The Collected Stories of Heinrich Böll Read online

  “And the day after tomorrow,” said Murke, “your talk is followed by ‘Let’s Go Dancing.’”

  “Oh, God, that’s Huglieme,” groaned Bur-Malottke. “Never yet has Light Entertainment given way to Culture by as much as a fifth of a minute.”

  “No,” said Murke, “it never has, at least”—and his youthful face took on an expression of irreproachable modesty—“at least not since I’ve been working here.”

  “Very well,” said Bur-Malottke and glanced at the clock, “we’ll be through here in ten minutes, I take it, and then I’ll have a word with the director about that minute. Let’s go. Can you leave me your list?”

  “Of course,” said Murke. “I know the figures by heart.”

  The technician put down his newspaper as Murke entered the little glass booth. The technician was smiling. On Monday and Tuesday, during the six hours they listened to Bur-Malottke’s talks and did their cutting, Murke and the technician had not exchanged a single personal word; now and again they exchanged glances, and when they stopped for a breather, the technician had passed his cigarettes to Murke and the next day Murke passed his to the technician. Now, when Murke saw the technician smiling, he thought: If there is such a thing as friendship in this world, then this man is my friend. He laid the metal box with the snippets from Bur-Malottke’s talk on the table and said quietly, “Here we go.” He plugged into the studio and said into the microphone, “I’m sure we can dispense with the run-through, Professor. We might as well start right away—would you please begin with the nominatives?”

  Bur-Malottke nodded, Murke switched off his own microphone, pressed the button which turned on the green light in the studio, and heard Bur-Malottke’s solemn, carefully articulated voice intoning, “That higher Being Whom we revere—that higher Being …”

  Bur-Malottke pursed his lips toward the muzzle of the mike as if he wanted to kiss it, sweat ran down his face, and through the glass Murke observed with cold detachment the agony that Bur-Malottke was enduring; then he suddenly switched Bur-Malottke off, stopped the moving tape that was recording Bur-Malottke’s words, and feasted his eyes on the spectacle of Bur-Malottke behind the glass, soundless, like a fat, handsome fish. He switched on his microphone and his voice came quietly into the studio, “I’m sorry, but our tape was defective, and I must ask you to begin again at the beginning, with the nominatives.” Bur-Malottke swore, but his curses were silent ones which only he could hear, for Murke had disconnected him and did not switch him on again until he had begun to say, “That higher Being …” Murke was too young, considered himself too civilized, to approve of the word “hate.” But here, behind the glass pane, while Bur-Malottke repeated his genitives, he suddenly knew the meaning of hatred: he hated this great fat, handsome creature, whose books—two million three hundred and fifty thousand copies of them—lay around in libraries, bookstores, bookshelves, and bookcases, and not for one second did he dream of suppressing this hatred. When Bur-Malottke had repeated two genitives, Murke switched on his own mike and said quietly, “Excuse me for interrupting you: the nominatives were excellent, so was the first genitive, but would you mind doing the second genitive again? Rather gentler in tone, rather more relaxed—I’ll play it back to you.” And although Bur-Malottke shook his head violently, he signaled to the technician to play back the tape in the studio. They saw Bur-Malottke give a start, sweat more profusely than ever, then hold his hands over his ears until the tape came to an end. He said something, swore, but Murke and the technician could not hear him; they had disconnected him. Coldly Murke waited until he could read from Bur-Malottke’s lips that he had begun again with the higher Being, he turned on the mike and the tape, and Bur-Malottke continued with the genitives.

  When he was through, he screwed up Murke’s list into a ball, rose from his chair, drenched in sweat and fuming, and made for the door; but Murke’s quiet, pleasant young voice called him back. Murke said, “But, Professor, you’ve forgotten the vocative.” Bur-Malottke looked at him, his eyes blazing with hate, and said into the mike, “O Thou higher Being Whom we revere!”

  As he turned to leave, Murke’s voice called him back once more. Murke said, “I’m sorry, Professor, but, spoken like that, the words are useless.”

  “For God’s sake,” whispered the technician, “watch it!” Bur-Malottke was standing stock-still by the door, his back to the glass booth, as if transfixed by Murke’s voice.

  Something had happened to him that had never happened to him before: he was helpless, and this young voice, so pleasant, so remarkably intelligent, tortured him as nothing had ever tortured him before. Murke went on, “I can, of course, paste it into the talk the way it is, but I must point out to you, Professor, that it will have the wrong effect.”

  Bur-Malottke turned, walked back to the microphone, and said in low and solemn tones, “O Thou higher Being Whom we revere.”

  Without turning to look at Murke, he left the studio. It was exactly quarter past ten, and in the doorway he collided with a young, pretty woman carrying some sheet music. The girl, a vivacious redhead, walked briskly to the microphone, adjusted it, and moved the table to one side so she could stand directly in front of the mike.

  In the booth Murke chatted for half a minute with Huglieme, who was in charge of Light Entertainment. Pointing to the metal container, Huglieme said, “Do you still need that?” And Murke said, “Yes, I do.” In the studio the redhead was singing, “Take my lips, just as they are, they’re so lovely.” Huglieme switched on his microphone and said quietly, “D’you mind keeping your trap shut for another twenty seconds, I’m not quite ready.” The girl laughed, made a face, and said, “Okay, pansy dear.” Murke said to the technician, “I’ll be back at eleven; we can cut it up then and splice it all together.”

  “Will we have to hear it through again after that?” asked the technician. “No,” said Murke, “I wouldn’t listen to it again for a million marks.”

  The technician nodded, inserted the tape for the red-haired singer, and Murke left.

  He put a cigarette between his lips, did not light it, and walked along the rear corridor toward the second paternoster, the one on the south side leading down to the coffeeshop. The rugs, the corridors, the furniture, and the pictures, everything irritated him. The rugs were impressive, the corridors were impressive, the furniture was impressive, and the pictures were in excellent taste, but he suddenly felt a desire to take the sentimental picture of the Sacred Heart which his mother had sent him and see it somewhere here on the wall. He stopped, looked round, listened, took the picture from his pocket, and stuck it between the wallpaper and the frame of the door to the assistant drama producer’s office. The tawdry little print was highly colored, and beneath the picture of the Sacred Heart were the words: “I prayed for you at St. James’s Church.”

  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 th
ree 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: “DISCIPLINE ABOVE ALL.”

  “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.