256
ISE BALAsz-RAK6CZY
wood was a bit swollen but it did come out and there, in a shallow
niche, lay the old box. When I was perhaps seven or eight, I had written
a confession: of my unhappiness? Of ... I don't know what. I put the
paper in that tortoise shell box and shut it away in the wall. There it
had lain for over forty years. With what trembling hands I opened it!
Intact!
r
unfolded the paper, preparing to uncover the truth of my
life - its secret essence. Nothing. The damp must have got in over the
years and the ink had run. Just a white sheet of paper, faintly stained with
blue.
The fog's so thick now I can't see a thing. What lights there are
glow like empty halos. I remember a book of hours in the library. The
illuminator had painted all the scenes: the Annunciation, the Marriage at
Cana, the Crucifixion - all without the figures! Fog makes the world an
emptiness waiting to be peopled : with pigeons, larvae, roses, tumors, mi–
crobes, sapphires, angels,scorpions, desert saints and harlots, duchesses, and
whales. That's with hindsight, of course. First, just a gray expectation.
No ability to imagine; nothing to base imagination on. The
nihil
at the
bottom of Creation .
12. There has been no time to write, no time to think. When I reached
home from Y , the house had been ransacked. Not merely robbed but
brutalized, wrecked beyond . .. Swastikas painted everywhere. The very
walls axed . Sophie's picture slashed again and again, and the magpies ...
r
felt as if I'd been murdered. I wanted to collapse, but something in me
stiffened. I pulled myself into the bathroom and lifted up the drain. Safe!
That night I spent with K., the two of us patiently sewing the jewels
into the quilting of my coat. Thank God it was winter. In the morning
I left. For where? I'd no idea. We traced a vague route on the map, but
who knew what the obstacles would be? It didn't matter.
In the event, there were few obstacles. People are still intimidated by
titles and a certain .. . . Corruption took care of the rest.
So, tomorrow I sail from Lisbon for the New World. They say
Marie Antoinette had the possibility of escaping there; she preferred the
guillotine. I wonder how someone with such perfect taste could possibly
have been wrong? To "start over again" is impossible. Whatever happens,
it must be
unimaginably
different. That thought comforts me. Katje had a
friend, the Princess Tatischev, who moved into a sort of Trianon in the
park. She had fled from the Bolsheviks with boxes of mementos: photos
of the Czar framed in pink diamonds, enameled spoons, gold-encrusted
icons of dubious quality. Katje spoke to her in French and allowed her
to pretend they were taking tea at Tsarskoye Seloe .
I shall speak only
English!
I shall idealize neither the past nor the present. The real - only
