The Collected Stories of Heinrich Boll (104 page)

Stobski realized that they were now in the very heart of that artificial thunderstorm, in fact had actually left some of it behind, for ahead
as well as behind them there were reddish flashes. When the order came to fan out, he left the path and ran off to the right, keeping close to Corporal Habke. He could hear shouting, banging, shooting, and now the voices of the officers and sergeants were hoarse again. Stobski’s feet still hurt, hurt him very much, and leaving Habke to his own devices he sat down in a wet meadow that smelled of cow dung and thought something that in Polish might have been an approximation of the French word
merde
. He removed his steel helmet, put down his rifle beside him in the grass, unhooked his pack, thought about his beloved oily wheels, and, surrounded by the din of battle, fell asleep. He dreamed of his Polish mother making pancakes in the little warm kitchen, and in his dream it struck him as odd that as soon as the pancakes seemed to be almost ready they exploded in the pan with a bang, and nothing was left of them. His little mother kept ladling dough into the pan, faster and faster; little pancakes would form, bursting an instant before they were ready, and in a sudden rage his little mother—in his dream Stobski had to smile, for his little mother had never really been in a rage—had poured the entire remaining contents of the mixing bowl into the frying pan. Now a great fat yellow pancake lay there, as big as the frying pan, thickened, turned crisp, swelled; Stobski’s little mother was already beaming with satisfaction as she picked up the spatula, slid it under the pancake, and—boom!—there was an especially horrible bang, and Stobski had no time to be wakened by it, for he was dead.

A week later, a quarter of a mile from the spot where Stobski had been killed by a direct hit, soldiers from his company found his haversack, together with a piece of his shredded belt, in an English trench: all that was ever found of him on this earth. And when Stobski’s haversack containing a piece of homemade hard sausage, his iron rations, and a Polish prayer book were found in this English trench, it was assumed that on the day of the assault Stobski had run with incredible heroism deep into the English lines and been killed there. And so the little Polish mother in Niestronno received a letter from Captain Hummel, informing her of the great heroism of Private Stobski. The little mother had the letter translated by her priest, wept, folded up the letter, laid it between the sheets in her closet, and ordered three Masses for the dead.

But quite suddenly the English reconquered this section of the trench, and Stobski’s haversack fell into the hands of the English soldier
Wilkins Grayhead, who ate up the sausage, looked at the Polish prayer book, and with a shake of his head threw it into the Flanders mud. Then he rolled up the haversack and stowed it away in his own pack. Two days later Grayhead lost his left leg; he was transported to London, discharged nine months later from the British army, granted a small pension, and, being no longer able to pursue the honorable occupation of tram driver, found employment as a commissionaire at a London bank.

Now, the wages of a commissionaire are not munificent, and Wilkins Grayhead had brought back two vices from the war: he drank and he smoked, and, since his income was inadequate, he began to sell articles he found superfluous, and he found almost everything superfluous. He sold his furniture, drank up the proceeds, sold his clothes except for a single shabby suit, and, when he had nothing left to sell, bethought himself of the dirty bundle he had put away in the cellar after his discharge. So now he sold the rusting army pistol he had neglected to turn in, a tarpaulin, a pair of shoes, and Stobski’s haversack. (As for Wilkins Grayhead, to put it very briefly: he went to the dogs. A hopeless alcoholic, he forfeited respect and job, turned to crime, and, in spite of his lost leg that was reposing in Flanders soil, landed in prison where, corrupt to the marrow, he dragged out the rest of his life as a stool pigeon.)

Stobski’s haversack, however, remained in the gloomy vaults of a Soho junk dealer for exactly ten years—until 1926. In the summer of that year, the junk dealer, Luigi Banollo by name, read with close attention a letter from a certain firm called Handsuppers Ltd. which displayed such obvious interest in war surplus of all kinds that Banollo rubbed his hands. Together with his son he searched through his entire inventory and brought to light: 27 army pistols, 58 mess kits, more than 100 tarpaulins, 35 knapsacks, 18 haversacks, and 28 pairs of shoes—all from a wide variety of European armies. For this entire consignment Banollo received a check for 810 pounds sterling drawn on one of the soundest banks in London. Banollo had made a profit of roughly five hundred percent while Banollo junior saw the disappearance of the shoes with a relief that almost defies description, for it had been his responsibility to knead, grease, in short look after those shoes, a responsibility the extent of which is obvious to anyone who has ever had to look after even a single pair of shoes.

Handsuppers Ltd. then proceeded to sell, at a profit of eight hundred and fifty percent (their normal margin), all the items they had bought from Banollo to a South American state that three weeks previously had suddenly realized that it was being threatened by a neighboring state and was now determined to forestall this threat. Private Stobski’s haversack, having survived the crossing to South America in the hold of a tramp steamer (the firm of Handsuppers made use of tramp steamers only), fell into the hands of a German by the name of Reinhold von Adams, who had espoused the cause of that South American state for a bounty of forty-five pesetas. Von Adams had spent only twelve of the forty-five pesetas on drink when he was requested to live up to his commitment and, under the command of General Lalango, advance to the border of the neighboring state with the cry of “Victory and loot!” on his lips. But Adams received a bullet smack in the center of his head, and Stobski’s haversack passed into the possession of a German called Wilhelm Habke, who, for a bounty of only thirty-five pesetas, had espoused the cause of the other South American state. Habke appropriated the haversack and the remaining thirty-three pesetas and found in addition a piece of bread and half an onion, which had already transferred its odor to the peseta bills. But Habke’s ethical and aesthetic scruples were minimal; he added his own bounty and obtained an advance of thirty pesetas after being promoted to corporal in the victorious national army. On opening the flap of the haversack and discovering it to be stamped in black ink with the number “VII/2/II”, he remembered his uncle Joachim Habke, who had served in that regiment and been killed. Wilhelm Habke was overcome by violent homesickness. He retired from the army, was presented with a photograph of General Gublanez, and eventually arrived in Berlin. When he took the streetcar from the Zoo station to Spandau, he rode—unwittingly—past the army ordnance department where Stobski’s haversack had lain for a week in 1914 before being sent to Bromberg.

Habke was joyously welcomed by his parents and resumed his real occupation, that of a dispatcher; but it soon became apparent that he tended toward political errors. In 1929 he joined the party, with its ugly, dung-colored uniforms, and took down the haversack that he had hung beside the picture of General Gublanez on the wall over his bed to turn it to account for practical purposes: he wore it with his
dung-colored uniform when he went off to Sunday training periods on the heath. During these exercises Habke shone with his military knowledge: he boasted quite a bit, promoted himself to battalion commander in that South American war, and explained in detail where, how, and why he had deployed his heavy weapons at the time. He had totally forgotten that all he had done was shoot poor von Adams in the head, rob him of his pesetas, and appropriate his haversack. In 1929 Habke married, and in 1930 his wife bore him a son, who was given the name Walter. Walter throve, although his first two years in life were spent under the sign of the dole; but by the time he was four years old he was already being given cookies, canned milk, and oranges every morning, and when he was seven, his father presented him with the faded haversack, saying, “Treat this object with respect. It used to belong to your great-uncle Joachim Habke, who rose from the ranks to be a captain, survived eighteen battles, and was executed by Red mutineers in 1918. I myself wore it in the South American war, in which I was only a lieutenant colonel although I could have become a general if the Fatherland hadn’t had need of me.”

Walter venerated the haversack. He wore it with his own dung-colored uniform from 1936 to 1944, frequently recalled his heroic great-uncle and his heroic father, and, when he had to spend the night in a barn, placed the haversack carefully under his head. In it he kept bread, soft cheese, butter, and his army song book; he brushed it, washed it, and was happy to see the faded tan gradually turn to soft white. He had no idea that the legendary heroic great-uncle had died as a corporal on muddy Flanders soil, not far from the place where a direct hit had killed Private Stobski.

Walter Habke turned fifteen, laboriously studied English, math, and Latin at Spandau High School, venerated the haversack, and believed in heroes until he was forced to be one himself. His father had departed some time before for Poland, to create some kind of order somewhere, and shortly after his father had returned, fuming, from Poland, smoking cigarettes and muttering “Betrayal” as he paced up and down the cramped Spandau living room—shortly after that, Walter Habke was forced to be a hero.

One night in March 1945 he lay behind a machine gun on the outskirts of a Pomeranian village, listening to the dark, thunderous
rumbling that sounded exactly as it had in the movies; he pressed the trigger of the machine gun, shot holes into the dark night, and felt an urge to weep. He heard voices in the night, unfamiliar voices, went on shooting, inserted a new belt, fired, and after emptying the second belt it struck him that everything was very quiet: he was alone. He stood up, adjusted his uniform belt, made sure he had his haversack, and walked slowly off into the night toward the west. He had started to do something that is very injurious to heroism: he had started to think—he thought of the cramped but cozy living room, without knowing that he was thinking of something that no longer existed. By this time young Banollo, who had at one time held Walter’s haversack in his hand, was forty, had circled in a bomber over Spandau, opened the bomb hatch, and destroyed the cramped but cozy living room, and now Walter’s father was pacing up and down in the cellar of the next-door house, smoking cigarettes, muttering “Betrayal,” and feeling uncomfortable at the thought of the order he had created in Poland.

That night, Walter walked on pensively toward the west, finally found an abandoned barn, sat down, pulled the haversack around onto his stomach, opened it up, and ate some army bread, margarine, and a few candies. That was how the Russian soldiers found him: asleep, with tearstained face, a fifteen-year-old boy, empty cartridge belts around his neck, his breath smelling sourly of candy. They shoved him into a column, and Walter Habke marched eastward. Never again was he to see Spandau.

Meanwhile, Niestronno had been German, become Polish, become German again, then Polish again, and Stobski’s mother was seventy-five years old. The letter from Captain Hummel still lay in the closet that had long since ceased to contain any linen: Frau Stobski used it to store potatoes; behind the potatoes were a big ham and a china bowl full of eggs, and right at the back, in the darkness, a can of oil. Wood was stacked under the bed, and on the wall an oil lamp spread a reddish glow over the picture of the Madonna of Czestochowa. Back in the stable lolled a thin pig, there was no longer a cow, and the house was filled with the racket of the seven children of the Wolniaks, who had been bombed out of their home in Warsaw. And outside on the road they came trudging by: exhausted, footsore soldiers with pinched faces. They passed by almost every day. At first Wolniak had stood at the roadside, cursing, from time to time picking up a rock, even throwing
it; but now he stayed back in his room, where Joseph Stobski had once repaired watches, engraved bracelets, and fiddled around in the evening with his little oily wheels.

In 1939 Polish prisoners of war had trudged past them toward the east, other Polish prisoners toward the west; later, Russian prisoners had trudged past them toward the west, and now for a long time German prisoners had been trudging past them toward the east, and although the nights were still cold and dark, and deep was the sleep of the people of Niestronno, they still woke up at night at the sound of the soft tramping on the roads.

Frau Stobski was one of the first to get up in the morning at Niestronno. She put a coat over her pale-green nightgown, lit the fire in the stove, poured oil into the little lamp in front of the Madonna’s picture, carried the ashes to the manure pile, fed the thin pig, then went back into her room to change for Mass. And one morning in April 1945 she found lying outside her front door a very young, fair-haired man with a faded haversack clutched firmly in both hands. Frau Stobski did not scream. She put down the black string bag in which she kept a Polish prayer book, a handkerchief, and a few fragments of thyme—she put down the bag on the window sill, bent down to the young man, and saw immediately that he was dead. Even now she did not scream. It was still dark, with just a faint yellow flicker behind the church windows, and Frau Stobski carefully removed the haversack from the dead man’s hands, the haversack that at one time had contained her son’s prayer book and a piece of hard sausage from one of her pigs. She dragged the boy inside onto the tiled floor, went into her room, taking along—as if absent-mindedly—the haversack, threw the haversack on the table, and searched through the bundle of dirty, almost worthless zloty bills. Then she set out for the village to rouse the gravedigger.

Later, after the boy had been buried, she found the haversack on her table, picked it up, hesitated—then went to look for a hammer and two nails, banged the nails into the wall, hung up the haversack, and decided to store her onions in it.