NORMAN MANEA
59
me. I feel empty, distant. My constantly monitored despair seems to have
been healed and has disappeared.
I return home in the evening. I am tired and make a detour to savor
my body's heaviness, its lethargy.
In the market square I stop at a kiosk for some juice.
"Papa Traian, give me something cold!"
"Of course, Sir. With this incredible heat ... a great tragedy, that
fire."
"Yes, it's hot. It's roasting out here."
"Today of all days, on St. Ilie day ... A tragedy, everything is burnt,
Sir, it's
all
destroyed. You seem ..."
"Yeah, Papa Traian, I'm pretty tired. It sure is hot."
He looks at me timidly, fearful, almost astonished.
"Goodbye, Sir."
I go on slowly, making my way leisurely to the street corner, slowing
my steps, my thoughts, my fatigue. In the kiosk, the vendor's movements
seemed filled with fear of the heat. Of course, in the dreadful, smoldering
apocalyptic heat of a day like today, an iron, left plugged in and forgotten,
could easily set a house on fire, burning it to the ground.
A few steps melt into the ground, the tension, the silence. The sheet
of glass seems to have been destroyed, liquidated, scattered - but there is
no collapse, nothing. The endless patience of the heat seems to have
melted the shards. I turn back, certain, to the refuge of the same brief
hesitation.
A faint, dizzying border separates the too-thin glass I walk over
timidly as I look back, searching for a foothold.
Translated from the Gennan
by
Tess Lewis
