Brunoâs invitation. It would have been out of the question, naturally, but I couldnât help a faint wistful pang atthe thought of them all sitting happily together, watching the play.
Having nothing better to do, I decided to read the story it was based on. Carefully avoiding looking at the answering machine on the window-ledge (as long as I didnât know for sure that Carol hadnât called, I could legitimately tell myself that she might have), I went to my bookshelf and took down my edition of Kafkaâs Short Works , where I found the story.
It was a very strange story, but almost stranger than the story itself, with its two fantastical blue-veined balls following Blumfeld around his apartment, was the fact that, contrary to what I had told Bruno, I evidently had read it. And not only read it, but taught it too, as it was all marked up in little underlinings and scribbles in my handwriting. Even so, not one word of it seemed familiar to me now. Nothing!
Itâs not quite pointless after all to live in secret as an unnoticed bachelor , I read, now that someone, no matter who, has penetrated this secret and sent him these two strange balls ⦠How could I have forgotten something so strikingly bizarre? A complete mental evacuation must have taken place. I simply didnât recognise a word of it. To get rid of the balls, Blumfeld plays a trick on them â climbing backwards into the wardrobe so that they have to bounce in there too: And when Blumfeld, having by now pulled the door almost to, jumps out of it with an enormous leap such as he has not made for years, slams the door, and turns the key, the balls are imprisoned . Relieved, wiping the sweat from his brow, Blumfeld leaves the apartment. It is remarkable how little he worries about the balls now that he is separated from them â¦
Abruptly, before I had finished the story, a small, pulsating silver spot appeared in the corner of my field of vision.
I hadnât experienced this phenomenon since I was twelveor thirteen, but I recognised it immediately, and put the book down with a feeling of alarm.
The spot began to grow, as I had feared it would, flickering and pulsating across my vision like a swarm of angry insects. I stood in the middle of my living room, looking helplessly through the window as this apparition gradually blocked out the ailanthus tree in the courtyard and the lit windows of the apartments opposite. After a while all I could see were a few peripheral slivers of the ceiling and walls surrounding me. And then for a minute or two I became completely blind.
I stood, trying to remain calm, listening to the suddenly pronounced sounds of the night â monkey-yelping police sirens, the ventilator humming on the roof of the pizza kitchen across the courtyard. Above me my upstairs neighbor, Mr Kurwen, turned on a TV, then walked heavily across his apartment to turn on a second TV. A toilet flushed next door. Then, as rapidly as it had come, the occlusion faded. And right on cue, as the last traces vanished, my head began to throb with an ache so intense I cried aloud with pain.
I had had these migraines for a period as a boy: the same silvery swarm spreading until it blinded me, then vanishing, leaving behind a headache of excruciating ferocity that continued unabated for five or six hours. After all other medications failed, my mother had taken me to a homeopathic doctor, an old Finn in a peculiar-smelling room, surrounded by dishes of felspar and a sticky substance he told me was crushed red ants. He gave me five tiny pills, instructing me to take one a night, five nights in a row. I hadnât had a migraine since then â not until now.
I went into the bedroom and lay down on the bed in darkness. The pain concentrated itself in the center of my forehead. It felt as though something were in there trying toget out â using now a hammer, now a pick-axe, now an electric drill. Above me Mr Kurwenâs two TVs
Having nothing better to do, I decided to read the story it was based on. Carefully avoiding looking at the answering machine on the window-ledge (as long as I didnât know for sure that Carol hadnât called, I could legitimately tell myself that she might have), I went to my bookshelf and took down my edition of Kafkaâs Short Works , where I found the story.
It was a very strange story, but almost stranger than the story itself, with its two fantastical blue-veined balls following Blumfeld around his apartment, was the fact that, contrary to what I had told Bruno, I evidently had read it. And not only read it, but taught it too, as it was all marked up in little underlinings and scribbles in my handwriting. Even so, not one word of it seemed familiar to me now. Nothing!
Itâs not quite pointless after all to live in secret as an unnoticed bachelor , I read, now that someone, no matter who, has penetrated this secret and sent him these two strange balls ⦠How could I have forgotten something so strikingly bizarre? A complete mental evacuation must have taken place. I simply didnât recognise a word of it. To get rid of the balls, Blumfeld plays a trick on them â climbing backwards into the wardrobe so that they have to bounce in there too: And when Blumfeld, having by now pulled the door almost to, jumps out of it with an enormous leap such as he has not made for years, slams the door, and turns the key, the balls are imprisoned . Relieved, wiping the sweat from his brow, Blumfeld leaves the apartment. It is remarkable how little he worries about the balls now that he is separated from them â¦
Abruptly, before I had finished the story, a small, pulsating silver spot appeared in the corner of my field of vision.
I hadnât experienced this phenomenon since I was twelveor thirteen, but I recognised it immediately, and put the book down with a feeling of alarm.
The spot began to grow, as I had feared it would, flickering and pulsating across my vision like a swarm of angry insects. I stood in the middle of my living room, looking helplessly through the window as this apparition gradually blocked out the ailanthus tree in the courtyard and the lit windows of the apartments opposite. After a while all I could see were a few peripheral slivers of the ceiling and walls surrounding me. And then for a minute or two I became completely blind.
I stood, trying to remain calm, listening to the suddenly pronounced sounds of the night â monkey-yelping police sirens, the ventilator humming on the roof of the pizza kitchen across the courtyard. Above me my upstairs neighbor, Mr Kurwen, turned on a TV, then walked heavily across his apartment to turn on a second TV. A toilet flushed next door. Then, as rapidly as it had come, the occlusion faded. And right on cue, as the last traces vanished, my head began to throb with an ache so intense I cried aloud with pain.
I had had these migraines for a period as a boy: the same silvery swarm spreading until it blinded me, then vanishing, leaving behind a headache of excruciating ferocity that continued unabated for five or six hours. After all other medications failed, my mother had taken me to a homeopathic doctor, an old Finn in a peculiar-smelling room, surrounded by dishes of felspar and a sticky substance he told me was crushed red ants. He gave me five tiny pills, instructing me to take one a night, five nights in a row. I hadnât had a migraine since then â not until now.
I went into the bedroom and lay down on the bed in darkness. The pain concentrated itself in the center of my forehead. It felt as though something were in there trying toget out â using now a hammer, now a pick-axe, now an electric drill. Above me Mr Kurwenâs two TVs
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