After summer had plunged into night, I fell asleep after all, suddenly, as though sucked down a vortex. But before deep sleep came, I was visited by thoughts, startled awake again and again; in a grinding motion they revolved beneath the surface of my brain until, all at once, they controlled me completely, destroying all their peripheral escape routes in a painful, bright incineration, and I realized that they were thoughts about me, irrefutable thoughts, appearing as truths before which every possible appeal broke down. Years of self-deception seemed to tear like veils, and all at once I thought I saw myself as I really behaved with others, my real behavior that was apparent to all.
Oh, whenever I dared to mingle among the beautiful people on the street, in the gardens, or in the public baths, I still managed to believe I resembled them. I saw how they moved in their assurance, in their careless self-awareness, how they conversed and reposed, draped over the chairs that supported them, surrendering to a dainty hand that offered itself to them, how they danced and how laughter sprang flawless from their throats like a natural utterance of their viscera. Oh, how they solved the mathematics of all their daily tasks, how they made compelling choices whenever they went shopping, and with what unerring purpose they dressed themselves. How they used bogus words unabashedly, how they revealed even their sins and lusts to all the world with serene brows, inimitably nonchalant, certain that all was forgivable, and how their innocence remained inviolate. Inimitably… no, just not imitable by me, but I failed to realize that whenever I went out into their midst, crushed and downcast, and awkwardly tried to emulate them. I mastered keen observational skills, excruciatingly anxious to register even the hint of a mocking smile. I honed an unerring sense of hearing, but it tricked me all the same when, in the evenings, I believed I’d missed just one mild joke about my gaucheness, and the suspicion made me await the next day in heightened agitation.
But every new day that followed I saw myself in yet a different way, yet again it seemed possible that I could be one of them, that I could deceive them, that they could overlook my true condition. Yes, even overlook my boundless tension as I went into their midst, hoping to seem at least outwardly calm. That they wouldn’t sense how utterly ensnared I was by my anxious desire for people to like me. That I was completely dominated by this one craving, to be loved, and at the same time extremely concerned not to reveal that craving to them. For I was convinced that because of this frailty I’d forfeited all possibility of love, convinced that if they discerned even one iota of my trepidation, they’d immediately scorn me for it. They’d punish me with contemptuous laughter because loving and being loved were things I couldn’t take for granted, things I racked my brains over, and because I failed to casually gain the sympathy of others: to achieve what cost them precious little effort, what was in fact the result of non-effort; for them it meant little to eschew things they could reclaim with a wave of the hand. And in the evenings, when I was alone, I hated them for that unselfconsciousness, while knowing that since I wanted their love, they must never find out this hatred. No, they must never learn that I was in hell, that far from moving in their radiance I was absent, that I led a secret life, that in the black nights I huddled in smoke-filled dens brooding over grimy papers, in the foul-smelling sequestration of my hiding places I saw more and more vividly how I grew into a giant bestial spider that clung to its filth, chewing its cud of toxic letters amid convulsive mutterings. A monster with putrefaction written in the crannies of its skin as hectic red blotches, with uric acid drying and itching on its pate, a madness no longer stoppable as damp tufts of hair began painlessly detaching themselves. The freak who stubbed out his cigarettes in the spaces between his toes to deaden the oozy moistening itch that broke out again and again… that finally drove me out into the night, where I roamed through the most unsavory of all the ravaged spots on the hateful margins of town. Just so that I could sleep, so that tomorrow I wouldn’t be so deathly pale, so that tomorrow I might be loved, if only I pretended well enough.
But I couldn’t fall asleep, and thinking about the man I really was made me feel the repeated lashes of a whip that instantly inflamed my senses… all my limbs were still slumbering, incapable of resistance, but my wide-awake consciousness blazed like a torch. I was the hell-dweller who had put out his eyes, I who could perceive no real person but myself, I who thought of myself alone, thus gradually losing the ability to see… the females were already invisible to me… soon I’d be so far gone that I’d no longer see myself… in a fit of resignation I fell asleep. Never, I told myself, under these circumstances I could never be loved; this conclusion satisfied me and I was filled by a fatal calm, again and again my thoughts found their way to sleep. I yearned for nothing more fervently than for my mother to return, to be ashamed of me, curse me, treat me with contempt; this at last, so I hoped, would force me to become the Other who could think of himself from within, and thus look outward with fewer impediments. Which might mean that he still had a chance… the Other, that is… but without a chance I fell asleep.
The images in the ensuing dream were so vivid that for a long time afterward I wondered how I could have forgotten them. I’d forgotten the riddle’s solution… it seemed I’d fallen asleep at the start of a very long ride and not woken up until I reached my destination, so that the entire immoderate length of the journey appeared to have vanished from my life. And yet, I told myself, something had happened on this ride… I suspected that I’d gotten out at some point, at some random stop, where something had happened to me. But I didn’t know what it was; it had just been a sign that soon, perhaps only a few days from now, misfortune would strike me. And I told myself that I might have been able to avert it if only I hadn’t gone back to sleep on the second half of the ride, after that forgotten stop. During that midway halt I’d been transported to a different reality, and perhaps a crucial part of the impending misfortune would be the inability to invoke the reality I’d experienced before it. — And even in my dream I’d been asleep: I was lying in bed and suddenly woke up because I thought I heard a voice. As always, it began with a harsh voice ordering me to get up, which I obeyed at once… quite possibly also doing so in reality… with the immediate knowledge that all resistance was pointless. Then the voice commanded me… unnecessarily, it seemed to me, for I felt I knew what I had to do… to lift up my nightshirt, and as always in this dream, the coarse, commanding tone rang with a mixture of amusement and revulsion: amusement that reminded me of an old popular song military bands belted out whose refrain included that same command, a song that had been played in concentration camps while prisoners were flogged; and a certain disgust that had to stem from the ludicrous sight of my filthy, sweaty nightshirt. I knew what would happen, it would be less painful than it seemed at first: with cool workmanlike hands whose movements betrayed neither fastidiousness nor gentleness, the man placed around my genitals a sturdy rope made into a noose, unclean and frayed, as thick as a finger, like a rope for trussing a sow, and the noose was narrowed with a jerk, unerringly achieving the ideal tightness a hairbreadth beneath the pain threshold. I couldn’t tell whether I’d been commanded to come along; the rope tautened, and I followed without a word, the man having deftly knotted his end of the rope to the belt that clasped his dark uniform jacket at the hips. Whenever words or thoughts distracted me, I was dragged on by force… for instance, I wondered why this man had painted his fingernails bright red. After taking a closer look at the back about six feet ahead of me, I realized that the uniform clothed a broad-shouldered, unusually burly woman, a woman wearing a tightly fitting skirt that skimmed her gleaming black boots and tautened around the short, striding legs; after this view of the woman’s unapproachable back I should by rights have woken up, but this time I was dragged on through a dream that moved across wide, poorly lit squares where I could make out nothing but damply gleaming cobblestones. Now I could barely feel my genitals beneath the nightshirt that draped ludicrously over the rope; only when I hesitated for a moment and the noose was pulled tight with an impatient, even brutal jerk did I realize I could still feel pain; I quickly stumbled onward, suddenly sensing that things were turning serious. — Stop, please… stop, I wanted to cry, but I had extraordinary trouble finding my voice again. Where am I being taken, I wanted to ask the woman, and who am I dealing with here?—My language seemed to have died in my throat, but at that very moment the woman turned around with a smile on her broad, rather coarse face—an expression of indulgence paired with slight resignation, evidently due to my dim-witted question. She drew herself up proudly, her feet, solidly shod in tight officer’s boots, planted slightly apart, with both thumbs hooked onto her belt, and her elbows held slightly akimbo so that the black cloth of the uniform jacket strained over her big, high breasts. — Are you taking me to the barracks…? — She ignored my question. Koch, she introduced herself, I’m Ilse Koch, the gentleman must have heard my name before… — Oh yes, yes of course I know you, I cried, my tone submissive, but vibrating with a kind of joyful astonishment. — She stared at me a while longer, and I grew increasingly worried that without noticing it I might get an erection under my nightshirt. — Come with me, I know what you want… with this command she yanked me toward her, her face suddenly transformed into a malevolent, petulant mask. I hurried forward, following the tight-stretched rope that formed a line to her waist; she strode swift and unperturbed, and I heard her hobnailed boot soles slam on the pavement as though to strike sparks. — At one point I shuddered, fearing the woman might elude me, and I began to feel a colossal anxiety. But the very thought seemed to precipitate what I feared: she vanished indeed, a few more steps took her into the lustrous moonlight; backlit, her silhouette blurred and finally turned invisible, and the houses at the end of the square vanished along with her; the radiance I had been running toward suddenly seemed transformed into a gray, foggy dawn in whose light everything was fathomless and hollow. I knew that the stick had not rapped the garret floor tonight, but all the same I was about to wake up, and my regret knew no bounds.