The Collected Stories of Heinrich Böll

by Heinrich Böll

  Then we saw who he was yelling at. Someone was sitting on the other side of the woodland road, asleep. It was an ordinary soldier, dressed in gray, leaning back against a tree, asleep. The soldier had a pleasant smile on his freckled face, and we thought the lieutenant would go nuts. We thought the soldier was nuts too, because the lieutenant kept on shouting and the sleeping man kept right on smiling.

  The men who had started to smoke stopped, the ones trying to sleep were now wide awake, and some of us were smiling, too. The spring air was fresh and gentle, and we knew that the war would soon be over.

  Suddenly the lieutenant stopped shouting and jumped up. He crossed the road in two long strides and struck the sleeping man in the face.

  We saw now that the sleeping man was dead. He fell over without a word, no longer smiling. His face was affixed with a terrible grin, and we didn’t feel at all sorry for the lieutenant, who came back pale faced, for the sun no longer gave us pleasure. We found no joy in the soft moisture of the mild spring air, and it made little difference to us now whether the war was coming to an end or not. Suddenly we felt we were all dead—the lieutenant too, for he was grinning now, and no longer wore a uniform.

  AMERICA

  I found Hubert lying in his bed, which he had shoved closer to the stove. He had kindled a pathetic fire from a few old picture frames. Of course it couldn’t heat the huge room. A tiny island of a somewhat humane temperature surrounded the stove, but elsewhere the room, with all its paintings, easel, and cupboards, lay cold and poignantly desolate. Hubert was holding a sketch on his knees that he’d just begun, but he was no longer working on it, gazing meditatively instead at some vague spot on the brown bedspread. He greeted me with a smile, laid the drawing aside, and in his sad, large gray eyes, I read for the moment only hunger and scant hope. But I didn’t leave him stretched on the rack for long; instead I pulled out some fresh, sweet-smelling, white bread. His eyes gleamed.

  “Either you’re crazy,” he said, “or I am. Or you’ve stolen this, or I’m dreaming, or …” He made a dismissive gesture and rubbed his eyes. “It’s simply not true.”

  “Look,” I said, holding it under his nose, pressing it into his hands, making the crisp crust crackle. “Now you’ve touched it, experienced it with all your senses. Think you’re crazy for all I care, but I certainly didn’t steal it. Cut it in two, would you?”

  Hubert finally seemed to trust his senses, seized the bread firmly, as if he feared he were reaching into the void, realized that it was real, then pulled the knife from the cupboard with a strange groan. Meanwhile I had pulled the tobacco from my pocket and was cutting the plug into smaller pieces, which I crumbled and placed on the warm stove plate. They call it roasting, I believe. Hubert gazed at me with shining eyes, sniffed greedily, and said: “You’ve turned into a regular criminal.”

  We ended up stretched out beside each other on the bed, each of us enjoying our portion of bread, pinching small pieces from the loaf and stuffing them in our mouths, sweet-smelling bread, fresh and still warm, white and delicious. Bread is the best thing there is. Woe unto the man who no longer eats bread because he is full. Woe!

  I was happy that Hubert had apparently forgotten the question of where the bread came from. My God, if he’d insisted on knowing. He’s so strict about things, a true artist! But he ate silently, happily; ah, happy the man who still has a bit of bread.

  “Do you know what I was thinking when you came in?”

  I had to admit I didn’t. I’m not a psychologist, for God’s sake.

  “I was wondering, if American universities ran some experiments, I was wondering how many calories they’d find in a genius, in Rembrandt for instance. After all, modern science can tell us anything. What do you think?”

  “Maybe they’d discover that a genius lives beyond the norm. That he eats a tremendous amount or starves himself, that his accomplishments are independent of—let’s say—his so-called caloric intake.”

  “But even a genius has a starvation limit. He might starve and freeze all week in a cellar for all I care, and still write a wonderful sonnet. But if you spend your whole life in a cold cellar, it’s all over with the sonnet writing, over because you simply no longer have the strength to write sonnets with a pencil stub on some dirty piece of paper.”

  “But I would claim he might have many, many beautiful unwritten sonnets in his mind, sonnets the world will never see, although they’re there, sonnets which might be immortal were they known.”

  Our bread was finished. I reached from the bed and gathered the roasted tobacco from the stove, filled our pipes, and Hubert held out a piece of his drawing as a spill. I lit it at the stove and now we smoked as dusk fell in the large room, creeping in like fog, enveloping everything.

  “I’ll write to America,” said Hubert, “and see if they’ll try to figure out Rembrandt’s daily calorie intake.” He looked at me uneasily. “I have an inferiority complex because I can’t work as long as I used to. And I read recently in the newspapers that they’ve run tests in America showing that at our caloric level a person can’t do creative work—at least not two years’ worth. This major scientific discovery has depressed me so much I can’t paint anymore.”

  Suddenly he sprang out of bed like a wild man, right past me, raced to the easel, stretched a sheet of paper on the board, and began working like crazy. He dashed off a lively sketch, grabbed the box of watercolors, and was off, with strong, bold strokes, stepping back from time to time to judge the effect. He finished a small painting I couldn’t see clearly because it was getting darker and darker in the room. But all at once he turned around and asked me energetically: “Where did you get the bread, you bastard?”

  I had to show my colors at last. “I traded my pen for it,” I said shyly, “to an American soldier. Here.” I pulled the two white cylinders from my pocket. “There’s a cigarette for each of us too.”

  We laid aside our smelly pipes at once and inhaled the marvelous tobacco with deep enjoyment—American cigarettes! Hubert worked boldly on; he had turned on the light.

  “The best thing about America, the very best thing of all, are the cigarettes,” he said with a laugh.

  PARADISE LOST

  The former paths were scarcely visible in the tangled shrubbery, in part no longer even recognizable. The broken gaps of the fence admitted one and all, the luxuriant greenery had been trampled flat, wilted, rotted, replaced by new growth, until at last a sort of gauzy jungle had rendered the untended paths impassable. New ones had been ruthlessly flattened, no longer following any plan, but simply the dictates of convenience, and now led to the house from all different directions. Even the old main road, which had bordered the park in a half circle, was scarcely passable. Seams of grass had spread from the sides toward the middle, meeting to form sparse new grassy areas in which stripling elders, box trees, and elder bushes were growing merrily, the decayed banks covered with foliage. The fountain at the upper curve of the path was covered with moss and filled with dirt and tin cans, so that in spite of the wet spring weather, it held scarcely a drop of water. Its iron water spout had been bent by a well-aimed rock, and I discovered signs of children at play, who, digging through the decayed vegetation, had produced a hole at the base of which a thick, greenish fluid was visible. Next I saw that the large, graveled square had been dug up and planted, and that the rocks and gravel had been swept together and dumped into the fountain. A poorly patched fence surrounded a few miserable cabbages, which had been given ample time to rot over the course of the winter. Wilted bean stalks clung to water pipes, and from a few inevitable tin buckets rose the stench of a greenish liquid similar to that which evidently lay hidden beneath the fountain.

  At last I came upon a person. Behind some sort of shed, which probably held gardening tools, sat an old man on a crate, a spade propped between his knees, a pipe in his mouth. But even though the gentle, veiled afternoon of my homecoming left me longing for a human face, I was still taken aback when I saw o
ne. I retreated a few steps so that the shed again hid him from view, and only then did I look around.

  The former layout of the park could be clearly discerned from this vantage point. The handsome large semicircle, once covered with white gravel, was now traversed by pathetic fences constructed out of narrow strips of stamped tin, warped by rust and ready to break, gas pipes, and box-tree branches. Yet the square still retained the soft, fertile beauty of perfection, even though its once smooth and carefully tended shrub border was now tangled, cut, burned, and trampled. Archaeologists say nothing is more indestructible or more easily found, even centuries later, than a hole, something dug into the earth, and this beautifully designed park was still wholly present in form.

  Higher up, at the top of the curve of the clear half circle, lay the round, soiled, but still perfect circle of the fountain, from which the main road led straight to the entrance gate. And in the bearded, greenish, curling undergrowth of the shrubbery the small paths that could scarcely be seen up close were now clearly apparent, indelibly preserved like smooth weals in the foundering, arched backs of the shrubbery, while to the left and right of the main road ran the other two, simple and clear, in the shape of musical clefs.

  And now at last I dared to look at the house. I saw it clearly through the gaps in the row of poplars, with their gleaming, thick, fresh-green foliage. I counted the trees; seven of twelve remained, while the willows at either end were still undamaged. The façade of the house, with its gray and intentionally somewhat rough surface, was practically unaltered. A few large patches of plaster had fallen here and there, and large, grayish white water spots appeared in a few places, like the cover of an old, damp-stained book. Only a few of the windows still contained unbroken glass; most were covered instead with mill-board or nailed shut with plywood, while others were partially bricked up and inset with windows too small for the grand casements.

  For the moment I was only registering visual impressions. The memories were too numerous, the feelings too powerful, for me to allow them to rise. Although everything—past, memory, youth, and life—bound me to this house and park, I could only stand like a stranger visiting some outlying area of fine homes, who, overcome by simple curiosity, bypasses a gate now rusted shut and steps into the garden through a gap in the fence, to view the traces of destruction.

  Painfully we recognize the inner transformations that mark the threshold of maturity. With ineffable sorrow we leave behind the toys and playgrounds of childhood, plunging with fear, sorrow, and desire into that tumult the grown-ups have always called life; more sadly yet do we leave the house of youth, the place of dreams, sensing darkly that our memories are but memories of dreams, already tasting the unspeakable pain we will feel when we are no longer simply adults, but old, and for the first time we glimpse ahead the only moment of which we can be sure, the one in which we cross the threshold of death to enter into another life.

  The roof of the house was only partially covered by the old, dark gray tiles. It must have been badly damaged, for large portions were now nailed over with patches of roofing felt or tin, and partly with brightly colored advertising signs, and even outside the tiny attic window I saw a drying rack, from which dismal gray diapers flapped wearily in the slack breeze. At the left corner of the house a section of the gutter was hanging down, just as it had seven years earlier, when I stood at this spot and took my leave. Back then I thought: They’ll have to have it repaired; I didn’t think: I must leave now, and I don’t know if I’ll ever return. I thought: They’ll have to have it repaired. But they hadn’t; it was still hanging there—one of the clamps attaching it to the edge of the roof had come loose, and it hung there at an angle, ready to fall at any moment, and I could see clearly where the water poured at an angle against the gray side of the building each time it rained, rushing down, soaking it, a white path edged in dark gray trailing down past the windows, with large round spots to the left and right, their centers white, with increasingly darker rings about them.

  That section of gutter had been dangling there for seven years. Seven years. I had traveled far, I had seen death many times, smelled and felt it. I had lived luxuriously, had hungered, starved to the point where I dreamed of white bread, imagining how I would tear into it, bury my face in it, share it, toss it to the entire starving world. I had starved to the point where I no longer felt hunger, but was wrapped instead in those sweet dreams that make actual eating—when it begins again—seem unspeakably disgusting. I had been shot at thousands of times, by guns, mortars, cannons, ships’ artillery, airplanes, bombs, and hand grenades. I’d been hit, I’d tasted my own blood on my lips, flowing stickily from my head, sweet and greasy, quickly thickening. I had marched along dusty roads all over Europe until I could no longer feel my feet, pursued white-throated women through dark suburbs without ever, ever possessing a single one; oh, those white throats in dusky lanes …

  So very much had happened to me in that time, and it shocked me to think that this damaged gutter had been hanging here those same seven years, guiding the rain at an angle against the façade of the house. This piece of tin had dangled on what remained of its clamp for seven years, roof tiles had blown off, trees had been uprooted, plaster had crumbled, and bombs had fallen from all sides on the sweet open flanks of the city, in the suburbs, woven about with greenery, but this small piece of tin had never been hit, nor forced by a blast of wind to abandon its angle and fall to the ground. Rain had fallen heavily in those seven years, but it had splashed against the façade of the house, had been absorbed by the porous, sandstone wall, and had emerged again, whitish and gray.

  Through the gaps in the row of poplars allowing a clearer view of the house, I could see wash hanging out on windy racks: faded men’s shirts, frayed women’s linen, sweaters, red and green, dresses, and among them a wet, heavy blanket that seemed to pull down on the rack like a leaden weight. Nothing familiar remained, and I was glad. I had always hated the house, loving only its inhabitants, and although the old forms of the park and house emerged everywhere like the watermark of eternity, I was most deeply affected by that flimsy piece of tin hanging at an angle above the pockmarked frieze of baby angels supporting the roof.

  For some time now I had noticed a shadow at the edge of my vision: the man who was sitting on the bench. Evidently he had risen and walked around the corner of the shed, and I now realized that he must have been standing at the edge of my field of vision for some time—whether for minutes, seconds, or hours I couldn’t have said—like a small gray speck of dust when you’re too busy looking to wipe it from your eye. I turned around again, taking in the park with a sweeping glance, particularly the shrubbery, deeply and painfully reminded of those two stone benches hidden at the thickest point of the musical-clef paths. Then I turned to the admonishing shadow waiting humbly in my field of vision and advanced a few paces.

  Up to that point I had passed through the garden plots wherever there was a gap in a fence without thinking, since I could see no sign of planting or sowing. Now I crossed a tiny field of corn stubble along a narrow path and made my way the few paces to the shed.

  It seemed as if I had crossed an acoustic border with those three strides. As soon as I was standing beside the man, who nodded in a friendly fashion and returned my “Good evening” with the same words, I heard the sound of children playing, women calling out, men whistling, all the indescribable sounds of evening leisure in the neighborhood of a crowded house on a spring evening after work. Radios warbled lightheartedly through the air, and at the main entrance to the house, which now lay directly before me, I saw two older girls playing with red balls beside the large sandstone pillars of the door. And now I saw for the first time that the left wing of the house had been hit by a heavy shell, and the hole filled in with ugly, blackish bricks. Small children were playing in a sand pile between the poplar trunks, others were striking each other with sticks, running about and screaming with laughter, and a man had turned his bicycle upside down to work on
it with rolled-up sleeves.

  The old man beside me had seated himself on a board hastily nailed to two wooden blocks, and I sat down beside him. He was short and thin, and although he was wearing a threadbare sailor’s cap, I could see from his bare temples and the completely hairless visible portions of his skull that he must be bald. His narrow face was nicely tanned, and his small, almost colorless eyes regarded me with good-natured curiosity. I had been beside him barely half a second before he seemed to sense that I was eagerly inhaling the aroma of his tobacco. Without a word, he started searching through his pockets, while I immediately felt for my pipe.

  “I don’t have a paper,” he said, holding out a tobacco tin.

  “Thanks,” I said, took the tin, opened it quickly, and filled my pipe.

  “Need a light?” he asked.

  I nodded.

  “Thanks,” I said again, handing the tin back to him.

  “You’re from …”

  “France,” I said.

  “That’s what I was about to say; you can always tell by certain features. Rough time?”

  I nodded.

  “Right.”

  It felt good to smoke a pipe with someone, the mutual movements of the lips, a smacking motion, and the gentle, almost inaudible puffs with which, in tandem, the blue clouds of smoke are expelled that come gray from the lungs.

  I no longer saw much. I suddenly knew that the old man would ask what they all do, and that I would have to say no. I was worried when he started to speak, but all he said was: “Are you looking for someone?”

  “Yes,” I said softly.

  “Who?”

  “Family. Fräulein Maria X.”

  “Oh,” he cried, and although he was sitting so close beside me that I would never forget the smell of his clothes, I felt him withdraw. “The Fräulein!”