Russell Hoban - Kleinzeit

I could save myself a lot of pain if I stopped living now. It’s too hard. And yet, look at the Spartans, eh? Sat on the rocks and combed their hair at Thermopylae. Look at birds, look at green turtles, crossing thousands of miles of ocean and finding the right place to lay their eggs. Look at that chap, whatever his name was, who wrote a 50,000-word novel without using the letter e. Kleinzeit thought about green turtles again, shook his head in admiration.

He got out of the train, went to WAY OUT, escalated. The girls on the underwear posters challenged with thighs, navels, bared their teeth, stared with their nipples through transparent fabrics, murmured with their eyes. Not today, said Kleinzeit. He kept his mind on green turtles, thought also about albatrosses.

‘5p more, luv,’ said the lady at the ticket-taking booth. ‘Fare’s gone up.’ That’s life, Kleinzeit noted. Yesterday it cost so much to get from here to there, today it costs more. Just like that. Who knows what it’ll cost me to wake up tomorrow.

He went to a Ryman stationer, found the yellow paper. 64 mill hard-sized thick din. Wrapped in heavy brown paper. Solid blocks of it on the shelf, each one humming quietly to itself, unknown, unseen under the heavy brown paper. Kleinzeit walked away, looked at typewriter ribbons, file folders, coloured binders, bulldog clips, postage scales, came back, bought a ream of yellow paper and six Japanese pens, tried to look unconcerned.

He went to Sister’s place, made love with Sister. After lunch they went into the Underground with the glockenspiel. Kleinzeit developed a green turtle theme. By supper time they had £ 2.43.

‘That’s only half a day,’ said Kleinzeit. ‘Working a full day we could probably average between three and four pounds. Six days a week that’s eighteen to twenty-four pounds.’ The ‘we’ walked out of his mouth like a baby chick, wandered off across the corridor, pecked aimlessly at the floor, cheeped a little. Both of them looked at it.

Oh, aye, said Underground. Ponce.

What do you mean? said Kleinzeit.

What do I mean, mimicked Underground. Do you think you’d have taken in anything like £2.43 alone? They look at her and they give money. Why not let them do more than look, they’ll give more money. Ponce. Do you think Eurydice passed the hat when Orpheus went busking?

‘I was making £6,500 a year!’ said Kleinzeit.

A little old ferret-faced man went past. Was it the one who’d played the mouth organ on the bridge? He said nothing, shaped a word with his mouth.

What’d he say? said Kleinzeit.

Ponce, said Underground.

Kleinzeit put the glockenspiel in its case, hurried Sister back to her room, picked up the brown-wrapped block of yellow paper, sat there holding it.

I guess I have to do it alone, he didn’t say.

I guess you do, she didn’t say. Remember?

Remember what? he didn’t say.

I don’t know, she didn’t say.

I exist, said the bathroom mirror as it looked into Redbeard’s face. There is world again. The face came and went. Lights went on and off. Sounds, voices. Life, said the mirror. Action. Silence again.

A key turned in the lock. Lights, footsteps coming into the sitting-room, Kleinzeit’s voice. ‘Jesus’ he said.

There was nothing in the room but a table and a chair. A plain deal table and plain kitchen chair. He’d never seen either of them before. On the table a note. Small cramped writing on white paper:

Believe me it was a lot of trouble but I did it for you.

RED

Kleinzeit went into the bedroom. No bed. The mattress and bedding were on the floor. He opened the wardrobe. His winter coat, nothing else.

He went into the kitchen. Two plates, bowls, cups, saucers. Two knives, forks, teaspoons, tablespoons. Saucepan, frying pan, kettle, coffee-pot. Spatula, bread knife, carving knife, can opener. Bread in the larder, coffee, tea, salt, pepper, sugar, cooking oil. Nothing else. No old cans of paint on the bottom shelf, no paintbrushes stuck to the bottoms of jam jars. No vases. No paint-encrusted brass screws in a Golden Virginia tobacco tin. Cooker. Fridge. In the fridge a pint of milk, fresh. Most of a pound of butter. Five eggs. Kleinzeit looked in the larder again. No jam.

No tape recorder, no typewriter, no passport, no radio, no gramophone, no paperclips, no insurance policies, no shoe polish. No bookshelves, no books. Kleinzeit’s library now consisted of the Ortega y Gasset and the Penguin Thucydides he’d brought back from the hospital. He’d read the Ortega, it didn’t seem to belong in a two-book library. He went down the hall, left it outside the door of the lady who taught elocution and piano. He took Thucydides into the bathroom, held it up to the mirror. , read the mirror. Hot stuff, it said.

Back to the living room. No records. He sang the opening of Die Winterreise, imagined it played on the glockenspiel. No good.

Suddenly he missed the aquarium most, the green sea-light shimmering on the stones, the blank mysterious smile of the voluptuous china mermaid. Half a sob in his throat for the mermaid.

There was an ashtray on the plain deal table. At least he doesn’t want me to stop smoking, Kleinzeit thought. He picked up the telephone from the floor, dialled 123, was told that at the third stroke it would be 7.23 and forty seconds, set his watch.

He put the wrapped yellow paper on the plain deal table, sat down on the plain kitchen chair. No lamp. There was a drawer in the table. Kleinzeit opened it, found six candles and a box of matches. He stuck a candle on a saucer, lit it, turned off the overhead light, lit a cigarette, closed his eyes, riffled the pages of The Peloponnesian War, put his finger on a page, opened his eyes, read:

This alliance was made soon after the peace treaty. The Athenians gave back to the Spartans the men captured on the island, and the summer of the eleventh year began. This completes the account of the first war, which went on without intermission for the ten years before this date.

Well, it’s not the I Ching, said Kleinzeit.

You do your job, I’ll do mine, said Thucydides.

Kleinzeit unwrapped the yellow paper. It stared at him like a giant squid. He covered it up again, closed his eyes, riffled Thucydides, opened his eyes, read:

‘Soldiers, all of us are together in this, and I do not want any of you in our present awkward position to try to show off his intelligence by making a precise calculation of the dangers which surround us; instead we must simply make straight at the enemy, and not pause to discuss the matter, confident in our hearts that these dangers, too, can be surmounted. For when we are forced into a position like this one, calculations are beside the point: what we have to do is stake everything on a quick decision …’

Well done, said Kleinzeit.

Any time, said Thucydides.

Kleinzeit uncovered the yellow paper without looking at it, pulled out several sheets, took a Japanese pen, wrote three lines for the china mermaid:

Dark autumn rain, ah!

The lighted aquarium;

The mermaid — her smile!

Then he wrote a green turtle poem and a Golden Virginia Tobacco tin poem as fast as he could, blew out the candle and went to bed.

In the morning after breakfast he made fair copies of the Golden Virginia and green turtle poems, took his glockenspiel and yellow paper, went out, bought a roll of Sellotape and a chair pad at Ryman, and went into the Underground. When he got to his place in the corridor he wrote on a piece of yellow paper: