The Collected Stories of Heinrich Böll Page 30

  But the third time he applied, the Death’s Head units accepted him because of the excellent references he submitted from all the Party organizations.

  During the early war years he suffered greatly as a result of his musical reputation: instead of being sent to the front, he was assigned to training courses, later becoming a course director and then a director of a course for course directors; he directed the choral training of whole SS armies, and one of his supreme achievements was a choir of legionaries which, while representing thirteen different countries and eighteen different languages, sang a chorus from Tannhäuser in perfect vocal harmony. Later he was awarded the Cross of Merit First Class, one of the rarest military decorations; but not until he volunteered for the twentieth time for military service was he assigned to a military training course and finally got to the front: in 1943 he was given a small concentration camp in Germany, and at last, in 1944, was made commandant of a ghetto in Hungary. Later, when that ghetto had to be evacuated because the Russians were getting close, he was given this little camp in the north.

  It was a matter of pride with him to carry out all orders to the letter. He had quickly discovered the enormous latent fund of musical talent among the prisoners—he was surprised to find this among Jews—and he applied the selective principle by ordering each new arrival to undergo a singing test and by recording each one’s vocal capacity on an index card, with marks ranging from zero to ten. Very few were given ten—those were assigned immediately to the camp choir—and those who got zero had little prospect of remaining alive for more than two days. When required to supply batches of prisoners for removal, he chose them in such a way as to retain a nucleus of good male and female voices so that his choir always remained complete. This choir, which he conducted with a strictness harking back to the days of the Concordia Choral Society, was his pride and joy. With this choir he could have beaten any competition, but unfortunately the only audience it ever had were the dying prisoners and the guard personnel.

  But orders were even more sacred to him than music, and he had recently received a number of orders that had weakened his choir: the ghettos and camps in Hungary were being evacuated, and because the large camps to which he had formerly sent Jews no longer existed, and his small camp had no railroad connection, he had to kill them all in his camp. But even now there were still sufficient work parties—for cookhouse and crematorium and bath hut—to preserve at least the very best of the voices.

  Filskeit did not like killing. He had never killed anyone himself, and that was one of his frustrations: he was incapable of it. He realized that it was necessary, and admired the orders, which he saw were strictly carried out; the important thing, after all, was not whether one liked carrying out orders but to realize their necessity, to respect them, and to see that they were carried out …

  Filskeit went to the window and looked out. Two trucks had driven up behind the green furniture van, the drivers had just got down and were walking wearily up the steps to the guardroom.

  SS Lieutenant Blauert came through the gate with five men and opened the big heavy padded doors of the furniture van. The people inside screamed—the daylight hurt their eyes—their screams were long and piercing, and the ones who jumped down staggered to where Blauert pointed.

  The first was a dark-haired young woman wearing a green coat; she was dirty, and her dress seemed to be torn; she was anxiously trying to keep her coat closed with her hands, and a girl of twelve or thirteen was clinging to her arm. Neither had any baggage.

  The people who staggered out of the van lined up on the assembly square, and Filskeit counted them under his breath as he watched the roll call proceed: there were sixty-one men, women, and children, varying greatly in dress, behavior, and age. Nothing more emerged from the green van—six had apparently died. The green van moved slowly off and halted by the crematorium. Filskeit nodded in satisfaction: six corpses were unloaded and hauled off into the building.

  The baggage of the van’s occupants was stacked up in front of the guardroom. The two trucks were also unloaded. Filskeit counted the rows of five as they slowly filled up: twenty-nine rows of five. SS Lieutenant Blauert shouted through the megaphone, “Attention, everyone! You are at present in a transit camp. You will not remain here long. You will proceed one by one to the prisoners’ registration section, then to the office of the camp commandant, to whom you will submit for a personal test. This will be followed by a bath and delousing, after which there will be hot coffee for all. Anyone offering the slightest resistance will be instantly shot.” He pointed to the watchtowers, whose machine guns had now been swiveled round to aim at the assembly square, and to the five men standing behind him with cocked machine pistols.

  Filskeit paced impatiently up and down behind his window. He had noticed a few fair-haired Jews. There were many fair-haired Jews in Hungary. He liked them even less than the dark ones, although there were specimens among them that might have embellished any illustrated work on the Nordic race.

  He watched the first woman, the one in the green coat and the torn dress, enter the registration hut, and he sat down, placing his cocked pistol beside him on the table. In a few minutes she would be here to sing for him.

  For ten hours Ilona had been waiting for fear. But fear did not come. In these ten hours she had had to experience and submit to many things: disgust and horror, hunger and thirst, gasping for air, despair when the light struck her, and a strangely cool kind of happiness when, for minutes or quarters of an hour, she managed to be alone—but she had waited in vain for fear. Fear did not come. This world in which she had been living for ten hours was spectral, as spectral as reality—as spectral as the things she had heard about. But hearing about them had frightened her more than now finding herself in the midst of them. She had very few desires left: one of these desires was to be alone so that she could really pray.

  She had pictured her life quite differently. Up to now its course had been orderly, satisfying, according to plan, pretty well exactly as she had pictured it—even when her plans had turned out to be mistaken—but this was something she had not expected. She had counted on being spared this.

  If all went well, she would be dead in half an hour. She was lucky, she was the first. She knew very well what kind of bath huts those were that that creature had spoken of, she knew she had to face ten minutes of death throes, but even this, because it still seemed so remote, did not frighten her. In the van, too, she had had to endure many things that touched her personally but did not penetrate. Someone had tried to rape her, a fellow whose sexual craving she had smelled in the dark and whom she now tried in vain to identify. Someone else had shielded her from him, an elderly man who had whispered to her later that he had been arrested because of a pair of pants, because of one pair of pants that he had bought from an officer; but now she couldn’t recognize that man either. The other fellow had felt for her breasts in the dark, torn her dress, and kissed the nape of her neck—but luckily the other man had come between them. Even the cake had been knocked out of her hand, the little parcel, the only thing she had taken with her—it had fallen to the floor, and in the dark, groping around on the floor, she had managed to get hold of only a few broken pieces ingrained with grit and icing. She had eaten them with Maria—some of the cake had been squashed in her coat pocket—but hours later, when she drew small sticky lumps out of her pocket, they tasted wonderful; she gave some to the child and ate some herself, and it tasted wonderful, this squashed gritty cake which she scraped to the last crumb from her pocket. Some people had committed suicide, they bled to death almost without a sound, emitting odd gasps and groans in the corner, until those next to them slipped in the flowing blood and screamed hysterically. But they stopped screaming when the guard banged on the side of the van. It had sounded ominous and terrible, that banging, it couldn’t have been done by a human being, they had long ceased to be among human beings …

  She was also waiting in vain for remorse; it had been senseles
s to leave that soldier, whom she liked very much, whose name she did not even know, absolutely senseless. Her parents’ apartment was already empty; the only person she found there was her sister’s confused and terrified child, young Maria, who had come home from school and found the apartment empty. Her parents and grandparents had already gone—neighbors told her they had been picked up at midday. And it had been senseless for her and Maria to run to the ghetto to look for her parents and grandparents: as always, they reached the ghetto by way of the back room of a hairdresser’s and ran through the empty streets, arriving just in time to be shoved into that furniture van which had been standing there, waiting to leave, and in which they hoped to find their relatives. They found neither parents nor grandparents; they were not in that van. Ilona was amazed that none of the neighbors had thought of hurrying over to the school to warn her, but even Maria had not thought of it. Still, it would probably have made no difference if someone had warned her … In the van someone had stuck a lighted cigarette between her lips, later she found out it had been the man who was picked up because of the pants. It was the first cigarette she had ever smoked, and she found it very refreshing and very soothing. She did not know her benefactor’s name, none of them revealed their identity, neither that panting, lecherous fellow nor her benefactor, and when a match flared up all the faces looked alike: terrible faces full of fear and hatred.

  But there had also been long stretches when she could pray. At the convent she had learned by heart all the prayers, all the litanies, and long sections of the liturgy for high holidays, and she was glad now that she knew them. Praying filled her with a cool serenity. She did not pray to be given something, or to be spared something, not for a quick painless death or for her life; she simply prayed, and she was glad when she could lean against the padded rear door and that at least her back was alone. At first she had stood the other way around, with her back to the press of bodies, and when she became tired and started to droop, tipping over backward, her body must have aroused that raging lust in the man she fell against, a lust that frightened but did not offend her—almost the opposite, she had a feeling of being somehow part of him, of this stranger …

  She was glad to be standing free, at least with her back alone against the padding intended for the protection of good furniture. She held Maria close to her body and was glad the child was asleep. She tried to pray as devoutly as she always did but found she couldn’t; all she could manage was a cool rational meditation. She had pictured her life quite differently: she had passed her teacher-training finals at twenty-three, then she had entered the convent—her relatives were disappointed but approved her decision. She had spent a whole year at the convent, it had been a very happy time, and if she had actually become a nun, she would now be a teaching sister in Argentina, in some very beautiful convent no doubt; but she had not become a nun, because the desire to marry and have children was so strong in her that even after a year it had not been subdued—and she had gone back into the world. She became a very successful teacher, and she enjoyed it; she loved her two subjects, German and Music, and was fond of the children, she could hardly imagine anything more beautiful than a children’s choir. She was very successful with the children’s choir she organized at school, and the choral works sung by the children, those Latin choral works which they rehearsed for feast days, had a truly angelic neutrality—it was a free and inward joy from which the children sang, sang words they did not understand and which were beautiful. Life seemed beautiful to her—for long periods, almost always. What troubled her was this desire for tenderness and children, it troubled her because she found nobody; there were many men who became interested in her, some even confessed their love, and she let some of them kiss her, but she was waiting for something she could not have described, she did not call it love—there were many kinds of love—she would have preferred to call it surprise, and she had believed she was experiencing this sense of surprise when the soldier whose name she did not know stood beside her facing the map and stuck in the little flags. She knew he was in love with her. The last two days he had been spending hours chatting with her, and she found him very nice, although his uniform worried and alarmed her a little, but suddenly, in those few minutes while she stood next to him and he seemed to have forgotten her, his grave, poignant face, and his hands as they explored the map of Europe, had surprised her, she had a sense of joy and could have sung. He was the first man whose kiss she had ever returned …

  She walked slowly up the steps to the hut, pulling Maria along; she glanced up astonished when the guard jabbed the muzzle of his machine pistol into her side and shouted, “Faster—faster.” She walked faster. Inside sat three clerks at tables; big stacks of index cards lay in front of them, the cards as big as cigar-box lids. She was pushed toward the first table, Maria toward the second, and toward the third table came an old man, in rags and unshaven, who gave her a fleeting smile. She smiled back; that must be her benefactor.

  She gave her name, her occupation, her date of birth, and her religion, and was surprised when the clerk asked her age. “Twenty-three,” she said.

  Another half hour, she thought. Maybe she would still have a chance to be alone for a bit after all. She was astonished at the casual atmosphere in this place given over to the administration of death. Everything was done mechanically, somewhat irritably, impatiently: these people were doing their job with the same lack of enthusiasm they would have brought to any other clerical work, they were merely doing their duty, a duty which they found tiresome but did anyway. No one did anything to her; she was still waiting for fear, the fear she had been dreading. She had been very scared when she left the convent, very scared as she walked to the streetcar carrying her suitcase, clasping her money in her moist fingers. The world had seemed alien and ugly, this world to which she had longed to return so as to have a husband and children—a series of joys which she could not find in the convent and which now, walking to the streetcar, she no longer hoped to find; but she was very ashamed, ashamed of this fear …

  As she walked over to the second hut, she scanned the rows of waiting people for familiar faces but found none. She went up the steps; when she hesitated at the door, the guard waved her impatiently inside, and she went in, pulling Maria along: that seemed to be the wrong thing to do, and she had her second encounter with brutality when the guard wrenched the child from her and, when the child struggled, pulled her by the hair. She heard Maria scream, and walked into the room holding her registration card. There was only one man in the room, and he was in the uniform of an officer; he was wearing a very impressive, narrow silver decoration in the shape of a cross on his chest. His face looked pale and haggard, and when he raised his head to look at her, she was shocked at his massive chin, which almost disfigured him. He mutely held out his hand, she gave him the card and waited. Still no fear. The man read the card, looked at her, and said quietly, “Sing something.”

  She hesitated. “Go on,” he said impatiently, “sing something—never mind what …”

  She looked at him and opened her mouth. She sang the All Saints’ Litany in a version which she had recently discovered and set aside to practice with the children. While she sang, she watched the man very intently, and suddenly she knew what fear was when he stood up and looked at her.

  She continued to sing while the face in front of her became contorted like some horrible growth in a state of convulsion. She sang beautifully, and she did not know she was smiling, despite the slowly mounting fear now caught in her throat and waiting to be spewed out …

  As soon as she started to sing, silence fell, outside as well. Filskeit stared at her. She was beautiful—a woman—he had never had a woman—his life had been spent in stifling chastity—much of it, when he was alone, in front of the mirror, in which he vainly sought beauty and nobility and racial perfection—here it was, beauty and nobility and racial perfection, combined with something that completely paralyzed him: faith. He did not realize he was letting
her sing on, even beyond the antiphony—perhaps he was dreaming—and in her gaze, although he saw she was trembling—in her gaze was something almost like love—or was it scorn—“Fili, Redemptor mundi, Deus,” she sang—he had never heard a woman sing like that.

  “Spiritus Sancte, Deus”—her voice was powerful, warm, and of incredible clarity. He must be dreaming—now she would sing: Sancta Trinitas, unus Deus—he still remembered it—and she sang it:

  “Sancta Trinitas”—Catholic Jews? he thought—I must be going mad. He ran to the window and flung it open: outside they were all standing there, listening, not a soul moved. Filskeit could feel himself twitching, he tried to shout, but from his throat came only a hoarse toneless rasp, and from outside came that breathless hush while the woman went on singing:

  “Sancta Dei Genitrix” … With trembling fingers he picked up his pistol, turned around, and fired blindly at the woman, who slumped to the floor and began to scream. Now he had found his voice again, once hers had stopped singing. “Wipe them out!” he screamed. “Wipe out the whole damn lot—and the choir too—bring out the choir—bring it outside—” He emptied the entire magazine into the woman, who was lying on the floor and in her agony spewing out her fear …

  Outside, the slaughter began.

  VIII

  The widow Suchan had been watching the war for the past three years. It had all begun with the arrival of German soldiers and army vehicles, and cavalry; they had crossed the bridge that dusty autumn and headed toward the passes leading over to the Polish side. It had had the genuine look of war, grimy soldiers, weary officers and horses, motorcycles chasing back and forth, a whole afternoon of war, with a few intermissions: a fine spectacle, you might say. The soldiers had marched across the bridge, with the trucks driving up ahead and motorcycles fore and aft, and the widow Suchan had never seen them again.