The Collected Stories of Heinrich Böll

by Heinrich Böll

  “Why,” said Bertha gently, “didn’t you mention the contract to him? You know it’s going to be awarded tomorrow.”

  “Well,” I said, “I didn’t know how to bring the conversation round to it.”

  “Now, look,” she said in a quiet voice, “you could have used any excuse to ask him into your study, that’s where you should have talked to him. You must have noticed how interested he is in art. You ought to have said: I have an eighteenth-century crucifix in there you might like to have a look at, and then …”

  I said nothing, and she sighed and tied on her apron. I followed her into the kitchen; we put the rest of the appetizers back in the refrigerator, and I crawled about on the floor looking for the top of the mayonnaise tube. I put away the remains of the cognac, counted the cigars: Zumpen had smoked only one. I emptied the ashtrays, ate another pastry, and looked to see if there was any coffee left in the pot. When I went back to the kitchen, Bertha was standing there with the car key in her hand.

  “What’s up?” I asked.

  “We have to go over there, of course,” she said.

  “Over where?”

  “To the Zumpens’,” she said, “where do you think?”

  “It’s nearly half past ten.”

  “I don’t care if it’s midnight,” Bertha said, “all I know is, there’s twenty thousand marks involved. Don’t imagine they’re squeamish.”

  She went into the bathroom to get ready, and I stood behind her watching her wipe her mouth and draw in new outlines, and for the first time I noticed how wide and primitive that mouth is. When she tightened the knot of my tie I could have kissed her, the way I always used to when she fixed my tie, but I didn’t.

  Downtown the cafés and restaurants were brightly lit. People were sitting outside on the terraces, and the light from the streetlamps was caught in the silver ice-cream dishes and ice buckets. Bertha gave me an encouraging look; but she stayed in the car when we stopped in front of the Zumpens’ house, and I pressed the bell at once and was surprised how quickly the door was opened. Frau Zumpen did not seem surprised to see me; she had on some black lounging pajamas with loose full trousers embroidered with yellow flowers, and this made me think more than ever of lemons.

  “I beg your pardon,” I said. “I would like to speak to your husband.”

  “He’s gone out again,” she said. “He’ll be back in half an hour.”

  In the hall I saw a lot of Madonnas, Gothic and baroque, even rococo Madonnas, if there is such a thing.

  “I see,” I said. “Well, then, if you don’t mind, I’ll come back in half an hour.”

  Bertha had bought an evening paper; she was reading it and smoking, and when I sat down beside her, she said, “I think you could have talked about it to her too.”

  “But how did you know he wasn’t there?”

  “Because I know he is at the Gaffel Club playing chess, as he does every Wednesday evening at this time.”

  “You might have told me that earlier.”

  “Please try to understand,” said Bertha, folding the newspaper. “I am trying to help you, I want you to find out for yourself how to deal with such things. All we had to do was call up Father and he would have settled the whole thing for you with one phone call, but I want you to get the contract on your own.”

  “All right,” I said, “then what’ll we do: wait here half an hour, or go up right away and have a talk with her?”

  “We’d better go up right away,” said Bertha.

  We got out of the car and went up in the elevator together. “Life,” said Bertha, “consists of making compromises and concessions.”

  Frau Zumpen was no more surprised now than she had been earlier, when I had come alone. She greeted us, and we followed her into her husband’s study. Frau Zumpen brought some cognac, poured it out, and before I could say anything about the contract she pushed a yellow folder toward me: “Fir Tree Haven Housing Project,” I read, and looked up in alarm at Frau Zumpen, at Bertha, but they both smiled, and Frau Zumpen said, “Open the folder,” and I opened it; inside was another one, pink, and on this I read: “Fir Tree Haven Housing Project—Excavation Work.” I opened this too, saw my estimate lying there on top of the pile; along the upper edge someone had written in red: “Lowest bid.”

  I could feel myself flushing with pleasure, my heart thumping, and I thought of the twenty thousand marks.

  “Christ,” I said softly, and closed the file, and this time Bertha forgot to rebuke me.

  “Prost,” said Frau Zumpen with a smile. “Let’s drink to it, then.”

  We drank, and I stood up and said, “It may seem rude of me, but perhaps you’ll understand that I would like to go home now.”

  “I understand perfectly,” said Frau Zumpen. “There’s just one small item to be taken care of.” She took the file, leafed through it, and said, “Your price per square yard is thirty pfennigs below that of the next-lowest bidder. I suggest you raise your price by fifteen pfennigs: that way you’ll still be the lowest and you’ll have made an extra four thousand five hundred marks. Come on, do it now!” Bertha took her pen out of her purse and offered it to me, but I was in too much of a turmoil to write; I gave the file to Bertha and watched her alter the price with a steady hand, rewrite the total, and hand the file back to Frau Zumpen.

  “And now,” said Frau Zumpen, “just one more little thing. Get out your checkbook and write a check for three thousand marks; it must be a cash check and endorsed by you.”

  She had said this to me, but it was Bertha who pulled our checkbook out of her purse and made out the check.

  “It won’t be covered,” I said in a low voice.

  “When the contract is awarded, there will be an advance, and then it will be covered,” said Frau Zumpen.

  Perhaps I failed to grasp what was happening at the time. As we went down in the elevator, Bertha said she was happy, but I said nothing.

  Bertha chose a different way home. We drove through quiet residential districts, I saw lights in open windows, people sitting on balconies drinking wine; it was a clear, warm night.

  “I suppose the check was for Zumpen?” was all I said, softly, and Bertha replied, just as softly, “Of course.”

  I looked at Bertha’s small brown hands on the steering wheel, so confident and quiet—hands, I thought, that sign checks and squeeze mayonnaise tubes—and I looked higher, at her mouth, and still felt no desire to kiss it.

  That evening I did not help Bertha put the car away in the garage, nor did I help her with the dishes. I poured myself a large cognac, went up to my study, and sat down at my desk, which was much too big for me. I was wondering about something. I got up, went into the bedroom, and looked at the baroque Madonna, but even there I couldn’t put my finger on the thing I was wondering about.

  The ringing of the phone interrupted my thoughts; I lifted the receiver and was not surprised to hear Zumpen’s voice.

  “Your wife,” he said, “made a slight mistake. She raised the price by twenty-five pfennigs instead of fifteen.”

  I thought for a moment and then said, “That wasn’t a mistake, she did it with my consent.”

  He was silent for a second or two, then said with a laugh, “So you had already discussed the various possibilities?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “All right, then, make out another check for a thousand.”

  “Five hundred,” I said, and I thought: It’s like a bad dream—that’s what it’s like.

  “Eight hundred,” he said, and I said with a laugh, “Six hundred,” and I knew, although I had no experience to go on, that he would now say seven hundred and fifty, and when he did I said “Yes” and hung up.

  It was not yet midnight when I went downstairs and over to the car to give Zumpen the check; he was alone and laughed as I reached in to hand him the folded check.

  When I walked slowly back into the house, there was no sign of Bertha; she didn’t appear when I went back into my study; she didn’t
appear when I went downstairs again for a glass of milk from the refrigerator, and I knew what she was thinking; she was thinking: He has to get over it, and I have to leave him alone; this is something he has to understand.

  But I never did understand. It is beyond understanding.

  THE THROWER-AWAY

  For the last few weeks I have been trying to avoid people who might ask me what I do for a living. If I really had to put a name to my occupation, I would be forced to utter a word that would alarm people. So I prefer the abstract method of putting down my confession on paper.

  Until recently I would have been prepared at any time to make an oral confession. I almost insisted. I called myself an inventor, a scholar, even a student, and, in the melodramatic mood of incipient intoxication, an unrecognized genius. I basked in the cheerful fame which a frayed collar can radiate; arrogantly, as if it were mine by right, I exacted reluctant credit from suspicious shopkeepers who watched margarine, ersatz coffee, and cheap tobacco disappear into my pockets; I reveled in my unkempt appearance, and at breakfast, lunch, and dinner I drank the nectar of bohemian life: the bliss of knowing one is not conforming.

  But for the past few weeks I have been boarding the streetcar every morning just before seven-thirty at the corner of the Roonstrasse; like everyone else I meekly hold out my season ticket to the conductor. I have on a gray double-breasted suit, a striped shirt, a dark-green tie, I carry my sandwiches in a flat aluminum box and hold the morning paper, lightly rolled, in my hand. I look like a citizen who has managed to avoid introspection. After the third stop I get up to offer my seat to one of the elderly working women who have got on at the housing settlement. Having sacrificed my seat on the altar of social compassion, I continue to read the newspaper standing up, now and again letting myself be heard in the capacity of arbitrator when morning irritation is inclined to make people unjust. I correct the worst political and historical errors (by explaining, for instance, that there is a certain difference between SA and USA); as soon as anyone puts a cigarette to his lips, I discreetly hold my lighter in front of his nose and, with the aid of the tiny but dependable flame, light his morning cigarette for him. Thus I complete the picture of a well-groomed fellow citizen who is still young enough for people to say he “has nice manners.”

  I seem to have been successful in donning the mask that makes it impossible to ask me about my occupation. I am evidently taken for an educated businessman dealing in attractively packaged and agreeably smelling articles such as coffee, tea, or spices, or in valuable small objects which are pleasing to the eye such as jewelry or watches; a man who practices his profession in a nice old-fashioned office with dark oil paintings of merchant forebears hanging on the walls, who phones his wife about ten, who knows how to imbue his apparently impassive voice with that hint of tenderness which betrays affection and concern. Since I also participate in the usual jokes and do not refrain from laughing when every morning at the Lohengrinstrasse the clerk from City Hall shouts out “When does the next swan leave?,” since I do not withhold my comments concerning either the events of the day or the results of the football pools, I am obviously regarded as someone who, although prosperous (as can be seen from his suit material), has an attitude toward life that is deeply rooted in the principles of democracy. An air of integrity encases me the way the glass coffin encased Snow White.

  When a passing truck provides the streetcar window with a background for a moment, I check up on the expression on my face: isn’t it perhaps rather too pensive, almost verging on the sorrowful? I assiduously erase the remnants of brooding and do my best to give my face the expression I want it to wear: neither reserved nor familiar, neither superficial nor profound.

  My camouflage seems to be successful, for when I get out at the Marienplatz and dive into the maze of streets in the Old Town, where there is no lack of nice old-fashioned offices, where notaries and lawyers abound, no one suspects that I pass through a rear entrance into the UBIA building—a firm that can boast of supporting three hundred fifty people and of insuring the lives of four hundred thousand. The commissionaire greets me with a smile at the delivery entrance, I walk past him, go down to the basement, and start in on my work, which has to be completed by the time the employees come pouring into the offices at eight-thirty. The activity that I pursue every morning between eight and eight-thirty in the basement of this respected establishment is devoted entirely to destruction. I throw away.

  It took me years to invent my profession, to endow it with mathematical plausibility. I wrote treatises; graphs and charts covered—and still cover—the walls of my apartment. For years I climbed along abscissas and up ordinates, wallowed in theories, and savored the glacial ecstasy of solving formulas. Yet since practicing my profession and seeing my theories come to life, I am filled with a sense of sadness such as may come over a general who finds himself obliged to descend from the heights of strategy to the plains of tactics.

  I enter my workroom, exchange my jacket for a gray smock, and immediately set to work. I open the mailbags which the commissionaire has already picked up earlier from the main post office, and I empty them into the two wooden bins which, constructed according to my design, hang to the right and left on the wall over my worktable. This way I only need to stretch out my hands, somewhat like a swimmer, and begin swiftly to sort the mail.

  First I separate the circulars from the letters, a purely routine job, since a glance at the postage suffices. At this stage a knowledge of the postal tariff renders hesitation unnecessary. After years of practice I am able to complete this phase within half an hour, and by this time it is half past eight and I can hear the footsteps of the employees pouring into the offices overhead. I ring for the commissionaire, who takes the sorted letters to the various departments. It never fails to sadden me, the sight of the commissionaire carrying off in a metal tray the size of a briefcase the remains of what had once filled three mailbags. I might feel triumphant, for this, the vindication of my theory of throwing away, has for years been the objective of my private research; but, strangely enough, I do not feel triumphant. To have been right is by no means always a reason for rejoicing.

  After the departure of the commissionaire there remains the task of examining the huge pile of printed matter to make sure it contains no letter masquerading behind the wrong postage, no bill mailed as a circular. This work is almost always superfluous, for the probity of the mailing public is nothing short of astounding. I must admit that here my calculations were incorrect: I had overestimated the number of postal defrauders.

  Rarely has a postcard, a letter, or a bill sent as printed matter escaped my notice; about half past nine I ring for the commissionaire, who takes the remaining objects of my careful scrutiny to the departments.

  The time has now come when I require some refreshment. The commissionaire’s wife brings me my coffee, I take my sandwich out of the flat aluminum box, sit down for my break, and chat with the commissionaire’s wife about her children. Is Alfred doing somewhat better in arithmetic? Has Gertrude been able to catch up in spelling? Alfred is not doing any better in arithmetic, whereas Gertrude has been able to catch up in spelling. Have the tomatoes ripened properly, are the rabbits plump, and was the experiment with the melons successful? The tomatoes have not ripened properly, but the rabbits are plump, while the experiment with the melons is still undecided. Serious problems, such as whether one should stock up on potatoes or not, matters of education, such as whether one should enlighten one’s children or be enlightened by them, are the subjects of our intense consideration.

  Just before eleven the commissionaire’s wife leaves, and usually she asks me to let her have some travel folders. She is collecting them, and I smile at her enthusiasm, for I have retained tender memories of travel folders. As a child I also collected travel folders, I used to fish them out of my father’s wastepaper basket. Even as a boy it bothered me that my father would take mail from the mailman and throw it into the wastepaper basket without lo
oking at it. This action wounded my innate propensity for economy: there was something that had been designed, set up, printed, put in an envelope, and stamped, that had passed through the mysterious channels by which the postal service actually causes our mail to arrive at our addresses; it was weighted with the sweat of the draftsman, the writer, the printer, the office boy who had stuck on the stamps; on various levels and in various tariffs it had cost money. All this only to end—without being deemed worthy of so much as a glance—in a wastepaper basket?

  At the age of eleven I had already adopted the habit of taking out of the wastepaper basket, as soon as my father had left for the office, whatever had been thrown away. I would study it, sort it, and put it away in a chest which I used to keep toys in. Thus by the time I was twelve I already possessed an imposing collection of wine-merchants’ catalogs, as well as prospectuses on naturopathy and natural history. My collection of travel folders assumed the dimensions of a geographical encyclopedia—Dalmatia was as familiar to me as the Norwegian fjords, Scotland as close as Zakopane, the forests of Bohemia soothed me while the waves of the Atlantic disquieted me—hinges were offered me, houses and buttons, political parties asked for my vote, charities for my money; lotteries promised me riches, religious sects poverty. I leave it to the reader’s imagination to picture what my collection was like when at the age of seventeen, suddenly bored with it all, I offered my collection to a junk dealer who paid me seven marks and sixty pfennigs for it.

  Having finished school, I embarked in my father’s footsteps and set my foot on the first rung of the civil service ladder. With the seven marks and sixty pfennigs I bought a package of squared paper and three colored crayons, and my attempt to gain a foothold in the civil service turned into a laborious detour, for a happy thrower-away was slumbering in me while I filled the role of an unhappy junior clerk. All my free time was devoted to intricate calculations.