The Collected Stories of Heinrich Boll (126 page)

Joseph didn’t realize the danger he was in until the engine suddenly revved up and the entire car began to vibrate. He broke out in a
cold sweat, a deathly fear. His heart skipped a beat, and with the final ounce of strength in his weakened hands he clutched the rods beneath the car, then lifted his feet and wedged them somewhere between a metal pipe and the car’s undercarriage, barely holding on. The car went into reverse to turn around, backed up to the ditch, the tires spun, and his grip slipped as the car lurched. Head down, his legs clamped fast, he dangled helplessly under the car as the tires continued to spin; he held back a scream welling up within him. Almost fainting from weakness, agitation, and terror, he grabbed on tight again, but could no longer suppress the tears. They streamed heavy and hot down his cheeks; he was blinded by the flood …

Somewhere in his subconscious he registered the tilt of the car as Germat jumped onto the running board, but the tears kept flowing, as if the infinite pain of his lost state had broken through the shell of his will and was now pouring into the silence of the night.

He couldn’t remember releasing his hands and feet. He felt the wheels race past his head like a final breath of horrible danger; then he found himself battered, dirty, tired and hungry, wet with tears, on the hard, bare road.

In that terrible solitude he almost wished himself back in the company of the hangman’s lackeys, caught up in the insane tension of the chase.

The darkness had thickened; a mantle of night lay silent and heavy over the earth. To muffle his footsteps, Joseph left the road, treading on the soft soil of the fields, following the roadway toward Breckdorf. If he could only sit somewhere for just an hour or so, in a house with other people, eat something, clean up, warm himself; my God, just to see a few people other than those he’d been with behind barbed wire for months, in the hangman’s clutches. Just one hour, then he could slip past the sentries before reinforcements arrived and reach the border before dawn, and then … then perhaps freedom …

Holding to the road, his senses tuned to the night, he reached the village, but it must have been late, for there wasn’t a light anywhere. The black blocks of the houses rose dimly against the sky, the outline of the trees. He passed a farmyard sunk deep in silence, so close to the hedge that he brushed against the thorns. Then with startling suddenness the huge, uncanny silhouette of a church rose before him, a marvelously
peaceful square, surrounded by tall trees, and a house in which a light still burned. He approached it slowly and cautiously; just don’t start the dogs barking … Germat’s men would be on him like wolves.

His head ached terribly, a piercing pain, like a merciless finger probing his tormented brain. His face was scratched, he was filthy, soaked to the skin, and tired, so tired it took an effort to lift his foot at every step. Finally he was leaning against the dark door, feeling for the bell. It sounded bright and shrill within the hall, startling him. He heard a soft, rapid tread, the light clicked on and seeped under the door. My God, what if he’d dropped in on a hero of the Party by accident? But terror no longer held sway over his exhausted mind, and a sudden wave of nausea seemed to turn his stomach inside out. Dear God, just some rest, rest and a little bread …

He tumbled through the open door and gathered enough strength to whisper to the dark figure: “Quick … quick … shut the door …”

Blinded by the light, overwhelmed by misery, he stood sobbing, pitiful and dirty, leaning against the wall, squinting painfully at the startled chaplain. Music, a fragment of some fading, melancholy melody, reached his ears, and it seemed as if the whole of mankind’s dark longing for paradise were concentrated in that one brief phrase of music, sweet and heavy, clouded with sorrow. It struck him like a death blow; he fell as if shot.

When he opened his eyes again, he first saw only books. He stared at an entire wall of them, their bright titles gleaming softly in the dull glow of a desk lamp. He felt the warmth of a stove at his back; he was sitting in a large, soft armchair, with comfortable cushions, to his right a large, flat desk of dark-stained wood. A friendly man’s voice asked: “Well?” and as he turned around with a start, he was looking into the narrow, pale face of the chaplain, bending over him. The first thing he noticed was the marvelous fragrance of good tobacco and good soap, mingled with the pleasant neutral odor of the confession box. Large, intelligent gray eyes peered at him from the white planes of the face, veiled by a cool reserve, regarding him with almost impersonal curiosity. Then came the second question: “What now?”

But Joseph was staring at the carpet, lost in dreams, a magnificent, clean, warm, yellow carpet, beautiful, tasteful etchings on the wall. A
dream of domesticity and warmth, beauty and security, enveloped the room. The contrast with the sties they lived in at camp was so shocking that tears came to his eyes again. My God, this armchair, soft and human, actually made to sit on! The chaplain’s pale face glanced nervously toward the desk, where a few books lay open and various papers were strewn about. “Well?” he asked again, but banished the impatient look from his face at once, as if he were ashamed. Joseph turned slowly to face him.

“Do you have something I could eat? I should wash up, too, and then … and then …” He stood up quickly and gestured helplessly at himself. “They’re after me … I have to be gone in half an hour … My God, I’m dreaming …” He tightened his hands impatiently into fists and stood trembling.

The chaplain spread his hands at once and said regretfully: “My housekeeper’s—” but then interrupted himself, motioned for the pitiful figure to follow him, and stepped out into the hall. Joseph slipped after him.

“You’re from the camp?” he asked on the way to the kitchen. Joseph mumbled hoarsely: “Yes.” The kitchen was so sparkling clean it looked as if no one had ever cooked there. It seemed meant only for show; everything gleamed in the glow of the glass lamp, not a speck of dust to be seen, not a dish in sight. The cupboards were closed, and the stove was obviously ice cold. The chaplain tugged awkwardly at a cupboard. “For heaven’s sake,” he said, shaking his head, “she always takes the key with her …” But Joseph had grabbed the poker from the tidy coal box and said tersely, with a strange, almost coldly cynical set to his lips: “If you’ll permit me …” The chaplain turned, startled and concerned, but Joseph pushed him aside, wedged the poker between the doors of the cupboard, and forced it open with a jerk. He regarded the splendors with almost predatory eyes, sighing.

Indignation mixed with a slight disdain showed on the chaplain’s face. He watched, clutching his hands nervously behind his back, as the man wolfed down thick slices of bread covered with butter and sausage. The ragged, filthy figure in greasy denim was a bizarre sight, with tousled, dirty hair and ravenous hunger in his large, gray, oddly gleaming eyes. The only sound in the stillness was his noisy chewing and at times a strange snuffling, as if the man had a cold and no handkerchief.
The chaplain couldn’t take his eyes off him, but the visitor no longer seemed to notice him.

It seemed as if time had stopped, and that the world consisted only of this kitchen in which he sat trembling beside a vagabond who ate and ate.

Joseph held the loaf of bread in his left hand and the knife in his right, seeming to hesitate; but then he dropped the knife on the table, shoved the bread aside, and stood up. “You could at least have offered me something to drink; you’ve never eaten a dozen slices like that,” he said in genuine irritation, then went over to the sink, fished the soap from a niche in the wall with annoying self-confidence, and began washing his face, puffing noisily. He found the hand towels under a clean cloth behind the oven, as if he knew the layout of the house forward and backward. “Clean underwear, now that would be just fine … and my feet washed …” he mumbled through the hand towel, drying his face and head roughly, almost relishing it. He hung up the towel and was about to ask for a comb when he looked the chaplain full in the face for the first time. “My God,” he said softly, with childlike amazement. “You’re not angry with me, are you?”

“No,” laughed the chaplain with an annoyed snort. “You’re the most charming fellow I’ve ever met!” He stood waiting by the door. Shaking his head, Joseph walked past him into the hall, heading for the study. He was still shaking his head as he sat down again in the armchair.

The chaplain had turned off the outside lights, relocked the doors, and returned quickly, as if he were afraid to leave the man alone. His face was masked with a strange severity like that of a welfare worker.

“I’ll need to ask you for a couple of other things,” Joseph said, speaking in an almost businesslike tone. “First a comb; you know how it is, a person feels so unfinished somehow, when he’s washed up but hasn’t combed his hair … thanks.” He took the black comb and combed his hair contentedly. “And a cigar, if you have one … and, I’m sorry, a sip of wine … then I think I’ll make it across the border easily. I’m feeling stronger now and I’m not afraid anymore.” The chaplain wordlessly handed him a cigar, along with a box of matches. “Now I know why the hangman’s men, even though they’re stupid, can still lord it over us in camp—because we’re always hungry and dirty.” He puffed deeply,
regarding the cigar and his fingernails in turn. Then he said softly: “Excuse me,” and cleaned his nails with a broken matchstick. “There, now I almost feel good … almost.” He gazed intently into the chaplain’s eyes, and a trace of sympathy appeared on his face. “I really don’t know what you’re so annoyed about.” The chaplain rose with a jerk, as if a fire had started under him; he paced agitatedly in front of the bookcases, his face an odd mixture of fear, sorrow, indignation, and uncertainty.

“In fact,” Joseph continued, when he received no answer, “I’m the one who could be offended, since you’re not offering me any wine. And viewed objectively, I am a rather charming fellow.”

The chaplain paused abruptly before him and stammered: “Are you … are you … a criminal?”

Joseph’s eyes narrowed and hardened; he looked at him searchingly. “Of course, I committed a crime against the state, and I think you’re about to as well.” He glanced at the scattered pages of the manuscript covering the desk. “That is, if you truly represent the ideas that your uniform stands for.”

“You let me worry about that.” The chaplain laughed, apparently trying to salvage a little humor from the situation. Joseph asked again about wine, but the chaplain merely smiled uncertainly, then paled in fear and nearly cried aloud as Joseph stepped up to him, cowering defensively as Joseph seized him by the top button of his soutane. “All right,” he said softly, very softly, “I’ll get you some wine.”

But Joseph threw his cigar angrily down on the desk and released his hold. “Oh”—he waved him off wearily—“if you only understood what wine it is I want from you. What good do all these treasures do you?” He gestured roughly at the books. “You’ve learned as little from them as your
confrères
fifty years ago learned from the fulsome pandects we find so contemptible today …” He struck the bookcase dully with his fist. Then he hesitated as he saw the chaplain’s tortured face, but his words gushed like a spring released by a drill. “You soak in your certainties like a man in a bathtub of lukewarm water, indecisive, hardly daring to get out and dry off. But you forget that the water is turning cold according to inexorable laws, as cold as reality.” His voice had lost its accusatory tone and was almost imploring. He released his gaze from the shocked face of the chaplain and ran his eyes over the book titles. “Here,” he said sadly. “You wanted to know my crime.”
And he threw the slim brochure onto the desk: “There it is … and now, goodbye.” He took a deep breath and looked around the room a final time, then knelt and said softly: “Bless me, Father, I have a dangerous road ahead.” The priest folded his hands and made the sign of the cross over him, and as he tried to hold him back with a helpless smile, Joseph said quietly: “No, forgive me … I have to go now, my life is at stake.” And before he left the house, he made the sign of the cross over the figure in black.

It was now totally dark outside, as if the night had rolled itself into a tight ball. The village seemed to cower in darkness, like a flock in a gloomy cave, swallowed by brute silence. It seemed as if loneliness braced itself icily against Joseph as he wended his way cautiously through the dark alleys to the open fields. As if in final farewell, the bells of the church rang in consolation through the night. Four times they sounded from the tower, bright and almost joyful, then twice, dark and heavy, as if God’s hammer were falling through all eternity.

In the silent gloom the tones were like a reminder to hold fast to his faith.

Soon he could distinguish the ground’s surface and larger obstacles, hedges and bushes and ditches. He could go only by sixth sense, instinctively following the street, which angled away toward the country road. He felt almost nothing, his heart heavy with silence, the infinite silence of one who suffers, for whom there is no answer under the heavens, no answer but God’s promise, spanning the earth, wherever any person suffers for the sake of the cross. He was so far, so far from all hate and all bitterness, that prayers formed in him like pure, steady flames rising from the garden of faith, hope, and love, innocent and beautiful as flowers.

He crossed a wooded area, feeling his way cautiously from tree to tree to keep from stumbling in the darkness. Emerging into the open, he saw lights. To the right, ghostly and distant, rose tall structures, illuminated by yellow light, steel-ribbed skeletons. Behind them glowed the red jaws of the blast furnaces, like the gullet of the underworld. My God, those must be the factories at Gordelen! The border lay just beyond them. It couldn’t be more than a half hour away. The field fell
away before him and was bordered by a line of trees, their silhouette outlined against the distant light, and he saw how the trees ran on ahead, far across the dark, level fields, toward the factory. It must be a road. Everything beyond it lay in darkness; a thick forest seemed to extend into the distance, perhaps even beyond the border.