The Collected Stories of Heinrich Boll (131 page)

The whole house was suddenly shaken by a powerful detonation. This was followed by waves of weapon fire in the area. The woman sprang up and leaned against the wall, pale and trembling. Reinhard approached her, placed his hand on her arm, and said calmly: “You’re safe, ma’am, that’s artillery fire. No, no, believe me, you have nothing to worry about.” He watched the stranger’s face closely, but a smile triumphed over the young man’s initial shock as he cried: “Those are our shells … those are ours!”

Several more shells exploded among the buildings with deafening noise, the dark murmur of advancing tanks could be heard, and the abrupt crack of their cannons, sounding like a sudden blowout, followed by the shattering din of the impact. A few minutes later, from behind the curtain, they again saw the gray figures of the Germans running down the street, a frightening indifference in their gait.

The tanks rolled past the corner again, heading up the street, as the small stranger with the pale child’s face smiled, laid a bar of chocolate on the table, shook hands warmly with them both, and left the building. The silence of the house enveloped them again, and now they were alone.

Reinhard went to the door, which the young man had left open, and stuck his head out for an instant before bolting it, feeling the cool, gentle evening air, with its delicate summery smells already offering a foretaste of autumn as it descended upon the beautiful, incomparable city. And perhaps it was the greatest offense of his life, the greatest, that he didn’t simply leave the house, but instead turned back, slowly and heavily, into the dusk of the hall, which had become thicker and darker.

The woman stood at the open window, her arms crossed, staring out into the evening at the gardens. Like a piece of bad theater, the
sound of voices, high-pitched and somehow tinged with excited joy, arose once more from the street, and it seemed as if these scenes might alternate throughout eternity.

As if wishing to hide even from herself, the woman stood in the recess of the window and did not turn as Reinhard entered. She gazed into the evening sky, its blue now touched with gentle shades of rose and lilac, stretching like a delicate tent above the splendid summer day now coming to a close, a day on which so many men had perished in the cruel arms of war. She seemed to shiver, although the soft breeze was still mild and pleasant. Her shoulders were hunched, she had buttoned the fine blue wool cloak about her, and her pale face, with the small red fruit of the mouth, appeared almost dead. The room was already wrapped in darkness, although it was still bright outside, as bright and friendly and beautiful as Paris, the incomparable city in which the war still raged. Reinhard gazed at her spellbound. Just half a second more, he thought, I’ll just look at her, just look, then I’ll slip away as quickly and quietly as I can. I’ll run and run until the nearness of the distant woman I love extinguishes the terrible, consuming fire within me.

But the woman turned around, suddenly, abruptly, as if she had just awakened, and said softly: “You’ll have to leave the house by way of those gardens when it’s completely dark. Believe me, a thousand pairs of eyes have seen you enter the house, and any one of them would recognize you again. They don’t think you’re here anymore, because the house has already been searched.”

He protested in a state of shock: “But that means I’ll have to wait here several more hours.” He felt fear rise within him, wild desires and opposing thoughts, and he was surprised by the joyful smile with which she said: “Do you find it so terrible to be my prisoner until darkness falls?” adding with a wry smile: “But wait a moment …” She walked past him and he heard her leave the house.

He breathed a sigh of relief. Was he so weak and foolish he couldn’t spend two hours beside this beautiful woman without succumbing ineluctably to the terrible sin of betrayal? He had carried the image of his beloved unscathed through all the dangers and temptations, the infinite agonies of war. Was he to give it up now, without wishing to, seduced by the dark, melodious voice of ruin hovering over this city, trapped now in the dusk of this house? Yes, it would be truly stupid to risk his escape
for a foolish weakness. Smiling, he lit one of the American’s cigarettes and turned on the light. But it seemed as if the dusk, the sweet sense of being lost, couldn’t be banished by the warm, bright flood of light, either. It hovered among furniture, in the gaps, even above the reddish lamp shade itself, the sweet fragrance of being lost, drawing him into its spell. Ghastly and sweet, it flowed in, as if the joyful visage of the beautiful city was dissolving into insane caresses, blurred and enticing, as if enveloped by the mists of ruin.

The noise of battle spread steadily throughout the city. From time to time it fell silent, only to burst forth again like the dull blasts of a trumpet. The war’s progress could be measured easily by its sounds; it was actually possible to sense the increasing depth and expanse of the blows, to feel the gray soldiers’ weakening resistance, and in the streets, as the curtain lifted, the sounds of life swelled forth again.

The evening slowly filled the last bright light of day with blue shadows. It seemed to fall softly, tenderly, friendly and familiar, no more than the darker sister of the cheerful day. Twilight seemed to smile upon this immense and beautiful city, to drape its vast, dark blue cloak around her, as if it couldn’t be angry with her, enfolding her in a quiet, loving, and ineffably tender embrace, openly, with no thought for the poor hearts of those who stand aside in misery, weeping, weeping in the arms of longing.

Reinhard turned the light back off. For an instant it seemed completely dark, but then the last gleams of daylight plunged through the open window into the thick dusk of the room. The window was like a benevolent shaft in a prison. Delicate reddish gleams flowed in; they seemed mingled inextricably with the confusing, yet bittersweet smells of the evening, breath and light in one, which wafted beneath the gentle trees of the boulevard. They penetrated to the young man hidden behind the curtains and breathing deeply, brushing him like the terrible caress of a beautiful woman who teases but will not yield. He groaned as if his life’s blood were streaming forth, and felt his misery, his total abandonment in this foreign, hostile city, like a single, massive wound, lashed by the inescapable blandishment of his senses. He tore himself away as if he had been anchored to this shadowy play, stumbled through the dusk to the door, pulled it open, and hurried down the hall to the front entrance. But then he paused as if nailed to the spot, for he
heard fate itself approaching. The front door opened and the soft steps of the woman came toward him. He saw nothing, nothing at all in the darkness of the hall, as if it were a solid fabric, but never, never in the thousands of seconds that long afternoon had he seen more clearly. He saw her whole, his heart was torn from him, and as the tiny steps approached, he braced himself against the wall, as if forced backward by an invisible power. His eyes closed, his entire being writhed in pain, and he simply reached out, vaguely, as if he were trying to catch a bird flying past, and at the first tender touch he sensed that she too was unable to flee. And as her tears burned upon his cheeks, he longed for the entire darkness of night to crash down around them and bury them in its rubble.

When they awakened, they were so distant ice water might have been flowing between them, distant and cold, lying together a bad dream, while the milky light of the moon streamed mockingly through the open window of the room. She turned her face aside with a shudder and her entire being, mysterious and unfathomable, seemed hidden with her face behind the dark curtain of her hair. Reinhard rose, passed his hand wearily through his hair. He was shivering. Provocative and threatening, the uncanny stillness entered the haze woven of their own confusion within the room, where despairing caresses seemed to have taken hold like poisons.

He slowly pulled on his shoes, which stood beneath the wardrobe as if awaiting him. He shuddered, shuddered again, and a wild fear kept him from turning around; never had he suffered such misery as in this cold night hour, which seemed to mock the tenderness of day and evening, the hour in which, in this deeply foreign city, the myriad dangers of a daring flight ahead, he creeps from the bedroom of a beautiful woman whose sobs express the desolation lodged in his own miserable heart, arid and ineradicable. No, never again in his life could he turn back.

He moved slowly, cautiously, as if fearing to awaken the stillness, to the window; but as he was about to swing over the low sill, the muffled sound of her bare feet froze him in his tracks. He felt the blood flow like ice through his veins and, trembling as if he were about to look directly into the true, naked face of death, he quickly turned his head. And it was strange that this lovely face, sweeter and more beautiful than ever, with its small, smiling bud of a mouth, that this face, like
a gently compelling mirror, forced from him a joyful, open, and innocent smile. There was no longer the slightest fiber of his being that this woman desired. Her eyes simply compelled him to throw off the entire burden, and with her small, slender hand, she passed him a slim bundle of banknotes, which he stuck in his pocket without looking. He seized her hand unhesitatingly and pressed it. “This may help you,” she said in a small voice, “and don’t be sad. The three who love us: God, your wife, and my husband, may well forgive us,” and she kissed him quickly and lightly on the forehead. Then he swung himself out and walked toward the cold face of the moon.

The sergeant pushed open the door and said: “Take a look at him. Is he …?” He left his cigarette in his mouth. I approached the motionless figure lying on a bier. Someone perched on a stool beyond the bier rose quickly and said: “Good evening.” I recognized the chaplain and nodded. He installed himself at the head of the body.

I turned irritably to the policeman and glanced at his burning cigarette: “Could I have a little more light, please? I can’t see a thing.” He mounted a chair and arranged the hanging lamp with a cord so that its glow fell directly on the stiffened body. Now that I could see the corpse in full light, I drew back involuntarily. I’ve seen plenty of dead men, but every time I see one I’m disturbed by the realization that I’m looking at a human being, a person who lived, and suffered, and loved.

I saw at once that he was dead. Not by any medical indication; I sensed it and knew it. But I had been summoned to certify his death officially, so I got down to business. It was my legal duty, after all, to go through the well-rehearsed motions with which human science gropes toward mysteries. The recumbent figure looked ghastly.

His reddish hair was soaked and matted with blood and dirt, practically glued to his head. I made out a few wounds inflicted by blows and cuts. A terrible laceration scored his face, as if a rasp had been pulled across it. His mouth was twisted, the small pale nose flattened; his hands cramped at his sides, still clenched in death; the clothes filthy and smeared with blood. You could sense the infernal rage with which he had been hit, kicked, and gashed; he had been killed with bestial pleasure. I took hold of his jacket resolutely and undid the few buttons that had not been ripped away. Oddly enough his skin was white and tender as a child’s; no blood or dirt had penetrated the cloth.

The policeman suddenly bent over me, so near that I could feel his heavy breath, and with a glance at the body, said indifferently: “The party’s over, huh?” I stared at him for a few seconds, feeling my face twitch with rage, almost with hate.

My eyes must have said enough. He removed the sweetly stinking cigarette from his mouth with a disconcerted air, then slipped away. At the doorway he added: “Just let me know, Doc.” I felt freed somehow. Now I began my examination in earnest. How ridiculous to place a stethoscope upon this chest, to feel this pulse, to carry out the whole helpless charade upon this miserable, flayed body. He couldn’t have died from the wounds to his head. Should I take the easy way out medical science offers these days and write on the death certificate:
circulatory failure … exhaustion … malnourishment
? I don’t know if I laughed. I could discover nothing but the head wounds, which must have been terribly painful, but could scarcely have been fatal, having barely penetrated the outer structure of the skull. They must have been inflicted in blind rage.

Even in this desolate state his uncannily narrow, white face resembled a knife. He must have been a cold, daring fellow, I thought. I slowly rebuttoned his jacket, instinctively brushing the strands of bloody, dirty hair back from his forehead. It seemed as if he were smiling scornfully, mockingly. Then I looked at the chaplain, who had been standing at my side, pallid and silent, a quiet man I knew well. “Murdered?” I asked softly. He simply nodded, then replied in an even softer voice than mine: “A murderer, murdered.” I gave a start, then stared once more at the knife-sharp, pale face, which seemed to be laughing, even beneath the agonizing wounds and abuse, cold and arrogant. Horror constricted my throat; it was horrible, this corpse in the gloomy room, drenched by the brutal lamp’s harsh circle of light, while everything else lay in darkness. The bare bier … a few old stools … the walls with their crumbling plaster … and this dead body in a tattered gray uniform.

I looked at the chaplain almost imploringly. I was dizzy with exhaustion, fear, and nausea. The policeman’s cigarette had finished me off. I had been going all afternoon on an empty stomach, entering miserable dens, powerless, helpless, absurdly at the mercy of circumstances. Although I had seen many things that day, a murdered murderer was still a rarity, even in this city.

“A murderer?” I asked, lost in thought. The chaplain pushed his stool toward me: “Sit down, please,” and after I had automatically obeyed him, he continued, leaning on the plank-bed: “You don’t know him, then? You really don’t?” He looked at me as if he almost doubted
that I had my wits about me. “No,” I said wearily, “I don’t know him.” The chaplain shook his head: “You get around so much, I thought you would have heard of the Mad Dog.” I jumped up in shock … my God! “The Mad Dog, here—that face!” I stood beside the chaplain, both of us staring at the pallid, disfigured corpse.