On this episode, Peter Orner and Yvette Benavides discuss “The Death of Elsa Baskoleit” by Heinrich Böll. And stay tuned for a bonus discussion about another Heinrich Böll story, “Parting.”
On "The Lonely Voice" podcast, where we celebrate the short story, we were bound to get around to Heinrich Böll. What took us so long? He was a master of the 20th century short story–and he was prolific.
He was German and chronicled World War II, the bleakest of postwar years, but also the rebirth and prosperity of the country over the next three decades.
His themes can be rather bleak — about the hypocrisy of governments, about alienation. But in his short stories he also endowed his characters with a sense of decency and dignity—and of an understanding that they deserve good things in this life, that, in fact, they should want those things for themselves.
Böll was considered one of the greatest German writers and he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1972.
We see in his stories the need he felt to center the moral duty of writers to address social and political issues of their time. But like all of the great masters of the short story, his stories are for all time — even today, perhaps especially so, for us Lonely Voices.
"The Death of Elsa Baskoleit"
In the story “The Death of Elsa Baskoleit,” the protagonist describes the rather neglected neighborhood where he grew up. Mr. Baskoleit was a grocer. He puts on as if he has no patience for the children who run around making noise. He grunts and complains, but he gives them apples to eat—an important act of kindness.
The protagonist is taken with the nightly view he has of the grocer’s daughter, Elsa–clad in green and pirouetting at the window. He is entranced. Soon, he comes to see that the neighbors don’t like what they see. There is something vulgar or unseemly they find in her dancing.
The boy’s family moves away from the neighborhood. Years pass. A war comes—a long one. And on the occasion of his return to the old building as an adult he learns of Elsa’s death.
What happens next is an echo or homage to Anton Chekhov’s story “Misery,” but Böll’s story must be taken on its own. This particular situation of a parent losing a child is so beyond imagining, so beyond language or words. It can only be articulated as a story — in a fiction — for the rest of us to understand what it means to be bereft, what it means to lose almost everything and let that loss color every interaction—for all the years to come.
“Parting”
Maybe we’ve all had this kind of situation with someone — a friend or loved one or lover — where we’ve said our solemn goodbye and braced ourselves for a parting. But then we’re still standing around together, standing at the gate or the platform … or maybe the car won’t start and we keep on saying good bye, keep making small talk as if we’ve just met, only occasionally dipping into the ancient history, remarking on a happier moment, a shared laugh, a time when saying goodbye didn’t even seem like the final chapter we’d ever have to write.
Heinrich Böll is the author of “The Death of Elsa Baskoleit” and “The Parting.”
