I digest these thoughts and counterpoints while I sit in the bus. Perhaps, I reflect, I shall bring them a simple tale after all. It should naturally describe everyday matters in an uncomplicated way. One shouldn’t weigh it down with all those utterances of life. For instance, what could be more straightforward than this trip this afternoon? Of course I could introduce a jiggling of beauty here and yonder just for the juice of it — some lacustrine colours perhaps, and a breath of sentiment not too lachrymose. Nothing lacerating however, no — none of that turning inside out or bringing dark mumblings to light.
And really it is quite a clear story. Let me tell it in the past tense and then allow me to go into the future. And move. Merely a prolepsis? But it is the pattern that weaves its tissues which cannot be avoided. (Ah, the layers of blunting and the carnal joys!)
We had a fine afternoon of it together in that big grey building where we used to meet so often. Slowly we lipped and sipped our kümmel and we refrained from observing the sun sinking. Now I really had to leave to rejoin my lady wife. It was cumbersome — my coming out was already a rare occurrence since I didn’t move much any more these days. I bade goodbye to my friends Tuchverderber and Galgenvogel. I was inordinately proud of not having made any mention of rumours (or fat facts) which had reached my ears lately. Was it Galgenvogel or Tuchverderber who couldn’t look me in the eye, who asked no question about my lady wife?
It was late but the day refused to die — just as if it were suspended for an eternity. I wanted to go back to my lady wife. She had been out shopping with Eva and I was thinking that she may get worried upon returning to this unaccustomed absence of mine.
I called my man. He help-handed me into the cart and then set out pulling it. We called him “The Horse” because of the clopping noise he made when trotting. This was due to the heavy and clumsy black boots he wore. He had had polio as a youth and since then the carpus and tarsus were permanently warped and annealed so that he had to go about on his errands with these stiff boots on, keeping the time to himself with rigid wrists. None the less we progressed at a jolly nice pace, jiggling, and I knew that home was only a few canals away from the grey building.
But today he took me back along an unfamiliar route. To tell the truth, it had been such a long time since I’d come out of myself that I no longer recognized the city. (But please don’t let me complicate the story.)
Horse was tiring, I could see it by the angle of his grey hat sinking ever deeper between the shoulders. So that I allowed him to convince me that we should take the bus as we neared the station. We got in — Horse with much stomping of shanks, obsequious winking and rubbing of hard hands. Apparently he knew the conductor and the other passengers. Horse and the cart were put in a special compartment rather like a stall separated from the rest of the bus by a steel partition. Against this he proceeded to kick with his clumsy black boots, all the while sniggering and moving his greasy grey fedora backward and forward on his head. He has a grey face with a wobbling chin and the goitre of a cretin. He also drools at the mouth. But this never stopped him from chatting and gossiping — a real flibbertigibbet. Was it not from him I heard the rumours concerning my lady wife and Galgenvogel or Tuchverderber?
The bus, strangely enough, took us right out of town. Horse and the conductor and even my fellow travellers kept on trying to reassure me that this was quite all right, even rather normal. But I didn’t remember the city this way at all. I certainly didn’t recognize these suburbs and the countryside unfolding — not that I’ve ever been far enough from my home to know. If at all. But I’ve always conceived of my home town as flat and shot through with canals running just a little lower than the cobbled streets. Now I saw black hills dotted with sunshine. From time to time the bus stopped and taciturn men with blackened hands and faces half swallowed by the shadows of flat caps got on. These were miners, I was told, and those hills are mine-dumps. What a labyrinth of shafts and corridors and caverns there must be below the surface to excrete all this blackness, I thought. Like thoughts. We also passed places where there were lighter patches not unlike furry growths. I wondered whether these may be flowers — cacti perhaps, or rocks of a vegetable shape? But no, everyone confirmed, they were only the severed heads of horses from the abattoirs and from nearer, I was assured, I would see the blood and mucus still freshly trickling from them, and the scores of busy flies. All the scars. (Or stars.)
But that, I felt, really belonged to another story. And I was quite enjoying the ride despite the unfamiliar proletariat all around me. The day was caught motionless in a decline of dappled lights; distances held the sheen of lacquer rather like the soft sateen of my shirt. Ja, I ruminated, this day is finally just like a smile saturated, soaked in sunshine. (But my pants were damp.)
We passed by the lakes. We passed over a bridge with the railway tracks below us. Workers got on and got off. They mumbled and moved their caps with black hands. Horse whinnied and kicked against the steel-plated partition behind which he was standing. We came to a forest. Hills and green trees and the opaque but silver surfaces of water. Porcelain and peppermint and pink. And then behind the tip of the woods the city reappeared.
I knew that this was the same city, I instinctively appropriated the memory of it, and as we entered the first streets I saw in fact that I was now so very nearly home — just approaching it, you know, as it were from behind. I felt quite content. More precisely: I was heavy with contentment. Now I should go home, I thought. And forgive my wife my immobility. And perhaps I should go out more often and then reabsorb the familiar from this unexpected angle and show it to her and to my friends Galgenvogel and Tuchverderber too. One could have picnics here. I even felt benign towards The Horse. In truth of course I have the edge over him, I am superior to him — for whereas he hates me I like him. But that has to do with fatness and the blight of a festering class consciousness.
The bus halted. There were now crowds of people milling about in the streets here on the edge of the city. Some girls were dressed in our national costume. It was strange because unannounced and inexplicable. I just couldn’t work out what the processions were in aid of. Was this a national holiday then? Or — G. God forbid! — an uprising? revolution? anarchy? Already? (If at all.)
And I found myself as suddenly abandoned in the bus. I called (or burped) for The Horse, but he was no longer in the little stable. So, with great toil and difficulty I managed to alight by myself. People were jostling over one another in the teeming streets. But this must be the same town, I thought: after all I practically know this area and those houses from behind.
In the street I tried to ask my way from a prancing youngster. His teeth flashed. All the people had flashes in their mouths. But neither he nor anyone else among the frenzied bypassers knew any French. A few trees from the nearby forest grew to within the city limits. Under their high canopies the room-like spaces were already dark. Ah, I thought — now the day is finally going.