Read Online Moving Parts by Magdelena Tulli - Free Book Online Page B

mind, in rebellion against the obvious, has no way out but unconditional capitulation. Having betrayed itself, it will begin to search the memory for an overlooked stretch of the way, wondering for example if the corridor with the fireextinguishers doesn’t lead off from the landing, a dozen or so steps up from where the mind bears a painful scar torn out of space. The memory, prepared against better judgment to consider in all seriousness a solution such as moving the elevator half a floor up, with a suspect alacrity offers the recollection of a dozen or so steps allegedly descended; this remembrance is dim and in the light of day might well have vanished in the blink of an eye like a badly developed photograph. In the face of a glaring inconsistency bearings are lost and space disintegrates into fragments that do not match. Now the narrator must quite simply climb those steps half a floor to the elevator without which he will be unable to find his way, and which he can locate only outside his field of vision. But after the first few steps, his foot is suspended over a void and his hand freezes on the twisted handrail that suddenly turns downward, from this point accompanying other, invisible stairs that descend into a dark abyss. Water drips into it continuously; the plash can be heard. Too many steps are missing to be able to go on; all he can do is stand in place, without a single thought in his head. For in that head, too, something has caved in, leaving a gap just as vast as the one that has just appeared beneath his feet. Doubt belongs to the present tense and the present tense only; it blossoms upon it like a poisonous lily on the clouded top of a pond. At this point the narrator would do anything he can to extricate himself from the dark well of the present tense. Yet it seems that nothing whatsoever can be done; there’s no signeven of a straw at which a drowning man might clutch. Perhaps the right thing to do would be to plunge into the water, take it into his lungs, and come to rest on the silty bottom – no other course can be seen. But that also is impossible. The balloon of longing keeps the mortally suffocating mind on the surface. From the very beginning, though, the narrator’s position has been so unfavorable that he has nothing to long for. And thus, since he has nothing, he longs for the street cut off by a pane of glass from the hotel lobby; he longs for the country lane that can be seen over the garden fence; he longs for everything that is unattainable. The only thing that this time he has not yet tried is to look for another way out. Picking his steps unsurely, he finds his way to the attic; the old copies of the Financial Times are lying in place beneath the sloping ceiling. Here space is predictable and the ground sure. The narrator descends to the landing. Through the window of the living room he watches out of the corner of his eye as Feuchtmeier desperately tries to stop Irene. She pulls her arm free without looking at him and walks quickly away; in a moment she’ll drive off in the car that is still standing in the driveway in the sun, the keys in the ignition. And she’ll pick up the tightrope walker Mozhe in his striped T-shirt on which a dark red stain is spreading. The narrator’s gaze does not linger on them; everything there is in any case determined in advance. He thinks about jumping out of the kitchen window on the other side of the house and walking away across the fields. The boy is not asleep at all. He knowsor does not know about the scene taking place on the terrace; probably he knows, though he certainly would prefer not to. He’s kneeling in the kitchen in a puddle of spilled milk. Covered with chocolate and ketchup, he’s building a tower of innumerable cans of tuna, Strasbourg pâté, tomato paste, and sliced pineapple in syrup. The battery of canned goods is a symbolic image of the plague of excess that has afflicted Feuchtmeier’s