And there you are, those were my only three opportunities, which, in fact, were not opportunities at all, but just false hopes, about as reliable as a cloud in the sky. Afterward, I didn’t even get this.
I went from office to office, from one man to another, but I got nowhere. Nobody was ever available. Minor officials heard me with boredom and disinterest, with blank looks, without even malice.
I spent hours sitting in waiting rooms, but those for whom I was waiting never appeared. They’d either crept in through the window or flown in like birds or were invisible, or perhaps there was some secret underground entrance that defended them from those of us who existed in a state of waiting.
My words sounded tired, my story tedious. People were bored at the sight of me. I’d become a man asking a favor, the lowest form of life on earth. There’s nothing lower.
Gradually, despite my efforts to avoid it, I began to feel a wall around me, invisible but impenetrable. It stood there like a fortress, without exit or approach. I was constantly beating my head against a brick wall. I was battered, bloody, covered in lumps and bruises, but I didn’t cease trying. For there always seemed to be a way round it. There had to be a crack somewhere; it couldn’t all be wall. And I wouldn’t give in to being walled up like this, as if I were a living shadow whom none could see but who saw all. Who talked in vain, shouted in vain, unheard, a nothing. It didn’t need much before they’d begin walking through me, as if I were made of air, or wading through me, as if I were water.
I felt fear. How could they have killed me like this? I was not wounded, no one had killed me, I was not dead, but I didn’t exist. “For God’s sake, people, can’t you see me?” I’d say. “Can’t you hear me?” I’d say. But my face did not enter their vision, nor my voice their ear.
I did not exist.
Or was I dreaming this impossible situation that defied experience? For I was alive, I moved, I knew what I wanted.
I refused to be nonexistent. They could beat me, shut me away; they could kill me; hadn’t they killed enough people for no reason at all? But had they made a ghost of me? Why had they deprived me of my ability to fight?
I wanted to be a man! Let me fight like a man!
Useless!
The empty space around me grew ever emptier, my ridiculous rebellion ever quieter.