“Besides, I’ve only come for a couple of minutes. I know, I know. You’re very kind to me, but you are to everyone. ‘Don’t take seriously the polite request to stay.’ I’ll stay for seven or eight minutes at the most. Did I say seven or eight? I’ll stay for seven only. Exactly seven minutes. Where’s your pocket watch?”
“Why?”
“Please get it out. I’ll get mine out as well. There now. Thank you. Goodness knows, I always feel more relaxed if I can see the time. So — when the minute hand gets to — look, here — I’ll be gone and that particular stone will fall from your heart and you’ll be able to sigh ‘at last he’s gone,’ and do whatever you feel like. Promise, however, that you’ll remind me. As soon as the moment of release comes — let’s call it that — you’ll stand up and say to me word for word ‘Dani, I’ve been glad to have the pleasure of your company, but even more so to be rid of it, off you go and God bless.’ Yes. Throw me out so fast that my feet don’t touch the ground. Or don’t even say that, just look at me. It’ll be enough for you to look at me, not crossly, but as you do at other times, the way you’re looking at me now. I assure you, there won’t be any need of that either, because in seven minutes’ time — beg your pardon, six minutes’ time — I shall have vanished, and only the painful memory of my presence will linger in the air of this room.”
“Listen here, you lunatic,” said Esti to him gently, in the confident tone of established friendship, “I don’t want you to go away, I want you to stay. But if you absolutely insist on these seven minutes — or these six minutes — that too I’ll accept conditionally. I’ll only ask one thing of you. While you’re in my apartment, don’t have misgivings, don’t fidget, don’t make excuses, but feel at home. So tell me quickly
what you want. Then we’ll talk. What? You can rest assured. Yes, yes. I’ll do as you wish. As soon as I’m tired of you I won’t beat about the bush, I won’t even look at you one way or another, but I’ll get up, grab you by the collar, and throw you out — even kick you downstairs if you tell me to. I hope that makes you feel better?”
Dani accepted this unselfish promise of amicable generosity with obvious pleasure. He seemed to gather strength from it, and he gulped his espresso. But how long did the effect of Esti’s calming solution last? Scarcely a minute or two. After that he began again, and had to be disarmed again. In growing waves of self-accusation and soulsearching he continued to explain why it was not his custom to steal other people’s valuable time, he pondered and dithered, returning again and again to his former excuses and objections, then to Esti’s arguments and remonstrations too, but as he wished to quote everything verbatim and couldn’t remember the words he became confused, stared in front of him, and wiped his perspiring forehead.
Esti listened to these expositions, these allusions, these digressions, these references, these hints, these circumlocutions, these angles and aspects. By this time he too was pale and weary. Now and then he stared in exhaustion at the ceiling and at his pocket watch as it ticked away in front of him. Nine o’clock passed, as did half past nine. Then slowly, with a certain solemnity, he rose and began to speak, at first quietly, then more loudly, as follows:
“Look, my dear fellow. You told me to let you know when six minutes were up. I’m telling you that those six minutes were up a long time ago. It is now, by Central European time, nine forty-two, almost a quarter to ten, so you can see that you’ve been squatting here for two and three-quarter hours, but you still haven’t been able to utter a single proper sentence, and you haven’t been able to bring yourself to tell me what on earth I have to thank for this honor. Dani, consider, I too am a man, I too have nerves. Are you holding me up? Infinitely. Am I tired of you? Inexpressibly. There’s no word for how damn tired of you I am. Just now you were so kind as to advise me how, at the right moment, I should show you the door, and, scrupulous as you are, you presented me with a script for the purpose. That script, which I have in the meantime been considering carefully, would have more or less expressed my feelings, but only an hour after you arrived, at about eight. I’ll confess that at about half past eight I was already thinking of adding a dose of cyanide to your coffee and poisoning you. Then toward nine I decided instead that while you were talking there I’d get out my revolver, fire a shot or two into you, and kill you. As you can see, the situation hasn’t changed at all. Your script now strikes me as pale and feeble. I can’t use it, and I return it to you — do whatever you like with it. At this moment I could do with a spicier, more elaborate script, an eloquent cascade of reproaches and insults compared to which the tirades of Shakespeare’s heroes would be lemonade. But I gave up the idea of exterminating you with poison, bullet, or words because I consider you such a pitiful worm that you aren’t even worth it. Instead, I’m telling you like this, quietly and in friendly fashion, to get out of here. Get out, this very minute. Did you get that? Get lost. I’m not joking, I swear, take your hide out of here, because I can’t stand the sight of you, and don’t have the ef rontery ever to come back, I’m fed up with you, sick and tired, you rotten egg, you dead loss …”
Esti was by this time howling so that he choked, his lips writhed, and he gesticulated. One of his gestures swept the water jug off the table, smashing it to fragments, and the black liquid that it contained soaked into a white silk Persian rug.
Dani burst out laughing. He laughed heartily and happily. Only now did he realize that he had been gladly allowed to remain and that he had been a burden to no one. He settled down comfortably, lit a cigarette and his tongue was loosened.
He explained his business.
His request was simple, indeed, extremely simple.
He was asking a favor, a huge favor, which obviously was only huge to him, but perhaps not all that huge to the person who would do it, though perhaps it was huge, or significant, though it could also be that it was nothing at all, but even so he pointed out in advance that his friend might refuse it, no need to say why, just look at him, or not look at him, just say nothing, he’d understand and wouldn’t take it amiss, the friendship between them would continue just as smoothly as before, as if nothing had happened: to put it in a nutshell, the point was that he would be interested in seeing the latest number of the neoactivist-simultanist-expressionist-avantgardist literary periodical Moments and Monuments, and would like to borrow it for twenty-four hours on condition that on the expiration of those twenty-four hours he himself brought it back entire and undamaged — naturally, however, if Esti himself hadn’t read it yet or had read it and would like to read a few things in it again, or not actually to read properly but just to skim through, merely dip into it here and there, or keep it by him on the off chance, or give it to somebody else — or if he had the least shadow of suspicion that he wasn’t to be completely trusted and would lose the copy or tear it, sell it to a bookseller or goodness knows what, do or not do with it all sorts of things which it was impossible really to detail or list fully there and then — then he should not undertake this favor however much he might press him, and then he would abandon the whole idea from the start, his request would be null and void, and it should be considered that he had not said a single word.
That sentence, which was in fact much more exhaustive and exhausting than that, he finished at two minutes past eleven.
Esti thereupon went to the wastepaper basket and took from it the latest, still uncut, number of Moments and Monuments. Dani thanked him for it, clarified a few secondary obscure points, and made to leave. Esti escorted him to the stairs. That did not pass off quickly either. When Esti had closed, locked, and bolted the gate behind him and returned to his room, his watch said that it was seventeen minutes past twelve.