Still hands but once out of sight they snap off. . fall away. . once out of sight they can no longer be felt either. .how heavy I am. . heavy nothingness.
Back into life?. . but where has it gone?… is there such a thing?… or was everything simply a fantasy in the head?. . phantoms of the mind?
At least pinching still causes a slight pain… an event. . using the choke but where has the engine gone. . nothing but metaphors, boy. . nothing but metaphors.
The head rolls about on the neck all by itself without any guidance. . must try to shrink… at any rate this boy here must not eat any more.
Shuffle those feet down there. . rub with those hands higher up. . help to crush this little person in between. . into his disappearance. . that is what they do to all these people here. .
Don't care for anything at all, don't care. . grasping. . holding. . letting go is now done independently by this hand like a machine which he watches.
Extinguished male head. . dribble running into the collar of his overalls. . pink lips opening and closing as those of a fish. . drums absently with his fingers on his flies. . am I like that, too?
The garden wall is good. . imitate a wall, most of the people here do that and who can blame them?. . some of them have quite a talent for it.
Sounds do not remain constant or does the head lower its hearing at times?
A madhouse?. . think: not mad means nothing. . one can't check for oneself whether one is mad or not.
Far in the distance there is gunfire. . shots. . fine business that is, there's even a war on now. . will it never end?. . occupied from within. . my liberators have occupied me, that's what it is. . more and more censorship. . hardly anything still gets through.
Sick. . sick as anything. . but can't tell whether the sickness is inside or outside this skin… on the borderline there is not a breath of air. . he has become a thin, transparent point in space.
Tea in metal mugs. . warms the hands. . lukewarm never becomes hot. . but hot does become lukewarm. . can this be called progress while in fact it is regression… to a state in which everything ends up having the same temperature. . tea can never of its own accord become colder than its surroundings. . that is so. . the static condition of tea for which stirring is of no further avail… let go that mug because those hands down there. . those stiff fingers. . serve no purpose any longer… on the contrary. . they freeze everything they touch.
MR BRACKEEN! HOW DELIGHTFUL TO SEE YOU!
Poor thing. . pitiful really.
This is the best corner… at last. . little human traffic. . occasionally someone accidentally strays this way and is immediately barked at. . that one over there is a metronome. . left. . right… at every turn he clicks his tongue. . rhythmically swings back and forth in his chair like the pendulum of a clock… of course, you could start laughing at it but it is too understandable for that (vertical wants to become horizontal. . but all you do here is sink, boy).
Still louder music. . two starting to dance with each other. . bending and in stockinged feet they dance around each other. . very carefully they hold hands… in a moment their fingers will break off.
A woman slumps to the ground against a wall. . slowly like treacle along the wall. . she claps and she cries. . tears streaming while she laughs. . loudly and a stream of tears down her cheeks and she claps her hands harder and harder and then
SUDDENLY
as if at a signal
SHE TURNS TO STONE
with a purple face that slowly becomes ashen grey. . they can carry that one away he thinks and this is exactly what happens.
Walking dozily. . shuffling… his shoes are gone. . that is why he no longer has any feeling in his feet. . breathing is in the head now. . has struck inside… a rustling rising and falling.
Can it be they have found him somewhere… a strange country and his passport lost or his memory or both… no papers. . that they are sorting it out. . who he is and what his name is and where he comes from. . only: it no longer interests me so obviously they stop their investigations and will leave me here until the end, anonymous for all time.
Eyes fill with prickly water. . silting up?. . cheeks are already caked with salt.
Everybody has been brought here in order to be emptied by means of medicine. . the lost-property department is already so overfull that everything that lands on the floor is at once deposited in garbage cans. . this does not apply to this person here who handed in all his remaining possessions at the entrance.
From the corner of the eye: a person pulling out his last tuft of hair because even that is too much for him. . poke about a bit. . rummage in these pockets so as not to have to see too much.
Light flickers down at me from tubes up above. . light that wants to penetrate every hollow. . close tightly. . keep shut. . lock up… he pulls the door shut behind him for good and at the same time long white trailing curtains close off the view of the wall. . the spindly tree in the snow.
Sit motionless and yet the feeling of forming part of a larger movement. . not perceptible… a mussel under the keel of a sailing ship.
All around you the last remnants of humanity are being played out… a grin on a stubbly old man's mug returns every other second. . don't look at this human clockface any longer. . better stroll about for a bit but they have weighted down his legs. . for your own good. . we no longer weigh anything here.
A woman grinding coffee at a table with a begonia on it. . she does not have the use of a coffee grinder but her movements are so lifelike that you can smell the coffee. . people only imitate here. . they cling to their last remembered remnants. . but why so many sit waving to each other (to each other?) is a mystery to me. . don't join in this game of false identities. . one must have sunk or strayed very far if one raises every random stranger to friend just so as not to be so alone here,
YOU'RE THE NEW ONE?
in so far as you can still speak of new here. . oh, are we going to the canteen. . didn't know there was one here.
Large colour photographs hang in wooden frames… a beach with wild breakers. . palm trees with a row of canoes underneath. . New York at night. . made to sit down at one of the Formica tables. . they have a lot of canteen staff here. . the coffee turns up without delay.
Everyone is given pills in round plastic cups. . the coffee lady peers at a list for a long time.
I'M THE NEW ONE
you shouldn't have said that… a woman with a horribly scraggy neck and a child's bolero made of remnants of wool wants to know your name now… he shakes his head but the hag insists with her high shrill voice… a bald gentleman in a crookedly buttoned cardigan tries to be helpful with pen and paper but he does not concede his identity and as he stubbornly goes on stirring his coffee he thinks: better forget that too. . then your alibi will be altogether watertight.
Singing here and there. . worn voices trying to follow a piano on a stage playing much too fast… he is clearly the only one to register that no one is playing on it. . the price one pays these days for a bit of social life!. . the utterly moronic community singing to which the fat canteen boss sweating in his white shirt on the stage tries in a loud voice to incite the dozy company before him.