It wasn’t till Saturday (July 18) that Konrad finally managed to write a few words to Magda. She didn’t know where he was, and perhaps she was worried about him, who could say. He was still her husband, after all.
At the railway kiosk he bought a bland picture postcard (a blurred aerial photograph of the port) and wrote: Dear Magda, Judith is minding the cat, life here is good, no cross words and fried foods galore. Cheers, K.
He dropped the card in the red letterbox outside the railway post office. There, he thought, now I’ve reduced my wife to the rank of postcard addressee. She will think wistfully of the time I wrote her long letters.
He wandered round the station. He saw that everyone had some object in view. No one was going round in circles. With eerie determination everyone went on his way, heading somewhere, no question. It was as though they all had little purring motors strapped to their bottoms. – Isn’t everything mysterious, Zündel said to himself, and made for a lavatory. While he looked down at his stream of urine, he thought: mind you don’t lose contact with reality. Don’t overdo the amazement. I’ve been away for a week, and already people are strange to me, and the most natural things startle me. So I think what I’ll do now is buy myself a newspaper, there, after all I’m not an ostrich. I know there are more current things than me. I know too how much world history depends on our involvement. What’s a boxing match without a public? A pallid dumbshow. What’s a sermon without a congregation? A bit of absurd theater. What would politicians be without publicity? Masks of stiff cardboard or paper maché. Yes, but for us onlookers, world history would probably grind to a halt. We stir the doers to action and so give rise to a brisk and colorful pageant.
Zündel bought himself a Swiss paper, sat down at a little marble table, ordered a Campari, and no sooner had he begun reading with interest than he noticed his capacity to absorb information was reduced, that he kept getting stuck, that all these sentences and terms didn’t bore him so much as simply disgust him.
Good in the air, credit rating, comfort zone. Jailbait. Humanitarian gesture. Organ-harvesting service. Plus pedophile community and re-insurance and arctic frontal system.
The swamp.
The Kremlin’s stick-and-carrot policy and a generous offer from the White House and lockable paradises. The words stink and the sentences stink, as if they’d slipped out of the hemorrhoid-wreathed intestines of pest-infected morons. The stock market didn’t get out of bed this morning, three-ply toilet paper is uncompromising, the intermediate missile program is on course. Shrill formulations are smeared over unresisting facts. Data spread their thighs and admit well-used linguistic particles. A noun acquires a stiff adjective and sticks it to reality from behind. Endless, shameless, comfortless sentences and contents pair off, and the product of their unchastity is called a newspaper.
At lunchtime, Zündel packed his swimming things and took a bus out to Nervi. The decision had taken a lot out of him, because the heat was extreme and he felt torpid. The more contentedly he now sat on an uncomfortably tilting slab of rock, slathered himself with sunblock, and thought: I am enjoying an active holiday. – A child’s voice cried out: Mama, look, that man’s all white! – A few yards behind Konrad was a deeply tanned family of Germans. The mother glanced at the pallid Zündel and said: Come on, Uschi, why don’t you splash about a bit.
A family of Italians was just getting dressed. So cumbrously, you couldn’t help looking. Mutual assistance was supposed to keep those parts from becoming public that in Italy were still the preserve of private life. – Prudish but well-intentioned, thought Zündel. Repressed, but more admirable than the grim topless honesty of cutting edge contemporary beaches.
The German Mama had followed her Uschi into the water. Papa was engrossed in the paper: “Yelling baby found in garbage pail.”
Zündel had no words for that. He buried himself in his own reading matter, a paperback with the title “After the Big One: Adapting to Survival.” Earthworms are very good for you because they are so protein-rich; he made a mental note of the fact. You drop them in boiling water. Then you slice them open with a knife, remove the grit, and wash them again, from the inside. Then grill them on a hot rock. Suggested vegetable accompaniment: tender young dandelion leaves.
Here was Mama and Uschi back again. Uschi had stepped on a sea urchin and was screaming. Papa said: Why don’t you watch where you’re going, you damned fool. – Don’t be cross with her, it can happen to anyone, said Mama. Papa said: No, she could have kept her eyes open. – Then he went grumpily into the water.
Zündel made a mental note: never drink urine! Though in extreme emergencies (desert situation) you can make potable water from it: pee into a hole in the sand, and watch the poisonous liquid drain away. Place a container over the bottom of the hole and stretch a funnel shaped piece of PVC over the top of it. While the poisons remain in the ground, the liquid, drawn to the surface by the sun’s heat, will condense against the taut plastic, and drip into the container.
The child was still crying.
The father came back from his swim. He was hobbling and shouting, I want to know who’s in charge of this goddamned beach. I’m going to make a complaint. You wouldn’t have a pair of tweezers would you, Mama? Sea urchin needles can easily turn septic. – I’m afraid not, honeybunch, they’re back in the hotel, said Mama. Does it hurt very much?
Now Zündel took his turn in the sea, and in spite of the yellowish foam crests breaking around him, he enjoyed the cool water. Coming back on land he kept his eyes open, but still, as expected, stepped on a sea urchin.
On the way back to his spot, he disguised his limp for fear the German would involve him in a conversation about the laxness of the Italian authorities. But the German was now sitting between the legs of his wife, back to her, while she squeezed his zits. The long white worms of sebum were Zündel’s cue to depart.
He arrived in his hotel salt-caked and sticky. Straightaway he stripped to his underpants, draped a towel across his shoulders and hurried out to the shower on the landing. Just outside it, he slowed his pace and almost reflexively pricked up his ears. From the shower room he heard a sound that was like the panting of a dog on a warm summer’s day. He listened more closely: the sound was a duet. Great Scott, thought Zündel, and he hopped from one foot to the other, because he could see that the keyhole was generously proportioned. – What would the normal person do now, he wondered, probably beat a quick retreat, a little peek would be the act of a pervert. Shall I or shall I not? – The panting was loud and rhythmic, and now Zündel involuntarily bent down, squeezed his right eye shut, and applied his left to the keyhole. He saw a pink-tiled wall. Nothing else. – Just then the ghastly thing happened. Zündel received a violent kick up the behind that sent his forehead smashing against the door. For a split second there was complete silence, inside and out, but before Zündel, trembling with shock and humiliation, could stand upright, a high pitched voice began to scold him. It was the cleaning lady, identifiable by her bucket and mop. The man she had caught in the act stood stricken in front of her, staring down at her sandals. The couple in the shower room seemed to have been caught out as well, at any rate they weren’t making any more noise. Maybe they were foreigners who hadn’t understood the woman’s Genoese dialect, and took the crashing and abuse upon themselves and what they had been doing. Either way, Zündel was only slowly able to part from the incensed female, and first slowly and then very quickly retired to his room. He locked the door, sat down dry mouthed on the bed, and thought that, in human terms, he was finished for the foreseeable future. He felt the bump on his brow. He remembered his beach reading. He groaned. Perhaps the hotel management was even now being informed of the monster on the second floor and his room number was being established?
Zündel waited.
No one knocked.
An hour later, he washed in the hand-basin.
He was hungry but didn’t dare leave his room, and decided to skip supper.
He crawled under the sheet.
His head hurt, and his foot hurt.
How all alone I am, he thought, and he remembered the screaming baby in the garbage can.
Later he said to himself, very quickly, ten times in a row: organ harvesting.
A rough night. Bad dreams, toothache, thirst, and a blocked nose.