300
PARTISAN REVIEW
all the others. Viii Feld moved from the front of my mind to the back.
Lea's face had remained calm and serious through it all.
I could only catch part of what her expression and breath meant. Her
touches. The beautiful body of Lea from Leuwarden; her entire figure
and a little bit of her dying soul that she had committed to me. The flesh
that first revels in and then regurgitates it all back out like prehistoric
creatures that ingested and excreted everything through their mouths.
She slowly repeated what she wanted from me . "More, more."
"Yes."
"Everything."
"Yes."
"Yes."
"Everything." We could have each been speaking for ourselves or for
one another and everything we said had more than one meaning. I was
capable of dying in that moment and so was she. The feeling poured
through my blood and my breath brought it back to life.
And then suddenly all she did was sob, like women do. She was cry–
ing and happy at the same time. I became conscious of her breath and
mouth, her teeth, tongue and lips. It was a hot, all-stirring wave that
rids the world of everything that is not here and now. Then everything
was just noises again, movements and silence. Closed and half-opened
eyes. Parted lips, touching each other like the wings of a butterfly touch
the wind, like rocks attached to each other and time to all its ages, like
a single second or a fraction of one.
"Nobody can take this away from us," I whispered. "Not even all
the owners of the world put together: Germans, the authorities, the
powerful- not even us ."
"It's only here and now."
"Why?"
"Don't say anything."
"Yes."
"Not a word."
She whispered it into my face so closely that I could hardly hear her.
"You're only free if you are an animal. You're alive because you live how
you want, with whom you want. Nobody tells you what to do or what and
how to go after something. You're a part of the world and outside of it too.
It
doesn't matter to you if you die or are born. Indifference runs through
you like the heat of an animal. You only know what is, not what isn't."
Did I want more than that? Maybe I did, maybe not. And Lea? I don't
know. It took over the moment that our time had filled, the moment we
had touched beyond time. We were the exception to everything that had
