Despair Read Free Page B

all. He appeared to my eyes as my double, that is, as a creature bodily identical with me. It was this absolute sameness which gave me so piercing a thrill. He on his part saw in me a doubtful imitator. I wish to lay stress, however, on the dimness of those ideas of his. He would certainly not have understood my comments upon them, the dullard.
    “I am afraid there is not much I can do for you at the moment,” I answered coldly. “But leave me your address.”
    I took out my notebook and silver pencil.
    He smiled ruefully: “No good saying I live in a villa; better to sleep in a hayloft than on moss in a wood, but better to sleep on moss than on a hard bench.”
    “Still, I should like to know where to find you.”
    He thought this over and then said: “This autumn I am sure to be at the same village where I worked last year. You might send a line to the post office there. It is not far from Tarnitz. Here, let me write it down for you.”
    His name turned out to be Felix, “the happy one.” What his surname was, gentle reader, is no business of yours. His awkward handwriting seemed to creak at every turning. He wrote with his left hand. It was time for me to go. I put ten crowns into cap. With a condescending grin he offered his hand, hardly bothering to sit up. I grasped it only because it provided me with the curious sensation of Narcissus fooling Nemesis by helping his image out of the brook.
    Then almost at a run I returned the way I had come. WhenI looked over my shoulder I saw his dark lank figure among the bushes. He was lying supine, his legs crossed in the air and his arms under his head.
    Suddenly I felt limp, dizzy, dead-tired, as after some long and disgusting orgy. The reason for this sickly-sweet afterglow was that he had, with a cool show of absent-mindedness, pocketed my silver pencil. A procession of silver pencils marched down an endless tunnel of corruption. As I followed the edge of the road I now and then closed my eyes till I all but tumbled into the ditch. Then afterwards, at the office, in the course of a business conversation, I simply craved to tell my interlocutor: “Queer thing has just happened to me! Now you would hardly believe …” But I said nothing, thus setting a precedent for secrecy.
    When at last I got back to my hotel room, I found there, amid mercurial shadows and framed in frizzly bronze, Felix awaiting me. Pale-faced and solemn he drew near. He was now well-shaven; his hair was smoothly brushed back. He wore a dove-grey suit with a lilac tie. I took out my handkerchief; he took out his handkerchief too. A truce, parleying.
    Some of the countryside had got into my nostrils. I blew my nose and sat down on the edge of the bed, continuing the while to consult the mirror. I remember that the small marks of conscious existence such as the dust in my nose, the black dirt between the heel and the shank of one shoe, hunger, and presently the rough brown taste tinged with lemon of a large flat veal cutlet in the grillroom, strangely absorbed my attention as if I were looking for, and finding (and still doubting a little) proofs that I was I, and that this I (a second-rate businessman with ideas) was really at a hotel, dining, reflecting on business matters, and had nothing in common with a certain tramp who, at the moment, was lolling undera bush. And then again, the thrill of that marvel made my heart miss a beat. That man, especially when he slept, when his features were motionless, showed me my own face, my mask, the flawlessly pure image of my corpse—I use the latter term merely because I wish to express with the utmost clarity—express what? Namely this: that we had identical features, and that, in a state of perfect repose, this resemblance was strikingly evident, and what is death, if not a face at peace—its artistic perfection? Life only marred my double; thus a breeze dims the bliss of Narcissus; thus, in the painter’s absence, there comes his pupil and by the