Pushkin Press

he was not so much interested in the world as he was invaded by its many forms.

I breathed freely, purely, and full of sudden delight I felt the air on my lips like a clear drink. It was soft, effervescent air carrying on it the aroma of fruits, the scent of distant islands, and making me feel slightly drunk.

Now, for the first time since I had set foot on the ship’s planks, I knew the blessed joy of reverie, and the other more sensual pleasure of abandoning my body, womanlike, to the softness surrounding me.

Frits rolled a cigarette and ran through the luminescent scale of frequencies without finding anything to his liking.

Frits smiled and looked closely at the handsome, bronzed face with its deep-set, dark blue eyes. “Look for the brand when you buy toothpaste,” he thought. “Wandering?” he replied, “I’m not wandering. It’s bound to be a nasty business this evening, don’t you think, Wim?”

felt his eyes grow moist, seized the sheet between his teeth and fell asleep.

“A doctor once told me that they asked one of the loonies in the asylum: What are you going to do when you leave here? He says: Oh, maybe I’ll become an actor, I’ve always had a flair for that. Or else I’ll work for a newspaper, I did that too for a few years. But there’s always a chance that I’ll pick up my old calling; in actual fact, I’m a teapot.”

I begin to feel elated, buoyant, even boisterous.

The more I pictured it, the more I thought about it, the more absurd ideas came into my fevered mind. At that moment it seemed to me a hundred times easier to exert a little quick pressure on the trigger of my revolver than to suffer the infernal torments of the next few days, that helpless waiting to find out whether my comrades had yet heard of my folly, whether the whispering and grinning had already begun behind my back. I knew myself only too well; I knew I would never have the strength to withstand the mockery and scorn and tittle-tattle once it began.

To a certain extent action takes my mind off my troubles, although my uncomfortable memories are still churning away inside my head, and there’s a lump in my throat like a sponge soaked in bitter gall.