The moral of this would therefore be quite simple: one need only know Heinrich Knecht, read half a story by Jacob Maria Hermes, and have had a superstitious great-grandmother, and all one would have to do would be to just simply write down one’s first short story. Of course one needs some subject matter, only a little really: a nine-year-old girl with cocoa spots on her blue blouse, a few nuns, who in a nice way are not quite right in the head, a school playground, a few maple trees, and seven trunks. Before any youthful readers bent on writing short stories go dashing off to acquire some trunks, I must quickly explain that the term “trunk” is of course variable: the seventh “trunk” can be one of those exquisitely designed little cases in which one keeps electric razors, it can be a carton for fifty cigarettes, an empty make-up kit might do too; what is important is what Knecht regards as indispensable: the “trunks” must get smaller and smaller; the first one sometimes has to be enormous. Where, for example, is an author in the first stage, the “preparation of subject matter,” as Knecht calls it, to put a railway station, or a school, a bridge over the Rhine, or a whole block of tenements? He has to rent an abandoned factory site until—and it may take years—he needs only the color of the bridge, only the smell of the school, and these he must put into the second trunk, although in this second trunk a horse, a truck, a barracks, and an abbey may be waiting, of which, as soon as it is the third trunk’s turn, he will keep only a hair, a squeak, the echo of a command, and a response, while in the third trunk an old blanket, cigarette butts, empty bottles, and a few pawn tickets are waiting. Pawn tickets were evidently Knecht’s favorite documents, for I recall a sentence of his: “Why, O Scribe, carry large objects around with you, when there are institutions which not only relieve you of having to store these objects but even give you money for them, money that you do not need to pay back if, after the due date, you are no longer interested in the object? Make use, therefore, of the institutions which help you to lighten your baggage.” It does not take long to tell all the rest, for all the rest consists of: and so on. Needless to say—I am most anxious to avoid any misunderstanding—needless to say, the fifth or sixth trunk can be some little container the size of a matchbox, and the seventh can be an old biscuit tin; all that matters is that the seventh trunk must be closed, if only by a plain rubber band, and it must spring open by itself. Only one question remains unresolved, and it will probably cause youthful readers some anxiety: what does one do with living people where they are needed for short prose? One can neither—and possibly for twenty years, for it can take a good short story that long to wait for its awakening in the seventh trunk—so, one cannot shut living people up for that long, nor can one leave them at the pawnbroker’s; what is one to do with them? Answer: they are not needed: one can pull out a hair, secretly remove a shoelace from a shoe, or brush a lipstick across a piece of cigarette paper; that is enough, for—here I must earnestly remind readers of my great-grandmother Nellessen: the point is not to put life into the case or box, the point is that life has to be created in it and jump out of its own accord. And so on—and then just simply write the whole thing down.
A SOLDIER’S LEGACY
Written in 1949, A Soldier’s Legacy was published in Germany as Das Vermächtnis by Lamuv Verlag in 1982. This English translation was published in 1985 by Knopf.
A SOLDIER’S LEGACY
I
Today, my dear sir, I saw a young man whose name I’m sure is familiar to you; it is Schnecker. He has been living—as far as I know—for a number of years in your neighborhood, and he was a schoolmate of your brother’s, who was reported missing during the war. But that’s not all. Today I also learned that for five years you have been waiting in vain to discover what actually happened to your brother, after you were informed, by way of that sinister official lie, that he had been “reported missing.” Well, Schnecker could have corrected that lie. There are only two people in the world who could have told you with certainty: one is Schnecker, the other is myself. I have kept silent. After reading my report you will understand why I could not come forward and tell you what actually happened.
Forgive me if I must now inform you of something that cannot be glossed over. Your brother is dead.
Actually, when I ran across Schnecker on the terrace of an outdoor café, he appeared to be in the best of spirits. He was sitting under one of those colorful umbrellas that are surrounded by planters full of big red geraniums, where customers relax in the shade as they observe the passing scene from behind their sunglasses. Schnecker was in the company of a young lady.
The young lady was pretty, her manner lighthearted and natural. On an impulse, I stepped onto the terrace, sat down at the next table so I could overhear them, and ordered some ice cream.
The shock I felt was intensified by the fact that Schnecker hadn’t changed. He was a bit plumper, seemed younger rather than older, and showed those first signs of the incipient bull neck that invariably begins to manifest itself in certain better-class Germans when they reach thirty-two and are old enough to take an active part in their father’s political party. After I had thanked the waiter and seated myself so as to miss nothing, I overheard Schnecker say, “And Winnie?”
“She’s married, didn’t you know? She’s happy—deliriously happy, in fact.”
Schnecker laughed. “We’ll be, too,” he said gently, covering the girl’s hand with his own. The way she turned her large, soft, slightly stupid eyes up at him made her look as though she would melt with happiness, leaving behind some kind of sugary mess on the graceful little terrace chair.
“Cigarette?” asked Schnecker, offering her his open case. She took one, and they smoked as they applied themselves to their ice creams. Beyond the terrace, a constant stream of perspiring, thinly clad people made their way to or from the summer clearance sales. Their faces revealed a strain similar to what one used to see, only a year ago, on the trains carrying people out into the countryside to scrounge for potatoes—fear, fatigue, greed. Deeply disturbed, I toyed with my ice cream; my cigarette didn’t taste good anymore.
“Come to think of it,” Schnecker began again, “we have every reason to celebrate today!”
“Yes, today’s a red-letter day!” said the girl.
“You’re right.”
“Of course I’m right! The way you got through it all! So quickly and confidently and the only one to make it with honors. But tell me”—she giggled—“are they actually going to put a doctoral cap on your head?”
“No, my dear, but listen.” He paused to swallow a spoonful of ice cream. “I suggest we drive out there right away, enjoy ourselves, then change and drive to the Cosmo for a little intimate celebration, before the official stuff gets under way …”
This time she placed her hand on his.
I suddenly felt so nauseated that I had to get up and do something. I left some money on the table, far too much and more than I could possibly afford. But I just didn’t care. I staggered outside and let myself drift along with the perspiring, prattling crowd until I turned off onto a quiet, rubble-strewn street that was bathed in the shadow of still-standing façades. I sat down at random on what was left of a wall. The peace of rubble is the peace of graveyards …
It is time, I think, for me to introduce myself. My name is Wenk, and I was a dispatch runner for your brother, First Lieutenant Schelling. I have already told you that he is dead. You could have found that out long ago. You needed only to enter the house of your neighbor and look closely into his eyes, those eyes that will induce such a charming, rhapsodic girl to have him father their two planned children. Oh, that sweet young thing, how she will weep when the priest joins their hands while a Bach fugue resounds from the organ, played not by the regular organist, who is much too pedestrian and inartistic, but by a specially hired musician. Don’t fail to attend the wedding. Don’t forget to try the cake, the wine and cigars, and make sure your mother offers appropriate congratulations and sends a gift that matches the degree of friendship.
This union, from which new Schneckers will spring, must be properly celebrated. I don’t know what kind of wedding presents match that degree of friendship in your circles: with us it might be an electric iron, or a punch bowl that would be used once every three years or never.
Enough of this chatter! I’m just trying to put off something I find it hard to write about because it sounds too improbable in the context of this incipiently bull-necked fledgling doctor of laws. But let me tell you: Schnecker is your brother’s murderer. There it is. There you have it. And I mean it not in any figurative or allegorical sense, but baldly and simply, the way I’ve said it: Schnecker is your brother’s murderer …
You are a young man. About twenty, I would guess. I have taken the liberty of spending a few afternoons snooping around outside your house and Schnecker’s, but I’m sure you won’t remember that nondescript individual standing under an elderberry tree, wearing sunglasses and smoking a cigarette, a sort of amateur detective of fate who, in return for a pension of thirty marks graciously doled out to him every month at the post office, feels obliged to render the Fatherland a small service.
Well, you’re twenty, I would guess. I saw you hurrying off with your book-filled briefcase at regular hours and fancied I could read something in your expression that I can only interpret as dread of your finals. Don’t worry, you’ll get through all right. Don’t take it too seriously. We were still priding ourselves on getting a B in geography and math when we were forced to look at men who had just been neatly shot in the stomach by a machine-gun salvo. Believe me, they all looked alike, those who had a B in Latin and those who had never heard of Latin. They looked ugly; there was nothing, absolutely nothing uplifting about them. They were all alike—Poles, Germans, and Frenchmen, heroes and cowards. That’s all I can tell you. They belonged to the earth, and the earth no longer belonged to them. That’s all …
But before I tell you how Schnecker killed your brother, I must introduce myself in greater detail. I’m not exactly a confidence-inspiring person. Most of my time is spent lying on the bed smoking cigarettes. The venetian blinds are kept closed, letting in just enough light for me to tell which side of the cigarette paper is gummed. Next to the bed is my chair, on it a great heap of loose yellow tobacco. I occupy myself by rolling a new cigarette when the butt between my lips has become damp and no longer draws. The tobacco makes my throat burn; I flick the butts out the window, and whenever I lean out I can see great quantities of them floating in the roof gutter—burst, yellowish objects like bloated maggots—from some of them the tobacco has seeped out and is floating in the greenish soupy liquid filling the gutter that slopes away from the drain. Sometimes, when this scum has grown too thick, I borrow the broom belonging to my landlord’s cleaning woman and sweep all the sludge toward the drain, where with a low gurgling sound it disappears …
I am very seldom persuaded to undertake any kind of activity. My one great concern is how to get hold of tobacco, which I pay for by selling my books. Even this activity is strenuous enough. Fortunately, I am fairly well informed as to the value of the books, although I must say I lack the patience to insist on getting their true value. So I reluctantly drag myself off to those dingy little secondhand bookstores that smell of the decay which only piles of books produce: dry, musty, moldy. Skinny yellow hands, whose movements remind me of the silent, repulsive haste of raccoons, assess my spiritual property according to its material value. I rarely haggle, only when the offer seems unreasonably low; otherwise I merely nod and remain adamant when the usurer thrusts his pitiful face toward me as he counts out the money, hoping to persuade me at the last moment to accept less. I have resigned myself to the fact that I can no more cope with these people than I could with the war.
II
I first met Schnecker in the summer of 1943. I had been ordered to leave an interpreter unit stationed in Paris and report to a coastal division where I was once again to partake of the joys of “real” infantry service. Leaving the last railroad station behind me, I had reached a sleepy little place that seemed to consist of long, low walls surrounding lush grass. There, in the northwestern corner of Normandy, parallel to the coast, runs a strip of land that breathes the brooding isolation of heath and marsh: here and there a few tiny hamlets, some abandoned, ruined farms, shallow streams meandering sluggishly toward the swampy arms of the Somme or petering out underground.
From the station I had laboriously asked my way to battalion headquarters. There, predictably, I had been kept waiting a considerable time before being directed to one of the companies. The clerk, a corporal, suggested I wait for the mail orderly of my future unit and go along with him. But since that would have meant a four-hour wait outside this desolate château, I asked the corporal how to get there, saluted, and left.
As I was shouldering my pack in the dark corridor, an officer passed by, a tall slim fellow who, in spite of his youth, was wearing the insignia of a captain. I performed the infamous “salute by standing at attention”: he looked at me as if I were made of glass and, without so much as a nod, walked on. It was Schnecker.
Only half a second had passed, but in that half second I felt all the humiliation forced upon us by the uniform. Every second I wore that uniform I hated it, but now I was so choked by disgust I actually felt a bitter taste on my tongue. I hurried after the officer, who was walking toward the orderly room, and planted myself in front of him, thus preventing him from reaching the door handle. I stood at attention again and said, “I request the captain to acknowledge my salute.” My loathing filled me with voluptuous pleasure. He looked at me as if I had gone out of my mind.
“What was that?” he asked huskily.
I repeated my words in an even tone, saluted again, looked at him, saluted again.
The battle was fought only between our eyes. He was fuming, ready to tear me to pieces, but from the ends of my coolly vibrating hair right down to my toes I was filled with a crystalline hatred. He suddenly raised his hand to his cap; I stood aside, opened the door for him, and walked away.
I passed quickly through the lethargic, sleeping village, took, as directed, the third turning on the left toward the coast, and soon found myself in a completely uninhabited area. Noonday heat quivered over the meadows; the road was dusty and stony; there were occasional little groups of trees, lots of bushes, no fields that I could see. I took advantage of the little shade there was and walked on for half an hour; then I suddenly stopped, looked up, and realized that all that time I had been staring unseeingly ahead of me. I was tired and suddenly felt quite exhausted. The roadside was covered with lush grass, but just as I was about to sit down I noticed, scarcely a hundred yards away, a larger group of trees that seemed to indicate a building. In the sultry heat the cows had sought the shade of the bushes. I walked along the flagstone path and stopped outside the building: it was very dilapidated, surrounded by tangled growth. The windows were blind, and above the door was a weathered sign, almost illegible, on which I could just make out the letters “auran” of the word “Restaurant.”
The door was open. I walked into a stale-smelling passageway and opened a brown door on the right. The room was empty. I put down my pack, threw cap and belt onto a chair, pulled out my big handkerchief, and began to wipe the sweat off my face as I looked around.
In taverns like this, one automatically expects a sour old witch of a woman, mustached, dirty, who can offer only some lukewarm stuff. I was very surprised when a young girl, who was not only pretty but clean, came in and greeted me briefly but without hostility with the usual “Good morning, sir.”
I returned her greeting and looked at her much too long. She was very lovely. Her brown eyes were large, slightly veiled, and seemed always to look away. Her reddish-brown hair fell loosely over her shoulders and was tied above her forehead with a blue ribbon. Her hands gave off a smell of milk and udders; her fingers were still spread, slightly curled …
“What would you like?” she asked.
I wanted
to say “You!” but with a gesture stopped myself and said quietly, “Something to drink; something cold perhaps.”
She closed her eyes and seemed to be letting my unspoken word sink into her. Then she raised her lids again and said mockingly, “Wine or lemonade?”
“Water,” I said.
“I wouldn’t recommend it, sir,” she said. “Our water is as foul as the Somme.”
“All right,” I said, “wine, then; white, if you have some.”
She nodded, turned, and disappeared.
The place was furnished like most country taverns in France. It used to be customary to dismiss them as being fusty, tasteless, uninviting. True, they did contain a lot of kitsch, both old and modern, but for me every one of those taverns held something of the elusive appeal of Cézanne’s cardplayers.
The girl’s pale face loomed up behind the glass panel, almost like the face of a drowning person rising to the surface once more before sinking for the last time. Quickly I jumped up and opened the door for her. In her right hand she was balancing a bottle of wine and a glass, in her left a soda-water siphon. To my astonishment the siphon, which I took from her, was cool. I commented on it, and while she set down glass and bottle she explained that they always kept the siphons in the well. As she spoke she avoided looking at me and murmured, “If you need anything, just call.” She was about to leave.
I said very softly, “Tell me one thing: Are you always here? Are you the owner’s daughter?”
Now for the first time she turned and looked at me. I had the impression she was smiling.
“Yes,” she said, “I’m always here.”