you think I was happy when you were born?
Maybe.
Do you remember the glass marbles you always played with?
Yes.
Do you remember the time I told you to try swallowing them?
Maybe.
Why do you think I wanted you to do that?
Dunno.
Do you remember the wall behind the house where Simon the coachman
lives?
Yes.
Do you remember the time I told you to try jumping down from it?
Maybe.
Why do you think I would have said that?
Dunno.
If you ever touch this book again, you will no longer be my sister. Do
you understand?
Yes.
And so now her tight-lipped sister had walked down the street beside a
tight-lipped man without realizing her little sister had seen her. Even a public
place like this, even in the middle of the night, could reveal something that was
none of anyone else’s business, just like an open book, in a city as large as Vienna
there was no avoiding someone’s reading it. She had been standing there for the past
five hours so that her sister would be able to eat cow udder the next day in order
to survive, and also so that she herself would be able to eat it to survive, along
with her mother and father. Her sister, in turn, while she, the little sister, was
at school, would accompany her mother to the Vienna Woods to collect firewood, for
hours she and their mother would march through the frigid woods and exhaust
themselves lugging armfuls of filthy waterlogged sticks, only so that the younger
sister — and she herself, of course, and their mother and father — would
not freeze in their own home. Nonetheless, it was perfectly possible that if this
very same sister knew that her younger sister had watched her walking through the
nocturnal Viennese streets at the side of a man, she would wish her dead, perhaps
with more success this time. How many fronts like these were there in a life that
might cost a person her life? How arduous it was surviving all the battles in which
one would not fall.
16
But then, the man falls asleep as soon as he is lying beside her,
the warmth of his body next to the warmth of her body, the man does not touch her
the entire night, not even in a dream. All night long she hears him breathing next
to her; from breath to breath, she knows with increasing certainty there is no point
putting out a hand to touch him. The weeping that has been stuck in her throat ever
since the departure of the 7031 now breaks to the surface, but now they are tears of
a different sort: This weeping for her dead friend gets twisted — still in her
throat — into a weeping out of jealousy, tears of mourning become tears of
fury at the man she loves, who has invited her to share his bed but now is refusing
to console her for the loss he has suffered. By the end of the night, she is weeping
only out of shame. She has now received an answer once and for all to a question
that, left to her own devices, she would not have asked for a long time, perhaps
never. An answer she would never willingly have asked for, namely that the man is
friendly but does not love her, that his mourning for the deceased is genuine and
deep, while her own duplicitous nature has no counterpart anywhere in the world. If
he shared her sentiments, how little would she care what her father, mother, and
friends had to say about it, but now this defeat has condemned her irrevocably.
Sleeping, he had encouraged her to hope, and sleeping, he has struck her down in
crushing defeat. Lonelier than ever, she arises at dawn from the side of the
sleeping man; no one who knew what she had hoped for could ever wish to consort with
her again; she herself has no choice but to go on enduring her body, which has led
her so badly astray, if only she had gone home the night before, as she’d originally
intended, the way home would have been nothing more than walking, setting one foot
before the other. But now she knows what it means to no longer have any possibility
of retreat. She gathers up her things and leaves the apartment without waking
him.
17
At
Maybe.
Do you remember the glass marbles you always played with?
Yes.
Do you remember the time I told you to try swallowing them?
Maybe.
Why do you think I wanted you to do that?
Dunno.
Do you remember the wall behind the house where Simon the coachman
lives?
Yes.
Do you remember the time I told you to try jumping down from it?
Maybe.
Why do you think I would have said that?
Dunno.
If you ever touch this book again, you will no longer be my sister. Do
you understand?
Yes.
And so now her tight-lipped sister had walked down the street beside a
tight-lipped man without realizing her little sister had seen her. Even a public
place like this, even in the middle of the night, could reveal something that was
none of anyone else’s business, just like an open book, in a city as large as Vienna
there was no avoiding someone’s reading it. She had been standing there for the past
five hours so that her sister would be able to eat cow udder the next day in order
to survive, and also so that she herself would be able to eat it to survive, along
with her mother and father. Her sister, in turn, while she, the little sister, was
at school, would accompany her mother to the Vienna Woods to collect firewood, for
hours she and their mother would march through the frigid woods and exhaust
themselves lugging armfuls of filthy waterlogged sticks, only so that the younger
sister — and she herself, of course, and their mother and father — would
not freeze in their own home. Nonetheless, it was perfectly possible that if this
very same sister knew that her younger sister had watched her walking through the
nocturnal Viennese streets at the side of a man, she would wish her dead, perhaps
with more success this time. How many fronts like these were there in a life that
might cost a person her life? How arduous it was surviving all the battles in which
one would not fall.
16
But then, the man falls asleep as soon as he is lying beside her,
the warmth of his body next to the warmth of her body, the man does not touch her
the entire night, not even in a dream. All night long she hears him breathing next
to her; from breath to breath, she knows with increasing certainty there is no point
putting out a hand to touch him. The weeping that has been stuck in her throat ever
since the departure of the 7031 now breaks to the surface, but now they are tears of
a different sort: This weeping for her dead friend gets twisted — still in her
throat — into a weeping out of jealousy, tears of mourning become tears of
fury at the man she loves, who has invited her to share his bed but now is refusing
to console her for the loss he has suffered. By the end of the night, she is weeping
only out of shame. She has now received an answer once and for all to a question
that, left to her own devices, she would not have asked for a long time, perhaps
never. An answer she would never willingly have asked for, namely that the man is
friendly but does not love her, that his mourning for the deceased is genuine and
deep, while her own duplicitous nature has no counterpart anywhere in the world. If
he shared her sentiments, how little would she care what her father, mother, and
friends had to say about it, but now this defeat has condemned her irrevocably.
Sleeping, he had encouraged her to hope, and sleeping, he has struck her down in
crushing defeat. Lonelier than ever, she arises at dawn from the side of the
sleeping man; no one who knew what she had hoped for could ever wish to consort with
her again; she herself has no choice but to go on enduring her body, which has led
her so badly astray, if only she had gone home the night before, as she’d originally
intended, the way home would have been nothing more than walking, setting one foot
before the other. But now she knows what it means to no longer have any possibility
of retreat. She gathers up her things and leaves the apartment without waking
him.
17
At
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