The Sigh of Silence

Listening to Beethoven, Fritz sat sunk deep into his armchair, daydreaming about everything and nothing. His thoughts were like grains of sand in a storm: elusive, scattered, carried off by the merciless wind of desert silence. Many ideas occupied his mind and demanded his complete attention. Ideas that were not simple, but layered like the most expensive mechanical watches; ideas that, like lightning, left traces in his mind, only to vanish with all their force and power. Fritz cared for nothing, shaking off every idea at hurricane speed and with volcanic eruptions of a superior mind. He not only cared nothing for the thoughts with which he might have changed the world; he cared nothing for his own existence either. What he loved most was doing nothing, and when he absolutely had to think, he would think about Nothing. His attention was drawn away by the chirping of birds singing their symphonies beneath his window. At that moment his smooth white hands trembled, and his face took on the shape of a predator from the African savannas. He could not comprehend the insolence of those stupid creatures; their arrhythmic babbling and crashing against the branches was blasphemy before the genius of Beethoven's tones. If only he could get hold of them, he would... He would... No, he stopped thinking about it, because today he had decided to do nothing. He watched children playing in the street. His eyes darkened. He hated youth because his own had vanished when he was a child. He could not stand games, because they were the product of stupidity, during which a person forgot to think about important things: about Nothing. His hatred for the world was infinite, a concealed silence that devoured everything, including himself. The only scraps of respect he possessed were reserved for the chosen dead whom he esteemed. For the dead, of whom he said that they were now nothing and would remain so forever. Whenever he told someone about this, a little smile would shake his black mustache like a bundle of twigs. This was rare, since he spoke with people only when he was bored, or only when he truly had to. He never wanted to admit that he had smiled. He hated laughter, considering it meaningless acrobatics of the facial muscles. He observed the many pictures he had hung on the walls of his room. All the pictures on the walls were black: shades of darkness in which he found beauty. Their quiet simplicity brought tears to his eyes, not from sadness, but from a deep kinship with the absolute. In every tear were inscribed forever his missed chances and the desires he had once had. He considered them weaknesses already overcome, and believed that enough weeping might succeed in driving the memories of them out of his head. The greatest evil that existed, for him, was existence itself, because it prevented him from doing nothing, from being nothing. Whenever he even thought of getting rid of it, he was already thinking; and whenever he wanted to do it, he would already be doing something. The paradoxical chaos of everything and nothing often tormented Fritz, casting him into hours of agony between thinking and not-thinking, doing and not-doing, existing and not-existing. The stream of thoughts and non-thoughts was interrupted by the maid, who was setting his lunch on the table. She looked him straight in the eyes and asked, "White or red wine?" Sweat and anger seized his face while his stomach growled thunderously. How dare she interrupt him in everything and nothing, in his striving toward nothing? So what if he was hungry? He looked the maid straight in the eyes and gripped the sides of the armchair. His legs began to tremble with anguish, dancing their own dance. All his thoughts began to grow clearer and to remain inside his mind. He could not recover from recovering himself. How dare she ask a question already condemned to hatred? Did she not know that white wine was not merely a drink he despised, but a symbol of everything he could not endure? Had she, too, conspired against him like all humanity? He wanted to dismiss her, but that would entail many things, and he aspired to do as little as possible. His stomach began to vibrate, and his lungs swelled, throwing his whole body into expectation. His throat quivered and his mouth began to turn until he released the painful act of speech. His voice, like a cry from the depths of an abyss, shattered the silence of the room: "Red!" After several minutes he was alone again in the nothingness and everythingness of his room. His stomach pulsed like a restless sea, threatening to swallow all the inner darkness that was eating him away. His hands began to move beyond his control, clutching at his stomach. Suddenly he stretched out his arm and seized the plate, hating everything more and more, and desiring nothing even more.