Involuntarily, Sorger hung his head. When he looked up, it seemed to him for an eerie moment that he was looking into his own wide-open eyes; only then did he realize that the stranger was crying. At the same time, the color of those eyes became a thing apart (as did his bare forehead). The two men moved deeper into the booth, until no one else could see them. The stranger asked Sorger for a handkerchief, blew his nose, and said: “Listen to me for a while.” He spoke of “business failure,” “inability to compete,” “wife and children,” “money,” and the “impossibility of returning to Europe.” He summed up his story in three outcries: “I know nothing!” “All I can do is clench my fist.” And in the end, simply: “Poor me!”
Sorger summoned up his power, transformed himself (with difficulty) into the booth where they were sitting, and surrounded his chance acquaintance, who shook his head in surprise at the state he had got into and from time to time politely asked for (and obtained) Sorger's handkerchief. Sorger (as booth) enfolded the stranger until little by little the man's rigid torso came to life, put on the at first grotesque but then winning face of a child, and finally rubbed his arms, out of which, as he said, his “fear flew away.” And then in the deep space of night Sorger felt a shudder of creation pass over him and, surprised at himself, wished to be physically united with this man, as though there were no other way of keeping him alive. But then one of those glances that
want everything to be different proved sufficient, and in it the stranger was able to lean back, as it were. Later Sorger deliberately looked the other way, as though one could cure the sick world just by disregarding it for a while.
From the start he had the impression of listening to his own storyânot because of any resemblance in the stories, but because in this man's words of self-accusation he recognized the voice that had often denied him, too, the right to live. But speaking from another man's mouth (and no longer a silent litany within himself), this voice did not condemn him, Sorger; it was identifiable as the absurdity which sometimes stifled others as well as himself. And so Sorger, opening the “gates of his senses” and stepping back from himself and his companion, was able to become the “laughing witness,” who fitted them both into a serene order; though moved by the stranger's misfortune, he felt, as he listened and watched him, the carefree pleasure of a sympathetic audience. From time to time, he even smiled, and noticing his smile, the still hesitant Esch took heart and spoke freely.
To describe his despair, Esch displayed it; not that he acted it out; he merely commanded the only fitting gestures and words for it and had the presence of mind to use them at the right moment. Portraying himself, fervent and at the same time laconic, he pictured his misfortune and became the prophet of truth; in this way (with Sorger as the indispensable opposite), he averted panic and even, though without overdoing it, showed himself attentive to his audience, anticipatingâwhile going on imperturbably with his lamentâhis every move, pouring wine, reaching for the check, etc. In the end, he mastered his condition so fully that he was able to frame it in a sequence of burlesque signs. He said: “I
could cry the whole timeâjust watch me!” And true enough, he actually produced a tear or two. In the next moment he displayed his trembling handsâwhereupon beads of sweat appeared on his forehead and immediately disappeared. There followed a calm interval, which the narrator (again at the proper moment) broke off by whispering in his listener's ear: “I've nearly finished”âthen picked up the plate with the check and a pencil on it and, looking down at it, calmly told the end of his story: “In the afternoon, the cliffs of death were still rising from the park and in the zoo the animals' cages were empty. But now in the evening, what a pleasure to hold a plate with a pencil rolling on it. I wish us all a long life.”
He concluded his performance with a parody of himself. He pointed to an aquarium, where small chunks of granite served as decor for the ornamental fishes; and then, earnestly, with nothing offensive in mind, called Sorger's attention to the neighboring booth, whereâthere was little else to be seenâa woman's shapely leg was swinging up and down, and swore, without batting an eyelash, “to die a natural death.” (Previously, when he was asked if he wished to die, only his pupils had darted to one side.)
Then the stranger got hungry. He ate, not greedily, but with almost ceremonious movements, drinking his wine in small sips, contemplating every morsel at length and putting it into his mouth with a look of affection. He said that he felt food and drink literally “sparkling” in his mouth. Then he smiled, and sustained the smile for several minutes, as though storing up energy.
Sorger watched him eat and, learning from him, felt warmth on his forehead. His face was covered over by the stranger's face, and in the end there was no other.
They sat in the booth as on a bridge; it sufficed to
exchange a grin of complicity now and then. Each sank into his private thoughts, but they enjoyed them in common. “A god had his sport with them.” Once Sorger fell asleep with his eyes open and was awakened by his companion's voice, but heard only the final sentence: “I've never told anyone that before.” What had the man said?
Once more, to be sure, the stranger's misery resumed its hold on him. On his way back from the toilet he got lost and without noticing sat down at another table, with other people. There he sat motionless, staring into space, until Sorger went and got him.
But before that, hadn't Esch missed several times when reaching for his wineglass? Hadn't he put on his jacket inside out? “Power, come back to me.” Sorger became his advocate, commanding, forbidding (and in his retrospective fear the other was glad to obey), releasing him from pain, predicting good thingsâand in the end gave him his blessing, whereupon the last vestige of blackness poured out of the man's mouth and, as the hatcheck girl later remarked, the “gentleman's” face revealed only a “sad contentment.”
They did not go out “into the night”; rather, they passed from the restaurant to the street as from one city room to another. In the doorway leading into the open, Esch, as though he were the owner of these rooms, made a gesture of invitation to Sorger.
Sorger had once heard of a strange sacred mountain in China which was forbidden to foreigners. From its summit, the natives (when the weather was right) could see their shadows on the clouds below and read their future in the shape of the shadows. A special shadow appeared that night on the yellowish-lit street along which the two of them took each other home, from south to north, from downtown to uptown, traversing half the
length of the city. This shadow showed itself on one of the many clouds of dense white steam which, smelling of hot rolls and often hissing softly, rose through the asphalt and, in the corners of Sorger's eyes taking on the form of fleeing dogs, were driven swiftly into the darkness by the night wind. Near an underground work site from which an uncommonly large sheet-metal ventilator protruded far above the surface of the street, the white steam was much thicker; and it did not seep off to one side, but high in the air formed a persistent but constantly renewed mass, upon which one of New York's intensely bright streetlamps cast the shadow of a small tree. When, ceding to the wind and the rhythmic bursts from below, this mass of steam broadened or lengthened and narrowed, the tree shadow on it expanded or shrank with itâfor a moment it was bloated and blurred and in the next it was small, shrunken, deep black, and clearly delineated. Though neither a word nor a sign was exchanged, the two men stopped in unison to contemplate the shadow branches (on which a few individual leaves were discernible) on the clouds of steam. True, the playful silhouette answered no questions about the future, but thanks to their perception of this commonplace sight (a sight not “forbidden,” not “sacred,” but accessible to all) the rest of their walk was dominated by a present which encompassed them both without distinction, and with every step on the pavement they sensed the beneficent hardness of the earth.
Was this beauty on the humpbacked avenue ephemeral (did the two foreign nightwalkers encounter it by mere chance)? Would the unique sceneâthe yellow light, the glaring white steam, the tree shadow that moved back and forth on itâsoon vanish for all time in Eternal Formlessness?
The Avenue of the Present, where Sorger and Esch continued on their way, jogging now and then along with the many night joggers, took on life before them as a place in itself, with its own unique nooks, vistas, and eminences, just as a neighborhood takes form for people who have lived there for years: and, indeed, a number of shop windows displayed signs reading “Sunday Brunch on the Avenue,” as though this avenue, leading straight through the metropolis, were a traditional sightseer's goal. On the left, the park appeared at the end of every cross street, as though inclining downward into the darkness, but here and there a light arose from its rocky hillocks; on the right, the waning moon, which at every street corner appeared slightly higher in the sky. Graduallyâthe air had grown noticeably coolerâthe moon put on a wide halo, and at a crossing where the two walkers stopped outside an all-night grocery store (as though this were the place to part) vanished in a great cloud that reflected the city lights. Then swarms of vague shadows raced across the pavement, soon followed by the bodies belonging to themâgreat snow crystals, which descended with a softly crackling sound from the night sky. Each man said: “An hour ago I'd have taken these shapes for rats.”
They were now in the vast American region of “Snow Flurries” (vision of hilly countryside with wagon tracks and a single fence post) and had time to stand side by side in the snowfall. It was past midnight; but everywhere, far up and down the avenue, people were still afoot; some were even scraping the snow from car tops and trying to make snowballs.
Close by the two walkers, a woman hugged a man, who merely responded with a smile. But when, after a short conversation, the man tried to fondle the woman,
she turned away. Speaking softly, he tried again, drawing her whole body to him; she stiffened and he turned away with a gesture of discouragement. His cheeks went violently red; and Sorger, who now noticed for the first time how young the two of them were, thought of the skiing instructor, whose face in the “chapel” had worn an expression of bitter disappointment. And he drew the young fellow entirely into himselfâthat is, into the shimmering worldwide snowy night, into the healing wintry space, to make him well again.
Then, behind the window of the grocery store, the sad people reappearedâa grotesque, mocking worldâin the form of two elderly men (the one sitting behind the checkout counter, white; the other, standing in front of it, black). They avoided each other's eyes as thoughâaside from the actual circumstance (which undoubtedly played a part) of their being “clerk” and “customer,” “black” and “white”âsomething more, something worse than personal enmity had erupted between them: the wretched incomprehension that blurs the features and muddles the mindâsomething that neither wanted and that made them both miserable.
Unlike the young couple on the street outside (where the man, with face averted, was timidly tickling the woman), the faces of the two old men in the grocery store were deeply pale. They did not speak; they hardly moved (except that the black man kept crumpling a brown paper bag). Both kept their eyes lowered; their lids quivered; not once did either appeal for support or help to the other customers, who stood congealed with their purchases, not even impatient, just as pale, silent, and forlorn as the protagonists. Only when the black man, soundlessly moving his lips, finally opened the door, did the clerk raise his face to the next customer, but he
did not grin (as the witness outside had expected); he merely showed (to no one in particular) his dark, desperately wide-open, and for a moment earnestly imploring eyes.
Immediately thereafter, while Sorger's eyes followed the black, who, occasionally throwing up his hands, disappeared down the avenue, a beam of light flashed over the two companions and all those who were still abroad, including a group some distance away, waiting in the darkness for a busâand then continued down the street like the beam of a searchlight, though no cars were passing just then. The trembling of the ground and the wind that followed made it clear that the flash rising through the street grating came from the subway below.
Sorger looked at Esch, who had turned into the half shadow; Esch answered his look, and glancing at each other from time to time, both went their common way: first helplessly rounding their eyes in a fervent plea for counsel, then half closing them like “enlightened ones,” then almost roguishly winking at each other, and finally bidding each other goodbye with pure veneration (as if they knew that they could also have been enemies)âuntil their eyes turned away from each other into the nocturnal city, where snow and the autumn wind pursued the people descending the stairs into the subway, and where night plane followed night plane, occasionally flaring up in the sky, as though their course were just one more avenue.
In the end, Esch held out his calling card (the card of a “sad businessman”) and jangled his “European keys” as a sign that he was capable of going home (it passed through Sorger's mind that he himself no longer had any keys at all); thrusting a positively puckish face into Sorger's, Esch castigated him for his “absentmindedness” and
recited a few lines from a poem: “The passage of beauty was as brief/as a dream in the snowy light,” and as a farewell gift gave his “compatriot” his hat.