'Vroog etz?' I asked, just testing him.
'Good,' he grumbled; he understood! He was Old Thak! But all he said was 'Ralph Packer', freeing a white hand from an arctic mitten, pushing this toward me out of the cuff of his Eskimo parka. 'You speak German, right? And you know tapes?'
'Right,' I said cautiously.
'Ever done any dubbing?' he asked. 'I'm making a film.' A pervert, I thought; wants me in his blue movie. 'I need a German voice,' he said. 'Some kind of clever German slipping in and out of the English narration.'
I knew those film-making students. Passing by Benny's and seeing through the window a terrible fight, a girl with her bra torn off, holding her tits, I rush inside to this lady's aid, only to spill a cameraman from his dolly, tangle my feet in extension cords, jar a man with his hands full of microphones. And the girl says tiredly, 'Easy, hey. It's just a goddamn movie.' She gives you a look to say: Because of nuts like you, I'm on my fourth bra today.
'... well, if you like playing with tapes and recorders,' Ralph Packer was saying, 'jamming voices, jumbling time. You know, sound montage. There's just a couple of things I want done, then you can play with it - you know, do what you want. Maybe give me some ideas ...'
It was such a shock at the time: to be a football-pennant salesman, and here's someone suggesting I might even have ideas!
'Hey,' said Ralph Packer, looking at me. 'You speak English too, don't you?'
'What do you pay?' I asked, and he whomped his arctic mitten down on my tape stack, sending one reel flopping like a stunned fish.
'Pay you!' he shouted. A great shrug of his shoulders sent a zoom lens around his neck swinging. Scenes of Old Thak in a rage sprang to mind.
Though well into his dotage, and weak
With the arrow sunk deep in his chest
Which was wider than Gurk's wine cask,
Old Thak strode up to the assassin-archer
And strangled him with his own bowstring.
Then, with his great palm, hardened
By holding the reins for a hundred horses,
Thak drove the arrow through his own chest
And drew it out his back, groaning mightily.
With the shaft still slimy with the old one's gore,
Thak slew the treacherous Gurk - a disemboweling
Thrust! Then did the Great Thak thank Gwolph
And blessed the banquet laid before him bloodily.
Thus did Ralph Packer storm about the listening booths of the language lab, and a frightened gathering of freshman German students cowered in the door while he ranted on.
'Sweet fuck! I should pay you? For an experience? And an opportunity! Look, Thumper' - a titter from my disloyal students - 'you sho
uld pay me for giving you the chance! I'm just getting started, I don't even pay myself! I sold fifteen hundred fucking football pennants for one wide-angle lens, and you want to be paid for your education!'
'Wait! Packer!' I cried; he was heading out the door, the students scampering.
'Fuck you, Thump-Thump,' he said. And turning fiercely on the freshman Germans: 'Fuck him, I say!' For a moment sensing their blind dread, I feared the lot of them would rush me and impulsively obey his command. But I ran after him. I found him watering himself with deep, greedy draughts at the drinking fountain in the hall.
'I didn't know you sold football pennants,' I said.
Later, when he was pleased with my sound-tracking games. Packer told me he'd be able to pay me one day. 'When I'm able to pay myself, Thump-Thump, there will be work for you.'