Read Next World Novella for Free Online Page A

closer, creeping towards him from the far end of the room. Eventually it once again embraced him entirely.
    But this was a different kind of silence. Schepp stood there listening to what was in his mind. Or outside of his mind? For a while he heard a buzzing, sometimes closer, sometimes further away, as if it were a part of the silence. Only when the sound stopped did he remember what was causing it. He stepped across the wooden floor as warily as a man about to commit murder, reached the chaise-longue , saw the fly sitting on Doro’s eye just where the lids met at a sharp angle. He could hardly swat it while it was there. Where did a fly come from anyway at this time of year; shouldn’t it be dead by now? Only when he was almost touching it could he shoo it away.
    Schepp’s glance lingered on the little slits of Doro’s eyes, moved to the bridge of her nose, which was sticking up in the air, to her lower jaw hanging so inelegantly open. How could he close it without hurting her? All at once he was back to loving her as much as ever; there would be time to quarrel later. Schepp knelt down in front of Doro and looked closely into her open mouth. He could see nothing in that dark space.
    He inhaled the smell of death and shuddered at the thought that she would leave her jaws open like that for ever and ever.
    How exactly did rigor mortis work?
    The fermentation of bodily fluids, decomposition , decay?
    He didn’t want to think about it.
    ‘All right, Doro,’ he said hesitantly, raising his voice, ‘if you’re going to start about Dana then please take things in their proper order.’
    Even when the children were still at home, and he was glad to get an hour or two in the evenings to devote to the heroic tales of the Tang dynasty or the brushstrokes of Song calligraphy, Doro had sometimes, surprisingly, come back out of her bedroom and over to him at his desk to – well, to say or do what? He had never known what to make of it, and if he asked her for an explanation she quite often went away looking offended. As if she had wanted to bring him out of his shell. Yet these kind of approaches had never been helpful. You have to tackle difficulties head on, systematically, and what use was it now – Schepp was back in the full flow of his perorations, once again speaking emphatically and clearly like a tutor lecturing a difficult examination candidate – what use was it now to drop Dana’s name at the very first opportunity and then abandon him with it? Things have to make sense before they can be cleared up, right?
    The Dana business was long ago and forgotten now. Still, at the very least, you should begin at the beginning to leave no room for doubt. And anyway, this wasn’t how he had imagined their farewell, so full of misunderstandings. The beginning had certainly been his operation. No, actually it had all started in his childhood. Even at the age of five he spent most of his time with books, his glasses would have only got in the way playing football. Yes, it had all started in his childhood, which had consisted mostly of being teased. At least he couldn’t be beaten up; he was so short-sighted that he was thought unable to defend himself, almost on a par with a girl. And if it hadn’t started in his childhood then definitely in his youth, a time of renunciation. Where his contemporaries succeeded, he stood aside. Luckily the details eluded him because he saw anything that was more than three to five metres away only in indistinct outline. Of course he noticed that something was going on. He just didn’t let on, learned another language instead. And although at university he was at last considered a genius and quietly admired, he still always had to stand aside when the real prizes were handed out.
    Admittedly his tranquil life as a research fellow rather than a university professor had its advantages; he didn’t have to bother with feminist Sinology, or modern business Chinese or even online-chat Chinese, all