The Collected Stories of Heinrich Boll (72 page)

It stands to reason that it was not Hermes’ intention to attack anything or anyone from the rear, or to turn his back on anyone or anything. I am so indebted to him that, in his place, I bare my breast to reactionaries and avant-gardists alike, because I know very well: a short story which speaks of a brotherhood whose members undertake to attend Mass not once but twice on Sundays—prose of this kind is highly suspect to both parties.

For thirty-two years now I have been carrying the end of this story around with me, and what rejoices me as a contemporary but inhibits me as an author is the fact that I know (no: I sense) that this woman is still alive, and perhaps this is why the seventh trunk will not spring open.

This is precisely the place where I must finally explain about Knecht’s seventh trunk. Before doing so I must quickly, in a few sentences, deal with the numerous works of which none ranks equally with Knecht’s but of which many are worthy of considerable note. It seems to me there are so many handbooks on how to write a short story that I am often surprised that not more good ones are written. For instance: the directions given in every creative writing course, teaching every beginner, clearly and to the point, with a minimum of fuss, how to make a story so attractive and so convenient that it poses not the slightest difficulty for the Sunday supplement copy editor—i.e., has a maximum length of one hundred column-length lines, in other words roughly the size (comparatively speaking, of course) of the smallest transistor in the world. And there are many more directions than those I have mentioned: one has only to read them
and then just simply
(these four expansion words
contain the entire secret of short-story writing), and then just simply write it down, except—except that Knecht’s very last injunction states: “And from the final trunk, the seventh one, the finished short prose, lively as a mouse, must jump out the moment the trunk springs open.” This last sentence has always reminded me of a superstition that one of my great-grandmothers—she must have been called Nellessen, which would make her the third in the conspiracy—used to tell us about. All one had to do, according to my great-grandmother, was take a few stale crusts of bread, and some rags, and tie them securely inside a cardboard or wooden box, open the box after at most six weeks, and live mice would come jumping out.

The moral of this would therefore be quite simple: one need only know Heinrich Knecht, read
half
a story by Jacob Maria Hermes, and have had a superstitious great-grandmother, and all one would have to do would be
to just simply
write down one’s first short story. Of course one needs some
subject matter
, only a little really: a nine-year-old girl with cocoa spots on her blue blouse, a few nuns, who in a nice way are not quite right in the head, a school playground, a few maple trees, and seven trunks. Before any youthful readers bent on writing short stories go dashing off to acquire some trunks, I must quickly explain that the term “trunk” is of course variable: the seventh “trunk” can be one of those exquisitely designed little cases in which one keeps electric razors, it can be a carton for fifty cigarettes, an empty make-up kit might do too; what is important is what Knecht regards as indispensable: the “trunks” must get smaller and smaller; the first one sometimes has to be enormous. Where, for example, is an author in the first stage, the “preparation of subject matter,” as Knecht calls it, to put a railway station, or a school, a bridge over the Rhine, or a whole block of tenements? He has to rent an abandoned factory site until—and it may take years—he needs only the color of the bridge, only the smell of the school, and these he must put into the second trunk, although in this second trunk a horse, a truck, a barracks, and an abbey may be waiting, of which, as soon as it is the third trunk’s turn, he will keep only a hair, a squeak, the echo of a command, and a response, while in the third trunk an old blanket, cigarette butts, empty bottles, and a few pawn tickets are waiting. Pawn tickets were evidently Knecht’s favorite documents, for I recall a sentence of his: “Why, O Scribe, carry large objects around with
you, when there are institutions which not only relieve you of having to store these objects but even give you money for them, money that you do not need to pay back if, after the due date, you are no longer interested in the object? Make use, therefore, of the institutions which help you to lighten your baggage.” It does not take long to tell all the rest, for all the rest consists of: and so on. Needless to say—I am most anxious to avoid any misunderstanding—needless to say, the fifth or sixth trunk can be some little container the size of a matchbox, and the seventh can be an old biscuit tin; all that matters is that the seventh trunk must be closed, if only by a plain rubber band, and it must spring open by itself. Only one question remains unresolved, and it will probably cause youthful readers some anxiety: what does one do with living people where they are needed for short prose? One can neither—and possibly for twenty years, for it can take a good short story that long to wait for its awakening in the seventh trunk—so, one cannot shut living people up for that long, nor can one leave them at the pawnbroker’s; what is one to do with them? Answer: they are not needed: one can pull out a hair, secretly remove a shoelace from a shoe, or brush a lipstick across a piece of cigarette paper; that is enough, for—here I must earnestly remind readers of my great-grandmother Nellessen: the point is not to put life into the case or box, the point is that life has to be created in it and jump out of its own accord. And so on—
and then just simply write
the whole thing
down
.

Today, my dear sir, I saw a young man whose name I’m sure is familiar to you; it is Schnecker. He has been living—as far as I know—for a number of years in your neighborhood, and he was a schoolmate of your brother’s, who was reported missing during the war. But that’s not all. Today I also learned that for five years you have been waiting in vain to discover what actually happened to your brother, after you were informed, by way of that sinister official lie, that he had been “reported missing.” Well, Schnecker could have corrected that lie. There are only two people in the world who could have told you with certainty: one is Schnecker, the other is myself. I have kept silent. After reading my report you will understand why I could not come forward and tell you what actually happened.

Forgive me if I must now inform you of something that cannot be glossed over. Your brother is dead.

Actually, when I ran across Schnecker on the terrace of an outdoor café, he appeared to be in the best of spirits. He was sitting under one of those colorful umbrellas that are surrounded by planters full of big red geraniums, where customers relax in the shade as they observe the passing scene from behind their sunglasses. Schnecker was in the company of a young lady.

The young lady was pretty, her manner lighthearted and natural. On an impulse, I stepped onto the terrace, sat down at the next table so I could overhear them, and ordered some ice cream.

The shock I felt was intensified by the fact that Schnecker hadn’t changed. He was a bit plumper, seemed younger rather than older, and showed those first signs of the incipient bull neck that invariably begins to manifest itself in certain better-class Germans when they reach thirty-two and are old enough to take an active part in their father’s political
party. After I had thanked the waiter and seated myself so as to miss nothing, I overheard Schnecker say, “And Winnie?”

“She’s married, didn’t you know? She’s happy—deliriously happy, in fact.”

Schnecker laughed. “We’ll be, too,” he said gently, covering the girl’s hand with his own. The way she turned her large, soft, slightly stupid eyes up at him made her look as though she would melt with happiness, leaving behind some kind of sugary mess on the graceful little terrace chair.

“Cigarette?” asked Schnecker, offering her his open case. She took one, and they smoked as they applied themselves to their ice creams. Beyond the terrace, a constant stream of perspiring, thinly clad people made their way to or from the summer clearance sales. Their faces revealed a strain similar to what one used to see, only a year ago, on the trains carrying people out into the countryside to scrounge for potatoes—fear, fatigue, greed. Deeply disturbed, I toyed with my ice cream; my cigarette didn’t taste good anymore.

“Come to think of it,” Schnecker began again, “we have every reason to celebrate today!”

“Yes, today’s a red-letter day!” said the girl.

“You’re right.”

“Of course I’m right! The way you got through it all! So quickly and confidently and the only one to make it with honors. But tell me”—she giggled—“are they actually going to put a doctoral cap on your head?”

“No, my dear, but listen.” He paused to swallow a spoonful of ice cream. “I suggest we drive out there right away, enjoy ourselves, then change and drive to the Cosmo for a little intimate celebration, before the official stuff gets under way …”

This time she placed her hand on his.

I suddenly felt so nauseated that I had to get up and do something. I left some money on the table, far too much and more than I could possibly afford. But I just didn’t care. I staggered outside and let myself drift along with the perspiring, prattling crowd until I turned off onto a quiet, rubble-strewn street that was bathed in the shadow of still-standing façades. I sat down at random on what was left of a wall. The peace of rubble is the peace of graveyards …

It is time, I think, for me to introduce myself. My name is Wenk, and I was a dispatch runner for your brother, First Lieutenant Schelling. I have already told you that he is dead. You could have found that out long ago. You needed only to enter the house of your neighbor and look closely into his eyes, those eyes that will induce such a charming, rhapsodic girl to have him father their two planned children. Oh, that sweet young thing, how she will weep when the priest joins their hands while a Bach fugue resounds from the organ, played not by the regular organist, who is much too pedestrian and inartistic, but by a specially hired musician. Don’t fail to attend the wedding. Don’t forget to try the cake, the wine and cigars, and make sure your mother offers appropriate congratulations and sends a gift that matches the degree of friendship. This union, from which new Schneckers will spring, must be properly celebrated. I don’t know what kind of wedding presents match that degree of friendship in your circles: with us it might be an electric iron, or a punch bowl that would be used once every three years or never.

Enough of this chatter! I’m just trying to put off something I find it hard to write about because it sounds too improbable in the context of this incipiently bull-necked fledgling doctor of laws. But let me tell you: Schnecker is your brother’s murderer. There it is. There you have it. And I mean it not in any figurative or allegorical sense, but baldly and simply, the way I’ve said it: Schnecker is your brother’s murderer …

You are a young man. About twenty, I would guess. I have taken the liberty of spending a few afternoons snooping around outside your house and Schnecker’s, but I’m sure you won’t remember that nondescript individual standing under an elderberry tree, wearing sunglasses and smoking a cigarette, a sort of amateur detective of fate who, in return for a pension of thirty marks graciously doled out to him every month at the post office, feels obliged to render the Fatherland a small service.

Well, you’re twenty, I would guess. I saw you hurrying off with your book-filled briefcase at regular hours and fancied I could read something in your expression that I can only interpret as dread of your finals. Don’t worry, you’ll get through all right. Don’t take it too seriously. We were still priding ourselves on getting a B in geography and math when we were forced to look at men who had just been neatly shot in the stomach by a machine-gun salvo. Believe me,
they all looked alike, those who had a B in Latin and those who had never heard of Latin. They looked ugly; there was nothing, absolutely nothing uplifting about them. They were all alike—Poles, Germans, and Frenchmen, heroes and cowards. That’s all I can tell you. They belonged to the earth, and the earth no longer belonged to them. That’s all …

But before I tell you how Schnecker killed your brother, I must introduce myself in greater detail. I’m not exactly a confidence-inspiring person. Most of my time is spent lying on the bed smoking cigarettes. The venetian blinds are kept closed, letting in just enough light for me to tell which side of the cigarette paper is gummed. Next to the bed is my chair, on it a great heap of loose yellow tobacco. I occupy myself by rolling a new cigarette when the butt between my lips has become damp and no longer draws. The tobacco makes my throat burn; I flick the butts out the window, and whenever I lean out I can see great quantities of them floating in the roof gutter—burst, yellowish objects like bloated maggots—from some of them the tobacco has seeped out and is floating in the greenish soupy liquid filling the gutter that slopes away from the drain. Sometimes, when this scum has grown too thick, I borrow the broom belonging to my landlord’s cleaning woman and sweep all the sludge toward the drain, where with a low gurgling sound it disappears …

I am very seldom persuaded to undertake any kind of activity. My one great concern is how to get hold of tobacco, which I pay for by selling my books. Even this activity is strenuous enough. Fortunately, I am fairly well informed as to the value of the books, although I must say I lack the patience to insist on getting their true value. So I reluctantly drag myself off to those dingy little secondhand bookstores that smell of the decay which only piles of books produce: dry, musty, moldy. Skinny yellow hands, whose movements remind me of the silent, repulsive haste of raccoons, assess my spiritual property according to its material value. I rarely haggle, only when the offer seems unreasonably low; otherwise I merely nod and remain adamant when the usurer thrusts his pitiful face toward me as he counts out the money, hoping to persuade me at the last moment to accept less. I have resigned myself to the fact that I can no more cope with these people than I could with the war.