The Collected Stories of Heinrich Böll

by Heinrich Böll

  Now she was actually leaving: she snapped her handbag shut, stood up, genuflected, crossed herself, and her legs passed on the rhythm to her shoes, her shoes to her heels, her heels to the tiles.

  The aisle seemed to him like a river which he would never cross: he would stand forever on the banks of sin. Only four steps separated him from the voice which could release and bind, only six to the center nave, where Saturday reigned, peace, absolution—but he took only two steps as far as the aisle, slowly at first, then he ran as if fleeing from a burning house.

  As he pushed open the padded door, light and heat hit him too suddenly; for a few seconds he was dazzled, his left hand struck the doorpost, the prayer book fell to the floor, he felt a jab of pain on the back of his hand, bent down, picked up the book, let the door swing back, and stopped for a moment in the porch to smooth out the crumpled page of the prayer book. “Utter repentance,” he read, before shutting the book; he put it into his trouser pocket, rubbed his smarting left hand with his right, and cautiously opened the door by pushing against it with his knee. The woman was no longer in sight, the forecourt was empty, dust lay on the dark-green leaves of the chestnuts; near the lamppost stood a white ice-cream cart, from the lamppost hook hung a gray sack containing evening papers. The ice-cream man was sitting on the curb reading the evening paper, the newspaper vendor was perched on one of the shafts of the ice-cream cart licking an ice-cream cone. A passing streetcar was almost empty: there was only a boy standing on the back platform, letting his green swimming trunks flap in the air.

  Slowly Paul pushed open the door, went down the steps; within a few seconds he was sweating, it was too hot and too dazzling, and he longed for darkness.

  There were some days when he hated everything except himself, but today was like most days, when he hated only himself and loved everything: the open windows in the houses around the square; white curtains, the clink of coffee cups, men’s laughter, blue cigar smoke puffed out by someone he could not see; thick blue clouds came out of the window over the savings bank; whiter than fresh snow was the cream on a piece of cake which a girl standing at the window next door to the pharmacy was holding; white, too, was the ring of cream around her mouth.

  The clock over the savings bank showed half past five.

  Paul hesitated a moment when he reached the ice-cream cart, a moment too long, so that the ice-cream man got up from the curb, folded the evening paper, and Paul could read the first line on the front page: “Khrushchev,” and in the second line, “open grave”; as he walked on, the man unfolded the paper and with a shake of his head sat down again on the curb.

  When Paul had passed the corner by the savings bank and turned the next corner, he could hear a voice down on the riverbank announcing the next regatta race: men’s four—Ubia, Rhenus, Zischbrunn 67. It seemed to Paul that he could smell and hear the river, which was a quarter of a mile away: oil and algae, the bitter smoke of the tugs, the slapping of the waves as the paddle steamers moved downstream, the hooting of long-drawn-out sirens in the evening; lanterns in outdoor cafés, chairs so red they seemed to burn like flames in the shrubberies.

  He heard the starting gun, shouts, voices chanting, at first clearly in time with the beat of the oars: “Zischbrunn, Rhe-nuss, U-bja,” and then all mixed up: “Rhebrunn, Zisch-nuss, Bja-Zisch-U-nuss.”

  Quarter past seven, thought Paul, till quarter past seven the town will stay as deserted as it is now. There were parked cars all the way to here, empty, hot, smelling of oil and sun, parked under trees, on both sides of the street, in driveways. As he turned the next corner and had a view of the river and the hills, he saw the parked cars up on the slopes, in the schoolyard, they were even parked in the entrances to the vineyards. In the silent streets through which he was walking they were parked on both sides, they heightened the impression of loneliness. He felt a pang at the glittering beauty of the cars, shining elegance from which the owners seemed to protect themselves with hideous mascots: grotesque monkey faces, grinning hedgehogs, distorted zebras with bared teeth, dwarfs leering malevolently above tawny beards.

  The chanting became clearer, the shouts louder, then the announcer’s voice proclaimed the victory of the Zischbrunn four. Applause, fanfare, then the song: “Zischbrunn, high on the slopes, caressed by the river, nourished by wine, pampered by lovely women …” Trumpets puffed out the tedious tune like soap bubbles into the air.

  As he passed through a gateway it was suddenly quiet. In this courtyard behind the Griffduhnes’ house the sounds from the river were muted: filtered through the trees, caught by old sheds, swallowed up by walls, the announcer’s voice was subdued: “Ladies’ pairs.” The starting gun sounded like the pop from a toy pistol, the chanting like school choir practice behind walls.

  Now his sisters were thrusting their oars into the water, their broad faces serious, beads of sweat forming on their upper lips, their yellow headbands turning dark; now their mother was adjusting the binoculars, elbowing away Father’s hands, which were trying to snatch the binoculars. “Zisch-Zisch-Brunn-Brunn” roared one chorus that drowned out the others, now and again a feeble syllable: “U-nuss, Rhebja,” then a roaring that here in the courtyard sounded as if it came from a muffled radio. The Zischbrunn pair had won: now the sisters’ faces relaxed, they tore off the sweat-darkened headbands, paddled calmly toward the judges’ boat, waved to their parents. “Zisch-Zisch,” shouted their friends. “Hurrah for Zisch!”

  Over their tennis balls, thought Paul, red blood over the white fleecy balls.

  “Griff,” he called softly, “are you up there?”

  “Yes,” replied a languid voice, “come on up!”

  The wooden staircase was saturated with summer heat; it smelled of tar, of ropes that had not been sold for the past twenty years. Griff’s grandfather had owned all these sheds, buildings, and walls. Griff’s father owned scarcely a tenth of them, and “As for me,” Griff always said, “all I’ll ever own will be the pigeon loft where Dad used to keep pigeons. You can stretch out comfortably in it, and I shall stay up there and contemplate my big right toe—but even the pigeon loft will only be mine because nobody wants it anymore.”

  The walls upstairs were covered with old photographs. They were dark red, mahogany almost, the white had gone cloudy and yellow: picnics of the nineties, regattas of the twenties, lieutenants of the forties; young girls who had died thirty years ago as grandmothers looked soulfully across the passage at their life partners: wine merchants, rope chandlers, shipyard owners, whose Victorian melancholy had been captured and preserved by Daguerre’s early disciples; a student of the year 1910 solemnly contemplated his son, an ensign who had frozen to death near Lake Peipus in Russia. Old furniture cluttered up the passage, and there was a stylish bookcase containing fruit jars, empty ones with limp red rubber rings rolled up on the bottom, full ones whose contents were only visible here and there through the dust; dark plum jam, or cherries of anemic red, pallid as the lips of sickly young girls.

  Griffduhne was lying on the bed, naked from the waist up. His white, narrow chest contrasted alarmingly with his red cheeks: he looked like a poppy whose stalk has already withered. An unbleached linen sheet hung in front of the window, there were spots on it as if it were being X-rayed by the sun; the sunlight, filtered down to a yellow dusk, penetrated the room. Schoolbooks lay on the floor, a pair of slacks hung over the bedside table, Griff’s shirt over the wash basin; a green corduroy jacket hung on a nail on the wall between the crucifix and photos of Italy: donkeys, steep cliffs, cardinals. An open jar of plum jam with a kitchen spoon sticking in it stood on the floor beside the bed.

  “So they’re rowing again; rowing, paddling, water sports—those are their problems. Dancing, tennis, wine harvest festivals, graduation parties. Songs. Is the town hall going to have gold, silver, or copper columns? Don’t tell me, Paul,” he said, lowering his voice, “that you were actually down there?”

  “I was.”

  “Well?”

&nbs
p; “Nothing. I left again. I couldn’t stand it. It’s so pointless. How about you?”

  “I haven’t been for ages. What’s the use? I’ve been thinking about what’s the right height for our age: I’m too tall for fourteen, so they say, you’re too short for fourteen. D’you know anyone who is just the right height?”

  “Plokamm is the right height.”

  “Huh—d’you want to be like him?”

  “No.”

  “You see,” said Griff, “there are …” He hesitated, broke off, as he watched Paul’s eyes looking intently and uneasily around the room. “What’s up? Are you looking for something?”

  “Yes,” said Paul, “where have you put it?”

  “The pistol?”

  “Yes, let me have it.” Over the box with the new tennis balls is where I’ll do it, he thought. “Come on,” he said loudly, “hand it over.”

  “Wait,” said Griff, shaking his head. Embarrassed, he took the spoon out of the plum jam, then stuck it back in the jar, folded his hands. “No, let’s smoke instead. There’s lots of time before quarter past seven. Rowing, paddling, maybe it’ll be even later. Outdoor reception. Lanterns. Prize-giving ceremony. Your sisters won the pairs. Zisch, zisch zisch …” he went under his breath.

  “Show me the pistol.”

  “Hell, why should I?” Griff sat up, seized the jar, and threw it against the wall: broken glass flew, the spoon struck the edge of the bookshelf, from there it did a somersault in front of the bed. The jam splashed onto a book that said Algebra I, some of it ran in a viscous blue across the yellow of the wall, dying it a kind of green. Without moving, without saying a word, the boys looked at the wall. When the noise of the crash had died away, and the last of the pulp had trickled down, they looked at each other in amazement: the shattering of the glass had left them unmoved.

  “No,” said Paul, “that’s no good. The pistol’s better, or maybe fire, a blaze or water—the pistol’s best. Kill.”

  “But who?” asked the boy on the bed; he leaned over, picked up the spoon, licked it, and placed it tenderly on the bedside table.

  “But who?”

  “Me,” said Paul hoarsely, “tennis balls.”

  “Tennis balls?”

  “Oh, nothing. Give it to me. Now.”

  “Right,” said Griff. He stripped off the sheet, jumped out of bed, kicked the broken glass aside, and took a narrow brown cardboard box from the bookshelf. The box was not much bigger than a pack of cigarettes.

  “What?” said Paul. “Is that it? In there?”

  “Yes,” said Griff, “that’s it.”

  “And that’s what you fired eight shots at a tin can with, at a distance of thirty yards, and got seven hits?”

  “That’s right, seven,” said Griff uncertainly. “Don’t you want to look at it even?”

  “No, I don’t,” said Paul; he looked angrily at the box, which smelled of sawdust, of the stuff blanks were packed in. “No, I don’t, I don’t want to look at it. Show me the ammunition.”

  Griff bent down. From his long, pale back the vertebrae stood out, disappeared again, and this time he quickly opened the box, which was as big as a matchbox. Paul took one of the copper cartridges, held it between two fingertips, as if to see how long it was, turned it this way and that, shook his head as he contemplated the round, blue head of the bullet. “No,” he said, “that’s no good. My dad has one—I’ll get my dad’s.”

  “But it’s locked up,” said Griff.

  “I’ll get hold of it. As long as I do it before half past seven. He always cleans it then, before he goes to the club. He takes it apart: it’s a big one, black and smooth, heavy, and the bullets are big like this”—he showed how big with his fingers—“and …” He was silent, and sighed: over the tennis balls, he was thinking.

  “Do you really want to shoot yourself, properly?”

  “Maybe,” said Paul. The feet of my eyes are sore, the hands of my eyes are sick, he thought. “Hell, you know how it is.”

  Griff’s face suddenly turned dark and stiff; he swallowed, went to the door, only a few steps away; there he stopped.

  “You’re my friend,” he said, “or aren’t you?”

  “Sure.”

  “Then go and get a jar too and throw it against the wall. Will you?”

  “Why?”

  “My mother,” said Griff, “my mother told me she wants to have a look at my room when she gets back from the regatta, she wants to see whether I’ve improved. Tidied up and all that. She got mad at my report. Let her look at my room, then—are you going to get the jar now?”

  Paul nodded, went out into the passage, and heard Griff call out, “Take the golden plum jam, if there’s any left. Something yellow would look good, better than this purplish mess.” Paul wiped off some of the jars outside in the semidarkness till he found a yellow one. They won’t understand, he thought, nobody will understand, but I have to do it. He went back to the room, raised his right hand, and threw the jar against the wall.

  “It’s no good,” he said quietly, while they both regarded the effect of the throw, “it’s not what I want.”

  “What is it you want?”

  “I want to destroy something,” said Paul, “but not jars, or trees, or houses—and I don’t want your mother to get mad, or mine; I love my mother, yours too—there’s no sense to it.”

  Griff fell back onto the bed, covered his face with his hands, and murmured, “Kuffang has gone to that girl.”

  “The Prohlig girl?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’ve been with her too.”

  “You have?”

  “Yes. She’s not serious. Giggles around there in the passage—stupid, she’s stupid. She doesn’t know it’s a sin.”

  “Kuffang says it’s great.”

  “No, I tell you, it’s not great. Kuffang’s stupid too, you know he’s stupid.”

  “I know he is, but what are you going to do?”

  “Nothing with girls—they giggle. I’ve tried it. They’re not serious—they just giggle.” He went across to the wall and smeared his forefinger through the big splash of golden plum jam.

  “No,” he said without turning round, “I’m going to get my dad’s pistol.”

  Over the tennis balls, he thought. They’re as white as washed lambs. The blood over the lambs.

  “Women,” he whispered, “not girls.”

  The filtered noise of the regatta came faintly into the room. Men’s eights. Zischbrunn. This time Rhenus won. The jam dried slowly on the wooden wall, became as hard as cow dung, flies buzzed around the room, there was a sweetish smell, flies crawled over the schoolbooks, the clothes, flew greedily from one spot, from one pool, to another, too greedy to stay long on one pool. The two boys did not move. Griff lay on the bed, staring at the ceiling and smoking. Paul perched on the edge of the bed, bent forward like an old man; deep within him, over him, on him, lay a burden to which he couldn’t put a name, a dark, heavy burden. Suddenly he stood up, ran out into the passage, snatched up one of the fruit jars, came back into the room, raised the jar—but he did not throw it; he stood there with the jar in his raised hand. Slowly his arm dropped, the boy put down the jar, on a paper bag which was lying neatly folded on the bookshelf. “Fürst Slacks,” it said on the paper bag, “Fürst Slacks Are the Only Slacks.”

  “No,” he said, “I’ll go and get it.”

  Griff puffed his cigarette smoke at the flies, then aimed the butt at one of the pools. Flies flew up, settled hesitantly around the smoking butt, which sank slowly into the jam and fizzled out.

  “Tomorrow evening,” he said, “I’ll be in Lübeck, at my uncle’s; we’ll go fishing, we’ll sail and swim in the Baltic; and you, tomorrow you’ll be in the Valley of the Thundering Hoofs.” Tomorrow, thought Paul, who did not move, tomorrow I shall be dead. Blood over the tennis balls, dark red like in the fleece of the lamb; the Lamb will drink my blood. O Lamb. I shall never see my sisters’ little laurel wreath, “Winners of th
e Ladies’ Pairs,” black on gold; they’ll hang it up there between the photos of holidays in Zalligkofen, between withered bunches of flowers and pictures of cats; next to the framed graduation diploma hanging over Rosa’s bed, next to the certificate for long-distance swimming hanging over Franziska’s bed; between the colored prints of their patron saints, Rosa of Lima, Franziska Romana; next to the other laurel wreath, “Winners of the Ladies’ Doubles”; under the crucifix. The dark-red blood will cling stiffly to the fuzz of the tennis balls, the blood of their brother, who preferred death to sin.

  “I must see it one day, the Valley of the Thundering Hoofs,” Griff was saying, “I must sit up there where you always sit, I must hear them, the horses charging up to the pass, galloping down to the lake, I must hear their hoofs thundering in the narrow gorge—their whinnying cries streaming out over the mountaintops—like—like a thin fluid.”

  Paul looked disdainfully at Griff, who had sat up and was excitedly describing something he had never seen: horses, many horses, charging up over the pass, galloping with thundering hoofs down into the valley. But there had only been one horse there, and only once: a colt, which had raced out of the paddock and cantered down to the lake, and the sound of its hoofs had not been like thunder, just a clatter, and it was such a long time ago, three years, maybe four.