An Offering for the Dead Read Online Free PDF Page A

proved. To be credible, I would have to produce remnants or shards; but there is nothing left. Only words, and words too are no longer valid. For what does it mean to say: there is something behind me. Earlier, there used to be nothing more reliable than chronology. Everything was precisely divided and could be expressed in numbers. One man was thirty years old, and another had lived a thousand years ago. The calculation was correct, no doubt, but the premise is no longer the same. Time is shattered. How can there be a yesterday? How can there be a thousand years ago? All I have to do is turn to the people who lived a thousand years ago, and I can converse with them. So what good are the numbers? For if I do not turn to those people, then they do not exist, and no number alters the situation in the least. And it is the same with you, my friend, to whom I am speaking; you exist because you are listening to me. Or am I like a newborn baby, who claims: I am already nine months old. And a lot older, since I already lived in the blood of my parents and forebears. Yes, I have been living from the very beginning. That would probably be a childish statement, and yet ...?
    If ever it should again become necessary to articulate things in numbers, because otherwise people would get lost, then I will begin not with yesterday, not with my walk through the city, not with my dream; instead, we will have to reckon: so and so many hours or days or years from the moment when I was able to speak about it.
    At the table, I sat next to the hostess. It was the very place that I had tried out previously, when I was alone. This happened as a matter of course, and no one objected. We were celebrating something, and the hostess was the celebrant, and so was I, since I was sitting next to her. I do not know what was being celebrated. In any case, we wanted to be happy.
    If only I knew her name. And my friend's name, yes, his especially; for he was basically not what I picture as a friend. In no case was he like the friend to whom I may now be speaking. I could make up names, and everything would be fine. For example, the name Lysander would fit my friend quite nicely, I do not know why. Lysander was a general, who won a few important battles. He must have been a highly capable man, but I never met him in person. Yet who knows — I may run into him eventually. Or he may come to me on his own and take me to task when he learns that I have given his name to someone else. And what great disorder might result from that. That is why I would rather let it be.
    And "hostess" — what does that mean anyway? "Friend" would be better. She receives the guest; in her home, he can cleanse himself of the grime of his wanderings, she gives him new clothes, something to eat, and a place to sleep. And when the time comes, she sends him on his way with many gifts. That used to be the custom. She most likely also gave him good advice for his journey, and it was certainly not her fault if the guest did not leave her as a wiser man. Her name — I mean the hostess, next to whom I was allowed to sit — is probably something like Iona. Perhaps a letter is missing. I know of no woman who had this name. Perhaps it is not so significant for women. The sound is more important. They wrap themselves in it, and if the color is becoming, they keep the name. Iona evokes a hilly land by the sea. There is a surf and there are also lonely desert islands. The landscape is often foggy, and if the sun ever shines, it is magical.
    At dinner, she must have assumed that I knew her name. We were sitting very close together. I sensed her warmth and thereby also sensed her question: Why are you acting like that? For though I made every effort to conceal it, she must have sensed my question: Just who are you? So the two of us, while participating in the general conversation, listened closely to whatever was behind the words.
    Sometimes our hands touched. I do not know what her hands were like. As