She should know that he was very grateful to her for letting him come out here, now she should go and not worry.
One does not have any kind of duty in the world, nothing, nada, and there’s nothing that one must accomplish either with or without a creator. And most of one’s fellow humans are beyond help anyway. You might do this or that for them, but that would be worthwhile only if you had a penchant for senseless charity. And you don’t have a penchant for that.
Neither do you. I at least am struggling for it, suffering, why don’t you want to understand that.
As if at the very last moment he risked beseeching her, and his most enlightened aunt did not understand this last appeal either.
No doubt for young people it is very hard to swallow this bitter pill without a sugar coating.
He also knows that there is no creator, he’s not an idiot, has not gone completely out of his mind.
Then don’t drive me out of mine and don’t make fun of me, and mainly stop whining at me. I can’t stand it.
The one I’m talking about, or the thing I’m talking about, is not as the Christians or Jews imagine him, or the way you do. He is much more ancient, much simpler, rawer and more brutal. And it’s not important whether it has a persona or not. It bothers you because right away you think of it as a person and worry that it might be crawling out of some Germanic myth.
Perhaps I could follow you, but I don’t want to.
The reason she needs the whole Germanic mythology or the Christian God is only to conceal or protect herself with them for a while.
Somebody did murder Gerhardt.
No one ever found out who.
He killed at least four people.
You must be listening to too much Wagner, Carlino. Or you’ve become addicted to some cheap drug, you can tell me.
You’re on the wrong track, but crimes must be confessed, no doubt about it, there’s no other way, and I agree about that. Everyone should confess his or her own.
At least you should leave off with this. After Christmas we’ll go not only to the lawyer but also to my doctor. Whatever you’ve been taking, believe me, we can take care of it in no time.
He’d try to formulate it differently, but he didn’t like censoring his words.
As if he were standing on a promontory across which waves were slowly crashing right before his eyes, and soon there’d be no solid ground left under his feet.
Perhaps Isolde is right, that his agitated fantasy is carrying his thoughts in the wrong direction. But why should she be so frightened of him, why call for a doctor right away. This too is only a cultural or cultic collective term to label one’s recurring fantasies, or fantasies of the collective. Wagner is in it, no question, and so are the Greeks, and the Germans — as in a large bowl of soup.
You’re not answering me.
I haven’t become addicted to anything.
Then something very unusual has happened to you. I understand if you don’t want to tell me about it, but then we’ll have to find a trustworthy psychiatrist.
I’ve told you more than once that if you’re ready to undergo your obligatory analysis, I will pay for it.
What’s to be done, Döhring shouted, if there are cultural fantasies with these brutal gods or even the creator sitting in the middle of them. Yes, the Creator. Whether Isolde likes it or not, such words do exist and one can’t avoid them. He knows that everything is very fragile, concepts are also very fragile and one must be very careful, but that’s why. He won’t keep quiet anymore, he cannot stand it, and he doesn’t much care if he offends other people’s convictions with this concept. He will wreak havoc, will smash the system of concepts. He can’t help it, the job of cultural fantasies is to excite, and how can he keep his mind from becoming enlightened at last regarding certain issues that eventually urge him to action.
What are you talking about, Isolde interrupted, trying to turn her entire being into a palpable threat, what words should you avoid and how.
Maybe you can tell me how to protect myself from them or from my own thinking.
He said this because he did not dare mention becoming enlightened again. One day I will tell you what can be done against it, against becoming enlightened, because you’re a big boy now.
You haven’t got very far with it.
Until now I’ve never wanted to interfere with your most intimate private life.
But you have, you’ve done nothing but.
Come on, what do you know about it.
Or, all right, maybe not from them, but how is one to protect oneself from one’s own imagination.
Nevertheless, the detective was coming toward him, leisurely and cheerful, as if this were the most natural thing in the world.
Which told him right off that no matter how risky it was, he had acted correctly when he let Isolde go, let her go to her happy little paradise and take her limitations and irresponsibility with her. He had broken the last thread that tied him to their reality. Where is it written that because of them he should censor his dictionary and even his imagination. He would do his own worrying about his vocabulary. He and the detective had to be left alone. The Creator’s hound has found not only the needed spoors in the universe but also his hangman, who will carry out the sentence.
This is as it should be, how could it be otherwise.
He did not understand the other gods but, at last, to himself, he could easily translate this more brutal god’s language into human language.
Let Isolde go to her dear rue Cassette, let her go and not worry.
Nothing more can go wrong.
At the very most they would be unable to decide whether cultural or mythological images are uniformly part of a cosmic reality, or whether they function as independent entities in a reality that is homogeneous for everyone.
Everything will be all right.
What he should say is yes, now the one I’ve been looking for has found me. And I shall carry out the sentence entrusted to me.
You called me, the detective said gently when he reached him in the patches of light cast from the house, and he showed his bright teeth in an overly nice smile.
Döhring wanted to reply just as gently and lightheartedly, he too wanted to attempt a smile, this obligatory flashing of mood, but instead he said to himself, I have to behead this man who has finally found me, and he shuddered at the happy thought of this verdict, that he has to finish him off.
He thought that wherever there was sin, there had to be virtue as well.
Not that having seen the axe, the detective wasn’t clear about the danger facing him.
While they were looking into each other’s eyes in the coldly dripping twilight, as if it couldn’t have been three days since they’d met for the first time, as if in the meantime not many things had happened to them and they needn’t think about so many other things, other dangerous persons and other dangerous occurrences.
If you take one of the handles, I’ll take the other, the detective said cheerfully and reached for the basket filled with chopped wood.
A man in love becomes very generous even with total strangers, though right away he saw how little enthusiasm the other one showed in accepting the generosity. He saw in Döhring’s very sharp features, and mainly in his compulsively small steps and tight movements, that his initial impression had been wrong. He had to correct himself. As though standing in the Tiergarten he had not acknowledged that this young man was not just an egomaniacal urban jerk; what he had was not neurosis, but schizophrenia. He saw the obduracy and the destructive desire to break free, he saw how the two clashed and did not let each other breathe. As if Döhring were urging or forcing himself to take steps to flee, or as if he were lurking around his own body. He was at once driven and treacherous.