In the end, W.'s sure, I bought my pink notebook just to irk him – just to get on his nerves, by adverting, by its pinkness, to the fact that I had a notebook, that there were notes to be taken, that I was to be taking notes, that I had the temerity to be taking notes, that I could present myself unashamedly as a note taker, and all this in front of W., for whom notetaking has always been a seriousness business. In front of him, who enters his thoughts on the thoughts of others at the front of his notebook in black ink, and enters his own thoughts at the back of his notebook in red ink, following the advice of our now-deceased friend, and in his memory.
Ah, our friend, who was cleverer than us, better than us, kinder than us, who had a more promising future than we had, who had things to say and write. Our friend, who advised us on the taking notes, advice W. took very seriously, indeed, to the extent that it guided henceforward all his notetaking, and even increased his desire to take notes. Advice, though, which I took up in my own way, smilingly, even humously – or so W. imagines it -taking notes only to spite and irritate W., who knows that my notes could only even be the parody of notes, and hence the desecration of the memory of our friend and his advice.
And it was a pink notebook – ostentatiously pink, flamboyantly pink, waving it in front of W., pink, waving it in front of him and thereby mocking him and compounding my mockery, which consists merely in taking notes – in the fact that I have the temerity to take notes at all. A pink notebook, with a pink ribbon as a bookmark, in which I write in with a violet pen and in violet ink, like a Japanese schoolgirl.
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