The Collected Stories of Heinrich Boll (50 page)

“Yes,” she said. “Darling, where are you?”

“I’m in Bonn,” I said. “The war’s over—for me.”

“My God,” she said, “I can’t believe it. No—it’s not true.”

“It is true,” I said, “it is—did you get my postcard?”

“No,” she said, “what postcard?”

“When we were taken prisoner, we were allowed to write one postcard.”

“No,” she said, “for the last eight months I haven’t had the slightest idea where you were.”

“Those bastards,” I said, “those dirty bastards. Listen, just tell me where Kerschenbach is.”

“I”—she was crying so hard she couldn’t speak, I heard her sobbing and gulping till at last she was able to whisper—“at the station in Bonn, I’ll meet you,” then I could no longer hear her, someone said something in English that I didn’t understand.

Gretchen put the receiver to her ear, listened a moment, shook her head, and replaced it. I looked at her and knew I couldn’t offer her the soap now. I couldn’t even say “Thank you,” the words seemed ridiculous. I lifted my arms helplessly and went out.

I walked back to the station, in my ear the woman’s voice which had never sounded like marriage.

That evening we had invited the Zumpens over for dinner, nice people; it was through my father-in-law that we had got to know them. Ever since we have been married he has helped me to meet people who can be useful to me in business, and Zumpen can be useful: he is chairman of a committee which places contracts for large housing projects, and I have married into the excavating business.

I was tense that evening, but Bertha, my wife, reassured me. “The fact,” she said, “that he’s coming at all is promising. Just try to get the conversation round to the contract. You know it’s tomorrow they’re going to be awarded.”

I stood looking through the net curtains of the glass front door, waiting for Zumpen. I smoked, ground the cigarette butts under my foot, and shoved them under the mat. Next I took up a position at the bathroom window and stood there wondering why Zumpen had accepted the invitation; he couldn’t be that interested in having dinner with us, and the fact that the big contract I was involved in was going to be awarded tomorrow must have made the whole thing as embarrassing to him as it was to me.

I thought about the contract too: it was a big one, I would make twenty thousand marks on the deal, and I wanted the money.

Bertha had decided what I was to wear: a dark jacket, trousers a shade lighter, and a conservative tie. That’s the kind of thing she learned at home, and at boarding school from the nuns. Also what to offer guests: when to pass the cognac, and when the vermouth, how to arrange dessert. It is comforting to have a wife who knows all about such things.

But Bertha was tense too: as she put her hands on my shoulders, they touched my neck, and I felt her thumbs damp and cold against it.

“It’s going to be all right,” she said. “You’ll get the contract.”

“Christ,” I said, “it means twenty thousand marks to me, and you know how we need the money.”

“One should never,” she said gently, “mention Christ’s name in connection with money.”

A dark car drew up in front of our house, a make I didn’t recognize, but it looked Italian. “Take it easy,” Bertha whispered, “wait till they’ve rung, let them stand there for a couple of seconds, then walk slowly to the door and open it.”

I watched Herr and Frau Zumpen come up the steps: he is slender and tall, with graying temples, the kind of man who fifty years ago would have been known as a “ladies’ man”; Frau Zumpen is one of those thin, dark women who always make me think of lemons. I could tell from Zumpen’s face that it was a frightful bore for him to have dinner with us.

Then the doorbell rang, and I waited one second, two seconds, walked slowly to the door and opened it.

“Well,” I said, “how nice of you to come!”

Cognac glasses in hand, we went from room to room in our apartment, which the Zumpens wanted to see. Bertha stayed in the kitchen to squeeze some mayonnaise out of a tube onto the appetizers; she does this very nicely: hearts, loops, little houses. The Zumpens complimented us on our apartment. They exchanged smiles when they saw the big desk in my study; at that moment it seemed a bit too big even to me.

Zumpen admired a small rococo cabinet, a wedding present from my grandmother, and a baroque Madonna in our bedroom.

By the time we got back to the dining room, Bertha had dinner on the table. She had done this very nicely too; it was all so attractive yet so natural, and dinner was pleasant and relaxed. We talked about movies and books, about the recent elections, and Zumpen praised the assortment of cheeses, and Frau Zumpen praised the coffee and the pastries. Then we showed the Zumpens our honeymoon pictures: photographs of the Breton coast, Spanish donkeys, and street scenes from Casablanca.

After that we had some more cognac, and when I stood up to get the box with the photos of the time when we were engaged, Bertha gave me a sign, so I didn’t get the box. For two minutes there was absolute silence, because we had nothing more to talk about, and we all thought about the contract; I thought of the twenty thousand marks, and it struck me that I could deduct the bottle of cognac from my income tax.
Zumpen looked at his watch and said, “Too bad, it’s ten o’clock; we have to go. It’s been such a pleasant evening!” And Frau Zumpen said, “It was really delightful, and I hope you’ll come to us one evening.”

“We would love to,” Bertha said, and we stood around for another half minute, all thinking again about the contract, and I felt Zumpen was waiting for me to take him aside and bring up the subject. But I didn’t. Zumpen kissed Bertha’s hand, and I went ahead, opened the doors, and held the car door open for Frau Zumpen down below.

“Why,” said Bertha gently, “didn’t you mention the contract to him? You know it’s going to be awarded tomorrow.”

“Well,” I said, “I didn’t know how to bring the conversation round to it.”

“Now, look,” she said in a quiet voice, “you could have used any excuse to ask him into your study, that’s where you should have talked to him. You must have noticed how interested he is in art. You ought to have said: I have an eighteenth-century crucifix in there you might like to have a look at, and then …”

I said nothing, and she sighed and tied on her apron. I followed her into the kitchen; we put the rest of the appetizers back in the refrigerator, and I crawled about on the floor looking for the top of the mayonnaise tube. I put away the remains of the cognac, counted the cigars: Zumpen had smoked only one. I emptied the ashtrays, ate another pastry, and looked to see if there was any coffee left in the pot. When I went back to the kitchen, Bertha was standing there with the car key in her hand.

“What’s up?” I asked.

“We have to go over there, of course,” she said.

“Over where?”

“To the Zumpens’,” she said, “where do you think?”

“It’s nearly half past ten.”

“I don’t care if it’s midnight,” Bertha said, “all I know is, there’s twenty thousand marks involved. Don’t imagine they’re squeamish.”

She went into the bathroom to get ready, and I stood behind her watching her wipe her mouth and draw in new outlines, and for the first time I noticed how wide and primitive that mouth is. When she tightened the knot of my tie I could have kissed her, the way I always used to when she fixed my tie, but I didn’t.

Downtown the cafés and restaurants were brightly lit. People were sitting outside on the terraces, and the light from the streetlamps was caught in the silver ice-cream dishes and ice buckets. Bertha gave me an encouraging look; but she stayed in the car when we stopped in front of the Zumpens’ house, and I pressed the bell at once and was surprised how quickly the door was opened. Frau Zumpen did not seem surprised to see me; she had on some black lounging pajamas with loose full trousers embroidered with yellow flowers, and this made me think more than ever of lemons.

“I beg your pardon,” I said. “I would like to speak to your husband.”

“He’s gone out again,” she said. “He’ll be back in half an hour.”

In the hall I saw a lot of Madonnas, Gothic and baroque, even rococo Madonnas, if there is such a thing.

“I see,” I said. “Well, then, if you don’t mind, I’ll come back in half an hour.”

Bertha had bought an evening paper; she was reading it and smoking, and when I sat down beside her, she said, “I think you could have talked about it to her too.”

“But how did you know he wasn’t there?”

“Because I know he is at the Gaffel Club playing chess, as he does every Wednesday evening at this time.”

“You might have told me that earlier.”

“Please try to understand,” said Bertha, folding the newspaper. “I am trying to help you, I want you to find out for yourself how to deal with such things. All we had to do was call up Father and he would have settled the whole thing for you with one phone call, but I want you to get the contract on your own.”

“All right,” I said, “then what’ll we do: wait here half an hour, or go up right away and have a talk with her?”

“We’d better go up right away,” said Bertha.

We got out of the car and went up in the elevator together. “Life,” said Bertha, “consists of making compromises and concessions.”

Frau Zumpen was no more surprised now than she had been earlier, when I had come alone. She greeted us, and we followed her into her husband’s study. Frau Zumpen brought some cognac, poured it out, and before I could say anything about the contract she pushed a yellow folder toward me: “Fir Tree Haven Housing Project,” I read, and
looked up in alarm at Frau Zumpen, at Bertha, but they both smiled, and Frau Zumpen said, “Open the folder,” and I opened it; inside was another one, pink, and on this I read: “Fir Tree Haven Housing Project—Excavation Work.” I opened this too, saw my estimate lying there on top of the pile; along the upper edge someone had written in red: “Lowest bid.”

I could feel myself flushing with pleasure, my heart thumping, and I thought of the twenty thousand marks.

“Christ,” I said softly, and closed the file, and this time Bertha forgot to rebuke me.

“Prost,”
said Frau Zumpen with a smile. “Let’s drink to it, then.”

We drank, and I stood up and said, “It may seem rude of me, but perhaps you’ll understand that I would like to go home now.”

“I understand perfectly,” said Frau Zumpen. “There’s just one small item to be taken care of.” She took the file, leafed through it, and said, “Your price per square yard is thirty pfennigs below that of the next-lowest bidder. I suggest you raise your price by fifteen pfennigs: that way you’ll still be the lowest and you’ll have made an extra four thousand five hundred marks. Come on, do it now!” Bertha took her pen out of her purse and offered it to me, but I was in too much of a turmoil to write; I gave the file to Bertha and watched her alter the price with a steady hand, rewrite the total, and hand the file back to Frau Zumpen.

“And now,” said Frau Zumpen, “just one more little thing. Get out your checkbook and write a check for three thousand marks; it must be a cash check and endorsed by you.”

She had said this to me, but it was Bertha who pulled our checkbook out of her purse and made out the check.

“It won’t be covered,” I said in a low voice.

“When the contract is awarded, there will be an advance, and then it will be covered,” said Frau Zumpen.

Perhaps I failed to grasp what was happening at the time. As we went down in the elevator, Bertha said she was happy, but I said nothing.

Bertha chose a different way home. We drove through quiet residential districts, I saw lights in open windows, people sitting on balconies drinking wine; it was a clear, warm night.

“I suppose the check was for Zumpen?” was all I said, softly, and Bertha replied, just as softly, “Of course.”

I looked at Bertha’s small brown hands on the steering wheel, so confident and quiet—hands, I thought, that sign checks and squeeze mayonnaise tubes—and I looked higher, at her mouth, and still felt no desire to kiss it.

That evening I did not help Bertha put the car away in the garage, nor did I help her with the dishes. I poured myself a large cognac, went up to my study, and sat down at my desk, which was much too big for me. I was wondering about something. I got up, went into the bedroom, and looked at the baroque Madonna, but even there I couldn’t put my finger on the thing I was wondering about.

The ringing of the phone interrupted my thoughts; I lifted the receiver and was not surprised to hear Zumpen’s voice.

“Your wife,” he said, “made a slight mistake. She raised the price by twenty-five pfennigs instead of fifteen.”

I thought for a moment and then said, “That wasn’t a mistake, she did it with my consent.”

He was silent for a second or two, then said with a laugh, “So you had already discussed the various possibilities?”

“Yes,” I said.

“All right, then, make out another check for a thousand.”

“Five hundred,” I said, and I thought: It’s like a bad dream—that’s what it’s like.

“Eight hundred,” he said, and I said with a laugh, “Six hundred,” and I knew, although I had no experience to go on, that he would now say seven hundred and fifty, and when he did I said “Yes” and hung up.

It was not yet midnight when I went downstairs and over to the car to give Zumpen the check; he was alone and laughed as I reached in to hand him the folded check.

When I walked slowly back into the house, there was no sign of Bertha; she didn’t appear when I went back into my study; she didn’t appear when I went downstairs again for a glass of milk from the refrigerator, and I knew what she was thinking; she was thinking: He has to get over it, and I have to leave him alone; this is something he has to understand.

But I never did understand. It is beyond understanding.