Once, he passed his hand over your eyes, which had been closed for a long time. You felt the skin of another body against yours — an instant of kindness, of peace. The body rolled over, time after time, clenching wildly, dissociated, famished, furious. The summer night roared.
Fingers were growing from the foreign body, probing for elbows, shoulders, arms; the body had drawn close, collapsing upon itself. . the arms continued curving into caresses, the legs, shaking. You were breathing at the same time, brother and sister, until the shock hit him: a sudden earthquake, horrified by the nightmare of kindness, unexpectedly abandoned, abandoning.
Again, the weight of silence: the ceiling suspended you. Again, the body twisted, the hand slid on shoulders, cheeks, eyelids, the strange hand climbing toward the damp eyelids and stopping, trembling like the wing of an injured bird. The neighboring body was trembling, withdrawing, returning. It was caressing your thighs, looking for your heat in some hiding place. You, with the hair of an army recruit or a prisoner, had damp shoulders, breasts weighted with weeping.
The tears flowed from the beginning, from before the beginning, from all along: from the moment you stretched out on the bed with your arms spread and soft things rustled over soft things, dangling on the edge of the bed. . you were waiting with closed damp eyes. . the strange hand had grasped your hands — first the left, then the right — and things fell down again. . you opened your eyes in the white ceiling, the summer night galloped alongside with tears like drops of sleet and hail. Out of the friction and spasms of bodies, the sudden disengagement of shoulders, arms, and chests: fulfillment had culminated. You were crying. . maybe you cried the whole time, from the beginning, unheard crying, inaudible even to you, the same as the closing door that should have been clearly heard, but somehow wasn’t. The movement of clothes, arms scrounging through fabric, the sheet, the body by your side, distant steps — no, first he touched one of your fingers, trapping your finger, squeezing it lightly in farewell. The footsteps moved toward the door; the door should have opened, as you knew it must, for the sound of closing to be heard. But the sound had disappeared, perished without a trace. The stranger had remained in the same spot, near the bed. Silence passed: time and silence.
You sat up halfway, you looked at the door, stuck to the edge of the wooden frame. It seemed closed, but it was only brought to the edge of the doorframe, shut too gently, almost closed, just enough to let a strip of light into the room. You remained in the same position, oppressed by the white ceiling, by the darkness and silence. Then the summer night broke open. Through the wooden blinds there were two young faces to be seen, ravished by the crack of the moon. A thousand stars on the blue background in the hole of the well. You closed your eyes, fast.
Easy sleep without tremors or dreams. You woke at dawn, at the same hour as always. You felt your shoulders, your cheeks. Dry: in their proper places. You lifted the wiry mound of hair from the floor. You sat the wig beside you, on the bed. Your feet landed on the chilly wooden floor. You picked up your clothes from the floor, and put them on. Smoothing your cheeks with your hand, your body began to awaken. You took the wig from the bed, and put it back on, straightening it approximately. You looked at the room, opened the door to the balcony.
In the fresh air and the light of a summer dawn, you crossed the room. The door was open, almost imperceptibly. The fugitive had left this as evidence. You walked to the window and went out onto the balcony. Busses were just beginning to leave, bicycles set in motion. The commute was beginning again, the same as always. In the street, the rat race was livening up.
You might have been able to face the astonishment of the heavens by leaping beyond the eventless calendar, beyond the crowds of hardworking, famished, overly submissive rodent workers. The earth without paths or surprises, without beginning or end, a resigned collapse, a silent tomb, the delirium of everyday absence.
You looked at the white walls and then at the street again. You panicked, you ran down the stairs: another morning, the kneeling of the slaves approves of the sun.
• • •
Smoky shadows, starving office slaves returning to their nests. The patrols and pickets to their posts, the spies running in high gear: the amnesiac mob. You can hear the clank of spoons and glasses, doors bumping against beds, and ringing telephones.
In the mouth of the stove, something revolves. It looks like a ring-shaped loaf of bread: a small curl with leaves of ash. The pile of burning pages rotates: burnt letters, fairy tales that have become black powder in the wastebasket under the piano teacher’s instrument. Ash-colored smears: the paws of a carbonized monster.
The fugitive gathers strength for the great, unfulfilled deed. The surrounding apathy prepares for retribution. Hatred promises to fulfill the dreams of explosions. Here, the door closed itself: the lock turned itself, the door fell back into its frame with the short piercing sound of pinched metal like a pistol’s click. . but that was long ago, a century ago, at least. Games of forgetting, of giving birth, of remembering, of revolting. He should stick his temple to the cold metal of the tape recorder, the sharp corner of some table, the wardrobe mirror, the telephone receiver, the door handle — any solid object that will confirm his existence. Then he should pick out the buried histories that he didn’t have the courage to utter and that he’ll carry with him forever: the treasure and the guilt.
He would also tell you the story that he forgot to leave behind in your room.
It happened long ago and far away, when everyone should have been glad, yet too many have managed to forget. Remembering the images is exhausting. The narrator grows tired quickly, too. The chroniclers write that back then arrogance had served the movements of the day and had been unleashed onto humanity. The cry of hoarse voices, suspicious people who hunted their own kind, suspected people and banished them into foreign lands. . into an unknown land where the cemetery would be their final home. Gathered into prison camps, far from the rest of humanity, they saw only barbed wire, trenches, common graves, common dormitories, common crematoria.
The few survivors were cadavers on liberation day. Immense beards, wild hair, ghostly faces. Rags hung off their skeletons.
Their perplexity continued for minutes and hours and days. They looked at the tanks covered with leaves and tree branches and at the incomprehensible smiles on the faces of their liberators. Some of them rushed to the gun turrets of the tanks to scatter the leaves that masked a great red star. The gates were thrown wide. They raised their rickety arms to feel the soldiers’ bodies. They saw everything clearly, they heard the cries of happy beasts; they danced for joy: unanimous madness. They crowded toward the gates, toward the hands of the saviors. Everything was seen with limpid clarity. There was no room for doubt.
They sensed the smell of burning clothing. They saw how everyone was throwing their striped clothes into the heap, which smoldered at first and then rose to a high flame. They saw, heard, felt, and understood everything that was happening. It couldn’t be otherwise, and in the following years — those shameful years of reintegration — they showed no trace of madness. They had endured, first clinging to the hope of such a miracle, then out of habit. Eventually, the rumors that spread during the final months would justify the panic on their executioners’ faces.
The light of the survivors’ eyes had grown brighter, reflecting the tired smiles of the liberators with their short haircuts and the peculiar commands that were issued in a noisy language — their uniforms dusty, their rifles and voices coated with dust.