Foreign literature is abbreviated. All works of the school curriculum in a summary. Heinrich Böll - Traveler, when you come to Spa Traveler, when you come to spa

Heinrich Böll

Traveler, when you come to the Spa

The car stopped, but the engine rumbled for several minutes; somewhere the gate swung open. A light entered the car through the broken window, and I saw that the light bulb in the ceiling was also smashed to smithereens; only its base was sticking out in the cartridge - a few gleaming wires with the remnants of glass. Then the engine stopped, and on the street someone shouted:

Dead here, have you dead here?

Damn it! Are you not darkening anymore? - the driver responded.

What the devil is to darken when the whole city burns like a torch, cried the same voice. - There are dead people, I ask?

Do not know.

Dead people here, do you hear? The rest are up the stairs to the drawing room, okay?

But I was not yet dead, I belonged to the rest, and they carried me to the drawing room, up the stairs. First they carried them down a long, dimly lit corridor with green, oil-painted walls and curved old-fashioned black hangers that were tightly embedded in them; small enamel tablets were white on the doors: "VIa" and "VIb"; between the doors, in a black frame, gleaming softly under the glass and looking into the distance, hung Feuerbach's Medea. Then came the doors marked "Va" and "Vb", and in between them was a snapshot from the sculpture "The Boy Pulling Out a Splinter," a superb red-gleaming photograph in a brown frame.

Here is the column in front of the entrance to the landing, behind it a wonderfully executed model - a long and narrow, truly antique frieze of the Parthenon made of yellowish plaster - and everything else that has long been familiar: a Greek warrior armed to the teeth, warlike and terrible, like a tousled rooster. In the stairwell itself, on the yellow-painted wall, everyone adorned - from the great Elector to Hitler ...

And on a small narrow platform, where for a few seconds I managed to lie right on my stretcher, there was an unusually large, unusually bright portrait of old Friedrich - in a sky-blue uniform, with shining eyes and a large shining golden star on his chest.

And again I lay on the side, and now I was carried past thoroughbred Aryan faces: a Nordic captain with an eagle's eyes and a stupid mouth, a native of the West Moselle, perhaps too thin and bony, an Ostsee scoffing with a bulbous nose, a long profile and a protruding Adam's apple of a cinematic highlander; and then we got to one more site, and again for several seconds I lay right on my stretcher, and even before the orderlies began to climb to the next floor, I managed to see it - a monument to a warrior decorated with a stone laurel wreath with a large gilded Iron Cross upstairs.

All this quickly flashed one after another: I am not heavy, and the orderlies were in a hurry. Of course, everything could only be imagined to me; I have a strong fever and absolutely everything hurts: my head, my legs, my arms, and my heart is pounding like crazy - what can not be imagined in such a heat.

But after the thoroughbred faces flashed through everything else: all three busts - Caesar, Cicero and Marcus Aurelius, side by side, amazing copies; quite yellow, antique and important they stood by the walls; when we turned the corner, I saw the column of Hermes, and at the very end of the corridor - this corridor was painted dark pink - at the very, very end, above the entrance to the drawing room, hung a large mask of Zeus; but it was still far from her. On the right in the window the glow of a fire glowed red, the whole sky was red, and dense black clouds of smoke were solemnly floating over it ...

And again I involuntarily shifted my gaze to the left and saw above the doors the signs “Xa” and “Xb”, and between these brown doors, as if smelling of musty, Nietzsche's mustache and pointed nose were visible in a golden frame, the second half of the portrait was pasted over with a piece of paper with the inscription “Easy surgery "...

If it is now ... flashed through my head. If there is now ... But here it is, I see it: the picture depicting the African colony of Germany in Togo is motley and large, flat, like an old engraving, magnificent oleography. In the foreground, in front of the colonial houses, in front of the Negroes and the German soldier, who is not knowing why sticking out here with his rifle, - in the very, very foreground a large, life-size bunch of bananas was turning yellow; on the left is a bunch, on the right is a bunch, and on one banana in the very middle of this right bunch there is something scrawled, I saw it; I myself, it seems, and scribbled ...

Stranger, Bear Word to the Spartans We ... ) - the story of Heinrich Theodor Böll. The plot is an internal monologue of a World War II soldier who, wounded, is carried on a stretcher through the corridors of his former school, which he left three months before the events described. the school has a temporary military hospital. The soldier notices familiar details, but does not want to recognize the corridors and premises of his own school from them. It is only when he is brought to art class that he finally has to admit that it really is. his school, as on the blackboard of the class it was written in his own handwriting: "Traveler, when you come to the Spa ...".

However, Böll abbreviates the word "Sparta" to "Spa ...", which is a reference to the Belgian municipality of Spa, which housed the office of the German command during the previous, First World War. From which it follows that Böll seeks to show the Second World War as a repetition of history.

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Literature

• Manuel Baumbach: Wanderer, kommst du nach Sparta. Zur Rezeption eines Simonides-Epigramms... In: Poetica 32 (2000) Issue 1/2, pp. 1-22.
• Klaus Jeziorkowski: Die Ermordung der Novelle. Zu Heinrich Bölls Erzählung In: Heinrich Böll. Zeitschrift der koreanischen Heinrich Böll-Gesellschaft... 1st ed. (2001), pp. 5-19.
• David J. Parent: Böll's "Wanderer, kommst du nach Spa". A Reply to Schiller's "Der Spaziergang". In: Essays in Literature 1 (1974), pp. 109-117.
• J. H. Reid: Heinrich Böll, "Wanderer, kommst du nach Spa ..." Klassische deutsche Kurzgeschichten. Interpretationen... Stuttgart 2004, pp. 96-106.
• Gabriele Sander: "Wanderer, kommst du nach Spa ..."... In: Werner Bellmann (Pub.): Heinrich Böll. Romane und Erzählungen. Interpretationen... Philipp Reclam jun., Stuttgart 2000, ISBN 3-15-017514-3, pp. 44-52.
• Bernhard Sowinski: Wanderer, kommst du nach Spa ...... In: Bernhard Sowinski: Heinrich Böll. Kurzgeschichten... Oldenbourg, München 1988, ISBN 3-486-88612-6, pp. 38-51.
• Albrecht Weber: "Wanderer, kommst du nach Spa ..."... In: Interpretationen zu Heinrich Böll verfaßt von einem Arbeitskreis. Kurzgeschichten I... 6th ed. Munich 1976, pp. 42-65.

An excerpt characterizing the Traveler, when you come to the Spa ...

“If I didn’t know you, I would think that you don’t want what you ask for. It is worth advising me one thing, so that His Serene Highness would probably do the opposite, - answered Bennigsen.
The news of the Cossacks, confirmed by the sent trips, proved the final maturity of the event. The stretched string came off, and the clock hissed, and the chimes began to play. Despite all his imaginary power, in his intelligence, experience, knowledge of people, Kutuzov, taking into account the note of Bennigsen, who personally sent reports to the sovereign, expressed by all the generals the same desire, the sovereign's supposed desire and the bringing of the Cossacks, could no longer restrain inevitable movement and gave the order for what he considered useless and harmful - blessed the accomplished fact.

The note submitted by Bennigsen about the need for an offensive, and the information of the Cossacks about the uncovered left flank of the French were only the last signs of the need to order an offensive, and the offensive was scheduled for October 5th.
On the morning of October 4, Kutuzov signed the disposition. Toll read it to Yermolov, inviting him to take up further orders.
“Okay, okay, I don’t have time now,” said Yermolov and left the hut. Tol's disposition was very good. Just as in the Austerlitz disposition, it was written, although not in German:
“Die erste Colonne marschiert [The first column goes (German)] this and that, die zweite Colonne marschiert [the second column goes (German)] this and that,” etc. And all these columns are on paper came at the appointed time to their place and destroyed the enemy. Everything was, as in all dispositions, perfectly thought out, and, as with all dispositions, not a single column came in its time and in its place.
When the disposition was ready in the proper number of copies, an officer was summoned and sent to Yermolov to give him the papers for execution. A young cavalry officer, Kutuzov's orderly, pleased with the importance of the assignment given to him, went to Yermolov's apartment.
“We’re gone,” answered Yermolov’s orderly. The cavalry officer went to the general, whom Ermolov often visited.
- No, and there is no general.
The cavalry officer sat on horseback and rode to another.
- No, they left.
“How would I not be responsible for the delay! What a shame! " - thought the officer. He traveled all over the camp. Someone said that they saw how Yermolov drove with other generals somewhere, who said that he was probably at home again. The officer, without having dinner, searched until six o'clock in the evening. Ermolov was nowhere to be found and no one knew where he was. The officer had a quick bite to eat at his comrade's and went back to the vanguard to Miloradovich. Miloradovich was not at home either, but then he was told that Miloradovich was at the ball at General Kikin's, that Ermolov must be there.
- But where is it?
“And over there, in Echkin,” said the Cossack officer, pointing to a distant landlord’s house.
- But what about there, behind the chain?
- They sent two of our regiments into the chain, there is such a revelry nowadays, trouble! Two music, three choirs of songwriters.
The officer went by the chain to Echkin. From a distance, still driving up to the house, he heard the friendly, cheerful sounds of a soldier's dancing song.
"In the oluzya ah ... in the oluzi! .." - with a whistle and with a torban he heard him, occasionally drowned out by the shout of voices. The officer felt cheerful in his soul from these sounds, but at the same time it was also scary for the fact that he was guilty, for so long not having given the important order entrusted to him. It was already past nine. He dismounted from his horse and entered the porch and the hallway of a large, intact manor house, located between the Russians and the French. In the pantry and in the hall, footmen were bustling about with wines and food. There were songbooks under the windows. The officer was led through the door, and he suddenly saw all together the most important generals of the army, including the large, noticeable figure of Yermolov. All the generals were in unbuttoned coats, with red, lively faces and were laughing loudly, standing in a semicircle. In the middle of the room, a handsome, short general with a red face was smartly and deftly making a trepak.
- Ha, ha, ha! Ah yes Nikolai Ivanovich! ha, ha, ha! ..
The officer felt that, entering at that moment with an important order, he was doubly guilty, and he wanted to wait; but one of the generals saw him and, learning why he was, told Ermolov. Ermolov, with a frowning face, went out to the officer and, having listened, took the paper from him, without saying anything to him.
- Do you think he left by accident? - That evening the staff comrade said to the officer of the cavalry guard about Yermolov. - These are things, this is all on purpose. Give Konovnitsyn a ride. Look, what porridge will be tomorrow!

The next day, early in the morning, the decrepit Kutuzov got up, prayed to God, dressed, and with the unpleasant consciousness that he should lead a battle, which he did not approve of, got into a carriage and drove out of Letashevka, five miles behind Tarutin, to that place, where the advancing columns were to be assembled. Kutuzov rode, falling asleep and waking up and listening to see if there were any shots on the right, was the case starting? But it was still quiet. The dawn of a damp and cloudy autumn day was just beginning. Approaching Tarutin, Kutuzov noticed the cavalrymen leading the horses to the watering hole across the road along which the carriage was traveling. Kutuzov looked at them closely, stopped the carriage and asked which regiment? The cavalrymen were from the column that should have been already far ahead in ambush. "A mistake, maybe," thought the old commander-in-chief. But, having driven even further, Kutuzov saw infantry regiments, guns in the box, soldiers with porridge and firewood, in underpants. An officer was called. The officer reported that there was no order to march.

7 CLASS

HEINRICH BELL

TRAVELER WHEN YOU COME TO THE SPA ...

(Abbreviated)

The car stopped, but the engine was still humming; somewhere a large gate opened. Light flew into the car through the broken window, and then I saw that the light bulb under the ceiling was smashed to smithereens, only the scroll was still sticking out in the holder - several flickering darts with the remnants of glass. Then the engine stopped, and a voice crept outside:

Dead people here. Are there dead people?

To hell with it, ”the driver swore. “You don’t do the eclipse anymore?”

An eclipse will help here when the whole city is on fire! shouted the same voice. "Are there dead people, I ask?"

Do not know.

Dead people here, have you heard? And the rest of the stairs up to the drawing room, okay?

So, so, I understand.

And I was not yet dead, I belonged to the rest, and they carried me up the stairs.

At first they walked along a long, dimly lit corridor, with green, oil-painted walls, into which black, crooked, old-world clothes hooks were hammered; here the doors with enameled tablets appeared: 6-A and 6-B, between those doors hung, affectionately gleaming under glass in a black frame, Feiєrbach's "Medea" with a look into the distance; then there were doors with signs: 5-A and 5-B, and between them - "Boy taking out -" - a lovely, with a reddish tint, a photo in a brown frame.

And here is the column before the exit to the staircase, and the long, narrow frieze of the Parthenon behind it ... and everything else that has long been familiar: the Greek hoplite, armed to the heels, nazheniy and formidable, like an angry rooster. At the pomstka itself, on the yellow-painted wall, all of them were proud - from the great Elector to Hitler.<...>

And again my stretcher fell, swam past me ... now samples of the Aryan breed: a Nordic captain with an eagle-eyed and stupid mouth, a female model from the West Moselle, a little lean and bony, an Ostsee nasty with a bulbous nose and a borlakuvatim long profile of a Verkhovinian from the movies ; and then the corridor stretched out again ... I managed to see her too - with a chimney laurel wreath a table with the names of the fallen, with a large gold Iron Cross at the top.

All this passed very quickly: I was not heavy and the orderlies were in a hurry. It’s not a miracle, if I dreamed of it: I was burning all over, everything hurt me - my head, arms, legs; and the heart was rolling as if frantic. What can not be seen in delirium!

And when we passed the exemplary Aryans, everything else surfaced behind them: three piles - Caesar, Cicero and Marcus Aurelius ... And when we found around the corner, the Hermes column appeared ... In the window on the right I saw the glow of a fire - the whole sky it was red, and black, thick clouds of smoke floated solemnly over it.<...>

And again, in passing, I glanced to the left, and again I saw the doors with the signs: 01-A 01-B, and between these brown doors, as if soaked in cloak, I saw the mustache and the tip of Nietzsche's nose in a golden frame - the second half of the portrait was covered with paper with the inscription: “ Light surgery ".

If now, - flashed through my head, - if now. And here he was, he had already seen - the view of Togo ... wonderful oleography ... in the foreground of the picture was a large, life-size knitting of bananas - a bunch on the left, a bunch on the right, and it was on the middle banana in the right ketyagu that there was something- it is scrawled; I made out this inscription, because, it seems, I scribbled it myself.<...>

Here the doors of the drawing room opened wide, I influenced there under the image of Zeus and closed my eyes.

I didn't want to see anything else.<...>

The drawing room smelled of iodine, feces, gauze and tobacco, and there was a hubbub.

They put the stretcher on the floor, and I said to the orderlies:

Put a cigarette in my mouth, above, in my left pocket.

I felt someone groping in my pocket, then rubbed with a syringe, and a lit cigarette was in my mouth. I took a drag.

Thanks, I said.

All where, I thought, is not yet proof. After all, every gymnasium has drawing rooms, corridors with green and yellow walls and crooked, old-fashioned hooks in them, ultimately, the fact that Medea hangs between 6-A and 6-B is not yet proof that I'm in my school. Apparently, there are rules for classical grammar schools in Prussia, where it is said that it is there that they should hang ... After all, the jokes in all grammar schools are the same. Besides, maybe I was delirious with a fever.

I did not feel pain. I felt very bad in the car ... But now, perhaps, the injection began to work.<...>

This cannot be happening, I thought, the car simply could not drive such a long distance - thirty kilometers. And one more thing: you don't feel anything; no instinct tells you anything, only the eyes; no feeling tells you that you are in your school, in your school, which you dropped out just three months ago. Eight years - not this one, would you, having studied here for eight years, know all of us ourselves only with our eyes?<...>

I spat out a cigarette and screamed; when you scream easier, you just have to scream harder, screaming was so good, I screamed like a madman.<...>

What?

To drink, - I said, - and another cigarette, in my pocket, upstairs.

Again someone touched it in my pocket, rubbed it with a match again, and a lit cigarette was stuck in my mouth.

Where are we? I asked.

In Bendorf.

Thank you, ”I said, and took a drag.

Apparently, I'm still in Bendorf, that is, at home, and if I did not have this terrible fever, I could say for sure that I am in some kind of classic

gymnasiums; at least I'm in school - that's undeniable. Didn't that voice downstairs shout: "Remaining in the drawing room!" I was one of the others, was alive, alive, probably, and made up the "rest".<...>

Finally he brought me water, again he breathed the spirit of tobacco and onions on me, I involuntarily opened my eyes and saw a tired, old, unshaven face in a fireman's uniform, and an old voice said quietly:

Drink, buddy!

I started drinking, it was water, but water is a wonderful drink; I could feel the metallic taste of the cauldron on my lips, I was delighted to know that there was still a lot of water there, but the fireman unexpectedly took the cauldron away from my lips and walked away; I shouted, but he did not look back, he just shrugged his shoulders wearily and walked on; the wounded man lying next to me calmly said:

In vain to make noise, they have no water, you see.<...>

What city is this? - I asked the one who was lying next to me, Bendorf, - he said.

Now there was no longer any doubt that I was lying in the drawing room of a certain classical gymnasium in Bendorf. There are three classical grammar schools in Bendorf: the grammar school of Frederick the Great, the grammar school of Albert, and - perhaps it would be better not to say that - but the last, the third, was called the grammar school of Adolf Hitler.

Didn't such a bright, such beautiful, huge portrait of old Fritz hang on the staircase in the gymnasium of Frederick the Great? I spent eight years in that gymnasium, but couldn't such a portrait hang in another school in the same place, so bright that it immediately caught my eye; as soon as you step on the second floor?<...>

Now I heard heavy guns firing somewhere ... confidently and measuredly, and I thought: expensive guns! I know it’s mean, but I thought so ... As for me, there is something noble about cannons, even when they shoot. Such a solemn moon, just like in that war, about which they write in picture books ... Then I wondered how many names there will be on that table of the fallen, which, perhaps, will be nailed here later, decorating it with an even larger gold Iron Cross and adding more a large laurel wreath. And suddenly it occurred to me that when I really am at my school, then my name will be there, carved in stone, and in the school calendar opposite my surname it will be written He left school for the front and died for ... "

And I didn’t know yet why, and I didn’t know for sure yet, I’m at my school, I now wanted to find out about it.<...>

I looked around again, but ... My heart did not respond. Would it not have been offended even then if I had been in the room where for eight whole years I had been drawing vases and writing fonts? Slender, beautiful, exquisite vases, beautiful copies of Roman originals - the drawing teacher always put them on a stand in front of us - and all kinds of fonts: rondo, smooth, Roman, Italian. I hated those lessons above all else in the gymnasium, I died for hours from melancholy and never once did I really manage to draw a vase or write a letter. And where did my curses go, where did my burning hatred for these ostogidlichs, as if waning walls, go? Nothing in me was moving, and I silently shook my head.

Every now and then I erased, shaving a pencil, erased again ... And - nothing.<...>

I did not remember how I was wounded, I knew one thing: that I would not move my hands and right leg, only my left, and even then only half-covered. I thought maybe they had tied my arms so tightly to my torso that I could not move them.<...>

Finally a doctor appeared before me; he took off his glasses and, blinking, looked at me in silence ... I clearly saw behind the thick glasses big gray eyes with barely three-pointed pupils. He looked at me for so long that I averted my eyes, and then quietly said:

Wait a minute, it's your turn soon.<...>

I closed my eyes again and thought: you must, must find out what kind of wound you have and you really are at your school.<...>

So the orderlies entered the hall again, now they lifted me up and carried me there, behind the board. Once I swam past the door and, while sailing, noticed another sign: here, above the door, a cross once hung, as the gymnasium was also called the School of St. Thomas; They later removed the cross, but a fresh, dark yellow mark from it remained on that spot on the wall. Then they repainted the whole wall with evil, and the mark ... The cross was visible, and, as you look more closely, you could even see the uneven mark on the right end of the crossbeam, where the beech branch hung for years, which the watchman Birgeler clinging to.<...>All this flashed in my dining room in that brief moment, while they carried me behind the board, where a bright light was burning.

They put me on the operating table, and I saw myself well, only a small one, as if shortened, above, in the clear glass of a light bulb - such a short, white, narrow scroll of gauze, as if a chimeric, fragile cocoon; so it was my reflection.

The doctor turned his back on me and, bending over the table, rummaged through the instruments; an old, heavy fireman stood in front of the board and smiled at me; he smiled tiredly and sorrowfully, and his overgrown, unimpressed face looked as if he were asleep. And suddenly, behind his shoulders, on the unworn other side of the board, I saw something, from which for the first time since I was in this dead house my heart responded ... There was an inscription in my hand. Above, in the highest row. I know my hand; seeing your letter is worse than seeing yourself in the mirror is much more likely. I could not question the identity of my own letter ... There he is, still there, the expression that we were told to write then, in that hopeless life that ended only three months ago “Traveler, when will you come in the Spa ... "

Oh, I remember, the blackboard was not enough for me, and the drawing teacher shouted that I did not calculate properly, took large letters, and then, shaking his head, wrote in the same font below: “Empty, when you come to the Spa ... "

Seven times it was written there - in my letter, Latin script, Gothic italics, Roman, Italian And rondo "Traveler, when you come to the Spa ..."

At the silent doctors' call, the fireman stepped back from the blackboard, and I saw the whole statement, only a little spoiled, because I did not calculate properly, chose large letters, took too many points.

I jerked, feeling a prick in my left thigh, I wanted to get up on the lіkti and could not, but I managed to look at myself and saw - they had already unwound me - that I didn’t have both hands, I didn’t have my right leg, so I immediately fell on his back, because now he had nothing to lean on; I screamed; the doctor and the fireman looked at me in dismay; and the doctor just shrugged his shoulders and again pressed the plunger of the syringe, slowly and firmly went down; I wanted to look at the board again, but the fireman was now standing quite close to me and was replacing it; he held me tightly by the shoulders, and I heard only the spirit of grease and dirt that came from his uniform, I saw only his tired, mournful face; and suddenly I recognized him: it was Birgeler.

Milk, - I said quietly ...

There is a translation. Woe

The story is written in the first person, the events take place during the Second World War. In the title of the work, Belle uses the first lines of the famous epitaph to the three hundred Spartans who died defending themselves from the invasion of the Persians.

The ambulance, in which the hero is, drove up to the large gate. He saw the light. The car stopped. The first thing I heard was a tired voice asking if there were dead people in the car. The driver swore that there was so much light everywhere. But the same voice that asked about the dead remarked that there is no need to make an eclipse when the whole city is on fire. Then again they spoke briefly: about the dead, where to put them, and about the living, where to carry them. Since the hero is alive and realizes this, he is carried along with the other wounded into the drawing room. First, he sees a long corridor, or rather, its painted walls with old-fashioned coat hooks, then a door with signs hanging on classrooms: "6", "6 B", etc., then reproductions of paintings between these doors. The paintings are glorious: the best examples of art from antiquity to modern times. In front of the entrance to the landing there is a column, and behind it is a skillfully made plaster model of the frieze of the Parthenon. On the staircase there are images of the idols of mankind - from the ancient ones to Hitler. The orderlies carry the stretcher quickly, so the hero does not have time to realize everything that he sees, but it seems to him that everything is surprisingly familiar. For example, this table, entwined with a mantel laurel wreath with the names of those who fell in the previous war, with a large gold Iron Cross at the top. However, he thought, perhaps he was only dreaming of all this, for "everything hurt me - my head, arms, legs, and my heart was pounding like a frantic one." And again the hero sees the door with tablets and plaster copies of the busts of Caesar, Cicero, Marcus Aurelius. “And when we went around the corner, a Hermes column appeared, and further, in the depths of the corridor - the corridor here was painted pink, up to the very depths, above the doors of the drawing room, hung a huge face of Zeus, but it was still far away ... On the right in the window I saw the glow of a fire - the whole sky was red, and black, thick clouds of smoke were solemnly floating over it. " He noticed and recognized the beautiful view of Togo, and the bunch of bananas depicted on it in the foreground, even the inscription on the middle banana, because he himself had once scribbled one. “And now the doors of the drawing room opened wide, I fell there in the image of Zeus and closed my eyes. I didn't want to see anything else. the drawing room smelled of iodine, feces, gauze and tobacco and was noisy. "

The stretcher was placed on the floor. The hero asked for a cigarette, who stuck it already lit at the mouth. He lay and thought: everything that he saw is not yet proof. Not proof that he ended up in a school he left only three months ago. Apparently, all the gymnasiums are similar to each other, he thought, apparently there are rules that say, What exactly should hang there, the internal regulations for classical gymnasiums in Prussia. He could not believe that he was in his native school, because he did not feel anything. The pain that so tormented him on the road in the car passed, probably, the effect of what drugs were injected into him when he screamed. Closing his eyes, he recalled everything he had seen, as delirious, but he knew so well, because eight years was not a trifle. Namely, for eight years he went to the gymnasium, saw those classic works of art. He spat out a cigarette and screamed. "... When you shout, it becomes easier, you just have to shout louder, it was so good to shout and I shouted like a catechuchman." Whoever bent over him, he did not open his eyes, felt only a warm breath and "smelled cloyingly of tobacco and onions," and a voice calmly asked what he was shouting. The hero asked for a drink, a cigarette again and asked where he was. They answered him - in Bendorfi, i.e. in his hometown. If it were not for the fever, he would have recognized his grammar school, he would have felt what a person should feel in his native place, the hero thought. Finally water was brought to him. Involuntarily opening his eyes, he saw in front of him a tired, old, unshaven face, a fireman's uniform and heard an old voice. He drank, feeling with pleasure even the metallic taste of the pot on his lips, but the fireman suddenly took the pot away and walked away, not paying attention to his cries. The wounded man, who was lying next to him, explained: they have no water. The hero looked out the window, although it was darkened, "behind the black curtains it glowed and flickered, black on red, like in a stove, when you pour coal there." He saw: the city was burning, but did not want to believe that it was his hometown, so he once again asked the wounded man who was lying next to him: which city it was. And again I heard - Bendorf.

Now it should be doubted that he was lying in the drawing room of the classical gymnasium in Bendorfi, but he did not want to believe that this was exactly the gymnasium where he studied. He recalled that there were three such gymnasiums in the city, one of them "maybe it would have been better not to say this, but the last, the third, was called Adolf Hitler's gymnasium."

He heard the cannons hitting, he liked their music. "Those cannons hummed soothingly: dull and stern, like quiet, almost sublime organ music." That noble he heard in that music, "such a solemn echo, just like in that war, about which they write in books with pictures." Then I thought, how many names will be on that table of the fallen, which will be nailed here later. It suddenly occurred to him that his name would be carved into stone. As if this was the last thing in his life, he wanted to know by all means, this "yes" is the gymnasium and that drawing room, where he spent so many hours drawing vases and writing different fonts. He hated those lessons most of all in the gymnasium and died for hours from boredom and never once could properly draw a vase or write to Iteru. Now everything was indifferent to him, he could not even remember his hatred.

He did not remember how he was wounded, he only knew that he could not move his arms and right leg, but only slightly with his left. I hoped that they were strapped so tightly to the torso. He tried to move his hands and felt such pain that he screamed again: from pain and rage, his hands did not move. Finally the doctor leaned over him. A fireman stood behind him and spoke softly to the doctor in the ear. He looked at the guy for a long time, then said that soon it was his turn. Behind the board, where the light was shining, they carried it to a neighbor. Then nothing was heard until the orderlies wearily carried it out to the neighbor and carried him to the exit. The guy closed his eyes again and told himself that he had to find out what his wound was and if he was really at his school. Everything that his gaze rested on was distant and indifferent, "as if they had brought me to some museum of the dead in a world deeply alien to me and uninteresting, which for some reason my eyes recognized, but only my eyes." He could not believe that only three months had passed since the time he painted here, and at recess, taking his sandwich with jam, he went to the Birgeler's watchman to drink milk down in the cramped closet. He thought that his neighbor must have been carried to the place where the dead were laid, perhaps the dead were taken to Birgeler's little room, where when it smelled of warm milk.

The orderlies picked him up and carried him behind the board. A cross once hung over the door of the hall, therefore the gymnasium was also called the school of St. Thomas. Then “they” (the fascists) removed the cross, but a fresh trace remained on that city, so expressive that it could be seen better than the cross itself. Even when the wall was repainted, the cross came out again. Now he saw that cross mark.

There was an operating table behind the board, on which the hero was placed. For a moment he saw himself in the clear glass of the lamp, but it seemed to him that he was a short, narrow scroll of gauze. The doctor turned his back on him, fiddled with his instruments. The fireman stood in front of the board and smiled, tired and mournful. Suddenly, behind his shoulders, on the unwashed other side of the board, the hero saw something, from which his heart responded for the first time: “... somewhere in its secret corner a fright emerged, deep and terrible, and it began to beat in my chest - there was an inscription on the board with my hand. " “Here he is, still there, the expression that we were told to write then, in that hopeless life that ended only three months ago:“ Traveler, when you come to the Spa ... ”He remembered that he did not have enough blackboard then, he I didn’t calculate properly, took the letters that were too big. I remembered how the drawing teacher was shouting then, and then he wrote. a little spoiled, because the letters I chose are too big.

He heard a prick in his left thigh, wanted to get up on his elbows and could not, but managed to look at himself: both hands were missing, and his right leg was missing. He fell on his back, because he had nothing to lean on, and screamed. The doctor and the fireman looked at him in dismay. The hero once again wanted to look at the board, but the fireman stood so close, holding his shoulders tightly, that he stepped in, and the hero saw only a tired face. Suddenly, the hero found out about this to the fireman of the school watchman Birgeler. “Milk,” the hero said quietly.

Heinrich Böll

Traveler, when you come to the Spa

The car stopped, but the engine rumbled for several minutes; somewhere the gate swung open. A light entered the car through the broken window, and I saw that the light bulb in the ceiling was also smashed to smithereens; only its base was sticking out in the cartridge - a few gleaming wires with the remnants of glass. Then the engine stopped, and on the street someone shouted:

Dead here, have you dead here?

Damn it! Are you not darkening anymore? - the driver responded.

What the devil is to darken when the whole city burns like a torch, cried the same voice. - There are dead people, I ask?

Do not know.

Dead people here, do you hear? The rest are up the stairs to the drawing room, okay?

But I was not yet dead, I belonged to the rest, and they carried me to the drawing room, up the stairs. First they carried them down a long, dimly lit corridor with green, oil-painted walls and curved old-fashioned black hangers that were tightly embedded in them; small enamel tablets were white on the doors: "VIa" and "VIb"; between the doors, in a black frame, gleaming softly under the glass and looking into the distance, hung Feuerbach's Medea. Then came the doors marked "Va" and "Vb", and in between them was a snapshot from the sculpture "The Boy Pulling Out a Splinter," a superb red-gleaming photograph in a brown frame.

Here is the column in front of the entrance to the landing, behind it a wonderfully executed model - a long and narrow, truly antique frieze of the Parthenon made of yellowish plaster - and everything else that has long been familiar: a Greek warrior armed to the teeth, warlike and terrible, like a tousled rooster. In the stairwell itself, on the yellow-painted wall, everyone adorned - from the great Elector to Hitler ...

And on a small narrow platform, where for several seconds I managed to lie right on my stretcher, there was an unusually large, unusually bright portrait of old Friedrich - in a sky-blue uniform, with shining eyes and a large shiny golden star on his chest.

And again I lay on the side, and now I was carried past thoroughbred Aryan faces: a Nordic captain with an eagle's eyes and a stupid mouth, a native of the West Moselle, perhaps too thin and bony, an Ostsee scoffing with a bulbous nose, a long profile and a protruding Adam's apple of a cinematic highlander; and then we got to one more site, and again for several seconds I lay right on my stretcher, and even before the orderlies began to climb to the next floor, I managed to see it - a monument to a warrior decorated with a stone laurel wreath with a large gilded Iron Cross upstairs.

All this quickly flashed one after another: I am not heavy, and the orderlies were in a hurry. Of course, everything could only be imagined to me; I have a strong fever and absolutely everything hurts: my head, my legs, my arms, and my heart is pounding like crazy - what can not be imagined in such a heat.

But after the thoroughbred faces flashed through everything else: all three busts - Caesar, Cicero and Marcus Aurelius, side by side, amazing copies; quite yellow, antique and important they stood by the walls; when we turned the corner, I saw the column of Hermes, and at the very end of the corridor - this corridor was painted dark pink - at the very, very end, above the entrance to the drawing room, hung a large mask of Zeus; but it was still far from her. On the right in the window the glow of a fire glowed red, the whole sky was red, and dense black clouds of smoke were solemnly floating over it ...

And again I involuntarily shifted my gaze to the left and saw above the doors the signs “Xa” and “Xb”, and between these brown doors, as if smelling of musty, Nietzsche's mustache and pointed nose were visible in a golden frame, the second half of the portrait was pasted over with a piece of paper with the inscription “Easy surgery "...

If it is now ... flashed through my head. If there is now ... But here it is, I see it: the picture depicting the African colony of Germany in Togo is motley and large, flat, like an old engraving, magnificent oleography. In the foreground, in front of the colonial houses, in front of the Negroes and the German soldier, who is not knowing why sticking out here with his rifle, - in the very, very foreground a large, life-size bunch of bananas was turning yellow; on the left is a bunch, on the right is a bunch, and on one banana in the very middle of this right bunch there is something scrawled, I saw it; I myself, it seems, and scribbled ...

But then the door to the drawing room opened with a jerk, and I swam under the mask of Zeus and closed my eyes. I didn't want to see anything else. The hall smelled of iodine, feces, gauze and tobacco and was noisy. They put the stretcher on the floor, and I said to the orderlies:

Put a cigarette in my mouth. In the upper left pocket.

I felt someone else's hands fumbled in my pocket, then a match struck, and a lit cigarette was in my mouth. I took a drag.

Thanks, I said.

All this, I thought, proves nothing yet. After all, every gymnasium has a drawing room; there are corridors with green and yellow walls in which curved old-fashioned dress hangers stick out; after all, this is not yet proof that I am in my school, if between IVa and IVb hangs "Medea", and between "Xa" and "Xb" - Nietzsche's mustache. Undoubtedly, there are rules where it is said that this is where they should hang. Internal regulations for classical grammar schools in Prussia: "Medea" - between "IVa" and "IVb", in the same place "The boy pulling out a splinter", in the next corridor - Caesar, Marcus Aurelius and Cicero, and Nietzsche on the top floor, where study philosophy. Frieze of the Parthenon and universal oleography - Togo. "The boy pulling out a splinter" and the frieze of the Parthenon are, after all, nothing more than good old school props passed from generation to generation, and I am probably not the only one who took it into his head to write "Long live that one!" On a banana. And the antics of schoolchildren, in the end, are always the same. And besides, it is quite possible that from the intense fever I began to delirium.

I didn't feel pain now. In the car I still suffered a lot; when she was thrown on small potholes, I started screaming every time. Deep funnels are better: the car rises and falls like a ship on the waves. Now the injection seems to have worked; Somewhere in the dark, they put a syringe in my hand, and I felt the needle pierce the skin and my leg became hot ...

Yes, this is simply impossible, I thought, the car probably did not cover such a long distance - almost thirty kilometers. And besides, you do not feel anything, nothing in your soul tells you that you are in your school, in the very school that you left just three months ago. Eight years is not a trifle, do you really know all this only with your eyes after eight years?

I closed my eyes and again saw everything like in the film: the lower corridor painted with green paint, a staircase with yellow walls, a monument to a warrior, a platform, the next floor: Caesar, Marcus Aurelius ... Hermes, Nietzsche's mustache, Togo, Zeus's mask ...

I spat out a cigarette and screamed; when you shout, it becomes easier, you just need to shout louder; screaming is so good, I screamed like crazy. Someone bent over me, but I did not open my eyes, I felt someone else's breath, warm, disgustingly smelling of a mixture of onions and tobacco, and I heard a voice that calmly asked:

What are you shouting for?

Drink, I said. - And another cigarette. In the top pocket.

Again someone else's hand fumbled in my pocket, again struck a match and someone thrust a lighted cigarette into my mouth.

Where are we? I asked.

In Bendorf.

Thank you, ”I said, and took a drag.

After all, apparently, I really am in Bendorf, which means at home, and if it were not for such a strong fever, I