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“My legs are starting to feel quite tired; it’s been such a long time since I spread them like this for anyone, Dr Seligman, but I think that this new friendship of ours is remarkable in so many ways and I never thought I could talk like this to someone I know. K and I always agreed that that the only real conversations you can have in life are those with strangers at night. During the day, there is no anonymity, and if you just start talking to people, you are a freak, most likely one of those Bible wierdos, but there comes an hour every night when Jesus’s disciples are safely tucked away and the differences don’t matter anymore. For me this has always been the only real intimacy; those were the only people I could share things with. The people I met at the bus stop at night, the people sitting on empty benches, or the sad women selling sweets and cosmetics outside the toilets of clubs and bars. Those were the only real people I ever met in this city where everyone is wrapped in impenetrable layers of fear and ambition, and all our attempts at communication end in loneliness. With people that seem so empty they must have sucked up all the air that was left, crippling out lungs with their meaningless existence. But with strangers it’s different; you can be sad in front of them. Do you have that as well, Dr Seligman? I can never be sad in front of people I know; there is a mechanism that always allows me to function, and you have to believe me when I say that I usually act out of a profound sense of sadness and despair. If we were to wait until the soft darkness of the early morning, somewhere between three and four, you would be able to see it shining through, Dr Seligman – that face that is buried underneath all the jokes. And K always loved the idea that there were a few strangers in the city who knew it all, who knew why he sometimes cried like a child and which drawer in his life this alphabet of fear came from. That without revealing our faces and names we carry each other’s secrets and guard them through the night like other’s secrets and guard them through the night like they were luminaries, precarious pieces that bind us together, make us recognise each other as human, in those fleeting moments that have become so rare. And as we come home from our nocturnal walks, Dr Seligman, those secrets are glowing in our hands, fragile little creatures that we will nurture back to life. I wish K and I could have remained strangers; I wish I could call one of his secrets my own and feel it glowing next to me in the dark.<\/p>\n
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Katharina Volckmer, The Appointment (Or, The Story of a Cock), Fitzcarraldo Editions, 2020, p. 79-80<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"