Moment of True Feeling Read Free Page A

but then, almost protectively, answered for him, so that Keuschnig merely had to drop an occasional: “Yes, that’s quite possible,” or “No, that can’t be ruled out.” Even the ambassador, who in his position, as he not infrequently remarked, could be expected to have an eye for people and their weaknesses, seemed to notice nothing. (Would he otherwise have listed course after course of the dinner he had eaten the night before at the home of some French count?) Keuschnig was relieved but at the same time, oddly enough, disappointed.
    He drank his usual tea at a café on the Boulevard Latour-Maubourg. As he looked out at the street, it occurred to him that he couldn’t have said anything to anyone. He often heard people saying: “If I had something to say …”—and now he thought: If I had something to say, I’d cross it all out. At the top of a garbage can on the sidewalk he saw a heap of coffee grounds and filter paper; as he looked at it, it reminded him of a lawn freshly fertilized with human manure: there had been toilet paper all over the young grass. He went to the men’s room and pissed gloomily down into the hole. The smell of urine revived him. He thought of tomorrow and the day after and tugged at his fingers in disgust; he opened his mouth wide, at the same time looking around to make sure no one was watching him.

    On the way back to the embassy, Keuschnig had a sudden impulse to bare his teeth. Without prospect for the future, he had risen from the protective café chair. Compressing his lips, he nodded to a colleague who was coming toward him. At the sight of this colleague he thought of sleeve protectors, although he hadn’t seen anyone in sleeve protectors for ages. Why couldn’t the other man disregard him? Why did he have to COME TOWARD HIM? Brownish-yellow scraps of scum on milk that had been boiled days ago. True, he was still more or less alive, he was running around loose, but soon it would be all up with him. He wanted to beat everyone to a pulp! Everything, even the sense of well-being his first sip of tea had given him, now seemed RELATIVE. My life line has broken off, Keuschnig thought, as though still trying to cheer himself up a little. A baby carriage with a plastic cover was standing in a doorway, an image of panic terror; as he hurried past, it completed the dream he hadn’t finished dreaming that night. He forced himself to go back and examine the baby carriage in every detail.
    He saw two blacks walking ahead of him, both with their hands deep in their pockets, so that the slits of their jackets gaped wide and their behinds stuck out—both had the same gaping slits and the same behinds! A woman was wearing two different shoes, one with a platform much higher than the other. Another woman was carrying a cocker spaniel in her arms and crying. He felt like a prisoner in Disneyland.
    On the sidewalk he read, written in chalk: “Oh la belle vie, ” and underneath: “I am like you,” with a phone number.
Whoever it was had BENT DOWN to write about the GOOD LIFE, he thought, and made a note of the phone number.
    In the office he read the newspapers that had just arrived. He was struck by the frequency of the words “more and more” in the headlines of a single page: “More and more babies are overfed,” “More and more child suicides.” In reading Time he was struck, on many pages, by the sentence: “I dig my life.” “I dig my life,” said a basketball star. “We are a happy family,” said a war veteran. “I am very glad,” said a country singer. “Now I dig my life,” said a man who was using a new fixative for his dentures. Keuschnig wanted to howl long enough for everyone in the building to hear him. Then he looked up at the ceiling, cautiously, as though even that might give him away.
    He had the sidewalk telephone number in front of him, but