14
When not actually at work with her blue pencil, K. is almost indispensable. Her undeniable sensibility in regard to German language and literature, which fails her only when she has compositional or editorial ambitions, her fairly lengthy familiarity with spiritual practices, when applied secularly are on no account to be considered wasted; precisely because she is in a sense emancipated, she plunges with zest (from which the Au. greatly benefits) into cooking and kitchen activities, is positively addicted to dishwashing, takes frowning note of rising meat prices and rents, yet likes taking taxis, blushes now and again at displays of porno-violence; as to the editorial side, she has made herself independent, as it were, meaning that her blue pencil no longer goes to work on other people’s texts, merely her own. As she puts it, Ilse Kremer’s death “upset her terribly,” many tears were (still are) shed over it, and she wants to write a brief biography of this woman whose “entire estate after years as a working woman consists of a recently paid-up television set, half a bottle of vinegar, and a few cigarette papers—plus a rent-receipt book. I can’t get over it, I simply can’t get over it.” Surely those are praiseworthy insights and intentions.
In other respects K. performed invaluable services, if not exactly as an informer, certainly as an observer. Whereas the Au. has still not achieved the ardently desired state of total d.u.a., she is approaching the goal of doing only those things she enjoys. She enjoys going to see Schirtenstein and Scholsdorff and noting that they seem relaxed; the causes of this relaxation are revealed to her later: Schirtenstein “cheek to cheek and hand in hand with Leni on a bench in Blücher Park,” and as for Scholsdorff: on two occasions she was an eyewitness to a laying-on-of-hands at the Café Spertz; on one occasion she met someone in Leni’s apartment who, judging by her description, can only have been Kurt Hoyser. Since she is fairly sure that Leni, in her present condition, is refusing intimate relations even to Mehmet, she finds that Leni, having “kissed Pelzer in the dark while sitting in a car not far from her own apartment,” has gone far enough. She is reluctant to visit Pelzer because she feels he is “a person basically devoid of tenderness, quite capable of demanding concrete substitute-eroticism from me.”
As for Lev Gruyten, she has no worries at all about him. “He’ll soon be coming out anyway.” Active as she is, she even took part in a demonstration of garbage collectors outside the courthouse, designed placard texts such as “is SOLIDARITY A CRIME?”, “is LOYALTY AN OFFENSE?” and, more menacingly, “IF OUR BUDDIES ARE PUNISHED THE CITY WILL CHOKE IN GARBAGE.” This earned her her first headline in a local rag: “REDHEAD EX-NUN MOUNTS BARRICADES FOR GARBAGEMEN!” In other ways, too, she is usefully employed: she gives German lessons in Leni’s apartment to the Portuguese children, discusses the present state of the Soviet Union with Bogakov, allows Grete Helzen to “pamper her face,” assists a variety of Turks and Italians to fill out forms for tax-refund applications. She telephones district attorneys (in connection with the trial, still going on, of the garbage-truck drivers), describes (likewise over the telephone) to the appropriate department the chaos that would result if the garbage collectors were to go on strike. Etc. Etc. The fact that from time to time she sheds a tear over The Marquise of O____ and several over The Country Doctor and The Penal Colony surely goes without saying, yet even she, in spite of all her tears, has still not grasped the potential meaning of the words “with earthly vehicle, unearthly horses.” She has radically, perhaps all too radically, turned her back on all unearthly things. It was not she who insisted on going to Gerselen, it was Leni who insisted on taking her when she discovered that a spa was actually to be opened there. Must we mention who has been earmarked for the posts of “Spa Director” and “Publicity Manager”? No other than Scheukens, who is busily running around with blueprints, carrying on imperious telephone conversations with tradesmen and architects, and has found a sure-fire method of suppressing that “goddamn plague of roses, by force if we have to.” At a distance of fifty yards around the “priceless spring” he has installed a kind of poison-drainage that carries a virulent herbicide, and this has actually stopped the roses. Needless to say, this is too much for the handful of dust that was once called Rahel Ginzburg. In any event, Bogakov has, to his delight, already felt the benefits of this “salubrious” spring for his “damned arthritis.” Ever since his success in persuading Lotte to adopt d.u.a., the two of them take frequent walks in the spa park.
K., the only one among all the persons mentioned here (including Mehmet) to be endowed with a faculty shared by former and nonformer nuns alike, stubbornness and tenacity, K.—by spending hours silently watching Leni paint and helping the artist by making coffee and washing out her brushes, unstinting with her flattery—has, of course, won the privilege of seeing the Madonna appear on television. Her comment is almost too prosaic to warrant printer’s ink: “It is herself, Leni herself, appearing to herself because of some still unexplained reflections.” Well, there remain the “still unexplained reflections,” there also remain some dark thunderclouds of foreboding in the background: Mehmet’s jealousy, and his recently announced aversion to ballroom dancing.
The Essential
HEINRICH BÖLL
“His work reaches the highest level of creative originality and stylistic perfection.” —The Daily Telegraph
THE CLOWN
Translated by Leila Vennewitz / Afterword by Scott Esposito
978-1-935554-17-2 | $16.95 / $19.95 CAN
“Moving … highly charged … filled with gentleness, high comic spirits, and human sympathy.” —Christian Science Monitor
BILLIARDS AT HALF-PAST NINE
Translated by Patrick Bowles / Afterword by Jessa Crispin
978-1-935554-18-9 | $16.95 / $19.95 CAN
“The claim that Böll is the true successor to Thomas Mann can be defended by his novel Billiards at Half-past Nine.” —The Scotsman
IRISH JOURNAL
Translated by Leila Vennewitz / Afterword by Hugo Hamilton
978-1-935554-19-6 | $14.95 US / $16.95 CAN
“Irish Journal has a beguiling … charm that perfectly suits the landscape and temperament of its subject.” —Bill Bryson, The New York Times Book Review
THE SAFETY NET
Translated by Leila Vennewitz / Introduction by Salman Rushdie
978-1-935554-31-8 | $16.95 US / $19.95 CAN
“The strongest response to modern terrorism by a serious novelist; an artful, gripping novel.” —Kirkus Reviews
THE TRAIN WAS ON TIME
Translated by Leila Vennewitz / Afterword by William T. Vollmann
978-1-935554-32-5 | $14.95 / $16.95 CAN
“Böll has feelingly symbolized a guilty Germany doing penance for its sins through suffering and death.” —Time
GROUP PORTRAIT WITH LADY
Translated by Leila Vennewitz
978-1-935554-33-2 | $18.95 / $21.50 CAN
“His most grandly conceived [novel] … the magnum opus which so far crowns his work.” —The Nobel Prize Committee
WHAT’S TO BECOME OF THE BOY? OR, SOMETHING TO DO WITH BOOKS
Translated by Leila Vennewitz / Introduction by Anne Applebaum
978-1-61219-001-3 | $14.95 US / $16.95 CAN
“The depth of Böll’s vision into the human soul can be breathtaking.” —The Washington Post
COLLECTED STORIES
Translations by Leila Vennewitz, Breon Mitchell, Patrick Bowles
978-1-61219-002-0 | $29.95 US / $34.00 CAN
“This is a most impressive collection, confirming Böll’s standing as one of the best writers of our time. It would form an admirable introduction to his work for those who don’t yet know it. It is the work of affirmation, for it proclaims the values of humanity and the unquenchable vitality of the spirit.” —The Scotsman
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Group Portrait With Lady Page 46
