Pablito’s Reviews > Swimming in the Dark > Status Update

I suppose the scariest thing was the lack of certainty. The fifties were over, and people no longer disappeared for speaking out. But in the sixties --- and even later --- things were more arbitrary.Almost anything was possible, depending upon who happened to denounce you and what they thought they could get from you.

I understood enough for anger to collect at the bottom of my stomach. The fact that I couldn't tell anyone made it all worse. I'd been handed a poisoned gift, powerful truths I could never admit to knowing.

That year, Mother said, there had been unrest, student strikes all across the country. So the Party had turned on the Jews. They had called them traitors, dismissed them from their jobs. This was why Beniak's family had left. Once they were gone, no one ever spoke about them again. One day your country is yours, and the next it isn't.

This had to be it, I thought. I shut the catalogue, tried to forget about it. But the title [Giovanni's Room] wouldn't leave me in peace, tantalizing like a loose tooth.

The law of gravity applies to memories too. And one day. as I sat in the library trying to work, to clear my mind, I remembered the book. I found his name in the card catalogue of the foreign literature department. Baldwin, James. There was a list of his works, and only one of them had no official translation: Giovanni's Room.