The Life of an Unknown Man Read Free

tinkling cascade of breaking glass. “No. Your name has only one meaning…” She kept him waiting, then in a firm, disdainful voice, let fly: “ Shut means ‘clown.’ You know. A buffoon.”
    She got up and made her way to the exit without hurrying, so confident was she of the effect of her words. Stunned, Shutov watched her walking away, followed by amused glances from the other customers, then jumped up, ran to the door, and there, amid the passersby, yelled out in a voice whose pained tones astonished even himself: “ Shut means a sad clown! Remember that! And this sad clown loved you…”
    The end of the sentence faded away into a cough. “Like the whispering of the young lover in Chekhov’s story,” it occurred to him one evening, as he was staring at the last of Léa’s cardboard boxes, stacked there in the corner of the dovecote.
    But that day, on his return from the café, for a long time he was incapable of thought, once more picturing a child in a row of other children, all dressed the same, a boy taking a step forward on hearing his name called and shouting, “Present,” then resuming his place. They are lined up in front of the gray orphanage building and after the roll call they climb into a truck and go off to work amid muddy fields under a fine hail of icy tears. For the first time in his life the child perceives that this name, Shutov, is his only possession here on this earth, the only thing that makes him “present” in other people’s eyes. A name he will always feel slightly ashamed of (that damned derivation!) but to which, however, he will be attached, for it is the name borne by that still-mute little being, who had seen the door closing on the person he loved most in all the world.

A cross the street from the dovecote there is a narrow building with faded walls (“It’s been out in the sun too long, it’s peeling,” Léa used to say). The moon moves bit by bit across the little top-floor apartment. The workmen have not closed the windows and the room shines, like a sleepwalker’s dream. An old woman lived there once, then she disappeared, dead, no doubt, the dividing walls have been demolished to make an open-plan studio apartment, as fashion dictates, and now the moon keeps watch over this empty space and a drunkard with sad eyes marvels at it, as he whispers words intended for the woman who will never hear him.
    After making love with her “guy,” she is asleep now in their new “place”… And everything hurts him, the way he imagines Léa’s friends talking and the idea of that young body, so close to him yet irretrievably lost. A body as supple as a frond of seaweed, which, in their intimacy, retained a touching, vulnerable awkwardness. To be dispossessed of those feminine arms, of those thighs, of Léa’s nighttime breathing: the mere thought of it is a blow to his solar plexus. A crude jealousy, a feeling of amputation. It will pass, Shutov knows this from experience. A body desired that now gives itself to another man can be forgotten quickly enough. More quickly, even, than one’s regret at never having spoken of the moon passing over the apartment across the street, of the woman who lived there, suffered, loved. And of the new life that will fill this white shell, bring in furniture, prepare meals, love, suffer, hope.
    On occasion, after their literary quarrels, after making love, they would reflect on such unsettling aspects of human life. At these moments Shutov always felt that this was how he would have liked to be: passionate but detached, sensual, and at the same time conscious that, thanks to their measured conversations, Léa was rising with him to glorious heights…
    A window lights up on the third floor of the building opposite. A young man, naked, opens a refrigerator, takes out a bottle of mineral water, drinks. A young woman, naked as well, goes up to him, embraces him, he moves away, his mouth clamped to the neck of the bottle, splutters, sprays his