The Collected Stories of Heinrich Boll (39 page)

“Spiritus Sancte, Deus”
—her voice was powerful, warm, and of incredible clarity. He must be dreaming—now she would sing:
Sancta Trinitas, unus Deus
—he still remembered it—and she sang it:

“Sancta Trinitas”
—Catholic Jews? he thought—I must be going mad. He ran to the window and flung it open: outside they were all standing there, listening, not a soul moved. Filskeit could feel himself twitching, he tried to shout, but from his throat came only a hoarse toneless rasp, and from outside came that breathless hush while the woman went on singing:

“Sancta Dei Genitrix” …
With trembling fingers he picked up his pistol, turned around, and fired blindly at the woman, who slumped to
the floor and began to scream. Now he had found his voice again, once hers had stopped singing. “Wipe them out!” he screamed. “Wipe out the whole damn lot—and the choir too—bring out the choir—bring it outside—” He emptied the entire magazine into the woman, who was lying on the floor and in her agony spewing out her fear …

Outside, the slaughter began.

The widow Suchan had been watching the war for the past three years. It had all begun with the arrival of German soldiers and army vehicles, and cavalry; they had crossed the bridge that dusty autumn and headed toward the passes leading over to the Polish side. It had had the genuine look of war, grimy soldiers, weary officers and horses, motorcycles chasing back and forth, a whole afternoon of war, with a few intermissions: a fine spectacle, you might say. The soldiers had marched across the bridge, with the trucks driving up ahead and motorcycles fore and aft, and the widow Suchan had never seen them again.

After that things had quieted down a bit, except for a German army truck turning up now and again; it would drive across the bridge and disappear into the forest, and she could hear the sound of its engine for a long time in the silence as it drove up the mountain on the other side, laboriously wheezing, groaning, with a few intermissions—for a long time—until it had evidently disappeared over the ridge. She pictured the trucks driving past her native village, where she had spent her childhood, the summers on the pastures and the winters at the spinning wheel—very high up, all by herself in summertime on those barren stony meadows. She had often leaned over the ridge for hours to see if anything was moving up or down the road. But in those days there were no cars here yet; occasionally there would be a cart, usually it was Gypsies or Jews going across to the Polish side. It was not until much later, long after she had left, that the railroad had been built crossing the bridge near Szarny and running along the very same valley she used to look down on from those upland pastures. She had not been up there for a long time, almost ten years, and she listened for the trucks as long as she could—and she could still hear them even after they had
vanished over the ridge and were driving along the mountain road, and maybe now it was her nephew’s boys who were looking down at the German army vehicles toiling along.

But they did not come often. The truck came regularly every two months, and between times there were not many vehicles—occasionally one carrying soldiers who stopped in for a beer before having to drive up into the mountains, and in the evening it would come down carrying the other soldiers who stopped in for a beer before driving down into the plain. But there were not many soldiers up there; the truck came only three times altogether, for, six months after the war had passed by her on its way into the mountains, the bridge leading behind her house across the river was blown up. It happened at night, and she would never forget the blast and the shriek she let out, the neighbors calling from across the street, and the steady screaming of her daughter Maria, who was then twenty-eight and getting more and more peculiar. The windowpanes were smashed, the cows lowed in the stable, and the dog barked the whole night through. When daylight came, they saw what had happened: the bridge had gone, the concrete piers were still standing, catwalk, roadway, railings, had all been neatly blown away, and the rusty girders lay down below in the river, sticking out here and there. That very morning a German officer had arrived with five soldiers; they searched all of Berczaba, first her house, every room, the stables, and even Maria’s bed, with Maria still in it—she had been lying there whimpering in her room since the blast during the night. Next they went through the Temanns’ house across the street: every room, every bale of hay and straw in the barn; and even Brachy’s house was searched although no one had lived in it for three years and it was slowly falling to pieces. The Brachys had gone to work in Bratislava, and so far no one had turned up who wanted to buy the house and farm.

The Germans had been furious, but they hadn’t found a thing. They had hauled out the boat from her shed and rowed across the river to Tzenkoshik, the little village that lay just where the road started to climb: you could see the church spire beyond the forest from her attic window. But in Tzenkoshik they hadn’t found a thing either, nor in Tesarzy—although, of course, they probably didn’t know that the two Svortchik boys had disappeared after the bridge was blown up.

To her mind, it was ridiculous to blow up the bridge: the German truck crossed it only about every two months, and between times, very occasionally, a car would turn up carrying soldiers, and the bridge served no one but the farmers who owned pastureland and forests on the other side. It certainly couldn’t matter to the Germans if once every two months they had to make half an hour’s detour as far as Szarny, only three miles away, where the railroad bridge crossed the river.

It took a few days for her to grasp what the destruction of the bridge meant to her. At first a lot of inquisitive people had shown up, they would have a schnapps or a beer at her place and want to be told the whole story, but then Berczaba became quiet, very quiet; the farmers and hired hands who had to go into the forest or up to the pastures on the other side stopped coming, so did the people who used to drive to Tzenkoshik on Sundays, the couples out for a stroll in the woods, and even the soldiers, and the only thing she sold in two weeks was a beer to Temann from across the street, that skinflint who made his own schnapps. It was very depressing to think that in future all she was going to sell was a glass of beer to that stingy Temann—everyone knew how stingy he was.

But this very quiet period lasted only three weeks. One day a gray, high-speed little army car arrived with three officers who inspected the ruined bridge, paced up and down the bank for half an hour, field glasses in hand, stared out over the countryside, first from the Temanns’, then went up into her attic and stared out over the countryside from up there, and drove off, without having so much as a single schnapps at her place.

And two days later a slow cloud of dust moved from Tesarzy toward Berczaba: it was some tired soldiers, seven of them plus a corporal, who tried to explain that they were to live, sleep, and eat at her place. At first she was scared, but then she realized what a good thing it was for her, and she hurried upstairs to Maria, who was still in bed.

The soldiers seemed in no hurry, they waited patiently—men, no longer young, who filled their pipes, drank beer, unloaded their packs, and made themselves comfortable. They waited patiently until she had emptied out three little rooms upstairs: the hired hand’s room, empty for the past three years because she could no longer afford hired help; the little room which her husband had once said was for visitors or
guests, but there were never any visitors, and guests never came; and her bedroom, the one she had shared with her husband. She herself moved in with Maria, into the latter’s room. Later, when she came downstairs, the corporal began to explain that the village council would have to pay her a lot of kronen for this, and that she was to cook for the soldiers and would be paid for this too.

The soldiers were the best customers she had ever had. Those eight men consumed more in a month than all the people together who used to cross the bridge separately. The soldiers appeared to have plenty of money and any amount of time. Their duties seemed ridiculous to her: two of them always had to cover a certain route together—along the riverbank, then across in the boat, back again, along another stretch of riverbank—they were relieved every two hours; and up in the attic sat one man who scanned the countryside through his field glasses and was relieved every three hours. They made themselves comfortable up there in the attic, they had widened the dormer window by removing a few tiles, covering it with a sheet of metal at night, and there they sat all day long in an old armchair, with cushions on it, that stood perched on a table. There one of the men would sit all day long, staring up into the mountains, into the forest, at the riverbank, sometimes also back toward Tesarzy, and the others loafed around and were bored. She was horrified when she found out how much the soldiers got paid for this, and their families at home got paid too. One of them was a schoolteacher, and he worked out for her exactly how much his wife got, but it was so much that she couldn’t believe it. It was too much, what that schoolteacher’s wife got paid for her husband to lounge around here, eat goulash, vegetables, and potatoes, drink coffee, eat bread and sausage—they even got tobacco every day. When he wasn’t eating, he was lounging around in her bar leisurely drinking his beer and reading, he read all the time, he seemed to have a whole pack full of books, and when he wasn’t eating or reading, he was lounging up there in the attic with his field glasses, of no use to anyone, staring at the forests and meadows or watching the farmers in the fields. This soldier was very nice to her, his name was Becker; but she didn’t care for him because all he did was read, just drink beer and read and lounge around the place.

But that was all a long time ago. Those first soldiers hadn’t stayed long, four months, then others had come who had stayed for six months,
then others again for almost a year, and then they were relieved regularly every six months, and some would come back who had been there before, and they all did the same thing, for three years: loaf around, drink beer, play cards, and lounge about up there in the attic or over in the meadow, and stroll uselessly around in the forest with their rifles on their backs. She was paid a lot of money for housing the soldiers and cooking for them. Others came too; the bar had become a living room for the soldiers.

The sergeant who had been quartered with her for the past four months was called Peter, she didn’t know his surname; he was heavy-set, walked like a farmer, even had a mustache, and the sight of him often reminded her of her husband, Wenzel Suchan, who had not returned from another war: soldiers had crossed the bridge then too, covered with dust, on foot and on horseback, with mud-caked baggage trains, soldiers who never came back—it was years before they came back, and she couldn’t tell whether they were the same ones who had gone up the other side so long ago. She had been young, twenty-two, a pretty woman, when Wenzel Suchan brought her down from the mountain and made her his wife: she felt very rich, very lucky, to be the wife of an innkeeper who kept a hired hand to work in the fields, and a horse, and she loved the twenty-six-year-old Wenzel Suchan with his deliberate walk and his mustache. Wenzel had been a corporal with a rifle brigade in Bratislava, and shortly after the unfamiliar, dusty soldiers had made their way through the forest up the hill, past her native village, Wenzel Suchan had gone to Bratislava again, as a corporal with a rifle brigade, and they had sent him south to a country called Rumania, to the mountains; from there he had written her three postcards saying he was fine, and on the last postcard he told her he had been made a sergeant. After that she heard nothing for four weeks, then she got a letter from Vienna saying he had been killed.

Soon after that Maria was born, Maria who was now pregnant by that sergeant called Peter who looked like Wenzel Suchan. In her memory Wenzel lived on as a young man, twenty-six years old, and this sergeant who was called Peter and was forty-five—seven years younger than herself—seemed very old to her. Many a night she had lain awake waiting for Maria, and Maria had not come until dawn, slipping barefoot into the room and getting quickly into bed just before the cocks began to crow. Many a night she had waited and prayed, and she had
put many more flowers before the Virgin Mary’s picture downstairs than she used to, but Maria had become pregnant, and the sergeant came to see her, embarrassed, awkward as a peasant, and explained that he would marry Maria when the war was over.

Well, there was nothing she could do about it, and she continued to put lots of flowers before the Virgin Mary’s picture downstairs in the passageway, and waited. Things became quiet in Berczaba, much quieter it seemed to her, although nothing had changed: the soldiers lounged around in the bar, wrote letters, played cards, drank schnapps and beer, and some of them had started up a trade in things that were not obtainable here: pocketknives, razor blades, scissors—wonderful scissors—and socks. They took money for them, or exchanged the money for butter and eggs, because they had more leisure than money to spend on drinks during this leisure. Now there was another one who read all day and even had a whole case of books driven over by truck from Tesarzy station. He was a professor, he also spent half the day in the attic staring through his field glasses at the mountains, into the forest, at the riverbank, and sometimes back toward Tesarzy, or watching the farmers at work in the fields, and he also told her his wife received money, large sums of money, so and so many thousand kronen a month—and she didn’t believe him either, it was too much, a crazy sum, he must be lying, his wife couldn’t be paid all that for her husband to sit around here reading books and writing half the day and often half the night, and then a few hours a day sitting up there in the attic with the field glasses. One of the men used to sketch. In fine weather he would sit outdoors by the river, sketching the mountains there was such a fine view of from here, the river, the remains of the bridge. He sketched her too a few times, and she admired the pictures very much and hung one of them in the bar.