Barley Batnose is a writer, so I have to straighten my face as much as possible. As we sit by the coffee table, I relax in my facial muscles, resulting in an expression with a marker of something feeble-minded or sheepish. Batnose notices this, but I say I don’t want to talk about my face. He suggests we just talk a little about my nose and then talk a little about the corner of the cheap paper napkin that lies at his right elbow. I agree and glue a chess piece to the bottom of the table.
“Nice lamps they have here,” he says and I nod as I run my fingers over a large beer glass that the blonde woman at the table next to is trying to drink from.
“Shall we talk about my book?”
No.
“Urrgh.”
I haven’t read it.
“No?”
And after sitting here with you for a quarter of an hour, I must say that you do not interest me at all or give me the impression that you can write a book.
“But I did anyway. It starts with a strong wind that makes eighteen trees feel cold.”
I’m not interested.
“After that comes a scene with me freezing, but getting the heat from an oven.”
You?
“Yes. Is there anything wrong with that?”
Yes.
“Why?”
Is the book about you?
“It is about my attitudes and my manner. And I will have to be in it if it is about my attitudes and my manner.”
Couldn’t you have left out you?
“Why?”
You are so weird because you seem to be completely stripped of deep inner contradictions as well as compassion and love. I would love to read a book about you, as long as you aren’t in it!
“I think it’s difficult not to put myself into my book, but I find your idea quite funny.”
