F

  Slowly but surely the little discrepancies accumulate. F is home, looking out at the rain, puts on a jacket and cap, takes his umbrella, leaves the house, wanders through the streets, where it isn’t raining, puts on a jacket and cap, takes his umbrella, and leaves the house, as if he hadn’t just done that already. Shortly after that a distant relative appears, who has already been registered in a subordinate clause as having died ten years ago, an innocent visit to the fair by a grandfather and his grandson turns into a labyrinthine nightmare, and a piece of clumsiness on F’s part with major consequences is wound backward until it clearly never happened. Of course this all leads to the construction of theories. Very slowly there comes a dawning sense of comprehension, then the realization of being on the brink, and then the story breaks off—just like that, without warning, right in the middle of a sentence.

  The reader keeps trying to make sense of it all. Perhaps the hero died. Perhaps the inconsistencies are harbingers of the end, the first defective spots, so to speak, before the entire warp and woof unravels. For what, the author seems to be asking, is death, if not an abrupt break in the middle of a sentence which the reader cannot elide, a soundless apocalypse in which it isn’t humanity that disappears from the world, but the world itself that disappears, an end of all things that has no end?

  The second half is about something else. Namely that you, yes, you, and this is no rhetorical trope, you don’t exist. You think you’re reading this? Of course you do. But nobody’s reading this.

  The world is not the way it seems. There are no colors, there are wavelengths, there are no sounds, there are vibrations in the air, and actually there is no air, there are chains of atoms in space, and “atoms” is just an expression for linkages of energy that lack either a form or a fixed location, and what is “energy” anyway? A number that remains constant throughout all changes, an abstract sum that remains inalterable, not substance, not ratio: pure mathematics. The more attentively one looks, the emptier it all is, and the more unreal that emptiness is. For space itself is no more than a function, a model of our minds.

  And the mind that creates these models? Don’t forget: nobody inhabits the brain. No invisible being wafts through the nerve endings, peers through the eyes, listens from within the ears, and speaks through your mouth. The eyes are not windows. There are nerve impulses, but no one reads them, counts them, translates them, and ruminates about them. Hunt for as long as you want, there’s nobody home. The world is contained within you, and you’re not there. “You,” seen from inside, are cobbled together on a makeshift basis: a field of vision amounting to no more than a few millimeters, and already dissolving into nothing at the outer edges, containing blind spots, and filled with mere habit and a memory that retains very little, most of it invented. Consciousness is a mere flicker, a dream that nobody is dreaming.

  There are fifty pages of this stuff, and it more or less works, you’re more or less convinced. It’s just that there’s a creeping sort of feeling that this too is an ironic demonstration of—well, what? You’re already on the final chapter. It’s short and it’s merciless, and there can be no doubt—it’s all about Arthur himself.

  F appears again and a human being is dismembered in the course of a few pages: gifted, gutless, vacillating, egocentric to the point of sheer meanness, self-loathing, already bored by love, incapable of engaging seriously with anything, using everything including art as a mere excuse for doing nothing, unwilling to take an interest in anyone else, incapable of taking responsibility, too cowardly, incapable of facing his own failures, a weak, dishonest, superfluous man, good for nothing except empty mind games, bogus art lacking all substance and the silent evasion of every unpleasant situation, a man who has finally reached the point of such aversion to his own self that he has to assert that there is no such thing as a self.

  But even this third part is not as clear as it seems. Is this self-loathing really genuine? Given the representations above, there is no “I,” and this entire exploration of consciousness is meaningless. Which part supersedes which other part? The author gives no indication.

  Ivan, Eric, and I had each received a copy through the mail, wrapped in brown paper, minus dedication or sender’s details. The book was not reviewed anywhere, and I didn’t see it in any shop. It was an entire year before I saw it on the street. I was on my way home from school, and for a moment I thought what I was seeing was pure fantasy. But there it really was, in the hands of an old man on a bench who was holding it and smiling as he read it, obviously captivated by the question of the reality of his own existence. I bent over and looked at the plain blue cover, the man looked up uneasily, and I hurried away. Two weeks later I saw the book again, this time in the subway, a man with a leather briefcase and a raggedy hat was reading it. When I saw it again the next week, it was all over the newspapers, and the first people had already killed themselves over it.

  It was a dreamy soul with metaphysical tendencies, a medical student in Minden, who having read it set up a lunatic experiment to test his own existence. No one understood the details, but it had something to do with the log he kept of his every flicker of awareness, with controlled needle jabs that he administered alternately to himself and to a pathetic guinea pig, and with the jump that he made, with absolute premeditation and equally absolute precise execution, from a railroad bridge. In the following week a young woman jumped from the television tower in Munich clutching a copy of My Name Is No One, which unleashed yet another flood of newspaper articles, which in turn resulted in a greengrocer in Fulda taking poison along with his wife. Between the two corpses lay a copy of Arthur’s book.

  That marked the end of the wave of suicides, although the wave of articles, commentaries, and rebuttals kept going, not least including the incident of the well-known radio talk-show host who voluntarily checked into a locked psychiatric ward after declaring on the air that he was convinced of his own nonexistence. Given that he wound up by reading out a rather long excerpt from My Name Is No One, this provoked a debate in parliamentary committee about whether the index of dangerous films, video games, and books should not be administered more severely. This provoked mocking responses from several MPs, and a pronouncement from a bishop, which in turn engendered a further wave of commentary, in which there was much speculation about who this Arthur Friedland person was, who kept in the background, didn’t defend his book, didn’t step forward, and didn’t allow himself to be photographed.

  When the subject had been so exhaustively explored that there wasn’t a human being in the country who wasn’t bored by it, Arthur was famous. His second book, the novel The Hour of the Hunter, a superficially conventional thriller about a deeply melancholic detective who, despite his vast intelligence and desperate efforts, is unable to solve an apparently simple case, spent several weeks on the lower ranks of the best-seller lists.

  Shortly thereafter, The Mouth of the River appeared, a novel about a man whose fate branches out again and again, depending on different decisions or the whims of Fortune. Each time the two alternatives are explored, the two paths that life can take from the same event. Death is an ever-more-frequent visitor, between a successful existence and its horrifying end, there is often no more than a moment of inattention or some tiny incident—more and more paths lead to sickness, accident, and death, while very few lead to old age.

  This book moved me in some extraordinary fashion, and it provokes my anxiety to this day. In part because it shows how immense the consequences of every decision and every move are—every second can bring destruction, and if you really think things through to their conclusion, how is it possible to live at all? But also in part because I could never rid myself of the suspicion that it had more to do with me than Arthur’s other books did: with a summer afternoon long ago when I was almost killed by a car, now little more than a distant memory, a brief anecdote, at best an echo in a bad dream after a heavy dinner.

  There is a creak of wood, a figure pushes its way in and goes dow
n on its knees. I put the cube to one side. I just completed it in twenty-eight seconds; my best time is nineteen, but that was long ago.

  “In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost,” I say crossly.

  “For ever and ever, amen,” a hoarse male voice responds.

  “I’m listening.”

  He’s silent, breathing heavily, searching for words. I look at the cube again, but it’s not okay, twisting the rows might make a noise and he’d notice it.

  “Unchastity. I pleasure myself. I do it all the time.”

  I sigh.

  “Even just now. On the street. No one saw. I have a wife and a girlfriend. They both know about each other, but neither of them knows about my second girlfriend, although she knows about them. Then I have a third girlfriend that none of them knows about. And she doesn’t know about any of them, she thinks I live alone.”

  I rub my eyes. I’m tired, and it’s so hot.

  “Things went wrong when Klara made fun of my wife on Facebook. She didn’t think of the fact that Pia’s her friend and can read it.”

  “Her friend?”

  “Facebook friend. I told all of them that I’m stopping, things are going to be different now. But it’s so hard! How do you do it? No woman ever! I get shaky after just two hours.”

  “We’re speaking about you.”

  “And besides I’ve taken money.”

  “Ah.”

  “Not that much. A thousand euros. From the company cash register.”

  “What is your profession?”

  “I’m an accountant. My girlfriend works in my office.”

  “Which one?”

  “Which office?”

  “Which girlfriend!”

  “Well, Klara. The one my wife knows about.”

  “Why an accountant?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Why would anyone be an accountant? I’ve always wondered.”

  He says nothing. But why can’t I ask questions, where is it written that I’m not allowed to learn anything in the confessional?

  “I like crossword puzzles,” he says. “When everything is neatly filled in. All of it is right. I like that. You look at all the receipts, at first it’s all pure chaos, but then you begin to fill in the answers. One thing here, another thing there, this space and that space, and at a certain point it all comes together. In life it’s the only place you’ll find order. Do you need an accountant?”

  “No, no. Thank you.”

  “The money wasn’t from a client. You mustn’t think that. It was from the office supply for petty expenses. A friend of mine has a furniture business, I told him I need to buy new swivel chairs, but you need to fill out the invoice a little higher, around three thousand euros, and then—”

  “You just said one thousand!”

  “—he delivered the chairs and I paid and we split the difference between us. Unfortunately he then wanted to write off the money I got as a special expense on his tax return, and because he’s our client, I had to tell him that this wasn’t possible. I tried a couple of bookkeeping tricks—”

  “Let’s talk about the women.”

  “It’s terrible, Father! They keep calling.”

  “Who?”

  “All of them except my wife. She never calls. Why would she? And I visit one of them every day, I’ve got things well organized, but it takes too long, I still have to … just like before. How do you stand it, Father? I once managed for a whole week. I stayed at home, played with the children, and helped my wife in the kitchen. In the evenings we watched funny animals on YouTube. There are so many of them. Thousands. Thousands of funny animals.”

  “What do they do?”

  “Eat, roll around, make noises. On the third day I thought things weren’t really so bad. On the fifth, I thought I’d have to kill myself. Then I went to her.”

  “To which one?”

  “I can’t remember. Is it important?”

  “No.”

  “So what should I do?”

  “Exactly that. Stay at home. Help with the cooking. Watch animal videos.”

  “But that’s terrible.”

  “Of course it’s terrible. That’s life.”

  “Why are you saying such a thing to me?”

  “Because I’m not your therapist. Nor am I your friend. Look truth squarely in the face. You’ll never be happy. But that’s not important. You can live that way.” I wait for a moment, then make the sign of the cross. “I absolve you of your sins. In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Be true to your wife for as long as you can. Try it for two weeks. Two weeks have to be possible. And give the money back. That is your penance.”

  “How do I enter it on the books?”

  “You’ll find a way.”

  “That’s easy to say! How do you picture that? I can’t just pay twelve thousand euros back to the office!”

  “Twelve?”

  “I’d rather stay at home for three weeks. Three, yes?”

  “Give the money back!”

  He’s silent. “The absolution still holds, yes? I mean, independent of the penance? It’s not a … condition?”

  “The Sacrament is fulfilled. But not paying the money back would be a new sin.”

  “Then I’ll come back.”

  “It doesn’t work that way!”

  “Of course I could do it as a tax refund. But if there’s an audit, what do I do? I can’t re-credit it.”

  He waits. I don’t respond.

  “Goodbye, Father.”

  The wood creaks, his footsteps recede. I would have liked to get a look at his face, but the sanctity of the confessional forbids it, and I stick to the rules. The Protestants have a God who wants to know what’s going on in your soul, but I’m a Catholic, and my God is only interested in what I actually do. I pick up the cube, and just as I’m wondering whether to use the classic approach or to start with a block of four, the wood creaks again.

  “I drink.”

  I put down the cube.

  “I drink all the time. I can’t stop.”

  I envy alcoholics. People make movies about them, the best actors star in them, articles and novels get written about them. But people who eat a lot? Thin people say it’s all a question of willpower, but maybe they’re just thin because they’re less hungry. Earlier, I bought two chocolate bars from the machine on the corner. Not to eat, just to have on hand. What a stupid idea.

  “It’s all I want anymore. Just drink. My wife’s left me, I lost my job, nothing matters. I just want to drink.”

  “I can only absolve you if you sincerely want to change.”

  My telephone vibrates. I fumble it out and see Eric’s office number on the screen. That’s odd, because Eric never calls me. But I can’t answer it now.

  “I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know.”

  “You don’t know if you want to stop drinking?”

  “I would love to not want to drink, but I want to drink.”

  Is that a clever distinction or an absurdity? The telephone stops vibrating.

  “Are you eating, Father?”

  “No! Try not to drink for two days. That’s a start. Then come back!”

  “Two days? I can’t.”

  “Then I cannot absolve you.” The first bite was wonderful. The breaking chocolate, the fine prickling taste of the cocoa. But already you can taste that it’s too fat and far too sweet. That’s the way it is with most things, something Jesus overlooked. Buddha was more alert. Nothing is ever truly sufficient. Everything falls short, and yet you can’t get free.

  “You’re eating!”

  “Come back in two days.”

  “Stop eating!”

  “I’m not eating.”

  “In the confessional!”

  “In two days. If you haven’t had a drink. Then you should come back.”

  The wood creaks, he leaves. I crumple the empty foil and think about the second bar. It’s still in my pocket, and that’s where it
will stay.

  I pull it out of my pocket.

  But I haven’t unwrapped it. And even if it were already unwrapped, I wouldn’t have bitten into it. Everything is within my power. The mystery that is free will: I can bite into it or I can leave it be. It’s up to me. All I have to do for it not to happen is not to do it.

  The second bar doesn’t taste good. I chew quickly and angrily. The second one never tastes good. The telephone vibrates. Eric’s office again. It must be important.

  “I envy you,” said Ivan.

  “That’s going overboard.”

  We were sitting on a bench in the covered walk of the Eisenbrunn monastery. Trees swayed in the soft wind, birds sang, cooking smells were coming from the kitchen, and now and then a monk in his habit went past, head bowed. You could think you were in a different century.

  I was happy to see Ivan. After a week of grueling spiritual exercises I was tired of the pious faces. My brother had surfaced unannounced, as was his way. The porter had wanted to shoo him off, but then finally let him in. Ivan was not someone it was easy to shoo.

  “They even confiscated your cube?”

  “Part of the exercises,” I said. I missed it to begin with, but in the meantime I had begun to wonder if what I had regarded as my favorite activity was merely an addiction.

  “You met Lindemann?” I asked.

  “It was totally unproductive. Not an interesting man.”

  “But did he remember? Could he explain to you—”

  “I told you, he’s not interesting.”

  “But—”

  “Martin, there’s nothing to tell! I wish I were like you. You know what you want. I’m not even suited to be an artist.”

  “Rubbish.”

  “It’s not modesty, and it’s not a crisis. I’ve realized I’m not cut out to be a painter.”

  Three monks swathed in their habits came along the colonnade. The one on the left drank, the one in the middle watched sports programs for hours every evening on the old black-and-white TV, the one on the right had recently been given a warning about his collection of pornographic videos. But to Ivan, who didn’t know them, they must look like Illuminati.