...of a spell

My mother sat bolt upright; I could only see her back, which was like a wall of pink silk. Sometimes a little light flickered into our room, the telephone kept purring next door. Down on the street, a man was whistling a tune. My mother trembled: ‘Did you hear that? Did you hear hat whistling? That was the Horst Wessel Song that someone was whistling in the street - here in Amsterdam.’
I don’t know the song she means, but I wonder why it would make my mother so frightened and sad. I couldn’t find her face any more, it was so far away. Then in my mind I changed my mother into a tree, because a tree is calm, a tree is unafraid. A tree doesn’t get hungry, or cry. It doesn’t laugh, it doesn’t talk. I turned her into a tree so that she would stop trembling. After that, I was able to sleep.

[Child of All Nations, Keun, I.]