The Illuminated Burrow by Max Blecher

Author:Max Blecher
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Surrealism, Fiction & Literature
ISBN: 9788086264615
Publisher: Twisted Spoon Press
Published: 2022-08-11T00:00:00+00:00

I spent most of the afternoons away from the sanatorium, taking carriage rides. I so regretted that I couldn’t raise myself up from the stretcher and stroke my horse. I felt we were friends, and I would ask someone to feed him the sugar-cube treats I kept for him in the carriage. One time the horse ate so much sugar he got a stomachache and had to rest in the stables for a few days.

Here’s how it happened. I was friendly with an elderly lady in the sanatorium and used to chat with her about her son, who was also ill and spent all his time in his room. She was a withered little thing, with a long, thin neck that she would mask by wearing a medallion attached to a black silk ribbon that seemed to tie up her thick veins and prominent Adam’s apple like a bundle of vegetables. Everyone in the sanatorium knew she was an absolute miser and had bizarre habits, such as when some hairs fell out she would quickly gather them in her hand and place them back on her head, as if this would stop her from balding. Because she was so afraid of losing her hair, she would never brush it, so that her tangled, dirty, thinning reddish grey locks made her look like a mattress with a few wisps of wool stuffing poking out. Her miserliness was the stuff of rumours that circulated throughout the sanatorium, such as that she drank her tea unsweetened so she could save the sugar cubes in a box. But since she had a certain social standing to uphold, she could never quite bring herself to sell them, out of embarrassment.

One day, as we were talking outside the sanatorium while I was lying in the carriage, I asked her to give my horse a sugar cube. When she saw how the mare greedily devoured the treat, she commented that she hadn’t realised horses like sugar.

“And how!” I said. “My mare can’t get enough of it.”

“Well,” she said, “you know, I like your horse and I’m going to bring her some sugar … just wait a moment, I’ll go and fetch it.”

It was the sugar she had pilfered that morning which she now had to find a way to dispose of, particularly as her son had caught wind of her infamous collection and kept scolding her and urging her to get rid of it. So the old lady brought down her box of sugar cubes and the horse had a feast.

I liked to look at my horses’ croups, the well-groomed, shiny coats and heavy tails, and when they turned their heads towards me, they seemed to understand how much I loved their large, teary, melancholy eyes and their thick black lips that revealed long, yellowish smoker’s teeth. Some young boys, around fifteen years old, also took carriage rides from the sanatorium, and they had somehow come up with a savage form of entertainment that involved pushing the

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