The Collected Stories of Heinrich Boll (78 page)

The farmer and his wife were sitting in the dark kitchen, and the first thing I saw was the glow of a cigarette.

“Good evening,” I said, instinctively keeping my voice low. “I’ve come about the cow.”

“Cow?” a woman’s voice repeated slowly and sarcastically.

“That’s right,” a man’s hoarse voice replied, equally sarcastically, more to the woman than to me. “They want to buy a cow, but …”

“I thought the deal was all settled,” I broke in.

“Settled!” repeated that disagreeable male voice; I couldn’t make out the face that went with it. “Nothing is settled,
nothing
has been settled, d’you get me?”

I was silent. Since nobody offered me a chair, I sat down on a stool by the window and began to smoke.

“Settled!” resumed that voice, this time a little less confidently.

“I was told,” I remarked, “that the purchase had been completed. The cow’s supposed to be picked up tonight.”

“Merde!”
shouted the voice. “That’s what I’d call rushing things! Nothing doing—in Paris people are paying twenty-five francs for a pound of meat, and you expect me to sell two hundred pounds for twenty-five hundred francs! I’m not crazy, not by a long shot …”

“All right,” I said evenly. “Put a rope around your cow’s neck and take it to Paris. There you might even get forty francs a pound.”

I could tell that the couple had both lifted their heads and were looking at me, but what bothered me was that I could see nothing except a pair of flashing knitting needles and the suggestion of a pale cloth cap; the cigarette had been spat out.

“After all,” I said quietly, “nobody’s forcing you to sell the cow, are they?”

The answer was a hostile silence.

These deals were a kind of legal black market, an infringement of a law that we had instituted ourselves and whose enforcement we should really have been safeguarding; but, as I already told you, soldiers who are permanently hungry don’t give a damn about such laws. Needless to say, my question was ridiculous, since I was putting it as the delegate of an enemy company, even though, legally speaking, it was the farmer’s duty to refuse the deal.

“No,” came the sarcastic voice, “nobody’s ever forced us, no indeed.”

“Very well,” I said as I stood up. “We’ll be here tonight at two o’clock. I have part of the money with me.” I opened my wallet and took from it three crisp, brand-new thousand-franc bills.

“Here you are,” I said curtly.

There are few farmers who can resist the sight of real money. The couple were on their feet in a flash; the woman rushed to the light switch and turned it on. Now for the first time I could see them both, and immediately saw how they leaned their heads toward the money. They were old, gray-haired, with pinched faces, and for a moment I thought they were brother and sister, then I saw their worn wedding rings. The man couldn’t resist; he took the bills from my hand and with a repulsive tenderness snapped them between his fingers.

We soldiers, sir, have a terrible contempt for money. Money alone is nothing. Its only value is what one can get for it at any given moment: wine, women, or tobacco. Money is no more than a means. To save it or hoard it seems to us absurd.

The deal was closed. The woman also offered me some butter and eggs; I left the house with a pound of butter, ten eggs, and a very special acquisition: a bottle of thick cream.

It was almost dark outside; a shadowy gloom hung over the meadows and bushes. Cautiously I rode back.

I was filled with a weary disgust. With complete clarity I could see everything that lay ahead: I would reach the highway, have a beer at Cadette’s, then sit for four hours at the phone fighting sleep. I would smoke, although nothing tasted good; try to write a letter, without success; hear Kandick’s snoring. And after two hours I would be left with
nothing but fatigue, hopeless fatigue, and I would keep looking at my watch to see whether it wasn’t time to waken Kandick. That’s how it would be for the next four or five weeks; then we would be relieved, and in some godforsaken little place eight miles from the coast we would be drilled. I wouldn’t even have any money left for booze, I’d have nothing to smoke, and after those six weeks I would once again be sitting in some other bunker night after night, at that phone that never rang, waiting for the moment when I would be allowed to sink into a leaden sleep.

At 2:00 a.m. I would be collecting the cow and the sheep, then sitting at the phone again from seven to eleven, riding off to company headquarters at eleven …

I dismounted for a moment because the sound of the bicycle was getting on my nerves.

In those days, sir, I still believed in what is known as coincidence. I believed that our life was an isolated fragment surrounded by other isolated fragments, each a distinct and a more or less brilliant painting; I believed in the total lack of connection between all things and in the pale, blind futility of our existence. I had as yet no inkling of that mysterious network of innumerable knotted threads, of that vast, all-encompassing fabric into which for each one of us a particular thread has been woven. I reached the highway, got back on my bike, and rode off toward Cadette’s tavern.

On opening the door, I was assailed by an unaccustomed racket. Raucous singing and caterwauling. I caught sight of naval and air-force uniforms—near our base there were a lighthouse and an air-force listening post—and the next moment I was surrounded by soldiers who directed my attention to a figure sitting slumped on a bench by the window: glassy-eyed, unseeing, and mumbling incoherent, drunken nonsense. He was from our base, a man called Wiering, normally a quite inconspicuous person who, as far as I could recall the schedule, was nowhere near due for time off. I remembered that he had been due only a few days ago and that he had sold his leave for half a packet of tobacco. I took charge of Wiering, who, without even staggering overmuch, unresistingly let himself be led away. Cadette protested her innocence and accused a few laughing antiaircraft gunners of having got him drunk.

I handed Wiering over to his squad leader, and we agreed to try to say nothing about his absence. Then I entered the bunker, reported my success to your brother, and sat down resignedly at the phone. Kandick had risen from his chair as I came in, then sunk back on his bed; he was already snoring.

I declined your brother’s offer to stay awake in my place and for a while sat silently across from him. My silence contained a good deal of hostility. I hated that life, and I was transferring my hatred to your brother as the wearer of a uniform, the possessor of a rank that seemed to justify that life.

Finally he rose to head for his room, turned at the door, and said, “Don’t forget that our lives can change at any minute. Nothing is unalterable. Good night.” Perhaps he already knew that his words were soon to come true.

Events now followed in such rapid succession that I must first sort them out in my memory if I am to keep them in the right order.

That night I got almost no sleep. Fatigue and despair filled me like an ever-recurring, evil-tasting tide that I had to keep regurgitating; back and forth it flooded, unwilling either to retreat or to utterly engulf me.

Just before two I was wakened by Kandick, who had relieved me at midnight, and I rode off to meet the cook and collect the cow and the sheep: an arduous enterprise accompanied by much frustration and cursing.

It was close to five when, totally exhausted, I was able to start on my way back, and the sky was already growing light as I turned into the avenue at Cadette’s tavern. A glorious morning, no doubt, but I was too tired to notice; how pointless and totally irrelevant that grayish-pink light seemed to me as it felt its way up the gray vault of the night sky with delicate, soft rays. There is a stage of fatigue—what soldier is not familiar with it!—that is almost deadly to body and soul. One would commit murder for a single night of unbroken sleep; one is on the verge of tears from exhaustion, indifferent to everything except sleep or oblivion.

When I stepped inside the bunker, Kandick was asleep, sprawled across the table. Even my noisy entrance failed to wake him. I simply flung myself down on my bunk and instantly fell asleep, too tired even to give Kandick a poke in the ribs; besides, I was beyond caring what happened. As far as I was concerned, anybody who liked could come and capture our base.

When I awoke, it was midday: a steaming mess tin was on the table. Your brother was sitting beside it, calmly looking at me. He was about to open his mouth to say something to me when the phone rang. He lifted the receiver, spoke, and the next moment I saw an expression of utter astonishment on his face. Then he repeated several times: “Yes, I understand, yes …” He put down the receiver and burst out laughing.

What had happened was this: our CO had ordered the brain of the cow that had been slaughtered that night to be fried for himself at around 11:00 a.m., had polished it off, and then suddenly been taken so violently ill that it had been necessary to rush him to the field hospital in Abbeville (incidentally, on account of chronic dyspepsia he was considered “unfit for service on the eastern front”). Your brother, being next in seniority, was put in command of the company.

Within an hour your brother and I had to move from Larnton to Pochelet. With our scanty baggage we settled into the CO’s quarters, a nice little four-room house, and for the time being were happy to have escaped from Larnton. Two more hours were enough to make ourselves reasonably comfortable in our new quarters and to remove the baggage of the former CO. At four o’clock your brother went over to the orderly room to take charge.

I spent the whole afternoon sitting on our little terrace with a view of the sea, reading the Kierkegaard diaries your brother had lent me.

Since by eight o’clock he hadn’t returned, I went to bed and fell asleep at once. I was worn out by the exertions of the previous night and of the day, and the prospect of sleeping the whole night through without interruption seemed irresistible.

The next morning I slept until nearly eight. I barely had time to wake your brother before hurrying off to the drill in which I now had to take part. For the first time in three years I had to endure the ordeal of foot drill. You can’t imagine the horror I feel to this day at having merely to write the words “position of attention,” those words that form the very foundation of Prussian drill procedure.

At about eight-thirty your brother drove off to take over the command of two bases farther north.

The morning dragged slowly on. At noon I was alone. I listlessly ate my meal, then dozed on my bunk, smoking cigarettes and drinking half a bottle of wine.

Your brother’s return awakened me; I heard him come in, go to his room, throw down his belt. Shortly after that he called me in.

He seemed tired and annoyed and at once asked me for a cigarette. We sat facing each other in armchairs, and after a few puffs he surprised me by pulling out a bottle of wine from under the table. He took two glasses from a cupboard, opened the bottle, and poured. We touched glasses and drank.

“Listen,” he said finally, after we had sat in silence for a few minutes. “There are people who are born to polish boots. A perfectly unobjectionable, dignified occupation. Perhaps you were not born for that, I don’t know. On the other hand, I don’t want anyone else around me but you. I think we will be able to talk in greater privacy and at greater length and less in innuendoes. Because I want to
do
something, understand? Not only talk. We have to do something, understand?”

I nodded, although I wasn’t very clear about what he meant.

“So,” he went on, “it’ll be best if we share the boot polishing. Right? One day I do yours and mine, the next you do yours and mine. Is that a deal? Apart from that, you will be on duty in the mornings and have the afternoons off, to which a CO’s orderly is entitled. We won’t infringe on any regulations. And there’s another thing you’ll have to take over, something I simply can’t do: the cooking.”

I gave him a long look. “I have a counterproposal,” I said. “Each of us will polish his own boots. I’ll be glad to do the cooking and collect our rations.”

“Splendid,” he cried, “splendid! A good idea. Thanks very much.” He shook my hand, raised his glass to me, I raised mine to him. Then
he suddenly stood up, walked toward the big portrait of Hitler that hung on the end wall of the room—an ostentatious affair in a heavy gilt frame—and without a word turned it back to front. His hand was still on the frame when the door opened and Schnecker stood on the threshold.

I jumped to my feet, as stipulated. Schnecker looked first at me, then at your brother, who had meanwhile moved back to the table. Then Schnecker said to me in a low voice, “Leave us, please.”

I walked to the door, saluted, and left the room.

With heavy steps I walked along the corridor, listening intently, but there was nothing to be heard yet, and I supposed he was waiting for my footsteps to die away. I left the house, but walked around to the rear and lay down in the garden under the open window. There was still no sound.

“Well, then,” Captain Schnecker finally said in a calm voice—he had apparently gone over to the wall and turned the picture back to its proper position—“let’s begin by correcting this childishness.”

“May I ask you,” said your brother, his voice just as calm, “whether this is my own living room and whether there is any regulation requiring officers to have portraits of the Führer in their home?”

“No.”

I could hear your brother walking over to the wall, and I knew he was turning the picture around again.

“Good,” said the captain, “excellent. But with your indisputable intelligence it must be clear to you that there is not much room for doubt when in the presence of his subordinate an officer displays loathing for the portrait of his supreme commander.”

“Wrong, my friend. All I loathe is the frame. You know quite well how sensitive I am when it comes to art, and to me it is outright blasphemy to frame the portrait of our modest, simple, soldierly Führer—who has said he won’t take off his soldier’s tunic as long as the war lasts—to stick his portrait in such a garish frame: to me that’s an insult to his person. And, after all, the Führer is also an artist.”