Sublime

Gulchekhra, our “host mother”—they really called her that, as if we were tapeworms—came outside.

Our mother’s brother never came back after crossing the river that day. That was probably the winter of 1994, so I would have been eleven years old.

Table 6.1

(Ah, the Taronjís. The island, the town, the sombre charcoal burners, each kept his eyes firmly on their ankles when they passed by.) The Taronjís took anyone suspicious to the ditch by the side of the road, where the forest began, beyond the square in the old Jewish quarter. Or to the cliff where the road turned, just beyond Son Major.

The governess appeared, quiet as the grave, as is her wont and her domain, pretending her job is to keep me from dying, when actually it is to keep me from living, at least outside her control. We share the worry that I am secretly a loser, a latent embarrassment, even back in the day when I could still sneeze or cough without tiny bladder control