The Collected Stories of Heinrich Böll by Heinrich Böll
He was pale with panic, trembling all over as if he were cold; he heard the tanks rolling closer, several of them, heard shouts from the cellars as the soldiers called back and forth in their crude, chewed-up language, he even thought he could hear the silent fall of their doom-laden rubber soles, but he seemed nailed to the spot by fear, while the street outside seemed to awaken, as if his presence alone had held it in check.
A soft cry of shock, the sort that slips out in moments of greatest danger, released him from paralysis. Startled, he turned and saw a slim, dark-haired young woman in the long, dimly lit hall, her hands stretched forward to ward him off, as delicate and unreal as a fairy tale, dressed in flowing pink.
In the blurred dusk of the hall her hands, face, and dress appeared as an almost flat surface, only the dark ink-spot of her hair stood living and solid in the gray mesh of the air. The frightened gestures relaxed, she approached slowly, and her face emerged, palpable and young, still nervous, in the light passing through the milky glass of the door. Reinhard made an urgent gesture of silence, filled with such need that she instinctively softened her steps. He listened to the sounds outside, tense and alert, as if his fate were to be wrested from that profusion of noise. His eyes searched the charming face of the young woman, and he saw in the human goodness of her gaze that she had no wish to drive him back to ruin.
He quickly surveyed the whole of her face, as if seeking confirmation, the small, delicate mouth, still drawn slightly downward by fear, the sweet, childlike forehead, the fine nose and the sturdy chin, framed and compressed into a small white plane by the raven-black hair. Then he turned his eyes aside, as if trying to see right through the milk glass, and whispered hoarsely, to her astonishment in fluent French: “If you want to help me, find me some clothes.” At first she didn’t seem to understand, and gazed at him in surprise, then slipped hurriedly back down the hall. He squeezed his hands together, trying to control his violent trembling as he heard them pounding at nearby doors. He worked a cigarette from his pocket with trembling hands, then started in fear at the sound of the flaring match; the silence with which the woman returned along the hall, quickly and quietly, seemed to him a precious caress. He grabbed the bundle she held out to him, walked rapidly into the darkness of the hall, and began changing as quickly as he could. It seemed an act of providence that he already had on the soft white silk shirt, for she had evidently forgotten any linen.
Now rifle butts were pounding at the door, hard and impatient, and he trembled as he remembered how weak the bolt was. But then he heard the woman’s voice, and as he heard it, gentle and kind, yet so wonderfully calm and cool, he knew that he was saved; she said indignantly: “Just a moment, sir, I have to get dressed …” She repeated the words in broken English, and received a coarsely muttered reply, which, although unintelligible, sounded like an obscenity delivered with a broad grin. But Reinhard had already changed, and had donned along with his clothes a wonderful, buoyant sense of freedom that intoxicated him. He felt his way toward the cellar door, threw his old stuff down the steps, and went back to the front door in his stocking feet.
The woman regarded him with a smile, and he asked her in a whisper: “Are you really alone here?” When she nodded, he calmly pulled back the bolt on the door. A huge figure, of almost animal perfection in its proportions, a childlike, unhewn face, and the embarrassed yet still threatening question uttered in broken French: “German soldier … no see?” Since he had addressed his question to the woman, she answered calmly: “No,” and shook her head, and, as he turned to scrutinize the man, closely and searchingly, and seemed about to seize him by the shoulder with his massive hand, she added: “This is my husband, he’s—” but the word “mute” was cut off amiably by Reinhard, who pulled back the hair at his forehead with a brilliantly acted show of pride and revealed a broad, still pinkly gleaming scar that crossed his brow like the stroke of a sword: “I was wounded, comrade … up by the canal … at …” and he rummaged in his coat pocket as if he meant to produce his papers. “Legionnaire,” he added in a murmur, but the giant, had he ever been in doubt, seemed convinced by his fluent French, and touched his cap in smiling salute and apology. There was an incomparable animal elegance in his movements as he turned and shouldered his way out the door. “That’s not Europe,” the woman said softly. Then the two of them were alone.
Once the peril and the compassion that provided the driving force behind this brief scene had faded, they were overcome by embarrassment. Reinhard mopped his perspiration-soaked brow and took a deep puff of his still-burning cigarette. He still believed he was half dreaming, for eternity had descended upon him, compressed into minutes. With a helpless smile he asked sadly: “What now?” It couldn’t have been more than five minutes since he was standing by the car, dreaming of peace, lost in the tranquillity of the afternoon. And now he was standing helpless and destitute in this dim, cool hallway beside a woman he didn’t know, astonished by her rare beauty, in misery—drowned in deepest misery …
The face of the woman was cool and reserved, as if she only now realized what she had done in all the excitement. She seemed to be thinking things over as the uncanny silence of the house, heightened by the noise from the street, rippled between them, unfamiliar and oppressive.
Finally, with a gesture of resignation, she rebolted the door, stepped into the hall, and said coldly: “Come this way.” There was something almost businesslike in her movements, as if she were conducting a customer into the office of a doctor or lawyer. She opened a door at the end of the hall and entered; depressed, he followed her like a condemned man.
The odor of the dim, tasteful, somewhat overdecorated room engulfed him, delicate and almost gracious, like a true expression of the woman’s nature. As if peril and misery were forcing him inexorably to the rim of an abyss, he sensed with dismay that he was becoming increasingly captivated by her beauty. He closed the door softly. She sat in an armchair, her hands propped, while he stood leaning against a sideboard. “Sit down,” she said, with what seemed like irritation. He sat down obediently, and as he did so, he was struck by how magnificently the trousers fit. Ridiculous, he thought. The woman’s face suddenly lifted toward him like a somber disk. Her large, gray-veiled eyes were sad, and she said softly, without rancor, as if speaking to herself: “You know, I was just thinking, you may be the one who kills my husband at the front.”
Reinhard shook his head wearily: “I won’t kill any more people in this war, ma’am.”
“Are you so sure?” she said quietly, almost imploringly. “How do you know what fate might drive you to, when you might be in a position where it’s a matter of life and death to fire in some direction, and might that not be my husband? You want to make it back to Germany, don’t you?”
Reinhard blushed. “I want to see my wife.”
She glanced briefly at his wedding ring. “The war is far from over, and who can trust a German?” She looked at him searchingly, as if she truly wanted to sound his depths. “I should have turned you in,” she continued in a flat voice. “It probably wouldn’t even have cost you your life. If Robert doesn’t return, I’ll feel for the rest of my life that I was his murderer.” She smiled suddenly, a beautiful, heartfelt smile. “I love Robert more than my life.”
He felt himself turn pale. A wild, unfamiliar, tremendously powerful, seemingly irresistible desire for the woman sitting before him flooded over him, gliding like a secret sorrow. It flowed into him, and it seemed as if his own wife’s beautiful face were smiling at him as well, filled with pity and love. He was so miserable, so miserable and forlorn, trapped between obstacles.
“Tell me what to do, ma’am,” he said in hoarse agitation, “for all I care, you can lock me up in your cellar like an animal, or I can leave your house now and mix in with the crowd.” He rose. He wanted so badly to flee, simply to flee; but then the clamor from the street rose like a tornado twisting into the heavens. Cries could be heard, doors and windows slammed. The woman pulled ope
He was deeply shocked as the first gray figure rounded the corner, soiled and dusty. He knew the trooper’s cynical face. It was Grote, carrying the slim black machine gun under his arm like a delicate, dangerous animal. Grote, a fine soldier constantly wavering between desertion and the possibility that he might one day wear the highest medals. Yet his face was totally miserable. Reinhard’s heart beat wildly, insistently; he’d forgotten everything. He no longer realized he was wearing the soft, lightweight clothing of a civilian. The gray desolation of the army weighed once more upon his shoulders, and without looking toward the woman, he walked slowly, slowly into the hall. A dull pounding at the door awakened him from his dark, brooding mood; he took a few steps, tore open the door, and pulled a totally collapsed body in a khaki uniform inside, a split second before a new troop of gray soldiers darted around the corner and the sound of a savage whip hissed through the narrow street again.
Reinhard bent over the exhausted man, but the woman, who had followed close on his heels, grabbed his shoulder roughly and yelled: “Don’t kill him!” Reinhard looked at her, releasing his hands from the fatigued man’s chest, and his eyes contained equal measures of unspeakable astonishment and terrible sorrow. He gazed fixedly at her delicate, flushed face with its dark eyes and said softly, as if he could hardly trust his own words: “Do you really take me for a swine, ma’am?” Then he slowly unbuttoned the man’s jacket, undid his belt, seized the inert body under the arms, and dragged him into the living room. Slowly, her arms hanging helplessly at her sides, the woman followed. He moved his hands cautiously about the man’s body, sensing the silent presence of the woman at his back, pleasing and oppressive at the same time, like a gentle, inexorable wall pushing him nearer and nearer to an abyss. A pale, almost yellowish childlike face, distorted by fear, numb with exhaustion, small, fleshy hands, a shock of touchingly youthful brown hair. He could discover no wound on the body; his pulse was weak, but steady. Perhaps the youngster was only unconscious after all. Reinhard turned slowly, his gaze slipped hurriedly, nervously, past the glowing face. Her youthful, totally transfigured look of sweet shame stirred him strangely, and, his face turned toward the door, he said: “I can’t find any wound.” But she merely stammered: “Please forgive me …” and now he had to look at her. All that was foreign and cold had fallen from her, and she was so close and familiar and so terribly beautiful that it startled him. Cheerfully, with a smile, he took the hand she offered him, pressed it firmly, so that he wouldn’t feel the wild coursing of her blood, this blood a stranger to his own, and then said: “I have nothing to forgive you for, ma’am.”
They both regarded this small, poor, unknown soldier as a gift from heaven. What would have happened to them had they been left alone? Outside, in the renewed silence, the heavy tramp of boots in the street, and farther off the rattle of the machine gun. It must be at the park entrance now, near the bullet-riddled car. Reinhard washed the face of the young man while she held the bowl, then made him as comfortable as he could. He could still hear the faint beating of the boy’s heart. Now they could look at each other without fear or blushing. Something akin to joy lay in their eyes, a cheerful renunciation, and they knew they needed to wage a fierce battle deep within themselves, for and against each other, to remain faithful. Once again the machine gun gnashed its teeth somewhere in the park, like a file rasping angrily across a thousand tiny, sharp fangs. Reinhard jerked as if the entire burst of gunfire had struck him in the heart. Some uncontrollable urge bound him to the terror and misery outside, and he felt he had to tear himself free, quickly and irrevocably, as from a mysterious umbilical cord. He stretched, put the washcloth aside, and said: “I’d better get rid of my uniform now. You’ll be alone for a few minutes.” She looked at him in surprise, slightly startled. “And what if the Ger—your countrymen capture you?” Reinhard turned toward the door. “It’s not the Germans or Americans I’m running from, ma’am, it’s the war. Anyway, I think the Americans are in control this evening.”
It was a somber, terrible business, emptying the pockets of the miserable rags in the cellar, with their dangling, half-broken decorations, bundling them together. It seemed gruesome, like looting a corpse, and he tried to do it as quickly and hurriedly as possible, like a necessary yet still nasty task, as if he were secretly burying a murdered man. When he had placed the tangle of clothes in a trash can and concealed it beneath some rubbish, he quickly climbed the stairs again. His hands felt dirty, as if they would never be clean again, and the war, with its cruel necessities, seemed more terrible than ever.
Something akin to jealousy shot through him as he found the woman sitting beside the stranger in the living room, enveloped in the fragrance of aromatic cigarettes, but he was instantly ashamed, as if he had once again defiled himself. She had draped a blue cloak over her pale rose sundress, and he felt he would have to tie his hands to keep from taking her in his arms. He greeted the newly awakened young man with reserve. His curiously childlike and yet depraved eyes responded politely, but with the condescension of the victorious soldier facing a civilian who has remained safely in his home. “Merci,” he said awkwardly, offering him the pack of cigarettes with a smile, then, turning to the woman, he chewed out an unintelligible sentence in which a few words were clear: crazy … German … damned animals. Then he turned abruptly to Reinhard and asked in broken French: “What are they still fighting for, these Germans?” He gestured vaguely outside, where the machine gun again raised its hoarse, threatening bark. Reinhard looked from one to the other uncertainly, but the woman calmed him with a slight shake of her head. This quiet, gentle indication of a bond moved him so deeply that a shiver ran through him.
The whole house was suddenly shaken by a powerful detonation. This was followed by waves of weapon fire in the area. The woman sprang up and leaned against the wall, pale and trembling. Reinhard approached her, placed his hand on her arm, and said calmly: “You’re safe, ma’am, that’s artillery fire. No, no, believe me, you have nothing to worry about.” He watched the stranger’s face closely, but a smile triumphed over the young man’s initial shock as he cried: “Those are our shells … those are ours!”
Several more shells exploded among the buildings with deafening noise, the dark murmur of advancing tanks could be heard, and the abrupt crack of their cannons, sounding like a sudden blowout, followed by the shattering din of the impact. A few minutes later, from behind the curtain, they again saw the gray figures of the Germans running down the street, a frightening indifference in their gait.
The tanks rolled past the corner again, heading up the street, as the small stranger with the pale child’s face smiled, laid a bar of chocolate on the table, shook hands warmly with them both, and left the building. The silence of the house enveloped them again, and now they were alone.
Reinhard went to the door, which the young man had left open, and stuck his head out for an instant before bolting it, feeling the cool, gentle evening air, with its delicate summery smells already offering a foretaste of autumn as it descended upon the beautiful, incomparable city. And perhaps it was the greatest offense of his life, the greatest, that he didn’t simply leave the house, but instead turned back, slowly and heavily, into the dusk of the hall, which had become thicker and darker.
The woman stood at the open window, her arms crossed, staring out into the evening at the gardens. Like a piece of bad theater, the sound of voices, high-pitche
As if wishing to hide even from herself, the woman stood in the recess of the window and did not turn as Reinhard entered. She gazed into the evening sky, its blue now touched with gentle shades of rose and lilac, stretching like a delicate tent above the splendid summer day now coming to a close, a day on which so many men had perished in the cruel arms of war. She seemed to shiver, although the soft breeze was still mild and pleasant. Her shoulders were hunched, she had buttoned the fine blue wool cloak about her, and her pale face, with the small red fruit of the mouth, appeared almost dead. The room was already wrapped in darkness, although it was still bright outside, as bright and friendly and beautiful as Paris, the incomparable city in which the war still raged. Reinhard gazed at her spellbound. Just half a second more, he thought, I’ll just look at her, just look, then I’ll slip away as quickly and quietly as I can. I’ll run and run until the nearness of the distant woman I love extinguishes the terrible, consuming fire within me.