Varieties of Disturbance Read Free

later—surely not as a result of the dinner, unless Felice’s compassion for me was further aroused by the futility of my efforts to make a good kasha varnishke, potato pancakes, and sauerbraten. Our eventual breakup, on the other hand, probably has more explanations than it really needs—this is ridiculous, but certain experts maintain that even the air here in this city may encourage inconstancy.
    I was excited as one always is by something new. I was naturally somewhat frightened as well. I thought a traditional German or Czech meal might be best, even if rather heavy for July. I remained for some time undecided even in my dreams. At one point I simply gave up and contemplated leaving the city. Then I decided to stay, although simply lying around on the balcony may not really deserve to be called a decision. At these times I appear to be paralyzed with indecision while my thoughts are beating furiously within my head, just as a dragonfly appears to hang motionless in midair while its wings are beating furiously against the steady breeze. At last I jumped up like a stranger pulling another stranger out of bed.
    The fact that I planned the meal carefully was probably insignificant. I wanted to prepare something wholesome, since she needed to build up her strength. I remember gathering the mushrooms in the early morning, creeping among the trees in plain sight of two elderly sisters—who appeared to disapprove deeply of me or my basket. Or perhaps of the fact that I was wearing a good suit in the forest. But their approval would have been more or less the same thing.
    As the hour approached, I was afraid, for a little while, that she would not come, instead of being afraid, as I should have been, that she would in fact come. At first she had said she might not come. It was strange of her to do that. I was like an errand boy who could no longer run errands but still hoped for some kind of employment.
    Just as a very small animal in the woods makes a disproportionate amount of noise and disturbance among the leaves and twigs on the ground when it is frightened and rushes to its hole, or even when it is not frightened but merely hunting for nuts, so that one thinks a bear is about to burst into the clearing, whereas it is only a mouse—this is what my emotion was like, so small and yet so noisy. I asked her please not to come to dinner, but then I asked her please not to listen to me but to come anyway. Our words are so often those of some unknown, alien being. I don’t believe any speeches anymore. Even the most beautiful speech contains a worm.
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    Once, when we ate together in a restaurant, I was as ashamed of the dinner as though I had made it myself. The very first thing they brought to the table ruined our appetite for the rest, even if it had been any good: fat white Leberknödeln floating in a thin broth whose surface was dotted with oil. The dish was clearly German, rather than Czech. But why should anything be more complicated between us than if we were to sit quietly in a park and watch a hummingbird fly up from the petunias to rest at the top of a birch tree?
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    The night of our dinner, I told myself that if she did not come, I would enjoy the empty apartment, for if being alone in a room is necessary for life itself, being alone in an apartment is necessary if one is to be happy. I had borrowed the apartment for the occasion. But I had not been enjoying the happiness of the empty apartment. Or perhaps it wasn’t the empty apartment that should have made me happy, but having two apartments. She did come, but she was late. She told me she had been delayed because she had had to wait to speak to a man who had himself been waiting, impatiently, for the outcome of a discussion concerning the opening of a new cabaret. I did not believe her.
    When she walked in the door I was almost disappointed. She would have been so much happier dining with another man. She was going to bring me a