Any other time I would have laughed at Leo, standing there wearing his steel helmet, that symbol of inflated importance. He looked past me, across the first, the second barrack square, to the stables; his expressions alternated from three to five, from five to four, and with his final expression he said, “It’s war, war, war—they finally made it.” I said nothing, and he said, “I guess you want to talk to her?”
“Yes,” I said.
“I’ve already talked to mine,” he said. “She’s not pregnant. I don’t know whether to be glad or not. What d’you think?”
“You can be glad,” I said. “I don’t think it’s a good idea to have kids in wartime.”
“General mobilization,” he said, “state of alert, this place is soon going to be swarming—and it’ll be a long while before you and I can go off on our bikes again.” (When we were off duty we used to ride our bikes out into the country, onto the moors, the farmers’ wives used to fix us fried eggs and thick slices of bread and butter.) “The first joke of the war has already happened,” said Leo. “In view of my special skills and services in connection with the telephone system, I have been made a corporal. Now go over to the public callbox, and if it doesn’t ring in three minutes I’ll demote myself for incompetence.”
In the callbox I leaned against the Münster Area phone book, lit a cigarette, and looked out through a gap in the frosted glass across the barrack square; the only person I could see was a sergeant major’s wife, in Block 4, I think. She was watering her geraniums from a yellow jug; I waited, looked at my wristwatch: one minute, two, and I was startled when it actually rang, and even more startled when I immediately heard the voice of the girl in Cologne: “Maybach’s Furniture Company.” And I said, “Marie, it’s war, it’s war”—and she said, “No.” I said, “Yes, it is.” Then there was silence for half a minute, and she said, “Shall I come?,” and before I could say spontaneously, instinctively, “Yes, please do,” the voice of what was probably a fairly senior officer shouted, “We need ammunition, and we need it urgently.” The girl said, “Are you still there?” The officer yelled, “Goddamn it!” Meanwhile I had had time to wonder about what it was in the girl’s voice that had sounded unfamiliar, ominous almost: her voice had sounded like marriage, and I suddenly knew I didn’t feel like marrying her. I said, “We’re probably pulling out tonight.” The officer yelled, “Goddamn it, Goddamn it!” (evidently he couldn’t think of anything better to say), the girl said, “I could catch the four o’clock train and be there just before seven,” and I said, more quickly than was polite, “It’s too late, Marie, too late”—then all I heard was the officer, who seemed to be on the verge of apoplexy. He screamed, “Well, do we get the ammunition or don’t we?” And I said in a steely voice (I had learned that from Leo), “No, no, you don’t get any ammunition, even if it chokes you.” Then I hung up.
It was still daylight when we loaded boots from railway cars onto trucks, but by the time we were loading boots from trucks onto railway cars it was dark, and it was still dark when we loaded boots from railway cars onto trucks again; then it was daylight again, and we loaded bales of hay from trucks onto railway cars, and it was still daylight, and we were still loading bales of hay from trucks onto railway cars; but then it was dark again, and for exactly twice as long as we had loaded bales of hay from trucks onto railway cars, we loaded bales of hay from railway cars onto trucks. At one point a field kitchen arrived, in full combat rig. We were given large helpings of goulash and small helpings of potatoes, and we were given real coffee and cigarettes which we didn’t have to pay for; that must have been at night, for I remember hearing a voice say: Real coffee and cigarettes for free, the surest sign of war. I don’t remember the face belonging to this voice. It was daylight again when we marched back to barracks, and as we turned into the street leading past the barracks, we met the first battalion going off. It was headed by a marching band playing “Must I Then,” followed by the first company, then their armored vehicles, then the second, third, and finally the fourth with the heavy machine guns. On not one face, not one single face, did I see the least sign of enthusiasm. Of course, there were some people standing on the sidewalks, some girls too, but not once did I see anybody stick a bunch of flowers onto a soldier’s rifle; there was not even the merest trace of a sign of enthusiasm in the air.
Leo’s bed was untouched. I opened his locker (a degree of familiarity with Leo which the probationary teachers, shaking their heads, called “going too far”). Everything was in its place: the photo of the girl in Oldenburg, she was standing, leaning against her bicycle, in front of a birch tree; photos of Leo’s parents; their farmhouse. Next to the ham there was a message: “Transferred to area headquarters. In touch with you soon. Take all the ham, I’ve taken what I need. Leo.” I didn’t take any of the ham, and closed the locker; I was not hungry, and the rations for two days had been stacked up on the table: bread, cans of liver sausage, butter, cheese, jam, and cigarettes. One of the probationary teachers, the one I liked least, announced that he had been promoted to Pfc and appointed room senior for the period of Leo’s absence; he began to distribute the rations. It took a very long time; the only thing I was interested in was the cigarettes, and these he left to the last because he was a nonsmoker. When I finally got the cigarettes, I tore open the pack, lay down on the bed in my clothes, and smoked; I watched the others eating. They spread liver sausage an inch thick on the bread and discussed the “excellent quality of the butter,” then they drew the blackout blinds and lay down on their beds. It was very hot, but I didn’t feel like undressing. The sun shone into the room through a few cracks, and in one of these strips of light sat the newly promoted Pfc sewing on his Pfc’s chevron. It isn’t so easy to sew on a Pfc’s chevron: it has to be placed at a certain prescribed distance from the seam of the sleeve; moreover, the two open sides of the chevron must be absolutely straight. The probationary teacher had to take off the chevron several times; he sat there for at least two hours, unpicking it, sewing it back on, and he did not appear to be running out of patience. Outside, the band came marching by every forty minutes, and I heard the “Must I Then” from Block 7, Block 2, from Block 9, then from over by the stables—it would come closer, get very loud, then softer again; it took almost exactly three “Must I Thens” for the Pfc to sew on his chevron, and it still wasn’t quite straight. By that time I had smoked the last of my cigarettes and fell asleep.
That afternoon we didn’t have to load either boots from trucks onto railway cars or bales of hay from railway cars onto trucks; we had to help the quartermaster sergeant. He considered himself a genius at organization; he had requisitioned as many assistants as there were items of clothing and equipment on his list, except that for the groundsheets he needed two; he also required a clerk. The two men with the groundsheets went ahead and laid them out, flicking the corners nice and straight, neatly on the cement floor of the stable. As soon as the groundsheets had been spread out, the first man started off by laying two neckties on each groundsheet; the second man, two handkerchiefs; I came next with the mess kits. While all the articles for which, as the sergeant said, size was not a factor were being distributed, he was preparing, with the aid of the more intelligent members of the detachment, the objects for which size was a factor: tunics, boots, trousers, and so on. He had a whole pile of paybooks lying there. He selected the tunics, trousers, and boots according to measurements and weight, and he insisted everything would fit, “unless the bastards have got too fat as civilians.” It all had to be done at great speed, in one continuous operation, and it was done at great speed, in one continuous operation, and when everything had been spread out the reservists came in, were conducted to their groundsheets, tied the ends together, hoisted their bundles onto their backs, and went to their rooms to put on their uniforms. Only occasionally did something have to be exchanged, and then it was always because someone had got too fat as a civilian. It was also only occasionally that something was missing: a shoe-cl
eaning brush or a spoon or fork, and it always turned out that someone else had two shoe-cleaning brushes or two spoons or forks, a fact which confirmed the sergeant’s theory that we did not work mechanically enough, that we were “still using our brains too much.” I didn’t use my brain at all, with the result that no one was short a mess kit. While the first man of each company being equipped was hoisting his bundle onto his shoulder, the first of our own lot had to start spreading out the next groundsheet. Everything went smoothly. Meanwhile the newly promoted Pfc sat at the table and wrote everything down in the paybooks; most of the time he had only to enter a one in the paybook, except with the neckties, socks, handkerchiefs, undershirts, and underpants, where he had to write a two.
In spite of everything, though, there were occasionally some dead minutes, as the quartermaster sergeant called them, and we were allowed to use these to fortify ourselves; we would sit on the bunks in the grooms’ quarters and eat bread and liver sausage, sometimes bread and cheese or bread and jam, and when the sergeant had a few dead minutes himself he would come over and give us a lecture about the difference between rank and appointment. He found it tremendously interesting that he himself was a quartermaster sergeant—“that’s my appointment”—and yet had the rank of a corporal, “that’s my rank.” In this way, so he said, there was no reason, for example, why a Pfc should not act as a quartermaster sergeant, indeed even an ordinary private might; he found the theme endlessly fascinating and kept on concocting new examples, some of which betokened a well-nigh treasonable imagination. “It can actually happen, for instance,” he said, “that a Pfc is put in command of a company, of a battalion even.”
For ten hours I laid mess kits on groundsheets, slept for six hours, and again for ten hours laid mess kits on groundsheets; then I slept another six hours and still had heard nothing from Leo. When the third ten hours of laying out mess kits began, the Pfc started entering a two wherever there should have been a one, and a one wherever there should have been a two. He was relieved of his post, and now had to lay out neckties, and the second probationary teacher was appointed clerk. I stayed with the mess kits during the third ten hours too. The sergeant said he thought I had done surprisingly well.
During the dead minutes, while we were sitting on the bunks eating bread and cheese, bread and jam, bread and liver sausage, strange rumors were beginning to be peddled around. A story was being told about a rather well-known retired general who received orders by phone to go to a small island in the North Sea where he was to assume a top-secret, extremely important command. The general had taken his uniform out of the closet, kissed his wife, children, and grandchildren goodbye, given his favorite horse a farewell pat, and taken the train to some station on the North Sea, and from there hired a motorboat to the island in question. He had been foolish enough to send back the motorboat before ascertaining the nature of his command; he was cut off by the rising tide and—so the story went—had forced the farmer on the island at pistol point to risk his life and row him back to the mainland. By afternoon there was already a variation to the tale: some sort of a struggle had taken place in the boat between the general and the farmer, they had both been swept overboard and drowned. What I couldn’t stand was that this story—and a number of others—was considered criminal all right, but funny as well, while to me they seemed neither one nor the other. I couldn’t accept the grim accusation of sabotage, which was being used like some kind of moral tuning fork, nor could I join in the laughter or grin with the others. The war seemed to deprive what was funny of its funny side.
At any other time the “Must I Thens” that ran through my dreams, my sleep, and my few waking moments, the countless men who got off the streetcars and came hurrying into the barracks with their cardboard boxes and went out again an hour later with “Must I Then”; even the speeches we sometimes listened to with half an ear, speeches in which the words “united effort” were always occurring—all this I would have found funny, but everything which would have been funny before was not funny anymore, and I could no longer laugh or smile at all the things which would have seemed laughable; not even the sergeant, and not even the Pfc, whose chevron was still not quite straight and who sometimes laid out three neckties on the groundsheet instead of two.
It was still hot, still August, and the fact that three times sixteen hours are only forty-eight, two days and two nights, was something I didn’t realize until I woke up about eleven on Sunday and for the first time since Leo had been transferred was able to lean out of the window, my arms on the sill. The probationary teachers, wearing their walking-out dress, were ready for church, and looked at me in a challenging kind of way, but all I said was “Go ahead, I’ll follow you,” and it was obvious that they were glad to be able to go without me for once. Whenever we had gone to church they had looked at me as if they would like to excommunicate me, because something or other about me or my uniform was not quite up to scratch in their eyes: the way my boots were cleaned, the way I had tied my tie, my belt or my haircut; they were indignant not as fellow soldiers (which, objectively speaking, I agree would have been justified), but as Catholics. They would rather I had not made it so unmistakably clear that we were actually going to one and the same church; it embarrassed them, but there wasn’t a thing they could do about it, because my paybook is marked RC.
This Sunday there was no mistaking how glad they were to be able to go without me. I had only to watch them marching off to town, past the barracks, clean, upright, and brisk. Sometimes, when I felt bouts of pity for them, I was glad for their sakes that Leo was a Protestant: I think they simply couldn’t have borne it if Leo had been a Catholic too.
The office clerk and the orderly were still asleep; we didn’t have to be at the stable again till three that afternoon. I stood leaning out of the window for a while, till it was time to go, so as to get to church just in time to miss the sermon. Then, while I was dressing, I opened Leo’s locker again: to my surprise it was empty, except for a piece of paper and a big chunk of ham. Leo had locked the cupboard again to be sure I would find the message and the ham. On the paper was written “This is it—I’m being sent to Poland—did you get my message?” I put the paper in my pocket, turned the key in the locker, and finished dressing; I was in a daze as I walked into town and entered the church, and even the glances of the three probationary teachers, who turned round to look at me and then back to the altar again, shaking their heads, failed to rouse me completely. Probably they wanted to make sure quickly whether I hadn’t come in after the Elevation of the Host so they could apply for my excommunication; but I really had arrived before the Elevation, so there was nothing they could do; besides, I wanted to remain a Catholic. I thought of Leo and was scared, I thought too of the girl in Cologne and had a twinge of conscience, but I was sure her voice had sounded like marriage. To annoy my roommates, I undid my collar while I was still in church.
After mass I stood outside leaning against the church wall in a shady corner between the vestry and the door, took off my cap, lit a cigarette, and watched the faithful as they left the church and walked past me. I wondered how I could get hold of a girl with whom I could go for a walk, have a cup of coffee, and maybe go to a movie; I still had three hours before I had to lay out mess kits on groundsheets again. It would be nice if the girl were not too silly and reasonably pretty. I also thought about dinner at the barracks, which I was missing now, and that perhaps I ought to have told the office clerk he could have my chop and dessert.
I smoked two cigarettes while I stood there, watching the faithful standing about in twos and threes, then separating again, and just as I was lighting the third cigarette from the second a shadow fell across me from one side, and when I looked to the right I saw that the person casting the shadow was even blacker than the shadow itself: it was the chaplain who had read Mass. He looked very kind, not old, thirty perhaps, fair and just a shade too well fed. First he looked at my open collar, then at my boots, then at my bare head, and finall
y at my cap, which I had put next to me on a ledge from where it had slipped off onto the paving; last of all he looked at my cigarette, then into my face, and I had the feeling that he didn’t like anything he saw there. “What’s the matter?” he finally asked. “Are you in trouble?” And hardly had I nodded in reply to this question, when he said, “Do you wish to confess?” Damn it, I thought, all they ever think of is confession, and only a certain part of that even. “No,” I said, “I don’t wish to confess.” “Well, then,” he said, “what’s on your mind?” He might just as well have been asking about my stomach as my mind. He was obviously very impatient, looked at my cap, and I felt he was annoyed that I hadn’t picked it up yet. I would have liked to turn his impatience into patience, but after all it wasn’t I who had spoken to him, but he who had spoken to me, so I asked—to my annoyance, somewhat falteringly—whether he knew of some nice girl who would go for a walk with me, have a cup of coffee, and maybe go to a movie in the evening; she didn’t have to be a beauty queen, but she must be reasonably pretty, and if possible not from a good family, as these girls are usually so silly. I could give him the address of a chaplain in Cologne where he could make inquiries, call up if necessary, to satisfy himself I was from a good Catholic home. I talked a lot, toward the end a bit more coherently, and noticed how his face altered: at first it was almost kind, it had almost looked benign, that was in the early stage when he took me for a highly interesting, possibly even fascinating case of feeble-mindedness and found me psychologically quite amusing. The transitions from kind to almost benign, from almost benign to amused were hard to distinguish, but then all of a sudden—the moment I mentioned the physical attributes the girl was to have—he went purple with rage. I was scared, for my mother had once told me it is a sign of danger when overweight people suddenly go purple in the face. Then he began to shout at me, and shouting has always put me on edge. He shouted that I looked a mess, with my “field tunic” undone, my boots unpolished, my cap lying next to me “in the dirt, yes, in the dirt,” and how undisciplined I was, smoking one cigarette after another, and whether perhaps I couldn’t tell the difference between a Catholic priest and a pimp. With my nerves strung up as they were, I had stopped being scared of him, I was just plain angry. I asked him what my tie, my boots, my cap, had to do with him, whether he thought maybe he had to do my corporal’s job, and “Anyway,” I said, “you fellows tell us all the time to come to you with our troubles, and when someone really tells you his troubles, you get mad.” “You fellows, eh?” he said, gasping with rage. “Since when are we on such familiar terms?” “We’re not on any terms at all,” I said. I picked up my cap, put it on without looking at it, and left, walking straight across the church square. He called after me to at least do up my tie, and I shouldn’t be so stubborn; I very nearly turned round and shouted that he was the stubborn one, but then I remembered my mother telling me it was all right to be frank with a priest but you should try to avoid being impertinent—and so, without looking back, I went on into town. I left my tie dangling and thought about Catholics; there was a war on, but the first thing they looked at was your tie, then your boots. They said you should tell them your troubles, and when you did, they got mad.
The Collected Stories of Heinrich Böll Page 36