Fiasco Read Free

there are no grounds at all for us to believe that these were the things being thought when the old boy was standing in front of the filing cabinet and thinking.
    No, all that’s at issue is that it was midmorning (relatively—getting on for ten), and that around this time the old boy was in the habit of having a think.
    That was how he ordered his life.
    Every day, when ten o’clock (or thereabouts) came around, he immediately started to think.
    This was an upshot of his circumstances, since before ten o’clock he would not have been able to start thinking, whereas if he only set about it later on, he would have reproached himself for the lost time (which would have only led to further loss of time, or held him back even further, if not—in extreme cases—completely obstructed him from thinking).
    Thus at ten o’clock (or thereabouts), so to speak automatically and quite independently of the intensity of the thinking, or even of whether or not he thought at all (the old boy was so much into the routine of thinking that he was sometimes capable of creating the appearance of being in thought even when he was not thinking, possibly even when he himself might have imagined he was thinking),the old boy stood in front of the filing cabinet and thought.
    For at ten o’clock (or thereabouts) the old boy was left alone in the flat (which for him counted as a precondition for thinking), as his wife would earlier have set off on the long journey to the bistro on the city outskirts where, as a waitress, she earned her bread (and occasionally the old boy’s as well) (if fate so willed it) (and it certainly did so will it more than once).
    He had also done with his ablutions.
    He had also drunk his coffee (in the armchair to the west of the tile stove) (allowing for an adequate gap).
    He had also already smoked his first cigarette (pacing back and forth between the west-facing window and the closed entrance door to the east) (sidling a bit in the constricted space formed by the curtain made from an attractive print of manmade fibre covering the north wall of the hallway and the open bathroom door) (a door which was constantly open, for purposes of ventilation, since the bathroom was even more airless than the airless hallway).
    These were the preliminaries, if not reasons (though most certainly preconditions), for the old boy to be standing in front of the filing cabinet and thinking at ten o’clock (or thereabouts) on this splendid, warm, slightly humid but sunny late-summer (early autumnal) morning.
    The old boy had plenty of troubles and woes, so he had something to think about.
    But the old boy was not thinking about what he ought to have been thinking about.
    Yet we cannot assert that his most topical care—that is to say, the one he ought to have been thinking about—had not so much as entered his head.
    Indeed we cannot.
    “I’m just standing here in front of the filing cabinet and thinking,” the old boy was thinking, “instead of actually doing something.”
    Well certainly, the truth is—not to put too fine a point on it—that he should long ago have settled down to writing a book.
    For the old boy wrote books.
    That was his occupation.
    Or rather, to be more precise, things had so transpired that this had become his occupation (seeing as he had no other occupation).
    He had already written several books as well, most notably his first one: he had worked on that book (since at the time writing books had not yet become his occupation and he had written the book for no obvious reason, just on an arbitrary whim, so to say) for a good ten years, but had subsequently seen it into print only after a fair number of vicissitudes—and the passage of a further two years; for his second book just four years had proved adequate; and with his other books (since by then writing books had become his occupation, or rather—to be more precise—things had so transpired that this had become his occupation) (seeing as he had no