The Collected Stories of Heinrich Boll (31 page)

“Fruit,” he said, “give me some apricots, please.” She looked at him with a smile. Somehow her smile had no warmth. Then she glanced at her baskets and asked, “Bag?” Greck shook his head. Her voice was warm and deep. He watched while she climbed around her seat onto the cart; her legs were surprisingly sturdy. Noticeably so. Greck’s mouth watered at the sight of the fruit: it was magnificent. He thought of home. Apricots, he thought, those times when Mama had been able to get apricots! And here, here they got taken back from market. Cucumbers too. He took an apricot from the cart and ate it: it was tart yet at the same time sweet, already a shade too soft and warm, but he enjoyed it. “Very good,” he said.

The woman smiled at him again. She took some loose pieces of paper and deftly made a kind of bag into which she very carefully laid the apricots. The way she looked at him struck him as odd. “Enough?” she asked. He nodded. She folded over the ends of paper, tucked them in, and handed him the package. He took his hundred-pengö bill out of his pocket. “Here,” he said. Her eyes opened wide, and she said, “Oh, oh,” then shook her head. But she took the bill, and for an instant she held on to his hand, clasping it up by the wrist although there was no need to, up by the wrist, for the merest second; then she took the bill, stuck it between her lips, and rummaged around under her skirt to pull out her purse. “No,” cried Greck, “no, no, put it away.” He looked anxiously around. That great red bill was horribly conspicuous. The street was busy, even a streetcar was passing. “Put it away,” he cried, “put it away!” He tore it out of her mouth. She bit her lip, whether with anger or amusement he couldn’t tell.

Furious, he dug out a second apricot, sank his teeth into it, and waited. The sweat was standing in thick beads on his forehead. He was having a hard time holding the apricots together in the loose bag. It
seemed to him that the old woman was deliberately taking her time—he even considered running away, but she would probably set up a terrible hue and cry and everyone would come running. The Hungarians were allies, not enemies. He sighed and waited. Across the street a soldier emerged from the tavern, not the one who had just gone in. This one had medals on his chest: three—as well as insignia on his sleeve. He saluted Greck, and Greck nodded in response. Again a streetcar passed, on the other side this time, people walked by, many people, and behind him, behind that dilapidated board fence, the swingboat calliope softly began to drone. The old woman smoothed out one bill after another until it looked as though her purse held no more. Then came the coins. Patiently she stacked up little nickel piles beside her on the seat. Then she carefully took the bill from him and handed him first the bills, then the nickel piles. “Ninety-eight,” she said. He turned to go, but she suddenly laid her hand on his forearm: her hand was broad and warm and quite dry, and her face came closer. “Girl?” she asked in a whisper, smiling at him. “Pretty girl, eh?”

“No, no,” he said hastily, “thanks all the same.”

She darted her hand under her skirt, drew out a scrap of paper, and quickly passed it to him. “There,” she said. “There.” He added it to the bills, she gave a flick to the reins, and he walked back across the street carefully carrying his loose package.

The table in front of the young couple had still not been cleared. He couldn’t understand these people: flies clustered in hordes on the plates, the rims of the glasses, and this young man was gesturing animatedly as he spoke in a low insistent voice to the girl. The innkeeper came toward Greck. “Can I have a wash?” asked Greck. The innkeeper stared at him. “A wash,” said Greck impatiently. “A wash, for God’s sake.” Infuriated at the man’s obtuseness, he rubbed his hands together. The innkeeper gave a sudden nod, turned, and beckoned Greck to follow him.

Greck followed, paused to let the innkeeper hold back the dark-green curtain for him—the fellow’s expression seemed to have changed. It looked as if he were asking something. They walked along a short narrow passage, and the innkeeper opened a door. “Here you are,” he said. Greck went in. The cleanliness of the washroom surprised him. The washbasins were neatly cemented to the wall, the doors were painted white. Beside the washbasin hung a towel. The innkeeper brought a
cake of green army soap. “Here you are,” he repeated. Greck felt at a loss. The innkeeper left. Greck sniffed the towel, it seemed clean. Then he quickly removed his tunic, washed his neck and face all over, and ran water over his arms. He hesitated a moment, then put on his tunic again and slowly washed his hands. The soldier he had seen before came in, the one with no medals. Greck stepped aside so the soldier could get to the urinal. He buttoned his tunic, picked up the soap, and left. At the bar he gave the innkeeper the soap, said “Thanks,” and sat down again.

The innkeeper’s expression was stony. Greck wondered what was keeping the soldier. The young couple in the corner had gone. The table had still not been cleared, a jumble of dirty dishes. Greck drank the rest of his cold coffee and sipped the apricot schnapps. Then he began to eat his fruit.

He felt an insane craving for this juicy, fleshy stuff and ate six apricots in quick succession—and suddenly he felt nauseated: the apricots were too warm. He took another sip of schnapps; the schnapps was also too warm. The innkeeper stood behind the bar, smoking and somnolent. Another soldier came in. The innkeeper seemed to know him, and the two men whispered together. The soldier drank beer; he had one medal, the Cross of Merit. The soldier who had just been to the toilet came back, paid at the bar, and left. At the door he saluted. Greck returned the salute, and then the soldier who had just arrived went to the toilet. Outside, the swingboat calliope was droning away. The sound, wild yet sluggish, filled Greck with melancholy. He would never forget that ride. Too bad it had turned his stomach. Outside, things had begun to liven up a bit: across the square there was an ice-cream parlor, people were crowding in front of it. The tobacco shop next door to it was empty. The soiled green curtain in the corner was pushed aside, and out came a girl. At once the innkeeper’s eyes went to Greck. The girl looked at him too. He could only just make her out; she seemed to be wearing a red dress, in that dense, greenish light the color looked nondescript, and the only thing he could see clearly was her heavily made-up face, very white, the mouth painted startlingly red. He could not see the expression on her face, he thought she was smiling a little, but he could be wrong; he could hardly see her. She was holding some money, holding the bill out straight, like a child, the way she would have held a flower or a stick.
The innkeeper gave her a bottle of wine and some cigarettes, without switching his gaze from Greck. He did not look at the girl at all, not a word passed between them.

Greck took the crumpled bills from his pocket and picked out the scrap of paper the old woman had given him. He placed it on the table and put the money back in his pocket. He was acutely conscious of the innkeeper’s gaze and looked up. There was no doubt about it now, the girl was smiling at him; there she stood, holding the green bottle, her fingers curved around a few loose cigarettes, little white sticks that matched her face. All he was aware of in the darkness were her startling white face, the dark mouth, and the piercingly white cigarettes in her hand. She gave a brief smile, then moved aside the curtain and left.

The innkeeper was now gazing fixedly at Greck. His expression was stony, with something menacing about it. Greck was scared of him. That’s how murderers look, he thought, and he would have welcomed the chance to leave quickly. Outside, the calliope was droning away, the streetcar squealed past, and sadness filled him, an alien and solemn sadness. The repulsive apricots, soft and warm, lay in front of him on the table, and flies were sticking to his cup. He did not wave them away. All at once he got up and called, “The bill, please,” raising his voice to give himself courage. The innkeeper hurried over. Greck took some money from his pocket. He watched the flies now slowly gathering on the apricots, black sticky dots on that repulsive pink; the thought of having eaten them almost turned his stomach.

“Three pengös,” said the innkeeper. Greck handed him the money. The innkeeper glanced at the schnapps glass, still half full, then at Greck’s chest, at the scrap of paper lying on the table, and he picked it up at the very instant Greck reached for it. The innkeeper grinned, his big fat pale face looked repulsive. The innkeeper read the address on the paper: it was his own. He grinned, more hideously than ever. Sweat broke out over Greck’s body again.

“Do you still need this paper?” asked the innkeeper.

“No,” said Greck. “Good-bye.” It occurred to him he had to say
“Heil Hitler,”
and in the doorway he added
“Heil Hitler!”
The innkeeper did not respond. Turning round, Greck saw the man toss the remains of the schnapps onto the floor. The apricots shone warm and pink, like rose-pink wounds in a dark body … Greck was glad to be out on the
street, and he hurried off. He was ashamed to go back to the hospital before his leave was up, the cocky little lieutenant would laugh at him. But what he really wanted was to go back right now and lie down on his bed. He felt like having a decent meal, but when he actually thought of food he remembered the apricots, repulsively pink, and his nausea increased. He thought of the woman he had gone to at noon, straight from the hospital. Her mechanical kisses on his neck suddenly hurt, and he knew why he had found the apricots so repulsive: they were the same color as her underwear, she had sweated a bit, and her body had been warm. It was a stupid idea to go to a woman in the middle of the day in this heat. But he had been following the advice of his father, who had told him he must be sure and have a woman at least once a month. This woman hadn’t been bad, a sturdy little person who would probably have been delightful in the evening. She had taken the last of his money off him and known right away what he was up to as soon as she saw he was wearing two pairs of pants. She had laughed and given him the name of the Jewish tailor where he could sell them.

He slowed down. He felt sick to his stomach. He knew it: he should have had a proper meal. Now it was too late, he wouldn’t be able to eat a thing. Everything disgusted him: the woman, the dirty Jew, even the swingboats, though that had been a novelty, but they disgusted him too, and the fruit, the innkeeper, the soldier—the lot. He had liked the girl. He had liked her very much. But it wouldn’t do to have a woman twice in one day. She had looked very lovely, standing there in the dark in that green corner with her white face, but close up she was sure to be sweaty and smelly too. These girls probably couldn’t help being sweaty, they didn’t have the money to smell nice in the middle of the day in this heat.

He was passing a restaurant. Chairs stood on the street among tubs of stiff green plants. He sat down in a corner and ordered some soda water. “With ice,” he called after the waiter. The waiter nodded. A couple at the next table were talking Rumanian.

Greck was now thirty-three and had been suffering from chronic indigestion ever since he was sixteen. Fortunately, his father was a doctor, not a good doctor but the only one in the small town, and they were reasonably well off. But his mother was thrifty. In the summer they used to go to health resorts, or south to the Alps, and often to the coast, and
during the winter, when they stayed home, they ate poorly. The only time they ate well was when guests came, but they had few guests. In their small town the center for all social gatherings was the inn, and he was not allowed to go with his parents to the inn. When guests came, wine was served, but by the time he reached the age when he could have drunk wine, he was already suffering from chronic indigestion. They had always eaten a lot of potato salad. He didn’t know exactly how often it had actually been, whether three or four times a week, but some days he had the feeling that as a boy he had eaten nothing but potato salad. A doctor once told him, years later, that his symptoms almost bordered on those of malnutrition, and that potato salad was poison to his system.

Word soon got around his hometown that he was sick, and indeed, you could see he was, and the girls more or less ignored him. His father wasn’t that well off, not enough to compensate for his ill health. In school he didn’t shine either. On finishing high school, in 1931, he was allowed to choose a graduation gift, and he chose a trip. He soon got off the train, in Hagen took a room in a hotel, and spent the evening feverishly roaming the town, but he couldn’t find a prostitute in Hagen, and left the next day for Frankfurt, where he stayed a week. At the end of a week he had run out of money and took the train home. On the train he thought he would die. At home he was received with shocked surprise; he had had enough money for a three-week trip. His father looked at him, his mother wept, and there was a terrible scene with his old man, who forced him to take off his clothes and be examined. It was a Saturday afternoon, he had never forgotten it; outside, all was quiet in those clean streets, so medieval and idyllic, warm and deep, the bells rang for a long, long time, and he stood facing his father and had to submit to having his body tapped by the old man’s fingers. In the surgery. He hated that fat face and the breath that always smelled slightly of beer, and he made up his mind to commit suicide. His father’s hands kept tapping his body, that gray head of thick hair moving for a long time below his chest. “You’re crazy,” said his father on finally raising his head, and he grinned softly. “You’re crazy. A woman once or twice a month is plenty for you.” He knew his old man was right.

That evening he sat with Mama drinking weak tea. She didn’t say a word, but all at once she began to cry. He laid aside the newspaper and went to his room.

Two weeks later he went to Marburg, to the university. He followed his father’s advice to the letter, much as he hated him. After five years he graduated in law. In 1937 he did his first tour of military duty, in 1938 his second, and in 1939, after he’d spent two years in the district attorney’s office, the war broke out, and he was sent to the front as a second lieutenant. He disliked the war. The war made new demands on him. It was no longer enough to be a qualified attorney, to have a good position with chances of promotion. Now they all looked at his chest when he came home. His chest was but meagerly decorated. In her letters Mama told him to take care of himself and at the same time made hints that felt like pinpricks.