Kleinzeit by Russell Hoban

maintained a STAFF ONLY for yellow-paper men, and his talk of being locked out was just a way of testing Kleinzeit? Kleinzeit felt a surge of well-being through his whole system. Not alone! Somebody looking after him, giving him a key! Maybe not a STAFF ONLY. Maybe a woman? But then there would have been a note to tell him where the door was. Couldn’t be a woman. A patron of some kind was what it had to be. A patron! Kleinzeit saw in his mind a photograph of himself on the back of a book jacket. Cocktail parties, beautiful eager women, not taking Sister’s place of course, but extra.
    Before going home he tried STAFF ONLY, PRIVATE, HIGH VOLTAGE and NO ADMITTANCE. The key did not unlock any of those doors. He could try other stations of course. There was no hurry, the main thing was the fact of the key itself.
    Kleinzeit got into a train and went home. He considered writing one or two new poems for tomorrow, now felt comfortably under observation, someone keeping an eye on him. Lovely. He read Thucydides, got to page 32, felt that it was doing him good. He could recall almost nothing of whatever ancient history he had learned at school, had never gone to university. He looked forward with keen interest to the consequences of the trouble over Epidamnus, wondered who would win the oncoming war. The representatives of both Corinth and Corcyra sounded wonderfully reasonable in their speeches to the Athenians, but of course one never knew. The book was of a pleasing thickness to hold in the hand, the detail of the vase painting on the cover was marvellous, the vertical white cracks in the glossy black paper of the spine marked his progress, gave him a sense of achievement. And at home his plain deal table, his bare room and his candle were waiting. Greatness touched him like the prickling of fog on the skin. In the plastic Ryman bag the yellow paper softly growled. In his pocket the new key lay with his keys and the key that Sister had given him. Doors, doors!
    Schwarzgang maybe, he thought walking from the Underground to his flat. Maybe Schwarzgang was the eccentric millionaire who laid on STAFF ONLYS for the yellow-paper men, maybe Schwarzgang had himself been a yellow-paper man who, old and broken now, passed on the torch while blipping in his bed, revoked failed Redbeard’s privileges and sent someone to drop the key in Kleinzeit’s glockenspiel lid. Kleinzeit saw in his mind a dedication: To my friend Schwarzgang, who … Dedication of what? Ah!Kleinzeit winked at the golden windows of the evening. Wait and see.
    He made scrambled eggs for supper, smiled as he thought of the yellow paper waiting for him, how he would throw himself upon it like a tiger. Rape. The yellow paper would love it. Redbeard simply hadn’t been man enough. He dawdled over his coffee, took his time clearing up.
    Kleinzeit went into the living-room rubbing his hands and chuckling, lit the candle, stripped the flimsy Ryman bag from the yellow paper. The yellow paper lay before him naked. Yes yes oh yes, it murmured. Never like this before, no one like you before. Yes yes oh yes. Now now now.
    Plenty of time, said Kleinzeit. No hurry. He covered the yellow paper, emptied the ashtray, put Thucydides on the plain deal table and read by candlelight. It’s there, he thought. When I’m ready I’ll take it. No hurry, plenty of time.
    In the book the Corinthian fleet engaged the Corcyraeans at dawn off Sybota. Kleinzeit smelled the salt morning on the Aegean. The rowers’ benches, the oar looms, the rigging would be cold and wet with dew, the white foam hissing past the pointed rams, the striped sails on the dawn-grey sea growing large on the horizon. He lost the reality of it in the printed details, emerged on page 67 to find that both sides claimed the victory and put up a trophy on Sybota. Kleinzeit shook his head, he had expected things to be more clearly defined in the ancient world. I’ll be with you in a minute, he said to the yellow paper, went