Sanatorium under the sign of the hourglass - Bruno Schulz [80]
Thus they joke with me, in a warm, sympathetic, and humane way. That roughness, that direct jocularity, gives me a certain comfort. I leave the place more cheerful and hurry home quickly, in order to take with me indoors some of the pleasant warmth before it all evaporates.
But as to other people ... An insistent questioning, never voiced aloud, which I can read in their eyes. It is difficult to avoid it. Supposing things are as they suspect—why immediately make these long faces, put on these solemn expressions, fall into uninvited silences, be both embarrassed and overcautious? Anything in order not to mention my condition . . . How well can I see through that game! It is no more than a kind of sybaritic self-indulgence and delight at their being different, a complete detachment from my condition, masked with hypocrisy. They exchange telltale looks but don't speak, and allow the thing to grow bigger in silence. Perhaps my condition is not quite as it should be. Perhaps it is even due to a small basic disability?
Goodness gracious, so what? Is this a reason for that quick and frightened eagerness to please? Sometimes I want to burst out laughing when I see the recognition they show me, a kind of deference. Why do they insist so, why stress it, and why does doing it give them the profound satisfaction, which they try to conceal behind a mask of scared devotion?
Let's assume that I am a passenger of light weight, even of excessively light weight; let's assume that I am embarrassed by certain questions such as how old I am, when is my birthday, and so on—is that a reason for incessantly touching upon these subjects as if they were very relevant? Not that I am in the least ashamed of my condition. Not at all. But I cannot bear the exaggeration with which they magnify the importance of a certain fact, a certain difference, no bigger really than a hair's breadth. I am amused by the false theatricality and the solemn pathos that surrounds this matter, by the tragic costumes and gloomy pomp that drape this fact. While in reality? . . . Nothing pathetic at all, nothing more natural and commonplace. Lightness, independence, irresponsibility . . . And an increased ear for music, a most extraordinary musicality of one's limbs, as it were. It is impossible to pass by a barrel organ and not dance to it. Not because you feel happy, but because you don't care, and the tune has its own will, its own stubborn rhythm. So you give in. "Maggie, Maggie, treasure of my soul ..." You are too light, too agile to protest; and besides, why protest against such an unpretentious and enticing proposal? Therefore I dance, or rather trot, in time with the tune, with the tiny steps of an old-age pensioner, and from time to time I give a little skip. Few people notice it, they are too busy rushing about their daily affairs.
I am anxious to avoid one thing: that the reader should have exaggerated ideas about my situation. I must warn him against it both in the positive and negative sense. No sentimentality please. It is a condition like any other, and therefore capable of being understood and treated naturally. Any strangeness disappears once you have crossed to the other side. You sober up—this is what is characteristic of my situation: you are unburdened, feel light, empty, irresponsible, without respect for class, for personal ties, for conventions. Nothing holds me and nothing fetters me. I am boundlessly free. The strange indifference with which I move lightly through all the dimensions of being should be pleasurable in itself. But . . . that lack of anchorage, the would-be careless animation and lightheartedness—but I must not complain. . . . There is a saying: gather no moss. That is exactly it: I stopped gathering moss a long time ago.
From the window of my room, which is high up, I have a bird's-eye view of the city, its walls, its roofs and chimneys in the gray light of a fall dawn—the whole, densely built-up panorama just