The husband waits for explanations behind the wall of newspaper.
“When our daughters do come, they always arrive late.”
The husband turns a page. He must be looking forward to his daughters’ arrival.
The main thing is that they are coming. Better late than never. He must be looking forward to it. Nobody is coming to see Levadski. This sad certainty makes him feel superior to the married couple.
“Yes, nuclear power really is a great threat to the world, it will probably be the end of it.”
“This is newfangled soup. The pumpkins of our youth, they don’t exist anymore.”
“Yes, it used be different.”
“The pumpkins were never that dark.”
Levadski’s gaze wanders to an inconsolable face. Two strings of pearls entwine the wrinkly neck they belong to. The old woman turns her head like a blue tit, looks around, before she plucks up the confidence to shakily steer the fork with the piece of cake in the direction of her mouth. She protectively holds her other hand beneath it, chews, swallows, and then, with a critical gaze, chin pressed to her chest, she checks whether any of the cake has fallen onto her lap, her bosom no longer able to catch crumbs.
The red of a broad-shouldered jacket catches Levadski’s eye. Barely arrived on the threshold, the female creature with short hair strides towards the nearest waiter. Both come to a stop in front of Levadski’s table. “Is there a special Sunday menu today?” the red jacket wants to know. Her earrings are birdcages inset with egg-shaped gemstones. “No,” the waiter says regrettably, “the menu is the same as always, but we are serving brunch on the second floor.” The lady mumbles something and leaves.
A group of guests traipses through the room. The leader has a sliver of wood in his mouth, which helps to identify him. A lumberjack, springs to Levadski’s mind, or perhaps a coffin maker?
A Mr. Sulke arrives and asks for a table for three, father, mother, child. “Sulke is my name,” Mr. Sulke says in a deep voice, “we will eat and leave.”
“Eat and leave,” he repeats. The echo of the name Sulke hangs in the room for a while.
“The worst thing that can happen to you is a stain,” the older waiter instructs his younger colleagues, “a stain on a guest is the worst thing that can happen!”
“I mean, I don’t begrudge any man for dying his hair, but gray is perfectly fine,” a faded beauty assures her friend who isn’t exactly a picture of freshness herself anymore. Both of them unleash their venom on a man seated at one of the neighboring tables, whose hair is apparently dyed. His younger companion seems not to be bothered by this at all. She lovingly guides a laden dessert fork towards the open sparrow beak of the man. “Ridiculous,” the girlfriends agree. There is nothing cheerful about them, nothing life affirming, thinks Levadski. They won’t allow the man anything, neither his dyed hair nor his lover. Under the false pretense of a Sunday breakfast they poison the surroundings with their disgust for life.
Glumly Levadski pours himself tea, and while doing so it occurs to the lid of the teapot to rip away and hurl itself onto the carpet, where it innocently spins around and comes to a standstill in front of the riding boots of one of the girlfriends. She picks it up with two of her varnished nails and brings it over to Levadski, who on his part airs his flat behind and receives the lid with embarrassment.
Shortly afterwards the two leave; the disparate couple also pay and leave. The piano player has left ages ago, something that escaped Levadski’s notice, so engrossed was he in his field studies. Levadski has the bill charged to his room. Leaning on his stick, waiting for the golden mirrored elevator, his eyes heavy, watching the coral-colored digits lighting up above the elevator button, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, M, G, he suddenly realizes that it is he, he is the one who despises life.
M
Zimmer / Room 71–86
IN HIS ROOM, LEVADSKI TAKES A DEEP BREATH. THE AIR IS delicious and sharp, as if a brazen woman is lurking in the cupboard, a smoldering beast with sparkling rings on her cold fingers. Take me out, buy me this and that, protect me, build me a nest! An expectation hovers in the air in Levadski’s suite, an invitation, cloaked by an elegantly arranged bouquet of flowers.
Up until now Levadski has not made a present of cut flowers to any living person; he has never had any in his apartment either. Now they close in on him and shamelessly exude their fragrant life in the middle of the table, looming above the exotic fruits, which Levadski wouldn’t willingly purchase either, out of protest, and in loyalty to local produce. The flowers are dying, that is perfectly obvious.
Levadski rests his stick against the half open mirrored door to the bedroom and lowers himself into an armchair with a groan. “You too will die,” Levadski whispers to the banana in his hand, “not tomorrow, but now. I am going to eat you, not because you taste particularly good to me, but because you are soft, you old banana.” As if this weren’t enough of a threat, Levadski removes the ball retained dentures from his mouth. Toothless, he devours the fruit. Bite by bite, if that’s how you can describe it. For a split second the gloomy premonition of what perversion is, stirs in Levadski.
When, still chewing, he puts the banana peel back on the plate, something causes his drinking stick to lose its composure. It falls to the floor with a dull cry, but Levadski does not move, does not rush to its aid. “I am too old, child,” he says to the drinking stick. Once more, Levadski is overcome by violent palpitations — he has just realized that he is spending more time talking to bananas and walking sticks than he is to people. Not a new revelation, Levadski thinks, getting up and going towards the bed on weak knees, without picking up the stick. He disappears beneath the gold embroidered bedspread in his suit, bow tie and shoes.
It’s nothing new, he persuades himself half asleep, to be conversing with your walking stick, it is no big deal, after all, you’re all it’s got. This isn’t merely capricious behavior. You communicated enough with people, even if you were never very talkative. Your posture spoke for you, your gestures and countenance, your behavior, your vivacity. You always reacted appropriately to other people’s signals and remained respectfully silent. Was that not communicating? What are you whining about? Levadski snaps at himself. But he is barely listening, the dreamer.
Levadski falls asleep and dreams he is still sitting in the café and waiting for his order. Evening approaches. There are candles burning everywhere. Bored, he watches a couple of lovers kissing and throws up. He tries to throw up as discreetly as possible, into each of the sleeves of his new suit. Without a sound, timorously, considerately, he spews his soul out of his body, until his suit sleeves catch fire. Horrified, Levadski jumps onto the small table in front of him and starts to dance like mad. The lovers are annoyed, voice their outrage and spew the contents of their romantic dinner in the direction of the trouble-maker. The waiter, who has visibly aged, races past the rows of tables with Levadski’s order on a silver tray. Too late, Levadski waves him away, the waiter can’t believe it. He looks at the floor and then at Levadski, at the floor and then again at Levadski. The lovers grow hoarse from retching, but still they remain in a tight embrace, like two people drowning. Levadski is in flames and dancing, and the waiter, being obstinate, dares to step out onto the ice which a moment ago was still carpet, stumbles and falls and falls and falls …
The memory of the dance in his dream and the fact that he went to bed without getting undressed warm Levadski’s heart on waking. He feels like a powerful ruler. Peter the Great is said to have spent the night wearing his riding boots in snow-white featherbeds, which every royal family in Europe considered an honor to furnish him with. This is how Levadski is lying there. Under other circumstances he would not have compared himself to a grand duke, but to a corpse in a coffin. However, in this midnight blue suite, filled with the rotting scent of exquisite flowers, he is what he is not. A booted Infante. It almost gives him physical pleasure to feel shame for his escapades and improprieties.