Read Online Fingers Pointing Somewhere Else by Daniela Fischerova, Neil Bermel - Free Book Online Page A

those words float through the warm morning, how peaceful they sound in the spring breeze.
    Before me is a woman who has lived more than half a century. She has raised a son, managed a bank. She has proved her prowess at living and surviving; she is among those who determine the world’s tastes. And yet to her, madness is deliberate silliness, peeing impudently into the wind. Just “a bit of effort” and you can change your ways.
    I dig my fingers into the soil and close my eyes. My tongue clings to my mouth like a stuck zipper. Hot, dense anger rises inside me; it washes over me like blinding sea-spray. In that sentence is everything I am trying to escape: the godlike arrogance of peoplewith no doubts. The joviality of eyewitnesses to a catastrophe, the unfeeling righteousness of those who are sure of their figures, and that eternal, smoothly ironed serenity! Must I admit that at the root of my grumbling is envy? My entire will to tell stories springs from it — and it’s now been (alas!) thirty years.
    Finally I open my eyes and Mrs. P. glances at me encouragingly. The soft spring air floats on the breeze. And as sometimes happens to that scale inside us, the cramp of anger slackens and is replaced by sorrow, until it melts my bones and there is nothing in my field of vision but flowers. The morning sun shines through the tulips, its light gushes through the living tissue of petals. It is like an unexpected blow; I have no chance to resist their beauty. I burst into tears (for the first time since the
breach
) and flee headlong from yet another home.

    And so I ended my strange visit, and the life of Mrs. P. and her son went on without me for another thirty years.
    The times themselves changed markedly. The word “taste” faded and retreated to the twilight of speech: the era of its supremacy is past. I must say that I regret this a little, but the dogma of those I share my life with says that taste is a haughty hoax. The buoys that warned swimmers have long since been dashed against the cliff.
    At sixteen I voted defiantly for chaos. As I grow older, I long for an orderly foundation to cling to; I pray for an easy repose and I simplify my life as much as I can. Sometimes I dream of that classroom from my childhood, but I am no longer prancing down the runway like a freak; I am sitting in the anonymous pack below, roaring with laughter like the others, falling in a heap from our chairs. We are inside, laughing without rancor at those on the outside: crazy accountants, Boarskins, traitorous fathers. Outside, I know, is the abyss — and for almost half a century I have lived so adroitly that I have not ended up in it.

    It was half coincidence that led me back to Mrs. P. thirty years later, and half the gravitational pull of my own tracks. Mrs. P. had hardly changed at all: I found her perfectly coiffed and the apartment spotless, as if I’d left only yesterday. She remembered who I was, and took me into the salon, which was just the same as before.
    â€œYou look good,” she offered — for my Boarskin days were behind me. Now my main ambition is to blend into the background.
    â€œThank you,” I answered. “I hear you have a famous son. You must be glad he’s done so well.”
    Mrs. P. looked straight at me. “I have no son,” she said firmly. I did not understand. I had seen him that very day on television; he had been chairing a conference. I recognized him mostly by his resemblance to his mother, not because he had stuck so firmly in my memory.
    â€œFor me, my son has ceased to exist,” she continued without a quiver, “because he’s rejected me. He has his own life, and there is no room for me in it, because he doesn’t need me anymore. But I’ve forgotten about him too. Supposedly he has children — I don’t know, that’s what people have told me. He moved out and I’m not interested in where he’s living now.