Free The Train Was On Time by Heinrich Böll Page B

blowing up tanks too, and years ago the Sudeten medals with the tiny shield showing Hradshin Castle. In ’thirty-eight.” They continued to look at him as if he were talking Greek, their eyes were still puzzled, and he reddened still further.
    “For God’s sake,” he almost shouted, “we had a factory back home!”
    “Oh,” said the two others.
    “Yes, a patriotic-flag factory.”
    “A flag factory?” Willi asked.
    “Yes, that’s what they called it, of course we made flags too. Truckloads of flags, I’m telling you, years ago … let’s see … in ’thirty-three, I think it was. Of course, that’s when it must have been. But mostly we made medals and trophies and badges for clubs, you know the sort of thing, little shields saying: ‘Club Champion 1934,’ or some such thing. And badges for athletic clubs and swastika pins and those little enamel flags to pin on. Red-white-and-blue, or the French vertical blue-white-and-red. We exported a lot. But since the war we’ve only made for ourselves. Wound badges too, hugequantities of those. Black, silver, and gold. But black, huge quantities of black. We made a lot of money. And old medals from World War I, we made those too, and combat badges, and the little ribbons you wear with civilian dress. Yes …” he sighed, broke off, glanced once more at the Crimea badge of the soldier who was leaning on the window and still smoking his pipe, and then he started to play again. Slowly, slowly the light bgean to fade … and suddenly, without transition, twilight was there, welling up stronger and darker until evening swiftly came, and you could sense the cool night on the threshold. The blond fellow went on playing his swampy melodies that wafted dreamily into them like drugs … Sivash, Andreas thought, I must pray for the men beside the cannon in the Sivash marshes before I go to sleep. He realized he was beginning to doze off again, his last night but one. He prayed … prayed … but the words got mixed up, everything became blurred.… Willie’s wife in her red pajamas … the eyes … the smug little Frenchman … the blond fellow, and the one who had said: Practically speaking, practically speaking we’ve already won the war.
    This time he woke up because the train stopped for a long time. At a railway station it was different, you turned over with a yawn and could feel the impatience in the wheels, and you knew the train would soon be under way. But this time the train stopped for so long that the wheels seemed frozen to the rails. The train was at a standstill. Not at a station, not on a siding. Half-asleep, Andreas groped his way to his feet and saw everyone crowding around the windows. He felt rather forlorn, all by himself like that in the dark corridor, especially since he couldn’t spot Willi and the blond fellow right away. They must be up front by the windows. It was dark outside and cold, and he guessed it was at least one or two in the morning. He heard railroad cars rumbling past outside, and he heard soldiers singing in them … their stale, stupid, fatuous songs that were sodeeply buried in their guts that they had worn a groove like a tune in a record, and as soon as they opened their mouths they sang, sang those songs: Heidemarie and Jolly Huntsman.… He had sung them too sometimes, without knowing or wanting to, those songs that had been sunk into them, buried in them, drilled into them so as to kill their thoughts. These were the songs they were now shouting into the dark, somber, sorrowful Polish night, and it seemed to Andreas that far off, somewhere far away he would be able to hear an echo, beyond the somber invisible horizon, a mocking, diminutive, and very distinct echo … Jolly Huntsman … Jolly Huntsman … Heidemarie. A lot of cars must have passed, then no more, and everyone left the windows and went back to their places. Including Willi and the blond fellow.
    “The S.S.,” said Willi. “They’re