all incidents, images, and words tumble down towards me. They keep sticking to me, each one urging its particular significance. Perhaps only a presumed significance. Although, on second thought, everything could be immeasurably significant. I have found her leaning on the window many times before. She’s probably not waiting for me; maybe she’s waiting for her own Godot, a tiny, graceful Nothing. I know how to distinguish those who wait. She always stands by the window waiting and smokes, the cigarette squeezed between her slender, nervous fingers. Perhaps her Godot is the grayish-blue sun—the color of cigarette smoke—shining outside the window. Or maybe I am her Godot after all, stuck at the bottom of the slick-sided funnel, beset by dreamed-up birds vanishing and appearing again and beating the dusty twilight of the library’s corridors with their wings.
She rocks back and forth almost imperceptibly, a slightly bent leg set in front. It seems she intentionally intoxicates with the hidden curve of her long thighs. They’re not particularly hidden: no clothing can cover her body. I don’t understand her, or perhaps I want her to remain mysterious as long as possible. I don’t turn my eyes away from her; even if I wanted to hide myself, she would force herself on me anyway, through hearing, touch, through the sixth or seventh sense. What is she—fate, or a treacherous snare? She doesn’t force herself on anyone, she simply exists, but incidents, images, and words constantly slide down the funnel’s slopes, closer to me each time. I avoid her a bit, maybe I’m even afraid. I can’t stand it when some person turns up excessively close.
We worked together for two or three years and it meant nothing to me. I scarcely noticed her. And suddenly, one miraculous moment, my eyes were opened. Since that moment she’s all I see.
She’s unattainable; she doesn’t pay the least attention to me. Why should she? I’m old, she’s young. I’m hideous, she’s beautiful. She could at least stop irritating me and distracting me by her mere existence. I know my destiny; I’m not reaching for the stars in heaven.
When was this; when did I think this—surely not today?
She sensed me, turned and showed her eyes (probably brown), wandering in from that morning’s vision. She doesn’t look at me; that brown gaze is always turned towards her own inner being, there, where the drab sun’s rays do not reach. Inside, she is teeming with hidden eyes, while the two eyes that are visible to everyone are merely two lights, two openings breached by the world squeezing its way into her unapproachable soul. Soul, spirit, ego, id . . .
But when, when was this, when did I think this way?
I slipped into my room and quickly closed the door. I closed the door, pulled the curtains shut, and unplugged the telephone. I know perfectly well what I’m hiding from. Particularly today . . . Although what does “today” mean? What does “yesterday,” “a week ago,” “a month from now” mean? What does “was,” “will be,” or “could be” mean? I grasp the world far more essentially, without the deceptive entanglement of time. I was first taught the secret art of understanding in dreams and visions, and then here, in the world we feel with our fingers. I pay less and less attention to humanity’s banal time; it’s too deceptive, it leads you astray from the essence that hides in one great ALL. I can’t allow myself to be deceived by thinking that something has “already passed by,” or that something else is still “to come.” Thinking that way destroys the great ALL’s unity. Now I sit at my desk in the library’s office and painstakingly lay out stiff paper cards. Now I stand entirely naked in front of the mirror. Now I plunge into the dizzying black-eyed Circe’s body. Now I fearfully step into the old house in the depths of a garden . . . I stepped into, I will step into, I could step into . . . All of that happens at the same time in the great ALL, those purported differences have no meaning, they aren’t essential. What is essential? That always, every second, slowly and quietly, I molder in one great ALL.
“How old are you, snot-face?” asks the sniffler.
“A hundred!”
“See—the little bastard is still yapping.”
Swinging his arm, he strikes, the brains disintegrate, from the wall the shit-god of all dogs, the mustachioed dog-god sniffs around Georgianly and smiles.
“Now, how old are you?”
“Six hundred twenty-three!”
The morning’s events weren’t, of course, accidental. I’d like to not pay attention to anything, to say to myself that it was accidental, that there was nothing to it at all. I’d like to forget the wrinkled woman’s oppressive stare, the pigeons by the announcement post, and the murderous black limousine’s fender. But I don’t believe in accidents. They don’t exist. Everything that happens in life is determined by you yourself. All “accidental” failures, all misfortunes, all joys and catastrophes are born of ourselves. Every fiasco is an unconscious fulfillment of our desires, a secret victory. Every death is a suicide. As long as you cling to the world, as long as you don’t surrender, no force can overcome you. Everything, absolutely everything depends on you yourself; even Their tentacles don’t reach as deep as They would want.
I’ve summoned Them again; once more I’ve given myself away, I’ve attracted attention. There can be no doubt: the shabby disa’s stare, the unmistakable movements of her lips and cheeks were excessively clear . . . The horror is to know that it’s as inevitable as the grass greening up in the spring, as the dragon’s fiery breath. For a little while They stopped hiding and took aim at me again. My life is the life of a man in a telescopic sight. There would be nothing to it if the shotgun that is aimed at me would merely kill me. Alas . . . Who can understand this horrible condition, a condition I’m already accustomed to? Who can measure the depth of the drab abyss? The worst of it is that the trigger of that unseen shotgun is directly connected to you. Only you can pull it, so you have to be on your guard every moment, even when you are alone. Perhaps the most on guard when you’re alone. Mere thoughts and desires, mere dreams, can give you away. They watch you, they watch you all the time and wait for you to make a mistake. With the second, true sight, I see the crooked smirk on Their plump faces, a smirk of faith in Their own unlimited power. But I barely try to inspect the mechanism of Their actions when I run into a blank wall. It’s easy to get into Buddha’s world; hard to get into Satan’s.
God’s world, Satan’s world, the worlds of spirit, pain, fear . . . But there is an ordinary world too, the real world; you always return to it, you’ll never escape it—just as you’ll never escape from Them. It counts its absurd time, never missing so much as a second. Now its clock says it’s noon. Two hours have disappeared, devoured by silent jaws. My time frequently disappears that way. You’d think you’ve fallen into a deep pit of time; all that can be seen from there is a pathetic little sky-blue patch of time that’s always the same. And the insane clocks of the empirical world don’t stop going; death hides in their ticking. Thank God, I fall into the pit and calm down there. Sometimes I envy myself this ability. It’s like sleep without dreams. In the forced labor camp I would walk and talk for entire days (now I walk and talk), but in fact I would be on the other side of the barbed wire fence, on the other side of all fences, on the other side of my own self. Later I wouldn’t remember either my words or my actions; that may be the only reason why I survived all the horrors. Unfortunately, from any sleep there is an awakening. It falls to your lot to return here.
Strange—even here I’m appropriate, allowed, possible. That’s practically a miracle. I should have long since flown out of this world to end up in God’s, Satan’s, or fear’s universe. However, for the time being I’m still here. I even almost have friends.
It’s probably all right now to pull back the curtains, to crack open the window—and immediately Stefa, without knocking, sticks her head in through the door. She invites everyone to take a coffee break: a charming little head with white-blond hair and sparkling eyes, hurrying to see everything she shouldn’t.
“Toast his pecker a bit,” says sniffitysniffler.
The portrait on the wall twitches its mustache like mad.
I follow behind her, down a low, straight corridor. Slowly I turn into the ordinary outward “I”; soon he will quietly sip coffee. Brezhnev’s