The Collected Stories of Heinrich Boll (61 page)

So when he stepped off the elevator at the second floor, the home of the Cultural Department, he felt lighthearted and relaxed, as lighthearted and relaxed as anyone who loves and understands his work. He would unlock the door to his office, walk slowly over to his armchair, sit down, and light a cigarette. He was always first on the job. He was
young, intelligent, and had a pleasant manner, and even his arrogance, which occasionally flashed out for a moment—even that was forgiven him, since it was known he had majored in psychology and graduated cum laude.

For two days now, Murke had been obliged to go without his panic-breakfast: unusual circumstances had required him to get to Broadcasting House at 8:00 a.m., dash off to a studio, and begin work right away, for he had been told by the director of broadcasting to go over the two talks on “The Nature of Art” which the great Bur-Malottke had taped and to cut them according to Bur-Malottke’s instructions. Bur-Malottke, who had converted to Catholicism during the religious fervor of 1945, had suddenly, “overnight,” as he put it, “felt religious qualms,” he had “suddenly felt he might be blamed for contributing to the religious overtones in radio,” and he had decided to omit God, who occurred frequently in both his half-hour talks on “The Nature of Art,” and replace Him with a formula more in keeping with the mental outlook he had professed before 1945. Bur-Malottke had suggested to the producer that the word “God” be replaced by the formula “that higher Being Whom we revere,” but he had refused to retape the talks, requesting instead that God be cut out of the tapes and replaced by “that higher Being Whom we revere.” Bur-Malottke was a friend of the director, but this friendship was not the reason for the director’s willingness to oblige him: Bur-Malottke was a man one simply did not contradict. He was the author of numerous books of a belletristic-philosophical-religious and art-historical nature, he was on the editorial staff of three periodicals and two newspapers, and closely connected with the largest publishing house. He had agreed to come to Broadcasting House for fifteen minutes on Wednesday and tape the words “that higher Being Whom we revere” as often as “God” was mentioned in his talks: the rest was up to the technical experts.

It had not been easy for the director to find someone whom he could ask to do the job; he thought of Murke, but the suddenness with which he thought of Murke made him suspicious—he was a dynamic, robust
individual—so he spent five minutes going over the problem in his mind, considered Schwendling, Humkoke, Fräulein Broldin, but he ended up with Murke. The director did not like Murke; he had, of course, taken him on as soon as his name had been put forward, the way a zoo director, whose real love is the rabbits and the deer, naturally accepts wild animals too for the simple reason that a zoo must contain wild animals—but what the director really loved was rabbits and deer, and for him Murke was an intellectual wild animal. In the end his dynamic personality triumphed, and he instructed Murke to cut Bur-Malottke’s talks. The talks were to be given on Thursday and Friday, and Bur-Malottke’s misgivings had come to him on Sunday night—one might just as well commit suicide as contradict Bur-Malottke, and the director was much too dynamic to think of suicide.

So Murke spent Monday afternoon and Tuesday morning listening three times to the two half-hour talks on “The Nature of Art”; he had cut out “God,” and in the short breaks which he took, during which he silently smoked a cigarette with the technician, reflected on the dynamic personality of the director and the inferior Being Whom Bur-Malottke revered. He had never read a line of Bur-Malottke, never heard one of his talks before. Monday night he had dreamed of a staircase as tall and steep as the Eiffel Tower; he had climbed it but soon noticed that the stairs were slippery with soap, and the director stood down below and called out, “Go on, Murke, go on … show us what you can do—go on!” Tuesday night the dream had been similar: he had been at a fairground, strolled casually over to the roller coaster, paid his thirty pfennigs to a man whose face seemed familiar, and as he got on the roller coaster he saw that it was at least ten miles long, he knew there was no going back, and realized that the man who had taken his thirty pfennigs had been the director. Both mornings, after these dreams, he had not needed the harmless panic-breakfast up there in the empty space above the paternoster.

Now it was Wednesday. He was smiling as he entered the building, got into the paternoster, let himself be carried up as far as the sixth floor—four and a half seconds of panic, the grinding of the chains, the bare brick walls—he rode down as far as the fourth floor, got out,
and walked toward the studio where he had an appointment with Bur-Malottke. It was two minutes to ten as he sat down in his green chair, waved to the technician, and lit his cigarette. His breathing was quiet, he took a piece of paper out of his breast pocket and glanced at the clock. Bur-Malottke was always on time, at least he had a reputation for being punctual; and as the second hand completed the sixtieth minute of the tenth hour, the minute hand slipped onto the twelve, the hour hand onto the ten, the door opened and in walked Bur-Malottke. Murke got up, and with a pleasant smile walked over to Bur-Malottke and introduced himself. Bur-Malottke shook hands, smiled, and said, “Well, let’s get started!” Murke picked up the sheet of paper from the table, put his cigarette between his lips, and, reading from the list, said to Bur-Malottke:

“In the two talks, God occurs precisely twenty-seven times—so I must ask you to repeat twenty-seven times the words we are to splice. We would appreciate it if we might ask you to repeat them thirty-five times, so as to have a certain reserve when it comes to splicing.”

“Granted,” said Bur-Malottke with a smile, and sat down.

“There is one difficulty, however,” said Murke: “where God occurs in the genitive, such as ‘God’s will,’ ‘God’s love,’ ‘God’s purpose,’ He must be replaced by the noun in question followed by the words ‘of that higher Being Whom we revere.’ I must ask you, therefore, to repeat the words ‘the will’ twice, ‘the love’ twice, and ‘the purpose’ three times, followed each time by ‘of that higher Being Whom we revere,’ giving us a total of seven genitives. Then there is one spot where you use the vocative and say ‘O God’—here I suggest you substitute ‘O Thou higher Being Whom we revere.’ Everywhere else only the nominative case applies.”

It was clear that Bur-Malottke had not thought of these complications; he began to sweat, the grammatical transposition bothered him. Murke went on. “In all,” he said, in his pleasant, friendly manner, “the twenty-seven sentences will require one minute and twenty seconds of radio time, whereas the twenty-seven times ‘God’ occurs require only twenty seconds. In other words, in order to take care of your alterations we shall have to cut half a minute from each talk.”

Bur-Malottke sweated more heavily than ever; inwardly he cursed his sudden misgivings and asked, “I suppose you’ve already done the cutting, have you?”

“Yes, I have,” said Murke, pulling a flat metal box out of his pocket; he opened it and held it out to Bur-Malottke. It contained some darkish sound-tape scraps, and Murke said softly, “ ‘God’ twenty-seven times, spoken by you. Would you care to have them?”

“No, I would not,” said Bur-Malottke, furious. “I’ll speak to the director about the two half minutes. What comes after my talks in the program?”

“Tomorrow,” said Murke, “your talk is followed by the regular program ‘Neighborly News,’ edited by Grehm.”

“Damn,” said Bur-Malottke, “it’s no use asking Grehm for a favor.”

“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.”