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‘I do realise of course that it’s just a drop in the ocean. We are hardly
moving at all in the enlargement of our humanity. Perhaps only marking time,’
she said lighting another cigarette.

‘Well, I suppose in my case there was a sort of relief in action, but you see I
think it’s terribly important to stop that sort of inhumanity, because if people
think nothing of treating living creatures like that the day will come, as of
course it did in Germany, when people think nothing of doing the same to
their fellow men.’

"He could be a precious lover, and, unlike
the others, could recreate from my body, neat, self-contained and selfish as in
the beginning I think it was, a landscape from Paradise. One in whose leaves and secret rills and trembling sunlight we had laughed and bathed together,
ravished."

"The new King recalls once, at an important dinner whose purpose eludes
him now – and probably did even at the time – looking across at this
brother and thinking, He soaks everything up. He felt himself a rock,
absorbing nothing, reshaped over time by the will of the water. His
brother was the meadow."

She asked me how I was, really and
truly, and she placed her hand on my arm. What she meant was how was
I getting on being alone in the house, reshaping my life? She said she
knew that people tend to stop asking after a few months, maybe a year,
and that can make a person feel ashamed if they are still suffering.

Finally free after being held hostage for 443 days.

"The purpose of these animals was no longer to exist for themselves –
as was their right. They now served as spectacles, and human
requirements methodically punctuated their days."

'When the Germans wished to bury their massacres the bulldozers did
not find it easy to separate the bodies: The bottom layers had to be dynamited, and sometimes axes had to be used.These lower strata were, with few exceptions, naked; but further up they
were in their underwear, and higher still they were fully dressed: like the
different formations of rocks.The Jews were at the bottom, then
Ukrainians, gypsies,etc'

''The soul of man is a far country, which cannot be approached or
explored. Most of the dead were poor and illiterate. But every single one of
them had dreamed dreams, seen visions and had amazing experiences, even
the babes in arms (perhaps especially the babes in arms). Though most of
them had never lived outside the Podol slum, their lives and histories were
as rich and complex as Lisa Erdman-Berenstein’s. ''

''The women were trying to cover their breasts too with their arms. It was terrible and strange to see them concerned for their
modesty, while they were being taken away to be shot.''

''Some became old in minutes.
When Lisa’s gift or curse of second sight had failed her so miserably and
her husband was snatched away in the dark, her hair had gone grey
overnight—the old saying was true. But now she saw it happen in front of
her eyes. In the next group but one after theirs she saw Sonia; and her raven
hair turned grey in the time it took for her to be stripped and sent away to be
shot. ''

I like the idea of clarification. “More light! More
light!” More light—and more love.

I call to mind a saying of Heraclitus: “The soul of man is a far
country, which cannot be approached or explored.” It is not altogether true,
I think, but success must depend on a fair harbour opening in the cliffs.

And lastly, yes it is
possible there may be a slight bisexual component in my make-up, but
nothing specifically sexual, or at least nothing I haven’t been able to cope
with very easily. On the whole I feel my life has been more bearable by
reason of my closeness to women

But you
see, I was living a lie. He said he loved me, but if he had known I had
Jewish blood he would have hated me. Whenever he said “I love you” I
understood it as “I hate you.”

I told her I thought she was cured of everything but life, so to speak.
She did not dispute this. She took away with her a reasonable prospect of
survival, in an existence that would doubtless never be less than difficult,
and might often be solitary.

All who have
hitherto, in a learning capacity, had the opportunity to read Frau Anna’s
journal have had that feeling: the “white hotel” is known to them, it is the
body of their mother. It is a place without sin, without our load of remorse

''I have
my doubts if we ever deal with a memory from childhood; memories
relating to childhood may be all that we possess. Our childhood memories
show us our earliest years not as they were but as they appeared at the later
period when the memories were aroused. ''

“And if I’m not thinking about sex, I’m thinking about death,” she
added bitterly. “Sometimes both at the same time.” She took a knife from
the cheese board, and twisted it in tense hands.

“It’s not as if,” she said, “the world around me is sexual. It would
excuse me, to some extent, if it were. If there were fish spawning in
millions, grapes loading the vines, dates weighing the palm trees, peaches
lusting for the bull to come in the night.”

In the end, of course, it was even more enchanting than before. Lying
joined in love, gazing into each other’s eyes, they could not believe
unfriendly words had passed between them.

"Her phantasy strikes me as like Eden
before the Fall—not that love and death did not happen there, but there was
no time in which they could have a meaning. "

Everything I've heard about this book terrifies and intrigues me. It looks like it will be a difficult undertaking: epistolary, in verse , phantasmagorical , tense. Yet I'm drawn to it completely. I'm going in blind though I have a vague knowledge about its darkness due to its setting ( 1930- 1940's) in 20th century Europe. Either it will change me or leave me frustrated and bald( from pulling out my hair )

"How strange it was that despite these earlier
memories my lifelong memento would be the scars on my left hand, scars
from one fraught encounter amid thousands of peaceful ones. For the rest of
my life, my hand would be marked by his sudden spell of madness."

"I sensed a wilderness and felt an urge to fill it
or at least alleviate it temporarily, to alleviate something of his and
something of mine, and once again, as I brought his face closer, my hand
made certain things vanish and conjured others into existence."

"No more tricks, no more abracadabra, no more misdirection or
uncertainty, no more seeing things one way while most people saw them
another. No more standing in darkened rooms trying to detect the source of
something that enters abruptly, demanding attention. No more. And yet
there is no such thing as an entirely vacant space."

As you grow older your fantasy life starts slipping away, early daydreams,
romantic and professional, less and less likely to materialise. The options
narrow, ships set sail one by one. I had seen many, many ships depart. In
my mid-thirties the harbour, once crowded, had begun to empty.

' Nothing new
emerges from keeping to a straight line … My son is still waiting for his
swerve.'

'' I know – and within it, anyway, lay something deeper, which is
what I learned over time: that human emotions are repeated, we have but a
finite number, and watching my instruments in motion and the gestures they
captured I saw how the same gestures are repeated over the centuries in one
vast theatre of the soul.''