He stood on the threshold. He looked around. The innkeeper and the Steels were standing with their backs to him. And he made an unexpected discovery: he was wrong; his calculation was off; in no way was it essential that he pass close by. With a bit of caution it was possible to get out to the yard before they even noticed him. But before he could even delight in this discovery, the innkeeper turned around, and the Steels’ heads followed this gesture. Had they spotted him? The apodosis of “. . and over here was the servants’ quarters, which we turned into guestrooms” knew nothing of him. Yet he was still sure that just as he was standing on the threshold of the house, he was also standing at that apodosis’s doorstep. He, insulted, unavenged, stepped inside this clause without so much as leaving a ripple. He entered like a shadow. The insulted, the unavenged didn’t exist.
“. . And over here was the servants’ quarters, which we turned into guestrooms.”
The innkeeper punctuated it with a pithy period. A period as if prearranged. A period/assembly point for an excursion to big fun, a period/rest stop.
“I am a gentleman!” — The outspread hands. — “Just take a look at him!” — “You shitass!” — “Yes, but do you have any proof?”
Before him who must pass by, must hurl his insult, there stood three illuminati, who knew that he must but can’t manage. They were standing majestically, with dignity and aware of a triumph so perfect that it set aside the rather burdensome responsibility.
His head drooped; he stepped out; they were standing in his way; he didn’t see them; he only saw the gate, and this, too, only as though through conjecture, it led to the road; he tried to walk slowly; he was blind, but he heard as never before. — Three coughs in chorus, as if a handful of sand that they’d derisively thrown at him, then a guffaw of non-speech; the non-speech choked on the guffaw and died at the words “. . next year we’re installing electricity.”
When he was making things out again, he saw that he was on the road. He was alone. A wooded slope ran down to a shallow, grassy ditch. He fell upon the grass; the finger he was biting had no taste, but the chill of yesterday’s rain still dwelled therein.
He was lying on his back. He had an urge to touch his eyes. They were dry. Not that they might have gone dry again; no, he had learned, not knowing how, that they hadn’t gotten moist to begin with. And for this stubbornness on the part of his eyes he hated himself just a bit more. — He squinted and noticed a clump of bellflowers. They were luminously blue. At the same time, he also noticed everything that had transpired since yesterday; at first glance, it was compellingly material, but in this blueness that materiality as if melted away markedly. He immediately sensed that, really, “the weight had lifted off his shoulders.” How his creditors had hounded him! And all at once, after all the quarrels and threats, after all the badgering, and when he least expected it, they offer him a reprieve. — It’s paid off! All of it, with interest.
Lunch is served in the yard, at small tables. His is right next to the stream: he’s got it covered. He’s visible to everyone, and everyone to him. It’s a table, and more than that it’s a hideout, an impregnable hideout. He’d be happy to see someone dare rise, approach, and address him: “Sir, I’ve had enough of you, get up, scram.” — He would say, standing with dignity and leaning against the covered tabletop: “This table is rented, sir. I’ve paid for it, the payment was accepted, so I am here by right.” — Rent is more reliable than ownership, safer, more secure; property can be expropriated, declared unpaid-for, criminal, ill-got, but who has ever denied someone’s right to a rented seat at a theater? — The call to lunch will come in a moment; he’ll settle into his theater seat; he’ll have a good view; he’ll let them have it one after the other, one after the other. He’d be happy to see who would dare harass his paid-for, rented hideout! No one can deny him his right to the table! What a sense of power! Of safety! At his own table, there’s a taboo. Would the fellow over there defy his gaze? Should we find out? Let’s bet on it! — He sees it as though it’s already happened: he fixes his eyes upon him, him there. The table is like an electric switchboard, he paws at it: is the fellow over there resisting? Push a button: aha! The resistant eyelids are lowered. As though he’d cut them down in a line. Just let them dare to come to his hideout! Poor them! — They don’t suspect that it is he who is generating this dangerous current — now that he’s finally understood where Shylock drew such great strength from: He’d paid! He’d paid! — You there, do you know how to get the better of this current? And with what? With words, really: words? But which words? There’s the rub: there are innumerable words; the point is to find the one among them that inoculates against a legal rejoinder. Aha! I say against a legal rejoinder. But what is a legal rejoinder? We’ll explain, we’ll explain: Suppose that a hardened provocateur steps forward. One who would keep his eyelids fast. Who would meet the gaze behind the hideout with the lance of his own gaze. Bon! But now tell me what this provocative look could say other than “you’re the one who had been suspected of theft yesterday”? — And so what? — Suspected — haha! — suspected! And what about the proof? After all, will he waste his time mentioning that there had actually been proof? Aha! But it was proof of his innocence; ah, of his complete innocence! — Fine! So we’ve found someone who provokes. Fine! But how could he provoke, except by lying? So what do we do with him? Still, no explanations, no proof? We’ll skip it. — Here is the look that doesn’t want to be averted. Fine! So then what lying slanderer will withstand two certain syllables? These: “Riffraff!”?
“Riffraff” is a lovely word. Its sound and appearance would merit better content than has been consigned to it. Gold is poorly distributed around the world. — “Riffraff.” — Such a winsome word, and what has it been condemned to! — “Riffraff.” — Such a sonorous word! Say it to yourself once, twice, and the scowled tinkling that hatches through the distinct layers of the midday shimmer immediately looks different. And what is that sound, anyway? It doesn’t have the cheerful quality of bell-ringing, it has the crabby stress of a call to labor. It’s the midday gong consigned to the housemaid Bela. She’s hammering it with an acrimonious thought toward the most disagreeable moment of the day: serving at table. — He gets up; he says to himself, “Riffraff! Riffraff!”; he’s delighted by what a corrective and winsome word it is; it’s a surprise he doesn’t say it to himself in a marching rhythm. — Now here’s the last bang on the gong; he’s slipped through the gate he’d hobbled to after the impossibly narrow and uneven footpath, along which he is also now embarking in the opposite direction. Here’s the yard, the tables are bare, they’re gleaming. He lifts his head, as if he were taking someone for his witness, but he already knows the testimony beforehand: it’s started to drizzle; it’s drizzling. — Lunch, under special circumstances, is served under the roof.
Here’s the glass door to the winter dining room. It’s as unyielding as an old miser; it can be coaxed just barely a bit, if you’ve tilted your head in a certain manner, then it grudgingly lowers its resistance: from it you’ll deduce that the interior is a kind of white point without it being possible to figure out its whole; and there’s the gliding of human shadows rather than the shadows themselves. They’d eaten in the winter dining room the day before yesterday as well. Farewell, hideout, farewell, stream that watches his back and lends him courage! He’ll be forced to sit between any two. I guess we take a bowl from somebody and give it to somebody? How do we look someone straight in the eye if we’re sitting next to them? And if he answers “riffraff!” with a kick to the shin, how do we ascertain who’d kicked whom under the table? And then: he doesn’t have his own place at the table, no magical isolation — the crowd and the crush.