Richard Weiner - The Game for Real

“You wouldn’t, either?”

“What can I do? I’m a servant. I do what I’m told. . If they were to tell me. .”

He grabbed her hand; he sank into it with his brutal fingers, as though he wanted to dig down to something. — But she broke free from him like it was nothing —yes, like it was nothing, and he was awash in shame at her having extricated herself so easily — and she snapped, not wanting to snap, but unable not to, “What do you think? I served you out of pity!”

The thought that had run aground in its own glue had long since given up hope of ever extricating itself. It had given up so perfectly that nothing of it remained but the smugly impoverished equivocation that it was hope itself that wanted it this way, and it was an equivocation so unavoidably necessary that it had maybe thus become true.

“It’s not too late, it’s never too late. .” The stuck thought turned its hysterically loving eyes toward him: Of course it wasn’t a coincidence; of course Zinaida had ambushed him; of course there’s no tour bus driver. . She was pressing him with a sales pitch as blatant as poorly-counterfeited coins. . But whether she’ll close the deal. . Suddenly, like a bang — the dull “plink” of a fake five-franc coin on the marble countertop: a memory so indecently jolly that it was annoying, like genuine rejoicing at a funeral banquet: the memory of that fake five-franc coin that someone had once pawned off on him; of all the shameful failures in trying to get rid of it at the baker’s, at the smoke shop, in cafés; and then the cash register at the art exhibition: the table laid with green cloth. . The green cloth! The witness with his eyes peeled and tongue torn out. . He threw down his five-franc coin with such bravado! The witness who caught him but could say nothing. — And following the reproach, no steps. He’d hit his mark, and his conscience had cleaned itself off in front of the mark. The mark: really, the sole autocrat, by the grace of God! You’ve passed off a counterfeit five-franc coin, so there is no longer a forged coin. Brass taken for gold is gold, and joy from a deception that’s worked is an agio . — The thought rolling its hysterical eyes was a false thought, but it was his. So who is hurt, who is harmed, if he promotes it to the rank of a thought that is true? And anyway: who knows? Maybe everything is right after all. Perhaps he suspects it of wrong. It can’t be helped: all it takes is something to belong to him, and already he’s casting it mistrustful glances. — A right idea? Appearances, of course, attest to the contrary. Appearances! He, too, had been under suspicion, and appearances were against him as well. And anyway: wrong thoughts are merely lazy thoughts. This one, however, is lively; this one is prodding him. He’s pleased by the thought that Zinaida had been lying in wait for him, that she desired him . It’s a thought that is strong and positive, for it cheers him on. It is therefore not wrong; it’s merely violent. Violent! Right is violence that’s hit its mark. Zinaida had been lying in wait for him, Zinaida had been pursuing him: the wrong idea? Yes — if, like a weakling, he lets it go. But if he seizes it, if he forces it to be the thought he stands up for — as if Zinaida had been lying in wait for him, as if she had been pursuing him, as if she cared for him — he will magically transform it into a true thought, for it will be the thought of a person who wants. He’ll be strong. And because he’ll be strong, Zinaida has come for him, she’s here next to him, offering herself. Fine; that’s how he’ll handle her. By the pool he’d allowed himself to get befuddled; once bitten. . Now he won’t be so stupid. — “She served me out of pity!” — Ha! A ruse, an indirect appeal for him to redress why he had seemed pitiful: when she pulled free of his hand? A ruse. .

“What do you think? — I served you out of pity!”

He mustn’t back down, not for anything; if he did back down, he’d lose. Dames don’t get nuances: a violent man is strong, a tiresome man is persistent: boorish pestering in pubs — that’s what they call strength. That’ll do! He’d seen them, those raw youths who aren’t put off by an elbow to the ribs or even a smack in the face; they know dames like the back of the hand. Zinaida’s driver — and who knows, perhaps such a thing exists — he, too, got her only because he dared to take a shot. — “I served you out of pity!”? — And that she tore free from me? — That’s it! I see, and I raise!

“Out of pity? Oh, you poor thing!”

Something was tickling him on the lips: Zinaida’s tousled hair. Aha! He had already assumed an attacking position without knowing it. On the table, her hand like a bird on guard; his left hand has fallen beside it like a shot-down buzzard; his pinkie is creeping clumsily toward hers, his right hand, a soused, yet not blacked-out oaf, was lapping at her waist.

“No way! Just take a look at yourself!”

He saw her stand up; he saw her standing; he saw it a smidge before feeling the sting of a sprightly, dry, precisely-landed slap. At the same time, he reckoned, as though with the raking of a croupier’s rake, what had actually happened. Just then he caught Zinaida’s alarm as well, but an alarm morbidly erasing itself before the unutterable ugliness that was squeezing it violently from her features. (And he was stalking after this profligate alarm, which had dropped down suddenly as though through a chute, but was somewhere now outside of Zinaida, somewhere where she no longer remembered it, and it became clear to him that she thus no longer remembered him now, too); then, behind the girl, like an optical syncopation, there flashed the hurriedly unoccupied shadow of a young man, two automatically enflamed little lights in his eyes shining upon some side agreement between them both. Automatically? He was flooded with such certainty that he was at least the electrical switch that had made those little lights glow that he would rather seek refuge back in Zinaida’s eyes, even though he was well aware what awaited him there. — No, he didn’t know; it was something still much worse; Zinaida spotted it and knew what it was ; he could immediately read that she had seen through him, that he was lying if he was pretending (and he was even pretending to himself) that he had cast a glance at those little lights only out of a contemptuous curiosity. Zinaida’s eyes laughed with the irrefutable certainty that he had reached for those will-o’-the-wisps for some other, concealed reason. — And everything was as though it had hatched all at once in the middle of a very short sentence that had begun like an escape hatch (around which he was bumbling comically, as though looking for the latch) and ended like an insurmountable wall, from which he fell like a sack:

“Hilarious! I mean, hilarious! — But haven’t you ever taken a look at yourself?”

She cast this at him as though it were a tight net, with no room to move; with this toss she caught both the cleverly probing noose he’d thrown after the fleet-footed ephebe, as well as the furious shrug of the shoulders, with which she confirmed for herself that the noose had gotten tangled.

“You pig, you!” she flung at him, God knows whether it was with her mouth or rather the grocer-like propping of her arms on her sides, and she vanished, God knows whether it was in the mist that had descended in the meantime, or rather in the sparse bunch of gawkers.

They were giving him a good going-over, exploiting the twilight that the pavement afforded them, whereas on the lighted terrace he was like a nudist in a display window. He saw them, not seeing them, but suffering through them; rather, he saw only something frighteningly languid, which was about to dispense with him . Dis-pense-with-him! He knew he was an object to them. An ob-ject! He reckoned roughly the kind of resistance that would be put to him should he wish to get away from them, not really understanding himself how he actually ventured to reckon the resistance (and according to what scale!), he gained the quite assured certainty that it would be an admittedly awkward resistance, but not too tough. He threw his money down on the table, stood up, and leaped out into the evening; he had a kind of unconscious impression that he was expending a certain physical effort, and an impression as though of an oversimplified satisfaction that he was not expending it for nothing. For he felt that he was outdoing something evil, thereby blazing himself a path toward something, not better, but toward something that was, perhaps though still worse, at least less artfully so. Something was troubling him: maybe the curses, maybe the clumps of desiccated muck — and out of the blue, a pitch-black and limpid silence; a solitude gaspingly encouraging a permissive acquiescence to his feeling his limbs. They were barely strained, nothing more. They started to stir; nowhere were they hindered; they started to walk, to turn the head, to thrash the arms; it didn’t hurt; he tried to speak: he could; he stopped and listened: he heard, and he recognized: distant footsteps, the slamming of front doors, trees rustling somehow like Corot’s trees. He was imbued with an immense gratitude to the world; he saw it as good. He knew that his gratitude was effusive, but there was nothing to be done about that— péché mignon —all he could do was be effusively grateful to it. He learned that beneath the terrace was a “lane for lovers.” He was undertaking something along the lines of excavating a well, someone else would say: he went deep into himself. But wherever he climbed in his self-excavation, there were, everywhere, just the same cool and limpid springs. It seemed to him that everything was freshness. Somewhere the word “universe” leaped out, it had the quality of a roomy, trusted thing, even homely, in no way devastating, and he must have said to himself sulkily, but with a strained sulkiness, “the universe! Like it’s now me and the universe.” He couldn’t help himself: he saw it, not with his eyes, but he saw it nonetheless, and as if in remarkably complete abbreviation. He didn’t, however, feel like he was part of it: he was a spectator, an impartial, unprejudiced, undemanding, and undesiring spectator — perceptive, indulgently self-restrained, and compassionate. — He was digging, digging, and with a great scientific curiosity as to whether he might strike some wish: he didn’t. As to whether he might strike some aspiration: he had none. He noticed that he had no right to anything, but at the same time he noticed that he was therefore the freest of all. He was looking, so that he might find someone he would hate; someone he would at least have a grudge against: he didn’t. He was casting about as far as he could, so that he might find an enemy, a disparager, a slanderer: on the clean-cut and bright horizon, no one anywhere, nothing. And what if there were no him there, either? Oh what joy, what joy — not to be! He stepped slowly, lightly, as though on cloudlets. The slightly denser form that crossed the path over there, what is it? Who is it? Never again would he encounter someone whose gaze he would fear. No one who would, upon encountering him, not meet his gaze. Who was it who had flashed across his path? Some young woman. Their eyes met. Why did she stop, why did she turn around? And this cone, upon the surface of which the woman’s puffed-out skirt fell as she whipped around in flight; this cone, wobbling like a top after the initial spin. Where was she fleeing to? Why? The terrace’s underpinning is entirely inviting nooks. It rustles, clucks, sighs. In one such nook, the fleeing woman vanished.