The Collected Stories of Heinrich Böll Page 34

  The women had finished peeling potatoes; the young woman picked up the bowl, went to the sink in the corner, and shook the potatoes into a sieve. She turned on the water and began listlessly washing the potatoes.

  The older woman touched Feinhals’s arm. He turned toward her.

  “Are they discharging very many?” she asked.

  “Yes, they are,” said Feinhals. “Some units are discharging everyone—on condition that they assemble in the Ruhr. But I didn’t go to the Ruhr.”

  The woman at the sink began to cry. She cried soundlessly, barely moving her thin shoulders.

  “Or cry,” said the old man by the window, “laugh or cry.” He looked at Feinhals. “Her husband was killed—my son.” He pointed his pipe at the woman standing at the sink, crying as she slowly and carefully washed the potatoes. “In Hungary,” said the old man, “last fall.”

  “He was supposed to be discharged last summer,” said the old woman sitting next to Feinhals. “They were just about to do so several times; he was a sick man, very sick, but I suppose they didn’t want to let him go. He was running the canteen.” She shook her head, and her eyes went to the younger woman at the sink. The younger woman shook the washed potatoes carefully into a clean saucepan and filled it with water. She was still crying, very quietly, almost without a sound, and she placed the pan on the stove and went over to the corner to get her handkerchief from the pocket of a smock.

  Feinhals knew his expression must have changed. He had not often thought of Finck, only now and again and for brief moments, but now it all came back to him so vividly that the scene was clearer in his mind’s eye than when he had seen it in reality: that incredibly heavy suitcase the shell had suddenly exploded into, the way the suitcase lid had whirled up and how the wine had splashed in the dark onto the path and the back of his neck, how the broken glass had tinkled—and how small and skinny the man had felt as his hand had groped along the body until it reached the great bloody wound and he had drawn back his hand …

  He watched the child playing on the floor. With his thin white fingers he calmly pulled the wagon around the chipped tiles—little pieces of kindling lay there being loaded, unloaded, loaded, unloaded. The boy looked very frail and had the same listless movements as his mother, now seated at the table holding her handkerchief to her face. Feinhals looked around the room in distress and wondered whether he ought to tell them, but he lowered his head again and decided to tell them later. He would tell the old man about it. Right now he didn’t want to talk about it; in any case, it didn’t seem to occur to them to wonder how Finck had got from his field hospital all the way to Hungary. The old woman touched his arm again. “What is it?” she asked quietly. “Are you hungry? Don’t you feel well?”

  “No, I’m all right,” said Feinhals, “thanks very much.” With her penetrating gaze still on him he repeated, “No, I’m all right, really, thanks just the same.”

  “How about a glass of wine,” asked the old man from the window, “or a schnapps?”

  “Yes,” said Feinhals, “a schnapps would be fine.”

  “Trude,” said the old man, “get the gentleman a schnapps.”

  The young woman stood up and went into the next room. “We’re rather cramped,” the old woman told Feinhals. “All we have is this kitchen and the bar, but we hear they’re moving on soon; they’ve got a lot of tanks here, and the prisoners are going to be taken away.”

  “Do you have prisoners here in the house?”

  “Yes,” said the old man, “there are some over there in the hall. They’re all high-ranking officers being interrogated here. As soon as they’ve been interrogated, they get taken away. One of them’s even a general. Look, over there!”

  Feinhals went to the window, and the old man pointed past the sentries and through the gateway into the second courtyard, to the windows of the hall that were covered with barbed wire.

  “There,” said the old man, “another of them’s being taken off for interrogation.”

  Feinhals recognized the general at once: he looked better, more relaxed, and he was wearing the Knight’s Cross at his neck now; he even seemed to be smiling gently as he walked quietly and docilely ahead of the two sentries, who had the barrels of their machine pistols trained on him. Almost all the yellow had left the general’s face, and he no longer looked tired either; his face was harmonious, quiet, cultivated, and humane, that very gentle smile made his face beautiful. He passed through the gateway, walked calmly across the yard, and preceded the two sentries up the steps.

  “That was the general,” said Finck. “They’ve got colonels in there too, and majors, all staff officers, close to thirty of them.”

  The young woman returned from the bar carrying glasses and the bottle of schnapps. She placed one glass on the windowsill in front of Finck and the other on the table in front of Feinhals’s place. Feinhals remained standing at the window. From there he could see out across the second courtyard as far as the street leading past the rear of the building. Two sentries with machine pistols were standing there too, and across the street from where the sentries stood Feinhals now recognized the window of the coffin shop, and he knew this was the street where the high school was. The coffin was still in the window: polished black with silver fittings and a black cloth with silver tassels. Maybe it was the same coffin that had been there thirteen years ago, when he had gone to high school.

  “Prost,” said the old man, raising his glass.

  Feinhals went quickly to the table, picked up his glass, said “Thanks” to the young woman and “Prost” to the old man, and drank. The schnapps was good. “When d’you imagine would be a good time for me to try and get home?”

  “You have to be sure and get through at a place where there are no Americans—by the Kerpel would be best—do you know the Kerpel?”

  “Yes,” said Feinhals. “Aren’t there any there?”

  “No, none. People often come across to get bread at night—women, they all come through the Kerpel …”

  “During the day they do sometimes fire into it,” said the young woman.

  “Yes,” said the old man, “during the day they do sometimes fire into it …”

  “Thanks,” said Feinhals, “thanks very much,” and finished his schnapps.

  The old man stood up. “I’m driving up the hill,” he said. “You’d better come along. From up there you have a good view of everything, even your father’s house …”

  “Right,” said Feinhals, “I’ll come along.”

  He looked at the women seated at the table cleaning vegetables, carefully removing the leaves from two cabbages, inspecting the leaves, shredding them, and throwing them into a sieve.

  The child looked up, suddenly abandoning the wagon, and asked, “May I come too?”

  “Yes,” said Finck, “come along.” He put his pipe down on the windowsill.

  “Now it’s the next one’s turn,” he called. “Look.”

  Feinhals hurried to the window: the colonel was dragging his feet now, his gaunt face looked ill, and his collar, with the decorations dangling from it, was much too big for him. He hardly raised his knees, his arms hung limp. “A disgrace,” muttered Finck, “a disgrace.” He took his hat from the peg and put it on.

  “Good-bye,” said Feinhals.

  “Good-bye,” said the women.

  “We’ll be back for dinner,” said Finck.

  Private Berchem did not like the war. He had been a waiter and bartender in a nightclub, and until the end of 1944 he had managed to avoid being called up, and during the war he had learned a lot of things in this nightclub, things that had been confirmed for him once and for all in nearly fifteen hundred war-nights. He had always known that most men can’t take as much alcohol as they think, and that most men spend a great part of their lives persuading themselves that they are real devils when it comes to drinking, and that they also try to convince the women they bring along of the same thing. But there were very few men who really knew ho
w to drink, whom it was a pleasure to watch drinking. And even in wartime there were still precious few of those around.

  Most people made the mistake of assuming that a piece of shiny metal on the chest or at the neck could change the man who wore it. They seemed to believe that a stupid fellow could become intelligent and a weakling strong if at some prominent spot on his uniform he were hung with a decoration, which he might very possibly have earned. But Berchem had realized this wasn’t so: if it was possible to change a man by way of a decoration, then it could only be for the worse. But most of these men he had seen only one night, and he hadn’t known them before, and all he knew was that most of them couldn’t take alcohol, although they all thought they could and told convincing tales of how much they had drunk at one session at such and such a time and at such and such a place. It wasn’t a pretty sight when they got drunk, and this nightclub, where he had spent fifteen hundred war-nights as a waiter, was not very closely checked for black-market goods: after all, there had to be someplace where heroes could get something to drink and smoke and eat, and his boss was twenty-eight, as fit as a fiddle, and even by December 1944 he still hadn’t joined up. Nor was the boss bothered by the bombs, although they were gradually destroying the whole town. The boss had a villa out in the country, among trees, it even had an air-raid shelter, and sometimes he got a kick out of inviting a few heroes, the ones who were the best company, to a private drinking party, and he would load them into his car and entertain them in his villa outside the town.

  Throughout fifteen hundred war-nights Berchem had kept a careful eye on what went on, and he had often had to listen too, although he found that boring. He didn’t know how many assaults and encirclements he was familiar with from hearsay. For a time he had considered writing it all down, but there were too many assaults, too many encirclements, and there were too many heroes who wore no decorations and felt obliged to tell you that actually they deserved them because—he had listened to so many of these “because” stories, and he was fed up with the war. But some told the truth when they were drunk, and he also heard the truth from many heroes and barmaids from France and Poland, Hungary and Rumania. He had always got along well with barmaids. Most of them could handle their liquor, and he had a soft spot for women you could have a drink with.

  But now he was lying in a barn in a place called Auelberg, with a pair of field glasses, an exercise book and a few pencils, and a wristwatch, and it was his job to write down everything he observed in a place called Weidesheim a hundred and fifty yards away on the other side of the little river. There was not much to see in Weidesheim: half the front of the place consisted of the wall of the jam factory, and the jam factory had closed down. Sometimes people crossed the street, once in a while; they would go off in the direction of Heidesheim and were soon out of sight in the narrow lanes. People climbed up to their vineyards and their orchards, and he could see them working up there, beyond Weidesheim, but he did not have to write anything down in his exercise book that happened beyond Weidesheim. The cannon for which he was acting as observer here got only seven shells a day, and these shells had to be fired somehow or other, otherwise the cannon wouldn’t get any at all, and the seven shells weren’t enough for a duel with the Americans who were occupying Heidesheim—it was useless, in fact forbidden, to fire at the Americans, because they returned every shot with a hundred of their own, they were very touchy. So no purpose was achieved by Berchem entering in his little book: “10:30 American vehicle from Heidesheim stopped at house next to entrance to jam factory. Car parked in front of jam factory. Returned 11:15.” This car came every day and parked for nearly an hour a hundred and fifty yards away from him, but it was useless for him to enter it in his book: this car was never fired at. Every day an American soldier would get out of the car, remain in the house almost always for an hour, and then drive off again.

  Berchem’s first gunnery officer had been a lieutenant called Gracht, and he was said to be a clergyman. Berchem had not had much to do with clergymen, but he found this one very nice. Gracht had always directed his seven shells into the mouth of the river, which was to the left of Heidesheim, a sandy, swampy little delta known to the local inhabitants as the Kerpel, where only reeds grew. His shells certainly wouldn’t harm anyone there, and Berchem had thereupon begun to enter in his little book, several times a day: “Noticeable activity at river mouth.” The lieutenant had made no comment and continued to direct his seven shells into the swamp. But two days ago the command up there had changed; now it was a sergeant major called Schniewind, who took his seven shells very seriously. Schniewind also did not fire at the American car that was always parked outside the jam factory, what he had his eye on was the white flags: obviously the inhabitants of Weidesheim were still counting daily on the Americans occupying their village, but the Americans did not occupy the village. Its position was very unfavorable, in a loop, very exposed, whereas Heidesheim was hardly exposed at all, and the Americans were clearly not planning to advance. At other points they had already marched a hundred and twenty miles into Germany, they had almost reached the center of the country, but here in Heidesheim they had been stationary for the last three weeks, and for every shell that struck Heidesheim they had returned more than a hundred, but nobody was firing at Heidesheim now. The seven shells were intended for Weidesheim and its environs, and Sergeant Major Schniewind had decided to punish the people of Weidesheim for their lack of patriotic feeling. A white flag was something he could not stomach.

  Nevertheless, that day Berchem entered in his little book as usual: “9:00 a.m. noticeable activity at river mouth.” And he made the same entry at 10:15—and again at 11:45 he wrote: “American vehicle from H. to W. jam factory.” At noon he left his post for a few minutes to go and pick up his lunch. As he was about to climb down the ladder, Schniewind called to him from below, “Hold on up there for a moment.” Berchem crawled back to the barn window and picked up the field glasses. Schniewind took the glasses from him, threw himself on his stomach in the prescribed combat-ready position, and squinted through the lenses. Berchem looked sidelong at him: Schniewind was one of those people who can’t take alcohol but persuade themselves and manage to convince others that they can take a great deal. There was something not quite genuine about the keenness with which he lay there on his stomach staring at the desolate, lifeless village of Weidesheim, and Berchem noticed that the star on his shoulder patch was still quite new, like the piece of braid encircling his shoulder patch with a perfect horseshoe. Schniewind passed the field glasses back to Berchem, saying, “The bastards, those goddamn bastards with their white flags—give me your book.” Berchem handed it to him. Schniewind leafed through it. “What a load of crap,” he said. “I can’t think what you fellows imagine is going on in that swampy river mouth of yours, there’s nothing but frogs there. Give me those.” He snatched the field glasses from Berchem and trained them on the river mouth. Berchem noticed a slight trace of saliva around Schniewind’s mouth and a very fine thread of saliva hanging down. “Nothing,” muttered Schniewind, “not a single solitary thing in that river mouth—nothing’s moving—what crap.” He ripped a page from the exercise book, took a pencil stub from his pocket, and, still looking out the window, wrote something on the paper. “Bastards,” he muttered, “those bastards.” Whereupon he turned away, without saluting, and climbed down the ladder. Berchem followed him one minute later to go pick up his lunch.

  From up here, looking down from the vineyard, there was a good view over the whole area, and Feinhals realized why Weidesheim had not been occupied by either Germans or Americans: it wasn’t worth it. Fifteen houses, and a jam factory that had closed down. The railroad station was at Heidesheim, and across the river, Auelberg station was occupied by Germans: Weidesheim lay in a dead loop. Between Weidesheim and the hills, in a hollow, lay Heidesheim, and he could see solid rows of parked tanks on every open space of any size: in the schoolyard, alongside the church, in the market square, and on the big
parking lot by the Hotel zum Stern—wherever you looked, tanks and vehicles that were not even camouflaged. In the valley the trees were already in blossom, slopes and meadows were covered with blossoming treetops, white, pink, and blue-white, and the air was mild: it was spring. From up here he could see the Finck premises lying like a fissure, the two square courtyards between the narrow streets; he could even make out the four sentries, and in the yard of the coffin shop he saw a man working at a big creamy-yellow box, slightly slanting, that was evidently to be a coffin—the freshly planed wood stood out clearly, shining pinkish-yellow, and the carpenter’s wife was sitting on a bench in the sun, near her husband, cleaning vegetables.

  The streets were busy with women shoppers and soldiers, and just then a crowd of schoolchildren came out of the school building at the end of the village. But in Weidesheim the silence was complete. The houses looked as if they were hiding among the great treetops, but he knew every house in the place, and saw at first glance that the Berg and Hoppenrath houses were damaged but that his father’s was undamaged; there it stood, broad and yellow beside the main road with its comfortable façade, and the white flag hanging from his parents’ bedroom on the second floor was extra large, larger than the white flags he could see hanging from the windows of other houses. The linden trees were already green. But not a soul was in sight, and the white flags hung stiff and dead in the windless air. The big courtyard of the jam factory was empty too, rusty pails lay around untidily in heaps, the sheds had been locked. Suddenly he saw an American car approaching from Heidesheim station and driving quite fast through meadows and orchards toward Weidesheim. Now and again the car would vanish beneath the white treetops, then reappear, finally emerging onto the main street of Weidesheim and pulling up at the entrance to the jam factory.

  “For God’s sake,” Feinhals said quietly to Finck, pointing to the car. “What’s that?”