He didn’t want to be anywhere, he wanted nothing more. He wanted to abolish everything! “I don’t believe in God!” he said, meaning nothing. (Those words had often popped out of him in the past.)
Night was falling and at last Keuschnig was alone. He stretched his legs, put both arms over the back of the bench, and thought: How gloriously alone I am! And really bared his teeth. One last thought: I not only have to see everything at once, now I want to. Suddenly the wind grew stronger, and Keuschnig lost himself …
After a while he noticed that for the first time that day there was perfect silence in his head. It was as though he had been having to talk all day, without stopping for breath. Now he only listened. The grass at the edge of the playground was flattened … He listened. The wind died down. When it rose again and the trees set up a murmur, Keuschnig was aware of a new, calm life feeling. The grass stood erect and trembled. Behind the trees, on the Champs-Elysees, an unbroken procession of cars passed; now and then the sound of a horn, or a rattling and roaring when a motorcycle overtook a car. He had thought himself away, yet he was present.
Then he had an experience — and while still taking it in, he hoped he would never forget it. In the sand at his feet he saw three things: a chestnut leaf; a piece of a pocket mirror; a child’s barrette. They had been lying there the whole time, but then suddenly they came together and became miraculous objects. “Who said the world has already been discovered?” It had been discovered only in respect to the mystifications some people used to defend their certainties from others, and surely there were no longer any pseudomysteries — such as the mystery of Holy Communion or the mystery of the universe — to blackmail him with. All the sublime mysteries, no differently from the Mystery of the Black Spider or the Mystery of the Chinese Scarf, were man-made, designed to intimidate people. But these wishing objects on the ground in front of him did not intimidate him. They put him in so confident a mood that he couldn’t sit still. He scraped his heels over the ground and laughed … I haven’t discovered a personal mystery in them, addressed to myself; what I’ve discovered is the IDEA of a mystery valid for all! “What names cannot accomplish as CONCEPTS, they do as IDEAS.” Where had he read that? He needed no mysteries, what he needed was the IDEA of a mystery — and if only he had the idea of a mystery, there would be no need to hide his fear of death behind a lot of pseudomysteries! At this thought Keuschnig leaped for joy. Suddenly he felt so free that he didn’t want to be alone any more. He would go up to someone and say: “You needn’t have any secrets from me!” At the encouraging sight of those three miraculous objects in the sand, he felt a helpless affection for everyone, but he had no desire to be cured of it, because it now seemed perfectly sensible. I have a future! he thought triumphantly. The chestnut leaf, the fragment of mirror, and the barrette seemed to move still closer together — and with them all other things came together … until there was nothing else. Magical proximity! “I can change!” he said aloud. — He stamped his foot, but there was no ghost. He looked around, but no longer saw an adversary. Since there was no need to wish anything more from the three objects, he scraped sand over them. He thought of keeping the chestnut leaf. To remember by? There was no need to remember: he threw the leaf away. Then he took a bite of his bread. Now I can let myself be hungry, he thought as he was leaving, because I’ve finally had an IDEA. He felt all-powerful again, but no more powerful than anyone else.
What a strange day it was! He couldn’t walk, he was running again. He should have been home at nine. He wouldn’t make it on time, ahead of the Austrian writer, unless he took a cab. But then he thought: I’ve got to experience something more, and stopped in front of the chestnut tree, suddenly taking a great liking to this tree with the still-bright strip of sky behind it. I’ve earned the right to look at it, he thought, and cast a long look at its flapping leaves. — He would experience more in a bus than in a cab. So he went over to the Avenue Gabriel and took the 52 bus, which runs from the Opera to the Porte d’Auteuil.
On the bus he thought: Maybe, if I feel as though I hadn’t experienced anything in a long time, not until last night at least, it’s because I had decided in advance what an experience is. As in a travel prospectus, a mere object stood for experience. According to the prospectus, “the campfire will be an experience”—and to my mind the water flowing in the gutter, the soft-smooth surface of the shoe polish in a new can, a freshly made bed, an elderly person who had preserved his curiosity represented experience. — I must get over needing guarantees of experience, he thought.
In the bus he was alone with a North African worker. The North African was drunk. The bus was going fast, because there was no one waiting at most of the stops. When the driver took the sharp turn into the Avenue Friedland without slowing down, the man vomited in the aisle. The driver pulled up at the curb and without a word opened the door. The drunk spoke loudly in his own language, but without turning toward the driver. Keuschnig pretended to be looking out of the window. Not one of the three in the bus looked at either of the others. The North African began to shout. The driver turned off the motor. It’s too late to say anything now, Keuschnig thought. Suddenly he noticed that the drunk was looking at him and speaking to him. He looked back blandly at him as if nothing were wrong. The North African fell silent and got out. The bus drove on. The driver didn’t say a word, he seemed to need no backing up. When Keuschnig looked at the splattered vomit on the floor, glistening in the harsh white overhead light, he felt it was meant for him. — At the next stop he left the bus, long before Auteuil. In getting out, he said to the driver: “Monsieur, vous n’êtes pas gentil,” but the words didn’t come out right.