John actually doesn’t need to, but he wants to live in the telescope tower with the other people. The people who live in the telescope tower never close the hatch, although they aren’t constantly looking through the telescope. Because of that, in winter it gets very, very cold in the telescope tower—as cold as it is in the open outer space. The people who live in the telescope tower snuggle underneath big dark blankets, and in the midst of the night, everything is silhouettes, gray and black, immobilized; they have stars instead of eyes.
During the day, the telescope tower people work in a dining hall for the unemployed. This means that even though they don’t own their own homes, they are not unemployed. They don’t cook the food, but they serve it in paper bowls: for example, a deep bucket of soup is brought in, they dip a big spoon halfway down the bucket—not too deep in order not to take too many vegetables, but not too shallow either in order not to take too little—and pour soup in a paper bowl. Then they put a paper lid on it and hand it to the unemployed person in line. The telescope tower people work at the same station, never far from each other. They talk loudly and laugh from deep within their throats, so that everyone can listen.
John can’t visit them in the dining hall for unemployed people, unfortunately, because he’s not unemployed. He works at a supermarket and receives a larger salary than three telescope tower people put together, but he wishes he could work at the dining hall. He loves nodding, and because filling a paper bowl with soup takes less time than checking out someone’s groceries, he would be able to nod more times per hour if he worked at the dining hall. At the supermarket, he takes people’s money in exchange for their groceries, and parting with their money makes people irritated, which cuts short his enthusiasm to nod. In the dining hall for the unemployed, money is not involved in the transaction, which would allow him to nod as much as he feels is appropriate.
It takes John twenty minutes to walk from the supermarket to the telescope tower, and he likes walking, so he sees no reason to use any other means of transportation. His steps are jerky, and his arms dangle jerkily along his body as he walks. He is so weird! He is tall, even handsome—high cheekbones, blond, wild hair, a stern look. The skirts of his coat in the air, he talks to himself as he walks. He overemphasizes each nod. When he opens the door for someone, he makes a giant nod; when he says ‘okay’—giant nod; when he says something to himself and agrees—giant nod. In moments like this one, when he agrees with himself only slightly, he makes numerous shallow nods, one pouring after the other.
In twenty minutes, he is in the telescope tower and offers its inhabitants a deep, meaningful nod. The dining hall closes at six, while his shift goes on until ten, so they are always back much earlier than he. Some of them have already started to drift off, disappearing under dark, heavy blankets. He wishes he could spend more time with them; he tried to move his shift, but the supervisors told him he couldn’t. Still, he is glad he can sit on the floor with his back against the wall, curl up in his jacket, and watch. The telescope tower people who are not asleep hover over each other and talk within themselves. Their speech is a husky whisper, words indistinguishable, eyes wide open glowing like stars.
A telescope stands diagonally in the middle of the tower. It is a telescope, so it is turned towards the stars, towards outer space, toward the vastness which exists in our minds as the sky. The hatch is open, and the stars are visible without a telescope: points of light somewhere deeply away on the z-axis on our coordinate system. The telescope stares at them without blinking so as not to miss a shooting star (although, as a telescope, it knows shooting stars are not actually stars). The telescope stares at its stars, and John stares at his telescope tower people.
The telescope tower people don’t talk to John, and John doesn’t talk to them, only nods. He’s thought about talking to them. He could ask them about the dining hall, about the soup, about the stars possibly. He never manages to push the words out of his mouth, though, because they don’t seem as meaningful as a nod. And what if the telescope tower people aren’t interested in his question? No, a nod is definitely the better choice, John nods to himself.
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