David Grossman - Falling out of time

TOWN CHRONICLER: Large beads of sweat roll down the channels of his nose. His face is a crimson tempest. I feverishly write completely transfixed by him not looking at the page my hand rushing on its own

CENTAUR: That’s the only way I can somehow get close to it, to that goddamn it , without it killing me, you know? I have to dance around in front of it, I have to move, not freeze like a mouse who sees a snake. I have to feel, even just for a minute, just half a second, the last free place I may still have inside me, the fraction of a spark that still somehow glows inside, which that lousy it couldn’t extinguish. Ugh! I have no other way. You have to get that: I have no other way . And maybe there is no other way, huh? I don’t know, and you wouldn’t understand, so at least write it down, quick: I want to knead it — yes, it , the thing that happened, the thing that struck like lightning and burned everything I had, including the words, goddamn it and its memory, the bastard burned the words that could have described it for me. And I have to mix it up with some part of me. I must, from deep inside me, and then exhale into it with my pathetic breath so I can try and make it a bit — how can I explain this to you — a bit mine, mine … Because a part of me, of mine, already belongs to it, deep inside it, in its damn prison, so there might be an opening, we might be able to haggle … What? Write it down, you criminal! Don’t stop writing. You stand there staring at me? Now that I’ve finally managed to get out a single word about it, and breathe … I have to create characters. That’s what I want, what I need. I must, it’s always like that with me. Characters that flow into the story, swarm it, that can maybe air out my cell a little and surprise it — and me. Yes, I want them to betray me, betray it , the motherfucker. I want them to jump it from this side and the other and from every direction and back to front and upside down, let them ram it up the ass for all I care, just as long as they make it budge even one millimeter, that’s enough, so that at least it moves a little on my page, so it twitches,

and just makes it not

so

so impossible

to

anything.

TOWN CHRONICLER: He stops. There is terror in his eyes, as though the ground is falling away beneath his feet and he is plunging down as I watch. He lifts one arm feebly, as if to grab me. Only now, Your Highness, do I begin to grasp what has been right in front of my eyes this whole time: the notebook, the pens on the desk, the empty pages—

I stare at the bulky, crude creature. This was not something I had ever imagined.

CENTAUR: Now get out of here. I beg you, leave. But come back, yes? You’ll come back? When? Tomorrow?

TOWN CHRONICLER: The next day, in a dusty drawer in the town archives, I locate his file. He was not lying: until a few years ago, he used to write stories. Poems, too, and ballads and one epic. I noticed that the experts generally wrinkled their noses, although he did garner the occasional accolade: “As with the biblical Joseph,” one critic rhapsodized, “lust erupts from his fingertips.”

The rumors circulating about him, and about his peculiar nickname, are also in his file. All sorts of tall tales, Your Highness, which I simply shudder to hear! I am almost tempted to write them down for amusement’s sake, but when I encounter the sardonic look emanating from your portrait on the royal edict in my hand, I know I could never embarrass you by quoting such primitive nonsense in an official document of the duchy.

WOMAN ATOP THE BELFRY:

Sometimes people

climb the tower, tourists or

bird-watchers or bell lovers,

and mostly, those who come to watch

our war, waged eternally

in the valley beyond the hills.

They stand for hours, drinking, spitting,

looking through binoculars, gambling

on the results. They drink again, and scream

hurrah at the top of their lungs if

a soldier down there, some poor man—

too far

to tell

if ours or theirs—

manages with great effort

to raise his sword.

You were there, too,

my son. What

did you do there,

why would you

be there?

Between their hurrahs,

the drinks and the winks, they look

at me, point fingers, laugh,

sometimes pinch.

What do they see? A woman

from the village, from by the swamps,

with a village face and heavyset legs,

a long silver braid, barely moving, walking

slowly,

slowly,

three or four steps

an hour, a madwoman.

They can laugh.

Laugh all they want. I walk

around the spire slowly, one step,

another, and another step. My eyes

on him alone,

on the hilltops,

with them around me, and he

and I,

and me

and him,

and our

son

strung

between us.

WALKING MAN:

A ray reaches out from me

into me, touches

cracks and niches,

tenses:

Where are you?

On which of all the roads

will you reveal yourself,

in which of my orbs be divined?

A soccer game?

Making sauce for a steak?

Doing your homework,

head in hand?

Skipping pebbles

across the water?

I have known for a long time:

it is you

who decides

how to appear in me

and when. You,

not I, who chooses

how to speak

to me. But your vocabulary,

my son — I sense it—

diminishes as

the years go by.

Or at least does not

evolve: soccer,

steak, homework, pebbles.

You had so much more

(all your life, my precious, a vast array),

yet you seem to insist,

entrench yourself

in diminishment:

steak, ball, pebbles, homework,

another two or three

small moments to which you turn,

return.

Dawn on a riverbed, up north,

the story I read to you there,

the alcove in the strange gray

rock in which you nested,

curled.

You were

so small,

and the blue of your eyes,

and the sun, and the minnows

that leaped in the water as though they, too,

wished to hear the story, and the laughter

we laughed together.

Just that, just those, again

and again,

those memories, and

the others

gradually fade …

Tell me, are you purposely

robbing me

of solace?

And then I think, Perhaps

this is how you slowly habituate

me to the ebbing

of pain? Perhaps,

with remarkable tenderness,

with your persistent

wisdom,

you are preparing me

slowly

for it—

I mean,

for the separation?

CENTAUR: You’re back. Finally. I was beginning to think you’d never … that I’d scared you off. Look, I was thinking: You and I, we’re an odd couple, aren’t we? Think about it: I’ve been unable to write for years, haven’t produced even one word, and you — it turns out — can write, or rather transcribe, as much as you feel like. Whole notebooks, scrolls! But only what other people tell you, apparently. Only quotes, right? Other people’s chewed-up cud. All you do is jot it down with a pen stroke here, a scribble there … Am I right? Not even a single word that’s really yours? Yeah? Not even one letter? That’s what I thought. What can I say, we’re quite a pair. Write this down then, please. Quickly, before it gets away:

And inside my head there’s a constant war comma the wasps

keep humming colon what good would it do if you wrote

question mark what would you add

to the world if you imagined question

mark and if you really

must comma then just write