hard to tell. He entered the office, greeted his colleagues and was greeted in return. He sat at a desk he sensed was
Hours later his neighbour greeted him as if for the first time and said that she and her husband were looking forward to getting to know him and to becoming good neighbours.
The name on his door was not the same one he had signed on letters in the office. He went into the flat. What he discovered was new, different from what he remembered had been there that morning. Once again he looked through the wardrobes and cupboards for documents and compared his face to the picture on the identity card, which looked exactly like him.
The doorbell rang and a woman was standing in the room. She had come to pick him up. She knew that otherwise he would have kept her waiting again or not shown up at all. She had been trying to reach him all day. They needed to talk, now. He didn’t know the woman, but they talked things out. Just when he thought she had calmed down and they were back on track, she announced that it was all over. He agreed and so they split up. He took her home and returned to his flat.
This happened often now. The names on his door kept changing. Each morning he left his flat and was recognized, even if not as the person he thought he was at the time. People knew who he was meant to be, or at least seemed to know. He was whoever they wanted to see in him. Without any effort or subterfuge, and no matter how he behaved, he always seemed to meet their expectations.
For a while he responded to people only hesitantly, since they always had the better of him, but he soon overcame what seemed like memory lapses or absentmindedness. With each encounter he found it easier to adapt to every new situation. People took him to be the one they perceived, and he became the one they expected him to be. Without disguising himself, he went around disguised, if not from others then simply from himself.
Through all the changes, his flat remained the same. At least the address stayed the same. His neighbours stayed the same, all the other people seemed to stay the same. Only
More and more often, he enjoyed ringing the doorbell at a strange address to see who he would be at that moment for that particular stranger. It could go well or badly because there was no way of knowing if the door would be opened in a friendly way or slammed shut in his face. He didn’t know if he would be greeted as an acquaintance, as an unwelcome stranger or as an enemy whose presence would be considered rude or even offensive.
When he awoke at night or in the morning and couldn’t tell whether or not the flat had changed yet, he would look in his address book for the name of someone with whom he had made plans the night before, and sometimes that person would have no idea what he was talking about.
Once, in a sort of relapse, he was taken for the person he might have been before this all started. At least that was his impression, and he was surprised by the warmth with which people greeted him. They thought he had returned after a long absence. Still, when he went back to his flat immediately after that experience, hoping to find it restored to the way it had been, he stood there, feeling indifferent. The flat belonged to him, but at the same time it didn’t, and everything continued on its new course.
It usually occurred at night, while he was asleep. At least it did for a long time, but then it began to happen more often during the day. And when he returned to his flat in the evening or even earlier, it was impossible to predict whether he would re-enter the flat as the salesman who had left it that morning or as the estate agent in whose guise he had just sold a piece of property, or even as the GP who had just chatted up a woman.
A shard of memory remained each time, at least for a while, or perhaps just a sense of previous possibilities and limitations. He was at the mercy of his strengths and weaknesses because it always took him a while to recognize them as his own. They became more and more difficult to cope with. He worried that he would lose perspective and no longer be aware of what was happening to him. But he didn’t need to worry, at least not on account of others, because
Ever more frequently, from one moment to the next, constantly, continuously, seamlessly, no matter where he was or where he tried to hide, he was discovered, recognized and confronted, and things took their course. On one and the same day he married and stood, an old man, at his wife’s grave, only to find himself the next moment in a divorce court believing he had got off lightly. Hours later he found himself unable to cope with the loss. He became a happy father and could not bear the thought of having children. He was a student attending the school in which he taught. He performed surgery and woke from anaesthesia. He raised bees, fell in love, mourned, was afraid and frightened others, and was happy. He was finally alone and intolerably lonely. He couldn’t decide which car he wanted to buy. Then he pawned his television and wore his last frayed shirt. And so on, constantly, continuously, without interruption. It exhausted him, wore him out. He tried to cope by staying in his flat. But he went out because he had to conform to the needs, desires and aspirations of the person whose life he was living at that moment. He withdrew more frequently now, every day, every night, into his flat, his bed, burrowing himself in there and refusing to get up or to do anything other than sleep, regardless of whose dreams he would have to dream. He did not want to wake up. But he did wake up and get up, which he in fact wanted to do since there were things he had planned, even though they were thwarted by the very first encounter of the day.
By now, he also felt at home at other addresses, and what at first had seemed to happen by chance was now routine.
He entered a building to visit someone, but was stopped by a man who took him for a neighbour and held the lift for him. He got out one floor above the man and went to the flat where someone was meant to be waiting for him, but no one was home. He put the key in the lock, the door opened, and he realized that this flat, too, belonged to him.
After glancing around, he left the building and went along the streets, peering into windows. When he saw windows that were dark, he went into the building and hid in the flat for a while, which then became his flat.
He didn’t return to his own flat for a long time after that night. He moved to new areas, towns and cities, and his key fitted the lock of any door he wished to open. Yet he wanted to return to the place where it all began, to be closer to his own history. At least that is what he thought, regardless of whose flat it might have been or whose life he had lived at the time, or was living now.
About the Author
Alois Hotschnig, born in 1959, is one of Austria’s most critically acclaimed authors, eliciting comparison with Franz Kafka and Thomas Bernhard. He has written novels, short stories and plays. His books have won major Austrian and international honours, such as the Italo-Svevo award and the Erich-Fried prize.
Tess Lewis has been translating from German and French for two decades. For her translations of Peter Handke, Alois Hotschnig, Pascale Bruckner and Philippe Sollers she has been awarded PEN Translation Fund grants and an NEA Translation Fellowship.
