The Illogic of Kassel

60

The caretaker seemed obsessed with keeping other people’s affections away from his hound.

Suddenly, he came over and started to tell me a story.

“Once,” said the caretaker, “I took a night train from Paris to Milan. I traveled in one of those classic compartments they used to have, those little four-man pigsties. In Paris there were only three of us. One of the passengers was a curly-haired young man with a parrot in a cage that said ‘Je t’aime, je t’aime’ to him every once in a while. The little creature seemed to know only this one phrase. When it came time to turn off the light in the compartment, the young man put a pink cover over the cage and told me that he’d had a similar parrot before but had to get rid of it because it refused to say loving words to him, which had led him to discover that he wasn’t loved. What a drama, I commented. I had to do away with him, he said. And while he gave me horrible details of how he’d suffocated the bird, the murdered parrot’s successor — now hidden under the cover — punctuated the story every once in a while by saying ‘Je t’aime, je t’aime.’

“In the middle of the night, the train stopped and a fourth passenger boarded who was very careful not to wake the rest of us and politely got undressed quietly in the darkness. All of a sudden, when the fourth traveler had just lain down in his berth, the voice of the enamored parrot rang out again through the whole compartment, from the depths of his hiding place: ‘Je t’aime, je t’aime.’

“The next morning, when we arrived in Milan and the young man took the cover off his pet, I asked if I could take a photo of the two of them: the enamored parrot and his owner. I took a Polaroid and later showed it to my girlfriend in Milan, so she’d see I hadn’t invented anything in my story. In spite of having such conclusive photographic proof, my girlfriend refused to believe me. That’s crazy. You’re always making stuff up, she said, sounding very disappointed.”

Once he’d told this story, the ferocious-looking, funny caretaker began to walk away. Had he divulged that story to tell me that he was enamored of his hound and recommend I mustn’t try to come between them?

I let my gaze wander among the hallucinogenic plants and the frog pond and then turned away fearlessly, flippantly, toward the lunacy of the morning light.

All the signs of a great morning were in front of me, by which I mean, it would be ideal not to overlook any of them. However, I ended up confining my grand panoramic view to go to observe some minuscule spyglasses I could see on top of a tower that seemed to be situated even beyond the remotest distance.