The Collected Stories of Heinrich Böll

  After that things had quieted down a bit, except for a German army truck turning up now and again; it would drive across the bridge and disappear into the forest, and she could hear the sound of its engine for a long time in the silence as it drove up the mountain on the other side, laboriously wheezing, groaning, with a few intermissions—for a long time—until it had evidently disappeared over the ridge. She pictured the trucks driving past her native village, where she had spent her childhood, the summers on the pastures and the winters at the spinning wheel—very high up, all by herself in summertime on those barren stony meadows. She had often leaned over the ridge for hours to see if anything was moving up or down the road. But in those days there were no cars here yet; occasionally there would be a cart, usually it was Gypsies or Jews going across to the Polish side. It was not until much later, long after she had left, that the railroad had been built crossing the bridge near Szarny and running along the very same valley she used to look down on from those upland pastures. She had not been up there for a long time, almost ten years, and she listened for the trucks as long as she could—and she could still hear them even after they had vanished over the ridge and were driving along the mountain road, and maybe now it was her nephew’s boys who were looking down at the German army vehicles toiling along.

  But they did not come often. The truck came regularly every two months, and between times there were not many vehicles—occasionally one carrying soldiers who stopped in for a beer before having to drive up into the mountains, and in the evening it would come down carrying the other soldiers who stopped in for a beer before driving down into the plain. But there were not many soldiers up there; the truck came only three times altogether, for, six months after the war had passed by her on its way into the mountains, the bridge leading behind her house across the river was blown up. It happened at night, and she would never forget the blast and the shriek she let out, the neighbors calling from across the street, and the steady screaming of her daughter Maria, who was then twenty-eight and getting more and more peculiar. The windowpanes were smashed, the cows lowed in the stable, and the dog barked the whole night through. When daylight came, they saw what had happened: the bridge had gone, the concrete piers were still standing, catwalk, roadway, railings, had all been neatly blown away, and the rusty girders lay down below in the river, sticking out here and there. That very morning a German officer had arrived with five soldiers; they searched all of Berczaba, first her house, every room, the stables, and even Maria’s bed, with Maria still in it—she had been lying there whimpering in her room since the blast during the night. Next they went through the Temanns’ house across the street: every room, every bale of hay and straw in the barn; and even Brachy’s house was searched although no one had lived in it for three years and it was slowly falling to pieces. The Brachys had gone to work in Bratislava, and so far no one had turned up who wanted to buy the house and farm.

  The Germans had been furious, but they hadn’t found a thing. They had hauled out the boat from her shed and rowed across the river to Tzenkoshik, the little village that lay just where the road started to climb: you could see the church spire beyond the forest from her attic window. But in Tzenkoshik they hadn’t found a thing either, nor in Tesarzy—although, of course, they probably didn’t know that the two Svortchik boys had disappeared after the bridge was blown up.

  To her mind, it was ridiculous to blow up the bridge: the German truck crossed it only about every two months, and between times, very occasionally, a car would turn up carrying soldiers, and the bridge served no one but the farmers who owned pastureland and forests on the other side. It certainly couldn’t matter to the Germans if once every two months they had to make half an hour’s detour as far as Szarny, only three miles away, where the railroad bridge crossed the river.

  It took a few days for her to grasp what the destruction of the bridge meant to her. At first a lot of inquisitive people had shown up, they would have a schnapps or a beer at her place and want to be told the whole story, but then Berczaba became quiet, very quiet; the farmers and hired hands who had to go into the forest or up to the pastures on the other side stopped coming, so did the people who used to drive to Tzenkoshik on Sundays, the couples out for a stroll in the woods, and even the soldiers, and the only thing she sold in two weeks was a beer to Temann from across the street, that skinflint who made his own schnapps. It was very depressing to think that in future all she was going to sell was a glass of beer to that stingy Temann—everyone knew how stingy he was.

  But this very quiet period lasted only three weeks. One day a gray, high-speed little army car arrived with three officers who inspected the ruined bridge, paced up and down the bank for half an hour, field glasses in hand, stared out over the countryside, first from the Temanns’, then went up into her attic and stared out over the countryside from up there, and drove off, without having so much as a single schnapps at her place.

  And two days later a slow cloud of dust moved from Tesarzy toward Berczaba: it was some tired soldiers, seven of them plus a corporal, who tried to explain that they were to live, sleep, and eat at her place. At first she was scared, but then she realized what a good thing it was for her, and she hurried upstairs to Maria, who was still in bed.

  The soldiers seemed in no hurry, they waited patiently—men, no longer young, who filled their pipes, drank beer, unloaded their packs, and made themselves comfortable. They waited patiently until she had emptied out three little rooms upstairs: the hired hand’s room, empty for the past three years because she could no longer afford hired help; the little room which her husband had once said was for visitors or guests, but there were never any visitors, and guests never came; and her bedroom, the one she had shared with her husband. She herself moved in with Maria, into the latter’s room. Later, when she came downstairs, the corporal began to explain that the village council would have to pay her a lot of kronen for this, and that she was to cook for the soldiers and would be paid for this too.

  The soldiers were the best customers she had ever had. Those eight men consumed more in a month than all the people together who used to cross the bridge separately. The soldiers appeared to have plenty of money and any amount of time. Their duties seemed ridiculous to her: two of them always had to cover a certain route together—along the riverbank, then across in the boat, back again, along another stretch of riverbank—they were relieved every two hours; and up in the attic sat one man who scanned the countryside through his field glasses and was relieved every three hours. They made themselves comfortable up there in the attic, they had widened the dormer window by removing a few tiles, covering it with a sheet of metal at night, and there they sat all day long in an old armchair, with cushions on it, that stood perched on a table. There one of the men would sit all day long, staring up into the mountains, into the forest, at the riverbank, sometimes also back toward Tesarzy, and the others loafed around and were bored. She was horrified when she found out how much the soldiers got paid for this, and their families at home got paid too. One of them was a schoolteacher, and he worked out for her exactly how much his wife got, but it was so much that she couldn’t believe it. It was too much, what that schoolteacher’s wife got paid for her husband to lounge around here, eat goulash, vegetables, and potatoes, drink coffee, eat bread and sausage—they even got tobacco every day. When he wasn’t eating, he was lounging around in her bar leisurely drinking his beer and reading, he read all the time, he seemed to have a whole pack full of books, and when he wasn’t eating or reading, he was lounging up there in the attic with his field glasses, of no use to anyone, staring at the forests and meadows or watching the farmers in the fields. This soldier was very nice to her, his name was Becker; but she didn’t care for him because all he did was read, just drink beer and read and lounge around the place.

  But that was all a long time ago. Those first soldiers hadn’t stayed long, four months, then others had come who had stayed for six months, then others again for almos
t a year, and then they were relieved regularly every six months, and some would come back who had been there before, and they all did the same thing, for three years: loaf around, drink beer, play cards, and lounge about up there in the attic or over in the meadow, and stroll uselessly around in the forest with their rifles on their backs. She was paid a lot of money for housing the soldiers and cooking for them. Others came too; the bar had become a living room for the soldiers.

  The sergeant who had been quartered with her for the past four months was called Peter, she didn’t know his surname; he was heavy-set, walked like a farmer, even had a mustache, and the sight of him often reminded her of her husband, Wenzel Suchan, who had not returned from another war: soldiers had crossed the bridge then too, covered with dust, on foot and on horseback, with mud-caked baggage trains, soldiers who never came back—it was years before they came back, and she couldn’t tell whether they were the same ones who had gone up the other side so long ago. She had been young, twenty-two, a pretty woman, when Wenzel Suchan brought her down from the mountain and made her his wife: she felt very rich, very lucky, to be the wife of an innkeeper who kept a hired hand to work in the fields, and a horse, and she loved the twenty-six-year-old Wenzel Suchan with his deliberate walk and his mustache. Wenzel had been a corporal with a rifle brigade in Bratislava, and shortly after the unfamiliar, dusty soldiers had made their way through the forest up the hill, past her native village, Wenzel Suchan had gone to Bratislava again, as a corporal with a rifle brigade, and they had sent him south to a country called Rumania, to the mountains; from there he had written her three postcards saying he was fine, and on the last postcard he told her he had been made a sergeant. After that she heard nothing for four weeks, then she got a letter from Vienna saying he had been killed.

  Soon after that Maria was born, Maria who was now pregnant by that sergeant called Peter who looked like Wenzel Suchan. In her memory Wenzel lived on as a young man, twenty-six years old, and this sergeant who was called Peter and was forty-five—seven years younger than herself—seemed very old to her. Many a night she had lain awake waiting for Maria, and Maria had not come until dawn, slipping barefoot into the room and getting quickly into bed just before the cocks began to crow. Many a night she had waited and prayed, and she had put many more flowers before the Virgin Mary’s picture downstairs than she used to, but Maria had become pregnant, and the sergeant came to see her, embarrassed, awkward as a peasant, and explained that he would marry Maria when the war was over.

  Well, there was nothing she could do about it, and she continued to put lots of flowers before the Virgin Mary’s picture downstairs in the passageway, and waited. Things became quiet in Berczaba, much quieter it seemed to her, although nothing had changed: the soldiers lounged around in the bar, wrote letters, played cards, drank schnapps and beer, and some of them had started up a trade in things that were not obtainable here: pocketknives, razor blades, scissors—wonderful scissors—and socks. They took money for them, or exchanged the money for butter and eggs, because they had more leisure than money to spend on drinks during this leisure. Now there was another one who read all day and even had a whole case of books driven over by truck from Tesarzy station. He was a professor, he also spent half the day in the attic staring through his field glasses at the mountains, into the forest, at the riverbank, and sometimes back toward Tesarzy, or watching the farmers at work in the fields, and he also told her his wife received money, large sums of money, so and so many thousand kronen a month—and she didn’t believe him either, it was too much, a crazy sum, he must be lying, his wife couldn’t be paid all that for her husband to sit around here reading books and writing half the day and often half the night, and then a few hours a day sitting up there in the attic with the field glasses. One of the men used to sketch. In fine weather he would sit outdoors by the river, sketching the mountains there was such a fine view of from here, the river, the remains of the bridge. He sketched her too a few times, and she admired the pictures very much and hung one of them in the bar.

  They had been stationed here for three years now, these soldiers, always eight men, doing nothing. They strolled along the river, crossed over in her boat, strolled through the woods as far as Tzenkoshik, came back, crossed the river again, walked past along the bank, then partway down to Tesarzy, and were relieved. They ate well, slept a lot, and had plenty of money, and she often thought that maybe Wenzel Suchan had been taken away, all those years ago, to do nothing in another country—Wenzel, whom she badly needed, who could work and liked to work. They had most likely taken him away to do nothing in that country called Rumania, to wait around doing nothing until he was killed by a bullet. But these soldiers under her roof didn’t get hit by bullets: as long as they had been here they had only fired their rifles a few times. Each time there was great excitement, and each time it had turned out to be a mistake—usually they had shot at game that was moving in the forest and hadn’t halted when challenged, but even that didn’t happen very often, only four or five times in these three years, and once they had shot at a woman who had come down the river at night from Tzenkoshik and then run through the forest to get a doctor in Tesarzy for her child, they had shot at this woman too, but luckily they hadn’t hit her, and afterward they had helped her into the boat and even rowed her across—and the professor, who hadn’t gone to bed yet and was sitting in the bar reading and writing, the professor had gone with her to Tesarzy. But in these three years they hadn’t found a single partisan. Everybody knew there were none left here now that the Svortchik boys had gone; even in Szarny, where the big railroad bridge was, no partisans were ever seen …

  Although she was making money from the war, it was bitter for her to imagine that Wenzel Suchan had probably done nothing in that country called Rumania, that he hadn’t been able to do anything. Most likely that’s what war meant, men doing nothing and going to other countries so no one could see them at it. Anyway, she found it both disgusting and ridiculous to watch these men doing nothing for three years but steal time, and getting well paid to shoot once a year, at night, by mistake, at game or some poor woman who was trying to fetch a doctor for her child; disgusting and ridiculous for these men to have to loaf around while she had so much to do she didn’t know which way to turn. She had to cook, look after the cows and pigs and chickens, and many of the soldiers even paid her to clean their boots, darn their socks, and wash their underclothes; she had so much to do that she had to take on a hired hand again, a man from Tesarzy, for Maria had been doing nothing ever since she got pregnant. She treated this sergeant as if he were her husband: slept in his room, got him his breakfast, kept his clothes clean, and sometimes scolded him.

  But one day, after almost exactly three years, a very high-ranking officer turned up, with red stripes down his pants and a gold-braided collar—she heard later that he was a real general—this high-ranking officer arrived with a few others in a very fast car from Tesarzy. His face was all yellow, he looked sad, and in front of her house he bawled out Sergeant Peter because Peter hadn’t been wearing his belt and pistol when he came out to report—and the officer stood there, furious, and waited. She saw him stamping his foot, his face seemed to shrink and get even yellower, and he barked at another officer standing beside him and saluting with a trembling hand, a gray-haired, tired-looking man of over sixty whom she knew because sometimes he would ride down from Tesarzy on his bicycle and chat in a very nice friendly way with the sergeant and the soldiers in the bar—and then later, wheeling his bicycle and accompanied by the professor, walk slowly back to Tesarzy. At last Peter came out, wearing his belt and pistol, and walked with the men to the river. They crossed over in the boat, walked through the forest, returned, and stood for a long time beside the bridge. Then they went up into the attic, and finally the officers drove off again, and Peter stood outside the house with two soldiers; they raised their arms in salute and stayed that way for a long time, until the car was almost back in Tesarzy. Then Peter went into the
house again, furious, threw his cap onto the table, and the only thing he said to Maria was “Looks like they’re going to rebuild the bridge.”

  And two days later another vehicle, a truck, came dashing up from Tesarzy, and out of this truck jumped seven young soldiers and a young officer who strode into the house and spent half an hour with the sergeant in his room. Maria tried to join in this conversation, walking right into the room, but the young officer waved her out, and she went in again, and again the young officer impatiently waved her out; she stayed at the top of the stairs, crying, and had to look on while the old soldiers collected their packs and the young ones moved into their rooms. She waited for half an hour, crying, flew into a rage when the professor patted her on the shoulder, and clung shrieking and sobbing to Peter when he finally came out of the room carrying his pack and with a very red face tried to calm her down, to comfort her—she clung to him until he had climbed into the truck. Then, still weeping, she stood on the steps and watched the truck dash off toward Tesarzy. She knew he would never be back, although he had promised her he would …

  Feinhals arrived in Berczaba two days before the rebuilding of the bridge began. The tiny hamlet consisted of a tavern and two houses, one of which was abandoned and falling into decay, and when he got out with the others, the whole place was enveloped in the bitter smoke from the potato fires smoldering in the fields. It was quiet and peaceful, nowhere any sign of war …