Man, pull yourself together! All eyes are on you (on me is good! They’re on me like leeches). Show these intellectuals and viragos what you’re made of! Show ’em you’ve got a brain in your head too! Now’s the time to show your mettle, the moment of truth (Heil Hemingway! For Whom the Balls Tell). The existentialist has to realize himself every minute of his life, even in the outhouse. So roll up your intellectual sleeves and get down to business: the prerequisite for a constructive etc. etc.—so far so good—is our agreement . . . Here! There’s the catch: why “agreement”?—but that probably emerges later in the sentence; it has to or I wouldn’t have started it out that way—so go on: is our agreement on the existence of an object which, while not rationally comprehensible—absolutely right, I agree one hundred percent (this guy really knows his text, damn it all!)—so: while not rationally comprehensible, can be psychically experienced—well how the hell else than with the psyche? With the large intestine maybe? (Careful! If I say that out loud he’ll say I’m anal)—so “experienced” in any case, can’t argue with that, all the psychic conditions man has experienced up to now confirm it, a few dozen millennia of not just Catholic religious ecstasy look down upon you, Christian Soldiers! It’s just the old duality: light and darkness, Ormus and Ariman, Baldur and Schirach, all nicely transcendental, so that’s okay, and it’s psychologically necessary to enter into religious association with it (“religious association” is actually a pleonasm, but what the heck), a psychological necessity—just like when you did something bad as a kid: first you get down on your knees and pray they won’t find out, they usually do, but that’s just the way humans are put together—the bastard is right, damn it, he’s a scientist after all, PhD in head-shrinking, an inspector of underpants trained by Papa Freud, and they don’t hire just any clown at the university, he’s not a Nazi either or he wouldn’t be thick as thieves with Freud and the Tommies, an intellectual reconstructionist appointed by the military government—appointed for what? to drink their whiskey. . . but stay on track here, it’s so aggravating to have your thoughts drift off, it’s probably due to the damn schnapps—or rather whiskey (I can’t even be precise about a thing like that and I’m crossing swords with a scholar?!)—you shouldn’t drink on an empty stomach, the Golden Rule, but what’re you gonna do when you’ve got nothing to stuff your face with? let’s get back to his (or rather, my) sentence or they’re gonna think I’m completely soused or just nuts, or possibly they’ll blame it on my leg (who was it who brought that up anyway? They’re gonna be sorry they did!) what’s that supposed to prove anyway? a cripple’s psychology, trauma, amputee and only half a man . . . just because you were hit (to the right of the scrotum, thank God: a gentleman carries his on the left side) and not in a vital organ, doesn’t mean you’re obliged to choke down all this religious content to understand the meagre ideas of this bastard Hertzog (with tee-zee), what a joke, a bit of dialectics (all Teresas and Annalisas, Freudian prick prosthesis) . . . what were we talking about? the formation of a future state—what a joke! By then we’ll all be dead and gone (not him, of course; he’s thick as thieves with the Tommies); but me for example, all I need to do is catch my fucking crutch in a hole under the snow on my way home and I’ll be lying there like a bug on its back, Kafka my contemporary, and I can wiggle my legs until I’m frozen to the ground, requiescat in pace on Brahms Blvd., and I could give a shit about a future state, whatever it turns out to look like won’t matter to me, so if there’s a psychological necessity that can increase to the point of psychosis, then he’s absolutely right—after all, the man’s a psychiatrist, a professional—then he can serve up a state to his crazies that corresponds to their neuroses, a perfect metaphysical comfort station in harmonious accord with everybody who wants to participate, it’s just a shame that my buddies over there are all in on it, I thought they were my friends—but the way they all started attacking me! the dames were the nastiest, of course: “you know what we’re talking about”—what do I know? what the hell do they think? that I’m a spy for the East or something? some of ’em are Marxists themselves—but it’s not worth getting all riled up about, they’re just crazy, the whole lot of them, Hertzog’s patients from the word go, they’re right to get themselves a house psychiatrist, but they used to be so nice, they were once true friends, real buddies, hungry, no future state, just nice people, I liked hoofing it out here, even though it was hard with one leg gone, it sure wasn’t for their crappy turnip schnapps and their shitty hand-rolled smokes, what a pile of shit it all is, and now they’re gonna invite the savior too: Come Lord Jesus, be our guest, may the shit you’ve dished us now be blessed! and in the same breath they swear by Karl Marx, comrades hear the happy news: the baby Jesus is the real founder of the classless society, the model of a metaphysical need fulfilled: in constant, active contact with the transcendent Big Daddy while completely free of any Oedipus complex thanks to his virginal Mommy, what do I need them for anyway? best thing would be to just beat it—this guy here, the Germanic Führer with tee-zee—etymologically without tee: the “herzog,” the duke to these blond-bearded assholes, the arch-asshole—he just puts me in the shade, he’s made to order for them, hand-tailored by the providence of the immortal Führer, the stiffs got scared by their own daring, reorganizing the globe in accordance with their weltanschauung blew up in their faces, let’s stick with time-tested Western values, with all of them if possible, without regard to what we’re losing: when in doubt, the good, the beautiful, the noble, and the true are innate human needs, no question about it, if we lost sight of them it was collective guilt, just ask the military government, turn yourself over to a trained therapist, Hansel and Gretel get lost in the forest so easily—that’s how it is: