David Grossman - Falling out of time

and look

at whatever is there

at whatever we dare

to see

only when walking

in a dream

TOWN CHRONICLER: Sleeping … They’ve been sleeping almost constantly for days, sleeping their minds away. Sleeping and walking, speaking to one another in their dream, each head leaning on another walker’s shoulder. I do not know who carries whom and what force drives them to walk—

DUKE:

Sometimes, alone

in my private chamber,

I take off both shoes and look

at my feet and think

it is

him.

ELDERLY MATH TEACHER:

I hit him. He was

a stubborn boy, and impudent,

with strange opinions

even as a child, and I — spare

the rod, spoil the child — I had to

beat him.

When he raised his hands to protect

his face, I hit him

in the stomach.

WALKING MAN:

But where are you, what are you,

just tell me that, my son.

I ask simply:

Where are you?

Ayeka ?

Or like a pupil before his master

(for that is how I often see

you now),

please teach me — as I not long ago

taught you—

the world and all its secrets.

Forgive me if my question

sounds foolish and insipid, but

I must ask because

it has been eating

at my soul like a disease

these past five years:

What is death, my son?

What

is death?

MIDWIFE:

Great, definitive death,

my girl,

with b-b-boundless power. Eternal,

immortal d-d-death. And yours.

Your single, little death,

inside it.

COBBLER:

Actually, I wanted

to ask, What’s it like,

my girl, when you die?

And how are you there?

And who are you

there?

DUKE:

It is a perplexing thought, my son,

but perhaps you now know

far more than I do?

Perhaps a new and wondrous world

now carries you in flight,

and with a massive flap of wings

it spreads out

its infinity, just as

in our world here it long ago

lavished your soul with its abundance,

your pure, boyish soul. I feel

so young and ignorant before you.

TOWN CHRONICLER: Every so often a tremor passes through them, all of them, one after the other, as though an invisible hand had slid a caress down the spine of the small procession, lingering lightly over the head of each and every one. In their sleep, they straighten up toward it like blind chicks hearing their mother’s voice, and their eyes glow through their lids.

MIDWIFE:

I see her

jumping,

dancing in the kitchen,

before she fell ill,

when she still

had the strength. And her f-f-father,

my man, my love,

my cobbler, kneels before her

and places his hands: shoes for her feet.

COBBLER:

Am I dreaming?

I hear my wife.

I swear

her words are

hardly broken

anymore!

MIDWIFE:

… he walks her

through the house in his

hand-shoes, and laughs

until the roof almost flies off,

and she hugs his neck

and squeals, she has only just

learned how to talk,

you remember,

just beginning to say

her first words,

Dad-dy,

Mom-my,

Lil-li-li-li-Lilli.

COBBLER:

Lilli,

my

Lilli.

WALKERS:

We walk. Impossible

to stop. My body

won’t allow it. My feet

are weak. And me, my breath

is short, yet still our body

will not stand. It pushes from inside, onward ,

onward … It’s like

going to meet your sweetheart ,

isn’t it, Mrs. Chronicler? Yes ,

my lady of the nets, it’s like a lovers’ rendezvous .

WALKING MAN:

This void,

this absence,

death alone can render—

and it is not at all

a disappearance,

a cessation,

nothingness.

It has one final place,

a window opened

just a crack, where still

the absence breathes, still loosened,

palpitating, where one can still

touch the here ,

still almost feel

the warming hand that touches

there .

It is the threshold,

one last line shared both by here

and there, the line to which

— no farther—

the living may draw near,

and where, perhaps, they still can sense

the very tip,

just one more hint,

the fading embers, slowly dying,

of the dead.

ELDERLY MATH TEACHER:

You have become your death

so much that sometimes I must wonder

(Forgive me, have I crossed a line?

Best to be quiet? To ask? You know,

my son, I am a gentlemen, yet find myself unsure

how to address you … May I use the second person?),

but tell me, speak it clearly,

show no pity:

if they were to allow you— they ,

there —if you were given liberty

to choose—

would you come back?

Come back to this?

To me?

DUKE:

Or, as Rilke wrote of Eurydice,

are you, my child,

abundant with your own death,

which fills you

like a sweet and darkened fruit ?

While I,

a bothersome Orpheus,

try to pull you

over here

against your will?

ELDERLY MATH TEACHER:

Just one more, if I may?

(Whom else can I ask

but you, my teacher

in these mysteries?)

Tell me just what is the thing

in us, the living,

whereby we can become

completely dead

within an instant,

in the blink of our own death?

And give up everything,

be given up on,

as though a primal law

that always lurked inside us

suddenly appears and rises

like a shadow from the depths: around it

still the ruins mount,

and comfortably it settles in,

a haughty landlord long in charge,

its stony glare — which does not miss

a thing, yet sees nothing—

declares with just

a hint of triumph

in its smile—

“Death, my friends, is what is true!”

WALKERS:

When we meet … What will we tell them

when we meet? I, gentlemen ,

have already made up my mind:

I shall not tell him of his brother ,

born after his time. In her room

we changed all the pictures .

We couldn’t bear it any longer .

I ended up giving his dog

to a boy on the street .

(silence)

WALKING MAN:

And after some time,

whatever I do, you

fossilize.

Then I must

carve you,

time and again,

out of the layers of stone

in which you are

cast. I must try very hard

to want it—

must carve myself for it, too,

must fight—

while my whole being

shouts: Let go, it’s best

this way. Let human nature

do as it will, you must

accept his fate, respect

his border—

But then I soon suspect

myself: perhaps deep down

I long for you

to fossilize?

To bleed no more.

To not be

so awake, so sharp,

white-hot and

everdead.

But no less painful

are the times when I succeed,

when my imagination

cleaves the hunk of stone until

it cracks, then crumbles,

falls around you,

and then suddenly

you are there:

naked,

breathtaking,

glowing in the palm of rock,

or merely standing,

limp

and incidental,

you look this way

and that, embarrassed, without knowing

that I watch you: present,

so present,

neither promising nor