Free I'm Not Stiller by Max Frisch

is her husband, she also shows me her hands—also bearing two bright red scars. It is obvious, this much I can guess, that the point is tó show who is the cross and who the crucified, though none of this is put into words; the people at the café tables are reading illustrated papers...)
    ***
    My warder wanted to know who Helen was. He had just heard the name in the public prosecutor's office. My warder already knew she was the wife of a U.S. sergeant, and also that the sergeant in question came home on leave one morning and surprised us together in the house ... Too tired to make up another murder story, I merely added:
    'He was a charming fellow.'
    â€¢Her husband?'
    'He wanted his wife to go and see a psychoanalyst, and she wanted him to do the same.'
    'What happened next?'
    'That was all.'
    My warder was disappointed, but I realize more and more that this has its advantages; it's precisely the disappointing stories, which have no proper ending and therefore no proper meaning, that sound true to life.
    Otherwise there's nothing new.
    Â 
    P.S. I don't know what they hope to gain from these on-the-spot investigations. They've evidently abandoned, or at least postponed, their plan of taking me to her lost husband's studio, because of my assurance that I should smash to pieces everything belonging to the fellow who had caused me so much trouble. Now, I hear, they want to go with me to Davos. What for?
    ***
    You can put anything into words, except your own life. It is this impossibility that condemns us to remain as our companions see and mirror us, those who claim to know me, those who call themselves my friends, and never allow me to change, and discredit every miracle (which I cannot put into words, the inexpressible, which I cannot prove)—simply so that they can say:
    'I know you.'
    ***
    My counsel was beside himself, as was bound to happen sooner or later; he did not lose his self-control, but self-control had made him white in the face. Without saying good morning, he looked into my sleepy eyes, silent, his brief-case on his knees, waiting till he felt I had sufficiently recovered my senses and was sufficiently curious to know the reason for his indignation.
    'You're lying,' he said.
    Probably he expected me to blush; he still hasn't grasped the situation.
    'How can I believe anything you say?' he complained. 'Every word you utter begins to seem dubious to me, extremely dubious, now that this album has come into my possession. Look,' he said, 'just look at these photographs for yourself.'
    Admittedly they were photographs, and I won't deny that there was a certain outward likeness between the missing Stiller and myself; nevertheless, I see myself very differently.
    'Why do you lie?' he kept asking me. 'How can I defend you, if you don't even tell me the whole and complete truth?'
    He can't understand.
    'Where did you get this album from?' I asked.
    No reply.
    'And you dare to tell me you have never lived in this country, that you couldn't even imagine living in our town!'
    'Not without whisky,' I said.
    'Just look at this,' he said.
    Sometimes I try to help him.
    'Herr Doktor,' I said, 'it all depends what you mean by living. A real life, a life that leaves a deposit in the shape of something alive, not merely a photograph album yellow with age—God knows, it need not be magnificent, it need not be historic and unforgettable—you know what I mean, Herr Doktor, a real life may be the life of a very simple mother, or the life of a great thinker, someone whose life leaves a deposit that is preserved in world history—but it doesn't have to be, I mean, it doesn't depend on our importance. It's difficult to say what makes a life a real life. I call it reality, but what does that mean? You could say it depends on a person being identical with himself. That's what I mean, Herr Doktor, a person has lived and his life has formed a deposit, however wretched it may be—it may be no more than a crime,