Nathan Knapp
It was in the summer of 1835, or so A. Schopenhauer later told me—by his own confession he was easily confused by matters of dates and times, and indeed he said that he found time in general to be a matter of almost intractable confusion; he freely confessed that it might just as well have been 1935 or even 2008—that he went away for a brief period from his poodles and his girlfriend and their most recent third, an almost hairless little Pole of ostensibly aristocratic origin from just outside Warsaw bearing the initials W.G., who was guilty of continually texting A. Schopenhauer pictures of his erect penis, despite A. Schopenhauer's explicit instructions to cease and desist doing so. He was, or so he later told me, leaving home with the intention of staying for a time in a small village in Upper Austria only a few kilometers east of the German border, in order to get some serious thinking and if possible a little writing done. He did this even though Austria was itself shaped like a sperm whale whose mental development had been sharply impeded by the fact, he said, of its very Austrianinity, a fact which, he later told me, he could never wholly put from his mind whenever he was within its borders. In any case, his travel agent had managed to find him a cheap flight there, and so he went, for he really was getting desperate. It was impossible to get anything done around his girlfriend, who was constantly either baking sourdough bread or working over sourdough starters, so that the pungent aroma of either freshly made bread or baking bread or bread-shortly-to-be totally filled the house and A. Schopenhauer's nostrils and, apparently, also the parts of his brain where he got his thinking done, which were the parts or part of his brain that enabled him to write (so he said). It was even more difficult to get any work done with the hairless little Pole texting him pictures of his erect penis at all hours of the day and night. I began to think, A. Schopenhauer later told me, that he had a hard-on literally all of the time, which seemed like a most unpleasant way to live, which, I must say, I came to think he was doing not in order to seduce or titillate me, but rather in order to ameliorate his own suffering through sharing it with me . . . . It was shortly after he arrived at the cottage he'd rented—quite well-appointed, he said—that he had his first thought. His first real thought in weeks. The trouble was that he could not find a writing utensil anywhere in his luggage, nor was there one anywhere in the cottage itself, which stood next to a cheerful burbling stream. Realizing that he would shortly be forced to make a trip to the store, he recalled that he had a writing app on his cell phone, at which he had sworn to himself not to look for the duration of the fortnight he'd set aside to stay there. He took out his phone and turned it on, then keyed in his password. Just as he was about to open the writing app the phone began to vibrate. He did not know how to dismiss texts without looking at them, having endeavored to learn as little as possible about this foul instrument ever since his girlfriend had thrust it upon him, insisting that he keep it charged at all times, and so he was confronted, once again, with the sight of the hairless little Pole's bulging penis. He texted back: Please stop, Witoldo. The hairless little Pole texted back a new picture of his hairless little pole, from a different angle this time. A. Schopenhauer tried again: I'm trying to work. The hairless little Pole replied with a third photo, this time with his dick angled—as A. Schopenhauer later told me—in such a way that the droplet of fluid at its tip caught the light. A. Schopenhauer replied: Fuck you. A fourth picture arrived. You make me wish I'd never discovered my bisexuality, A. Schopenhauer wrote, and later told me. One can likely guess how the hairless little Pole responded to this. A. Schopenhauer tried to turn off his phone, but could not remember which button accomplished this. Finally he found his writing app, but he could no longer remember what the thought had been that he'd wanted to write down. Fuck, he said. Another picture of the hairless little pole appeared, this time poised above the spread lips of a vagina which A. Schopenhauer beyond the shadow of a doubt knew to belong to his girlfriend. You guys, A. Schopenhauer texted back, are free to do this sort of shit but I do not need any fucking reminders. Finally, he figured out how to turn the phone off. Then he walked over to the general store that stood a short distance from his cottage, where he procured an inkwell, some ink, a good pen and a few spare nibs, for he liked to press down very hard when he wrote. Back at the cottage he finally managed to remember his thought, and he wrote it down. Satisfied with a job well done, he set aside his pen and stretched himself out upon the bed, desirous of a short sleep before heading to the inn to eat his supper. It had, after all, been a long day, full of travel and unsolicited photographic representations of shaved male genitalia. The only trouble, he later told me, was that shortly after laying down he found that his pillow was stained with blood! Lots and lots of blood! At first he started to panic, before realizing that he must have a nosebleed. He got up and went to the washroom, where he appraised himself in the mirror. Yes, he said to himself, and later told me, I have a nosebleed. But it did not appear to be any garden-variety nosebleed—no, he said, the stream was coming out of both nostrils, steadily getting worse and worse, rushing out of his nose almost as if his nostrils were a veritable Niagara Falls of blood, drenching his clothes, pouring all over the floor. Now I really did panic, he said, and so I ran into the living room, where there was so much blood coming out of my nose that it actually began to cover the floor, and so, thinking it imperative that I find a practicing member of the medical profession, I ran out into the street, which at that moment was full of children playing what I recognized to be one of those traditional Austrian children's games, such as beat-the-beggar, he said, or maybe it was torture-the-turtle or castrate-the-cobbler or fistfuck-the-friar, I forget exactly which. At all events, the game was one of those such as all Austrian children play in the first-fruits of their youths, and yet, though they were absorbed in their activity, when they saw me, or rather my nose, or so A. Schopenhauer later told me, all the children started screaming and fled as one—and now there was so much blood coming out of my nose that I couldn't stand up properly, the cobblestones were so slick with my own blood. At that moment a policeman came running up, A. Schopenhauer later told me, a porcine Austrian with his chest puffed out, and he said What's all this about, you can't be bleeding in the street like this. It simply isn't allowed. I assured him that I would stop bleeding had I the ability, but it appeared that I did not, and the policeman said in that case he would have to arrest me. Fortunately for me, as A. Schopenhauer later put it, just as the policeman was withdrawing his handcuffs from their elegant little blue velvet case, the man slipped in all the blood, struck his head on the cobblestones and seemed instantly on the spot to expire. It was about that time that the bleeding came to a stop. Still, A. Schopenhauer later told me, I decided that such a nosebleed—totally inexplicable as it was—could not be other than the worst of omens, and that if I were wise I would immediately cut short my trip, which was a pity, since I'd gotten such little writing done. The line I did complete, he said, was a good one, asserting as it did that almost all our sufferings spring from having to do with other people. A. Schopenhauer asked me if I thought it a good line and I said that yes, I did think it was a good line. This seemed to please him. Did the Pole ever stop sending him dick-pics, I asked. No, A. Schopenhauer said, taking out his phone. In fact, he said, he's just sent me one. Do you want to see it? Sure, I said. Why not.