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.Here also I witnessed his sad end.As late as November 1944 the Führer was importing porphyry columns from Sweden, doubtless intended for some monument to himself, doubtless unaware that Swedish porphyry is not an acceptable substitute for Egyptian.His geologists were incapable of choosing stone of good quality.My services were accepted.I left for Stockholm, taking with me the finest pieces of the Gruenwald Collection, saving them from certain destruction.Through an intermediary I gave the Crown Prince a stem cup that had belonged to the Emperor Hsuan Tsang.I was granted asylum.The cup was no loss: it was, in my opinion, the only lapse in Gruenwald’s taste.In 1945 I became an Argentine citizen and under the pseudonym of Mills began my academic career as a glaciologist.Eventually I returned to the United States, where, from minor colleges, I assembled a portfolio of pointless distinctions.I began work on my ‘refined Thebaid’ in the southern summer of 1947-8, believing at the time that nuclear war was inevitable in the Northern Hemisphere.In the years that followed I spent at least three months in my valley, but by 1960 inflation, the cost of freight and the blackmailing demands of Chilean and Argentine officials had eaten into the capital I had placed in Swiss banks.I met Estelle Neumann in the Peabody Museum in 1962 as she was admiring a case of glass flowers.She said she came from Trenton, New Jersey.I was surprised, neither by Trenton nor her admiration for the flowers.I found in her an ideal mixture of brilliance and incredible stupidity.No original thought entered her head, yet she did have the wit to appropriate each one of my suggestions as her own.But now my schemes have not turned out as planned.I am writing this memoir in a tin shack in the Atacama Desert.My water is running low.I had intended to settle for ever in my valley; I have left it for others to pillage.I have left my young companion.I have left my things.I, who with bedouin rigour abolished the human form from my possessions.I, who did everything to protect my retina from the visual affronts of the twentieth century, now I too am prey to hallucinations.Women with red faces leer at me.Wet lips slaver over me.Monstrous blocs of colour smother me.Je dus voyager, distraire les enchantements assemblés dans mon cerveau.One particular colour continues to torment me: the orange of Estelle Neumann’s anorak the second before I pushed her.1979BEDOUINS.and dwell in tents that ye may live long in the land where ye are strangers.JeremiahHe was travelling to see his old father who was a rabbi in Vienna.His skin was white.He had a small fair moustache and bloodshot eyes, the eyes of a textual scholar.He held up a grey serge overcoat, not knowing where to hang it.He was very shy.He was so shy that he could not undress with anyone else in the compartment.I went into the corridor.The train was speeding up.The lights of Frankfurt disappeared into the night.Five minutes later he was lying on the upper bunk, relaxed and eager to talk.He had studied at a Talmudic Academy in Brooklyn.His father had left America fifteen years earlier: the morning would reunite them.He and his father disapproved of America.They mistrusted the Zionist mood.Israel was an idea, not a country.Besides, Jahweh gave the Land for his Children to wander through, not to settle or sink roots there.Before the war his family had lived in Sibiu in Romania.When the war came they hoped they were safe; then, in 1942, Nazis set a mark on the house.The father shaved his beard and cut his ringlets.His Gentile servant fetched him a peasant costume, black breaches and a smocked linen shirt.He took his first-born son and ran into the woods.The Nazis took the mother, the sisters and the baby boy.They died in Dachau.The rabbi walked through the Carpathian beech forests with his son.Shepherds sheltered him and gave him meat.The way the shepherds slaughtered sheep did not offend his principles.Finally, he crossed the Turkish frontier and made his way to America.Now father and son were returning to Romania.Recently they had a sign, pointing the way back.Late one night, in his apartment in Vienna, the rabbi reluctantly answered the doorbell.On the landing stood an old woman with a shopping basket.She said, ‘I have found you.’She had blue lips and wispy hair.Dimly he recognised his Gentile servant.‘The house is safe,’ she said.‘Forgive me [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]