Richard Weiner - The Game for Real

That’s why? On the contrary. He’s on the bottom, and that’s why he can no longer suffer. A nostalgia for misfortune, but so incidental: he didn’t miss it, he just knew that there was a reason to. And at the same time he noticed how excruciatingly beautiful life was then, in those times when to him, too, the world seemed depopulated for no other reason than that one single being was missing from it. . He looked, and he found that he no longer missed anyone or anything. He was astonished to find that, but in no way petrified. And it wasn’t a burning astonishment; it merely fumed. If he wanted — and he wanted this and nothing else — he found himself impressive, putrid, and swollen excuses to his heart’s content: at intersections, on corners, under street-sweepers’ brooms, next to bollards, and in church vestibules; mitigating circumstances proliferated like moldy mushrooms: in the neighborhood of Saint-Sulpice, in the window of stores selling devotional items, he spotted Him Who Was Crucified, and the blood sparkling on the tops of his feet gained a voice, and it implored: “See, you have been sold out as well.” But his bankrupt ambition didn’t abate: excuses that all you have to do is bend down for? He swept them into the gutter with his heel; the filthy mushrooms will get trampled, and the blood shouts out, “Heel!” — And all of this calmly, dispassionately, right? With an honorable prudence, he naturally refuses, because he knows that they’re offering it to him by mistake: with a nasty, though not agonizing, feeling that he’s playing without knowing with whom, cheating without knowing how, but that he’s most certainly cheating.

The bright clock of the Gare d’Orsay reminded him that it was late — it reminded him fretfully, like someone he’d glued his eyes upon — and its circuit spun his eyes around a circuit much larger still, spun them around a horizon namelessly cut short, where — it came to him suddenly — he’d been wandering for a while now. But it came to him too late, that is, a second later than when he ascertained that there were no people, that there were no thoughts, that there were no things, that there was no desire, that there was nothing — and he was no exception — that would be worth death, much less life, let alone an irreparable — better yet — a sanctifying grief.

But that futility was not the downside of existence; it was more vindictive: people, thoughts, things, desires, he himself— and he above all—“were not” merely because “non-being” was the most essential of all their attributes. And not even thinking announced itself, that’s just what was missing; what am I saying; nowhere was there even an inkling of the thought that any other way might have been more natural . He had an intense urge to want for something, but he couldn’t make it out. He didn’t feel a lack, he only remembered it from an earlier time, remembered the way one remembers objective knowledge. — It was despair; despair from things that are messianically absolute, from which only a single path leads, short and rushed like an indispensable vertical drop to somewhere, that is, anywhere. Anywhere — that is, toward the antipode of despair: toward cognizance. — The tendency’s already there; already the overburdened “I want for nothing” was opening out to the abundance of the gossamer “then I’ve found it” when a pallid light shone upon him from that filthy darkness, illuminating his hunted face.

He was sitting on a bench; he lifted himself up, for he was seized by a promising horror, from the hope that that face was, after all, perhaps not the face of a prohibition on searching because finding had been denied him, that perhaps the opposite was the case, that it was the face of a prohibition on searching because he had already found. But just then he was already sitting on the bench again, not knowing whether he was relieved or rattled, for that face was a human face, and he knew it.

“I beg you, hurry,” the person said, drawing in close, “if they ask you, you have to say you’re with me.”

She hadn’t yet finished speaking, and they both already knew, but his “Zinaida” and her “is it you?” recoiled before the categorical plea, as astonishment awaits two who have collided out of nowhere in a burning house, until they carry out the thing they’ve flung themselves there for.

“Zinaida!”

“Yes,” she said, breathless, “tell them you’re with me. Afterwards. .”

She fell silent. Two policemen on bicycles were approaching at a pace that boasted of the self-confident rhythm of studded soles; their heads swerved expertly toward the bench; they exchanged knowing looks, adjusted their holsters, tossed their shoulders, said “ Enfin! ” and walked on by.

“Zinaida!”

“Fancy meeting you here!” and she nodded until she finally leaped up. “But is it really you?”

He was staring with the belated shock of a person who has been denied the amusement of timely astonishment.

“What’s this look? It’s like you’d been expecting me.”

“You? No.”

“I only mention it because you don’t seem surprised. You weren’t anticipating this, after all. .”

“So why should I be surprised?”

“The main thing is that they’re gone.”

They were sitting far apart. He twisted his torso in her direction; he had his arm stretched across the backrest. The visor of his cap was bent toward its top and raised comically. He swallowed, but his eyes, squinting and slightly crusty in the corners, were asking, though also already answering at the same time. The questions were answers, as though they were cut short; what remained of them was the neglected void of the cell they’d led the condemned man from that morning.

Because he wasn’t saying anything, she twisted her torso as well. She kept her hands in her lap.

“I’m not registered yet. And I already look like I’m supposed to be.”

He craned his neck. Not surprised so much as exasperated at her having been able to say this without turning her head away.

“Yeah, so — I’m not registered yet — what do you want? She just threw me out today.”

“Yeah, Mrs. Steel,” she added a moment later, as if he had asked, “Who?”

“How could you just run off like that? There — well, you did look different.”

“I didn’t run off. I only forgot myself.”

“I know. With that boy. There was a rumor going round.”

“You moron! Not with anybody. I forgot myself — I forgot my self — somewhere.”

“Like me, then. — Like hell! It was different with me. Ugh!”

She shifted.

“Actually, nothing’s happened yet. I’m saying she only threw me out this morning.”

“You’re saying ‘nothing’s happened’—but now you’re as sly as. .,” and he stood up.

The grip with which she caught his hand was of the impatient and timorous kind, which people use to cajole when they no longer hold off any true disgrace.

“You’re not leaving so suddenly — just like that?”

She pulled him onto the bench and so close beside herself that he shifted away involuntarily. But right away he fixed his eyes on her so compassionately — she thought it was compassion — as though he wanted to blunt the offensive point of that shifting. Zinaida saw wrong: he was not looking at her compassionately, he was merely on the lookout for a reason why Zinaida momentarily seemed so ugly to him. For she wasn’t ugly, he clearly saw that this was the same Zinaida as the one back there. So then what was it? But just then it dawned on her, and she tore herself away.

“Right, that’s enough! What are you looking at? Surely you can’t see it yet, not today. Surely it’s not possible that so quickly. . It’s not possible, see? Not at all — when nothing’s happened yet.”