Group Portrait with Lady (57 page)

As an unwed mother, alone on the little farm, which she put back on its feet again, things had not been easy for her, yet “time heals all wounds,” she had brought up her son, he had done well in school and become a farmer. When all was said and done, he had something many boys did not have, his father’s grave close by. She, Mrs. Z., had tried “as early as” (!!) 1948 to find Mrs. K., and then “soon after that” (!!), in 1952, had tried again, but she had finally given it up as a bad job, even her next attempt, in 1960 (!!), had come to nothing. True, she said, at the time she had not known Erich K. to be illegitimate too, nor had she known his mother’s first name and occupation. At last, some six months ago, with the assistance of a fertilizer salesman who had been kind enough to intervene in the matter, she had discovered Mrs. K.’s address, but still she had hesitated, not knowing how “she would take it.” Finally the boy had insisted, they had come into town, located Mrs. K.’s apartment, but, after long and repeated knocking, the door had not been opened. Inquiries of the neighbors (this is where the lady in the curlers plays a considerable role, also the whimpering dog, etc.—all this now a victim of that cavalier iconoclasm, reminiscent of the liturgy reform!!) had yielded the information that Mrs. K. could not possibly have gone away, that she never had gone away. In short: she, Mrs. Z., “feared the worst.”

(2) Wülffen was in a dilemma. Was this a case of “imminent danger,” the sole legal justification for having Mrs. K.’s apartment broken open? Having meanwhile reached 5 Nurgheimer Strasse accompanied by Mrs. Z. and her son, he was able to
ascertain that Mrs. K. had not been seen for a week. A neighbor (not the hairy-chested one, but a pensioner of Rhenish descent, known to be a drunkard, who referred to Mrs. K. as “that Ils”—all deleted!) thought he had “heard her bird cheeping pathetically” for three days. Wülffen decided, not because he considered the term “imminent danger” to apply but merely out of compassion, to have the apartment opened up. Fortunately there was, likewise among the neighbors, a youthful person (with such colorless words is an interesting personality dismissed, one who had been convicted four or five times of assault, procuring, breaking and entering, and is known to all the neighbors as “Kröcke’s Heini,” a person whom even Police Officer Dieter Wülffen describes as having “a thick mane of greasy, long brown hair and known to the police”), who with suspicious dexterity and the telltale words “This time I’m doing it
for
the police,” broke open the apartment.

(3) Mrs. K. was found dead, from an overdose of sleeping pills, lying fully dressed on the bench in her kitchen. Decomposition had not yet set in. She had merely (!!)—apparently with her finger and using the remains of some tomato ketchup—written the verb “to have” in a number of variations on an old mirror that hung over her kitchen sink. “I have had enough. I had enough. For a long time I had had en …” At this point she had evidently used up all the ketchup. The dead bird, a budgerigar, was found in the adjoining bedroom under a chest of drawers.

(4) Dieter Wülffen admitted that Mrs. K. had been known to the police. According to the records of K. 14, the political branch of the police, she had been a Communist but since 1932 no longer politically active, although—this was also known to the police—especially after the German Communist Party was banned, she had received numerous visits from a person who had enjoined her to resume her activity. (Here K. had written
out “Fritz’s” name in full, and this time it was the Au.’s blue pencil that claimed a victim.)

(5) Mrs. Z. and her son lodged inheritance claims. Dieter W. took into safekeeping a purse containing DM.15.80, also a savings book showing a balance of DM.67.50. The sole article of value that was taken into safekeeping was a nearly new black-and-white television set on which Mrs. K. had stuck a slip of paper saying “Final installment paid.” From a photo that hung, framed, above the bench Mrs. Z. recognized the father of her child, Erich K. A second photo showed
“his
father probably. Because of the amazing likeness.” In a flower-painted canister bearing the name of a well-known brand of coffee was found: “A man’s wrist watch, of almost no value but intact. A worn gold ring set with an artificial ruby, likewise of almost no value. A 10-mark bill from the year 1944. A Red Front party badge, the value of which cannot be ascertained by the undersigned. A pawn ticket dated 1936 with which a gold ring had been pawned for 2.50 Reichsmarks, another pawn ticket dated 1937 for which a beaver collar had been pawned for 2.00 Reichsmarks. A duly receipted rent-receipt book.” No food supplies of any value were found; half a bottle of vinegar, a can of oil, almost full (small size), some dried-out graham bread (five slices), an opened can of milk, some cocoa in a can—two or three ounces. A jar, only half full, of instant coffee, some salt, sugar, rice, a modest quantity of potatoes, as well as a package of birdseed, unopened. In addition, two small packages of cigarette paper and an opened package of fine-cut, “Turkish Gem” brand. Six novels by someone called Emile Zola, pocket edition, much read, not soiled. Probably of little value. A book entitled: “Songs of the Workers’ Movement.” The entire contents were dubbed by the neighbors who, impelled by curiosity, came crowding in and were promptly told to keep their distance, “nothing but a lot of junk.” Having waited for the arrival of the police doctor, Dieter W. sealed up the apartment as required by
regulations. Mrs. Z. was directed to the Department of Justice in the matter of her inheritance claims.

(6) An offer was made to Mrs. Z. to put her in touch with Mr. (“Fritz”) who, it was thought, might be able to provide her with some interesting details concerning the life of the deceased woman and the father of the deceased Erich K. She declined. She wanted nothing to do with Communists, she said.

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.

“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