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Concept
The Pigeon (novella)
Summary
The Pigeon (German: Die Taube) is a 1987 novella by German writer Patrick Süskind. Taking place in a single day, the story follows a solitary Parisian bank security guard who undergoes an existential crisis when a pigeon roosts in front of his one-room apartment's door, prohibiting him entrance to his private sanctuary. The book was Süskind's follow-up to his nine-year bestselling first novel, Perfume and drew comparisons to the work of Franz Kafka and Edgar Allan Poe.
Jonathan Noel is a tidy and solitary man: he is nearing retirement and has never failed at his job as a security guard at the bank near his home in Paris. He has only one aspiration: to live a quiet recluse life without being paid attention to. His youth, which was not the most pleasant, explains to a large extent this withdrawal: in 1942, his mother was deported to the Drancy concentration camp; in 1953, he went to war in Indochina and in 1954, his uncle persuaded him to marry Marie Baccouche, who was unfortunately already five months pregnant and in love with another man with whom she later fled.
He lives in a small maid's room on the top floor of a bourgeois house, sheltered from the world. He loves his simple room so much that he will soon buy it for himself so that nothing can separate them any more and he can end his life by continuing his daily routine. In a way, as the narrator says, his little room is 'his mistress, for she tenderly welcomes him into her'.
But one morning, when he goes out to relieve himself in the little toilet upstairs, after listening carefully to make sure he doesn't meet anyone, he comes face to face with a pigeon. Panic-stricken, he locks himself in his room. Only with a great burst of courage does he manage to get out of his room and go to work. He was determined to leave his room so that he would not have to see the pigeon again.
Throughout the day he fails to follow his usual routine and thinks he is finished. He commits a few blunders on his morning shift and unintentionally tears his trousers during his lunch break: these events, which are of no major importance, take on the dimension of a drama in his eyes.
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