I am so weak, so rocky, that I can scarcely climb down the L steps. Now I know what’s happened – I’ve crossed the boundary line! This Bible that I’ve been carrying around with me is to instruct me, initiate me into a new way of life. The world I knew is no more, it is dead, finished, cleaned up. And everything that I was is cleaned up with it. I am a carcass getting an injection of new life. I am bright and glittery, rabid with new discoveries, but in the centre it is still leaden, still slag. I begin to weep – right there on the L stairs. I sob aloud, like a child. Now it dawns on me with full clarity: you are alone in the world! You are alone . . . alone . . . alone. It is bitter to be alone . .. bitter, bitter, bitter, bitter. There is no end to it, it is unfathomable, and it is the lot of every man on earth, but especially mine . . . especially mine. Again the metamorphosis. Again everything totters, and careens. I am in the dream again, the painful, delirious, pleasurable, maddening dream of beyond the boundary. I am standing in the centre of the vacant lot, but my home I do not see. I have no home. The dream was a mirage. There never was a house in the midst of the vacant lot. That’s why I was never able to enter it. My home is not in this world, nor in the next I am a man without a home, without a friend, without a wife.
I am a monster who belongs to a reality which does not exist yet. Ah, but it does exist, it will exist, I am sure of it. I walk now rapidly, head down, muttering to myself. I’ve forgotten about my rendezvous so completely that I never even noticed whether I walked past her or not. Probably I did. Probably I looked right at her and didn’t recognize her. Probably she didn’t recognize me either. I am mad, mad with pain, mad with anguish. I am desperate. But I am not lost. No, there is a reality to which I belong. It’s far away, very far away. I may walk from now till doomsday with head down and never find her. But it is there, I am sure of it. I look at people murderously. If I could throw a bomb and blow the whole neighbourhood to smithereens I would do it. I would be happy seeing them fly in the air, mangled, shrieking, torn apart, annihilated. I want to annihilate the whole earth. I am not a part of it. It’s mad from start to finish. The whole shooting match. It’s a huge piece of stale cheese with maggots festering inside it. Fuck it! Blow it to hell! Kill, kill, kill: Kill them all, Jews and Gentiles, young and old, good and bad …
I grow light, light as a feather, and my pace becomes more steady, more calm, more even. What a beautiful night it is! The stars shining so brightly, so serenely, so remotely. Not mocking me precisely, but reminding me of the futility of it all. Who are you, young man, to be talking of the earth, of blowing things to smithereens? Young man, we have been hanging here for millions and billions of years. We have seen it all, everything, and still we shine peacefully every night, we light the way, we still the heart. Look around you, young man, see how still and beautiful everything is. Do you see, even the garbage lying in the gutter looks beautiful in this light. Pick up the little cabbage leaf, hold it gently in your hand. I bend down and pick up the cabbage leaf lying in the gutter. It looks absolutely new to me, a whole universe in itself. I break a little piece off and examine that. Still a universe. Still unspeakably beautiful and mysterious. I am almost ashamed to throw it back in the gutter. I bend down and deposit it gently with the other refuse. I become very thoughtful, very, very calm. I love everybody in the world.
I know that somewhere at this very moment there is a woman waiting for me and if only I proceed very calmly, very gently, very slowly, I will come to her. She will be standing on a comer perhaps and when I come in sight she will recognize me – immediately. I believe this, so help me God! I believe that everything is just and ordained. My home? Why it is the world – the whole world! I am at home everywhere, only I did not know it before. But I know now. There is no boundary line any more. There never was a boundary line: it was I who made it. I walk slowly and blissfully through the streets. The beloved streets. Where everybody walks and everybody suffers without showing it. When I stand and lean against a lamp post to light my cigarette even the lamp post feels friendly. It is not a thing of iron – it is a creation of the human mind, shaped a certain way, twisted and formed by human hands, blown on with human breath, placed by human hands and feet. I turn round and rub my hand over the iron surface. It almost seems to speak to me. It is a human lamp post. It belongs, like the cabbage leaf, like the torn socks, like the mattress, like the kitchen sink. Everything stands in a certain way in a certain place, as our mind stands in relation to God. The world, in its visible, tangible substance, is a map of our love. Not God but life is love. Love, love, love. And in the midmost midst of it walks this young man, myself, who is none other than Gotdieb Leberecht Muller.
Gotdieb Leberecht Miiller! This is the name of a man who lost his identity. Nobody could tell him who he was, where he came from or what had happened to him. In the movies, where I first made the acquaintance of this individual it was assumed that he had met with an accident in the war. But when I recognized myself on the screen, knowing that I had never been to the war, I realized that the author had invented this little piece of fiction in order not to expose me. Often I forget which is the real me. Often in my dreams I take the draught of forgetfulness, as it is called, and I wander forlorn and desperate, seeking the body and the name which is mine. And sometimes between the dream and reality there is only the thinnest line. Sometimes while a person is talking to me I step out of my shoes, and, like a plant drifting with the current, I begin the voyage, of my rootless self. In this condition I am quite capable of fulfilling the ordinary demands of life – of finding a wife, of becoming a father, of supporting the household, of entertaining friends, of reading books, of paying taxes, of performing military services, and so on and so forth. In this condition I am capable if needs be, of killing in cold blood, for the sake of my family or to protect my country, or whatever it may be. I am the ordinary, routine citizen who answers to a name and who is given a number in his passport. I am thoroughly irresponsible for my fate.
Then one day, without the slightest warning, I wake up and looking about me I understand absolutely nothing of what is going on about me, neither my own behaviour nor that of my neighbours, nor do I understand why the governments are at war or at peace, whichever the case may be. At such moments I am born anew, born and baptized by my right name: Gotdieb Leberecht Miiller! Everything I do in my right name is looked upon as crazy. People make furtive signs behind my back, sometimes to my face even. I am forced to break with friends and family and loved ones. I am obliged to break camp. And so, just as naturally as in dream, I find myself once again drifting with the current, usually walking along a highway, my face set towards the sinking sun. Now all my faculties become alert. I am the most suave silky, cunning animal – and I am at the same time what might be called a holy man. I know how to fend for myself. I know how to avoid work, how to avoid entangling relationships, how to avoid pity, sympathy, bravery, and all the other pitfalls. I stay in place or widi a person just long enough to obtain what I need, and then I’m off again. I have no goal: the aimless wandering is sufficient unto itself. I am free as a bird, sure as an equilibrist. Manna falls from the sky; I have only to hold out my hands and receive. And everywhere I leave the most pleasant feeling behind me, as though, in accepting the gifts that are showered upon me, I am doing a real favour to others. Even my dirty linen is taken care of by loving hands. Because everybody loves a right-living man!
