The Abyss of Self-Knowing
by Robert Rubsam
Marcel took lunch in his favorite restaurant. It was the sort of stolid and old-fashioned place where everything is made of slightly scuffed wood, and it was known for its rare meats. He ordered a bottle of wine, and, feeling bold, a single slice of roast beef, “the rarest you have.” There was much whispering amongst the staff, but he thought nothing of it. When they finally delivered his lunch, however, Marcel was astonished: there was an eye in the middle of his beef. It gazed this way and that; every so often it would blink. He poked at the meat with his knife and fork, even trimmed a bit of fat around the edges, but the eye did not seem to notice. Though he knew the meat would be tasty, Marcel could not bring himself to eat it. Something about the eye just seemed wrong. After observing it observe him for some time, he nearly cried out in shock. The eye staring back at him was none but his own. Marcel promptly sent his lunch back to the kitchen. “No,” he told them, “that’s too rare.”
Robert Rubsam is a writer and critic whose work has been published in the New York Times Magazine, The Baffler, Commonweal, and America Magazine. He is currently an M.F.A. student at Columbia University.
