The Collected Stories of Heinrich Boll (101 page)

With an angry gesture Franz closed the newspaper and got up, and at that moment an idea came to him of such ingenuity that it may be regarded as the turning point towards the optimistic part of our story. He neatly folded the newspaper, suddenly raised his hitherto shy voice, and called out quite loudly: “
World Echo!
World’s Last Echo!”

He was surprised at his own courage and went on shouting, amazed that people took so little notice of him; even more amazed when someone asked him: “How much for the paper?”

Franz replied: “Fifty pfennigs,” looked into a disappointed face, and now had enough presence of mind to say: “The latest edition—make it thirty, if you like. Forty pages, an excellent paper …”

He accepted the tiny ten-pfennig notes and, puffed up with pride, left the park convinced that everything would turn out all right. After briskly crossing a few streets he hopped onto a moving tram and remained surprisingly cool-headed when the conductor came round asking: “Any more fares, please?”

After two stops he got out and walked to the station. Here he bought a cigarette for ten pfennigs, threw ten pfennigs into a beggar’s hat, and with his last ten pfennigs bought a platform ticket. Smoking cheerfully, he passed through the barrier and fastened his attention on the Arrivals board. On discovering that a train from Frankfurt was due in one minute, he hurried to that platform. A voice over the loudspeaker said, “Stand back!”, and already the train was approaching. And when the train had come to a stop he suddenly had a new idea. Allowing his cigarette to dangle casually from one corner of his mouth, he ran alongside the train shouting: “Hella! Hella dearest! Hella darling!” although he knew nobody of that name. He shouted imploringly, desperately, like a hopeless lover, and eventually, having run all the way from the engine
to the tail end of the train, he abandoned his shouting and running with an air of deep resignation. He assured himself of a good exit by wending his way, heavy-hearted and defeated, among the parting couples and grumpy porters. He walked back down the stairs and finally spat out the cigarette butt that had been threatening his lower lip.

Like all shy people who suddenly discover their own courage, he had the feeling that the world was his oyster. From the Arrivals board he took in at a glance that the next train wasn’t due for twenty minutes, coming from Dortmund. He decided to go into the station buffet.

Franz wrote me all this in great detail. These days he has plenty of leisure: somewhere in a foreign country he is living with an adorable wife in his own villa. But I must condense his story; I have been charged with writing a brief, optimistic story, for people no longer trust long-winded optimism, so I cannot describe the minutest nuances of every single emotional reaction, the way Franz did.

Let us hurry on, then. He entered the station buffet, buttonholed a waiter, and said hastily, like someone whose time is of inestimable value: “I’m Dr Windheimer. Has Dr Hella Schneekluth been asking for me?” The waiter looked at him sceptically, shook his head, pushed up his glasses, and, disconcerted by the anything-but-shy eyes of my friend, said: “No, sir, I’m sorry.”

“Terrible,” said Franz, and “Thanks.” He sighed, groaned, sat down at a table, pulled out his notebook, which contained nothing, put it back in his pocket, pulled it out again and began to draw girls’ profiles in it, until he was interrupted by the waiter saying: “Can I get you anything, sir?”

“No, thanks,” Franz calmly replied, “not today. I don’t feel like anything today.”

The waiter looked at him again over the top of his spectacles and went off with his tray of empty beer glasses. At the next table Franz now spied a peasant woman with a little girl who, with admirable persistence, were eating their way through a basketful of thick sandwiches as if driven by a stubborn, proud, indescribably ennobling sense of duty to fulfil some loathsome task. They had not ordered anything to drink—thrifty folk.

At that moment Franz’s hunger announced its presence with such vehemence that he couldn’t help laughing, so loudly that everybody
turned towards him—the woman, the child (both of them with a chunk of white bread in their half-open mouths), the waiter, and all the rest. Franz looked at a page in his notebook as if he had discovered something outlandishly amusing there. Then he got up, approached the waiter again, and said in a loud voice: “If anyone should ask for me—Dr Windheimer—I’ll be back in ten minutes,” and left.

Outside he studied the Arrivals board again and discovered to his horror that he had overlooked an arrival from Ostend printed in red. He raced over to the platform in question, saw the long, luxurious train standing there, was already opening his mouth, about to call out, when he remembered that he must use a foreign name, and he called out—no, he shouted: “Mabel! Mabel dearest! Mabel darling,” and the result was what justifies me in describing this story as optimistic: in the very last carriage, in the very last compartment, at the last window before the pessimistically snorting engine, the head of a sweet-looking, fair-haired girl looked out, and she cried: “Yes!” (in English, of course). Franz stopped in his tracks, looked her in the face, and said: “Yes, you’re the one,” and I must assume that she too, despite his empty pockets, found him to be the right one; for he ended his really disgustingly detailed letter with: “We understand each other perfectly. Mabel is adorable. Do you need any money?”

I replied by telegram with the one word: “Yes.”

The bus always stops at the same spot. The driver has to be very careful, the street is narrow, and the bay where the bus has to stop is cramped. Each time there is a jolt that wakes me up. I look to my left out of the window and always see the same sign:
LADDERS ANY SIZE—THREE MARKS TWENTY PER RUNG
. There is no point in looking at my watch to see the time: it is exactly four minutes to six, and if my watch says six or even later, I know my watch is fast. The bus keeps better time than my watch! I look up and see the sign:
LADDERS ANY SIZE—THREE MARKS TWENTY PER RUNG;
the sign is above the window of a hardware shop, and in the window among the bottling jars, coffee mills, mangles and china a small, three-rung ladder is displayed. At the present time, there are mostly garden chairs in the window, and garden loungers. On one of these a woman reclines, a life-size woman made of papier mâché or wax—I don’t know what kind of stuff they use to make mannequins. The mannequin is wearing sunglasses and reading a novel called
A Holiday from Myself
. I can’t make out the name of the author, my eyes aren’t good enough for that. I look at the mannequin, and the mannequin depresses me, makes me even more depressed than I already am—I ask myself whether such mannequins really have a right to exist. Mannequins made of wax or papier mâché and reading novels called
A Holiday from Myself
. It is all so depressing—to the left of this shop window is a pile of rubble on which mounds of garbage and ashes lie smouldering in the sun. It depresses me to see the mannequin right next to them.

But what interests me most is the ladders. We really should have a ladder. In the cellar we have shelves for our preserves, and the shelves are very high because the cellar is narrow and we have to make the best use of the space. The shelves are poorly made. I nailed them together out of some boards and fastened the whole thing with a piece of thick rope to the gas pipes that run through our cellar. If they were not firmly fastened, I am sure they would collapse under the weight of the jars.

My wife does a lot of bottling. In summer there is a constant smell of freshly boiled cucumbers, cherries, plums and rhubarb. For days on end the smell of hot vinegar permeates our home—it almost makes me ill, but I do see that we need the preserves. The shelves are very high, and on the top shelf are the cherries and peaches we eat on Sundays in winter. On Saturdays my wife always has to climb up there, and she usually stands on an old wooden crate. Last spring my wife fell through a crate like that and had a miscarriage. I wasn’t there, of course, and she lay in the cellar bleeding and calling for help until someone found her and took her to hospital.

On Saturday afternoon I went to the hospital and took my wife some flowers: we just looked at each other, and my wife cried—she cried for a long time. It would have been our third, and we had always talked about how we would manage with three children in two rooms. It is bad enough having to live in two rooms with only two children. I know there are worse things—there are people living six or eight to a room. But it is also hard to manage with two children in two rooms on the same floor as three other parties who have no children. That’s hard. I don’t want to complain—I’m not a Communist, for heaven’s sake, but it’s really hard.

I’m tired when I come home and I’d like to have half an hour’s peace and quiet, only half an hour to eat my supper, but just when I get there they’re not quiet and then I smack them—and later, when they’re in bed, I feel sorry. Then I sometimes stand beside their bed and look at them, and at such moments I am sometimes a Communist … Don’t tell anyone—it’s only for a few moments, you see.

Every evening, when the bus stops, I feel a jolt and look to my left: the suntanned face of the mannequin in the swimsuit is half hidden by the sunglasses, but the title of the book is clearly visible:
A Holiday from Myself
. Maybe one day I’ll get off and look for the name of the author. And above the shop window hangs a sign:
LADDERS ANY SIZE—THREE MARKS TWENTY PER RUNG
. Our ladder would have to have three rungs, that would be nine marks sixty. No matter how much I juggle the figures I can’t come up with nine marks sixty. Now it’s summer anyway, and it’ll be November before my wife begins climbing onto the crate again on Saturdays to bring down a jar of peaches or cherries for Sunday—not till November. So there’s plenty of time.

But my wife is expecting again. Don’t tell any of our relatives, and please don’t tell the people on our floor. There’ll be trouble, and I don’t want any trouble. All I want is half an hour’s peace and quiet a day. The relatives will be angry when they hear that my wife’s expecting—and the people on our floor will be even angrier, and I’ll start smacking the children again—and then I’ll feel sorry again, and at night when they’re asleep I’ll stand beside their bed and for a few moments be a Communist. It’s all so pointless—I’ll try not to think about it again till November. I’ll look at the mannequin reclining on the lounger reading a novel called
A Holiday from Myself
—that mannequin right beside the pile of rubble and the mounds of ashes from which a dirty yellow stream flows into the gutter whenever it rains.

Not long ago my wife met the mother of a young girl who cuts the nails of a cabinet minister’s daughter. The toenails. There is now great excitement in our family. Formerly we had no contacts whatever, but now we have contacts, contacts that are not to be underestimated. My wife takes this girl’s mother flowers and chocolates. The flowers and the chocolates are accepted with thanks although also with some reserve. Since knowing this woman we have been feverishly wondering what position we should propose for me when we reach the point of meeting the girl herself. So far we have never seen her; she is rarely at home, moves of course only in government circles, and has a charming flat in Bonn: two rooms, kitchen, bath, balcony. But nevertheless there is talk that she will soon be available. I am very curious about her and, needless to say, will behave with due humility, though also with determination. It is my belief that in government circles humble determination is appreciated, and it is said that the only people who stand a chance are those who are convinced of their own ability. I am trying to be convinced of my abilities, and I soon will be. Still, wait and see.

To begin with, our credit has improved since it has become known that we have contacts in government circles. The other day I heard a woman in the street say to another: “Here comes Mr B, he has contacts with A.” She said it very quietly but so that I should and could hear it, and as I walked past the ladies they smiled sweetly. I nodded condescendingly. Our grocer, who until now had reluctantly allowed us very limited credit and, with a suspicious expression, watched margarine, grey bread and cigarette tobacco disappear into my wife’s shopping bag, now smiles when we arrive and offers us delicacies the taste of which we had forgotten: butter, cheese and real coffee. He says: “Now wouldn’t you like some of this magnificent Cheddar?” And when my wife hesitates, he says: “Do take some!”, then lowers his eyes and grins discreetly. My wife takes some. But yesterday my wife heard him
whisper to another woman: “The Bs are related to A!” It’s uncanny the way rumours get round. In any event, we eat butter and cheese on our bread—no longer grey bread—and drink real coffee while waiting somewhat tensely for the appearance of the girl who cuts the nails of the cabinet minister’s daughter. The toenails. The girl has not turned up yet, and my wife is growing uneasy, although the girl’s mother, who meanwhile appears to have developed a fondness for my wife, reassures her and says: “Just be patient.” But our patience is wearing thin since we have been making ample use of that tacit credit which has recently been granted us.

The daughter whose toenails our young lady cuts is the minister’s favourite daughter. She is studying history of art and is said to be extremely talented. I can believe it. I can believe anything, yet I tremble because the young pedicurist from Bonn still hasn’t turned up. We look up encyclopedias and all available biological textbooks in order to gather information on the natural growth rate of toenails, and we discover that it is minimal. So this minister’s daughter cannot be the only one. Our young pedicurist probably grasps one toe of Bonn society after another in her adorable hands and removes the burden of dead cells that can pose a threat to nylon stockings and ministerial socks.

I hope her scissors don’t slip. I tremble at the thought that she might hurt the minister’s daughter. Female art historians have terribly sensitive toenails (I once was in love with an art historian and, on throwing myself at her feet, accidentally leaned my elbow on her toes, without dreaming they could be so sensitive; all was over, and since that day I have known how sensitive are the toes of female art historians). The young girl must be careful; the influence of the daughter on the minister and of the pedicurist on the daughter (who is suspected of social ambitions) is said to be extraordinarily great; and the pedicurist’s mother had hinted (everything is hinted) that her daughter has already managed to secure a position for a young man of her acquaintance as clerk in the outer office of a departmental head. “Departmental head” were the magic words for me. The very thing.