Blue Self-Portrait

perfectly doing her amazon turn so lightly as to be barely there, he had these three initials in his head, BWS, no idea why the initials and not the full names, BWS in historical order not alphabetical, he closed his eyes because the accompaniment was probably picturing herself making love to BWS but was only making love to him who was neither B nor W nor S but himself, the concern came to him that if he’d been himself alone unassociated with BWS, alone being booed and hissed, without antecedents neither B nor W nor S nor anyone else, the accompaniment wouldn’t now be on top of him, moving with such terrifying benevolence and understanding. He closed his eyes so as not to disappoint the accompaniment who was making love so well to B, to W and to S at the same time as to him who was only himself and not the other three, couldn’t find the courage to make the accompaniment get down without this hurtful dissonance resolved, absented himself like this, in a muddled pleasure, in order not to contradict any of that sexually embarrassing musical lineage. I went over and over all the possible explanations but I didn’t hit on anything, said the composer the accompaniment now descended and he extended, having a smoke in bed for once, knowing that for once the accompaniment wouldn’t object, would keep quiet about smoking on account of B, of W and of S who were still floating in the bedroom air like figures of immortality. Hit on what? the usual accompaniment asked in her tiny husky after-sex voice. The reason for that reaction from the audience, the composer said again not wanting to specify but repeating it anyway. Their reactionary mindset, the accompaniment replied, turning out the bedside light, abandoning the composer in that negative and unproductive solitude that was no good for him, abandoning him but keeping one arm laid over his chest. He had to wait for the accompaniment to fall asleep before he could gently free himself from this habitual arm, one mustn’t assume a presence because of an arm or a leg left behind, the pianist knows. This is how one becomes a man alone, the pianist realized, not going to sleep. The Blue Self-Portrait hung on the wall, the hum of contemporaries behind the wall. Ahead of the wall the West, behind the East, if one not the other, you had to choose, Deutsche Oper or Staatsoper you had to choose, Café Einstein or Brecht’s house you had to make a call, one side of the Spree or the other, downriver or upriver, now things are better we can choose but actually no we can’t, between Berlin and Berlin there’s no choice, you can generally tell the difference between Berlin and Berlin but not always, it gets harder, really there’s no difference any more.

I have to go for a pee, said my sister, first-class at piss, a pee in front of the Reichstag and behind the Brandenburg gates, a pee in the Tiergarten, a pee at the Sony Center, a pee in Nikolaiviertel, in front of the Bauhaus Archiv a piss and at the Philharmonic, at the Deutsche Oper, on the Kurfürstenstrasse, on the Unter den Linden avenue pee in front of the Bellevue again and there right away without waiting in the rain on the bank of the Spree just after the little bridge the need takes her so there she goes, but not at the Nationalgalerie no, the only place where my sister has not pissed although I have, it was an hour before the Kaiser Café in the Sony Center, I went to pee in the Nationalgalerie, went into the Nationalgalerie specially for that not to see the exhibition about melancholy. Look it’s the exhibition, I said to my sister in front of the Nationalgalerie, we could go and see it, yes we could, my sister replied who had a melancholy tendency. The exhibition had been at the Grand Palais before sprouting anew at the Nationalgalerie, I had walked past the Grand Palais and thought melancholy, hm, why not go see that but I’d let it go, every day putting it off to the next, walking past the Grand Palais, melancholy tomorrow, thought I must go see the melancholy but had put everything off while swearing I wouldn’t miss it, I put it off every time so that in the end I missed the melancholy I was just too late, once over it’s over, on balance relieved to have missed it, having practically forgotten melancholy and even forgotten having missed it yet now I’m here brutally confronted with melancholy in the beating heart of Berlin, a stone’s throw from the Philharmonic, practically next door to the Staatsbibliothek and not much further from the Sony Center where waiting for me though I didn’t yet know it was my tragic destiny, confronted once more with the decision of going or not going, the possibility of a detour via melancholy before facing the tragic destiny crossed my mind, look there’s that exhibition from the Grand Palais at the Nationalgalerie, I said to my sister, so the question of melancholy reared its head again when I thought I’d decided it once and for all by dint of my apathy which almost instantly made an enthusiasm for melancholy seem vulgar and laughable. No step was taken, no commitment on my part either directly or from afar in favor of melancholy but a vague impulse, one at least, hardly framed before it was demolished by the apathy, but here in Berlin a fresh chance to bear out my good intentions, we could go I said to my sister but instead of joining the queue for tickets I snuck straight off to the Nationalgalerie toilets, the basement ones, actually not just for a pee, I’m better at holding on than my sister, but to change my Eleganti hold-ups. For a good half-hour my left stocking had been showing