John Wray - The Right Hand of Sleep

She brought supper to him as he lay half awake with his head against the bedboard: tinned tomatoes in an omelette with leeks and gray, rye-seed-speckled cheese. He called to her when he was done and she came down from the kitchen with a mug of sweet brown beer. While he drank she took the dishes and returned with a lamp and a pile of battered books, spines cracked and stained to illegibility. She put the lamp down by the bed on a night table and lit it and sat down with an earnest and businesslike air on the stool. — I’ve not had an audience in a while, she said, seeing him watching her. — What shall we read?

— You’re a schoolteacher, said Voxlauer, putting down his mug. — I’d forgotten.

— Answer the question, Herr Voxlauer, or we’ll send you to the corner without your beer. You’d not like that much, I fancy. She smiled.

Voxlauer sighed. — Give us the choices please, Fräulein.

— Max and Moritz, Else said reverently. — Hatschi-Bratschi. King Farú. Robert Walser—

— Those are all children’s reads.

She frowned. — Walser isn’t.

— No?

— He’s Swiss.

— All right. Let’s have the Walser then, said Voxlauer, lying back. Years later her voice would remain clearest in his memory, low-riven and solemn, secretive and measured, the texture and the color of crushed wool. The close, half-drawn breaths, the unspooling sadness of that voice. It’s resignedness. She read evenly and slowly, stopping now and again for a sip of his beer, and kept steadily on as his eyes fell closed. The lamp sputtered and smoked behind her.

Once there was a town. The people in it were merely puppets. But they spoke and walked, had grace and sensitivity and were very polite. Not only did they say “Good morning!” or “Good night!” they meant it quite sincerely. These people possessed sincerity.

In spite of this, they were very much city people. Smoothly, if reluctantly, they’d shed all things coarse-grained and countryish. The cut of their clothes and of their manners were the finest that anyone, tailor or socialite, could possibly imagine. Old worn-out unraveling outfits were worn by nobody. Good taste was universal. The so-called rabble was unheard-of; everyone was completely alike in demeanor and erudition without resembling one another, which would of course have grown tiresome. On the street one met no one but attractive, elegant persons of noble mien. Freedom was a thing one knew well to guide, to have in hand, to rein in and to cherish. For this reason controversies over questions of public decency never occurred. Insults to the common morality were equally undreamt-of.

The women especially were wonderful. Their fashions were as charming as they were practical, as seductive as they were well designed, as titillating as they were proper. Morality seduced! Young men loped after it in the evenings, slowly, dreamily, without falling into greedier, hastier rhythms. The women went about in a sort of trousers, usually of white or pale blue lace, which rose and then wound tightly around their waists. Their shoes were tall, colorful and of the finest leather. The way these shoes clambered up the legs, and the legs felt themselves enclosed by something precious, and the men, in turn, imagined what those legs were feeling, was glorious! This wearing of pants had the further advantage that the women brought a spirit and eloquence into their gait, which, hidden under skirts, had felt itself less noticed and appraised.

On the whole, quite simply everything became “Emotion.” The most miniscule things were a part of it. The businesses ran brilliantly, as the merchants were vigorous, industrious and honest. They were honest out of conviction and tact. They had no desire to make life, beautiful and airy as it was, any harder for one another. There was more than enough money, plenty for everyone, since everyone was so responsible, looking first to the fundamentals; there was no such thing as Sunday, nor any religion either, over whose dictates one might fall into disagreement. The houses of entertainment took the place of churches and the people gathered there devotedly. Pleasure for these people was a deep and holy matter. That one remained pure even in pleasure was obvious, since everybody felt a need for it.

There were no poets. Poets would have found nothing new or high-minded to write about. There were no professional artists of any kind, as a natural aptitude for the arts was commonplace. A fine thing, when people have no need anymore of artists to be artistic. They had learned to view their senses as precious and to make full use of them. There was no cause to look up fine sayings in ancient texts because one had one’s own fine-grained and particular perception. One spoke well when one had cause to speak, one had a mastery of the tongue without knowing whence it came. .

The men were beautiful. Their carriage bespoke their erudition. They delighted in many things, they were busy at many tasks, but everything that happened did so in connection with the love of beautiful women. All of life was drawn into this fine, dreamlike relation. One spoke and thought of everything with deep emotion. Business matters were conducted more simply, more discreetly and more nobly than is now the case. There were no so-called higher things. The very idea would have been an intolerable suffering for these people, who found beauty in everything.

Are you asleep?

Voxlauer woke to dull pains in his legs and Else’s still form beside him wrapped in a patterned sheet. He rose and limped to the kitchen in search of a chamber pot and, finding none, stepped out into the early-morning dampness, a bright mist hemming in the pines. The bleeding seemed to have lessened. He hobbled back past the house and leaned over behind a solitary birch, pissing against the white trunk and down onto a skirt of mud-colored drift. Three days now I’ve been here, he thought, leaning against the tree. Or is it four. .? He felt unbearably old suddenly, watching his piss trickle into the snow. And her inside sleeping. Suddenly the past day and evening and above all the fact of her there in the bed asleep served as nothing to him but proof of his own harmlessness, his nonexistence, a photograph projected onto a paper screen. To his own surprise he laughed at this, a rasping, hollow laugh that traveled dully and gracelessly off into the woods. Watch yourself, Oskar, he said. Button up your pants. He shook his head a few times violently from side to side, still smiling at himself without the least affection, then limped back to the villa through the snow. When he came into the bedroom he saw she now lay with half of her body out of the covers, sighing and whispering in her sleep. He sat down on the stool and pressed the heels of his palms against his knees.

An hour later she stirred. — Is it morning?

— It looks to be. Voxlauer smiled. — I had best be going.

— Yes, she said sleepily. — Have you had any breakfast?

— Thank you. How did you sleep?

— Very well. . You’ve had breakfast? she said again. She seemed to be making an effort to see him clearly, or perhaps to place him in her memory.

— Yes. There’s coffee in the kitchen, if you’d like any.

She sat up all at once, awake now, squinting at him. — You’ve been walking.

He nodded. — An undeserved miracle. I’ll go back to my hut now, if you’ll excuse me, and fall over.

She smiled. — Why not fall over here, Herr Voxlauer, and spare yourself the trouble?

— Thank you, Fräulein. You’re very kind. I’m ashamed to say that my dignity won’t allow it.

— Your dignity? said Else, squinting again. — What does your dignity have to do with anything here, Herr Voxlauer?

— Nothing, I’m sure, Fräulein. I’d rather not incommode you further.