When I am out on the streets and I hear
telephones ring in strange houses, even when I am in strange cities,
in cities where my presence is unknown to anyone
even then, hearing a ring, my first thought every time for
a fraction of a second
is that the telephone is calling me, and in the
following fraction of a second
there is the relief of knowing myself excluded for the moment from every call, unattainable, safe.
But this relief also lasts a mere
fraction of a second
because immediately afterward, I think it is not only that strange telephone that is ringing
many kilometers away, hundreds, thousands of kilometers,
there is also the telephone in my house
which certainly at that same moment is
ringing repeatedly in the deserted rooms
and again I am torn between the necessity and impossibility of answering
