Look Who's Back (7 page)

“What do you mean, ‘other’? What clubs? What bag?”

“You know, a programme,” he said, “or other texts.”

“I have written two books!”

“Extraordinary,” he marvelled. “Why didn’t we pick you up on our radar years ago? How old are you, actually?”

“Fifty-six,” I said soberly.

“Of course,” he laughed. “Have you got a make-up artist, or do you do it yourself?”

“Not usually, only when filming.”

“Only when filming,” he laughed again. “Excellent. Look, there are one or two people in our company I’d like to introduce you to. Where can I touch base with you?”

“Touch what?” I asked.

“Where can I get in contact with you?” he explained.

“Here,” I said firmly.

The newspaper vendor interrupted me, adding, “I told you that his personal circumstances at the moment are a little … unsettled.”

“Oh yes, that’s right,” Sensenbrink said. “You are, how should I put it, currently homeless … ?”

“For the time being I am indeed without fixed abode,” I conceded. “But I am certainly not without a Heimat!”

“I understand,” Sensenbrink said, and turned to Sawatzki. “Well, that’s no good, is it? Sort something for him. The man needs to sharpen his pencils. I don’t care how good he is, if he turns up in front of Frau Bellini looking like that he’ll be scrap metal before he can open his mouth. It doesn’t have to be the Adlon, does it?”

“A modest dwelling will suffice,” I said in agreement. “The Führerbunker was not exactly Versailles.”

“Excellent,” Sensenbrink said. “Do you really have no manager?”

“No what?”

“Forget it,” he said, flapping his hand. “That’s settled, then. Now, I don’t want to let the grass grow long on this one; we should try and diarise it this week. You’re going to get your uniform back soon, aren’t you?”

“Maybe this evening,” I reassured him. “It is a Blitz cleaner’s, after all.”

Sensenbrink fell about laughing.

E
ven taking into account the dramatic events I had already experienced, the first morning in my new quarters was one of the most arduous in my life. The great conference at the production company had been delayed, which did not bother me. I was not so presumptuous as to deny that I had much work to do in familiarising myself with this present era. By chance, however, I came across a fresh source for such information: the television set.

The structure of this apparatus had changed so substantially since its initial development in 1936 that at first I simply failed to recognise it. To begin with I assumed that the dark, flat plate in my room must be some bizarre work of art. Then, taking into consideration its shape, I speculated that it might serve as a means of storing my shirts overnight without them creasing. There were many things in this modern world to which I had to accustom myself, based as they must be on new discoveries or a passion for outlandish design. Now, for example, it was deemed appropriate to install a kind of elaborate washing galley for guests in place of a bathroom. There was no longer a bathtub, but the shower – a glass cabin – was more or less housed in the room itself. For several weeks I took this to be a
sign of the modesty, nay, squalor of my billet, until I learned that in contemporary architecture circles these sorts of things are regarded as creative and remarkably progressive. Likewise, it was another coincidence which alerted me to the television set.

As I had forgotten to hang the
DO NOT DISTURB
sign on the door to my room, a cleaner entered just as I was attending to my moustache in the washing galley. I turned around in surprise, she apologised, promising to return later and, as she was leaving, she caught sight of the apparatus my shirt was hanging in front of.

“Is there something wrong with the telly?” she asked, and before I could reply she picked up a small box and turned on the device. An image appeared at once, which changed each time she pressed the buttons on the box.

“No, it’s working,” she said, satisfied. “I just thought …”

Then she went, leaving me full of curiosity.

Carefully I took the shirt from the screen, then reached for the little box.

So this was a modern-day television set. It was black, with no switches or knobs, nothing. Holding the box in my left hand I pressed button number one, and the apparatus started up. The result was disappointing.

The picture was of a chef, finely chopping vegetables. Unbelievable! Having developed such an advanced piece of technology, all they could feature on it was a ridiculous cook! Admittedly, the Olympic Games could not take place every year, nor at every hour of the day, but surely something of greater import must be happening somewhere in Germany, or even in the world! Shortly afterwards a woman joined the man
and provided an admiring commentary on his knife skills. My jaw dropped. Providence had presented the German Volk with this wonderful, magnificent opportunity for propaganda, and it was being squandered on the production of leek rings. I was so furious that I could have hurled the entire apparatus out of the window, but then it occurred to me that there were many more buttons on the little box besides the simple on/off one. So I pressed number two. The chef vanished at once, only to be replaced by another chef, who was grandiosely discussing the differences between two varieties of turnip. This one had a floozy standing next to him too, who marvelled at the pearls of wisdom that fell from the lips of this “Turnip Head”. In irritation I pressed number three. I had not imagined the modern world would be like this.

Turnip Head disappeared in favour of a thickset woman who was also standing by a stove. Here, by contrast, the preparation of food was peripheral to the scene, nor did the woman announce what was on the day’s menu. Instead she complained that she had far too little money. This at least was good news for a politician; the social question had not been resolved in the past sixty-six years. Might one have expected anything better from those democratic windbags?

I found it astonishing, however, that the television should afford this trout such prominence; compared to a 100 metres final, the performance of the hefty whiner was terrifically uneventful. On the other hand I was grateful to be watching a transmission where nobody was fussing over the cuisine, least of all the fat woman herself. Her concern was for a scruffy young character, who now slouched up to her, muttered
something that sounded like “grmmmshl”, and was introduced by a narrator as Manndi. Manndi, he explained, was the obese woman’s daughter, and she had just lost her apprenticeship. As I sat there, wondering how anybody could have possibly given this Manndi an apprenticeship in the first place, I heard her categorically rejecting every meal she was offered as “filth”. As unsympathetic a character as this urchin must be, one could hardly be surprised at her lack of appetite, given the indifference with which her elephantine mother opened a box and carelessly tipped its contents into a pan. It came almost as a surprise that the box was not tossed in as well. Shaking my head, I switched again, to find a third chef chopping meat into small pieces and holding forth about how he held the knife and why. He, too, had a young blonde bint at his side, who nodded in admiration. Exasperated, I switched off the television set and resolved never to watch the thing again. I decided to hazard another attempt at the wireless instead, but after a thorough reconnaissance of my room I established that there was no receiver present.

If these modest quarters housed a television set but no wireless receiver, one had to conclude that the television had become the more important of the two media.

Nonplussed, I sat on the bed.

I grant that once I had been very proud of my ability, after years of independent study, to unmask with lightning clarity the Jewish lies concocted for the press, in no matter what guise they appeared. But here my skill in that area was of no help. Here were only gibberish radio and cookery telecasts. What kinds of truths were being hidden?

Were there lying turnips?

Were there lying leeks?

But if this was the medium of the age – which was indisputably the case – then I had no choice. I had to learn to understand the content of this device, I had to absorb it, even if it was as intellectually challenged and loathsome as the plump woman’s boxed food. Full of resolve, I filled a jug of water at the washing galley, poured myself a glass, took a gulp and, thus steeled, sat in front of the apparatus.

I switched it on again.

On the first programme the leek chef’s preparations had come to an end; in his place a gardener, marvelled at by a nodding strumpet, was discussing snails and the best way to combat them. Of considerable importance to the nutrition of the nation, true, but did it need to be the subject of a television transmission? Perhaps the reason it appeared so gratuitous was that, just a few seconds later, another gardener delivered the same speech almost verbatim, but on a different programme, this time in place of the turnip chef. My curiosity was now aroused as to whether the stout woman had also moved into the garden to take up the fight against snails rather than against her daughter. But this was not the case.

Evidently the television set had realised that I had been watching other broadcasts in the meantime, for a narrator now summarised what I had missed. Manndi, the narrator recapitulated, had lost her apprenticeship and did not want to eat her mother’s food. The mother was unhappy. The same pictures I had seen only a quarter of an hour earlier were shown once more.

“Alright, alright!” I said, loud enough for the television set to hear. “There’s no need to do it at such length. I am not senile, for goodness’ sake.”

I switched programmes again. And in fact I encountered something new. The meat chef had vanished, and there were no preaching allotmenteers; instead they were showing the adventures of a lawyer, which seemed to be one of a series of telecasts. The lawyer had a beard like Buffalo Bill’s, and all the actors spoke and moved as if the silent film era had barely ended. A very jolly piece of buffoonery all in all, which made me laugh out loud on a number of occasions, even though in hindsight I was not entirely sure why. Perhaps it was mere relief that for once nobody was cooking or engaged in the defence of their salads.

I switched over, now feeling almost confident in my mastery of the apparatus, and stumbled across more feature films. Apparently older, and with variable picture quality, they depicted farm life, doctors, detectives. But in none of them did the actors have the same bizarre quality as the Buffalo Bill lawyer. The general aim seemed to be to offer unadulterated daytime entertainment. Which surprised me. Of course, I too was delighted when in 1944
The Punch Bowl
was released, a wonderfully cheery film which enchanted and diverted the public at a particularly difficult time in the war. But this comedy had been consumed in the evenings, at least in the overwhelming majority of cases. How grievous the situation must now be, then, if the Volk was being offered up such a featherweight muse in the
mornings
. In shock, I continued my exploration of the device and was stopped dead in my tracks.

Before me now sat a man who was reading from a text, which in content appeared to be a news bulletin, but this was hard to say with absolute certainty. For while the man presented his reports, banners ran across the picture, some with figures, some with phrases, as if what the announcer was saying were so negligible that one might as well follow the banners instead, or vice-versa. What was certain was that one would suffer a stroke if one tried to follow everything. My eyes burning, I switched over again, only to find myself presented with a channel doing precisely the same, albeit with banners in another colour and a different announcer. Mobilising every last ounce of my inner strength, I spent several minutes attempting to grasp what was happening. A matter of some importance seemed to be the focus; the current German chancellor had obviously proclaimed, announced or decided something, but it was impossible to understand
what
. On the verge of despair, I crouched in front of the machine and tried to cover the inconsequential swarm of words with my hands so I could concentrate on the spoken word. But more gobbledygook was shifting, constantly, in almost every corner of the screen. The time, the stock prices, the price of the American dollar, the temperature of the remotest corners of the earth – oblivious to all this, the announcer carried on broadcasting news of world events. It was as if the information were being retrieved from a lunatic asylum.

And as if these nonsensical antics were not enough, interruptions for advertisements, as frequent as they were abrupt, declared where the cheapest holiday could be obtained, a claim, moreover, which a large number of shops made in exactly the
same way. No sane person would be capable of remembering the names of these outlets, but they all belonged to a group called W.W.W. My only hope was that this was nothing more than “Strength through Joy” in a modern guise. Mind you, it was inconceivable that a man as intelligent as Ley could have created something which sounded like a frozen runt clambering out of a lido with chattering teeth: W.W.W.

I do not recall how I was able to summon the strength to compose my own thoughts. And yet I was struck by a flash of inspiration: this organised lunacy was a sophisticated propaganda trick. It was plain to see – in the face of even the most dreadful news, the Volk would not lose heart, for the never-ending banners gave the reassuring message that it was legitimate to dismiss what had just been read by the announcer as insignificant, and concentrate on the sports headlines instead. I gave a nod of approval. In my time we could have used this technology to inform the Volk of many things parenthetically. Not Stalingrad, maybe, but definitely the Allied landing in Sicily. And conversely, when one’s Wehrmacht won great victories, one could promptly remove the text banners and announce from a static screen:
TODAY, HEROIC GERMAN TROOPS GAVE THE DUCE BACK HIS FREEDOM
!

What impact
that
would have had!