The Collected Stories of Heinrich Boll (67 page)

“Women,” he whispered, “not girls.”

The filtered noise of the regatta came faintly into the room. Men’s eights. Zischbrunn. This time Rhenus won. The jam dried slowly on the wooden wall, became as hard as cow dung, flies buzzed around the room, there was a sweetish smell, flies crawled over the schoolbooks, the clothes, flew greedily from one spot, from one pool, to another, too greedy to stay long on one pool. The two boys did not move. Griff lay on the bed, staring at the ceiling and smoking. Paul perched on the edge of the bed, bent forward like an old man; deep within him, over him, on him, lay a burden to which he couldn’t put a name, a dark, heavy burden. Suddenly he stood up, ran out into the passage, snatched up one of the fruit jars, came back into the room, raised the jar—but he did not throw it; he stood there with the jar in his raised hand. Slowly his arm dropped, the boy put down the jar, on a paper bag which was lying neatly folded on the bookshelf. “Fürst Slacks,” it said on the paper bag, “Fürst Slacks Are the Only Slacks.”

“No,” he said, “I’ll go and get it.”

Griff puffed his cigarette smoke at the flies, then aimed the butt at one of the pools. Flies flew up, settled hesitantly around the smoking butt, which sank slowly into the jam and fizzled out.

“Tomorrow evening,” he said, “I’ll be in Lübeck, at my uncle’s; we’ll go fishing, we’ll sail and swim in the Baltic; and you, tomorrow you’ll be in the Valley of the Thundering Hoofs.” Tomorrow, thought Paul, who did not move, tomorrow I shall be dead. Blood over the tennis balls, dark red like in the fleece of the lamb; the Lamb will drink my blood. O Lamb. I shall never see my sisters’ little laurel wreath, “Winners of the Ladies’ Pairs,” black on gold; they’ll hang it up there between the photos of holidays in Zalligkofen, between withered bunches of flowers and pictures of cats; next to the framed graduation diploma
hanging over Rosa’s bed, next to the certificate for long-distance swimming hanging over Franziska’s bed; between the colored prints of their patron saints, Rosa of Lima, Franziska Romana; next to the other laurel wreath, “Winners of the Ladies’ Doubles”; under the crucifix. The dark-red blood will cling stiffly to the fuzz of the tennis balls, the blood of their brother, who preferred death to sin.

“I must see it one day, the Valley of the Thundering Hoofs,” Griff was saying, “I must sit up there where you always sit, I must hear them, the horses charging up to the pass, galloping down to the lake, I must hear their hoofs thundering in the narrow gorge—their whinnying cries streaming out over the mountaintops—like—like a thin fluid.”

Paul looked disdainfully at Griff, who had sat up and was excitedly describing something he had never seen: horses, many horses, charging up over the pass, galloping with thundering hoofs down into the valley. But there had only been
one
horse there, and only
once:
a colt, which had raced out of the paddock and cantered down to the lake, and the sound of its hoofs had not been like thunder, just a clatter, and it was such a long time ago, three years, maybe four.

“So you,” he said quietly, “are going fishing; you’ll go sailing and swimming, and stroll up the little streams, in wading boots, and catch fish with your hands.”

“That’s right,” said Griff sleepily, “my uncle catches fish with his hands, even salmon, yes …” He sank back onto the bed with a sigh. His uncle in Lübeck had never caught a fish, not even with a rod or a net, and he, Griff, doubted whether there were any salmon at all up there on the Baltic and in the little streams. Uncle was just the owner of a small cannery; in old sheds in the backyard the fish were slit open, cleaned, salted or pickled; preserved in oil or tomato sauce; they were pressed into cans by an ancient machine which threw itself with a grunt like a tired anvil onto the tiny cans and shut the fish up in tin-plate. Lumps of damp salt lay around in the yard, fish bones and skin, scales and entrails; seagulls screamed, and light-red blood splashed onto the white arms of the women workers and ran down their arms in watery trickles.

“Salmon,” said Griff, “are smooth, silvery and pink, they’re strong, much too beautiful to eat; when you hold them in your hand, you can feel their strong muscles.”

Paul shuddered: they had once had some canned salmon for Christmas, a putty-colored mass swimming in pink fluid, full of bits of fish bone.

“And you can catch them in the air when they jump,” said Griff; he sat up, knelt on the bed, threw up his hands, fingers spread wide, brought them together till they looked as if they were about to strangle something; the rigid hands, the motionless face of the boy, it all seemed to belong to someone who worshiped a stern god. The soft yellow light bathed the rigid boyish hands, lent the flushed face a dark, brownish tinge—“Like that,” Griff whispered, snatched with his hands at the fish that wasn’t there, and suddenly dropped his hands, letting them hang limp, inert, by his sides. “Come on,” he said, jumped off the bed, picked up the box with the pistol from the bookshelf, opened it before Paul could turn away, and held out the open bottom half of the box containing the pistol. “Look at it now,” he said, “just have a look at it.” The pistol looked rather pathetic: only the firmness of the material distinguished it from a toy pistol; it was even flatter, but the solidity of the nickel gave it some glamour and a degree of seriousness. Griffduhne threw the open box containing the pistol into Paul’s lap, took the closed glass jar from the bookshelf, unscrewed the lid, separated the perished rubber ring from the edge, lifted the pistol out of the box, dropped it slowly into the jam; the boys watched while the level of the jam rose slightly, scarcely beyond the narrowing of the neck. Griff put the rubber ring back around the edge, screwed on the lid, and replaced the jar on the bookshelf.

“Come on,” he said, and his face was stern and dark again. “Come on, we’ll go and get your dad’s pistol.”

“You can’t come with me,” said Paul. “I have to climb in through a window because they didn’t give me a key—I have to get in at the back. They would notice; they didn’t give me a key because they thought I was going to the regatta.”

“Rowing,” said Griff, “water sports, that’s all they ever think about.” He was silent, and they both listened for sounds from the river: they could hear the cries of the ice-cream vendors, music, fanfares, a steamer hooting.

“Intermission,” said Griff. “Plenty of time still. All right, go by yourself, but promise me you’ll come back with the pistol. Will you promise?”

“I promise.”

“Shake.”

They shook hands: they were warm and dry, and each wished the other’s hand had been firmer.

“How long will you be?”

“Twenty minutes,” said Paul. “I’ve thought it out so many times but never done it—with the screwdriver. It’ll take me twenty minutes.”

“Right,” said Griff; he reached across the bed and took his watch from the bedside table drawer. “It’s ten to six; you’ll be back at quarter past.”

“Quarter past,” said Paul. He paused in the doorway, looked at the great splashes on the wall: yellow and purplish. Swarms of flies were sticking to the splashes, but neither of the boys moved a finger to drive them away. Laughter drifted up from the riverbank: the water clowns had begun to add zest to the intermission. An “Ah” rose up like a great soft sigh; the boys looked up at the sheet over the window as if they expected it to billow out, but it hung limp, yellowish, the dirt spots were darker now, the sun had moved farther westward.

“Water skiing,” said Griff, “the women from the face-cream factory.” An “Oh” came up from the river, a sigh, and again the sheet did not billow out.

“The only one,” said Griff quietly, “the only one who looks like a woman is the Mirzov girl.” Paul did not move. “My mother,” Griff said, “found the piece of paper with those things about the Mirzov girl on it—and her picture.”

“Good God,” said Paul, “d’you mean to say you had one too?”

“Yes,” said Griff, “I spent all my pocket money on it—I—I don’t know why I did it. I didn’t even read what was on the paper, I stuck it in my report envelope, and my mother found it. D’you know what was on it?”

“No,” said Paul, “I don’t, I bet it’s all lies, and I don’t want to know about it. Everything Kuffang does is a lie. I’m off now—”

“Right,” said Griff firmly, “hurry up and get the pistol, and come back. You promised. Go on, go.”

“Okay,” said Paul, “I’m going.” He waited a moment, listening to the sounds from the river: he could hear laughter, fanfare. “Funny I never thought of the Mirzov girl …” And he said again, “Okay,” and went.

Cutouts might be like that, she thought, miniatures or colored medallions: the images were sharply punched, round and clear, a whole series of them. She was looking at it from a distance of twelve hundred yards, magnified twelve times through binoculars. The church with the savings bank and pharmacy, in the center of the gray square an ice-cream cart: the first picture, detached and unreal. A section of the riverbank, above it, in a semicircle of horizon, green water with boats on it, colored pennants: the second picture, the second miniature. The series could be added to at will: hills with woods and a monument; over there—what were their names?—Rhenania and Germania, torch-bearing, stalwart female figures with stern faces, on bronze pedestals, facing each other; vineyards, with green vines—hatred welled up in her, salty, bitter and satisfying. She hated wine; they were always talking about wine, and everything they did, sang, or believed was associated ritually with wine: puffy faces, mouths emitting sour breath, hoarse gaiety, belching, shrill women, the bloated stupidity of the men who thought they resembled this—what was he called?—Bacchus. She hung on to this picture for a long time: I’ll certainly stick this little picture in my album of memories, a round picture of a green vineyard with vines. Perhaps, she thought, I might be able to believe in You, their God, if it were not wine which turns into Your blood for them, is wasted for them, poured out for those useless idiots. My memory will be a clear one, as acid as the grapes taste at this time of year when you pick one the size of a pea. All the pictures were small, distinct, and ready to be stuck in; vignettes of sky blue, grass green, river green, banner red, blending with the sounds which formed the background to the pictures, as in a movie, spoken words, dubbed-in music: chanting, hurrahs, shouts of victory, fanfare, laughter, and the little white boats, as tiny as the feathers of young birds, as light too, and as quickly blown away, the white feathers scudding airily across the green water. When they reached the rim of the binoculars the noise swelled slightly. That’s how I shall remember it all: just a little album of miniatures. A tiny twist of the binoculars, and already everything was blurred, red with green, blue with gray; another twist of the screw, and all that was left was a round patch of mist in which noise sounded like
cries for help from a group of lost mountain climbers, like the shouts of the search party.

She swung the binoculars up and down, trailed them slowly across the sky, punching out circles of blue; just as her mother did when she was baking, punching the uniform yellow dough with the cookie cutters, that was how she punched out the uniform blue sky: round sky-cookies, blue, a great quantity of them. But where I am going there will be blue sky too, so why stick these miniatures into the album? That’ll do. Slowly she let the binoculars sweep downward. Careful, she thought, I’m falling, and she felt slightly giddy as she flew from the blue of the sky onto the trees in the avenue, covering more than a mile in less than a second; past the trees, over the gray tiles of the next house. She looked into a room: a powder compact, a Madonna, a mirror, a single black shoe, a man’s, on the polished floor; she flew on to the living room: a samovar, a Madonna, a large family photo, the brass strip along the carpet and the russet, warm gleam of mahogany. She stopped, but her giddiness persisted in subsiding waves. Then she saw the open box with the snow-white tennis balls in the hall—how ugly those balls are, she thought, the way women’s breasts sometimes look on statues I don’t like; the terrace: a garden umbrella, a table with a cloth and dirty cups and saucers, an empty wine bottle still with its white foil cap. Oh, Father, she thought, how wonderful to be going to you, and how wonderful that you don’t drink wine, only schnapps.

Melting tar was dripping from the garage roof in a few places. Then she jumped as Paul’s face—eighty feet away, such a long way off, but in the binoculars only six feet—came directly toward her. His pale face looked as if he were on the verge of doing something desperate: he was blinking into the sun, his arms, fists clenched, were hanging down limply as if he were holding something, but he wasn’t holding anything; his fists were empty, squeezed tight. He turned the corner of the garage, sweating, his breath labored, jumped up onto the terrace. The cups and saucers clinked on the table; he rattled at the door, took two steps to the left, swung himself up onto the window sill, and jumped into the room. The samovar gave off a silvery chime as Paul bumped into the buffet: inside, the rims of the glasses passed on the vibration to each other; they were still faintly twittering as the boy ran on, across the brass strip in the doorway. When he came to the tennis balls, he paused, bent down,
but did not touch them; he stood there for a long time, stretched out his hands again, almost as if in benediction or tenderness, suddenly pulled a little book out of his pocket, threw it on the floor, picked it up, kissed it, and placed it on the shelf under the hall mirror. Then all she could see was his legs as he ran upstairs, and in the center of this miniature was the carton with the tennis balls.

She sighed, lowered the binoculars, letting her eyes linger on the pattern of the carpet; it was rust red, with a black pattern of innumerable squares all joined together in labyrinths; toward the middle of each labyrinth the red got thinner and thinner, the black wider and wider, almost dazzling in its purity.

His bedroom was in the front of the house, facing the street. She remembered it from the days when he had still been allowed to play with her—it must be a year or two ago now; she had been allowed to play with him till he had begun to stare at her breasts with such a strange persistence that it interfered with their game, and she had asked: What are you looking at, do you want to see it? And he had nodded as if in a dream; she had undone her blouse, and she did not realize it was wrong till it was already too late. She saw it was wrong, not from his eyes but from the eyes of his mother, who had been in the room all the time, who came over now and screamed, while the darkness in her eyes turned to stone. That scream, that’s also something I have to preserve on one of the phonograph records of my memory; that’s what the screams must have sounded like at the witch burnings the man used to describe, the one who came to have discussions with Mother; he looked like a monk who no longer believes in God. And her mother looked like a nun who no longer believed in her God: home again in this place called Zischbrunn, after years of bitter disillusionment, salty error, preserved in the faith she had had and lost in something called Communism, floating in the brine of the memory of the man who was called Mirzov, drank schnapps, and had never possessed the faith which she had lost; her mother’s words were as salty as her heart.