Why do I speak of myself as if I had an ‘I’?Do I exist more, exist more really, than the frost-ferns etched on the windowpane? Because I am able to capture myself in thought? What of it? The capacity for self-deception is but one more flourish in the form of ice, a baroque ornament frozen for show.In such a way arises the illusion of existence: a pattern imposed by unknown laws organises random elements; then successive, ever-longer branches of hoarfrost freeze to it, spreading in both directions, into the future and into the past, reproducing the same illusory regularity: that it was, that it is, that it lived, that it lives, that it will live – the frost flower – the gleiss – I.One has to try at last to liberate oneself from the language of the second kind, express truth in a way in which it can be expressed. I do not exist. One does not exist. Exist not. It’s not I who thinks it. Not I stood here, staring through the frosted window at a snowstorm above the Warsaw roofs, at eddies of white dust sucked into the trapdoor of the courtyard well, at dirty lights flickering through the blizzard from windows opposite: not I who throws a cigarette butt into the stove, pulls a wool-knit sweater over my back, dons a second pair of socks, fustian long johns, frayed overcoat; not I who gathers up from the table the yellowing scribbles, unfinished letter, Teitelbaum’s papers, not I leafing through the notes and typescripts. Each action occurs; what happens, happens – but it’s not the ice blossom advancing across the pane, merely the frost hardening. It’s growing colder.Grow colder, need to stoke the stove. Stoke the stove. Throw in some logs. Adjust the lamp-wick. The wind howls outside the window, rooftiles rattle. Pee in the chamber pot. Snuggle under the quilt, three blankets. Blow into the numbed palms. Zygmunt snores loudly. Hear how he tosses from side to side and smacks his lips in slumber.
