The Collected Stories of Heinrich Boll (22 page)

I jumped up at once, saying, “Allow me!” She looked at me in surprise, then set down the glass, handed me the corkscrew, and asked the young man, “What can I do for you?” As I put the cigar between my lips and twisted the corkscrew into the cork, I heard the young man ask, “Can you let us have two rooms?”

“Two?” asked the landlady. Just then I pulled out the cork and from the corner of my eye saw the girl flush, while the boy bit hard on his lower lip and, barely opening his mouth, said, “Yes, two.”

“Oh, thank you,” the landlady said, filling the glass and passing it to me. I went back to my table, began to sip the gentle wine, and could only hope that the inevitable ritual would not be dragged out even further by the arrival of my supper. But the entries in the register, the filling
out of forms, and the producing of gray-blue identity cards, all took less time than I had expected; and at one point, when the boy opened the leather bag to get out the identity cards, I saw that it contained greasy paper bags, a crumpled hat, some packets of cigarettes, a beret, and a shabby old red wallet.

During all this time the girl tried to look poised and confident; with an air of nonchalance she surveyed the bottles of lemonade, the green of the hessian wall covering, and the rosette-shaped nails, but the flush never left her cheeks, and when everything was finally settled they took their keys and hurried upstairs without saying good night. A few minutes later my supper was passed through the hatch; the landlady brought me my plate, and when our eyes met she did not smile, as I had thought she would, but looked gravely past me and said, “I hope you enjoy your supper, sir.”

“Thank you,” I replied. She remained standing beside me.

I slowly began my meal, helping myself to bread, butter, and cheese. She still did not move. “Smile,” I said.

And she did smile, but then she sighed, saying, “There’s nothing I can do about it.”

“Do you wish there were?”

“Oh, yes,” she said fervently, sitting herself down beside me, “indeed I do. I’d like to do something about a lot of things. But if he asks for two rooms … If he had asked for one, now …” She paused.

“What then?” I asked.

“What then?” she mimicked angrily. “I would have thrown him out.”

“What for?” I said wearily, putting the last piece of bread in my mouth. She said nothing. What for, I thought, what for? Doesn’t the world belong to lovers, weren’t the nights mild enough, weren’t other doors open, dirtier ones perhaps, but doors one could close behind one? I looked into my empty glass and smiled …

The landlady had risen, fetched her big book and a pile of forms, and sat down beside me again.

She watched me as I filled everything out. I paused at the column “Occupation,” raised my eyes, and looked into her smiling face. “Why do you hesitate?” she asked calmly. “Have you no occupation?”

“I don’t know.”

“You don’t know?”

“I don’t know whether I am a workman, a salesman, a manufacturer, unemployed, or only an agent … but whose agent?” Whereupon I quickly wrote down “Agent” and gave her back the book. For a moment I considered offering her candles—twenty, if she liked, for a glass of wine, or ten for a cigar. I don’t know why I didn’t; perhaps I was just too tired, or too lazy, but the next morning I was glad I hadn’t. I relit my dead cigar and got to my feet. The woman had shut the book, laying the forms between the pages, and was yawning.

“Would you like coffee in the morning?” she asked.

“No, thank you, I have to catch an early train. Good night.”

“Good night,” she said.

But next morning I slept late. The passage, which I had glimpsed the previous evening—carpeted in dark red—had remained silent throughout the night. The room was quiet too. The unaccustomed wine had made me sleepy but also happy. The window was open, and all I could see against the quiet, deep-blue summer sky was the dark roof of the church opposite; farther to the right I could see the colorful reflection of the town lights, hear the noise of the livelier district. I took my cigar with me as I got into bed so that I could read the newspaper, but fell asleep at once …

It was after eight when I woke up. The train I had meant to catch had already left, and I was sorry I had not asked to be woken. I washed, decided to go out for a shave, and went downstairs. The little green room was now light and cheerful, the sun shining in through the thin curtains, and I was surprised to see tables set for breakfast, with breadcrumbs, empty jam dishes, and coffeepots. I felt as if I were the only guest in this silent house. I paid my bill to a friendly maid and left.

Outside, I hesitated. The cool shadow of the church surrounded me. The lane was narrow and clean; to the right a baker had opened his shop, loaves and rolls shone pale brown and yellow in the glass cases, and farther on, jugs of milk stood at a door to which a thin, blue-white trail of milkdrops led. The other side of the street was entirely taken up by a high black wall built of great square blocks of stone; through a big arched gateway I saw green lawn and walked in. I was standing in a monastery garden. An old, flat-roofed building, its stone window frames touchingly whitewashed, stood in the middle of a green lawn, stone tombs in the shade of weeping willows. A monk was padding
along a flagged path toward the church. In passing, he gave me a nod of greeting. I nodded back, and when he entered the church, I followed him, without knowing why.

The church was empty. It was old, devoid of decoration, and when by force of habit I dipped my hand in the stoup and bent my knee toward the altar, I saw that the candles must have just gone out: a thin black ribbon of smoke was rising from them into the clear air. There was no one in sight; Mass seemed to be over for this morning. My eyes involuntarily followed the black figure as it bobbed an awkward genuflection in front of the tabernacle and vanished into a side aisle. I went closer and came to a sudden halt. I found myself looking at a confessional. The young girl of the previous evening was kneeling in a pew in front of it, her face hidden in her hands, while at the edge of the nave, showing no apparent interest, stood the young man, the leather bag in one hand, the other hanging slackly by his side, his eyes on the altar …

In the midst of this silence I could hear my heart beating, louder, stronger, strangely unquiet, and I could feel the boy looking at me: our eyes met, he recognized me and flushed. The girl was still kneeling there, her face in her hands, a thin, faint thread of smoke still rising from the candles. I sat down in a pew, placed my hat beside me, and put my suitcase on the ground. I felt as if I were waking up for the first time, as if until now I had seen everything with my eyes only, a detached spectator—church, garden, street, girl, man—it had all been like a stage set that I had brushed by as an outsider, but now, looking at the altar, I longed for the young man to go and confess too. I wondered when I had last gone to confession, found it hard to keep track of the years, roughly it would be about seven, but as I went on thinking about it, I realized something much worse: I couldn’t put my finger on any sin. No matter how honestly I tried, I couldn’t think of any sin worth confessing, and this made me very sad. I felt unclean, full of things that needed to be washed away, but nowhere was there actually anything that in coarse, rough, sharp, clear terms could have been called sin. My heart beat louder than ever. Last night I had not envied the young couple, but now I did envy that ardent kneeling figure, still hiding her face in her hands, waiting. The young man stood completely motionless and detached.

I was like a pail of water that has remained exposed to the air for a long time. It looks clean, a casual glance reveals nothing in it: nobody has thrown stones, dirt, or garbage into it, it has been standing in the hallway or basement of a well-kept, respectable house; the bottom appears to be immaculate; all is clear and still, yet, when you dip your hand into the water, there runs through your fingers an intangible repulsive fine dirt that seems to be without shape, without form, almost without dimension. You just know it is there. And on reaching deeper into this immaculate pail, you find at the bottom a thick indisputable layer of this fine disgusting formless muck to which you cannot put a name; a dense, leaden sediment made up of these infinitesimal particles of dirt abstracted from the air of respectability.

I could not pray; I could only hear my heart beating and wait for the girl to go into the confessional. At last she raised her hands, laid her face against them for an instant, stood up, and entered the wooden box.

The young man kept his place. He stood there aloof, having no part in it, unshaven, pale, his face still expressing a mild yet insistent determination. When the girl emerged, he suddenly put down the bag and stepped into the confessional.

I still could not pray, no voice spoke to me or in me, nothing moved, only my heart was beating, and I could not curb my impatience: I stood up, left my suitcase where it was, and crossed over to the side aisle, where I stood beside a pew. In the front pew the young woman was kneeling before an old stone Madonna standing on a bare, disused altar. The Virgin’s face was coarse-featured but smiling, a piece of her nose was missing, the blue paint of her robe had flaked off, and the gold stars on it were now no more than lighter spots; her scepter was broken, and of the Child in her arms only the back of the head and part of the feet were still visible. The center part, the torso, had fallen out, and she was smilingly holding this fragment in her arms. A poor monastic order, evidently, that owned this church.

“Oh, if I could only pray!” I prayed. I felt hard, useless, unclean, unrepentant; I couldn’t even produce one sin; the only thing I possessed was my pounding heart and the knowledge that I was unclean …

The young man brushing past me from behind roused me from my thoughts, and I stepped into the confessional.

By the time I had been dismissed with the sign of the cross, the young couple had left the church. The monk pushed aside the purple curtain of the confessional, opened the little door, and padded slowly past me; once again he genuflected awkwardly before the altar.

I waited until I had seen him disappear, then quickly crossed the nave, also genuflecting, carried my suitcase back to the side aisle, and opened it. There they all lay, tied in bundles by my wife’s loving hands, slim, yellow, unadorned, and I looked at the cold, bare stone plinth on which the Madonna stood and regretted for the first time that my suitcase was not heavier. I ripped open the first bundle and struck a match …

Warming each candle in the flame of another, I stuck them all firmly onto the cold plinth, which quickly allowed the soft wax to harden; on they all went, until the whole surface was covered with restless flickering lights and my suitcase was empty. I left it where it was, seized my hat, genuflected once more, and left: it was as if I were running away.

And now at last, as I walked slowly toward the station, I recalled all my sins, and my heart was lighter than it had been for a long time …

It would seem that I have been singled out to ensure that the chain of black sheep is not broken in my generation. Somebody has to be the black sheep, and it happens to be me. Nobody would ever have thought it of me, but there it is: I am the one. Wise members of our family maintain that Uncle Otto’s influence on me was not good. Uncle Otto was the black sheep of the previous generation, and my godfather. It had to be somebody, and he was the one. Needless to say, he was chosen as my godfather before it became apparent that he would come to a bad end; and it was the same with me—I became godfather to a little boy who, ever since I have been regarded as black, is being kept at a safe distance from me by his anxious family. As a matter of fact, they ought to be grateful to us, for a family without a black sheep is not a typical family.

My friendship with Uncle Otto began at an early age. He used to visit us often, bringing more candies than my father thought good for us, and he would talk and talk until he finally ended up cadging a loan.

Uncle Otto knew what he was talking about. There was not a subject in which he was not well versed: sociology, literature, music, architecture, anything at all—and he knew his subject, he really did. Even specialists in their field enjoyed talking to him; they found him stimulating, intelligent, an uncommonly nice fellow, until the shock of the attendant attempt to cadge a loan sobered them up. For that was the outrageous thing about it: he did not confine his marauding to the members of the family but laid his artful traps wherever a favorable prospect seemed to present itself.

Everyone used to say he could “cash in” on his knowledge—as the older generation put it—but he didn’t cash in on it, he cashed in on the nerves of his relatives.

He alone knew the secret of managing to give the impression that on this particular day he would not do it. But he did do it. Regularly, relentlessly. I fancy he could not bring himself to pass up an
opportunity. His conversation was so fascinating, so full of genuine enthusiasm, clearly conceived, brilliantly witty, devastating for his opponents, uplifting for his friends: he could converse far too well on any topic for anyone to have dreamed that he would … ! But he did. He knew all about infant care, although he had never had any children; he would involve young mothers in irresistibly fascinating discussions on diet for this or that ailment, suggest types of baby powder, write out ointment prescriptions, decide the quantity and quality of what they were given to drink. He even knew how to hold them: a squalling infant, when put into his arms, would quiet down immediately. He radiated a kind of magic. And he was equally at home analyzing Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, composing legal opinions, citing from memory some law that happened to be under discussion …

But, regardless of time and topic, as the conversation approached its end and the moment of parting drew inexorably nearer—usually in the entrance hall, with the front door already half shut—he would thrust his pale face with its lively dark eyes once more through the door and, right into the apprehension of the tensely waiting relatives, remark quite casually to the head of that particular family, “By the way, I wonder if you could …?”