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He wore a simple pair of pants, almost like a peasant’s, and his hazel-colored shoes were absolutely out of style.
His wife said: “You’re dressed like you’re from another century. No one thinks that way anymore.”

2.

Joseph Walser doesn’t have his papers on him.
Someone says: “No messing around these days, you always have to have your papers.”
Joseph Walser receives this reprimand in silence.

Distance was proportional to astonishment. When events took place just a few inches or feet away: no big deal, just monotony. Monotony exists in close proximity to mankind, while astonishing things are always out of reach.

The introduction of a single new element into a peaceful environment can effect radical changes in one’s outlook for the day to come. Death had not yet been introduced as an everyday element, but this next month was going to be tough, vile even, according to some forecasts.
“A vile month,” murmured Walser to his wife Margha. But a month one can’t avoid touching. Relegating all your humiliating fears to the tips of your fingers.

You’ll touch the next month the way you touch the water of a dirty river with your right hand: afterward you have to clean your fingers, you have to wash them.

The technique of influencing men by frightening them about things that don’t exist yet is ancient. It’s happening once again, now. There’s talk of a military unit approaching with great appetite; that’s the word they use: appetite. As if weapons had stomachs, the way organisms do. And a sort of grotesque, metallic saliva. However, mental processes are the only things that have been disturbed, thus far; the physical reality of things still remains calm and well-organized. Factories are keeping up the diligent commotion that corresponds to the routine movements of their peaceful machines, and the necessary products subsequently materialize. In industry, the phenomenon of cause and effect is sustained, and none of the machines interrupt their customary processes to veer off toward such things as miracles or explosions.
“Fortunately, no miracles,” mutters Klober Muller, the foreman at the factory where Joseph Walser works.

As if war were just an excessive concentration of miracles. An irritating series of such occurrences taking place over the shortest possible period of time, a supernatural acceleration, a feat of pure human arrogance, and—more than mere impropriety—a crude domination over time.
There need to be significant pauses in between events. “They shouldn’t just pile up like a heap of shoddy merchandise, events aren’t shoddy merchandise, they’re valuable things,” said Klober.
Joseph Walser was standing next to him, in his hazel-colored shoes, which were absolutely out of style.
Klober couldn’t help but notice.
“Those shoes of yours,’ he said, “are absolutely irresponsible.”
Joseph Walser looked down at his own shoes and then raised his head back up. The smile that he thought of affecting in that fleetingly tense moment disappeared when his eyes took in the expression on Klober’s face. The foreman wasn’t kidding. Not at all: he was annoyed.
“Your shoes are absolutely irresponsible,” repeated Klober Muller.