Moving Parts

This could not have been foreseen. There wasn’t meant to be a gunshot wound in the story the narrator was telling, especially one that he himself would sustain. But he has in fact been wounded. He acknowledges this reluctantly, because the fact of the injury points unambiguously to a body; it proves that the narrator possesses one. He has a beating heart, sensitive kidneys and liver, soft skin, delicate muscles and dark red blood — everything that, not without a certain disquiet, can be studied on the pages of anatomical atlases. The suggestion that things are otherwise, present in the background from the very first paragraphs and fed by what was left unsaid, all at once loses its convenient, noncommittal quality and acquires the ordinariness of that which is spoken outright, the inertia of concrete statements, heavy as bricks. Suddenly filled with substance, the illusion loses balance and falls over. In this way the discreet insinuations of the narrator turn into brazen lies. This unexpected turn of events, shedding light on a troublesome issue, lends his earlier intimations the quality of playacting and exposes them to ridicule.

The narrator bears a body — like every one of the characters, like the hurrying passers-by carrying their burden along the sidewalks. He hid this fact doggedly, not shrinking from barefaced prevarication. Now he would like to say something in his own defense but cannot, somewhat dazed as he is, and lying spread-eagled on the steep roof. The body, barely grazed, is bleeding unrestrainedly. The body has its own weight and is afraid that if it grows weaker, it will follow the bottle and slip off the roof. It’s drenched in cold sweat; the pain does not give it a moment’s respite. It sees no escape, no future beyond bleeding, no hope of anything better than a slow demise. The body realizes in despair that it was permitted to relish the smell of coffee, to experience the softness of sofas and the caress of soap and warm water, only up to the point at which the world pulled the ground from under its feet and the air from its lungs. Vulnerable and cowardly, always with something to lose and always prepared to yield to pressure, sell itself, abase itself, to pay any price to be saved, it was unable to prevent a thing. While it still stood on its feet, it tried to negotiate favorable conditions for itself. Yet the time will come when this aching body will have nothing more to offer, and its concessions will prove worthless. And it will have to give everything back; it will be left only with whatever space in the world it manages to gather beneath itself as it lies insensate.