The Collected Stories of Heinrich Boll (62 page)
Read The Collected Stories of Heinrich Boll Online
Authors: Heinrich Boll
Murke continued along the corridor, got into the paternoster, and was carried down. On this side of the building the Schrumsnot ashtrays, which had won a Good Design Award, had already been installed. They hung next to the illuminated red figures indicating the floor: a red four, a Schrumsnot ashtray, a red three, a Schrumsnot ashtray, a red two, a Schrumsnot ashtray. They were handsome ashtrays, scallop-shaped, made of beaten copper, the copper base an exotic marine plant, nodular seaweed—and each ashtray had cost two hundred and fifty-eight marks and seventy-seven pfennigs. They were so handsome that Murke could never bring himself to soil them with cigarette ash, let alone anything as sordid as a butt. Other smokers all seemed to have had the same feeling—empty packs, butts, and ash littered the floor under the handsome ashtrays. Apparently no one had the courage to use them as ashtrays; they were copper, burnished, forever empty.
Murke saw the fifth ashtray next to the illuminated red zero rising toward him; the air was getting warmer, there was a smell of food. Murke jumped off and stumbled into the coffeeshop. Three freelance colleagues were sitting at a table in the corner. The table was covered with used plates, cups, and saucers.
The three men were the joint authors of a radio series, “The Lung, A Human Organ”; they had collected their fee together, breakfasted together, were having a drink together, and were now throwing dice for the expense voucher. One of them, Wendrich, Murke knew well, but just then Wendrich shouted “Art!”—“Art,” he shouted again, “art, art!” and Murke felt a spasm, like the frog when Galvani discovered electricity. The last two days Murke had heard the word “art” too often, from Bur-Malottke’s lips; it occurred exactly one hundred and thirty-four times in the two talks, and he had heard the talks three times,
which meant he had heard the word “art” four hundred and two times, too often to feel any desire to discuss it. He squeezed past the counter toward a booth in the far corner and was relieved to find it empty. He sat down, lit his cigarette, and when Wulla, the waitress, came, he said, “Apple juice, please,” and was glad when Wulla went off again at once. He closed his eyes tight, but found himself listening willy-nilly to the conversation of the free-lance writers over in the corner, who seemed to be having a heated argument about art; each time one of them shouted “Art,” Murke winced. It’s like being whipped, he thought.
When she brought him the apple juice, Wulla looked at him in concern. She was tall and strongly built, but not fat; she had a healthy, cheerful face. As she poured the apple juice from the jug into the glass, she said, “You ought to take a vacation, sir, and quit smoking.”
She used to call herself Wilfriede-Ulla, but later, for the sake of simplicity, she combined the names into Wulla. She especially admired the people from the Cultural Department.
“Lay off, will you?” said Murke. “Please!”
“And you ought to take some nice ordinary girl to the movies one night,” said Wulla.
“I’ll do that this evening,” said Murke, “I promise you.”
“It doesn’t have to be one of those dolls,” said Wulla, “just some nice, quiet, ordinary girl, with a kind heart. There are still some of those around.”
“Yes,” said Murke, “I know they’re still around, as a matter of fact I know one.” Well, that’s fine then, thought Wulla, and went over to the freelancers, one of whom had ordered three drinks and three coffees. Poor fellows, thought Wulla, art will be the death of them yet. She had a soft spot for the freelancers and was always trying to persuade them to economize. The minute they have any money, she thought, they blow it; she went up to the counter and, shaking her head, passed on the order for the three drinks and the three coffees.
Murke drank some of the apple juice, stubbed out his cigarette in the ashtray, and thought with apprehension of the hours from eleven to one when he had to cut up Bur-Malottke’s sentences and paste them into the right places in the talks. At two o’clock the director wanted both talks played back to him in his studio. Murke thought about soap, about staircases, steep stairs, and roller coasters, he thought
about the dynamic personality of the director, he thought about Bur-Malottke, and was startled by the sight of Schwendling coming into the coffeeshop.
Schwendling had on a shirt of large red and black checks and made a beeline for the booth where Murke was hiding. Schwendling was humming the tune which was very popular just then: “Take my lips, just as they are, they’re so lovely …” He stopped short when he saw Murke, and said, “Hello, you here? I thought you were busy carving up that crap of Bur-Malottke’s.”
“I’m going back at eleven,” said Murke.
“Wulla, let’s have some beer,” shouted Schwendling over to the counter, “a pint. Well,” he said to Murke, “you deserve extra time off for that, it must be a filthy job. The old man told me all about it.”
Murke said nothing, and Schwendling went on, “Have you heard the latest about Muckwitz?”
Murke, not interested, first shook his head, then for politeness’s sake asked, “What’s he been up to?”
Wulla brought the beer. Schwendling swallowed some, paused for effect, and announced, “Muckwitz is doing a feature about the Steppes.”
Murke laughed and said, “What’s Fenn doing?”
“Fenn,” said Schwendling, “Fenn’s doing a feature about the Tundra.”
“And Weggucht?”
“Weggucht is doing a feature about me, and after that I’m going to do a feature about him, you know the old saying: ‘You feature me, I’ll feature you …” ’
Just then one of the freelancers jumped up and shouted across the room, “Art—art—that’s the only thing that matters!”
Murke ducked, like a soldier when he hears the mortars being fired from the enemy trenches. He swallowed another mouthful of apple juice and winced again when a voice over the loudspeaker said, “Herr Murke is wanted in Studio 13—Herr Murke is wanted in Studio 13.” He looked at his watch; it was only half-past ten, but the voice went on relentlessly, “Herr Murke is wanted in Studio 13—Herr Murke is wanted in Studio 13.” The loudspeaker hung above the counter, immediately below the motto the director had had painted on the wall: “D
ISCIPLINE
A
BOVE
A
LL
.”
“Well,” said Schwendling, “that’s it, you’d better go.”
“Yes,” said Murke, “that’s it.”
He got up, put money for the apple juice on the table, pressed past the freelancers’ table, got into the paternoster outside, and was carried up once more past the five Schrumsnot ashtrays. He saw his Sacred Heart picture still sticking in the assistant producer’s doorframe and thought: Thank God, now there’s at least one corny picture in this place.
He opened the door of the studio booth, saw the technician sitting alone and relaxed in front of three cardboard boxes, and asked wearily, “What’s up?”
“They were ready sooner than expected, and we’ve got an extra half hour in hand,” said the technician. “I thought you’d be glad of the extra time.”
“I certainly am,” said Murke. “I’ve got an appointment at one. Let’s get on with it, then. What’s the idea of the boxes?”
“Well,” said the technician, “for each grammatical case I’ve got one box—the nominatives in the first, the genitives in the second, and in that one”—he pointed to the little box on the right with the words “Pure Chocolate” on it—“in that one I have the two vocatives, the good one in the right-hand corner, the bad one in the left.”
“That’s terrific,” said Murke. “So you’ve already cut up the crap.”
“That’s right,” said the technician, “and if you’ve made a note of the order in which the cases have to be spliced, it won’t take us more than an hour. Did you write it down?”
“Yes, I did,” said Murke. He pulled a piece of paper from his pocket with the numbers one to twenty-seven; each number was followed by a grammatical case.
Murke sat down, held out his cigarette pack to the technician; they both smoked while the technician laid the cut tapes with Bur-Malottke’s talks on the roll.
“In the first cut,” said Murke, “we have to stick in a nominative.”
The technician put his hand into the first box, picked up one of the snippets, and stuck it into the space.
“Next comes a genitive,” said Murke.
They worked swiftly, and Murke was relieved that it all went so fast.
“Now,” he said, “comes the vocative; we’ll take the bad one, of course.”
The technician laughed and stuck Bur-Malottke’s bad vocative into the tape.
“Next,” he said, “next!”
“Genitive,” said Murke.
The director conscientiously read every letter from a listener. The one he was reading at this particular moment went as follows:
Dear Radio,
I am sure you can have no more faithful listener than myself. I am an old woman, a little old lady of seventy-seven, and I have been listening to you every day for thirty years. I have never been sparing with my praise. Perhaps you remember my letter about the program “The Seven Souls of Kaweida the Cow.” It was a lovely program—but now I have to be angry with you! The way the canine soul is being neglected in radio is gradually becoming a disgrace. And you call that humanism. I am sure Hitler had his bad points: if one is to believe all one hears, he was a dreadful man, but one thing he did have: a real affection for dogs, and he did a lot for them. When are dogs going to come into their own again in German radio? The way you tried to do it in the program “Like Cat and Dog” is certainly not the right one: it was an insult to every canine soul. If my little Lohengrin could only talk, he’d tell you! And the way he barked, poor darling, all through your terrible program, it almost made me die of shame. I pay my two marks a month like any other listener and stand on my rights and demand to know: When are dogs going to come into their own again in German radio?
With kind regards—in spite of my being so cross with you,
Sincerely yours,
Jadwiga Herchen
(retired)
P.S. In case none of those cynics of yours who run your programs should be capable of doing justice to the canine soul, I suggest
you make use of my modest attempts, which are enclosed herewith. I do not wish to accept any fee. You may send it direct to the SPCA. Enclosed: 35 manuscripts.
Yours,
J.H.
The director sighed. He looked for the scripts, but his secretary had evidently filed them away. The director filled his pipe, lit it, ran his tongue over his dynamic lips, lifted the receiver, and asked to be put through to Krochy. Krochy had a tiny office with a tiny desk, although in the best of taste, upstairs in Culture and was in charge of a section as narrow as his desk: Animals in the World of Culture.
“Krochy speaking,” he said diffidently into the telephone.
“Say, Krochy,” said the director, “when was the last time we had a program about dogs?”
“Dogs, sir?” said Krochy. “I don’t believe we ever have, at least not since I’ve been here.”
“And how long have you been here, Krochy?” And upstairs in his office Krochy trembled, because the director’s voice was so gentle; he knew it boded no good when that voice became gentle.
“I’ve been here ten years now, sir,” said Krochy.
“It’s a disgrace,” said the director, “that you’ve never had a program about dogs; after all, that’s your department. What was the title of your last program?”
“The title of my last program was—” stammered Krochy.
“You don’t have to repeat every sentence,” said the director, “we’re not in the army.”
“ ‘Owls in the Ruins,’” said Krochy timidly.
“Within the next three weeks,” said the director, gentle again now, “I would like to hear a program about the canine soul.”
“Certainly, sir,” said Krochy. He heard the click as the director put down the receiver, sighed deeply, and said, “Oh, God!”
The director picked up the next letter.
At this moment Bur-Malottke entered the room. He was always at liberty to enter unannounced, and he made frequent use of this liberty. He was still sweating as he sank wearily into a chair opposite the director and said, “Well, good morning.”
“Good morning,” said the director, pushing the letter aside. “What can I do for you?”
“Could you give me one minute?”
“Bur-Malottke,” said the director, with a generous, dynamic gesture, “does not have to ask me for one minute; hours, days, are at your disposal.”
“No,” said Bur-Malottke, “I don’t mean an ordinary minute. I mean one minute of radio time. Due to the changes, my talk has become one minute longer.”
The director grew serious, like a satrap distributing provinces. “I hope,” he said sourly, “it’s not a political minute.”
“No,” said Bur-Malottke, “it’s half a minute of ‘Neighborly News’ and half a minute of Light Entertainment.”
“Thank God for that,” said the director. “I’ve got a credit of seventy-nine seconds with Light Entertainment and eighty-three seconds with ‘Neighborly News.’ I’ll be glad to let someone like Bur-Malottke have one minute.”
“I am overcome,” said Bur-Malottke.
“Is there anything else I can do for you?” asked the director.
“I would appreciate it,” said Bur-Malottke, “if we could gradually start correcting all the tapes I have made since 1945. One day,” he said—he passed his hand over his forehead and gazed wistfully at the genuine Kokoschka above the director’s desk—“one day I shall”—he faltered, for the news he was about to break to the director was too painful for posterity—“one day I shall … die,” and he paused again, giving the director a chance to look gravely shocked and raise his hand in protest, “and I cannot bear the thought that after my death, tapes may be run off on which I say things I no longer believe in. Particularly in some of my political utterances, during the fervor of 1945, I let myself be persuaded to make statements which today fill me with serious misgivings and which I can only account for on the basis of that spirit of youthfulness that has always distinguished my work. My written works are already in process of being corrected, and I would like to ask you to give me the opportunity of correcting my spoken works as well.”
The director was silent; he cleared his throat slightly, and little shining beads of sweat appeared on his forehead. It occurred to him that Bur-Malottke had spoken for at least an hour every month since
1945, and he made a swift calculation while Bur-Malottke went on talking: twelve times ten hours meant one hundred and twenty hours of spoken Bur-Malottke.
“Pedantry,” Bur-Malottke was saying, “is something that only impure spirits regard as unworthy of genius; we know, of course”—and the director felt flattered to be ranked by the We among the pure spirits—“that the true geniuses, the great geniuses, were pedants. Himmelsheim once had a whole printed edition of his
Seelon
rebound at his own expense because he felt that three or four sentences in the central portion of the work were no longer appropriate. The idea that some of my talks might be broadcast which no longer correspond to my convictions when I depart this earthly life—I find such an idea intolerable. How do you propose we go about it?”
The beads of sweat on the director’s forehead had become larger. “First of all,” he said in a subdued voice, “an exact list would have to be made of all your broadcast talks, and then we would have to check in the archives to see if all the tapes were still there.”
“I should hope,” said Bur-Malottke, “that none of the tapes has been erased without notifying me. I have not been notified, therefore no tapes have been erased.”
“I will see to everything,” said the director.
“Please do,” said Bur-Malottke curtly, and rose from his chair. “Goodbye.”
“Goodbye,” said the director as he accompanied Bur-Malottke to the door.
The freelancers in the coffeeshop had decided to order lunch. They had had some more drinks, they were still talking about art, their conversation was quieter now but no less intense. They all jumped to their feet when Wanderburn suddenly came in. Wanderburn was a tall, despondent-looking writer with dark hair, an attractive face somewhat etched by the stigma of fame. On this particular morning he had not shaved, which made him look even more attractive. He walked over to the table where the three men were sitting, sank exhausted into a chair, and said, “For God’s sake, give me a drink. I always have the feeling in this building that I’m dying of thirst.”
They passed him a drink, a glass that was still standing on the table, and the remains of a bottle of soda water. Wanderburn swallowed the drink, put down his glass, looked at each of the three men in turn, and said, “I must warn you about the radio business, about this pile of junk—this immaculate, shiny, slippery pile of junk. I’m warning you. It’ll destroy us all.” His warning was sincere and impressed the three young men very much; but the three young men did not know that Wanderburn had just come from the accounting department, where he had picked up a nice fat fee for a quick job of editing the Book of Job.
“They cut us,” said Wanderburn, “they consume our substance, splice us together again, and it’ll be more than any of us can stand.”
He finished the soda water, put the glass down on the table, and, his coat flapping despondently about him, strode to the door.
On the dot of noon Murke finished the splicing. They had just stuck in the last snippet, a genitive, when Murke got up. He already had his hand on the doorknob when the technician said, “I wish I could afford a sensitive and expensive conscience like that. What’ll we do with the box?” He pointed to the flat tin lying on the shelf next to the cardboard boxes containing the new tapes.
“Just leave it there,” said Murke.
“What for?”
“We might need it again.”
“D’you think he might get pangs of conscience all over again?”
“He might,” said Murke. “We’d better wait and see. So long.” He walked to the front paternoster, rode down to the second floor, and for the first time that day entered his office. His secretary had gone to lunch; Murke’s boss, Humkoke, was sitting by the phone reading a book. He smiled at Murke, got up, and said, “Well, I see you survived. Is this your book? Did you put it on the desk?” He held it out for Murke to read the title, and Murke said, “Yes, that’s mine.” The book had a jacket of green, gray, and orange and was called
Batley’s Lyrics of the Gutter;
it was about a young English writer a hundred years ago who had drawn up a catalog of London slang.
“It’s a marvelous book,” said Murke.
“Yes,” said Humkoke, “it is marvelous, but you never learn.”
Murke eyed him questioningly.
“You never learn that one doesn’t leave marvelous books lying
around when Wanderburn is liable to turn up, and Wanderburn is always liable to turn up. He saw it at once, of course, opened it, read it for five minutes, and what’s the result?”
Murke said nothing.
“The result,” said Humkoke, “is two hour-long broadcasts by Wanderburn on ‘Lyrics of the Gutter.’ One day this fellow will do a feature about his own grandmother, and the worst of it is that one of his grandmothers was one of mine too. Please, Murke, try to remember: never leave marvelous books around when Wanderburn is liable to turn up, and, I repeat, he’s always liable to turn up. That’s all, you can go now, you’ve got the afternoon off, and I’m sure you’ve earned it. Is the stuff ready? Did you hear it through again?”
“It’s all done,” said Murke, “but I can’t hear the talks through again, I simply can’t.”
“ ‘I simply can’t’ is a very childish thing to say,” said Humkoke.
“If I have to hear the word ‘art’ one more time today, I’ll become hysterical,” said Murke.
“You already are,” said Humkoke, “and I must say you’ve every reason to be. Three hours of Bur-Malottke—that’s too much for anybody, even the toughest of us, and you’re not even tough.” He threw the book on the table, took a step toward Murke, and said, “When I was your age I once had to cut three minutes out of a four-hour speech of Hitler’s, and I had to listen to the speech three times before I was considered worthy of suggesting which three minutes should be cut. When I began listening to the tape for the first time I was still a Nazi, but by the time I had heard the speech for the third time I wasn’t a Nazi anymore. It was a drastic cure—a terrible one, but very effective.”
“You forget,” said Murke quietly, “that I had already been cured of Bur-Malottke before I had to listen to his tapes.”
“You really are a vicious beast!” said Humkoke with a laugh. “That’ll do for now. The director is going to hear it through again at two. Just see that you’re available in case anything goes wrong.”
“I’ll be home from two to three,” said Murke.
“One more thing,” said Humkoke, pulling out a yellow biscuit tin from a shelf next to Murke’s desk. “What’s this scrap you’ve got here?”
Murke colored. “It’s …” he stammered, “I collect a certain kind of leftovers.”
“What kind of leftovers?” asked Humkoke.
“Silences,” said Murke. “I collect silences.”
Humkoke raised his eyebrows, and Murke went on, “When I have to cut tapes, in the places where the speakers sometimes pause for a moment—or sigh, or take a breath, or there is absolute silence—I don’t throw that away, I collect it. Incidentally, there wasn’t a single second of silence in Bur-Malottke’s tapes.”
Humkoke laughed. “Of course not, he would never be silent. And what do you do with the scrap?”
“I splice it together and play back the tape when I’m at home in the evening. There’s not much yet, I only have three minutes so far—but then people aren’t silent very often.”
“You know, don’t you, that it’s against regulations to take home sections of tape?”
“Even silences?” asked Murke.
Humkoke laughed and said, “For God’s sake, get out!” And Murke left.
When the director entered his studio a few minutes after two, the Bur-Malottke tape had just been turned on:
… and wherever, however, why ever, and whenever we begin to discuss the Nature of Art, we must first look to that higher Being Whom we revere, we must bow in awe before that higher Being Whom we revere, and we must accept Art as a gift from that higher Being Whom we revere. Art …
No, thought the director, I really can’t ask anyone to listen to Bur-Malottke for a hundred and twenty hours. No, he thought, there are some things one simply cannot do, things I wouldn’t want to wish even on Murke. He returned to his office and switched on the loudspeaker just in time to hear Bur-Malottke say, “O Thou higher Being Whom we revere …” No, thought the director, no, no.
Murke lay on his chesterfield at home smoking. Next to him on a chair was a cup of tea, and Murke was gazing at the white ceiling of the room. Sitting at his desk was a very pretty blonde who was staring out of the window at the street. Between Murke and the girl, on a low coffee table, stood a tape recorder, recording. Not a word was spoken, not a sound was made. The girl was pretty and silent enough for a photographer’s model.
