WALTER ABISH
81
As soon as I complete the novel. I am, you might say, searching for
an appropriate conclusion. In yesterday's paper there was mention of a
young woman who jumped from the fourteenth story of an office
building only a few blocks from this hotel. I mention this only because
in life, jumping out of a window is an end, whereas in a novel, where
suicide occurs all too frequently, it becomes an explanation.
I'm terribly sorry. The interviewer looks at me apologetically. I
forgot
to
press the record button. This has never happened to me
before. Could we possibly go over the interview again. Just briefly ...
Yes, why not, I reply.
An hour later, after the interviewer has left, the phone rings, and
when I pick up the receiver, ready to welcome any interruption, any
small diversion, anything that will keep me from sitting down and
trying to write, my brother Helmut on the other end of the line, at that
hour, I presume, still in his office, calmly says: I thought you might
want to know that your Daphne Hasendruck is not Daphne Hasen–
druck.
Of course she is.
The real Daphne Hasendruck is married to the head of Dust
Enterprises in Spain. They live in Madrid. They have two chi ldren.
Her name, should you wish to contact her, is Daphne Wheelock.
You spoke to her?
I was just being thorough.
Then who is our Daphne?
I haven't the foggiest idea.
Did you mention this
to
your father-in-law?
Do you take me for an ass?
You spotted her that weekend. You saw through her. Was that the
reason for all those questions?
No. I'm just thorough. I don ' t want you to fuclt up.
It
takes too
much of my time.
By the way, I'm sorry about the police station.
We'll patch it up. But I've been told they lost all their files,
including the one on you.
This is Switzerland, I say
to
myself, as I set out for a stroll later that
afternoon. This is the place where Musil died, where Rilke died, where
Gottfried Keller lived and died, where Jean-Jacques Rousseau was
born, and where Nabokov lived, as much a prisoner of the past as I am
a prisoner of the present.
Geneva 1977.
