MR. NOBODY AS THE LAST MOUNTAINEER
In the Destiny Motel, Mr. Nobody carefully reworks the last act
of a play begun six decades earlier in an African country
beneath its flags and lime-whitened acacias.
It’s the longest comedy in history
he lived it, embodied it, staged it day after day
but now, though he gave it everything, it looks him in the eye
and laughs in his face.
Mr. Nobody has turned on the television which at this hour broadcasts only
game-shows whose prizes are electrical kitchen appliances, paltry sums
or spouses for lasting relationships.
From the window of his room he sees the vesperal flow of traffic
partially blanked-out billboards on the other side of the highway
(with amusing results like Nootel or Koak)
and a euphemism for nature in the grassy road-shoulder pecked by crows.
He has shaved, put his bridegroom’s suit back on, and the dress-shoes he’s polished.
A bottle of Condrieu, and Balzac’s Une ténébreuse affaire occupy the little corner table
meant for a telephone.
Unless he’s missed something, he’s convinced he constitutes the entire clientele of this establishment so thorough is the silence.
He glimpses a sheet of letterhead paper and jots a question on it:
By whom would I like to be greeted?
And the answer: La Fontaine.
He slips the paper, folded in quarters, into an envelope he leaves prominently visible on the bolster
then he stretches out and closes his eyes.
The next day, he describes the scene in detail to his analyst, Dr. Friedel
who shakes his hand effusively as if he were the sole survivor of a Himalayan expedition.
