Cruelty Read online

  ‘May I sit down, sir?’

  ‘Sure, take a seat.’

  Adolph Knipe seated himself on the edge of a chair. The older man watched him with alert brown eyes, wondering what was coming now.

  ‘I would like to explain something, Mr Bohlen, if I may, about how I came to do all this.’

  ‘Go right ahead, Knipe.’ He would have to be humoured a little now, Mr Bohlen told himself. The boy was really valuable – a sort of genius, almost – worth his weight in gold to the firm. Just look at these papers here. Darndest thing you ever saw. Astonishing piece of work. Quite useless, of course. No commercial value. But it proved again the boy’s ability.

  ‘It’s a sort of confession, I suppose, Mr Bohlen. I think it explains why I’ve always been so … so kind of worried.’

  ‘You tell me anything you want, Knipe. I’m here to help you – you know that.’

  The young man clasped his hands together tight on his lap, hugging himself with his elbows. It seemed as though suddenly he was feeling very cold.

  ‘You see, Mr Bohlen, to tell the honest truth, I don’t really care much for my work here. I know I’m good at it and all that sort of thing, but my heart’s not in it. It’s not what I want to do most.’

  Up went Mr Bohlen’s eyebrows, quick like a spring. His whole body became very still.

  ‘You see, sir, all my life I’ve wanted to be a writer.’

  ‘A writer!’

  ‘Yes, Mr Bohlen. You may not believe it, but every bit of spare time I’ve had, I’ve spent writing stories. In the last ten years I’ve written hundreds, literally hundreds of short stories. Five hundred and sixty-six, to be precise. Approximately one a week.’

  ‘Good heavens, man! What on earth did you do that for?’

  ‘All I know, sir, is I have the urge.’

  ‘What sort of urge?’

  ‘The creative urge, Mr Bohlen.’ Every time he looked up he saw Mr Bohlen’s lips. They were growing thinner and thinner, more and more purple.

  ‘And may I ask you what you do with these stories, Knipe?’

  ‘Well, sir, that’s the trouble. No one will buy them. Each time I finish one, I send it out on the rounds. It goes to one magazine after another. That’s all that happens, Mr Bohlen, and they simply send them back. It’s very depressing.’

  Mr Bohlen relaxed. ‘I can see quite well how you feel, my boy.’ His voice was dripping with sympathy. ‘We all go through it one time or another in our lives. But now – now that you’ve had proof – positive proof – from the experts themselves, from the editors, that your stories are – what shall I say – rather unsuccessful, it’s time to leave off. Forget it, my boy. Just forget all about it.’

  ‘No, Mr Bohlen! No! That’s not true! I know my stories are good. My heavens, when you compare them with the stuff some of those magazines print – oh my word, Mr Bohlen! – the sloppy, boring stuff that you see in the magazines week after week – why, it drives me mad!’

  ‘Now wait a minute, my boy …’

  ‘Do you ever read the magazines, Mr Bohlen?’

  ‘You’ll pardon me, Knipe, but what’s all this got to do with your machine?’

  ‘Everything, Mr Bohlen, absolutely everything! What I want to tell you is, I’ve made a study of magazines, and it seems that each one tends to have its own particular type of story. The writers – the successful ones – know this, and they write accordingly.’

  ‘Just a minute, my boy. Calm yourself down, will you. I don’t think all this is getting us anywhere.’

  ‘Please, Mr Bohlen, hear me through. It’s all terribly important.’ He paused to catch his breath. He was properly worked up now, throwing his hands around as he talked. The long, toothy face, with the big ears on either side, simply shone with enthusiasm, and there was an excess of saliva in his mouth which caused him to speak his words wet. ‘So you see, on my machine, by having an adjustable co-ordinator between the “plot-memory” section and the “word-memory” section I am able to produce any type of story I desire simply by pressing the required button.’

  ‘Yes, I know, Knipe, I know. This is all very interesting, but what’s the point of it?’

  ‘Just this, Mr Bohlen. The market is limited. We’ve got to be able to produce the right stuff, at the right time, whenever we want it. It’s a matter of business, that’s all. I’m looking at it from your point of view now – as a commercial proposition.’

  ‘My dear boy, it can’t possibly be a commercial proposition – ever. You know as well as I do what it costs to build one of these machines.’

  ‘Yes, sir, I do. But with due respect, I don’t believe you know what the magazines pay writers for stories.’

  ‘What do they pay?’

  ‘Anything up to twenty-five hundred dollars. It probably averages around a thousand.’

  Mr Bohlen jumped.

  ‘Yes, sir, it’s true.’

  ‘Absolutely impossible, Knipe! Ridiculous!’

  ‘No, sir, it’s true.’

  ‘You mean to sit there and tell me that these magazines pay out money like that to a man for … just for scribbling off a story! Good heavens, Knipe! Whatever next! Writers must all be millionaires!’

  ‘That’s exactly it, Mr Bohlen! That’s where the machine comes in. Listen a minute, sir, while I tell you some more. I’ve got it all worked out. The big magazines are carrying approximately three fiction stories in each issue. Now, take the fifteen most important magazines – the ones paying the most money. A few of them are monthlies, but most of them come out every week. All right. That makes, let us say, around forty big stories being bought each week. That’s forty thousand dollars. So with our machine – when we get it working properly – we can collar nearly the whole of this market!’

  ‘My dear boy, you’re mad!’

  ‘No, sir, honestly, it’s true what I say. Don’t you see that with volume alone we’ll completely overwhelm them! This machine can produce a five-thousand word story, all typed and ready for dispatch, in thirty seconds. How can the writers compete with that? I ask you, Mr Bohlen, how?’

  At that point, Adolph Knipe noticed a slight change in the man’s expression, an extra brightness in the eyes, the nostrils distending, the whole face becoming still, almost rigid. Quickly, he continued. ‘Nowadays, Mr Bohlen, the hand-made article hasn’t a hope. It can’t possibly compete with mass-production, especially in this country – you know that. Carpets … chairs … shoes … bricks … crockery … anything you like to mention – they’re all made by machinery now. The quality may be inferior, but that doesn’t matter. It’s the cost of production that counts. And stories – well – they’re just another product, like carpets and chairs, and no one cares how you produce them so long as you deliver the goods. We’ll sell them wholesale, Mr Bohlen! We’ll undercut every writer in the country! We’ll corner the market!’

  Mr Bohlen edged up straighter in his chair. He was leaning forward now, both elbows on the desk, the face alert, the small brown eyes resting on the speaker.

  ‘I still think it’s impracticable, Knipe.’

  ‘Forty thousand a week!’ cried Adolph Knipe. ‘And if we halve the price, making it twenty thousand a week, that’s still a million a year!’ And softly he added, ‘You didn’t get any million a year for building the old electronic calculator, did you, Mr Bohlen?’

  ‘But seriously now, Knipe. D’you really think they’d buy them?’

  ‘Listen, Mr Bohlen. Who on earth is going to want custom-made stories when they can get the other kind at half the price? It stands to reason, doesn’t it?’

  ‘And how will you sell them? Who will you say has written them?’

  ‘We’ll set up our own literary agency, and we’ll distribute them through that. And we’ll invent all the names we want for the writers.’

  ‘I don’t like it, Knipe. To me, that smacks of trickery, does it not?’

  ‘And another thing, Mr Bohlen. There’s all manner of valuable by-products once you’ve go