Once again – that Friday aside – there followed a sequence of incident free days. Early on Sunday morning, Zündel left the Hotel Virginia and was now staying at the Albergo Armonia.
Blue ink: Zündel must have bought himself a pen; all the earlier records and some subsequent to the Genoese stay are in fine black felt-tip.
There is a further, almost alarming peculiarity in the Armonia protocols: at the end of one section – often a single sentence – Konrad would straightaway comment on what he had written with the expression, “load of crap.” – Sometimes there seemed to be no form of words that did not elicit such a challenge, no statement that was allowed to stand.
A typical excerpt might run (verbatim):
Reality – with all equanimity, more terrible and indescribable by the day – forces one either to complete withdrawal or baying anarchy. –
I can neither steer the course of history toward some bearable ideal, nor can I deconstruct the ideal, to make history appear more tolerable by comparison. – Oh, load of crap.
The course of history commences at birth – Oh . . .
Get on the track of the emotions! (Cf. Zuberbühler: you don’t know what you want!) Possible leads: Wife. Job. State of the world. Time the deceiver. Weather. Incisor. Bump on my brow. Rudeness met with. Apartment complex. Advertisement complex. The streetcar. A supermarket. People, people, the Schmockers, the politicians, imposing physiques, the whole object compulsion lobby, ruffians, shouters, bluffers, conmen, the wall-to-wall wolves.
Or maybe: the inheritance of my father. My mother’s pregnancy. My birth in winter. Saturn? – Oh . . .
Dull-wittedness is an exact word, I like it. –
Negation is the only thing that keeps one alert, but strength, strength. – Survival training begins at birth. –
Giving up is cowardly. Carrying on is cowardly. Giving up is brave. Carrying on is brave. Life is a matter of vocabulary. – Ach, load of crap.
Out of who knows what state of feeling – it will hardly have been desire – Zündel, on Friday night, went with a prostitute for the first time in his life. She had accosted him on the street, and against his custom he had stopped and asked, half-shyly, half-masterfully, what she charged.
Then, shuffling along in her wake and thinking of what lay ahead, he began to feel afraid. He didn’t feel like it. He couldn’t do it, and after not quite fifty yards, he couldn’t imagine anyone who could and would. – Why is this a flourishing profession? Are men just animals? Or machines? Or pathological impulsives who don’t require affection and are in thrall to their fiery phallic wand?
By now they had crossed a gloomy courtyard, and it felt too late to Zündel to peel off. The woman who had kept turning round to him and flicking her tongue out in his direction – presumably thinking she was heightening his interest – now entered a long and dimly lit passage, at the end of which was a porter’s lodge. Evidently a convenience hotel, thought Zündel following after, and at the same moment he saw with a shock where he was. The Armonia! He groaned inwardly, but the scrawny porter beamed all over his face for the first time, and called out in a voice of thunder: “Benvenuto Signor Sindel!” – Zündel broke into a cold sweat, managed a “buona sera,” cursed his enterprise, his blindness, cursed all rear entrances everywhere and concluded he would be spared no humiliation.
He found himself going up a narrow spiral staircase, then left, then right, then into the woman’s room.
She closed the door and demanded her money upfront. It was a little more than the sum agreed, but for that they would enjoy amore italiano. – Zündel wondered if amore italiano corresponded to the practice known to him as “French love.” He hoped not, and paid. She stripped off her skirt and pants, went to the sink, and swabbed herself cursorily with a green sponge. Zündel looked about him. His eye caught on a yellow woven plastic wastebasket beside the bed, half full of used condoms. He shuddered. The woman stepped up to him and unzipped his trousers. She said mechanically: amore amore. Straightaway he pulled the zip up again. Then she lay down on the bed and parted her legs. She thrust her pelvis at him once or twice, and moaned noisily. He stepped up to the bedside and looked at her. The only natural thing about her, the only loveable thing was her ugliness, everything else about her struck him as dead. – You no like-a me? she asked, and grabbed for his flies again. He looked down at the innumerable blue veins in her thighs. – No, no, I do, he said, but I’m not in the mood. – She sat up and shrieked: What about the money? – You keep it, said Zündel, hurried out, and sadly betook himself to his own room.