Found in Translation

by Frank Wynne

  The question arose of where I was to sleep. The obvious place was Begum Jan’s room; accordingly, on the first evening a small bed was placed alongside the huge four-poster. Until ten or eleven that night we played Chance and talked; then I went to bed. When I fell asleep Rabbo was scratching her back. “Filthy wench,” I muttered before turning over. In the middle of the night I woke up with a start. It was pitch dark. Begum Jan’s quilt was shaking vigorously, as if an elephant was struggling beneath it.

  “Begum Jan,” my voice was barely audible. The elephant subsided “What is it? Go to sleep.” Begum Jan’s voice seemed to come from afar.

  “I’m scared.” I sounded like a petrified mouse.

  “Go to sleep. Nothing to be afraid of. Recite the Ayat-ul-Kursi.”

  “Okay!” I quickly began the Ayat. But each time I reached “Yalamu Mabain” I got stuck. This was strange. I knew the entire Ayat!

  “May I come to you, Begum Jan?”

  “No child, go to sleep.” The voice was curt. Then I heard whispers. Oh God! Who was this other person? Now I was terrified.

  “Begum Jan, is there a thief here?”

  “Go to sleep, child; there is no thief.” This was Rabbo’s voice. I sank into my quilt and tried to sleep.

  In the morning I could not even remember the sinister scene that had been enacted at night. I have always been the superstitious one in my family. Night fears, sleep-talking, sleep-walking were regular occurrences during my childhood. People often said that I seemed to be haunted by evil spirits. Consequently I blotted out the incident from memory as easily as I dealt with all my imaginary fears. Besides, in the daytime the quilt seemed so innocent.

  The next night I woke up again, this time a quarrel between Begum Jan and Rabbo was being settled on the bed itself. I could not make out what conclusion was reached, but I heard Rabbo sobbing. Then there were sounds of a cat slobbering in the saucer. To hell with it, I thought and went off to sleep!

  In the morning Rabbo had gone off to visit her son. He was a quarrelsome lad. Begum Jan had done a lot to help him settle down in life; she had bought him a shop, arranged a job in the village, but to no avail. She even managed to have him stay with Nawab Sahib. Here he was treated well, a new wardrobe was ordered for him, but ungrateful wretch that he was, he ran away for no good reason and never returned, not even to see Rabbo. She therefore had to arrange to meet him at a relative’s house. Begum Jan would never have allowed it, but poor Rabbo was helpless and had to go.

  All day Begum Jan was restless. Her joints hurt like hell, but she could not bear anyone’s touch. Not a morsel did she eat; all day long she moped in bed.

  “Shall I scratch you, Begum Jan?” I asked eagerly while dealing out the deck of cards. Begum Jan looked at me carefully.

  “Really, shall I?” I put the cards aside and began scratching, while Begum Jan lay quietly, giving in to my ministrations. Rabbo was due back the next day, but she never turned up. Begum Jan became irritable. She drank so much tea that her head started throbbing.

  Once again I started on her back. What a smooth slab of a back! I scratched her softly, happy to be of some assistance.

  “Scratch harder, open the straps,” Begum Jan spoke. “There, below the shoulder. Ooh, wonderful!” She sighed as if with immense relief.

  “This way,” Begum Jan indicated, although she could very well scratch that part herself. But she preferred my touch. How proud I was!

  “Here, oh, oh, how you tickle,” she laughed. I was talking and scratching at the same time.

  “Tomorrow I will send you to the market. What do you want? A sleeping-walking doll?”

  “Not a doll, Begum Jan! Do you think I am a child? You know I am …”

  “Yes … an old crow. Is that what you are?” She laughed. “Okay then, buy a babua. Dress it up yourself, I’ll give you as many bits and pieces as you want. Okay?” She turned over.

  “Okay,” I answered.

  “Here.” She was guiding my hand wherever she felt the itch. With my mind on the babua, I was scratching mechanically, unthinkingly. She continued talking. “Listen, you don’t have enough clothes. Tomorrow I will ask the tailor to make you a new frock. Your mother has left some material with me.”

  “I don’t want that cheap red material. It looks tacky.” I was talking nonsense while my hand roved the entire territory. I did not realize it but by now Begum Jan was flat on her back! Oh God! I quickly withdrew my hand.

  “Silly girl, don’t you see where you’re scratching? You have dislocated my ribs.” Begum Jan was smiling mischievously. I was red with embarrassment.

  “Come, lie down with me.” She laid me at her side with my head on her arm. “How thin you are … and, let’s see, your ribs,” she started counting.

  “No,” I protested weakly.

  “I won’t eat you up! What a tight sweater,” she said. “Not even a warm vest?” I began to get very restless.

  “How many ribs?” The topic was changed.

  “Nine on one side, ten on the other.” I thought of my school hygiene. Very confused thinking.

  “Let’s see,” she moved my hand. “One, two, three …”

  I wanted to run away from her, but she held me closer. I struggled to get away. Begum Jan started laughing.

  To this day whenever I think of what she looked like at that moment, I get nervous. Her eyelids had become heavy, her upper lip darkened and, despite the cold, her nose and eyes were covered with tiny beads of perspiration. Her hands were stiff and cold, but soft as if the skin had been peeled. She had thrown off her shawl and in the karga kurta, her body shone like a ball of dough. Her heavy gold kurta buttons were open, swinging to one side.

  The dusk had plunged her room into a claustrophobic blackness, and I felt gripped by an unknown terror. Begum Jan’s deep dark eyes focussed on me! I started crying. She was clutching me like a clay doll. I started feeling nauseated against her warm body. She seemed possessed. What could I do? I was neither able to cry nor scream! In a while she became limp. Her face turned pale and frightening, she started taking deep breaths. I figured she was about to die, so I ran outside.

  Thank God Rabbo came back that night. I was scared enough to pull the sheet over my head, but sleep evaded me as usual. I lay awake for hours.

  How I wished my Amma would return. Begum Jan had become such a terrifying entity that I spent my days in the company of household servants. I was too scared to step into her bedroom. What could I have said to anyone? That I was afraid of Begum Jan? Begum Jan, who loved me so dearly?

  The following day there was another tiff between Begum Jan and Rabbo. I was dead scared of their quarrels, because they signalled the beginning of my misfortunes! Begum Jan immediately thought about me. What was I doing wandering around in the cold? I would surely die of pneumonia!

  “Child, you will have my head shaven in public. If something happens to you, how will I face your mother?” – Begum Jan admonished me as she washed up in the water basin. The tea tray was lying on the table.

  “Pour some tea and give me a cup.” She dried her hands and face. “Let me get out of these clothes.”

  While she changed, I drank tea. During her body massage, she kept summoning me for small errands. I carried things to her with utmost reluctance, always looking the other way. At the slightest opportunity I ran back to my perch, drinking my tea, my back turned to Begum Jan.

  “Amma!” My heart cried in anguish. “How could you punish me so severely for fighting with my brothers?” Mother disliked my mixing with the boys, as if they were man-eaters who would swallow her beloved daughter in one gulp! After all who were these ferocious males? None other than my own brothers and their puny little friends. Mother believed in a strict prison sentence for females; life behind seven padlocks! Begum Jan’s “patronage,” however, proved more terrifying than the fear of the worlds worst goons! If I had had the courage I would have run out on to the street. But helpless as I was, I continued to sit in that very spot with
my heart in my mouth.

  After an elaborate ritual of dressing up and scenting her body with warm attars and perfumes. Begum Jan turned her arduous heat on me.

  “I want to go home!” I said in response to all her suggestions. More tears.

  “Come to me,” she waxed. “I will take you shopping.”

  But I had only one answer. All the toys and sweets in the world kept piling up against my one and only refrain, “I want to go home!”

  “Your brothers will beat you up, you witch!” She smacked me affectionately.

  “Sure, let them,” I said to myself annoyed and exasperated.

  “Raw mangoes are sour. Begum Jan,” malicious little Rabbo expressed her views.

  Then Begum Jan had her famous fit. The gold necklace she was about to place around my neck, was broken to bits. Gossamer net scarf was shredded mercilessly. Hair, which was never out of place, was tousled with loud exclamations of “Oh! Oh! Oh!” She started shouting and convulsing. I ran outside.

  After much ado and ministration. Begum Jan regained consciousness. When I tiptoed into the bedroom Rabbo, propped against her body, was kneading her limbs.

  “Take off your shoes,” she whispered. Mouse-like I crept into my quilt.

  Later that night, Begum Jan’s quilt was, once again, swinging like an elephant. “Allah,” I was barely able to squeak. The elephant-in-the quilt jumped and then sat down. I did not say a word. Once again, the elephant started convulsing. Now I was really confused. I decided, no matter what, tonight I would flip the switch on the bedside lamp. The elephant started fluttering once again, as if about to squat. Smack, gush, slobber – someone was enjoying a feast. Suddenly I understood what was going on!

  Begum Jan had not eaten a thing all day and Rabbo, the witch, was a known glutton. They were polishing off some goodies under the quilt, for sure. Flaring my nostrils, I huffed and puffed hoping for a whiff of the feast. But the air was laden with attar, henna, sandalwood; hot fragrances, no food.

  Once again the quilt started billowing. I tried to lie still, but it was now assuming such weird shapes that I could not contain myself. It seemed as if a frog was growing inside it and would suddenly spring on me.

  “Ammi!” I spoke with courage, but no one heard me. The quilt, meanwhile, had entered my brain and started growing. Quietly creeping to the other side of the bed I swung my legs over and sat up. In the dark I groped for the switch. The elephant somersaulted beneath the quilt and dug in. During the somersault, its corner was lifted one foot above the bed.

  Allah! I dove headlong into my sheets!!

  What I saw when the quilt was lifted, I will never tell anyone, not even if they give me a lakh of rupees.

  ACTION WILL BE TAKEN

  Heinrich Böll

  Translated from the German by Leila Vennewitz

  Heinrich Böll (1917–1985) One of the foremost German writers of the twentieth century, Heinrich Böll was born in Cologne, to a pacifist family that staunchly opposed the rise of Nazism. As a boy, he refused to join the Hitler Youth but was later conscripted into the Wehrmacht. After the war, he worked as a statistician before becoming a writer. His first novel was published in 1949, and he went on to write novels, short stories, radio plays and essays. His writings were controversial in post-war Germany. His novel The Clown was scathing in its criticism of the Catholic Church and its support for the Nazi regime He is best known for his novels Group Portrait with Lady and The Lost Honour of Katharina Blum. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1972.

  Probably one of the strangest interludes in my life was the time I spent as an employee in Alfred Wunsiedel’s factory. By nature, I am inclined more to pensiveness and inactivity than to work, but now and again prolonged financial difficulties compel me – for pensiveness is no more profitable than inactivity – to take on a so-called job. Finding myself once again at a low ebb of this kind, I put myself in the hands of the employment office and was sent with seven other fellow-sufferers to Wunsiedel’s factory, where we were to undergo an aptitude test.

  The exterior of the factory was enough to arouse my suspicions: the factory was built entirely of glass brick, and my aversion to well-lit buildings and well-lit rooms is as strong as my aversion to work. I became even more suspicious when we were immediately served breakfast in the well-lit, cheerful coffee shop: pretty waitresses brought us eggs, coffee and toast, orange juice was served in tastefully designed jugs, goldfish pressed their bored faces against the sides of pale-green aquariums. The waitresses were so cheerful that they appeared to be bursting with good cheer. Only a strong effort of will – so it seemed to me – restrained them from singing away all day long. They were as crammed with unsung songs as chickens with unlaid eggs.

  Right away I realized something that my fellow-sufferers evidently failed to realize: that this breakfast was already part of the test; so I chewed away reverently, with the full appreciation of a person who knows he is supplying his body with valuable elements. I did something which normally no power on earth can make me do: I drank orange juice on an empty stomach, left the coffee and egg untouched, as well as most of the toast, got up, and paced up and down in the coffee shop, pregnant with action.

  As a result I was the first to be ushered into the room where the questionnaires were spread out on attractive tables. The walls were done in a shade of green that would have summoned the word “delightful” to the lips of interior decoration enthusiasts. The room appeared to be empty, and yet I was so sure of being observed that I behaved as someone pregnant with action behaves when he believes himself unobserved: I ripped my pen impatiently from my pocket, unscrewed the top, sat down at the nearest table and pulled the questionnaire toward me, the way irritable customers snatch at the bill in a restaurant.

  Question No. 1: Do you consider it right for a human being to possess only two arms, two legs, eyes, and ears?

  Here for the first lime I reaped the harvest of my pensive nature and wrote without hesitation: “Even four arms, legs and ears would not be adequate for my driving energy. Human beings are very poorly equipped.”

  Question No. 2: How many telephones can you handle at one time?

  Here again the answer was as easy as simple arithmetic: “When there are only seven telephones,” I wrote, “I get impatient; there have to be nine before I feel I am working to capacity.”

  Question No. 3: How do you spend your free time?

  My answer: “I no longer acknowledge the term free time – on my fifteenth birthday I eliminated it from my vocabulary, for in the beginning was the act.”

  *

  I got the job. Even with nine telephones I really didn’t feel I was working to capacity. I shouted into the mouth-pieces: “Take immediate action!” or; “Do something! – We must have some action – Action will be taken – Action has been taken – Action should be taken.” But as a rule – for I felt this was in keeping with the tone of the place – I used the imperative.

  Of considerable interest were the noon-hour breaks, when we consumed nutritious foods in an atmosphere of silent good cheer. Wunsiedel’s factory was swarming with people who were obsessed with telling you the story of their lives, as indeed vigorous personalities are fond of doing. The story of their lives is more important to them than their lives, you have only to press a button, and immediately it is covered with spewed-out exploits.

  Wunsiedel had a right-hand man called Broschek, who had in turn made a name for himself by supporting seven children and a paralyzed wife by working night-shifts in his student days, and successfully carrying on four business agencies, besides which he had passed two examinations with honors in two years. When asked by reporters: “When do you sleep, Mr. Broschek?” he had replied: “It’s a crime to sleep!”

  Wunsiedel’s secretary had supported a paralyzed husband and four children by knitting, at the same time graduating in psychology and German history as well as breeding shepherd dogs, and she had become famous as a night-club singer where she was known as Vam
p Number Seven.

  Wunsiedel himself was one of those people who every morning, as they open their eyes, make up their minds to act. “I must act,” they think as they briskly tie their bathrobe belts around them. “I must act,” they think as they shave, triumphantly watching their beard hairs being washed away with the lather: these hirsute vestiges are the first daily sacrifices to their driving energy. The more intimate functions also give these people a sense of satisfaction: water swishes, paper is used. Action has been taken. Bread gets eaten, eggs are decapitated.

  With Wunsiedel, the most trivial activity looked like action: the way he put on his hat, the way – quivering with energy – he buttoned up his overcoat, the kiss he gave his wife, everything was action.

  When he arrived at his office he greeted his secretary with a cry of “Let’s have some action!” And in ringing tones she would call back: “Action will be taken!” Wunsiedel then went from department to department, calling out his cheerful: “Let’s have some action!” Everyone would answer: “Action will be taken!” And I would call back to him too, with a radiant smile, when he looked into my office: “Action will be taken!”

  Within a week I had increased the number of telephones on my desk to eleven, within two weeks to thirteen, and every morning on the streetcar I enjoyed thinking up new imperatives, or chasing the words take action through various tenses and modulations: for two whole days I kept saying the same sentence over and over again because I thought it sounded so marvelous: “Action ought to have been taken;” for another two days it was: “Such action ought not to have been taken.”

  So I was really beginning to feel I was working to capacity when there actually was some action. One Tuesday morning – I had hardly settled down at my desk – Wunsiedel rushed into my office crying his “let’s have some action!” But an inexplicable something in his face made me hesitate to reply, in a cheerful gay voice as the rules dictated: “Action will be taken!” I must have paused too long, for Wunsiedel, who seldom raised his voice, shouted at me: “Answer! Answer, you know the rules!” And I answered, under my breath, reluctantly, like a child who is forced to say: I am a naughty child. It was only by a great effort that I managed to bring out the sentence: “Action will be taken,” and hardly had I uttered it when there really was some action: Wunsiedel dropped to the floor. As he fell he rolled over onto his side and lay right across the open doorway. I knew at once, and I confirmed it when I went slowly around my desk and approached the body on the floor: he was dead.