The Apartment A Novel(19)

I see a coat on a headless mannequin at the other end of the floor, in a row of headless mannequins wearing nice coats. The coat is grey, almost silver. We walk to it. We stand beside the window overlooking the street. The coat has a lapel collar and epaulette sleeves and hidden buttons. Saskia says, It’s beautiful. She runs to find one my size. It’s ninety-nine per cent cashmere and one per cent cotton. It’s so soft, says Saskia. But look. She holds out the price tag, which is hanging out of the cuff. I don’t make that in a month, she says. It really is nice, though, I say. Yes, the best by far, she says. If you can afford it, you should get it. I feel inside the sleeves. It is expensive, but it’s also one of the nicest coats I’ve ever seen. And I may never buy a coat again. Put it on, says Saskia. I put my old coat on the ground and kick it away from me. I take the new coat and put my arms through the sleeves and pull the collar to my neck, and it fits. It’s a lot warmer than my other coat. It falls to my knees and there’s a large slit up the back.

Now Manuela appears. What do you think? I ask. Very stylish, she says. Is it expensive? A little bit, I say. A lot, says Saskia. Maybe, I say, but I don’t plan to buy myself any more coats for a long time. My colleagues wear coats like this, says Manuela, but not as nice. Your colleagues do not wear this coat, says Saskia. That’s what I said, says Manuela. Not as nice. Well, I say, it’s pretty conservative. I’m not trying to stand out. That’s what I mean, says Manuela. You won’t stand out. I stretch my arms to make sure the sleeves are the right length, and they are perfect. I say, How about gloves and a scarf now? Let me pick the scarf, says Manuela. Okay, I say. You need some colour, she says. What’s wrong with grey? I ask. She looks at Saskia and says, Exactly. She departs, and Saskia says she will look for some gloves. Something heavy, I say. I go find a mirror and have a look at myself. It is strange to spend this kind of money on anything that does not move or can’t be lived in. But this is not the beginning of ostentatious spending. This is just the once. Manuela returns with a scarf. I knew it the second I saw it, she says. It is a silk scarf with thin tassels at either end, light blue patterned with large, narrow-lined, orange-pink squares. What do you think? she asks. I love it, I say, but it doesn’t look very warm. No, says Manuela, it doesn’t, but you can’t wear a big wool scarf with that coat. I put it around my neck. You’re probably right, I say. Tie it, says Manuela. Okay, I say, and I make a knot and pull tight, which strangles me. I look at myself. Oh, I say, and untie the knot. Have you worn a scarf before? she asks. I don’t think so, I say. The only coat I would have ever worn, before I arrived here and bought my ugly coat from the Arab, was a pea coat, and you do not need scarves with pea coats. Give it to me, she says. She makes a loop, which she wraps around her neck, and pulls the ends through the loop. She tugs it tight. The tassels dangle over the breast of her dress. See? she says. I see, I say. I take the scarf and tie it in the way she has demonstrated. Much better, she says.

Saskia returns with a few pairs of gloves. We all look them over. Manuela rubs them on her cheek. Then she sniffs them. Try these, she says, and hands me a pair of thick black leather gloves with brown fur lining. Manuela reads the label and says, Beaver, I think. Beaver? says Saskia. Now I’m wearing everything – the coat and the scarf and the gloves. And my boots. I look at myself in the mirror and feel different. Nobody changes himself from the inside. Nobody wills change from the innermost depths of his soul. This is because a person cannot ever look within himself, or search himself, or witness an emotion in himself. A person looks at a chair, and the chair becomes hatred. Or a light bulb flickering in a bathroom. Or a doorway. Or a shelf full of books. Or a house. Or a city. Or a temperature. Or a kind of light in the sky. Or an articulated thought, or a dream – which is where thoughts become externalized facts. Or a reflection of himself. You look at yourself in the mirror, and feel hatred. But you have not felt hatred. Hatred stares back at you. This is what hell will be. A room, without walls or dimension, full of all the objects that hate you. Not fire and cinder, not pain, but mundane views of streets, television sets, and acquaintances.

Some weeks ago, when it was sunny and clear, and not too windy, I took a long journey by train to the uplands just south of the city. It was a weekday, and the train was full of empty seats, and I flipped through a newspaper I couldn’t read. The train blinked out of the suburbs. There were yellow and white houses with sharply angled rooftops sparkling with snow and ice. Smoke rose out of their chimneys and light flashed off their windows. When the houses were all gone and there was nothing but countryside, the train accelerated. There was nobody but me then – everyone else had disembarked at the suburban stations. I fell asleep. It was one of those sudden, accidental sleeps, which I had never been capable of until I arrived here. When I woke, the train had come to its terminus. I had missed my stop. The train was silent. The engine was off, and so were the heaters in the carriages. There were no other trains in the station. I stayed seated for a few minutes. Since I have never felt so calm in my life – or have no memory of a time when I felt this kind of calm – sometimes I like to sit and dwell in it. It’s like floating in the distant wake of a huge ship, a ship you no longer see, which has moved into fog. The open sea smells like nothing you know how to smell, and it makes no noise, though there is a great noise in it, deep beneath you, which carries you even though you cannot feel yourself moving.