I'm Not Stiller Read Online Free PDF Page A

a lonely road, often rise up in flocks from a corpse, a squashed snake, a putrefying donkey or a murdered man no one has missed yet; you can see these birds everywhere, black and ugly and fat they perch on the roofs above the picturesque market: vultures, the birds of Mexico.
    And yet it was beautiful!
    Why didn't I stay there—?
    ***
    Fortunately my public prosecutor (or examining magistrate; I'm not well up in these things) is a pleasant character, a sceptic, who doesn't even believe everything he says himself; also he was the first one with the good manners to knock before coming into the cell.
    'I suppose you know who I am?'
    'The public prosecutor?'
    His smile baffled me. He stared at me for a long time with both hands thrust into his jacket pockets, somehow embarrassed. My first idea was: This man has some confession to make to me. He seemed to lose himself in private thoughts of his own. For a while he behaved as though he were deaf, staring at me openly as adults rarely do, and in any case longer than was polite, so that when he realized what he was doing he blushed slightly.
    'Do you smoke?' he asked, and when I refused, he added, taking a cigarette himself and lighting it: 'This is an entirely personal call. Please don't regard it as an interrogation. I felt the urge to make your acquaintance...'
    A pause.
    'You really don't smoke?' he asked.
    'Only cigars.'
    'My wife sends her regards,' he said, sitting down on the bed like a regular visitor and gazing round for an ash-tray, just to avoid looking at me, I believe '—that is if you really are Herr Stiller.'
    'My name is White,' I said.
    'I don't want to anticipate the judicial inquiry,' he said with an undertone of apology or relief, went on smoking and obviously didn't know what to say next under the circumstances. It wasn't for some minutes, after an exchange of small talk that was suddenly quite impersonal and rendered even more threadbare by the fact that his mind was elsewhere—chiefly about motor scooters and the fact that whisky, and alcohol generally, was 'unfortunately' strictly forbidden to prisoners on remand—he declared abruptly: 'Personally, I've never seen Stiller. At least not consciously. We once had a talk over the telephone, as you may know; it was a call from Paris, but I can't tell whether it was you.'
    Then his tone changed and he suddenly became good-humoured:
    'You murdered your wife, Mr White?'
    I had the feeling that he didn't believe me either. He was smiling, but his smile disappeared when we stared at one another in silence, and he asked me why I murdered my wife.
    'Because I loved her,' I said.
    'Is that a reason?'
    'Look,' I explained, 'it was a sacrifice for her to live at my side; All my friends thought so, to say nothing of her friends. She herself hardly said a word about the way I made her suffer. She was a very noble person, you know, and you can ask anyone you like about that, everybody thought so. They had never seen such a noble, such a fine person as my wife, they all said. And we moved almost exclusively in educated circles. Besides, I thought so myself, I admired her, you know. Her nobility attracted me. That was her undoing. I can't tell you how often that woman forgave me, how often!'
    'What for?'
    'For being as I am.'
    Every now and then he asked a question. For instance:
    'Did you often quarrel?'
    'Never.'
    'Not even before the murder?'
    'Certainly not,' I answered, 'otherwise it would never have been committed. You obviously can't picture my victim. She would never have dreamt of raising her voice, so I didn't dare to either. I told you, she was such a noble person—can you imagine what it's like to be married to such a noble person? For nine years I was plagued by a bad conscience. And if, once a week, I couldn't stand my bad conscience and smashed a plate against the wall, for example, I felt like a murderer, my wife's murderer. Yes, that's how hard this frail woman's life was with me.'
    'Hm,' he