The Collected Stories of Heinrich Boll (44 page)

From up here, looking down from the vineyard, there was a good view over the whole area, and Feinhals realized why Weidesheim had not been occupied by either Germans or Americans: it wasn’t worth it. Fifteen houses, and a jam factory that had closed down. The railroad station was at Heidesheim, and across the river, Auelberg station was occupied by Germans: Weidesheim lay in a dead loop. Between Weidesheim and the hills, in a hollow, lay Heidesheim, and he could see solid rows of parked tanks on every open space of any size: in the schoolyard, alongside the church, in the market square, and on the big parking lot by the Hotel zum Stern—wherever you looked, tanks and vehicles that were not even camouflaged. In the valley the trees were already in blossom, slopes and meadows were covered with blossoming treetops, white, pink, and blue-white, and the air was mild: it was spring. From up here he could see the Finck premises lying like a fissure, the two square courtyards between the narrow streets; he could even make out the four sentries, and in the yard of the coffin shop he saw a man working at a big creamy-yellow box, slightly slanting, that was evidently to be a coffin—the freshly planed wood stood out clearly, shining pinkish-yellow, and the carpenter’s wife was sitting on a bench in the sun, near her husband, cleaning vegetables.

The streets were busy with women shoppers and soldiers, and just then a crowd of schoolchildren came out of the school building at the end of the village. But in Weidesheim the silence was complete. The houses looked as if they were hiding among the great treetops, but he knew every house in the place, and saw at first glance that the Berg and Hoppenrath houses were damaged but that his father’s was undamaged; there it stood, broad and yellow beside the main road with its comfortable façade, and the white flag hanging from his parents’ bedroom on the second floor was extra large, larger than the white flags he could see hanging from the windows of other houses. The linden trees were already green. But not a soul was in sight, and the white flags hung stiff and dead in the windless air. The big courtyard of the jam factory was empty too, rusty pails lay around untidily in heaps, the sheds had been locked. Suddenly he saw an American car approaching from Heidesheim station and driving quite fast through meadows and orchards toward Weidesheim. Now and again the car would vanish beneath the white treetops, then reappear, finally emerging onto
the main street of Weidesheim and pulling up at the entrance to the jam factory.

“For God’s sake,” Feinhals said quietly to Finck, pointing to the car. “What’s that?”

Finck, sitting beside him on the bench outside the toolshed, calmly shook his head. “Nothing,” he said, “nothing of any importance; that’s Fräulein Merzbach’s lover—he drives over every day.”

“An American?”

“Of course,” said Finck. “She’s scared to come to him over here because sometimes the Germans fire into the village—so he goes to her.”

Feinhals smiled. He knew Fräulein Merzbach well. She was a few years younger than himself, and at the time he left home, she had been fourteen, a skinny, restless teenager who played the piano much too much and badly—he could recall many a Sunday afternoon when she had been playing downstairs in the living room of the manager’s apartment while he sat reading in the garden next door, and when her playing stopped her thin pale face would appear at the window, and she would look out into the gardens, sad and discontented. Then for a few minutes it would be quiet, until she went back to the piano to continue her playing. She must be twenty-seven now, and somehow he was pleased that she had a lover.

He thought about how he would soon be down there, at home, right next door to the Merzbachs, and that at noon tomorrow he would probably see this American. Maybe he could speak to him, and maybe there would be a chance of getting hold of some papers through him—he was sure to be an officer. It wasn’t likely Fräulein Merzbach would have a private for a lover.

He also thought about his little apartment in town, which he knew no longer existed. The people there had written him that the house was no longer standing, and he tried to imagine it, but he couldn’t imagine it, although he had seen many houses that no longer existed. But that his apartment should no longer exist was something he couldn’t imagine. He hadn’t even gone there when he was granted leave to check the damage; he couldn’t see why he should go there just to see that there was nothing left. The last time he had been there, in 1943, the house had still been standing; he had nailed cardboard across the broken windows and had gone to the nightclub a few doors away. There he had sat for
three hours, until his train left, and he had chatted for a while with the waiter, who was very nice, a quiet, matter-of-fact type, still young, who had sold him cigarettes for forty pfennigs and a bottle of French cognac for sixty-five marks. That was cheap, and the waiter had even told him his name—he had forgotten it now—and had recommended a woman whose attraction lay in her apparently genuine German respectability. Her name was Grete, and everyone called her Ma, and the waiter had said she was a very nice person to have a drink with and a chat. He had spent three hours chatting with Grete, who really did seem to be respectable; she told him about her old home in Schleswig-Holstein and tried to cheer him up about the war. It had really been very nice at that nightclub, although after midnight a few drunk officers and men had insisted on doing the goose step.

He was glad to be going home and to be able to stay there now. He would stay a long time, doing nothing until he could see what was what. There would certainly be plenty of work after the war, but he didn’t intend to work much. He didn’t feel like it—he didn’t want to do anything, maybe help a bit with the harvest, without getting involved, like the summer vacationers who don’t mind putting their hand to a pitchfork once in a while. Maybe later on he would start rebuilding a few houses in the neighborhood, if he could get the contracts. His gaze swept over Heidesheim: much of it had been destroyed, a whole row of houses next to the station as well as the station itself. A freight train was still standing there, its engine shot to pieces beside the tracks; lumber was being loaded from one freight car onto an American truck, and the fresh planks stood out as clearly as the coffin in the carpenter’s garden that had been lighter and brighter than the blossoms on the trees, its creamy yellow shining brightly up at him …

He wondered which way to go. Finck had explained that American sentries were posted along the railroad tracks, where they had dug themselves in, and they didn’t bother individuals going out to work in the fields. But if he wanted to make quite sure, he could crawl through the canal in which the silted-up river was caught for a few hundred yards; you could duck as you went through it, and many people who for some reason or other wanted to get to the other side had used it—and at the end of the canal was the dense underbrush of the Kerpel reaching all the way to the gardens of Weidesheim. Once he was in the
gardens, nobody could see him, and there he knew every step of the way. Or he might carry a hoe or a spade on his shoulder. Finck assured him that many people came across every day from Weidesheim to work in the vineyards and orchards.

All he wanted was peace and quiet: to lie at home in bed, to know that no one could bother him, to think about Ilona, perhaps to dream about her. Later on he would start working, sooner or later—but first he wanted to sleep as long as he liked and be spoiled by his mother; she would be very happy if he came to stay for a long time. And most likely there would be tobacco or cigarettes at home, and at last he would have a chance to catch up on his reading. Fräulein Merzbach could almost certainly play the piano better by this time. He realized how happy he had been in those days, when he could sit in the garden reading and having to listen to Fräulein Merzbach play the piano badly; he had been happy, although he hadn’t known it at the time. Now he knew it. Once he had dreamed of building houses such as nobody had ever built, but later he had built houses that were almost exactly the same as the ones other people built. He had become a very mediocre architect, and he knew it, but still it was nice to understand one’s craft and build simple, good houses that sometimes turned out to be quite pleasing when they were finished. The important thing was not to take oneself too seriously—that was all. The way home seemed very long now, although it couldn’t be much more than half an hour; he felt very tired and lazy, and he would have liked to drive the rest of the way very quickly by car, drive home, get into bed, and go to sleep. It seemed such an effort to have to walk the route he soon must walk: right through the American front line. There might be trouble, and he didn’t want any more trouble; he was tired, and it all seemed such an effort.

He removed his cap and folded his hands when the noonday bell struck. Finck and the little boy did the same; and the carpenter down there in the yard, working away at the coffin, put down his tool, and his wife laid aside the vegetable basket and stood with folded hands in the yard. People no longer seemed ashamed of praying in public, and he found it somehow repugnant, in himself too. At one time he used to pray—Ilona had prayed too, a very devout, intelligent woman, who was even beautiful, and so intelligent that she couldn’t be confounded in her faith even by the priests. Now as he prayed he caught himself
praying for something, as a matter of habit almost, although there was nothing he wanted: Ilona was dead, what was there to pray for? But he prayed for her return—from somewhere or other, for his safe homecoming, although this was now almost accomplished. He suspected all these people of praying for something, for the fulfillment of some wish or other, but Ilona had told him, “We have to pray to console God,” she had read that somewhere and found it worth remembering, and as he stood there with folded hands he made up his mind that he would only pray properly when he could cease to pray for anything. When that happened he would go to church too, although he found it hard to bear the faces of most priests and their sermons, but he would do it to console God—maybe to console God for the faces and sermons of the priests. He smiled, unclasped his hands, and put on his cap … “Look,” said Finck, “now they’re being taken away.” He pointed down toward Heidesheim, and Feinhals saw that a truck was standing outside the coffinmaker’s house, a truck that was slowly filling up with officers from Finck’s little reception hall: even from up here their decorations stood out clearly. Then the truck disappeared rapidly along the tree-lined road toward the west, to where the war was over …

“People are saying they’ll be advancing soon,” said Finck. “D’you see all the tanks?”

“I hope they take Weidesheim pretty soon,” said Feinhals.

Finck nodded. “It won’t be long now—will you come over and see us?”

“Yes,” said Feinhals, “I’ll come and see you often.”

“I’d like that very much,” said Finck. “Have some tobacco?”

“Thanks,” said Feinhals; he filled a pipe, Finck held out a match, and for a while they gazed down onto the blossoming plain, Finck’s hand resting on his grandson’s head.

“I’ll be off now,” said Feinhals suddenly. “I must go, I want to get home …”

“Go ahead,” said Finck, “it’s quite all right, there’s no danger.”

Feinhals shook hands with him. “Thank you very much,” he said, and looked at him. “Thank you very much—I hope I can come over and see you soon.” He shook hands with the boy too, and the child looked at him thoughtfully and a bit suspiciously out of his dark, narrow-lidded eyes.

“You’d better take along the hoe,” said Finck.

“Thanks, I will,” said Feinhals, taking the hoe from Finck.

For a while as he walked down the hill it seemed as if he were heading straight for the coffin being made down there in the yard, he was walking straight for it, he watched the yellow shining box grow bigger and more distinct, as if through the lenses of field glasses, until he swung to the right past the village; there he was swallowed up by the stream of schoolchildren just leaving the school, he stayed among a group of children as far as the town gate and was alone as he quietly crossed the road to the underpass. He didn’t want to crawl through the canal, it was too much of an effort. To walk through the trackless, marshy Kerpel was also too much of an effort—and besides, it would just make him conspicuous if he entered the village first from the right and then from the left. He took the direct path that led across meadows and orchards and was completely calm when a hundred yards ahead he saw someone walking along carrying a hoe.

The Americans had posted only a couple of sentries at the underpass. The two men had taken off their steel helmets and were smoking as they stared with bored expressions at the blossoming gardens between Heidesheim and Weidesheim; they paid no attention to Feinhals, they had been here for three weeks now, and for the last two weeks nothing had been fired at Heidesheim. Feinhals walked calmly past them, nodded, they casually nodded back.

Only ten more minutes now: straight through the gardens, then around to the left between the Heusers and the Hoppenraths, down the main road a bit, and he would be home. He might meet someone he knew on the way, but he met no one; it was perfectly quiet except for the distant sounds of rumbling trucks, but at this hour no one seemed to think of firing. Right now there were not even the regular sounds of shells exploding that had seemed like warning signals.

He thought with a certain bitterness of Ilona: somehow he felt she had shirked things, she was dead, and to die was perhaps the easiest—she should have been with him now, and he felt she might have been with him. But she seemed to have known that it was better not to become very old and build one’s life on a love that was real only for a few moments while there was another, everlasting love. She seemed to have known many things, more than he did, and he felt cheated
because he would soon be home, where he would live, read, not work too hard if he could avoid it, and pray, to console God, not to ask Him for something He couldn’t give, because He loved you: money or success, or something that helped you to muddle along through life. Most people muddled along through life somehow, he would have to too, for he wouldn’t be building houses that could only be built by him—any mediocre architect could build them …