The Collected Stories of Heinrich Böll Page 56

  “Don’t shoot at anything living,” she said. “Shoot at tennis balls or at—at jam jars.”

  “What made you think of jam jars?”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “I could imagine it might be fun to shoot at jam jars. It’s bound to make a noise, and splash all over the place—wait a minute,” she said hurriedly as he turned away and started to climb down; he turned back and looked at her gravely. “And, you know,” she said softly, “you could stand at the railroad crossing, by the water tower, and fire into the air when my train goes by. I’ll be looking out of the window and waving.”

  “Good,” he said. “I’ll do that, when does your train go?”

  “Ten past seven,” she said, “at seven-thirteen it passes the crossing.”

  “Then I’d better get going,” he said. “Goodbye. You’ll be back?”

  “I’ll be back,” she said, “for sure.” And she bit her lip and repeated under her breath, “I’ll be back.”

  She watched him as he clung to the weathervane, till his feet had reached the trellis. He ran across the lawn, onto the terrace, climbed into the house; she saw him cross the brass strip again, pick up the carton of tennis balls, turn back; she heard the gravel crunching under his feet as, with the carton under his arm, he ran past the garage and out onto the street.

  I hope he doesn’t forget to turn round and wave, she thought. There he was, waving, at the corner of the garage, he pulled the pistol out of his pocket, pressed the barrel against the carton, and waved once more before he ran round the corner and disappeared.

  Up she went with the binoculars again, punching out circles of blue, medallions of sky; Rhenania and Germania, riverbank with regatta pennants, round horizon of river green with shreds of banner red.

  My hair would crackle, she thought, it crackled even when he touched it. And in Vienna there’s wine too.

  Vineyard: pale-green, sour grapes, leaves which those fat slobs tied around their bald heads to make them look like Bacchus.

  She looked for the streets, the ones she could see into with the binoculars. The streets were all deserted, all she could see was the parked cars; the ice-cream cart was still there, she could not find the boy. I’ll be—she thought with a smile, while she swept the binoculars toward the river again—I’ll be your Jerusalem after all.

  She did not turn round as her mother opened the front door and entered the hall. A quarter to seven already, she thought. I hope he makes it to the crossing by thirteen minutes after. She heard the suitcase being snapped shut and the tiny key being turned in the lock, heard the firm footsteps, and she winced as the coat fell over her shoulders: her mother’s hands remained lying on her shoulders.

  “Have you got the money?”

  “Yes.”

  “Your ticket?”

  “Yes.”

  “The sandwiches?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did you pack your suitcase properly?”

  “Yes.”

  “You haven’t forgotten anything?”

  “No.”

  “The address in Vienna?”

  “Yes.”

  “The phone number?”

  “Yes.”

  The brief pause was dark, frightening, her mother’s hands slid down her shoulders, over her forearms. “I felt it was better not to be here during your last hours. It’s easier that way, I know it is. I’ve said goodbye so many times—and I did right to lock you in, you know.”

  “You did right, I know.”

  “Then come along now …” She turned round. It was terrible to see her mother crying, it was almost as if a monument were crying: her mother was still beautiful, but it was a dark beauty, haggard. Her past hung over her like a black halo. Strange words echoed in the legend of Mother’s life: Moscow—Communism—a Red nun, a Russian called Mirzov; her faith lost, escape, and the dogmas of the lost faith continuing to twist and turn in her brain. It was like a loom whose spools go on turning although there is no more yarn: gorgeous patterns woven into a void, only the sound remained, the mechanism. All she needed was an opposite pole: Dulges, the city fathers, the priest, the schoolteachers, the nuns; and if you shut your eyes you could imagine prayer wheels, the prayer wheels of the unbelieving, the restless wind-driven rattle known as discussion. Occasionally, very rarely, her mother had looked the way she looked now: when she had been drinking wine, and people would say: Ah yes, in spite of everything, she’s still a true daughter of Zischbrunn.

  It was a good thing her mother was smoking; trickling down toward the cigarette, wreathed in smoke, her tears looked less serious, more like pretended tears, but tears were the last thing her mother would pretend.

  “I’ll pay them back for this,” she said. “I hate to see you go. To have to give in to them.”

  “Why don’t you come too?”

  “No, no—you’ll be back, a year or two and you’ll be back. Never do what they think you’ve been doing. Never, and now come along.”

  She slipped her arms into the sleeves of her coat, buttoned it up, felt for her ticket, for her purse, ran into her bedroom, but her mother shook her head as she went to pick up her suitcase. “Never mind that,” she said, “and hurry—there’s not much time.”

  Heat hung in the staircase, wine fumes rose from the cellar, where the pharmacist had been bottling wine: an acrid smell that seemed to go with the hazy magenta of the wallpaper. The narrow lanes: the dark windows, doorways, from which things had been called out after her, things she did not understand. Hurry. The noise from the riverbank was louder now, car engines were being started up: the regatta was over. Hurry.

  The ticket collector called her mother by her first name, “Okay, Kate, never mind about a platform ticket.” A drunk staggered along the dark underpass, bawling out a tune, and hurled a full bottle of wine against the damp black wall; there was a crash of breaking glass, and once again the smell of wine rose to her nostrils. The train was already in, her mother pushed the suitcase into the corridor. “Never do what they think you’ve been doing, never.”

  How sensible to make the goodbyes so short; there was only one minute left, it was long, longer than the whole afternoon. “I expect you’d have liked to take the binoculars along. Shall I send them on to you?”

  “Yes, would you, please? Oh, Mother.”

  “What is it?”

  “I hardly know him.”

  “Oh, he’s nice, and he’s looking forward to having you—and he never believed in the gods I believed in.”

  “And he doesn’t drink wine?”

  “He doesn’t care for it—and he’s got money, he’s in business.”

  “What kind of business?”

  “I don’t know exactly: clothing, or something. You’ll like him.”

  No kiss. Monuments must not be kissed, even when they weep. Without a backward glance her mother disappeared into the underpass: a pillar of salt, a monument to unhappiness, preserved in the bitter brine of her mistakes. That evening she would start up the prayer wheel, give a monologue while Dulges sat in the kitchen: “Aren’t tears actually a remnant of bourgeois sentiment? Can there be tears in the classless society?”

  Past the school, the swimming pool, under the little bridge, the long, long wall of the vineyards, the woods—and at the railroad crossing by the water tower she saw the two boys, heard the bang, saw the black pistol in Paul’s hand, and shouted, “Jerusalem, Jerusalem!” and she shouted it again although she could no longer see the boys. She wiped away her tears with her sleeve, picked up her suitcase, and stumbled along the corridor. I won’t take off my coat yet, she thought, not just yet.

  III

  “What was it she called out?” asked Griff.

  “Couldn’t you hear?”

  “No, could you? What was it?”

  “Jerusalem,” said Paul quietly. “Jerusalem. She shouted it again when the train had already gone by. Let’s go.” He looked disappointedly at the pistol, which he held in his lowered hand, his thumb on the safety cat
ch. He had thought it would make more of a bang, that it would smoke; he had counted on it smoking. With a smoking pistol in his hand, that’s how he had wanted to stand beside the train; but the pistol did not smoke, it was not even hot, he moved his forefinger carefully along the barrel, withdrew it. “Let’s go,” he said. Jerusalem, he thought, I could hear it quite plainly, but I don’t know what it means.

  They left the path that ran parallel to the railway tracks, Griff hugging under his arm the jar of jam he had brought from home, Paul carrying the pistol in his lowered hand; in the greenish light they turned to face each other.

  “Are you really going to do it?”

  “No,” said Paul, “no, we must …” He blushed, turned his face away. “Did you put the balls on the tree trunk?”

  “Yes,” said Griff, “they kept rolling off, but then I found a groove in the bark.”

  “How far apart?”

  “Four or five inches, like you said—listen,” he said, lowering his voice and coming to a halt, “I can’t go home, I can’t. To that room. You do see, don’t you, that I can’t go back to that room.” He moved the jam jar to his other hand, and held Paul, who wanted to go on, by the sleeve. “I just can’t.”

  “No,” said Paul, “I wouldn’t go back to that room either.”

  “My mother would force me to clean it up. I can’t, I tell you—wipe up the floor, clean the walls, the books, and everything. She would be standing there watching.”

  “No, you can’t do that. Let’s go!”

  “What shall I do?”

  “We’ll see. Let’s shoot first—come along …” They walked on, from time to time turning their green faces toward one another, Griff nervously, Paul smiling.

  “You’ve got to shoot me,” said Griff, “you’ve got to, I tell you.”

  “You’re crazy,” said Paul; he bit his lip, raised the pistol, aimed at Griff, and Griff ducked, whimpered softly, and Paul said, “You see, you’d scream, and I haven’t even moved the safety catch.”

  He shaded his eyes with his left hand when they reached the clearing, blinked across to the tennis balls which were lying in a row on a fallen tree: three were still spotless, white and fluffy, like the fleece of the Lamb, the others were muddy from falling on the damp ground.

  “Go over there,” said Paul, “put the jar between the third and fourth ball.” Griff walked unsteadily across the clearing, placed the jar behind the balls so that it stood at an angle and threatened to topple over.

  “There’s not enough room. I can’t put it in between.”

  “Out of my way,” said Paul, “I’m going to shoot. Stand over here by me.”

  He waited until Griff was standing beside him in the shade, raised the pistol, took aim, pressed the trigger, and, frightened by the echo of the first bullet, he banged away till the magazine was empty—the echo of the last two shots came back clearly out of the forest long after he had stopped firing. The tennis balls were still there, not even the jam jar had been hit. It was quite silent, there was just a slight smell of powder—the boy was still standing there, the raised pistol in his hand, he stood there as if he would stay there forever. He was pale. The chill of disappointment flowed into his veins, and his ears rang with the clear echo that was no longer there: clear, staccato barking reverberated in his memory. He closed his eyes, opened them again: the tennis balls were still there, and not even the jam jar had been hit.

  He pulled back his arm as if from a great distance, stroked his fingers along the barrel: at least it was a little hot. Paul ripped out the empty clip with his thumbnail, slid a new one in, and pushed the safety catch back.

  “Here,” he said quietly, “it’s your turn.”

  He handed the pistol to Griff, showed him how to release the safety catch, stepped back, and thought, while he stood in the shade trying to swallow his disappointment: I hope you don’t miss, at least; I hope you don’t miss. Griff threw up his arm with the pistol, then lowered it slowly toward the target—he’s read about that, thought Paul, read that somewhere, it looks as though he had read it—and Griff fired stutteringly. Once—then silence; there were the balls, and the jar was still standing there; then three times—and three times the echo yapped back at the two boys. The dark tree trunk lay there as peaceful as some strange still life, with its six tennis balls and the jar of plum jam.

  Only an echo; there was a faint smell of powder, and, shaking his head, Griff handed the pistol back to Paul.

  “I’ve got an extra shot coming to me,” said Paul, “the one I fired in the air—that leaves two for each of us, and one left over.”

  This time he aimed carefully, but he knew he would miss, and he did miss: the echo of his shot came back to him thin and forlorn, the echo penetrated him like a red dot, circled around inside him, flew out of him again, and he was calm as he handed Griff the pistol.

  Griff shook his head. “The targets are too small, we must pick bigger ones. How about the station clock or the Rapier Beer sign?”

  “Where d’you mean?”

  “At the corner, across from the station, where Drönsch lives.”

  “Or a windowpane, or the samovar we have at home. We’ve got to hit something. Is it really true that you fired eight times with your pistol and got seven hits? A tin can at thirty yards?”

  “No,” said Griff, “I didn’t shoot at all, I’ve never shot before.” He went over to the tree trunk, kicked the balls, and the jam jar, with his right foot; the balls rolled into the grass, the jar slipped off and fell over onto the soft ground in the shade of the tree trunk where no grass grew. Griff snatched up the jar and was about to throw it against the tree, but Paul held back his arm, took the jar from him, and put it on the ground. “Please, don’t,” he said, “don’t—I can’t bear to see it. Leave it where it is, let grass grow over it, lots of grass …”

  And he pictured the grass growing till the jar was completely covered; animals would sniff at it, mushrooms would grow in a dense colony, and years later he would go for a walk in the forest and find it: the pistol covered with rust, the jam decayed into a moldy, spongy scum. He took the jar, set it in a hollow at the edge of the clearing, and kicked some loose earth over it. “Leave it,” he said softly. “Leave the balls too—we haven’t hit a thing.”

  “Lies,” said Griff, “all lies.”

  “Yes, all lies,” said Paul, but while he was fastening the safety catch and putting the pistol in his pocket he said under his breath, “Jerusalem, Jerusalem.”

  “How did you know she was leaving?”

  “I met her mother on my way over to you.”

  “But she’ll be back, won’t she?”

  “No, she won’t be back.”

  Griff returned to the clearing and kicked the balls; two of them rolled white and silent into the shady forest. “Come over here,” he said. “Look at this—we aimed much too high.”

  Paul walked slowly across, saw the ragged blackberry bush, bullet holes in a fir tree, fresh resin, a snapped branch.

  “Come on,” he said. “Let’s shoot at the Rapier Beer sign, it’s as big as a cartwheel.”

  “I’m not going back into town,” said Griff, “never again. I’m going to Lübeck. I’ve got the ticket right here. I’m not coming back.”

  They walked slowly back the way they had come, past the railroad crossing, past the long vineyard wall, past the school. The parked cars had long since left, the sound of music drifted up from the town. They climbed up onto the two pillars of the churchyard gates, sat ten feet apart at the same level, and smoked.

  “Prize-giving ceremony,” said Griff. “A ball. Vine leaves round their foreheads. Down there you can see the Rapier Beer sign on the wall of Drönsch’s house.”

  “I’ll hit it,” said Paul. “Aren’t you coming?”

  “No, I’ll stay here. I’m going to sit here and wait till you’ve shot it down. Then I’ll walk slowly over to Dreschenbrunn, get on the train there, and go to Lübeck. I’ll go for a swim, a long swim in
the salt water, and I hope it’ll be stormy, with high waves and lots of salt water.”

  They smoked silently, looked at each other now and then, smiled, listened to the sounds coming up from the town, which were getting louder and louder.

  “Did the hoofs really thunder?” asked Griff.

  “No,” said Paul, “they didn’t. It was only one horse, and his hoofs just clattered—how about the salmon?”

  “I’ve never seen one.” They exchanged smiles and were silent for a while.

  “Now my dad’s standing in front of the cupboard,” Paul said then, “with his shirt sleeves rolled up, my mother’s spreading the tablecloth; now he’s unlocking the drawer; perhaps he can see the scratch I made when the screwdriver slipped; but he doesn’t see it, it’s dark now over there in the corner; he’s opening the drawer, he stops in surprise, for the checkbooks and ledger sheets aren’t lying the way he left them—he’s got the wind up, he’s calling out to my mother, he’s throwing all the stuff on the floor, rummaging around in the drawer—now, right now—at this very moment.” He looked at the church clock, whose big hand was just slipping onto the ten while the small one stood motionless below the eight. “At one time,” said Paul, “he was champion pistol-cleaner in his division; in three minutes he could take a pistol apart, clean it, and put it together again—and at home I always had to stand beside him and check the time with a stop watch: it never took him more than three minutes.”

  He threw his cigarette butt onto the path, stared at the church clock. “At exactly ten to eight he was always through with the job, then he would wash his hands and still be at the club on the stroke of eight.” Paul jumped down from the pillar, held his hand up to Griff, and said, “When’ll I see you again?”

  “Not for a long time,” said Griff, “but one day I’ll be back. I’ll go to work for my uncle, canning fish, slitting them open. The girls are always laughing, and in the evening they go to the movies, maybe—they don’t giggle, that’s for sure. They’ve got such white arms and look so cute. They used to stuff chocolate in my mouth when I was little, but now I’m not so little anymore. I can’t—” he said quietly. “You do see, don’t you, that I can’t go back to that room. She would stand beside me till it was all cleaned up. Have you got any money?”