In that hour I would have sold all the rest of my life to sink into the arms of that girl who had said, “I’m always here”—and who hadn’t been there after all.
As dusk fell, I crept back home, lay down on my bed, and abandoned myself to the sluggish tide of a leaden despair that left no room even for desire. Not a sound was to be heard in our cottage. From the barracks I could hear faint singing. I was incapable of thinking or doing anything, I was at the end of my tether.
VIII
Two days later we were already on our way to Russia.
When I woke up next morning, everything was normal. From the direction of the company kitchen I could hear the men whose job it was to take coffee to their barracks. In your brother’s room all was quiet. It was seven o’clock. I got up, went into our own little kitchen, set the frying pan on the electric hotplate, put some fat in it, took the loaf of bread out of the drawer, and began to slice it. As the fat melted, I beat up the eggs in a cup with some cream and stirred them around in the pan. Then I prepared the tray, putting two plates, cups, and knives on it, and went off to the company kitchen.
The mornings were always peaceful. The whole little place had the atmosphere of a somewhat run-down summer camp. That morning the air was already warm, and the soldiers were standing outside their barracks, stripped to the waist and washing.
The topkick was sitting in the kitchen, discussing with the cook how to use up the rest of the cow. He was markedly cooler toward me.
“Please tell the CO,” he called out to me while I was filling my mess tin at the coffee urn, “that church services have been scheduled for this afternoon, both denominations, here. The outposts have been notified.”
“Yessir,” I replied.
The cook also threw me a suspicious glance. He hadn’t forgiven me for doing him out of his profit of five hundred francs on the cow, and he probably assumed I’d told your brother about it.
As I left the kitchen, Schmidt called across to me from the orderly room, “We need a dispatch runner for nine o’clock to pick up special orders from the battalion—would you be interested?”
I looked into Schmidt’s placid, amiable face. “Yes,” I said. All I could see was the pale face of the girl, and I imagined myself pressing my mouth onto her cheeks, her lips, and the little hollow at the base of her neck.
“Yes,” I repeated.
As I approached our quarters, I could already see your brother’s face, covered with shaving soap, at the window. It was seven-thirty.
Shortly after that, I carried coffee, bread, and eggs into the room and told your brother about the church services and that I had been ordered for nine o’clock to ride over to battalion headquarters.
“Yes,” he said as he put on his tunic, “there’s something in the air; maybe the cow will be our farewell dinner.”
“Do you really think so?” I asked doubtfully.
“Things look bad in Russia.”
We sat down. I poured the coffee and we spread scrambled egg on the bread, but first I lit a cigarette. It was the first real breakfast in a long time. The wide, low window toward the north was open, the air, cool yet soft, streamed into the room, and one could see far out over the water.
Your brother, like me, picked up the bread and promptly put it down again, swallowed a mouthful of coffee, and suddenly began to speak in a rapid, almost droning voice:
“I daresay you know that I was considered unfit to lead a company because the very first time I was put in charge of one, I decided to get to the bottom of all those discrepancies in the issuing of rations. You see, my first day as CO, each man was supposed to receive twenty-five ounces of butter. A straightforward calculation: ten men one package, that’s all. But oddly enough there was one package for every twelve men. At the time my company, including all subordinate units, consisted of a hundred and eighty men. That meant that, at fifteen times twelve men, somewhere along the line a pound and a half had gone astray. I immediately summoned my quartermaster sergeant, and his excuse was that deliveries had been short. In his presence I phoned the fellow in charge of provisions at battalion headquarters, and he admitted that he had had to short two packages per company because that was all he had received. So my quartermaster sergeant had already kept back one package; at least I had my hands on him—it’s always easy to catch the small fry. I still had to clarify how it was possible for the division to have short-shipped five pounds of butter for the five ration-drawing units of our battalion.
“I kept phoning those guys till they almost went out of their minds. I made them spend hours recalculating, and it turned out that each unit had actually had to be shorted three pounds because the butter had turned rancid. Replacements were promised. After a phone bombardment of almost two days I finally had the battalion quartermaster on the hook with a shortage of two pounds. So far so good. Now just figure out how many battalions, sections, ration-drawing units, there are to a division. Oddly enough, for the next three days full rations were issued. Butter and margarine seemed to have lost their tendency to turn rancid. But I persisted. On the fourth day, a shortage again. This time, company and battalion quartermaster sergeants had clean hands. Wherever a shell explodes close by, people are scared, but farther back … Well, I had a phone. You can imagine how those fellows hated me; I was relentless. If one of the men told me something had gone bad, I contacted his superiors and asked whether this had been reported and whether the facts had been investigated. But I got nowhere. It didn’t work. The soldiers never received their full rations for more than four consecutive days. The funny thing was that I also became unpopular in my own company; the topkick and the sergeant were scared and thought I was crazy. Luckily I had won a few officers over to my side. I would phone, or write a report, every day if so much as a single ounce of jam was short. Well, the upshot was that I personally punched the divisional quartermaster in the nose: I need hardly tell you that fellow was fat as a bedbug in an overcrowded barracks. The officers let me down, saying it was futile to fight the administration, it was a clique, and so on.”
He swallowed some coffee, picked up the bread again, put it down again.
“Well,” he went on, “I was powerless, of course. At the hearing I was accused of being senselessly fanatical, quixotic. The divisional quartermaster emerged from the battle a rosy, innocent lamb. I was duly punished, transferred, and narrowly escaped demotion. But, damn it all, I can think of no more meaningful battle than against the administration, for the administration—any administration—is the administration of mindlessness, the administration of the administration. Oh, God! I’d like to take over the administration of life! I’d like to represent the rights of the living against those dead creatures, even if during my next attack I have to throw my insignia in the general’s face. I don’t want them!” he suddenly shouted, then, embarrassed, began stirring his coffee although it contained neither milk nor sugar. With a sigh he raised his head. “Now it’s starting all over again,” he said. “You can help me. Do you want to?”
“Sir,” I said, blushing, “my conscience isn’t sufficiently clear for me to accuse others of filching.”
“No?” he merely asked.
I told him about my finaglings in Paris. He listened with lowered head; my confessions clearly embarrassed him.
“You see,” I added, after outlining the essentials, “wherever I can cheat the state, I have no scruples. The state has stolen six years of my youth, it has prevented me from learning a trade. I would call that ‘getting compensation.’”
“So,” he asked quietly, “you wouldn’t hesitate to sell a bicycle, for instance, and pocket the proceeds?”
“Absolutely not,” I admitted, “although …”
“Although?”
“Although several years of concentration camp seem an excessive price to pay for a bicycle.”
“So it’s only the punishment that deters you?”
“Yes.”
“That’s interesting,” he cried eagerly. “
Most interesting! This is the first time I’ve heard that put in such classically cynical form. Nevertheless,” he went on with a smile, “if you thought there was the slightest chance of somebody being personally harmed, you wouldn’t take anything, would you?”
“No,” I said.
“We shall see,” he said. “I have to go on duty now.” It was eight o’clock. He ate his scrambled eggs and bread, swallowed a few more mouthfuls of coffee, and left.
Half a minute later I left the house, without having touched my breakfast.
At eight-fifteen I stopped outside the quiet tavern where, barely a week earlier, I had seen and spoken to the girl. It was so quiet all around that I had to stand still and listen. I think that for the first time in my life I could hear my heart beating—rapidly pounding away, that invisible hammer in my chest …
Very quietly I propped the bicycle against the wall and walked straight through the open gate into the yard, for after dismounting I had heard the gentle sounds of milking. I saw her at once, and she too, having heard my footsteps, had risen and turned around. There she stood: milk dripping from her fingers as they hung, curved inward, by her sides, her hair tied back smooth and tight, her red lips open in surprise, her grubby gray smock slipping off her left shoulder. She recognized me immediately and stood there motionless as I walked toward her.
Without a word I put my arms around her, and for half a second I felt her hair against my cheek and her warm breath on my neck, but when I turned her head toward me to kiss her I realized that her body was cold and stiff in my arms, and her face, which I could now see, registered such resistance and fear that I was shocked.
“Angel,” I whispered to her in German, mad with pain, “angel—I love you!”
Her lips grimaced. “Laisse-moi,” she implored, “je ne t’aime pas.”
I released her instantly, but she did not step back: she just stood there, and I could see she was on the verge of tears. Tears over me. My face must have expressed intolerable pain.
She pitied me, and when I realized that, could see it in her face, I knew for the first time how much I loved her. Even her pity seemed like a gift.
“Angel,” I stammered again, “angel!”
I turned away, but she called me back with a strange, birdlike sound. She was smiling. “Wouldn’t you like something to drink?” she asked.
Without waiting for a reply she walked past me, wiped her hands on her smock and, with a gesture of extraordinary grace, pulled her smock up over her shoulder. Dazed, with drooping shoulders, I followed her into the house.
I looked at my watch: twenty past eight. Five minutes had passed, and the world had almost come to an end; a last, soft red glow hung over the horizon—for what lover will ever cease to hope?
She had uncorked a bottle and filled two glasses. “I’m thirsty,” she said in a low voice. “The air’s so sultry, although it’s early yet.”
I find it hard to describe her smile: it was affectionate and sad, leaving me no spark of hope, yet not coquettish. It was ineffably human—I know no other word. She raised her glass; I nodded and drank.
The wine was delicious, cool and dry, and her face showed that she found it refreshing.
“Yes,” I finally said with an effort, my muteness weighing on me like a heavy burden. “If I could just see you occasionally …”
We put down our glasses, and I followed her as she led the way outside. One more nod from her, and she was gone.
At eight-forty-five I was at battalion headquarters; the other dispatch bearers were already assembled. I sat on the steps outside, surrounded by that know-it-all chatter, and the time passed incredibly fast. Again and again I dug around into my memory, resurrecting the scene in the barn in order to find some tiny hope; but I found nothing, and yet …
We waited a long time. We smoked, walked up and down, sat down again, and I joined listlessly in the general scuttlebutt; it was almost eleven when we were summoned to the orderly room. We were each handed a dispatch box, flat, locked wooden boxes for each of which there was one key with the battalion and one with the company, thus ensuring that we couldn’t discover the contents of the dispatches. Nevertheless, it was obvious we were going to Russia. Normally that would have struck me as the ultimate horror; that day it left me cold. I felt numb. I saw the world and didn’t see it. I was aware that the weather had become even more sultry, that the sky was covered with heavy gray clouds. Somehow my will power had also ceased to function. Deep down in a layer of buried consciousness I knew that I must stop, dismount, rest, and try to come to my senses, but I believe I would have gone on riding my bike to the end of the world, on and on, obsessed by the stupefying mechanics of pedaling … on … on … I was dead.
A terrifying clap of thunder roused me. That same instant a warm, heavy rain started coming down in torrents. I looked about me and recognized my surroundings: there was the group of trees, her house, and no other shelter in sight. I raced toward the house, dismounted, left my bike lying on the ground, and, carrying the box, burst into the corridor.
I left the door open and stood there without making a sound.
Our bond with nature is closer than we realize. I don’t know how long I stood there; I was barely conscious. When I came to again, I realized I was crying.
The beauty of the torrential summer rain, the cosmic power invested in all flowing water, created in my being some sort of parallel; an element of release, of flow, touched me. I wept. The unspeakable, agonizing spasm was relaxed, and I was alive again.
With trembling nostrils I breathed in that marvelous, sweetly moist fragrance that rose like clouds from the meadows.
I wept …
Suddenly I heard the footsteps of two people approaching along the flagstone path that skirted the house. The rain had let up a bit. I winced, as if a long, fine needle had unerringly pierced the very core of my sensitivity: they were your brother’s footsteps. We know the people we live with better than we imagine: they were his footsteps. I stood stock still, leaning against the wall in the darkness of the corridor.
With the girl beside him, he entered my field of vision, and it was no surprise to me to see her with him. He was pushing his bicycle, half leaning on it, his face turned toward me; of the girl I could see only her back, her head, slightly bent, and a narrow segment of her soft cheek, and I knew that she was smiling. His face was pale and serious, and there was a kind of blissful pain in it, but the shattering thing was the naturalness with which those two seemed to belong together: uttering not a word, merely exchanging little smiles, that gentle pair simply belonged together.
I can’t say I felt jealous. I was breathing heavily, suffused with the pain of being totally excluded. They scarcely moved, they just looked at each other, and there I stood: transfixed to the damp wall of that dilapidated house, thinking that it might feel good to die.
Finally he bent down, kissed her, and said, “Au revoir, Madeleine.” He quickly turned away and, pushing his bicycle, walked toward the gate.
“Au revoir, au revoir!” she called after him.
Then she took a few steps back, probably so as to gaze after him for as long as possible from the top step, and in doing so she bumped against the closed half of the door, turned slightly, saw me, and gave a little shriek …
Your brother had not yet reached the gate. He rushed back to the door; the girl was still looking at me in horror and disbelief. Now he was quite close, saw me, and instantly grasped the situation.
“Come along,” he said to me huskily. I followed him like a condemned man, the dispatch box under my arm, retrieved my bike outside the gate, mounted it, and rode off at his side.
We didn’t look back.
IX
Neither of us ever saw her again.
We rode in silence to company headquarters, where we parted without a word. He went to his quarters; I had to deliver the dispatch box, then go to the kitchen to collect our midday meal, having, as always, handed in our mess kits in the morning.
I put my bike in the shed and stopped by the kitchen to receive our two portions of potatoes and stew; then I followed him to our quarters.
He stood up as soon as I entered. He had already brought out the plates from the kitchenette and placed them on the table, also the cutlery, but he tended to do that a bit awkwardly, so I put our two mess kits on the tray and calmly rearranged forks, knives, and plates, straightened the loaf of bread, and removed the wilted stalks from the flowers in the vase.
All this time he was pacing up and down with folded arms.
“We can eat now,” I said calmly, when everything was ready.
“All right,” he said, and at that moment we looked at each other again for the first time; reluctantly I had to smile. He shook his head, his expression registering bewilderment, then shrugged his shoulders; I was still waiting for him to sit down.
“We don’t want to pass over this in complete silence,” he said in a low voice, “but it’s up to you whether we discuss it or not.”
“No,” I said, my voice equally subdued, “I’d rather not discuss it.”
“Fair enough,” he said. We sat down, and I passed him the little ladle we used for serving ourselves from the mess kits. There was a knock at the door. Putting down his spoon, he called out, “Come in!” and the topkick entered. His normally placid face showed agitation.
By next morning we were on the train heading for Russia. The reports and orders I had picked up were already superseded, canceled by telephone instructions. The men to be transferred had to be selected and prepared for departure that same day and wait at the bases for their replacements, which were said to be on their way. The trucks bringing the replacements were then to take the transferred men to an assembly point near Abbeville, where a division had already arrived, been loaded onto the train, and left. But the train had been blown up, casualties had been heavy, and the division was a hundred and twenty men short of combat strength. Your brother and Schnecker were among the officers.
The Collected Stories of Heinrich Böll Page 64