Falling Out of Time by David Grossman Read Free Book Online Page B

TEACHER:
    Here I will fall,
    now will I fall?
    I do not fall.
    Here is shadow
    and fog,
    frost
    rises
    from a darkened pit—
    now,
    now
    I will fall—
    TOWN CHRONICLER’S WIFE:
    Now, here,
    the heart
    will stop—
    it does not stop—
    here is shadow
    and fog—
    now?
    Now will I fall?
    TOWN CHRONICLER: And she walked! Walked away! Suddenly, out of the darkness, she appeared beside me on the street, then walked away without seeing me at all, moving behind the teacher as if sleepwalking. I quickly lay down on the bench and made myself as small as possible. I was very cold. I tried to fall asleep. I could not. I do not know what I shall do with myself today, and the sun has not even risen. The town is terrifyingly empty. I wander the streets. No one. I run to the wharf, dig through reeking piles of nets and dry seaweed—no one. Where will I go? There, on the hilltops, the small embers glow tonight as though each holds a beating heart. In a dark yard at the edge of the market stands an old gray donkey eating from a trough. I hold my face up to its mane and rub my nose in it. To my surprise, it is soft, softer even than the centaur’s hair. Perhaps things in the world have softened in my absence? The donkey stops chewing. He waits for me to talk. Of that thing that happened to her, to my daughter, I must never speak with any person—I explain to him—and if truth be told, I am forbidden even to mention her, although I don’t always stick to that, particularly since that man began circling the town. The donkey turns his head to me. His gaze is wise and skeptical. It’strue, I whisper, I’m not allowed to remember her. Just imagine! He twitches his ears in surprise. It was the duke, I say as I throw my arms around his neck. It was he who commanded me, in a royal edict, to exile myself from my home, to walk the streets day and night recording the townspeople’s stories of their children. And it was he who forbade me—by explicit order!—to remember her, my one. Yes, immediately after it happened, he sentenced me, after she drowned, I mean the daughter, Hanna, after she drowned in a lake right before my eyes, and I couldn’t, listen, there were tall waves, huge, and I couldn’t … What could I …
    You don’t believe me. You’re moving your ears dubiously, even crossing them as if to dismiss the possibility … I know exactly what you’re thinking:
The duke? Our kind and gentle duke? It cannot be!
Everyone in town thinks so, and honestly, sometimes I think so myself. Perhaps you’ve heard that we used to be good friends, the duke and I. Soul mates. Yes, after all, I was his jester for twenty years, until the disaster befell me. His beloved jester … And to think that he, of all people, decreed such a terrible decree … How did it even occur to him?
    My lips suddenly quiver, and the donkey cockshis head and studies them. I fear he might read in them words I would rather keep to myself, or those that I am forbidden by the edict to even utter, or remember, even the slightest hint or word or thought of the person she would be today, if she were. I may not imagine her at all, nor dream her image. Nor are longings, yearnings, and so forth permitted. Or sudden heart pangs, or churning contractions of the gut, nor any kind of crying, whether sobbing or the faintest sleepy whimper. A memory-amputee is what I am, donkey. Abstaining from my daughter. A prisoner in a tiny remote cell inside my spirit, until, as in the poem we once read together, the duke and I,
“My life (which liked the sun and the moon) resembles something that has not occurred.”
    COBBLER:
    There is no longer anything in me
    of myself that used to be.
    Only motion remains.
    That is all I can give you
    today, my girl,
    only motion
    that might seep
    into the stillness
    where you lie.
    Only that,
    only thus will I know
    today, my daughter,
    how to be your father—
    MIDWIFE:
    I stood in the window
    of my home, at night,
    alone,