George Konrad
THE LOSER *
1 talk all day, I keep hearing things, moments out of the
past, like honeycomb cells during extraction , burst open-riffraff
ove rrun my dreams. A humble wayfarer, 1 tumble from garden to
garden, bed to bed, body to body. 1 stand on top of a truck with my
younger brother; dusty wind is shaking the plane trees; Grandfather,
in white graveclothes, sits at our feet , pleading with us to throw
away our machine guns. But my brother rai ses his gun high and
shoots until the magazine is empty. A number of us conspirators a re
sitting in a forest clearing; 1 have no idea what we are up to but am
already trying to figure out how many years we'll get and who the
informer is. 1 can hardly recognize my brother; he is wearing a
blond wig and backs off softly on the leaf-st rewn forest floor. 1 follow
him through sparsely planted aspen groves; he is in a log cabin ,
lying on a cot with his eyes closed. 1 try to move him over so I , too ,
can lie down, but he pushes me off. We get tired of fighting, he
points upward: we see the face of a huge clock on the ceiling , the
hands moving around so fast they make us dizzy. 1 walk in stocking
feet along a prison corridor and end up in the warden's office. "I
can't get used to being locked up ," 1 tell him . He puts his hand on
my shoulder. "You are a foolish young man ," he says. "Try to think
of this place as a temple of the mind." 1 force open my cell window;
the floor is splotched with vomit. An old man is crying behind me,
imploring me to take him with me. 1 lift his bulky, hard-to-handle
body onto my shoulde r; now 1 must swim with him through green,
motionless wate r. 1 would like to push him away, but our necks are
tied together. "Easy does it, my son," Father says, his beard filled
with bubbles. "Do something," I yell at him . "After all, you are the
rabbi." "How could 1 be the rabbi ?" he answers disconsolately ; " I
broke all ten commandments." 1 am on a train with Mother; the
luggage rack is filled with her little bundles. An officer sits across the
aisle, Mother pulls the hem of her red skirt over her pretty thighs. A
one-armed conductor comes in, sets down his lantern and ticket
• Excerpted f!'Om
The Loser
by George Konrad , to be published by H arcourt Brace
Jovanovich , Inc. (Copy right
©
1980 by Editions du Seuil , Paris. English transla–
tion copy right
©
by H arcourt BraceJovanovich , In c.)
