The Collected Stories of Heinrich Boll (128 page)

“My financial affairs were going from bad to worse back then. My only regular income was the twenty-five marks I received each month from the executor of my small inheritance. It had reached a point where I could no longer afford the bare necessities, like clothes and shoes. I started several projects, but the Napoleon essay was the only one I finished. I entrusted it to her, and she carried it around to various houses for almost three weeks, until she found someone willing to publish it. A publisher’s representative visited me (a publisher who’d made a fortune with trashy novels). We quickly reached an agreement.

“It was around this time that her father committed suicide. He was a businessman who’d managed to keep his head above water by a series of clever maneuvers, in spite of being deeply in debt. Now his shady deals had been discovered, and he shot himself. She came to me late that afternoon. I longed to see her, for I was sad, even though I had signed a relatively advantageous contract. In the powerful heat of the late summer day, heavy storm clouds were forming on the horizon. The sun had just set, and I gazed from my small window across a city drenched in red. It looked less forlorn than normal … and yet I felt I could die of sorrow, and knew how much I needed her. Then she arrived, looking half insane. She collapsed into my arms, and gradually I pieced together what had happened from the phrases she stammered out. I could think
of nothing to say, and kissed her wordlessly. That night she stayed with me. And that day … we lost our innocence.”

Benedikt talked rapidly, pacing back and forth. Now he broke off and stared out the window. Heinrich wanted to go to him, say something, at least press his hand, when the dark figure of a young woman entered. He recognized her immediately from his description. He greeted her, and Benedikt introduced them. Benedikt gave her his chair and sat beside Heinrich on the bed. In the dim light of the room the two youths could barely make out her silhouette. She began speaking softly in a warm voice: “I’ve found something for you. A gentleman who runs a private school afternoons is looking for someone to teach grammar-school subjects part time for one mark an hour. You’d have to teach middle-class children who haven’t done well in school. The work would be steady, six or seven hours a day. There’s a short qualifying exam, but the gentleman waived it. I spoke with him, told him you already have a grammar-school degree. He gets three marks an hour from the parents, by the way.” Benedikt looked up slowly, “Thank you, Magdalena.… That means we can get married, that is … if God …”

All three sat for a long time in the half-darkness. Only once was the silence broken, by Benedikt: “Magdalena, I told you about the young woman in the brothel who taught me the truth about things, you remember … She’s to be Heinrich’s bride …”

Magdalena sprang up, went over to Heinrich, and fixed her unusually large, dark eyes somberly upon him: “Has she forgiven him … forgiven us … for not returning to her? We were too ashamed to face her purity.” She turned bright red and stared at the floor. When she looked up again she saw Heinrich smile and nod. She pulled up her chair and joined them.

While Magdalena stayed with Susanne, almost joyful in the aura of the latter’s glowing faith, the two youths visited the capitalist schoolmaster. The cold winter rain that murders the poor was still falling. Hatless, clad only in their thin, threadbare coats, they stuck close to the walls of the buildings as they walked along, accepting what little protection they offered. On a broad and elegant suburban avenue, where houses lay in studied reserve behind rows of tall trees and garden parks, they rang
the bell of an almost palatial home. They were led into a reception area and left waiting for over an hour. After tracing the origin and history of every picture in the room angrily and in sarcastic detail, they were almost in a frenzy, and were about to turn their attention to the wallpaper pattern when a “serious” gentleman entered. He was of average height and portly build, with the smile of a Buddha. They introduced themselves; he greeted them amiably and within five minutes, without an exam, Benedikt was hired on the basis of his degree for a probationary period of one month. Heinrich said he would like to teach as well, and after a quick glance at his credentials he was taken on, in spite of his youth. “You can start this afternoon,” and with these words they were dismissed. They returned along the same barren route.

“The man is either stupid or crazy,” said Heinrich. “He’s risking the entire reputation of his famous school, hiring us just like that.”

Benedikt laughed: “He’s not crazy, but he is too lazy. But he’s not stupid either. Since he knows Magdalena he probably realizes we’re Catholic, and believers. Catholics, he figures, are afraid to commit a sin, since they know they’ll have to go through the humiliation of confession. They cheat less than those who don’t have to slip into a box at regular intervals to unburden their souls … There are plenty of unbelievers who will only hire Catholic maids, you know, because they think they won’t dare steal anything for fear of having to confess. And he can toss us out anytime he thinks we’re endangering his reputation.”

Magdalena was still with Susanne. It was pleasant sitting beside the warm stove, drinking hot coffee and smoking.

Benedikt and Magdalena soon took their leave, since they still had to see the priest about their wedding, which was to take place in a week.

Susanne sat beside Heinrich. He stared into her eyes: “Susanne, I’ve always hated the sun because I thought its blissful rays were mocking my pain. I found it hard to live, let alone feel any pleasure in life. Then one day I found the will to live, and that same day I found you, the joy of my life. The sun hasn’t shone since that day, in punishment for my blasphemy, but it will surely appear again, and I’ll greet it joyfully. The days will be filled with wonder for us, Susanne … Susanne …” He smiled, the first smile Susanne had seen upon his face, like the simple, clear, godly music of ancient times tentatively settling upon his young countenance. Susanne was happy to see this gentle outbreak
of joy. They shared something so pure, so far from sin—in an era so constantly near it—that it resembled medieval courtly love, a pleasant, tender breath of blessedness, full of silent jubilation. Heinrich drew her gently closer, kissed her mouth, and the earth seemed to vanish beneath their feet.

The wedding was as sad as a child’s funeral. The majestic cathedral, infinitely vast and lofty, had no doubt rarely witnessed a ceremony so forlorn. The few poorly clothed people kneeling before a side altar seemed crushed to pitiful insignificance by the huge room, whose high ceiling of disintegrating gray resembled the cloudy February sky. Magdalena closed her eyes humbly, trembling with joy as she awaited the holy sacrament of marriage, and when, in the course of the ceremony, the priest turned, it was Benedikt’s pale, earnest face he confronted. Magdalena’s mother and brothers knelt behind them. Her mother’s face bore a hint of painful submission, like a violated maiden who, in the purity of her soul, is beginning to forget her body’s shame. Something of her brothers’ debauchery could still be read in their eyes, masked by their boldness. It was no doubt they who, along with her father, had violated the soul of this woman. From time to time they would sneak a glance at Susanne, kneeling before them at Magdalena’s side, her head bowed. The two witnesses, Heinrich and Paul von Sentau, assisted at the mass.

After the benediction the couple stepped forward and knelt on the ancient, plain hassock that had served in many a princely wedding. Both witnesses joined them and the priest began. When the holy ceremony was completed, the young priest spoke. He spoke softly, as if he were afraid of awaking an echo in that vast space, a smile of joy on his face.

“It’s customary for the priest to say a few words to a young couple upon uniting them in holy matrimony. Please forgive me, but I can’t speak at the moment … We so seldom see true Christian feeling and humbleness before God these days. I hope you understand.” He blushed and looked at the floor. “I’m too deeply moved … But permit me to accept your invitation to a small celebration.”

Magdalena’s brothers took their leave in front of the cathedral. With the disappearance of their greedy, nasty faces, a sense of oppression seemed to lift from the pitifully small party. They walked through
the daily life of the great city to their new apartment, situated near the outskirts of the old part of town. The cathedral wasn’t actually in their parish, but Benedikt wanted to be married there because that was where his parents had been married, and where he himself had been baptized. The young priest to whom he’d opened his glowing heart six months ago, the night he received the spark of divine truth from Susanne, had gone through old church records and discovered that Danile Tauster had been joined in matrimony with one Adelheid von Sentau in the second year of the Great War. Benedikt’s baptism was also recorded. So now they had a fairly long walk from the city center to the suburbs. The young couple led the way, conversing quietly. Magdalena’s mother followed with the priest. Susanne walked behind them, between Heinrich and Paul.

Paul, who’d never met Susanne before, was telling her about himself: “I’m the last descendant of a noble Frankish family reduced to middle-class circumstances over a hundred years ago. My cousin Benedikt is my only blood relative. I was born the day my father fell at Langemarck. My mother was barely eighteen. Her young husband’s love had rescued her from an orphan’s painful life, and she was devastated by his death. Benedikt’s mother, my father’s sister, only nineteen herself, took me in when I was six months old, although she was expecting a child and deeply concerned about her husband, hospitalized in Romania with a serious head injury. Her husband died three months before Benedikt was born. She bore the sorrow over her husband, her brother, and my mother along with the infinite burden of life. She forced her fiery young soul through the business of everyday life, believing in Christ, the herald of truth and the friend of all those who suffer.

“She received scant pleasure from the boys she raised. She was forced to get a job, and we spent our long morning hours with Veit, a crippled veteran, who lived in a garret next to us. Veit had lost a leg, and had a hard time climbing all those steps on his crutches. He spent a lot of time in bed because his lungs were bad, and he was glad to have us around since he was still young. He was thirty-two years old, and full of energy, and when he learned that our fathers had died in the Great War, he came to love us.

“I was five, Benedikt not quite four, when our friendship with Veit began. Veit believed in nothing. When we entered his room, he would
ask with mock solemnity: ‘What is the basic rule of life?’ and our high-pitched children’s voices would respond according to his teaching, ‘Everything is shit!’ He’d lived through terrible times, and told us horror stories, which we found fascinating. He dripped the poison of unbelief into our childish souls, which remained untouched by the prayers we said each evening when our mother came home, weary and kind. Veit wasn’t a bad man, but he had lost touch with God. I think now that the Holy Ghost stirred mysteriously within him, for on one of the final days of his life—I was seven at the time—he said: ‘Boys, what do you say in your evening prayers?’ ‘We pray to Jesus Christ to protect our souls from unbelief, to take our fathers to heaven, to make Veit well again, and to grant our mother happiness.’ He smiled uncertainly at us and said: ‘That’s good, don’t forget to say them.’ This remark, which ran counter to all his wisdom over the past two years, was to us simply one impression among thousands; we merely absorbed them without differentiating.

“Veit died a few days later. We mourned him deeply for a long time. Mother tried in vain to console us. Time alone healed this wound, and after a period of mourning, the seeds he’d sown began to sprout. We contradicted our mother when she spoke of things in which—as far as we recalled—Veit had not believed, although we did not yet doubt God. That happened much later, when we were exposed to the corrupt wisdom of the streets, and when, after our mother’s death, we were despised in high school by the sons of the middle-class and newly wealthy upstarts because we were poor. Increasingly isolated within the realm of our own minds, slowly at first, then with startling suddenness, we denied all things metaphysical, bearing our poverty proudly with bitter, pale faces. We were awash in skepticism, and circumstances and our own short-sightedness conspired to turn us from the cross—repulsed by the cripples who called themselves Christians—long before we knew the first thing about its teachings.

“Our mother died when I was nine, and Benedikt barely eight. The doctors said she died from overwork. She had surely been weakened by the drudgery she undertook out of love for us, but I believe, in fact I’m sure, that she died of sorrow. It had fermented in her for years, and at last dealt her a devastating blow which sent her into the eternal life in which she had always believed. Had she offered us the gentle teachings
of the cross in those decisive early years we surely would have understood, and would not have foundered upon the ignorance and shortcomings of the world around us. Instead we were forced to wander aimlessly for years on end, groping blindly. We lived on the proceeds of a tiny house Benedikt’s mother had purchased with her scanty income to offer some small security for the future. People talk about magnificent memorials, documents of love. For me nothing compares to that tiny, crooked old house in the old city, for which a beautiful, tormented, lonely young woman suffered long years of hunger.

“One year before my final high school exam, I left Benedikt and my hometown for the sake of a woman. She had dark brown hair, a splendid young mouth, and eyes black as night, burning with fire. She gave a Chopin concert back then … I listened in a trance—moved for the first time in my life, inspired by the music’s magical, melancholy, seductive sensuality. This young woman, whose profound performance filled my soul with ecstasy, became my sole desire. The applause still sounded through the thick curtains as I waited in her dressing room. Her lackeys had withdrawn under my gaze, the curtain was pulled back, and she entered with noiseless grace. She was neither startled nor angry. Without noticing that I was dressed like a beggar, she looked into my eyes and smiled. She was very young, seventeen. I saw at once that she was still as innocent as I was. She stood for some time, smiling, while I waited, pale with pain and joy. She approached and kissed me. I had never kissed a woman before, and felt the joy of that first kiss from a woman I loved. In a soft voice that made me tremble, she said: ‘I know you’ll laugh, but I love you. You’re my first and only love.’ We were united in a night filled with dizzying, sweet pleasure—joyful, but lacking God’s blessing.