The Clown by Heinrich Böll Read Free Book Online Page A

cigarettes before coming upstairs. We both thoughthe would be bound to notice something: after all, what had happened was so tremendous. But he noticed nothing, listened a moment at the door, and went on upstairs. We heard him taking off his shoes and throwing them on the floor, later on we heard him coughing in his sleep. I wondered how he would react to this thing. He was no longer a Catholic, he had left the church long ago, and he had spoken contemptuously to me of the “hypocritical sexual morals of bourgeois society” and was furious “with the swindle the priests carry on with marriage.” But I was not sure whether he would accept what I had done with Marie without raising hell. I liked him very much, and he liked me, and I was tempted to get up in the middle of the night, go to his room, and tell him the whole thing, but then it occurred to me I was old enough, twenty-one, and Marie was old enough too, nineteen, and that certain kinds of manly frankness are more embarrassing than keeping quiet, and I also felt: it really didn’t concern him as much as I thought. After all, I could hardly have gone to him in the afternoon and said: “Mr. Derkum, I want to sleep with your daughter tonight”—and what had happened he would find out in good time.
    A little later on Marie got up, kissed me in the dark and pulled the sheets off the bed. It was quite dark in the room, no light came from outside, we had drawn the heavy curtains, and I wondered how she knew what had to be done now: pull the sheets off and open the window. She whispered to me: I’m going to the bathroom, you wash here, and she drew me by the hand out of bed, led me in the dark to the corner where her washstand was, guided my hand to the jug, the soap dish, the basin, and went out carrying the sheets. I washed, got back into bed, and wondered why Marie was taking so long bringing the clean sheets. I was dead tired, glad I was able to think of that wretched Gunther without getting into a panic, and then began to feel scared something might have happened to Marie. At school they used to tell terrible stories. It was not pleasant lying there on the mattress without sheets, it was oldand lumpy, I had nothing on but my undershirt and I felt cold. I thought once more of Marie’s father. Everyone assumed he was a communist, but when after the war he was supposed to become mayor the communists saw to it that he didn’t, and every time I started to compare the Nazis with the communists he got mad and said: “There’s a difference, my boy, whether someone gets killed in a war which is carried on by a soft soap company—or whether he dies for a cause in which one can believe.” What he really was I still don’t know, and when Kinkel once called him a “brilliant sectarian” in my presence, it was all I could do not to spit at Kinkel. Old man Derkum was one of the few men I respected. He was thin and bitter, much younger than he looked, and being a heavy smoker he had trouble with his breathing. All the time I was waiting for Marie I heard him up there in his bedroom coughing, I felt like a skunk, and yet I knew I wasn’t. He had said to me once: “Do you know why in the houses of the rich, like your parents’, the maids’ rooms are always next to those of the young sons? I’ll tell you: it is an age-old speculation on human nature and compassion.” I wished he would come down and find me in Marie’s bed, but to go upstairs and report to him, so to speak, that was something I didn’t want to do. It was getting light outside. I felt cold, and the shabbiness of Marie’s room depressed me. The Derkums had long been considered to have come down in the world, and the decline was attributed to the “political fanaticism” of Marie’s father. They had had a small printing plant, a small publishing business, a book-store, but now all they had was this little stationery shop where they also sold candy to school kids. My father once said to me: “Now you