Free The Illogic of Kassel by Enrique Vila-Matas Page B

tiredness from the day was making them pop up in the most alarming way.
    I was starting to feel really worn out, and at that stage even greater muddles can end up materializing in my mind. I’d gotten up terribly early in Barcelona to catch the plane to Frankfurt, and over the course of the day the fatigue of the flight, the lengthy Croatian incident and other tribulations had been piling up. On top of that, I didn’t want to bother Boston any longer, whom they seemed to have obliged to carry out these welcoming acts of courtesy toward me; as she herself had been half-hinting, she was expected as soon as possible in the central office, where she’d left a host of work matters pending.
    It was time to start saying goodbye to her and devote myself to setting up the “thinking cabin” in my room in the Hessenland. Soon it would be getting dark, and, what’s more, I believed I could feel tiredness stealing over my body. It followed that the glitter of summer light in the store window could only be false (that sparkle I’d glimpsed a moment ago). Already in the grip of the imminent appearance of anguish, I was reminded of the philosophers of the Tlön school, who declared that, if we mortals didn’t already know it, it was as well for us to understand that all the time in the world had already transpired, and our life was only the crepuscular and no doubt falsified and mutilated memory or reflection of an irrecoverable process.
    In a chain of events that took place out of my control, I saw myself as a worthless twilight reflection and fell into a state of unease that I guessed would not now be assuaged for the rest of the day, not even by the genuine glitter of the truest summer sun. And all this, naturally, was putting off the moment when I could at last feel I was fully in Germany. Depending on how I chose mentally to tackle the problem of my definitive landing, Germany might even come to seem like the other side of the moon to me, with its craters and its great seas.
    18
     
    On the terrace of a bar on Theaterstrasse, we stopped to eat some frankfurters, and I recovered more than I expected to, although it so happened that, once again, I couldn’t avoid a silly memory coming back to me. Since boyhood, it has been hard for me to eat a frankfurter without thinking of the two pounds of mud my grandfather claimed to have accumulated on the soles of his shoes near Frankfurt during World War I.
    If the anecdote was ridiculous, its absurd tendency to come back every time I was about to swallow that sort of snack was even more so. Trying to escape the muddy memory by fleeing it mentally, I said the first thing to Boston that popped into my head. This was as spontaneous as it was outlandish and, seen from my present perspective, perhaps somewhat suicidal (although, not wishing to punish myself too much, I prefer to see the question as utter whimsy, like a McGuffin):
    “Do you think there can be any point of connection between the avant-garde and Aryan perfume?”
    Nobody has ever looked at me with such rage as Boston did hearing this question.
    “What concept do you have of the avant-garde?” she asked.
    At that moment it was hard to imagine what consequences this question would have for me.
    19
     
    I didn’t know what crime I had committed. I was almost scared. I took the opportunity to remind Boston that since my physical collapse some years back, I had taken exceptionally good care of my health, and, because of this, in spite of having just recovered my strength, even though I knew it was still early, I was going to retire to my hotel to rest until the following day. Surely, I thought, my question had originated in my accumulated tiredness of that day.
    Boston objected, asking me at the same time if I was really so sure I had to go. I told her that I was, indeed, very tired. And then, in a very friendly tone, I reminded her that in Barcelona I’d made exceptions going out for dinner with her twice, and I could make