The Collected Stories of Heinrich Boll (17 page)

“The stretcher,” said the driver. “Can’t you move him onto something else? We’ve got work to do.”

“Oh, of course—over here!” The doctor pointed to the leather couch. At that moment the night nurse appeared, her expression unemotional but serious. She took hold of the boy by the shoulders, and one of the stretcher bearers, not the driver, grabbed him by the legs.

The boy screamed like one demented, and the doctor said hastily, “Take it easy now, it’s not that bad …”

The stretcher bearers were still standing there, waiting. The doctor’s look of annoyance evoked a further response from one of them. “The blanket,” he said stonily. The blanket wasn’t his at all, a woman at the scene of the accident had let him have it, saying they couldn’t drive the boy like that to the hospital with those shattered legs of his. But the stretcher bearer figured the hospital would keep it, and the hospital had plenty of blankets, and the blanket certainly wouldn’t be returned to the woman, and it didn’t belong to the boy any more than it did to the hospital, and the hospital had plenty. His wife would clean up the blanket all right, and blankets were worth a lot of money these days.

The child was still screaming. They had unwrapped the blanket from around his legs and passed it quickly to the driver. Doctor and nurse exchanged glances. The boy was an appalling sight: the whole lower part of his body was bathed in blood, his cotton shorts were mere shreds, and the shreds had coagulated with the blood into a revolting pulp. His feet were bare, and he screamed without pause, screamed with terrible persistence and regularity.

“Quick,” whispered the doctor, “a hypo. Nurse, hurry, please!” The nurse’s movements were skillful and swift, but the doctor kept whispering, “Hurry, hurry!” His mouth hung slack in his tense face. The boy kept up his incessant screaming, but the nurse was preparing the hypo as fast as she could.

The doctor felt the boy’s pulse, his pale face twitching with exhaustion. “Be quiet,” he whispered a few times distractedly, “be
quiet
!” But the child screamed as if he had been born for the sole purpose of screaming. At last the nurse brought the hypo, and the doctor swiftly and skillfully gave the injection.

With a sigh he drew the needle out of the tough, leathery skin, and just then the door opened and a nun burst into the room, but when she saw the accident case and the doctor she closed her mouth, which she had opened, and approached slowly and quietly. She gave the doctor and the pale lay sister a friendly nod and placed her hand on the child’s forehead. The boy opened his eyes and looked straight up, in surprise, at the black figure standing behind him. It seemed almost as if the pressure of the cool hand on his brow were quieting him down, but
the injection was already taking effect. The doctor was still holding the syringe, and he gave another deep sigh, for it was quiet now, blissfully quiet, so quiet that they could all hear their own breathing. They did not speak.

The boy was evidently out of pain now; he was looking quietly and interestedly around the room.

“How much?” the doctor asked the night nurse in a low voice.

“Ten,” she replied, in the same tone.

The doctor shrugged his shoulders. “Quite a bit. We’ll see what happens. Would you give us a hand, Sister Lioba?”

“Of course,” the nun replied promptly, seeming to rouse herself from a deep reverie. It was very quiet. The nun held the boy by the head and shoulders, the night nurse took his legs, and together they pulled off the blood-soaked tatters. The blood, as they now saw, was mixed with something black. Everything was black, the boy’s feet were caked with coal dust, his hands too, there was nothing but blood, shreds of cloth, and coal dust, thick oily coal dust.

“Obviously,” murmured the doctor, “you fell off a moving train while pinching coal, eh?”

“Yes,” said the boy in a cracked voice, “obviously.”

His eyes were wide open, and there was a strange happiness in them. The injection must have been gloriously effective. The nun pulled his shirt all the way up, arranging it in a roll on the boy’s chest, under his chin. His chest was scrawny, ludicrously scrawny like the breast of an elderly goose. Alongside the collarbones strangely deep shadows filled the hollows, great cavities where she could have hidden the whole of her broad white hand. Now they could see his legs too, as much of them as was still intact. They were skinny, and seemed to be fine-boned and shapely. The doctor nodded to the women, saying, “Double fracture of both legs, I imagine. We’ll need an X-ray.”

The night nurse wiped his legs clean with alcohol, and now they didn’t look quite so bad. But the child was so appallingly thin. The doctor shook his head as he applied the bandage. He started worrying again about Lohmeyer: maybe they’d got him after all, and even if he kept his mouth shut it was still very awkward to let him take the rap for that Strophanthin business and get off scot-free himself, while if things had gone well he would have had a share in the profits. Hell, it
must be eight-thirty, it was ominously quiet now, not a sound from the street. He had finished his bandaging, and the nun pulled the boy’s shirt down again over his loins. Then she went to the closet, took out a white blanket, and spread it over the boy.

Her hands on the boy’s forehead again, she said to the doctor as he was washing his hands, “What I really came about was the little Schranz girl, doctor, but I didn’t want to worry you while you were treating this boy.”

The doctor paused in his drying, made a slight grimace, and the cigarette hanging from his lower lip quivered.

“Well,” he asked, “what about the Schranz child?” The pallor in his face was almost yellow now.

“I’m afraid that little heart is giving up, just giving up; it looks like the end.”

The doctor took the cigarette between his fingers again and hung the towel on the nail beside the wash bowl.

“Hell,” he cried helplessly, “what am I supposed to do? There’s nothing I can do!”

The nun kept her hand on the boy’s forehead. The night nurse dropped the blood-soaked rags into the garbage pail; its chrome lid cast flickering lights against the wall.

The doctor stood there thinking, his eyes lowered. Suddenly he raised his head, gave one more look at the boy, and dashed to the door. “I’ll have a look at her.”

“Do you need me?” the night nurse called out after him. He put his head in again, saying, “No, you stay here. Get the boy ready for X-rays and see if you can take down his history.”

The boy was still very quiet, and the night nurse came and stood by the leather couch.

“Has your mother been told?” asked the nun.

“She’s dead.”

The nurse did not dare ask about his father.

“Whom should we notify?”

“My older brother, only he’s not home right now. But the kids ought to be told, they’re all alone now.”

“What kids?”

“Hans and Adolf. They’re waiting for me to come and make supper.”

“And where does your older brother work?”

The boy was silent, and the nun did not pursue the question.

“Would you mind taking it down, nurse?”

The night nurse nodded and went over to the little white table which was covered with medicine bottles and test tubes. She pulled the ink toward her, dipped the pen in it, and smoothed out the sheet of white paper with her left hand.

“What’s your name?” the nun asked the boy.

“Becker.”

“Religion?”

“None. I was never baptized.”

The nun winced; the night nurse’s expression remained impassive.

“When were you born?”

“In 1933 … September 10.”

“Still going to school, I suppose?”

“Yes.”

“And his first name!” the night nurse whispered to the nun.

“Oh, yes … and your first name?”

“Grini.”

“What?” The two women looked at each other and smiled.

“Grini,” said the boy, slowly and peevishly, as anyone does who has an unusual first name.

“With an ‘i’?” asked the night nurse.

“That’s right, with two i’s,” and he repeated once more, “Grini.”

His real name was Lohengrin. He had been born in 1933, just when the first photographs of Hitler at the Bayreuth Wagner Festival started flooding all the illustrated weeklies. But his mother had always called him Grini.

The doctor rushed suddenly into the room, his eyes blurred with exhaustion, his wispy fair hair hanging down into his young, deeply lined face.

“Come along, both of you, and be quick about it. I’m going to try a transfusion; hurry up!”

The nun’s eyes went to the boy.

“That’s all right,” cried the doctor, “you can leave him alone for a moment.”

The night nurse was already at the door.

“Will you lie there quietly like a good boy, Grini?” asked the nun.

“Yes,” he answered.

But as soon as they had all left the room he let the tears flow unchecked. It was as if the nun’s hand on his brow had held them back. He was crying not with pain but with happiness. And yet with pain and fear too. It was only when he thought about the kids that he cried with pain, and he tried not to think about them because he wanted to cry with happiness. Never in his life had he had such a wonderful feeling as now, after the injection. It flowed right through him like some wonderful, gently warmed milk, making him feel dizzy and yet awake, and there was a delicious taste on his tongue, more delicious than anything he had ever tasted, but he couldn’t help it, he kept thinking about the kids. Hubert wouldn’t be back before tomorrow morning, and Father, of course, wouldn’t be home for another three weeks, and Mother … and right now the kids were waiting all alone, and he knew very well that they listened for every step, every tiny sound on the stairs, and there were so many, many sounds on the stairs, and the kids were disappointed so many, many times. There wasn’t much hope that Frau Grossmann would bother about them: she never had, why should she today. She never had, and after all she couldn’t know that he … that he had had an accident. Hans might try to comfort Adolf, but Hans was so frail himself and the least thing made him cry. Maybe Adolf would comfort Hans, but Adolf was only five whereas Hans was eight; it was really more likely that Hans would comfort Adolf. But Hans was so terribly frail and Adolf much stronger. Probably they would both cry, for when it got close to seven o’clock they would tire of playing because they were hungry and knew he would be home at seven-thirty to give them something to eat. And they wouldn’t dare take any of the bread; no, they would never dare do that again—he had forbidden them too strictly since those few times when they had eaten it all up, every bit, the whole week’s rations. It wouldn’t matter if they took some of the potatoes, but of course they didn’t know that. If only he had told them it was all right to take some of the potatoes. Hans was already quite good at boiling them; but they wouldn’t dare, he had punished them too severely, in fact he had even had to hit them, for it just wouldn’t do for them to eat up all the bread; it just wouldn’t do. But now he would have been glad if he hadn’t punished them, for then they would
take some of the bread and at least they wouldn’t be hungry. So instead they were sitting there waiting, and at every sound on the stairs they were jumping up excitedly and thrusting their pale faces through the crack of the door, the way he had seen them so often, so often, a thousand times maybe. Oh, he always saw their faces first, and they were glad to see him. Yes, even after he had hit them, they were glad to see him; they had understood, he knew that. And now every sound was a disappointment, and they would be scared. Hans trembled at the very sight of a policeman; maybe they’d make such a noise crying that Frau Grossmann would be angry, for she liked peace and quiet of an evening, and then maybe they would go on crying, and Frau Grossmann would come and see what was the matter and take pity on them—she wasn’t so bad, Frau Grossmann. But Hans would never go on his own to Frau Grossmann; he was so dreadfully scared of her, Hans was scared of everything …

If only they would take some of the potatoes at least!

Now that he had begun thinking about the kids, he was crying with pain. He tried holding his hand in front of his eyes so as not to see the kids, but he felt his hand getting wet, and he cried even more. He tried to figure out the time. It must be nine o’clock, maybe ten, that was terrible. He had never got home later than seven-thirty, but today the train had been closely watched and they had had to keep a sharp lookout, those Luxembourgers were so trigger-happy. Maybe during the war they hadn’t been able to shoot much and they just enjoyed shooting; but they didn’t get him, oh no, they’d never got him, he’d always given them the slip. Anthracite, people would pay seventy to eighty marks for anthracite and think nothing of it—and he was supposed to miss a chance like that? But those Luxembourgers had never got him; he’d managed to cope with the Russians, with the Yanks, and the Tommies, and the Belgians, was he going to let himself get caught by the Luxembourgers of all people, those clowns? He had slipped past them, up onto the train, filled his sack, tossed it down, and then thrown down whatever he still had time to lay hands on. But then, crash, the train had stopped with a sudden jolt, and he knew nothing except that he had been in the most frightful agony until he knew nothing whatever, and then there had been the pain again when he woke up in the doorway and saw the white room. And then they had given him the
injection. Now he was crying with happiness again. The kids had gone; this happiness was glorious, he had never known such bliss. His tears seemed to be bliss itself, bliss was flowing out of him, and yet it didn’t get any smaller, this flickering, exquisite, circling thing in his chest, this funny lump that welled up out of him in tears, didn’t get any smaller …

Suddenly he heard the Luxembourgers shooting. They had machine pistols, and it made a horrible racket in the cool spring evening; there was a smell of fields, smoke from the station, coal, and even a bit of real spring. Two shots barked into the sky, which was dark gray, and the echo of them returned to him a thousand times over, and there was a prickling in his chest like pins and needles. Those damned Luxembourgers weren’t going to get him, they weren’t going to shoot him to bits! The coal he was lying on was hard and sharp; it was anthracite, and they paid eighty marks, up to eighty marks a hundredweight for it. Should he get the kids some chocolate? No, it wouldn’t be enough, for chocolate they wanted forty marks, sometimes forty-five. He couldn’t carry away that much: God, he’d have to lug a whole hundredweight for two bars of chocolate; and those Luxembourgers were crazy nuts, now they’d started shooting again, and his bare feet were cold and the sharp anthracite hurt them, and they were black and dirty, he could feel it. The shots were tearing great holes in the sky, but surely they couldn’t shoot the sky to bits, or maybe the Luxembourgers could shoot the sky to bits …