“So is this really the end then?” asked the girl at length, rousing me from my thoughts.
“For me it is, yes, Loona,” I replied.
“So there’s no use in a person being honest and fair?” she complained.
“Do you really think I could accept your food and put it down my throat?” I asked at last, seriously and pragmatically, for this bundle of misery was beginning to arouse my pity, as she had the first time, when she stood on the same spot, a plate under her shabby apron.
“Yes, sir, I believed that if I told you everything and you saw that I’m completely innocent and honest, not cheating or lying, then you’d take pity on me and start eating again. Or if you didn’t pity me, why did you pity me the first time? Why did you accept my food at all? If you hadn’t taken it, madam wouldn’t have made me do anything. It’s all because you started eating then. You ate, and madam made me lie, that’s why I’m suffering for nothing. Please, sir, I’m begging you, keep on eating – spit it out, once it has been around your mouth a couple of time, but eat, I’ll do anything in the world you want me to. If you say I have to keep quiet, I’ll keep quiet; if you order me to talk, I’ll talk, and if you even order me to come up in the night, like you said at first, then…”
“Loona, are you thinking about what you’re saying?” I asked her. “You said you’re an honest, decent girl.”
“And I really am,” she assured me, “but what am I supposed to do if you won’t start eating?”
For a moment I had a feeling that I was in a madhouse. People, their faces, movements, the spaces and lines around them – everything shifted and became somehow strangely angular, misshapen, unfamiliar, unimaginable and incredible, as if appearing to me in a funhouse mirror. Along with this I felt my heart beating more weakly in front of this girl, particularly as a new thought occurred to me: what if I do carry on eating? Things can’t get any worse than they are, more likely better. Let the landlady believe that with her deceptions she’s getting me to eat and taking no payment, but I will make a note of the lunches I have eaten, and if I ever get any money, then I’ll pay off my debts, and then let’s see who’s pulling whose leg, who gets the last laugh. So I said, “Loona, all right then, I’ll save your skin this time, but first you have to answer a few questions.”
“Ask away – I’ll answer them all, I’ll do everything you want,” she asserted.
“Would you tell me where you and madam got this story of the cheating girlfriend from?” I asked.
“Madam got that one on her own, it wasn’t me,” she explained. “She started complaining that you weren’t eating anything any more, sir. Well, that meant you’d fallen in love. Then she’d seen you and the young lady outside; I don’t know where. And to make quite sure, she sent me out into the street a couple of evenings to watch the young lady leaving her lessons; well then it was all clear. Afterwards I didn’t need to do anything more than come upstairs each evening to see if your room was empty or not, sir. But it was always empty when the young lady had left us. In the end I simply listened to whether you came before the young lady went downstairs or not, sir. Sometimes madam and I listened together. She would make out as if she had something to do in the hall, but I knew for sure that she came to listen for your steps. I’m not fooled by her tricks. And that’s how we got to know as well that you weren’t going out with the young lady any more, because there was someone else, taller and smarter, with a jacket and socks on.”
“You went outside to look?” I asked.
“Of course I did that too,” she replied. “But after that I didn’t, because madam said it was clear anyway: a gentleman going with a German lady, and the bumpkin’s left drooling.”
“So that was the dirty, puny laundry of my great and pure love,” I said to myself, thinking over everything I had heard that day. But to tease a little more out of it, I carried on asking, “The landlord was the third player in your game, of course?”
“No, madam kept everything secret from him, because she kept assuring me, ‘Bear in mind, Loona, if you have a golden husband, then poke one of his eyes out, if he’s good, then both eyes, but if he’s bad, make him blind and deaf, for only then can we women get a little life in this world.’ Those were madam’s words then, and they still are. And all I’m telling you is quite true, because I’m talking as if I were standing before the preacher at communion. In future I won’t lie to you any more, if madam tells me to – I promise you that – but when I come to you, I’ll tell you everything straight, like it is, as long as you start eating that food of lies and cheating.”
“All right, Loona, I will, for your sake,” I said.
“How good you are!” she cried in quiet ecstasy, came a couple of steps closer and looked me in the eyes, moved, and I felt that even the most wretched being, the most unhappy face, can sometimes reveal beauty which is captivating. I was aroused from my meditation, as she continued, “I really don’t know what I can do or give you in return!”
Like it or not, I had to admit that I was, one way or another, completely beaten by women. Erika had left me, madam had arranged things so that despite refusing, I was still forced to eat her lunches, and Loona had played with me like a cat with a mouse. I should have asked myself whether I was the only one she was playing with. She could have been talking about me to madam, just as she talked about her to me. Perhaps both madam and I didn’t believe her when she deceived us? Perhaps both of us were convinced that we were pulling each other’s legs, while actually we were both being duped by Loona?
But never mind – why worry about something that was in the past and couldn’t affect the present? One thing was certain anyway: the revelation of lies and deceptions and all sorts of behind-the-scenes tricks and schemes ultimately had an enlivening and energising effect on me. My failed love affair, which warmed my breast and drained my body, took on a slightly clownish air which gradually came to make me smile. Perhaps it was all just an empty delusion best forgotten – sooner rather than later.
And there’s nothing better to encourage mind games than work and activity, I thought then. A certain obstinacy added to that conviction, as if something primeval within me was rising up against my surroundings. Ah, so everyone thinks they can play with me, and twist me whichever way they want, I said to myself. When the mood comes, they take away my job, when another man comes along, then love takes flight, someone else’s whim has me eating food I don’t want, and still another twists my resolution hither and thither. But I wanted to show everyone that it wasn’t as easy to play with me as they thought.
I started looking for employment because I understood that everything revolves around that, and only an income can make you independent. Day after day I did nothing but run around the town visiting old friends and acquaintances and acquiring new ones, and everywhere the conversation ended the same way: how do I get hold of a job? Through personal contacts, or despite them, I wore out the doors of public and private enterprises, for I was convinced that a man like me is suitable for every trade. Apart from that, I wrote letters, because I wanted to know whether in the whole country there was a place for a man who’s ready to work his fingers to the bone.