I had to decide how to spend the several hours I had left until I went to meet her. Visit some friend? Impossible! I wouldn’t have been able to say a word to anyone, listen to anyone’s words or endure anyone’s presence. I recalled how once I had gone to sleep to pass the time and been ten minutes late. A whole ten minutes, and nowadays time is measured in seconds, as I keep reading in the newspaper’s sports pages.
Nevertheless I didn’t want to read the sports news now, though I felt obliged by circumstance to compete with someone – try my strength, jump higher or longer than someone, smash someone’s nose, deal him a knockout blow or have that done to myself, so that my sense of time would vanish from my consciousness for a moment. While sports news was boring me, so was everything else I could read, though I had done more reading in recent times than ever before. This resulted from my attempts to write. It seemed to me that my personal life, personal experiences and skills were so feeble, superficial, vulgar and ordinary that it was not worth putting them down on paper. Life had passed me by, and I had passed it with neither of us leaving a trace on the other, as though we had run in opposite directions on carefully oiled bearings.
It’s strange and funny to think that this could be the case. Perhaps I was in such a state that I started to think others must have had the same experience, or at least many of them. Why else would writers read so much? I mean writers who digest dusty tomes instead of experiencing the freshness of real, uncharted life. Intellectually we are doing the same as we do physically. Instead of feeding ourselves on green grass, we kill and eat the animals that eat the grass. And if a genius were to suddenly appear who would write a book that was utterly true to life, with nothing to do with other books, then probably no one would read it, just as eating green grass has been left to ruminants. Life is too hard to ruminate and digest, so books are for ruminating. Life is for living.
But what’s even easier to digest than a book written from other books is the cinema, because it’s a book that has been chewed and digested several times over. On the whole it’s as easy as going the pub, café, church or chapel. Right now I needed the easiest option of all, because my mind was sick and my heart heavy. I needed oblivion. So I decided to go to the cinema, where I could doze by myself in the darkness, while familiar, almost indifferent events passed before my eyes and rehashed platitudes caressed my auditory nerves. But even there I had to change places several times, because each time I ended up next to people who were continually whispering, reading the subtitles aloud, humming and whistling along with the songs or tirelessly munching, as if they were being fed by the kilogram. That day I was even disturbed by people laughing heartily in my presence or searching in their pockets and handbags for handkerchiefs to wipe their tears or blow their noses. This was done solely to annoy me.
Eventually I found a quiet, peaceful place by the wall, where there was no one in front of me or behind me. There I could have thanked God with all my heart that he had enlightened people and let them erect a building where they come together as if in church and spend their time as if they were in the pub.
As I left the cinema, the sun was already going down, but the glow of the evening sky still showed that approaching spring was already being hinted at. You could feel it in the air, in the shining stars and in the eyes and voices of people. Because a sudden thaw had recently occurred, the pavements were decorated with scattered piles of snow and shards of ice, and their ugly and filthy black appearance had been covered by fresh, bright white snow which pedestrians were now sweeping aside. A light chill pinched as if teasingly at the tip of one’s nose or earlobes, forcing people unconsciously to quicken their step. I too hurried, although I could have dawdled with all the time I had. I wanted solitude, as if I had to prepare my heart for the coming meeting.
This year’s meagre snow had, with the thaw, turned into to water or slush on the pathways, and then hardened with the cold mostly into rough ice, which didn’t hinder walkers. Where skis had once slid along and left their endless tracks, people could now stride freely on their own legs. The bright fresh snow was fading in the twilight, and further darkened by the shadows of the trees. The ground surface felt untouched and pure. Here and there the old porous snow gave way under the weight of my footsteps and seemed to crackle in warning, but the fresh white carpet in its softness had a muffling effect and I only heard a light crunching and scratching sound which barely made an impression. A strange drowsy silence and peace prevailed, broken only by bright headlights on the highway, which sent blinding shafts of light between the coal-black tree trunks, piercing the pedestrians’ eyes, as if screaming in pain.
As the clock approached eight, I no longer had the patience to use the whole pavement for walking, but almost shuffled on the spot at the point I hoped to see Erika appear from. Once again I was mistaken: Erika came not from the direction of town but from the park, and thus had to traverse the entire Avenue of Lies before she could reach me. I was so taken aback by this that I didn’t know what to do or say. That familiar form also seemed terribly foreign and new to me, and the greatest impression on me was surely made by Erika wearing a fur jacket instead of a coat, and a fur cap instead of a hat.
“I was beginning to think you wouldn’t be here,” said Erika after our greeting.
“And I was afraid you wouldn’t come,” I replied, because I wanted to say something and couldn’t think of anything better.
“I came punctually,” she defended herself.
“But I’d been here at least half an hour beforehand,” I said.
“I noticed that in the darkness – so many footprints – and I wondered whether they were yours or a stranger’s,”
“They’re all mine,” I assured her, “before me it was pure, untouched snow. I walked and walked and finally came to a stop, thinking that you’d come from over here.”
“But you see, I came from the other direction,” she said playfully and obstinately.
“I was really surprised that you came from the other side,” I explained.
“Why?” she asked, as if startled.
“I don’t even know,” I replied. “With you I never know what will happen to me. If I believe one thing, it turns to be another. I thought I saw you from far away and recognised you despite the darkness, but now…”
“…now you don’t know at all,” she finished my sentence.
“That’s it, I don’t know at all,” I affirmed.
“You see how quickly everything is forgotten,” she said somewhat instructively and sadly.
“No, miss, quite the opposite: I see that it’s not forgotten, and can’t be.”
“But why didn’t you recognise me then?” she asked, affecting a light tone, while her voice was trembling with excitement.
“You’re quite different to what I imagined, and there’s more within you than I can guess, that’s why. I feel downright afraid when I see what you really are like. If you were like I’d imagined, then forgetting would be easy, but you aren’t, you’re quite different, so how could I forget you?”
“You shouldn’t talk to me like that,” she said quietly and pleadingly, but in a way that provoked me to go on: “Forgive me, miss, for not being able to say better what I want to say, but firstly, while walking here alone, I decided that, for whatever reason you invited me here today, I want to assure you of one thing: I love you as I always did, I love you as never before. I didn’t even believe that I would still be in love like this; your letter proved it to me. Every word in it made my heart tremble. It hardly mattered to me what you wrote; the main thing was that you wrote, and that I could hold in my hand the same piece of paper that you’d recently touched, for that had made it precious and holy. Of course it’s silly and ridiculous of me to talk like this, but it’s the truth. I dare to tell you this, because I believe that anyone else would laugh at me, but you wouldn’t. You’ll forgive my madness and stupidity, because you understand me. Although I don’t know why we’re here today…”