Stay overnight with him — who is now alone?
He grabs her by the shoulders and weeps into the crook of her neck, or was it really
a kiss? What? Happiness cuts shame, shame covers unhappiness, unhappiness unfurls
happiness. Hope pushes aside grief, proving to be so much stronger — so strong
that it surprises even the seventeen-year-old herself, this is the intensity of
women fighting over bread in front of the Anker bakery — the old ones are
often stronger than the younger ones, though they are so much closer to dying.
Suddenly alert with hopefulness, she says: Yes, and follows the man, not heading for
the vestibule this time, as she’s always done when spending the night here, but
instead lying down next to him at his request, obediently lying down in the bed of
her friend, lying for the first time beside the man whom she has loved ever since he
returned home from the war that past December like someone she’d never seen before.
What? She lies down in the place of her dearest friend, who has been dead only since
the morning, 3:20 a.m. The end of a day on which a life has ended is still far from
being the end of days. Inconsolable, she will now — what? — inherit what
belonged to her friend, who yesterday was still warm; she will metamorphose into her
friend and continue her conversations in her body with their beloved. Has anyone
before seen such soft lips on a man who was forced to kill so as not to be killed
himself, has anyone seen such shiny, wetly gleaming teeth, and a nose whose nostrils
flare with arousal, has anyone seen such long lashes shading a pair of eyes —
such beautiful shadows — these lashes brought home unsinged from all the
fires? Ever since the moment when he was standing there unexpectedly at the door,
she has known that this is the man who was destined for her all along, and now at
long last he knows it too, at long last he is lying beside her just as she imagined
countless times, breathing so close beside her that she can inhale his breath, and
if it weren’t so dark, she would surely be able to see him gazing at her through the
night, gazing all the way through her. What?
14
In the local scythe factory — situated not on the
Judenburg Terrace but directly on the left bank of the Mur — fifteen cm.
lengths of stacked steel were thrown in a northeasterly direction. In a smithy
in Purbachgraben, approximately one hundred m. from the right bank of the Mur
— where the limestone massif of the Liechtenstein Mountain descends to the
Judenburg Terrace — tools on the west wall were thrown to the east. In
Aichdorf a small bell tolled (plane of oscillation: east/west). In Fohnsdorf, a
man was thrown out of bed in an eastwardly direction. Several persons staggered
or fell in an eastwardly direction, e.g., a schoolboy on the road between
Rikersdorf and Allerheiligen, who simultaneously heard a howling sound and a
thunder-like crash; a local apprentice on a ladder; and in the building next
door, a schoolboy on the stairs. Taking into account the objects’ inertia, these
findings correlate well with the observations of several witnesses, who were
sitting quietly at the time and had the impression that the main thrust came
from the east.
15
When her mother comes to relieve her at midnight, the younger
daughter doesn’t say that she just saw her older sister with a man. The two of them
walked right past her where she stood hidden among the crowd of people. And she, the
little sister, didn’t dare call out her sister’s name, her sister was walking with
her head down, tight-lipped, not speaking to the man who was walking at her side. So
this is how her sister spends the nights she’s not at home. Years ago, when the
younger sister had stumbled across her older sister’s diary and read a little bit of
it, her sister had suddenly come into the room, but she hadn’t shouted or struck her
sister when she saw what she was doing, she just calmly removed the book from her
hands and said to her:
Do
He grabs her by the shoulders and weeps into the crook of her neck, or was it really
a kiss? What? Happiness cuts shame, shame covers unhappiness, unhappiness unfurls
happiness. Hope pushes aside grief, proving to be so much stronger — so strong
that it surprises even the seventeen-year-old herself, this is the intensity of
women fighting over bread in front of the Anker bakery — the old ones are
often stronger than the younger ones, though they are so much closer to dying.
Suddenly alert with hopefulness, she says: Yes, and follows the man, not heading for
the vestibule this time, as she’s always done when spending the night here, but
instead lying down next to him at his request, obediently lying down in the bed of
her friend, lying for the first time beside the man whom she has loved ever since he
returned home from the war that past December like someone she’d never seen before.
What? She lies down in the place of her dearest friend, who has been dead only since
the morning, 3:20 a.m. The end of a day on which a life has ended is still far from
being the end of days. Inconsolable, she will now — what? — inherit what
belonged to her friend, who yesterday was still warm; she will metamorphose into her
friend and continue her conversations in her body with their beloved. Has anyone
before seen such soft lips on a man who was forced to kill so as not to be killed
himself, has anyone seen such shiny, wetly gleaming teeth, and a nose whose nostrils
flare with arousal, has anyone seen such long lashes shading a pair of eyes —
such beautiful shadows — these lashes brought home unsinged from all the
fires? Ever since the moment when he was standing there unexpectedly at the door,
she has known that this is the man who was destined for her all along, and now at
long last he knows it too, at long last he is lying beside her just as she imagined
countless times, breathing so close beside her that she can inhale his breath, and
if it weren’t so dark, she would surely be able to see him gazing at her through the
night, gazing all the way through her. What?
14
In the local scythe factory — situated not on the
Judenburg Terrace but directly on the left bank of the Mur — fifteen cm.
lengths of stacked steel were thrown in a northeasterly direction. In a smithy
in Purbachgraben, approximately one hundred m. from the right bank of the Mur
— where the limestone massif of the Liechtenstein Mountain descends to the
Judenburg Terrace — tools on the west wall were thrown to the east. In
Aichdorf a small bell tolled (plane of oscillation: east/west). In Fohnsdorf, a
man was thrown out of bed in an eastwardly direction. Several persons staggered
or fell in an eastwardly direction, e.g., a schoolboy on the road between
Rikersdorf and Allerheiligen, who simultaneously heard a howling sound and a
thunder-like crash; a local apprentice on a ladder; and in the building next
door, a schoolboy on the stairs. Taking into account the objects’ inertia, these
findings correlate well with the observations of several witnesses, who were
sitting quietly at the time and had the impression that the main thrust came
from the east.
15
When her mother comes to relieve her at midnight, the younger
daughter doesn’t say that she just saw her older sister with a man. The two of them
walked right past her where she stood hidden among the crowd of people. And she, the
little sister, didn’t dare call out her sister’s name, her sister was walking with
her head down, tight-lipped, not speaking to the man who was walking at her side. So
this is how her sister spends the nights she’s not at home. Years ago, when the
younger sister had stumbled across her older sister’s diary and read a little bit of
it, her sister had suddenly come into the room, but she hadn’t shouted or struck her
sister when she saw what she was doing, she just calmly removed the book from her
hands and said to her:
Do
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