The Collected Stories of Heinrich Boll (12 page)

And now here I was, lying on my stretcher, looking at the deepening shades of green in the dimness of this Russian farmhouse room where the only brightness was the light outlining the oblong of the door.

Meanwhile the nausea had subsided, the lemon drop had spread soothingly through the horrible muck filling my mouth; the vise of pain attacked less and less often, and I dug into my greatcoat pocket, pulled out cigarettes and matches, and struck a light. The flare revealed dark, damp walls, lit here and there by the flickering sulfur-yellow flame, and as I tossed aside the dying match I saw for the first time that I was not alone.

I saw beside me the gray, green-stained folds of a carelessly drawn-up blanket, saw the peak of a cap like an intense black shadow over a pale face; then the match went out.

At the same moment it occurred to me that there was nothing wrong with my hands or feet, so I kicked my blanket aside, sat up, and was startled to see how close I was to the ground: that apparently bottomless pit was scarcely more than knee-deep. I struck another match. My neighbor lay motionless, his face the color of crepuscular light filtering through thin green glass; but before I could get any closer to have a good look at his face under the shadow of his cap, the match went out again, and I remembered that in one of my pockets there must still be a candle end.

The vise of pain made another assault, and I just managed to stagger to the edge of my stretcher in the dark. I sat down, dropping my cigarette onto the floor, and since I now had my back to the door I could see only darkness, a green opaque darkness containing just enough shadows to give me the feeling it was revolving, while the pain in my head seemed to be the motor making it revolve; the more the pain in my head swelled, the more violently did these darknesses revolve like separate disks overlapping as they revolved, until once more everything came to a standstill.

As soon as the attack was over, I fingered my bandage. My head felt bulky and swollen; there was the hard, lumpy crust of clotted blood, and the ultrasensitive spot where the splinter must be. I knew now that the stranger over there was dead. There is a kind of silence and muteness
going beyond sleep or unconsciousness, something infinitely icy, hostile, contemptuous, that in the darkness seemed doubly malevolent.

I finally found the candle end and lit it. The glow was yellow and soft; it seemed to spread slowly and diffidently before unfolding its flame to its utmost limits, and when the candle had achieved its full radius I saw the beaten earth floor, the bluish whitewashed walls, a bench, and the dead stove with a pile of ashes lying in front of its sagging door.

I stuck the candle onto the edge of my stretcher so that the center of its radiance fell on the dead man’s face. I was not surprised to see Drüng. Rather, I was surprised at my own lack of surprise, for it should have been a great shock: I had not seen Drüng for five years, and even then so briefly that we had exchanged only the barest civilities. We had been classmates for nine years, but there had been such a deep antipathy—not animosity, merely indifference—between us that during those nine years we had spoken to each other for a total of scarcely an hour.

It was so unmistakably Drüng’s spare face, his pointed nose, thrusting upward now, still and greenish, from the spare flatness of his face, his narrow-lidded eyes, always somewhat protruding, now closed by a stranger’s hand; so unquestionably was it Drüng’s face that there was really no need for me to confirm it by bending down and reaching in under the blanket folds for the label tied with string to one of his greatcoat buttons. On it I read by candlelight: “Drüng, Hubert, Corporal,” the number of his regiment, and under the heading T
YPE OF
I
NJURY
, “Multiple shell splinters, abdomen.” Under this an academic hand had scrawled the word “Deceased.”

So Drüng was really dead, or would I ever have doubted the hasty scrawl of an academic hand? Again I read the number of his regiment, one I had never heard of; then I took off Drüng’s cap, whose black, sardonic shadow gave his face a cruel look, and there was that fairish, lackluster hair which at various times during those fluctuating nine years had been right in front of me.

I was sitting quite close to the candle as its flickering glow swung round the room, the strongest core of its yellow flame always centered on Drüng’s face as its feebler offshoots roamed ceiling, walls, and floor. I was sitting so close to Drüng that my breath brushed the ashen skin
on which a stubble of beard proliferated, unsightly and reddish-brown, and suddenly for the first time I saw Drüng’s mouth. During our daily encounters over so many years, the rest of his appearance had become so familiar that I would have recognized him in a crowd—although probably unconsciously—but now I realized I had never really looked at his mouth. It was as if I had never seen it before: fine-drawn, narrow-lipped, pain still clinging to its pinched corners, a pain so alive that I thought I must be mistaken. This mouth seemed, even now, to be still fighting back the pent-up cries of pain to keep them from gushing out in a red spurt that would drown the world.

Beside me flickered the warm breath of the candle as it flared up, died down, then slowly fanned out, over and over again. I was looking at Drüng’s face now without seeing him. I saw him alive, a sickly, shy fourth-grader, heavy satchel on thin shoulders, shivering as he waited for the school doors to open. Then he would rush past the burly janitor and, still wearing his overcoat, plant himself beside the stove, standing guard over it with a defensive look in his eyes. Drüng had always felt the cold, he was of poor physique, poor in every way, the son of a widow whose husband had been killed in the war. He had been ten at the time, and he stayed like that for nine years, shivering, of poor physique, poor in every way, the son of a widow whose husband had been killed in the war. Never once did he have time for those foolish things that memory alone makes memorable, while we often look back on humorless obsession with duty as a foolish thing; never once did he talk back to the teacher, for nine years he remained well behaved, hardworking, always “of average ability.” At fourteen he developed acne, at sixteen his skin was smooth again, at eighteen he had acne again, and he always felt the cold, even in summer, for he was of poor physique, poor in every way, the son of a widow whose husband had been killed in the war. He had a few friends, also of average ability, with whom he worked hard and was well behaved. I hardly ever spoke to him, or he to me. Occasionally, as is to be expected over a period of nine years, he had sat in front of me, his lackluster, fairish hair had been in front of me, quite close, and he had always prompted me—now for the first time I realized he had always prompted me, faithfully and reliably; and when he didn’t know the answer, he had his own special way of obstinately shrugging his shoulders.

I had been crying for some time, and the candle was now casting its wider light around the room, sighing gently so that the barren little room seemed to rock like the cabin of a ship on the high seas. For some time—without being conscious of it—I had felt the tears running down my face, warm and soothing on my cheeks, and lower down, on my chin, cold drops that I automatically wiped away with my hand like a tearful child. But now that I remembered how he had always loyally prompted me, with never a word of thanks, faithfully and reliably, with none of the spitefulness of others who put too high a price on their knowledge to give it away—now I sobbed aloud, and the tears dripped through my matted beard into my muddy fingers.

And then I remembered about Drüng’s father. During history lessons, when the teachers told us in edifying tones about World War I—assuming the topic fell within the curriculum and that Verdun fell within the topic—then all eyes would turn toward Drüng, and at such times Drüng acquired a special, fleeting glory, for it was not often that we had history, or that World War I fell within the curriculum, and still less often was it permitted or appropriate to talk about Verdun …

The candle was hissing now, hot wax bubbling in the cardboard holder; then the unsupported wick toppled over into the melted remains—but suddenly the room was filled with light and I was ashamed of my tears, a light that was cold and naked and gave the drab room a spurious clarity and cleanliness …

It was not until I felt myself grasped by the shoulders that I realized the door had opened and two people had been sent to carry me into the operating room. I shot another glance at Drüng, lying there with pinched lips; then they had laid me back on the stretcher and were carrying me out.

The doctor looked tired and irritable. He watched without interest as the stretcher bearers placed me on a table under a glaring lamp; the rest of the room was shrouded in ruddy darkness. The doctor came closer, and I could see him more clearly: his coarse skin was sallow, with purple shadows, and his thick black hair covered his head like a cap. As he read the label attached to my chest, I noticed the cigarette smell on his breath, and I could see the whitish rolls of fat on his neck and the mask of weary despair over his face.

“Dina,” he called softly, “take it off.”

He stepped back, and from the ruddy darkness emerged a woman’s figure in a white smock; her hair was all wrapped up in a pale-green cloth, and now that she was close, leaning over me and carefully cutting the bandage over my forehead, I saw from the serene, pale oval of her kindly face that she must be blond. I was still crying, and through my tears her face appeared melting and blurred, and her great soft light-brown eyes seemed to be weeping too, while the doctor seemed hard and dry even through my tears.

With a sudden movement she tore the hard, bloody rag from my wound; I screamed and let the tears flow on. The doctor stood scowling at the edge of the circle of light, the smoke from his cigarette reaching us in sharp blue puffs. Dina’s face was quiet while she bent over me, touching my head with her fingers as she began to sponge my clotted hair.

“Shave it!” said the doctor brusquely, tossing his cigarette butt angrily onto the floor.

Now the vise of pain renewed its attacks as the Russian nurse began to shave the filthy, matted hair around the gaping wound. Once again the disks started revolving and eerily overlapping. I had moments of unconsciousness, then I would come to again, and during those waking seconds I could feel the tears flowing more and more freely, running down my cheeks and collecting between shirt and collar, compulsively, as if a well had been drilled.

“Don’t cry, damn it!” shouted the doctor from time to time, and because I neither could nor would stop, he shouted, “You ought to be ashamed of yourself!” But I was not ashamed, I was aware only of Dina now and again resting her hands in a caress on my neck, and I knew it was futile to try and explain to the doctor why I had to cry. What did I know of him or he of me, of filth and lice, Drüng’s face, and nine school years that came punctually to an end when the war broke out?

“Damn it,” he shouted, “for God’s sake, shut up!”

Then he suddenly came closer, his face looming unbelievably huge, fiercely stern, as he approached, and for one second I felt the first boring of the knife, then saw nothing more and gave only one shrill scream.

They had closed the door behind me, turned the key, and I found myself back in the first room. My candle was still flickering, sending its fleeting light over everything it encountered. I walked very slowly. I was scared; it was all so quiet, and I felt no more pain. Never before
had I been so entirely without pain, so empty. I recognized my stretcher by the rumpled blankets, looked at the candle, still burning just as I had left it. The wick was floating in liquid wax, one tiny tip sticking up just enough for it to burn, and any moment now it would be submerged. I patted my pockets apprehensively, but they were empty. I ran back to the door, rattled the handle, shouted, rattled, shouted. Surely they couldn’t leave us in the dark! But outside no one seemed to hear; and when I went back, the candle was still burning, the wick was still floating, a tiny piece was still sticking up just enough for it to burn and produce an irregular, flickering light; this piece of wick seemed to have got smaller; in another second we would be in the dark.

“Drüng,” I called, scared, “Drüng!”

“Yes?” came his voice. “What’s the matter?”

I felt my heart stand still, and all about me there was no sound save the appallingly quiet consuming of this candle end, on the verge of going out.

“Yes?” he asked again. “What’s the matter?”

I stepped to the left, bent down, and looked at him: he was lying there laughing. He was laughing very softly and painfully, and there was gentleness too in his smile. He had thrown back the blankets, and through a great hole in his stomach I could see the green canvas of the stretcher. He was lying there quite quietly, and seemed to be waiting. I looked at him for a long time, the laughing mouth, the hole in his stomach, the hair: it was Drüng.

“Well, what’s the matter?” he asked again.

“The candle,” I whispered, looking into the light. It was still burning; I saw its radiance as, yellow and fitful, forever expiring and forever burning again, it illumined the whole room. I heard Drüng sit up, the stretcher creaked softly, the corner of a blanket was pushed aside, and now I was looking at him again.

“Don’t be scared,” he shook his head and went on, “The light won’t go out, it’ll burn forever and ever, I know it will.”

But the next instant his pale face seemed to disintegrate still further; trembling, he grasped my arm, I could feel his thin, hard fingers. “Look,” he said in a frightened whisper, “now it’s going out.”

But the anchorless wick was still floating in the cardboard holder, it was still not quite submerged.

“No,” I said, “it should have gone out long ago—there wasn’t enough to last even two minutes.”

“Oh, Christ!” he shouted, his face distorted, and he slammed his hand down onto the light, jarring the stretcher so that the iron clanged, and for one second we were enveloped in greenish darkness, but when he lifted his trembling hand the wick was still floating, it was still light, and through the hole in Drüng’s stomach I was looking at a pale-yellow spot on the wall behind him.