In a minute he withdrew the needle and — the passengers all around me were smiling: they had seen my face — he started rubbing on the arm of the fat woman, who watched appreciatively. I noticed the large syringe squirted only a small amount of liquid, the plunger bouncing right back out. Then I read the yellow letters down the side: LOVEBIRD FURNITURE. I was too embarrassed to ask what the injection was for and decided to find out the next day from the newspapers. But the moment I got off the trolley I thought, “It can’t be a tonic — it has to be something with an immediate visible effect if it’s really a promotional stunt.” I still couldn’t figure out how it would work, but I was very tired and made up my mind to ignore it. In any case, I was confident the Lovebird people wouldn’t be allowed to dope the public with some drug. Before going to sleep I wondered whether they might be trying to induce a state of physical pleasure or well-being. I was still awake when I heard a birdsong inside me. It didn’t have the quality of a remembered sound or one reaching you from the outside. It felt abnormal, like a new disease, but with an ironic twist to it as well, as if the disease were happy and had started to sing. These sensations soon wore off and were followed by something more concrete: a voice — also ringing in my head — that said:
“Hello, hello, this is your Lovebird station. . Hello, and welcome to our special broadcast. The persons sensitized to these transmissions. . ” and so on.
I heard all this standing barefoot by my bed, without daring to turn on the light. I had jumped out of bed and frozen on the spot: I couldn’t believe the sounds were in my head. I dropped back in bed, waiting to see what would happen next. The voice was giving instructions for buying Lovebird Furniture on the installment plan. Then suddenly it said:
“And now stay tuned for our first selection, the tango. .”
Desperate, I pulled a heavy blanket over my head, but that only made the sound worse because the blanket muffled the street noise and I could hear what was going on inside my head more clearly. So I threw off the blanket and started to walk up and down the room, which helped a little — until I caught myself listening in secret, as if perversely determined to go on feeling sorry for myself. I got back into bed and, hanging on to the bedstead, heard the tango again, even louder than before.
When I’d had enough, I went out searching for other sounds to block the ones in my head. I thought of buying a newspaper, looking up the radio station’s address and finding out how to neutralize the effects of the injection. But a trolley went by and I got on, and soon we were going over a rough spot in the rails and the clatter and jangle relieved me of the next tango. Then, suddenly, looking around the trolley, I saw another man with a syringe: he was injecting some children in the seats facing forward. I went up and asked him what I could do to neutralize the effects of an injection I had received an hour earlier. He stared at me in amazement and said:
“You don’t like our programming?”
“Absolutely not.”
“If you wait a few minutes you’ll catch a soap opera.”
“I couldn’t bear it,” I said.
He went on with the injections, shaking his head and smiling. The tango was over and the voice was back with another sales pitch. Finally, the man of the injections said:
“Sir, haven’t you seen the ad for Lovebird pills? It’s in all the papers. If you don’t like our programming, you simply take a pill and that’s the end of it.”
“But all the drugstores are closed at this time and I’m losing my mind!”
Just then I heard the announcer say:
“And now for a poem entitled ‘My Favorite Armchair.’ It’s a sonnet composed specially for Lovebird Furniture.”
Whereupon the man of the injections drew up close to me and whispered in my ear:
“I can fix things for you — another way. I’ll only charge you a buck: you look like I can trust you. If you give me away I’ll lose my job, because the company would rather have people buy the pills.”
I pressed him to reveal his secret and he extended his hand and said:
“Let’s have the buck first.”
And after I had given him the money:
“Go soak your feet in hot water.”
The Two Stories
On the 16th of June, just before dark, a young man sat down at a small table where there were some writing materials. His intention was to capture a story and confine it in a notebook. For days he had been looking forward to the thrill of sitting down to write. He had promised himself to write the story very slowly, putting the best of himself into it. Finally, that afternoon, the moment had come. He worked in a toy shop and, while gazing at a slate board with red and blue beads strung across it on wires, he had suddenly realized he was ready to begin. He remembered another afternoon when he had been pondering a detail of the story and the manager of the shop had called him to account for not paying attention to his work; but his mood allowed him to efface all such ugly memories as soon as they appeared and go on with the thoughts that made him so happy. In the street, after work, these thoughts had also made him clumsy: his spirit freed, the minute he was out the door of the shop, he had delegated only a minimal part of himself to deal with the external world and get him home. While letting himself be drawn along by the small force to which he had entrusted the task of guiding him, he had concentrated heart and soul on his beloved story. At times the very intensity of his happiness had allowed him to abandon his happy thoughts for a moment to observe things in the street and try to find them interesting; but soon he returned to his story, still drawn along by the small force to which he had entrusted the task of guiding him.
In his room at last, he thought tidying up a bit before he got started might help him settle down. On the other hand, it seemed he would only keep stumbling over things, with his eyes, nose and forehead bumping into doors and walls. So in the end he decided to sit right down at the small table, which had short legs and was stained in walnut. After sitting down, he still had to get up once more to fetch a notebook in which he had written the date when the story began.
“The 16th of May was a Saturday and it must have been about nine in the evening when I met her. A moment ago I was remembering the person I was that night and the indifference I felt. I was also imagining that if the person I am now had told the person I was then, on the way out of her house, to note the date because it marked a great event, that other person would have accused this one of being decadent and falling into the trap of the commonplace. Nevertheless, the person I am now laughs at the one I was then, without stopping to ask himself whether the other would have been right or not. Moreover, he tries to recall even the smallest details relating to the other in order to laugh harder and to determine when and how the other started to be him. Further: he in interested in recalling the other because in that way he can also remember her. And not only that, if the truth be known: most of all, he is interested in writing this story so as to concentrate on her, and if he has made a note of the date when he met her, as the most commonplace lover would have done, it is because in this matter, even more than in everything else, he is not ashamed of not being original. A final warning: I worked out the date of that night with the help of a great friend who accompanied me that night and every other night until we were both convinced she loved me and not him.”
When he finished this paragraph he stopped, got up, and started to pace back and forth. The room was very cramped. He could have set the small table aside for more space, but he liked to bend over it and read what he had written. He could also have gone on with his task, but he felt a secret anguish: in order to write, which meant bringing back the events of the past, he had to distort his memories, and he was too fond of those events to allow himself to distort them. He had sat down with the purpose of telling everything exactly as it had happened — and soon realized that this was impossible. And that was when his vague and secret anguish began.