Chapter 1
“Ludwig, pass me my cufflinks!”
“Which ones, Count?”
Edmund fell into thought. Which cufflinks he should wear depended on his shirt. And choosing a shirt was always a difficult decision for him. Edmund N. was an aesthete and didn’t want to leave any element of his life to chance, especially not the choice of shirt. He tried to select his shirt in such a way that it would appear he hadn’t chosen it deliberately, but that among the many in his wardrobe, he had picked by chance and with indifference precisely the one that harmonized most perfectly with the entire day. Especially today, when he was expecting a visit, an improperly chosen shirt could spoil his pleasure of spending a few charming hours in the company of his cousin Celestyna.
Edmund looked out the window. The sun had risen a good hour ago and was piercing through the green leaves of the oak trees in the park with sharp yellow light. The day promised to be clear. It was early spring, and the pure blue of the sky clashed with the pure green of the leaves—how could one add anything harmonious to such a cacophony? Whatever color shirt Edmund might choose, there would always be an instinctively perceptible discord. Edmund N. had experienced this dilemma many times before, but so far had found no ideal solution. Each time he found a way to circumvent the problem, but was never truly satisfied.
“Hmm, I could simply wear a white shirt. In this way, I would somewhat express my votum separatum toward the colors that prevail around me, and having cut myself off from them, I wouldn’t need to worry about whether I harmonize with my surroundings or not—but then again, in such an arrangement, it would become all the more important for the color of the shirt to harmonize with my inner self. And would it harmonize? Would it harmonize in Celestyna’s perception—firstly—and secondly, would the way this color influences my mood today throw me off the mood that my unfathomable inner self has prepared for me today? I must consider this.”
Edmund stared out the window and pondered. The sun warmed his face through the glass with a bad, infrared-filtered heat. Edmund wanted to open the window, but when he touched the cold metal handle, he saw a dry, shriveled autumn leaf lying on the windowsill. In a single flash of thought, he saw all the transience and impermanence of the affairs of this world.
“Who am I,” he thought, “thrown against my will into the middle of a world I cannot comprehend; just as easily I could be taken from it at any moment.”
Moved, he ran to the bathroom, turned on the hot water tap, and immersed his hand in the stream. The truth that he had so violently, in a single moment, felt with his entire being was pounding in his head, but Edmund knew that flowing water was the only thing that could allow him to forget anew. He slowly moved his hand, playing with the water flowing around it; the water behaved like a small animal, responding to his movements, seeming to find pleasure in such cheerful flowing, and Edmund gradually regained his composure.
“Calmly,” he thought, “Calmly, calmly.”
He returned to the room and again opened the shirt closet. He flipped through them, looking at their smooth patterns that expressed nothing, seeking no meaning or justification beyond themselves, but he could no longer focus on them, could no longer truly care about how they would play out. He held in his hands soft materials, warm-rough cottons, slippery-smooth georgettes gently cooling the hand, thick woolen shirts that he so liked to wear on rainy autumn days, thin silk shirts, a whole set in eleven colors: three warm ones—red, yellow, and orange; three cold ones—green, blue, and celadon; three broken ones—olive green, gray-steel-blue, and rusty burgundy; and of course black and white (he had never worn this set, despite having bought it three years ago, but the longer he didn’t wear it, the more festive it seemed to him, and the more no everyday occasion seemed worthy of wearing something from it). He poured the soft materials through his hands, unconsciously trying to find a hard button with his fingertip, but with the eyes of his soul, he still saw the dry, shriveled leaf.
This was the state in which Celestyna found him when, five hours later, she arrived carrying a small cardboard box.
“Walking to your place,” she said, entering breathless and flushed from her walk, “I saw wild cranes calling to each other before their departure. I walked through the meadows (I wanted to shorten the journey, and besides, I preferred a walk through the meadow rather than through the housing estate; really, I had no desire to meet any acquaintances today, to pretend that I had something to say to them and that I was at all interested in what they were saying to me, and, worse still, to know that they felt the same, but that we were trapped in this convention of two acquaintances meeting), I was walking through the meadows when I saw small children looking up at the sky. I looked in the same direction and then I saw them, circling above the wetlands. And it seemed to me that in their cries I heard a song about longing for distant lands, wild territories, the warm savannas of Africa. For a moment, it seemed to me that soon I too would spread my wings and run to fly south with them. How happy these birds are, Edmund, in this moment when they leave everything behind and, obedient only to their instinct, set off on a journey whose purpose they don’t understand, but which is commanded by an inner voice stronger than reason. How I envy them for having the courage to follow that voice into the unknown!”
“It’s autumn,” replied Edmund, “it’s autumn, and the days are growing shorter. I too sometimes have such inexpressible feelings, perhaps it is exactly what you’re saying, some atavism from our avian ancestors, a voice that tells us to leave everything and travel to that Africa we don’t know, but in which we expect to find everything we lack here; even if we cannot articulate what it is that we lack, we see nevertheless that what we have, what we experience every day, is not completeness, and the non-existence of completeness means precisely a lack, does it not?”
They fell silent. From beyond the window, one could hear the cursing farmhands who had brought wood from the sawmill. The sun was sinking lower and lower, red and large, as if swollen. The smell of scrambled eggs wafted from the kitchen.
(to be continued...)