Stalemate by Icchokas Meras & Jonas Zdanys

Author:Icchokas Meras & Jonas Zdanys [Meras, Icchokas & Zdanys, Jonas]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Other Press
Published: 2020-11-24T00:00:00+00:00

• 2 •

“I begat a son, Kasriel,” said Abraham Lipman.

• 3 •

It’s now night. It’s dark. I know that winter nights are darker. Or, more likely, autumn nights, when everything all around is black. The roofs are black; the ground is black; the sky is black, flooded with ink. How does a man whose soul is black feel?

I know how a man whose soul is black feels. He walks through the world with his eyes open, but he does not see himself and he does not see the world. He blends with the world’s dark colors. There are no differences in color. Everything’s the same. That’s why nothing can be distinguished. Not the soul, not the sky, not the black roofs. Good….

It’s now a summer night. The darkness is as translucent as a blue-gray sheet of glass. But if I want it to be darker, I can squint my eyes. A man’s eye is a wonderful instrument. It can squint; it can open wide; it can close completely. An entire diapason from pianissimo to fortissimo. An entire diapason! Isn’t that enough?

The moon shines brightly, and there are many stars. The moon tosses from side to side, trying to find a more comfortable position. It’s an eternal game for him: One side wanes; the other side waxes. Toss, and toss in good health, moon, without twitching your wide Asiatic nose.

The stars above pierce my eyes like needles. They glimmer all so differently: red and green, blue and gold, and perhaps in colors we have never seen.

I close my eyes. There! It’s all gone. No stars, no moon.

It’s difficult to argue with me even though I never managed to finish at the university. It’s hard for me to argue with myself, trum-tara-rum!

I close my eyes, everything disappears, and I can now say there is no such thing as the real world; everything’s an illusion. I see what I want to see. Who said that the night is black, that the moon shines? I say that the night is as white as paper and that the moon does not exist, that it’s a banal, meaningless stain in the sky. And if the black night is a white night, and if the moon is not the moon but a simple, common yellow pancake, then I am not a creature known as a man but a creature known as a superman.

That’s right—I’m a superman.

The ghetto is silent; everyone’s asleep; everyone rests, moaning or crying out in their dreams. They know that as tomorrow barely dawns, they’ll have to tramp down the dusty roads to the work camps. They don’t know what the day will be like tomorrow—perhaps they’ll bomb the ghetto or will want to take everyone away to Paneriai. Perhaps they’re moaning; perhaps they’re crying out; perhaps they lie clasping one another, wanting to continue their family lines. I don’t hear them; I don’t see them. They are lumps of gray dust, and I’m a superman and can do whatever I please.

I walk slowly through the silent sleeping streets of the ghetto.

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