TE23 Double Feature

The Lamentations of Zeno

Ilija Trojanow

same software: deflect, downplay, be ready to duck when the storm hits. I wonder what words would have sprung to their happy lips if they’d been hauled off to the clinic at Pentecost, just as summer was settling in, with a persistent pain in the chest. A whole week of examinations. Probes boring into my body, as though the pain had to be hauled up from the deep. And then I spent days waiting for the life-saving operation and after that three months recuperating. When the doctors declared I was (almost) fully recovered, I dropped my bag at home and dashed off to the glacier, leaving Helene staring dumbly behind me. The mere sight of the strangers in my compartment got on my nerves. The woman sitting opposite—my equal in age and disappointment—was holding a box of chocolates. She cautiously untied the ribbon, removed the marbled paper cover and carefully laid it on the seat to her left, then positioned her fingers over the selected 20

confection like the grippers of a crane and lifted it from the box with clinical precision. The candy quickly disappeared between her pale purple lips, with hardly any sign of chewing as she closed the box and retied the ribbon, only to tug at it a few minutes later and repeat the entire pedantic operation. No matter how many pieces she removed, the outside looked completely untouched, as though the candies were intended as a present. At the rate she was going she’d have nothing but an empty box with a fancy bow by the time she got to Kufstein or Klagenfurt. Meanwhile the man sitting by the window was using newspapers—first Bild and then Krone—to shield himself against the swelling landscape. He gave the appearance of wealth, a middle-class man ready for first class travel on that hot summer day, faint marks on his suitcase showed it had once been covered with tacky tourist decals, perhaps he’d acquired some aesthetic guidance since sticking them on. The man studied the first tabloid from top to bottom and then proceeded 21