Kaddish for an Unborn Child Read Online Free PDF

yet finished, no way, there was something still to come, and I was almost beginning to fidget on my chair because, naturally, I knew very well what was still to come, and I was thinking that if she had to rack her brains over it this long, then I would prompt her myself, when finally she added with great bitterness: “. . . a Jew,” and all at once, yet quite unexpectedly, even though I had been counting on the word, waiting for it, watching out for it, almost insisting on it, well anyway, the world all at once went into a spin for a split second, with a sudden, gut-wrenching free-falling sensation, and I thought that if that woman were to look at me now, then I would mutate:
I will be
a bald-headed woman in a red negligee in front of the mirror
, there is no escaping that curse, I thought, none, and I can see only one way out, I thought, and that is, I thought, to get up straightaway from the table and either slap the woman, I thought, or screw her. Needless to say, I did neither, just as I don’t do so many other things that I have thought, often with reason, that I ought to do, and this was not even one of those categorical imperatives over whose violation I could more justifiably shake my head; my temper had hardly flared up, so to speak, than it was snuffed out, beside which, like stray shadows, several nasty but familiar thoughts were in the offing: Why should I bother to convince either the woman or myself, since I have long been convinced about everything, I do what I have to do, and although I don’t know why I have to, I do it anyway in the hope, indeed the knowledge, that there will come a time when there will be no need to have to, and I shall be free to stretch out on my comfortable bed, after they have first made me work hard for it, of course, after they have whistled out the signal for me to dig a grave for myself, and at present, even though so much time has already passed—God help us!—I am still just at the digging stage. Then my wife arrived, and I, my feelings eased, instantly and, so to say, involuntarily thought, “What a lovely Jewish girl!” the way she traversed a greenish-blue carpet as if she were making her way on the sea, and she stepped, triumphantly yet still timidly ever closer towards me for she wanted to speak with me, because she knew that I am who I am, B., writer and literary translator, “a piece” of whose she had read which she
absolutely
had to discuss with me, my (then as yet future but now ex-) wife said, and she was still very young, fifteen years younger than me, though I was not yet really all that old either, but then already quite old enough, as ever. Yes, that is how I see her now, in this night of mine, in my big, all-illuminating, lightning-bright night and also in the dark night that descended upon me later, much later, yes:
Sometimes I wonder why I spend a lonely night
dreaming of a song . . . and I am once again with you
, I whistle, amazed that I should be whistling, and “Stardust” at that, which is what we always whistled, even though I am now in the habit of whistling only Gustav Mahler, nothing but Gustav Mahler, his Ninth Symphony. But I suppose this is quite beside the point, unless anyone should happen to be familiar with Mahler’s Ninth Symphony, in which case they would be able to surmise from its mood, rightfully and with complete justice, my frame of mind, if they happened to be curious about it and were not willing to make do with the direct disclosures emanating from me, from which the necessary conclusions can likewise be drawn.
When our love was new and
each kiss an inspiration . . .
    â€œNo!” something bellows, howls, within me, I don’t wish to remember, to dunk let’s say ladyfingers instead of petites madeleines (unknown, even as unprocurable articles, in this benighted part of the world) into my cup of Garzon tea mixture, though of course I do wish to remember, willingly or not, I can