The Collected Stories of Heinrich Boll (32 page)

“The Beckers’ boy Hugo has been home on leave. He has the Iron Cross, First Class. Not bad for a boy who never got through high school, who couldn’t even make it as a butcher’s apprentice. I hear they’re even going to make him an officer. Sounds incredible to me. Wesendonk has been badly wounded, they say he’s going to lose his leg.” Even that was something, to lose a leg.

He told the waiter to bring him some more soda water. The soda water made him feel better. It was ice-cold. He longed to be able to wipe out everything he had done, that silly business with the Jew, and that stupid idea of buying a bit of fruit on a busy street with a hundred-pengö bill. The thought of that scene made him sweat again. Suddenly he felt his stomach beginning to rebel. He kept his seat and looked around for the toilet. Everyone in the restaurant was sitting quietly chatting. Not a soul moved. He looked anxiously around until his eyes fell on a green curtain beside the counter; he got slowly to his feet and walked stiffly toward the green curtain. On the way he had to salute, a captain was sitting there with a woman; his salute was brief and smart, and he was glad to reach the green curtain.

By four o’clock he was already back at the hospital. The cocky little lieutenant was sitting there with his bags packed. He was wearing his black tank uniform, numerous decorations shone on his chest. Greck knew exactly which ones they were. There were five of them. The lieutenant was drinking wine and eating slices of bread and meat. He called to Greck as he entered, “Your barrack box has arrived.”

“Good,” said Greck. He walked over to his bed and dragged the box by the handle over to the window.

“By the way,” said the lieutenant, “they had to leave your battalion commander behind at Szokarhely. Schmitz stayed with him. He wasn’t fit to be moved, that captain of yours.”

“Too bad,” said Greck. He began to open his box.

“I’d leave it shut if I were you,” said the lieutenant, “we have to move on, the lot of us, you too.”

“Me too?”

“That’s right,” the lieutenant laughed, then his childlike face became solemn. “They’re soon going to be organizing stomach commandos.”

Greck could feel his stomach protesting again. He breathed heavily at the sight of the meat lying there right in front of his eyes in all its clarity. Those gritty specks of fat in the canned meat looked to him like fly eggs. He walked rapidly to the window to get some air. Outside, a cart was driving by loaded with apricots. Greck vomited—he felt an incredible sense of relief.

“Bon appétit!”
cried the little lieutenant.

Feinhals had gone into town to buy pins, cardboard, and India ink, but all he had managed to get was the cardboard, deep-pink cardboard, the kind the sergeant major liked for making placards. On his way back from town, it started to rain. The rain was warm. Feinhals tried to push the thick roll under his tunic, but the roll was too long and too thick, and when he noticed the wrapping paper beginning to get wet at the edges and the pink of the cardboard coming through, he walked faster. At a street corner, he had to wait. Tanks were clumsily rounding the curve, slowly swinging first their gun barrels and then their rear ends as they continued on toward the southeast. People stood quietly watching the tanks. Feinhals walked on. The rain was coming down solidly now, dripping from the trees, and when he turned into the street leading to his clearing station, there were already large puddles on the black ground.

On the door hung the big white sign on which he had printed in pale-red pencil: “Hospital Clearing Station—Szentgyörgy.” Soon a better sign would hang there, sturdy, deep pink, printed in script with India
ink. Plain for all to see. At this hour there was no one about. Feinhals rang the bell, inside the porter pressed the switch for the latch; he nodded to the porter as he passed his little cubicle, and entered the corridor. In the corridor a machine pistol and a rifle were hanging on coat hooks. Beside each door was a little glass peephole with a thermometer hanging behind it. Everything was clean, and it was very peaceful, and Feinhals walked very quietly. Behind the first door he could hear the sergeant major on the telephone. In the corridor hung photographs of schoolmistresses and a large colored view of Szentgyörgy.

Feinhals turned to the right, went out through a door, and was in the schoolyard. The schoolyard was surrounded by big trees, and beyond its walls clustered tall buildings. Feinhals looked at a window on the fourth floor: the window was open. He walked quickly back into the building and up the stairs.

On the landings hung the photographs of former graduating classes. A whole row of big brown-and-gilt frames surrounding waist-length photos of girls: thick oval pieces of cardboard, each with a picture of a girl. The first frame showed the class of ’18; 1918 seemed to have been the first graduating year. The girls were wearing stiff white blouses and smiling sadly. Feinhals had looked at them often, every day for almost a week. Surrounded by the girls’ pictures was one of a very dark, severe-looking lady wearing pince-nez; she must be the headmistress. From 1918 to 1932 it was the same lady—in those fourteen years she did not seem to have changed. It was always the same photo; most likely she always took the same one to the photographer and had him stick it in the center. Feinhals paused in front of the class of ’28. Here his eyes were drawn to a girl because of her figure: her name was Maria Kartök, she wore her hair in bangs low on her forehead, almost to her eyebrows, and her face was confident and pretty. Feinhals smiled. He had now reached the second landing and walked on up to the class of ’32. He had also graduated in 1932. He looked at each girl in turn, they must have been nineteen at the time, his own age then, and now they were thirty-two: in this class there was another girl wearing bangs, only halfway down her forehead, and her face was confident and of a certain severe tenderness. Her name was Ilona Kartök and she was very like her sister, only she seemed slighter and less vain. The stiff blouse suited her well, and she was the only girl in the frame who was not smiling.
Feinhals stood there for a few seconds, smiled again, and continued slowly on up to the fourth floor. He was sweating but had no free hand to take off his cap, so he walked on.

At one end of the landing a statue of the Virgin Mary stood in a niche in the wall. It was made of plaster, a vase of fresh flowers had been placed in front of it; that morning there had been tulips in the vase, now there were yellow and red roses, tight, barely opened buds. Feinhals halted and looked along the corridor. Seen as a whole, that corridor full of girls’ pictures looked monotonous: all those girls looked like butterflies, innumerable butterflies with slightly darker heads, preserved and collected in large frames. It seemed to be always the same ones, only the large, dark, center one changed from time to time. It changed in 1932, in 1940, and in 1944. Way up on the left, at the end of the third landing, hung the year of ’44, girls in stiff white blouses, smiling and unhappy, and in the middle a dark elderly lady who was also smiling and also seemed unhappy. As he passed, Feinhals glanced at the year of ’42; there was a Kartök in that one too, called Szorna, but there was nothing striking about her: she wore her hair like all the others, her face was round and touching. When he got to the top, to the corridor that was as silent as the rest of the house, he heard trucks driving up outside. He threw his stuff on the windowsill, opened a window, and looked out. The sergeant major was standing down on the street facing a column of trucks, their motors still running. Soldiers with bandages jumped down onto the road, and at the rear, from a large red furniture van, came a whole group of soldiers with their packs. The street quickly filled up. The sergeant major shouted, “Here—over here—everyone into the corridor—and wait there.” A straggling gray procession moved slowly in through the doors. Across the street, windows were flung open, heads looked out, and people gathered at the corner.

Some of the women were crying.

Feinhals shut the window. The building was still quiet—the first sounds were just rising faintly from the corridor below; he walked slowly to the end of the corridor, where he kicked once at a door, and a woman’s voice inside said, “Yes?” He felt himself blushing as he pressed down the latch with his elbow. He did not see her right away; the room was full of stuffed animals, wide shelves held rolled maps, and neatly galvanized glass-topped cases displaying rock specimens, and on the
wall hung a colored print of embroidery samples and a numbered series of illustrations showing all the stages of infant care.

“Hello there,” cried Feinhals.

“Yes?” she called. He went toward the window where a narrow aisle opened up between cabinets and map stands. She was sitting at a little table. Her face was rounder than downstairs in the picture, the severity seemed to have grown softer and the tenderness more pronounced. She was shy yet amused when he said “Good afternoon,” and she nodded to him. He threw the big paper roll on the windowsill, then the parcel he had been carrying in his left hand, tossed his cap down beside them, and wiped the sweat off his face.

“I need your help, Ilona,” he said. “I’d appreciate it if you could let me have some India ink.”

She stood up, closing the book lying in front of her.

“India ink,” she said. “India ink, I don’t know what that is.”

“I thought you were a teacher!”

She laughed.

“India ink,” he said, “is a kind of drawing ink. Well, then—d’you know what a lettering pen is?”

“I can imagine,” she said with a smile. “A pen for writing fancy lettering—yes, I know what that is.”

“D’you think you could lend me one?”

“I believe so.” She gestured toward the cupboard behind him, but he saw that she would never come out from the corner behind the table.

He had discovered her three days earlier in this room and had spent hours with her every day, but she had never come close: she seemed scared of him. She was very devout, very innocent and intelligent, he had already had long talks with her, and he could feel that she was drawn to him—but she had never come close, close enough for him to suddenly put his arms around her and kiss her. He had had long talks with her, hung around her for hours, and a few times they had discussed religion, but he would have liked to kiss her; only she never came close.

He frowned and shrugged his shoulders. “Just one word,” he said hoarsely. “You’ve only to say one word, and I’ll never come into your room again.”

Her expression became serious. She lowered her lids, pursed her lips, looked up again: “I don’t know,” she said softly, “whether I’d like that—besides, it wouldn’t make any difference, would it?”

“No,” he said. She nodded.

He walked back to the aisle leading to the door and said, “I don’t understand how anyone can become a teacher in a school they’ve gone to for nine years.”

“Why not?” she said. “I always liked school, and I still do.”

“Isn’t there any school now?”

“Oh, yes—we’ve combined with another one.”

“And it’s your job to stay here and keep an eye on things, I know. Very smart of your headmistress to leave the prettiest teacher behind in the building,” he saw her blush, “as well as the most reliable, I know …” He glanced around at the teaching aids. “D’you have a map of Europe in here?”

“Of course,” she said.

“And some pins?” She looked at him in surprise and nodded.

“Be a nice girl,” he said, “and let me have the map of Europe and a few pins.” He unbuttoned his left pocket, fished out a small wax-paper envelope, and shook the contents carefully into his hand: little red cardboard flags; he picked one up and showed it to her. “Come on,” he cried, “we’re going to play General Staff, it’s a great game.” He saw her hesitate. “Come on,” he cried, “I promise I won’t touch you.”

She came slowly out and walked over to the rack that held the maps. He looked down into the yard as she passed him, then turned around and helped her set up the stand she was dragging out from somewhere. She fastened in the map, undid the cord, and slowly cranked up the stand. He stood beside her holding the little red flags. “Good God,” he muttered, “are we like animals, that all you girls are so scared of us?”

“Yes,” she said in a low voice, looking at him; he could tell she was still scared. “Like wolves,” she said, breathing hard. “Wolves that are liable to start talking about love any minute. Disturbing kind of people. Please,” she said very softly, “don’t do that.”

“Don’t do what?”

“Talk about love,” she said very softly.

“Not for the present, I promise.” He was peering at the map and did not notice the sidelong smile she gave him.

“The pins, please,” he said without turning his head. He stood impatiently facing the map, staring at the brightly colored, irregular shapes, and passed his hand over them. The main front from East Prussia’s eastern corner ran down almost dead straight as far as Nagyvárad, except in the middle, near Lvov, where there was a bulge, but no one had any exact information.

He glanced impatiently across at her; she was rummaging in the big drawer of a heavy walnut closet: towels, sheets, diapers, a large naked doll—then she hurried back, holding out a big tin full of pins. His fingers groped around in it, hastily picking out the ones with red or blue heads. She watched closely as he inserted the pins in the little cardboard flags and carefully stuck them into the map.

They looked at each other; outside in the corridor there was noise, doors banging, boots tramping, the voices of the sergeant major and soldiers.

“What’s happening?” she asked in alarm.

“Nothing,” he said calmly. “The first patients have arrived.”

He planted a flag down at the bottom where there was a large dot—Nagyvárad—ran his hand gently across Yugoslavia, and carefully stuck a flag on Belgrade, then farther along on Rome, and was surprised to see how close Paris was to the German frontier. With his left hand resting on Paris, he slowly ran his right hand all the way across to Stalingrad. The distance between Stalingrad and Nagyvárad was greater than between Paris and Nagyvárad. He shrugged his shoulders and carefully stuck little flags in the spaces between the marked points.