The Collected Stories of Heinrich Boll (91 page)

The train started. It would travel through the Carpathians, through the
puszta
, through all of Hungary, all the way to the Vienna Woods.

But first only a few kilometres to the main station, where we received rations: white bread, cheese, and tobacco. Coffee too, but we had no mess-tins. Then blankets were distributed, and we bedded down very comfortably in the freight car. There were only twenty-four of us: it was a French car, and below the inscription: “8 chevaux, 40 hommes” some joker had written: “1/2 elephant, 20,000 white mice.” I had to laugh. We were all classified as “minor casualties”. I had hoped to be among the so-called “stretcher cases”, since those were conveyed home later in white beds in a hospital train. But the doctor at the railway station had said I was a “minor casualty”. We were twelve at each end, six a side, and in the middle was an empty space with pots of coffee and mugs. We drank coffee and ate white bread and cheese. Dusk began falling, and the train moved off.

The doctor who had divided us at the station into “minor casualties” and “stretcher cases” had put Hubert in charge of our car. Hubert assigned us our places and distributed the blankets, and before the train left he hauled a keg of wine on board. “Help yourselves!” he cried.

The dusk deepened as we travelled across a grey plain with grazing land and huge herds of cattle. Herdsmen’s fires stood out against the flat horizon, and the fires and black smoke from gypsy camps hung in the sky like great banners; the gypsies were singing, we supposed, and we drank. Each man had received a litre of wine, and we were all getting drunk. We were once more in a casualty train, and I was a hero, I would get the silver badge and Hubert the gold; it was his fifth time. One by one the others fell asleep, and I sat alone with Hubert on a wooden crate by the open door, and we drank up the wine, smoked, and didn’t say a word.

The sky was grey and beneath it stretched shimmering, cool-green maize fields, and often we were travelling across the steppe and could hear the lowing of the herds, see the quiet fires of the herdsmen. Sometimes we would pass through a station where people were standing waiting for trains going the other way, soldiers and Romanians in colourful costumes, and I thought how terrible it must be for the soldiers to be standing there and going off to the front. It would have been nice if we could have told them where to find the sellers of home-leave shots; then they could immediately have taken the train home again from that station. But no doubt most of them would have been scared. I would have been scared. I know I would have been scared to do something like that, and to me Hubert was a hero. Goddammit, that required courage.

“You’re a hero,” I said in a low voice.

“Shut up.”

Then darkness fell, but the sky was still grey, a soft grey, with the tall poles of the draw-wells outlined against it like black screams of torment. Villages lay silent and patient in their maize fields under the grey sky, and I had no desire to sleep: it was so glorious, it was wonderful, and the most wonderful thing was that they couldn’t touch me. We smoked and drank, and neither said a word.

The train stopped at a lighted station, and we could see it was a big one. We halted beside a regular platform that was crowded with people, some of them in rags, but there were also some very smart
Romanian officers with their whores, and Romanian soldiers who got paid in beatings. In a freight car somewhere up front, the stretcher cases were screaming horribly.

The crowd on the platform parted, and two doctors and a corporal approached. Beside me Hubert whistled through his teeth. “We’re being screened,” he said. Grabbing the empty keg he disappeared behind me, getting down off the train on the side where the tracks were. And I looked right into the solemn faces of the people on the platform and felt myself to be a hero. Up front they were still screaming; I saw from my watch that it was only eleven thirty, and here I’d been thinking the night was almost over.

The doctors entered our car. “On your feet!” one of them shouted, “everybody on their feet!” I felt calm enough but was aware of the tension in the others. I presented myself first. “Right,” he said. “Any pain?” “Yes,” I said. “A pill, Schwitzkowski.” The corporal gave me a pill. The next man was kicked out; he only had a tiny splinter in his arm and hadn’t even bled. The doctor shone his flashlight onto each wound. It was dark and silent in the car. Several times he said: “Out!”, and those to whom he said “Out!” got out right away and had to wait on the platform. Finally he went over to the corner where a man was lying quite still.

“Get up, damn you!” said the doctor. But the man just lay there and said nothing. Perhaps he’s dead, I thought. “What’s the matter with you?” shouted the doctor. Now the man said quietly: “Shot in the leg.”

“But you’re a stretcher case—what are you doing here? Let’s have a look.” He kneeled down and turned the wounded man onto his stomach. “There?” he asked. “Here?” he asked, and each time the wounded man groaned. “Come on now,” said the doctor, “don’t be a sissy.” Then he said: “Carry him out, put him in with the stretcher cases.” Two men picked him up, and the corporal shone his flashlight.

As they carried him past me, I saw that he was already dead. It was quite obvious—he was dead. “But he’s dead,” I told the corporal. “Shut up,” he replied, and they carried him out, and the people on the platform made room. One of the Romanian officers touched his cap. He must have also seen that the man was dead. Back there in the corner, the doctor had poked and prodded him to death.

Someone came and asked how many of us were left. We had to count off, and in the dark I counted off in two different voices. There
were still fourteen of us. They brought us some hot milk and a few Romanian cigarettes each. Then we started off again. At the last moment Hubert jumped back on from the far side. There was another man with him who laughed and said there was nothing wrong with him, just that he was almost blind and had broken his glasses. He had a certificate from his lieutenant saying that his glasses had been broken by “enemy action”. The half-blind man lay down somewhere in the corner, and Hubert gave him the milk I had been saving for him. We two drank the schnapps he had brought along.

After the hot milk they all needed to go, and for a long time we had no peace on our wooden crate. It was getting chilly, too, and by that time it was quite dark.

In the silent fields we were passing, something seemed to be lying in wait. And the humped villages sleeping among the bushes seemed dangerous.

The apricot brandy was very strong, and when it hit the hot milk I suddenly felt miserably sick. At every rattle, the vomit rose to my throat and slipped down again, and the dark-grey fields became a blur, a whirling mush, before my eyes. I threw up. I grabbed a blanket and lay down on the straw, and Hubert pushed another blanket under my head for a pillow. He said nothing. It was uncannily quiet.

I fell asleep. When I woke up I was shivering.

It was not yet light, and the train had halted in a narrow gorge. Hubert was standing outside smoking a cigarette. “Hallo there!” he called. “Had a good sleep?” I lit a cigarette and got down off the train too. Most of the minor casualties were standing outside. On either side were very steep mountains, and high up, very high up, I saw a young herdsman, a boy, waving his hat. I took off my cap and waved back at him.

The boy shouted something, probably he was very lonely up there and glad when a train passed. I suddenly felt hungry, climbed back into the freight car, and ate up the rest of the white bread and the cheese and drank some cold coffee with it. I wasn’t a bit happy any more, I longed to be home. My wound was hurting how, and I could tell that it had begun to fester; I felt very sick. I looked forward to a bed, and I wouldn’t have minded a wash. I hadn’t washed for three days. We had been marching, attacking, marching, attacking, the food lorry had had a direct hit; then I’d been wounded and since then I’d been boozing: no
wonder I was feeling sick. One man stood right beside me and pissed against the inside wall of the car.

“Hey!” I cried. “What d’you think you’re doing?”

“I’m pissing,” he replied calmly.

“Piss properly, then!”

“I am pissing properly.” I was about to get up and show him how to piss, but it was too late—he’d finished and was already buttoning his trousers. Then I saw that it was the half-blind man and thought, he’s putting it on.

I picked up my blanket and lay down somewhere else, feeling wretched, and now I wasn’t thinking that they couldn’t get at me but wondering instead how I could get at them.

The engine whistled, and we crawled over one of those uncomfortably swaying Carpathian bridges; then we came to a station where we were screened all over again. Hubert disappeared as he’d done before. But this time they got the half-blind man, and a few others too. One of them merely had eczema.

“Eczema!” said the doctor. “Are you crazy, to go all the way back to Hungary with eczema?”

By this time there were only eight of us left, and they moved us from three freight cars into one. It was odd that once again we were exactly twenty-four. Maybe all they had was that one car. The man with eczema and the half-blind fellow and all the simple bullet holes had to stay behind just because there was only one car. From among the stretcher cases they carried out those who were no longer fit to be transported. Of one of them there was very little left anyway. He was minus both legs, and it looked like very little when they carried the stretcher past us. He was as white as milk in the face but looked furious, and his bandages were black with blood. They also carried away a body, the man the doctor in our car had poked and prodded to death.

I still felt ghastly, and once again the freight car was crowded. A very stern corporal had been put in charge. He was tall and broad and wore the Cross of Merit, and I was sure he was a schoolteacher and just about to be promoted to sergeant.

“To your places!” he shouted. He suffered from jaundice, and his fat face looked like a bronze statue of Mussolini.

“Sit down!” he shouted.

“Count off!” We counted off.

I simply missed out one number and said “fourteen” instead of “thirteen”, and he didn’t notice because he forgot to count himself. No one noticed. We were all tired and hungry, and our wounds had begun to hurt.

Then we were given white bread and cheese and some hot coffee. I was worried about Hubert, couldn’t see him anywhere, but the engine was there and it looked as if we were going to leave any minute.

I got out, and the stern corporal asked where I was going, saying no one was allowed to get out. I said I had to have a shit; he couldn’t do anything about that so he told me to be quick about it.

Walking over to the station building I called out: “Hubert!” I found him in the little bar next to the waiting-room. He was drunk. “I’m changing my money,” he called out. “We’re going to Hungary, you have to have
pengö
there. Come along, sit down!”

We had a clear view of the train, and I saw the stern corporal sticking his head out of the car several times.

“They’ve counted off.”

“So what?”

“But he’s strict, that
Kapo
.”

“So what?”

“And the fellow in charge, a doctor, knows exactly how many of us there are.”

“So what?”

He was very drunk.

“But what are you going to do? You’re one too many!”

“I’ve already spoken to the doctor.”

A girl brought a big hunk of roast pork and some bread; it smelled fantastic and must have cost a lot. We ate, drank some wine, and I thought, well, if he’s spoken to the doctor, nothing can happen to him, and I felt fine again. We bought some tobacco and a few more bottles of wine, then walked back to our freight car. Right after that the train left.

The stern corporal asked Hubert: “What are you doing here? You don’t belong in here.”

“I beg to differ, I’ve always been in here.”

“That’s not true.”

“Hey, fellows!” Hubert called out. “Haven’t I always been in here?”

Most of the men were silent and said nothing, but the eight who had been in our old car called out: “Of course he belongs in here!”

“But we’ve only reported twenty-four,” said the stern corporal.

“That was a mistake.”

“We don’t make mistakes.”

“But it was a mistake.”

“We really were twenty-five before,” I said.

“Shut up!”

“Because you didn’t count yourself,” I said.

“You’re drunk!” shouted the stern corporal, and now I knew that he really was a schoolteacher.

“This business has to be cleared up,” he told Hubert.

“It’s been cleared up,” Hubert said as he sat down.

“I am responsible.”

“You’re an arsehole.”

“How dare you speak to me like that in front of the troops!”

“Because you are one.”

“I’ll report it to the doctor.”

“I’ve already reported it to the doctor.”

“Reported what?”

“That you’re an arsehole.”

Everyone laughed, and the stern corporal sat down too. By now it was somewhere round eight or nine in the morning. I felt great, and we drank wine. What I could see of the outside seemed to me already quite Hungarian, but we were still in Romania. There were peasants in the fields, and they waved their hats and called out something that sounded Hungarian.

But then we stopped at a station in a big city, and true enough we were still in Romania. I was appalled at the thought that we might be dropped off here so that I wouldn’t even get as far back as Hungary.

Now the doctor will come, I thought, and Hubert hasn’t spoken to the doctor of course, and it’s all going to come out.

The doctor arrived, quite young. He was laughing—probably glad to have been assigned to this train and so able to travel with us, maybe even as far as the Vienna Woods.

“How’s it going, boys?” he called. “Anyone here in pain?” And just as the stern corporal was about to open his mouth, Hubert and
the doctor looked at each other and they both laughed. “Kramer!” the doctor exclaimed. “What the hell are you doing here? Did you stop one again?”