I continue living for the rest.” I don’t know what she was trying to tell you with this nor what son they stole. Maybe they stole the son of a survivor of the Holocaust like you. Maybe you thought she told you this to console you. Nowadays they talk a lot about the Yemenite children but back then we all thought she was crazy and you didn’t understand what she was saying. “If they stole your child, ask for compensation from Germany but I don’t have any intention of speaking to those people by letter or telephone.”
At seventeen, I took my first girlfriend home. Claire, you remember, don’t you? Her mother was also a survivor of the Holocaust. You liked her a lot. You would hug her and lavished so much attention on her that one day she ran off and fled and left me. Perhaps it was your way to preserve our relationship, inverse to what you really wanted.Perhaps you thought that hugging a woman to your breast that could form part of my life. What makes me laugh so much is when people take me for being so independent that I don’t need anybody or anything. No one around me can know to what degree my life has depended on you. Everyone sees me as the lucky guy who lives in the opera building, and has no interest in seeing anything not coming from his own hands, such as the machines I design. They have no idea I did it all for you. Now I don’t care about anything. I wanted so much for you to be proud of your child for yourself of course, because you didn’t have many friends. Simply that you feel proud of me and with me. Now I have enough money. I am leaving the company that I built and managed. Nobody knows that yet. But surely if I go once a week, and in the most isolated corners of the planet, I look for a buyer of shares of the Company, or several, I think I’ll get a good price then I can spend the days sitting in front of your tomb and I will write about your life every day. I will write something different about Warsaw and about you about the Warsaw that I do not know and where I am prohibited from touching ground. And about you. I don’t know you, but you are the closest person to me every day you will be a different person, thus you will never die in your tomb. The new account and the new personality have to exist somewhere, and with that existence you will exist or perhaps when I die if anyone reads these tales their imagination will be my children and if not, at least I will know that I kept you alive here each day for an hour or two or eight, that I kept you alive in my imagination I, the boy who was born dead in 1947.
––––––––
I N CYPRUS
I could not believe that I would return here and that words would flow like this. Except for that short story for which I received a prize at school: A story of an encounter between Little Red Riding Hood and Kafka, I don’t remember having written anything. Maybe two or three poems when I was fifteen. And now I come here every day and this notebook is ceaselessly filling with words, as though they had a very important function. As though they were soldiers called up to war who had to line up in a certain order. And since it is about the war of their existence they do it very well, perhaps professionally. But also, in the most efficient manner, that is how I write, and I write about your life.
I again am here thinking about Josephine, about how old she would have been when she died. Eight perhaps. There you saw her for the last time. You left on the train. Perhaps you left her in a convent. You knew she had died. You saw her burning and right away I ask myself how you managed to escape, without a scratch. Perhaps your beauty is what saved you. Maybe an old disgusting SS officer hid you in his room or in his office and took care of you in exchange for you submitting. Perhaps your beauty saved you, or your courage. Perhaps you fled to the forest with Josephine until she could not go any farther. I remember that sometimes you would mistake my name and
At seventeen, I took my first girlfriend home. Claire, you remember, don’t you? Her mother was also a survivor of the Holocaust. You liked her a lot. You would hug her and lavished so much attention on her that one day she ran off and fled and left me. Perhaps it was your way to preserve our relationship, inverse to what you really wanted.Perhaps you thought that hugging a woman to your breast that could form part of my life. What makes me laugh so much is when people take me for being so independent that I don’t need anybody or anything. No one around me can know to what degree my life has depended on you. Everyone sees me as the lucky guy who lives in the opera building, and has no interest in seeing anything not coming from his own hands, such as the machines I design. They have no idea I did it all for you. Now I don’t care about anything. I wanted so much for you to be proud of your child for yourself of course, because you didn’t have many friends. Simply that you feel proud of me and with me. Now I have enough money. I am leaving the company that I built and managed. Nobody knows that yet. But surely if I go once a week, and in the most isolated corners of the planet, I look for a buyer of shares of the Company, or several, I think I’ll get a good price then I can spend the days sitting in front of your tomb and I will write about your life every day. I will write something different about Warsaw and about you about the Warsaw that I do not know and where I am prohibited from touching ground. And about you. I don’t know you, but you are the closest person to me every day you will be a different person, thus you will never die in your tomb. The new account and the new personality have to exist somewhere, and with that existence you will exist or perhaps when I die if anyone reads these tales their imagination will be my children and if not, at least I will know that I kept you alive here each day for an hour or two or eight, that I kept you alive in my imagination I, the boy who was born dead in 1947.
––––––––
I N CYPRUS
I could not believe that I would return here and that words would flow like this. Except for that short story for which I received a prize at school: A story of an encounter between Little Red Riding Hood and Kafka, I don’t remember having written anything. Maybe two or three poems when I was fifteen. And now I come here every day and this notebook is ceaselessly filling with words, as though they had a very important function. As though they were soldiers called up to war who had to line up in a certain order. And since it is about the war of their existence they do it very well, perhaps professionally. But also, in the most efficient manner, that is how I write, and I write about your life.
I again am here thinking about Josephine, about how old she would have been when she died. Eight perhaps. There you saw her for the last time. You left on the train. Perhaps you left her in a convent. You knew she had died. You saw her burning and right away I ask myself how you managed to escape, without a scratch. Perhaps your beauty is what saved you. Maybe an old disgusting SS officer hid you in his room or in his office and took care of you in exchange for you submitting. Perhaps your beauty saved you, or your courage. Perhaps you fled to the forest with Josephine until she could not go any farther. I remember that sometimes you would mistake my name and
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