Sanatorium under the sign of the hourglass - Bruno Schulz [87]
"Boys, help, help!" I shouted, already suspended in the air. I could still see their outstretched arms and their shouting, open mouths, but the next moment, I turned a somersault and ascended in a magnificent parabola. I was flying high above the roofs. Breathless I saw in my mind's eye how my schoolmates raised their arms, and called out to the instructor: "Please, sir, please, Simon has been swept away!"
The instructor looked at them from under his spectacles. He went slowly over to the window and, screening his eyes with his hands, scanned the horizon. But he could not see me. In the dull glare of the pale sky, his face had the color of parchment.
"We must cross his name off the register," he said with a bitter smile and returned to the rostrum. I was carried higher and higher into the unexplored yellow space.
LONELINESS
IT IS WITH GREAT RELIEF that I feel able to go out again. But for what a long time was I confined to my room! These have been bitter months and years.
I cannot explain why I have been living in my old nursery—the back room of the apartment, with access from the balcony—which was rarely used in the past, forgotten, as if it did not belong to us. I cannot remember how I got there. I believe it was during a bright watery-white moonless night. I could see every detail in the dim light. The bed was unmade, as if someone had just left it, and I listened in the stillness for the breathing of people asleep. But who was likely to be breathing here? Since then, this has been my home. I have been here for years and am rather bored. Why didn't I think in advance about stocking up! Ah, you who still can do it, who still are given the time, make provisions, save up grain—good, nourishing, sweet grain—for a great winter of lean and hungry years lies ahead, and the earth will not bear fruit in the land of Egypt. Alas, I was not provident, like a hamster. I have always been a light-hearted field mouse, I have lived from day to day without a care for the morrow, trusting in my starveling's talent. Like a mouse, I thought, What do I care about hunger? If worst comes to worst, I can gnaw wood or nibble paper. The poorest of animals, a gray church mouse, at the tail end of the Book of Creation, I can exist on nothing. And so I live in this dead room. Many flies died in it a long time ago. I put my ear against wood, to hear the sound of a woodworm. Deadly silence. Only I, the immortal mouse, lonely and posthumous, rustle in this room, running endlessly on the table, on the shelf, on the chairs. I run around, resembling Aunt Thecla in a long gray frock reaching to the ground—agile, quick, and small, pulling behind me a mobile tail. I am now sitting in bright daylight on the table, immobile, as if stuffed, my eyes like two protruding shiny beads. Only the end of my muzzle pulsates imperceptibly, by force of habit, in minute chewing movements.
This, of course, is to be understood as a metaphor. I am really an old-age pensioner, not a mouse. It is part of my existence to be the parasite of metaphors, so easily am I carried away by the first simile that comes along. Having been carried away, I have to find my difficult way back, and slowly return to my senses.
What do I look like? Sometimes I see myself in the mirror. A strange, ridiculous, and painful thing! I am ashamed to admit it: I never look at myself full face. Somewhat deeper, somewhat farther away I stand inside the mirror a little off center, slightly in profile, thoughtful and glancing sideways. Our looks have stopped meeting. When I move, my reflection moves too, but half-turned back, as if it did not know about me, as if it had got behind a number of mirrors and could not come back. My