STORIES
Bruno Schulz
DEAD SEASON
I
At five o'clock in the morning, an hour glaring with early
sunshine, our house was already enveloped in an ardent but quiet
brightness. At that solemn hour, unobserved by anyone-while the
rooms in the semi-darkness of drawn blinds were still filled with the
harmonious breathing of sleeping people-its facade bathed in the
sun, in the silence of the early haze, as if its surface were decorated by
blissfully sleeping eyelids. Thus, in the stillness of these early hours, it
absorbed the first fires of the morning with a sleepy face melting in
brilliance, its features slightly twitching from intense dreams. The
shadow of the acacia in front of the house slid in waves down the hot
surface, trying in vain to penetrate into the depth of golden sleep. The
linen blinds absorbed the morning heat, portion after portion, and
sunbathed fainting in the glare.
At that early hour, my father, unable
to
sleep any longer, went
downstairs loaded with books and ledgers, in order
to
open the shop
which was on the street level of the building. For a moment he stood
still in the gateway, sustaining with half-closed eyes the powerful
onslaught of the sun. The sundrenched wall of the house pulled him
tenderly into its blissfully leveled, smooth surface. For a moment
Father bec.ame flat, grown into the facade and felt his outstretched
hands, quivering and warm, merging into its golden stucco. (How
many other fathers have grown forever into the facades of houses at five
o'clock in the morning, while on the last step of the staircase? How
many fathers have thus become the concierges of their own gateways,
flatly sculpted into the embrasure with a hand on the door handle and a
face dissolved into parallel and blissful furrows, over which the fingers
of their sons would wander, later, reminiscing about their parent, now
incorporated forever into the universal smile of the house front?) But
soon he wrenched himself away, regained a third dimension and, made
human once more, freed the metal framed door of the shop from its
bolts, bars and padlocks.
Copyright
©
1978 by Jakob Schulz.
