The Clown by Heinrich Böll

them?”
    “Are you cross-examining me?”
    “Oh no,” I said mildly, “no, no, I simply thought in all modesty that perhaps I had a right to know what happened to my letters.”
    “Which you, without asking us, sent here.”
    “Dear Mrs. Fredebeul,” I said, “please, do be human now.”
    She laughed, faintly but audibly, but said nothing.
    “What I mean is,” I said, “there is a point at which human beings, even if for ideological reasons—become human.”
    “Does that mean that up to now I have behaved inhumanly?”
    “Yes,” I said. She laughed again, very faintly, but still audibly.
    “I am very unhappy about this whole thing,” she said finally, “but more than that I can’t say. You have disappointed us all terribly.”
    “As a clown?” I asked.
    “That too,” she said, “but not only that.”
    “I suppose your husband isn’t home?”
    “No,” she said, “he won’t be back for a few days. He is on an election campaign in the Eifel Mountains.”
    “What?” I exclaimed; that was news indeed, “surely not for the CDU?”
    “Why not,” she said in a voice that made it clear she would like to hang up.
    “Oh all right,” I said, “is it asking too much if I ask you to send me my letters.”
    “Where to?”
    “To Bonn—to my address here in Bonn.”
    “You’re in Bonn?” she asked, and it sounded as if she was suppressing a “For Heaven’s sake.”
    “Goodbye,” I said, “and thank you for so much humanity.” I was sorry to be so angry with her, I was fed up. I went into the kitchen, took the cognac out of the icebox and had a long drink from it. It didn’t help. I had another, that didn’t help either. Mrs. Fredebeul was the last person from whom I would have expected a brush-off like that. I had been prepared for a long sermon about marriage, with reproaches about my behavior toward Marie; she could be dogmatic in a nice, consistent way, but usually when I was in Bonn and phoned her she would ask me laughingly to help her again in the kitchen and with the children. I must have been mistaken about her, or perhaps she was pregnant again and in a bad mood. I didn’t have the nerve to phone again and maybe find out what was the matter with her. She had always been so nice to me. The only way I could account for it was that Fredebeul had given her “strict instructions” how to treat me. I have often noticedhow wives are loyal to their husbands to the point of absolute madness. Mrs. Fredebeul was no doubt too young to know how deeply her unnatural coldness would hurt me, and I really couldn’t expect her to realize that Fredebeul is little more than an opportunist, full of hot air, intent on becoming a success at all costs and prepared to “drop” his own grandmother if she got in his way. No doubt he had said, “Write Schnier off,” and so she simply wrote me off. She was under his thumb, and as long as he had believed I was useful in some way, she had been allowed to follow her natural instincts and be nice to me, now contrary to her instincts she had to be unkind to me. But maybe I was doing them an injustice, and they were both merely following the dictates of their conscience. If Marie was married to Züpfner, it was no doubt sinful to arrange a contact between us—that Züpfner was
the
man in the Executive Committee and could be useful to Fredebeul didn’t interfere with their conscience. Doubtless they must do what was right and proper even when it was to their advantage. I was less shocked at Fredebeul than at his wife. I had never had any illusions about him, and not even the fact that he was now on an election tour on behalf of the Christian Democratic Union could surprise me.
    I put the cognac bottle away in the refrigerator for good.
    I decided I might as well ring them all, one after the other, so I could get the Catholics out of the way. Somehow I was wide awake now and wasn’t even limping any more when I came back to the living room from the