The Goalie's Anxiety at the Penalty Kick: A Novel Read Online Free PDF Page B

the room even though the window was wide open? Why “even though”? Was it possible that nobody was in the
room because the window was wide open? Bloch looked back: a beer bottle had even been taken off the windowsill so that they could have a better look at him. He heard a sound like a bottle rolling under a sofa. On the other hand, it was not likely that the customs shed had a sofa. Only when he had gone farther on did it become clear to him that a radio had been turned on in the room. Bloch went back along the wide curve the street made toward the town. At one point he started to run with relief because the street led back to town so openly and simply.
    He wandered among the houses for a while. At a café he chose a few records after the owner had turned on the juke box; he had walked out even before all the records had played. Outside he heard the owner unplug the machine. On the benches sat schoolchildren waiting for the bus.
    He stopped in front of a fruit stand but stood so far away from it that the owner behind the stand could not speak to him. She looked at him and waited for him to move a step closer. A child who was standing in front of him said something, but the woman did not answer. When a policeman who had come up from behind got close enough to the fruit stand, she spoke to him immediately.
    There were no phone booths in the town. Bloch
tried to call a friend from the post office. He waited on a bench near the switchboard, but the call did not go through. At that time of day the circuits were busy, he was told. He swore at the postmistress and walked out.
    When, outside the town, he passed the public swimming pool, he saw two policemen on bicycles coming toward him. “With capes,” he thought. In fact, when the policemen stopped in front of him, they really were wearing capes; and when they got off their bicycles they did not even take the clips off their trousers. Again it seemed to Bloch as if he were watching a music box; as though he had seen all this before. He had not let go of the door in the fence that led to the pool even though it was closed. “The pool is closed,” Bloch said.
    The policemen, who made the usual remarks, nevertheless seemed to mean something entirely different by them; at least they purposely mispronounced phrases like “got to remember” and “take off” as “goats you remember” and “take-off” and, just as purposely, let their tongues slide over others, saying “whitewash?” instead of “why watch?” and “closed, or” instead of “close door.” For what would be the point of their telling him about the goats that, he should remember, had once, when the door had been left open, forced their way into the pool,
which hadn’t even been officially opened yet, and had soiled everything, even the walls of the restaurant, so that the rooms had to be whitewashed all over again and it wasn’t ready on time, which was why Bloch should keep the door closed and stay on the sidewalk? As if to show their contempt for him, the policemen also failed to give their customary salutes when they drove away—or, anyway, only hinted at them, as though they wanted to tell Bloch something by it. They did not look back over their shoulders. To show that he had nothing to hide, Bloch stayed by the fence and went on looking in at the empty pool. “Like I was in an open wardrobe I wanted to take something out of,” Bloch thought. He could not remember now what he had gone to the public pool for. Besides, it was getting dark; the lights were already shining on the signs outside the public buildings at the edge of town. Bloch walked back into town. When two girls ran past him toward the railroad station, he called after them. Running, they turned around and shouted back. Bloch was hungry. He ate at the inn while the TV set could be heard from the next room. Later he took a glass in there and watched until the test pattern came on at the end of the program. He asked for his key and