Paragraph from the novel Replay
? How can one change his humdrum life that is regular as the moon's orbit around the earth, and deserve no better metaphor than "the moon's orbit around the earth". How can one escape from the route coerced upon him by his fate?
There were the walks, the Saturday walks he had initiated in the hope that they would engender some sort of occurrence.
On these walks, he used to tread down Borochov street to King George avenue, then stride up to Allenby Boulevard and from there continue down to the Promenade, turn north and then usually stop off at the Sheraton Hotel on the Yarkon Street to sit in the lobby, rest and gaze at the aging female tourists. Sometimes he would also read a book and after a fair amount of time in which nothing occurred, as usually was the case, he would head out again with renewed strength and lowered expectations to continue up Frishman street towards King George before completing the circle on Borochov.
A long walk for a heavy man like him. Six kilometers and four hundred and twenty meters. On rare occasions, he would follow a man or woman who caught his attraction infusing a hope that the followed one will lead him out of his boring life into a challenging and exiting one. In such occasions he would let himself stray from his usual course, trailing behind them to the point they vanished into the other side of their lives (the entrance door to an apartment building, a bus sailing away to unknown realms, the slammed door of a car) leaving him on a dead end. To spare himself the inevitable disappointment, he usually kept to his regular route, repeating to himself time and again like a mantra: something will happen to me today. Today, something will happen to me. Today, something will definitely occur. Something must take place. I deserve something to happen already. These walks, which he held on a regular basis, he secretly called: "The Walks of Hope". On each of them, he passed seven hundred and twenty four people. This was the number he reached after calculating the average of eleven walks on which he counted only the people who passed by him or sat in the cafés he stepped into. Seven hundred and twenty four different people. Seven hundred and twenty four life stories that were probably much more fascinating than his. Out of them, fifty six percent were women (405). Towards a third of them (135), aged fourteen to fifty, he felt various degrees of sexual attraction. Statistically, it wasn't improbable to assume that a third of the third felt a similar attraction towards him, so it would be very reasonable to say that there were forty five women he could, fuck, screw, bone, nail, smash, adore, torture, beat, worship, love, yes love; it all depended on the kind of relationship that would develop with each and every one of them, if only any relationship would develop. Unfortunately, whether due to lack of luck or to certain incompetence, nothing happened with any of them. Along with all the others that had crossed his path, they too vanished into their lives the moment they disappeared from sight. He faded into his own at the same spot, geographically and mentally, from which he set out on his walks - his apartment, just two or three hours older. Apart from exchanging some essential words with the waitresses that took down his order in the cafés and the hotel lobby, he almost never uttered a word during these walks. There was a lot of silence in his life, despite the fact that he lived in a constant commotion of various electronic devices and a mix of conversations led by him and with him, and was equipped with every available form of communication - cell phone, state-of-the-art computers with a modem and fax (two desktops at the home and the office and one laptop), a connection to the internet, e-mail.
In the summer, he would complete the walks covered in sweat and in the winter, if it suddenly rained, his clothes would get soaked. The feeling that he was missing out on things, which accompanied him in almost every state of consciousness, would abandon its metaphysical nature and, on account of the calculations, take on a more concrete character. Forty five women on each walk. Fifty such walks each year meant 2250 women, an impressive crop by any standard. In the nine years of walking - which he kept to meticulously, following doctor's orders that were prescribed after he experienced mild heart failure - he had passed twenty two thousand five hundred women, with whom, according to all reasonable probability, something should have happened: an easygoing exchange of words; small talk; a joint visit to the movies; a weekend in Eilat; a fascinating discussion about the problem of deconstruction in art and architecture; a wild romance; a quickie in the restaurant's restrooms. Let's say that he didn't take certain variables into consideration and that there was a fifty percent probability of error. 11250 women were still plenty. With a little more courage, he thought during lunch, I could have escaped my own life and become someone else long ago...."
