Klober extended his right hand to Walser, who responded in kind with his right hand.
“Don’t take this the wrong way, but, my, how I’ve missed the touch of your hand! Its absence made my own hand itch. My dear fellow, let me say this right away, let me repeat it: I’ve missed your hand! You abandoned us, you know, my dear Walser? You went off to some other building and left us here all alone with the machines. You’ve already noticed it: can you hear them? They’re all running. Exactly. They run on Sundays. All of them. I turned them on, isn’t that extraordinary? The motors are running on Sunday. But I haven’t called you here to talk about the indolence of some of these apparatuses. My dear Walser, wouldn’t you like to sit down? No? All right, very well, standing, my dear sir, that’s fine, you’re more imposing that way. Okay, dear Walser, I would first like to shut the door, we wouldn’t want to be interrupted, and you never know what will happen on Sunday. I’m going to lock it with this key, if you don’t mind, so we can be certain we won’t be interrupted. Here’s the key, don’t worry, I’ll set it here close to you, right here, you see, within arm’s reach. Very good.
“My dear Walser, you must be frightened, I know you. You are not a man who could be characterized as excessively courageous. You have never found yourself under attack by a single excess — if I may put it that way. You are what we could call a quiet man, Joseph, my friend, and I admire you for it. You know how to parcel out your energy, you’ve always known. Perhaps you know it in a way with which no machine could ever compete. You don’t waste time, my dear fellow, you possess something that could be called an ‘instinct of utility,’ an instinct that allows you to distance yourself, precisely, from waste, from excess. You’re a very precise man, Walser, and you should take this brief introduction as the expression of a fond weakness on your friend Klober’s part: I am, in fact, happy to see you again. To talk to you again, and with plenty of time to spare, no rush. You are a man who listens, Joseph Walser, and it’s not by chance that women must think of you as a valued confidant.
“But I can tell that you’re afraid. Don’t be silly, are we friends or not? How many years has it been? Many, maybe you’d say too many, since those years are evidence of the obvious fact that we’re both getting older. But the startling thing is that I look at you and still see the same young man who first started working with our machines. A hard worker. Can you hear the noise? Listen.
“Wonderful, isn’t it? The machines. All right then, prick up your ears. Now tell me, can you hear the sound of your own machine? Can you? There are many, I know, they’re all running, and all by themselves, which is just absurd, but, after all, today is Sunday, and anything goes, we’ve been at peace for years and we’re in need of some kind of amusement, some novelty, some kind of surprise. But listen. See if you can ferret out your own machine. Do you remember it? It took your finger, which seemed like a tragedy at the time, I remember it well, but look at you now. You’re still going on, still moving forward, you know? I look at you and see that same young man, with the same judiciousness and the same exactitude. And always such a good listener. My, how well you listen to other men! My dear Walser, you should be awarded a medal just for how well you listen to other men. I know that you didn’t take part in the war, you were right to stay away from it, just like me, you could say. Such affairs aren’t for people like us. I know that you stayed away from the weapons and that you aren’t exactly a hero, but if it were up to me, the country would award you a medal tomorrow. You really listen to men. And that’s a rare thing. But now listen to the machines as well, make an effort. See if you can listen to them as intently as you’re listening to me right now; see if you can separate the noise they’re making into individual, distinct words, and see if you can give this noise meaning, an exact meaning, just as you do with the words I am speaking. Yes, prick up your ears, as they say, my dear Walser, it’s time to learn to listen to the machines.
“But I didn’t call you here, on a Sunday, in the afternoon, on a sunny day during which you should be, along with the rest of the city, strolling in the park with your wife, with your amazing, steadfast wife, your faithful wife, and I say that without a hint of irony, I know what I’m talking about, she will never leave you; but as I was saying, I didn’t call you here, depriving you of the sun and the park, to talk to you about machines; my dear friend, I called you here because I want to talk about myself, me: Klober, a simple inhabitant of this city, the foreman of one unit of one of the factories in the empire of Leo Vast, which is led these days by a beautiful woman, about whom they say shocking things, but also wonderful things, as befits the characters of the mighty. But, my dear Walser, we’re on a different floor here. We’re below them. This is my office. How many years has it been? Fifteen, twenty? They always kept me down below, close to the machines, so I wouldn’t forget the warmth of their humming motors. Do you know that I still have never seen Leo Vast’s widow, not even once? Not once. And, just between you and me, they say she’s nice to look at. But what can we do, my friend and I? Here we are down below. We get our kicks with prostitutes. You, my dear Walser, more fortunate than me, sometimes sleep with poor Clairie, who’s getting fatter by the week: indeed, you chose well. I can see that you like large women and I can’t help but agree with you on that score. They’re the ones who appreciate men the most, the ones that hold tightest to men. Life is tragic, my dear fellow, life is absolutely physical, have you noticed?
“It’s when you have a physical defect like you, my friend, or when you are obese, that you realize that life is completely physical and that there is nothing else to it. That there’s no such thing as a spirit, Joseph. There isn’t a single drop of spirit among the living: obese women hold tight to men and never let them go, because they know that they’ll probably never have another, and they hate that likelihood: the likelihood that they’ll never have another. Clairie isn’t holding on to you, my dear Walser, because she’s madly in love with you, she’s holding on to you because she would hate to be alone.
“What was it like to chase after a widow like that, Joseph, my friend? Only you would have done it. Do you know what they call her in the factory? Simply: ‘the stupid fatty.’ Isn’t it excellent, as a summary, as a method of synthesis: ‘the stupid fatty’? Do whatever you want with her. Try out weird things with her, my friend, I heartily advise you to do it. She might complain, but don’t pay attention, women of her caliber only pretend to be offended. It’s a survival instinct: they pretend to be offended. But they cannot refuse.
“But I want to show you something. I have it here in the drawer. Look, it’s pretty, isn’t it? A gun. And it’s loaded.
“I want to talk about myself, my dear fellow, as I’ve already told you, that’s the reason I called you here, to talk about myself; and because you’re a good listener. All right then, I brought with me the necessary instrument for use in talking about myself: a pistol, an excellent pistol, a modern pistol, a loaded pistol, a pistol that has within it two deaths. That’s just a figure of speech, don’t be frightened, it has two deaths within it because it has two bullets: one for you and one for me, arithmetically speaking. But don’t be frightened, don’t be ridiculous, not now; I’m just using that as an example.
“Are you frightened? Oh, my dear friend, that was just a gunshot. Don’t tell me you don’t recognize that sound. After so many years of war, that sound still frightens you? That’s extraordinary. You, my dear Walser, surprise me, you still surprise me. You’re still carrying on with a naïveté that is absolutely remarkable. Everything is new to you. You’re made of different stuff, you’re from a different world, you’re from a different century. All right then, my dear sir, you know that I’m not like that. Know that for me, in fact, the idea of putting a bullet in my head has crossed my mind many times. Have you ever heard of such a thing? Klober the foreman, Klober the foreman wants to put a bullet in his head? That’s absurd, you’ll say, in your immense naïveté. That may be: but a day doesn’t pass that I don’t think about putting a bullet in my head. In one side, out the other: a bullet in my very own head. But look here, don’t get frightened because of me. I still haven’t decided anything, I’m here to talk to you because I still haven’t decided. That’s why I called you, I know that you’re a good listener, an extraordinary listener, and knowing that I knew it wouldn’t be a mistake to bring you here, on a sunny Sunday, making you leave your faithful wife, and your beautiful lover, thus leaving two forlorn women behind on Sunday, a crucial day for hatred, a day on which hatred is in urgent need of parks and nice weather, of idle strolls; it’s like this: I wouldn’t rob you of all the happiness out there just to get you to witness my suicide. It would be an affront to your finest quality, that of being a good listener, if I were to call you just to watch me do it. So, I’ll tell you something right away to ease your worries about my health. Well then, this gun now only has one bullet, the other was wasted, if we want to think of it that way; I fired off to the side; I missed, my dear Walser. I now have a single bullet in this pistoclass="underline" it won’t do for two people, it’s easy to do the math, and I’ll say that it has drastically reduced the probability of one of us dying, here, in this room. But I’m going to include you in this game, Walser, my friend — perhaps a little too early. Nevertheless, I want you to realize something: the war ended some time ago; so, my dear Walser, you are looking at a man who has never killed anyone. Can you believe it? Believe it, please, I beg of you. Here we are, locked in here, there’s no one nearby, the machines are all running and I would never lie to you about such an important matter: yes, I may have betrayed a man at one time or another — I know that some were perhaps shot because of what I did or, at least, because of a sudden loss of memory on my part — but who isn’t guilty of that? And you, Joseph, know very well what I’m talking about. Although you distanced yourself from these matters, you’ve also got something of a résumé in this regard, don’t be so modest. But as I was saying: I have never killed a man. I’ve never aimed a gun. The substance of which the human body is constructed even nauseates me a little, I have to admit. The substance of the human body is much too inexplicable to me, and as such, I repeat, I cannot help but feel a little nauseated by men. Nothing excessive, of course: here I am, to this very day, having never shed blood, carrying on in my job, carrying on as Klober the foreman.