Voice of Our Shadow Read Online Free PDF Page B

that it is far to the East — the last free, decadent stronghold before you roll over the flat gray plains into Hungary or Czechoslovakia — all my memories of it are washed in a slow, end-of-the-afternoon light. Sometimes even now, even after everything that has happened, I wish very much that I was back there.
    There are cafés where you can sit all morning over one cup of wonderful coffee and read a book without anyone ever disturbing you. Small, smelly movie theaters with wooden seats, where a couple of sad-looking models put on a “live” fashion show for you before the feature goes on. I had a favorite gasthaus where the waiter brought dogs water in a white porcelain bowl with the name of the restaurant on the side.
    It is also the only city I know that gives up its best parts grudgingly, unhappily. Paris slaps you in the face with oceanic boulevards, golden croissants, and charm on every square inch of its surface. New York sneers — completely assured and indifferent. It knows that no matter how much dirt or crime or fear there is, it is still the center of everything. It can do what it wants because it knows you will always need it.
    Most visitors like Vienna at first sight (including myself!) because of the Opera or the Ringstrasse or the Brueghels in the Kunsthistorisches Museum, but these things are only grand camouflage. The first summer I was there, I discovered that beneath the lovely gloss is a sad, suspicious city that reached its peak a hundred, two hundred years ago. It is now regarded by the world as a delightful oddity — a Miss Havisham in her wedding dress — and the Viennese know it.
    Everything went right for me. I met a nice girl from the Tirol, and we had a fling that left us tired but unscarred. She was a tour guide for one of the companies in town and consequently knew every nook and cranny in the place: the Jugendstil swimming pool at the top of the Wienerwald, a cozy restaurant where they served the original Czech Budweiser beer, a walk through the First District that made you feel as if you were back in the fifteenth century. We had a rainy weekend in Venice and a sunny one in Salzburg. She took me to the airport at the end of August, and we promised to write. A few months later she did, telling me she was marrying a nice computer salesman from Charlottesville, Virginia, and if I was ever down their way …
    My father picked me up at the airport and, as soon as we were in the car, told me Mother had leukemia. What came to mind was a picture of the last time I had seen her: a white hospital room — white curtains, bedspread, chairs. In the middle of the bed hovering over that eternity of white was her small red head. Her hair had been chopped short, and she no longer made the quick, sharp movements of a hummingbird. Because they kept her sedated most of the time, it often took minutes before she fully recognized anyone.
    “Mama? It’s Joe. I’m here, Mama. Joe .”
    “Joe? Joe. Joe! Joe and Ross! Where are my two boys?” She wasn’t disappointed when we told her Ross wasn’t there. She accepted it as she accepted each spoonful of colorless soup or creamed spinach from her plate.
    I went directly to the hospital. The only obvious change was a pronounced thinness about her face. Taken together, her features and the wrong color of her skin reminded me of a very thin, very old letter written on gray paper in violet ink. She asked me where I had been; when I said Europe, she gazed for a time at the wall as if she was trying to figure out what Europe was. She was dead by Christmas.
    After her funeral my father and I took a week off and flew down to the heat, colors, and freshness of the Virgin Islands. We sat on the beach, swam, and took long, panting walks up into the hills. Each night the beauty of the sunset made us feel sad, empty, and heroic. We agreed on that. We drank dark rum and talked until two or three in the morning. I told him I wanted to go back and live in Europe after I