I carried everything I had. It wasn't actually mine. It was either intended for a different purpo or somebody el's. The pigskin suitca was a gramophone box. The dust coat was from my father. The town coat with the velvet neckband from my grandfather. The breeches from my Uncle Edwin. The leather puttees from our neighbour, Herr Carp. The green gloves from my Auntie Fini. Only the claret silk scarf and the toilet bag were mine, gifts from recent Christmas.
The war was still on in January 1945. Shocked that, in the depths of winter, I was to be taken who-knows-where by the Russians, everyone wanted to give me something that would be uful, maybe, even if it didn't help. Becau nothing on earth could help. It was irrevocable: I was on the Russians' list, so everyone gave me something - and drew their own conclusions as they did. I took the things and, at the age of venteen, drew my own conclusion: the timing was right for going away. I could have done without the list being the reason, but if things didn't turn out too badly, it would even be good for me. I wanted away from this thimble of a town, where all the stones had eyes. I wasn't so much afraid as cretly impatient. And I had a bad conscience becau the list that caud my relativ
es such anguish was, for me, tolerable. They feared that in another country something might happen to me. I wanted to go to a place that did not know me.
Something had already happened to me. Something forbidden. It was strange, dirty, shameless, and beautiful. It happened in the park with all the alders, away at the back, beyond the short-grass hills. On the way home, I went to the centre of the park, into the round pavilion where, on public holidays, the orchestras would play. I remained ated for a while. The light pierced the finely-carved wood. I could e the fear of the empty circles, squares, and quadrilaterals - white tendrils with claws linking them. It was the pattern of my aberration, and the pattern of the horror in the face of my mother. In this pavilion I swore to mylf: I'm never coming back to this park.
The more I tried to stop mylf, the quicker I went back – after two days. To my rendezvous, as it was called in the park.
I went to my cond rendezvous with the same first man. He was called THE SWAN. The cond man was new, he was called THE FIR. The third was called THE EAR. After that
came THE THREAD. Then THE ORIOLE and THE CAP. Later, THE HARE, THE CAT, THE SEAGULL. Then THE PEARL. Only we knew which name was who. We played at wild animals, I let mylf be pasd along. And it was summer in the park, and the birches had a white skin, and the green wall of impenetrable foliage was growing among the jasmine and elder bushes.
Love has its asons. Autumn put an end to the park. The wood became naked. The rendezvous moved with us to the Neptune. Next to the pool's iron gate was its oval sign with the swan. Each week, I met the one who was twice my age. He was Romanian. He was married. I am not saying what his name was, and not what my name was. We arrived parately: the woman at the cash desk, behind the leaded window of her booth, the shiny stone floor, the round central column, the wall tiles with the water-lily pattern, the carved wooden stairs – none of the must reali we'd arranged to meet. We went into the pool and swam with all the others. Only at the saunas did we finally meet.
Back then, shortly before the camp - and as would also be the ca from my return until, i
n 1968, I left the country - any rendezvous would have meant a prison ntence. Five years, at least, if I'd been caught. Many were. After a brutal interrogation, they were taken straight from the park or the municipal baths to the jail. From there, to the prison camp next to the canal. I know now: no-one came back from the canal. Anyone who did was a walking corp. Had aged, was ruined, was no longer fit for any kind of love.
As for in the camp – I'd have been dead, if caught in the camp.
After the five years in the camp, I strolled daily through the commotion of the streets, rehearsing in my head the best things to say, if arrested. CAUGHT RED-HANDED: against this guilty verdict I prepared a thousand excus and alibis. I carry silent baggage. I have packed mylf into silence so deeply and for so long that I can never unpack mylf in words. I just pack mylf differently each time I speak.
In the last summer of the rendezvous, to extend my walk home from the park with all the alders, I happened to enter the Church of the Holy Trinity on the main ring road. This coincidence was fate. I saw the times that were coming. On a pillar, next to the side altar,
stood the saint in the grey cloak, his collar was the sheep that he carried round his neck. This sheep round his neck is silence itlf. There are things you don't speak about. But I know what I am speaking about when I say that silence round your neck is not the same as silence in your mouth. Before, during, and after my time in the camp – for twenty-five years I lived in fear, of the state and of my family. Of a double fall, that the state might lock me up as a criminal, and the family disown me in disgrace. In the crowded streets, the display cas, the windows in trams and hous, the fountains and puddles, for me, became mirrors. I looked at mylf, disbelievingly, feared I might be transparent, after all.
