The Collected Stories of Heinrich Boll (100 page)

Ah, my beloved … my faraway, faraway darling dove … if only you were here! Once again I plunged into that beautiful daydream, I cast everything away and went towards her … that faraway, nameless one, the only one … towards her, my only true home about whom, by the grace of God, I will some day write one last poem.

Suddenly I felt a rough punch on my right arm and I turned round, startled and annoyed. I looked into the face of an elderly woman who had apparently prodded me on purpose: I awoke to so-called reality,
and the “true” face of the waiting-room loomed before me: grimy, musty … wretched, ugly … worn-down, worn-out figures, loitering, squatting on bundles that looked as if they couldn’t possibly contain objects worth keeping. But the old woman plucked impatiently at my sleeve. “Hey … young man!” she said. I looked at her squarely; she was sitting on a chair beside me. Grey hair, a coarse, plain face … a farmer’s wife, I thought. A grey-blue kerchief, a wrinkled face, swollen, work-worn hands. I looked up at her expectantly. “Yes?”

She seemed to hesitate a moment, then pointed to the brown hat lying on my right knee: “Wouldn’t you like to trade it? I could use it, for my son!”

I was not surprised. When you spend half a day sitting around in waiting-rooms, you get to know the secrets of our so-called modern economy, based on the secret cigarette currency and carried on in the form of barter. I laughed.

“No, I need it myself—it’s about the only thing I possess, and after all it’s still January.”

The old woman shook her head with an exasperating calm. “January!” she said scornfully. “Can’t you see that spring has come?” She pointed to the ceiling of the waiting-room as if spring were to be seen there in the flesh.

I looked up involuntarily; the woman had turned away and was digging into some piece of luggage lying half under her chair; in doing so she bumped a youth who was sleeping with his elbows on the table; he opened his eyes in annoyance, swore under his breath, then laid his head down on the table. A young girl sitting opposite me and reading a book glanced up; with a frown she looked at the woman and me and went on reading. The old woman had finally dug out what she was looking for, and her coarse fists placed a big round loaf of bread, brown bread, between us on the table.

“I’d give you that for it,” she said stolidly. I have no doubt the look I gave the bread sealed the fate of my hat. I’m no good at bargaining. I know—I should have pretended to be stand-offish, should have ignored the bread, but I’m no good at bargaining, as I told you before. And besides—at the sight of the crusty brown bread my hunger was back again. In less than no time there it suddenly was beside me, this time wagging its tail and barking with pleasure, like a puppy
whimpering expectantly as it sniffs at the housewife’s apron; with one astonishing bound it had come back from some distant place where it had gone off for a walk. All that was no doubt to be read in my eyes. The woman knew even before I did that she would get the hat … oh, that farmer’s wife could write a psychology of hunger. How many hungry eyes have hung around her front door!

But I resisted. “No, no …” I said fervently, and involuntarily grabbed my hat as if to protect it. “No—for a loaf of bread?” My eyes flickered between the bread, my hat, and the woman’s cold face. “No,” I repeated, trying to give my voice firmness. “Not for a loaf of bread!” The woman seemed somewhat surprised. “Aren’t you hungry, then?” What an infamous way to try and snatch my hat from me! For a split second I wondered whether I shouldn’t grab the loaf, put on my hat, and make a run for it. But then I would never again be able to enter that waiting-room in a calm frame of mind.

I shook my head vehemently. The woman gave a little smile, a bit more lenient, it seemed to me; then without a word she leaned down and fished out a second loaf from the depths under her chair. “Well?” she asked triumphantly. The light of victory was plain to see in her eyes. The thought that I had only to say the one little word “yes” to gain possession of two fragrant loaves of bread intoxicated me. But had the Devil in the shape of a barterer’s soul taken possession of me? “You must … give me some … money, too,” I stammered, blushing. “You … I’m unemployed …” The woman suddenly looked quite angry. “Unemployed?” she repeated, dragging out the word incredulously.

I merely nodded, blushing ever more deeply, for the girl opposite me had once again looked up disapprovingly. “Twenty marks,” I said bravely, staking everything on one card, and as if the Devil were really driving me I playfully spun my nice brown hat on one finger … for all the world like some careless youth. Oh, I knew it was a sort of farewell caress. The woman poked round in an old leather purse, grumpily picked out a few notes, and placed them beside the loaves. “That’s it!” she said sternly. Thus I was unwittingly thrust into the role of the person who is to blame for the deal, and the woman looked at me as if I were the most despicable swindler she had ever laid eyes on. Twelve marks I had counted with bated breath … two loaves and twelve marks, what riches! And how quickly I could calculate: four German or three
Belgian cigarettes … two American ones! I stuffed the notes into my pocket, drew the loaves towards me, and quickly gave the woman my hat. She turned it round and examined it, her expression indicating that it was absolute rubbish, before it disappeared under the chair into that invisible container. I felt as if I were the lowest of criminals. Then my hunger took a wild leap over everything. I broke off a big chunk from one of the loaves and ordered another glass of beer from the waiter as he rushed past.

After my hunger had been fed its chunk, I was quickly alone again. In fact I even forgot that I had money for cigarettes in my pocket. The sweet grey veil of my dreams had been pulled across again. Ah, wasn’t this a day when the beloved might arrive? Wasn’t she on her way to me with her golden hair and black eyes, and with a smile that knew everything, everything … she was coming closer … closer and closer! Surely she was hungry! Oh, my beloved must be hungry, but I would not face her empty-handed; no doubt she was cold too, but oh, I would wrap her up in the warmth of this springlike day. If she was suffering fear and pain, my heart was open to her. I would give her my room, my bed, and I would sleep on the hard bare floor.

It was dusk outside and getting cold again; there was an icy draught round my feet and head. I looked desperately for my hat … oh, my hat! You won’t believe it, but there was no regret in me, only distress … no, I did not regret having traded my hat, but it hurt me that it was gone. The cold was cruel, and it was a long way to my room with the bed where I could hide.

How infinitely rich I was in possessing a bed I could crawl into to escape the cruel cold. I would simply stay in bed; nothing and nobody could force me to get up. Mind you, there was silence there. But better to be exposed to silence than to the cold. Believe me, the worst thing is the cold. It crept towards me, across the stone floor and through the ceiling. What a nasty trick, to put on the mild, kindly garment of dusk just to pounce upon me again! I hurried … hurried out of the station, waited desperately for a few minutes for the tram, and finally walked home.

It was as if my head were gradually freezing solid, as if it were being showered with invisible ice. I had the horrible feeling that it was shrinking, leaving nothing but a tiny button in which a frantic pain was concentrating. What a fool I was to think that spring was here … 
it was January, bitter, stark January. All I could feel was that grinding pain in my head, but then it spread like some crazy turmoil throughout my skull … spreading, shrinking, taking possession of everything. In the end my whole head consisted only of pain and was growing tinier and tinier … a glowing, frightful needle-point drilling away at my consciousness, my reason, my whole being.

I believe I was feverish when (I don’t know how) I reached home … I was feverish, haunted by dreams; my beloved was with me, but she was not smiling: instead tears were streaming from her black eyes.

And corpses were piled up round me like ramparts … ragged, mutilated corpses, some fat, some wizened.

When I woke again to so-called reality, I found myself lying in hospital …

Several times a day I would see round me those grave faces of the doctors who seemed to know all the secrets of life and death.

I had the dreadful notion that I might have woken up from my dreams wearing a uniform again. What was the difference between this hospital and a field hospital? No, there would be no more fever charts and grey-and-white-striped pyjamas for me. I am sure the urge for freedom made me recover so quickly that the doctors could congratulate themselves. I was well on my way back to health …

The day soon came when I could say goodbye to the nurse and shake her hand gratefully. I felt compelled to hurry, hurry, as if my beloved had now, at this very moment, arrived and was standing in the entrance to the big waiting-room. I had to hurry … but the nurse called me back. “Good heavens,” she said, shaking her head, “you can’t go out in this cold without a hat!” And with a smile she handed me a hat, a blue one, nearly new, that fitted me perfectly … oh, I have quite a normal head.

Didn’t it seem as if Someone were holding a protective hand over my head? Do you understand …?

Numerous requests to write a truly optimistic story gave me the idea of relating the fate of my friend Franz, a story that is true yet at the same time strange and almost too optimistic, with the result that one has a hard time believing it.

One day my friend Franz was fired from his job as a cub reporter on account of inordinate and insurmountable shyness, and he found himself out on the street almost penniless, hungry, and young enough to be desperate—all this on a sunny spring morning. I hope that the people wanting optimistic stories have no objection to a sunny spring morning, but for the time being, on account of his unemployed condition, I am forced to begin the story on a rather gloomy note. Franz was left with only fifty pfennigs. He gave much thought to what he should do with this. His most fundamental wish was for something to eat, for at all hours of the day and night he felt hungry, and his depression over being fired increased his appetite. Experience, however, had taught him that, to the very hungry, an incomplete meal was worse than no meal at all. Merely to stimulate the taste buds without satisfying them meant—as Franz well knew—worse torment than plain ordinary hunger. He toyed with the idea of appeasing his appetite by smoking, by inducing a kind of mild stupor, but then it occurred to him that smoking in his present condition would probably lead only to nausea.

Brooding over his dilemma, therefore, he walked past the displays in the shop windows. In a chemist’s window he saw a display of indigestion pills, fifty pfennigs a package; Franz’s digestion was in perfect order: he had none to speak of, in fact couldn’t have, since these things do require some physical basis, and for many days Franz had been eating minimal quantities which had been totally consumed in his innards. Franz offered the chemist a mental apology, quickened his pace past a butcher’s shop and a bakery, found himself, somewhat calmer, outside a greengrocer’s, and wondered whether he shouldn’t buy ten pounds of
potatoes, boil them, and eat them with their skins. Ten pounds of potatoes in their jackets would certainly not give a mere illusion of satisfied hunger: they would actually satisfy it. But to boil potatoes he needed either wood or coal, as well as matches to light the stove; and since no one had yet thought of selling matches singly (here I permit myself to lay my finger on a sore point in the otherwise blessed and sophisticated state of our economy), the purchase of a box of matches would have meant sacrificing two pounds of potatoes, quite apart from the fact that he possessed neither wood nor coal.

There is really no need to list in detail the number of shops Franz walked past while a plan was taking shape in his head to buy a whole loaf of bread and eat it up on the spot; but a loaf costs fifty-eight pfennigs.

Franz remembered that he still had a tram ticket good for three more trips, with a face value of sixty pfennigs and a resale value of at least thirty. With eighty pfennigs he could easily eat his fill and buy two cigarettes. He therefore decided to make a clean break with his shyness and sell the tram ticket. Luckily he had just reached a tram stop. Studying the waiting passengers, he tried to read from their expressions how they would react to his unusual offer. Then he approached a man with a briefcase and a cigar, braced himself, and said: “Excuse me …”

“I beg your pardon?” said the man.

“Here,” said Franz, presenting his tram ticket. “Unusual circumstances, a temporary embarrassment, oblige me to dispose of this ticket. Could you perhaps … would you …?”

“No,” said the man suspiciously, and with such finality that Franz immediately desisted. Blushing, he left the tram stop, crossed the street, and found himself in front of a newspaper kiosk. Here he stopped and started to read without taking anything in. He made vain efforts to tear himself away from the kiosk, and when the woman inside asked him: “Yes, sir?” he knew he was done for, and with the last vestiges of good sense he named the fattest newspaper he knew, saying huskily and with an unhappy sigh:
“World Echo.”
He handed the fifty-pfennig note into the kiosk and received a forty-page packet of paper and printer’s ink.

Aware of having committed one of the greatest follies of his life, he decided to go into the park in order at least to read the newspaper. The sun shone very mildly, and it was spring. He asked a passer-by the time and was told it was ten o’clock.

Seated in the park were pensioners, a few young mothers with children, and some unemployed. Noisy children were fighting over places in the sandbox; dogs were scuffling over bits of discarded greasy paper; the young mothers threatened and called out in the general hubbub. Franz sat down, opened his newspaper with a flourish, and read a bold headline:
BRILLIANT POLICE
!, followed by: “Our police must recently have perfected some brilliant investigatory methods. They have succeeded in arresting a butcher for black-market activities. In view of the well-known rectitude of this trade …”