The Collected Stories of Heinrich Boll (20 page)

A fellow could cry for years over the big fake they put on. I must try to cry; it must be wonderful to cry, a substitute for wine, tobacco, bread, and maybe even a substitute for when the single solitary second is extinct and all I have left is twenty-four naked, entire hours of despair.

I can’t cry in the streetcar, of course; I must pull myself together, I really must pull myself together. They mustn’t notice anything; and at the station I’ll have to watch out. I’m sure they have people hidden somewhere. “After all, the security of a civil servant is at stake … Platform 4b.” I’ll have to be damn careful. It makes me nervous the way
the conductress keeps looking at me. She asks several times, “Tickets?” looking only at me. And I really have one; I could pull it out and hold it under her nose, she gave it to me herself, but she’s forgotten already. “Tickets?” she asks three times, looking at me. I blush, I really do have one; she moves on, and everyone thinks: He hasn’t got one, he’s cheating the transit company. And all the time I’ve given up my last twenty pfennigs, I’ve even got a transfer …

I must watch out like hell; I very nearly ran through the barrier, like I always do; but they might be standing around anyplace. As I was just about to dash through, I realized I didn’t have a platform ticket, or a nickel. It’s seventeen minutes past, in three minutes the train will be in, I’m going crazy. “Take this watch,” I said. The man looks insulted. “For God’s sake, take this watch.” He pushes me back. Their excellencies the ticket holders are staring. There’s no help for it: I have to go back; it’s seventeen and a half minutes past.

“A watch!” I shout. “A watch for a nickel! An honest watch, not a stolen one, a watch that belonged to my father!” Everyone takes me for a nut or a criminal. Not one of those bastards will take my watch. Perhaps they’ll call the police. I must find the bums. The bums will help me at least. The bums are all down below. It’s eighteen minutes past, I’m going crazy. Am I to miss the train today of all days, the very day she’s going to arrive? “Arriving there 1:20 p.m.”

“Hey, buddy,” I say to the first bum I see, “give me a nickel for this watch, but quick, quick,” I say.

He stares too—even he stares. “Listen, buddy,” I tell him, “I’ve got one more minute, understand?”

He understands—he misunderstands, of course, but at least he tries to understand, at least it’s something to be misunderstood. At least it’s a kind of understanding. The others understand nothing.

He gives me a mark; he’s generous. “Listen, buddy,” I say, “I need a nickel, get it? Not a mark, understand?”

He misunderstands again, but it’s so good to be at least misunderstood; if I get out of this alive I’ll hug you, buddy.

He gives me a nickel as well, that’s how the bums are, they give a bit extra and at least they misunderstand.

I manage to race up the steps at nineteen and a half minutes past one. But I still have to be on the alert, I have to watch out like crazy.
There comes the train, black and snorting against the city’s gray horizon. My heart is silent at the sight of it, but I am in time, that’s the main thing. In spite of everything, I’ve managed to get here in time.

I keep well away from the joker with the baton. He is surrounded by people, and suddenly he’s caught sight of me, he calls out, he’s scared, he waves to the clique hiding in his signal house, waves to them to catch me. They dash out, they’ve almost got me, but I laugh in their faces, I laugh in their faces, for the train has pulled in and before they get to me she is in my arms, my girl, and all I own in the world is my girl and a platform ticket, my girl and a punched platform ticket …

While I was standing on the dock watching the seagulls, my sad face attracted the attention of a policeman on his rounds. I was completely absorbed in the sight of the hovering birds as they shot up and swooped down in a vain search for something edible: the harbor was deserted, the water greenish and thick with foul oil, and on its crusty film floated all kinds of discarded junk. Not a vessel was to be seen, the cranes had rusted, the freight sheds collapsed; not even rats seemed to inhabit the black ruins along the wharf, silence reigned. It was years since all connection with the outside world had been cut off.

I had my eye on one particular seagull and was observing its flight. Uneasy as a swallow sensing thunder in the air, it usually stayed hovering just above the surface of the water, occasionally, with a shrill cry, risking an upward sweep to unite with its circling fellows. Had I been free to express a wish, I would have chosen a loaf of bread to feed to the gulls, crumbling it to pieces to provide a white fixed point for the random flutterings, to set a goal at which the birds could aim, to tauten this shrill flurry of crisscross hovering and circling by hurling a piece of bread into the mesh as if to pull together a bunch of strings. But I was as hungry as they were, and tired, yet happy in spite of my sadness because it felt good to be standing there, my hands in my pockets, watching the gulls and drinking in sadness.

Suddenly I felt an official hand on my shoulder, and a voice said, “Come along now!” The hand tugged at my shoulder, trying to pull me round, but I did not budge, shook it off, and said quietly, “You’re nuts.”

“Comrade,” the still-invisible one told me, “I’m warning you.”

“Sir,” I retorted.

“What d’you mean, ‘sir’?” he shouted angrily. “We’re all comrades.”

With that he stepped round beside me and looked at me, forcing me to bring back my contentedly roving gaze and direct it at his simple,
honest face: he was as solemn as a buffalo that for twenty years has had nothing to eat but duty.

“On what grounds …” I began.

“Sufficient grounds,” he said. “Your sad face.”

I laughed.

“Don’t laugh!” His rage was genuine. I had first thought he was bored, with no unlicensed whore, no staggering sailor, no thief or fugitive to arrest, but now I saw he meant it: he intended to arrest me.

“Come along now!”

“Why?” I asked quietly.

Before I realized what was happening, I found my left wrist enclosed in a thin chain, and instantly I knew that once again I had had it. I turned toward the swerving gulls for a last look, glanced at the calm gray sky, and tried with a sudden twist to plunge into the water, for it seemed more desirable to drown alone in that scummy dishwater than to be strangled by the sergeants in a backyard or to be locked up again. But the policeman suddenly jerked me so close to him that all hope of wrenching myself free was gone.

“Why?” I asked again.

“There’s a law that you have to be happy.”

“I am happy!” I cried.

“Your sad face …” He shook his head.

“But this law is new,” I told him.

“It’s thirty-six hours old, and I’m sure you know that every law comes into force twenty-four hours after it has been proclaimed.”

“But I’ve never heard of it!”

“That won’t save you. It was proclaimed yesterday, over all the loudspeakers, in all the papers, and anyone”—here he looked at me scornfully—“anyone who doesn’t share in the blessings of press or radio was informed by leaflets scattered from the air over every street in the country. So we’ll soon find out where you’ve been spending the last thirty-six hours, comrade.”

He dragged me away. For the first time I noticed that it was cold and I had no coat; for the first time I became really aware of my hunger growling at the entrance to my stomach; for the first time I realized that I was also dirty, unshaved, and in rags, and that there were laws demanding that every comrade be clean, shaved, happy, and well fed.
He pushed me in front of him like a scarecrow that has been found guilty of stealing and is compelled to abandon the place of its dreams at the edge of the field. The streets were empty, the police station was not far off, and, although I had known they would soon find a reason for arresting me, my heart was heavy, for he took me through the places of my childhood which I had intended to visit after looking at the harbor: public gardens that had been full of bushes, in glorious confusion, overgrown paths—all this was now leveled, orderly, neat, arranged in squares for the patriotic groups obliged to drill and march here on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Saturdays. Only the sky was as it used to be, the air the same as in the old days, when my heart had been full of dreams.

Here and there as we walked along I saw the government sign displayed on the walls of a number of love-barracks, indicating whose turn it was to participate in these hygienic pleasures on Wednesdays; certain taverns also were evidently authorized to hang out the drinking sign, a beer glass cut out of tin and striped diagonally with the national colors: light brown, dark brown, light brown. Joy was doubtless already filling the hearts of those whose names appeared in the official list of Wednesday drinkers and who would thus partake of the Wednesday beer.

All the people we passed were stamped with the unmistakable mark of earnest zeal, encased in an aura of tireless activity probably intensified by the sight of the policeman. They all quickened their pace, assumed expressions of perfect devotion to duty, and the women coming out of the goods depots did their best to register that joy which was expected of them, for they were required to show joy and cheerful gaiety over the duties of the housewife, whose task it was to refresh the state worker every evening with a wholesome meal.

But all these people skillfully avoided us in such a way that no one was forced to cross our path directly. Where there were signs of life on the street, they disappeared twenty paces ahead of us, each trying to dash into a goods depot or vanish round a corner, and quite a few may have slipped into a strange house and waited nervously behind the door until the sound of our footsteps had died away.

Only once, just as we were crossing an intersection, we came face to face with an elderly man, I just caught a glimpse of his schoolteacher’s badge. There was no time for him to avoid us, and he strove, after first saluting the policeman in the prescribed manner (by slapping
his own head three times with the flat of his hand as a sign of total abasement)—he strove, as I say, to do his duty by spitting three times into my face and bestowing upon me the compulsory epithet of “filthy traitor.” His aim was good, but the day had been hot, his throat must have been dry, for I received only a few tiny, rather ineffectual flecks, which—contrary to regulations—I tried involuntarily to wipe away with my sleeve, whereupon the policeman kicked me in the backside and struck me with his fist in the small of my back, adding in a flat voice, “Phase One,” meaning: first and mildest form of punishment administerable by every policeman.

The schoolteacher had hurriedly gone on his way. Everyone else managed to avoid us; except for just one woman, who happened to be taking the prescribed stroll in the fresh air in front of a love-barracks prior to the evening’s pleasures, a pale, puffy blonde who blew me a furtive kiss, and I smiled gratefully while the policeman tried to pretend he hadn’t noticed. They are required to permit these women liberties that for any other comrade would unquestionably result in severe punishment; for, since they contribute substantially to the general working morale, they are tacitly considered to be outside the law, a concession whose far-reaching consequences have been branded as a sign of incipient liberalization by Professor Bleigoeth, Ph.D., D.Litt., the political philosopher, in the obligatory (political)
Journal of Philosophy
. I had read this the previous day on my way to the capital when, in a farm outhouse, I came across a few sheets of the magazine that a student—probably the farmer’s son—had embellished with some very witty comments.

Fortunately we now reached the police station, for at that moment the sirens sounded, a sign that the streets were about to be flooded with thousands of people wearing expressions of restrained joy (it being required at closing time to show restraint in one’s expression of joy, otherwise it might look as though work were a burden; whereas rejoicing was to prevail when work began—rejoicing and singing), and all these thousands would have been compelled to spit at me. However, the siren indicated ten minutes before closing time, every worker being required to devote ten minutes to a thorough washing of his person, in accordance with the motto of the head of state: Joy and Soap.

The entrance to the local police station, a squat concrete box, was guarded by two sentries who, as I passed them, gave me the benefit of
the customary “physical punitive measures,” striking me hard across the temple with their rifles and cracking the muzzles of their pistols down on my collarbone, in accordance with the preamble to State Law No. 1: “Every police officer is required, when confronted by any apprehended [meaning arrested] person, to demonstrate violence
per se
, with the exception of the officer performing the arrest, the latter being privileged to participate in the pleasure of carrying out the necessary physical punitive measures during the interrogation.” The actual State Law No. 1 runs as follows: “Every police officer
may
punish anyone: he
must
punish anyone who has committed a crime. For all comrades there is no such thing as exemption from punishment, only the possibility of exemption from punishment.”

We now proceeded down a long, bare corridor provided with a great many large windows. Then a door opened automatically, the sentries having already announced our arrival, and in those days, when everything was joy, obedience, and order and everyone did his best to use up the mandatory pound of soap a day—in those days the arrival of an apprehended (arrested) comrade was naturally an event.

We entered an almost empty room containing nothing but a desk with a telephone and two chairs. I was required to remain standing in the middle of the room; the policeman took off his helmet and sat down.

At first there was silence; nothing happened. They always do it like that—that’s the worst part. I could feel my face collapsing by degrees, I was tired and hungry, and by now even the last vestiges of that joy of sadness had vanished, for I knew I had had it.