How’s it hanging, then, you little lustful brute? asked the hostess. Shocked, Zündel replied: Very well, thanks, and you? – She replied: No money, no love, just a basement full of filth. – And she grabbed him between the legs, and hissed into his ear: My name’s Pussy, what’s yours? – Oh, call me Traugott, said Zündel, paid, slid off his barstool, and wobbled home. Such exploits had never yet brought him relief. But at least the evening’s yawning void was shortened by an hour.
Firstly, Magda has a sister but no brother, and secondly, Magda was away for the weekend at the bioenergetics seminar in Aarwangen.
That’s the way it is then. No sooner am I gone than she brings someone home with her, they run into Schmocker on the stairs, and – for the sake of appearances – she claims the visitor is her brother. So shoddy. So conventional. The fellow was probably stretched out beside her, pinching her bottom, all the time I was talking to her from Milan. So it goes. And the minute I get home, a quarrel is manufactured to give her some legitimacy. Then off to Helen in Bern. Or should I say “Helen” in “Bern.” Because his name won’t be Helen. It’s all such vieux jeu. Dear God, send me a hole to be sick in.
Zündel stood by the open window. The night was mild and bright. He stood and drank until – at about half past ten – he had the courage to call Helen’s number. No reply.
What yesterday still had the appearance of value is sudden trash. Everything is subject to continual revision: so fragile is the past, so idiotically menaced by the least bit of now. A single infidelity, and everything is swept away, certainly all the good bits. And the better it was, the more doubtful it becomes, in the light of one’s doubts. In a matter of seconds, the love story is a crumpled tissue of lies. And if it weren’t for the house rules, one might have a bath, because one’s teeth are chattering, and existence is so unappetizing.
He turns on the radio and catches the end of an interview. A writer is saying: Over the course of time, I’ve felt the classics becoming like brothers to me. – Then the brother to the classics says: At the end of all dialectic is praise. – Zündel rediscovers sarcasm and thinks: so true, so beautiful, so bold. – At the same time, though, he can feel his eyes moisten. He shakes his head, and says, aloud: Konrad, Konrad.
He drinks calvados. He finds: for decades the course of events has borne me out. But this congruence leaves me neither proud nor happy. I wish I had a revolver.
Zündel drinks, smokes, flicks through one of the women’s magazines lying on the coffee table, but midnight won’t come. A reader’s letter: I have yet to give myself to my lover, but I fear it may one day come to that. What should I do? The advice columnist replies: What you are so painfully and representatively going through is the crisis in orientation of the modern-day woman. Question your needs and work on your understanding of your emotions . . . – Oh, Jesus H. Christ, mutters Zündel, and stops reading.
The fact that Magda always laid the breakfast table before going to bed had always been a source of irritation to Konrad. The blithe, bossy manner with which the future’s hash was settled in these parts alienated him, and he found it stultifyingly bourgeois to pretend there was no chance of an overnight catastrophe. Now, though, he lays out plate, cup, egg-cup, knife, and spoon, and at the top end of the table a tense little arrangement comes into being.
He casts an eye over the bookshelves. You wiseacres, you sages, you dolled-up yarn artists. There you are, united in the belief that you could shovel yourselves free with words. How long I put my money on you, how long I let you nest in the hollow spaces of my inexperience. But there’s an end to all that now. Radical renunciation of the power of the mind, claiming to make sense of the world for me. You’ve turned me into a quote hamster. Your chitchat’s at the root of my trouble. I want my feeling raw, not spoon-sized, I want action, not the book. I hereby declare – until further notice – that unfiltered reality is my aim, and I mean it. The mind – and I say it with all respect, and I have proof – the mind chokes off pleasure in living. The fact that the female praying mantis (mantis religiosa) bites the head off the male at the onset of copulation and thereby heightens his sexual prowess (the head contains inhibitor nerve centers) can surely come as no surprise. The spontaneous life is – headless.
Zündel empties the ashtray, airs the room, cleans his teeth, washes his face, locks the front door, gets undressed, and sits up in bed. Behind the alarm clock he encounters one of Magda’s hair clips, picks it up, and sniffs it. A bland scent, he thinks, undecided between mournfulness and fury.
But in fact he feels strangely comforted. The Lord giveth, he whispers to himself several times. A conciliatory image floats into his mind: the Union of Abandoned Husbands (UAH) amalgamates with the Sisterhood of Beaten Wives (SBW). All hearts are thawed, the respective members exchange violets and melting looks, and body fearlessly presses against body.
With a sigh, Zündel turns the light off. He feels: there’s a mechanism within us that degrades even the most shame-faced little idyll to utopian kitsch.
Then he turns the light on again and climbs out of bed. I forgot to lock the door, I must be getting senile. – He sees that the door is locked. Things are going downhill with me, he thinks, I’ve already locked the door. I really must be senile.
Midnight is past, in spite of his ultimatum to himself he has taken no decision, but what does another postponement matter? Isn’t every lapse paid for by increased rigor?
Before he goes to sleep he remembers things they did for one another out of love at the beginning: in his single bed there were two pillows, one hard, one soft. When it looked as though Magda was going to stay the night with him for the very first time, he asked her which of the two she would like. – Which one do you want? she asked back. Although Konrad had a distinct preference for the hard one, he said he really didn’t mind. Then Magda thought: he’s bound to prefer the soft one, but doesn’t trust himself to say so. I’ll leave him that one, and take the hard one myself, though the soft one would be nicer for me. And so she said: I’d prefer the hard one. And he: And I prefer the soft one, isn’t that convenient.