So it was Monday morning, Zündel still had his passport and his change purse with some money and his train ticket, and he decided to go home and get his tooth seen to on Tuesday, and he stood in the phone box and he said to his Magda: So how was the bioenergetic weekend? –Where are you? asked Magda. – Something’s cropped up, said Zündel, and felt revolting. – What happened, why aren’t you on the ship? asked Magda. – I’m in Milan, but you’re not being very nice to me, what’s the matter? – I was asleep, said Magda. – What time is it? he asked. She said: Nine o’clock. – I’m sorry, said Zündel, I just wanted to let you know that I’ll be home tonight. – Tonight? asked Magda unenthusiastically. – Yes, he persisted. – Koni, aren’t you well? – I’ll tell you everything when I see you, he said, appeased.
In the station buffet, he felt sick. The phone call had sapped him. – Increasingly everything in me curls up when I hear myself speak. I’m tired. Was Magda alone? All this continual assertion of self. Everything is hostile, everything that happens to me exceeds my capacity to endure it. Why does God have to send me a finger? And take my tooth. Sooner or later, everyone feels unviable. Humanity is assembled from partially reformed bed-wetters who never quite shake the feeling of existential displacement. No sphincter, no melancholy. Look at them, sipping their coffee.
He had bought himself a German newspaper for the journey, and was looking forward to reading it. But then the term “parcel of measures” kept him enraged almost as far as Como. On the other side of the border, he struggled for a long time with the notion of a saddle “with non-slip grip.” There too, Zündel saw an imposing counter-position to his habitual slither through life.
He dozed as far as Göschenen.
Then he read an article about intestinal parasites. Belatedly, he found an explanation for the itching that had tormented him at night in bed, as a child. The female worms like to creep out a little at night, and lay their eggs just beyond the portals.
In Arth Guldau a young woman joined the train. Thus far Zündel had had the compartment to himself. When the woman hoisted her bag onto the luggage rack, he saw that her jeans were called “Let’s Go.” His own, he knew, were called “Happy Life.” It occurred to Zündel to ask: Miss, do you think our trousers might be related? – But she sat down and said: You can’t move without getting chatted up. – Zündel felt a shiver go down his spine. Had he been thinking aloud? Was it that bad? – Ever since Altdorf, she explained, I have been pestered by two Italians, and so I’ve finally moved compartments. – I see, he said, and added: Yes, the world is full of booty-hunters. – The expression, which had been one of Zündel’s grandfather’s, seemed unfamiliar to her, at any rate she looked at him uncomprehendingly, and immersed herself in her magazine.
Zündel’s sympathies were with the two ill-bred Italians. He had long since observed that, under her very thin blouse, the woman was not wearing a bra. Now I don’t mind seeing such things, in fact I probably rather like it, he thought, but in a way I hate it as well, and if I had power, I might well decree an end to immodesty. Everything is under protection nowadays, everything except for men. As if we didn’t have to pull ourselves together, master ourselves, control ourselves enough as it was! And now these summer girls show up, and take feats of masculine self-mastery for granted. – I would like time to think this all over thoroughly, Zündel thought, and looked out of the window till Zürich, feeling increasingly irked by the frantic salubriousness of the Swiss scene.
The city looks as though a million tongues are continually licking it clean. The people dress smartly, although some few affect a kind of casual chic. Their dialect is broad, their gait is bent and cramped, and I’m an old curmudgeon, now here’s my tram.