“Shall we use this one?”
I’d always want to use the one she picked.
“Where do you find such lovely leaves?” she’d ask admiringly each time.
Let me tell you, to hear that admiration of hers I would have climbed up into the trees, not just looked around on the ground underneath them. There were oaks, beeches, maples, elms, sycamores, all kinds of trees. She virtually filled the book with leaves. We only had a few tales left to read, but she didn’t manage to finish the book. Later I’ll show you the book. I have it in the living room. Don’t worry, I’m not going to read to you. The ones that are unread, let them stay that way. No, the copy with the leaves got lost. This one I bought myself.
I went to get some sheet music one time, and the store also carried books. I’d already bought the music, and I was just browsing idly among the books. All at once I see Andersen’s Fairy Tales. My heart pounded. I paid, brought it home and put it on my bedside table. I was living alone, my wife had left me not long before. I’d always read at bedtime. Whether or not I was tired, I always had to read a page or two at least. Even after just one page I’d feel myself calming down and everything resuming its place, then after five or ten more pages my eyes would start to let me know they were about to close. I didn’t need sleeping pills. But the remaining tales, the ones she didn’t manage to read, somehow I could never bring myself to read them either.
These days I supposedly have much more time, now that the season’s over. I don’t need to sleep because I don’t have to be fresh in the morning. But still I’ve never turned to those fairy tales. I do read, just not so much anymore. Nowadays not even books can make me fall asleep. Besides, I have the sense that books can no longer help me understand the things I’d like to understand here at the end.
When I was working on the electrification of the villages, in one house where we were installing the wiring I saw Andersen’s Fairy Tales lying on a windowsill. I asked the owner if I could borrow it. He said:
“You can have it. We don’t need it. It belonged to our boy. He got killed. Stepped on a mine.”
I took it back to our lodgings, four of us were rooming together, and I meant to read a bit in bed that evening. One of the other guys whose bed was next to mine noticed the book and started to laugh.
“What, are you reading fairy tales?”
Another guy piped up from another bed:
“What you need is a girl. One that’s the right shape here and here, got some flesh on her.”
I was embarrassed, I pulled my suitcase out from under my bed and stuffed the book beneath my shirt and socks and other things, right at the bottom. Then I started work at the building site, but I never reached for my suitcase to take the book out and read it. In the end I gave it to one of the guys to give to his son. He was going home one Sunday and he was worried that he didn’t have a present for his kid. I asked:
“How old is he?” I took out the Fairy Tales. “Give him this. It’s just right for his age. I was the same age.”
But why was the sister not shy in front of me? I don’t know. Maybe because I didn’t speak? Or for some other reason?
One time I was on guard to make sure no one was watching her, I was standing with my back to the lake and she was undressing on the shore. Suddenly she called out:
“Turn around! Do I make you feel uncomfortable? Come over here! When was the last time you bathed?” I didn’t know how to tell her it hadn’t been that long. “I bet it’s been ages,” she said. “All of you here like being dirty. Take your clothes off. You can wash with me.” I stood there rooted to the spot. “What are you staring at me for? Haven’t you had your fill of looking yet?” I averted my eyes. “Don’t just stand there, get undressed. Come on, I’ll help you.” Left to myself I don’t think I could have so much as unfastened a single button on my shirt. “Lift your head up. Give me your arm. Raise your foot. Have a good look, look all you like. At your age what do you know? You haven’t even got any hairs down there. So it can already get stiff? Still, you’ve got time. Though the rest of us might not be alive by then. Not me in any case, that’s for sure. Come on, hop in the water with me.”
She leaped in. Like a colorful blur, that’s how I remember her. All the colors were in her. I’ve never found her since in any painting. I don’t remember her face anymore, but I can still see the blur of her body.
“Come on, jump in!” she repeated, emerging from the water. “Let’s swim to the other side! Don’t be afraid, I’ll be right by you!”
I wasn’t afraid, I was a pretty good swimmer. I’d swum many times in the Rutka, downstream, or against the current. She swam by me, and when we got near the other side she asked:
“Are you tired? Let’s climb out and sit awhile.”
We got there, sat on the shore and gazed out.
“The lake’s even more beautiful from this side,” she said. “It would be beautiful to die in it.” She lost herself in thought, then a moment later she said: “Look at me. Don’t turn your eyes away. I want you to remember me. Will you remember me? Tell me you will. You’ll survive for certain. Because us—” She broke off. I looked at her. I thought I was seeing things, but no, tears were streaming down her cheeks. “I’m not crying,” she said, though I hadn’t said anything. “My face is wet from the water, that’s all. Yours is too. I could just as well say you’re crying.”
But I actually was crying. Not on the outside. I felt somehow as if the tears were flowing inside of me, on the other side of my eyes. Have you ever known tears like that? For me, it was only that once. And for the first time since she’d found me in the cellar, I felt words in my mouth.
“Sister …,” I said. I got stuck. Then: “I’ll …” Then: “always …”
She didn’t let me finish. She burst out in joy:
“You’re talking! You’re talking!” She wiped the tears from her cheeks. “Let’s swim back! We’ll tell everyone you’re talking!”
What was I trying to say then? I don’t recall. Perhaps it wasn’t anything important. But for me those had been the most important words of my whole life that I’d wanted to say but hadn’t said. If you sat down and thought about it, how many unspoken words like that must have disappeared forever? And they may have been more important than all the ones that were spoken. Don’t you think?
There was only one thing I couldn’t understand: why she hadn’t wanted to admit she was crying. And she was, I could have sworn she was.
At that age, there are a lot of things you maybe don’t understand, but you feel things deeper than if you’d understood them. Plus, you see everything, you see it through and through. Life can’t be concealed from anyone, least of all a child. There’s no curtain you can use to hide it. A child will even see through a curtain. Sometimes I wonder if children aren’t our conscience. Later you see less and less. The world’s no longer willing to be reflected in people’s eyes. Although a child doesn’t even have to look. The world pushes under his eyelids of its own accord. The world is still transparent at that age. Unfortunately, you grow out of it. Today I find it hard to believe I was once a child. I used to graze the cattle, but what proof is that of anything. Before that I minded the geese. Then grandfather took over the geese, and I took the cows from him. And I imagined that we’d just keep swapping like that the whole time. Grandfather would take over the cows from me, and I’d take the geese again. Then he’d mind the geese once more, and I’d mind the cows. And it would always be like that, cows to geese, geese to cows. I was convinced that since grandfather had always been grandfather from the beginning, I’d also always be a child.