Absence (2 page)
Along with her monologue, the woman has concluded her from-start-to-finish indecipherable writing, in which only the often double and triple exclamation points and underlinings are clear: her reply. She rises, not abruptly, but with graceful vigor. Her pen and paper fall to the floor. She squats down, looks at them, but leaves them where they are. The room with its army of lamps and disorderly piles of television magazines distills the slightly subdued atmosphere of a Sunday evening. With wide-open eyes the woman stands in front of the large mirror. Quarreling voices are heard from an adjoining apartment. Her absent look and crouching posture give the figure in the mirror the air
of an animal that has strayed into a high rise. Then suddenly she looks back over her shoulder and laughs into the void, a carefree laugh that might have been addressed to someone on the street. Lightly she slips into the other room; dressing and doing her face, she flits gracefully back and forth between the two rooms, which thanks to her parading take on the character of a grandiose suite. In no time at all she is in the doorway, ready to go out. There, to be sure, she drops her handbag and has to bend down to pick up its scattered contents. Rising to her full height, she stands for a long moment, letting herself be looked at, so to speak: no longer a displaced animal but a star. Finally, with a toss of the chin, she says to her audience: “Don't bother me with your everyday life. No one else can give you people the pleasure I give you. You all need me. And so do you!”
of an animal that has strayed into a high rise. Then suddenly she looks back over her shoulder and laughs into the void, a carefree laugh that might have been addressed to someone on the street. Lightly she slips into the other room; dressing and doing her face, she flits gracefully back and forth between the two rooms, which thanks to her parading take on the character of a grandiose suite. In no time at all she is in the doorway, ready to go out. There, to be sure, she drops her handbag and has to bend down to pick up its scattered contents. Rising to her full height, she stands for a long moment, letting herself be looked at, so to speak: no longer a displaced animal but a star. Finally, with a toss of the chin, she says to her audience: “Don't bother me with your everyday life. No one else can give you people the pleasure I give you. You all need me. And so do you!”
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Outside a movie house displaying posters of entirely different stars stands a soldier in street uniform and tilted cap. He is flanked by a middle-aged couple outfitted for travelâumbrella in fair weather, hats. His mother has taken his arm; his father, at some distance, is covertly watching the other two from the side. The movie house is across from the railroad station; they have only stopped there for a moment, and now they are crossing the square. Here the Sunday evening is betokened by the old newspapers blowing over the asphalt or filling the trash cans to overflowing and by the fact that the handful of travelers in the station hall are far outnumbered by drunks sleeping or bellowing and groups of foreign workers in the corners. The three cross the platform to a waiting room, a separate structure situated on an island between the tracks which, though hardly bigger
than a hut, has a marble doorway. The interior is rather like a parlor: curved benches and lacquered tables in which the overhead lamp is reflected. The slender stove in the corner reaches up to the ceiling. In one recess there is a miniature fountain and across from it a tiny palm tree. Instead of the usual oversize views of tourist attractions, the walls are decorated with faded landscape paintings, and the tables are equipped with ashtrays. Here, where in both rows of windows trains are perpetually stopping and starting off again, the group sits down. The parents keep their hats on and their faces remain half shaded; the soldier rolls up his cap and puts it in his trouser pocket. Bareheaded, with his scraggly short hair, his somewhat pimply forehead, and his chubby cheeks, he gives the impression of a schoolboy, but sitting there between the two others he shows no sign of being their son; while they are visibly concerned with him, his attention, his watchfulness, as it were, is directed toward the things around him, the cigar rest in the ashtray, which in his eyes takes on the shape of a mountain pass, and the bent tips of the palm leaves, groping like tentacles. Thus the soldier seems independent of the parents to the left and right of him. If he bows his head like a son, it is only as a favor to them, a pretense. His mother has the floor; his father sits silent, his expression suggests disengagement, resolute neutrality. The woman, still young in voice and bearing, speaks as follows: “I'd been hoping that army life would help you to come out of your shell. I saw you turning into the different man that you've always been deep down, the kind of man who knows the right moment for everything, the right moment to take action, the right moment to withdraw, the right moment for the right word,
and who consequently becomes the one who counts, the mainspring, even when he isn't the actual leader. Instead, you're just absent, now more than ever. You mustn't suppose I care if after all these months you haven't a single stripeâI'm just disappointed that you don't make your presence felt, either in the barracks or outside. To your comrades you're a nobody; when you come into a room, nobody sees you; when you leave it, they hear the door closing and that's all; your salutes are ignored; when we asked for you, your name meant nothing to anyone; even when your father described you, and you know how well he does that, the only reaction was a shrug. At a restaurant you're still the one whose order the waitress has forgotten, and when waiting in line you're the one who gets shoved aside. You could be all alone in a room, you could be on a raised platform with a spotlight shining on you, and you'd still be overlooked. You're always absent. At home, where you've spent twenty years of your life and have hardly ever been away, nobody asks for you. Nobody remembers you, neither your teachers nor your classmates; and even your friend of those days doesn't think of me anymore as your mother but only as Frau So-and-So. Even we, your parents, when we see you find it hard to believe that it's really you. You're there and then again you're not. It's your absence that drives us away from you. Because it doesn't come natural to you, you put it on as a defense against us, against others, against the world; it's your weapon. You frighten me with your absence. Sometimes I get the feeling that you're not my child at all, that you were foisted on me. Even when you were little, I caught myself knocking at your door, as if you were a stranger. Who are you actually? Show yourself at
last, let yourself be recognized. Show your other weapons, my child, the weapons that disarm, just as time and time again at the right moment you have disarmed me, or your father, or your opponent, with a glance, a question.”
than a hut, has a marble doorway. The interior is rather like a parlor: curved benches and lacquered tables in which the overhead lamp is reflected. The slender stove in the corner reaches up to the ceiling. In one recess there is a miniature fountain and across from it a tiny palm tree. Instead of the usual oversize views of tourist attractions, the walls are decorated with faded landscape paintings, and the tables are equipped with ashtrays. Here, where in both rows of windows trains are perpetually stopping and starting off again, the group sits down. The parents keep their hats on and their faces remain half shaded; the soldier rolls up his cap and puts it in his trouser pocket. Bareheaded, with his scraggly short hair, his somewhat pimply forehead, and his chubby cheeks, he gives the impression of a schoolboy, but sitting there between the two others he shows no sign of being their son; while they are visibly concerned with him, his attention, his watchfulness, as it were, is directed toward the things around him, the cigar rest in the ashtray, which in his eyes takes on the shape of a mountain pass, and the bent tips of the palm leaves, groping like tentacles. Thus the soldier seems independent of the parents to the left and right of him. If he bows his head like a son, it is only as a favor to them, a pretense. His mother has the floor; his father sits silent, his expression suggests disengagement, resolute neutrality. The woman, still young in voice and bearing, speaks as follows: “I'd been hoping that army life would help you to come out of your shell. I saw you turning into the different man that you've always been deep down, the kind of man who knows the right moment for everything, the right moment to take action, the right moment to withdraw, the right moment for the right word,
and who consequently becomes the one who counts, the mainspring, even when he isn't the actual leader. Instead, you're just absent, now more than ever. You mustn't suppose I care if after all these months you haven't a single stripeâI'm just disappointed that you don't make your presence felt, either in the barracks or outside. To your comrades you're a nobody; when you come into a room, nobody sees you; when you leave it, they hear the door closing and that's all; your salutes are ignored; when we asked for you, your name meant nothing to anyone; even when your father described you, and you know how well he does that, the only reaction was a shrug. At a restaurant you're still the one whose order the waitress has forgotten, and when waiting in line you're the one who gets shoved aside. You could be all alone in a room, you could be on a raised platform with a spotlight shining on you, and you'd still be overlooked. You're always absent. At home, where you've spent twenty years of your life and have hardly ever been away, nobody asks for you. Nobody remembers you, neither your teachers nor your classmates; and even your friend of those days doesn't think of me anymore as your mother but only as Frau So-and-So. Even we, your parents, when we see you find it hard to believe that it's really you. You're there and then again you're not. It's your absence that drives us away from you. Because it doesn't come natural to you, you put it on as a defense against us, against others, against the world; it's your weapon. You frighten me with your absence. Sometimes I get the feeling that you're not my child at all, that you were foisted on me. Even when you were little, I caught myself knocking at your door, as if you were a stranger. Who are you actually? Show yourself at
last, let yourself be recognized. Show your other weapons, my child, the weapons that disarm, just as time and time again at the right moment you have disarmed me, or your father, or your opponent, with a glance, a question.”
During his mother's speech the soldier keeps his eyes on his surroundings, as though ready to leap. If a ball were suddenly to come flying, he would catch it. During some of the woman's sentences he glanced over his shoulder at something. For a moment or two a black man on a distant bench came closer. The weak irregular jet of the fountain grew strong and seemed to be the outstanding event of the station area; the fountain became monumental. The letters on the glass door framed the view and the objects in it; a face in the window of a train, a lighted switch at the edge of the tracks, became as palpable as though seen through a telescope.
Now the waiting room is occupied by other people. The three have gone. The platforms are empty, and so are the many tracks; the rails give off a cold gleam. A last car vanishes around the long curve. After that there are only the high-rise buildings beyond the dead fields, the lighted windows almost as close together as in the old people's home. This is the time of day when most people are back from their Sunday outings, but few want to be in the dark; countless silhouettes are seen standing in the middle of rooms, motionless except for hands moving up and down with cigarettes.
The soldier has put his cap on again. Already far from the station, he is walking along the riverâalone nowâwith giant strides, as though flying. In almost every telephone booth a motionless shadow. An arm that seems to
have been dangling all day from a car window is pulled back. Three teenage girls are waiting in front of a house; a very small child steps out of the door. Knots of foreign workers are standing around, looking more Slavic than ever with their prominent cheekbones. In response to a homicidal look the soldier salutes, and the saluted person suddenly comes to life.
have been dangling all day from a car window is pulled back. Three teenage girls are waiting in front of a house; a very small child steps out of the door. Knots of foreign workers are standing around, looking more Slavic than ever with their prominent cheekbones. In response to a homicidal look the soldier salutes, and the saluted person suddenly comes to life.
On one of the main streetsârows of lighted, yet barred shopwindowsâhe stands at some distance from a few others, mostly soldiers. While the others engage in conversation and a bit of shadowboxing, he takes a cookie out of his jacket pocket and eats it in a leisurely, almost ceremonious way. There is a church nearby; a poster on the wall of the bus shelter announces PILGRIMAGE TO THE HOLY LAND.
In the bus he takes a book from his other pocket and reads. Repeatedly in the course of the trip he looks upâat a pedestrian crossing or at the one good-looking girl on the busâalways for longer than needed to digest what he has been reading. The army camp, way out beyond the expressways, is invisible, recognizable only by the glaring white sentry box in a small birch forest and the barriers on either side of it. The soldier slips through in line with the others.
It's deep night. The lights go out on the airfield. A pedestrian light changes; there are no more pedestrians; the stick figures on the light are crooked. A voice comes out of a dark ground-floor window; it starts with a loud, clear word, but then becomes unintelligible, the voice of a sleeper. In the center of town, on the squares, there is hardly anything but animal sounds to be heard: the screeching of cats, the roaring of a bull in a slaughterhouse far away, the scream
of a peacock in a zoo. The television sets in a shopwindow all display their test patterns. At one of the scenes of Sunday's accidents whitish sand is being strewn over blood, which in one place is still discernible, a circular, clotted, pitch-black spot, as though the victim's heart had drained just there. The light of a streetlamp shines into a café, whose chairs and tables are sharply outlined in the gloom; in one corner a basket full of leftover bread, shrunken, crusts broken, as happens to baked goods only on Sunday evenings; the few men left on the chess board have all tipped over, except the king, who stands proudly erect. A segment of the sky includes the half-moon in the shape of an apothecary's mortar, prepared to receive the pill that is the single star. A uniform rumbling fills the room, as though the city's machines had not been fully turned off and were ready to start up again at any moment.
of a peacock in a zoo. The television sets in a shopwindow all display their test patterns. At one of the scenes of Sunday's accidents whitish sand is being strewn over blood, which in one place is still discernible, a circular, clotted, pitch-black spot, as though the victim's heart had drained just there. The light of a streetlamp shines into a café, whose chairs and tables are sharply outlined in the gloom; in one corner a basket full of leftover bread, shrunken, crusts broken, as happens to baked goods only on Sunday evenings; the few men left on the chess board have all tipped over, except the king, who stands proudly erect. A segment of the sky includes the half-moon in the shape of an apothecary's mortar, prepared to receive the pill that is the single star. A uniform rumbling fills the room, as though the city's machines had not been fully turned off and were ready to start up again at any moment.
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Only in the gambling establishment have time and the outside world ceased to exist. Fluorescent tubes make it as bright as day, the thick curtains offer no gap through which to look out, and besides, it would never occur to the gamblers to raise their eyes from the cards or dice. In contrast to the depopulated world outside, the large room, the sections of which are separated by pillars, is crowded, literally black with people. Nevertheless, apart from a group of young billiards players, all beginners who have come here only to prove their courage, there is no noise. Hardly anyone speaks; there is little to be heard but the shuffling of cards, the shaking of dice, and the hum of the ventilators, one in each wall. Not a single picture; far and wide only the shimmer of green paint, rubbed dull on the baseboards by the movements
of nervous heels. Even the usual plants and lone dog are missing. Cigarette butts fall thick and fast on the tile floor, the players stamp them out without looking. The only decoration in the room is the oval stucco ornament on the high ceiling, the one thing at which one of the players, invariably the loser, to be sure, occasionally takes a quick, furtive look.
of nervous heels. Even the usual plants and lone dog are missing. Cigarette butts fall thick and fast on the tile floor, the players stamp them out without looking. The only decoration in the room is the oval stucco ornament on the high ceiling, the one thing at which one of the players, invariably the loser, to be sure, occasionally takes a quick, furtive look.
There is a main table, recognizable not by its size but by the number of onlookers standing around it. It is not in the center of the room but in a corner. One of the men sitting at it is the big man; he is not among the losers. He is white-haired and smooth-skinned, as though beardless, while most of the others at the table look unshaved. Like them he is wearing a dark suit, a white shirt, and no tie. But over his suit he is wearing an almost floor-length camel's -hair coat, as though he were cold. Another thing that singles him out is that he is not sitting in a chair like the others but on a backless stool at one corner of the table. There he sits upraised, with his legs folded under him, and keeps the bank. While waiting for bets to be madeâsome of the apparent onlookers standing around the table turn out to be playersâhe shakes the dice in a rhythm suggesting an endless drumroll, summoning all present to step up and join in. The emptying of the cup is all the more sudden; a slight flick of the wrist, which sends the dice to the edge of the dice board and bouncing back again. His hands alone seem concerned with what is going on; the one always busy with the dice, the other, after the throw, with jotting down numbers, which his gold pencil seems to inscribe autonomously on a slip of paper. Otherwise, no part of him moves; the cigarette in his mouth, which he never draws on, is
always relit by an assiduous henchman at his side, who also rakes in the banknotes for himâthe dancing of a coin on this table is unthinkableâsmooths them out, and arranges them in piles. And, like most of the gamblers here, he never orders a drink from the manager, who makes his rounds at intervals (but he invariably has a banknote from one of the piles slipped to him). He never says a word. At times he seems even more bleary-eyed and pale than the others; his hands seem to move of their own accord, as though he were asleep under his swollen eyelids. But seen from close up, his pupils are constantly darting this way and that. While shaking the dice, he is equally keeping an eye on the crackling banknotes between the fingers of one of the onlookers and on the game at the next table, where big, pallid, almost hairless fists are clutching very small cards. A blue light shines from below on the face of the solitary player farther back, plying a one-armed bandit. In mid-scream the lone girl in the noisy billiards group feels the gambler's glance, breaks off, and looks around at her companions as though for protection.
always relit by an assiduous henchman at his side, who also rakes in the banknotes for himâthe dancing of a coin on this table is unthinkableâsmooths them out, and arranges them in piles. And, like most of the gamblers here, he never orders a drink from the manager, who makes his rounds at intervals (but he invariably has a banknote from one of the piles slipped to him). He never says a word. At times he seems even more bleary-eyed and pale than the others; his hands seem to move of their own accord, as though he were asleep under his swollen eyelids. But seen from close up, his pupils are constantly darting this way and that. While shaking the dice, he is equally keeping an eye on the crackling banknotes between the fingers of one of the onlookers and on the game at the next table, where big, pallid, almost hairless fists are clutching very small cards. A blue light shines from below on the face of the solitary player farther back, plying a one-armed bandit. In mid-scream the lone girl in the noisy billiards group feels the gambler's glance, breaks off, and looks around at her companions as though for protection.
The dice are rolled again, but then they are left lying on the table. The thrower takes his watch from his vest pocket, signaling the end of the game. Others, too, open their watches. The banker tots up columns of figures, a few banknotes are distributed; he stuffs the lion's share into his coat pocket and reaches behind him for his cap, which is of the same material as his coat. But then, with his cap already on his head, he remains seated and even leans back against the wall. The others, too, remain in their places, like him almost motionless, pursuing a dream. On all sides
of the table, running toward the middle, innumerable fingerprints. Even after standing up, the gambler does not leave at once, but lifts the curtain a little. He looks out into the faint early light and sees a bus loop on the edge of the cityâshimmering pre-dawn wires; milk bottles singly or in pairs on the doorsteps of uniform housing-development dwellings.
of the table, running toward the middle, innumerable fingerprints. Even after standing up, the gambler does not leave at once, but lifts the curtain a little. He looks out into the faint early light and sees a bus loop on the edge of the cityâshimmering pre-dawn wires; milk bottles singly or in pairs on the doorsteps of uniform housing-development dwellings.
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