The Collected Stories of Heinrich Boll (56 page)

While I was dialing the number, and the perforated nickel dial kept clicking back into place—five times—I almost regretted it, but I dialed the sixth figure, and when her voice asked, “Who is it?” I was silent for a moment, then said slowly, “Bruno” and “Can you come? I have to go off—I’ve been drafted.”

“Right now?” she asked.

“Yes.”

She thought it over for a moment, and through the phone I could hear the voices of the others, who were apparently collecting money to buy some ice cream.

“All right,” she said, “I’ll come. Are you at the station?”

“Yes,” I said.

She arrived at the station very quickly, and to this day I don’t know, although she has been my wife now for ten years, to this day I
don’t know whether I ought to regret that phone call. After all, she kept my job open for me with the firm, she revived my defunct ambition when I came home, and she is actually the one I have to thank for the fact that those opportunities for advancement have now become reality.

But I didn’t stay as long as I could have with her either. We went to the movies, and in the cinema, which was empty, dark, and very hot, I kissed her, though I didn’t feel much like it.

I kept on kissing her, and I went to the station at six o’clock, although I need not have gone till eight. On the platform I kissed her again and boarded the first eastbound train. Ever since then I have not been able to look at a beach without a pang: the sun, the water, the cheerfulness of the people seem all wrong, and I prefer to stroll alone through the town on a rainy day and go to a movie where I don’t have to kiss anybody. My opportunities for advancement with the firm are not yet exhausted. I might become a director, and I probably will, according to the law of paradoxical inertia. For people are convinced I am loyal to the firm and will do a great deal for it. But I am not loyal to it and I haven’t the slightest intention of doing anything for it …

Lost in thought I have often contemplated that registration sticker, which gave such a sudden twist to my life. And when the tests are held in summer and our young employees come to me afterward with beaming faces to be congratulated, it is my job to make a little speech in which the words “opportunities for advancement” play a traditional role.

I have nothing against animals; on the contrary, I like them, and I enjoy caressing our dog’s coat in the evening while the cat sits on my lap. It gives me pleasure to watch the children feeding the tortoise in the corner of the living room. I have even grown fond of the baby hippopotamus we keep in our bathtub, and the rabbits running around loose in our apartment have long ceased to worry me. Besides, I am used to coming home in the evening and finding an unexpected visitor: a cheeping baby chick, or a stray dog my wife has taken in. For my wife is a good woman, she never turns anyone away from the door, neither man nor beast, and for many years now our children’s evening prayers have wound up with the words: O Lord, please send us beggars and animals.

What is really worse is that my wife cannot say no to hawkers and peddlers, with the result that things accumulate in our home which I regard as superfluous—soap, razor blades, brushes, and darning wool—and lying around in drawers are documents which cause me some concern: an assortment of insurance policies and purchase agreements. My sons are insured for their education, my daughters for their trousseaux, but we cannot feed them with either darning wool or soap until they get married or graduate, and it is only in exceptional cases that razor blades are beneficial to the human system.

It will be readily understood, therefore, that now and again I show signs of slight impatience, although generally speaking I am known to be a quiet man. I often catch myself looking enviously at the rabbits who have made themselves at home under the table, munching away peacefully at their carrots, and the stupid gaze of the hippopotamus, who is hastening the accumulation of silt in our bathtub, causes me at times to stick out my tongue at him. And the tortoise stoically eating its way through lettuce leaves has not the slightest notion of the anxieties that swell my breast: the longing for some fresh, fragrant coffee, for tobacco, bread, and eggs, and the comforting warmth engendered
by a schnapps in the throats of careworn men. My sole comfort at such times is Billy, our dog, who, like me, is yawning with hunger. If, on top of all this, unexpected guests arrive—men unshaven like myself, or mothers with babies who get fed warm milk and moistened zwieback—I have to get a grip on myself if I am to keep my temper. But I do keep it, because by this time it is practically the only thing I have left.

There are days when the mere sight of freshly boiled, snowy potatoes makes my mouth water; for—although I confess this reluctantly and with deep embarrassment—it is a long time since we have enjoyed “good home cooking.” Our only meals are improvised ones of which we partake from time to time, standing up, surrounded by animals and human guests.

Fortunately it will be a while before my wife can buy useless articles again, for we have no more cash, my wages have been attached for an indefinite period, and I myself am reduced to spending the evenings going around the distant suburbs, in clothing that makes me unrecognizable, selling razor blades, soap, and buttons far below cost; for our situation has become grave. Nevertheless, we own several hundredweight of soap, thousands of razor blades, and buttons of every description, and toward midnight I stagger into the house and go through my pockets for money; my children, my animals, my wife stand around me with shining eyes, for I have usually bought some things on the way home: bread, apples, lard, coffee, and potatoes—the latter, by the way, in great demand among the children as well as the animals—and during the nocturnal hours we gather together for a cheerful meal. Contented animals, contented children are all about me, my wife smiles at me, and we leave the living-room door open so the hippopotamus will not feel left out, his joyful grunts resounding from the bathroom. At that point my wife usually confesses to me that she has an extra guest hidden in the storeroom, who is only brought out when my nerves have been fortified by food: shy, unshaven men, rubbing their hands, take their place at table, women squeeze in between our children on the bench, milk is warmed up for crying babies. In this way I also make the acquaintance of animals that are new to me: seagulls, foxes, and pigs, although once it was a small dromedary.

“Isn’t it cute?” asked my wife, and I was obliged to say yes, it was, while I anxiously watched the tireless munching of this duffel-colored
creature which looked at us out of slate-gray eyes. Fortunately the dromedary only stayed a week, and business was brisk: word had got round of the quality of my merchandise, my reduced prices, and now and again I was even able to sell shoelaces and brushes, articles otherwise not much in demand. As a result, we experienced a period of false prosperity, and my wife, completely blind to the economic facts, produced a remark that worried me, “Things are looking up!” But I saw our stocks of soap shrinking, the razor blades dwindling, and even the supply of brushes and darning wool was no longer substantial.

Just about this time, when I could have used some spiritual sustenance, our house was shaken one evening, while we were all sitting peacefully together, by a tremor resembling a fair-sized earthquake: the pictures rattled, the table rocked, and a ring of fried sausage rolled off my plate. I was about to jump up and see what the matter was when I noticed suppressed laughter on the faces of my children. “What’s going on here?” I shouted, and for the first time in all my checkered experience I was really beside myself.

“Wilfred,” said my wife quietly, and put down her fork, “it’s only Wally.” She began to cry, and against her tears I have no defense, for she has borne me seven children.

“Who is Wally?” I asked wearily, and at that moment the house was rocked by another tremor. “Wally,” said my youngest daughter, “is the elephant we’ve got in the basement.”

I must admit I was at a loss, which is not really surprising. The largest animal we had housed so far had been the dromedary, and I considered an elephant too big for our apartment.

My wife and children, not in the least at a loss, supplied the facts: the animal had been brought to us for safekeeping by a bankrupt circus owner. Sliding down the chute which we otherwise use for our coal, it had had no trouble entering the basement. “He rolled himself up into a ball,” said my oldest son, “really an intelligent animal.” I did not doubt it, accepted the fact of Wally’s presence, and was led down in triumph into the basement. The animal was not as large as all that; he waggled his ears and seemed quite at home with us, especially as he had a bale of hay at his disposal. “Isn’t he cute?” asked my wife, but I refused to agree. Cute did not seem to be the right word. Anyway, the family appeared disappointed at the limited extent of my enthusiasm, and my
wife said, as we left the basement, “How cruel you are, do you want him to be put up for auction?”

“What d’you mean, auction,” I said, “and why cruel? Besides, it’s against the law to conceal bankruptcy assets.”

“I don’t care,” said my wife. “Nothing must happen to the animal.”

In the middle of the night we were awakened by the circus owner, a diffident, dark-haired man, who asked us whether we had room for one more animal. “It’s my sole possession, all I have left in the world. Only for a night. How is the elephant, by the way?”

“He’s fine,” said my wife, “only I’m a bit worried about his bowels.”

“That’ll soon settle down,” said the circus owner. “It’s just the new surroundings. Animals are so sensitive. How about it, then: will you take the cat too—just for the night?” He looked at me, and my wife nudged me and said, “Don’t be so unkind.”

“Unkind,” I said, “no, I certainly don’t want to be that. If you like, you can put the cat in the kitchen.”

“I’ve got it outside in the car,” said the man.

I left my wife to look after the cat and crawled back into bed. My wife was a bit pale when she came to bed, and she seemed to be trembling. “Are you cold?” I asked.

“Yes,” she said, “I’ve got such funny chills.”

“You’re just tired.”

“Maybe,” said my wife, but she gave me a queer look as she said it. We slept quietly, but in my dreams I still saw that queer look of my wife’s, and a strange compulsion made me wake up earlier than usual. I decided to shave for once.

Lying under our kitchen table was a medium-sized lion; he was sleeping peacefully, only his tail moved gently and made a sound like someone playing with a very light ball.

I carefully lathered my face and tried not to make any noise, but when I turned my chin to the right to shave my left cheek I saw that the lion had his eyes open and was watching me. They really do look like cats, I thought. What the lion was thinking I don’t know; he went on watching me, and I shaved, without cutting myself, but I must admit it is a strange feeling to shave with a lion looking on. My experience of handling wild beasts was practically nonexistent, so I confined myself to looking sternly at the lion, then I dried my face and went back to
the bedroom. My wife was already awake, she was just about to say something, but I cut her short and exclaimed, “What’s the use of talking about it!” My wife began to cry, and I put my hand on her head and said, “It’s unusual, to say the least, you must admit that.”

“What isn’t unusual?” said my wife, and I had no answer.

Meanwhile the rabbits had awakened, the children were making a racket in the bathroom, the hippopotamus—his name was Gottlieb—was already trumpeting away, Billy was stretching and yawning; only the tortoise was still asleep, but it sleeps most of the time anyway.

I let the rabbits into the kitchen, where their feed box is kept under the cupboard; the rabbits sniffed at the lion, the lion at the rabbits, and my children—uninhibited and used to animals as they are—were already in the kitchen. I almost had the feeling the lion was smiling; my third-youngest son immediately found a name for him: Bombilus. And Bombilus he remained.

A few days later someone came to take away the elephant and the lion. I must confess I saw the last of the elephant without regret; he seemed silly to me, while the lion’s quiet, friendly dignity had endeared him to me. I felt a pang at Bombilus’s departure. I had grown so used to him; he was really the first animal to enjoy my wholehearted affection.

The basement of the house we used to live in was rented to a shopkeeper called Baskoleit; there were always orange crates standing around in the passages, it smelled of rotten fruit that Baskoleit put out for the garbage trucks, and from beyond the dim light of the frosted glass panel we could often hear his voice, with its broad East Prussian dialect, complaining about the bad times. But in his heart of hearts Baskoleit was a cheerful man: we knew, as surely as only children can know, that his grumbling was a game, even the way he used to swear at us, and he would often come up the three or four steps leading from the basement to the street with his pockets full of apples and oranges which he tossed to us like rubber balls.

But the interesting thing about Baskoleit was his daughter Elsa, of whom we knew that she wanted to be a dancer. Perhaps she already was one. In any case, she practiced a great deal, she practiced downstairs in the basement room with the yellow walls next to Baskoleit’s kitchen: a slender girl with fair hair who stood on the tips of her toes, dressed in green tights, pale, hovering for minutes like a swan, whirling around, leaping, or doing handsprings. I could watch her from my bedroom window when it got dark; in the yellow rectangle of the window frame, her thin, green-clad body, her pale strained face, and her fair head that sometimes, when she jumped, touched the naked light bulb, which began to swing and for the space of a few seconds expanded the yellow circle of light on the gray courtyard. There were some people who shouted across the courtyard, “Whore!,” and I didn’t know what a whore was; there were others who shouted, “It’s disgusting!,” and although I thought I knew what disgusting was, I couldn’t believe it had anything to do with Elsa. Then Baskoleit’s window would be flung open, and in the steam of the kitchen his big bald head would loom up, and with the light that fell from the open kitchen window into the courtyard he would pour out into the dark courtyard a torrent of oaths of which I didn’t understand a single one. At any rate, Elsa’s window
was soon provided with a curtain, heavy green plush, which let out hardly any light at all, but every evening I would gaze at the faintly glowing rectangle and see her, although I couldn’t see her: Elsa Baskoleit in her light-green tights, thin and fair-haired, hovering for seconds on end under the naked light bulb.