The Train Was On Time by Heinrich Böll Page B

exactly! Five forty-five, and tomorrow is already Sunday, and tomorrow Paul begins his new week, and all this week Paul has the six o’clock mass. I shall die as Paul is mounting the steps to the altar. That’s absolutely certain, when he starts reciting the antiphons without an altar boy. He once told me that you can’t count on altar boys nowadays. When Paul is reciting the antiphons between Lvov and … he must look and see which place is thirty miles beyond Lvov. He must get hold of the map. He glanced up and saw that the blond fellow was still dozing in his chair; he was tired, he had had sentry duty. Willi was awake and smiling happily, Willi was drunk, and the map was in the other man’s pocket. But there was plenty of time. More than twelve hours, fifteen hours to go … in these fifteen hours he had to see to a lot of things. Say my prayers, say my prayers, no more sleep … whatever happened, no more sleep, and I’m glad I’m so sure now. Willi also knows he’s going to die, and the blond fellow is ready to die too, their lives are over; it will soon be full, the hourglass is nearly full, and death has only a few, a very few, more grains of sand to add.
    “Well, boys,” said Willi, “sorry, but it’s time we were moving. Nice here, wasn’t it?” He nudged the blond fellow, who woke up. He was still dreaming, his face was all dreams, and his eyes no longer had that nasty slimy look; there was something childlike about them, and that might have been because he had had a real dream, had been genuinely happy. Happiness washes away many things, just as suffering washes away many things.
    “Because now,” said Willi, “now we have to go to the rubber-stamp place. But I’m not giving anything away yet!” He was rather hurt that nobody asked him; he beckoned to Georg and paid something over four hundred marks. The tip was a princely one. “And a taxi,” said Willi. They picked up their luggage, buckled their belts, put on their caps, and went out past the officers, past the civilians, and past the ones in the brown uniforms. And there was much amazement in the eyes of the officers and of the ones in the brown uniforms. And it was just like in every bar in Europe, in French bars, Hungarian, Rumanian, Russian, and Yugoslav bars, and Czech and Dutch and Belgian and Norwegian and Italian and Luxembourg bars: the same buckling of belts and putting on of caps and saluting at the door, as if one were leaving a temple inhabited by very stern gods.
    And they left the Imperial mansion, the Imperial driveway, and Andreas cast one more glance at that crumbling façade, the waltz façade, before they got into the taxi … and were off.
    “Now,” said Willi, “now we’re going to the rubber-stamp place, they open at five.”
    “May I have another look at the map?” Andreas asked the blond fellow, but before the latter could pull the map out of his Luftwaffe pack they were stopping again. They had driven only a short distance along the wide brooding Imperial avenue. Beyond lay open country and a few villas, and the house they had stopped at was a Polish house. The roof was flattish, thefaçade a dirty yellow, and the narrow tall windows were closed with shutters reminiscent of France, shutters with very narrow slits, very flimsy-looking, painted gray. It was a Polish house, this rubber-stamp place, and something told Andreas immediately that it was a brothel. The whole ground floor was hidden by a thick beech hedge, and as they walked through the front garden he saw that the groundfloor windows were not shuttered.…
    He saw russet-colored curtains, dirty russet-colored, almost dark brown with a touch of red. “You can get any stamp in the world here,” said Willi with a laugh. “You just have to know the ropes and be firm.” They stood with their luggage outside the front door after Willi had pulled the bell, and it was some time before they heard any sound in the silent, mysterious house. Andreas was