The Collected Stories of Heinrich Boll (83 page)

As we stood beside him he said, “I can’t take any more, Schelling. He keeps forcing me to drink, I can’t take any more, but he threatens to shoot anyone who won’t drink. I can’t take any more.” As he leaned over the sill, I followed him with my eyes; below lay a dark, silent garden that appeared to be planted with vines.

“Where’s your room?” asked your brother.

“Why do you ask?”

“Come along.”

Your brother took Piester by the arm and steered him ahead down the long corridor. Each time Piester hesitated, your brother gave him another push. Piester opened a door.

“Let’s have some light,” your brother said to me. I fished out my box of matches, and by the light of the burning match we entered the room. Then I closed the door behind me and ran to the window to fasten the blackout curtain.

The room looked bare. On the floor lay a pack; beside the narrow wooden bed stood an officer’s trunk, and on it a half-written letter and a candle stuck to the lid. A piece of broken mirror hung on the wall.

We forced Piester onto the bed; his face was yellow.

“Something terrible is going to happen,” mumbled Piester, his eyes closing the moment he lay down. “He’s run out of schnapps, and the paymaster won’t fork out any more. Something terrible—they’re expecting you …”

We went back onto the corridor. All this time I had been listening, almost apprehensively, for a woman’s voice, but even now I could hear nothing but that stupid male yowling.

The moment we opened the door, silence fell in the room. It was a scene of utter debauchery: Schnecker was sitting on the table, his legs spread-eagled, his tunic unbuttoned and revealing curly black hair on his broad chest. Beside him stood an artillery officer holding a bottle of
cognac upside down over Schnecker’s gaping mouth. After a brief pause they both resumed their bestial yowling.

Over in the corner stood the battalion’s medical officer, an elderly bourgeois type; beside him a young Russian woman with soft blond hair and a rosy, peasantlike face: she looked like a girl. I assumed her to be the doctor’s mistress, a doctor herself, of whom I had heard a good deal when collecting our rations. She was said to be very skillful at bandaging and very kind to the wounded. Now she was watching the scene at the table with a completely dispassionate curiosity, while her lover, looking very nervous, was holding her tightly by the arm.

“Good evening, gentlemen,” said your brother.

Schnecker let out a hoarse roar and tried to jump off the table, but he slipped and would have struck it head first if we hadn’t caught him in time. The artillery officer smashed the empty bottle onto the floor and looked at us idiotically.

“Good evening,” your brother repeated, smiling in the direction of the Russian woman, who bowed slightly and smiled back at us.

We helped Schnecker down from his wedged position on the table. “Not a drop of booze left!” he shouted. “Goddamn it, not a drop left. My good friend Karlemann has just squeezed the last drops out of the bottle for me!” He gratefully patted the artillery officer, who was still laughing idiotically.

“Well!” said your brother. “You’re a fine host, I must say. When I arrive there’s nothing left!”

Schnecker stared at him. Those bloodshot eyes were hot and ugly.

I could look only at the Russian woman; the mere sight of her soft, rosy skin gave me a pang of happiness, and I trembled as she approached. She kept her eyes firmly on Schnecker as she took her doddering old medical officer by the hand and walked without a sound to the door.

Meanwhile Schnecker had been having an incoherent, raucous dialogue with the artillery officer, but when the Russian woman was almost at the door—I had stepped aside and was close enough to be aware of how crisp and clean she smelled—Schnecker swung around in a flash and, his mouth agape with laughter, shouted, “Stop, my girl—not yet! You have to have another drink with me!” The medical officer had freed his hand and stepped back.

“But you’ve nothing more to drink!” said the woman, her voice as clear as ringing metal.

“There’s more on the way!” He careened around the table, guffawed, dashed to the door, flung it open, and screamed, “Alarm! Alarm! Alarm!”

At first we didn’t understand and stood rooted to the spot. Even the artillery officer seemed to have sobered up a bit Schnecker came back and called out to us, “Now he’ll have to get out of bed, that stinker—then we’ll have some booze!”

Your brother sighed and took a deep breath, flung himself at Schnecker, and thrust him out into the dark corridor. I followed them, the woman screamed, the medical officer shouted, “My God … my God …” while the artillery officer tried in vain to get around the table, stammering, “Karlemann … Karlemann …”

Schnecker was now wrestling outside with your brother: he was a muscular fellow, and drunkenness must have doubled his strength. I ran to them, grabbed him from behind, and dragged him over to the window, meanwhile pummeling away at him in my towering rage. Somewhere in the dark the last of his decorations fell with a tinny sound onto the tiled floor. Schnecker groaned, spat, bit, and, whenever he managed to free his mouth, which your brother was clamping shut, screamed like a madman, “Alarm! Alarm!”

When an orderly came up from downstairs and asked what was going on, your brother called out to him, “Nothing, he’s drunk.” By this time we were pretty close to the window, but now the artillery officer had also slipped through the door and was attacking your brother from behind; furthermore, a staff sergeant came running along the corridor shouting, “What’s going on? What is it?”

“Alarm!” yelled Schnecker. “Alarm!”

“Nothing,” shouted your brother. “He’s drunk!”

He now had Schnecker by the throat, while I had tripped the artillery officer and was preventing him from getting up.

Schnecker had been forced over to the window. He was groaning and seemed to be bleeding somewhere. “Don’t you realize, you bastard,” your brother said to him, “that the other hundred and twenty men in your battalion can use a few hours’ sleep?”

Schnecker, who by this time had freed himself, yelled even louder, “Alarm! I am ordering alarm!” And when your brother, suddenly seized
by a sort of frenzy, punched him right in the face, Schnecker, in a lightning move, drew his pistol, held it to your brother’s temple, and pressed the trigger. Your brother was dead on the spot: he fell to the floor across the whimpering artillery officer. Schnecker had turned pale; his hand was still holding the pistol. There was an eerie silence: I was about to fling myself on him, but at that moment the first Russian tank started firing outside the building. We stared at each other. Hideous bursts of firing shattered the sky. Schnecker had already run off down the corridor. I dashed after him but on the way ran into Piester’s room and shouted in his ear, “The Russians are here—move!” Then I ran down the stairs to the ground-floor corridor and jumped out the window into the garden.

I managed to escape and from a distance saw that the great building was in flames. I kept running until I was scooped up by another regiment and sent back to the front. Not one man from our unit escaped. The Russians had overrun the village from three sides and in great numerical superiority. And although I never saw Schnecker again, or was ever told, I knew he had managed to get away. He can’t die. I assumed that in some way or other he would inform your mother of your brother’s death. He has done nothing. He just goes on living. All this I learned during the last few days.

I pass the truth on to you. It belongs to you …

He was looking down on the parting in her hair, a narrow white path; he felt her breasts against his skin, her warm breath in his face, and his gaze fell into the endless distance of that narrow white path. Somewhere on the carpet lay his belt with, clearly visible, the embossed words:
GOTT MIT UNS;
beside it his tunic with its soiled collarband, and somewhere a clock was ticking.

The window was open, and from outside on the terrace he could hear the tinkle of fine crystal, hear men chuckling and women giggling. The sky was a velvet blue; it was a glorious summer night.

And he could hear her heart beating, very close to his chest, and again his gaze fell into that narrow white path through her hair.

It was dark, but the sky still held that soft summer glow, and he knew he was close to her, as close as he could be, while still so infinitely remote. They didn’t say a word. The clock seemed to be ticking him away, the ticking was stronger than the heartbeat against his chest, and he couldn’t tell whether it was her heart or his. The message was: you’re on leave until reveille; and: one more chance to sleep with a girl, but make a real night of it. They had even given him a bottle of wine.

He could distinctly make out the bottle as it stood on the chest of drawers, a bright band of light. That was the bottle, a bright band of light in the dark. The bottle was empty. The cork must be on the carpet, where his tunic, trousers and belt were lying.

She had lain against his chest, he with one arm round her and smoking with his free hand; they hadn’t said a word. All their encounters were marked by silence. He had always thought it might sometimes be possible to talk to a woman, but she never talked.

Outside the sky darkened, the subdued laughter of the guests on the terrace faded away, the women’s giggles turned into yawns, and after a while he could hear the glasses clinking louder as the waiter picked up four or five in one hand to carry them away. Then the bottles
were being taken away too, making a fuller sound, and finally chairs were upended, tables moved, and he could hear a woman sweeping slowly, thoroughly, conscientiously: the entire night seemed to consist of that sweeping as she swept with a quiet, regular stroke. He could hear the sweep of the broom and the woman’s footsteps moving from one end of the terrace to the other; then came a weary, thick voice asking from beyond a door: “Not finished yet?”, and the woman’s reply, equally weary: “I’ll be through in a minute.”

Soon after that, complete silence fell; the sky had turned dark blue. Softly and from very far away came the sound of music from behind the heavy curtains of a night club. So they lay side by side, until the empty bottle slowly emerged from the darkness, a band of light growing wider and brighter until the bottle assumed its full, round shape, dark green and empty, and the tunic on the floor with its soiled collarband became visible, and the belt with the embossed words:
GOTT MIT UNS
.

Somewhere up ahead was where the front began. He kept thinking they had reached it whenever the truck column slowed down and stopped in a village, where corporals and soldiers with grim, set faces were moving about in dirt and mud. But the journey was always resumed, and he was scared because for a while now they had been hearing shots close by. They must have already moved beyond the emplacements of the heavy artillery since the detonations were now coming from behind, where the column had just come from. But on they went. It was cold, and it was no use to keep trying to pull one’s greatcoat closer or tugging at the collar as if it could be made longer. And their gloves were too thin, and he didn’t even feel like smoking: he was simply too cold, as well as horribly tired.

His eyes kept closing, but nausea kept him from falling asleep. He was sickened by the exhaust fumes, and it made him uneasy that no one in the truck said a word. Normally their tongues never stopped wagging. Even while they were in the troop train, on their way here, they had talked all day, about their women and their exploits and about their fancy flats back home and their important jobs. There wasn’t one of them who didn’t have a gorgeous flat and a super job, but now they were all terribly quiet, and he could tell from their breathing that they were shivering with cold. The road was rough, the mud over a foot deep, rutted by tank tracks, with here and there the imprint of a horse’s hoof. The poor horses, he thought. And he didn’t even think of the infantrymen who had to slog it on foot. It was great to be driven, but it would have been better to walk, it would have warmed them up and they wouldn’t have got there so fast.

But now he wanted to get there faster. He really did feel as sick as a dog. With each breath he seemed to inhale new nausea. He could smell not only the stink of the exhaust right under his nose but also the stench of the men sitting behind him, all of whom—including himself—hadn’t
had a proper wash for a couple of weeks, just hands and faces. A foul miasma of sour, disgusting, dirty, stale sweat came from behind him. Some of the men were smoking; he was ready to throw up and would have welcomed it if someone had taken pity on him, held a service revolver to his head, and pressed the trigger …

And still they hadn’t reached the front. Now he could hear the firing of the machine guns, so close that he felt they must be driving right into it. The village they were passing through looked exactly as he imagined a front-line village to look. Soldiers with muddy boots and the totally deadpan faces of heroes, wearing their decorations and staring straight ahead, and corporals who no longer looked so much like corporals; and some lieutenants, and a field kitchen behind a filthy cottage, in a yard apparently consisting solely of manure and mud. But they were soon through the godforsaken hole and still they hadn’t quite reached the front. Goddammit, he thought, where the hell’s the infantry?

They stopped beside a small forest that covered a hill. Somewhere up front a voice roared “Everybody out!” and he immediately jumped down from the lorry and began to stamp his feet to get warm. The others tossed out the baggage, and he had to catch not only a machine gun but also the ammunition boxes, which he dropped in the mud. The corporal, pale-faced and shivering, gave him hell for dropping the boxes in the mud. He looked in astonishment at the corporal. What the hell difference did it make? As far as he was concerned they could shoot him on the spot if they felt like it. He simply felt too wretched to care.