The Collected Stories of Heinrich Boll (36 page)

“What the hell are you doing here?” said Brecht. “Get in behind that wall. One of you stand at the corner and listen.”

Feinhals was surprised to see how many there were. He tried to count them in the dark, there seemed to be six or seven. They sat down
on the grassy strip. “That’s wine,” said the second lieutenant; he groped for the bottles and passed them across. “Split it up between you.”

“Prinz,” he said, “Corporal Prinz, what’s going on?”

Prinz was the one standing at the corner. Feinhals saw his medals glinting in the dark as he turned.

“Lieutenant,” said Prinz, “this is just nonsense. They’ve already overtaken us left and right, and surely you’re not trying to tell me that here of all places, right next to this dirty farm, here of all places where our machine gun happens to be standing, the front is supposed to be held. Lieutenant, the front is several hundred miles wide and has been slipping for quite a while now—and I don’t believe these hundred and fifty yards have been destined to produce a Knight’s Cross—it’s time we cleared out; if we don’t we’ll be caught in the middle, and not a soul’s going to give a damn …”

“The front’s got to be held somewhere. Are you all there?”

“Yes,” said Prinz, “we’re all here—and I don’t think a front can be held by convalescents and men just back from sick leave. Incidentally, young Genzki’s been wounded—he got a bullet through his arm. Genzki,” he called softly, “where are you?”

A slight figure detached itself from the wall.

“All right,” said the second lieutenant, “you can go back. Feinhals, you go with him, the first-aid post is right where your bus stopped. Report to the old man that I’ve moved the machine gun back thirty yards—and bring some bazookas back with you. Send another man along with them, Prinz.”

“Wecke,” said Prinz, “you go. Did you come with the furniture van too?” he asked Feinhals.

“Yes.”

“So did we.”

“Go on,” said the second lieutenant, “get a move on; hand in the paybook to the old man …”

“Someone killed?” asked Prinz.

“Yes,” said the second lieutenant impatiently. “Go on, get a move on.”

Feinhals walked slowly to the village with the two men. Now several tanks were firing into it from the south and east. Ahead of them, where the main road entered the village to the left, they heard deafening explosions, men yelling, and they stood still for a moment and exchanged glances.

“Great,” said the short fellow with the wounded arm.

They hurried on, but when they emerged from the hollow a voice called, “Password?”

“Tannenberg,” they growled.

“Brecht? Combat unit Brecht?”

“Yes,” called Feinhals.

“Go back! Everyone back into the village; assemble on the main road!”

“Run back to the others,” Wecke told Feinhals. “You go.”

Feinhals ran down the hollow, up the other side, and called from halfway up, “Hey, Lieutenant Brecht!”

“What is it?”

“We’ve all got to go back—back to the village—and assemble on the main road.”

They all walked slowly back together.

The red furniture van had almost filled up again. Feinhals slowly climbed the ramp, sat down just inside, leaned back, and tried to sleep. The deafening explosions seemed somewhat ridiculous to him now that he could hear it was German tanks trying to keep the road open. They were banging away much too much, there was altogether more banging in this war than necessary, but no doubt it was all part of this war. Everyone was in now except for a major handing out decorations and the few men to whom he was handing them. A corporal, a sergeant, and three privates were standing facing the little gray-haired major, who, his head bare, was hurriedly presenting the crosses and documents. From time to time he would call, “First Lieutenant Greck—First Lieutenant Greck!” Finally he shouted, “Brecht, where’s Lieutenant Brecht?” From the depths of the van Brecht called, “Here, sir!” moved slowly forward, touched his hand to his cap, and, standing on the ramp, reported, “Second Lieutenant Brecht, Major.”

“Where’s your company commander?” asked the major. Although not furious, the major did look annoyed. The soldiers he had decorated walked slowly up the ramp and squeezed past Brecht into the van.

The major stood all by himself on the village street holding an Iron Cross First Class, and Brecht, his face expressing complete blankness, said, “No idea, Major. A few minutes ago Lieutenant Greck ordered me to lead the company to the assembly point, he had to,” Brecht stopped and wavered, “Lieutenant Greck was suffering from severe indigestion …”

“Greck!” shouted the major in the direction of the village. “Greck!” He turned away, shaking his head, and said to Brecht: “Your company fought very well indeed—but we have to get out …”

A second German tank banged away from the street in front of them toward the right, and the small battery behind seemed to have veered round; it was firing in the same direction as the tanks. In the village many houses were burning now—and the church, which stood in the center of the village and was taller than any of the houses, was filled with a ruddy glow. The motor of the furniture van began to throb. The major stood irresolutely at the roadside and shouted to the van driver, “Get started.”

Feinhals opened the paybook and read, “Finck, Gustav, sergeant; civilian occupation: innkeeper; place of residence: Heidesheim …”

Heidesheim, thought Feinhals, with a shock. Heidesheim was two miles from his home, and he knew the inn with the sign, painted brown, F
INCK’S
W
INESHOP
& H
OTEL, ESTAB
. 1710. He had often driven past but never gone in—then the door was slammed in his face, and the red furniture van drove off.

Again and again Greck tried to stand up and run to the end of the village where they were waiting for him, but he couldn’t. As soon as he straightened himself, a griping pain like a corkscrew in his stomach forced him to double up, and he felt the urge to defecate—he was squatting beside the low wall surrounding the cesspool, his stool came in driblets, barely a tablespoonful at a time, while the pressure in his racked abdomen was enormous; he could not sit properly, the only bearable position was squatting, completely doubled up, and getting some slight relief when the stool left his bowels in small quantities—at such moments his hopes would rise, hopes that the cramps might be over, but they were only over for that moment. This griping pain was so paralyzing that he couldn’t walk, he couldn’t even have crawled slowly; the only way he could have propelled himself would have been to tip forward and drag himself painfully along by his hands, but even then he wouldn’t have got there in time. It was another three hundred yards to the departure point, and now and again through the noise of the firing he would hear Major Krenz calling his name—but by this time he hardly cared: he had stomach cramps, intense, violent stomach cramps. He held on to the wall, his naked bottom shivering, and in his bowels
that grinding pain would form and re-form, like some slowly accumulating explosive that surely must be devastating in effect but, when it did come, was always minimal, kept accumulating, kept promising to bring final release while never releasing more than a tiny morsel of stool …

Tears ran down his face; he no longer thought of anything connected with the war, although all around him shells were bursting and he could distinctly hear the trucks driving away from the village. Even the tanks withdrew onto the highway and moved off, firing, toward the town; he could hear it all, very graphically, and in his mind’s eye he had a clear picture of the village being surrounded. But the pain in his stomach was bigger, closer, more important, monstrous. He thought about this pain that wouldn’t let up, that paralyzed him—and in a frenzied, grinning procession, all the doctors he had ever consulted for his agonizing condition passed in front of him, headed by his repulsive father. They surrounded him, those useless creatures who had never had the guts to tell him straight out that his illness was due simply to constant malnutrition in his youth.

A shell landed in the cesspool, a wave splashed over him, soaking him with that disgusting liquid; he could taste it on his lips, and he sobbed more bitterly than ever, until he noticed that the farmhouse was in the tanks’ direct line of fire. Shells were whining right past his ears, over his head, incredibly hard round balls that caused a great rush of air. Glass tinkled behind him, timbers shattered, and inside the house a woman screamed, chunks of plaster and splinters of wood flew all around him. He tipped forward, ducked behind the wall surrounding the cesspool, and carefully buttoned his pants. Although his bowels were still convulsively releasing tiny amounts of that terrible pain, he crawled slowly down the steep little stone path to get away from the immediate vicinity of the farmhouse. His pants were fastened, but he could crawl no farther, the pain was paralyzing him. He lay where he was, and for a few seconds his whole life spun round him—a kaleidoscope of unspeakably monotonous pain and humiliation. Only his tears seemed important and real to him as they flowed freely down his face into the muck, that muck he had tasted on his lips—straw, excrement, mud, and hay. He was still sobbing when a shell hit the center beam of a barn roof, and the great wooden structure with its bales of pressed straw collapsed and buried him.

The green furniture van had an excellent engine. The two men up front in the cab, who took turns driving, did not talk much, but when they did, they spoke almost exclusively about the engine. “Isn’t she a beaut,” they would say from time to time, shaking their heads in amazement and listening spellbound to that powerful, dark, regular throbbing with never a false or disquieting note to it. The night was warm and dark, and the road, as they drove steadily northward, was sometimes choked with army vehicles or horse-drawn carts, and every now and again they had to jam on the brakes because they suddenly came face to face with marching columns and almost drove into that strange formless mass of dark figures whose faces were lit up by their headlights. The roads were narrow, too narrow to allow furniture vans, tanks, and marching columns to pass, but the farther north they drove the emptier became the road, and for a long time there was nothing to stop them driving the green van as fast as it would go; the cones of their headlights lit up trees and houses, sometimes, in a curve, shooting into a field and making the tall corn or tomato plants stand out sharp and clear. Finally the road became quite empty, the men were yawning now, and they stopped somewhere in a village on a side road for a rest; they opened their packs, gulped the hot, very strong coffee from their canteens, opened flat round cans of chocolate, and calmly made themselves sandwiches, opening their cans of butter, sniffing the contents, and spreading the butter thickly on the bread before covering it with slabs of sausage, the sausage red and ingrained with peppercorns. The men took their time over their meal. Their gray, tired faces revived, and one—the man now sitting on the left and the first to finish—lit a cigarette and drew a letter from his pocket; he unfolded it and took a snapshot out of the folds: it showed a charming little girl playing with a rabbit in a meadow. Holding the picture out to the man beside him, he said, “How d’you like that—cute, eh? My kid,” he laughed, “a home-leave kid.” The other man went on chewing as he answered, staring at the picture and mumbling, “Cute—home-leave kid, eh? How old is she?”

“Three.”

“Haven’t you got a picture of your wife?”

“Sure.” The man on the left took out his wallet—but suddenly
paused, saying, “Listen to that, they must have gone nuts.” From the interior of the green van came a deep, angry mumbling and the shrill screams of a woman.

“Go and make them shut up,” said the man behind the wheel.

The other man opened the cab door and looked out onto the village street. It was warm and dark outside, and the houses were unlit; there was a smell of manure, a very strong smell of cow dung, and in one of the houses a dog barked. The man got out, cursing under his breath at the deep soft mud of the village street, and walked slowly around the van. From outside, the mumbling was only faintly audible, more like a gentle buzzing inside a box, but now two dogs were barking in the village, then three, and suddenly a light went on in a window somewhere, and a man’s silhouette became visible. The driver—his name was Schröder—couldn’t be bothered to open the heavy padded doors at the rear, it didn’t seem worth the effort, so he took his machine pistol and banged the steel butt a few times against the side of the van; there was silence at once. Then Schröder jumped up onto the tire to see if the barbed wire was still securely in place over the closed opening in the roof. The barbed wire was still securely in place.

He climbed back into the cab. Plorin had finished his meal; he was drinking coffee now and smoking, and the picture of the three-year-old girl with the rabbit was lying in front of him. “Cute kid all right,” he said, raising his head for a moment. “You’re not saying anything—don’t you have a picture of your wife?”

“Sure.” Schröder took out his wallet again, opened it, and removed a well-thumbed snapshot: it was of a woman, short, grown a little stout, wearing a fur coat. The woman was smiling inanely, her face was rather haggard and tired, and the black shoes with the heels that were much too high looked as though they hurt. Her thick hair, heavy and brownish, had been permed. “Good-looking girl,” said Plorin. “Let’s get going.”

“Right,” said Schröder, “start her up.” He gave another glance outside; by this time a lot of dogs were barking in the village, and a lot of windows showed lights, and people were calling out to each other in the darkness.

“Let’s go,” he said, slamming the door. “Start her up.”

Plorin turned the key in the ignition, the motor started at once; he
let it idle for a few seconds, then pressed down the gas pedal, and the green furniture van maneuvered itself slowly onto the highway. “She’s a beaut all right,” said Plorin, “a real beaut.”

The noise of the engine filled the whole cab, their ears were full of the steady hum, but after a short distance that deep murmur from the inside of the van became audible again. “Let’s have a song,” Plorin said to Schröder.