Absence Read Online Free PDF

hidden by the shadow of his helmet.
    For a long time there are no passersby, only the roaring of the cars, many trucks among them. Then some children pass on their way home from school. One of the boys stations himself under the soldier’s nose, the tips of his shoes touching the tips of the soldier’s boots, and stays there until the soldier’s fingers suddenly start drumming on his belt buckle; a moment later, the sentry is alone again. Next, at an intersection within his field of vision, a small group of pedestrians appears, whose festive dress radiates an eerie splendor in this workaday landscape. This because of the dark colors—the black of the men’s suits and the uniform violet of the women’s attire, even of their hats and handbags. This group is only the advance guard; more and more of the holidaymakers follow, in pairs, in clusters, and finally in a swarm that overflows the footpath and takes up part of the road. It is in no sense a parade that passes the war memorial; these people don’t even seem to notice it or the
soldier. Far from marching, they seem to be strolling, taking the air, as it were. Their self-absorption, their easy chatter, their unconstrained gestures, the glow of contentment in the eyes even of the children show that their festival, though drawing to a close, is not yet over. It is not a wedding or a baptism but a public religious festival, the just-experienced ritual of which continues to hold them together as they talk about purely secular concerns far from their place of worship. It is a great festival observed only by this particular group, an offshoot of a foreign race. Of this there are no outward indications, but only their sense of time, which is radically different from that of the figures in the cars speeding by. It is most apparent in the young women, who are all wearing high-heeled boots and costumes with short, tight skirts, which shimmer as they pass; for them this is in part a festival of the flesh. As soon as they get home, each one of them, the giantess as well as the midget, will give herself to her companion, and in their rooms the language of union will prevail until nightfall. Moving slowly along the road, glassy-eyed in the light, they are making ready for the man who will become their husband in the darkened tent.
    The soldier is no longer standing by the memorial. Only his rifle is leaning against the pedestal. The radiotelephone is silent. His steel helmet is lying on the riverbank, half buried in sand, full of egg-shaped pebbles and pinecones. The murmur of the water, the thundering of a train, and the clattering of a helicopter are caught in it.
    With rippling hair, the soldier runs through an underpass, which is so long that for a time the end of it is hidden from sight. He passes young soldiers like himself coming from the opposite direction, all carrying identical
plastic bags, on their way back to the barracks from the supermarket; though few are engaged in conversation, none notices him. Two girls, walking arm in arm as though for protection, also look through him, as if they had eyes only for the exit. He stops once, takes the dagger from his felt boot, and scrapes away a tiny inscription, almost obscured by the grooves in the concrete, from the wall of the tunnel; after that, no longer in a hurry, he takes his book from his hip pocket and, now striding straight ahead, immerses himself in it.
    Emerging from the underpass, the soldier is in a different part of the world. The hedges by the roadside have evergreen, cup-shaped leaves, gleaming far and wide in the light of a southern sun, and the cone of rubble on the horizon is traversed by a dried-out, petrified riverbed. As he walks, the soldier puts on dark glasses and undoes the zipper of his jacket; behind him, far far away, hardly distinguishable from the clouds, there is a northern, snow-covered mountain.
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    Her back to the window, whose drawn curtain captures the sun, the young