The Collected Stories of Heinrich Böll

by Heinrich Böll

When an orderly came up from downstairs and asked what was going on, your brother called out to him, “Nothing, he’s drunk.” By this time we were pretty close to the window, but now the artillery officer had also slipped through the door and was attacking your brother from behind; furthermore, a staff sergeant came running along the corridor shouting, “What’s going on? What is it?”

  “Alarm!” yelled Schnecker. “Alarm!”

  “Nothing,” shouted your brother. “He’s drunk!”

  He now had Schnecker by the throat, while I had tripped the artillery officer and was preventing him from getting up.

  Schnecker had been forced over to the window. He was groaning and seemed to be bleeding somewhere. “Don’t you realize, you bastard,” your brother said to him, “that the other hundred and twenty men in your battalion can use a few hours’ sleep?”

  Schnecker, who by this time had freed himself, yelled even louder, “Alarm! I am ordering alarm!” And when your brother, suddenly seized by a sort of frenzy, punched him right in the face, Schnecker, in a lightning move, drew his pistol, held it to your brother’s temple, and pressed the trigger. Your brother was dead on the spot: he fell to the floor across the whimpering artillery officer. Schnecker had turned pale; his hand was still holding the pistol. There was an eerie silence: I was about to fling myself on him, but at that moment the first Russian tank started firing outside the building. We stared at each other. Hideous bursts of firing shattered the sky. Schnecker had already run off down the corridor. I dashed after him but on the way ran into Piester’s room and shouted in his ear, “The Russians are here—move!” Then I ran down the stairs to the ground-floor corridor and jumped out the window into the garden.

  I managed to escape and from a distance saw that the great building was in flames. I kept running until I was scooped up by another regiment and sent back to the front. Not one man from our unit escaped. The Russians had overrun the village from three sides and in great numerical superiority. And although I never saw Schnecker again, or was ever told, I knew he had managed to get away. He can’t die. I assumed that in some way or other he would inform your mother of your brother’s death. He has done nothing. He just goes on living. All this I learned during the last few days.

  I pass the truth on to you. It belongs to you …

  THE CASUALTY

  The stories in The Casualty were written between 1946 and 1952 but only published in 1983, as Die Verwundung, by Lamuv Verlag. The Casualty was first published in English by Chatto and Windus in 1986; an American edition by Farrar, Straus & Giroux followed in 1987.

  THE EMBRACE

  He was looking down on the parting in her hair, a narrow white path; he felt her breasts against his skin, her warm breath in his face, and his gaze fell into the endless distance of that narrow white path. Somewhere on the carpet lay his belt with, clearly visible, the embossed words: GOTT MIT UNS; beside it his tunic with its soiled collarband, and somewhere a clock was ticking.

  The window was open, and from outside on the terrace he could hear the tinkle of fine crystal, hear men chuckling and women giggling. The sky was a velvet blue; it was a glorious summer night.

  And he could hear her heart beating, very close to his chest, and again his gaze fell into that narrow white path through her hair.

  It was dark, but the sky still held that soft summer glow, and he knew he was close to her, as close as he could be, while still so infinitely remote. They didn’t say a word. The clock seemed to be ticking him away, the ticking was stronger than the heartbeat against his chest, and he couldn’t tell whether it was her heart or his. The message was: you’re on leave until reveille; and: one more chance to sleep with a girl, but make a real night of it. They had even given him a bottle of wine.

  He could distinctly make out the bottle as it stood on the chest of drawers, a bright band of light. That was the bottle, a bright band of light in the dark. The bottle was empty. The cork must be on the carpet, where his tunic, trousers and belt were lying.

  She had lain against his chest, he with one arm round her and smoking with his free hand; they hadn’t said a word. All their encounters were marked by silence. He had always thought it might sometimes be possible to talk to a woman, but she never talked.

  Outside the sky darkened, the subdued laughter of the guests on the terrace faded away, the women’s giggles turned into yawns, and after a while he could hear the glasses clinking louder as the waiter picked up four or five in one hand to carry them away. Then the bottles were being taken away too, making a fuller sound, and finally chairs were upended, tables moved, and he could hear a woman sweeping slowly, thoroughly, conscientiously: the entire night seemed to consist of that sweeping as she swept with a quiet, regular stroke. He could hear the sweep of the broom and the woman’s footsteps moving from one end of the terrace to the other; then came a weary, thick voice asking from beyond a door: “Not finished yet?”, and the woman’s reply, equally weary: “I’ll be through in a minute.”

  Soon after that, complete silence fell; the sky had turned dark blue. Softly and from very far away came the sound of music from behind the heavy curtains of a night club. So they lay side by side, until the empty bottle slowly emerged from the darkness, a band of light growing wider and brighter until the bottle assumed its full, round shape, dark green and empty, and the tunic on the floor with its soiled collarband became visible, and the belt with the embossed words: GOTT MIT UNS.

  THE UNKNOWN SOLDIER

  Somewhere up ahead was where the front began. He kept thinking they had reached it whenever the truck column slowed down and stopped in a village, where corporals and soldiers with grim, set faces were moving about in dirt and mud. But the journey was always resumed, and he was scared because for a while now they had been hearing shots close by. They must have already moved beyond the emplacements of the heavy artillery since the detonations were now coming from behind, where the column had just come from. But on they went. It was cold, and it was no use to keep trying to pull one’s greatcoat closer or tugging at the collar as if it could be made longer. And their gloves were too thin, and he didn’t even feel like smoking: he was simply too cold, as well as horribly tired.

  His eyes kept closing, but nausea kept him from falling asleep. He was sickened by the exhaust fumes, and it made him uneasy that no one in the truck said a word. Normally their tongues never stopped wagging. Even while they were in the troop train, on their way here, they had talked all day, about their women and their exploits and about their fancy flats back home and their important jobs. There wasn’t one of them who didn’t have a gorgeous flat and a super job, but now they were all terribly quiet, and he could tell from their breathing that they were shivering with cold. The road was rough, the mud over a foot deep, rutted by tank tracks, with here and there the imprint of a horse’s hoof. The poor horses, he thought. And he didn’t even think of the infantrymen who had to slog it on foot. It was great to be driven, but it would have been better to walk, it would have warmed them up and they wouldn’t have got there so fast.

  But now he wanted to get there faster. He really did feel as sick as a dog. With each breath he seemed to inhale new nausea. He could smell not only the stink of the exhaust right under his nose but also the stench of the men sitting behind him, all of whom—including himself—hadn’t had a proper wash for a couple of weeks, just hands and faces. A foul miasma of sour, disgusting, dirty, stale sweat came from behind him. Some of the men were smoking; he was ready to throw up and would have welcomed it if someone had taken pity on him, held a service revolver to his head, and pressed the trigger …

  And still they hadn’t reached the front. Now he could hear the firing of the machine guns, so close that he felt they must be driving right into it. The village they were passing through looked exactly as he imagined a front-line village to look. Soldiers with muddy boots and the totally deadpan faces of heroes, wearing their decorations and staring straight ahead, and corporals who no longer looked so much like corp
orals; and some lieutenants, and a field kitchen behind a filthy cottage, in a yard apparently consisting solely of manure and mud. But they were soon through the godforsaken hole and still they hadn’t quite reached the front. Goddammit, he thought, where the hell’s the infantry?

  They stopped beside a small forest that covered a hill. Somewhere up front a voice roared “Everybody out!” and he immediately jumped down from the lorry and began to stamp his feet to get warm. The others tossed out the baggage, and he had to catch not only a machine gun but also the ammunition boxes, which he dropped in the mud. The corporal, pale-faced and shivering, gave him hell for dropping the boxes in the mud. He looked in astonishment at the corporal. What the hell difference did it make? As far as he was concerned they could shoot him on the spot if they felt like it. He simply felt too wretched to care.

  He grabbed his rifle, combat pack, and two boxes of ammunition, and stepped into the bushes after hearing the order from up front: “Get off the road!” It was wet in the bushes, some of the men were smoking, and he fished a cigarette out of his pocket. He saw everything and heard everything, yet he heard and saw nothing: the sky was grey all over, without a single dark or light speck, and it must be about five in the afternoon. The soldiers hunkered down on their boxes; some of them were stamping around, but they soon gave up because the ground was too soft and wet, so wet that it splashed when they stamped on it.

  Nothing much was said. Somewhere the NCOs were gathered round the lieutenant, and on the path leading into the forest a captain appeared with a list. He was a young captain who for some reason snapped at the lieutenant, and the lieutenant stood to attention. The noise of machine guns started up again: the gunner couldn’t have been lying more than ten yards away. Then came the sound of quite a different machine gun, and he knew that that rough, slower, throaty sound must come from the Russian machine guns. For a moment he felt his terrible indifference shot through with something like excitement. The captain in his muddy boots with his incredibly young face was now talking urgently to the lieutenant and the NCOs.

  He threw away his cigarette and turned to the man nearest to him. It was cold; he looked at him, and it was some time before he realized that it was Karl—Karl, that quiet, inconspicuous fellow who hadn’t had much to say on the journey, an older man wearing a wedding ring who had always seemed a pillar of respectability.

  “Karl,” he said in a low voice.

  “What is it?” Karl answered quietly.

  “Got anything to drink?” Karl nodded and fumbled at the canteen hanging from his belt.

  He groped for the stopper with one hand, unscrewed it, and lifted the canteen to his mouth, and when the first gulp ran down his throat he was suddenly aware of having a hellish thirst. He groaned with pleasure and drank deeply.

  Suddenly their corporal shouted “Fall in!” and Karl hurriedly snatched back his canteen and hooked it on again. All the sections were being called by their corporals, assembled on the forest path, then marched off in rows behind the captain into the forest.

  All he could think of was drinking.

  His thirst was barbaric: he was tempted to throw himself on the ground and drink the puddle on the path. The forest path seemed familiar. This thin, scrubby growth, these skimpy little beech trees standing far apart, and between them the brown, sodden earth; the grey, endlessly grey sky overhead, and this squelchy path. Up ahead the captain, talking earnestly to the lieutenant, and the corporals beside their sections: just like on the training ground when they used to march off for firing practice … it was all nonsense, they weren’t really in Russia, they hadn’t covered all those thousands of kilometres by train to be shot up here or to freeze to death. It was all a dream.

  The firing ahead of them sounded regular and familiar: rifles and machine guns, somewhere artillery too.

  Suddenly they halted. He looked up to find they were standing in front of a hut hidden in the trees beside the path. Behind it were more huts, and deeper inside the forest he could see holes in the ground, entrances to dug-outs hung with blankets and telephone cables, and somewhere in a dilapidated shed stood a field kitchen. Once again they had to leave the path and step under the scrawny little trees. Troopers emerged from the dug-outs, and some corporals and another lieutenant. They seemed quite unconcerned, and he thought: so it’s not Russia after all. Everything was so terribly normal. The trooper who joined them had a machine pistol slung over one shoulder and a pipe stuck in his grey face. He had always imagined that, when they reached the front, the real front, they would be looked at with contempt as being greenhorns. But no one looked contemptuously at them; in fact they seemed rather indifferent, if anything a bit sorry for them.

  What a marvellous war-game they’re having here, he thought. Everything’s so incredibly real, I hope the shooting’s real too and they’ll shoot me dead. His nausea had not subsided; his head ached, and a sour, horrible sick feeling rose from his stomach into his head and seemed to fill all his veins and nerves. He took deep breaths—the fresh air felt good for at least a tenth of a second. They’re playing a damn convincing game, he thought, as the trooper who had joined them walked right up to the corporal and said: “To the third.”

  “Yessir!” replied the corporal, and the trooper gave him an odd look. “Okay, let’s go,” said the trooper, and he marched off into the forest, followed by the corporal and the men in single file.

  Carrying his ammunition box, he was the last but one. He staggered along behind the man in front of him, through that sparse beech wood, feeling miserably cold, sick to his stomach …

  Suddenly their guide, the trooper, threw himself on the ground shouting “Take cover!” and at that very moment some shells burst in front of them. It couldn’t be far away: he heard a sickening soft rustling, a rush of wind, then the crash, and one of the little beech trees snapped right off and fell over. He could clearly see a slender tree trunk bursting twenty yards away and slowly toppling over, revealing its white, greenish-white, core at the place of impact. Clods of earth rained down, some of them splattering the ground close by. It was wonderful to be lying on the ground. Although he knew very well that this was for real, that they were in Russia, actually in Russia, and almost right up at the very front, all he felt was: how wonderful to be lying on the ground, full length. Although it was wet and the cold and damp quickly penetrated his greatcoat, he simply didn’t care.

  Dear God, he prayed, let the next shell land right on top of me … But the trooper was back on his feet, shouting “Let’s go!” On they marched and soon they reached the edge of the forest. The trooper waited until they were all there and then explained something to them. He could hear it all quite distinctly, but he couldn’t have cared less about any of it; never in his life had he felt so utterly indifferent. Moreover, by this time he was so cold that his teeth were chattering. Before them was a big field, all torn up, and on it a burned-out tank with a Soviet star painted on its side. On either side of the tank were emplacements. It looked exactly like the training area. Proper trenches and dug-out mounds, and he saw which machine gun was firing—it seemed to sound much farther away than it had a while ago when they had been in the lorry. And the machine gun was firing at the remains of a house standing at the end of the field: he saw the impacts, saw the mud spray up from the ruined walls, and from an entirely different direction a throaty-sounding, slower machine gun was now firing at the edge of the forest just where they were standing. The trooper, their leader, threw himself on the ground again, and they didn’t wait for him to shout “Take cover!” for one of them had been hit and lay there screaming, screaming horribly, and the machine gun went on firing.

  He was about to slide over to his mate, realizing from the voice that it was Willi, but two men were already lying on their stomachs beside Willi, bandaging one leg. He distinctly heard one of the bullets smash into a tender young sapling. A few ricochet bullets buzzed into the void like demented bees.

  When he saw the others cautiously crawling back
wards, he did the same, although his fatigue and nausea made everything swim before his eyes. It was exhausting work, pushing oneself backwards, and the machine gun was now sawing right above their heads; it was horrifying the way the bullets were slapping into the forest floor behind them or into the soft wood, revealing the young, greenish-white wounds. And then another shell burst, then several more; everything was reduced to noise and a horrible stench, and again a man screamed, then another. He didn’t know who was screaming, all he wanted was to sleep; he closed his eyes and screamed, went on screaming without knowing that he was screaming, until God granted his wish …

  JAK THE TOUT

  He arrived one night with the ration runners as a replacement for Gornizek, who lay wounded at battalion headquarters. Those nights were very dark, and fear hung like a thunder cloud over the alien, pitch-black earth. I was up front at a listening post, keeping my eyes and ears open towards the rear, from where the sounds of the ration runners came, just as much as towards the front, towards the dark silence on the Russian side.

  It was Gerhard who brought him along, together with my mess-tin and cigarettes.

  “D’you want the bread, too?” Gerhard asked, “or shall I keep it for you till tomorrow morning?” I could tell from his voice that he was in a hurry to get back.

  “No,” I said, “give me the lot, it’ll be eaten up right away.”

  He handed me the bread and the tinned meat in a piece of wax paper, the roll of fruit-drops and some mixed butter and lard on a scrap of cardboard.

  All this time the newcomer had been standing there trembling and silent. “And here,” said Gerhard, “is the replacement for Gornizek. The lieutenant has sent him out to you, to the listening post.”

  “Yes,” was all I said; it was customary to send newcomers to the most difficult posts. Gerhard crawled back to the rear.