to breathe. There are even crayfish in the lake, that’s the best proof of how clean the water is. The deer have gotten so comfortable with humans that they come and graze among the cabins. You can even stroke them. One time an owl perched on his windowsill, he wrote. One sultry night he opened the window. When he opened his eyes, there it was, right on the sill. He thought he was dreaming. He got up and shone a flashlight in its eyes, I’m telling you, he wrote, they shone like two diamonds. Another time he was lounging about on the deck and a squirrel came up to him. It stood on its hind legs, and they just stared at each other. He was mad at himself for not having any nuts around. This was the only place I’d be able to see a proper sunrise and sunset. It wasn’t at all the same as where I lived, in the city. It might not be the same anywhere else at all. If he didn’t have a cabin here he might never have known what sunrisesand sunsets really are, what humans have lost for good. Because what can they see in their cities? What can he see from his souvenir shop?
Of course, from all those letters over the years I could easily have figured out where the place was, but it never entered my head that it might be here. Thankfully, after a while he stopped writing so frequently. His letters got shorter and his invitations were less eager, I thought our chance acquaintance would eventually dry up. So all the more I’d no reason to wonder if this might be the place. The whole business had come and gone, the way things often happen. And if he’d been playing some kind of game, maybe he’d finally understood that I wasn’t the kind to play along.
By now our correspondence was limited to cards with best wishes and season’s greetings. He’d sometimes just scribble a few words in tiny handwriting in the margin to ask if he could hope I’d come visit one day. Or, Think about it, time’s passing and more and more plans come to nothing. Soon even the cards stopped coming. What I found worrying, though, was that the phone calls also ceased.
I started to wonder if something might have happened to him. Perhaps I should at least give him a call? I couldn’t muster up the courage. But whenever my phone rang, I’d pick up in hopes that it might be him. Previously, I’d never felt like answering his letters and cards, it was always an effort to do so; now, whenever the telephone rang I wanted it to be him. I came up with all kinds of explanations for his silence, despite the fact that I barely knew anything about him. For all the effusiveness of his letters there were never any confidences apart from the fact that he had a cabin by a lake in the woods and a souvenir shop in the city. It was as if he’d set firm boundaries on what he could write to me about. And in fact it was the same with me. Though of course I was supposedly the put-upon one in the relationship.
A year went by, and another. Then out of the blue he wrote me – a long, cordial, enthusiastic letter just like before, filled with the same efforts to entice me out there. You can’t imagine what a wonderful crop of mushrooms we havethis year, he wrote. Ceps, birch boletes, chanterelles, slippery Jacks, milk-caps, parasols – you name it. Parasols fried up in butter – makes your mouth water. Better than a veal cutlet any day of the week. Or milk-caps with onion in sour cream – delicious. And the best place to find them is where the graves are. No one picks them there. What are they afraid of? It makes no difference to me whether they’re from around the graves or not. They’re just mushrooms. Who cares what’s in the earth underneath? If you started thinking about that you’d have to stop walking, driving, building houses, you couldn’t even plow or sow, because the whole world till now is down there. We’d have to fly above the earth or move away from it completely. But where to?
Everyone’s picking, drying, preserving, frying. In the evenings there
Of course, from all those letters over the years I could easily have figured out where the place was, but it never entered my head that it might be here. Thankfully, after a while he stopped writing so frequently. His letters got shorter and his invitations were less eager, I thought our chance acquaintance would eventually dry up. So all the more I’d no reason to wonder if this might be the place. The whole business had come and gone, the way things often happen. And if he’d been playing some kind of game, maybe he’d finally understood that I wasn’t the kind to play along.
By now our correspondence was limited to cards with best wishes and season’s greetings. He’d sometimes just scribble a few words in tiny handwriting in the margin to ask if he could hope I’d come visit one day. Or, Think about it, time’s passing and more and more plans come to nothing. Soon even the cards stopped coming. What I found worrying, though, was that the phone calls also ceased.
I started to wonder if something might have happened to him. Perhaps I should at least give him a call? I couldn’t muster up the courage. But whenever my phone rang, I’d pick up in hopes that it might be him. Previously, I’d never felt like answering his letters and cards, it was always an effort to do so; now, whenever the telephone rang I wanted it to be him. I came up with all kinds of explanations for his silence, despite the fact that I barely knew anything about him. For all the effusiveness of his letters there were never any confidences apart from the fact that he had a cabin by a lake in the woods and a souvenir shop in the city. It was as if he’d set firm boundaries on what he could write to me about. And in fact it was the same with me. Though of course I was supposedly the put-upon one in the relationship.
A year went by, and another. Then out of the blue he wrote me – a long, cordial, enthusiastic letter just like before, filled with the same efforts to entice me out there. You can’t imagine what a wonderful crop of mushrooms we havethis year, he wrote. Ceps, birch boletes, chanterelles, slippery Jacks, milk-caps, parasols – you name it. Parasols fried up in butter – makes your mouth water. Better than a veal cutlet any day of the week. Or milk-caps with onion in sour cream – delicious. And the best place to find them is where the graves are. No one picks them there. What are they afraid of? It makes no difference to me whether they’re from around the graves or not. They’re just mushrooms. Who cares what’s in the earth underneath? If you started thinking about that you’d have to stop walking, driving, building houses, you couldn’t even plow or sow, because the whole world till now is down there. We’d have to fly above the earth or move away from it completely. But where to?
Everyone’s picking, drying, preserving, frying. In the evenings there
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