The Safety Net by Heinrich Böll Read Free Book Online Page B

himself—where the worst Nazis had lived; knew how their families, or even they themselves as they sat trembling in their cellar hideouts, could be persuaded with good old dollars to sell their houses or properties in a sort of “counter-Aryanization,” as he called it—through middlemen, of course—and with those dollars they could then clear out, God knows where to, and Bleibl killed two birds with one stone: provided the Nazis with dollars and the means to escape, and the corrupt officer with property, and naturally he could expect a commission from both, in dollars of course, which he could use to acquire this or that property for himself, through middlemen of course, for obviously a Nazi of Bleibl’s stamp couldn’t acquire real estate while still in the internment camp. There were some wild rumors: that Bleibl, together with a small U.S. Army patrol, was “cleaning up” in the vaults ofdestroyed banks—safes and cash deposits; they simply—so the rumor went—drove up in armored scout cars, cleaned up and cleaned out—“positively shoveled out money and valuables”—in the chaos of the ruined city. Later Bleibl had free access to the commandant’s barracks, could telephone, was allowed out, was taken along, presumably also to the brothels—and there the rest of them were, almost weeping at the sight, even from a distance, of a woman, any woman—and he tormented them with a recital of his numerous “erections,” brought along whole cartons of cigarettes and let them all have a sniff, drove them crazy—advanced from a textile whiz to a real estate genius. It was not difficult to imagine him “cleaning up” in bank vaults. And before long he was appointed—what was it called? probably “Textile Administrator” for an entire region.
    No, Bleibl knew his weakness only too well, and to this day would grin when he lit up anyway, mouthing meaningfully: “Virginia, O Virginia!”; Bleibl enjoyed protection, right at the top, way in the rear, maybe even on both sides of the ocean, he couldn’t be got at. They all knew of his weakness, of course, but didn’t know where it originated—only Käthe, he had told her all about it, yet even she didn’t know that it was the same with cigarettes as with the milk soup: that taste, that smell, that Virginia aroma—he never found it again, never found it, kept looking for it, probably smoked to find it again, and never did.
    Already twilight beyond the forest, the tops of the old trees gray in the rose-red light, those ancient, magnificent trees toward which the owl would soon be flying. The trees were dearer to him than the manor, he sometimes wondered whether he hadn’t bought the whole thing for the sake of the trees, also as compensation for the trees lost at Eickelhof. The owl glided without a sound, perhaps the same one that at Eickelhof had flown every evening from the turret to the edge of the forest, he and Käthe had watched it together. Käthe was afraid when the owl took off from the turret and flew away, she would cling to him and whisper: “We must leave this place, we must leave”—twentyyears before they really had to leave. It also made Käthe nervous when the screech owls started calling; and still, before thunderstorms, when crows and starlings suddenly flew up and flapped away, she would cling to him.
    Tranquil, the view over the park, no sound of elevator or departing cars, or of Bleibl’s reverberating laughter that drowned out even elevator noises, those triumphal chest tones with which he blared out that he had finally succeeded in having “one of our oldest members, one of our best,” elected, in a situation where he had been quite unable, at any price, to refuse the candidacy; there were all the prefabricated clichés he had used himself during the interviews: “In the hour of greatest danger. At a moment when each one of us is expected to prove himself. Steadfastness …” So of course they had to elect him, the weakest, the