they’d done before and gazed out the window. He allowed delight and alertness to wash through him like a warm wave. His hands burned, his totally new hands. The whole time he staredout the window. Then the two of them glided back into one another. This happened with a sense of weary reluctance and left behind it a feeling of disappointment, flaccid and ghastly. He was alone in the room. He ran to the door and back to the window, at his wit’s end from abandonment. Again and again he thought, bitterly, He doesn’t look at me any more, why doesn’t he look at me? He remembered the story about the doppelgänger who killed himself. He couldn’t work.
The rain had stopped, and the weather was chilly and clear. He put on his boots and a warm coat, left the house and took a bus out to where the city came to an end. Day after day, he wandered around in the borderland where the buildings thin out and lose themselves in arbitrary ugliness. He returned to the area every morning and walked incessantly, occasionally resting on a bench or in some café by a railway crossing or a factory. The impersonal, undefined environment was perhaps a preparation for his meeting the other, perhaps a challenge. Spring came closer, a work in progress, much like the area he wandered through, as muddy and melancholy in every way. He didn’t know what he felt for the one he expected, for the one he made a place for and opened himself up to – at times he was an enemy, at times a friend. In the cafés, he sometimes ordered two cups of coffee, which was also a challenge. Sometimes someone tried to speak to him, more often here than in the city. When that happened, he would immediately stand up and leave.
In these unpopulated, half-built, discarded outlands, he felt he could see the city’s discharge, the wave ofdirty foam that flows over the rim and settles. Letters and words had also been flushed out; he could see them everywhere in signs, posters, placards. Every fence and wall, even the trees, carried black words that pursued him. But he didn’t read them. Chalk and knives and tar had written words that screamed at him and drove him on down a gauntlet between fences and walls and trees, all bearing the impress of the written word. He walked in circles and found distance and space nowhere, balance nowhere. He had begun to think of himself in the third person, “he”. He wanders here, waiting, he is waiting for me, walking among these horrible words and these great fields lined with wooden houses and rubbish tips. He walks quickly past the people he encounters and waits only for me to see him and take him under my wing. He passes long murals of barracks and streets and crossroads, again and again, and they are all alike, ceaselessly and sadly repeating, like lost time.
The last snow melted. One day he walked through a thin grove of birches somewhere between two highways, and there, finally, he stood to the side. In a state of great joy, he stood ready to walk on, but now it was not only his hands that felt alive but also his head, his stomach, all of him. His whole body burned with an enormous unused power. Behind the copse of trees by the main road, he could see large black letters. He wanted to read them and understand them, and he started walking, just then I started walking. I wanted to move on, and I started to walk, faster and faster, I hadn’t known I could feel like this. I was mad with joy and impatience and Iknew there wasn’t much time and there was too much to do. I looked back one single time, and there he came, running, stumbling across the marshy ground, stoop-shouldered, his mouth agape as if he were calling to me to wait. I had no time for him, because he was only one person but I was seeing him. I did not reach out to him, I’m sure I didn’t, but he threw himself forwards, towards my hand and grabbed it, and before I had time to despise him it was too late – we were just one person, a single figure standing stock-still
The rain had stopped, and the weather was chilly and clear. He put on his boots and a warm coat, left the house and took a bus out to where the city came to an end. Day after day, he wandered around in the borderland where the buildings thin out and lose themselves in arbitrary ugliness. He returned to the area every morning and walked incessantly, occasionally resting on a bench or in some café by a railway crossing or a factory. The impersonal, undefined environment was perhaps a preparation for his meeting the other, perhaps a challenge. Spring came closer, a work in progress, much like the area he wandered through, as muddy and melancholy in every way. He didn’t know what he felt for the one he expected, for the one he made a place for and opened himself up to – at times he was an enemy, at times a friend. In the cafés, he sometimes ordered two cups of coffee, which was also a challenge. Sometimes someone tried to speak to him, more often here than in the city. When that happened, he would immediately stand up and leave.
In these unpopulated, half-built, discarded outlands, he felt he could see the city’s discharge, the wave ofdirty foam that flows over the rim and settles. Letters and words had also been flushed out; he could see them everywhere in signs, posters, placards. Every fence and wall, even the trees, carried black words that pursued him. But he didn’t read them. Chalk and knives and tar had written words that screamed at him and drove him on down a gauntlet between fences and walls and trees, all bearing the impress of the written word. He walked in circles and found distance and space nowhere, balance nowhere. He had begun to think of himself in the third person, “he”. He wanders here, waiting, he is waiting for me, walking among these horrible words and these great fields lined with wooden houses and rubbish tips. He walks quickly past the people he encounters and waits only for me to see him and take him under my wing. He passes long murals of barracks and streets and crossroads, again and again, and they are all alike, ceaselessly and sadly repeating, like lost time.
The last snow melted. One day he walked through a thin grove of birches somewhere between two highways, and there, finally, he stood to the side. In a state of great joy, he stood ready to walk on, but now it was not only his hands that felt alive but also his head, his stomach, all of him. His whole body burned with an enormous unused power. Behind the copse of trees by the main road, he could see large black letters. He wanted to read them and understand them, and he started walking, just then I started walking. I wanted to move on, and I started to walk, faster and faster, I hadn’t known I could feel like this. I was mad with joy and impatience and Iknew there wasn’t much time and there was too much to do. I looked back one single time, and there he came, running, stumbling across the marshy ground, stoop-shouldered, his mouth agape as if he were calling to me to wait. I had no time for him, because he was only one person but I was seeing him. I did not reach out to him, I’m sure I didn’t, but he threw himself forwards, towards my hand and grabbed it, and before I had time to despise him it was too late – we were just one person, a single figure standing stock-still
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