“I swear, Comrade Gospodin, I swear on the lives of my wife and my children, of all who are dear to me, of all those comrades who are my friends: I would have returned; full of remorse would have given myself up to the authorities and, after serving an appropriate sentence, resumed my occupation as a skilled mechanic; would have spent the rest of my life in this my beloved native land, the land of the workers. I have no illusions but that after a very few days in Copenhagen I would have grown weary of that decadence. After all—and I beg you not to look for any ironic overtures in this—how magnificent is our instruction in geography, how comprehensive ours in philosophy, that such longings should arise!”
Prosecutor Gospodin merely summed up the accused’s confession objectively, acknowledging it briefly, so to speak; but, as he went on to explain in detail, he did not attach even the slightest mitigating significance to it. It meant absolutely nothing, he said, if a person confessed to something that had been proved, recorded, and confirmed by the accused’s signature. What was shocking about this confession was its references to matters of common knowledge: the advantages of Soviet instruction in geography and philosophy. Praise of such self-evident matters contained an element of toadying, of hypocrisy. What was particularly damning in any assessment of the character of the accused was his praise of Soviet shoe polish, which everyone—Party leaders, government leaders, and, last but not least, the Soviet people—knew was, although not exactly bad, not as good as the accused had maintained; there were reports—and by no means secret, at that—about this shoe polish which stamped the accused as a toadying liar; and (at this point the Prosecutor took the fake pistol out of his briefcase and placed it before the judge) chemical analysis had proved (he placed the expert’s report beside the pistol) that this contraption designed for extortion had been treated with an American brand of shoe polish to produce that deceptive metallic sheen. As further proof, here was (once again he fished in his briefcase) a fake pistol that, he said, had been treated with Soviet shoe polish: he pointed out how the wood showed through, how the color was not metallic black but blackish, how the sheen was not steel-gray but grayish.
The accused, he continued, was proved guilty not only by his deed, not only by his needless confession, but by his praise of Soviet shoe polish, his cosmopolitan irony, his subversive mockery; and the court should not allow itself to be deluded by the accused’s words of remorse. He, the Prosecutor, asked not for the heaviest sentence but for a heavy one.
THE MAD DOG
The ten stories in The Mad Dog were written in the late 1930s and the 1940s. The collection, assembled by Böll in 1947, was published posthumously as Der blasse Hund by Kiepenheuer & Witsch in 1995. It was published in English by St. Martin’s Press in 1997, in a translation by Breon Mitchell, whose introduction to the collection follows below.
* * *
Early treasures continue to emerge from the literary estate of Heinrich Böll. The sensation created in Germany in 1992 by the publication of the novel Der Engel schwieg (The Silent Angel, 1994) was due only in part to the obvious interest literary scholars took in the rediscovery of his first sustained work of fiction. More striking was the quality of the work itself. Although no German publisher would take a chance on it in 1950, fearing its vivid portrayal of the harsh realities of the war and its aftermath, the novel found immediate readers in the 1990s. It was not simply that Böll was now a literary icon. The novel spoke directly to the hearts of Germans, with a voice that remained clear, strong, and moving in spite of the intervening decades.
The response to The Silent Angel in America quickly reaffirmed that Böll’s keen observation and poetic power remained an international affair. The universal themes of human loss and human courage, of spiritual despair and spiritual strength, rang clearly through the pages of the novel. American critics found The Silent Angel “a beautiful, urgent novel … as perfect as anything Böll ever wrote,” “a haunting evocation of postwar desolation,” and “still pertinent to our own hunger for the bread of meaning amid the rubble of history.” The novel was recognized as a key to Böll’s entire later development and praised as a magnificent work of art in its own right.
The present collection of hitherto unpublished short stories is of equal importance to readers everywhere. Like The Silent Angel, these tales may well have seemed too bleak for German publishers in the immediate aftermath of the war, but they offer powerful and striking insights into the human condition that still touch us today. They range in tone and subject matter from the prewar idealism of “Youth on Fire” to the grim despair of “The Mad Dog,” and from scenes of battle to the daily lives of those who struggle to make sense of things when war has ended. Readers will hear echoes of almost every familiar motif from Böll’s later work, but, paradoxically, they will be listening to the original source of those very themes.
Perhaps the most surprising story in the collection is “Die Brennenden” (“Youth on Fire”). There is good reason for our surprise: Böll wrote the story when he was nineteen years old, before he had completed the German equivalent of high school. It is thus the earliest of his stories to which we have ever had access, offering a unique, prewar perspective on the young writer. Its striking chords of youthful idealism, the search for spiritual meaning, and the role of the Catholic church already seem familiar, as do a keen eye for telling detail, a deep sympathy for the poor, and an impatience with social conventions and mores. There are also unusual reversals of plot: a young prostitute reveals herself to be a Christian in disguise, a concert pianist takes on a strange lover, a priest performs an unexpected marriage. From the opening scene of contemplated suicide to the closing vision of hope, the story reveals touches of the major writer to come.
“Youth on Fire,” written in 1937, reminds us that Heinrich Böll was called to the writer’s life from an early age. Although it is difficult to imagine what his stories and novels might have been like without the crucial, formative experience of World War II, it is clear that the war did not create Böll’s literary impetus, but only formed and channeled it. In the ten years that intervened between “Youth on Fire” and the earliest of the remaining stories in this collection, Böll’s writing was limited almost exclusively to long and detailed letters to his wife.
The spiritual and creative distance covered as Böll absorbed the devastating impact of battle and defeat may be seen in “The Mad Dog,” written in 1947, a story that reads like a hopeless cry of pain. Here a young man who might well have been one of the enthusiastic youths listening to Beethoven at the end of “Youth on Fire” is twisted and torn by his country and its fate, impelled toward murderous revenge in a world gone mad. Yet the connecting humanitarian thread remains, unbroken over the years.
The war leaves its imprint on every one of the remaining stories in the volume, from battle scenes to postwar poverty, from senseless destruction to the ruins of love. “The Tale of Berkovo Bridge,” printed here for the first time in its original form, offers a powerful metaphor of the conflict of duty and compassion in time of war; “The Fugitive” and “Trapped in Paris” are breathless depictions of soldiers on the run, desperately seeking to avoid the face of death. Several of the stories show men and women searching for remnants of love amid spiritual wreckage, with varying degrees of success. A profound human sympathy permeates this book, a belief that God will forgive us, as we may perhaps one day forgive ourselves.
This collection closes with one of the most moving texts Böll ever wrote: “Paradise Lost.” So strong was the hold of the images in this unfinished novel that Böll continued to rework passages from it into both novels and short stories over the next several years. Now at last we have the paradox of the original fragment rendered whole—for the ruined symmetrical garden through which the narrator passes, the mirrored images of memory and present moment, the arrival and departure that frame the tale, create a text of unexpected balance and harmony, a complex aesthetic whole as finished as any reader could desire, a classic story lost but now
regained.
—Breon Mitchell
THE FUGITIVE
His heart pounding, he watched from his hiding place as the car raced along the country road, its headlights blazing. He jerked back as if struck in the face as the car squealed to a halt, then turned sharply and sent the merciless beam of its searchlight gliding slowly and deliberately back and forth across the fields. Trees flared in unnatural brightness, as if awakened to terrifying life by some magic spell. Bushes were drenched by the harsh, maniacal light before slipping back into darkness; then the beam was stopped short by the wall that hid him. He could almost feel the light damming up against it. Then it flowed across the crumbling top; he shut his eyes, blinded, struck by savage pain as the corrosive beam stabbed at his eyes through a crevice in the wall.
He heard the steady idling of the motor and men’s voices; he listened intently as the searchlight was extinguished and the heavy weight of darkness fell over him again. Rising from the cold, damp meadow, he risked raising his head above the wall. The car was standing on the road with its searchlight stowed. He saw the silhouettes of two men, their faces seemingly turned toward him; surely they must sense that he was there … surely. His eyes bored deeply into the flat darkness, as if forcing it to reveal their faces. He had to know if Germat was there. Germat! His heart skipped a beat. If so, he was lost. Germat was the most cunning bloodhound in the entire zone, a vicious man-eater gifted with nearly supernatural instincts. The men’s voices appeared almost apathetic, a steady murmur.
All at once he heard noises to the left and right in the dark field, like someone creeping, dragging his feet, and the unbearable yet unavoidable sucking sound of a boot being pulled from mud that has closed around it. My God … he had just realized his head must be visible above the wall, like a black oval against the darkened blue of the heavens, even at this distance. He ducked down, panting in brutish fear, and in the next split second, as he tried to bring the dizzying whirl of his thoughts and emotions under control, a bullet whizzed over the wall from the direction of the road, the signal that the hunt was officially on. Had he missed the gunshot in his first moment of panic?
Suddenly he felt totally weightless, strangely light, as if the ice-cold hatred in his heart had crystallized the chaos of fear and peril. He thought quickly yet carefully; now the veil lifted and he saw through their tactics: They had already outflanked him. He heard the sounds of several men to either side, and behind him as well. They probably had a chain of sentries all the way to the road, where Germat waited, directing the hunt with his devilish intellect. It was hopeless. He would be shot a dozen times if he made the slightest move in the darkness. They knew where he was, while he had no idea where they had stationed themselves; he could only head straight into the heart of the trap. Then suddenly he thought of a plan, laughably simple, dazzlingly bold. Hate gave him courage, a savage living hatred that served as well as love. He no longer felt cold, or hungry, or afraid. A deadly enemy stood before him; he had to attack with the strength of an ox and the boldness of genius. He heard the circle close behind him, heard two of the beaters meet behind the orchard wall and establish contact with a few soft words. Then he prayed, a short quick prayer, like a flame flaring up and extinguishing, and he almost felt like smiling, yes, smiling in the darkness, surrounded by hunters, yet almost sure of victory. He raised his hands high above the wall and cried out: “Don’t shoot, Germat, I give up!” He heard the startled cries of the men around him, sprang quickly over the wall, and ran toward the road, smiling as he yelled: “Call off your dogs!”
The road was scarcely more than a hundred yards away and he ran quickly, before the troops could recover from their surprise, until he made out the tall figure of Germat through the darkness, standing in his black uniform, blacker than the blue of night. Still holding his hands over his head, he leaped across the ditch. Then, in the glow of the headlights, he had a clear view of Germat’s hard, coldly handsome face, his mouth opening to speak with a satisfied smile. Gathering his whole body—his only weapon—he threw himself savagely against Germat with all the crazed fury of his hatred. He felt the impact with a thrill of pleasure, raced around the car, and heard the driver jump out with a yell, just as he had planned; then he lowered himself softly and carefully to the ground and crept slowly, silently, under the car. The low-lying gas tank left just enough space for him to see Germat: He lay two steps away from him on the cold, hard asphalt of the road. It took every ounce of will to suppress the deep, terrible sobbing rising within him. His entire body trembled. He broke out in a nervous sweat as the smell of gas and oil made his empty stomach lurch with nausea.
Almost as a diversion, to break the terrible tension, he looked toward Germat. He lay groaning and cursing on the road, his face twisted in bestial anger. Blood flowed onto the gray, cold, dully gleaming asphalt from a wound on the back of his head. The driver fumbled over him helplessly, managed to lift his head and place a seat cushion beneath it, as the cries of the troops rang out from the darkness.
Germat was now standing. Strickmann had bandaged him and handed him a few pills, which he washed down with brandy; he was leaning against the car. His boots, those elegant soft boots, which poor Gunderland had to polish each morning, stood directly before Joseph’s eyes. For an instant he was seized by an insane desire to grab them and jerk backwards, toppling Germat flat on his face again. Yes, he might have risked his life to send that devil flying a second time, but what he heard now occupied his entire attention. Germat cut off the curses and empty threats of the guards in a cold voice and said irritably: “You should have stopped yapping and got right after the bastard … then we’d have him by now. All right, shine a light over here, Jupp …”; evidently he’d taken out a map. The men’s feet gathered around his beautiful boots. “We’re here—at the Breckdorf exit, there’s the border; if he wants to cross it, he has to go back down the road we’re on now. Damn, my head hurts! If we ever get hold of that swine … We’ve got to catch him, I tell you … that filthy dog.” He groaned, stamped his feet, and continued: “All right, Berg and Strickmann, patrol the stretch from here to Eiershagen … right here, look … Grosskamp and Strichninski, you cover the stretch between Brickheim and Gordelen. I’ll drive back to camp and send reinforcements. Set them up so the entire sector is closed all the way to the border. Okay, you know what to do … Damn it, pay some attention to the map.” He seemed to be holding his head again, groaning and cursing. “Get going,” he said. “I’ll wait till you’ve taken your positions. Büttler, get the car turned around …”
Joseph didn’t realize the danger he was in until the engine suddenly revved up and the entire car began to vibrate. He broke out in a cold sweat, a deathly fear. His heart skipped a beat, and with the final ounce of strength in his weakened hands he clutched the rods beneath the car, then lifted his feet and wedged them somewhere between a metal pipe and the car’s undercarriage, barely holding on. The car went into reverse to turn around, backed up to the ditch, the tires spun, and his grip slipped as the car lurched. Head down, his legs clamped fast, he dangled helplessly under the car as the tires continued to spin; he held back a scream welling up within him. Almost fainting from weakness, agitation, and terror, he grabbed on tight again, but could no longer suppress the tears. They streamed heavy and hot down his cheeks; he was blinded by the flood …
Somewhere in his subconscious he registered the tilt of the car as Germat jumped onto the running board, but the tears kept flowing, as if the infinite pain of his lost state had broken through the shell of his will and was now pouring into the silence of the night.
He couldn’t remember releasing his hands and feet. He felt the wheels race past his head like a final breath of horrible danger; then he found himself battered, dirty, tired and hungry, wet with tears, on the hard, bare road.
In that terrible solitude he almost wished himself back in the company of the hangman’s lackeys, caught up in the insane tension of the chase.
The darkness had thi
ckened; a mantle of night lay silent and heavy over the earth. To muffle his footsteps, Joseph left the road, treading on the soft soil of the fields, following the roadway toward Breckdorf. If he could only sit somewhere for just an hour or so, in a house with other people, eat something, clean up, warm himself; my God, just to see a few people other than those he’d been with behind barbed wire for months, in the hangman’s clutches. Just one hour, then he could slip past the sentries before reinforcements arrived and reach the border before dawn, and then … then perhaps freedom …
Holding to the road, his senses tuned to the night, he reached the village, but it must have been late, for there wasn’t a light anywhere. The black blocks of the houses rose dimly against the sky, the outline of the trees. He passed a farmyard sunk deep in silence, so close to the hedge that he brushed against the thorns. Then with startling suddenness the huge, uncanny silhouette of a church rose before him, a marvelously peaceful square, surrounded by tall trees, and a house in which a light still burned. He approached it slowly and cautiously; just don’t start the dogs barking … Germat’s men would be on him like wolves.
His head ached terribly, a piercing pain, like a merciless finger probing his tormented brain. His face was scratched, he was filthy, soaked to the skin, and tired, so tired it took an effort to lift his foot at every step. Finally he was leaning against the dark door, feeling for the bell. It sounded bright and shrill within the hall, startling him. He heard a soft, rapid tread, the light clicked on and seeped under the door. My God, what if he’d dropped in on a hero of the Party by accident? But terror no longer held sway over his exhausted mind, and a sudden wave of nausea seemed to turn his stomach inside out. Dear God, just some rest, rest and a little bread …