“Oh, for one person to deify another. .” she sighed comically. “For that matter, you’ve been watching me for a long time already, don’t you see? Oh yes, you’ve been watching! I know everything. . now. For a long time you’ve been eyeing me, to see when I’d fall into my own crime. A dovish crime. But crime is crime. No such thing as a free ride. I was overgrown with such sworn misfortune that you said to yourself, ‘Give her one of those small lady’s revolvers with mother-of-pearl, and at the same time squeeze her hand with silver-tongued warmth: adieu! And that’s it; it’d be a Samaritan act inédit.’ Yes, that’s what you told yourself. . as I was leaning against the wall. . as I was leaning against the wall like Niobe from the community theater. .”
“Giggles!”
“My God. . we’re still having. . a calm discussion. All that is in the past. And I know everything. . now.
“And you were right,” she patted my knee with god-motherly emphasis, “you were dead right. Just be a dear and tell me,” she threw in inquisitorially, “why were you deluding me with hope? That’s not right, you see, that’s not right; it’s not nice. Instead of hastening me out the door, out that door, you were saying. . too bad, after all, we could have just played it out, it would have been more lively. . you were saying: ‘Giggles, it’s not for love, all that suffers is your pride. If you were suffering for love, you wouldn’t be opening up to me. I know you. Isn’t it perhaps out of willfulness that you’ve capitulated to Mutig?’ Pride! Like people would tear their hair out and bang their head against the wall for pride. And as if it were a matter of forsaken love — oh! forsaken love — and not at all of my devastation!
“I’m asking you. . me! A little creature being vivisected. My fear was only waiting for him to say his piece. How could you have missed such an opportunity, you, who are ever so curious?
“Curious, curious, curious,” she started saying stubbornly, “it’s only out of that damned curiosity of yours that you consoled me; out of curiosity over what would come of it. What would come of the furious hope of a little creature being vivisected, what sort of vileness might she be talked into. . yes,” she said, suddenly curt, “without you, sir, I could have passed away in beauty.
“So now we know, without you I could have passed away in beauty. So I am the way I am. . I happened to find myself a god. Now that’s something. That, sir, is worth dying for! A god is a god. A god is according to what we deserve, and not according to his own perfection. But it’s a god every time. I found him, you see. I’m the one who deserved to depart for those pastures. You thwarted me just as things were going good. ‘There are other ways to god,’” she started aping me, “‘than vanishing within him. For example, there’s the dignity of life, and besides: Mutig is not a god.’
“Dignity of life! Mutig is not a god! I deified him, I think that’s enough, huh? Dignity of life. . is that what you traded me to Fuld for? Or was it to find out ‘what would come of it,’ Fuld and me, me and Fuld? We were supposed to shed some light for you, one on the other. We interested you, that’s what. You wanted to test out what kinds of disgusting poses the dead would consent to if they were bought off with hope. O hope, hope,” she caricatured, drawing out the o, “who, then, I ask you, will be taken in by it more than the one for whom there isn’t any left? Why didn’t you send me out to. . to those pastures. ., as befits the dead?”
“Giggles,” I said, “I had it all thought out. I swear to you that in spite of everything I had it all thought out.”
“What are you defending yourself for?” she responded jovially. “I’m not holding anything against you, I’m just telling it like it was. You’re not to blame. I know you had it all thought out. It’s not your fault you think better than you act. It’s not your fault that you, too, are the dead among the living; that you, too, think that enduring is everything. You, like Fuld — you’re no longer a weakling either, nor a coward — you’re nobody, too. Between the abyss and the fire even a weakling will somehow make a decision, but you wouldn’t get killed one way or the other, neither leaping, nor burning — you’d go for some wry ‘I don’t know up from down.’ It’s a good thing you looked into the mirror; wherever you’d find yourselves faces, you and Fuld.
“But I didn’t beg you, you see, and I’m not knowledgeable about what the dead are capable of. — The dignity of life! What could be simpler than loving cads, what could be more pure! They were bad, but cluelessly. Mutig took my glory upon himself, and Mutig took my murder upon himself. With him it was easy to be dignified: to live when there was a reason, and to die when the living was done. You brought me down. To life? Where! To enduring. What for? Maybe so I’d prove something that way? What? I’m asking you. What would it prove?”
“That the one who wins is the one who doesn’t run away.”
“God willing!” she said, and she leaned sculpturally on her chin. “But I have always loved! I loved him. I loved Mutig. Don’t you know that love is a dead end? And one that always leads to glory? No matter where it leads? Why did you hold me back? Why did you, in all your curiosity, ever hand me over to Fuld? Oh, because I was on the street and Fuld wanted me, I know. Those guys were as sharp as cactus needles and as bitter as wormwood. They abused and they tortured. But their scorn had edges and limits. I like things that your eyes can move along. They tormented and humiliated, but it was out of an earthy taste. But Fuld has a double face,” she continued in a trusting whisper. “You know? A double face. Whether he was making an offer or speaking ill, everything that came out of him was the same slime. He’s a glutton for problems. He has coarse tastes. He sets people on divine paths — you know why?” (And in a timid whisper:) “For the spectacle of vice and misfortune. What would he do with people who’d found their path themselves?” She turned toward me slowly, and, giving me a compassionate wink:
“You’ve been seeking each other a long time. You belong together. You’re no good at taking things either, taking people, of weighing them and telling them hopelessly: ‘You’re following your own path.’ You, in your pity, you don’t know, either, that the main thing is to follow your own path. And there’s nothing that can be done about it.” She shrieked hatefully, “You only force them into detours. What you’re running is purely a game!
“Fuld? He doesn’t trust anything that’s simple and positive, just because it’s not confused and negative. Love, virtue, truth? It’s not like he didn’t believe in them, you know? But he’s no good at dressing people in them. No one, no one in the world. He’s a person so dissolutely suspicious that he thinks everything is dissolute if it’s not perfect. Miserable people, miserable people, don’t you know that there’s no way for us to tempt the saints too much? You’re worse and more intolerant than God. Maybe the devil will hold up against you; you’d bring an angel to ruin.
“Let me go, put me out to those pastures,” she said suddenly, with bracing heartiness, “come on, hurry up, don’t you hear me?” And she assumed the position of a kitschy allegory of Echo, winking at me that she knows what she’s doing and how it looks.
And again that three-note motif, which this time I recognized immediately, and which, before blossoming, drew itself out, separating us. But when she was already quite far away, as though behind numerous veils, but always curiously visible, that taut motif suddenly slackened, brightened up, and began to spin off into the helix of a tango, toward which the rondo theme from Eine kleine Nachtmusik ascended like a tendril. And Giggles, her finger on her lips, smiled, and then she declaimed, “The rondo of cheerful lads, the rondo of luminous thieves who rob people who’ve formed from the shadows, so as to serve that beautiful justice, according to which one must take from the poor even what little they have, that it might then be handed over to the rich.