Pushkin Press

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

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 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, woman-like, to the softness surrounding me.

I haven’t spoken a word to anyone for ten days … well, not for years, really, and then it seems so difficult, perhaps because forcing it all back inside myself chokes me.

I can’t bear the company of human beings either because they laugh all day … I can’t endure that now, I hear it in my cabin and stop my ears against it.

Oh, I know, I know very well how absurd it is to turn to the first man I meet, but … I’m … I’m in a terrible mental condition, I have reached a point where I absolutely must talk to someone, or it will be the end of me …

we often come upon such cases, such fateful cases … borderline cases, let’s call them, when we don’t know whether or not it is our duty … or rather, when there’s more than one duty involved, not just to another human being but to ourselves too, to the state, to science … yes, of course, we must help, that’s what we are there for … but such maxims are never more than theory. How far should we go with our help? Here are you, a stranger to me, and I’m a stranger to you, and I ask you not to mention seeing me … well, so you don’t say anything, you do that duty … and now I ask you to talk to me because my own silence is killing me, and you say you are ready to listen. Good, but that’s easy … suppose I were to ask you to take hold of me and throw me overboard, though, your willingness to help would be over. The duty has to end somewhere … it ends where we begin thinking of our own lives, our own responsibilities, it has to end somewhere, it has to end … or perhaps for doctors, of all people, it ought not to end? Must a doctor always come to the rescue, be ready to help one and all, just because he has a diploma full of Latin words, must he really throw away his life and water down his own blood if some woman … if someone comes along wanting him to be noble, helpful, good? Yes, duty ends somewhere … it ends where no more can be done, that’s where it ends …”