The Proper Procedure and Other Stories

by Theodore Dalrymple

  ‘I always think it’s a tragedy when someone’s memories die with them,’ said Dr Brown, ‘especially when they concern events or times of historical importance. Once they are lost, they are lost for ever.’

  Miss Falkenhagen smiled. How pleasant it was to meet a young man mature enough to understand the importance of the past. Most young people, especially these days, couldn’t care less about it: for them, the present moment and its so-called pleasures were all-important. No, all-important was not quite the word, for it implied an awareness, albeit subliminal, of something other than the present moment. In fact, young people these days didn’t even know there had been a past: the world began with them, and each moment was unconnected with any other. Dr Brown, thank God, was not like that.

  ‘Writing your memoirs will do you more good than anything I can give you,’ he said. ‘Medicine will only give you side-effects.’

  Miss Falkenhagen was buoyed by what Dr Brown said. She felt better already. It was true that what she had lacked hitherto was purpose, and this had depressed her; when Dr Brown went further, and said it was practically her duty to the world to record her memories and experiences, she was almost elated.

  Miss Falkenhagen was a modest person, but there was no point in disguising from herself - for modesty did not compel dishonesty - that God had granted her an unusual degree of literary ability (for had she not mastered a foreign language so thoroughly that she made fewer grammatical mistakes in it than most native speakers, her accent notwithstanding?), and chance had put her in the way of experiences of the greatest significance, a happy combination of circumstances. The doctor, though young, was quite right: it was her duty to write her memoirs.

  ‘As a matter of fact,’ said Miss Falkenhagen, ‘I had thought of writing them. They might be of some value to historians and even of some interest to the public, though of course the public is generally more interested in footballers and pop stars.’

  Dr Brown assured her that, though this was true overall, yet there was still a sufficient audience for works of history: you had only to go to a bookshop to see that.

  Miss Falkenhagen, who had arrived at the Mary Lamb Mental Wellness Centre in a state of hostile scepticism, left with almost a spring in her step. Indeed, she was so invigorated by her encounter with Dr Brown that she decided not to take the first bus that came along, but rather to walk a few bus-stops in the direction of home. There is nothing like a brisk walk to reinforce a happy resolution, and Miss Falkenhagen, who in any case had never let herself go physically to seed, strode along like someone much younger than herself.

  Of course, fame would not be the object of her writing, much less money – the latter was so vulgar a consideration that she quite consciously put it out of her mind, and would not let it re-enter. Had money been of any interest to her, she would not have remained a mere secretary all these years. No, her book would have a succès d’estime, a classic: not a great classic, like Goethe’s Faust, there was no point in being unrealistic, but a minor one, a kind of miniature on what was nevertheless a great subject. People would continue to read it as long as they were interested in the Third Reich, which was likely to be for a very long time. Had she not heard a publisher say recently on a book programme on the radio that a swastika on the cover of a book automatically increased sales by at least thirty per cent? No doubt most of the interest of which this was indicative was morbid or prurient, but it did at least mean that there must be a number of serious persons to whom she could address herself, who were interested in the lessons of the period. The main thing was to ensure that nothing like it ever happened again, and Miss Falkenhagen’s book would be a well-sculpted and enjoyable, but serious, contribution to this laudable end. Form and content would be happily united in her book.

  What would she call it? She was so absorbed in her thoughts as she walked along that she hardly noticed what was going on around her, and once she almost ran over a young woman who was dragging her child along the pavement like a sack of potatoes.

  ‘Watch where you’re fucking going, can’t you?’ said the coarse young woman who claimed the exclusive right to abuse her child, totally unaware that she was speaking to a person of some standing in the intellectual world.

  Miss Falkenhagen was momentarily shaken, the shrillness of the woman’s voice obtruding on her reverie, but quickly returned to the question of the title once the confrontation was over. What should it be, the title? Nothing catching in a vulgar way – no pun, for example, no matter how clever – yet arresting and, of course, informative. The obvious illustration for the cover would be of a blond little girl presenting flowers to Hitler, although some might say, of course, that it was not only hackneyed but misleading, because Miss Falkenhagen had never actually met Hitler. The publisher would probably insist upon it, however, and Miss Falkenhagen would raise no deep objection. If people judged books by their covers, that was their affair. And, after all, the book would be about Nazi Germany, even if the author extended her account to the immediate post-war years in England; such a cover, therefore, would not be so very misleading.

  Arriving back at Percy Bysshe Shelley House, a nasty altercation was taking place in the lobby between a Rastafarian and a thin young white woman who, despite the draughtiness (a cold wind whistled through a broken window), was scantily dressed. One could easily imagine the altercation ending in violence and even murder, but Miss Falkenhagen knew better than to intervene in what did not concern her, and went straight to her flat.

  Miss Falkenhagen settled to the pleasant task of thinking about her book. She was aware that she ought not to conceive of it as already written, but it is only human to daydream a little; in her mind’s eye, she read the reviews and even saw extracts from them on the back cover of paperback edition. She smiled; how surprised they would be at work, all those who found her uninteresting just because she was not interested in what they were interested in. As for her fellow-residents in Percy Bysshe Shelley House, they were so utterly beyond the reach of cultivation that the fact that she had written a book would mean nothing to them. She would move out, into more congenial surroundings.

  The first thing to do, of course, was to put her memories and recollections in order. No, that was not the first thing to do; first she must have notebooks in which to write down the things as she remembered them. Or would a system of index cards be better? Notebooks, perhaps, would be preferable if she were going to stick to a strict chronological account, but it might be more interesting to write thematically, with flashbacks and other such literary devices. In any case, she had neither notebooks nor filing cards in the flat, so she would have to go out again and buy some. And this would take time, because she would have to go quite far: materials for writing books were not exactly items of first necessity for the local residents. Industrial cider of high alcohol content was more in their line.

  So Miss Falkenhagen went out again. She had to go to a shopping street half an hour away (if you counted the time waiting for a bus); and of course the return journey was just as long and arduous. Moreover, the first notebooks that she found did not please her. They had cheap glossy covers, with vulgar, childish pictures on them. One could hardly record scenes from the Nazi era on pages protected by pink rabbits and blue bears. One had only to look at these pictures to have one’s concentration destroyed. Somehow they made you despair of the human race. How could anyone find them attractive?

  It proved surprisingly difficult to find three notebooks of suitably sober design. It was easy enough to find index cards, but the plastic boxes in which they came were of horrible garish primary colours. By the time Miss Falkenhagen had all that she wanted she was tired out. The fact is that she wasn’t young any more; and though thinking and writing were sedentary work, still they required energy, with which she was less plentifully supplied than in former years.

  Still, she had made a start, and a good start too! One had, after all, to start somewhere: you couldn’t build a house without bricks. Miss Falkenhagen w
ent to bed happy, full of purpose; even the deep base throb of the music, whose vibration usually caused an unpleasant sensation in the lower part of her abdomen, and which started at eleven o’clock at night almost as reliably as the sun went down, did not disturb her.

  On returning home from work on the following days, Miss Falkenhagen would take out her notebooks and sit at the all-purpose table in her living room and write a few notes. It was really very surprising what you could remember when you tried, even about things to which you had given no thought for decades. For example, her father had been a station-master, and she recalled not only the layout of his office, but the colour-scheme of the waiting rooms in his station (much more tasteful than anything today, incidentally). As she remembered, she wrote things down, in a mixture of German and English that only someone who was bilingual could have deciphered.

  After a few days, however, it occurred to her that she might approach things differently. Most of her reading, extensive as it was, had been in literature, above all in classical fiction. She had read very few memoirs, if any; and it was surely no disgrace to admit that she could learn something from how others had approached the genre. It was hardly reasonable to expect her to produce a memoir without any knowledge of memoirs as such. All literature, after all, grew out of, and added to, a tradition. So Miss Falkenhagen went to the local library to see what she could find. It shouldn’t have surprised her, probably, that in the section marked ‘Biography,’ to which the librarian had directed her, there was nothing to be found but the life stories of actors and actresses, sportsmen, popular entertainers and a notorious criminal or two. This was not what she needed or wanted; she decided that it would probably be worth her while to procure for herself some memoirs of more serious, if less famous people, because then she would be able to refer to them whenever she wished. Accordingly, she went to several bookshops which, of course, were not in her area. She bought the memoirs of politicians, ex-colonial administrators, journalists and more serious writers. It was best, she thought, to be thorough, and she began systematically to read through them, not starting a new one until she had finished the old, though she was often tempted to do so and some of them were very long – longer than they needed to be, in her opinion, a lesson that she would certainly take to heart when she began to write.

  She had an appointment to see Dr Brown two weeks after the first, and she found herself looking forward to it as if it were some kind of treat or social event. It couldn’t be, she told herself, that she was falling for him in any romantic sense or fashion, not at her advanced age and with the difference in years between them. Preposterous! She was far too sensible, if not in the strictest sense experienced, for that kind of caper. No, it was simply that someone like herself longed for a little intelligent and intellectual conversation, to talk to a person (man or woman, it hardly mattered which) for whom the petty day to day flux of existence, and the circuses provided for the distraction of the unreflective masses, were not the sole preoccupations.

  Dr Brown asked her how she was.

  Miss Falkenhagen did not say that she was better, because to have done so would have implied there had been something wrong in the first place. And if there was one thing that was perfectly clear, it was that her mind had always been perfectly clear: all she had needed was a little encouragement to do what had always wanted to do in any case and (if truth be told) had always been her deepest, if sometimes unacknowledged, ambition.

  ‘I’m getting on very well,’ she said.

  ‘I’m glad to hear it,’ said Dr Brown. ‘And the book? Have you started?’

  Dr Brown’s manner was enthusiastic and eager, as if he were more of an editor than a doctor.

  ‘Yes,’ said Miss Falkenhagen, not without a slight twinge of conscience. ‘I’m gathering my materials.’

  ‘I thought it would all be in your head,’ said Dr Brown.

  ‘Well, of course it is,’ replied Miss Falkenhagen. ‘All the same, there are one or two books I need, and documents. I want to be as accurate as possible.’

  ‘Well, of course, I quite agree.’

  ‘The last thing I want is for reviewers to say, no, it was not on the thirtieth of January, it was on the thirty-first, therefore the writer is unreliable or not telling the truth.’

  ‘Pedants can always be found to nit-pick,’ said Dr Brown agreeably. ‘There are books in which many facts are wrong and yet overall convey the truth of their subject. And, of course, the opposite: books in which every fact is right, and yet miss the point completely.’

  Miss Falkenhagen and Dr Brown had a very pleasant discussion about the nature of literary truth, the upshot of which was that Miss Falkenhagen should return to the Mary Lamb Mental Wellness Centre in a month’s time.

  How well-informed Dr Brown seemed on literary matters! A real pleasure to talk to him! One might even say that he was something of a soul-mate: though, of course, one should never forget that he was acting in a professional capacity and not the informal one of friendship. One must always keep that in mind.

  For the next month, Miss Falkenhagen read and read, and made copious notes on the index cards. She recorded all those sentences and paragraphs that seemed to her to be of exceptional value, but also the things that seemed to her pretentious or affected – and how many there were! In writing, as in life, honesty was the best policy, but also rare.

  Her notebooks filled surprisingly quickly, and she soon needed others. She therefore had the impression that she was making very good progress.

  The month between appointments with Dr Brown also went quickly. After a brief enquiry as to how she was feeling, Dr Brown asked her how the book was progressing.

  ‘Very well,’ said Miss Falkenhagen, again not without a slight twinge of conscience. ‘Things have become very clear now. Everything has fallen into place.’

  ‘Excellent,’ said Dr Brown. ‘I can’t wait to read the first chapter.’

  His obvious sincerity, which should have pleased Miss Falkenhagen, somehow gave her a slight chill through the heart.

  ‘I am not sure,’ she said, ‘whether I should show anyone any of it until it is completed. Fragments can give a misleading impression, especially when there is an overall design. With all due respect to you, Dr Brown, of course, because naturally I would value your opinion very highly.’

  ‘Oh, I quite understand,’ said Dr Brown. And then they discussed a little (and in general) the relation of a part of a literary work to the whole. Once again the upshot was that Miss Falkenhagen should return in a month’s time.

  During those four weeks, Miss Falkenhagen could not disguise from herself that she had now read a number of memoirs, that each of them was different, that there was no absolute formula to be followed, and that therefore no further reading could really help her. She was now, in a manner of speaking, on her own: it was time really to begin.

  She cleared the table, but that did not take long because in fact she was very tidy anyway. She took a new notebook and opened it, folding back its cover with almost ceremonial care. It was a lined notebook, with twenty-four lines per page. On average, with writing of her size, there would be ten words per line, that is to say, two hundred and forty words per page. And since the notebook had a hundred and twenty pages, that would mean, when she filled it, twenty-eight thousand, eight hundred words (you could expect the girls at the office to do a sum like that in their heads, not with the education, so-called, that they’d received).

  That meant, of course, that her memoir would have to fill two, or perhaps two and a half, such notebooks. You could hardly expect people to pay good money for a book of less than fifty thousand words: famous authors might get away with it, but not someone completely unknown, as yet, to the public, like Miss Falkenhagen. Even a swastika on the cover would not make up for unacceptable slimness. Books should, of course, be exactly as long as their content warrants, neither longer nor shorter; but one should not disguise from oneself the imperatives of the market-place. Besides, fifty th
ousand words was not so very much: it was considerably fewer (not less: to have used the word ‘less’ here would have been the kind of grammatical solecism that the girls in the office might have made) - fewer than a thousand words per year she had lived, that is to say fewer than three per day. Surely no one in the world had lived so insignificant a life that its relation was worth fewer than three words per day, let alone Miss Falkenhagen, who had nearly seen Hitler and narrowly missed presenting him with flowers?

  The lined blank page stared up at her – was it invitation or reproach? Silly to think of it like that, for dead objects like a page of paper did not have intentions or feelings. Miss Falkenhagen took up her pen.

  She wrote the words ‘I was born in’ and then stopped. Surely they were too trite, though undoubtedly they would be true once she appended the date and place of her birth. But they might give the reader the impression that he was reading a birth certificate or other official document rather than a memoir. Compare it with (just to take a book at random) the first words of Edmund Blunden’s memoir of the First World War, Undertones of War. They were, ‘I was not anxious to go.’ Go where? The reader’s interest was piqued at once, one couldn’t help but read on. Not even a swastika on the cover would save a book whose first sentence failed to engage the reader’s attention, for no one bought a book without reading the first sentence.

  The problem was that she had already those trite words, and thus soiled the page. She could, of course, scratch them out, but surely the first page of her manuscript should be word-perfect, without alterations? It was unrealistic to expect the whole manuscript to be without deletions, insertions and the like, but a first page ought to display something like a rush of inspiration. The page would have to go.