The Clown

by Heinrich Böll

  When one of my kind dies, I am sad. I would weep even at the grave of my mother. At the grave of old man Derkum I lost all self-control; I kept shoveling more and more earth onto the bare wood of the coffin and heard someone behind me whisper that it was indecent—but I kept right on shoveling, till Marie took the shovel away from me. I never wanted to see the shop again, the house, wanted nothing to remember him by. Nothing. Marie was sensible, she sold the shop and put the money aside “for our children.”

  By this time I could go into the hall without hobbling and fetch my guitar. I undid the cover, shoved two armchairs together in the living room, pulled the phone toward me, lay down again and tuned the guitar. It did me good to hear the few sounds. As I began to sing I felt almost myself again: mater amabilis—mater admirabilis—I intoned the ora pro nobis on the guitar. I liked the idea. With the guitar in my hand, with the open hat lying beside me, with my true face, I would wait for the train from Rome. Mater boni consilii. After all, Marie had told me, when I came back with the money from Edgar Wieneken, we would never, never be parted again: “Till death do us part.” I was not dead yet. Mrs. Wieneken used to say: “If you can sing you’re still alive,” and “As long as you have an appetite, there’s still hope for you.” I sang and I was hungry. The last thing I could imagine was Marie settling down in one place: together we had gone from town to town, from hotel to hotel, and when we stayed anywhere for a few days she would always say: “The open suitcases are staring at me like mouths wanting to be fed,” and we would feed the mouths of the suitcases, and whenever I had to spend a few weeks in one place she would run through the towns as if they had just been excavated. Movies, churches, popular newspapers, parchesi. Did she really want to be present at the great ceremonial high office when Züpfner was made a Knight of Malta, surrounded by chancellors and presidents, and at home with her own hands iron out the drops of wax in his robes? A matter of taste, Marie, but not your taste. It is better to put your trust in an unbelieving clown, who wakes you early enough for you to get to Mass on time, who will even pay for a taxi for you to go to church. You’ll never need to wash out my blue jersey.

  24

  When the phone rang I was confused for a few moments. I had been concentrating entirely on not missing the doorbell and on opening the door to Leo. I put down the guitar, stared at the ringing phone, lifted the receiver and said: “Hullo.” “Hans?” said Leo.

  “Yes,” I said, “I’m glad you’re coming.” He was silent, cleared his throat, I hadn’t recognized his voice right away. He said: “I have the money for you.” The money sounded odd. Leo had odd ideas about money anyway. His requirements are almost nil, he doesn’t smoke, doesn’t drink, doesn’t read evening papers and only goes to the movies when at least five people in whom he has complete confidence have recommended the film to him as worth seeing; that happens once very two or three years. He would rather walk than take the streetcar. When he said the money, my spirits fell again immediately. If he had said, some money, I would have known it would be two or three marks. My nervousness stuck in my throat and I asked hoarsely: “How much?” “Oh,” he said, “six marks and seventy pfennig.” For him that was a lot, I think that for what are called personal needs it would last him for two years: now and again a stamp, a roll of peppermints, a nickel for a beggar, he didn’t even need matches, and if he ever did buy a box, to have them on hand for “superiors” who needed a light, they lasted him for a year, and even when he carried them around for a year they still looked like new. Now and again, of course, he had to have a haircut, but no doubt he took that out of the “study account” that Father had set up for him. In the past he used sometimes to spend money on concert tickets, but Mother generally gave him her complimentary tickets. Rich people have far more given to them than poor people, and what they do have to buy they generally get cheaper, Mother had a whole catalogue from the wholesalers: I wouldn’t have been surprised if she had even got stamps at a reduced price. Six marks seventy—for Leo that was quite a tidy sum. For me too, at the moment—but he probably didn’t know yet that I was—as we used to say at home—“temporarily without funds.”

  I said: “Good, Leo, thanks a lot—could you bring me a pack of cigarettes when you come?” I heard him clear his throat, no reply, and I asked: “You can hear me, can’t you? Eh?” Perhaps I had offended him by asking him right away to use some of his money for cigarettes. “Yes, yes,” he said, “only …” he stammered, stuttered: “I find it hard to tell you—I can’t come.”

  “What?” I shouted, “you can’t come?”

  “It’s a quarter to nine,” he said, “and I have to be back in the building by nine.”

  “And if you’re late,” I said, “will you be excommunicated?”

  “Don’t, please,” he said, hurt.

  “Well, can’t you ask for leave or something?”

  “Not at this hour,” he said, “I would have had to do that at noon.”

  “And what happens if you just come in late?”

  “Then I get a severe exhortation!” he said in a low voice.

  “That sounds like garden,” I said, “if I remember my Latin correctly.”

  He gave a little laugh. “More like garden shears,” he said, “it’s pretty unpleasant.”

  “Oh all right then,” I said, “I won’t expose you to such an unpleasant inquiry, Leo—but the presence of a human being would do me good.”

  “It’s all very complicated,” he said, “you must try and understand. The exhortation wouldn’t be so bad, but if I get another exhortation this week it gets into the records, and I have to account for it before a scrutinium.”

  “Where?” I said, “say it again, please, slowly.” He sighed, growled a bit and said very slowly: “Scrutinium.”

  “Damn it, Leo,” I said, “it sounds as if insects were being taken apart. And ‘into the records’—that’s like in Anna’s I.R. 9. Everything got into the records there immediately, like with criminals.”

  “Good God, Hans,” he said, “are we going to spend these few minutes arguing about our educational system?”

  “If you find it so distasteful, then by all means let’s not. But there must be ways—I mean ways of getting round it, such as climbing over walls, like at I.R. 9. What I mean is, there are always loopholes in these strict systems.”

  “Yes,” he said, “there are, like in the army, but I won’t have anything to do with them. I want to keep straight.”

  “Can’t you for my sake overcome your repugnance for once and climb over the wall?”

  He sighed, and I could visualize him shaking his head. “Won’t tomorrow do? I mean, I can skip the lecture and be at your place shortly before nine. Is it so urgent? Or are you leaving right away?” “No,” I said, “I’m staying in Bonn for a while. At least give me Heinrich Behlen’s address, I’d like to give him a call, and maybe he’ll come over, from Cologne or wherever he is now. I’ve had an accident, to my knee, I have no money, no bookings—and no Marie. To tell the truth, tomorrow I’ll still be injured, with no money, no bookings and no Marie—so it’s not really urgent. But maybe Heinrich is a priest by now, has a motor scooter or something. Are you still there?”

  “Yes,” he said wearily.

  “Please,” I said, “give me his address, his phone number.”

  He was silent. He certainly knew how to sigh, like someone who for a hundred years has sat in the confessional and sighed over the sins and follies of mankind. “All right,” he said at last, with an audible effort, “you don’t know then?”

  “What don’t I know,” I shouted, “for God’s sake, Leo, speak clearly. Tell me what you mean.”

  “Heinrich is no longer a priest,” he said quietly.

  “I thought you remained one as long as you breathed.” “Of course,” he said, “what I mean is, he no longer holds office. He went away, disappeared months ago.” He brought all this out with great difficulty. “Well,” I said, “he’ll turn up again,” then something struck me
, and I asked: “Is he by himself?”

  “No,” said Leo severely, “he went off with a girl.” It sounded as if he had said: “He’s got the plague.”

  I felt sorry for the girl. No doubt she was Catholic, and it must be painful for her to sit around in some dump with a former priest and put up with the details of “desires of the flesh,” underwear strewn around, pants, suspenders, saucers with cigarette ends, torn movie tickets and the first signs of running out of cash, and when the girl went downstairs to get bread, cigarettes or a bottle of wine, a nagging landlady would open the door, and she couldn’t even call out: “My husband is an artist, yes, an artist.” I was sorry for them both, for the girl more than for Heinrich. Doubtless the church authorities were very strict in such a case, when it concerned a chaplain who not only wasn’t much to look at but was also difficult. With a type like Sommerwild they would probably close their eyes. But then he didn’t have a housekeeper with yellowy skin on her legs, but a pretty, blooming creature he called Maddalena, an excellent cook, always nicely dressed and cheerful.

  “All right then,” I said, “for the time being he’s no use to me.”

  “My God,” said Leo, you are cold-blooded, aren’t you?”

  “I am neither Heinrich’s bishop nor seriously interested in the matter,” I said, “it’s only the details that worry me. Do you at least have Edgar’s address or phone number?”

  “Do you mean Wieneken?”

  “Yes,” I said. “You remember Edgar, don’t you? You met at our place in Cologne, and we used to play at Wienekens’ as kids and have potato salad?”

  “Yes, of course,” he said, “of course I remember, but Wieneken isn’t in Germany at all, as far as I know. Someone told me he was on a trip with some commission or other studying conditions in India or Thailand, I don’t remember exactly.”

  “Are you sure?” I asked.

  “Pretty sure,” he said, “yes, now I remember, it was Heribert who told me.”

  “Who?” I shouted, “who told you?”

  He was silent, I couldn’t even hear him sigh, and I knew now why he didn’t want to come. “Who?” I shouted again, but he didn’t answer. He had also acquired this little confessional cough that I had sometimes heard when I was waiting for Marie in church. “You’d better not come tomorrow either,” I said in a low voice. “It would be a pity to miss your lecture. Don’t tell me you’ve seen Marie too.”

  Apparently he really had learned nothing but sighing and coughing. Now he sighed again, deeply, unhappily, a long sigh. “You don’t need to answer,” I said, “say hullo for me to the nice man at your place I spoke to twice on the phone today.”

  “Strüder?” he asked softly.

  “I don’t know his name, but he sounded so nice on the phone.”

  “But nobody takes him seriously,” he said, “he’s—he’s just being kept on out of charity.” Leo actually managed a kind of laugh, “only sometimes he creeps to the phone and talks a lot of nonsense.”

  I got up, looked down through a gap in the curtains to the clock in the square. It was three minutes to nine. “You must go now,” I said, “otherwise it will get into your record. And be sure not to miss your lecture tomorrow.”

  “But please try and understand,” he begged.

  “Damn it,” I said, “I do understand. Only too well.”

  “What kind of a man are you?” he asked. “I am a clown,” I said, “and I collect moments. Goodbye.” I hung up.

  25

  I had forgotten to ask him about his experiences in the army, but perhaps there would be another opportunity some day. Doubtless he would praise the “food”—he had never eaten so well at home—regard the hardships as “excellent training” and the contact with ordinary folk as “immensely instructive.” I didn’t have to ask him about it. Tonight in his hostel bed he wouldn’t be able to sleep, he would toss and turn while he wrestled with his conscience and wonder if he had done the right thing in not coming to see me. There was so much I had wanted to tell him: that he would do better to study in South America or Moscow, anywhere on earth but in Bonn. Surely he must realize there was no room here for what he called his faith, between Sommerwild and Blothert, in Bonn, a converted Schnier, especially one who had turned priest, would almost serve to strengthen the stock market. I must talk to him about it all one day, the best time would be at one of Mother’s At Homes. We two apostate sons would sit down in the kitchen with Anna over a cup of coffee, reminisce about old times, glorious times when there was bazooka practice in our grounds and army cars pulled up in front of the entrance when officers were billeted on us—a major or something, with NCO’s and soldiers, a car with a pennant, and all they ever thought about was fried eggs, cognac, cigarettes and fooling around with the maids in the kitchen. Sometimes they became official, i.e., pompous: they would assemble in front of our house, the officer would strut up and down, sometimes even tuck his hand into his tunic like a fourth-rate actor impersonating a colonel, shout something about “final victory.” Embarrassing, ridiculous, senseless. When it was discovered that Mrs. Wieneken and a few other women had secretly gone through the woods one night, through the German and American lines, to get bread from her brother’s bakery over there, the pompousness became lethal. The officer wanted to have Mrs. Wieneken and two other women shot for espionage and sabotage (when she was being questioned, Mrs. Wieneken had admitted having spoken to an American soldier over there). But then my father—for the second time in his life, as far as I can remember—put his foot down, got the women out of the improvised prison, our ironing room, and hid them in the boatshed down by the river bank. He showed real spirit, shouted at the officer and the officer shouted back. The most ridiculous thing about the officer was his decorations, which trembled with indignation on his chest, while my mother said in her mild voice: “Gentlemen, gentlemen—there is a limit, you know.” What embarrassed her about the whole thing was the fact that two “gentlemen” were shouting at each other. My father said: “Before anything happens to these women you will have to shoot me—go ahead” and he actually unbuttoned his jacket and stuck out his chest at the officer, but the soldiers left then because the Americans were already on the slopes of the Rhine, and the women could come out of the boatshed. The most embarrassing thing about the major, or whatever he was, was his decorations. Undecorated he might perhaps have had a chance of preserving a certain dignity. When I see those narrow-minded bastards standing around at Mother’s At Homes wearing their decorations, I always think of that officer, and then even Sommerwild’s decoration seems bearable: Pro Ecclesia something or other. At least Sommerwild does things of lasting value for his church: he keeps his “artists” in line and has enough decency to regard the decoration “as such” as embarrassing. He only wears it during processions, special church services, and TV discussions. In his case too, television destroys the last remnants of the decency which I must admit he possesses. If our era deserves a name, it would have to be called the era of prostitution. People are becoming accustomed to the vocabulary of whores. I once met Sommerwild after one of those discussions (“Can Modern Art be Religious?”), and he asked me: “Was I good? Did you like me?” word for word the questions whores ask their departing suitors. I almost expected him to ask: “Please recommend me to your friends.” I said to him at the time: “I don’t think you are good, so I couldn’t have liked you yesterday.” He was completely heartbroken, although I had expressed my opinion of him very tactfully. He had been dreadful; for the sake of scoring a few cheap cultural points he had “slaughtered” or “shot down,” perhaps just “cracked up,” his opponent, a somewhat inept socialist. How tricky to ask: “I see, so you find early Picasso abstract?” and in the presence of ten million viewers to murder the old gray-haired man, who mumbled something about involvement, with the remark: “Oh, I suppose you mean social art—or possibly social realism?” When I saw him on the street the next day and told him I hadn’t liked him, he was really crushed. That one among t
he ten million hadn’t liked him was a severe blow to his vanity, however he was richly rewarded by a “real wave of acclaim” in all the Catholic newspapers. They wrote that he had scored a victory for the “good cause.”

  I lit my last cigarette but two, picked up the guitar and strummed a few notes. I thought about all the things I wanted to tell Leo, and all the things I wanted to ask him. Always, when I had to have a serious talk with him, he was just writing exams or afraid of a scrutinium. I also wondered if I really ought to sing the Litany of Loreto; better not: someone might get the idea I was a Catholic, they would proclaim me as “one of ours,” and it might turn out to be a nice bit of propaganda for them, seeing how they use everything “to serve their own ends,” and the whole thing would be confusing and misleading, the fact that I wasn’t a Catholic at all but merely found the Litany of Loreto beautiful and sympathized with the Jewish girl it was dedicated to, nobody would understand that either, and by some means or other they would discover a few million catholons in me, haul me before TV cameras—and the stocks would go even higher. I would have to look for another text, too bad, I would really have preferred to sing the Litany of Loreto, but on the Bonn station steps that was bound to be misunderstood. Too bad. I had rehearsed it so well and could intone the Ora pro nobis so nicely on the guitar.