Epitaph for a Working ManO

punctually after work.
    June, July, August, September: relapses into teenage behaviour in the car? In Fritschi’s Ford Sierra? It didn’t necessarily have to be an Alfa Romeo with five doors and a reclining seat.
    I never managed to stop myself imagining things. I didn’t actually do any imagining, the pictures just came.
    At times it was pathetic. But what could I do? Take my infantry rifle out of the cupboard, go out on the balcony, and shoot at the gulls and pigeons over the Aare? It would have been as spectacular as it was pointless. And anyway, all that doesn’t belong here, not the hotel room or the reclining seat, not the striptease or the comic strips. A discreet person. She didn’t tell me anything. But I had plenty of time for daydreams. Black and white; incubus, succubus.
    On my moped rides to Breitmoos, especially, things passed through my mind, grey on grey. In the long run I didn’t stand a chance. I was not of the same calibre as Mr Fritschi. Sophie wouldn’t have embarked on an affair without good reason. What would have happened if Fritschi hadn’t had a wife, a woman from the Valais, an unwavering Catholic? Some time after the summer holidays she’d noticed. Or was it precisely the Valaisan woman who made the affair attractive for Sophie? The competition? A rival? Sophie had always been a tad crazy in her easygoing way.
    Should she have given me a full report? At least she’d never tried to pull the wool over my eyes. And as for the details, run-of-the-mill or spicy, she really couldn’t know what kind of things would interest a husband. And then I’d have had to admit that I was interested. And admitting that was quite another matter.
    I only asked once, after she’d come back from her holiday: how had Fritschi managed to keep his wife from knowing. He’d thought something up, she said. He’d compiled a scenario with cover addresses in Livorno and Portoferraio, with detours, with regular telephone calls to the Upper Valais where his wife and children were spending the holidays at her parents’ place. I didn’t quite understand all the complicated cautionary measures. But they must have worked. At least as long as the holidays lasted.
    What if Fritschi had been single, or divorced? Sophie would certainly have left me. She wasn’t afflicted with passivity like me. See the situation as it was, as it is. It was only thanks to Fritschi’s being married that she stayed on. Otherwise, obviously, she’d simply have gone.
    Incurably irritable, irascible, and irremediable. What else? We’ve already had inoperable. Marooned, written off. – Don’t exaggerate. If we’d had a baby I’d be changing nappies. And as a house husband you don’t go off the rails either.
    Apparently Mrs Fritschi had resigned herself to it. She had made only one condition: nothing was to happen in her own flat. Even when she was away on holiday with the children.
    If deceived husbands and wives are in the know, there’s no need for alibis. Did I want to be in the know?
    *
    We still slept with each other occasionally. But if I had reason to think she’d recently had a tête-à-tête with her Fritschi I avoided bodily contact. I didn’t mind her smooching with strangers. But the very idea of coming into contact with Fritschi’s slime revolted me. An idiotic reaction, I know. Considering we’re all quintessentially zoological creatures.
    Had I been warned? No, not really. We don’t have the same temperament, I should have known that.
    *
    Finally I did take my rifle out of the cupboard. On official orders and not in the least because I wanted to. Military service, a two-week refresher course. In this country you never get away from the military. All the more annoying this time, since I was out of a job and would not qualify for compensatory payment. Only soldiers’ pay, and that would be meagre.
    Anyhow, I had