314
PARTISAN REVIEW
turns and trails off or disappears, where it's headed; how everything did
or didn't make sense; her open window that she only saw fog through;
the words that a person resorts to and is afraid of; and how a woman or
a girl fights with fate like the best man does. How she can be happy or
strong in a moment, like a tree that grows, a blossoming flower or a river
before it pours into the sea. And where the end - of everything - begins.
And in the end, the fog rolls in again. What become of women many
times, either with their consent or against their will, or the combination
of the two, in a day, a night or a minute, even though the rest of their
lives are branded by doing so, and why most likely the first thing women
insist on of all is the right to do what they want with their bodies, regard–
less of the circumstances or how they fight with it. How they demand,
rightly, that it is their body. How each person in the world controls his
own life-at least in some small way-or a piece of his life, his fate, or
a fraction of it, and how that something isn't possible to direct without
repercussions.
It
was something that people try to understand about each
other and only manage to rarely, if ever. It's what changes people and the
world for the better, or the worse; what changes them for the better or
worse by what they will do or what they dare to do.
Farewell had spread through her without saying goodbye. She had
lapsed into an invisible darkness. A silence more quiet than quiet. I was
only one of the many men in her short life. On the other hand, what had
happened between us hadn't been an ordinary or everyday kind of
thing. I sense how it was that she was beautiful, in spite of everything,
by what she still believed in at this last moment and by what she didn't.
That was all there was to our parting. What she had said came back to
me: that a person will do anything when there's nobody watching. And what
Viii Feld had said and Lea had repeated: that nobody knows who his master
is and what that meant or didn't mean. And what disappears in us before we
disappear ourselves. And how we ourselves drop out of everybody else's
lives. She was already standing in the full light of the window. She turned the
key in the lock and put a red ace of hearts in my hand. I thanked her. The
morning light streamed over her. The rays of the early sun danced in her hair
and over her skin. She looked like she was going to dissolve in a moment
with her white complexion in the white skirt with buttons down the front.
The sky was already clear
to
the north, just like it was to the east. The
wind was blowing the few smudges of clouds that were left from last
night on to the west.
There was an eagerness in her eyes like there had been in the begin–
ning that I didn't know how to interpret. Her breasts were trembling–
and the look in her eyes said that everything was futile.
