Free Irish Journal by Heinrich Böll

is simply weather, and weather means rough weather. It reminds us forcibly that its element is water, falling water. And water is hard. During the war I once watched a burning aircraft going down on the Atlantic coast; the pilot landed it on the beach and fled from the exploding machine. Later I asked him why he hadn’t landed the burning plane on the water, and he replied:
    “Because water is harder than sand.”
    I never believed him, but now I understood: water is hard.
    And how much water can collect over three thousand miles of ocean, water that rejoices in at last reaching people, houses, terra firma, after having fallen only into water, only into itself. How can rain enjoy always falling into water?
    When the electric light goes out, when the first tongue of a puddle licks its way under the door, silent and smooth, gleaming in the firelight; when the toys which the children have left lying around, when corks and bits of wood suddenly startfloating and are borne forward by the tongue, when the children come downstairs, scared, and huddle in front of the fire (more surprised than scared, for they also sense the joy in this meeting of wind and rain and that this howling is a howl of delight), then we know we would not have been as worthy of the ark as Noah was.…
    Inlander’s madness, to open the door to see what’s up outside. Everything’s up: the roof tiles, the roof gutters, even the house walls, do not inspire much confidence (for here they build temporarily, although, if they don’t emigrate, they live forever in these temporary quarters—while in Europe they build for eternity without knowing whether the next generation will benefit from so much solidity).
    It is a good thing always to have candles, the Bible, and a little whisky in the house, like sailors prepared for a storm; also a pack of cards, some tobacco, knitting needles and wool for the women; for the storm has a lot of breath, the rain holds a lot of water, and the night is long. Then when a second tongue of rain advances from the window and joins the first one, when the toys float slowly along the narrow tongue toward the window, it is a good thing to look up in the Bible whether the promise to send no more floods has really been given. It has been given: we can light the next candle, the next cigarette, shuffle the cards again, pour some more whisky, abandon ourselves to the drumming of the rain, the howling of the wind, the click of the knitting needles. The promise has been given.
    It was some time before we heard the knocking on the door—at first we had taken it for the banging of a loose bolt, then for the rattle of the storm, then we realized it was human hands, and the naïveté of the Continental mentality can be measured from the fact that I expressed the opinion it might be the man from the electric company. Almost as naïve as expecting the bailiff to appear on the high seas.
    Quickly the door was opened, a dripping figure of a man pulled in, the door shut, and there he stood; with his cardboardsuitcase sopping wet, water running out of his sleeves, his shoes, from his hat, it almost seemed as if water were running out of his eyes—this is how swimmers look after taking part in a life-saving contest fully clothed; but such ambitions were foreign to this man: he had merely come from the bus stop, fifty paces through this rain, had mistaken our house for his hotel, and was by occupation a clerk in a law office in Dublin.
    “D’you mean to say the bus is running in this weather?”
    “Yes,” he said, “it is, and only a bit behind schedule. But it was more of a swim than a drive … and you’re sure this isn’t a hotel?”
    “Yes, but.…”
    He—Dermot was his name—turned out, when he was dry, to know his Bible, to be a good card-player, a good storyteller, a good whisky-drinker; moreover, he showed us how to bring water quickly to the boil on a tripod in the fireplace, how to broil lamb chops on the same ancient tripod,