red and green circles and the rails, galvanoplastically fused with the lights, ran off in blue or red arcs into the darkness. Then there was silence; the chain stopping clanking against the pulleys and the noise of metal against stone ended.
He sat submerged in a half sleep.
"What am I doing here? Why do I stay here? Is it true I want to kill him? Or is it really that I want to get up the will to feel like wanting to kill him? Is that the necessary thing? By now, she's romping in bed with him. But what's that to me? Before, when I knew she was home alone, and I was out having a cup of coffee, I felt bad about her. I felt bad knowing she was unhappy with me. They must have dropped off to sleep, her head on his chest. Oh, God! This is what they call life? To be lost, lost for all time! But can I really be who I am? Or am I somebody else? Weird! Lost in weirdness! That's my situation. And his, too! From a distance I see him for what he is, a rat, a loser. He almost broke my nose. But can you believe it! So now it turns out he was the one who was cuckolded and messed up, not me! Me! ... Really, life is slapstick! Only, still, there's something serious about it. Why does it revolt me to even be near him?"
Shadows intermingled in front of the yellow glass panes of the telegraph office.
"To kill him or not to kill him? What's that to me? Does killing him matter to me? So to me it's all the same if he lives or not. Still, I want to work up the will to kill him. If a god appeared to me right now and asked: Do you want the power to destroy mankind? Would I destroy it? No, I would not destroy it. Because being able to do it would make it something totally uninteresting. Besides, what would I do alone on earth? Watch dynamos rust away in workshops and horseback riders' skeletons fall apart in the heat? It's true he slapped me around, but, what's it to me? What a crew! What a zoo! The Captain, Elsa, Barsut, the Astrologer, the Pig-Headed Man, the Ruffian, Ergueta. What a crew! Where did they ever get so many monsters? And me, out of whack, I'm not who I am, and yet I need to do something to be aware of my own existence, to affirm it. Just that, to affirm it. Because I'm like a dead man, I don't exist for the Captain or for Elsa, or Barsut. If they want, they can put me in jail, Barsut can beat me up again, Elsa can run off with another guy and me standing right there, the Captain can run off with her all over again. I'm antilife for all of them. I'm like nonbeing. A man is not like action, and so he doesn't exist. Or does he exist despite not being? He is and he is not. Take those men over there. They must have wives, children, homes. Maybe they're poor wretches. But if somebody tried to come into their homes, get one penny away from them or steal their wives, they'd be tigers. And so, why haven't I put up a fight? Who can answer me that? I myself don't know. I know I exist like that, like antiexisting. And when I tell myself all this, I'm not sad, only my soul falls silent and my head goes empty. Then, after that silence and emptiness, curiosity about the murder plot creeps up out of my heart. Just that. I'm not crazy, since I know how to think, to reason. But this curiosity about the murder comes creeping up from my heart, a curiosity that brings me utter sorrow, the sorrow of curiosity. Or, the demon of curiosity. To find out what I am by committing a crime. That, just precisely. To see what happens in my conscience, my feelings as I commit a crime.
"Yet, these words can't make me feel the crime any more than a telegram about a disaster in China can make me feel the disaster. It's like I wasn't the one planning the crime, somebody else was doing it. Somebody else like me, a man, only with nothing to him, a shadow of a man, an image on a screen. He has a shape, he moves around, he seems to exist, to suffer, but still, he's only a shadow. He has no life. God only knows if this makes any sense. Okay: what all would the shadow-man do?
He sat submerged in a half sleep.
"What am I doing here? Why do I stay here? Is it true I want to kill him? Or is it really that I want to get up the will to feel like wanting to kill him? Is that the necessary thing? By now, she's romping in bed with him. But what's that to me? Before, when I knew she was home alone, and I was out having a cup of coffee, I felt bad about her. I felt bad knowing she was unhappy with me. They must have dropped off to sleep, her head on his chest. Oh, God! This is what they call life? To be lost, lost for all time! But can I really be who I am? Or am I somebody else? Weird! Lost in weirdness! That's my situation. And his, too! From a distance I see him for what he is, a rat, a loser. He almost broke my nose. But can you believe it! So now it turns out he was the one who was cuckolded and messed up, not me! Me! ... Really, life is slapstick! Only, still, there's something serious about it. Why does it revolt me to even be near him?"
Shadows intermingled in front of the yellow glass panes of the telegraph office.
"To kill him or not to kill him? What's that to me? Does killing him matter to me? So to me it's all the same if he lives or not. Still, I want to work up the will to kill him. If a god appeared to me right now and asked: Do you want the power to destroy mankind? Would I destroy it? No, I would not destroy it. Because being able to do it would make it something totally uninteresting. Besides, what would I do alone on earth? Watch dynamos rust away in workshops and horseback riders' skeletons fall apart in the heat? It's true he slapped me around, but, what's it to me? What a crew! What a zoo! The Captain, Elsa, Barsut, the Astrologer, the Pig-Headed Man, the Ruffian, Ergueta. What a crew! Where did they ever get so many monsters? And me, out of whack, I'm not who I am, and yet I need to do something to be aware of my own existence, to affirm it. Just that, to affirm it. Because I'm like a dead man, I don't exist for the Captain or for Elsa, or Barsut. If they want, they can put me in jail, Barsut can beat me up again, Elsa can run off with another guy and me standing right there, the Captain can run off with her all over again. I'm antilife for all of them. I'm like nonbeing. A man is not like action, and so he doesn't exist. Or does he exist despite not being? He is and he is not. Take those men over there. They must have wives, children, homes. Maybe they're poor wretches. But if somebody tried to come into their homes, get one penny away from them or steal their wives, they'd be tigers. And so, why haven't I put up a fight? Who can answer me that? I myself don't know. I know I exist like that, like antiexisting. And when I tell myself all this, I'm not sad, only my soul falls silent and my head goes empty. Then, after that silence and emptiness, curiosity about the murder plot creeps up out of my heart. Just that. I'm not crazy, since I know how to think, to reason. But this curiosity about the murder comes creeping up from my heart, a curiosity that brings me utter sorrow, the sorrow of curiosity. Or, the demon of curiosity. To find out what I am by committing a crime. That, just precisely. To see what happens in my conscience, my feelings as I commit a crime.
"Yet, these words can't make me feel the crime any more than a telegram about a disaster in China can make me feel the disaster. It's like I wasn't the one planning the crime, somebody else was doing it. Somebody else like me, a man, only with nothing to him, a shadow of a man, an image on a screen. He has a shape, he moves around, he seems to exist, to suffer, but still, he's only a shadow. He has no life. God only knows if this makes any sense. Okay: what all would the shadow-man do?
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