Blue Self-Portrait

another way of putting two fingers up at the world, staying carefree in the offspring’s room is however much more imaginable than staying there and hoping to die, as if it were so important where a girl sleeps, here or there, one room or another in the end what difference does it make, thanks but, all in all, I prefer a little Polish B&B on Neue Kantsrasse to the accompaniment’s offspring’s bedroom in your apartment, I nevertheless replied with as much nonchalance as exaggeration, because the little Polish B&B is not objectively preferable, nonetheless among the shabbiest and sorriest, the black forest freeze emanating from the B&B staff, sleeping in a Polish forest or sleeping in the B&B on Neue Kantstrasse is six and half a dozen, the chill and the darkness and fear of wolves and the winter solitude, the tapestry in room 203, the deer in the tapestry, the Polish state of the electrical wiring, the Polish condition of the bed-linen, the Polish room service, I pictured the accompaniment’s face at having to put up with me in her offspring’s room so near the pianist and having to put up with me in fact everywhere in the apartment, I as always incapable of respecting hospitality’s limits and overstepping them at the first opportunity and at all those that follow, by my omnipresent presence destroying an environment propitious to well-conceived conjugality, the quiet and benevolent friendly complicity of conjugality when it’s genuinely shared, my big mouth talking too much from sparrow’s fart, even before breakfast I’m motoring on and without thinking to spread the marmalade on my Brötchen I plunge in, in my typical scholarly, passionate and extravagant fashion, like that from my first words of the day, from the moment I first open my mouth and as if to compensate the tooth I’m missing, already before morning coffee is done I’ll have talked too much, in my passionate and triumphal and candid, shameless fashion, Maman did not teach me modesty certainly not, I said to my sister, we can’t blame her you can’t think of everything, we’ll have to make the best of our education, I said, our education wasn’t the worst either, went on, still we can’t blame Maman nor Papa who followed Maman, peace be with him he went straight to heaven like a man of nature, of wild nature, not beautiful nature, of wild woods not of gardens à la française, we can’t blame either one or the other for this dreadful education, they did their best, didn’t educate us so badly in the end, I look at us and I know there’s worse, that day I was optimistic and said to my sister who wasn’t at her best since Papa was dead and she wasn’t yet, that yes, shamelessness is a basic handicap but not the worst, that of course shamelessness sabotages us, makes us misfits and more arm-bombs than arm candy, that of course education for collective happiness makes us unresistant and fundamentally influenceable by the best and much more often by the worst, but see, my sister, what nice girls we are, really very nice girls, Maman did not screw that up and Papa neither, dead his soul at peace having at least succeeded in making truly nice girls of us, very very nice. As nice as us is very rare, as fundamentally is exceptional, I said to my sister who didn’t see why, for my sister being nice is so natural she doesn’t see it, thinks everyone is like her, doesn’t know, doesn’t see the nasty on one side and nor the nice on the other, imagines everyone equally nice, no villainy or perversity but a universal niceness. Collective happiness, in my sister’s case, depends neither on satisfaction nor on abnegation but fundamentally on universal niceness, the one does not preclude the other, my sister said, it’s due to excessive niceness that I’ve found myself in the most immodest situations, stripped bare by niceness and soon fetched up in a strip from which I have only emerged thanks to the niceness of others, niceness has never prevented shamelessness in my case, to be honest my niceness has much more often fed my shamelessness such that for me niceness has always been a disaster. For me but not you, I replied because I’ve never believed in disaster striking my sister. Others may believe that, not I, I’ve heard tales about her, the acres burned down in her wake, the suicides and nervous breakdowns, the despair of artists who’ve painted her portrait, the demolitions of façades and crumblings of cliffs which speak volumes about my sister’s capacity to provoke, my sister’s provocations have been a feature of her whole career, although never catastrophic for her, my sister emerges a hero from all misadventures thanks to her non-stick character and to a stubbornness that I call perseverance, misfit and arm-bomb are compliments to my sister while both being appalling flaws in me, declining the pianist’s invitation is yet another symptom of my antisocial character, the pianist will of course have observed, the lack of elementary politeness in this categorical refusal is due to my unclub-bable character, saying I preferred a Polish B&B on Neue Kantstrasse to the offspring’s room in his apartment is proof if any required that misfit and arm-bomb are, right after carefree, the terms that best describe me, which the pianist will have noticed, no longer risking an invitation except to the cinema in the Sony Center, invitation to which I responded positively. If you like we could go to the cinema, the pianist said in French out of politeness and love of the language and I said ja warum nicht.

You had to hear me say that warum nicht to the pianist, a warum nicht at the Kaiser Café is not a warum nicht at Brecht’s house, there is in that Kaiser Café warum nicht a readiness for suicide that the same warum nicht at Brecht’s house could never convey, Kurt