OMNE ANIMAL TRISTE

The sun stood low at above the greenhouse, golden rays pierced the humid air. The woman strolled beside me and I felt as if this were a waking dream, as if reality were about to dissolve.

 

She told me about her childhood in Brussels between au pairs and horse races. Once a year for ski jumping in Innsbruck. She told me about her literature studies, her enthusiasm for the complete otherness of the thought-being of medieval texts and the medieval person (although her apartment was furnished in the sign of minimalism, with only a green plush sofa with a low backrest as a disruptive element and... She was by no means aesthetically bound to the Middle Ages). She had moved to this city for her studies and stayed. She had worked as a student assistant, had liked to dance, and she often longed for that time. Back then, she had many good friends who then moved away or became pregnant. She had also known artists. Today, she was quiet. She still worked at the philological faculty; she had never been able to detach herself from the university. All at once, she seemed to be gripped by a fundamental sadness, and that made her very beautiful in the soft light of the greenhouse.

 

If I also liked to go dancing?

 

"Certainly," I answered. (That wasn't true, but I saw little danger of having to prove the opposite in midst of the botanical garden).

 

After a short silence, she talked about Canada, about Vancouver. Her parents had a vacant apartment there. A small flame was in her eyes when she spoke of it. She wanted to pack all her belongings into a container and ship it across the Atlantic. This year still. Leave everything behind and get to know a new freedom.

 

While we were talking about Canada, we entered the furthest part of the greenhouse, in the middle of which the Titan Arum, Dracontium croatii, awaited. I had seen ads in the city promoting this horrible, horrible plant. Around it was a small group of American tourists with large cameras. The giant plant stank terribly of rotten meat. I felt the Belgian's gaze on me and tried not to let anything show. With a serious expression, I looked at the plant to give her the opportunity to study me. It was a hideous plant, really. From a brown funnel grew a spadix well two meters long, like the swinging member of a large man towering over us. Its stench of decay was intoxicating. When I turned to my companion, she giggled, pointed to the plant, and mimed a movement with her wrist. I had to laugh; only the tourists looked annoyed. 

 

We went on, she and I. Our gazes met for a moment and at a strange angle, as one sometimes sees something by tilting one's head, which can only be recognized from this one spot, as if peering past everything at something targeted and thus obviously special and beautiful. An angled hallway, a light through a door crack, the depth of her eyes. I felt like a boy that I was in love.

 

She invited me to yesterday's bar tomorrow. I accepted, and a feeling of peaceful warmth spread through my body. At the exit, she gave me a kiss on the cheek and disappeared around the corner. I remained bathed in happiness.

 

With a lit cigarette, I strolled back along the wall to the subway station. The sun was setting behind me. The day had been magic. I had thought about the woman with all my might, (Wasn't it her? Wasn't Petra's empty face her face?) had concentrated only on her, and there she had been. Was such a thing possible? It felt as if everything until now had happened in the wrong order. The truth had followed the events but had not preceded them. The truth had been imposed on what happened, was attached to it, but a word was never true until its meaning happened. But perhaps there are invisible threads that preceded meaning, lines of logic. And if it happened that one spoke the effect before the cause occurred, then one had merely spoken the truth before it entered. What followed was the feeling of having turned the world upside down.

 

I stopped briefly and saw before me: A wall, a street, parked cars, townhouses on the other side. The most banal scene in the evening light, yet I saw it like a stranger. The shadow of all these objects was the effect, their final consequence. It was the end of a chain of complications, causes, and consequences, and nothing came after it. My whole life, I had been a shadow. I had not refuted the Jung & Spär money on my account and had not understood why. In my ignorance, I had assumed it was the fear of some consequence that had made me hesitate: of joblessness or social decline. When in fact, it had been the reversal of cause and effect, for my vacation days had been stolen from me, and thus all guilt was settled. The world was fair if one understood it in reverse. And if I spoke the truth that preceded everything, then all my words would be truth. I could draw the world with my words, and like a shadow, it would follow.

 

The street lamps were already turned on when I returned to the inner city. Linked-arm couples strolled along under the linden trees, and those who didn't have a loved one tried their luck in the cafes and small corner pubs of the old city. Old people sat along the avenues, in front of the small shops with their colourful signs. A young retriever dog lay there, warming itself in the remaining heat of the day. When a passing child ran its hand through the long fur, the animal contentedly stretched its head towards the sky. The warm cobble stones dimly reflected red light of the sky, and a humming permeated the thick, fragrant air like an infinite ether. It was a slow evening, in which the streets traversed by tracks lay heavier than usual between the houses. They maintained the appearance that everything had always been here, everything always followed this pattern: the red sky, the lovers, the cobblestones.

 

I felt the beautiful melancholy of being in love and would be careful not to exchange it for an old, dilapidated consideration, as I had had in my head this morning. What a child's game that had been. What did I care about other people's money? They want to transfer it to my account? Fine! Then they shouldn't be surprised if it's gone.

 

I sat down outside at Café Kiel to treat myself to a glass of wine, for the sake of the mood, and then work out a plan for our date tomorrow. Everything should be perfect. With half-closed eyes, I vividly imagined us laying down together, mouths entwined, bodies pressed into each other, tearing, biting. I would burry my head between her legs. Her lips would taste red and earthy. Strong legs wrapped around my hips. I would press the woman tighter and tighter against me, thrust into her, my fingers clawing at her hip. I would hear her heartbeat beneath her breasts and feel the warm blood in her veins, perceive every one of her movements, however small they might be. Our faces, distorted in lust. Oh, my tower, my fortress, my highest feeling, you shall stand forever. There was nothing greater than love. Love? Oh, why not. A strong man should allow himself to express his feelings and to put a stamp on his feelings. Love refines everything, even the worst.

 

I would go so far as to say: You can't truly hate if you haven't loved before. A bank employee kills his wife. A simple citizen, the fine gentleman father-landlord in his stairwell, may view that as a clear act with his naïve eyes. But his eyes are following shadows ---

 

I ordered a second glass of wine.

 

--- Canada with the Belgian woman! Why not? Hadn't the thought of Latin America been silly. Neither did I speak Spanish, and dancing, I didn't like that anyway. The American North, however: full of endless expanses, an infinite garden, so vast that one could find oneself in it ---

 

A third glass of wine.

 

--- For whoever loves and looks at the silent truth must recognize that such an act, especially with the accused's knowledge that he would be caught, that the ankle monitor would start to ring at any moment, that such an act could only happen out of love. Yes, he had come to the apartment as a man, to love one last time. Only it had been impossible for him. The accused was overcome by the certainty of his punishment, which hung over him like a sword. He loved, but he couldn't show it. Everything lay in ruins. Another man would have shamefully boarded the next train or thrown himself from the roof, but he, knowing it was his last chance to show her his love, despaired over this injustice so much that he, as he recognized his love, between objects, between door and frame, saw only one solution. A tenth of a second the thought flashed, was simultaneously put into action, and was then not understood because he was sure he had acted out of love. It was a logical chain of thoughts in which the sublime and the terrible held the same rank for just one moment too long.

 

After a forth or fifth glass of wine, I wanted to take the next train home.

 

The subway was packed with people who didn't grasp their happiness. The world was beautiful, life a gift. And the free man recognized beauty in all things, recognized a gift in everything. But these people were following shadows. No one even looked at me; they didn't recognize the one among them who shone. When the Belgian woman would receive me in the bar tomorrow, I would give her back everything she had given me today. I would share my happiness with her, and if she only got a fraction of it back, she would love me just as much.

 

I wrote Henry that I had a date with the woman from last night (the one he struck out with!) for tomorrow evening. He replied that I should take her hard. Only this morning, Henry's banality would have bothered me; I would have reproached him for it. But he was only shadow, an eternally and invisibly prepared event. How could I not forgive him, a person in whom everything was an end.

 

I got out, bought a beer-to-go from the kiosk, and instead of changing trains, I made my way to the surface. In front of the station entrance lay the nightly office building of Jung & Spär. The windows had no more lights in them, the whole building slept. Up there, that window had been mine. One, two, three floors up. One, two, three, four windows to the left. As the house stood there, motionless in the night, it no longer exerted any power over me. It seemed, the building was a monster, and all the people within it were in its serfdom. Now it slept. Now would be the best time to slay it. It wouldn't be difficult.

 

How could I have had such fear of the accountant, of those glassy eyes. She had left it up to me to punish myself for her mistake. And I, poor donkey, had been aware of all guilt. For eight long weeks, nausea had crippled me, because my stomach would not tolerate the untruth; it openly rebelled against the world that was out of balance. The accountant's lie had made a tightrope walker out of me, and when I threatened to lose my balance, my stomach gave me equilibrium through nausea. It told me, wanted to force me: Don't be afraid to use your mind. That damn money! Yes, go ahead, ask the question of guilt! But I will answer: Does it matter whether the head or the stomach knew? The soul suffered, that's what matters! I paid richly for my new freedom. And after all, it was her fault that the money had come into my account. Would one strike a poor donkey for eating an apple that one oneself held out to it? Or punish it for running away when one forgot to tether it. On the contrary, one would take responsibility and only reprimand the donkey out of a bad conscience. Also one knows in one's heart that it is what makes the donkey a donkey, that it is stubborn.

 

The building slept. A piece of fabric as kindling. I could take the lighter out of my pocket and make a small flame, just to see that it works, to prove to myself that the possibility exists somewhere in another universe. There would be nothing to it. I would never do it, but I could prove to myself that I could. Now, then and there, the building seemed fragile, the monster slept with its belly up.

 

Suddenly, I became afraid of myself, of the power of every human being ; that I carried within me the full capacity to do anything. That I was only a hand movement away from slaying a monster.

​

I had held onto the lighter in my pocket with clenched fist. Then I let it go. 

 

When I descended back down into the subway station, again I felt the strange rhythm of the people. They waited for the train. I was no longer waiting. A free person boarded just when the train came, without having waited for it. It was nothing I was waiting for, because it came because I was there. It drove for me, even if I wasn't waiting. Was that freedom? To recognize that all power lies within oneself. That the world is waiting for you wherever you go. All these years, I had assumed I had to align my life with their schedule. Oh, if only this thought had come to me this morning in the stairwell, I would have thrown it in the father's face. He should just see: I am more than the simple bachelor from upstairs. I am a man with depth and experience. But I stammered around, how stupid I was.

 

From today on, I will bite and scratch.