Moment of True Feeling Read Online Free PDF

made sense; the world only pretended to be sensible; much too sensible, Keuschnig thought. That a couple who sat down at a café table should still be a couple when they got up again: how very sensible! It was beyond him how when the two of them got up they could still be talking to each other, and in a friendly tone what’s more, as though nothing were wrong.—And it wasn’t true that he had only begun to see himself and others in this light the night before. Little by little it came back to him that even earlier he had been unable to understand how everything could simply flow along and remain as it was. Once he had
crossed the whole of Paris on Line 9 of the Métro just to find out exactly what the advertisement for DUBONNET painted at regular intervals on the walls of the dark tunnels between stations represented. The train went so fast that he never saw the whole picture but always the same small segment, and could make no sense of it. He should have got out in midtown, but as it was he continued on to the PORTE DE CHARENTON on the southeast edge of Paris, where the train had to slow down because of men working, and there he finally saw that the vague blobs represented bright-colored clouds and that the sphere in front of them was a kind of sun decorated with the colors of all the countries where DUBONNET was consumed … In those days everything had tended to run too fast, and he had run along, because he wanted to recognize things. Since this last night something had stopped. This something was unrecognizable, and he could only turn away. To be initiated had become absurd, to be taken back into the fold had become unimaginable, to belong had become hell on earth. He saw great lumps of overcooked rice in a pot as big as the world. The swindle had been exposed and he was disenchanted.
    Keuschnig went down the hill, step for step. What affectedly carefree gaits, what inimically serene faces. He felt no desire to emulate them, only a furious impulse to ape them—all these faces so bright and summery that the only way to bear them was to ape them, as sometimes at a café, often involuntarily to be sure, you ape the facial expression of those women who trip past you so mincingly, looking neither to left nor right for fear of losing their semblance of beauty, or as a drunk returning a stare is likely to put on the starer’s expression.

    A woman coming in the opposite direction broke into a smile in the middle of the street and began to run. He was frightened. Had she gone mad? Then he saw someone some distance off, walking toward her—and he too was smiling. Imperturbably smiling, they approached one another, preserving their smiles the whole way despite every obstacle, although the man stumbled over an empty wooden crate and the woman collided with a passer-by. Keuschnig couldn’t bear the sight any longer and, conscious of pressure on his bladder, walked away. Now, he thought, they’ll be putting their preposterous arms around each other, looking into each other’s pitiful eyes, kissing each other’s pathetic cheeks, left and right. And then imperturbably they’ll go their senseless ways. Spooky! He had the feeling of having to lower his bottom jaw to let the accumulated saliva run out. He saw a child standing lost in thought; a bubble came out of its mouth and burst. He passed a man carrying a black attache case. You’d think he’d be ashamed! Keuschnig thought. When I see somebody like that, I could cross myself.—Yet he himself was carrying just such an attaché case, and instead of throwing it into the nearest trash can he heroically went on carrying it. Heroes of everyday life. He couldn’t get rid of the idiotic smile he had put on to ape people, and it was starting to itch. He didn’t scratch with his fingers but tried to relieve the itch by making even worse faces. Even the infants under the parasols, with their mashed-carrot-colored cheeks