“Well, sure, they can’t use the stupidest ones at university …”
“Don’t you believe it—sometimes they like those the best.”
“I don’t believe it.”
He pointed to the stern corporal, saying: “Just look at that fellow: there you have a solid citizen. He believes that everything he does is for the good of the state, but actually all he’s concerned with is his citizen’s stomach and his arse. He likes to eat well and is a bit of a coward. And likes to bawl people out. The fact is, he’s concerned only with himself. He’s scared that, because I got into the train, he might be kicked out since he only has jaundice while I’ve been honourably wounded. Haven’t I?”
“Of course.”
“There you are, then. The state likes these fellows, although it knows they’re concerned only with themselves. It gives them a job where they have something to say but also something to lose, and that takes care of it. To hell with all that. They’ll be surprised to see what I’m capable of.”
He drank again from the bottle, and I wondered whether he might have been overdoing the booze a bit.
“What d’you think you’re doing there?” he called out to the stern corporal, who was working something out on a piece of paper on his knee.
“Counting my assault days and my close-combat days,” he said, modestly enough.
“What assault days?”
“My assault days.”
“Where the hell did you take part in an assault or close combat?”
“Up there near Kishinev—you know.”
“Kishinev? Which unit?”
“The tank corps …”
“And that’s where you were in close combat and an assault? You look like a pretty fierce fighter to me, I must say!”
The stern corporal blushed. And I was tempted to feel sorry for him.
“Well,” he said, “if you like I can show you. On three assault days I was up at the front, taking round food, bringing back wounded …”
“You’re a bastard, I tell you—you ate up the men’s rations and pinched the valuables out of the wounded men’s pockets. That’s the kind of chap you are.”
“How dare you speak to me like that! Cut it out, you’re drunk.”
“Sure I am, drunks tell the truth. That’s the kind of bastard you are. Here,” he said suddenly, ripping all the decorations off his chest, “take the Iron Cross and the assault badge and the close-combat badge, I’ve had it up to here with them.”
By now he was totally drunk. I grabbed hold of him and laid him down flat on his blanket.
“You can see he’s plastered, can’t you?” I said.
The stern corporal said nothing. I picked up the decorations from the floor and put them in my pocket. No one said a word.
We were now travelling through some marvellous scenery, magnificent mountains and picturesque villages and small towns. It was almost noon, and we began to eat our white bread and our tinned cheese, and we were all thirsty. We stopped at a small station, and someone asked the corporal whether we might try and get something to drink.
“I’m not saying another word.” He seemed to be still working something out on his knee. “I’m not saying anything any more. I ate up all your rations and pinched your valuables from your pockets. I’m not saying another word.”
I almost think he was close to tears, and now I was quite sure he was a schoolteacher.
“Don’t be an idiot,” someone called out, “he was drunk!”
“Drunks tell the truth …”
“Kapo, don’t be such a fool,” came another voice, “he was just being mean!”
“No, I’m a bastard.”
“Come on, there’s a good lad, we don’t believe him!”
“I didn’t do my duty.”
“You did, you did—come on, chin up. Look, he’s plastered.”
“So can we go and get something to drink?”
“It’s against regulations, and if the train suddenly starts to move you’ll miss it—but then I’m not responsible. He knows all the doctors intimately, and he sized me up right away.”
A few men got off the train, hurried to a nearby house, and came back with some water and some weak coffee. They first let the corporal have a drink. One man wanted to fill up a whole mug for him.
“Hold it,” said the corporal, “don’t forget your mates.”
Then the others got off too, and he said with a laugh: “I’m not responsible any more—it feels good not to be responsible any more! The man responsible is asleep and drunk. He has the right attitude towards duty.”
They all looked angrily at the sleeping Hubert. He slept very quietly, but his face showed some stress, and now for the first time I had a good look at him. He was older than I, at least six or seven years older. At least twenty-five. He had very fair hair and a narrow face and didn’t look well, but then he’d been drinking pretty heavily the last few days.
Then the young doctor returned and called out: “Kramer!” I pointed at Hubert, and the doctor said: “Let him sleep.” Then he told us: “It’s all right for you fellows to get off here for a bit, the engine’s broken down. It may take a while.”
It was a very small station. The station building looked half asleep; it smelled of resin and ripe maize. There were piles of lumber lying around, and stacks of iron and indefinable objects such as seemed to have been left at almost every station. The train stood there without an engine like a snake without a head. Not a soul in sight.
I sniffed the air and suddenly smelled that it was Sunday. There was a smell of inactivity. I walked past the station, where they were all converging like flies onto the bar.
There was such a glorious smell of summer and Sunday, and then I heard sobbing violin music that drove me wild. There wasn’t a dog to be seen in the dusty street, not a soul in sight.
Aha, I thought, they’ve filled their bellies with goulash and now they’re sleeping it off, and someone’s playing the violin. The music was coming from a tiny bar, and suddenly I realized I was thirsty and went inside.
All I saw there were a few swarthy fellows sitting on dilapidated chairs; they didn’t really look in too good shape, they were very thin and sallow, and I thought maybe they hadn’t been eating goulash after all. Another man was leaning against the bar producing sobbing sounds from his violin.
I stared in amazement at the violin, surely tears must be pouring down it, but it was quite dry. And the men all looked terribly parched too. Maybe because of all that paprika, I thought. I had never been to Hungary, and I imagined they all ate a lot of paprika and goulash and made their violins sob. Only the mouth of the plump, pretty woman behind the bar was moist, and as I entered and called out “Hallo, comrades!” they laughed and responded with some friendly-sounding Hungarian words; the woman was especially welcoming with her friendly “Gooter Tak!”
I walked towards the bar. The fellow went on playing his violin and gave me a pleasant smile.
“Might I please have a glass of water?” I asked very politely, not having a penny in my pocket. The woman laughed, the way we sometimes laugh when someone speaks an incomprehensible language. Then she said, with a cooing sound like a pigeon’s in her lovely, smooth throat: “Bor.”
But I didn’t know what she meant, and I told her so. That made her laugh even more, and delightful dimples appeared in her handsome face. Then she said: “Birr.”
I shook my head and said: “No pengö,” and stubbornly went on asking for water. Meanwhile I had put my hands in my pockets and was listening to the young violinist. The others, too, were listening to him spellbound, smiling only when I caught their eyes. In my pocket, however, I found a brand-new, factory-fresh Wehrmacht handkerchief, one of those olive-green ones, and holding it out to the woman I asked: “How many pengö this?”
But she shook her head at once, and I realized I was no longer in Romania. In Romania you could sell anyone anything. A shadow crossed the woman’s face, and I felt sad too because I thought I ha
d offended her, but she was soon smiling again, set a bottle and glass on a table, and gestured to me to sit down. “You no pengö,” she said encouragingly.
I sat down beside one of the swarthy fellows and listened to the sobbing violin.
I found it cruelly sad and beautiful; it seemed to smell of passionate kisses and tears shed over a broken heart. I could feel my tears welling up, but then I opened the bottle and poured some wonderful brown beer into the glass. My mouth watered. At that moment the violinist paused briefly, and I rose, held up my glass, and called out: “First, my Hungarian comrades, let me drink to the loveliest of all women,” raising my glass to the landlady.
“And then,” I went on with a nod towards the violinist: “let me drink to you, comrade, you who can sob like a god. I’m not making fun of you, far from it, but keep up the sobbing and to hell with everything else. And now let me drink to the whole parched Hungarian people—don’t be offended, but I don’t know what else to say.”
And I drank down the whole huge, glorious glassful, and it tasted so good that I almost choked with pleasure.
My speech met with loud approval. They seemed to have understood me, and they laughed like children as they raised their glasses to me.
One of them came up and filled my glass; I had to drink it down in one go. They immediately produced another bottle, and I finished that off in short order, too. The beer was truly glorious, and it was so warm outside, and it was summer, and I was in Hungary, and they couldn’t touch me, and I would have no trouble hearing the train whistle and could quickly run out and jump on. I was soon slightly drunk and sorry I didn’t have any money for treating my Hungarian friends in return. But they merely smiled when I tried through gestures to indicate my problem, and the landlady was especially nice to me. I think she liked me, I liked her, too, although she was much older than I, but she was kind and generous and she was a handsome woman, a fine figure of a Hungarian innkeeper …
After the fourth bottle I began heaping abuse on Hitler. “Comrades,” I called out dramatically, “Hitler is an arsehole!” They fully agreed and stamped their feet in delight. The sobbing violinist was quite carried away by my speech; he picked up his violin and produced some frantic revolutionary sobbing, his fingers scampering up and down the strings at breakneck speed.
Suddenly one of my new pals grabbed my arm: “Ssh, ssh!” he went, and everyone fell silent. From the direction of the station I could hear loud shouting. I felt a bit sick to my stomach, but then I thought, only bad people are ever in a hurry. I stood up: “Comrades, the hour of farewell has struck. Don’t be offended, but the fact is I’d like to get as far as possible to the rear, to a hospital and close to Germany, otherwise I’ll be sitting here all summer, drinking beer and listening to the violin. Don’t be offended.”
They fully understood and urged me to get going. I hurried over to the landlady and tried to kiss her hand, but she gave me a playful shove …
The avenue was lovely and cool, yet there was a smell of summer and Sunday and of Hungary. Dense chestnut trees that looked as rich and thick as that glorious beer. I soon noticed how drunk I was; the avenue seemed to sway ever so slightly.
The train was still there. At first I couldn’t see anyone about, but then someone called out, “There he is!” and I saw all the men from the two freight cars lined up, the doctor facing them. The doctor, Hubert’s old pal, was angry, angry and upset, and I imagined it was because of me, because I’d been away, but that wasn’t it at all. “Where’ve you been?” he asked sternly, but without waiting for a reply he said: “Fall in!”
I obeyed, and the others laughed because it was obvious that I was good and drunk. The doctor looked at us solemnly, then glanced at a sheet of paper and said somewhat dramatically:
“Men, I have some information that will interest you all. We received it over the radio as a special announcement, and I have no wish to withhold it from you.”
He gave us all another solemn look and continued:
“Today, in the early hours of the morning, the joint British–American forces landed on the west coast of France. A battle of the utmost violence is in progress. In this solemn hour, comrades, when the cowardly liars are finally confronting us, we will not fail to utter a threefold ‘Sieg Heil!’ to our Führer, to whom we owe everything. Comrades—Sieg …”—“… Heil!” we shouted. He repeated it twice with us. Then you could hear a pin drop, and into that silence Hubert suddenly shouted: “Hurrah, hurrah, hurrah!” We looked up, startled and horrified, including the doctor. Hubert was standing half-asleep by the doorway of the car, deep lines in his face and wisps of straw clinging to his tunic.
“What’s that supposed to mean, Kramer?” the doctor shouted furiously.
“Sir, because at least they’re confronting us, you see—that’s why I’m shouting hurrah. Now we’ll defeat them, wipe them out, and then the war will be over—hurrah, hurrah, hurrah!”
He was grinning from ear to ear, and the doctor and the rest of us laughed too.
“Dismiss!” said the doctor, “everyone stay with the train—the engine will be here any minute.”
Hubert jumped down from the car and walked over to the doctor; I could see them chatting together. The others crept back into the car; some of them sat down on the stacks of iron, ate their bread and cheese, and drank cold coffee, since they had no pengö.
I stayed close to the station exit, waiting for Hubert; my idea was for him to give me some money or come with me so we could treat those parched fellows and the violinist until the landlady was down to the last bottle of that glorious beer.
Hubert slapped me on the shoulder and told me quietly: “Two more hours at least, but I’m not supposed to tell anyone. Are you drunk?”
“Yes.”
“What from?”
“Beer.”
“Any good?”
“Fantastic,” I replied.
“Let’s go,” said Hubert, “where’s this place of yours?”
We slipped away quickly, but as soon as we reached the lovely cool avenue we slowed down. It was warm and summery, and we’d been wounded, and they couldn’t touch us, we were in a proper hospital train—oh God, how wonderful it all was.
“Listen,” said Hubert as we walked on. “D’you know that we have a genuine, bona fide reason to get drunk?”
“No,” I answered.
“Hell,” he said, “they’ve landed, that means the end is near, I tell you—inexorably near. Now at least the end’s no longer out of sight.”
“The end of the war?” I asked.
“Of course. Now the end is near, just wait and see.”
Suddenly Hubert stopped and grabbed my arm. “Quiet!” We could hear the sobbing violin.
“That’s in the bar,” I said with a laugh.
“In our bar?”
“Right!” I said, and Hubert again: “Hurrah, hurrah, hurrah!” Now we were running.
The parched men welcomed us with loud laughter, even the violinist broke off his playing and nodded at me. And the landlady, my plump, handsome landlady, was positively delighted to see me again. I could tell. I made a short speech introducing my friend Hubert, and they all took him to their hearts. Hubert ordered seven bottles of beer for the three parched ones, for the violinist, for the landlady and for the two of us. He slapped a whole bundle of notes onto the table, and I could see from the eyes of the parched ones, those big, shyly glancing eyes, that the men were poor, and I was touched that they had paid for my beer.
Hubert went round filling all the glasses, then jumped onto a chair and raised his own.
“Men,” he cried, “and this delightful lady, beg pardon! Is it not a thing of glory that we’re all human beings? Is it not wonderful that we are brothers, and is it not disgusting that those pigs started the war in which they want to kill us off? But we’re human beings, and we’re going to take our revenge by continuing to be brothers, by stealing from them and screwing them—begging your pardon, fair lady—screwing the
m blind! Mates!” he cried, “Hungarian mates, we’re human beings, never forget that. And now let’s drink!”
He emptied his glass, and an expression of amazement spread over his face. “I’ll be damned!” he exclaimed. “This beer is truly magnificent!”
Everyone got carried away in their enthusiasm. We embraced each other, and I had a notion I might be able to kiss our lovely landlady, but she pushed me away with a laugh, and I saw that she was blushing.
Damn it, I thought, what a bastard you are—she’s married and loves her husband, and you young whippersnapper want to kiss her. And then I stood up and gave another little speech in which I apologized and called myself a bastard. They all understood, including the landlady, who gave me a forgiving smile.
The Hungarians made speeches too, saying that we were brothers and Hitler and Horthy were bastards, and they spat on the floor and sprinkled some beer over it. Each time the landlady brought more beer she chalked seven strokes on a blackboard, and I soon saw that there were quite a lot of strokes. We had a great time, all of us, and told each other the most fantastic stories without understanding a word, and we understood each other famously.
The violinist sobbed out a piece that sounded like wine and silk, dark silk and heavy wine, and when he had finished Hubert suddenly shouted: “Tokay!” But now we noticed that the woman was no longer there. Hubert gently took the violinist’s instrument from him and led him to a chair, where he fell asleep at once.
I had a clear view of Hubert slipping a wad of notes into the violinist’s pocket. Hubert really did have a fantastic amount of money, and I decided to ask him later on what he had flogged. Hubert picked up the violin and started to play; the parched ones danced in time to his music.
Actually I felt like making another speech, there was so much I wanted to say, but I simply didn’t know how to begin.
The landlady returned with a platter of sliced cold meat and bread, and we ate as she watched us with a happy smile. The parched ones tucked in quite nicely, and I realized that they were hungry, really hungry, and it all tasted wonderful, the cold meat and the white bread, and we drank wine as we ate, and meanwhile I learned that bor meant wine, the only Hungarian word I knew.
The Collected Stories of Heinrich Böll Page 74