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.They don’t buy alcohol with the proceeds, he said, that’s the miracle.They buy tools and raw materials so that they can make more toys.The key thing, he said, was that no one pressured them, no one asked them anything or tried to convince them of anything, and also that they could come and go as they pleased, or go away for a long time and come back later.They were simply accepted the way they were.And they, or at least some of them, accepted what he was offering: that was the second miracle, he said.Ann felt the need to lighten things up a little so she drove us through a Mexican neighborhood she especially liked.She shopped there; it was poor, but colorful and lively.We ate lunch at a restaurant called Serenata de Garibaldi, and Therese implied that this city, Los Angeles, was something of a refuge for her.No, she said to a half-question from Ann, she still wasn’t divorced from her husband, he was still insisting that he couldn’t live without her.Ann said if it was her she would take the risk.The afternoon was drawing to a close and we drove downtown again through the poor neighborhoods.Now the homeless people were gathering everywhere around the missions and public shelters set up by the city, like iron filings around magnets, to get a bowl of soup and a place to sleep before night fell.Now we could see for the first time how many there were—a dark, gray-black mass in long lines.Almost all of them black, many of the faces expressionless.One couple sat next to each other in the gutter: they were young, they laughed, I took them for lovers and pointed them out to Ann.She said: Lovers? Well, maybe.But there was no way to be sure that he wasn’t just her pimp.She had long since stopped taking photographs in these parts of town, by the way, because it was dangerous.I could tell that a sense of shame kept her from documenting these people in their degradation.Instead, she photographed us, the privileged guests of the CENTER, in the most flattering way possible, and showed a row of the enlarged photographs in a kind of gallery along the hall on the seventh floor.I was unable to see the gallery of photos as anything but obscene.By the time I got back home, back to the MS.VICTORIA, I was utterly exhausted.It wore a different face now: not just an oasis but a fortress, a bastion of defense against this city’s poverty and misery, which we were powerless against.I paced back and forth between the kitchen and the living room, I couldn’t sit down at the word processor, couldn’t write anything up; I ate little and drank two whiskeys one after the other, which I almost never did, without feeling any effect.Then I took the mail I had fetched without looking at from the CENTER that morning, took it out of my Indian bag, and paged through it.A fax was there, an article from a well-respected German magazine by a well-respected journalist, and unfortunately I forgot myself and read it.It went beyond everything so far, everything I had almost gotten used to over the past few days.I felt like I was breathing another kind of air now, I was in serious, unavoidable danger.I had to make a decision that night.I am trying to remember what I did that night—I couldn’t take any notes at the time.I went to bed.I brought dear Fleming’s poem with me.“Be undismayed in spite of everything; do not give up, despite everything.” I repeated the line over and over until I could say it in my sleep.But it was only midnight.What now?THEN I STARTED SINGINGI sang the whole night through, every song I knew—and I know a lot of songs, with a lot of verses.I drank two more whiskeys straight down but I didn’t get drunk.The phone rang several times, I knew who was trying so urgently to reach me but I didn’t pick up.I sang “An jenem Tag im blauen Mond September,” I sang “Glück auf, Glück auf, der Steiger kommt,” I sang “Es leben die Soldaten so recht von Gottes Gnaden.” “Du Schwert an meiner Linken.” Songs from different eras of my life mingled together in my mind, suddenly I heard myself singing “Was fragt ihr dumm, was fragt ihr klein, warum wir wohl marschieren” and quickly broke off.I still remember the feeling I had that the overcoat of Dr.Freud was hovering above me: it had heralded that I would learn much about myself that night and, since that was dangerous, it would protect me.We would see if I really wanted to know it, as I always claimed.It didn’t surprise me that an overcoat was talking to me.I sang “Als wir jüngst in Regensburg waren,” I sang “Am Brunnen vor dem Tore,” I sang “Der Mond ist aufgegangen,” then I sang “Spaniens Himmel breitet seine Sterne,” and “Da streiten sich die Leut herum wohl um den Wert des Glücks,” and then I sang “Im schönsten Wiesengrunde ist meiner Heimat Haus,” but also “We Shall Overcome” and “Au clair de la lune [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
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