Zundel's Exit by Werner Markus; Hoffman Michael;

Author:Werner, Markus; Hoffman, Michael;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Published: 2013-03-15T00:00:00+00:00

He arrived in his hotel salt-caked and sticky. Straightaway he stripped to his underpants, draped a towel across his shoulders and hurried out to the shower on the landing. Just outside it, he slowed his pace and almost reflexively pricked up his ears. From the shower room he heard a sound that was like the panting of a dog on a warm summer’s day. He listened more closely: the sound was a duet. Great Scott, thought Zündel, and he hopped from one foot to the other, because he could see that the keyhole was generously proportioned. – What would the normal person do now, he wondered, probably beat a quick retreat, a little peek would be the act of a pervert. Shall I or shall I not? – The panting was loud and rhythmic, and now Zündel involuntarily bent down, squeezed his right eye shut, and applied his left to the keyhole. He saw a pink-tiled wall. Nothing else. – Just then the ghastly thing happened. Zündel received a violent kick up the behind that sent his forehead smashing against the door. For a split second there was complete silence, inside and out, but before Zündel, trembling with shock and humiliation, could stand upright, a high pitched voice began to scold him. It was the cleaning lady, identifiable by her bucket and mop. The man she had caught in the act stood stricken in front of her, staring down at her sandals. The couple in the shower room seemed to have been caught out as well, at any rate they weren’t making any more noise. Maybe they were foreigners who hadn’t understood the woman’s Genoese dialect, and took the crashing and abuse upon themselves and what they had been doing. Either way, Zündel was only slowly able to part from the incensed female, and first slowly and then very quickly retired to his room. He locked the door, sat down dry mouthed on the bed, and thought that, in human terms, he was finished for the foreseeable future. He felt the bump on his brow. He remembered his beach reading. He groaned. Perhaps the hotel management was even now being informed of the monster on the second floor and his room number was being established?

Zündel waited.

No one knocked.

An hour later, he washed in the hand-basin.

He was hungry but didn’t dare leave his room, and decided to skip supper.

He crawled under the sheet.

His head hurt, and his foot hurt.

How all alone I am, he thought, and he remembered the screaming baby in the garbage can.

Later he said to himself, very quickly, ten times in a row: organ harvesting.

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