The Collected Stories of Heinrich Boll (124 page)

What was that language called? What were his children called? Lieselotte was better than the woman behind the counter, and the woman behind the counter was better than the woman beyond the door. Was he soiled, had he soiled himself? With what? With vomit? And the fingers that were attached to his hands couldn’t thrust into the inside pocket of his soiled jacket, it was more than his fingers could manage, they couldn’t thrust deeply, grasp firmly enough, at where his money and papers and checks had been. Lieselotte, so he had imagined, would have held his hand, and the other younger Lieselotte, his daughter, would have placed her hand on his forehead; it was a good thing to give one’s children the names of their parents, two Lieselottes, the older one had black hair but
wasn’t Spanish, the younger Lieselotte had fair hair, beautiful, yes, with a real golden sheen to it—one Lieselotte should have placed her hand on his forehead, the other should have grasped his hand, or rather his wrist, with one of hers. That was how he had imagined it, if—if—but there were more children there, two more. They were standing around the bed, four of them, two Lieselottes and the boys, young men. What the devil was that language called that he couldn’t remember, a language in which there were noodles in a country where noodles were also eaten yet wasn’t Italy? No, he wasn’t an Italian, nor was he an Austrian, although Austrians ate noodles.

The things you grasped with were fingers; the sky-blue rectangle was a door; the red thing on the white van was a cross. What was revealed behind the garage shutter when you pushed it up was a car. The older Lieselotte had black hair, the younger one fair—she had grown a bit lanky; one boy stood to the left of the older Lieselotte, the other to the right of the younger. Yellow sheets, blue pillows, the reading lamp orange—and on the opposite wall hung the thing that had been red on the white van, hanging there black, plain, crossed at right angles, a cross—and again they came from the glitter of the universe and the shimmer of the moon, came from that crossroads of celestial pathways, the names of the boys: Richard was the one to the left of the older Lieselotte, Heinrich was the one to the right of the younger Lieselotte. Damn it, in which language were you called Heinrich? Chill of the moon, heat of the sun, a circling, or rather a wheeling as with aircraft coming in to land. Aircraft? Surely he’d had his car in the aircraft? Richard was dark-haired and serious, Heinrich blond and cheerful. In which language did that name occur? Veins of the earth—rigid, deep, hard—yet also lava, hot, flowing, rampaging inside and out. As for the younger Lieselotte, she would fill out, that lanky figure, those prominent collarbones, all that would fill out, and one day she would be a stately blonde without hollows; the older Lieselotte was quite a different type, slight yet sturdy, a sturdy woman, with a surprising fullness behind the slightness, a good wife in every situation in life. Not a sturdy fortress, a sturdy wife, not athletic, not the gymnast type—no. Beyond the door it was quiet, as if someone in there were breathing with a
gigantic chest. Sturdy fortress, sturdy woman—his laughter brought on a surge of pain, from ear to abdomen, from eye to knee. Everything sore and painful, painful and sore, and nothing below the knee; was there anything below the knee? Knee, that was almost a word like Heinrich. Eyelids pushed up again, heavier than ever, what an effort, how he could see the words on the posters: cigarillos, color photos, corphotolos, Carlos, that was a fellow behind a bull. Was he in Mexico after all, was he a Mexican? Could one be called Heinrich in Mexico? On Sundays, when he had to push up the garage door without help, it had been as heavy as lead and kept sliding down again until finally, with an effort, such an effort, he had pushed it into its catch at the top. The car. He had seldom driven himself, had usually sat in the back, and up front was Schneckenröder, who had an inspired way of driving fast yet phlegmatically. In which language was one called Schneckenröder, who could crawl and race at the same time? Schneckenröder hadn’t been driving, nor had he; as usual he had sat in the back. What were those things called that one was driven in but not by Schneckenröder? No, not rental cars, no more than a door could be called a shutter. Those things he had seldom sat in were used only for short distances, from airport to hotel, from hotel to restaurant or movie theater, or to keep appointments. Now he had to laugh again about the sturdy fortress, sturdy woman—he had never called her that, but that’s what she was, it had just occurred to him—and he certainly had been in a car, not with Schneckenröder but not driving himself either. Taxis, that’s what those things were called, not rental cars, and the fellow had himself taken the money from his pocketbook. Pocket? Jacket pocket? Pocketbook? The fingers refused to go in that far. Color photos, cigarillos, Carlos,
olvidados
, on their way into the pocket the fingers went limp. Laughing was the worst, it hurt, felt sore, made that sloshing lava surge up between the stiff and stony asphalt veins. There was no white, and there was no orange reading lamp, no fair-haired girl with prominent collarbones, no sturdy wife, no mahogany-brown cross on the wall, no serious Richard or cheerful Heinrich; a bit, just a bit of white would have been good, not too much, just a bit, nothing was white here, nothing, not even the breast of the nice woman who had pushed it back into her blouse had been white. There was another “os” on one of the bottles behind the counter, and now, quite clear, quite near, the whispered Paternoster in
his ear, with all the rest of it, all that he supposed went with it, and that Ave Maria too, that wasn’t Spanish, that was Latin, and in the sturdy fortress—in his, anyway—he hadn’t picked up all that much, no, that really was papist gabble, maybe even combined with a whole lot of superstitious mumblings. Not a bit of white, not a scrap. Where was Schneckenröder? Taxis, that’s what those things were called, not rental cars. This lava that was sloshing around in him, this hot, painful, sore infinity, thinly encased as if in a toy balloon—surely it must soon burst, pour out, sore, painful, hot? What were corphotolos? And who was that saying in his ear: “Too late for the doctor, never too late for the priest”? Surely that was the language in which one was called Heinrich! He had imagined how it might happen, the best way it would happen or would have happened; how it might have happened and hadn’t happened—not, oh, not like this! Someone reached into the inside pocket of his jacket, which was more than his fingers had managed, saying, “We’ll find out all right,” and that was the language in which one was called Schneckenröder, and Heinrich, like himself, spoken by someone who would pronounce the “os” as the woman had in
“Los!,”
and it was someone else who pushed up his eyelids, and now he could clearly read what was printed on the bottle—“Calvados”—and was mystified: since when did anyone drink Calvados in these grubby snack bars with sky-blue, pink-bordered doors leading to the rear? And still he didn’t know what language it was in which one was called Schneckenröder, or Heinrich, like himself.

“Comrade Gospodin, after thorough consultation with the level of control that rules (not always successfully, I must admit) my baser instincts; after close, almost exhausting attention to that inner chamber I would like to call my civic conscience, I have decided to make a confession.

“Yes. I tried to hijack a plane. Yes. I had equipped myself for this purpose with a firearm, and although it was only a fake—a bit of wood, a lot of black shoe polish—it was definitely meant to intimidate. Fortunately, it was wrested from me before I had a chance to employ it. I would ask you, Comrade Gospodin, to note my formulation—‘had a chance to employ it’—and not to accuse me of playing formalistic games (how can one seriously employ a fake weapon made of wood and shoe polish?), for I maintain that this formulation does not mean that I would actually have employed or even planned to employ it. To me, the sole function of this weapon was that of a key. No, I will not cast aspersions on such an honorable instrument as a key: to me its function was that of a skeleton key; with it I intended to break into those hallowed regions that are accessible only to foreigners and deserving comrades. Can one commit a more despicable act? Never.

“My motivation in this attempt to hijack a plane—and I claim no mitigating circumstances and request that I be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law—was something that used to be called longing; moreover, it was—my guilt is hereby doubled, so let the law descend upon me with doubled severity—the longing for a non-socialist country, and yet at this point I must in all fairness set limits to my guilt: I longed for this country not
because
but
although
it is not socialist, and between this ‘not because’ and ‘but although’ there lies, of course (as the Prosecutor has correctly established), an ‘ideological uncertainty;’ there lies (as, with equal correctness, he has established) my ‘susceptibility to seduction by capitalist propaganda.’ This is quite true.

“The fact is that I did acquire a travel brochure of the city of Copenhagen in an illegal, almost sordid manner. I—forgive me if this squalid deed brings tears to my eyes, and do not, I beg you, hold these tears against me as mere hypocrisy—I fished this brochure out of a trash can on Gorki Street as I leaned over it to toss in my crumpled-up
Pravda
(of which, incidentally, I had read every single word).

“Now, I am well aware that throwing away
Pravda
is enough to make me a suspect, but let me emphasize that I had read it thoroughly, read every single word; I could still recite the contents of the editorial to you. The unforgivable part is that, lured by a photograph of an unclothed female figure which I spied among the garbage, I poked my right hand through the garbage to reach for this female figure.

“I am married, Comrade Gospodin, I have three growing children, I lead a harmonious married life, and I do not want to give the impression that this photograph—this bronze statue of an unclothed woman—was the basic motivation for my attempt at hijacking. No, that woman was merely the skillfully planted capitalist-pornographic bait; actually I—or rather those shady instincts that even my socialist upbringing was unable to eradicate—was disappointed in that woman. I have committed myself to being frank, Comrade Gospodin, and on this point, too, I intend to be frank.

“I am, after all, not without education. I enjoyed excellent instruction in geography, I happen to be a passionate student of maps, and so, starting at Leningrad, I run my finger across the Baltic Sea until I reach city of Copenhagen, and that, Comrade Gospodin, is where my longing awakens: that wonderful city simply fascinates me, and I swear by all that is supposed to be sacred to me I did
not
mean to go there for the sake of pornographic movies and sex shops, no; it was the architectural beauty that attracted me—the canals, the old warehouses that I saw in the brochure after the superficial appeal of the unclothed female figure had quickly faded—and not only the architecture but the philosophy.

“I am only a simple Soviet worker, but I have been attracted time and time again by philosophy—indeed, it has fascinated me—and for that again I have to thank my excellent education. In the library of an acquaintance of my deceased aunt, I once read a tract by this Kierkegaard, who is said to have been a contemporary of the incomparable Karl
Marx; and now you will ask me, with justifiable reproach, why in that case my longing was not directed toward the attractive old town of Trier.

“Here I must make a further confession: I am of Jewish nationality, and certain—or should I say specific—historical events affecting the fate of the Jewish people have considerably lessened my longing to visit a country inhabited by Germans, and I need hardly emphasize—this goes without saying for a Soviet citizen—that I exclude the inhabitants of the German Democratic Republic. But Trier happens not to be situated in the German Democratic Republic, and there are no Germans living in Denmark; besides, Trier is not on the sea, and it does not have the Tivoli, it does not have that wonderful circus of Copenhagen’s, and, after all, I wanted to go to Copenhagen not merely for the sake of Kierkegaard but also for the sake of the beauty and gaiety of that city; and if I long for Danish circuses, that is not meant to disparage our glorious Soviet circuses; we have the best clowns, we have wonderful artists, but I simply felt the urge to see a non-Soviet circus, to take a vacation among non-Soviet people.

“I do not deny the beauties of the Crimea or the Caucasus, which I have been privileged to see; I do not deny the beauties of the Baltic among our brother peoples, the Latvians, Lithuanians, and Estonians; I have seen all that, and it drew tears of joy—indeed, of delight—from my sense of beauty. But: I just wanted to go to Denmark, and when all my many attempts to see that beautiful country by legal means, as a Soviet tourist, failed, when all my applications were rejected, I perverted my abilities as a skilled—indeed, prize-winning—mechanic in a criminal manner: out of a chunk of beechwood (secretly, while my family was asleep, under the pretext of furthering my education) I carved a faithful replica of a pistol, using our incomparable first-rate black Soviet shoe polish to give it a metallic sheen. Pretending to be a sightseer, I drove out to the airport, made a note of the departures for Copenhagen, and attempted on the day in question to force my way through the barrier onto an S.A.S. airliner. The attempt was foiled by the vigilance of our militia, to whom I would like at this point to express my thanks.

“I swear, Comrade Gospodin, I swear on the lives of my wife and my children, of all who are dear to me, of all those comrades who are my friends: I would have returned; full of remorse would have given myself up to the authorities and, after serving an appropriate
sentence, resumed my occupation as a skilled mechanic; would have spent the rest of my life in this my beloved native land, the land of the workers. I have no illusions but that after a very few days in Copenhagen I would have grown weary of that decadence. After all—and I beg you not to look for any ironic overtures in this—how magnificent is our instruction in geography, how comprehensive ours in philosophy, that such longings should arise!”