Fingers Pointing Somewhere Else Read Online Free PDF Page B

Prague 10 district. It is called “A Merry Christmas Party.”
    â€œYou,” the principal points her finger, “you will write the letter. And you: copy it over in your best handwriting. I want to see it before vacation. You have two weeks.”
    She opens a drawer and spends a long time looking for something. She seems to have forgotten about us. I don’t dare utter a word. Suddenly she stands up and stares me straight in the eye.
    â€œIt’s high time the truth be told!” she shouts as if from a deep sleep. The tips of my fingers tingle with excitement. The principal hands me an outline.

    I fly home, riding the crest of the moment. Outline, point one: greeting. Dear President Eisenhower! Outline, point four. The horrors of war. Like in Soviet films. Signature: We, the children of Czechoslovakia. And it is I who was given this historic task!

    Fourth grade took something out of me. Just last year I swam through life like a fish through water. Now I’m a dry cork on the surface. I tread water and try to get down into it. Life’s everyday certainties are irrevocably gone.
    Everything is just pretend. Since I can still faithfully imitatethe loud, pudgy little girl I was not so long ago, no one has caught on yet. For example, everyone believes I love writing essays, but actually it bores me to death. My “Merry Christmas Party” was made up out of thin air. About thin-air kids doing thin-air things. In spite of this, everyone believes I’m going to be a writer. I’m sentenced to fiction for life.
    It doesn’t bother me. I play laboriously at playing. Sometimes I sense adults’ fleeting anxiety that everything’s already happened. I secretly hope for a “jolt,” for a catapult of transformation, as if I were a larva that ravenous inertia drives forth from its cocoon.

    Is this my jolt? Presenting mankind’s credentials in a letter? It’s high time the truth be told! For ten days I write as if in a fever.
    First I describe rivers of blood. I awaken the conscience of the American government. I speak with Eisenhower as an equal, but then behind all mankind’s back I chew on my pen. I cross out whole mountains of pages, I don’t sleep, I fall exhausted at the foot of the White House steps. Hana’s mother says the whole thing is pretty stupid. Hana, of course, repeats this to me.
    Finally the letter is ready. It contains the horrors of war, as depicted in films. It contains many, many exclamation points. It contains the sentence: “After all, I myself am still a child!” Hana contends that it is too long, but doesn’t put up a fight. She copies it perfectly, without a single mistake.

    That evening I find an excuse to go out, and I run over to Hana’s. My authorial pride goads me on. I long to see that beautifully copied letter again. I want to touch it before Eisenhower does. To weigh in my hands the paper confection in which my challenge to the White House will arrive.
    Hana awkwardly lets me in. Usually we run right to her room, but today we stand in the hallway, shifting from foot to foot, as if on a train. Suddenly, through the wall, I hear an explosion of laughter and the voice of Hana’s mother. She’s reading my letter to her guests. “We children are too weak; our hands cannot carry bombs,” she declaims in a flat, cadaverous voice. That’s how the TV comedian they call the Sad Man speaks. Hana doesn’t laugh, but her tidy, perfidious face makes it clear that she completely agrees with the antics on the other side of the wall.
    â€œMy parents insist that the principal’s crazy,” she says defensively, looking straight at me with prim courage.
    â€œYou’re the one who’s crazy! Just wait till there’s a war!”
    I turn on my heel and trot down the dark hallway. Hana quietly closes the door as waves of laughter billow forth. Blinded by my humiliation, I vanish into the