Falling Out of Time by David Grossman Page A

longer.
    Speech,
    movements,
    expressions.
    MAN AND WOMAN:
    Now,
    for a moment,
    we sink.
    Both not saying
    the same words.
    Not bewailing him,
    for now,
    but bewailing the music
    of our previous life, the
    wondrously simple, the
    ease, the
    face
    free of wrinkles.
    WOMAN:
    But we promised each other,
    we swore to be,
    to ache,
    to miss
    him,
    to live.
    So what is it now
    that makes you
    suddenly tear away?
    MAN:
    After that night
    a stranger came and grasped
    my shoulders and said: Save
    what is left.
    Fight, try to heal.
    Look into her eyes, cling
    to her eyes, always
    her eyes—
    do not let go.
    WOMAN:
    Don’t go back there,
    to those days. Do not
    turn back your gaze.
    MAN:
    In that darkness I saw
    one eye
    weeping
    and one eye
    crazed.
    A human eye,
    extinguished,
    and the eye
    of a beast.
    A beast half
    devoured in the predator’s mouth,
    soaked with blood,
    insane,
    peered out at me from your eye.
    WOMAN:
    The earth
    gaped open,
    gulped us
    and disgorged.
    Don’t go back
    there, do not go,
    not even one step
    out of the light.
    MAN:
    I could not, I dared not
    look into your eye,
    that eye of
    madness,
    into your noneness.
    WOMAN:
    I did not see you,
    I did not see
    a thing,
    from the human eye
    or the eye
    of the beast.
    My soul was uprooted.
    It was very cold then
    and it is cold
    now, too.
    Come to sleep,
    it’s late.
    MAN:
    For five years
    we unspoke
    that night.
    You fell mute,
    then I.
    For you the quiet
    was good,
    and I felt it clutch
    at my throat. One after
    the other, the words
    died, and we were
    like a house
    where the lights
    go slowly out,
    until a somber silence
    fell—
    WOMAN:
    And in it
    I rediscovered you,
    and him. A dark mantle
    cloaked the three of us,
    enfolded us
    with him, and we were mute
    like him. Three embryos
    conceived
    by the bane—
    MAN:
    And together
    we were born
    on the other side,
    without words,
    without colors,
    and we learned
    to live
    the inverse
    of life.
    (silence)
    WOMAN:
    See how
    word by word
    our confiding
    is attenuated, macerated,
    like a dream
    illuminated
    by a torch. There was
    a certain miracle
    within the quietude,
    a secrecy
    within the silence
    that swallowed us up
    with him. We were silent there
    like him, there we spoke
    his tongue.
    For words—
    how does the drumming
    of words voice
    his death?!
    TOWN CHRONICLER: In the hush that follows her shout, the man retreats until his back touches the wall. Slowly, as if in his sleep, he spreads botharms out and steps along the wall. He circles the small kitchen, around and around her.
    MAN:
    Tell me,
    tell me
    about us
    that night.
    WOMAN:
    I sense something
    secret: you are tearing off
    the bandages
    so you may drink
    your blood, provisions
    for your journey to
there
.
    MAN:
    That night,
    tell me
    about us
    that night.
    WOMAN:
    You
    circle
    around me
    like a beast
    of prey. You close
    in on me
    like a nightmare.
    That night, that
    night.
    You want to hear about
    that night.
    We sat on these chairs,
    you there, me here.
    You smoked. I remember
    your face came
    and went in the smoke,
    less and less
    each time. Less
    you, less
    man.
    MAN:
    We waited
    in silence
    for morning.
    No
    morning
    came.
    No
    blood
    flowed.
    I stood up, I wrapped you
    in a blanket,
    you gripped my hand, looked
    straight into my eyes: the man
    and woman
    we had been
    nodded farewell.
    WOMAN:
    No
    wafted dark
    and cold
    from the walls,
    bound my body,
    closed and barred
    my womb. I thought:
    They are sealing
    the home that once
    was me.
    MAN:
    Speak. Tell me
    more. What did we say?
    Who spoke first? It was very quiet,
    wasn’t it? I remember breaths.
    And your hands twisting
    together. Everything else
    is erased.
    WOMAN:
    Cold, quiet fire burned
    around us.
    The world outside shriveled,
    sighed, dwindled
    into a single dot,
    scant,
    black,
    malignant.
    I thought: We must
    leave.
    I knew: There’s nowhere
    left.
    MAN:
    The minute
    it happened,
    the minute
    it became—
    WOMAN:
    In an instant we were cast out
    to a land of exile.
    They came at