Zündel hurried out of town in a northwesterly direction. He followed the winding coastal road that connects Rapallo and Santa Margherita. To the left lay the sea, gray and flat. It was three in the morning. – I feel like cheering, he thought, but I could also weep. Parting hurts, and it lightens the heart. Goodbyes weaken and ease.
In the little bay of San Michele he sat down on a stone bench, smoked and looked out at the sea. He tried not to think, so as not to have to think what – he supposed – anyone else would have thought in his shoes. So instead he tried to take in the world around him without words or thoughts, but soon realized he couldn’t, wondered if others could, suddenly couldn’t remember if a human being had four, five, six or seven senses, thought that was a disgrace, but perfectly symptomatic of this cerebral culture; thought this, thought that, jumped up and widdled spitefully into the sea.
Wandering on, he imagined sitting over breakfast with Nounou.
Nounou says: What about a game of something?
He says: Sure.
Nounou says: I’ll ask you a question, and you have to answer it. If your answer is correct or in some other way pleasing, then I give you a match. And then you can ask me something. If my answer is correct or pleasing, then I get a match. The winner is the first to five.
He says: OK. You start!
Nounou asks: What is the strangest thing?
He answers: A long kiss with eyes open.
She pushes a match across to him.
He asks: How do you account for the fact that ninety-two of a hundred women say they prefer a man with a hairy chest?
Nounou answers: Because the other eight aren’t telling the truth.
He pushes her two matches, but she gives one back.
She asks: Why is there fidelity?
He answers: Because of fear of the infidelity of the other.
Nounou says: Please expand!
He says: The faithful man is faithful because he is alarmed by the thought that infidelity on his part could provoke his partner to infidelity.
Half-true! says Nounou, and offers him half a match.
He asks: Why do most politicians resemble animals?
She answers: Because most of them are pigs, and the rest are wolves, foxes, vultures, geese, and centipedes.
Nounou is awarded a match.
She asks: What is the watchword of the Swiss?
He answers: There are several.
She says: Then tell me two.
He says: Firstly, experience everything and risk nothing. Second: always be packed and ready.
Nounou gives him a match.
He asks: How much bigger is the human egg than a human sperm?
She replies: Search me. Shall I have a guess?
Of course, he says generously. You can even have three guesses.
Twice as big?
No.
Eleven times?
No!
A hundred times bigger?
No, Nounou. No matches for you this time. An egg is eighty-five thousand times bigger than a sperm.
Mon dieu, exclaims Nounou impressed, what are we women doing wasting our time with little squirts like you.
Your turn, he says offended.
She asks: Why are there so many terms – including some really unpleasant ones – for diarrhea, and so few for constipation?
He answers: Because we are more in awe of the hyper-sensory.
Expand! she orders.
He says: What is visibly and olfactorily evident is talked to death, but what is discreet and not apparent elicits from us a mute respect.
I like it! says Nounou, and hands him a match.
He asks: What did the Americans call the Hiroshima bomb?
She answers: I don’t know, and questions like that don’t belong in this game.
He says: You’re right, but I’ll tell you anyway. The name of the bomb was ‘Little Boy’.
You’re making it up! screams Nounou.
It’s the plain truth, he says.
She asks: Pansoti, why are there bad people?
He answers: I don’t know.
She says: In that case, you haven’t earned a single match.
Santa Margherita station, July 30, early morning:
But there’s something else, dear Nounou, that I do know: more and more people are fed up. In my homeland for example, we have some citizens who carry banners saying: “Leave us alone!” They’ve had enough, they’re fed up, but not fed up with bad things, but with protesting against the bad things! And in the lee of these opposition-weary people, blind by choice and desperate for peace, who identify their lost eyesight as optimism and their satiety as pleasure in existence, grimness grinning spreads, and calculates that not itself but its critics will be brought to book.
On the train to Genoa, July 30, 5:30:
Small resolution for those in want of rest:
We, all those in need of rest, hereby declare once and for all: a wild pandemonium of noisy pressure groups, know-it-alls, self-important self-appointed so-and-so’s, chatterboxes, wild men, demagogues, bleaters, blowhards, and blatherers is forever tooting into the same stale horn and shouting their slogans out into the world, which would be a quieter, healthier, and more festive place without them. – We demand: Enough slander! Enough abuse of the planet! Enough of the self-righteous anti-creation talk! Enough with all the corrosive chitchat! – Let us be tolerant of the minor imperfections of this world, but we will not endure those notorious moaners who take themselves to be wiser than the Almighty and whose true purpose is to exchange their private woe for chaos for everyone.
Zündel bought cigarettes at a kiosk in the Genoa station. He drank a cup of coffee at a bar. Between the bottles ranked in front of a mirror at the bar, he caught his gray, alien face, and remembered his resolution to buy a revolver.
He was exhausted.
On the way to his pensione, he remarked at the cleanliness of the streets, which were just beginning to come to life. Like eyes clanging open, sliding shutters were pulled up.
Zündel slept till evening.
A little before seven he got up, drank some water and thought:
What do I do now?
He clipped his fingernails.
Today’s Thursday, he thought.
Tomorrow’s Friday.
I’m not hungry.
If I wore glasses, I would clean them now.
He went back to bed.
At midnight he woke up, bathed in sweat and shivering.
He turned on the light.
A dream. I’m hanging on a cliff face. The rescue helicopter hovering in front of me. At the controls is my father, eyeing me calmly. Then he veers away.