But that’s what I’m talking to you about, your hunger and your thirst, which Christians can never appease or quench.
He cried out as if he were deeply wounded.
You can’t seriously imagine that anyone around here would dare spend Christmas Eve outside the family circle.
How could there be anything open tonight. No, you won’t find such a depraved place here, not in our neck of the woods. The people who live here are all decent hypocrites.
Isn’t there a different kind of place.
You don’t understand what I’m talking about.
Still, despite your theoretical resistance, I invite you to be my guest, Kienast replied relentlessly.
Just this once, I ask you to sit down and listen to me. Hear me out.
Come on, get your coat, stop groaning and moaning.
I won’t leave the fire. I’m sorry, but I’m not going to leave the fire just because of you. I didn’t chop all that wood to let the fire go out now.
I’ll relight it for you when we come back. That’s one thing I’m really good at, lighting fires in fireplaces.
Go by yourself, I’ve no objection to your coming back.
I didn’t see any food in your kitchen, have you had anything at all to eat today.
The refrigerator is full.
I didn’t ask whether the refrigerator was full but whether you’ve had anything to eat.
What do you want from me, and so what if I haven’t eaten anything.
Get your coat, we’ll go eat something and while we eat I’ll tell you what I want from you. We can also have a glass of something and talk about theology.
You will not talk to me about the object of my hatred. You may not do that.
What, are you preaching to me again, I understand you very well, but please stop these tasteless tirades.
This God of yours has been torturing me all my life.
I have nothing to do with him.
I hate him.
Stop shamming and get your coat. You think other people don’t suffer or other people have no god. I’m not suffering. You think you’re the only one who does.
I don’t think that.
You’ll live through it.
That’s true.
There, you see.
We’re not talking about suffering.
Good, let’s keep it that way, because I can’t stand your mawkish gushing.
But what can I do when my family is crawling with murderers.
We can’t decide before supper which of our families offers the more meaningful example, because my family is crawling not only with murderers but also with suicides.
That’s true.
How would you know. Stop talking like an idiot.
I know.
You see.
I know more than you can guess.
Where’s your coat.
The young man went upstairs and presently returned with the expensive Scottish windbreaker he had received from his aunt.
Wait, he said when they both had their coats on, and he grabbed the poker again.
First, he had to find the cat and chase it out of the house.
Meanwhile it had grown dark outside.
It’s a stray cat, he explained.
He reached under the sofa with the poker. Sometimes it disappears for weeks or months, but it always turns up.
He can’t stand seeing the cat slyly scurrying around, sneaking in and out. He so can’t stand the sight of it that once he managed to hit it twice in a row with the poker, on the spine, right above the rump, ready to destroy it.
He saw the spine crack.
There was snow on the ground that day, and he threw the cat out into the snow. It made no sound, as if he had done it in his sleep. The body sank into the snow.
But the next day, in daylight, he could not find it.
He didn’t tell the policeman the whole story, though he wanted to, but he could not forgive himself for it. He doesn’t feel sorry for people; he wouldn’t feel sorry for their brats either. If he killed a child, it would be like carrying out a verdict of acquittal. Whenever he found himself near a small child, he was afraid he might do it. Regarding children, he felt ready to do anything to save them from the life awaiting them. The cat, however, reappeared after a few weeks, sneaking, scurrying, alive, and he found no joy in this.
The owl must have perched somewhere in the bare orchard, emitting a single sharp sound at regular intervals. It sounded like water drops plopping on metal.
Another owl responded from a great distance.
The car was still breathing warmly when they got in it. For a while they sat mutely side by side and actually had a cigarette. They did it so they could engage in at least this small activity without lying.
Pardon me for asking again, the young man said after a while in the dark. I’m still curious to know your possible answer. In your opinion is there a god in this world or the universe, not the Christians’ but anybody’s, and I mean any kind of god.
No.
And in that case one is permitted to do anything.
Yes.
But how can a person coexist with this knowledge, he asked, and then suddenly he let the question dwindle. Is it even possible.
Exactly the way you coexist with it, not any other way. Only people who are soft in the head can believe that freedom is a good thing that one should strive for. I’d say, instead, that freedom is necessary, you can’t get around it.
You can’t be serious, or else you are cynical to the marrow of your bones. Even if it was so, how can it be acceptable to strive consciously for evil and do premeditated harm.
Nobody accepts that, even when a person has done it. This is something everyone fears.
Then maybe I wasn’t wrong after all, maybe murder is better.
They would have liked to continue this, sitting in the dark; it would have been nice. To continue thinking about how they should mutually avoid the subject of murder, if for no other reason than that it didn’t get them anywhere. At best it would confirm their feeling of complete futility. But the detective, preferring to leave the question undecided, was willing to relinquish even the beauty of asking questions or engaging in a dialogue. As Humphrey Bogart would have, he stuck his cigarette in the corner of his mouth, turned on the ignition, and backed up, making the wheels screech as he turned his old car around and, pulverizing their intimacy with immense gusto, took off at great speed.
He would have been annoyed at, and for practical reasons could not have approved of, their surrender to the sentimental spirit of theological contemplation.
He wanted to talk about simpler things and did not want to stray from them. It was not so much hunger or thirst that urged him on; after all, he had had something to eat and drink and did not really care about the other man’s hunger or thirst, but now he simply had to find a restaurant that was open, since he had promised he’d find one. He thought a neutral location would be more appropriate for their conversation, which he had more or less planned out while driving to Döhring’s place, mapping out various possibilities, but until now he hadn’t even come close to sounding his themes in their natural tones. He had to get closer to the young man, to get even closer, to be dangerously close, and to obtain the most intimate pieces of information, and he could not afford to be taken in by the other’s playacting.
He was wise to that, though. He saw through Döhring’s role playing. He didn’t grade the young man’s insanity as more than average; however, unlike others with this kind of insanity, Döhring played not a normal person but, oddly enough, an insane one. This is how he defended his real insanity, the points of his outburst. Everything he had committed until now was a mere taste of what he might commit in the future. And it made no difference whether all this was unintentional, unpremeditated, whether he played his role not consciously, for he performed what his real schizophrenia made him perform.