The Collected Stories of Heinrich Böll by Heinrich Böll
III
It was a mild, damp day in early spring. For the first time in three years of university he missed the last, the third, step at the main entrance—he had only reckoned with two—stumbled, and, in catching himself and trying to get back into step, he was conscious of the aftereffects of the appalling quarter of an hour he had just been through. He felt giddy, and he was aware of his surroundings as a pleasant, dreamy blur. The faces of the college girls—majoring in literature, he would imagine—wore a look of impressionistic sensuality; they strolled languidly about under the green trees, carrying their books, and even the Catholic students with their colored caps, who appeared to be holding some kind of meeting in front of the main building, seemed less objectionable than usual: their colored ribbons and caps might have been wisps of a dissolving rainbow. Müller stumbled along, returning greetings mechanically, fighting his way against the stream which now, at half past twelve, was pouring into the university, like a stream of workers at change of shift.
IV
Not until he was in the streetcar, three stops farther on, did he begin to see properly again, as if he had put on glasses which corrected his vision. From one suburb to the city center, from the center out again to another suburb: almost an hour to think things out and “get everything into proper perspective.” It just couldn’t be true! Surely Schmeck was the last man to have to steal from him—Rudolf Müller, third-year student? Hadn’t he told Schmeck he was considering writing a series of essays to demonstrate “The Sociology of Dress,” taking as his first title “On the Sociology of the Mackintosh,” and hadn’t Schmeck enthusiastically agreed, congratulated him, and offered to supervise the whole series? And hadn’t he read the first pages of his “Sociology of the Mackintosh” aloud to Schmeck in his study, sentences which today he had heard coming word for word from Schmeck’s lips? Müller turned pale again, tore open his briefcase, and rummaged through it. The soap container fell to the floor, then a book by Schmeck: First Principles of Sociology. Where was his manuscript? Was it a dream, a memory, or a hallucination that he suddenly found himself looking at—Schmeck’s smile as he stood in the doorway of his study, the white pages of manuscript in his hand? “Of course, I’ll be glad to have a look at your work!” Then the Easter vacation—first at home, then three weeks in London with a study group—and today Schmeck’s lecture, “Rudiments of a Sociology of Dress, Part One: On the Sociology of the Mackintosh.”
V
Transfer. He automatically got off, on again when his streetcar arrived, gave a troubled sigh as the elderly conductress sitting on her throne recognized him. Would she make the same joke she had been making ever since she had seen his student’s pass? She made the joke: “Well, well—if it isn’t our gentleman of leisure, all through by eleven-thirty—and now it’s off to the girls, eh?” The passengers laughed, Müller blushed, made his way to the front, wished he could get out, run faster than the streetcar, and get home and into his room at last, to find out for sure. His diary would be proof—or would it help to have Marie as a witness? She had typed his paper for him; he remembered her suggesting she make a carbon copy, he could see her hand holding up the carbon paper, but he had waved it aside, pointing out that it was only a draft, an outline—and he could see Marie’s hand putting the carbon paper back into the drawer and starting to type. “Rudolf Müller, philosophy student, 17 Buckwheat Street” … While he was dictating the heading it struck him one could also write a sociology of food. Buckwheat flour, pancakes, roast beef—in the working-class district where he had grown up this was considered the pinnacle of epicurean delight, on a par in the scale of bliss with sexual pleasures—rice pudding, lentil soup; and before he had even begun dictating his essay to Marie, he already had visions of following up the sociology of the mackintosh with a sociology of french fries. Ideas, ideas, all kinds, in fact—and he knew he had what it took to put these ideas into words.
VI
These endless streets leading out of the city, Roman, Napoleonic—the house numbers were already in the 900s. Fragmented memories: Schmeck’s voice—the sudden nausea on first hearing the word “mackintosh”—eight or nine minutes up there in the front row—the urge to vomit—then the thirty-third minute, Schmeck’s handkerchief, his glance at the results of his noisy exertions—at long last the toilet—misty dampness in front of the university—the girls’ faces, sensual, blurred—the colored ribbons of the Catholic students like remnants of a dying rainbow—getting onto the Number 12, transferring to the Number 18—the conductress’s joke—and already the house numbers on Mainz Street were up to 980, 981. He pulled out one of the three cigarettes he had taken along in his breast pocket as his morning ration, groped for the match.
“Here, son, give us a light too.” He stood up, and with a wan smile walked to where the old conductress was squeezing herself down off her throne. He held the burning match to her cigarette butt, then lit his own cigarette, and was pleasantly surprised to find he felt no nausea. “Troubles, son?” He nodded, looked hard at her coarse, red-veined face, dreading the obscenity she might offer as consolation, but she merely nodded and said, “Thank you kindly,” clasped his shoulder as the streetcar swung into the terminus loop, got out ahead of him when the streetcar stopped, and waddled along to the front car, where the driver was already unscrewing his Thermos flask.
VII
How small these gray houses were, how narrow the streets. A parked motorcycle was enough to block them; thirty years ago the apostles of progress had not believed that cars would ever become a commonplace. Here visions of the future had become the present, and died; everything that would later claim to be progressive and advanced was regarded with hostility. All the streets were alike, from Acanthus Avenue to Zinnia Road, wintergreen and leek, monkshood (first rejected because it smacked of clericalism but later approved by the Board as being strictly botanical and free of any clericalist taint) and privet—“all growing things” were to be found here in street names, surrounded by a Marx Avenue, at the center an Engels Square (Marx Street and Engels Street had already been appropriated by older working-class districts). The little church had been built later, when it was discovered that the declared atheists were all married to devout wives—when one day (by this time the devout mothers had their grown-up sons and daughters on their side) the polling district had to report more votes for the Catholic Center Party than for the Socialist Party, when old Socialists, crimson with embarrassment, drowned their sorrows in drink and went over in a body to the Communist Party. For years now the little church had been much too small: on Sundays it overflowed, and the model for the new one could be admired at the rectory. Very modern. Beyond Marx Avenue, the neighboring parish of St. Boniface had donated land for the new church of St. Joseph, patron saint of the working class. Construction cranes were already reaching triumphantly into the spring sky.
Müller tried to smile, but couldn’t quite, when he thought of his father; it always seemed to him as if the aura of the twenties, that ardent spirit of atheism and enlightenment, still hung in the air here, as if the climate of free love were still present, and, although it was never heard anymore, he seemed to hear echoes in these streets of “Brothers, toward sunlight, toward freedom”; his smile miscarried. Rosemary Street, Tulip Street, Maple Grove—and another cycle of streets in alphabetical order: Acacia Way, and finally Buckwheat Street—“all growing things.” There was Number 17; now he could smile as he caught sight of Marie’s bicycle: it was propped against the iron railing that Uncle Will had built around the garbage can, the none-too-clean, wobbly bicycle belonging to Baroness von Schlimm (younger branch). His desire to show affection even to the bicycle was manifested in a gentle kick against the back tire. He opened the door, called “Hello, Auntie” into the narrow passageway, which smelled of french fries, picked up the parcel lying on the bottom stair, and rushed upstairs. The staircase was so narrow that his elbow always brushed the reddish-brown hessian wall covering, and Aunt Kate claimed to be able to det
VIII
Marie. He never failed to be moved by the intensity of his feelings for her, and each time (by now they had met more than three hundred times; he kept track, so to speak, in his diary), each time she seemed thinner than he remembered her. During the time they were together she seemed to fill out—when he thought of her afterward he remembered her as full—and he was consistently surprised when he saw her again in her original, unaltered thinness. She had taken off her shoes and stockings and was lying on his bed, dark-haired and pale, with a pallor which he still could not help feeling was a sign of consumption.
“Please,” she said gently, “don’t kiss me. All morning I’ve been listening to dirty stories about various kinds of love. If you want to be nice, rub my feet.” He threw down his briefcase and the parcel, knelt down by the bed, and took her feet in his hands. “How sweet you are,” she said. “I only hope you don’t get a male-nurse complex—with your kind one has to be so careful—and please,” she said, lowering her voice, “let’s stay here, I’m too tired to go out to eat. Anyway, our social worker, who looks after employee relations, always regards my absence at lunchtime as antisocial.”
“For God’s sake,” he said, “why don’t you quit the whole ghastly business? Those swine.”
“Which ones do you mean? My bosses or the other girls?”
“Your bosses,” he said, “what you call dirty stories are the outward expression of the only pleasures those girls have; your bourgeois ears …”
“I have feudal ears, in case my ears require a sociological epithet.”
“Feudalism succumbed to the bourgeoisie: it married into industry, thereby becoming bourgeois. You are confusing what is accidental in you with what is typical; to attach so much importance to a name by regarding it as valueless as you regard yours is a form of late-bourgeois idealism. Isn’t it enough for you that soon—before God and man, as your kind would put it—your name will be Marie Müller?”
“Your hands do feel nice,” she said. “When will you be in a position to support a wife and children with them?”
“As soon as you take the trouble to work out how much we’ll have to live on when we’re married and you go on working.”
She sat up and recited in a schoolgirl singsong: “You get two hundred forty-three a month, that’s the highest category; as an assistant lecturer you earn two hundred, of which one hundred twenty-five is available because it’s earned in conjunction with your university training. That makes three hundred sixty-eight—but your father earns seven hundred ten net, i.e., two hundred sixty more than the free limit, which means that you, since you’re an only child, have your income reduced by one hundred thirty. In other words, you’re working as an assistant lecturer for nothing—net balance: two hundred thirty-eight. As soon as we get married, half of what I earn above three hundred—i.e., exactly two marks and fifteen pfennigs—will be deducted, so that your total net income will amount to two hundred thirty-five marks and eighty-five pfennigs.”
“Congratulations,” he said. “So you really got down to it?”
“Yes,” she said, “and the most important thing I worked out is that you’re working for precisely nothing for this Schmeck-bastard …”
He took his hands off her legs. “Schmeck-bastard—what makes you say that?”
She looked at him, swung her legs round, sat up on the edge of the bed; he pushed his slippers toward her. “What’s Schmeck been up to? Something new? Tell me—never mind my feet now—go on, tell me, what’s he been up to?”
“Can you wait a moment?” he said; he picked up his briefcase and the parcel from the floor, took the two remaining cigarettes from his breast pocket, lit them both, gave one to Marie, threw briefcase and parcel down beside Marie on the bed, went over to the bookshelf, and pulled out his diary, a fat exercise book standing between Kierkegaard and Kotzebue, sat down at Marie’s feet beside the bed.
“Listen,” he said. “Here. ‘December 13. During a walk with Marie through the park, suddenly struck by the idea of a “Sociology of the Mackintosh.” ’”
“That’s right,” said Marie, “you told me about it at the time. Remember my objections?”
“Sure.” He turned some more pages. “Here. ‘January 2. Began work on it. Outlines, ideas—also viewed material. Went to Meier’s Menswear and tried to get a look at their customer list, but no luck …’ It goes on—January, February, daily entries about the progress of the work.”
“Yes, of course,” said Marie, “and at the end of February you dictated the first thirty pages to me.”
“Yes, and here, this is what I was looking for: ‘March 1. Went to see Schmeck, showed him the first pages of my draft, read parts of it aloud to him. Schmeck asked me to leave the manuscript with him so he could look through it …’”
“That’s right, and the next day you went home to your parents.”
“And then to England. Came back yesterday—and today was Schmeck’s first lecture, and the audience was more interested, more enthralled, more ecstatic than ever, because the subject was so new, so thrilling—at least for the audience. I’ll let you guess what Schmeck’s lecture was about. Try and guess, my dear baroness.”
“If you call me ‘baroness’ once more, I’ll call you—no”—she smiled—“don’t worry, I won’t call you that, even if you do call me ‘baroness.’ Would it hurt your feelings if I called you that?”
“If you called me that, no,” he said gently. “You can call me what you like. But you have no idea how wonderful it is when they call out after you, whisper as you go by, when they write it after your name on the bulletin board—‘Rudolf, Son of the Working Class.’ I’m a freak, you see, I’m the great phenomenon, I’m one of those of whom there are only five in every hundred, only fifty in every thousand, and—the higher you go, the more fantastic the ratio—I’m one of those of whom there are only five thousand in every hundred thousand. I am really and truly the son of a working man who is studying at a West German university.”
“At the East German universities I guess it’s the other way round; ninety-five percent are from working-class families.”
“Over there I’d be something absurdly ordinary; here I’m the famous example in discussions, arguments, counterarguments, a real live unadulterated Son of the Working Class—and talented too, very talented. But you still haven’t tried to guess what Schmeck was paying homage to today.”
“Television, perhaps.”
Müller laughed. “No, the big snobs are now in favor of television.”
“Not”—Marie stubbed out her cigarette in the ashtray Müller was holding—“not the sociology of the mackintosh?”
“What else,” said Rudolf in a low voice, “what else?”
“No,” said Marie, “he can’t do that.”
“But he has done it, and there were sentences in his lecture that I recognized and remembered how much fun I had had formulating …”
“Too much fun, it seems …”
“Yes, I know—he quoted whole paragraphs.”
He got up off the floor and began pacing up and down in the room. “You know how it is when you try to figure out whether you’re quoting yourself or someone else—when you hear something you think you’ve heard or said before, and you try to figure out whether you said it before yourself or whether you only thought it, whether you recognize it or read it—and you go crazy because your memory’s not functioning properly?”
“Yes,” said Marie, “I always used to worry about whether or not I’d had anything to drink before holy communion. You think you’ve had a drink of water because so often, so many thousands of times, you have had a drink of water on an empty stomach—but actually you haven’t had anything to drink …”
“And yet you can’t come up with any convincing proof—that’s where a diary is so i
“You needn’t have worried about this particular question: it’s obvious that Schmeck’s robbed you.”
“And done me out of my thesis.”
“Oh, my God,” said Marie—she stood up next to the bed, put her hand on Rudolf’s shoulder, kissed his neck—“oh, my God, you’re right, that’s true. He’s cut the ground from under your feet. Can’t you sue him?”
Müller laughed. “Every university on the face of the earth, from Massachusetts to Göttingen to Lima, from Oxford to Nagasaki, will burst out in one united, crazy laugh when a person by the name of Rudolf Müller, Son of the Working Class, gets up and claims to have been robbed by Schmeck. Even the Warraus will join in the derisive laughter, for they know too that the wise white man Schmeck is omniscient in the ways of mankind. But—and this is what would happen if I sued him—if Schmeck got up and said he had been robbed by a person by the name of Müller, they would all nod their heads, even the Hottentots.”