The Collected Stories of Heinrich Boll (16 page)

What impressed me about him was that he never had a book or notes with him, not even a slip of paper: he performed his occult arts with casual ease, tossing stupendous formulas onto the blackboard with something of a tightrope walker’s absolute mastery. The one thing he could not draw was circles. He was too impatient. He would wind a string around a long piece of chalk, pick the imaginary center, and swing the chalk round with such gusto that it would snap and, with a whining screech, go bounding across the blackboard—dash-dot, dot-dash. He never managed to make the beginning and end meet, and the result was an unsightly gaping outline, truly an unacknowledged symbol of Creation rent asunder. And that sound of the squeaking, screeching, chattering chalk piled further agony on my already tortured brain: I would stir from my daydreams, look up, and the minute he caught sight
of me he would rush over, pull me up by the ears, and order me to draw his circles for him. For this was an art, springing from some slumbering, innate law within me, that I mastered to near perfection. What an exquisite feeling it was, to play with the chalk for half a second. It was a minor ecstasy, the world around me would drop away, and I was filled with a profound happiness that made up for all the agony … but even from this sweet oblivion I would be roused by a rough, although this time respectful, tug at my hair, and with the laughter of the entire class in my ears I would slink back to my seat like a whipped dog, incapable now of reentering my dreamworld, to wait in perpetual agony for the bell to ring …

It was a long time since those early days, a long time since my dreams had become more disturbing, a long time since he had dropped the
du
when calling me “a boneheaded broommaker,” and there were long months of torment during which there were no circles to be drawn and I was condemned to hopeless attempts to clamber over the brittle girders of algebraical bridges, still dragging my F behind me, the familiar ritual still being performed. But then when we had to volunteer for officer training a brief test was improvised, simple but nonetheless a test, and my expression of utter wretchedness as I faced the stern examining board may have softened the math teacher’s heart, for he was so skillful in putting words into my mouth that I actually passed. Later on, however, as we shook hands with the teachers on leaving, he advised me to forego the use of my mathematical knowledge and to be sure to avoid joining a technical unit. “Infantry,” he whispered, “join the infantry, that’s the place for all … broommakers,” and for the last time, with a gesture that concealed his affection, he made as if to cuff me over the head—my now well-seasoned head.

Scarcely two months later, at the Odessa airfield, I was sitting crouched over my pack, in deep mud, watching a real broommaker, the first I had ever seen.

Winter had come early, and over the nearby city the sky hung gray and comfortless between the horizons. Dingy tall buildings were visible among outlying gardens and black fences. In the distance, where the Black Sea must be, the sky was even darker, almost blue-black, as if twilight and evening came from the east. Somewhere in the background the trundling monsters were being refueled alongside cavernous
hangars, after which they trundled back and, standing there in horrible complacency, were loaded up with men, gray, tired, despairing soldiers whose eyes were devoid of all emotion but fear—for the Crimea had long since been encircled …

Our platoon must have been one of the last; no one spoke, and in spite of our long greatcoats we were shivering. Some of the men were eating in desperation, others were smoking, and because this was prohibited they covered their pipes with their palms and blew the smoke out in slow, thin puffs.

I had plenty of time to watch the broommaker as he sat a little way off beside a garden fence. He was wearing one of those rakish-looking Russian hats, and in his bearded face the short stocky brown pipe was as broad and long as his nose. But there were peace and simplicity in his quietly working hands as they picked up the bunches of furze twigs, cut them, tied them with wire, and fastened the finished bundles in the holes of the broom handle.

I had turned over onto my stomach, lying almost flat on my pack, and all I saw was the looming silhouette of this quiet, humble man, working steadily and unhurriedly away at his brooms. Never in my life have I envied anyone as much as that broommaker, neither the top student, nor Schimski the math brain, nor the best football player on the school team, nor even Hegenbach, whose brother had the Knight’s Cross; not one of those had I ever envied as I envied that broommaker, sitting by a fence on the outskirts of Odessa and serenely smoking his pipe.

I longed secretly to catch the man’s eye, for I fancied it would be comforting to look directly into that face, but I was suddenly jerked up by my coat, shouted at, and jammed into the droning aircraft, and once we had taken off and were flying high above the distracting jumble of gardens and roads and churches, it would have been impossible to try to make out the broommaker.

First I squatted on my pack, but then I slipped down behind it onto the floor and, stupefied by the oppressive silence of my fellow victims, was listening to the unearthly drone of the aircraft, while the constant vibration began to make my head quiver as it leaned against the metal wall. The darkness of the narrow fuselage was relieved only by a somewhat lighter darkness up front, where the pilot sat, and this
pale reflection threw an eerie light on the mute, dim figures squatting left and right and all around me on their packs.

But suddenly a strange noise tore across the sky, so real and familiar that I sat bolt upright: it was as if the hand of a giant math teacher were drawing a massive hunk of chalk in an arc across the limitless expanse of dark sky, and the noise exactly matched the familiar one I had heard two months before, the same leap and chatter of protesting chalk.

Arc after arc was drawn across the sky by the hand of the colossus, but now, instead of being only white and dark gray, it was red on blue and purple on black, and the flashing streaks faded without completing their circles, chattered, screeched, and died away.

I suffered not for the terrified, frenzied groans of my fellow victims, or the shouting of the lieutenant vainly ordering the men to be quiet and stay where they were, or even the agonized face of the pilot. I suffered merely for those eternally uncompleted circles that flared up over the sky, in a fury of haste and hate, and never ever returned to their starting point, those botched circles whose ends never met to achieve the perfect beauty of the circle. They tormented me along with the chattering, screeching, leaping wrath of the giant hand, the hand I dreaded would grab me by the hair and cuff me brutally over the head.

Then came the real shock. I suddenly realized that this sky-splitting fury was in fact a noise: close to my head I heard a strange hiss as of a baleful, swiftly descending hand, felt a moist, hot pain, jumped up with a cry, and reached out toward the sky where just then another searing yellow flash blazed up; with my right hand I held on tight to this flailing yellow snake, letting it spin its angry circle, confident that I would be able to complete the circle, for this was the one and only art I had been born to master. So I held it, guided it, the flailing, raging, jerking, chattering snake, held on to it while my breath came hot and my twitching mouth hurt and the moist pain in my head seemed to increase, and as I brought the points together, drawing the glorious round arc of the circle and gazing at it with pride, the spaces between the dots and dashes closed and an immense, hissing short circuit filled the entire circle with light and fire until the whole sky was burning, and the abrupt momentum of the plunging aircraft rent the world in two. All I could see was light and fire, and the mutilated tail of the machine, a jagged tail like the black stump of a broom fit to carry a witch riding off to her sabbath …

They’re giving me a chance now. They sent me a postcard telling me to come down to the Department, and I went. They were very nice to me at the Department. They took out my file card and said, “Hm.” I also said, “Hm.”

“Which leg?” asked the official.

“The right.”

“The whole leg?”

“The whole leg.”

“Hm,” he went again. He proceeded to shuffle through various papers. I was allowed to sit down.

Finally the man found what seemed to be the right paper. He said, “I think I have something here for you. Very nice too. A job you can sit down at. Shoeshine stand in a public convenience on Republic Square. How about that?”

“I can’t shine shoes; that’s one thing people have always noticed about me, my inability to shine shoes.”

“You can learn,” he said. “One can learn anything. A German can do anything. You can take a free course if you like.”

“Hm,” I went.

“You’ll take the job?”

“No,” I said, “I won’t. I want a higher pension.”

“You must be out of your mind,” he replied, his tone mild and good-humored.

“I’m not out of my mind, no one can give me back my leg, I’m not even allowed to sell cigarettes anymore, they’re already making that difficult for me.”

The man leaned all the way back in his chair and drew a deep breath. “My dear fellow,” he said, launching into a lecture, “your leg’s a damned expensive leg. I see that you’re twenty-nine years of age, your heart is sound, in fact apart from your leg you’re as fit as a fiddle. You’ll
live to be seventy. Figure it out for yourself, seventy marks a month, twelve times a year, that’s forty-one times twelve times seventy. Figure it out for yourself, not counting interest, and don’t imagine your leg’s unique. What’s more, you’re not the only one who’ll probably live to a ripe old age. And then you want a higher pension! I’m sorry, but you must be out of your mind.”

“I think, sir,” I said, also leaning back and drawing a deep breath, “I think that you grossly underestimate my leg. My leg is much more expensive, it is a very expensive leg indeed. It so happens that my head is as sound as my heart. Let me explain.”

“I’m a very busy man.”

“I’ll explain!” I said. “You will see that my leg has saved the lives of a great number of people who today are drawing nice fat pensions.

“What happened was this: I was lying all by myself somewhere up front. My job was to spot them when they came so that the others would have time to clear out. The staffs in the rear were packing up, and while they didn’t want to clear out too soon they also didn’t want to leave it too long. At first there were two of us, but they shot the other fellow, he’s not costing you a cent now. It’s true he was married, but his wife is in good health and able to work, you don’t need to worry. He was a real bargain. He’d only been a soldier for a month, all he cost was a postcard and a few bread rations. There’s a good soldier for you, at least he let himself be killed off. But now there I was, all by myself, scared stiff, and it was cold, and I wanted to clear out too, in fact I was just going to clear out when—”

“I’m really very busy,” said the man, beginning to search for a pencil.

“No, listen,” I said, “this is where it gets interesting. Just as I was going to clear out, this business of my leg happened. And because I had to go on lying there anyway, I thought I might as well pass the word, so I passed the word, and they all took off, one after another, in descending order of rank, first the divisional staff, then the regimental, then the battalion, and so on, one after another. The silly part was, you see, they were in such a hurry they forgot to take me along! It was really too silly for words, because if I hadn’t lost my leg they would all be dead, the general, the colonel, the major, and so on down, and you wouldn’t have to pay them any pensions. Now just figure out what my leg is costing you. The general is fifty-two, the colonel forty-eight, and the major fifty,
all of them hale and hearty, their heads as well as their hearts, and with the military life they lead they’ll live to be at least eighty, like Hindenburg. Figure it out for yourself: a hundred and sixty times twelve times thirty, we’ll call it an average of thirty, shall we? My leg’s become a damned expensive leg, one of the most expensive legs I can think of, d’you see what I mean?”

“You really must be out of your mind,” said the man.

“No,” I replied, “I’m not. Unfortunately my heart is as sound as my head, and it’s a pity I wasn’t killed too, a couple of minutes before that business of my leg happened. We would have saved a lot of money.”

“Are you going to take that job?” asked the man.

“No,” I said, and left.

Going up the stairs, the men carrying the stretcher slowed down a bit. They were both feeling resentful; they had been on duty for over an hour and so far nobody had given them a cigarette for a tip. Besides, one of them was the ambulance driver, and drivers are not actually required to carry stretchers. But the hospital hadn’t sent anyone down to help, and they couldn’t very well leave the boy lying there in the ambulance; they still had an emergency pneumonia to pick up and a suicide who had been cut down at the last minute. They were feeling resentful, and suddenly they were carrying the stretcher along less slowly again: the corridor was poorly lit, and of course it smelled of hospital.

“I wonder why they cut him down?” muttered one of the men, referring to the suicide; he was the one behind, and the one in front growled over his shoulder, “Yeah, why would they do that?” But because he had turned round as he spoke, he collided with the doorpost, and the figure lying on the stretcher woke up and emitted shrill, terrible screams; they were the screams of a child.

“Easy now, easy,” said the doctor, a young intern with fair hair and a tense face. He looked at the time: eight o’clock, his relief should have been here long ago. For over an hour he had been waiting for Dr. Lohmeyer: they might have arrested him, anyone could be arrested any time these days. The young doctor automatically fingered his stethoscope, his eyes fixed on the boy on the stretcher, and now for the first time he noticed the stretcher bearers standing impatiently by the door. “What’s the matter, what are you waiting for?” he asked irritably.