The Collected Stories of Heinrich Böll

by Heinrich Böll

  Meanwhile I nodded at the boy and gave him another cigarette, he’d eaten the whole can of corned beef and all the bread, and the coffee must’ve done him a power of good. And Jesus, the way these guys smoke, it’s crazy, they smoke the way we sometimes used to smoke in the war when things got tough. They always smoke as if it was wartime, these Germans.

  “Here we are!” Pat cried. “Got it!”, and he jumped up, took a letter out of his locker, and showed the kid the stamp on it, but the boy just shook his head and even smiled a bit.

  “Nee,” he said, and he repeated that crazy word that had made him try and drown himself, and I’d never heard it.

  “Hold it,” Pat said, “I’ve got it, it’s a word that means ‘ration cards’,” and he quickly turned over the pages of his dictionary.

  “Still hungry?” I gestured to the kid. But he shook his head and poured himself another cup of coffee. Jesus, the way they can put away coffee, by the bucket, I thought …

  “Damn it all,” Pat cried, “these dictionaries, these crappy dictionaries, these goddamn fucking dictionaries—a kid like that tries to drown himself for some reason or other, and you can’t even find it in the dictionary.”

  “Look,” I said to the boy, in English of course, “just tell us what it is, take your time, we’re all human, we must be able to understand each other. Tell him, tell Pat,” and I pointed to Pat, “just tell this guy.” And Pat laughed, but he listened very carefully and the boy told him slowly, very slowly, the poor kid was all embarrassed, taking his time about it, and I understood some of it, and Pat’s expression turned very serious.

  “I’ll be damned!” Pat exclaimed. “How can we be so dumb! They get their food on ration cards, right? They have ration cards, get it? Goddammit, we never thought of it, and that’s what he’s lost, and that’s why he jumped into the Rhine.”

  “I’ll be damned,” I muttered. “A kid like that jumps into the river, and we don’t know why, can’t imagine …”

  We should at least be able to imagine it, I thought, at the very least, even if we can’t actually experience it, we should at least be able to imagine it …

  “Pat,” I said, “if he’s lost them, they’ll have to give him some new ones. It’s just paper, and they can print them, they simply have to give him some new paper—it’s not money, after all. It can happen to anyone, you know, losing them, surely there must be plenty of that printed stuff around …”

  “Balls,” Pat replied, “they’ll never do it. Because there’s some people who just say they’ve lost them, and they sell them or eat twice as much, and the authorities get fed up. Christ, it’s like in the war, when you’ve lost your rifle and suddenly there’s a guy coming at you, and you simply can’t shoot because you haven’t got a rifle. It’s just a goddamn war they’re carrying on with their paper, that’s what it is.”

  Okay, I thought, but that’s terrible, then these folks end up having nothing to eat, nothing, nothing at all, and there’s not a thing to be done about it, and that’s why he ran like a maniac and threw himself into the Rhine …

  “Yes,” Pat said, as if answering my thoughts, “and he’s lost them all, the whole lot, for—I believe it’s six people, and some other cards too, I just don’t get what he means—for a whole month …”

  Jesus, I thought, what are they going to do if that’s how it is! They can’t do a thing, that kid goes and loses all the ration cards, and I thought to myself I’d drown myself too if I was him. But I still couldn’t imagine it … no, I guess nobody can imagine it.

  I stood up, went over to my locker and got two packs of cigarettes for the kid but then I really had a shock, the way he looked at me. He sure gave me a weird look, he’s going to go out of his mind on us, I thought, clear out of his mind, that’s the kind of face the kid was making.

  “Pat,” I shouted—yes, I guess I shouted. “Do me a favour and take that boy away, take him away,” I shouted. “I can’t stand it, that face, those grateful eyes, all for two packs of cigarettes, I can’t stand it—I tell you, it’s as if I’d given him the whole world. Pat,” I shouted, “take him away, and make him a parcel of everything we’ve got here, pack it all up and give it to him!”

  Jesus, was I glad when Pat left with the kid. Pat’ll make him a nice big parcel, I thought; and there you sat beside the dirty grey water, chatting a bit with the river all because of some skinny girl’s face and thinking: throw yourself in, throw yourself in, let yourself be carried all the way to … ha, Holland, for Christ’s sake! But that child threw himself in, splash! threw himself in because of a few scraps of paper that were worth maybe less than a dollar.

  THE GREEN SILK SHIRT

  I did exactly as I had been told: without knocking I pushed open the door and walked in. But then it was a shock suddenly to find myself confronting a tall, stout woman whose face had something strange about it, a fantastic complexion: it was healthy, it positively shone with health, calm and confident.

  The expression in her eyes was cold; she was standing at the table cleaning vegetables. Beside her was a plate with the remains of a pancake which a big fat cat was sniffing at. The room was cramped and low-ceilinged, the air stale and greasy. A sharp, choking bitterness caught at my throat while my shy gaze roamed restlessly between pancake, cat and the woman’s healthy face.

  “What d’you want?” she asked without looking up.

  With trembling hands I undid the clasp of my briefcase, hitting my head against the low doorframe; finally I brought the object to light: a shirt.

  “A shirt,” I said huskily, “I thought … perhaps … a shirt.”

  “My husband has enough shirts for ten years!” But then she raised her eyes as if by chance, and her gaze fastened on the soft, rustling, green shirt. When I saw an ungovernable craving flare up in her eyes, I was sure the battle was won. Without wiping her fingers, she grabbed the shirt, holding it up by the shoulders; she turned it round, examined every seam, then muttered something indistinguishable. Impatient and anxious, I watched her go back to her cabbage, cross to the stove, and lift the lid of a sizzling saucepan. The aroma of hot, good-quality fat spread through the room. Meanwhile the cat had been sniffing at the pancake, apparently not finding it good or fresh enough. With a lazy, graceful leap, the cat jumped onto the chair, from the chair onto the floor, and slipped past me through the door.

  The fat bubbled, and I thought I could hear the crackling bits of bacon hopping about under the saucepan lid, for by this time some ancient memory had told me that it was bacon, bacon in that saucepan. The woman went on scrubbing her cabbage. Somewhere outside a cow was lowing softly, a cart creaked, and still I stood there at the door while my shirt dangled from a dirty chairback, my beloved, soft, green silk shirt, for whose softness I had been longing for seven years …

  I felt as if I were standing on a red-hot grill while the silence oppressed me unutterably. By now the pancake was covered by a black cloud of sluggish flies: hunger and revulsion, a dreadful revulsion, combined in an acrid bitterness that closed my throat; I began to sweat.

  At last I reached out hesitantly for the shirt. “You,” I said, my voice even huskier than before, “you … don’t want it?”

  “What d’you want for it?” she asked coldly, without looking up. Her quick, deft fingers had finished cleaning the cabbage; she placed the leaves in a colander, ran water over them, stirred them all under the water, then again lifted the lid of the saucepan where the bacon was sizzling. She slid the leaves into the saucepan, and the delicious hiss again revived old memories: memories of a time that might have lain a thousand years in the past, yet I am only twenty-eight …

  “Well, what d’you want for it?” she asked somewhat impatiently.

  But I’m no good at bargaining, no, although I have visited every black market between Cap Gris Nez and Krasnodar.

  I stammered: “Bacon … bread … maybe some flour, I thought …”

  Now for the first time she raised her cold blue eyes and looked at m
e coolly, and at that moment I knew I was done for … never, never again in this life would I know the taste of bacon, bacon would forever remain no more than a wave of painful aromatic memory. Nothing mattered any more, her gaze had struck me, transfixed me, and now my whole self was draining out …

  She laughed. “Shirts!” she cried scornfully. “I can have shirts for a few bread ration coupons.”

  I snatched the shirt from the chair, knotted it round the neck of this virago and strung her up like a drowned cat on the nail beneath the big crucifix that hung black and threatening on the yellow wall above her face … but I did this only in my imagination. In reality I grabbed my shirt, bundled it up, and stuffed it back into the briefcase, then turned to the door.

  The cat was crouching in the hallway over a saucer of milk, greedily lapping it up. As I passed, it lifted its head and nodded as if wanting to acknowledge and comfort me, and in its green, veiled eyes there was something human, something unutterably human …

  But because I had been advised to be patient, too, I felt obliged to try again. If only to escape the oppressive brilliance of the sky, I made my way under crippled apple trees, among cowpats and busily pecking chickens, towards a somewhat larger farmhouse situated to one side under the solid shade of some ancient linden trees. The bitterness must have blurred my vision, for it was only at the last moment that I noticed a brawny young farm lad sitting on a bench in front of the house and calling out endearments to two grazing horses. When he saw me he laughed, and called through an open window into the house: “Number eighteen’s coming, Ma!” Then he slapped his thigh with glee and began to fill a pipe; his laughter was answered indoors by a throaty chuckle, and the shiny, crimson face of a woman appeared for a second in the window like a dripping pancake. I turned on my heel and ran like a madman, my briefcase tucked tightly under my arm. I didn’t slow up until I reached the village street again and walked down the hill that I had climbed half an hour earlier.

  I breathed a sigh of relief when I saw the friendly, grey snake of the highway below me, bordered with gentle trees. My pulse slowed down, the bitterness subsided, while I rested at the crossing where the cobbled, neglected, fetid village street emerged into the freedom of the highway.

  I was dripping with sweat.

  Suddenly I smiled, lit my pipe, pulled off my old, sticky, soiled shirt, and slipped into the cool, soft silk; it flowed gently down my body and right through me, and all my bitterness melted away, all of it, to a mere nothing; and as I walked back along the highway towards the railway station I felt welling up inside me a yearning for the poor, abject face of the city, behind whose contorted features I had so often seen the humanity bred by misery.

  THE WAITING-ROOM

  At first when I woke up I couldn’t believe it—no, it couldn’t be true. Once more I stuck my hand out from under the blanket and took it back again. Was I still dreaming? It couldn’t be true; could the cold really have broken overnight? It was warm … and mild; but oh, was I suspicious! I don’t know whether you were also born in 1917—we are a very suspicious lot, the survivors of that generation, as rare as cigarettes among so-called honest folk. Well, in the end I had to trust my senses: I got up. Yes, it really was mild, the sunshine was warm and gentle, the windows were entirely free of ice … they shimmered moistly, like the eyes of young girls who still believe in love.

  My heart felt so light while I was dressing—what a relief that the cruel, murderous cold had broken. I looked out of the window: surely people were striding out more freely and happily, although the street was wet, but with a benign wetness, and from between grey clouds shone a moist sun … and yes, I could almost believe that the trees were turning green! What arrant nonsense, in the middle of January. But you see how little one can trust one’s senses and how right I was to be suspicious; oh, careful, careful! You will find it ridiculous, but after walking only a few hundred yards I felt myself sweating … I really was. You will think: 1917, born during one war and cracked up during another … No, no, it’s really true, I was sweating …

  And I felt so light, the mild air and the sun and the dreamlike certainty that the cold seemed really to have broken made me reckless; at the corner I bought a good cigarette with almost the last of my money, pumped it voluptuously through my lungs, and blew the thin, grey smoke into the springlike air. I responded with a regretful smile to a pretty, red-haired girl who offered me bread-ration coupons and the next moment I had jumped onto a tram passing at full speed. Wasn’t there, in spite of all the misery, a gleam of relief in people’s eyes that the cruel cold had been conquered by a “warm air front”?

  Didn’t the sweet, tender air vibrate with sighs of relief? I even found a valid tram ticket in the depths of my coat lining, which meant that I could keep the fifty-pfennig piece intact in my pocket.

  I smoked the entire cigarette without pinching it out. That hadn’t happened for a long time—how reckless! I calculated in a kind of daze: since April 1945 … that meant for almost two years, since my first days as a prisoner of war, I hadn’t smoked an entire cigarette without pinching it out. Was some fundamental change taking place in me? I spat the butt, which was almost burning my lips, out into the street. The conductress called out cheerfully: “Main station!” I got off deep in thought …

  What bliss, to submerge oneself in the bustle of the huge waiting-room! You will say, or at least think: how can a man who was a soldier for many years, who has had to wait to the point of stupefaction for so many trains in all the waiting-rooms of Europe—how can a man like that enjoy sitting in a waiting-room? Oh, you don’t understand. In this swarm of harried, weighed-down fellow creatures who, in the aftermath of war, are travelling—must travel—to somewhere from somewhere—in the midst of this bustle I pursue the secrets of solitude, of that blissful solitude which I was never allowed to find … Here I can be truly alone, truly, truly alone and dream, dream to my heart’s content. Silence is not for us … silence scares us; with cruel fingers silence rips off the frail blanket of stoicism that we have spread over our memories and thrusts straight into the teeming, bloodied darkness of our brief, pain-fraught life. Silence … silence is like a great snow-white screen onto which we project the joyless film of our lives. Silence can offer us no rest …

  But here, in this impersonal hum, the ebb and flow of outlandish images, in the midst of sounds I do not hear, of apparitions I do not see … here there is a kind of peace, that’s right, some kind of peace: here I can abandon myself to my dreams.

  You will find this very foolish; but I have meanwhile discovered that there is nothing more pleasant than foolishness. Unfortunately we were never given enough time to be foolish … that was the trouble. We were too young when the horror broke over us, and now we are too old to “learn”. Or would you care to tell me what I am supposed to learn? With that mild, warm air, hadn’t hope reawakened in those grey, pathetic faces of the homeless?

  I idly jingled my fifty-pfennig piece against a bunch of safety pins I carried in my pocket, a habit I had picked up in the army—I always have to carry some safety pins in case buttons are ripped off or fabric gets torn; a cheap little quirk, you must admit, not an expensive indulgence.

  I drank my beer straight down; today the insipid stuff tasted marvellous—I was really thirsty; but what had happened to my appetite? I sat down on a chair that had just been vacated and wondered about my appetite, which seemed to have vanished with the cold … or had the cigarette absorbed it? I was profoundly shocked; where was my hunger, that faithful companion of so many years, that many-headed creature, often searing and vicious, sometimes just gently growling or amiably prompting: that mysterious monster that was second nature to me, fluctuating between wolfish greed and pitiful pleading?

  One day, by the grace of God, I shall write a poem, a poem about my hunger. I became very uneasy.

  Not only because of my hunger, not only because of this unexpected spring, not only because of my faraway, phantom beloved, perhaps unborn, or peris
hed in the ghastly embrace of the war, for whom I sometimes waited here with a quaking heart … no, no, I was also here for a purely practical reason. I was waiting for Edi. Edi was to tell me whether the deal would come off; if so, I would be the richer by three hundred marks—if not, well, I wouldn’t be. But if it did come off I could buy a violin, which I craved … it would make me happy, even happier, even freer … oh, a violin! I love music almost more than I do that faraway, phantom beloved, who, I often believe, will appear any moment in the door of the waiting-room, so that I look tensely and with a trembling heart in that direction … breathless and intoxicated by the thought that she has now become flesh and blood and will walk towards me with a smile.

  So I was waiting for Edi. You may sometimes have wondered what people in waiting-rooms are waiting for! You probably believe that they are all waiting for arriving and departing trains. If you only knew the kind of things a person can wait for. One can wait for anything that exists between Nothing and God. Yes, there are even people waiting for Nothing.

  My hair is now considerably thinner; illnesses, usually found only among the aged, plague me according to the season; and if I—please don’t be alarmed!—take off my shirt, you can see some scars that might affect you like a painting by Goya; and the scars you could look at if I … but since you are a lady I will say no more. You won’t believe that I finished school ten years ago, by the skin of my teeth incidentally, and that during those ten years I have never been out of uniform, except for the last five months, since my return from P.O.W. camp—and I have never hated anything in my life so totally and profoundly as that uniform! I didn’t know what occupation to enter on my release papers. High-school student? High-school graduate? Oh, if only I could have said, with a clear conscience: labourer. But with thinning hair and at almost thirty … high-school graduate? It didn’t seem funny to me—at that moment my eyes were opened …