hand arranged his forelock. He was a handsome fellow, brown-haired and slim. He sighed.

  “The camp,” he said, “there’s no more camp now—by tonight there’ll be no more camp. It’s empty.”

  “Empty?” asked Plorin; he had sat down and was slowly rubbing his sleeve along his machine pistol, which had got damp.

  “Empty,” repeated the SS lieutenant; he grinned faintly, shrugged his shoulders. “The camp’s empty, I tell you—isn’t that enough?”

  “Have they been taken away?” asked Schröder, already at the door.

  “Damn it all,” said the SS lieutenant, “leave me alone, can’t you? I said empty, not taken away—except for the choir.” He grinned. “We all know the old man’s crazy about his choir. Mark my words, he’ll be taking that along again …”

  “Hm,” said each of the two men, and then again, “Hm …” And Schröder added, “The old man’s completely nuts about his singing.” All three laughed.

  “Okay, then, we’ll be off now,” said Plorin. “I’ll leave the van where it is, I’m all in.”

  “Never mind the van,” said the SS lieutenant. “Willi can drive it away.”

  “Okay, then—we’re off.” The two drivers left.

  The SS lieutenant nodded, walked to the window, and looked out at the green furniture van parked on the camp road, just where the waiting column began. The camp was quite silent. It was another hour before the green van was opened, when SS Captain Filskeit arrived at the camp. Filskeit had black hair, he was of medium height, and his pale and intelligent face radiated an aura of chastity. He was strict, a stickler for order, and would tolerate no deviation. His actions were governed solely by regulations. When the sentry saluted, he nodded, glanced at the green furniture van, and stepped into the guardroom. The SS lieutenant saluted.

  “How many?” asked Filskeit.

  “Sixty-seven, sir.”

  “Good,” said Filskeit. “I’ll expect them in an hour for choir practice.” He nodded casually, left the guardroom, and walked across the camp ground. The camp was square, a quadrangle consisting of four times four huts with a small gap on the south side for the gate. At the corners were watchtowers. In the center were the cookhouse, the latrine hut; in one corner of the camp, next to the southeast watchtower, was the bath hut, and next to the bath hut, the crematorium. The camp was completely silent except for one of the sentries—the one on the northeast watchtower—who was singing something softly to himself; apart from that the silence was unbroken. Wispy blue smoke was rising from the cookhouse, and from the crematorium came dense black smoke, fortunately drifting south; the crematorium had been belching dense clouds of smoke for a long time. Filskeit gave a quick look around, nodded, and went to his office, which was next to the kitchen. He threw his cap on the table and nodded in satisfaction: everything was in order. He might have smiled at the thought, but Filskeit never smiled. To him life was very serious, his army career even more so, but the most serious thing of all was art.

  SS Captain Filskeit loved art, music. Some people found his pale, intelligent face handsome, but the angular, oversize chin dragged down the finer part of his face and gave his intelligent features an expression of brutality that was as shocking as it was surprising.

  Filskeit had once studied music, but he loved music too much to be able to summon that grain of realism that the professional must have, so he went to work for a bank and remained a passionate amateur of music. His hobby was choral singing.

  He was a hardworking and ambitious individual, very reliable, and he soon advanced to the post of department head in the bank. But his real passion was music, choral singing. At first all-male choirs.

  At one time, in the distant past, he had been choirmaster of the Concordia Choral Society, he had been twenty-eight, but that was fifteen years ago—and, although a layman, he had been elected choirmaster. It would have been impossible to find a professional musician who would have furthered the society’s aims more passionately or more meticulously. It was fascinating to watch his pale, faintly twitching face and his slender hands as he conducted. The members were afraid of him because he was so meticulous, no wrong note escaped his hearing, he flew into a rage whenever someone was guilty of sloppiness, and there had come a time when these decent, worthy singers had enough of his strictness, his tireless energy, and chose another choirmaster. At the same time he had been conductor of the church choir in his parish, although the liturgy did not appeal to him. But in those days he had seized every opportunity of getting his hands on a choir. The parish priest was popularly known as “the saint,” a gentle, rather foolish man who could sometimes look very severe: white-haired and old, he knew nothing about music. But he invariably attended choir practice, and sometimes he would smile gently, and Filskeit hated that smile: it was the smile of love, a compassionate, poignant love. And sometimes the priest’s face would take on a look of severity, and Filskeit could feel his aversion to the liturgy mounting simultaneously with his hatred of that smile. That smile of “the saint” seemed to say: Futile—futile—but I love you. He did not want to be loved, and his hatred of those anthems and that priest’s smile steadily increased, and when the Concordia dismissed him, he left the church choir. He would often think of that smile, that elusive severity, and that “Jewish” look of love, as he called it, which seemed to him both down-to-earth and loving, and
his breast was devoured by hate and torment …

  His successor was a schoolteacher who enjoyed his beer and a good cigar and liked listening to dirty stories. Filskeit had loathed all these things: he neither smoked nor drank, and he was not interested in women.

  Not long after, attracted by the idea of racism, corresponding as it did to his secret ideals, he joined the Hitler Youth, where he rapidly advanced to the position of regional choirmaster, organized choirs, including “speaking choirs,” and discovered his real love: mixed choral singing. At home—he had an austerely furnished barrack-like room in a Düsseldorf suburb—he devoted his time to choral literature and to every work on racism that he could get hold of. The result of this long and intensive study was an article of his own, which he entitled “The Interrelationship of Choir and Race.” He submitted it to a state music academy which returned it to him with the addition of some sarcastic marginal notes. It was not until later that Filskeit found out that the head of this academy was a Jew called Neumann.

  In 1933 he gave up banking for good in order to devote himself entirely to his musical assignments within the Party. His article was approved by a music school and, after some condensing, printed in a professional journal. He held the rank of unit leader in the Hitler Youth but his duties also embraced the SA and the SS, his specialty being speaking choirs, male choirs, and mixed choral singing. His qualities of leadership were undisputed. When war broke out he resisted being classified as indispensable, applied several times for admission to the SS Death’s Head units, and was rejected twice because he had black hair, was too short, and patently belonged to the stocky, “pyknic” type. No one knew that he often stood for hours in despair in front of the mirror at home and saw what it was impossible not to see: he was not a member of that race which he so ardently admired and to which Lohengrin had belonged.