The Silent Wall by Peter Rabe

Author:Peter Rabe [Rabe, Peter]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-4405-4007-3
Publisher: Prologue Books
Published: 2011-07-15T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 14

When I was done at the table the sun was out of sight, behind the opposite houses and this caused an immediate darkness and dankness everywhere. All objects were still visible but as if reflecting darkness and not light. My own small mid-afternoon madness was gone now because the kind of madness that can survive here does not have any fun in it.

I think Sophia knew something of this sort too because she came to my table once more, looking the same as before but cool now, not drawing me to her, and said she would be busy now with the dishes.

I went outside and wandered around the square which lay under the first touch of the nightwind already. I put my hands into my pockets and felt the warmth in there and nowhere else. That was alright I was not looking for warmth anywhere else. I felt alone and that was alright too because it meant that I did not need anything else. I met Vinciguerra on my second turn.

“You asked about a room for the night,” he said. “I’ll have the same room for you. The one you had once before.”

“Without riscaldamento? “

“As you wish.”

Neither he nor I were interested in the remark as a joke. I for one wasn’t interested in anything he might have to say to me anymore. I was really leaving. But he, Vinciguerra, perhaps he never came truly alive until this hour of evening, and only showed a spark of some kind when the light was grey.

“Are you reasonably well?” he asked and he looked at me with real interest, or even concern.

This question, of course, and this manner, I knew very well. Next he would start to weave himself into everything that he touched in a most infectious manner. I wanted no part of that.

“I’m fine. Thank you. Had a lovely meal, too.”

“You no longer look as if you were waiting for everything,” he said without any transition.

It needed no transition. The fact was simply there, and he saw it.

“I’m not waiting because I don’t know what I’m waiting for, Vinciguerra.”

“That’s a very blind thing for you to say. As if one only waits for something one already knows.”

“You can cut that out, Vinciguerra. Just cut that kind of talk out I’ve had it.”

“Alright.”

But of course, he had me. I had to ask the next thing.

“What am I waiting for?”

“Well,” he said. “They won’t let you go from here, obviously.”

“What’s the punishment in this, Vinciguerra, the not letting me go, or the vagueness of the situation?”

“Avoiding you, the way they do, is part of it, yes.”

“And why don’t you?”

He raised his hands by his sides and then dropped them again, making a small sound against cloth. I thought that he suddenly looked incredibly helpless.

“I have tried to help you. This is a way of helping you. Don’t you see?”

I saw that, I saw that it was the most pathetic kind of help there was, help offered kindly and openly, but useless.

I

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