Meanwhile, however, the well-read character always finds himself in a particularly unpleasant fix every time he gets into a so-called real-life situation. He is seething with a good dozen prescribed lines, half-raised eyebrows or clenched fists, backs turned and heaving breasts, all of which don’t really fit the provocation, and yet are not altogether out of place. The corners of the mouth are simultaneously drawn upwards and downwards, the forehead both darkly furrowed and brightly illuminated, and the eyes want at the same time to lunge forward reproachfully and draw back ashamedly into their sockets: this is very unpleasant, for one hurts oneself in the process from all angles. The result all too often is that familiar palpitation and heaving which spreads across the lips, eyes, hands, and throat, sometimes consuming the entire body to such an extent that it twists like a screw that has lost its nut.
It was then that my friend discovered how much more convenient it would be to possess a single character, his own, and started searching for it.
But he stumbled into new exploits. I met him again years later when he had entered the legal profession. He wore glasses, was clean-shaven and spoke in a quiet tone of voice. “You’re looking me over?” he remarked. I could not deny it, something impelled me to seek an answer in his appearance. “Do I look like a lawyer?” he asked. I did not wish to disagree. He explained: “Lawyers have a very particular way of glancing over the rim of their glasses, which is different from the way, say, doctors do it. It might also be maintained that all their words and gestures are more pointed or sharp-edged than the rotund and knotty words and gestures of the theologian. The latter differ from the former as a piece of light journalism from a sermon. In brief, just as fish do not fly from tree to tree, so lawyers are submerged in a medium they never leave.”
“Professional character!” I said. My friend was pleased. “It wasn’t so easy,” he added. “When I started out, I wore a Christlike beard; but my boss forbade it, as it did not accord with the character of a lawyer. Thereafter I comported myself like a painter, and when that was denied me, like a sailor on shore leave.” “For God’s sake, what for?” I asked. “Because I naturally wanted to resist adopting a professional character,” he replied. “The unfortunate thing is that you can’t avoid it. There are of course lawyers that look like poets, and likewise poets that look like grocers, and grocers with the heads of thinkers. But they all have something of a glass eye or a false beard about them, or a wound that hasn’t quite healed. I don’t know why, but it’s like that, isn’t it?” He smiled as he was wont to and added resignedly: “As you know, I don’t even possess a personal character. . ”
I reminded him of his many theatrical characters. “That was only youth?” he proceeded with a sigh. “When you become a man you take on, in addition, a sexual, a national, a state, a class, and a geographical character to boot; you have a writing character, a character of the lines in your hand, of the shape of your skull, and if possible, a character that derives from the constellation of the stars at the moment of your birth. All that is too much for me. I never know which of my characters to follow.” Once again, his quiet smile appeared: “Happily I have a fiancée who claims I do not possess the slightest trace of a character, because I have not yet kept my promise to marry her. I’ll marry her for that very reason, since I can’t do without her healthy judgment.” “Who is your fiancée?”
“From the point of view of which character? But you know,” he interrupted himself, “she still always knows what she wants! She used to be a charmingly helpless little girl — I have known her for a long time already — but she learned a lot from me. When I lie, she finds it awful; when I don’t leave on time for the office in the morning, she claims I’ll never be able to support a family; when I can’t resolve to keep a promise I previously made, she knows that only a scoundrel could do such a thing.”
My friend smiled again. He was an amiable fellow in those days, and everyone looked affectionately down on him. No one ever thought for a moment that he would amount to anything. His external appearance alone already gave him away, for as soon as he started talking, every part of his body twisted into a different position; his eyes shifted to the side; shoulder, arm, and hand turned in opposite directions; and at least one leg swayed in the hollow underside of his knee like a postage scale. As I said, he was an amiable fellow back then, modest, shy, respectful; and sometimes he was also the opposite of all that, but one remained well-disposed toward him, out of curiosity alone.
When I met him again, he had a car, that woman as a wife who was now his shadow, and a respected, influential position. How he started this, I don’t know; but I suspect that the secret of it all was that he grew fat. His daunted, lissome face was gone. To be more precise, it was still there, but it lay buried under a thick upholstery of flesh. His eyes, which in the old days, when he had done some mischief, could be as touching as those of a sad little monkey, had in fact not lost their internal lustre; but they had a hard time shifting sideways beneath the bulk of his heavily upholstered cheeks, and so stared forwards with a haughty, pained expression. Internally, his movements continued to twist in every which way, but on the outside, at his elbows, knees and joints, padded pillows of fat held them back, and what came out gave an impression of brusqueness and decisiveness. So he had also become the man to suit the image. His flickering soul had taken on solid walls and convictions. Sometimes a spark of his old self still sallied forth; yet it no longer emanated any brightness in the man, but was rather a shot that he gave off to impress or to achieve a specific goal. The fact is that he had forfeited much of what he was before. Above all, the things he said, it was six of one or half a dozen of the other, even if they were a half-dozen sound, reliable goods. He recalled the past as one does a youthful indiscretion.
Once I succeeded in directing his attention back to our old topic of conversation, character. “I am convinced that the development of character has something to do with the way we wage war,” he expounded in short-breathed, insistent syllables, “and that nowadays, for that very reason, it can only be found among savages. For those who fight with knives and spears require character to come out on top. But what kind of character, however resolute, can stand up to tanks, flame throwers and poison gas!? What we therefore need today is discipline, not character!”
I had not contradicted him. But the strange thing was — and that’s why I permit myself to record this memory — all the while he spoke and I watched him, I retained the impression that the old person was still inside him. He stood inside himself, confined within the larger fleshy revision of the old self. His gaze was stuck inside the gaze of that other, his speech inside his speech. It was almost uncanny. I have since run into him again on several other occasions, and each time had the same impression. It was clear to me, if I may say so, that he would have liked to be himself again; but something held him back.