The Method by Juli Zeh

stares ahead, deep in thought. The ideal inamorata looks at his profile and seems to be thinking as well. Leu-kae-mi-a. The climate of the room has been transformed by the rare conjunction of syllables. But Kramer, clever Kramer, is oblivious to the change. He has collected his hat and stick and is busy pursuing new goals.
    ‘You spoke with the eloquence of a poet. You don’t mind if I quote you?’ he says, his fingers already on the handle.
    With that, he is gone.

Ambivalence
     
    MIA’S ATTITUDE TOWARDS Kramer is
ambivalent
, to use a word beloved of the undecided. She cannot even say that she dislikes him. In fact, earlier that day, when he bent over her attentively to hand her a cup of freshly brewed water, a ritual that assumed an almost absurd perfection in his hands, it seemed to her briefly that she could love him. Not because of his manners – good manners being an agreeable way of disguising whatever one happens to be thinking at the time. And not because of his looks, which like all things of beauty were eroded by familiarity, so that after meeting him for the first time, Mia was unable to find him attractive or unattractive but simply and undeniably
there
. No, Mia was impressed by the way in which he could serve a cup of water as if it were a sacred act. The attention he lavished on a seemingly unimportant action spoke of a wholehearted and unconditional engagement with the world which Mia, if she is honest, admires. Kramer puts himself wholly and unconditionally into everything he does – walking, talking, standing, dressing. He thinks and speaks with a ruthlessness that makes no attempt to find dialectical excuses for the eternal uncertainty of humankind. Anyone who claims that truth is dependent on usefulness, anyone who openly admits that knowing and believing are essentially the same for limited beings such as humans, is clearly a nihilist in a class of his own.
    Mia replicates his perambulation of her apartment and tries to see her belongings, books and papers through the eyes of a reporter. She too is a nihilist, but in her case, the absence of objective truth leads not, as with Kramer, to an outlook of unconditionality, but to an agonising feeling that nothing is fixed. Mia can find reasons for everything as well as its opposite. She can justify or criticise any given concept or thought; she can argue for and against both sides; in fact, Mia could play chess with or without an opponent and never run out of moves. For a long time now she has believed that a person’s character consists mainly of rhetoric, but, unlike Kramer, she has never been tempted to apply her conclusions in any particular way. Deep down she suspects that she and Kramer are cut from the same cloth: that she reached a certain point and stopped, whereas Kramer simply carried on. As if he thought there was a goal, as if he thought there was something worth wanting. The crucial question as to what Kramer wants, as to
what anyone might want
, seems to Mia to find its mystical answer in the perfect way of serving a cup of hot water. For the duration of a few seconds, she was enormously attracted to Kramer.
    Either side of those few seconds, which is how we get to the ambivalence, Mia felt a mild revulsion. It would be possible to rewrite, or in Mia’s case, mentally reshuffle, the information above. The same starting point could be used to construct a different set of arguments; the black chess pieces could be swapped for the white. Then Kramer, the icon of unconditionality, would be an empty striving with a void at its heart. A snoop. A pathetic creature.
    While Mia continues to pace around the room, the ideal inamorata raises herself on her elbows and remonstrates with her. ‘
An answer contained in the perfect way of serving hot water? Attracted to your brother’s killer?
Do you call yourself a woman?’
    ‘Rousseau,’ says Mia from the bookcase. ‘With a dedication from Moritz at the front. Dostoevsky, Orwell, Musil. Kramer.