The Hour of the Star Read Free Page A

my transfiguration into someone else and in my ultimate materialization into an object. Perhaps I might even acquire the sweet tones of the flute and become entwined in a creeper vine.
    But let us return to today. As is known, today is today. No one understands my meaning and I can obscurely hear mocking laughter with that rapid, edgy cackling of old men. I also hear measured footsteps in the road. I tremble with fear. Just as well that what I am about to write is already written deep inside me. I must reproduce myself with the delicacy of a white butterfly. This idea of the white butterfly stems from the feeling that, should the girl marry, she will marry looking as slender and ethereal as any virgin dressed in white. Perhaps she will not marry? To be frank, I am holding her destiny in my hands and yet I am powerless to invent with any freedom: I follow a secret, fatal line. I am forced to seek a truth that transcends me. Why should I write about a young girl whose poverty is so evident? Perhaps because within her there is seclusion. Also because in her poverty of body and soul one touches sanctity and I long to feel the breath of life hereafter. In order to become greater than I am, for I am so little. I write because I have nothing better to do in this world: I am superfluous and last in the world of men. I write because I am desperate and weary. I can no longer bear the routine of my existence and, were it not for the constant novelty of writing, I should die symbolically each day. Yet I am prepared to leave quietly by the back door. I have experienced almost everything, even passion and despair. Now I only wish to possess what might have been but never was.
    I seem to know the most intimate details about this girl from the North-east because I live with her. And since I have discovered almost everything about her, she has clung to my skin like some viscous glue or contaminating mud. When I was a child, I read the story of the old man who was afraid to cross the river. Whereupon a youth appeared who also wished to cross to the other side. The old man seized the opportunity and begged him:
    — Please take me with you. You can carry me on your back.
    The youth agreed and once they were safely across he said to the old man:
    — We've arrived. You can get down now.
    But the old man, who was very sly and astute, replied:
    — Oh no! It's so comfortable up here that I intend to stay put!
    The typist doesn't want to get off my back. I now realize that poverty is both ugly and promiscuous. That's why I cannot say whether my narrative will be — will be what? I can reveal nothing for I still haven't worked up enough enthusiasm to write the story. Will there be a plot? Yes, there will. But what plot? That, too, I cannot reveal. I am not trying to cause anguished and voracious expectancy: I simply do not know what awaits me. I have a restless character on my hands who escapes me at every turn and expects me to retrieve her.
    I forgot to mention that everything I am now writing is accompanied by the emphatic ruffle of a military drum. The moment I start to tell my story — the noise of the drum will suddenly cease.
    I see the girl from the North-east looking in the mirror and — the ruffle of a drum — in the mirror there appears my own face, weary and unshaven. We have reversed roles so completely. Without a shadow of doubt she is a physical person. And what is more: she is a girl who has never seen her naked body because she is much too embarrassed. Embarrassed because she is a prude or because she is ugly? I ask myself how I am going to cope with so many facts without coming to grief. The figurative suddenly appeals to me. I create human action and tremble. Suddenly I crave the figurative like the painter who only uses abstract colours but wants to prove that he does so deliberately and not because he has no talent for drawing. In order to draw the girl, I must control my emotions. In order to capture her soul, I must nourish