The Collected Stories of Heinrich Böll Read online

  HEINRICH BÖLL

  In 1972, Heinrich Böll became the first German to win the Nobel Prize for literature since Thomas Mann in 1929. Born in Cologne, in 1917, Böll was reared in a liberal Catholic, pacifist family. Drafted into the Wehrmacht, he served on the Russian and French fronts and was wounded four times before he found himself in an American prison camp. After the war he enrolled at the University of Cologne, but dropped out to write about his shattering experiences as a soldier. His first novel, The Train Was on Time, was published in 1949, and he went on to become one of the most prolific and important of post-war German writers. His best-known novels include Billiards at Half-Past Nine (1959), The Clown (1963), Group Portrait with Lady (1971), and The Safety Net (1979). In 1981 he published a memoir, What’s to Become of the Boy? or: Something to Do with Books. Böll served for several years as the president of International P.E.N. and was a leading defender of the intellectual freedom of writers throughout the world. He died in June 1985.

  The Essential

  HEINRICH BÖLL

  The Clown

  The Safety Net

  Billiards at Half-Past Nine

  The Train Was on Time

  Irish Journal

  Group Portrait with Lady

  What’s to Become of the Boy? Or:

  Something to Do with Books—A Memoir

  The Collected Stories

  The Collected Stories

  All stories © Verlag Kiepenheuer &

  Witsch GmbH & Co. KG, Cologne, Germany

  With the exception of The Mad Dog, all stories are

  translated by and © Leila Vennewitz

  The Mad Dog is translated by and © Breon Mitchell

  Melville House Publishing

  145 Plymouth Street

  Brooklyn, NY 11201

  www.mhpbooks.com

  eISBN: 978-1-61219-012-9

  The Library of Congress has cataloged the paperback edition as follows:

  Böll, Heinrich, 1917-1985.

  [Short stories. English]

  The collected stories / translated from the German by Leila Vennewitz and Breon Mitchell.

  p. cm.

  A new edition with previously translated stories compiled from various sources, including several collections and individual periodicals.

  1. Böll, Heinrich, 1917-1985–Translations into English. I. Vennewitz, Leila. II. Title.

  PT2603.O394A2 2011

  833′.914–dc23

  2011038546

  v3.1

  The Collected Stories brings together all of Heinrich Böll’s shorter fiction published in English. With the exception of The Mad Dog, the stories and novellas in this volume are translated by Leila Vennewitz.

  CONTENTS

  Cover

  About the Author

  Other Books by This Author

  Title Page

  Copyright

  CHILDREN ARE CIVILIANS TOO Across the Bridge

  My Pal with the Long Hair

  The Man with the Knives

  Rise, My Love, Rise

  That Time We Were in Odessa

  “Stranger, bear word to the Spartans we …”

  Drinking in Petöcki

  Dear Old Renée

  Children Are Civilians Too

  What a Racket

  At the Bridge

  Parting

  Breaking the News

  Between Trains in X

  Reunion with Drüng

  The Ration Runners

  Reunion in the Avenue

  In the Darkness

  Broommakers

  My Expensive Leg

  Lohengrin’s Death

  Business Is Business

  On the Hook

  My Sad Face

  Candles for the Madonna

  Black Sheep

  AND WHERE WERE YOU, ADAM?

  ENTER AND EXIT:

  A NOVELLA IN TWO PARTS When the War Broke Out

  When the War Was Over

  18 STORIES Like a Bad Dream

  The Thrower-Away

  The Balek Scales

  My Uncle Fred

  Daniel the Just

  The Postcard

  Unexpected Guests

  The Death of Elsa Baskoleit

  A Case for Kop

  This Is Tibten!

  And There Was the Evening and the Morning …

  The Adventure

  Murke’s Collected Silences

  Bonn Diary

  Action Will Be Taken

  The Laugher

  In the Valley of the Thundering Hoofs

  The Seventh Trunk

  A SOLDIER’S LEGACY

  THE CASUALTY The Embrace

  The Unknown Soldier

  Jak the Tout

  The Murder

  Vingt-et-Un

  Cause of Death: Hooked Nose

  Vive la France!

  The Casualty

  The Cage

  I Can’t Forget Her

  Green are the Meadows

  The Rain Gutter

  Autumn Loneliness

  Beside the River

  The Green Silk Shirt

  The Waiting-Room

  An Optimistic Story

  I’m Not a Communist

  Contacts

  At the Border

  The Surfer

  In Friedenstadt

  UNCOLLECTED STORIES Adventures of a Haversack

  Christmas Not Just Once a Year

  Recollections of a Young King

  A Peach Tree in His Garden Stands

  Pale Anna

  In Search of the Reader

  The Tidings of Bethlehem

  The Taste of Bread

  Monologue of a Waiter

  Undine’s Mighty Father

  No Tears for Schmeck

  Anecdote Concerning the Lowering of Productivity

  He Came as a Beer-Truck Driver

  The Staech Affair

  Till Death Us Do Part

  On Being Courteous When Compelled to Break the Law

  Too Many Trips to Heidelberg

  My Father’s Cough

  Rendezvous with Margret or: Happy Ending

  Nostalgia or: Grease Spots

  In Which Language Is One Called Schneckenröder?

  Confession of a Hijacker

  THE MAD DOG The Fugitive

  Youth on Fire

  Trapped in Paris

  The Mad Dog

  The Rendezvous

  The Tribe of Esau

  The Tale of Berkovo Bridge

  The Dead No Longer Obey

  America

  Paradise Lost

  CHILDREN ARE CIVILIANS TOO

  The collection Children Are Civilians Too was first published in German as Wanderer, kommst du nach Spa … by Friedrich Middelhauve Verlag in October 1950. An earlier translation by Mervyn Savill, Traveller, If You Come to Spa …, was published in English by Arco Publisher Limited in May 1956. The present translation was made from 1947 bis 1951, a larger collection of Böll’s stories from the same period, and also includes “Black Sheep,” first published in German in December 1951.

  ACROSS THE BRIDGE

  The story I want to tell you has no particular point to it, and maybe it isn’t really a story at all, but I must tell you about it. Ten years ago there was a kind of prelude, and a few days ago the circle was completed …

  A few days ago I was in a train crossing the bridge that once, before the war, had been strong and wide, as strong as the iron of Bismarck’s chest on all those monuments, as inflexible as the rules of bureaucracy: a wide, four-track railroad bridge over the Rhine, supported by a row of massive piers. Ten years ago I used to take the same train across that
bridge three times a week: Mondays, Wednesdays, and Saturdays. In those prewar days I was an employee of the Reich Gun Dog and Retriever Association—a modest position; I was a kind of errand boy, really. I knew nothing about dogs, of course; I haven’t had much education. Three times a week I would take the train from Königstadt, where our head office was, to Gründerheim, where we had a branch office. There I would pick up urgent correspondence, money, and “Pending Cases.” The latter were in a large manila folder. Being only a messenger, of course, I never was told what was in the folder …

  In the morning I would go straight from the house to the station and catch the eight o’clock train to Gründerheim. The journey took three-quarters of an hour. Even in those days, crossing the bridge scared me. All the technical assurances of well-informed people concerning the ample load capacity of the bridge were to no avail: I was just plain scared. The mere connection of train and bridge scared me; I am honest enough to admit it. The Rhine is very broad where we live. With a quaking heart I was invariably conscious of the slight swaying of the bridge, of the ominous rocking that continued for six hundred yards. At last came the reassuring, more muffled rattle as we regained the railroad embankment, and then came the vegetable plots, rows and rows of vegetable plots—and finally, just before Kahlenkatten, a house: it was to this house that I clung, so to speak, with my eyes. This house stood on solid ground; my eyes would clutch at this house.

  The exterior of the house was of reddish-brown stucco, it was very clean, the window frames and ledges all picked out in dark brown. Two floors, three windows upstairs and two down, in the middle the front door with three steps leading up to it. And invariably, if it was not raining too hard, a child would be sitting on these steps, a spindly little girl of about nine or ten holding a large, clean doll and frowning up at the train. Invariably my eyes would stumble over this child, to be brought up short by the window on the left, for each time I saw a woman in there, a bucket beside her, bent double, a scrubbing cloth in her hands, laboriously washing the floor. Invariably, even when it was raining cats and dogs, even when the child was not sitting there on the steps. The woman was always there: the thin nape of her neck betraying her as the mother of the little girl, and that movement to and fro, that typical scrubbing movement. Many a time I meant to notice the furniture, or the curtains, but my eyes were glued to this thin, eternally scrubbing woman, and before I could think about anything else the train had passed. Mondays, Wednesdays, and Saturdays, it must always have been about ten minutes past eight, for in those days the trains were nothing if not punctual. By the time the train had passed, I was left with a view of the clean rear of the house, silent and uncommunicative.

  Needless to say, I began wondering about this woman and this house. All the other places we passed held little interest for me. Kahlenkatten—Bröderkotten—Suhlenheim—Gründerheim—there was nothing very interesting about these stations. My thoughts were always preoccupied with that house. Why does the woman wash and scrub three times a week? I wondered. The house didn’t look at all as if there were dirty people living in it, or as if a great many visitors came and went. In fact it looked almost inhospitable, although it was clean. It was a clean and yet unwelcoming house.

  But when I caught the eleven o’clock train from Gründerheim for the return trip and saw the rear of the house shortly before noon, just beyond Kahlenkatten, the woman would then be washing the panes of the end window on the right. Oddly enough, on Mondays and Saturdays she would be washing the end window on the right, and on Wednesdays the middle window. Chamois in hand, she rubbed and rubbed. Round her head she wore a scarf of a dull, reddish color. But on the way back I never saw the little girl, and now, approaching midday—it must have been a few minutes to twelve, for in those days the trains were nothing if not punctual—it was the front of the house that was silent and uncommunicative.

  Although in telling my story I shall make every effort to describe only what I actually saw, presumably no one will object to the modest observation that, after three months, I permitted myself the mathematical combination that on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays the woman probably washed the other windows. This combination, modest though it was, gradually became an obsession. Sometimes, all the way from just before Kahlenkatten to Gründerheim, I would puzzle over which afternoons and mornings the other windows of the two floors were likely to get washed. In fact, I finally sat down with pencil and paper and devised a kind of cleaning timetable for myself. From what I had observed on the three mornings, I tried to figure out what was likely to get cleaned the other three afternoons and the remaining whole days. For I had the curiously fixed notion that the woman never did anything but wash and scrub. After all, I never saw her any other way, always bent double, so that I thought I could hear her labored breathing, at ten minutes past eight; and busily rubbing with the chamois, so that I thought I could see the tip of her tongue between her tightly drawn lips, shortly before twelve.

  The story of this house preyed on my mind. I started daydreaming. This made me careless in my work. Yes, I became careless. I let my thoughts wander too often. One day I even forgot the “Pending Cases” folder. I drew down upon my head the wrath of the district manager of the Reich Gun Dog and Retriever Association. He sent for me; he was quivering with indignation. “Grabowski,” he said to me, “I hear you forgot the ‘Pending Cases.’ Orders are orders, Grabowski.” When I maintained a stubborn silence, the boss became more severe. “Messenger Grabowski, I’m warning you. The Reich Gun Dog and Retriever Association has no use for forgetful employees, you know. We can look elsewhere for qualified staff.” He looked at me menacingly, but then he suddenly became human. “Have you got something on your mind?” I admitted in a low voice, “Yes.” “What is it?” he asked kindly. I merely shook my head. “Can I help? Tell me what I can do.”

  “Give me a day off, sir,” I asked diffidently, “that’s all I ask.” He nodded magnanimously. “Done! And don’t take what I said too seriously. Anybody can make one mistake; we’ve always been quite satisfied with you …”

  My heart leaped with joy. This interview took place on a Wednesday. And the following day, Thursday, was to be my day off. I had it all figured out. I caught the eight o’clock train, trembling more with impatience than with fear as we crossed the bridge: there she was, washing the front steps. I caught the next train back from Kahlenkatten and passed her house just about nine: top floor, middle window, front. I rode back and forth four times that day and had the whole Thursday timetable complete: front steps, middle window top floor front, middle window top floor back, attic, front room top. As I passed the house for the last time at six o’clock, I saw a little man’s stooped figure digging humbly away in the garden. The child, holding the clean doll, was watching him like a jaileress. The woman was not in sight …

  But all this happened ten years ago, before the war. A few days ago I crossed that bridge again by train. My God, how far away my thoughts had been when I got onto the train at Königstadt! I had forgotten the whole business. Our train was made up of boxcars, and as we approached the Rhine, a strange thing happened: one after another the boxcars ahead of us fell silent. It was quite extraordinary, as if the whole train of fifteen or twenty cars were a series of lights going out one after another. And we could hear a horrible, hollow rattle, a kind of windy rattle; and suddenly it sounded as if little hammers were being tapped against the floor of our boxcar, and we fell silent too, and there it was: nothing, nothing … nothing; left and right there was nothing, a ghastly void … in the distance the grassy banks of the Rhine … boats … water, but one didn’t dare look too far out: just looking made one giddy. Nothing, nothing whatever! I could tell from the white face of a silent farmer’s wife that she was praying; other people were lighting cigarettes with trembling hands; even the men playing cards in the corner had fallen silent …

  Then we could hear the cars up front riding over solid ground again, and we all had the same thought: They’ve made it. If somethi
ng happens to the train, maybe those people can jump out, but we were in the last car but one, and it was almost a foregone conclusion that we would plunge into the river. The conviction was there in our eyes and in our pale faces. The temporary bridge was no wider than the tracks; in fact, the tracks themselves were the bridge, and the side of the boxcar hung out over the bridge into space, and the bridge rocked as if it were about to tip us off into space …

  But then all of a sudden there was a firmer rattle; we could hear it coming closer, quite distinctly, and then under our car too it became somehow deeper, more substantial, this rattle, we breathed again and dared to look out: there were vegetable plots! Oh, may God bless vegetable plots! And suddenly I realized where we were, and my heart throbbed queerly the closer we came to Kahlenkatten. For me there was but one question: would that house still be standing? And then I saw it, first from a distance through the delicate sparse green of a few trees in the vegetable plots, the red façade of the house, still very clean, coming closer and closer. I was gripped by an indefinable emotion. Everything, the past of ten years ago and everything that had happened since then, raged within me in a frenzied, uncontrollable turmoil. And then the house came right up close, with giant strides, and then I saw her, the woman: she was washing the front steps. No, it wasn’t her—those legs were younger, a little heavier, but she had the same movements, those jerky, thrusting movements as she pushed the scrubbing cloth to and fro. My heart stood still, my heart marked time. Then the woman turned her face for just a moment, and instantly I recognized the little girl of ten years ago; that pinched, spidery, frowning face, and in the expression on her face something rather sour, something disagreeably sour like stale salad …

  As my heart slowly started beating again, it struck me that today was in fact Thursday …

  MY PAL WITH THE LONG HAIR

  It was a funny thing: exactly five minutes before the raid started I had a feeling something was wrong … I looked warily round, then strolled along the Rhine toward the station, and it didn’t surprise me at all to see the jeeps come dashing up full of red-capped military police who proceeded to surround the block, cordon it off, and begin their search. It all happened incredibly fast. I stood just outside the cordon and calmly lit a cigarette. Everything was done so quietly. Quantities of cigarettes landed on the ground. Too bad, I thought … instinctively making a rough calculation as to the cash that must be lying around there. The truck rapidly filled up with the ones they had nabbed. Franz was among them … he gestured to me from a distance in a resigned kind of way, as much as to say: Just my luck. One of the policemen turned round to look at me, so I left. But slowly, very slowly. Hell, let them pick me up too, I couldn’t care less.