Embarrassing moment in the bookstore. I want to pay, put my payment card on the appropriate device that the bookseller has hopefully pushed towards me. Then I hesitate, my PIN code suddenly seems to have flown away to unreachable distances.
“Sorry,” I say hoarsely, “I don’t remember anymore.”
“No problem, sir!” the bookseller shouts, just a little too loudly, because I can already see some prospective buyers looking up with pity from a book they have just picked up. “It happens to me sometimes too,” he adds comfortingly. “Do you know what you are doing? Take a moment to look around. Then it will happen naturally.”
I wander around like a cat in a strange bookstore, picking up a book here and there that I just didn’t want to buy. The only book I covet, now more fiercely than ever, is priceless on that counter for the time being. Behind it, the bookseller is considering which polite wording he will use to refuse to give me this book.
I take one last desperate turn past some tables. Just when I have given up hope and my inglorious retreat seems inevitable, four figures come to my mind. They had just gotten some fresh air. Are they allowed? It’s no fun, such a long day in the stuffy pit of a memory.
I escaped unscathed, but for how long?
I escaped unscathed, but for how long? To be very precise: for three weeks and four days.
I call a restaurant to reserve a table. A woman writes down some information and concludes with the question: “What is your telephone number?” I take a deep breath and only see a blank wall rising up in front of me. “Let’s think about it,” I mumble. And thank God: a very reliable-looking series of numbers appears above the wall. I happily pass it on to her. But then she says: “I’m one grade short.”
Surprised, I repeat my numbers, but again she finds that a number is still missing. An impasse threatens. Can I help that a figure has gotten away?
“Shall I just take over the number you are calling from now?” I agree, grateful and relieved. “What is it for?” she asks. Her restaurant has the cordial custom of placing a sign with a congratulations on the table. “For my birthday,” I say. Luckily she doesn’t ask an age, she would have laughed involuntarily if she had heard the answer: eighty.
Immediately after the conversation, I was very curious to look for the wrong figures that I had initially given her. But suddenly I know with great certainty: they are the digits of my former telephone number – digits that I have not used for at least five years and that now demanded my attention like a neglected child.
What now? We’ll see. If you come across this same piece again in almost the same words in this place in a while, you will know what is going on. I would find it extremely sympathetic if you continued to act as if you had not noticed anything.
