LEONARD KRIEGEL
577
A world framed by nightmare is a world framed by Kafka. I listened
to Michael's parents, and I did not sob or cry out with rage. I closed my eyes
and watched a woman push a man in a wheelchair into a small room. She
takes him from the chair, forces him
to
the mattress on the floor. Then she
takes his crutches and his wheelchair from the room, locks the door. He is to
be taught a lesson by his wife-jailer. Other than the mattress on the floor and
a straw-seat chair that seems to have been lifted from a Van Gogh painting
and placed in the corner of the room, there is no furniture. There is no bath–
room. There is no washstand.
He hears his sons, now young men of fifteen and seventeen, move
through the house. His sons ignore the closed door. Beyond it lies not their
father but a thing defined by its relation to their mother. He may talk like a
man. But his sons know that a man - even a minister of the gospel- is not
merely speech. A man is a body, defining himself by the demands he makes
upon the world. Michael demands nothing. Like Kafka's hunger artist, he
finds himself more and more attracted to the aesthetics of starvation while he
lies on the floor. His world has been turned inside out. His children are his
guards, his wife is his jailer.
I remain purposefully calm as I listen. I envision Michael lying within
the locked room, in his own dirt, measuring time in the mind's eyes. No tele–
vision set, no books, no radio, no newspaper. He can listen to the sounds of
his oldest son's guitar. The sound of the guitar soothes, makes him feel part
of his family again. He smiles, as ifhe were once more surrounded by wife
and sons, posing for a picture on a Christmas card . He closes his eyes. He
recites verses from the Bible. He passionately preaches sermons to spell–
bound congregations.
But if he is God's voice, he can speak only in his imagination. For five
days, punctually at three, his wife-jailer unlocks the door and shoves a tray
into the room. Focusing his eyes on the tray, he forces his face to remain
expressionless. His wife grimaces her displeasure at the sight of Michael on
the floor, dissatisfied with what she has created. His solitary kingdom is de–
fined anew by the glass of water, the bread, and the cheese on the tray. He
does not crawl to the tray until she has closed and relocked the door. Michael
eats.
His voice survives five days of hearing itself in the mind alone. It as–
sumes the scale ofIsaiah, Ezekial, oflamenting with Jeremiah. Never before
had Michael felt comfortable with the Book of Ecclesiastes.
It
was always too
Greek, too lacking in Christian hope. But now, in his enforced isolation, he
transforms the Preacher word by word.
As
he lies alone on the mattress in
the empty room, Michael is determined to endure. Ifhe can outlast captivity,
he
will,
he knows, again become human.
He hears wife and sons speaking with considerable agitation in the
vestibule. He hears the front door slam. Silence descends on the house. Too
