The Collected Stories of Heinrich Boll (112 page)

As Müller’s nausea approached the point at which voiding was inevitable, a solemn, reverent silence filled the lecture hall. Professor Schmeck’s voice, deliberately unaccentuated, cultured, slightly husky, had now (seventeen minutes before the end of the lecture) advanced to that gentle chant, soothing yet stimulating, which transports a certain type of female student (the hyperintellectual, the kind that used to be known as a bluestocking) to a pitch of excitement bordering on the sexual; at this moment they would have died for him. As for Schmeck, he used—when speaking confidentially—to describe this stage of his lecture as the point at which “the rational element, driven to its outer limits, to the very furthest edge of its possibilities, begins to seem irrational, and,” he would add, “my friends, when you consider that any decent church service lasts forty-five minutes, like the sex act—well then, my friends, you’ll understand that rhythm and monotony, acceleration and retardation, climax—and relaxation—are an integral part of a church service, the sex act, and—in my opinion, at least—the academic lecture.”

At this point, somewhere about the thirty-third minute of the lecture, all indifference vanished from the hall, leaving only adoration and hostility; the adoring listeners could have exploded any minute into inarticulate rhythmic screams, and this would have incited the hostile listeners (who were in the minority) to screams of provocation. But at the very instant when such unacademic behavior appeared imminent, Schmeck broke off in the middle of a sentence and with a prosaic gesture introduced that sobering note which he needed to bring the lecture to a controlled conclusion: he blew his nose with a brightly colored checkered handkerchief, and the compulsive glance with which he briefly inspected it before replacing it in his pocket had a sobering effect on every last female student whose lips may already have been
showing traces of light foam. “I need adoration,” Schmeck used to say, “but when I get it, I can’t take it.”

A deep sigh went through the lecture hall, hundreds swore never again to attend a Schmeck lecture—and on Tuesday afternoon they would be crowding round the door, they would stand in line for half an hour, they would miss the lecture given by Livorno, Schmeck’s rival, so as to hear Schmeck (who never announced the times of his lectures until Livorno had settled on his; whenever Schmeck was supposed to announce his lecture schedule for the university timetable, he had no compunction about going off to places so remote that he could not be reached even by cable; last semester he had gone on an expedition to the Warrau Indians; for weeks he was hidden in the Orinoco delta, and when his expedition was over, he cabled his lecture schedule from Caracas, and it had been identical with Livorno’s—a fact that led someone in the registrar’s office to remark, “Obviously he has his spies in Venezuela too”).

The deep sigh seemed to Müller to indicate the right moment to do what he ought to have done a quarter of an hour earlier but hadn’t had the nerve to: go out and get rid of the contents of his stomach. When he stood up in the front row, his briefcase tucked under his arm, and made his way through the closely packed rows, he was fleetingly aware of the look of indignation, of surprise, on the faces of the students who grudgingly made room for him: even the Schmeck opponents seemed to find it inconceivable that there could be anybody—and an out-and-out Schmeck supporter at that, of whom it was rumored that he was angling for the post of chief assistant lecturer—who would deprive himself even partially of this perfidious brilliance. When Müller at last reached the exit, he heard with half an ear the remainder of the sentence which Schmeck had broken off to blow his nose—“to the heart of the problem: is the mackintosh an accidental or typical manifestation? Is it sociologically significant?”

Müller reached the toilet just in time, loosened his tie, ripped open his shirt, heard a shirt button tinkle as it rolled away into the next cubicle, let his briefcase drop to the tiled floor—and vomited. He felt the cold
sweat getting even colder on the gradually returning warmth of his face. Keeping his eyes closed, he flushed the toilet by groping for the lever, and was surprised to feel in some definitive way not only liberated but cleansed: what had been flushed away was more than vomit; it was a whole philosophy, a suspicion confirmed, rage—he laughed with relief, wiped his mouth with his handkerchief, hastily pushed up the knot of his tie, picked up his briefcase, and left the cubicle. They had teased him a hundred times, but here was proof of how useful it was always to carry along a towel and soap, a hundred times they had made fun of his “plebeian” soap container. As he opened it now, he could have kissed his mother, for she had urged him to take it with him when he started university three years ago: soap was the very thing he needed now. He pulled uncertainly at his tie, left it the way it was, hung his jacket up on the doorknob, washed his face and hands thoroughly, wiped his neck briefly, and left the washroom as quickly as he could. The corridors were still empty, and if he hurried he could be in his room before Marie. I’ll ask her, he thought, whether disgust, which we all know originates in the mind, can have such a drastic effect on the stomach.

It was a mild, damp day in early spring. For the first time in three years of university he missed the last, the third, step at the main entrance—he had only reckoned with two—stumbled, and, in catching himself and trying to get back into step, he was conscious of the aftereffects of the appalling quarter of an hour he had just been through. He felt giddy, and he was aware of his surroundings as a pleasant, dreamy blur. The faces of the college girls—majoring in literature, he would imagine—wore a look of impressionistic sensuality; they strolled languidly about under the green trees, carrying their books, and even the Catholic students with their colored caps, who appeared to be holding some kind of meeting in front of the main building, seemed less objectionable than usual: their colored ribbons and caps might have been wisps of a dissolving rainbow. Müller stumbled along, returning greetings mechanically, fighting his way against the stream which now, at half past twelve, was pouring into the university, like a stream of workers at change of shift.

Not until he was in the streetcar, three stops farther on, did he begin to see properly again, as if he had put on glasses which corrected his vision. From one suburb to the city center, from the center out again to another suburb: almost an hour to think things out and “get everything into proper perspective.” It just couldn’t be true! Surely Schmeck was the last man to have to steal from him—Rudolf Müller, third-year student? Hadn’t he told Schmeck he was considering writing a series of essays to demonstrate “The Sociology of Dress,” taking as his first title “On the Sociology of the Mackintosh,” and hadn’t Schmeck enthusiastically agreed, congratulated him, and offered to supervise the whole series? And hadn’t he read the first pages of his “Sociology of the Mackintosh” aloud to Schmeck in his study, sentences which today he had heard coming word for word from Schmeck’s lips? Müller turned pale again, tore open his briefcase, and rummaged through it. The soap container fell to the floor, then a book by Schmeck:
First Principles of Sociology
. Where was his manuscript? Was it a dream, a memory, or a hallucination that he suddenly found himself looking at—Schmeck’s smile as he stood in the doorway of his study, the white pages of manuscript in his hand? “Of course, I’ll be glad to have a look at your work!” Then the Easter vacation—first at home, then three weeks in London with a study group—and today Schmeck’s lecture, “Rudiments of a Sociology of Dress, Part One: On the Sociology of the Mackintosh.”

Transfer. He automatically got off, on again when his streetcar arrived, gave a troubled sigh as the elderly conductress sitting on her throne recognized him. Would she make the same joke she had been making ever since she had seen his student’s pass? She made the joke: “Well, well—if it isn’t our gentleman of leisure, all through by eleven-thirty—and now it’s off to the girls, eh?” The passengers laughed, Müller blushed, made his way to the front, wished he could get out, run faster than the streetcar, and get home and into his room at last, to find out for sure. His diary would be proof—or would it help to have Marie as a witness? She
had typed his paper for him; he remembered her suggesting she make a carbon copy, he could see her hand holding up the carbon paper, but he had waved it aside, pointing out that it was only a draft, an outline—and he could see Marie’s hand putting the carbon paper back into the drawer and starting to type. “Rudolf Müller, philosophy student, 17 Buckwheat Street” … While he was dictating the heading it struck him one could also write a sociology of food. Buckwheat flour, pancakes, roast beef—in the working-class district where he had grown up this was considered the pinnacle of epicurean delight, on a par in the scale of bliss with sexual pleasures—rice pudding, lentil soup; and before he had even begun dictating his essay to Marie, he already had visions of following up the sociology of the mackintosh with a sociology of french fries. Ideas, ideas, all kinds, in fact—and he knew he had what it took to put these ideas into words.

These endless streets leading out of the city, Roman, Napoleonic—the house numbers were already in the 900s. Fragmented memories: Schmeck’s voice—the sudden nausea on first hearing the word “mackintosh”—eight or nine minutes up there in the front row—the urge to vomit—then the thirty-third minute, Schmeck’s handkerchief, his glance at the results of his noisy exertions—at long last the toilet—misty dampness in front of the university—the girls’ faces, sensual, blurred—the colored ribbons of the Catholic students like remnants of a dying rainbow—getting onto the Number 12, transferring to the Number 18—the conductress’s joke—and already the house numbers on Mainz Street were up to 980, 981. He pulled out one of the three cigarettes he had taken along in his breast pocket as his morning ration, groped for the match.

“Here, son, give us a light too.” He stood up, and with a wan smile walked to where the old conductress was squeezing herself down off her throne. He held the burning match to her cigarette butt, then lit his own cigarette, and was pleasantly surprised to find he felt no nausea. “Troubles, son?” He nodded, looked hard at her coarse, red-veined face, dreading the obscenity she might offer as consolation, but she
merely nodded and said, “Thank you kindly,” clasped his shoulder as the streetcar swung into the terminus loop, got out ahead of him when the streetcar stopped, and waddled along to the front car, where the driver was already unscrewing his Thermos flask.

How small these gray houses were, how narrow the streets. A parked motorcycle was enough to block them; thirty years ago the apostles of progress had not believed that cars would ever become a commonplace. Here visions of the future had become the present, and died; everything that would later claim to be progressive and advanced was regarded with hostility. All the streets were alike, from Acanthus Avenue to Zinnia Road, wintergreen and leek, monkshood (first rejected because it smacked of clericalism but later approved by the Board as being strictly botanical and free of any clericalist taint) and privet—“all growing things” were to be found here in street names, surrounded by a Marx Avenue, at the center an Engels Square (Marx Street and Engels Street had already been appropriated by older working-class districts). The little church had been built later, when it was discovered that the declared atheists were all married to devout wives—when one day (by this time the devout mothers had their grown-up sons and daughters on their side) the polling district had to report more votes for the Catholic Center Party than for the Socialist Party, when old Socialists, crimson with embarrassment, drowned their sorrows in drink and went over in a body to the Communist Party. For years now the little church had been much too small: on Sundays it overflowed, and the model for the new one could be admired at the rectory. Very modern. Beyond Marx Avenue, the neighboring parish of St. Boniface had donated land for the new church of St. Joseph, patron saint of the working class. Construction cranes were already reaching triumphantly into the spring sky.

Müller tried to smile, but couldn’t quite, when he thought of his father; it always seemed to him as if the aura of the twenties, that ardent spirit of atheism and enlightenment, still hung in the air here, as if the climate of free love were still present, and, although it was never heard anymore, he seemed to hear echoes in these streets of “Brothers, toward
sunlight, toward freedom”; his smile miscarried. Rosemary Street, Tulip Street, Maple Grove—and another cycle of streets in alphabetical order: Acacia Way, and finally Buckwheat Street—“all growing things.” There was Number 17; now he could smile as he caught sight of Marie’s bicycle: it was propped against the iron railing that Uncle Will had built around the garbage can, the none-too-clean, wobbly bicycle belonging to Baroness von Schlimm (younger branch). His desire to show affection even to the bicycle was manifested in a gentle kick against the back tire. He opened the door, called “Hello, Auntie” into the narrow passageway, which smelled of french fries, picked up the parcel lying on the bottom stair, and rushed upstairs. The staircase was so narrow that his elbow always brushed the reddish-brown hessian wall covering, and Aunt Kate claimed to be able to determine the vehemence and frequency of his ascents from the traces of wear—in the course of the three years a strip had been rubbed almost bare, to a shade resembling a bald head.

Marie. He never failed to be moved by the intensity of his feelings for her, and each time (by now they had met more than three hundred times; he kept track, so to speak, in his diary), each time she seemed thinner than he remembered her. During the time they were together she seemed to fill out—when he thought of her afterward he remembered her as full—and he was consistently surprised when he saw her again in her original, unaltered thinness. She had taken off her shoes and stockings and was lying on his bed, dark-haired and pale, with a pallor which he still could not help feeling was a sign of consumption.