Fiasco (4 page)
Certainly his subjects so far had not been too happy.
As the old boy saw it, the reason for that—on the rare occasions he gave it any thought—was that he probably had no fantasy (which was quite a disadvantage, considering that his occupation happened to be writing books) (or rather, to be more precise, things had so transpired that this had become his occupation) (seeing as he had no other occupation).
As a result—for what else could he have done?—he drew his
subjects, for the most part, out of his own experiences.
That, however, always ruined even his happiest subjects.
On this occasion he wanted to be on his guard.
“It was dumb of me,” he mused, “to get out my papers. Best pack them away again.”
“Only,” he mused further, “they’ve got my interest now.”
“I feared as much,” he added (musing).
Rightly so, because for once we can now report the restoration of an earlier situation, itself only temporarily modified by the pacing back and forth: the old boy was sitting in front of the filing cabinet and reading.
… with the guilty conscience of a thief … to present my public … and myself with renewed royalties—
But this is getting me nowhere. In the final analysis, it is just a story; it may be expanded or abbreviated but still explain nothing, like stories in general. I can’t make out from my story what happened to me, yet that is what I need. I don’t even know if the scales have just now fallen from my eyes or, on the contrary, are just now dimming them. These days, at any rate, I am caught off guard at every turn. Take the flat in which I live. It takes up twenty-eight square metres on the second floor of a comparatively not too ugly Buda apartment house of fairly human proportions. A living room and a hallway that lets on to the bathroom and the so-called kitchenette. It even has belongings, furniture, this and that. Disregarding the changes that my wife held to be necessary every now and then, everything is just the same as yesterday, the day before, or one year or nineteen years ago, which was when …”
“Nineteen years!’ the old boy snorted.
“… or nineteen years ago, which was when we moved in, under circumstances that were not without incident. Yet, recently some sort of perfidious threat issues from it all, something that makes me uneasy. At first I had no idea at all what to make of this since, as I said, I see nothing new or unusual in the flat. I racked my brains a long time until I finally realized that it’s not what I see that has changed: the change comes just from the
way
I see. Before now, I had never properly seen this flat in which I have lived for nineteen years …”
“Nineteen years,” the old boy said, shaking his head.
… and yet there is nothing puzzling about that if I think it over. For the fellow with whom I was once, even just a few months ago, identical, this flat was a fixed but nevertheless provisional place where he wrote his novel. That was this chap’s job, his express goal, who knows, perhaps even his purpose; in other words, however slowly he might actually have done his job, he was always rushing. He viewed objects from a train window, so to speak, in passing, as they flashed before his gaze. He gained at best a fleeting impression of the utility of individual objects, taking them in his hands and then putting them down, going through them, pulling them, pushing them about, bullying them, terrorising them. Now they no longer feel the power of the controlling hand they are having their revenge: they present themselves, push their way before me, reveal their constancy. How indeed to take account of the panic which grips me on seeing them? This chair, this table, the sweeping curve of this standard lamp and the shade, scorched in the areas near the bulb, that hangs submissively, so to speak, from it—each one of them
now jostles me and surrounds me with sham meekness, like forgiving, mournful nuns after some king of drubbing. They want to convince me that nothing has happened, though as I recall it, I have lived through something with them, an adventure, let us say—the adventure of writing, and I supposed that in pursuing a certain path to its very end my life had altered. But nothing at all has altered, and now it is clear that with my adventure it was precisely the chances of altering that I forfeited. This twenty-eight square metres is no longer the cage from which my imagination soared in flight every day, and to which I returned at night to sleep; no, it is the real arena of my real life, the cage in which I have imprisoned myself.
Then there is another thing: the strangeness of mornings. There was a time when I would awake at dawn; I would restlessly watch the light prising the cracks in the window blinds, waiting until I could get up. Over breakfast tea I exchanged only a few obligatory words with my wife; subconsciously I was just watching out for the time when I would finally be left to myself and, having completed the indispensable ablutions, be able to devote myself to the stubbornly waiting and perpetually recalcitrant paper. These days, however, out of some peculiar compulsion, it seems as if all I do is excuse myself; at breakfast I talk to my wife, and she is delighted at the change, not suspecting its cause; and when she leaves I catch myself anxiously following her in my thoughts …
At this point, the old boy thought that he might have heard the telephone ringing, but, having loosened one of the pliable wax plugs, ascertained that it was merely the noises from Oglütz as well as The Slough of Deceit swirling about him, perhaps just at a somewhat higher frequency than usual; and this bit disturbance may
explain why he had to search for the continuation, and also why—as the lack of this continuity indeed demonstrates—he must have skipped a few lines of the text at this point:
I sense all kinds of traps opening up beneath my feet, I compound one mistake after another; every perception I make, everything that surrounds me, serves only to attack me, to cast doubt on and undermine my own probability.
I wonder when it was that these nuisances began. I don’t know why: it seems a person finds it reassuring to discover a starting point, some possibly arbitrary reference point in time that he can subsequently designate as the cause. Once we believe we have discovered a cause, any trouble appears rational. I suppose I never truly believed in my own existence. As I have already hinted earlier, I had good, sound, one might say objective, reasons for that. When I was writing my novel, this deficiency paid remarkable dividends as it became practically a work tool for me; it was worn down in the course of my daily activity, and when it had tired of my converting it into words, it did not bother me further. The trouble only started up again when I had finished my novel. I can still remember how those last pages were written. It happened three a and half months ago, on a promising May afternoon. I sensed that the end was within my grasp. It all depended on my wife. That evening she was due to visit one of her woman friends. During dinner I was tensely alert to whether she might be tired, not in the mood … I was lucky; I was left on my own. A sudden attack of diarrhoea delayed me from setting to the paper straight away. I had to ascribe this annoying symptom to a
motus animi continuus
, an onward sweep of the productive mechanism in which, as we know from
Cicero, the quintessence of eloquence resides. That spirit is nothing but a certain state of excitement, but it can have an effect—with me, at any rate—on the entire body, including in all likelihood the digestive system. I finally sat down at the table, after all, and then finished off the text just as speedily as I was able to glide pen over paper. I got the last sentence down as well: finished. For days after that I kept on tinkering with it, scribbling in something here and there, correcting some words, deleting others. Then there was nothing more that could be done: that was it, the end. I was overcome by a somewhat idiotic feeling. Suddenly, something that had been a rather good diversion over many long years had folded, it seems. I only came to realize this later on. Up till then I had presumed I was working and had set to it, day after day, with a corresponding, contrived fury. Now that had been drained from me. The daily hard slog had been transfigured into a heap of paper. Now I was left with empty hands, plundered. All at once I found myself confronting the immaterial and formless monster of time. Its gaping mouth yawned witlessly at me, and there was nothing I could shove down its maw.
“Did you get any work done?” the old boy’s wife enquired after she had returned from the bistro where, as a waitress, she earned her bread (and occasionally the old boy’s as well) (if fate so willed it) (and it certainly did so will it more than once).
“Of course,” the old boy replied.
“Did you make any progress?”
“I pushed on a bit,” said the old boy.
“What do want for dinner?”
“I don’t know. What’s the choice?”
His wife told him.
“All the same to me,” the old boy decided.
A little later the old boy and his wife sat in front of the filing cabinet to eat their dinner (with due regard, naturally, to the circumstances that have already been touched upon) (thus when we say that the old boy and his wife sat in front of the filing cabinet to eat their dinner, this should be understood to mean that although the filing cabinet was facing them, in reality they were seated at the table, to be more precise,
the
table, the only real table in the flat) (and eating).
The old boy’s wife had got into the habit during dinner of relating what had happened to her in the bistro.
They would be making stock check soon; the managers were afraid that shrinkages would show up (not without reason, as they pilfered far too much) (and most unprofessionally at that, most notably the Old Biddy) (the chief administrator, to give her her official title) (though certain members of staff were no better) (but then there was much greater opportunity for the managers) (most notably the Old Biddy—the chief administrator, to give her her official title—who wanted to make up all the shrinkages through the tap beer and, more especially, the lunch menus) (what in the waitresses’ jargon was dubbed “pap”) (“pap” being the meals consumed mainly by children whose parents, not wanting, or possibly not being in a position, to cook for them, paid a weekly sum to the bistro for the lunch menu, or “pap” in the jargon) (although, as the old boy’s wife never omitted to remark, she had yet to meet the parent who checked up on what their children ate, or whether they even ate at all) (despite which the children did put on weight and, in time, would indisputably grow up into adults, who quite possibly would condemn their own children to lunch menus for want of time to fuss about with household chores) (that being the way of the world, what one major but highly suspect mind called eternal recurrence) (about which, as about many other things, he was mistaken, let it be noted): in short, veiled hints and open insinuations were already
being expressed on the matter of the prospective stock check.
“Apart from which,” the old boy’s wife added, “blood is being spilt over the shift rota.”
The point was that the old boy’s wife always worked the morning shift.
The bistro, on the other hand, stayed open until late at night (during which late-night hours the bistro was frequented by an army of customers who, by the late evening hours, were transformed into exceptionally generous, open-handed beings).
In accordance with the worthy, fair-play rule of equal opportunity, which was also enshrined in law as a labour right, the bistro’s employees shared alike the clientele for the lunch menu in the mornings and afternoons (pap-eaters in the jargon), as tight-fisted as their time was rushed, and the late-night clientele who, by the late evening hours, were transformed into exceptionally generous, open-handed beings.
Nevertheless, the old boy’s wife, at her own request, as confirmed by signature, only ever worked in the mornings (so that the old boy would also be able to work in the twenty-eight square metres during the mornings) (and also because she could not abide the late-night clientele who, by the late evening hours, were transformed into exceptionally generous, open-handed beings but at the same time mostly drank themselves stupid or to the point of causing a nuisance).
Thus the late-night shift hours (as well as the by no means inconsiderable benefits that went with them) to which the old boy’s wife would have been entitled on the worthy, fair-play rule of equal opportunity, which was also enshrined in law as a labour right, were almost automatically assigned to a certain colleague called Mrs. Boda; however, most likely as a result of long habitude and also, perhaps, the greater inclination that human nature shows toward what, no doubt, is—if we may put it this way—a more instinctive attitude to legal practice than the worthy rules of
fair play (even when also enshrined in law as a labour right), this certain colleague called Mrs. Boda (whose first name was Ilona) had already long regarded the benefits that had been assigned to her not as assigned benefits but entitlements.
One must take all that into account in imagining the effect produced by the announcement made by the old boy’s wife that very day that from now on she too wanted to work in the evenings.
“Why?” the old boy asked.
“Because as things are I hardly earn anything, and now you are not going to earn anything because you have to write a book.”
“That’s true,” said the old boy.
That evening the old boy declared, “I’m off for a walk.”
“Don’t be too long,” said his wife.
“All right. I need to think a bit.”
“There was something else I meant to tell you.”
“What was that?” The old boy paused.
“It’s slipped my mind for the moment.”
“Next time write it down so you won’t forget.”
“It would be nice if we could go away somewhere.”
“Yes, that would be nice,” the old boy said, nodding.
On returning from his walk (his contemplative walk, as he called it), the old boy asked:
“Did anyone call?”
“Who would have called?”
“True,” the old boy conceded.
“That tin-eared, clap-ridden, belly-dancing bitch of a whore …” the old boy intoned, unhurriedly and syllable by syllable, while carefully shaping the softened wad between his fingers as he crammed it into his ear, thereby placing himself beyond reach of Oglütz, the Slough of Deceit—the entire world in effect.