The Safety Net Read online

  HEINRICH BÖLL

  In 1972, Heinrich Böll became the first German to win the Nobel Prize for literature since Thomas Mann in 1929. Born in Cologne, in 1917, Böll was reared in a liberal Catholic, pacifist family. Drafted into the Wehrmacht, he served on the Russian and French fronts and was wounded four times before he found himself in an American prison camp. After the war he enrolled at the University of Cologne, but dropped out to write about his shattering experiences as a soldier. His first novel, The Train Was on Time, was published in 1949, and he went on to become one of the most prolific and important of post-war German writers. His best-known novels include Billiards at Half-Past Nine (1959), The Clown (1963), Group Portrait with Lady (1971), and The Safety Net (1979). In 1981 he published a memoir, What’s to Become of the Boy? or: Something to Do with Books. Böll served for several years as the president of International P.E.N. and was a leading defender of the intellectual freedom of writers throughout the world. He died in June 1985.

  Salman Rushdie is the author of ten novels: Grimus; Midnight’s Children (which was awarded the Booker Prize in 1981 and, in 1993—and again in 2008—was judged to be the “Booker of Bookers,” the best novel to have won the prize in its first forty years); Shame; The Satanic Verses; Haroun and the Sea of Stories; The Moor’s Last Sigh; The Ground Beneath Her Feet; Fury; Shalimar the Clown; and The Enchantress of Florence. He is also the author of a book of stories, East, West, and four works of nonfiction: Imaginary Homelands, The Jaguar Smile, The Wizard of Oz, and Step Across this Line.

  The Essential

  HEINRICH BÖLL

  The Clown

  The Safety Net

  Billiards at Half-Past Nine

  The Train Was on Time

  Irish Journal

  Group Portrait with Lady

  What’s to Become of the Boy? Or: Something to Do with Books—A Memoir

  The Collected Stories of Heinrich Böll

  The Safety Net

  Originally published in German as Fürsorgliche Belagerung by Heinrich Böll

  © 1979 by Verlag Kiepenheuer & Witsch GmbH

  & Co. KG, Cologne, Germany

  Translation Copyright © 1981 by Heinrich Böll and Leila Vennewitz

  Introduction is reprinted from Imaginary Homelands: Essays and Criticism 1981–1991, © copyright Penguin Books, 1991.

  Melville House Publishing

  145 Plymouth Street

  Brooklyn, NY 11201

  www.mhpbooks.com

  The Library of Congress has cataloged the paperback edition as follows:

  Böll, Heinrich, 1917-1985.

  [Fürsorgliche Belagerung. English]

  The safety net : / Heinrich Boll ; translated from

  the German by Leila Vennewitz.

  p. cm.

  eISBN: 978-1-935554-94-3

  I. Vennewitz, Leila. II. Title.

  PT2603.O394F8513 2010

  833′.914–dc22

  2010043894

  v3.1

  Translator’s Acknowledgment

  My husband William has contributed unending patience and knowledge to this translation, and for this I warmly thank him.

  Leila Vennewitz

  To my sons

  Raimund, René, and Vincent—

  in gratitude

  CONTENTS

  Cover

  About the Author

  Other Books by This Author

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Acknowledgements

  Dedication

  INTRODUCTION

  by Salman Rushdie

  List of Characters

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  CHAPTER 18

  CHAPTER 19

  CHAPTER 20

  CHAPTER 21

  INTRODUCTION

  by Salman Rushdie

  Heinrich Böll never lacked courage. When most good German burghers were reacting to the words “Baader-Meinhoff” as if they were the names of Hell’s most fearsome demons, Böll attempted to explain, in print, why some of Germany’s most brilliant people had chosen the left-hand path of terrorism. It’s always easier to condemn than to understand, and Böll took a fair amount of flak for having assumed the role of devil’s advocate (although he never condemned the violence of the Baader-Meinhoff group, or of anyone else, for that matter). Andreas Baader, Ulrike Meinhoff, Gudrun Ensslin, Holger Meins and the rest had given the German ruling class its biggest fright in years; the burghers didn’t enjoy being told that incomprehensible acts may arise out of comprehensible, even rational motivations.

  The Safety Net is about the effects of that fright on the frightened. Baader and Meinhoff appear in it, thinly disguised as “Heinrich Beverloh” and “Veronica Tolm”; but until the novel’s chillingly orchestrated, thriller-like climax, they hover high above the action, like circling Furies, waiting to strike. (The central character, Fritz Tolm, actually speculates on the possibility of his being assassinated by an airborne bomb disguised as a bird.) The foreground is occupied by more or less “respectable” people and by the security forces—the “safety net” of the title—who must protect them; and Böll’s message, for this is certainly a message-novel, is that this security system is as destructive a force as the terrorists it seeks to resist. If Beverloh and Veronica are the novel’s devils, the security police are its deep blue sea.

  The plot is pretty simple, even schematic. Tolm, a newspaper owner, becomes President of “the Association” and thus a prime target for the assassins. He is obliged to submit to the ministrations of the security police, although he remains convinced that absolute security does not exist, and that the killers will certainly get him. The safety net closes around his whole family, tapping telephones, destroying privacy, suspecting everyone, turning the most trivial events into a kind of battle against an invisible enemy—a visit to an art gallery is referred to by the security chief as “the Madonna front.” All the lives held in this net are corrupted in profound and subtle ways.

  Meanwhile Tolm knows that his newspaper empire will shortly be gobbled up by his rival Zummerling (an Axel Springer figure), while his own house and lands will be swallowed by the open-cast mining machines that are already nibbling at his horizon—so that he is doomed to end up the victim of that same omnipotent force, Money, which is precisely the entity against which the terrorists are struggling. This is one of the novel’s darkest ironies.

  And in the end, of course, the terrorists … but it would be wrong to spoil a climax as gripping as this one.

  This fine, meticulous novel shows Böll at his most effectively ruminant. His method has always been to chew away at people, details, places, turning them over and over until they yeild up every last iota of meaning. The Tolm family is perhaps a little too representative a cross-section of the German middle classes: Tolm himself is a weary fellow gripped by “capitalist melancholy”; then there’s his “ultra-capitalistic” daughter Sabine; his reformed radical son Rolf and Rolf’s communist wife; even a hippie-ish son, Herbert, rather quaintly described in the List of Characters as “one of the ‘alternate society.’ ” But Böll worries away at them all to such revealing effect that it’s easy to forgive the too-programmatical structure of the book.

  “It’s the era of nice monsters, Kathe,” Tolm tells his wife, “and we must count ourselves amongst them.” The security policemen are nice. (
When Sabine has an affair with one of her guards, Böll goes to great pains to present him as a decent, troubled chap. In his fair-minded way, he’s making the useful point that the guardians, too, are damaged by their roles.) Bleibl, the ex-Nazi newspaper man, turns out to have a human side. Only Zummerling, the media czar, and his creature, Amplanger, are not nice. Even Beverloh and Veronica seem nice enough, particularly Veronica, who keeps ringing up with warnings about her own group’s activities. Too much niceness, you may think; but it has the advantage of allowing Böll to present, sympathetically, a very wide range of points of view. The Safety Net is a sort of interior panorama: its primary purpose is not to judge, but to understand.

  There is, however, a judgment. “It is Beverloh’s era and Amplanger’s era … figuring, figuring, figuring,” says Tolm, and you sense that Böll agrees; that the real tragedy for Böll is the replacement of the old kindnesses, of human values, by the remorseless, amoral world of the technologists. The press, the police and the bombers are all aspects (or victims) of this sickness and it is in bringing us to this perception that the achievement of this brave, pained novel really lies.

  LIST OF CHARACTERS

  The Family

  TOLM, Fritz, president of the Association; a newspaper owner

  Käthe, née Schmitz, his wife

  Sabine, their daughter, married to Erwin Fischer

  Herbert, their son, one of the “alternate society”

  Rolf, their second son, a former political activist; lives with

  Katharina Schröter; father of Holger I (with Veronica)

  and of Holger II (with Katharina)

  Holger I, son of Rolf and Veronica

  Holger II, son of Rolf and Katharina

  FISCHER, Sabine, née Tolm

  Erwin, her husband

  Kit, their daughter

  FISCHER, Mr. and Mrs., Erwin’s parents

  SCHRÖTER, Katharina, lives with Rolf, mother of Holger II

  SCHRÖTER, Mr. and Mrs., Katharina’s parents

  The Newspaper People

  AMPLANGER senior, representative of Bleibl

  AMPLANGER junior, his son; secretary of the Association

  BLÖRL, elderly printer on Tolm’s newspaper

  BLUME, small newspaper owners

  BOBERING, small newspaper owners

  KÜSTER, small newspaper owners

  THÖNIS, editor-in-chief of Tolm’s newspaper

  PLIEFGER, objects of attempted assassination

  PLOTTETI, objects of attempted assassination

  ZATGER, Birgit, Tolm’s secretary

  ZUMMERLING senior, a publisher

  ZUMMERLING junior, his son

  The Industrialists and Delegates

  BLEIBL, married to

  (1) Hilde,

  (2) Margret,

  (3) Elisabeth,

  (4) Edelgard née-Köhler;

  Martin and Robert, his sons with Hilde

  GROLZER, employees of Bleibl

  KOLZHEIM, employees of Bleibl

  HERBTHOLER

  KLIEHM, one of Zummerling’s men

  KORTSCHEDE, a friend of Fritz Tolm’s; lover of Peter Schlumm

  Verena, his daughter

  POTTSIEKER

  “They”

  BEVERLOH, Heinrich (“Bev”), an underground

  activist; lover of Veronica Zelger

  “Old Beverloh,” his father

  TOLM, Herbert, son of Fritz and Käthe

  ZELGER, Veronica, former wife of Rolf Tolm; mother of Holger I

  The Police

  HENDLER, Hubert, security guard; Sabine Fischer’s lover

  Helga, his wife

  Bernhard, their son

  Heinz, Hubert’s brother

  Monika (Monka), Helga’s sister

  HOLZPUKE, officer in charge of security for the Tolm family

  Dollmer, Holzpuke’s boss

  Stabski, Dollmer’s boss

  KÜBLER

  LÜHLER

  ROHNER

  ZURMACK

  KIERNTER, Dr., psychologist

  Friends and Neighbors

  THE BEERETZES, farmers

  THE BLÖMERS, architect and lawyer

  THE GROEBELS, friends of the young Fischers

  THE HERMESES, neighbors of the Hendlers

  THE KLOBERS, friends of the young Fischers

  THE HERMANNSES, farmers

  BREUER, Erna, née Hermes, lover of Peter Schubler

  Mr. Breuer, her husband

  GREBNITZER, Dr., the Tolms’ family doctor

  HALSTER, Jupp, farmer who murdered his wife

  KOHLSCHRÖDER, Pastor

  Gerta, his housekeeper and companion

  TOLM, Count Holger, former owner of the Tolm manor house

  TOLMSHOVEN, Countess Gerlind, sister of Count

  Holger; childhood girlfriend of Fritz Tolm

  ROICKLER, Pastor

  Anna Plauck, his lover

  SCHMERGEN, Heinrich, farmer’s son; friend of Rolf and Katharina

  SCHUBLER, Peter, lover of Erna Breuer

  Others

  BANGORS, a U.S. Army officer

  Mary, his wife

  BLUM, Maria, nursemaid to Kit Fischer

  BLURTMEHL, Alois, manservant to Fritz Tolm

  KLENSCH, Eva, lover of Blurtmehl

  KULGREVE, secretary to Fritz Tolm

  SCHLUMM, Peter (Horst), lover of Kortschede

  ZELGER, Dr. and Mrs., parents of Veronica

  ZURMEYEN, Karl, lover of Monka

  1

  Shortly before the conference came to an end, before the balloting, during the final, crucial session, the fear had suddenly left him. It had been replaced by curiosity. By the time he faced the inevitable interviews he was cheerful, surprised at the ease with which he trotted out the phrases: growth, expansion, conciliation, tariff autonomy, correlation of interests, looking back, looking ahead, the common ground of the early days—which allowed the sprinkling of a few discreet autobiographical details, his role in the development of a democratic press—the advantages and dangers of bigness, the invaluable role of both work force and unions, struggling not in confrontation but shoulder to shoulder. Much of what he said had actually sounded quite convincing even to his own ears, although Rolf’s trenchant analyses and Kortschede’s gloomy predictions were beginning to acquire more and more credibility in spite of the fundamentally different premises on which they were based. He had enjoyed weaving in allusions to history, even to art, cathedrals and Menzel, Bismarck and Van Gogh, whose social (or perhaps even incipient socialist) energy and missionary zeal had found their outlet in art; Bismarck and Van Gogh as contemporaries: brief, thoughtful observations on this theme added color to the purely economic statements expected of him. He had been able to recapture a seemingly off-the-cuff elegance which, more than forty years earlier, had proved so useful in Truckler’s seminar and which he had later been able to exploit at numerous editorial conferences but until now had never been able to bring off in public.

  What he was saying, ad-libbing, came out almost automatically, prefabricated, allowing him to think of other things, to determine at what point his fear had suddenly left him: most likely at the moment when he realized the inevitability of being elected. This would hoist him into a position where his fear should have been intensified, and—so his thoughts ran while he gave yet another interview—instinct had told him that the better course was to have no fear at all rather than more. No fear at all, merely curiosity; the fear that had weighed on him for months, the fear for his life, for Käthe’s life, for Sabine’s and Kit’s lives, was gone. Of course they would get him, probably even kill him, and there remained only the suspense of wondering: who, and how? And what he felt for Sabine had been transformed from fear into concern. He had reason to be concerned about the child.

  During these last few months his fear had been directed almost entirely toward technical matters, security measures. Concern had been supplanted; now it was no longer fear of something but fear
for: for Sabine, and for Herbert, for Käthe’s follies, least of all—and this surprised him—for Rolf. Sabine’s extreme religious devotion had always troubled him, he had felt envious too, and that fellow Fischer, his son-in-law, whose boyishness had fooled them all—but not him, even Käthe admitted that, not him—was not the right partner for her. The craftiness with which he was using Sabine and their child for his own purposes must surely have opened the eyes of all of them. As for Käthe, a trustee should simply have been appointed to look after her money: she gave to all and sundry while denying herself nothing, and someday—soon, he feared—she would come a fearful cropper.

  All this was going through his mind while they were holding microphones to his mouth like hand grenades, while the glaring spotlights were trained on him. Amplanger had coordinated and timed the interviews with great precision, made sure there was mineral water and coffee on hand, kept eau de cologne in readiness—all this moved through his mind on double tracks, and even awkward questions concerning his family failed to disconcert him. While “on the rear track of his thoughts” he continued to mull over the worries lying behind his technical fear, in the foreground he was wondering whether it was possible to speak of “concerned cheerfulness,” as they questioned him without regard for his feelings about Rolf, Veronica, Holger, and even Heinrich Beverloh (didn’t they know yet that he now had a second grandson called Holger?). He displayed sincere and deep distress over Veronica’s chosen path, would not be lured into dissociating himself from Rolf (although they all tried more or less to put the words into his mouth), did not deny Rolf’s offenses, stressed the fact that his son had paid the penalty, also admitted his serious, his deep concern for Holger (the older, they obviously still knew nothing about Holger the younger).

  This double-track function, which might also have been called media-induced schizophrenia, was beginning to amuse him: it was possible to reel off answers even to awkward questions while thinking about Sabine, who had obviously been shocked—probably by Kohlschröder, how else?—and was now pursuing her Madonna cult more fervently, more intensely, than ever. What he found difficult, while seeming to ad-lib into the microphones in a staccato laced with discreet little throat clearings, was to abandon the dream he had been cherishing for so long: Kit as a girl or a young woman in the manor house, in the park, in the corridors, feeding the ducks, in the orangery—and he couldn’t bring himself to cut this film once and for all—this dream, this game which, according to Kortschede’s devastating prediction, would now never be played; never would Kit—even as a ten-year-old—wander through the manor house, live here, never.