“Still, while we’re still alive on this magnificent earth, which we undoubtedly love unequivocally, you and I, so much so that we’d be willing to die for it — isn’t that right, Walser, my friend? Well then, when the country seems like it is falling to pieces, at those times, at these times, we should simply protect the organs that enable us to perceive the world; and you know very well which ones those are.
“The rest of it doesn’t concern us.
“But forgive me for going on like this, it’s just that I’m overjoyed to see you again, and the presence of my good friend Walser lets my rational mind loose; I feel eloquent when I’m by your side. Well then, here is the important information, once more; an extremely important piece of information: tomorrow, Saturday, forget about that dice game! Tomorrow night they’re going to arrest Fluzst. That man has gotten himself into a disastrous mess.
“I know that Fluzst is your friend, or some such similar thing, and, by the way, I’ve never known you to have any others; you, my good sir, aren’t an easy man to get along with, as you must know, and you’ve developed very few relationships. We all belong to the same world and the same eternity, if I may use that word, so we should get to know each other better, don’t you think? Maybe that way we’d be able to love one another, who knows?
“There’s one day left, enough time for you to leave here and warn Fluzst. Or, on the other hand, you can take my advice: just forget about your dice game tomorrow. From what I’ve heard, you haven’t won that much anyway, and money isn’t the only thing that keeps us alive, as you must have already realized.
“My dear Walser, it’s such a pity, but I really have to say good-bye. It was good to see you again, and it’s always a pleasure to do so. I forgot to mention that the information I gave you is completely confidential, not even your adorable wife should know about it. Consider this a test of your personality. You have one day, more than twenty-four hours in front of you, to prove your convictions and intelligence. Once again I hold my right hand out to you; hold yours out to me as well. My dear Walser, I’m counting on you.”
CHAPTER XVII
1
Saturday night the city takes on an odd logic; a schizoid personality becomes readily apparent in men who are able to move straight from their loathsome days into occupying themselves, remorselessly, with nonstop dancing and dim, arousing lights. People are having fun.
A boyfriend and girlfriend are guessing at sentences that the other makes up. It’s a game: he writes something down on a piece of paper, then hides what he’s written; she guesses what it is, and they compare the two; they laugh at the results, whenever they’re completely different, laugh at the predictability or unpredictability of their ideas.
Moving successively, purposelessly, the woman’s elbows manage to knock over a glass of wine; she bursts out laughing, and the man apologizes to their waiter and says that he’ll pay for everything.
Hidden passions are revealed by reckless kisses. Formulaic amorous phrases are repeated, sentences copied from someone else, but which, when spoken or heard in isolation, become essential, capable of occupying a person’s thoughts for an entire week. In times of little imagination a new science is constructed: the formulation of love in a series of phrases: like an experimental study in which one already knows, with absolute certainty, what practical effects or moral consequences certain phrases have on the body of a man or a woman on a Saturday night. A night when the city, protected as it is by soldiers, seems inaccessible to death, which has a way of humbling the joys of even the victorious or indifferent.
Periods of great fear are good for more than just survivaclass="underline" they’re also good for passion. But if the quality of an entire generation can be measured by the quality of the phrases that its seducers utilize, then this generation, without a doubt, was a mediocre one.
Inseparable from a certain violence (as if it were its counterpoint), these seductions are made up, on these particular nights, of well-aimed blows, so to speak, that hit their targets in that part of existence which lies outside oneself. In every moment of respite from serious illness or fear, people head out to the streets, people sing; adolescents spy through keyholes to inspect the limits of their morality as well as the unashamed nudity of their housemaids; after advancing decisively through unsafe locations, soldiers learn dance-steps, useless steps, though steps that could, nevertheless, efficiently seduce even the most resolute women; the soldiers listen to their dance instructor the way they used to listen to the officers who taught them other sorts of steps, another way to walk across this earth.
Since an explanation of all existence can’t fit on a single tabletop, two soldiers opt instead for more beers, which fit nicely, and their dates can’t stop smiling, drunk, their bladders full and their breasts swollen. People leave their houses to search for perfection and, indeed, they find soldiers — whose deadly weapons seem reduced now to a mere detail in their wardrobe — and even find women who’ve been abandoned by their courageous or dead husbands, and who, confused, mix incompatible styles in their chosen attire, as well as in their fluctuating demeanors: meaningful stares, typical of prostitutes, accompanying phrases spoken using absolutely perfect, refined grammar, voicing their eloquent anxieties about the “instability of the current political situation.” The women are debasing themselves. These men are from other cities; they’re merely passing through.
But joy doesn’t yield. The two lovers endeavor to inaugurate a new century, one belonging solely to their table: a private century. A stupid woman, with her ill-mannered elbows on the table, and with her dress already marked by two wine stains, that woman, who earlier in the afternoon was disparaging the humanity of people whose names she can’t even spell, is now rubbing her high-heeled shoe against a soldier’s boot, emulating the behavior of people she’s seen in films; and she’s already feeling a certain sort of feminine desire begin to express itself in the area above her knees.
Normality continues apace; no one disturbs it, as there’s a constant need to keep moving, which, from a distance, seems incomprehensible, almost absurd. Normality continues trudging apace, even on top of ruins; the human organism endeavors to maintain its habits, even in the strangest and most confusing situations. Men do not stop for a single minute, whether they’re satisfied or trying to adapt to a new element; indeed, this is the reason that they get out of bed. And since they have desires they’ll never stop searching. Searching for what? That which has been stolen from them.