See Under David Grossman (free ebook reader TXT) 📖

I take such pains and lose my soul and steal across every frontier! Indeed, call me a rebel if you will, waving my fist at heaven! Escaping each minute from the most highly guarded prison in the world, and gradually overcoming the barriers set up between man and his fellow man … thus increasing in however small measure the love and compassion that exists between people, because, well, we are all so lonely, locked up in our boxes, deaf and dumb and blind all … and I, ah, I at least can wander freely … contain everyone … send a wordless greeting at least … I am a hostel of sorts, the mute translator of numerous strange languages, because they can say the words, for instance, ‘misery’ and ‘agony,’ ‘hope’ and ‘longing,’ ah, but only I know what they mean by them, why you, for example, Pan Doctor, when you say—pain, what Madame Paula means by that is as different as if you both called two different women by the name of mother, yes yes, and only inside me can those blind, deaf pains touch each other … only inside me do they acknowledge themselves to each other in all their depth … A dictionary I have become, a person-to-person dictionary, but there is no one to read me, because I myself am not able to read, I am only the pages, and the doctor said barbarians, in jest no doubt, but now that I have finally said this, I’ll be on my way, yes, I have been wanting to do that for a few moments only … Nu, something is holding me back, a kind of bite from the depths of the stomach, no, not because of your wonderful onion biscuits, madame, but because of a kind of gloom, a kind of pregnant rage, dear Lord, what is this, help me, help me, Pani Paula, ha, this pain, do you feel it, too, take it away, take it away from me, it’s yours, all yours, not mine … please …”

And before the startled eyes of Paula and Fried, the biographer collapsed, writhing on the noor—Wasscrman: “Panting like a woman in travail!”—struggling with invisible cords that seemed to bind him inside and all around, to pull him in the direction of Paula, toward that which lay beyond her, toward that which she herself did not yet sense, and finally he was hurled in the air, curled like a fetus, and fell out the doorhe had entered by, with a strange shrill wailing sound, and Fried and Paula looked at each other, and Paula, for the first time, felt the biting in her womb.

ZMAN

TIME

Rudimentary data of intelligent being, not susceptible to unambiguous definition due to its primacy and indeterminateness. Signifies the cadence and duration of phenomena.

1. Kazik’s time

Fried reckoned Kazik’s time from 2100 hours the evening of his delivery, when the white butterfly fluttered across the infant’s face. With the seventy-two-year life span of the average male as his frame of reference, the doctor computed one moment of Kazik’s life per eighteen days of normal human life. One second of Kazik’s life thus equaled eight hours of Fried’s, one minute and forty seconds, a month. An elapse of ten minutes represented six months for Kazik; one hour, three whole years. Fried was aghast. Worthy of mention perhaps are his two frantic attempts to arrest the galloping of Kazik’s time that night: First he extinguished all the lights, hoping—Marcus: “Not because he was stupid, heaven forbid, but because he was desperate”—that the tyranny of time would diminish in the dark. Then shortly before dawn, when Kazik was approximately twenty-one years of age, the doctor immersed him in a cold tub again, in the vain hope that water would decelerate the process. All this, however, only served to intensify the doctor’s perception that his own time was dwindling at the same fearful rate; that as soon as time had finished harrowing Kazik, the whole world would begin to deteriorate at the same maniacal speed. Every so often, however, the doctor sensed—it should be stressed—that he was not fighting for Kazik’s sake alone.

2. The semblance of time

The semblance of time was revealed to the astonished Fried through an unfortunate incident: Kazik, running through the house with Fried at his heels [see under: CHILDHOOD; STRANGENESS], pulled the doily on the bookcase, knocking down a large ceramic bowl with four blue stags painted on it, which Paula had always loved to gaze at dreamily. It broke to pieces on the floor. Fried had reached out impulsivelyand slapped the boy’s face. Kazik let out a piercing sob, and then there was silence. Fried: “Moi bozhe! What have I done?!” Kazik, incidentally, forgot the slap right away, and turned his attention to the broken pottery. He was astonished that something could be destroyed by breakage rather than slow expiration. Fried shut his eyes with heartrending remorse for having so distressed the doomed, defenseless baby, but there was barely sufficient time even for this, because just then Kazik stepped on a sharp splinter and let out a scream. He screamed more from surprise than pain, and clung fiercely to Fried, who had struck him only a moment before. And Fried screamed with him, because with his own eyes he saw life was streaming out of the child, and knew that Kazik was awakening to pain Fried could neither prevent, suffer in his stead nor bargain away, but when he bent down and hugged the boy, he saw it wasn’t blood flowing out of the deep cut in his foot at all but what appeared to be fine, sheer, dustlike particles sprinkling out of his body to the rhythm of his pulse and dissolving in the air, and Fried knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that this was time.

3. Non-time: see under: PROMETHEUS

ZARUT

STRANGENESS

The quality of being strange. A sense of isolation. Distance and difference.

Fried felt