ARNOST LUSTIG
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youth, her eighteen years, and by her fear of dying. 1 knew she was right.
And 1 knew too what 1would take from her for myself, like a person car–
ries away a piece of another person; 1 hoped it was the same for her.
She dressed towards the light as if she were a tree or a river or a stone.
Like a flower before it wilts. Even though she had already put on warm
underwear for the winter in the east, 1 could still smell her body. Love
was a word that at that moment would maybe sound ridiculous or
empty, but it was more than a false hope right then or some scheme or
the fulfillment of a dream; more than mere revenge or making good on
an old debt that a friend had seduced a girl 1loved. More than only child–
ish, half-childish, manly, or half-manly rivalry. Maybe it was are how a
person always wants to carve a piece out a little higher and farther for
himself than where other people are or where he is himself; to take a
stand or not take one, at least in the eyes of everyone else or in your own;
then he finds out, like Lea of Leuwarden, that every breath brings him
one step lower and closer to where he came from, but to which he would
never return again. Who knew what it was? A kind of justice that we
hand out ourselves, at least among each other, if not just from within?
The morning had already lost the truth of last night and the evening
before.
It
was a part of the feelings that make a person either bigger or
smaller. The way he faces the world, and then returns to himself and gets
lost inside so deeply he gets to places he has never been before.
The gratitude 1 felt towards her was the kind that translates into plea–
sure, self-confidence, and promise for a man. A gratitude he takes with
him on his way into the future. Every person has a different meaning for
the word friendship. 1 could only guess afterwards what it meant to the
other person. Was it something that love is born of even if that only hap–
pens later on in a corner of the memory or far off in the future because
everything would already have been long past by then? No one remains
how he used to be forever. Were those tears in her eyes? She cast me a
look full of uncertainty. Was this the last freedom she would feel before
she died? She looked like she was made of china.
"I wanted you to be strong. To know that you're strong."
"You're strong too," 1 lied. "Stronger than you think you are."
"I wanted to give you what only a woman can give a man. So you
would know beforehand how strong you are. How you will always be
stronger." And then she said, "The last thing we always have are our
bodies. The last freedom, the last will, the last principle. The moments
when my body is only mine like your body is only yours."
"Was it a power that a woman gives a man or that a man takes from
a woman?
It
lasts for as long and as far as life does, but at the same time
