Free Tubutsch by Albert Ehrenstein

 
     
     
    MY NAME IS TUBUTSCH, KARL TUBUTSCH. I ONLY MENTION THIS BECAUSE I have very few possessions apart from my name . . .
    It's not the melancholy and bitterness of autumn, nor the feeling one gets after completing a major work, nor the dullness with which one o nly dimly a wakes after a long, serious illness: I just can't understand how I have sunk into this state. Inside and outside of me is governed by a complete emptiness, a deso lation. I've become an empty shell and don't know how. Just who or what has brought about this ghastliness: a great nameless magician, the reflection in a mirror, the fall of a bird's feather, the laugh of a child, the death of two flies; it is futile to search for it, or even to want to search, as foolish as attempting to track down any cause in this world. All I ca n see is the effect and its con sequence; it's established that my soul has lost its balance, something in it is buckled and broken, the inner fountains have dried up. I can't even guess at the reason for this, the reason for my own particular case, and the worst of it is, I can't see anything which might change my hopeless state, not even slightly. For my inner emptiness is complete, systematic as it were, the result of a lamentable lack of any sort of chaotic elements. The days slip by, as do the weeks and the months. No, no! just the days. I don't beli e ve that there are such things as weeks, months and years, there are only days, days which keep plunging into one another, days which I am unable to hold onto by some experience or other.
     
    Were someone to ask what happened to me yesterday, I would answer: "Yes terday? Yesterday one of my shoelaces snapped." Years ago I used to be furious if one of my shoelaces snapped or one of my buttons fell off, I invented a special demon to preside over this department and even gave him a name. Gorymaaz, if I remember correctly. Now I thank God if one of my shoelaces snaps in the street. For only then do I have some degree of justification to enter a shop, request a shoelace, answer the question as to whether I would like something else with: "Nothing!", pay at the till and depart. Or else: I purchase the goods from one of the lads who keep on shouting: "Four for five bob." and get stared at by numerous passers-by who take me for a public benefactor. In any case, a few minutes pass by in this way and, all said and d one, that's something after all . . .
    It shouldn't be said that I have a special aptitude for feeling bored. That's not true. Since time immemorial I have possessed an exceptional ability, have been endowed with the talent for killing time, for coming up with the most exotic of imaginable occupations.
    By way of proof: not long ago, as I was on my way to Ganster Lane, I walked up to a policeman, desirous of more proximate information, even though I did not know the whereabouts of the aforementioned thoroughfare. And thereupon I made an important discovery which seems to portend the toppling of a number of universal laws. The policeman smelt of rose water. Just think: a perfumed policeman. What a contradictio in adjecto! At first I didn't believe my nose. Doubts rose up inside me as to the authenticity of this law enforcer. Perhaps an artful criminal, a usurper, had clad himself in the uniform of a policeman in order to elude his pursuers. Only when I received my information was I convinced of his authenticity. It was so Delphic. Now it was up to me to find out whether all law enforcers — p erhaps on account of a new regu l a tion, say — had to disseminate pleasant odours, or whether he was the sole example with this characteristic and had acted, as it were, on his own initiative. Without batting an eyelid, I set myself this far-reaching task. A dissertation, or better still an essay: "On policemen and their odours" swam before my eyes . . . One policeman after another was sniffed at without finding a single further stain on their station, although I did ascertain that