“He ought to be exterminated,” said Marie.
“At last you’re beginning to think in nonbourgeois terms.”
“I don’t understand how you can still laugh,” said Marie.
“There’s a very good reason for the fact that I can still laugh,” said Müller. He went over to the bed, picked up the parcel, took it over to the table, and began to undo the string. He patiently untied all the knots, so slowly that Marie jerked open the drawer, took out a penknife, and silently held it out to him.
“Exterminated, yes,” said Müller, “that might be an idea, but not for anything in the world would I cut this string: that would be cutting right into my mother’s heart. When she opens a parcel she carefully unties the string, rolls it up, and puts it aside for future use—the next time she comes here she’ll ask me about the string, and if I can’t produce it she will predict the imminent end of the world.”
Marie snapped the knife shut again, put it back in the drawer, leaned against Müller while he unwrapped the paper from his parcel and carefully folded it up. “You haven’t told me yet why you can still laugh,” she said. “After all, that was the vilest, filthiest, most disgusting trick that Schmeck could play on you—when you think how he wanted to make you his chief assistant and how he’s prophesied a brilliant future for you.”
“Well,” said Müller, “do you really want to know why?”
She nodded. “Tell me,” she said.
He put down the parcel, kissed her. “Damn it all,” he murmured, “if it weren’t for you I would have done something desperate.”
“Do it anyway,” she said quietly.
“What?”
“Do something desperate to him,” said Marie, “I’ll help you.”
“What do you want me to do, really kill him?”
“Do something physical to him, not mental—half kill him.”
“How?”
“Maybe beat him up—but let’s have something to eat first. I’m hungry and I have to go off again in thirty-five minutes.”
“I’m not so sure you will go off again.”
He carefully folded up a second layer of paper, undid a piece of thinner string tied round the core of the parcel, a shoebox, removed the sheet of notepaper stuck between string and box lid (“Every parcel should contain the address inside as well as out”), and at last, as Marie sighed, he took off the lid of the shoebox: salami, ham, cake, cigarettes, and a package of glutamate. Marie picked up the notepaper from the table and read in a low voice, “My dear boy, I am glad you could make the long journey to England so cheaply. It is wonderful what they are doing these days at the universities. Tell us about London when you come home. Remember how proud we are of you. Now you are really working on your Ph.D. thesis—I just can’t believe it. Your loving Mother.”
“They really are proud of me,” said Müller.
“And they have every reason to be,” said Marie. She put away the contents of the parcel in a little cupboard below the bookshelves, took out an opened package of tea. “I’ll run down and make us some tea.”
IX
“It’s funny,” said Marie, “but when I propped my bike up against the railing today at noon, I knew that I wouldn’t be going back after lunch to that plastics nightmare. One does have premonitions like that. Once when I came home from school I threw my bike against the hedge just like I used to every day; it always sank halfway in, tipped over, the handlebars would get caught in a branch and the front wheel would stick up in the air—and as I threw my bike in there, I knew I wouldn’t be going back to school next day, that I would never be going back to any school. It wasn’t just that I was fed up with it—there was much more to it than that. I simply knew that it would be wicked for me to go to school for even one more day. Father couldn’t get over it; you see, it was exactly four weeks before my graduation, but I said to him: ‘Have you ever heard of the sin of gluttony?’ ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘I have, but you haven’t been guilty of gluttony as far as school’s concerned.’ ‘No,’ I said, ‘it’s just an example—but when you swallow one more mouthful of coffee or one more piece of cake than at a given point you ought to drink or eat, isn’t that gluttony?’ ‘It is,’ he said, ‘and I can imagine such a thing as spiritual gluttony, only—’ but I interrupted him and said, ‘There’s not room for another thing in me, I already feel like a stuffed goose.’ ‘It’s a pity,’ said Father, ‘that this has to happen to you four weeks before your graduation. It’s such a useful thing to have.’ ‘Useful for what?’ I asked. ‘You mean university?’ ‘Yes,’ he said, and I said, ‘No, if I’m going to work in a factory, then it’s going to be a real one’—and that’s what I did. Does it hurt you when I tell you things like this?”
“Yes,” said Müller, “it hurts very much to see someone throwing away something that for countless people is the object of all their dreams and aspirations. It’s also possible to laugh about clothes, or to despise them, when one has them hanging in the closet or is in a position to buy them any time—it’s possible to laugh about anything one has always taken for granted.”
“But I didn’t laugh about it, and I didn’t despise it, and it’s true that I preferred to work in a real factory rather than in a university.”
“Oh, I believe you,” he said. “I do, just as I believe you’re really a Catholic.”
“By the way, I got a parcel from home yesterday too,” said Marie. “Guess what was in it.”
“Salami, ham, cake, cigarettes,” said Müller, “and no glutamate—and, needless to say, you cut the string with scissors, screwed the paper up into a ball and …”
“Exactly,” said Marie, “exactly, only you’ve forgotten something …”
“No, I haven’t,” said Müller. “I haven’t forgotten anything, you interrupted me, that’s all. Then you immediately bit into the salami, then the cake, and right after that you lit a cigarette.”
“Come on, let’s go to the movies, and then we’ll half kill Schmeck this evening.”
“Today?” said Müller.
“Of course today,” said Marie. “Whenever you think something is right, you should do it at once—and a woman should fight at her man’s side.”
X
It was dark by the time they came out of the movie, and they found the bicycle-parking attendant in a state of sullen resentment; Marie’s ramshackle bicycle was the sole remaining one in his charge. An old man, his coat almost trailing on the ground, rubbing his hands to warm them, walking up and down muttering curses under his breath.
“Give him a tip,” whispered Marie. She remained nervously by the chain separating the parking lot from the square in front of the opera house.
“My principles forbid me to give tips except where they form part of the wages. It’s an offense against human dignity.”
“Perhaps you’ve got a mistaken idea of human dignity: seven hundred years ago my ancestor, the first Schlimm, was given a whole barony as a tip.”
“And maybe that’s why you have so little sense of human dignity. Christ,” he said, lowering his voice, “what do you give in a case like this?”
“Twenty or thirty pfennigs, I should think, or about the same in cigarettes. Go on, please, you go first. Help your assistant. I’m so embarrassed.”
Müller hesitantly approached the attendant, holding out the stub as if it were a pass he didn’t quite trust, then, when the old man’s furious face was turned toward him, quickly drew the cigarette pack from his pocket, saying, “Sorry, I’m afraid we’re a bit late.” The old man took the whole pack, stuck it into his coat pocket, gestured in wordless contempt toward the bicycle, and walked past Marie in the direction of the streetcar stop.
“When you’re in love with lightweight men,” said Marie, “you have the advantage of being able to take them on the luggage carrier.” She rode in and out between waiting cars till they got to the front at the red light. “Look out, Müller,” she said, “see you don’t scratch their paint with your feet, they’re very tou
chy about that, they worry about it more than if their wives get a scratch.” And when the driver of the car waiting beside her rolled down his window, she said in a loud voice, “If I were you, I would write a sociology of the various makes of cars. Driving is the training ground of one-upmanship—and the worst ones are the so-called gentlemen behind the wheel. Their false democratic courtesy is positively nauseating; it is hypocrisy par excellence, because it means they expect a medal for something that should be taken for granted.”
“Right,” said Müller, “and the worst thing about them is, they all think they look different from the others, while actually …”
The driver quickly wound up his window again.
“Yellow, Marie,” he said.
Marie pushed off, going straight across in front of the cars to the right-hand lane, while Müller conscientiously stuck out his right arm.
“I see I’ve found a good assistant,” he said, as they turned into a dark side street.
“Assistant,” said Marie, over her shoulder, “is a weak translation of adjutorium—which contains much more: counsel, and some pleasure too. Where does he live?”
“Mommsen Street,” said Müller, “Number 37.”
“That’s wonderful—he’s stuck with a street name that must annoy him every time he reads it, says it, writes it—and I hope he has to do each of those things three times a day. I’m sure he hates a classicist like Mommsen.”
“He hates him like poison.”
“Serves him right that he has to live on Mommsen Street. What’s the time?”
“Half past seven.”
“A quarter of an hour to go.”
She turned into a still darker side street leading to the park, and stopped; Müller jumped off and helped her to guide the bicycle through the barrier. They walked a few yards along the dark path, stopped beside a bush, and Marie threw her bicycle against a shrub; it sank halfway in, got caught on a twig. “Almost like home,” said Marie. “There’s nothing like shrubbery for bikes.”
Müller put his arms around her, kissed her neck, and Marie whispered, “Don’t you think I’m a bit too skinny for a woman?”
“Be quiet, assistant,” he said.
“You’re terribly scared,” she said. “I didn’t know one could actually feel a person’s heart beating—tell me, are you scared?”
“Of course I am,” he said. “It’s my first assault—and I find it quite incredible that we’re really standing here for the purpose of luring Schmeck into a trap, to beat him up. I just can’t believe it.”
“You see, you have faith in intellectual weapons, in progress and so on, and one has to pay for such mistakes; if there ever were such things as intellectual weapons, they’re no use nowadays.”
“Try to understand,” he whispered, “the mental process: here I am …”
“You poor fellows, you must be schizophrenics. I do wish I weren’t so thin. I read somewhere that thin women aren’t good for schizoids.”
“Your hair actually smells of that filthy plastic, and your hands are quite rough.”
“Yes,” she whispered. “You see, I’m one of those girls you come across in modern novels. Heading: ‘Baroness turns her back on her own class, decides she is really going to live.’ What’s the time now?”
“Almost quarter to.”
“He’s bound to come soon. It’s so satisfactory to be going to trap him in his own vanity. You ought to have heard his voice when he was talking to that radio reporter, ‘Regularity, rhythm, that is my principle. A light meal—just a snack, actually, at seven-fifteen—and some strong tea; and at a quarter to eight my evening walk through the park.’ You’re sure you know what we’re going to do?”
“Yes,” said Müller. “As soon as he comes round the corner, you lay your bike down right across the path, and when I go ‘Psst,’ you run and lie down beside it. He’ll come running over to you.”
“And you come from behind, beat him up thoroughly, hard enough so he needs some time to come to, and we clear off …”
“That doesn’t sound quite fair.”
“ ‘Fair,’” she said, “that’s just one of those mental images.”
“And what if he calls for help? Or if he manages to get the upper hand? He weighs at least a hundred pounds more than I do! And, as I say, I don’t like the sound of ‘from behind.’”
“Of course, people like you always have your mental images. Fair election campaign, and so on—and obviously you always get defeated. Remember I’m coming to help you, that I’ll hit him good and hard too—and if we have to we’ll just abandon the bike.”
“As a corpus delicti? It must be the only bike in town whose appearance is unmistakable.”
“Your heart’s beating stronger and stronger, faster and faster—you really must be dreadfully scared.”
“Aren’t you?”
“Sure I am,” she said, “but I know we’re in the right, and that this is the only way of seeing some kind of justice done, considering the whole world’s on his side, including the Hottentots.”
“Christ,” whispered Müller, “there he is now.”
Marie jumped onto the path, snatched her bicycle from the bushes, laid it down in the middle of the damp path. Müller watched Schmeck walking along the lane, hatless, his coat open and flapping. “Damn,” he whispered to Marie, “we forgot the dog. Look at that creature, a German shepherd, almost as big as a calf.” Marie was standing beside him again, looking over his shoulder toward Schmeck. “Solveig, Solveig,” he called hoarsely, fending off the dog who was leaping joyously up at him; then he picked up a stone from the path and threw it toward the bushes, where it dropped scarcely ten yards from Müller.
“Damn,” said Marie, “it’s useless trying anything with that dog; he’s vicious, and trained to attack people—I can tell. We’ll get complexes because we didn’t do it after all, but it’s quite useless.” She walked over to the path, picked up her bicycle, nudged Müller, and said softly, “Well, come on, we have to leave, what’s the matter?”
“Nothing,” said Müller. He took Marie’s arm. “I had just forgotten how much I loathe him.”
Schmeck was standing under the streetlight stroking the dog, who had laid the stone at his feet; he looked up as the couple entered the circle of light, glanced once more at the dog, then suddenly up again, and walked toward Müller with outstretched hands. “Müller,” he said warmly, “my dear Müller, fancy meeting you here”—but Müller succeeded in looking at and yet through Schmeck. Mustn’t meet Schmeck’s eyes; if I meet them, he thought, I’m lost; I mustn’t behave as if he isn’t there—he is there, and I’ll extinguish him with my eyes—one step, two, three—he felt Marie’s firm grasp on his arm, he was panting as if after some enormous exertion.
“Müller,” called Schmeck, “it is you—can’t you take a joke?”
The rest was easy: just keep walking, fast and yet not too fast … They heard Schmeck calling again, “Müller,” first loud, then softer, “Müller, Müller, Müller”—and at last they had turned the corner.
Marie’s deep sigh startled him; when he turned to her he saw she was crying. He took the bicycle from her, leaned it against a garden fence, wiped her tears away with his finger, put his free hand on her shoulder. “Marie,” he said softly, “what’s the matter?”
“You scare me,” she said, “that wasn’t an assault, that was murder. I’m scared he’s going to wander around for all eternity in this wretched little park whispering ‘Müller, Müller, Müller.’ It’s like a nightmare: Schmeck’s ghost with the dog, in the damp bushes, his beard growing, getting so long that it drags behind him like a frayed belt—and all the time he’s whispering ‘Müller, Müller, Müller.’ Oughtn’t I to see if he’s all right?”
“No,” said Müller, “no, don’t, just leave him alone, he’s perfectly all right. If you feel sorry for him, give him a mackintosh for his birthday. You can’t even begin to think what he’s done to me; he turned me into the miracle Son of the W
orking Class. I was his protégé, as they call it—and no doubt he expects the mackintoshes as a form of tribute—but I’m not going to pay him this tribute, not if I can help it. Tomorrow morning he’s going to say casually to Wegelot, his chief assistant, just as he’s leaving the room, ‘By the way, Müller’s gone over into the reactionary camp after all: he’s transferred to Livorno. He called me up yesterday saying he wanted to leave the seminar,’ and then he’ll close the door again, go over to Wegelot, and say, ‘Pity about Müller, very talented, but his draft thesis was simply terrible, quite hopeless. I suppose it’s difficult for these people who have to fight not only the world around them but their own milieu as well. Pity’—then he’ll bite his lip again and leave the room.”
“Are you quite sure that’s how it’s going to be?”
“Quite sure,” said Müller. “Come on, let’s go home. No tears for Schmeck, Marie.”
“The tears weren’t for Schmeck,” said Marie.
“For me, then?”
“Yes—you’re so terribly brave.”
“Now that really does sound like a modern novel. Are we going home?”
“Would you think it terrible if I said I would like one (in a word, one) hot meal?”
“All right,” Müller said, laughing. “Let’s ride to the nearest restaurant.”
“We’d better walk. There are a lot of policemen around at this hour—the park, not many lights, spring in the air—attempted rapes—and a summons would cost us as much as two bowls of soup.”
Müller wheeled the bicycle. They walked slowly along the lane beside the park; as they stepped out of the light from the next street-lamp they saw a policeman in deep shadow beyond the barrier, leaning against a tree.
The Collected Stories of Heinrich Böll Page 91
