Another bad time, or it wasn’t exactly bad, but it wasn’t easy either, was when I had to leave, the time was coming, and I was beginning to tremble and feel empty, nothing in the middle of me, nothing inside, and nothing to hold me up on my legs, and then it came, everything was ready, and I had to go, and so it was just a kiss, a quick one, as though we were afraid of what might happen after a kiss, and she was almost wild then, she reached up to a hook by the door and took an old shirt, a green and blue shirt from the hook, and put it in my arms, for me to take away, the soft cloth was full of her smell, and then we stood there close together looking at a piece of paper she had in her hand and I didn’t lose any of it, I was holding it tight, that last minute or two, because this was it, we’d come to the end of it, things always change, so this was really it, over.
Maybe it works out all right, maybe you haven’t lost for doing it, I don’t know, no, really, sometimes when you think of it you feel like a prince really, you feel just like a king, and then other times you’re afraid, you’re afraid, not all the time but now and then, of what it’s going to do to you, and it’s hard to know what to do with it now.
Walking away I looked back once and the door was still open, I could see her standing far back in the dark of the room, I could only really see her white face still looking out at me, and her white arms.
I guess you get to a point where you look at that pain as if it were there in front of you three feet away lying in a box, an open box, in a window somewhere. It’s hard and cold, like a bar of metal. You just look at it there and say, All right, I’ll take it, I’ll buy it. That’s what it is. Because you know all about it before you even go into this thing. You know the pain is part of the whole thing. And it isn’t that you can say afterwards the pleasure was greater than the pain and that’s why you would do it again. That has nothing to do with it. You can’t measure it, because the pain comes after and it lasts longer. So the question really is, Why doesn’t that pain make you say, I won’t do it again? When the pain is so bad that you have to say that, but you don’t.
So I’m just thinking about it, how you can go in with $600, more like $1,000, and how you can come out with an old shirt.
Mr. Burdoff’s Visit to Germany
Mr. Burdoff is lodged in Cologne for the year with a petty clerk and family in order to learn German. The undertaking is ill conceived and ill fated, for he will waste much of his time in introspection and will learn very little German.
He writes to an old school friend in America with great enthusiasm about Germany, Cologne, the house he is staying in, and his lofty room with its excellent view out over a construction site to the mountains beyond. But although his situation seems novel to him, it has actually been repeated many times before without spectacular results. To his old school friend, it sounds all too familiar: the house cluttered with knickknacks, the nosy landlady, the clumsy daughters, and the loneliness of his bedroom. The well-meaning language teacher, the tired students, and the strange city streets.
Mr. Burdoff is no sooner established in what he considers a productive routine than he falls into a state of lassitude. He cannot concentrate. He is too nervous to put down his cigarettes, and yet smoking gives him a headache. He cannot read the words of his grammar book and he hardly feels rewarded even when by a tremendous effort he manages to understand one construction.
Mr. Burdoff finds himself thinking about lunch long before it is time to go down to the dining room. He sits by his window smoking. He can already smell the soup. The table in the dining room will be covered by a lace tablecloth but not yet set for lunch.
Mr. Burdoff is gazing out at the construction site in back of the boardinghouse. In a cradle of raw earth three cranes bow and straighten and rotate from side to side. Clusters of tiny workmen far below stand still with their hands in their pockets.
The soup will be thin and clear, with liver dumplings floating in it, spots of oil on the surface, and specks of parsley under the coil of rising steam. More often than not, the soup will be followed by a thin veal cutlet and the cutlet by a slice of pastry. Now the pastry is baking and Mr. Burdoff can smell it. The sounds he has been hearing, the many different heavy engines of the cranes and bulldozers grinding down below, are muffled by the sound of the vacuum cleaner beyond his door in the hallway. Then the vacuum cleaner moves to another part of the house. At noon the machines down below fall quiet, and a moment later through the sudden silence Mr. Burdoff hears the voice of his landlady, the squeaking of floorboards in the lower hall, and then the festive rattle of cutlery. These are the sounds he has been listening for, and he leaves his room to go down to lunch.
His language teacher is pleasant and funny, and everyone in the class has a good time. Mr. Burdoff is relieved to see that although his comprehension is poor, he is not the slowest in the class. There are many unison drills out loud, and he joins in with gusto. He takes pleasure in the little stories the class studies so painfully: for example, Karl and Helga go on a sightseeing trip that ends with a mild surprise, and the students appreciate this with waves of laughter.
Mr. Burdoff sits beside a small Hawaiian woman and watches her very red lips as she describes with agony her travels in France. The hesitation of the members of the class as they attempt to speak is charming; a fresh innocence endows them as they expose their weakness.