304
PARTISAN REVIEW
Something after which there was no one and nothing. That was an
unreachable place for me, farther than where I was now, or where I ever
wanted to get to. And at the same time it was here simply and honestly
and lovingly, for the two of us.
"You and I," she said.
I thought about how, for her, life was an infectious cancer. There was
death in every moment, in every wrinkle, in every movement of the eye–
lids, eyelashes, or eyebrows. Everything that took place rid her of con–
trol of the things that made her beautiful and what offered her control
of something, at least.
Her eyes held that which had escaped her, how she was pretty in a dif–
ferent way from where she had been inside to the form of existence she car–
ried on the outside. The time that she had cut short began running again.
"It's the third time they're moving us," she said. "They're not going
to let off the killed and wounded this time. That'll be a pretty sight:
everyone from the first to the last will be there."
"Terezin is a garish city," I said. "The fortress. I never lived in a place
like this before with ramparts and a moat and all the things that go
along with a place like that."
She smiled. "Maybe it's just cheap. You can get a girl here for a rose
or ten grams of sugar or a couple of grams of margarine...and a man?
He comes free."
She was wearing yesterday'S porcelain smile. Her high eyebrows had
fallen a little like tired or sad women's do before she raised them again
and her eyes brightened.
"You can leave me that rose you stole now. I changed my mind. I'll
deal with what it looks like somehow."
I didn't have to think very hard to figure out what she was saying. I
didn't know if she was planning on turning me in-or just herself. And
why she would do that? Would it be hard on her? Maybe for a little
while. Who knew? Whatever had been important yesterday no longer
was. It wasn't only the unpleasantness that I didn't like. I remembered
that she had said she was married and why she had done so at the last
moment-and what she had told me about before, how ViIi Feld, her
husband, was just as obsessed with her in the fortress with what he had
been in Prague. What he was really like in life and what he probably
wasn't even if he thought himself to be-and what he most likely was
instead. Aren't we all selling something that shouldn't be paid for? Who
doesn't act like their hearts are a piece of paper that they can tear apart,
crumple up and throwaway? The heart is cheap stuff too.
