Collected Stories (43 page)

And now the evening sun’s slanting rays broke forth from behind the rims of the great cloud and illuminated the hills and mountains as far as the eye could see, while the river and the region beneath the cloud lay in an uncertain light.

The fat man turned slowly in the direction of the flowing water and was carried down the river like a yellow wooden idol which had become useless and so had been cast into the river. He sailed along on the reflection of the rain cloud. Elongated clouds pulled and small hunched ones pushed him, creating considerable commotion, the effect of which could even be noticed by the lapping of water against my knees and the stones on the shore.

I crept quickly up the slope so as to be able to accompany the fat man on his way, for I truly loved him. And perhaps I could learn something about the dangers of this apparently safe country. So I walked along a strip of sand to the narrowness of which one had to grow accustomed, hands in my pockets and my face turned at right angles to the river so that my chin rested almost on my shoulder.

Swallows sat on the stones by the shore.

The fat man said: ‘Dear sir on the shore, don’t try to rescue me. This is the water’s and the wind’s revenge; now I am lost. Yes, revenge it is, for how often have we attacked them, I and my friend the supplicant, amidst the singing of our swords, the flash of cymbals, the great splendor of trumpets, and the leaping blaze of drums!’

A tiny mosquito with stretched wings flew straight through his belly without losing its speed.

The fat man continued:

There was a time when I went to a church day after day, for a girl I was in love with used to kneel there in prayer for half an hour every evening, which enabled me to watch her at my leisure.

Once when the girl failed to appear and in dismay I was watching the other people praying, my eye was caught by a young man who had flung his long emaciated figure on the ground. From time to time he clutched his skull with all his strength and, moaning loudly, beat it in the palms of his hands on the stone floor.

In the church there were only a few old women who kept turning their shawled heads sideways to glance at the praying man. This attention seemed to please him, for before each of his pious outbursts he let his eyes rove about to see how many people were watching him. Finding this unseemly, I decided to accost him on his way out of the church and ask him outright why he prayed in this manner. For since my arrival in this town clarity had become more important to me than anything else, even though at this moment I felt only annoyance at my girl’s failure to appear.

Yet an hour passed before he stood up, brushed his trousers for such a long time that I felt like shouting: ‘Enough, enough! We can all see that you have trousers on,’ crossed himself carefully, and with the lumbering gait of a sailor walked to the font of holy water.

I placed myself between the font and the door, determined not to let him pass without an explanation. I screwed up my mouth, this being the best preparation for resolute speech, and supported myself by standing on my right leg while resting the left one on its toes, for this position as I have often experienced gives me a sense of stability.

Now it is possible that this young man had already caught sight of me while sprinkling his face with holy water; perhaps my stare had alarmed him even earlier, for he now quite
unexpectedly rushed to the door and out. I involuntarily jumped to stop him. The glass door slammed. And when I passed through it a moment later I could not find him, for the narrow streets were numerous and the traffic considerable.

During the following days he failed to appear, but the girl came and again prayed in a corner of a side chapel. She wore a black dress with a transparent lace yoke – the crescent of her chemise could be seen through it – from the lower edge of which the silk hung down in a finely cut frill. And now that the girl had returned I was glad to forget about the young man, ignoring him even when he continued to appear regularly and to pray in his usual fashion.

Yet he always passed me by in sudden haste, his face averted. While praying, on the other hand, he kept glancing at me. It almost looked as though he were angry with me for not having accosted him earlier and was thinking that for my first attempt to talk to him I had actually taken upon me the duty to do so. One day as I was following the girl out as usual after a service, I ran into him in the semidarkness and thought I saw him smile.

The duty to talk to him, needless to say, did not exist, nor had I much desire to do so anymore. And even when I hurried up to the church one evening while the clock was striking seven and found, instead of the girl who of course had left long ago, only the young man exerting himself in front of the altar railings, I still hesitated.

At last I tiptoed to the door, slipped a coin to the blind beggar sitting there, and squeezed in beside him behind the open wing. And there for about half an hour I looked forward to the surprise I was planning to spring upon the supplicant. But this feeling did not last. Before long I was morosely watching spiders creeping over my clothes and finding it tiresome to have to bend forward every time someone came breathing loud out of the darkness of the church.

But finally he came. The ringing of the great bells which had started a little while ago did not agree with him, I
realized. Each time before taking a step he had to touch the ground lightly with his foot.

I straightened myself, took a long stride forward, and grabbed him. ‘Good evening,’ said I, and with my hand on his coat collar I pushed him down the steps onto the lighted square.

When we had reached ground level he turned toward me while I was still holding on to him from behind, so that we stood breast to breast.

‘If only you’d let go of me!’ he said. ‘I don’t know what you suspect me of, but I’m innocent.’ Then he repeated once more: ‘Of course I don’t know what you suspect me of.’

‘There is no question here of suspicion or innocence. I ask you not to mention it again. We are strangers; our acquaintance is no older than the church steps are high. What would happen if we were immediately to start discussing our innocence?’

‘Precisely what I think,’ he said. ‘As a matter of fact, you said “our innocence.” Do you mean to suggest that if I had proved my innocence you would have to prove yours, too? Is that what you mean?’

‘That or something else,’ I said. ‘I accosted you only because I wanted to ask you something, remember that!’

‘I’d like to go home,’ he said, and made an effort to turn.

‘I quite believe it. Would I have accosted you otherwise? Don’t get the idea that I accosted you on account of your beautiful eyes.’

‘Aren’t you being a little too sincere?’

‘Must I repeat that there’s no question of such things? What has it to do with sincerity or insincerity? I ask, you answer, and then goodbye. So far as I’m concerned you can even go home, and as fast as you like.’

‘Would it not be better to meet some other time? At a more suitable hour? Say in a coffeehouse? Besides, your fiancée left only a few minutes ago, you can easily catch her up, she has waited so long for you.’

‘No!’ I shouted into the noise of the passing tram. ‘You won’t escape me. I like you more and more. You’re a lucky catch. I congratulate myself.’

To which he said: ‘Oh God, you have a sound heart, as they say, but a head of wood. You call me a lucky catch, how lucky you must be! For my bad luck is precariously balanced and when touched it falls onto the questioner. And so: Good night.’

‘Fine,’ said I, surprised him and seized his right hand. ‘If you don’t answer of your own accord, I’ll force you. I’ll follow you wherever you go, right or left, even up the stairs to your room, and in your room I’ll sit down, wherever there’s space. Go on then, keep staring at me, I can stand it. But how’ – I stepped up close and because he was a head taller I spoke into his throat – ‘how are you going to summon up the courage to stop me?’

Whereupon, stepping back, he kissed my hands in turn, and wetted them with his tears. ‘One cannot deny you anything. Just as you knew I want to go home, I knew even earlier that I cannot deny you anything. All I ask is that we go over there into the side street.’ I nodded and we went over. When a carriage separated us and I was left behind, he beckoned to me with both hands, to make me hurry.

But once there, not satisfied with the darkness of the street where the lamps were widely separated from one another and almost as high as the first floor, he led me into the low hallway of an old house and under a small lamp which hung dripping in front of the wooden stairs.

Spreading his handkerchief over the hollow in a worn step, he invited me to be seated: ‘It’s easier for you to ask questions sitting down. I’ll remain standing, it’s easier for me to answer. But don’t torment me!’

I sat down because he took it all so seriously, but nevertheless felt I had to say: ‘You’ve led me to this hole as though we are conspirators, whereas I am bound to you simply by curiosity, you to me by fear. Actually, all I want to ask is why you pray like that in church. The way you carry on
there! Like an utter fool! How ridiculous it all is, how unpleasant for the onlookers, how intolerable for the devout!’

He had pressed his body against the wall, only his head moved slowly in space. ‘You’re wrong! The devout consider my behavior natural, the others consider it devout.’

‘My annoyance proves you’re mistaken.’

‘Your annoyance – assuming it’s real – only proves that you belong neither to the devout nor to the others.’

‘You’re right. I was exaggerating when I said your behavior annoyed me; no, it aroused my curiosity as I stated correctly at first. But you, to which group do you belong?’

‘Oh, I just get fun out of people watching me, out of occasionally casting a shadow on the altar, so to speak.’

‘Fun?’ I asked, making a face.

‘No, if you want to know. Don’t be angry with me for expressing it wrongly. It’s not fun, for me it’s a need; a need to let myself be nailed down for a brief hour by those eyes, while the whole town around me—’

‘The things you say!’ I cried far too loud for the insignificant remark and the low hallway, but I was afraid of falling silent or of lowering my voice. ‘Really, the things you say! Now I realize, by God, that I guessed from the very beginning the state you are in. Isn’t it something like a fever, a seasickness on land, a kind of leprosy? Don’t you feel it’s this very feverishness that is preventing you from being properly satisfied with the real names of things, and that now, in your frantic haste, you’re just pelting them with any old names? You can’t do it fast enough. But hardly have you run away from them when you’ve forgotten the names you gave them. The poplar in the fields, which you’ve called the “Tower of Babel” because you didn’t want to know it was a poplar, sways again without a name, so you have to call it “Noah in his cups.” ’

He interrupted me: ‘I’m glad I haven’t understood a word you’ve been saying.’

Irritated, I said quickly: ‘Your being glad about it proves that you have understood it.’

‘Didn’t I say so before? One cannot deny you anything.’

I put my hands on a step above me, leaned back, and in this all but unassailable position, the wrestler’s last resort, I asked: ‘Excuse me, but to throw back at me an explanation which I gave you is insincere.’

At this he grew daring. To give his body unity he clasped his hands together and said with some reluctance: ‘You ruled out quarrels about insincerity from the very beginning. And truly, I’m no longer concerned with anything but to give you a proper explanation for my way of praying. Do you know why I pray like that?’

He was putting me to the test. No, I didn’t know, nor did I want to know. I hadn’t even wanted to come here, I said to myself, but this creature had practically forced me to listen to him. So all I had to do was to shake my head and everything would be all right, but at the moment this was just what I couldn’t do. The creature opposite me smiled. Then he crouched down on his knees and said with a sleepy expression: ‘Now I can also tell you at last why I let you accost me. Out of curiosity, from hope. Your stare has been comforting me for a long time. And I hope to learn from you how things really are, why it is that around me things sink away like fallen snow, whereas for other people even a little liqueur glass stands on the table steady as a statue.’

As I remained silent and only an involuntary twitching passed over my face, he asked: ‘So you don’t believe this happens to other people? You really don’t? Just listen, then. When as a child I opened my eyes after a brief afternoon nap, still not quite sure I was alive, I heard my mother up on the balcony asking in a natural tone of voice: “What are you doing, my dear? Goodness, isn’t it hot?” From the garden a woman answered: “Me, I’m having my tea on the lawn.” They spoke casually and not very distinctly, as though this woman had expected the question, my mother the answer.’

Feeling that this required an answer, I put my hand in the hip pocket of my trousers as though I were looking for
something. Actually, I wasn’t looking for anything, I just wished to change my appearance in order to show interest in the conversation. Finally I said I thought this a most remarkable incident and that I couldn’t make head or tail of it. I also added that I didn’t believe it was true and that it must have been invented for a special reason whose purpose wasn’t clear to me just now. Then I closed my eyes so as to shut out the bad light.

‘Well, isn’t that encouraging! For once you agree with me, and you accosted me to tell me that out of sheer unselfishness. I lose one hope and acquire another.

‘Why, after all, should I feel ashamed of not walking upright and taking normal steps, of not tapping the pavement with my stick, and not touching the clothes of the people who pass noisily by? Am I not rather entitled to complain bitterly at having to skip along the houses like a shadow without a clear outline, sometimes disappearing in the panes of the shopwindows?

‘Oh, what dreadful days I have to live through! Why is everything so badly built that high houses collapse every now and again for no apparent reason? On these occasions I clamber over the rubble, asking everyone I meet: “How could this have happened? In our town – a new house – how many does that make today?— Just think of it!” And no one can give me an answer.