I'm Not Stiller by Max Frisch

future; but she didn't hear me. Even when she was silent she didn't hear me, she was only adopting the pose of an attentive listener. Her mind was in Davos, you could see that, and while I was speaking she even began to cry, I also found it sad that two people could sit face to face and yet fail to perceive one another. 'Julika?' I called her by name, and at last she turned her lovely face to me. But instead of seeing me, she saw Stiller. I took hold of her slender hand to wake her up. She made an effort to listen to me. She smiled whenever I protested my love, and possibly she was listening to me, but without hearing what I was trying to say. She only heard what Stiller, if he had been sitting in my chair, would probably have said. It was painful to feel this. Really it was no use going on talking. I looked at her hand lying close beside me, after I had involuntarily released it, and could not help thinking of the terrible dream with the scars. Julika told me to go on. What was the use? I, too, suddenly felt absolutely hopeless. Every conversation between this woman and myself, it seemed, was finished before it began, and any action it might occur to me to take was interpreted in advance, alienated from my present being, because it would in any case appear as an appropriate or inappropriate, an expected or unexpected action on the part of the missing Stiller, never as my action. Never as my action ... When I beckoned to the waiter, she immediately said with tender solicitude:
    'You shouldn't drink so much.'
    At these words, to be frank, I winced and had to control myself. What was this lady thinking of? First, I had no intention of ordering another drink. And what if I had? She seemed to think she could treat me in the same way as her vanished Stiller, and for a moment I felt like drinking another whisky out of pure spite. I didn't do so. For spite is the opposite of real independence. I smiled. I felt sorry for her. I realized that her whole behaviour did not relate to me, but to a phantom, and once confused with her phantom (for the man she was looking for probably never existed) one was simply defenceless; she could not perceive me. What a pity! I thought.
    'Don't take it amiss,' she said, 'but you really shouldn't drink so much. I'm saying it for your own good.'
    Unfortunately the waiter was a long time coming.
    'I didn't intend to order anything,' I said with rather tired rebelliousness—and Julika laughed, so that I added almost with irritation, 'you're wrong, my love, I really didn't mean to order anything, I meant to pay—but unfortunately I have no money.'
    In the meantime, however, as though she never expected anything else, Julika had already slipped her red morocco-leather purse under my elbow, so that I could pay (as she must often have done with Stiller). What could I do? I paid. Then I gave her back the red morocco purse, pulled myself together and said:
    'Let's go.'
    On the stroke of six I was back in prison.
    ***
    P.S. That's the trouble: I have no words for reality. I've been lying on my bed without sleeping, hearing the clock strike one hour after another, trying to decide what to do. Shall I give in? I've only to tell a lie, a single word, a so-called admission, and I shall be 'free'; in my case, that means condemned to play a part that has nothing to do with me. On the other hand, how can anyone prove who they really are? I can't. Do I know myself who I am? That is the terrifying discovery I have made while under arrest: I have no words for my reality.
    ***
    The little Jew, with whom I had allied myself for purposes of back-soaping, was not at the showers today. When I remarked that I didn't grudge him his freedom, they merely raised their eyebrows. He was an intelligent man, and the rumour that he has committed suicide keeps occupying my mind. Of course, we are a group often, and if we hadn't soaped one another's backs I should probably never have noticed he had gone. It's not that I miss him,