Italian Shoes

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I always feel more lonely when it’s cold.

The cold outside my window reminds me of the cold emanating from my own body. I’m being attacked from two directions. But I’m constantly resisting. That’s why I cut a hole in the ice every morning. If anyone were to stand with a telescope on the ice in the frozen bay and saw what I was doing, he would think that I was crazy and was about to arrange my own death. A naked man in the freezing cold, with an axe in his hand, opening up a hole in the ice?

I suppose, really, that I hope there will be somebody out there one of these days, a black shadow against all the white — somebody who sees me and wonders if he’d be able to stop me before it was too late. But it’s not necessary to stop me because I have no intention of committing suicide.

Earlier in my life, in connection with the big catastrophe, my fury and despair were sometimes so overwhelming that I did consider doing away with myself. But I never actually tried. Cowardice has been a faithful companion throughout my life. Like now, I thought then that life is all about never losing your grip. Life is a flimsy branch over an abyss. I’m hanging on to it for as long as I have the strength. Eventually I shall fall, like everybody else, and I don’t know what will lie in store. Is there somebody down there to catch me? Or will there be nothing but cold, harsh blackness rushing towards me?

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