Saturday 28 February 2015

...of endorsement (and cowardice)

...You're a stupid and destructive person, and you're not even ashamed of it, he said, and then fell silent. I have to own that the actor's attack on Jeannie gave me great delight, for I had seldom seen anybody say such things to her face or requite her with such asperity for one of her impertinences. Although I still found the Burgtheater actor repugnant, he had momentarily earned my esteem. Never before has Jeannie Billroth been told how lacking in decency she really is, I thought. Nobody's ever told her that for a long time she's been utterly incompetent in discussing ideas, I thought. Nobody's ever told Jeannie to her face that she's rude, even vulgar, as the actor just has. We feel a great delight when somebody is getting his just desserts, so to speak, by being reproached with his own rudeness and shamelessness, his own stupidity and incompetence, I thought, especially when we've waited years to see it happen. Jeannie's never before been told that she's basically a common little woman and a low character, but the actor from the Burgtheater has just spelled it out. I had the impression that everyone who witnessed the actor's outburst felt not only a certain momentary pleasure, but a satisfaction that would last rather longer than that. Naturally they did not express what they felt: they had no occasion to do so, nor could they have afforded to. The actor could afford to, however, just as I could afford, if only by my silence, to endorse everything he had said about Jeannie. For years, perhaps for decades, we may have wanted to tell someone the truth to his face, the truth that he has never heard because no one has dared to tell it to him to his face, and then at last someone does it for us. And I reflected that by telling Jeannie the truth to her face, whatever that truth may or may not have been, the actor had made it worthwhile for me to have accepted the invitation to the artistic dinner after all...

[Woodcutters, Bernhard, T.]

...of uninvolving

...While I was working on The Wild Duck I saw what was wrong with these young people: they will not tolerate discipline. But the actor who plays Gregers is quite outstanding, Jeanie Billroth objected to this point. To which the Burgtheater actor replied, Everybody says Gregers is good, but I don't understand what they see in him: I find his performance just average, no more than average - a piece of positive miscasting. Jeanie Billroth was the only other guest who had actually seen the production at the Burgtheater, and the others, having started off without knowing what The Wild Duck was and only gradually learning that it was a play, were condemned to silence. Every now and then they nodded, either looking straight at the actor or gazing down at the tablecloth, or else staring in bewilderment at the person sitting opposite, they had no chance whatever of participating in the actor's performance, with which he was regaling them so uninhibitedly, knowing that none of them would inhibit him. Auersberger's wife, far from inhibiting him, repeatedly urged him to go on, and it was natural that the actor, having just come from performing in The Wild Duck at the Burgtheater, should continue to expatiate on the performance and related matters...

[Woodcutters, Bernhard, T.]

...of observation

...This trick of going to the cafe Eiles had always worked. I would go in, get myself a pile of newspapers, and recover my composure. Nor did have to be the cafe Eiles, the Museum or the Braunerhof also produced the desired effect. Just as some people run to the park or the woods in search of calm and distraction, I have always run to the coffeehouse. Thus it was as likely as not, I reflected in the wing chair, that before finally addressing me the Auersbergers had observed me for some time, just as closely as I had observed Auersberger that day in the Rotenturmstrasse, and no doubt with the same ruthlessness, the same monstrous inhumanity. We learn a great deal, I reflected in the wing chair, if we observe people from behind when they are unaware of being observed, observing them for as long as we can, prolonging our ruthless and monstrous observation for as long as possible without addressing them, keeping control of ourselves and refraining from speaking to them, then being able simply to turn on our heel and walk away from them, in the truest sense of the phrase - if we have the skill and cunning that I displayed that day at the bottom of the Rotenturmstrasse, when I turned on my heel and walked away. We should apply this observation procedure both to people we love and to people we hate, I thought, sitting in the wing chair and observing Auersberger's wife, who kept glancing at the clock and trying to console her guests for having to wait for supper so long, that is to say until the actor made his entrance...

[Woodcutters, Bernhard, T.]

...of feigned ignorance

...The fact that I had not heard from Joana for so long, I thought, sitting in the wing chair, had for some time struck me as suspicious, and I had often wondered lately whether Joana, a woman who had been deeply wounded, who had been cheated, deserted and scorned, might one day commit suicide. But in the Graben I had pretended to the Auersbergers that I knew nothing of Joana's suicide, feigning utter astonishment and shock, even though by eleven o'clock in the Graben I was no longer astonished or shocked by the tragedy, having heard about it at seven o'clock that morning; after walking up and down the Graben and Karntnerstrasse several times I found I was able to endure Joana's suicide, that I was able to bear it, in the bracing air of the Graben. Actually it would have been better had I not appeared utterly astonished by the Auersbergers' announcement of Joana's suicide; I should have told them that I had known for some time and that I even knew how she had killed herself. I ought to have told them the precise circumstances, I thought, and so deprived them of their triumph, which they were actually reveling in and savoring to the full, as I noted at the time while we were standing in front of Knizes'; for by pretending to know nothing whatever about Joana's death, by acting as though I had been stunned and shattered and dumbfounded by the terrible news, I had allowed the Auersebergers the thrill of being the sudden bearers of ill tidings, which naturally had not been my intention, though this was what I managed to achieve by my ineptitude, by claiming to know nothing whatever about Joana's suicide at the time of our meeting. All the time I was standing there with the Auersbergers I feigned ignorance, while knowing more or less everything about Joana's suicide...

[Woodcutters, Bernhard, T.]

...of diners

They're hungry, and hunger is just about the only thing that can shut them up for a moment. They clap when I bring in the fries, then fall into devout silence to taste them. They're burning hot, crisp outside, soft inside, and slightly disturbing, because they're not evenly cut and don't come from the freezer. Are they OK, nonetheless? Was that an unambiguous OK? They're delicious? Oof, I passed the test. Now I have to gird myself for a silent duel with Monkey. He stares at me and I stare back. Will he, won't he? He's still not sure. He looks at me and nods. I concede the match.
"Yes, I've got some."

[Dear Reader, Fournel, P.] 

...of e-readers

I cannot stand the countryside. That's why I go there every weekend. So as to read and have a heart attack in enemy territory, in dark and lugubrious silence. As I gave up having a good night's sleep long ago, I get out of bed in the pitch dark of the back of beyond and automatically dive into the thickest of my weekend doorstops. I sink onto the sofa, wrap my legs in a blanket, and read. My habitual technique is quite simple: I stack the pile of sheets on my paunch, and as I read I transfer them one by one to my chest. The increasing pressure on my ribcage gives an accurate reading of how much work I have done. For the first twenty pages I read with great attention, as slowly as I can make myself read, then I speed up gently, allowing my professional experience and what I know of the author and the book's concept to take over - imagination does the rest. This is my semi-somnolent reading style, which constitutes my deepest mode of engagement with a text. It's the perfect time for working on authors that the firm has published for many years - solid old troopers who need nothing more than a tuck or a nip.
The tablet is on my paunch. I hold it in both hands. There is a page open on the screen. I've matched the font size to the strength of my half-moons. The reader is cold to the touch. It'll take a minute for my hands to warm it up. My reading lamp makes an unpleasant glare in one corner of the screen. I switch it off. Now the only light comes from the text. That's a plus. If I look at myself in the mirror, with the tablet under my chin, I look like a ghost. I am the ghost of readers past.
With a flick of a finger I turn pages that don't fall on my pile. They depart body and soul to some imaginary place I can hardly imagine. My chest is anxious and gives me no guide to how far I've got. There's no noise of turning pages to break the silence of the house. I miss the slight breeze I used to feel on my neck from each page as it fell. I am hot. The light from the page absorbs my eyes. I've suddenly lost a character and I have to go back. My useless pencil is still behind my ear (I'm a bookie reader) and I'm puzzled as to how I'm going to keep track of typos. I'm really put off by the idea of summoning up a keyboard the way the intern showed me and barging into the text. I've always been a man of margins and lead pencils. I want to be erasable. For a second I rest the reader on my chest and close my eyes. I'm waiting for the screen to go to sleep so I can too, just for fifteen minutes, until dawn comes.

[Dear Reader, Fournel, P.]

...of old paper

When was it exactly that I stopped jumping for joy at the mere thought that I might discover a masterpiece and come back into the office on a Monday morning a new man? Twenty years ago? Could it be thirty? I don't like doing sums of that sort, they have a whiff of mortality about them. When I close my eyes the steady glow of the Perzel lamp passes through my eyelids and summons up black whorls and floating ruins like a drawing by Victor Hugo. My breathing slows down as does my cardiac rhythm somewhat. I could easily drop off. I could die. Yes! Like Moliere, I could die in the saddle. They'd say, "He died as he lived, among books, whilst reading!" and to be honest I would have passed on while dreaming of nothing. I haven't really read properly for a long time. Do I still know how to read - I mean, to read in the full sense of the word? Am I still up to it? If I let my head loll to the side, my heart beats louder and sends a shiver through the oak...
The whole house is bathed in the silence of old paper. Books, like snow, gobble up sound. My profession has its own smell and mufflers. I can smell it better in this quiet. Going back into the noise of the world is always a challenge.

[Dear Reader, Fournel, P.]

Sunday 22 February 2015

...of friendship

Gradually I became friendly with a boy called the Silent One. He acted as though mute; no one had heard the sound of his voice since he had come to the orphanage. It was known that he could speak, but at some stage of the war he had decided that there was no point in doing so. Other boys tried to force him to speak. Once they gave him a bloody beating, but did not extract a single sound from him.
The Silent One was older and stronger than I. At first we avoided each other. I felt that by refusing to speak he was mocking boys like me who could not speak. If the Silent One, who was not mute, had decided not to speak, others might think that I too was only refusing to speak but could do so if I wanted to. My friendship with him could only enhance this impression.
One day the Silent One unexpectedly came to my rescue and knocked down a boy who was beating me in the corridor. The next day I felt obliged to fight on his side in a scuffle which broke out during a recess.
After that we sat at the same desk in the rear of the classroom. We first wrote notes to each other, but then learned to communicate by signs. The Silent One accompanied me in expeditions to the railway station, where we made friends with departing Soviet soldiers. Together we stole a drunken postman's bicycle, went across the city park, still sown with land mines and closed to the public, and watched the girls undressing in the communal bathhouse.

[The Painted Bird, Kosinski, J.]

...of victims

Many of the boys and girls were quite passive and listless. They stood against the walls, mostly silent, neither crying nor laughing, staring at some image which they alone could see. It was said that some of them had lived in ghettos or concentration camps. Had it not been for the end of the occupation, they would have died long since. Others had apparently been kept by brutal and greedy foster-parents who had exploited them ruthlessly and flogged them for the slightest sign of disobedience. There were also some who had no particular past. They had been placed in the orphanage by the army or the police. No one knew their origins, the whereabouts of their parents, or where they had spent the war. They refused to tell anything about themselves; they responded to all questions with evasive phrases and indulgent half-smiles suggesting infinite contempt for the questioners.

[The Painted Bird, Kosinski, J.]

...of survivors

All the tracks were being used by military transports, Red Cross carriages, and open cars loaded with army equipment. On the platforms crowds of Soviet soldiers and ex-prisoners in a variety of uniforms jostled along with limping invalids, shabby civilians, and blind people who tapped the flagstones with their canes. Here and there nurses directed emaciated people in striped clothes; the soldiers looked at them in sudden silence - those were the people saved from the furnaces who were returning to life from the concentration camps.
I clutched Yury's hand and looked into the grey faces of these people, with their feverishly burning eyes shining like pieces of broken glass in the ashes of a dying fire.
Nearby a locomotive pushed a gleaming railcar to the centre of the station. A foreign military delegation emerged in colourful uniforms and medals. An honor guard quickly formed and a military band struck up an anthem. The smartly uniformed officers and the men in striped concentration camp clothes passed without a word within a few feet of each other on the narrow platform.

[The Painted Bird, Kosinski, J.]

...of mutism

As soon as I found myself in the shade of the trees I started rolling over in the cool, moist moss, rubbing myself with cold leaves. With pieces of bark I scraped off the remaining muck. I rubbed sand in my hair and then rolled in the grass and vomited again.
Suddenly I realised that something had happened to my voice. I tried to cry out, but my tongue flapped helplessly in my open mouth. I had no voice. I was terrified and, covered with cold sweat, I refused that this was possible and tried to convince myself that my voice would come back. I waited for a few moments and tried again. Nothing happened. The silence of the forest was broken only by the buzzing of the flies around me.
I sat down. The last cry that I had uttered under the falling missal still echoed in my ears. Was it the last cry I would ever utter? Was my voice escaping with it like a solitary duck call straying over a huge pond? Where was it now? I could envision my voice flying alone under the high-arched, vaulting ribs of the church roof. I saw it knocking against the cold walls, the holy pictures, against the thick panes of coloured glass in the windows, which the sun's rays could scarcely penetrate. I followed its aimless wanderings through the dark aisles, where it wafted from the altar to the pulpit, from the pulpit to the balcony, from the balcony to the altar again, driven by the multichorded sound of the organ and groundswell of the singing crowd.
All the mutes I had ever seen paraded by under my lids. There were not very many of them and their absence of speech made them seem very much alike. The absurd twitching of their faces tried to substitute for the missing sound of their voices, while the frantic movement of their limbs took the place of their unforthcoming words. Other people always looked at them with suspicion; they appeared like strange creatures, shaking, grimacing, dribbling heavily down their chins.
There must have been some cause for the loss of my speech. Some greater force, with which I had not yet managed to communicate, commanded my destiny. I began to doubt that it could be God or one of His saints. With my credit secured by vast numbers of prayers, my days of indulgence must have been immeasurable; God had no reason to inflict such terrible punishment on me. I had probably incurred the wrath of some other forces, which spread their tentacles over those God had abandoned for some reason or other.

[The Painted Bird, Kosinski, J.]

...of habit

Weeks went by and the village left me alone. Some of the boys said occasionally that I should be delivered to the German headquarters, or that the soldiers should be told about the Gypsy bastard in the village. Women avoided me on the road, carefully covering the heads of their children. The men looked me over in silence, and casually spat in my direction.
They were people of slow, deliberate speech who measured their words carefully. Their custom required them to spare words as one spares salt, and a loose tongue was regarded as a man's worse enemy. Fast talkers were thought devious and dishonest, obviously trained by Jewish or Gypsy fortunetellers. People used to sit in a heavy silence broken only infrequently by some insignificant remark. Whenever speaking or laughing, everyone would cover his mouth with a hand to avoid showing his teeth to ill-wishers. Only vodka managed to loosen their tongues and relax their manners.

[The Painted Bird, Kosinski, J.]

...of reprieve

The soldier hitched up his belt. His movement caught my attention and I stopped thinking for a moment.
Then I tried to calculate the distance to the forest and the time it would take him to pick up his rifle and shoot if I should suddenly escape. The forest was too far; I would die midway on the sandy ridge. At best I might reach the patch of weeds, in which I would still be visible and unable to run fast.
The soldier rose and stretched with a groan. Silence surrounded us. The soft wind blew away the smell of the gasoline and brought back a fragrance of marjoram and fir resin.
He could, of course, shoot me from the back, I thought. People preferred killing a person without looking into his eyes.
The soldier turned toward me and pointing to the forest made a gesture with his hand which seemed to say, "run away, be off!" So the end was coming. I pretended I did not understand and edged toward him. He moved back violently, as if fearing I might touch him, and angrily pointed to the forest, shielding his eyes with his other hand.

[The Painted Bird, Kosinski, J.]

...of an executioner

He watched me and smiled faintly at my attempts at acrobatics on the rail. The smile was too brief to signify anything; he was going to kill me.
We had already left the station area and now passed the last switchpoint. It was darkening. We drew nearer to the forest and the sun was setting behind the treetops. The soldier halted, put down the gasoline can, and transferred the rifle to his left arm. He sat down on the edge of the track and, heaving a deep sigh, stretched his legs down the embankment. He calmly took off his spectacles, wiped the sweat from his thick brows with his sleeve, and unclipped the small shovel hanging from his belt. He took out a cigarette from his breast pocket and lit it, carefully extinguishing the match.
Silently he watched my attempt to loosen the rope, which was rubbing the skin off my leg. Then he took a small jackknife out of his trouser pocket, opened it, and moving closer held my leg with one hand, and with the other carefully cut the rope. He rolled it up and flung it over the embankment with a sweeping gesture.
I smiled in an attempt to express my gratitude, but he did not smile back. We now sat, he drawing at his cigarette and I observing the bluish smoke drifting upwards in loops.
I began to think of the many ways there were of dying. Until now, only two ways had impressed me.

[The Painted Bird, Kosinski, J.]

...of suggestion

The miller's wife served supper. They ate silently. The miller sat at the middle of the table, his wife on one side and the plowboy on the other. I ate my portion squatting by the oven. I admired the appetites of the two men: huge chunks of meat and bread, washed down with gulps of vodka, disappeared down their throats like hazelnuts.
The woman was the only one who chewed her food slowly. When she bowed her head low over the bowl the plowboy would dart a glance faster than lightning at her bulging bodice.
In the centre of the room the tabby suddenly arched her body, bared her teeth and claws, and pounced on the tomcat. He halted, stretched his back, and sputtered saliva straight into her inflamed eyes. The female circled him, leaped toward him, recoiled and then struck him in the muzzle. Now the tomcat stalked around her cautiously, sniffing her intoxicating odour. He arched his tail and tried to come at her from the rear. But the female would not let him; she flattened her body on the floor and and turned like a millstone, striking his nose with her stiff, outstretched paws.
Fascinated, the miller and the other two stared silently while eating. The woman sat with a flushed face; even her neck was reddening. The plowboy raised his eyes, only to drop them at once. Sweat ran down through his short hair and he continually pushed it away from his hot brow. Only the miller sat calmly eating, watching the cats, and glancing casually at his wife and guest.
The tomcat suddenly came to a decision. His movements became lighter. He advanced. She moved playfully as if to draw back, but the male leapt high and flopped on to her with all fours. He sank his teeth in her neck and intently, tautly, plunged directly into her without any squirming. When satiated and exhausted, he relaxed. The tabby, nailed to the floor, screamed shrilly, and sprang out from under him. She jumped onto the cooled oven and tossed about on it like a fish, looping her paws over her neck, rubbing her head against the warm wall.
The miller's wife and the plowboy ceased eating. They stared at each other, gaping over their food-filled mouths. The woman breathed heavily, placed her hands under her breasts and squeezed them, clearly unaware of herself. The plowboy looked alternately at the cats and at her, licked his dry lips, and got down his food with difficulty.

[The Painted Bird, Kosinski, J.]

...of the supernatural

She called me the Black One. From her I learned for the first time that I was possessed by an evil spirit, which crouched in me like a mole in a deep burrow, and whose presence I was unaware. Such a darkling as I, possessed of this evil spirit, could be recognised by his bewitched black eyes, which did not blink when they gazed at bright clear eyes. Hence, Olga declared, I could stare at other people and unknowingly cast a spell over them.
Bewitched eyes can not only cast a spell but can also remove it, she explained. I must take care, while staring at people or animals or even grain, to keep my mind blank of anything other than the disease I was helping her remove from them. For when bewitched eyes look at a healthy child, he will immediately begin to waste away; when at a calf, it will drop dead of a sudden disease; when at grass, the hay will rot after the harvest.
This evil spirit which dwelled in me attracted by its very nature other mysterious beings. Phantoms drifted around me. A phantom is silent, reticent, and is rarely seen. Yet it is persistent: it trips people in fields and forests, peeks into huts, can turn itself into a vicious cat or rabid dog, and moans when enraged. At midnight it turns into hot tar.

[The Painted Bird, Kosinski, J.]

...of moulting

One morning when I awoke the hut was cold. The fire in the stove was out and Marta was still sitting in the middle of the room, her many skirts tucked up and her bare feet resting in a bucketful of water.
I tried to speak to her, but she did not answer. I tickled her cold, stiff hand, but the knobby fingers did not move. The hand hung down from the arm of the chair like wet linen from a clothesline on a still day. When I lifted her head, her watery eyes seemed to be staring up at me. I had seen such eyes only once before, when the stream threw up the bodies of dead fish.
Marta, I concluded, was waiting for a change of skin and, like the snake, she could not be disturbed at such a time. Though uncertain what to do, I tried to be patient.
It was late fall. The wind was cracking the brittle twigs. It tore off the last of the wrinkled leaves, tossing them into the sky. Hens perched owlishly on their roosts, sleepy and depressed, opening with distaste one eye at a time. It was cold, and I did not know how to kindle a fire. All my efforts to talk to Marta failed to elicit any response. She sat their motionless, staring fixedly at something I could not see.
I went back to sleep, having nothing else to do, confident that when I woke up Marta would be scurrying around the kitchen humming her mournful psalms. But when I awoke in the evening she was still soaking her feet. I was hungry and frightened of the darkness.

[The Painted Bird, Kosinski, J.]