Group Portrait with Lady by Heinrich Böll

Author:Heinrich Böll
Language: eng
Format: azw3
ISBN: 9781935554967
Publisher: Melville House
Published: 2011-04-04T23:00:00+00:00

A kind of summary would seem to be in order here, as well as a few questions to be answered by the reader himself. First, the statistical and external details. To imagine Pelzer as a cigar-smoking, shifty individual would be mistaken. He was (and is) very clean, attired in custom-made suits, wore (and wears) the latest thing in ties, which do, in fact, still look good on the seventy-year-old Pelzer. He smokes cigarettes, was (and is) a perfect gentleman, and if he has once been described here as having spat, it must be added that he spits very seldom, almost never, and in that instance his spitting operates as historical punctuation, possibly even as an indication of partiality. He lives in a villa that he does not call a villa. He is six foot one, weighs—according to his son, who is a doctor and whose patient he is—171 pounds, with very thick hair that was once dark and is now just beginning to turn gray. Must we really regard him as the classic example of mens sana in corpore sano? Has he ever known S., or T. and W.? Although his sense of confidence in Being seems to be complete, not one of the eight adjectives listed in the paragraph on L. would be applicable to his L., and his occasional smile has always resembled the Mona Lisa’s rather than Buddha’s. Taking him as a person who does not shrink from external conflicts and knows no inner ones, who by 1944 has reached the age of forty-four without ever experiencing an inner conflict, has increased his father’s business fivefold, and does not shrink from the “every little bit” that “helps,” it must be realized that at the relatively advanced age of forty-four he was for the first time catapulted out of his total sense of confidence in Being and is now entering upon virgin territory with some trepidation.

Then if we take one of his most marked characteristics, an almost inordinately powerful sensuality (his breakfast habits are a perfect reflection of Leni’s), the conflict in which he found himself from the middle of 1944 on may perhaps be imagined; and if we take a further marked characteristic of Pelzer’s, an almost inordinately high vitality, the conflict in which he found himself after the events of July 1944 can be imagined. The Au. has in his possession some detailed information that may serve to typify Pelzer’s behavior at approximately the end of the war.

On March 1, 1945, a few days before the Americans marched into the city, Pelzer announced, by way of registered letter, his resignation from both Party and Storm Troopers, dissociated himself from the crimes of this organization, and declared himself (the certified copy of this letter may be inspected at the Au.’s) to be “a decent German who was duped and led astray.” He must actually have managed to find, almost on the eve of the arrival of the Americans, a German post office that was still functioning, or at least a responsible post-office official.

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