Daniel Kehlmann - Fame - A Novel in Nine Episodes

He got to his feet. How had he written this? These pages were the absolute retraction of everything, the annihilation of his life’s work, the clear, concise apology for his ever having claimed that there was an order in the world and life could be good.

But it wasn’t until he reached a tanned hand out for the pistol that he understood what he’d done, and that the time when he’d thought he still had a choice was over. What had been a quasi-game before was suddenly real. If he really did squeeze the trigger, he would make history. All the world’s believers, all the optimists, and the prayerful who had his books in their bookcases and his example in their hearts—how could he resist the temptation to deliver such a blow to them! This, and only this, would make him a great man. The corners of his mouth twitched in a mixture of laughter and panic. What he had just written wasn’t even his own opinion. It was simply the truth.

His knees were suddenly weak; he leaned against the window. The winking lights of a plane drew a curve in the firmament, a boat fired off a flare that soared and burst silently in a whirl of sparks. In the room next door, with a poor sense of timing, the cleaning lady turned on the vacuum cleaner.

He picked up the last sheet one more time and asked himself if he really had written it, and how after so many years of being emollient he could have come up with these words. He had a vision of the Church congresses and their tables of books from which his would be banished, he had a vision of bookshops with gaps in their shelves, he had a vision of shocked priests and blanching housewives, bewildered doctors’ wives and all the middle-ranking employees on five continents, to whom there would be no one left to say that their suffering had meaning. He dropped the piece of paper, and before it could float to the floor on the draft from the air conditioner that carried it gently this way and that, he picked up the pistol. No safety catch. You only had to pull the trigger. He opened his mouth and clenched his teeth around the polymer barrel, which to his surprise wasn’t even cold.

His fingers groped for the trigger. Eyes wide, as the sweat ran down over his forehead, he saw the city below, the twinkling lights of the boats, the expanse of the night. The bullet would pass through his head and hit the window—as if to strike not just the glass but the universe itself, as if the cracks would run through the sea, the mountains, and the sky, and he grasped that this was the truth, that this was exactly what would happen if he and only he branded the world with the sigh of his contempt, once and for all, if only he had the strength to pull the trigger. He heard himself panting. In the room next door the vacuum cleaner droned. If.

Here I have to back up. Sorry: perfectly clear that lithuania23 and icu_lop will flame this posting for being too long; so will that troll lordoftheFlakes, just like he flamed on MovieForum, but I can’t do it shorter, and whoever’s in a hurry can just skip it. Meeting celebrities? Heads up!

Must signal that I’m a huge hardcore fan of this forum. Platinum idea. Normal types like you and me who spot famous people and report on their sightings: chill, no? wicked idea, really well worked out, interesting to everyone and besides it acts like control, so they know they’re being scanned and can’t just goof off. Wanted to post here forever, only where to get the stuff. But then came last weekend, the whole load.

Quick flashback. (My life has been the whole crazy load recently, but you have to cope, there are good days and bad days, yin and yang stuff and for you freaks who’ve never heard of that: it’s philosophy!) You know my username mollwit from other forums. I post a lot on Supermovies and also on TheeveningNews, on literature4you, and chat rooms, and when I see bloggers serving up bullshit I let them have it. Username always mollwit. In Real Life (the real one!) I’m in my mid-thirties, quite tall, medium build. During the week I wear tie, office regs, whole capitalist racket, you do the same. Has to happen if you’re going to realize your Life Sense. In my case writing analyses, observations, and debates: contributions to culture, society, political stuff.

I work in the headquarters of a cell phone company and share an office with Lobenmeier, whom I hate, the way nobody’s ever hated anybody, you can eat lunch on that. I wish him dead, and if there’s worse than dead then I wish him that too. Logicalwise he’s the boss’s golden boy, day-on-day punctual, yes yes yes hardworking, and for as long as he’s at his desk, he does his work stuff and only stops to look at me and say something like “hey, back on the Internet again?” Sometimes he jumps up, comes round my desk, and wants to eyeball my screen, but I’m quicker and click off in time. Just the once I had to go to the water closet in a hurry and I left a couple windows open by accident, and when back, he was sitting on my chair with a huge smiley face. I swear to you, if he wasn’t a fitness freak, he’d have swallowed his teeth right then.

Our boss seriously awful too. Totally unchill and majorly bad, none of your small stuff. I think he trusts me, but you can’t tell with him: he’s always thinking us through and hatching plans nobody can overview. Power plays totally above my head; for me, it’s about the universal thing and society and all the daily pig stuff … you know. Obvious that people who write for newspapers already bought, and people they write about in it with them. A huge conspiracy, everyone in bed together, coining money like mad, us okay people just waiting. Just one example: radio messages on 9/11, read it online, nothing will surprise you again!

Back to topic. All began last Friday. Was about to post on movieforum of TheeveningNews, about Ralf Tanner and the slap. Bugclap4 said nothing going on any more with him and Carla Mirelli, while icu_lop thought still something to be saved. I was one who knew more again, had read something on another Web site, but when I wanted to go public, noticed I couldn’t post any more. Wouldn’t work! Whole load of error messages each time, and because it stank I just called up.

Okay, okay, okay, okay, clear already. Didn’t think. I know. But evening before to top everything banged heads with mother again: you can cook for yourself, you can wash your own stuff, like that plus more, finally me back “So live alone, pay your own rent!”

Then her: “Never wanted to move here! And you’d really rather be with some tramp !”

Then me: “go back to flyspeckland, cow!”

Around midnight, kiss-up scene in cinemascope, but next day I was still cross-wired and all down-side up, otherwise none of it would have happened.

So, looked up number, dialed. So furious, could hear heart thump-beating.

Voice answering man. Me: “my postings aren’t being posted! Already the fourth time.”

Voice: How, what, postings where? No explanations there.

Me: explanations, explanations, blablah, then him “connecting you now!”

Then second and third technotype, and that’s exactly when Lobenmeier came back and smiled like a moosehead while the technotype asked for name and location and IP address and Ethernet ID. Then typed, yawned, typed, stopped. “Give me the IP again.”

Me: “Problems?”

He typed, stopped, typed, then asked if it’s possible I’ve already posted twelvethousandthreeehundredfortyone times on TheeveningNews.

“And?”

Him again: “twelvethousandthreeehundredfortyone!”

“So?”

Him, third time. This not going anywhere. I hung up.

I know you’re uproaring with laughter. But no one is a hundred percent on alert, and shit occurs. When I tried again, the posting went through at once, and there was so much to do that I didn’t give it another thought. Discussion already far along, high time for someone to bring voice of reason. Ralf Tanner and Carla Mirelli, I wrote, it will never be anything again, he has sawdust in his head and is as ugly as an ox, you can forget it!