The Train Was On Time by Heinrich Böll

Author:Heinrich Böll
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Tags: Fiction
ISBN: 9781935554950
Publisher: Melville House
Published: 2011-04-05T10:00:00+00:00

AFTERWORD:

THE HANDS OF OLINA

by William T. Vollmann

… he had a terrible dream: he was sitting somewhere on a wet, very cold plain and had no legs, no legs at all, he was sitting on the stumps of his thighs, and the sky over this plain was black and lowering … then suddenly something cold and wet splashed onto his head … (30–31)

It was not a dream at all … he realized that he had been crying. He had neither known it nor felt it, but his face was wet, and Olina’s hands, soft and very small, were drying his face; the rivulets had run down his face … She dried his cheeks and around his eyes, and he was grateful that she said nothing.… (91)

My God, thought Andreas, are they all dead? … and my legs … my arms, is only my head left? … Am I crying? he thought suddenly, for he could feel something moist running down his cheeks; no, something was dripping onto his cheeks; and in that ashen morning light … he saw that Olina’s hand was hanging down over his head from a fragment of the car, and that blood was dripping onto her face from his hands, and he was past knowing that now he was really beginning to cry … (119)

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