I Called Him Necktie Read Online Free PDF Page A

my arms. I’ve got it, he cried, there is no perfect poem! Its perfection arises precisely from its imperfection. Do you see? I did not want to see. He, into my ear: I have an image in myhead. I see it clearly before me. Its colors are glaring and harsh in their brightness. But as soon as I rush to capture it, it explodes, and what I write down are separate bits that don’t form a whole. Do you see it now? It’s as if I tried to glue together a broken vase, piece by piece. But the shards are so fragmentary that I don’t know which goes with which or how I fit them together, there’s always one fragment left over. But this fragment! It makes the poem. It alone gives meaning. His voice was feverish: My requiem should be a vase with water shooting through the glue in its cracks.
    He let go of me. I swayed. I felt the imprint of his fingers on my arms.
    You’re sick, I whispered.
    He replied: You are too.
    It was a warning. I heard it and ignored it.
32
    Days later, in physics class, Kumamoto passed me a note. It said: Tonight at eight. At the intersection. I want to put it right. I still have the note. I know exactly where in my room, which drawer it’s in. Under an ancient fossil with an insect trapped inside. Now and then I take it out and read, word for word, like a prayer: Tonight at eight. At the intersection. I want to put it right.
    His illness.
    I believe that was definitely his intention. He wanted and wanted and wanted. To put it right. He knew he couldnot honor what he owed his father, and he knew that his good spirits would not prevail forever. You can’t go on maintaining forever: I can’t do anything about it. At a certain age, which he didn’t want to reach, you must see that you can always do something about it. This was his illness: Too young he recognized that nothing is perfect, and he was too young to draw the right conclusions from it. Since this was my illness too, perhaps he wanted to warn me.
    When I left the house that evening the air was damp and clammy. Like a wet cloth wrapped around your body. I was tense, ran, the asphalt soft under my feet. Already from a distance I spotted him. He had turned his face towards me. A searing look, at me. Raised his hand, called out. His mouth opened and closed again. I didn’t understand him. Eclipsed by the noise in the street, his call died away as he, without turning around, plunged like a swimmer into the traffic, headlong before my eyes. The outstretched hand. Squealing brakes. The hand still raised for seconds in the heavy air. Then it flopped down. Someone shouted: An accident! Panting, I reached the spot. Sharp elbows in my side. I burrowed through the rows of passersby. Kumamoto, covered in blood. His hand, white and thin. The howling of sirens. I stepped back. Blind. Blinded. Was pushed away, far away. Hey, you! You alright? I sank down onto the pavement. Beside me was a torn garbage bag. Rotting meat. I lost consciousness. When I came to again, they had already taken him away. Above me an advertisement for face masks. You alright? I stood up and walked.
33
    I walked home, legs trembling. Each person I met had hiseyes. Kumamoto everywhere. Thick bodies, bones inside, organs, nothing permanent. His death – Was he actually dead? – had given me x-ray vision. I remember the woman walking in front of me. She was beautiful. Delicately built. I looked at her back and watched, breathing in and out, her spine swinging to and fro as she walked. This spine, I understood all of a sudden, it is moving towards death. I remember the man who ran up to her, took her by the arm, kissed her hand. He too, ashes and dust. My parents. I remember. Mother, a skeleton, was sitting in front of the television. Father, a skeleton, was drinking frothy beer. Ah, there you are at last. Bare skulls eyed me from staring hollows. What’s to become of you, I heard. Running around late at night. Have you forgotten? Your future! Father bit into a piece of raw sausage. Tearing