Traveler of the Century by Andrés Neuman

threads around a bobbin—the focus, the real reason for his visit to the Gottlieb Salon, was beyond a doubt his desire to be close to Sophie. She spoke to him now and then, although their conversations never ran on, and it was always Sophie who broke them off on some pretext or other. So it seemed to Hans at any rate. Was it shyness? Or pride? Perhaps he was behaving inappropriately. Or possibly his conversation bored her. But if so then why had she invited him? That afternoon, Hans agonised over the meaning of Sophie’s gestures, conferring on each too much significance, veering constantly between enthusiasm and disappointment,
sudden delight and petty resentment.
    For her part Sophie had the impression that Hans, seemingly with impeccable courtesy yet with a certain underlying impertinence, had spent the entire afternoon creating small points of intimacy between them during their conversations. Sophie refused to tolerate this attitude for a number of reasons. Firstly, she had endless things to attend to during these gatherings, and was not about to neglect her duties in order to please anyone. Secondly, Hans was a newcomer, and should not expect any preferential treatment—this would be unreasonable and unfair on the others. Thirdly, she was of course a recently betrothed woman and her father was keeping an eagle eye on her from behind the veil of his pipe smoke. Finally, without knowing why, Sophie realised with annoyance that whenever she spoke to Hans her mind began to wander and she had inconvenient thoughts quite unrelated to the salon.
    Even so, Sophie told herself as she swished her skirts from one end of the room to the other, these slight objections were not enough of a reason to stop inviting Hans to the salon—she could not deny that his contributions, more frequent as the hours went by, were original and slightly provocative, and would enhance the debates. And this was the only thing, Sophie kept saying to herself, the only thing that persuaded her Hans should be allowed to keep coming.
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    I don’t know what it is about this city, Hans said, handing the bowl of rice back to the organ grinder, it’s as if it won’t let me leave. The organ grinder chewed, nodded his head and tugged on his beard. First you appeared, Hans said, and then her, there’s always some reason for me to delay my journey. Sometimes it feels as if I’ve just arrived in Wandernburg; other days I wake up with the sensation of having lived here all my life. When I go out I look at the coaches and say to myself: Go on, climb
aboard, it’s very simple, you’ve done it a thousand times. Yet I let them go by, and I don’t understand what’s happening to me. Why, yesterday Herr Zeit didn’t even ask me when I was leaving as he does every night. I paused as we crossed on the stairs, but instead he looked at me and said, See you in the morning. It felt terrible. I hate knowing the future. I could hardly sleep for thinking about it. How many days have I been here? To begin with I knew exactly how many, but now I couldn’t say for sure. (Why does that worry you? the organ grinder said, what’s wrong with staying here?) I don’t know, I suppose I’m afraid of carrying on seeing Sophie and then having to leave, it would be worse, maybe I should continue my travels while there’s still time. (But isn’t that what love is, the old man said, being happy to stay?) I’m not sure, organ grinder, I’ve always thought of love as pure movement, a sort of journey. (But if love itself is a journey, the old man argued, why would you need to leave?) Good question, well, for example, in order to come back, in order to be sure you’re in the right place. How can you know that if you’ve never left it? (That’s how I know I love Wandernburg, replied the organ grinder, because I don’t want to leave.) All right, all right, but what about people? Does the same rule