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By Root 630 0

is moved and stored away new and radiant scenes open up, true and alive for a moment, until you realize that they are made of cardboard. All perspectives are painted, all the panoramas made of board, and only the smell is authentic, the smell of wilting scenery, of theatrical dressing rooms, redolent of grease paint and scent. And at dusk there is disorder and chaos in the wings, a pileup of discarded costumes, among which you can wade endlessly as if through yellowed fallen leaves. There is great confusion: everybody is pulling at the curtain ropes, and the sky, a great autumnal sky, hangs in tatters and is filled with the screeching of pulleys. And there is an atomsphere of feverish haste, of belated carnival, a ballroom about to empty in the small hours, a panic of masked people who cannot find their real clothes.

"Fall, the Alexandrian time of the year, collecting in its enormous library the sterile wisdom of three hundred and sixty-five days of the sun's race. Oh those elderly mornings, yellow like parchment, sweet with wisdom like late evenings! Those forenoons smiling slyly like wise palimpsests, the many-layered texts of yellowed books! Ah, days of fall, that old crafty librarian, groping his way up ladders in a faded dressing gown and trying spoonfuls of sweet preserves from all the centuries and cultures! Each landscape is for him like the opening chapter of an old novel. What fun he has letting loose the heroes of old stories under that misty, honey-colored sky into an opaque and sad, late sweetness of light! What new adventures will Don Quixote find at Soplicowo?* How will Robinson Crusoe fare upon his return to his native Drohobycz?"

On close, immobile evenings, golden after fiery sunsets, my father read us extracts from his manuscript. The flow of ideas allowed him sometimes to forget about Adela's ominous presence.

Then came the warm winds from Romania, establishing an enormous yellow monotomy, a feel of the south. The fall would not end. Like soap bubbles, days rose ever more beautiful and ethereal, and each of them seemed so perfect that every moment of its duration was like a miracle extended beyond measure and almost painful.

In the stillness of those deep and beautiful days, the consistency of leaves changed imperceptibly, until one day all the trees stood in the straw fire of completely dematerialized leaves, in a light redness like a coating of colored confetti, magnificent peacocks and phoenixes; the slightest move or flutter would cause them to shed the splendor of their plumage—the light, molted, superfluous leafy feathers.

*Name of the estate in Lithuania where the action of Pan Thdeusz by Adam Mickiewicz takes place.

DEAD SEASON

I

AT FIVE O'CLOCK in the morning, an hour glaring with early sunshine, our house was already enveloped in an ardent but quiet brightness. At that solemn hour, unobserved by anyone—while the rooms in the semidarkness of drawn blinds were still filled with the harmonious breathing of sleeping people—its facade bathed in the sun, in the silence of the early haze, as if its surface were decorated by blissfully sleeping eyelids. Thus, in the stillness of these early hours, it absorbed the first fires of the morning with a sleepy face melting in brilliance, its features slightly twitching from intense dreams. The shadow of the acacia in front of the house slid in waves down the hot surface, trying in vain to penetrate into the depth of golden sleep. The linen blinds absorbed the morning heat, portion after portion, and sunbathed fainting in the glare.

At that early hour, my father, unable to sleep any longer, went downstairs loaded with books and ledgers, in order to open the shop, which was on the street level of the building. For a moment he stood still in the gateway, sustaining with half-closed eyes the powerful onslaught of the sun. The sun-drenched wall of the house pulled him tenderly into its blissfully leveled, smooth surface. For a moment Father became flat, grown into the facade, and felt his outstretched hands, quivering and warm, merging into its