Confession of a Murderer

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SOME YEARS AGO I was living in the Rue des Quatres Vents. My window looked across the street at a Russian restaurant called the “Tari-Bari.” I often used to eat there. At any hour of the day one could get borscht, grilled fish, and boiled beef. I sometimes got up late in the day. The French restaurants, in which the customary hours for lunching were strictly adhered to, were already preparing for their evening meals. But in the Russian restaurant time played no part. A tin clock hung on the wall. Sometimes it had stopped, sometimes it was wrong; its purpose seemed to be not to tell the time, but to ridicule it. No one looked at the clock. Most of the guests in this restaurant were Russian emigrants. And even those amongst them who, in their own country, might have had a sense of punctuality and exactitude, seemed now, in a foreign land, either to have lost it or to be ashamed of displaying it. Yes, it was as though those emigrants were consciously demonstrating against the calculating, the all calculating and so very calculated, deliberations of the European West; as though they were at pains not only to remain real Russians, but also to play at being “real Russians,” to live up to the European conception of what Russians should be. So the inaccurate or inactive clock in the restaurant “Tari-Bari” was more than a necessary requisite; it was a symbol. The laws of time seemed to have been rescinded. And sometimes I noticed that even the Russian taxi drivers, who most certainly had to keep definite working hours, were as little concerned with the passage of time as the other emigrants who had no profession and who lived on the charity of their wealthier compatriots.

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