The Collected Stories of Heinrich Boll (94 page)

“Hallo!” he cried. “Anybody at home?”

I had crossed the room and stood looking out into the street. It was a very broad, dusty road; on either side were flat-roofed houses under small, old trees.

All was silent and empty, until suddenly one of the lorries came dashing into the street, making the dust rise in a spreading cloud. The dust covered the whole sky, enveloped the little church spire … I turned away.

Hubert was standing at the counter negotiating with a neat, elderly woman who couldn’t understand a word. They were both laughing. The woman reached under the counter and placed a bottle on it; moving closer I saw that it was a real cherry brandy.

“More,” said Hubert with a gesture. Out came the next bottle, apparently some kind of apricot brandy, then some real Scotch whisky.

After lining up six bottles in front of us, the woman wrote a figure with chalk on the kitchen door-frame, then made a quick addition and showed us the total: a hundred and ninety-two
pengö
. Hubert paid with two hundred
-pengö
notes.

“Christ,” I asked, “how did you get hold of all that money?”

“God knows!” he said with a laugh. “Maybe it was lying around in the street and I picked it up!”

Inside the hospital train everything looked so superior that I felt like a criminal. White beds and a nice, gentle nurse and background
music from a radio.

We each lay on an upper bunk, close enough together for Hubert to be able to pass me the bottle.

“Just to make sure it doesn’t heal up,” he said. “Cheers!” We drank … In the bunk below me lay a man who’d had a bullet through his thigh bone; below Hubert lay a man whose left arm had been amputated. We shared our bottle with them. After two cherry brandies the man with the amputated arm grew quite talkative.

“Just imagine,” he said, “my arm had been cut right through, like with a knife. A splinter must have sliced its way through, but the arm wasn’t quite off. It still hung by a tendon, and I didn’t feel a thing. I jumped up, the lieutenant helped me out of the trench, and I ran to the doctor with my arm dangling—you know, like those little balls you used to be able to buy at a fair, and there was masses of blood, but I ran as fast as I could. The doctor went ‘snip’ with his scissors, just ‘snip’, the way a barber snips off a single hair—and there lay my arm.” He laughed. “I sometimes wonder where they buried it—let’s have another drink. The doctor tells me it was all quite straightforward, it would heal up perfectly …” He paused to drink … “Want another one too?” he asked the fellow lying beneath me.

“No, I don’t think it’s good for me. I feel sick.”

“Seems to me,” the one-armed man went on, “I ought to get the gold badge now. What d’you think? I spent three weeks at the front and right the first day I got a graze and lost some blood—that counts, doesn’t it? But I had to stay at the front, and a week later I caught another one, on my leg … I lost some more blood, so that’s two wounds, right? And now this one, that makes three, so it seems to me they have to give me the gold, eh? Let’s have the bottle again. My sergeant in the Reserve won’t believe his eyes when I rejoin his unit with the gold badge plus the Iron Cross—after four weeks the gold plus the Iron Cross, for after all they’re bound to give me the Iron Cross, too.” He laughed. “He won’t believe his eyes and he’ll keep his mouth shut—he always said I was a slob, a great big slob, that I was the worst slob he’d ever known. He won’t believe his eyes, will he!”

The windows had been blacked out, but you could hear the noise from the platform, and when I pushed aside the blind a bit there it actually was, a big platform.

“See anything?” asked the one-armed man. “On this side there’s only rails and freight cars.”

“Yes,” I said, “a platform, and officers, and Hungarians and Germans, and women—it’s dark … a few men are being carried out on stretchers.”

“What’s the station called?” asked Hubert.

First I took a swig from the bottle, then looked for the sign: it must be somewhere along the platform, but I couldn’t find it.

The nurse and an orderly came in, bringing sandwiches and cocoa. The man with the bullet through his thigh began groaning loudly. “Shit!” he shouted at the nurse. “I don’t want to be fed—get that filthy metal out of my leg! Shit on your food, shit on your cocoa, I don’t want any cocoa, any more than I wanted that metal in my leg!”

The nurse had turned pale. “But,” she whispered, “it’s not my fault—wait a moment.” She put down the tray on a chair and hurried to the middle of the car, to a small white table with medication on it. There was now complete silence: everyone was listening to the thigh casualty’s curses.

“Cocoa!” he swore, “cocoa … so they think I’d go overboard with joy because I’m lying here in a white bed and get to drink cocoa! I’ve never wanted cocoa or this rocking-chair, and I never wanted any metal in my leg—I wanted to stay home, it’s all shit, everything is shit … !” By this time he was yelling as if he’d gone out of his mind.

The nurse returned with a syringe.

“Give me a hand,” she said to the orderly, who was standing, silent and stupid, beside my bed.

The nurse looked at the temperature chart. “Grolius,” she said in a low voice, “do try and be reasonable. You’re in pain, aren’t you? I …”

“…   An injection!” he yelled. “What else, an injection! But …” he suddenly groaned, “don’t think I’m going to keel over with joy just because you’re gracious enough to give me an injection … give the Führer an injection!”

You could have heard a pin drop. A voice said: “For God’s sake, give that arsehole an injection!”

No one spoke, and the nurse murmured: “He’s beside himself … really, he’s beside himself …”

“Shit,” murmured the wounded man, and once more he whispered: “Shit …” I leaned down and saw that he’d fallen asleep. His slack mouth looked bitter and almost black in the reddish stubble of his beard.

“There now!” the nurse said brightly. “Now we’ll have supper!”

She began handing round cocoa and sandwiches. The portion for the thigh casualty was placed on the one-armed man’s chair. The cocoa was really good, and the sandwiches were spread with tinned fish.

After taking care of everyone, the nurse stood in the doorway holding the empty tray. “Anyone else need anything … anything urgent?” she asked.

“Pills!” shouted someone from the far end of the car. “Pills! I can’t stand the pain!”

“What?” said the nurse. “No, not now, in half an hour you’ll all be getting pills for the night anyway.”

“Nurse dear,” asked Hubert, “where are we here?”

“We’re in Nagykaroky,” she replied.

“Shit!” Hubert cried. “Oh, goddamn shit!”

“What’s matter?” I asked.

“Because we’ll only be going as far as Debrecen after all. Half a night more at the most. Then there’ll be another fucking hospital where we won’t be allowed out.”

“But I thought we were going to Vienna, that’s what I heard,” said the one-armed man. “Aren’t we?”

“Balls,” someone shouted. “The train’s going to Dresden.”

“Nonsense … Vienna Woods …”

“You’ll see, Debrecen’s the end of the line.”

“Really?” I asked.

“Are you sure?” I asked.

“Yes,” he said gloomily. “Here, have a drink, I’m quite sure.”

But I didn’t want a drink on top of the cocoa, I didn’t want to destroy that wonderful sense of well-being. I smoked a cigarette, lay back carefully on my pillows and looked out into the night. I had tucked the blackout curtain slightly to one side and could look into the soft, dark grey night passing by. The train was moving again, everything was quiet except for the groans of the sleeping thigh casualty. Let’s hope he sleeps all the way to Debrecen, I thought, let’s hope the one-armed fellow keeps his mouth shut about his gold badge and his bloody sarge … and let’s hope no one at either end of the car starts yelling and screaming “shit”; and when the nurse comes I’ll ask her to take my pulse so I can feel her gentle hand, and if she has some pills for me I’ll let her put
them into my mouth, like yesterday, and for a tenth of a second I’ll feel her warm, white fingers on my lips.

But after the orderly had collected the dishes, they started playing gramophone records, Beethoven, and that made me cry, simply made me cry, because it reminded me of my mother.

Hell, I thought, never mind, no one’s going to see. It was almost dark in the compartment, and we were being rocked from side to side, and I was crying … I would soon be nineteen, and I’d already been wounded three times, was already a hero, and I was crying because I was reminded of my mother.

In my mind’s eye I clearly saw our home in Severin-Strasse, the way it had been before any bombs had fallen. A comfortable living room, very snug and warm and cheerful, and the street full of people, but no one knew who they were or why they were there. My mother was holding my arm, and we were silent, it was a summer evening and we were coming out of a concert … and my mother said nothing when I suddenly lit a cigarette, although I was only fifteen. There were soldiers in the street too, since it was war and yet not war. We weren’t in the least hungry and not at all tired, and when we got home we might even drink a bottle of wine that Alfred had brought from France. I was fifteen and I would never have to be a soldier. And everything about Severin-Strasse felt so good. Beethoven, what a treat a Beethoven concert was.

I could see it all quite clearly. We had passed St Georg’s, and a few whores had been standing there in the dark beside the urinal. Now we were passing the charming little square facing St Johann’s, the small Romanesque church …

The street narrowed. We had to walk in the road and sometimes step aside for the tram; then we passed Tietz’s, and finally the street widened out: there stood the great bulk of St Severin’s tower. I could see everything so clearly: the shops with their displays—cigarettes, chocolate, kitchen spoons and leather soles. I could see it all as clear as day.

It was the nurse’s gentle hand that startled me.

“Here we are,” came her voice, “here’s the Novalgin Quinine for your fever, and there,” she said as she handed me the thermometer, “let’s have your temperature!”

The mild fever gave me a feeling of contentment. It brought the goo on my back to the boil again, and now I was a hero again, four
years older than before, wounded three times, and now an authentic, official hero. Even the sergeant in the Reserve wouldn’t be able to touch me, for by the time I was back there again I would have the silver badge, so how could they possibly get at me …?

By now I really did have a fever: 38.6, and the nurse entered a blue stroke on the curve of my chart that made it look quite alarming.

I had a fever, and from Debrecen it wasn’t that far to Vienna, and from Vienna …

Maybe the front would collapse again at some corner, and there would be a big push, and we would all be moved to the rear, the way I’d heard it told so often—and like a shot we’d be in Vienna or Dresden, and from Dresden …

“Are you asleep, young fellow?” Hubert asked, “or would you like another drink?”

“No,” I said, “I’m asleep, asleep …”

“Okay, then. Goodnight.”

“Goodnight.”

But sleep was still a long way off. Somewhere towards the front of the car a man started screaming his head off. Lights were switched on … people shouted, ran, the nurse arrived and the doctor … and then all was quiet again.

The thigh casualty groaned and snored softly in his sleep …

Outside the night was once more totally dark, no longer grey; it was blue-black and silent, and I found I could no longer think of Severin-Strasse. I could think only of Debrecen … strange, I thought, when we did Hungary in geography you so often put your finger on Debrecen; it lay in the middle of a green patch, but not far away the colour turned to brown, then to very dark brown, that was the Carpathians, and who would ever have thought that one day you’d be swaying so quickly and quietly on your way to Debrecen, in the middle of the night. I tried to imagine the town.

Perhaps there would be some fine cafés there, and lots of things to buy, with
pengö
in your pocket. I glanced across at Hubert, but he had fallen asleep.

It was very quiet, and I longed for the tears to come again, but the image of my mother and of Severin-Strasse was completely wiped out.

A man stood beside the fence looking pensively through the barbed-wire thicket. He was searching for something human, but all he saw was this tangle, this horribly systematic tangle of wires—then some scarecrow figures staggering through the heat towards the latrines, bare ground and tents, more wire, more scarecrow figures, bare ground and tents stretching away to infinity. At some point there was said to be no more wire, but he couldn’t believe it. Equally inhuman was the immaculate, burning, impassive face of the blanched blue sky, where somewhere the sun floated just as pitilessly. The whole world was reduced to motionless scorching heat, held in like the breath of an animal under the spell of noon. The heat weighed on him like some appalling tower of naked fire that seemed to grow and grow and grow …

His eyes met nothing human; and behind him—he could see it even more clearly, without turning round—was sheer horror. There they lay, those others, round the inviolable football field, packed side by side like rotting fish; next came the meticulously clean latrines, and somewhere a long way behind him was also paradise: the shady, empty tents, guarded by well-fed policemen …

How quiet it was, how hot!

He suddenly lowered his head, as if his neck were breaking under the fiery hammer-blow, and he saw something that delighted him: the delicate shadows of the barbed wire on the bare ground. They were like the fine tracery of intertwining branches, frail and beautiful, and it seemed to him that they must be infinitely cool, those delicate tracings, all linked with each other; yes, they seemed to be smiling, quietly and soothingly.

He bent down and carefully reached between the wires to pick one of the pretty branches; holding it up to his face he smiled, as if a fan had been gently waved in front of him. Then he reached out with both hands to gather up those sweet shadows. He looked left and right
into the thicket, and the quiet happiness in his eyes faded: a wild surge of desire flared up, for there he saw innumerable little tracings which when gathered up must offer a precious, cool eternity of shadow. His pupils dilated as if about to burst out of the prison of his eyeballs: with a shrill cry he plunged into the thicket, and the more he became entangled in the pitiless little barbs the more wildly he flailed, like a fly in a spider’s web, while with his hands he tried to grasp the exquisite shadow branches. His flailings were already stilled by the time the well-fed policemen arrived to free him with their wire-cutters.