Nothing +

Look, my soul, or shall I say: evil spirit, I again feel like being a character in a novel, if I may put it that way, says my master, so I shall put it that way. Complaining is hard. To whom. If you complain about Ex that he is not good to you in your business "A", does not bother about it, deep inside, about your business, take good care, it may be the case that Y, to whom you say this, is that way about your business "B", indeed about your business "C" too, and all you are doing is bringing them together, in a front, against yourself, thus my master, and on top of that Zed does not think well, never mind of "A", but of "C". If you talk about your private woes to Em, you trust him, because he has his own private woes as well, similar ones, but it will not be a good move, says my master. Because the one from your own circle about whom you complain, may perchance have been "poisoned" by Em on the part of Cee and Eff and Gee, and anyway Em has no wish to admit that you are right, though he grumbles plenty enough about his own private connections. You would still do better, says my master, to Mrs Overseer, he says, that's also how I told about Em, ha! ha! ha! it wasn't possible to complain about him with/to her because... my ghost, see above. Once someone marries, a Sagittarius, his friends will ask, and unhappy one, who is the partner? She's a Scorpio, for instance, says my master. They kill themselves laughing, that'll be a great marriage, that's a joke, a Sagittarius and a Scorpio! Upon my soul, thus my master, they don't go on about the unbridgeable-distance-betweenman- and-man which sometimes, in those still greedy years, possibly decades and a half, of lovemaking, gets pushed to the back, only then, says my master, presents itself daily to the point of boredom, so my master can't believe his ears to hear about just about everybody "not exchanging a word with each other back home", and there are still the kids there, and in addition, no, that was Kafka (A, B, C, etc.), and Thomas Bernhard, so in other words, says my master, it's very much in order, that is to say, would be in order, for one writer to borrow the others, the trouble is that (everyone!) it's not just between lovers that there is an endless distance that presents itself; sets in.

My master, out of necessity, had little option but to render the title of his translation of Virginia's The Voyage Out as something like "Farawayness". Only the other day, due to the crippled wee sparrow (Shanty?), the telephone was plugged in. (No more of that! thus he.) An outstanding fellow artist called me out of the blue, a very pleasant chap, I did some work for him once, top-notch relationship. It's just, my evil spirit, that I changed in the meantime. And to what this outstanding does-what-hepleases (doing what his compulsions dictate?) fellow artist had to say I responded instantly from the gut and sincerely and despondently, thus my master. I didn't say jeez, thus my master, my hand's all fouled up, how am I supposed to write! During the last year alone I wrote 2 novels, translated 4 books (there's plenty who say, and they look like it too, but no, they include Elfriede, Virginia, then this for a book, the Zombie, and now there's the addendum on A. J., not Attila József, and all that takes it out of a chap, says my master), no, I didn't say that, nor even, thus my master, that there's a need for a bit of a breather, that there's a heat-wave, that a wee sparrow is on its way, that Mrs Overseer is very reliant on me with her things, no. From the gut, my master reiterates, I yo-yoed increasingly, this way then that, despondently, that I've reached the stage where I don't much like even leaving the flat, for me there is nothing and no one of interest, I tried to recall what our book had to say on the subject, upon my soul, thus my master, all in all I passed myself off as a deformed monster, I reported, badly at that, what will be the essence of this book, if there is one. Only it was purely because of the wee sparrow that the telephone was switched on, and so on, says my master. Good thing that I was at least able to put up a stout enough resistance that, according to my fellow artist, my situation was, in point of fact, an enviable one, though unquestionably dreadful, thus my master. But nay, my soul, a book's worth of material like this, brr! and ha! ha!, how can it possibly be used in a single answer, to condense it into a telephone, so it's perfectly clear: away, away, farawayness!

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