hourless night, in a house I did not know, in a nameless street, beside a girl whose face I had never seen properly …
Later on I had hurried across to the station, found my train gone and the next one not due till the morning. I had paid my bill, left my pack lying beside the other one, and staggered out into the twilight of the little town. Gray, dark gray, flooded in on me from all sides, and only the sparse lamps gave the faces of passersby the look of living people.
Somewhere I drank a better wine, looked forlornly into the unsmiling face of a woman behind the bar, smelled something like vinegar through a kitchen door, paid, and disappeared again into the dusk.
This life, I thought, is not my life. I have to behave as if this were my life, but I’m no good at it. It was quite dark by now, and the mild sky of a summer evening hung over the town. Somewhere the war was going on, invisible, inaudible in these silent streets where the low houses slept beside low trees; somewhere in this absolute silence the war was going on. I was alone in this town, these people were not my people; these little trees had been unpacked from a box of toys and glued onto these soft, gray sidewalks, with the sky hovering overhead like a soundless dirigible that was about to crash …
Somewhere under a tree there was a face, faintly lit from within. Sad eyes under soft hair that must be light brown although it looked gray in the night; a pale skin with a round mouth that must be red although it too looked gray in the night.
“Come along,” I said to the face.
I took hold of her arm, a human arm; the palms of our hands clung together; our fingers met and interlocked as we walked along in this unknown town and turned into an unknown street.
“Don’t turn the light on,” I said as we entered the room I was now lying in, floating unattached in the darkness.
I had felt a weeping face in the dark and plunged into abysses, down into abysses the way you tumble down a staircase, a dizzying staircase of velvet; on and on I plunged, down one abyss after another …
My memory told me all this had happened, and that I was now lying on this pillow, in this room, beside this girl, without being able to hear her breath; she sleeps as lightly as a child. My God, was my brain all that was left of me?
Often the pitch-black waters would seem to stand still, and hope would stir in me that I was going to wake up, feel my legs, hear again, smell, and not merely think; and even this modest hope was a lot, for it would gradually subside, the pitch-black waters would start eddying again, repossess my helpless corpse, and let it drift, timelessly, in total isolation.
My memory also told me that the night could not last forever. Day had to come some time. And it told me that I could drink, kiss, and weep, even pray, although you can’t pray just with your brain. While I knew that I was awake, was lying awake in a Hungarian girl’s bed, on her soft pillow in a dark, dark night, while I knew all this, I could not help also believing that I was dead …
It was like a dawn that comes very gently and slowly, so indescribably slowly as to be barely perceptible. First you think you’re mistaken; when you’re standing in a foxhole on a dark night you can’t believe that that’s really the dawn; that soft, soft pale strip beyond the invisible horizon; you think you must be mistaken, your tired eyes are oversensitive and are probably reflecting something from some secret reserves of light. But it actually is the dawn, growing stronger now. It actually is getting light, lighter, daylight is growing stronger, the gray patch outthere beyond the horizon is slowly spreading, and now you know for certain: day has come.
I suddenly realized I was cold; my feet had slipped out from under the blanket, bare and cold, and the sense of chill was real. I sighed deeply, could feel my own breath as it touched my chin; I leaned over, groped for the blanket, covered my
Later on I had hurried across to the station, found my train gone and the next one not due till the morning. I had paid my bill, left my pack lying beside the other one, and staggered out into the twilight of the little town. Gray, dark gray, flooded in on me from all sides, and only the sparse lamps gave the faces of passersby the look of living people.
Somewhere I drank a better wine, looked forlornly into the unsmiling face of a woman behind the bar, smelled something like vinegar through a kitchen door, paid, and disappeared again into the dusk.
This life, I thought, is not my life. I have to behave as if this were my life, but I’m no good at it. It was quite dark by now, and the mild sky of a summer evening hung over the town. Somewhere the war was going on, invisible, inaudible in these silent streets where the low houses slept beside low trees; somewhere in this absolute silence the war was going on. I was alone in this town, these people were not my people; these little trees had been unpacked from a box of toys and glued onto these soft, gray sidewalks, with the sky hovering overhead like a soundless dirigible that was about to crash …
Somewhere under a tree there was a face, faintly lit from within. Sad eyes under soft hair that must be light brown although it looked gray in the night; a pale skin with a round mouth that must be red although it too looked gray in the night.
“Come along,” I said to the face.
I took hold of her arm, a human arm; the palms of our hands clung together; our fingers met and interlocked as we walked along in this unknown town and turned into an unknown street.
“Don’t turn the light on,” I said as we entered the room I was now lying in, floating unattached in the darkness.
I had felt a weeping face in the dark and plunged into abysses, down into abysses the way you tumble down a staircase, a dizzying staircase of velvet; on and on I plunged, down one abyss after another …
My memory told me all this had happened, and that I was now lying on this pillow, in this room, beside this girl, without being able to hear her breath; she sleeps as lightly as a child. My God, was my brain all that was left of me?
Often the pitch-black waters would seem to stand still, and hope would stir in me that I was going to wake up, feel my legs, hear again, smell, and not merely think; and even this modest hope was a lot, for it would gradually subside, the pitch-black waters would start eddying again, repossess my helpless corpse, and let it drift, timelessly, in total isolation.
My memory also told me that the night could not last forever. Day had to come some time. And it told me that I could drink, kiss, and weep, even pray, although you can’t pray just with your brain. While I knew that I was awake, was lying awake in a Hungarian girl’s bed, on her soft pillow in a dark, dark night, while I knew all this, I could not help also believing that I was dead …
It was like a dawn that comes very gently and slowly, so indescribably slowly as to be barely perceptible. First you think you’re mistaken; when you’re standing in a foxhole on a dark night you can’t believe that that’s really the dawn; that soft, soft pale strip beyond the invisible horizon; you think you must be mistaken, your tired eyes are oversensitive and are probably reflecting something from some secret reserves of light. But it actually is the dawn, growing stronger now. It actually is getting light, lighter, daylight is growing stronger, the gray patch outthere beyond the horizon is slowly spreading, and now you know for certain: day has come.
I suddenly realized I was cold; my feet had slipped out from under the blanket, bare and cold, and the sense of chill was real. I sighed deeply, could feel my own breath as it touched my chin; I leaned over, groped for the blanket, covered my
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