Keuschnig hadn’t had the feeling of being with a unique, individual woman, and afterwards he felt free from the impersonal power that had gripped them both. — They helped each other up. They sat on two chairs, she behind the desk, he in front of it, and exchanged conspiratorial looks. She was grave, smiled only once with set lips while looking at him, and soon grew grave again. He too was able to look at her as a matter of course, without strain, without fear of giving himself away. His glance had no further need of something to hold on to, some detail, some particular by which to recognize her — he saw her all in one, noticing nothing in particular. If in that moment he had told her he loved her, he would, at least for the time it takes to draw a breath, have known what he meant by it. For the moment it was REAL, that’s all there was to it. With her he had no need of secrecy, never again. Without fear he immersed himself in her, they had no secrets from each other, only a secret in common from others. For a few moments they had EVERYTHING in common. They let the telephones in the building blare, let the elevator hum, the door-opening device in the courtyard buzz, a fly in the room hum; nothing could divert them from their unthinking calm. He looked at the handwritten sign on the wall — PER ASPERA AD ACTA; it didn’t strike him as ridiculous now, and he wasn’t repelled by the cooing of the pigeon menage which had settled in the ivy on the opposite wall. He wouldn’t have minded in the least if someone had been watching them all along. Let him watch! — They needed no secrecy, and perhaps it would even give this other fellow an idea. He kept looking at her and suddenly he thought: So now I have an ally! Though he didn’t say a word, she nodded, held a finger in front of her mouth, then set it on her lower lip, as though to underline her meaning. They laughed again, surprised and almost proud. Then they talked together, and he didn’t even mind when she said: “When I’m with a man … when someone touches me here …”—Actually he was glad to be interchangeable as far as she was concerned. In leaving the room he kissed her hand. — But when he thought of her again, back in his office, his breath caught, because he had no recollection of what it had been like to make love to her. There was no particular he could hold on to — no feeling of warmth or yielding softness. Then for the first time he felt slightly ashamed.
When at about six Keuschnig stepped out on the square, on his way to the press conference at the Elysée Palace, he suddenly stopped still and propped his hands on his hips. He felt hostile toward the whole world. “Now I’ve shown you,” he said. “I’ll get you down yet.”—With clenched fists he headed for the Pont des Invalides, crossed the Quai d’Orsay with utter unconcern for the traffic. He felt an urgent need to break some resistance, to prove himself. Now he was sure that something remained to be done — but where? The coins jangled in his pocket as he walked, but he only walked faster, ran, PURSUED. For a short time at least he had the feeling that he was all-powerful and could look down at the world. It had been made for him, and now he was forcing his way into it, to convert all its renegade objects to his way of thinking. “There you are, Mr. Seine,” he said patronizingly, as he hurried across the bridge. “Just keep up that senseless flowing — I’ll get your secret out of you yet.” Then he thought: I’m having an experience; and with that he was happy and walked more slowly. Agnes had often said to him: “You never tell me any stories.” Now he had a story to tell, how he had said: “Be still!” and for a few moments at least the world had obeyed. And he would add further particulars: steep streets had suddenly become level and whole rows of houses one floor lower. That would be the right kind of story for her, because for her “the world” was still a unit of cubic measurement. — And what if he were to tell her nothing, because he had nothing more to say? — Then at least he would have something for himself, a memory that might help him to envisage and deal with what lay inexorably ahead of him. I can be pleased, he thought with surprise: I am a person capable of being pleased. One more thing I had never thought of until today. Suddenly he wanted to draw. Moving one finger through the air, he drew the spiked-helmet roof of the Grand Palais, which he was passing on his way down the Avenue Franklin-Roosevelt …
In Paris one can usually see the sky without raising one’s eyes; even when looking straight ahead, one sees it at the end of many streets. Consequently Keuschnig noticed that clouds had now come into the sky, white immobile stripes high overhead, and under them, rather low and running at an angle to the stripes, other clouds, whose proximity made them seem somewhat darker, moving rapidly just above the rooftops and changing their shapes before he was able to fix them in his mind. Why, he wondered, am I so struck with the sky? It didn’t exactly strike him; he merely looked at it with interest, but thinking nothing in particular. For a few steps it held his attention so exclusively that afterwards he thought: I wish I could learn to prolong these selfless and yet full moments, when I observe nothing in particular but nothing escapes me. But his very next glance at the clouds soured him. He never wanted to look at anything again. Why couldn’t everything finally disappear — everything! He walked in the middle of the sidewalk with his hands on his hips. He would have liked to shout insults at everyone. Out of my way, you clever clever people! He would shout just one word at a woman, and she would have to think of it as long as she lived. He must find the word to which no one knew the answer!
At the far end of the Champs-Elysées, there was only one thing to catch the eye, the Arc de Triomphe. Looking through it from down here at the Rond-Point, one saw nothing but the western sky, which was reflected in the surface of the wide avenue. “If I looked through the arch from farther up the avenue, I would see the cranes being used to put up still more buildings in the Defense quarter of suburban Puteaux.”—I observe as if I were doing it for someone else! thought Keuschnig. But that was a brief diversion.
In turning into Le Drugstore from the sidewalk of the Avenue Matignon, he suddenly felt saved, for the moment at least. The mere act of TURNING IN — of deviating from his depressing rectilinear course — suggested a break in a journey, and as he moved through Le Drugstore along with many others, in a rhythm, determined by others, of stopping, dodging, and starting up again, his only movements now being Drugstore movements, performed in common with others, he was able to see himself leading a totally different life, derived from his Drugstore feeling, in which all his problems would cease to exist. “That’s it, I’ll start a new life!” he said aloud, on a note of urgency. A memory came to him: Schoolchildren in shorts were standing in a row, in front of them the two team captains, each in turn calling out the names of the boys he wanted on his team. Those named stepped forward. The good players were soon taken, and only the incompetents stood there, squirming with embarrassment: please, please call my name! The next-to-last would still be taken — oh, don’t let me be the last of all, don’t leave me standing here by myself. And here now, those crumpled paper napkins on ketchup-smeared plates, those young women sitting alone, rereading their love letters over their open handbags — in such confusion a game in which someone had to be last ceased to be possible. — At a bookstand Keuschnig bought three diner’s guides. He would read them from cover to cover. One more thing to go by, he thought.