Heinrich
Boll
CHRISTMAS EVERY DAY
Symptoms of decline have become evident in our family.
For a time we were at pains to disregard them, but now we have
resolved to face the danger. I dare not, as yet, use the word break–
down, but disturbing facts are piling up at such a rate as to constitute
a menace and to compel me to report things that will sound disagree–
able to my contemporaries; no one, however, can dispute their reality.
The minute fungi of destruction have found lodgement beneath the
hard, thick crust of respectability; colonies of deadly parasites that
proclaim the end of a whole tribe's irreproachable correctness. Today
we must deplore our disregard of Cousin Franz, who began long
ago to warn us of the dreadful consequences that would result from
an event that was harmless enough
in
itself. So insignificant indeed
was the event that the disproportion of the consequences now terrifies
us. Franz warned us betimes. Unfortunately he had too little standing.
He had chosen a calling that no member of the family had ever
followed before, and none ever should have: he was a boxer. Melan–
choly even in youth and possessed by a devoutness that was always
described as "pious fiddle-faddle," he early adopted ways that wor–
ried my Uncle Franz, that good, kind man. He was wont to neglect
his schoolwork to a quite abnormal degree. He used to meet dis–
reputable companions in the thickets and deserted parks of the
suburbs, and there practice the rough discipline of the prize fight,
with no thought for
his
neglected humanistic heritage. These young–
sters early revealed the vices of their generation, which, as has since
become abundantly evident, is really worthless. The exciting spiritual
combats of earlier centuries simply did not interest them; they were
far too concerned with the dubious excitements of their own. At
first I thought Franz's piety in contradiction to his systematic exercises
in passive and active brutality. But today I begin to suspect a con–
nection. This is a subject I shall have to return to.
