The Immortal Bartfuss
Appelfeld, Aharon
artfuss is immortal. In the Second World War he was in one of the smaller of those -----....... notorious camps. Now he's 50, married to a woman he used to call Rosa, with two daughters, one...
...He doesn't bargain...
...she From The Immortal Bartfuss by Aharon Appelfeld...
...At seven he locks his room and goes out into the corridor...
...I live in the present, the present tense...
...In time he stopped getting angry, making declarations...
...I won't be angry...
...It would be better without those thoughts, but you can't repress them completely...
...Certainly not...
...A mistake will always be a mistake, and that's what made him roll from place to place...
...Phrases from the beginning of The Brothers Karamazov had secretly sung within him...
...I don't talk to strangers," she replied immediately...
...She extruded the words through a mouthful of food...
...I expect great things of him...
...His anticipation became tenser...
...The suffering was ugly...
...I hate Jewish trash...
...Rosa wasn't a bother...
...Bartfuss stood, captivated by their conversation...
...He went back and sat in a narrow cafe...
...I love them, and I won't exchange them for any imitation...
...She sat in her place without saying a word...
...I'm a human being too...
...She serves Bartfuss a cheese omelet and cold borscht...
...Later, he heard the son-in-law's voice: "Those traders disgust me...
...Theresa did not return...
...That's an insult," said the proprietor...
...Don't you remember...
...The first cigarette makes him feel very good...
...The peasants dressed me in their clothes...
...There are 50 bullets in his body...
...They seemed like strangers, unnerved by some misfortune...
...Where's the coffee...
...She didn't answer...
...not only that, but he would sit with her a lot...
...Bartfuss goes out...
...People have been looking for you...
...While he was sitting there a short, solid woman appeared at the door, dressed in a polka-dot summer dress, the kind they used to wear before the war...
...But Theresa remembered the book in detail, and she knew the whole opening by heart...
...she called without directing her glance toward the proprietor...
...Theresa asked the proprietor...
...Here his movements are sharp, quick and precise...
...Rosa didn't ask, "Who are you and what do you do...
...Why don't you serve water...
...The thought that he hadn't told her anything secretly came to please him after a while...
...Bartfuss was disgusted by those tales of wonder...
...He couldn't contain himself...
...The heat of the day, the drinks, gave rise, among other things, to words, confessions, arguments and justifications...
...These were thin whispers of abject amazement...
...Yes, I know him...
...Bartfuss scrupulously avoided talking about the dark days...
...I wouldn't go that far...
...A full face without a trace of beauty...
...Do you want more toast...
...The dealers' fat faces would twitch...
...We're impressed...
...Even the word 'Budapest' disgusts me...
...Now he doesn't think about them, only at night sometimes, on his bed, but not excessively...
...The proprietor provoked her: "Where is he...
...There's a limit to humiliation...
...Because he's immortal...
...When he gets close to the building his gait changes...
...For a long time he wanders along the shore...
...Bartfuss was so tired that even his son-in-law's coarse, annoying voice didn't prevent him from sinking deeply into sleep...
...While the girls were still children he would hear her telling them about life in the village, about fruit picking and harvests...
...In fact her haste didn't last more than a few moments...
...He drinks a cup of coffee and lights a cigarette right away...
...Let me be generous for once...
...For many hours he walked aimlessly...
...But . . . "he tried to say...
...And if I don't pay...
...He spoke and went out...
...Here and there he took a shortcut, went around, and continued...
...Afterward he would sit in the cafe for hours, drinking coffee to wake up...
...His reactions, though they were few, always provoked Rosa's tongue...
...Whips descended on them from all sides...
...She didn't lack for words now...
...But he doesn't let fury take control of him...
...An hour of lovemaking would make her sleepy...
...For a long time he sits without uttering a syllable...
...So, you agree...
...Nothing, if possible...
...The peasants in the village slept with her too...
...True, the ignoring did him no good...
...When he reached home it was already very late...
...Bartfuss looked at them from a distance, impartially, as though he had finally understood some other matter: his own loneliness...
...His awakenings would imbue his consciousness with a kind of clarity, as though his wild slumber had become transparent: he, Rosa, the children, the recurrent ugliness, debts he had not honored, words he had corrupted, all those tired people who hadn't found anything for their bodies but weariness, haste and avarice...
...But the dealers never stopped embroidering the legend...
...Here no one asks who you are and what you're doing...
...Excuse me...
...I don't know...
...What do you want...
...He halts and imagines the way Rosa gets up, the words she spouts into space...
...The coastal sun ruled over everyone and enveloped them like sleep...
...You're pardoned," she said without looking at him...
...He closed the door and slipped out of the house...
...And what do you want now...
...The proprietor mixed in, spreading out his arms as if in demonstration...
...The matter was resolved far more simply than he had imagined...
...Meanwhile the coffee and sandwich were served...
...His voice had authority, like a foreman bossing around laborers...
...But in fact she didn't try to deny the accusation, and sometimes it even seemed she was thinking about those days with pleasure...
...The peasants again...
...We spoke about The Brothers Karamazov...
...Did I say anything about your seriousness...
...At around ten the whole place fills up with dealers...
...We're proud of you...
...Bartfuss walked to the cashier...
...Two cups of soda quenched his thirst...
...Actually he was the one talking in the wrong context...
...When the toast and coffee were served she immediately put two heaping spoonfuls of sugar in the coffee and stirred it...
...But frenetic activity taught them to speak little...
...Everything transpired as if under a heavy glass bell...
...He would be shaken...
...Afterward he would part from her without even leaving her a single word...
...I'm going," said the man, from the door...
...A woman sits on the seaside and anyone who wants her takes her...
...Just me...
...Is it my fault...
...I'm impressed...
...In the last year his life had been restricted to the area between his house and the cafe...
...He quickly paid without looking at her and went out...
...Strange, everyone remembers me...
...What's to ask...
...He could tell their argument was a long-standing one, with no resolution...
...Women like Rosa raise their children in the sand...
...What did you say...
...A great many suspicions teemed in his brain...
...Once Rosa tried to dress up the walls a little...
...On the long trip, which had taken nearly a year, to that little camp known for its horrors, he had seen many faces, but no people...
...They would fight until late at night...
...He walked toward the sea...
...He's usually quiet," said the proprietor as he made the toast and ordered the waitress to get the coffee ready...
...He has a ground-floor apartment, not very large, with two trees growing at the entrance...
...The thought that all during the war she had been in a village with peasants, sleeping with the old man and his sons by turns, that thought wouldn't loose its grip on him even in the bluntest moments of oblivion...
...Haven't you heard about him...
...There was softness in her silence...
...There were many faces there, thin and tortured, but a clean light, tinged with deep blue, covered Theresa's...
...Is that Theresa...
...The words stuck in his mouth...
...What do you have for dessert...
...Once Rosa used to nag him: "Tell me something...
...Is that Theresa...
...He sits by himself...
...So what is there to say...
...Here he sometimes sits until as late as three...
...Sometimes longing for his friends would beset him...
...Especially the religious ones...
...Interesting...
...I don't want you to talk about me out loud...
...He only knew one thing: he had to struggle...
...He drank his second cup of coffee in Cafe Rex, as usual...
...Except for the few visions of the end of the battle, the agonies would have been even uglier...
...Theresa," called the proprietor, ' 'where have you been...
...I must get up and say something to her...
...The muscles tense sharply, in his neck for some reason, and he nips his anger in the bud...
...For about two hours he is by himself...
...His voice sounded false...
...Now he is here, in Jaffa...
...Her voice was clearly audible...
...Cool darkness envelops everyone...
...This man is bothering me...
...Every day he rises at the same time, a quarter to five...
...I'm surprised at him...
...But he, for some reason, would go back to her like a criminal returning to the scene of the crime...
...She even brought in a table and chairs...
...He would sometimes surprise her...
...He had made a big effort to cut himself off from them...
...or, "When will you come back...
...I worked...
...Give me a wafer...
...I understand...
...What do you have against them...
...He didn't do it...
...I've been watching him for years now...
...The proprietor gave her another sandwich, and she didn't thank him...
...She learned to hear and not answer...
...He forgot about his house...
...He would run away from them as though from pursuers...
...Bartfuss...
...A cup of tea did him a lot of good...
...When day broke they didn't have a chance to say goodbye...
...momentarily Bartfuss's life dropped anchor, as it were, at that pier—not exactly a splendid pier, but one that aroused many hopes: Theresa...
...He learned to ignore both Rosa and them...
...Bartfuss cleared them right out, with his own hands...
...On the way home he didn't meet anyone...
...It was definitely Theresa...
...Okay, I'm going...
...I hate the people who go there...
...Bartfuss was like the rest...
...He withdrew, and words he had once used withered inside him...
...Now the summer again, the lust for sleep...
...Not a lot," she said, smiling...
...She knew that at night he would find her by the sea...
...He didn't know what to say, just: "I don't know...
...Those little movements momentarily captivated Bartfuss's eyes...
...It had taken him a while to sense a kind of impurity in his life...
...Theresa," he said, "I'll willingly do whatever you want, but not when you're angry...
...She apparently understood his arguments and kept silent...
...The sea bathes him in cool breezes...
...The evening light lay on the filthy floor...
...I'm talking about the transit camp at Dorfenziehl...
...She sat at the table, her face to the street...
...You want to eat...
...I'll never see her face again...
...But we were together in the warehouse in Dorfenziehl...
...He went into his room without exchanging a look...
...During that time he has thoughts...
...She wanted to come, but her lover wouldn't let her...
...They have inherited her facial expressions too...
...He goes straight to his room...
...Then what's the point of all this talk...
...I have good reason to be annoyed...
...You make the seashore ugly...
...The second cup of coffee, the eight o'clock coffee, arouses his senses, and his sight gets sharper...
...Starved, crushed into freight cars, the people had learned to ignore each other, to steal and push like beasts with the little strength remaining to them...
...Truth before all, isn't that what they used to say...
...He buys and sells...
...Their grimaces and haste revolt him...
...But concerning the house, the girls, she stood her own ground and made strong demands...
...At around ten the first traders enter the cafe...
...The thought that the peasants in the village had also slept with her wouldn't leave him even when he was traveling, intoxicated with his huge smuggling operations...
...He walked with an erect posture...
...Sometimes those tones woke him up at night...
...Boats were sailing to Australia, Brazil and New Zealand...
...In one of those hidden warehouses, on the long road, he met her...
...A few beads of perspiration here and there...
...Now nothing was left of that intimacy but the cursed riddle...
...That was years ago, when they still talked...
...She didn't even ask his name...
...I remember you...
...Also his long walks down the beach had new meaning, vitality, a kind of preparedness...
...Pardon me," he said...
...It's an open, pleasant cafe...
...She told it without any grace, but still he imagined he heard longing in her voice...
...In Italy he had sworn himself to silence...
...He thought it would be a good idea to go to Natanya now...
...The night fell, tired and mild, on the low buildings...
...But I was there...
...It was a wakeful sleep but full of suction...
...He didn't tell...
...I also want a little consideration...
...He would sit for a long time and then leave as if after a stern reprimand...
...He invested substantial effort into silencing that frightful music...
...Her voice changed...
...Many husbands left their wives and sailed away...
...Too many people...
...The trips were very dangerous, but danger was his element...
...Am I right...
...His room is practically bare: just a bed, a chair and a cupboard...
...Everyone says so...
...Now nothing was left of those dark days except twitches, remnants of nightmares, grimaces and scraps of words...
...She lies in bed and eavesdrops on him with her eyes closed...
...No one else was in the cafe then, only shadows broke in from the street...
...At last they'd agreed not to play music in the morning...
...He's usually quiet," the proprietor said to himself...
...The sea and the morning lights dissipate the last remains of his staleness...
...When he does his accounts he sits on the bed and uses the chair as a desk...
...When he was in Italy, steak joints already disgusted him...
...These little sights charm his eyes...
...He knew that he would always find her by the sea...
...What's the matter with this place...
...On the contrary, everything he did was to his discredit...
...His feet were light and bore him through the alleys...
...They would continue it later, in the cafe...
...For a few days he toyed with that thought, and in secret he gathered strength...
...You'll be sorry...
...Now he could see only that orange spot, surprisingly changing hue...
...The Joint will provide for me," meaning the Jewish Joint Distribution Committee...
...They get up late, and at this hour they are plunged deep in slumber...
...But the expression "nature girls" revolted him...
...I repeat, 'European.' " "That word, if you'll excuse me, doesn't mean a thing to me...
...He was sunk in himself without thoughts...
...Immediately after leaving the restaurant he turns down a side street and heads for the two-story house...
...May was bright, mild, and pleasant for walks...
...People labored like ants...
...After a while he noticed that her expression was serene...
...It occurred to him that if the violent lover should come again, stand at the door and pick on Theresa, he would rise and confront him...
...The fan didn't stop flapping its metal wings...
...Now there is a tacit competition between them: who will ignore most...
...She turned to the proprietor...
...Why don't you go swimming...
...Now he hardly talks, nor does he get angry...
...About the past, of course, Rosa and Bartfuss never spoke...
...Now he only said a word here or there, and only for practical needs...
...From inside he could hear Rosa's voice: "He's here...
...He meant to ask, "How did you survive...
...The sun sank in the west, and the sea was empty...
...If he had given even a little of his treasure to his married daughter she wouldn't have to work...
...Fine...
...But the dealers let their imaginations run wild, and on the strength of that they made up a mysterious Bartfuss, an immortal Bartfuss...
...Come out to the promenade...
...Usually they aren't at ease with men like Bartfuss...
...The cafe was empty...
...The proprietor took his bill and gave him change...
...She was standing some distance from him...
...It was clear she had arrived after a lot of running around...
...Bartfuss sat paralyzed...
...Life is valuable, but not at any price...
...Apparently she understood the meaning of those sentences and wouldn't respond...
...He stands near the sea and no absent vision distracts him...
...Other women would scream and shake the world...
...She made use of the words she had learned in the village...
...It's been years since he got angry...
...Where that impurity was, he still didn't know...
...I'm going," she said without getting up...
...At that hour Rosa wakes up too...
...He was thirsty...
...Bartfuss rose as though to address her...
...They're suspicious of men who don't talk a lot...
...asked years ago, when she was still young and the girls were only children...
...He bought, sold and smuggled, and in the evening he would come to Rosa...
...He eats lunch in Tina's restaurant...
...She scraped her chair heavily as though about to draw closer to the table, which made her broad back stand out, strewn with bright-red freckles from the sun...
...The pictures spread over the entire wall with their colors: golden girls swimming in greenery...
...Whatever you please...
...He had met Rosa on the shore in Italy, among the many refugees, bewildered people, between the shacks and the water...
...No one was there...
...The proprietor got down immediately and stood beside her the way one stands next to a mutinous creature...
...I'm hungry...
...Of course you're serious...
...We were together in the warehouse in Dorfenziehl, don't you remember...
...What...
...At eight he is already sitting in the cafe...
...I wasn't talking to you," said the man without taking his eyes off Theresa...
...The peasants where you worked demanded favors from you...
...Surely she'll remember...
...He's changed a lot...
...That was just an outburst...
...Bartfuss fixed his gaze on the door, the place where a few weeks earlier the tyrannical lover had stood and voiced his threats...
...How can a man live with 50 bullets in his body...
...In that case, I'm throwing this into the sea," she said and threw it...
...It was a thrilling captivity, which brought his senses a new kind of arousal...
...Not even a hint...
...Unavoidably he sinks into those beautiful years after the liberation: enchanting Italy, before Rosa, before the children...
...They were in the camps too, but not in the same camp, from which only faint echoes had come...
...Water...
...Theresa's sudden reappearance, in that very earthly figure, riveted him to his spot...
...You've come to the wrong woman...
...Formerly those deals would disturb him afterward too...
...She wasn't pretty, and now that she was pregnant she was even awkward, but there was some power in her being, an incomprehensible power...
...The thought that the treasure was lying quietly in the ground gave him pleasure, like the thought of a devoted woman...
...That was his refuge...
...That information, which he gathered from the remnants of the smoke, didn't make him restful...
...She didn't say, "Do you love me...
...She ate quickly...
...That sentence made him angrier than all the other things she said...
...You don't ask anything...
...It was the same the next day...
...As he sat, stunned and lacking words, the name flashed through his mind like a burst of light: Theresa...
...She sat erect in her chair, filling it...
...Aren't I serving you faithfully...
...Then he stops doing that...
...Except for the activity, the continued activity, people would have beaten each other mercilessly...
...Even then he didn't like discussions...
...A woman wouldn't refuse a bed for the night...
...Not every day...
...In Italy he had beaten up any dealer who indulged in too much wonderment...
...At that hour he still manages to take in the half-light of the morning, the fog and the quiet before everyone gets up...
...For a long time Bartfuss sat and looked at her broad, spotted shoulders...
...A few people came in and spoke noisily...
...Once he found her sitting and eating sardines...
...You're getting me mad...
...Reprinted with permission of Weidenfeld & Nicholson, a division of Wheatland Corp...
...For hours he would sit and daydream...
...Once she even said, "I won't bring you to court...
...When...
...At that hour the proprietor isn't particularly accommodating, but Bartfuss feels at ease because he's a regular customer...
...Don't chatter, make me a sandwich and a cup of coffee right away...
...Separation was easier to understand than attachment...
...They were in the middle of an argument...
...Isn't the greenery pleasing...
...More than once he was about to leave the camp and sail away...
...He asked her if it was sweet and she said, "It's very sweet...
...For years he had lived in passivity and somnolence, ignoring everything...
...When he's inside, in the narrow room, he shades his eyes for a moment...
...Is that my fault...
...The girls have grown up and come to look like their mother...
...At seven the street is empty...
...I think they're splendid...
...Bartfuss took the change and put it in his shirt pocket...
...Her body was full and young and smelled of the sea and cheap cologne...
...A few years ago he had stood here and shouted loudly at them: "Why don't you play some sports...
...Occasionally he would hear her say, ' 'This is how they fix beets in the village," or, "This bread tastes of the oven...
...People have been asking for you," said the proprietor distractedly...
...In her high school, in the literature club that met in the library in the afternoon, they had discussed The Brothers Karamazov that year...
...She wiped her mouth with a napkin and said, "How much do I have to pay...
...There was nothing in him or in her, but nevertheless there was something touching about their quarrel...
...Only with trash...
...Theresa looked at him from where she sat without answering...
...The eavesdropping and looks didn't stop, but he no longer noticed them...
...She put the bill under her saucer and moved the cup from in front of it...
...They needed legends too, heroes, splendid deeds...
...I'm full...
...Even afterward, when they had already been expelled from school, in the ghetto, they kept meeting in a cellar to read and discuss...
...The orangish light retreated from his field of vision...
...Without offering him any she ate it...
...He hurries out...
...I'm better off not owing anyone anything," she said, and took a bill out of her handbag...
...As you wish...
...He straightened himself, buttoned his shirt with a heavy, slightly artificial movement, leaned over, and said in a whisper, "Excuse me...
...Or sometimes, "Men will always be men...
...He would dispatch illegal immigrants and smuggle at the same time...
...He would spend hours at the sea...
...Her senses became concentrated on that chewing...
...I don't know...
...One evening on his way home he felt that something wasn't quite right with him...
...Nothing...
...Your pudding is never fresh...
...A kind of repugnance tightened her lips...
...Sometimes it would seem to him that it wasn't Theresa's fault...
...At the door he lights a cigarette and, with quick steps, he heads toward the sea...
...He tortured her like that...
...Don't ask," she said curtly...
...From hour to hour it seemed to grow stronger within him, as though nearing a holiday...
...But the past would pop up at moments when it wasn't expected at all...
...While he was still stunned with joy, a man appeared at the door and shouted, "I don't like this place...
...I'm asking you...
...Once my stomach is full, you'll hear a different tune...
...Now he might sit for two hours without having their shadow pass before his eyes...
...He sat and looked at her closely: broad, solid, her back bare and freckled from the sun, a little bowed...
...He was bewitched by Theresa...
...What would you like me to say...
...Theresa didn't return...
...Since then, years have passed and his words have grown fewer...
...He's alive...
...Copyright ®1988 by Aharon Appelfeld...
...One after another, feelings were numbed...
...I wanted to exchange some memories...
...But Tina's place has a kind of tranquility you can apparently find only in cellars...
...Memories don't interest me...
...I said something," said the man, in the same voice...
...Yesterday, when he came home, he could tell by the thickness of the cigarette smoke that they had been there longer than usual, they had eaten a lot of sandwiches, drunk coffee and soda, and the son-in-law had proposed a new strategy...
...Bartfuss, for his part, never did anything to make them like him...
...Nothing...
...A face rose up and spread out before his eyes, but not a single name...
...Since their early youth the girls had been told that their father wasn't as strange as he pretended to be: He had a treasure, and he kept it hidden...
...I want a wafer...
...She said: "I have no claims against you...
...Theresa," said the proprietor from his high stool, "you're clean out of patience today...
...If not for the few shadows that creep in through the shutters, white glare would cover everything...
...His sole answer was, "Am I Theresa's keeper...
...You felt good...
...Bartfuss went out into the street...
...She dug her teeth into the wafer and chewed...
...I'm serious...
...All that night they spoke about The Brothers Karamazov...
...Theresa hurried the proprietor: "Where's the sandwich...
...The evening light was full...
...Once he asked, for some reason, ' 'How did you get here...
...I'm not being annoying...
...There had been times when the thought would pop up every day: Rosa learned to slip away from that area with agility, like an animal...
...Recently he's learned to ignore, at least to pretend...
...I don't understand you...
...He didn't ask any more, and she didn't tell...
...The few thoughts that had wandered through his head were now scattered...
...She sat in her place without answering...
...Just the same...
...One by one they had fallen away from him, but it didn't seem to be a complete falling away...
...He roused himself...
...It's Bartfuss...
...So they could say, "There were people like that too...
...He annoyed me today...
...What, for example...
...He changed his mind and departed...
...One evening a woman walked into the cafe and called loudly: "Sandwich and coffee—I'm fainting...
...Now her hands rested heavily on the table...
...Or sometimes with vacant amazement: "He's changed a lot...
...Me...
...Don't call them trash...
...But you have to admit the atmosphere is European...
...The daily routine didn't diminish that feeling...
...The sea and the cigarettes inebriate him again...
...Interesting," she said...
...The girls are nature girls...
...But they don't boycott Bartfuss, because he's a legend...
...Above the great, collective suffering, a point of light now shone...
...So even though he doesn't tell them anything, they know: Everything he went through is true and certain...
...For a long while he sits next to the window and absorbs the little tremors of the morning: an old man walks to synagogue, a truck unloads a crate of milk...
...Don't ask me...
...I can hear it in your voice...
...Sometimes he couldn't stand it anymore, and he'd break in: "Life isn't everything...
...He would sit for hours and stare at her...
...Sometimes he would fall asleep on a bench...
...Thick darkness blew in...
...Day after day he came and waited for her...
...Now he doubted his first impression...
...Believe me, I remember the conversation very well...
...Now he relived that horrible journey to Dorfenziehl as he had never lived it before, in detail, with a kind of visionary devotion...
...The old fury rises in him immediately...
...We were together in Dorfenziehl, do you remember...
...There's a limit to disgrace...
...When everything was locked and dark, Theresa's face had broken through...
...A few isolated voices, shouting, sliced through space and passed before him...
...If it hadn't been for that mistake, he would be sitting in the Saint George Islands now, those marvelous islands, unpopulated, shedding silence and water all day and all night...
...She seemed to await them...
...She would sit by the sea for hours...
...You still remember all those names...
...That summer overcame everyone, confused everyone, addled people's brains and made them blunt, clumsy and hungry for the sun...
...She spoke softly, with an inner voice...
...What do they want from me...
...It wasn't easy to be silent at that time...
...Except for the smells of kerosene and oil he would even have lingered to observe them...
...Why did you sleep with the peasants, just to survive...
...The sight isn't especially breathtaking—the sink is full of dishes, yesterday's cups are on the counter—but the transistor radio isn't roaring...
...And so you were saved...
...Sir, please don't disturb my customers...
...Now he's 50, married to a woman he used to call Rosa, with two daughters, one married...
...Now they belonged to the hidden regions of his life...
...So he closes the door between them to muffle the noise a little...
...What's wrong with the Budapest...
...What does he want out of you...
...At that hour the street is full of dealers and agents...
...Once again he saw that orangish spot before his eyes, but this time it was larger, and little dark spots raced around it in circles like bugs...
...Strangers don't interest me...
...Bartfuss gathered his courage and approached her...
...You've awakened a lot of good memories in me...
...Tt's her," he said to himself, not knowing what he was talking about...
...One evening, upon returning home from the discussion group, she hadn't found her parents...
...The coffee's better, and there are cream pastries...
...They were exhausted and beyond hunger...
...For his part, he hadn't uttered a single sentence...
...My name is Bartfuss...
...I won't try to change your mind...
...I won't go...
...Bartfuss, don't you know Bartfuss...
...But they caught up with him everywhere...
...He wore a tight sport shirt...
...The thin sea smells thrilled his senses to the point of fainting...
...He had borne that night, with its long trip and human cargo, in his heart for many years...
...You can do what you want...
...He adds the numbers in his head...
...She always rushed in to explain, to dispel, to pile words upon words...
...The sea restored his spirit...
...Theresa didn't budge...
...Recently he had forgotten the opening, but not the tones...
...He would go home, sleep, go out...
...He said, "Come," and she got up and followed him...
...She ate hastily...
...Then why are you talking to me...
...She answered simply, "I was with peasants...
...He quickly took off his shirt, closed the shutter tightly, and wrapped himself in his sheet...
...She didn't ask questions...
...Around them the matter of illegal immigration arose...
...The issue of Palestine didn't concern him, but yearning for it strengthened him...
...They could easily boycott him, and a lot of actions could be chalked up against him, but still, they don't boycott him...
...Immediately they all fell silent...
...The whole thing lasts no more than a quarter of an hour...
...It's a fact...
...While he was walking up to the pier he noticed Theresa and her solidly built lover near the railing...
...she held out the can...
...Now he knows what he has to do...
...He was in his twenties, with no father or mother, already thin and longing for death...
...There was strength in her arm as she swung it...
...It was a summer full of light, full of power...
...You're mad at me again...
...Pudding...
...In the other room, separated by a long corridor, his wife and younger daughter sleep together in the double bed...
...Now a scab has also formed over that revulsion...
...Make me some toast and coffee," she said to the proprietor...
...Since then the room has stood bereft of any garment...
...Certainly it's Theresa...
...He persisted: "Life is valuable, but there's a limit to disgrace...
...Her rounded back was also concentrated on eating...
...Daily he would ask the proprietor, "Have you seen Theresa...
...I'm willing to go anyplace but there...
...The line at the bus stop was long, and the people didn't look particularly pleasant to him...
...They would make love for an hour or two...
...She was an ample woman and he recognized her immediately: Theresa in her earthly guise...
...At the end of the day sleep would prostrate them where they stood...
...For entire days he would sleep, deep sleep, which would wrest him away to the green regions of his childhood...
...Now the man walked over to the table and said, ' 'Don't you see...
...Two nylon straps stretched across her back, emphasizing its breadth...
...Stop being so annoying...
...The turning point in his feelings came during one of his walks, and immediately the dormant will flared up in him: to struggle...
...That eavesdropping, which he senses, hastens his movements...
...Aren't we allowed to be impressed...
...As noted, he met Rosa on the beach...
...He turned his gaze to the door...
...When he first brought her a box of candy she took it and said, "This is good...
...That had been more than 20 years earlier...
...What are you talking about...
...In fact they didn't know a thing about Bartfuss...
...Right away," said the proprietor...
...That short period of concentration has left him limp...
...He stopped...
...If he were to sit there and reveal even a handbreadth they would thank him, but Bartfuss won't utter a word...
...Don't you remember...
...Don't talk...
...When no one was near he would silently give himself over to his treasure...
...But in spite of himself, he would go back...
...That walk lasts only a few moments...
...Interest in the work was high, and they even tried to find a way of dramatizing it...
...Nothing...
...One of them was doing calisthenics...
...Near the shore a few young people stood in bathing suits...
...At six he rises, gets to his feet, lights a second cigarette, and, to his surprise, discovers some unpleasant scraps of food in the sink...
...In contrast, Rosa's room is crammed full of colored pictures and vases...
...They know Bartfuss well, from Italy...
...His back bends, his steps lengthen, and he hugs the wall...
...Not at my expense...
...In fact, she doesn't care...
...She loved the pictures and she passed that love on to her daughters...
...He lived for the strong taste of action on others' behalf, like in the forest...
Vol. 13 • October 1988 • No. 7
