...of the stunned

It wasn’t easy to tell what was going on in my friend’s head just then, in any case he was dumbfounded with… I don’t know… disappointment… or shock that I hadn’t simply gone along with the game… and maybe too he felt he hadn’t gotten the recognition he thought he deserved in the wake of his ingenious contribution to arithmetic. He’d expected elation and enthusiasm and had been met with grumpy scepticism. But once I’d come out with guns blazing, there was no way I was prepared to ease off: Hans-Jacob, if anyone, should be man enough to stand it.
But now he just sat there, without saying a word: my last comments still hung in the air unanswered. For a moment I felt the taste of victory. Then I felt embarrassed by his silence. I looked at him. He sat there, slumped over, like a man defeated. I couldn’t believe my eyes. I waited for him to lift his head and deliver a scathing retort. But no, he just sat there as if the power had been cut. All I wanted was a familiar quotation. A caustic reply. Something to rebuff my unwarranted scepticism and put me in my place. But he didn’t say a word. He sat there as if paralysed. I felt like kicking him in order to wake him up. But I just sat there too, bewildered by the whole affair.
Suddenly he got up, not without some difficulty, and walked out into the hall. I heard him opening and closing the bathroom door. He left his pipe behind him, like a stranded submarine in the ashtray, the smoke visible as no more than an almost imperceptible trembling on the sofa behind it. I went out into the hall and looked for him… whatever use that was. The yellow light from the vestibule seemed as though it was radiating some kind of warmth, even though I knew this was only in my imagination. And I had a sudden vision of the toilet, spattered with blood, Hans-Jacob in convulsions on the floor with his wrists slit, his life pumping steadily out of him, his head turned up toward me with a look of confusion on his face while he whispered his last words: “I’m sorry, my friend. I’m sorry.” 

[Self-Control, Sæterbakken, S.]