MY FATHER’S: black leather folded and opened so many times over the years that the places it folded were white. The edges were frayed. It was narrow. He was a small man and his narrow black leather one looked small even in his hands. He was small but he seemed big. As a little boy I stood beside him at hardware store checkout counters looking up at him pulling it from his back pocket and opening it for the stranger behind the register. And I remember in those times the weight that came down from him onto me, crushing me who was shy and did not want to see because it was not mine to see—my father showed me nothing of what was inside until the day it all came exploding out in blood and bones and fire. I did not want to see but at the same time I did want to, very much, because he was my father and it was mine to see
Read moreMan Opening His Wallet
MY FATHER’S: black leather folded and opened so many times over the years that the places it folded were white. The edges were frayed. It was narrow. He was a small man and his narrow black leather one looked small even in his hands. He was small but he seemed big. As a little boy I stood beside him at hardware store checkout counters looking up at him pulling it from his back pocket and opening it for the stranger behind the register. And I remember in those times the weight that came down from him onto me, crushing me who was shy and did not want to see because it was not mine to see—my father showed me nothing of what was inside until the day it all came exploding out in blood and bones and fire. I did not want to see but at the same time I did want to, very much, because he was my father and it was mine to see
Read moreBack In Time
I. WHERE MAGDA IS NAMED
Once more the story began, for me, on that day-night of Santa Rosa. Lamas and I were in the beer hall, christened “Munich,” in Lavanda. The place was heating up, filling with impatient customers, smoke and voices. There was the continuous evening clinking of mugs and utensils. It was then that Magda and her life, in bits and pieces, began to emerge and expand.
Santa Rosa was back again and threatening to play a trick on Lavanda and Buenos Aires. September 30: the first day of spring. But one must put up with her as a friend and sweat out, almost gasping, the heat and humidity. The solicitor thought about it, but shook his head.
Now it was Lavanda and one had to wait for the noisy arrival of Rosa, the only nice whore, who figures, naughty girl, in Gregory XIII’s book of saints.
I could not remember having known any woman as flirtatious as her. None with her distant thunder, with her jokes like children playing with fireworks, suddenly to preside, so high up, over our conscious breathing, with thunder rolls that announced the end of the rotten world, to cease abruptly and go off with a distant carnival cackle.
She is known to have descended to Earth only once, in Sirilund, Norway, seduced by Lieutenant Glahn.
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