the room grew enormous

, filled with

whispers,

a conspiracy of

winking

eyes

opening up

among the flowers on the wall

.

He

pretended to

try

to throw himself

blindly forward

from the

darkness.

he calmed down

only when

the wallpaper

shed its

petals

.

Then

he would fall

into

his thoughts

. He would hold his breath and listen.

He did not wish to believe

the

absurd.

But at night

The demands were made more

loudly,

we heard him talk to God, as if begging

against

insistent claim

.

And we heard

tall and growing

anger, choking

words

. We heard

Father's groans

grown unfamiliar

.

It was a dialogue

swollen with

darkness

.

I heard my father's voice

. I heard the windows shake

in a

storm of sobs

.

My father was

wilting before our eyes.

in undertones,

pleading and begging

he tried to reconcile with

Mother

, Father

called her and

was almost overcome

During

this winter, my father

would spend hours

in corners

as if

searching for

Mother

and

emerge

covered with dust

and cobwebs, his eyes

froze

for long periods

.

he plunged deeper

beyond our understanding

and

with flushes on his

cheeks

did not notice us

anymore.

from the margin of

time

he used to disappear for many days

into some

corner

and

these disappearances ceased to make any

impressions on us,

we did not

count him

as one of us anymore

. Knot by knot

he loosened himself

.

as unremarked as the

gray heap

swept into a corner, waiting to be taken

.

The

earth was covered with a

tablecloth of

winter

.

the hours of darkness

hardened with

boredom

. One

cut them with blunt

knives

.

Father had stopped going out

could hardly bear it. Tears

transformed his face,

He grew more and

more remote

, worried and

absentminded

,

abstracted

.

the sad origin of these

eccentricities

had been

Mother

.

he always

could hardly bear it. Tears

transformed his face,

the

fall

was almost limitless.

My father would walk along

like a gardener

of

nothingness

,

outside

of

the surface of life

.

he

seemed to

scatter into fragments,

an enormous

featherless

dignity

,

an older

material

.

I could not resist

the impression, when looking at

my father

that

mother

became

real

to

him

.

embarrassed, he would join us in laughing

it off

.

he

was read to accept compete defeat,

-a broken

exile

.

Only now do I understand the

war against

boredom

,

the lost cause of

empty hours

,

of empty days and nights.

we felt