The Collected Stories of Heinrich Böll Read online

  “No.”

  The man spat the third cigarette butt over the mud wall and blew out the candle. He pulled up his blanket again, worked his feet into a comfortable position, and lay back with a sigh. It was quite silent and quite dark, and again the only sound was that aimless rustle of someone trying to get to sleep, and the swish of the rain, very gentle.

  “Willi’s been wounded,” the boy’s voice said suddenly, after a few minutes’ silence. The voice was more awake than ever, in fact not even sleepy.

  “What d’you mean?” asked the man in reply.

  “Just that—wounded,” came the younger voice, with something like triumph in it, pleased that it knew some important piece of news which the older voice obviously knew nothing about. “Wounded while he was shitting.”

  “You’re nuts,” said the man; then he gave another sigh and went on, “That’s what I call a real break; I never heard of such luck. One day you come back from leave and the next day you get wounded while you’re shitting. Is it serious?”

  “No,” said the boy with a laugh, “though actually it’s not minor either. A bullet fracture, but in the arm.”

  “A bullet fracture in the arm! You come back from leave and while you’re shitting you get wounded, a bullet fracture in the arm! What a break … How did it happen?”

  “When they went for water last evening,” came the younger voice, quite animated now. “When they went for water, they were going down the hill at the back, carrying their water cans, and Willi told Sergeant Schubert, ‘I’ve got to shit, Sergeant!’ ‘Nothing doing,’ said the sergeant. But Willi couldn’t hold on any longer so he just ran off, pulled down his pants, and bang! A grenade. And they actually had to pull up his pants for him. His left arm was wounded, and his right arm was holding it, so he ran off like that to get it bandaged, with his pants around his ankles. They all laughed, everyone laughed, even Sergeant Schubert laughed.” He added the last few words almost apologetically, as if to excuse his own laughter, because he was laughing now …

  But the older man wasn’t laughing.

  “Light!” he said with an oath. “Here, give me the matches, let’s have some light!” He struck a match, cursing as it flared up. “At least I want some light, even if I don’t get wounded. At least let’s have some light, the least they can do is give us enough candles if they want to play war. Light! Light!” He was shouting again as he lit another cigarette.

  The younger voice had sat up again and was poking around with a spoon in a greasy can held on his knees.

  And there they sat, crouching side by side, without a word, in the yellow light.

  The man smoked aggressively, and the boy was already looking somewhat greasy: his childish face smeared, bread crumbs sticking to his matted hair around most of his hairline.

  The boy then proceeded to scrape out the grease can with a piece of bread.

  All of a sudden there was silence: the rain had stopped. Neither of them moved, they looked at each other, the man with the cigarette in his hand, the boy holding the bread in his trembling fingers. It was uncannily quiet, they took a few breaths, and then heard rain still dripping somewhere from the groundsheet.

  “Hell,” said the older man. “D’you suppose the sentry’s still there? I can’t hear a thing.”

  The boy put the bread into his mouth and threw the can into the straw beside him.

  “I don’t know,” said the boy. “They’re going to let us know when it’s our turn to relieve.”

  The older man got up quickly. He blew out the light, jammed on his steel helmet, and thrust aside the blanket. What came through the opening was not light. Just cool damp darkness. The man pinched out his cigarette and stuck his head outside.

  “Hell,” he muttered outside, “not a thing. Hey!” he called softly. Then his dark head reappeared inside, and he asked, “Where’s the next dugout?”

  The boy groped his way to his feet and stood next to the other man in the opening.

  “Quiet!” said the man suddenly, in a sharp, low tone. “Something’s crawling around out there.”

  They peered ahead. It was true: in the silent darkness there was a sound of someone crawling, and all of a sudden an unearthly snapping sound that made them both jump. It sounded as if someone had flung a live cat against the wall: the sound of breaking bones.

  “Hell,” muttered the older man, “there’s something funny going on. Where’s the sentry?”

  “Over there,” said the boy, groping in the dark for the other man’s hand and lifting it toward the right. “Over there,” he repeated. “That’s where the dugout is too.”

  “Wait here,” said the older man, “and better get your rifle, just in case.”

  Once again they heard that sickening snapping sound, then silence, and someone crawling.

  The older man crept forward through the mud, occasionally halting and quietly listening, until after a few yards he finally heard a muffled voice; then he saw a faint gleam of light from the ground, felt around till he found the entrance, and called, “Hey, chum!”

  The voice stopped, the light went out, a blanket was pushed aside, and a man’s dark head came up out of the ground.

  “What’s up?”

  “Where’s the sentry?”

  “Over there—right here.”

  “Where?”

  “Hey there, Neuer!… Hey there!”

  No answer: the crawling sound had stopped, all sound had stopped, there was only darkness out there, silent darkness. “God damn it, that’s queer,” said the voice of the man who had come up out of the ground. “Hey there!… That’s funny, he was standing right here by the dugout, only a few feet away.” He pulled himself up over the edge and stood beside the man who had called him.

  “There was someone crawling around out there,” said the man who had come across from the other dugout. “I know there was. The bastard’s quiet now.”

  “Better have a look,” said the man who had come up out of the ground. “Shall we take a look?”

  “Hm, there certainly ought to be a sentry here.”

  “You fellows are next.”

  “I know, but …”

  “Ssh!”

  Once again they could hear someone crawling out there, perhaps twenty feet away.

  “God damn it,” said the man who had come up out of the ground, “you’re right.”

  “Maybe someone still alive from last night, trying to crawl away.”

  “Or new ones.”

  “But what about the sentry, for God’s sake?”

  “Shall we go?”

  “Okay.”

  Both men instantly dropped to the ground and started to move forward, crawling through the mud. From down there, from a worm’s-eye view, everything looked different. Every minutest elevation in the soil became a mountain range behind which, far off, something strange was visible: a slightly lighter darkness, the sky. Pistol in hand, they crawled on, yard by yard through the mud.

  “God damn it,” whispered the man who had come up out of the ground, “a Russki from last night.”

  His companion also soon bumped into a corpse, a mute, leaden bundle. Suddenly they were silent, holding their breath: there was that cracking sound again, quite close, as if someone had been given a terrific wallop on the jaw. Then they heard someone panting.

  “Hey,” called the man who had come up out of the ground, “who’s there?”

  The call silenced all sound, the very air seemed to hold its breath, until a quavering voice spoke, “It’s me …”

  “God damn it, what the hell are you doing out there, you old asshole, driving us all nuts?” shouted the man who had come up out of the ground.

  “I’m looking for something,” came the voice again.

  The two men had got to their feet and now walked over to the spot where the voice was coming from the ground.

  “I’m looking for a pair of shoes,” said the voice, but now they were standing next to him. Their eyes had become accustomed to the da
rk, and they could see corpses lying all around, ten or a dozen, lying there like logs, black and motionless, and the sentry was squatting beside one of these logs, fumbling around its feet.

  “Your job’s to stick to your post,” said the man who had come up out of the ground.

  The other man, the one who had summoned him out of the ground, dropped like a stone and bent over the dead man’s face. The man who had been squatting suddenly covered his face with his hands and began whimpering like a cowed animal.

  “Oh, no,” said the man who had summoned the other out of the ground, adding in an undertone, “I guess you need teeth too, eh? Gold teeth, eh?”

  “What’s that?” asked the man who had come up out of the ground, while at his feet the cringing figure whimpered louder than ever.

  “Oh, no,” said the first man again, and the weight of the world seemed to be lying on his breast.

  “Teeth?” asked the man who had come up out of the ground, whereupon he threw himself down beside the cringing figure and ripped a cloth bag from his hand.

  “Oh, no!” the cringing figure cried too, and every extremity of human terror was expressed in this cry.

  The man who had summoned the other out of the ground turned away, for the man who had come up out of the ground had placed his pistol against the cringing figure’s head, and he pressed the trigger.

  “Teeth,” he muttered, as the sound of the shot died away. “Gold teeth.”

  They walked slowly back, stepping very carefully as long as they were in the area where the dead lay.

  “You fellows are on now,” said the man who had come up out of the ground, before vanishing into the ground again.

  “Right,” was all the other man said, and he too crawled slowly back through the mud before vanishing into the ground again.

  He could tell at once that the boy was still awake; there was that aimless rustle of someone trying to get to sleep.

  “Light the candle,” he said quietly.

  The yellow flame leaped up again, feebly illumining the little hole.

  “What happened?” asked the boy in alarm, catching sight of the older man’s face.

  “The sentry’s gone; you’ll have to replace him.”

  “Yes,” said the youngster. “Give me the watch, will you, so I can wake the others.”

  “Here.”

  The older man squatted down on his straw and lit a cigarette, watching thoughtfully as the boy buckled on his belt, pulled on his coat, defused a hand grenade, and then wearily checked his machine pistol for ammunition.

  “Right,” said the boy finally. “So long, now.”

  “So long,” said the man, and he blew out the candle and lay in total darkness all alone in the ground …

  BROOMMAKERS

  Our math teacher was as good-natured as he was hot-tempered. He used to come charging into the classroom—hands in pockets—spew his cigarette butt into the cuspidor to the left of the wastepaper basket, take the dais by storm and, standing by his desk, call out my name as he asked some question or other to which I never knew the answer, no matter what it was.

  After I had floundered my way to a halt, he would walk over to me, very slowly, accompanied by the tittering of the whole class, and cuff me over the head—my long-suffering head—in his rough good-natured way, muttering, “You boneheaded broommaker, you.”

  It became a kind of ritual, the thought of which made me tremble throughout my school days, the more so since my knowledge of science, far from growing with increased demands, seemed to diminish. But, having duly cuffed me, he would leave me in peace, leave me to my meandering daydreams, for to try and teach me math was a completely hopeless proposition. I dragged my F after me all through those years like the heavy ball chained to a convict’s feet.

  What impressed me about him was that he never had a book or notes with him, not even a slip of paper: he performed his occult arts with casual ease, tossing stupendous formulas onto the blackboard with something of a tightrope walker’s absolute mastery. The one thing he could not draw was circles. He was too impatient. He would wind a string around a long piece of chalk, pick the imaginary center, and swing the chalk round with such gusto that it would snap and, with a whining screech, go bounding across the blackboard—dash-dot, dot-dash. He never managed to make the beginning and end meet, and the result was an unsightly gaping outline, truly an unacknowledged symbol of Creation rent asunder. And that sound of the squeaking, screeching, chattering chalk piled further agony on my already tortured brain: I would stir from my daydreams, look up, and the minute he caught sight of me he would rush over, pull me up by the ears, and order me to draw his circles for him. For this was an art, springing from some slumbering, innate law within me, that I mastered to near perfection. What an exquisite feeling it was, to play with the chalk for half a second. It was a minor ecstasy, the world around me would drop away, and I was filled with a profound happiness that made up for all the agony … but even from this sweet oblivion I would be roused by a rough, although this time respectful, tug at my hair, and with the laughter of the entire class in my ears I would slink back to my seat like a whipped dog, incapable now of reentering my dreamworld, to wait in perpetual agony for the bell to ring …

  It was a long time since those early days, a long time since my dreams had become more disturbing, a long time since he had dropped the du when calling me “a boneheaded broommaker,” and there were long months of torment during which there were no circles to be drawn and I was condemned to hopeless attempts to clamber over the brittle girders of algebraical bridges, still dragging my F behind me, the familiar ritual still being performed. But then when we had to volunteer for officer training a brief test was improvised, simple but nonetheless a test, and my expression of utter wretchedness as I faced the stern examining board may have softened the math teacher’s heart, for he was so skillful in putting words into my mouth that I actually passed. Later on, however, as we shook hands with the teachers on leaving, he advised me to forego the use of my mathematical knowledge and to be sure to avoid joining a technical unit. “Infantry,” he whispered, “join the infantry, that’s the place for all … broommakers,” and for the last time, with a gesture that concealed his affection, he made as if to cuff me over the head—my now well-seasoned head.

  Scarcely two months later, at the Odessa airfield, I was sitting crouched over my pack, in deep mud, watching a real broommaker, the first I had ever seen.

  Winter had come early, and over the nearby city the sky hung gray and comfortless between the horizons. Dingy tall buildings were visible among outlying gardens and black fences. In the distance, where the Black Sea must be, the sky was even darker, almost blue-black, as if twilight and evening came from the east. Somewhere in the background the trundling monsters were being refueled alongside cavernous hangars, after which they trundled back and, standing there in horrible complacency, were loaded up with men, gray, tired, despairing soldiers whose eyes were devoid of all emotion but fear—for the Crimea had long since been encircled …

  Our platoon must have been one of the last; no one spoke, and in spite of our long greatcoats we were shivering. Some of the men were eating in desperation, others were smoking, and because this was prohibited they covered their pipes with their palms and blew the smoke out in slow, thin puffs.

  I had plenty of time to watch the broommaker as he sat a little way off beside a garden fence. He was wearing one of those rakish-looking Russian hats, and in his bearded face the short stocky brown pipe was as broad and long as his nose. But there were peace and simplicity in his quietly working hands as they picked up the bunches of furze twigs, cut them, tied them with wire, and fastened the finished bundles in the holes of the broom handle.

  I had turned over onto my stomach, lying almost flat on my pack, and all I saw was the looming silhouette of this quiet, humble man, working steadily and unhurriedly away at his brooms. Never in my life have I envied anyone as much as that broommaker, neither the top student,
nor Schimski the math brain, nor the best football player on the school team, nor even Hegenbach, whose brother had the Knight’s Cross; not one of those had I ever envied as I envied that broommaker, sitting by a fence on the outskirts of Odessa and serenely smoking his pipe.

  I longed secretly to catch the man’s eye, for I fancied it would be comforting to look directly into that face, but I was suddenly jerked up by my coat, shouted at, and jammed into the droning aircraft, and once we had taken off and were flying high above the distracting jumble of gardens and roads and churches, it would have been impossible to try to make out the broommaker.

  First I squatted on my pack, but then I slipped down behind it onto the floor and, stupefied by the oppressive silence of my fellow victims, was listening to the unearthly drone of the aircraft, while the constant vibration began to make my head quiver as it leaned against the metal wall. The darkness of the narrow fuselage was relieved only by a somewhat lighter darkness up front, where the pilot sat, and this pale reflection threw an eerie light on the mute, dim figures squatting left and right and all around me on their packs.

  But suddenly a strange noise tore across the sky, so real and familiar that I sat bolt upright: it was as if the hand of a giant math teacher were drawing a massive hunk of chalk in an arc across the limitless expanse of dark sky, and the noise exactly matched the familiar one I had heard two months before, the same leap and chatter of protesting chalk.

  Arc after arc was drawn across the sky by the hand of the colossus, but now, instead of being only white and dark gray, it was red on blue and purple on black, and the flashing streaks faded without completing their circles, chattered, screeched, and died away.

  I suffered not for the terrified, frenzied groans of my fellow victims, or the shouting of the lieutenant vainly ordering the men to be quiet and stay where they were, or even the agonized face of the pilot. I suffered merely for those eternally uncompleted circles that flared up over the sky, in a fury of haste and hate, and never ever returned to their starting point, those botched circles whose ends never met to achieve the perfect beauty of the circle. They tormented me along with the chattering, screeching, leaping wrath of the giant hand, the hand I dreaded would grab me by the hair and cuff me brutally over the head.