“Aha!” the old boy commented aloud.
The old boy was now sitting in front of the filing cabinet and thinking.
“I ought to read the book again,” he was thinking.
“But then again,” he continued his thought, “why would I do that? I am not in the mood for reading about concentration camps.”
“It was dumb of me,” he mused, “to get out my papers,” he added (mentally).
Upon which the old boy sat in front of the filing cabinet and resumed reading:
… was a huge and ghastly subject … a sheet of the firm’s headed letter paper …(he turned toward me and away from his typewriter, in which I could see he had inserted a sheet of the firm’s headed letter paper) was a huge and ghastly subject about which there had already been much written by many authors. Yet, he added, as it were reassuringly, he was by no means suggesting that the subject had been completely exhausted. He then informed me that it was the publisher’s normal practice to have three readers assess a manuscript “before a decision is made about its fate.” He was a little coy: they were not in the habit of initiating authors into the publisher’s affairs, but he did not exclude the possibility that he might be the third reader for my novel. He fell silent.
“Isn’t it a trifle bitter?” he suddenly asked.
“What?”
“Your novel.”
“Oh, indeed,” I replied.
My response manifestly threw him into confusion.
“Don’t take what I said for granted; it’s not an opinion, as I haven’t even read your novel yet,” he explained.
It was now my turn to be confused: the indications were that, to the extent he might feel my novel was bitter, it would probably not be to his taste. This would obviously be a black mark and might set its publication back. Only then did I see that I was sitting opposite a professional humanist, and professional humanists would like to believe that Auschwitz had happened only to those to whom it had happened to happen at that time and place; that nothing had happened to the majority, to mankind — Mankind! — in general. In other words, the publishing man wanted to read into my novel that notwithstanding — indeed, precisely notwithstanding — everything that had happened to happen to me too at that time and place, Auschwitz had still not sullied me. Yet it had sullied me. I was sullied in other ways than were those who had transported me there, it’s true, but I had been sullied none the less; and in my view this is a basic issue. I have to recognize, however — how could it be otherwise? — that anyone who takes my novel in his hand in good faith and innocently starts to read it will thereby, it is to be feared, also be dragged a little bit into the mire.
I can therefore readily understand why my novel might irritate a professional humanist. But then, professional humanists irritate me because they seek to annihilate me with their cravings: they want to invalidate my experiences. Yet something had happened to those experiences through which, I was taken aback to perceive, they had suddenly turned to my disadvantage, for in the meantime — somehow or other — they had been transformed within me into an irrevocable aesthetic standpoint. The difference of views between me and this man plainly arose from differences in personal convictions between us; but the fact that my novel lay between us, at least symbolically, spoilt everything. I felt that my personal opinions, which my novel exposed utterly, were starting to look inauspicious from the viewpoint of my concerns. On top of which, those concerns, which happened to be embodied in the objective form of the novel, were attached to other factors, less prominent certainly but not negligible for all that — among which were my financial prospects …
“Aha,” the old boy brightened up.
… the question of my future, my social status, if I may put it that way.
“Ha-ha-ha,” the old boy chuckled.
I suddenly found myself in the fairly strange and — through my lack of foresight — surprising situation of having become a hostage to that two-hundred-and-fifty-page bundle of paper that I myself had produced.
“To be sure,” the old boy said aloud.
… I myself had produced.
“To be sure,” the old boy said aloud once more.
… I don’t believe that I saw distinctly then what even …
The telephone.
This time the old boy had no doubt about it. Nevertheless, he did not get up straight away but merely loosened the wax plug in one ear.
Indeed it was.
“No, of course you’re not disturbing me,” the old boy declared (by now into the telephone).
The old boy was standing in the southeast corner of the room, next to the child’s mini-table, 1st-class special ply of 1st-class sawn hardwood (which in regard to its actual function was more a kind of tiny smoker’s table), and holding a telephone conversation.
“… and I immediately thought of you,” he heard a muffled female voice through the loosened wax plug. “The book is just right for you; only four hundred and fifty pages, and you would have a six-month deadline. If you really want, you could go two months over that.”
In point of fact, the old boy also undertook translation work.
He was a translator from German (German being the foreign language that he still did not understand the best, relatively speaking, the old boy was in the habit of saying).
The money for translating might not be a lot, but at least it was dependable (the old boy was in the habit of saying).
Right now, however, he needed to be writing a book.
On the other hand, it’s true, he also needed to earn some money (maybe not a lot, but at least dependable).
Besides which, the old boy did not have so much as a glimmer of an idea, little as that may be, for the book he needed to write.
If he were to accept the translation, he could kill two birds with one stone: he would earn some money (maybe not be a lot, but at least dependable) and also he wouldn’t have to write a book. (For the time being).
“Yes, of course,” he spoke into the telephone.
“Then I’ll send you the book, along with the contract,” he heard the muffled female voice through the loosened wax plug.
“Yes, of course. Thank you,” he heard his own muffled voice (through the loosened earplug).
“It was stupid of me to accept,” he mused afterwards (stuffing the wax plug back into his ear).
“But now I’ve gone and accepted it,” he added (mentally) (as if there were no choice in the matter) (though we always have a choice) (even when there is none) (and we always choose ourselves, as one may read in a French anthology) (which the old boy kept on the bookshelf on the wall above the armchair standing to the north of the tile stove that occupied the southeast corner of the room) (but then who chooses us, one might ask) (justifiably).
… and — through my lack of foresight … I suddenly found myself in the fairly strange and — through my lack of foresight — surprising situation of having become a hostage to the two-hundred-and-fifty-page bundle of paper that I myself had produced.
“To be sure,” the old boy said.
… I don’t suppose that I could have seen distinctly then what even today is not entirely clear to me — what sort of trap, what an amazing adventure I had let myself in for. To the best of my recollection, I made do with a fleeting suspicion. It seems my character is such that I am only able to free myself from one captivity by instantly throwing myself into another. I had barely finished my novel and I was already scratching my head over what to write next. Nowadays at least I have an idea of what purpose it all served: it was my way of avoiding worries about tomorrow’s looming proximity. As long as I succeed in arranging a fresh set of homework for myself, I can again confuse the passage of my time and the events which occur within it with the will that I have harnessed to the yoke of my goals. In this way infinity can once again open up before me, even though all I have done is conjure up refractions of light in a real perspective.