Read Online Forgiving the Angel by Jay Cantor - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Jay Cantor
Ads: Link
to the party, to the work against Hitler, and to the pleasures of the Lusks’ home, the books everywhere, the burnished wood, the warmth of Lusk’s father (a cultured and famous neurologist), the fierce debates at the dinner table.
And that life together also gave Lusk many opportunities to eavesdrop. “It was the same when he prepared tea for a visitor,” he heard Dora saying to his mother one morning, and he stopped outside the kitchen door to listen. “When Franz performed even a simple, seemingly insignificant action like that,” she said, “he made it seem as if he were doing it for someone that he revered.”
His mother, from the sound of it, must be making Dora some tea—though apparently with an inferior, only human level of concentration.
“His manner gave everything he did a religious intensity,” Dora said, and Lusk could easily imagine her infuriatingfond smile. “Of course, this thoroughness kept him so busy that he didn’t manage to put the cup of tea on the table. He used up all his strength in the preparation.”
His mother placed something that sounded solid on the round glass table in the alcove off the kitchen. “Then there was no tea, Dora?” his mother said. “Was it Kafka’s concern that friends were supposed to drink? You make me wonder if the man had ever been thirsty.”
At that, Dora had run through the swinging door and right past Lusk. She said nothing about his spying, just rushed on toward their bedroom, weeping. Apparently, no one but Kafka had ever known what thirst truly meant.
Lusk decided to learn all he could about his rival. He read
The Trial
—unfinished—and
The Castle
, also unfinished, both of them stories about and by a petit-bourgeois defeatist who couldn’t even manage to give his character a name. They showed no social and political awareness.
Lusk told her that as he and Dora leafleted on Unter den Linden. She said nothing, and handed a man in a cloth cap a leaflet for their last big rally before the vote, and smiled at him, but the man didn’t look at that lovely gesture in his rush to get to a warmer place. Lusk, overcome by love, decided he must get Dora a better coat.
Their post was near the university, a place busy with a mix of students, bourgeois, workers, yet as everyone rushed by, their faces set against leaflets and cold, Dora said she felt as though it wasn’t the German working class against Hitler anymore, only the two of them.
He reassured her that the party had posted many otherteams up and down the avenue, and, in any case, a Communist should always know he’s not alone; he’s part of the masses in motion.
But what if a Communist
wanted
, if only occasionally, to be alone with his wife? How could he do that as long as a ghost was always with them, too? Lusk had to reduce the writer in size so he could blow him away. He told Dora that
The Trial
was meant to convince the petite bourgeoisie that one needn’t take up the struggle for justice; a man was an isolated atom, and all struggles end in defeat.
Dora, oddly, agreed. Joseph K’s struggle was futile, but Lusk didn’t understand why. In fact, no one who hadn’t known Franz could understand him.
“That will certainly limit his readership.”
She ignored that. “Franz condemns Joseph K. because he tries to shape his life differently from the life of crucifixion, the only life there is.”
Dora, he wanted to say—to cry, perhaps, as if from the cross—if you think there’s no life but crucifixion, what do you think we’re doing here handing out leaflets? What are we struggling for?
“You can hold back from the suffering of the world,” Dora said, “but perhaps this holding back is the one suffering you could have avoided.”
He could tell from her tone that she was quoting
him
, and wondered why the phrases didn’t make his ears bleed. Before he could reply, one of the Nazi trucks came by, with Hitler’s voice blaring from a gramophone record. Dora watched it pass.
And that life together also gave Lusk many opportunities to eavesdrop. “It was the same when he prepared tea for a visitor,” he heard Dora saying to his mother one morning, and he stopped outside the kitchen door to listen. “When Franz performed even a simple, seemingly insignificant action like that,” she said, “he made it seem as if he were doing it for someone that he revered.”
His mother, from the sound of it, must be making Dora some tea—though apparently with an inferior, only human level of concentration.
“His manner gave everything he did a religious intensity,” Dora said, and Lusk could easily imagine her infuriatingfond smile. “Of course, this thoroughness kept him so busy that he didn’t manage to put the cup of tea on the table. He used up all his strength in the preparation.”
His mother placed something that sounded solid on the round glass table in the alcove off the kitchen. “Then there was no tea, Dora?” his mother said. “Was it Kafka’s concern that friends were supposed to drink? You make me wonder if the man had ever been thirsty.”
At that, Dora had run through the swinging door and right past Lusk. She said nothing about his spying, just rushed on toward their bedroom, weeping. Apparently, no one but Kafka had ever known what thirst truly meant.
Lusk decided to learn all he could about his rival. He read
The Trial
—unfinished—and
The Castle
, also unfinished, both of them stories about and by a petit-bourgeois defeatist who couldn’t even manage to give his character a name. They showed no social and political awareness.
Lusk told her that as he and Dora leafleted on Unter den Linden. She said nothing, and handed a man in a cloth cap a leaflet for their last big rally before the vote, and smiled at him, but the man didn’t look at that lovely gesture in his rush to get to a warmer place. Lusk, overcome by love, decided he must get Dora a better coat.
Their post was near the university, a place busy with a mix of students, bourgeois, workers, yet as everyone rushed by, their faces set against leaflets and cold, Dora said she felt as though it wasn’t the German working class against Hitler anymore, only the two of them.
He reassured her that the party had posted many otherteams up and down the avenue, and, in any case, a Communist should always know he’s not alone; he’s part of the masses in motion.
But what if a Communist
wanted
, if only occasionally, to be alone with his wife? How could he do that as long as a ghost was always with them, too? Lusk had to reduce the writer in size so he could blow him away. He told Dora that
The Trial
was meant to convince the petite bourgeoisie that one needn’t take up the struggle for justice; a man was an isolated atom, and all struggles end in defeat.
Dora, oddly, agreed. Joseph K’s struggle was futile, but Lusk didn’t understand why. In fact, no one who hadn’t known Franz could understand him.
“That will certainly limit his readership.”
She ignored that. “Franz condemns Joseph K. because he tries to shape his life differently from the life of crucifixion, the only life there is.”
Dora, he wanted to say—to cry, perhaps, as if from the cross—if you think there’s no life but crucifixion, what do you think we’re doing here handing out leaflets? What are we struggling for?
“You can hold back from the suffering of the world,” Dora said, “but perhaps this holding back is the one suffering you could have avoided.”
He could tell from her tone that she was quoting
him
, and wondered why the phrases didn’t make his ears bleed. Before he could reply, one of the Nazi trucks came by, with Hitler’s voice blaring from a gramophone record. Dora watched it pass.
Similar Books
