Autobiographies of an Angel: A Novel by Gábor Schein

Author:Gábor Schein
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Yale University Press
Published: 2022-03-15T00:00:00+00:00

7

Secret Theater

If I stood on my tiptoes, and really stretched myself out, I could see, above the plank fencing of the pigsty, the clouds of the autumn sky. They were wind-swept clean shawls, as if waving farewell. As I attempted, through vigorous thrusts, to clutch at the top of the planks and pull my body across the fencing—wishing to liberate myself from my captivity—the air was forced out from my lungs through the effort, and every attempt ended with me shamefully plopping back onto the ground. That morning at dawn the overly fattened pigs had been driven from the sty so that the knife could be plunged into their necks outside. The thick mud, mixed with manure, was splashed across my buckled shoes, my cotton hose. I don’t know why it was exactly that my shoes and my stockings made me such a miserable sight, and it wasn’t that earlier moment, when, with my mother’s consent, my father grabbed me by the arm and dragged me over to the sty, or even earlier, when my mother tied my ankle to the table leg, because she’d had enough of my running around all over the place and getting myself covered in dirt; it was true, though, that in the following moment, seized by a fit of rage, I shook the pigsty’s plank door, closed from outside, and I screamed dreadful things. I don’t remember what. Then, exhausted, I was quiet; I crouched by the base of the planks. I no longer bothered with the mud. Maybe I was even happy that my shoes, my stockings had become completely filthy. They became muddy, not me. I have nothing to do with it. I have nothing to do with anything that happens to me. They’re the ones doing it: they’re the guilty ones. Even if they don’t know what they’re doing. And I’m not even going to plead for a temporary reprieve. I have no tongue for it, it was cut out, paralyzed. The cat stole it. Or it wasn’t paralyzed, they didn’t cut it out, I can still talk but not to them, not for them—but then to whom? Who is going to hear what I have to say: I’m filthy, and I no longer have the right to be clean. Because this morning this was the place where the pigs were, from which they were dragged out, legs tied up, and now it’s my place, they’ve shut me up here. From now on this is my place. I must engrave it into my memory. It was needed in my memory. And from that moment on, so I say, although there is no beginning and no end to all this, I became incapable of conveying myself to others. I understood something that was unfamiliar to me. The whole day long my parents never heard my words—I believe they were satisfied with me, the shining fruit of their upbringing, and as my grades at school had also visibly improved, they were even proud.

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