At six in the morning he was already wide-awake. He folded his hands behind his head, and gazed up at the ceiling.
The quest is at an end, he thought. You could believe the source of depression was in the sum of all misfortunes. But against that there is the fact that a hundred misfortunes aren’t enough to rob a life-affirming fellow of his affirmativeness. So if joie de vivre exists in spite of and including misfortunes, surely there is also an absence of joie de vivre that operates independently of misfortunes.
(By the bye: why are those people who have everything and still manage to be unhappy not less well thought of than those who have nothing and still manage to be happy? Both could use an explanation, but only the unhappy fellow is asked to account for himself.)
Where was I? – Yes, if there is a dejection without misfortunes on the one hand and on the other – thinking of myself now – one freighted with misfortunes, then, then – oh, crap! But I don’t mind slowly growing stupid. It could even be that all these curses and minor afflictions are not the cause for my state of soul, but its consequence. Perhaps my make-up makes me receptive to those facts that best explain my makeup. Perhaps my lack of joie de vivre has specialized in finding unjoyful things, so as not to appear unmotivated, to clear up mysteries, to keep the quest from ending.
So. Hans gets the flu. Fritz doesn’t. A question of susceptibility, as everyone knows. The flu goes after Hans, because Hans doesn’t resist it. The flu doesn’t cause Hans’s weak resistance. But it will intensify his sense of frailty.
We are asking after the causes of Hans’s weakness.
The cause of his vital consciousness.
Why is Fritz happy?
Fritz doesn’t go hungry or thirsty, he isn’t cold, he has an apartment, a job, everything.
Same with Hans.
Why is Hans unhappy (even when he hasn’t got the flu)?
There are some causes of contemporary unhappiness that are referred to as syndromes, because they are so overly familiar: Concrete architecture. Violence. Anonymity. Coldness. Competition. Bad air. Bad water. Noise. The A-bomb. The B-bomb. The C-bomb.
But Fritz is subject to all of them too – and he’s still happy!
A pachyderm?
And Hans the sensitive one? The one with the translucent skin?
Then all problems are basically skin-deep? A happy life is a matter of dermatology?
How come Hans has his unfit-for-purpose skin, and Fritz his thick pelt?
Dunno.
Just that it forms part of the strategy of the unscrupulous to persuade the despondent that they are responsible for their skin type, and should curse not the world but themselves. They need to understand that they are moaners, and should be ashamed of their grief. They should kindly take themselves off, and leave the world to the wolves. But if the grief-stricken go, then it’s not just Mary the comforter who will die as well, but all sense of things being amiss. If the patient dies, the causes of death are buried with him. If the sufferers go to the wall, the weak efface themselves, and the mad are confined, then the world is as it should be, then positive thoughts will reign, and no sounds will challenge the resounding, roly-poly hallelujahs of the competent.
I’m so fed up with these thoughts, I wish I had a calmer brain. I’m lying in bed, protesting. A recumbent protester is what I am. And even that’s too much for me. Outside, I’m quieter. It’s indoors that I begin to make a racket. And in bed I’m positively fearless. But that’s too much for me now. I want to be quiet inside and out, not well-behaved, not courageous, just quiet. Quiet like a bag of trash by the side of the road, waiting to be picked up.
When Konrad straightened up, he felt dizzy, and when he stood up he realized his legs could hardly carry him. Even the thought of a sandwich made him feel sick.
Somewhere he tossed down a couple of brandies, standing up. Eight o’clock found him in a hairdresser’s salon – the day’s first customer – where he asked the barber to cut his hair as short as possible.
A number four? asked the hairdresser. – Number one! said Konrad. He felt a little embarrassed that his stomach was growling so loud, but before long he heard the hairdresser’s stomach growling too, and he followed their duet with fascination.
With even greater fascination – albeit with growing horror – he watched the remorseless metamorphosis of his head in the mirror. At the end of twenty minutes he saw himself confronting a creature for which he had no feeling at all.
Whatever that is, it’s not a human head, he thought, it’s like the cross between a plucked pheasant and a darning egg. Magda would be rigid with shock if she saw me. But there won’t be anyone in the apartment tomorrow night. The family silver that Magda brought as a dowry will be gone too, so that I’ll be sitting at the kitchen table, glad of my penknife to smear a slice of moldy bread with rancid butter.
Konrad bought a bottle of cognac and went up to his room. From ten in the morning till midnight he wrote.
Then – on shaky legs – he went out for a walk. On the main harbor road there was still some activity, but all the alleyways were deserted. Konrad felt scared. When he suddenly noticed a dark shape lying in front of him, he began to shake all over. If that’s a human being, he thought, I’m going to fold up. – It was a dog, and Konrad said in relief: Rest in peace, brother. – Back in his room, he looked in the mirror and again failed to recognize himself.
Better a dead dog than a living lion, he thought.
Then he went on writing, until five in the morning.
Last entry:
On Dignity “Dignity” – isn’t that the desperate effort, in view of our nugatoriness, to maintain our posture? And is that a good thing?
Misery must be branded, frailty must be indicated so that the heavenly hosts finally rally to us. As long as we are struggling for dignity, they will think we are well.
At noon on Sunday, Konrad stood on the station square taking one last look at Christopher Columbus. Only now did he notice that Columbus’s left hand was resting on a mighty anchor, while his right was caressing the neck of a mermaid sitting at his feet.
By nine o’clock that evening, Konrad was home.