542
PARTISAN REVIEW
Hans introduces them.] We are all from the same valley. This here
is Anton. He lives at the valley-end and early Monday morning he
loads us one after the other into his car. When you drive through the
empty villages at dawn, long before the first scheduled bus, and see
single men stand by the roadside with a dufflebag or a thick brief–
case, a thermos sticking out, all bundled up and bearish, then that is
us . Anton is just building a house. On weekends I go over to help
him. The water has been diverted; the cellar already excavated. In
one year the shell will perhaps be done, yet one more year, perhaps a
room on the ground floor: from there he will gradually enlarge . An–
ton was a long time overseas. Look at him: he is as old as you and
has almost no teeth left. "We like you the way you are," that's what
our wives keep saying obediently to us - but naturally they would
prefer us different; as we would them; with o-yes! -
breast~
and no
varicose veins. Aren't our names for each other as though we ad–
dressed each others' parents? "Dad," says my wife to me, "Ma," I say
to my wife . And has time really passed since one night two were wild
and hot and magma fluid-like, the empty field around us a main
dance floor filled by us alone, the sky above warm breathing skin
body within, the world as small as wind tinge and we inside a secret!
Aren't we all still young? Anton slaved for years overseas, high in the
Arctic, laying pipeline, but didn't he just now sit in the first grade
with you? Here [he points] the frozen-off ear - a teacher threatened
to tear if off only a short while ago. Here [he points] the squashed–
off finger tips - a moment ago still your pointman's hand during
your First Holy Communion procession - a moment ago still too
pudgy-fingered for the fat votive candle, a moment ago still drip-wet
with holy water! And here [he points upstairs] the rumbling of the
cement mixers, day after day, and yet no more pertinent than the
Easter bonfire crackling twenty years ago; the daily clouds of steam–
ing tar in the nose, and at the same time still stuck to the inside of
your hands the far more pungent odor of green apples prematurely
stolen from strangers' orchards; the screaming and hollering of the
foremen and engineers here on the scaffolding: how easily drowned
out by the gentle sound of a domestic animal from that period which
even now, beyond punch-in-time , rises from its place or lies down to
rest. And if that isn't a so-called recollection! We are still young!–
This here is Ignatius [he points him out] . He, too, worked a long
time overseas, in the jungle, vicinity equator. He's from our neigh–
boring village and lives there again now. He lives by himself,
without a family . When you pass through his village in its center you
