I Called Him Necktie Read Online Free PDF

teeth. I rushed across the hall. My shadow after me, into my room. The door fell quietly shut.
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    Here, take a sip. You must drink something.
    The tie, red and gray stripes, summoned me back to the park.
    Take it slowly, he said, that’s better.
    I was glad he didn’t say anything more than that.
    What can you say, I continued. What can you say when you’ve run out of words? After the door shut behind me, I felt a speechless emptiness. I lay down, speechless, ran in my thoughts towards the intersection again. Kumamoto’s mouth. What had he shouted? Again and again I tried to read it from his lips, again and again I tried and failed.Was it a word? A word like freedom? Or life? Or happiness? Was it a no? Or a yes? A simple greeting? Perhaps: Farewell? Was it my name? Or: Father? Perhaps: Mother? Or something of no importance and it was pointless to want to know.
    I spent the rest of the night in a trance. I didn’t sleep, yet I slept the sleep of a sleepwalker. As soon as I closed my eyes I saw the hand, in the dark chamber of my memory, Kumamoto’s hand, how it emerged, quite alone, rose from the black asphalt. It had pointed at me. At me of all the bystanders. And what upset me most about it was the sudden flush of shame, for this: I don’t know him. He doesn’t belong to me. I am happy to be pushed away. From him, who lies there, suffering. The shame had passed as quickly as it had come but it was no use pretending after the event that it was a natural reaction. It was there, I had felt it, it was always there, and with it the anger, so: Why had Kumamoto done something in public when it concerned only himself and himself alone? Why had he forced this cowardly shame on me? Never again, I swore, would I be dependent on someone else. Never again tangled in someone else’s fate. I wanted to enter a timeless room, where no one would ever startle me. Life would continue outside. I wanted to block it out, to hide away from it, not accept that it was happening to me. A fragment had penetrated my consciousness and made sense of Kumamoto’s requiem.
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    The next morning I stayed in bed. Nothing unusual. I’d often skipped school in the past. It had happened before that I’d stayed at home for three, four days, and because I made clever excuses, I’d been left in peace. The main thing was to bring home good grades. I made up for thelost hours thanks to my last reserves of zeal.
    This time, however, it was different.
    A week passed by. My parents were worried. A week later they were angry. A week later despairing. Despairing for a long time. Then angry again. Finally, worried. And so it went on, up and down, until I could no longer distinguish whether the weeks had turned into months, or the months into years. I had bolted the door to my room. Futile knocking, I did not answer. According to whether my parents were worried or angry or despairing, their knocking had a gray or white or black tone. It colored the silence, which absorbed me and resembled the silence of a dark forest. You walk along a winding path. Swaying treetops, the sun falling diagonally through the branches. In its beams shimmered spider webs, delicate designs of dreamy threads. You think: How quiet it is here. And recognize in the next moment that you are mistaken. The silence of the forest is an imbued silence. It is filled with the voices of the birds, the crackle of rotting wood. The beetles whirr. A tired leaf spins down. Like music the silence murmurs, like a song without beginning and end. This song is the origin of all other songs. In my room I realized: Silence has a body. It is alive. The dripping of the tap from the kitchen. Mother’s furry slippers. The ringing of the telephone. The fridge starts humming. Father’s slurping. Through the blocked-up keyhole I could hear what was outside breathing and was relieved not to have to mix my own breath with it. An itching on my scalp. I felt my hair growing.
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    Did he get in touch