The Collected Stories of Heinrich Boll (46 page)

That afternoon we didn’t have to load either boots from trucks onto railway cars or bales of hay from railway cars onto trucks; we had to help the quartermaster sergeant. He considered himself a genius at organization; he had requisitioned as many assistants as there were items of clothing and equipment on his list, except that for the groundsheets he needed two; he also required a clerk. The two men with the groundsheets went ahead and laid them out, flicking the corners nice and straight, neatly on the cement floor of the stable. As soon as the groundsheets had been spread out, the first man started off by laying two neckties on each groundsheet; the second man, two handkerchiefs; I came next with the mess kits. While all the articles for which, as the sergeant said, size was not a factor were being distributed, he was preparing, with the aid of the more intelligent members of the detachment, the objects for which size was a factor: tunics, boots, trousers, and so on. He had a whole
pile of paybooks lying there. He selected the tunics, trousers, and boots according to measurements and weight, and he insisted everything would fit, “unless the bastards have got too fat as civilians.” It all had to be done at great speed, in one continuous operation, and it was done at great speed, in one continuous operation, and when everything had been spread out the reservists came in, were conducted to their groundsheets, tied the ends together, hoisted their bundles onto their backs, and went to their rooms to put on their uniforms. Only occasionally did something have to be exchanged, and then it was always because someone had got too fat as a civilian. It was also only occasionally that something was missing: a shoe-cleaning brush or a spoon or fork, and it always turned out that someone else had two shoe-cleaning brushes or two spoons or forks, a fact which confirmed the sergeant’s theory that we did not work mechanically enough, that we were “still using our brains too much.” I didn’t use my brain at all, with the result that no one was short a mess kit. While the first man of each company being equipped was hoisting his bundle onto his shoulder, the first of our own lot had to start spreading out the next groundsheet. Everything went smoothly. Meanwhile the newly promoted Pfc sat at the table and wrote everything down in the paybooks; most of the time he had only to enter a one in the paybook, except with the neckties, socks, handkerchiefs, undershirts, and underpants, where he had to write a two.

In spite of everything, though, there were occasionally some dead minutes, as the quartermaster sergeant called them, and we were allowed to use these to fortify ourselves; we would sit on the bunks in the grooms’ quarters and eat bread and liver sausage, sometimes bread and cheese or bread and jam, and when the sergeant had a few dead minutes himself he would come over and give us a lecture about the difference between rank and appointment. He found it tremendously interesting that he himself was a quartermaster sergeant—“that’s my appointment”—and yet had the rank of a corporal, “that’s my rank.” In this way, so he said, there was no reason, for example, why a Pfc should not act as a quartermaster sergeant, indeed even an ordinary private might; he found the theme endlessly fascinating and kept on concocting new examples, some of which betokened a well-nigh treasonable imagination. “It can actually happen, for instance,” he said, “that a Pfc is put in command of a company, of a battalion even.”

For ten hours I laid mess kits on groundsheets, slept for six hours, and again for ten hours laid mess kits on groundsheets; then I slept another six hours and still had heard nothing from Leo. When the third ten hours of laying out mess kits began, the Pfc started entering a two wherever there should have been a one, and a one wherever there should have been a two. He was relieved of his post, and now had to lay out neckties, and the second probationary teacher was appointed clerk. I stayed with the mess kits during the third ten hours too. The sergeant said he thought I had done surprisingly well.

During the dead minutes, while we were sitting on the bunks eating bread and cheese, bread and jam, bread and liver sausage, strange rumors were beginning to be peddled around. A story was being told about a rather well-known retired general who received orders by phone to go to a small island in the North Sea where he was to assume a top-secret, extremely important command. The general had taken his uniform out of the closet, kissed his wife, children, and grandchildren goodbye, given his favorite horse a farewell pat, and taken the train to some station on the North Sea, and from there hired a motorboat to the island in question. He had been foolish enough to send back the motorboat before ascertaining the nature of his command; he was cut off by the rising tide and—so the story went—had forced the farmer on the island at pistol point to risk his life and row him back to the mainland. By afternoon there was already a variation to the tale: some sort of a struggle had taken place in the boat between the general and the farmer, they had both been swept overboard and drowned. What I couldn’t stand was that this story—and a number of others—was considered criminal all right, but funny as well, while to me they seemed neither one nor the other. I couldn’t accept the grim accusation of sabotage, which was being used like some kind of moral tuning fork, nor could I join in the laughter or grin with the others. The war seemed to deprive what was funny of its funny side.

At any other time the “Must I Thens” that ran through my dreams, my sleep, and my few waking moments, the countless men who got off the streetcars and came hurrying into the barracks with their cardboard boxes and went out again an hour later with “Must I Then”; even the
speeches we sometimes listened to with half an ear, speeches in which the words “united effort” were always occurring—all this I would have found funny, but everything which would have been funny before was not funny anymore, and I could no longer laugh or smile at all the things which would have seemed laughable; not even the sergeant, and not even the Pfc, whose chevron was still not quite straight and who sometimes laid out three neckties on the groundsheet instead of two.

It was still hot, still August, and the fact that three times sixteen hours are only forty-eight, two days and two nights, was something I didn’t realize until I woke up about eleven on Sunday and for the first time since Leo had been transferred was able to lean out of the window, my arms on the sill. The probationary teachers, wearing their walking-out dress, were ready for church, and looked at me in a challenging kind of way, but all I said was “Go ahead, I’ll follow you,” and it was obvious that they were glad to be able to go without me for once. Whenever we had gone to church they had looked at me as if they would like to excommunicate me, because something or other about me or my uniform was not quite up to scratch in their eyes: the way my boots were cleaned, the way I had tied my tie, my belt or my haircut; they were indignant not as fellow soldiers (which, objectively speaking, I agree would have been justified), but as Catholics. They would rather I had not made it so unmistakably clear that we were actually going to one and the same church; it embarrassed them, but there wasn’t a thing they could do about it, because my paybook is marked RC.

This Sunday there was no mistaking how glad they were to be able to go without me. I had only to watch them marching off to town, past the barracks, clean, upright, and brisk. Sometimes, when I felt bouts of pity for them, I was glad for their sakes that Leo was a Protestant: I think they simply couldn’t have borne it if Leo had been a Catholic too.

The office clerk and the orderly were still asleep; we didn’t have to be at the stable again till three that afternoon. I stood leaning out of the window for a while, till it was time to go, so as to get to church just in time to miss the sermon. Then, while I was dressing, I opened Leo’s locker again: to my surprise it was empty, except for a piece of paper and a big chunk of ham. Leo had locked the cupboard again to be sure I
would find the message and the ham. On the paper was written “This is it—I’m being sent to Poland—did you get my message?” I put the paper in my pocket, turned the key in the locker, and finished dressing; I was in a daze as I walked into town and entered the church, and even the glances of the three probationary teachers, who turned round to look at me and then back to the altar again, shaking their heads, failed to rouse me completely. Probably they wanted to make sure quickly whether I hadn’t come in
after
the Elevation of the Host so they could apply for my excommunication; but I really had arrived
before
the Elevation, so there was nothing they could do; besides, I wanted to remain a Catholic. I thought of Leo and was scared, I thought too of the girl in Cologne and had a twinge of conscience, but I was sure her voice had sounded like marriage. To annoy my roommates, I undid my collar while I was still in church.

After mass I stood outside leaning against the church wall in a shady corner between the vestry and the door, took off my cap, lit a cigarette, and watched the faithful as they left the church and walked past me. I wondered how I could get hold of a girl with whom I could go for a walk, have a cup of coffee, and maybe go to a movie; I still had three hours before I had to lay out mess kits on groundsheets again. It would be nice if the girl were not too silly and reasonably pretty. I also thought about dinner at the barracks, which I was missing now, and that perhaps I ought to have told the office clerk he could have my chop and dessert.

I smoked two cigarettes while I stood there, watching the faithful standing about in twos and threes, then separating again, and just as I was lighting the third cigarette from the second a shadow fell across me from one side, and when I looked to the right I saw that the person casting the shadow was even blacker than the shadow itself: it was the chaplain who had read Mass. He looked very kind, not old, thirty perhaps, fair and just a shade too well fed. First he looked at my open collar, then at my boots, then at my bare head, and finally at my cap, which I had put next to me on a ledge from where it had slipped off onto the paving; last of all he looked at my cigarette, then into my face, and I had the feeling that he didn’t like anything he saw there. “What’s
the matter?” he finally asked. “Are you in trouble?” And hardly had I nodded in reply to this question, when he said, “Do you wish to confess?” Damn it, I thought, all they ever think of is confession, and only a certain part of that even. “No,” I said, “I don’t wish to confess.” “Well, then,” he said, “what’s on your mind?” He might just as well have been asking about my stomach as my mind. He was obviously very impatient, looked at my cap, and I felt he was annoyed that I hadn’t picked it up yet. I would have liked to turn his impatience into patience, but after all it wasn’t I who had spoken to him, but he who had spoken to me, so I asked—to my annoyance, somewhat falteringly—whether he knew of some nice girl who would go for a walk with me, have a cup of coffee, and maybe go to a movie in the evening; she didn’t have to be a beauty queen, but she must be reasonably pretty, and if possible not from a good family, as these girls are usually so silly. I could give him the address of a chaplain in Cologne where he could make inquiries, call up if necessary, to satisfy himself I was from a good Catholic home. I talked a lot, toward the end a bit more coherently, and noticed how his face altered: at first it was almost kind, it had almost looked benign, that was in the early stage when he took me for a highly interesting, possibly even fascinating case of feeble-mindedness and found me psychologically quite amusing. The transitions from kind to almost benign, from almost benign to amused were hard to distinguish, but then all of a sudden—the moment I mentioned the physical attributes the girl was to have—he went purple with rage. I was scared, for my mother had once told me it is a sign of danger when overweight people suddenly go purple in the face. Then he began to shout at me, and shouting has always put me on edge. He shouted that I looked a mess, with my “field tunic” undone, my boots unpolished, my cap lying next to me “in the dirt, yes, in the dirt,” and how undisciplined I was, smoking one cigarette after another, and whether perhaps I couldn’t tell the difference between a Catholic priest and a pimp. With my nerves strung up as they were, I had stopped being scared of him, I was just plain angry. I asked him what my tie, my boots, my cap, had to do with him, whether he thought maybe he had to do my corporal’s job, and “Anyway,” I said, “you fellows tell us all the time to come to you with our troubles, and when someone really tells you his troubles, you get mad.” “You fellows, eh?” he said, gasping with rage. “Since when are we on such familiar
terms?” “We’re not on any terms at all,” I said. I picked up my cap, put it on without looking at it, and left, walking straight across the church square. He called after me to at least do up my tie, and I shouldn’t be so stubborn; I very nearly turned round and shouted that
he
was the stubborn one, but then I remembered my mother telling me it was all right to be frank with a priest but you should try to avoid being impertinent—and so, without looking back, I went on into town. I left my tie dangling and thought about Catholics; there was a war on, but the first thing they looked at was your tie, then your boots. They said you should tell them your troubles, and when you did, they got mad.

I walked slowly through town, on the lookout for a café where I wouldn’t have to salute anyone: this stupid saluting spoiled all cafés for me. I looked at all the girls I passed, I turned round to look at them, at their legs even, but there wasn’t one whose voice would not have sounded like marriage. I was desperate. I thought of Leo, of the girl in Cologne, I was on the point of sending her a telegram; I was almost prepared to risk getting married just to be alone with a girl. I stopped in front of the window of a photographer’s studio, so I could think about Leo in peace. I was scared for him. I saw my reflection in the shop window—my tie undone and my black boots unpolished. I raised my hands to button up my collar, but then it seemed too much trouble, and I dropped my hands again. The photographs in the studio window were very depressing. They were almost all of soldiers in walking-out dress; some had even had their pictures taken wearing their steel helmets, and I was wondering whether the ones in steel helmets were more depressing than the ones in peaked caps when a sergeant came out of the shop carrying a framed photograph: the photo was fairly large, at least twenty-four by thirty, the frame was painted silver, and the picture showed the sergeant in walking-out dress and steel helmet. He was quite young, not much older than I was, twenty-one at most; he was just about to walk past me, he hesitated, stopped, and I was wondering whether to raise my hand and salute him, when he said, “Forget it—but if I were you I’d do up your collar, and your tunic too. The next guy might be tougher than I am.” Then he laughed and went off, and ever since then I have preferred (relatively, of course) the ones who have
their pictures taken in steel helmets to the ones who have their pictures taken in peak caps.