It was the nurse’s gentle hand that startled me.
“Here we are,” came her voice, “here’s the Novalgin Quinine for your fever, and there,” she said as she handed me the thermometer, “let’s have your temperature!”
The mild fever gave me a feeling of contentment. It brought the goo on my back to the boil again, and now I was a hero again, four years older than before, wounded three times, and now an authentic, official hero. Even the sergeant in the Reserve wouldn’t be able to touch me, for by the time I was back there again I would have the silver badge, so how could they possibly get at me …?
By now I really did have a fever: 38.6, and the nurse entered a blue stroke on the curve of my chart that made it look quite alarming.
I had a fever, and from Debrecen it wasn’t that far to Vienna, and from Vienna …
Maybe the front would collapse again at some corner, and there would be a big push, and we would all be moved to the rear, the way I’d heard it told so often—and like a shot we’d be in Vienna or Dresden, and from Dresden …
“Are you asleep, young fellow?” Hubert asked, “or would you like another drink?”
“No,” I said, “I’m asleep, asleep …”
“Okay, then. Goodnight.”
“Goodnight.”
But sleep was still a long way off. Somewhere towards the front of the car a man started screaming his head off. Lights were switched on … people shouted, ran, the nurse arrived and the doctor … and then all was quiet again.
The thigh casualty groaned and snored softly in his sleep …
Outside the night was once more totally dark, no longer grey; it was blue-black and silent, and I found I could no longer think of Severin-Strasse. I could think only of Debrecen … strange, I thought, when we did Hungary in geography you so often put your finger on Debrecen; it lay in the middle of a green patch, but not far away the colour turned to brown, then to very dark brown, that was the Carpathians, and who would ever have thought that one day you’d be swaying so quickly and quietly on your way to Debrecen, in the middle of the night. I tried to imagine the town.
Perhaps there would be some fine cafés there, and lots of things to buy, with pengö in your pocket. I glanced across at Hubert, but he had fallen asleep.
It was very quiet, and I longed for the tears to come again, but the image of my mother and of Severin-Strasse was completely wiped out.
THE CAGE
A man stood beside the fence looking pensively through the barbed-wire thicket. He was searching for something human, but all he saw was this tangle, this horribly systematic tangle of wires—then some scarecrow figures staggering through the heat towards the latrines, bare ground and tents, more wire, more scarecrow figures, bare ground and tents stretching away to infinity. At some point there was said to be no more wire, but he couldn’t believe it. Equally inhuman was the immaculate, burning, impassive face of the blanched blue sky, where somewhere the sun floated just as pitilessly. The whole world was reduced to motionless scorching heat, held in like the breath of an animal under the spell of noon. The heat weighed on him like some appalling tower of naked fire that seemed to grow and grow and grow …
His eyes met nothing human; and behind him—he could see it even more clearly, without turning round—was sheer horror. There they lay, those others, round the inviolable football field, packed side by side like rotting fish; next came the meticulously clean latrines, and somewhere a long way behind him was also paradise: the shady, empty tents, guarded by well-fed policemen …
How quiet it was, how hot!
He suddenly lowered his head, as if his neck were breaking under the fiery hammer-blow, and he saw something that delighted him: the delicate shadows of the barbed wire on the bare ground. They were like the fine tracery of intertwining branches, frail and beautiful, and it seemed to him that they must be infinitely cool, those delicate tracings, all linked with each other; yes, they seemed to be smiling, quietly and soothingly.
He bent down and carefully reached between the wires to pick one of the pretty branches; holding it up to his face he smiled, as if a fan had been gently waved in front of him. Then he reached out with both hands to gather up those sweet shadows. He looked left and right into the thicket, and the quiet happiness in his eyes faded: a wild surge of desire flared up, for there he saw innumerable little tracings which when gathered up must offer a precious, cool eternity of shadow. His pupils dilated as if about to burst out of the prison of his eyeballs: with a shrill cry he plunged into the thicket, and the more he became entangled in the pitiless little barbs the more wildly he flailed, like a fly in a spider’s web, while with his hands he tried to grasp the exquisite shadow branches. His flailings were already stilled by the time the well-fed policemen arrived to free him with their wire-cutters.
I CAN’T FORGET HER
I can’t forget her; whenever I emerge even for a moment from the vortex of everyday life which with its constant pressure tries to keep me beneath the surface of human reality; whenever I can even for a second turn my back on the ceaseless bustle of the crass pomposity they call life, and pause where their inane shouting cannot reach me: then her image appears before me, as close and distinct and ravishingly beautiful as I saw her years ago, when she was wearing a collarless coat that revealed all of her delicate neck.
At the time they had given up hope for me. The captain had said we were to make a counter-attack, and the lieutenant had made a counter-attack with us. But there was nothing to attack. We ran blindly up a wooded hill one spring evening, but on the expected battleground there was complete silence. We paused on the hill, looked away into the distance, and could see nothing. Then we ran down into the valley, up another hill, and paused again. There was not an enemy in sight. Here and there behind bushes were abandoned holes, half-finished positions of our troops in which the meaningless junk of war had been hastily left behind. It was still quiet; an uncanny silence lay heavily under the great vault of the spring sky that was slowly covering itself with the darker veils of twilight. It was so quiet that the lieutenant’s voice startled us: “Carry on!” he ordered. But as we were about to proceed the sky suddenly roared down upon us, and the earth burst open.
The others had quickly dropped to the ground or flung themselves into the abandoned holes; I just caught sight of the sergeant’s pipe falling from his mouth, and then it felt as though they had knocked my legs from under my body …
Five men ran away after the first load had come down. Only the lieutenant and two men stayed behind; they hastily picked me up and ran down the slope with me while up above, where we had been lying, a fresh load came roaring down.
It was only much later, when all was quiet again and they laid me on the forest floor, that I felt any pain. The lieutenant wiped the sweat off his face and looked at me, but I could clearly see that he was not looking at the place where my legs must be. “Don’t worry,” he said, “we’ll get you back all right.”
The lieutenant placed a lighted cigarette between my lips, and I can still remember: while the pain increased again I still felt that life was beautiful. I was lying at the bottom of the valley on a forest path beside a little stream; up above, between the tall fir trees, only a narrow strip of sky was visible, a strip that was now silvery, almost white. The birds were singing, and an indescribably soothing silence reigned. I blew the cigarette smoke upward in long blue threads and felt that life was beautiful, and tears came to my eyes …
“It’s all right,” said the lieutenant.
They carried me away. But it was a long way, almost two kilometres to the point where the captain had retreated, and I was heavy. I believe all wounded are heavy. The lieutenant carried the front end of the stretcher, and the other two walked behind. We slowly came out of the forest, across meadows and fields, and through another forest, and they had to set me down and wipe off their sweat, while the evening sank lower and lower. When we reached the village, everything was still quiet. They took me into a room w
here the captain now was. On both sides, school desks had been piled up against the walls, and the teacher’s desk was covered with hand grenades. As I was being carried in, they were busy distributing the hand grenades. The captain was shouting into a telephone, threatening someone that he would have him shot. Then he let out a curse and hung up. They set me down behind the teacher’s desk, where some other wounded were also lying. One of them was sitting there with his hand shot to pieces; he looked very contented.
The lieutenant gave a report on the counter-attack to the captain, and the captain yelled at the lieutenant that he would have him shot, and the lieutenant said, “Yessir.” That made the captain yell even more, and the lieutenant again said, “Yessir,” and the captain stopped yelling. They stuck big torches in flowerpots and lit them. By now it was dark, and there seemed to be no electric current. After the hand grenades had been distributed, the room emptied. All that was left were two sergeants, a clerk, the lieutenant and the captain. The captain said to the lieutenant: “See that security sentries are placed all round the village; we’ll try to get a few hours’ sleep. Tomorrow we’ll be starting out early.”
“To the rear?” asked the lieutenant quietly.
“Get out!” yelled the captain; the lieutenant left. After he had gone, I looked for the first time at my legs and saw that they were covered with blood, and I couldn’t feel them, I felt only pain where normally I would have felt my legs. I was shivering now. Beside me lay a man who must have been shot in the stomach; he was very quiet and pale and scarcely moved; from time to time he merely stroked his hand, very quietly and carefully, across the blanket that covered his stomach. No one paid any attention to us. I imagine the medic had been among the five who had run away. Suddenly the pain reached my stomach and crept higher very quickly; it flowed up like molten lead as far as my heart, and I believe I began to scream and then fainted …
I woke up and first heard music. I was lying on my side, looking into the face of the fellow with the stomach wound and saw that he was dead. His blanket was all black with congealed blood. And I could hear music, somewhere they must have found a radio. They were playing something quite modern, it must have been a foreign station; then the music was wiped out as if by a wet rag, and they played military marches, then came something classical, and they let that music go on. Then a voice above me said very softly, “Mozart,” and I looked up and saw her face and realized at the same moment that it couldn’t be Mozart, and I said to that face: “No, it’s not Mozart.”
She bent over me, and now I saw that she was a doctor or a medical student, she looked so young, but she was holding a stethoscope. Now all I could see was her loose, soft crown of brown hair, for she was bending over my legs, lifting the blanket so that I couldn’t see anything. Then she raised her head, looked at me, and said: “It is Mozart.” She pushed up my sleeve, and I said softly: “No, it can’t possibly be Mozart.”
The music went on playing, and now I was quite sure that it could never be Mozart. Some of it sounded like real Mozart, but there were other passages that couldn’t possibly be Mozart.
My arm was all white. With gentle fingers she felt my pulse, then came a sudden needle prick, and she injected something into my arm.
As she did so, her head came quite close, and I whispered: “Give me a kiss.” She blushed deeply, withdrew the needle, and at that moment a voice on the radio said: “Dittersdorf.” Suddenly she smiled, and I smiled too, for now I could get a proper look at her because the only torch that was still burning was behind her. “Quick,” I said in a louder voice, “give me a kiss.” She blushed again and looked even more beautiful; the light from the torch shone on the ceiling and spread in wavering red circles round the walls. She gave a quick glance over her shoulder, then bent over me and kissed me, and at that instant I saw her closed eyelids from very near and felt those soft lips while the torch flung its restless light round the room and the captain’s voice bellowed into the telephone again and now some different music was being spewed out of the speaker. Then a voice called out an order, someone picked me up and carried me out into the night and placed me in a cold van, and I had a last glimpse of her standing there, her eyes following me in the torchlight, right among all the school desks that were piled up like the absurd rubble of a collapsing world.
As far as I know, they are all back now in their proper jobs: the captain is an athletics instructor, the lieutenant is dead, and there’s nothing I can tell you about the others—after all, I knew them only for a few hours. No doubt the school desks are back in their proper places, the electric light is working again, and torches are lit only on very romantic occasions; and instead of bellowing “I’ll have you shot!” the captain is now shouting something harmless such as perhaps: “Idiot!” or “Coward!”, when someone can’t do a grand circle on the crossbar. My legs have healed up, and I can walk quite well, and they tell me at the Veterans Affairs office that I should be working. But I have a different, much more important occupation: I am looking for her. I can’t forget her. People tell me I’m crazy because I make no effort to do a grand circle in the air and land smartly on my feet like a good citizen and then, eager and thirsting for praise, step back in line.
Fortunately they are obliged to give me a pension, and I can afford to wait and search, for I know that I shall find her …
GREEN ARE THE MEADOWS
The tram was crossing a street whose name—white on blue at the corner under the street-lamp—suddenly seemed familiar to him. He blushed, pulled out his notebook, and found the name of the street, circled in red, on a scribbled page: Bülow-Strasse. He now realized he had always passed over this page, although at heart he hadn’t forgotten the name for so much as a single day …
The tram slowly rounded a curve and stopped. He heard music from a bar, saw gas lamps burning in the dusk; from somewhere beyond a garden fence came the laughter of young girls, and he got off. The suburb was like all the suburbs: pockmarked, dirty, dotted with little gardens and somehow appealing: it had the smell, the sound, the colour and the quite indescribable atmosphere of vulnerability …
The man heard the tram screeching off and set down his bundle. Although he knew the number by heart, he put his hand into his pocket and once more leafed through his notebook: 14 Bülow-Strasse. Now there was no way of avoiding it. He realized why he had always refused the job of picking up the cigarettes in this particular town. Of course there was many a Bülow-Strasse, every decent town had its Bülow-Strasse, but only in this town was there this house, number 14, where a woman by the name of Gärtner was living, a woman for whom he had a message about something that had happened four years ago and that he should have told her about four years ago …
The gas lamps lit up the high fence of a lumber yard, and painted on the fence were huge white letters. Through the gaps he saw the light-coloured piles of trim boards, and he wearily deciphered the inscription on the fence: SCHUSTER BROTHERS: then he took a step backwards because the lettering on the fence was so big that his eyes had trouble following it, and much farther along, lit up by another gas lamp, he read: OLDEST LUMBER YARD IN TOWN. At the spot where he could read the final N of this display of integrity there was a large black house in which a few windows shone with a yellow light. The windows were open, he saw lamplight, heard radio music, and somewhere he heard again the girls’ bright laughter. Someone was playing a guitar, and a few boys’ voices were gently singing, “We lay by the camp fire, Conchita and I …”, other voices joined in, and a second guitar was struck up; the girls’ laughter had died away.
The man walked slowly along beside the fence as far as the second gas lamp, which stood exactly between the T and the O. The shining tram rails continued on into a narrow street with closely packed buildings whose façades were almost dead, dark and frightening; the buildings seemed to have been burned out.
The dusk had grown thicker: he now saw those dead façades lit up by a tall, gently swaying lamp, and at the far corner there was another gr
oup of young fellows; the tips of their cigarettes glowed in the dusk. That must be the entrance to Bülow-Strasse …
He was still standing between the T and the O. It was quiet, with only the low, plaintive sounds of the two guitars and the soft voices coming to the end of the song. On the other side of the street were allotment gardens. Just then, a man standing in the dark lit his pipe, and he saw the match light up a fisherman’s cap and a pudgy, heavy face, its lips puckered to blow out the match with one puff of smoke. Then all was swallowed up again in the silent darkness. He strolled slowly on, and at the end of the lumber yard’s long fence the silence was suddenly broken; from the open doors of a bar came loud male laughter and in the background a frantic male voice yelling from a radio. The first cross-street seemed almost undamaged: loud laughter reached him and shouts and the murmuring conversation of people sitting on chairs outside their doors …
While walking past this scene as if he were passing an open, crowded living room, he was thinking: I can still go back. I don’t have to be in this Bülow-Strasse. But he went on, as if under some compulsion, towards the traffic lights, and he had soon reached the group of young fellows at the street corner. There was some noise coming from Bülow-Strasse, too, but as he quickly turned the corner he saw that these façades also showed great black gaps, and for a moment he wished that number 14 might also have been destroyed. That would solve everything.
At the corner he hesitated. Once I enter the street, there’s no going back, he thought. They will recognize me as a stranger, ply me with questions, and I’ll have to tell them everything. He made a quick turn to the left and pushed his way through the group of youngsters into the bar. “Evening all,” he said, sitting down at the table nearest the door. The landlord behind the counter, tall, thin, dark-complexioned, nodded and called out: “Beer?”
The Collected Stories of Heinrich Böll Page 76