Zündel was breakfasting, and noticing he was barely missing Magda. Peace and quiet at last, he remarked to the cat. At last I can sit over my coffee the way I like to. For years, I’ve been at pains not to belch. For years, I’ve held up my end of countless breakfast conversations, even though I’m naturally aphasic in the mornings. I was faithful, too, even though . . . well, just even though! A marriage is over when its “even thoughs” are not lived out, and if they are, it’s over as well. So what do we conclude, Büsi dearest? Do you know that Magda had you snipped against my wishes? And now she just takes off, leaves us sitting there, and feels ever so bold. Mad! She needs to get her head examined. Well, see if we care. We’re not the ones to force ourselves on anybody, and it would be a grave mistake to see Magda’s presence as any sort of prerequisite for a happy existence.
Zündel took a headache tablet. It was eleven o’clock. He opened the window. The sun was out. I ought to get dressed, he thought, but I don’t feel like it. One thinks he ought, the second doesn’t feel like it, and the third has to decide one way or another. For the sake of simplicity all three are called Konrad. The intestine holds the sausage together. The name pretends it keeps us from disintegrating, but the compacted forcemeat remains flobby. The so-called I is only a foolish grammatical assertion, one that admittedly is increasingly brazen. The only reason we need our asylums is because not everyone likes to participate in this identity nonsense, and whoever doesn’t fall for the planet-wide I-con is accounted mad. And now I’m going back to bed.
When Konrad breakfasted for the second time early in the evening, he felt worse. His sleep had been troubled and sweaty; when he got up, his muscles had grumblingly performed what he asked of them. His coffee cup shook in his hand, and the honey pot kept losing its definition. He thought he must have had nightmares, and remembered a falsetto voice that had kept dinning the same message into him. The only phrase he could remember was “dietary wagon.”
He decided to give himself until midnight. Then he would have to make a decision as to how to proceed. What he was looking at initially was three and a half weeks of holiday, behind him lay a lifetime that had never, not for one hour, especially convinced him. His marriage – like the overwhelming majority of marriages – had probably been contracted through love, but this love turned out – like almost every other love (in his view) – to be a mixture of fear of solitude, sex drive, and habit. He had not taken up his profession out of pedagogical enthusiasm, but for want of alternatives, perhaps even because he had suffered so unspeakably during his own school days.
What now? he asked, after his bread and honey had been eaten up. In the first place, I’d like to get so far as to be able to see myself as negligible, as the little cosmic pea I really am. I want to be able to giggle about my existential earnestness and pampering of self. I’d like to be able to see myself retrospectively, as the banal prequel to a rotting corpse. And secondly, I wouldn’t mind writing a little novel, were it not that so doing would reveal myself to be a self-important so-and-so, who – like any writer – has eyes only for himself, even in the strangest disguise.
Disquieted by the incompatibility of his desires, Zündel got out paper and pencil.
8.7. To write? (Perchance to publish?) If at least, one had the certainty of being a representative sort of cripple. What is at issue is not literary ability, but – putting it rather pompously – deservingness. To be worthy you have to be exceptional in some sort (for instance the cripple), but this exceptionalism must not be some random difference, it needs to be held up as a normal or compelling or statistically representative exceptionalism. (The writer can never be finally sure whether he’s a crazy or an exemplary human being.) – Correction: the representative exception is extremely rare. Ordinarily, the representative is the common-or-garden varietal. An exemplary person would be the one who exposed the nullity of the average. If such a person were to write a book attacking his own average nullity, the result would be . . . oh, stuff it.
One thing for sure: whoever isn’t prepared to get through life in discreet silence and without leaving his mark anywhere is a publicity-crazed scribbler. The end.
P.S. Though, in a more subtle way, the taciturn man is also making a fuss of himself.
Then Zündel remembered that he hadn’t been down to the letterbox yet. The paper. The paper! It would help him get through the next hour or two.
He slid down the balustrade to the ground floor. On the bottom step, on a sheet of paper, lay a cigarette end. It had been ringed in green felt-tip. The ring was indicated by an arrow, emerging from another, speech-bubble-like form, in which the legend hovered: “Thank God decent tenants outnumber pigs like this.” Schmocker the super’s claim was rather flattering to those occupants who were not the delinquent. Zündel emptied his letterbox. In his ears he felt a sensation of heat that indicated to him he had little doubt as to his own culpability. Yes, of course, he was smoking in the taxi early this morning, then when he got home wondered what had become of the cigarette, and, panic-stricken, had scrabbled around on all fours looking for it. Of course. I’ll have dropped it in the common parts, but Schmocker is and remains a dismal wretch.
Quickly, Zündel scuttled upstairs, but no sooner had he passed Schmocker’s door than he heard the super’s booming voice at his back: Evening, Herr Zündel! – Like a shot in the neck, thought Konrad, came to a dead stop, shuddered, turned, and forlornly boomed back: And a good evening to you too, Herr Schmocker. – Schmocker walked up to the bottom step. – So, we’re on holiday again, are we? he bellowed from a range of six feet. – That’s right, said Zündel. Schmocker raised his index finger, rotated it through 180 degrees so that it pointed straight down, and said: I know who was responsible for this outrage, you’ll have seen it for yourself I’m sure. – Oh, who was it, then? asked Zündel. – Omarini, of course, who else! If it was up to me, I’d have had the building cleansed long ago, you take my meaning. – Actually, I don’t, lied Zündel, to avoid excess complicity. – Eye-ties bish-bosh, bish-bosh! said Schmocker. – But there are some salubrious southerners too, replied Zündel, rather piano, and he wondered if he had ever said anything as pathetic in his life. Schmocker ignored him, and said: Has your brother-in-law left, then? – I don’t understand. My brother-in-law? – Sure, your wife had her brother staying over the weekend. – Zündel paused a moment, then quickly smote himself across the brow with the rolled up newspaper: Oh, him, of course. Yes, he’s left. – It couldn’t have looked at all convincing. Schmocker made an indescribable face and yelled: Well, be seeing you, Herr Zündel, and remember, chin up! – What do you mean by that? asked Zündel. His voice didn’t sound nearly innocent enough. And Schmocker answered under his breath, as though seeking some middle ground with Zündel’s blurted question: Oh, just so. – And with that he turned, and disappeared back into his flat.