The Attic by John K. Cox Read Free Book Online Page A

fresh glue and rain, looking like some enormous rose petal. On it was written, in beautiful black letters:

    “ Let ’ s go, Capricorn, ” I said.
    Or he said: “ Off we go, guitar-meister. ”
    At any rate, we headed in that direction . . .
    At the door they asked to see our passes. Igor pulled out a thousand-dinar note and slipped it into the man ’ s hand. The guy took a look at us and then gave us two pornographic postcards; the program was printed on the back of them, along with the words “ No Admittance Under Sixteen Years of Age. ”
    “ No matter, ” I said. “ I would make a point of attending out of professional curiosity, even if I were under sixteen . . . ”
    Billy the Goat laughed. “ That ’ s a good way to put it, ” he said.
    “ Flowers grow on the dung-heap , ” I said sagely.
    “ What do you mean by that? What kind of flowers? ”
    “ Nothing, nothing. I was just thinking out loud. Besides . . . ”
    “ Why do you always stumble to a stop before you finish your thought? ” he said. “ What kind of flowers are at issue here? ”
    “ The ones that are sprouting from me. With their roots in my heart and their blossoms in the sunlight. With their pollen in my eye . . . Those are the ones. ”
    ?!
    After some sort of incident — I don ’ t remember what — Eurydice either couldn ’ t or didn ’ t want to come see me in the attic anymore. Maybe it was after that note she ’ d left me while I ’ d been licking my plate clean in some pub. I don ’ t know. I no longer even know if that attic ever existed or if I just conjured it up. And I also don ’ t know if Eurydice ever climbed up into that attic through that narrow, dirty stairwell, where the cockroaches rustle about when the light catches them by surprise. Then, with a light crack, they squish under your feet like berries. A little greasy spot remains; it spreads out and becomes darker the farther it gets from the epicenter of the eruption. I don ’ t know — I don ’ t believe — that she ever climbed those filthy steps. But then where did that slip of paper come from, which I found at some point under the bell jar next to the rocking chair? Maybe she passed the note to the cleaning lady downstairs in the hall, and then she put it under the bell jar so the rats wouldn ’ t shred it like lettuce. Who knows if I ever really read this note? Or whether she, Eurydice, really wrote it with her own hand. But I can ’ t believe that I planted this note here myself. For God ’ s sake, how would I have been able to imitate her handwriting so skillfully . . . ? It truly was odd handwriting. And worthy of further comment. At first glance it resembled Sanskrit. To tell the truth, I ’ ve never actually seen Sanskrit, but in any case I think that Eurydice ’ s handwriting has its roots in some secret dream. In places her writing was utterly illegible. All the consonants looked like a single letter, which looked like all of them together, so that you could never determine precisely which was intended. Each and every vowel was also written identically, with the one difference that you could at least produce its sound: that eternal letter — a multitude of circular, oval, large-eyed and bewitched letters rolled around between those indeterminate, exotic consonants. Come to think of it, everything she wrote looked like it contained only one and the same imperishable letter, so that her words, once written, scrolled past like a vague tolling of bells. But I never had sufficient time then to ponder all this. I was always completely preoccupied with deciphering her notes, which I found unexpectedly here and there, most frequently right in the attic upon returning from my travels. These really weren ’ t missives in the true sense of the word. On a slip of paper ripped from a memo pad she would string together a necklace of sighs, with pretty much every other little square containing either an O , or a kiss, or a tear, or an eye. It all