Group Portrait With Lady

by Heinrich Böll

  It is with outright contempt, manifested merely by facial expression and movements of the eyebrows, that Leni receives the news that her father-in-law intends to award himself a medal for his participation in a battle that took place twenty-three years ago, not only the Combatant’s Cross of Honor but also the Iron Cross Second Class, and that he was “pestering” his friend Gruyten, who naturally had occasion to deal with generals at his office, to assist him in acquiring this coveted decoration. And still no doctor had discovered the shell splinter “the size of a pinhead” that had caused the permanent dragging of the “lost leg.” Doesn’t she notice that the Pfeiffers are trying to trick her by taking it upon themselves to register Leni for a widow’s pension—doesn’t she notice that she signs the application, and that, starting July 1, 1941 (with the arrears duly paid up), sixty-six marks are credited monthly to her bank account? Have the Pfeiffers done this just so as to take malicious revenge for roughly thirty years by having their otherwise quite agreeable son Heinrich—who far from dragging a leg has manifestly lost one—calculate in Leni’s presence that she has earned at least forty thousand marks, probably fifty thousand, from the name of Pfeiffer by having “collected” over a period of nearly thirty years the occasionally increased and, because of her employment, constantly fluctuating widow’s pension—and, annoyed with himself for having gone that far, and probably (Au.’s opinion, not confirmed by any witness) out of jealousy because he has been secretly mad about Leni from the very first day, he goes even farther and shouts at her, in the presence of witnesses (Hans and Grete Helzen): “And what did you do for those fifty thousand marks? Lie once with him in the bushes, and the other time—well, we all know about that—he had to beg you, that poor fellow who a week later was dead and left you a spotless name, while you—while you—while, while you—” one look from Leni shut him up.

  Does Leni feel like a whore after having the accusation “hurled at her” that in return for having twice allowed intercourse she has collected some fifty thousand marks—while she—while she—while she …

  Leni not only avoids the office, she hardly ever goes into it, she confesses to Lotte H. that the “sight of those stacks of freshly printed money” make her sick to her stomach. She defends her car against a further threat of confiscation, she only uses it now for “driving around,” to “drive around town,” although these days taking her mother more and more often with her, “and they spend hours sitting in nice cafés and restaurants that are as close as possible to the Rhine, exchanging smiles, looking at the boats, smoking cigarettes.” What distinguishes all the Gruytens at this time is that “indefinable cheerfulness that in the long run could drive a person crazy” (Lotte H.). Mrs. G.’s disease has finally been diagnosed with little hope of improvement: multiple sclerosis, now approaching its final stage with ever-increasing speed. She is carried by Leni into the car, out of the car; she no longer reads, not even Yeats, from time to time “she passes her rosary through her fingers” (van Doorn) but does not ask for “the consolations of the Church.”

  This period in the lives of the Gruytens—between early ’42 and ’43—is described unequivocally by all concerned as the “most luxurious.” “It was irresponsible, really irresponsible—and when I say that maybe you’ll understand better why, if I’m not exactly hard on Leni today, I’m not soft either—the way they enjoyed everything that was to be had on the European black market—and then that terrible business was exposed, and to this day I don’t know why Hubert did it. He didn’t need the money, after all—truly he didn’t” (M.v.D.).

  The only way “that business” was exposed was through an absurd and purely literary coincidence. Gruyten later called it “merely a notebook enterprise,” which meant that he constantly carried all the data around with him in his briefcase and a notebook; his postal address for it was his office in town, he let no one in on it, dragged no one into it, not even his friend and head bookkeeper Hoyser. It was a risky affair, a gamble for high stakes, in which, as we now know, Gruyten was interested less in the stakes than in the gamble, and to this very day Leni is probably the only one who “understood” him as his wife “understood” him, and—although with certain limitations—Lotte H., who as a matter of fact understood almost everything, only not the “damn suicidal part about it, it was suicide, you know, nothing but suicide—and what did he do with the money? Those were the stacks, the heaps, the bundles he gave away! It was so senseless, so nihilistic—so abstract, crazy.”

  For the purposes of this “business,” G. had founded a firm he called “Schlemm & Son” in a small town about forty miles away. He had obtained false identification papers, forged orders with forged signatures (“He could get hold of the forms any time, and he never thought signatures that important, during the Depression years from ’29 to ’33 he would sometimes even forge his wife’s signature on promissory notes, saying: ‘She’ll understand all right—why worry her about it now?’ “ Hoyser, Sr.).

  Well, the gamble, the business, lasted a good eight or nine months and is known throughout the entire construction world as the “Dead Souls scandal.” This mammoth scandal consisted of an “abstract notebook game” (Lotte H.) that featured vast quantities of cement that were paid for, even taken delivery of, but diverted via the black market from their proper purpose, plus a whole company of paid but nonexistent “foreign workers,” a game in which architects, building superintendents, foremen, even cafeterias, cooks, etc., existed solely in Gruyten’s notebook; not even the inspection certificates were lacking, nor the proper signatures on these certificates; bank account, bank statements, it was all there, “everything in apple-pie order, or I should say, that’s how it seemed” (Dr. Scholsdorff later in court).

  Although only thirty-one at the time, this Scholsdorff had, without resorting to tricks (“although I wouldn’t have minded using tricks, it was just that I didn’t need them”), been designated unfit by all, even the strictest recruiting boards, although suffering from no organic disease, simply because he was so exceedingly delicate, sensitive, and high-strung that no one wanted to take a chance on him—and that means something when we consider that as late as 1965 members of recruiting boards, German doctors, were “tempted to prescribe a Stalingrad cure” for slightly overweight young Germans. “To be on the safe side,” a friend from S.’s student days, who was “ensconced” in an influential position, had S. officially transferred to the tax department of that small town where, surprisingly, S. familiarized himself so quickly and thoroughly with the new material that after one year he was already “not only indispensable but positively irreplaceable” (Dr. Kreipf, Director of Taxes, Retired, S.’s superior, who is still around and could be tracked down in a spa for diseases of the prostate). Kreipf went on: “Although a philologist, he was not only a good mathematician but capable of grasping complex financial and accounting procedures, of recognizing the doubtfulness of certain transactions—all of which had nothing to do with his actual talent.” This “actual talent” was the study of Slavic languages and literature, to this day still S.’s overriding passion, his special field being: nineteenth-century Russian literature, and “although I received some attractive offers for the job of interpreter, I preferred this one in the tax department—did they think I was going to translate the German of sergeants or even generals into Russian? Was I supposed to debase this, to me, sacred object and turn it into a vocabulary suitable for interrogations? Never!”

  During a harmless routine check, Scholsdorff came across the records of the firm “Schlemm & Son,” found nothing, nothing whatever, to object to in them, it was only by chance that he began to study the payroll lists, and he became “leery, no, it was more than that: I was indignant, not only did I come across names that seemed familiar but there were names there that I was still living with.” Now we must in all fairness add that it is just possible for a few notions of revenge to have been dormant in S., not against G. but against the construction trade; he had begun as a payroll accountant in
a construction company to which he had been recommended by his influential friend, but as soon as his genius for numbers and figures was discovered he was always shifted and promoted with high praise, because no construction company was really all that keen on having its accounts scrutinized with a thoroughness that would not have been expected from a philologist. For in his almost indescribable naiveté S. had believed that these firms were genuinely interested in having the very thing that in fact they had to avoid: a thorough insight and overview into and over their manipulations. An unworldly, half-crazy philologist had been taken on “out of pity and in the desire to see that he got enough to eat and to save him from the clutches of the army” (Mr. Flacks, of the construction firm of the same name, still a thriving business), and then “we were stuck with a fellow who was more meticulous than any tax auditor. We just couldn’t risk that.”

  Scholsdorff, who could have told you exactly how many square feet Raskolnikov’s student digs measured, how many stairs Raskolnikov had to go down to reach the courtyard, now suddenly came across a worker called Raskolnikov who, somewhere in Denmark, was mixing cement for Schlemm & Son and eating in their cafeteria. Not yet suspicious, but already “very upset,” he found a Svidrigailov, a Razumikhin, and finally discovered a Chichikov and a Sobakevich—and then in about the twenty-third place came across a Gorbachov, turned pale, but trembled with indignation when further scrutiny revealed a Pushkin, a Gogol, and a Lermontov as underpaid war-slaves. Not even at the name of Tolstoi had they called a halt. Let there be no mistake: this Scholsdorff was not in the least interested in such things as the “spotless reputation of the German war economy,” he could not have cared less about such things; his scrupulous exactitude as a tax auditor was merely (interpretation of the Au., who had frequent and lengthy conversations, and quite recently, with S., and will probably have many more in the future) a variation of the scrupulous exactitude with which he knew, loved, and interpreted the entire assembly of characters in nineteenth-century Russian literature. “I discovered, for instance, that in that list Chekhov and all his characters were missing, so was Turgenev, and I could have told you even then who had drawn up the list: it could only be my old university pal Henges, completely gone to seed now—but a devotee of Turgenev and an absolute worshipper of Chekhov, although to my mind these two writers have little in common, and although I am quite frankly willing to admit that in my student days I underestimated Chekhov, grossly underestimated him.” Moreover, it is a fact that S. never, not even in this case, denounced anyone: ‘To my mind that was too drastic, although I loathe shady dealings and despise profiteers, I’ve never denounced anyone, I would have them come to my office, give them the works, tell them to amend their declarations and pay up their arrears—and because my department could show the largest number of paid-up arrears I was always in Kreipf’s good books. That’s all, but a denunciation—you see, I knew the kind of justice machinery I would have been throwing those people into, and I didn’t want to do that even to profiteers and shady operators. When you imagine that people were sentenced to death for stealing a few sweaters, no. But this was more than I could take. I blew my top: Lermontov as a slave of the German construction industry in Denmark! Pushkin, Tolstoi, Razumikhin, and Chichikov—mixing cement and eating barley soup. Goncharov and his Oblomov each wielding a shovel!”

  As a matter of fact, S., soon to be retired with the rank of a senior civil servant and still engrossed in Russian literature, even contemporary Russian literature, had a chance to apologize to Gruyten, Sr., and make generous amends by teaching Gruyten’s grandson, Leni’s son Lev, fantastically good Russian; and when Leni sometimes has flowers (which she still loves, although for almost twenty-seven years she handled them as other people handle peas) in her room, they are from Scholsdorff! Scholsdorff is at the moment completely absorbed in the poems of Akhmadullina. “So I need hardly tell you I didn’t denounce the firm, I began by writing a letter which went roughly as follows: ‘I must request your immediate attendance at my office. The urgency of the matter cannot be sufficiently emphasized.’ “ He sent reminders, once, twice, tried to trace Henges, without success—“and since I myself was also subject to routine checks, my own investigations were discovered, and an official inquiry into ‘Schlemm & Son’ was launched. And then—then the juggernaut got under way.”

  S. became the chief witness for the prosecution in a trial that lasted only two days, G. having pleaded guilty on all counts. He remained cool, becoming confused only when required to specify the “name supplier” (“Imagine that, ‘name supplier’ “—Scholsdorff), whom even S., although he knew precisely who it was, did not betray. Some three hours of the second day of the trial were spent in an educational test carried out by an expert in Slavic languages and literature summoned from Berlin, G. having claimed that he had obtained the names from books—it was proved that he had never read a single Russian book in his life, “or a German book, for that matter, not even Mein Kampf” (S.); then it was “Henges’s turn.” It was not Gruyten who betrayed him, Scholsdorff had meanwhile run him to earth. “He was in fact working for the Army with the rank of officer on special duty, trying to persuade Russian prisoners of war to betray military secrets. A man who, as a Chekhov specialist, could have acquired an international reputation.”

  Henges, who had actually volunteered to testify, appeared in court in his officer’s uniform, which “somehow didn’t look quite right on him, he’d only had it on for a month” (S.). Yes, he admitted to having supplied Gruyten with a list of Russian names when approached by him. What he failed to mention was that he had collected a fee of ten marks for each name. He had previously conferred with Gruyten’s defense attorney on this point and explained to him: “I simply can’t afford to do that now—do you understand?” Whereupon Gruyten and his attorney agreed to omit this embarrassing detail, one which, however, Henges admitted to Scholsdorff, with whom he continued his dispute in a bar near the courthouse. For in court an argument had arisen between Scholsdorff and Henges during which Scholsdorff shouted indignantly to Henges: “All of them, you betrayed all of them, except for your Turgenev and your Chekhov!” This “Russian farce” was broken off by the district attorney.

  The moral of this interlude is self-explanatory: contractors who keep forged payroll lists should have a good literary background and—tax auditors with a good literary background can prove to be of undeniable usefulness and benefit to the state.

  At this trial only one person was found guilty: G. He confessed to everything and made his situation more difficult by refusing to admit to greed as his motive; when asked about his motive, he refused to make any statement, asked whether he had had sabotage in mind, he denied it. Leni, later questioned several times on his motive, murmured something about “revenge” (revenge for what? Au.). G. narrowly escaped the death sentence, and only after the intensive intervention “of very, very influential friends who put forward his undisputed services to the German war construction industry” (according to H., Sr.); he was sentenced to life in the penitentiary, and his entire fortune was confiscated. Leni had to appear twice in court but was acquitted on account of proven innocence, as were Hoyser and Lotte and all friends and employees. The only object to escape confiscation was the apartment building in which Leni had been born, and for this she is indebted solely to the “otherwise very aggressive prosecutor,” who put forward her “hard fate as a war widow; her proven innocence,” and rattled on embarrassingly as he “rehashed” (Lotte H.) A.’s heroic exploits; even Leni’s association with a Nazi girls’ organization was placed by him on the side of her moral credit. “It would be unfitting, Your Honor, to rob this gravely ill mother” (meaning Mrs. G.), “who has lost a son and a son-in-law, and this courageous young German woman, whose immaculate life has been proven, of a financial asset which, incidentally, became part of the family fortune not through the defendant but through his wife.”

  Mrs. Gruyten did not survive this scandal. Since she was not fit to be mo
ved she was interrogated a few times in bed; “that did it” (van Doorn), “and she wasn’t all that sad either to leave this world—when all’s said and done a fine decent brave woman. She would’ve dearly liked to say farewell to Hubert, but it was too late, and we buried her very quietly. Church ceremony, of course.”

  Leni has now reached the age of twenty-one; needless to say, she no longer has a car, she thinks it right to give up her position with the firm, her father has for the time being disappeared without trace. How does all this affect her—not at all or very much? What will become of the snappy blonde with the snappy car, who in the third year of the war appears to have had little else to do than play the piano a bit, read Irish legends to her sick mother, visit a dying nun; who has been widowed, so to speak, for the second time, with no sign of grief, and now loses her mother while her father disappears behind iron bars? Few direct utterances of hers have come down to us from that time. The impression she made on all those close to her is a surprising one. Lotte says that Leni had been “somehow relieved,” van Doorn says, “she seemed to feel freer,” whereas old Hoyser puts it this way—“she seemed somehow to breathe a sigh of relief”; the “somehow” in two of these statements does not, of course, help us much, but it does offer the imagination a crack in Leni’s reserve. Margret expresses it as follows: “She didn’t seem depressed, the impression I got was more that she was taking a new lease on life. What was much worse for her than the scandal with her father and her mother’s death was the mysterious disappearance of Sister Rahel.” Confining ourselves to the facts: Leni had to register for a job and landed up, as the result of the intervention of a well-wisher who, working quietly in the background, “could pull a few strings” and wishes to remain anonymous, but is known to the Au.—at a wreathmaker’s.