Читать книгу Till Kingdom Come - Andrej Nikolaidis - Страница 9

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I only went out at night, when I could stroll through the deserted town to my heart’s content. No one was out in the streets after one in the morning except the schizophrenics hurriedly walking in the squeaky flip-flops they wore summer and winter alike, looking straight ahead. They were my brothers. Their families kept them under lock and key during the day because people in small towns try to hide what is considered shameful. They would let them out at night to get their fill of fresh air and wear themselves out on their sometimes long and always frenzied walks. Before dawn, they would be rounded up, like animals that have strayed from the flock, and returned to their rooms, where they would sleep all day on sedatives.

Drugged-up kids would squeeze into unmanageable cars and race to discos in the suburbs. They didn’t notice me. Young couples had fast sex in the woods and on the beaches. They had enough problems of their own even without me turning up – difficulties and embarrassments that, when the night’s amorous experiences were recounted the next day, would morph into anatomically impracticable acrobatics and fireworks of passion. Teenage sex is proof that Karl Kraus was right when he maintained that intercourse is a poor substitute for masturbation. Out of consideration for the ordeal they were going through, I always gave the young people a wide berth and tried not to disturb them.

But most of all I liked the dawns. In nature, I have to admit, there is no kitsch. That is also the nicest thing that can be said about nature. It is people’s perspective that fouls everything up. When dawn comes like the writing on the wall and the day that arrives in its wake is unwelcome, like all it can possibly bring, there can be no kitsch even in the scene of a person standing at the shore and watching the morning rear up, slowly and terrifying like Godzilla – that gleaming monster one should flee before, to find a refuge and try to survive until the following night. Yes, the dawns were beautiful.

Beauty is difficult.