The Collected Stories of Heinrich Boll (137 page)

The roof of the house was only partially covered by the old, dark gray tiles. It must have been badly damaged, for large portions were now nailed over with patches of roofing felt or tin, and partly with brightly colored advertising signs, and even outside the tiny attic window I saw a drying rack, from which dismal gray diapers flapped wearily in the slack breeze. At the left corner of the house a section of the gutter was hanging down, just as it had seven years earlier, when I stood at this spot and took my leave. Back then I thought: They’ll have to have it repaired; I didn’t think: I must leave now, and I don’t know if I’ll ever return. I thought: They’ll have to have it repaired. But they hadn’t; it was still hanging there—one of the clamps attaching it to the edge of the roof had come loose, and it hung there at an angle, ready to fall at any moment, and I could see clearly where the water poured at an angle against the gray side of the building each time it rained, rushing down, soaking it, a white path edged in dark gray trailing down past the windows, with large round spots to the left and right, their centers white, with increasingly darker rings about them.

That section of gutter had been dangling there for seven years. Seven years. I had traveled far, I had seen death many times, smelled and felt it. I had lived luxuriously, had hungered, starved to the point where I dreamed of white bread, imagining how I would tear into it, bury my face in it, share it, toss it to the entire starving world. I had starved to the point where I no longer felt hunger, but was wrapped instead in those sweet dreams that make actual eating—when it begins again—seem unspeakably disgusting. I had been shot at thousands of times, by guns, mortars, cannons, ships’ artillery, airplanes, bombs, and hand grenades. I’d been hit, I’d tasted my own blood on my lips, flowing stickily
from my head, sweet and greasy, quickly thickening. I had marched along dusty roads all over Europe until I could no longer feel my feet, pursued white-throated women through dark suburbs without ever, ever possessing a single one; oh, those white throats in dusky lanes …

So very much had happened to me in that time, and it shocked me to think that this damaged gutter had been hanging here those same seven years, guiding the rain at an angle against the façade of the house. This piece of tin had dangled on what remained of its clamp for seven years, roof tiles had blown off, trees had been uprooted, plaster had crumbled, and bombs had fallen from all sides on the sweet open flanks of the city, in the suburbs, woven about with greenery, but this small piece of tin had never been hit, nor forced by a blast of wind to abandon its angle and fall to the ground. Rain had fallen heavily in those seven years, but it had splashed against the façade of the house, had been absorbed by the porous, sandstone wall, and had emerged again, whitish and gray.

Through the gaps in the row of poplars allowing a clearer view of the house, I could see wash hanging out on windy racks: faded men’s shirts, frayed women’s linen, sweaters, red and green, dresses, and among them a wet, heavy blanket that seemed to pull down on the rack like a leaden weight. Nothing familiar remained, and I was glad. I had always hated the house, loving only its inhabitants, and although the old forms of the park and house emerged everywhere like the watermark of eternity, I was most deeply affected by that flimsy piece of tin hanging at an angle above the pockmarked frieze of baby angels supporting the roof.

For some time now I had noticed a shadow at the edge of my vision: the man who was sitting on the bench. Evidently he had risen and walked around the corner of the shed, and I now realized that he must have been standing at the edge of my field of vision for some time—whether for minutes, seconds, or hours I couldn’t have said—like a small gray speck of dust when you’re too busy looking to wipe it from your eye. I turned around again, taking in the park with a sweeping glance, particularly the shrubbery, deeply and painfully reminded of those two stone benches hidden at the thickest point of the musical-clef paths. Then I turned to the admonishing shadow waiting humbly in my field of vision and advanced a few paces.

Up to that point I had passed through the garden plots wherever there was a gap in a fence without thinking, since I could see no sign of planting or sowing. Now I crossed a tiny field of corn stubble along a narrow path and made my way the few paces to the shed.

It seemed as if I had crossed an acoustic border with those three strides. As soon as I was standing beside the man, who nodded in a friendly fashion and returned my “Good evening” with the same words, I heard the sound of children playing, women calling out, men whistling, all the indescribable sounds of evening leisure in the neighborhood of a crowded house on a spring evening after work. Radios warbled lightheartedly through the air, and at the main entrance to the house, which now lay directly before me, I saw two older girls playing with red balls beside the large sandstone pillars of the door. And now I saw for the first time that the left wing of the house had been hit by a heavy shell, and the hole filled in with ugly, blackish bricks. Small children were playing in a sand pile between the poplar trunks, others were striking each other with sticks, running about and screaming with laughter, and a man had turned his bicycle upside down to work on it with rolled-up sleeves.

The old man beside me had seated himself on a board hastily nailed to two wooden blocks, and I sat down beside him. He was short and thin, and although he was wearing a threadbare sailor’s cap, I could see from his bare temples and the completely hairless visible portions of his skull that he must be bald. His narrow face was nicely tanned, and his small, almost colorless eyes regarded me with good-natured curiosity. I had been beside him barely half a second before he seemed to sense that I was eagerly inhaling the aroma of his tobacco. Without a word, he started searching through his pockets, while I immediately felt for my pipe.

“I don’t have a paper,” he said, holding out a tobacco tin.

“Thanks,” I said, took the tin, opened it quickly, and filled my pipe.

“Need a light?” he asked.

I nodded.

“Thanks,” I said again, handing the tin back to him.

“You’re from …”

“France,” I said.

“That’s what I was about to say; you can always tell by certain features. Rough time?”

I nodded.

“Right.”

It felt good to smoke a pipe with someone, the mutual movements of the lips, a smacking motion, and the gentle, almost inaudible puffs with which, in tandem, the blue clouds of smoke are expelled that come gray from the lungs.

I no longer saw much. I suddenly knew that the old man would ask what they all do, and that I would have to say no. I was worried when he started to speak, but all he said was: “Are you looking for someone?”

“Yes,” I said softly.

“Who?”

“Family. Fräulein Maria X.”

“Oh,” he cried, and although he was sitting so close beside me that I would never forget the smell of his clothes, I felt him withdraw. “The Fräulein!”

He must have sensed the rapid, irregular pounding of my heart, he may have seen the drops of sweat breaking out on my brow, and he was surely astonished to see me remove the pipe from my mouth, hold the bowl in my hand, and sigh deeply. Then he drew nearer and said softly, but more coldly than anything he had said thus far: “Don’t worry, she’s here.”

“Thanks,” I said, sticking the pipe back in my mouth. I knew now that I had plenty of time, all the time in the world, and I was surprised myself at the depth of the sigh that emerged from me, without my knowledge or will.

Now I felt the old man scrutinizing my worn and tattered uniform; I sensed him drawing a bit closer and closed my eyes, because I knew what he would ask me now.

“Maybe you know him,” he said.

I said nothing.

“He was a corporal. Grittner. Hubert. My son. Western front like you. Maybe you know him.”

“Where?” I asked hoarsely.

“Falaise,” he said, and I felt him waiting …

“I was there too,” I said, and now I looked at him. He had removed his pipe from his mouth, wrapping his right hand around the warm
bowl, and in his compressed lips and narrowed eyes stood the certainty that he would learn nothing from me. “No,” I said with a sigh, and shook my head. Then I put the pipe back in my mouth and looked toward the house.

“Funny,” he said, “so many have come back, and not a single one has known him.” I started to say something, but he raised his pipe and cut me off. “Oh, I know,” he said. “A name means nothing. At Verdun you seldom knew the person lying a foot away from you, I know all about it.”

He interrupted himself, looking up as a young, cheerful voice called from the house: “Dad!”

“Yes,” he called out softly, “I’m coming,” and he touched the rim of his cap with his pipe stem, said goodbye, and left. I called him back and asked: “Which room is she in?”

He understood me at once and pointed with his pipe toward the room next to the room next to the dangling gutter.

“Thanks,” I said, and watched as he headed for the house. He walked, as always, no doubt, slowly and calmly, with a slight stoop. He knocked his pipe on the stone lion, which stood halfway along the row of poplars, then turned and nodded to me once again, and in those few seconds it took him to reach the dark entrance and disappear within it, in those few seconds, I suddenly realized that
we all
are guilty
of everything
. Nothing touches us, for when we’re asked about someone, we say no. We always have to say no, and when we say it, our hearts refuse to break, when, in fact, what we are saying is: Am I my brother’s keeper?

I knew she wasn’t there, but I suddenly stood and followed the old man into the house. I entered without taking a close look, but even in passing through I saw, sensed, and smelled that the house looked as if a company of soldiers had spent three weeks there. The staircase was almost undamaged, missing only a lath here and there, and the upper story was dark. I saw at once that the side windows had been boarded up, the light stood in stiff, silver-gray stripes along the edges of the boards, and the hall gave the impression of a cold, rainy, gray winter day outside, with a leaden sky by evening, followed by a sad and starless night.

And although I knew that she wasn’t there, I walked quickly to the end of the hall, knocked, waited, knocked again, and rattled the door
handle. Naturally nothing stirred, nor did anything stir within me, and in the half minute I stood there, I kept asking myself why that was. The fact that she had kept this same room said a great deal, said everything. But I felt nothing. Finally I noticed a note attached to the door. I tore it off and read it in the light seeping into the hall through the cracks of the old, musty boards.

It was her handwriting:
Be back at eight. Key next door. M
. I stuck the note in my pocket and knocked at the neighboring door. I had heard nothing before I knocked, but now an oppressive silence weighed upon my heart, as if someone were pumping air into me, pressing tighter and tighter against it. I knocked again, then I heard whispering, someone rose from a bed, a key turned in the lock, and in the flat dimness I saw the head of a pretty blond woman, her hair hanging in her eyes. Although I saw only a small strip of her throat, I knew that she was naked. I could smell it as well.

“Fräulein X,” I said, “the key for Fräulein X …”

“Oh,” she cried out. “You’re the one whose picture is hanging over the bed.”

“Yes,” I said, “probably so.”

She closed the door quickly, I heard more whispers, and then a round, naked, and very pretty arm held out a key to me.

I went back, and during the three steps to the door, in the musty hall, which still looked like winter, I realized that there was no point in holding back the memories any longer, once I was in the room. I stuck the key in the lock, paused for a moment, and crumpled the note in my pocket into a tight, small mass, so that I could feel it between my fingers like a tiny, hard paper ball.

Back then it seemed I could see nothing but the part in her hair. It was below me, straight and neat, white and steep like a very narrow, wonderfully bright pathway between soft, gently rising and falling waves of light brown hair. My gaze fell down that part and was lost forever. That narrow pathway had no end, and I felt the sorrow in my heart for that part in her hair.

He could feel her heart beating against his right side, softly and steadily, and knew it was a good heart, with more love in it for him than he
would ever find elsewhere. He knew all these things back then, knew he was so close to her he could never, ever be closer. The window stood half open as the dewy, sweet fragrance of the park, filled with enchanting decay, drifted into the room. The greenish curtain colored the light, dyeing her scattered clothes on the floor a similar green. The carpet and chest of drawers, the chair where his sword belt lay, everything was dusky green, tender and beautiful; even the cheap silver buckle of his belt was tinged with green, and he could read the raised inscription surrounding the national insignia and the laurel-wreath clearly: G
OD IS WITH US
. At the sight of her linen, the brown skirt and red sweater, an infinite tenderness swept over him. He suddenly understood why men promise to fetch the stars from heaven for a woman. His service jacket lay spread out so that only the inner lining was visible, and part of the shoulder straps, bordered in white, and he saw that the collar-band was soiled. But his happily wandering gaze continued to return to the relentlessly clear and neat part in her hair lying below him, and he knew that this pathway had no end, that he would never come as near to any other human as he had to her. Yet she was as infinitely distant as the pathway of the part in her hair was long.

He felt her warm nose against his chin and her breath on his throat, and he sensed that she would never, ever stir again, if he himself did not stir.

Still holding the key, which was already in the lock, he felt the tiny, wadded note in his hand. He chewed his lower lip as he recalled the voice of the woman next door saying: “Oh, you’re the one whose picture is hanging over the bed.” She started singing, and he could hear her pause in her song to take a deep breath, and then a man’s voice could be heard.