And we drove in the police car, behind an iron grill, she said, and it really was a long drive. When they stopped she got out. There was a high house. They told her to go inside and hurry up. Everything happened in a hurry. She hurried up. There were long corridors with doors and more corridors with doors. The corridors were empty and you could hardly see the walls only the doors and they opened a door and led her in. Herr Zutter asked for the bag. She gave him the bag. He told her to get undressed. Then he told her to wait. Then took the bag and went out and locked the door. There was a chair there and she got undressed and sat down on the chair. Time passed. The room was empty. The cold of the chair burned her skirt and she sat and looked at her body as if at some strange animal.

Time passed. She went up to the door. The door was locked and she went back to the chair. Again time passed. Her hands stopped shaking. Now they were small, unnaturally small, almost like a child’s hands. She felt a terrible shame, sitting in the empty room, on the chair, looking at her own body, feeling something, she didn’t know what, turning into a concrete, meaningless thing. Her father appeared in a flash. She heard him say: The disgrace, she saw him from the depths of her back. Oh no, it’s different, she said. Her skin prickled. Time passed. Again time passed. She felt her body becoming hollow, felt his weakness and wildness and idiocy in her blood. Everything whirled in crazy vertigo, the stupidity that had led her astray, and the disgrace, from here it would begin again, the disgrace, humiliated, the terror that made her jump, the hand gripping her shoulder—it was the policewoman who made her stand up and felt her all over her body, felt her skin, in every corner, all over her skin, as if she had coins hidden under her skin. Then she ran her hands over her once again, groping, and turned around without a word and went out of the room and after that another policewoman came in and told her to get dressed and take off her watch and her rings and earrings, and she took them off and put them in a heap on the chair but the policewoman said: The watch, the watch too, and she took off her watch but the policewoman said: And the little ring too, and she pulled the little ring but it wouldn’t come off and she said: I’ve had it since I was a little girl, but the policewoman said: Everything, everything, everything left on the body, and she brought soap and rubbed, and then Herr Zutter came and said they were leaving and they got into the armored car again behind the iron grill again in the rainy streets in the evening coming down on the beautiful bustling city and the gleaming lights in the grand shops and cafes, and she said: Everything’s open, it’s still early, and Herr Zutter said: Yes. We have to be there before four because the examining magistrate leaves at four, and she said: I haven’t got a watch, they took my watch away. He didn’t answer. The rain hit the roof of the car. She asked where she was. He didn’t answer. She asked where they were taking her. He didn’t answer. And she said: Oh God it’s not rain it’s a storm it can’t be anything but a storm and would Herr Zutter please turn round just once. He didn’t turn round even once.

What shall I do, she said.

He didn’t turn his head.

Sign a confession. Here in Switzerland, you have nothing to fear. When someone confesses and repents we let him go.

She said she was afraid.

He said: Here in Switzerland you have nothing to fear. This is a free country. What we hate is a lie. Nobody in Switzerland has ever been punished for the truth. What we can’t forgive is a lie.

She shivered.

What our judges hate is a lie.

She shivered.

He said: If you tell lies you’ll rot in jail. For the truth we send people home here, understand?

I remember his back she said, he didn’t turn his head, what I remember is his back. He had a brown leather jacket on and I remember his voice coming out of the leather jacket. That’s what I advise you to do, he said. He had a soft voice, actually, a woolly voice. It seemed to me that his leather jacket was made of wool.

You should know that the law is always right, he said and smiled, looking at her now obliquely, a look that spread like threads over her body, sticking to her like a spider and tightening in threads around her body.

Have you ever seen the way a spider works? That was how his eyes worked, she said. And then the fear came back to her, pressing on her throat.

I hope you haven’t got any more on your body, he said. And then he said he hoped she didn’t have any more in the hotel. She said she didn’t. He didn’t ask the name of the hotel, only his eyes spreading round her body, and then the crazy idea came to her, then she asked if they had already passed the square where the gold was buried. He asked what gold. She said: The Paraden Platz, where the safes were, her grandfather had one too. He asked where her grandfather was. She didn’t answer. He said he was sorry, Switzerland only looked after the gold. He asked what the connection was. She said there wasn’t one. He laughed a little. And it’s impossible to open of course, that’s the code, the secret, he said. Again he laughed a little. You have to understand, the whole world understands, he said. He turned round slowly to face her. And you stole from the Swiss government, you simply stole from the Swiss government, you’d better remember that, he said. And besides, I know that they changed the currency in your country, he said, and you came with the old money. His eyes glittered when he said this. I only want your own good, you must understand that, only your own good, he said.

After that there was a long corridor with the only other person sitting in it a strange hulking boy with strange wild eyes making savage noises. He had a shirt painted in shining colors, all peacocks with their tails open, and peacocks tattooed on his wrists. He asked her what she had done. She didn’t answer. He laughed a mean laugh.

You didn’t kill anyone, he said.

She didn’t answer.

He said: You stole something in a supermarket, you stole panties in a supermarket.

She didn’t answer.

For panties in a supermarket you rot in jail here, he said. The Swiss hate it when you take panties from the supermarkets. It’s a big deal for the Swiss, panties in a supermarket—just don’t lie, they’ll tell you.

He fixed her with his eyes and the mean laughter burst out of his whole body which shifted nervously on the chair.

*  *  *  *  *

And they took me in, she said. The clock on the wall said four. The Examining Magistrate said he was supposed to be home at four-fifteen and his wife didn’t like him to be late. He would have to phone and tell her he was coming late. Of course, said Herr Zutter and the Examining Magistrate phoned his wife that he’d be ten minutes late because he had a little problem here. After that he said something and typed on a typewriter. She didn’t hear what he said, only the typewriter, looking first at his typing hands and then at the wall above him, with posters of Klee and Mondrian and a still life with a guitar by Braque. The Examining Magistrate typed rapidly and she answered the questions and said Yes, yes looking at the Braque guitar all the time. He said they would have to get it over quickly and she understood that if they got it over quickly the little problem might grow even littler, and in the window the blue was so cobalt and she said to herself that soon she would be lying on her bed in the hotel and looking at the ceiling and tomorrow she would get on a tram and ride and ride and ride all day. The cobalt blue became ultramarine. Silence fell. Again she repeated to herself that what the Swiss liked was the truth and what they hated was a lie, and Herr Zutter said say Yes and she said Yes. Repeat after me, said the Examining Magistrate. And she repeated after him. He asked if she had anything to say. She didn’t answer. You have nothing to say, he said and asked if it was necessary to translate because he was in a hurry. She shook her head, no there was no need to translate, but the Examining Magistrate said it wasn’t enough to shake her head it was a protocol and she had to say Yes to go into the protocol and she said Yes to go into the protocol. Her jaws were swollen. Her cheekbones hurt. And she felt her neck smelling and its volume expanding every time she said Yes. She tried in vain to stretch her neck, holding a block of wood between her head and shoulders, a block of wood full of sawdust getting thicker and thicker. Yes, she said, feeling the block of sawdust going down from her neck to her chest and from her chest to her stomach and down to the pit of her stomach and something hollow and heavy moving round in her body. The Examining Magistrate gave her the paper and told her to sign. She took it, looking at the Braque guitar, and signed. The Examining Magistrate said: Ja, he was already five minutes late, his wife didnt like it at all when he was five minutes late, and showing signs of panic he slipped into his coat and snatched his umbrella and ran, and Herr Zutter told her to wait because it was already late and the Examining Magistrate had only written a report without deciding anything definite and in Switzerland it had to be definite, and he told her to go back to the corridor and she sat down again next to the boy with the brightly colored peacocks and the mean laugh but now he didn’t look at her he just sat there stinking of tobacco, and then he let out a meaningful grunt and began voraciously scratching his hands. The corridor was brightly lit. In the big window red and yellow gleamed and the ultramarine turned into indigo. She stretched her legs. The boy with the mean laugh made a peculiar noise again, looking at her from his seat, and then the policeman came and said let’s go. Where to, she asked. For a ride, he said and told her to get in and pushed her inside and she sat down and they drove through the streets with the trams and the shops and the lamps and the people with the plastic bags, and then they turned into other streets and it was quiet and it was raining. A procession of priests walked past in the rain. She listened to the rain beating down on the cobblestones. The streets smelled exciting and she looked at them, squinting with wild desire. The streets raced. The trams raced. The cars raced. There were sounds of traffic in the street, sounds of traffic in the air and bells rang for prayer, bells of glass of iron of branches and trees. She listened, squinting wildly, wanting wildly to be joined to the racing world, the real running racing world, to be joined to the windows, the blinds, the neon signs, the black revolving glass doors. In the cafe entrances magic lights and red lamps flickered, in this direction, in that. The noise increased. The car bumped forward and backward and she was thrown forward and backward and they stopped and told her to get out and she got out and someone pushed her lightly and told her to go in and next to the counter they asked her if she had anything else on her and she said she had nothing on her, nothing, nothing, she said, but the man behind the counter didn’t look at her and didn’t answer her, and two policemen came in and told her to come and started marching fast down corridors of nailed metal walls between nailed metal doors. The block of wood was already inside her feet and she marched slowly, unable to lift her feet, and they pushed her and shouted weiter, weiter. She asked where to but they shouted weiter, weiter and took her down in a metal elevator to a huge metal room and sat her down on a metal chair and turned her head and snapped and snapped again and after that they told her to press her thumb and she pressed her thumb and they told her to press the palm of her hand and she pressed and they moved her palm on the plate and turned the chair round and put her palm on the plate again and she said: They told me that if I signed I could go home, and they shouted weiter and marched her down the nailed metal corridors with the nailed doors and she shrieked wildly that they told her she could go home and she wouldn’t go with them. I want to know where I am, she shrieked, and they caught her by both hands and dragged her along the iron floor down the long corridors of the huge prison and she shrieked I won’t go, I wont go, and two huge men held her by both arms and dragged her along the floor and they reached an iron door and opened the iron door and pushed her inside and shut the iron door. And I was a prisoner. she said.

*  *  *  *  *

About the jail I don’t know much. She said little and what she said was confused, the way people talk about a time that resembles a hallucination or a nightmare, trying to report the fact: but afraid of showing her hand, as if playing for stakes that were too high, and when I try to recorustruct the story it sounds more or less like this: She beat against the iron door with her fists. A voice answered, thunderous like drums. She beat again, with both fists. The iron thundered, coming back from other walls and answering from countless doors along the corridors, hitting the floors above and the floors below with a renewed metallic clang. She heard footsteps in the corridor. The footsteps approached. Then they receded. The iron voice died away. She beat again, savagely, raving. The shrill swooping shrieks of a mighty flock of cymbals answered. She went on beating, with clenched fists, furiously, feeling the blood pouring from her fists and streaming slowly down her arms. She felt the dampness on her arms under her sleeves, but she went on beating, hopping up and down like a little animal. The footsteps approached and receded and approached and receded again. She stopped for a minute, listening. Muffled voices came back from the empty spaces and the corridors, voices drawn out in a long low trumpet call. She began beating again, demented, hitting her fists on the iron door, hearing the iron orchestra answer, zigzagging down the corridors, breaking somewhere down below and coming back with every new blow of her fists. She went on, beating, beating, she felt enormous strength in her hands and opened her bleeding hands. For a moment she looked at them, astounded, but still she felt enormous strength in her hands and she opened her palms and beat the iron with her palms, with the delicate skin of her palms, which was immediately scratched and burning, but still she felt enormous strength in her hands and she opened her fingers and began to beat with her fingers. She felt a fierce pain in her fingers, in the skin and the little joints, and that her fingers were breaking, but still she felt enormous strength in her hands and she turned her fingers round, beating with the hard side of her fingers. The footsteps in the corridor approached and receded and approached and receded. The cymbals suddenly grew low, children’s cymbals, almost toy cymbals, and she lifted the wounded palms of her hands to her eyes, examining the raw exposed flesh, the pink flesh of a fresh burn. The madness intensified and she began beating with her forehead, feeling her forehead deep in the bones of her temples. Thin trickles of blood dripped into her eyes, and she closed her eyes which were full of bloody tears. She wiped the reddish liquid from her eyes, feeling in the depths of her face the two painful balls hollow like two inserted pockets. The reddish liquid went on flowing, dripping onto the balls of her fingers, and she pushed her fingers into her hair, drawing them backwards, wanting to wipe the balls of her fingers as she tried to stand still for a minute, but on both sides of her face two enormous ears protruded, growing bigger from minute to minute, growing more remote from her face and more alien. She moved her head to one side. Then to the other. But the enormous ears moved somewhere far from her head, heavy, full of strange sounds of tools and hammers and saws and grating sounds of shattering glass, and she pressed her back to the iron door, beating now with her back. The hammers stopped and so did the saws, the cymbals and the trumpet, and now she heard only the grating sound of shattering glass, the scraping sound of fingernails on hard stone, the sounds of things moving and rustling. She went on beating her back against the door, trying to raise her hands, feeling the thin muddy trickles making warm little pools in her armpits, and she went on slamming her back on the door; but the blows now reached her ears dimly, like the muffled bellow of a wounded animal. She began to scream, raving, beating alternately with her forehead, her skull, her back, hearing the sounds of her thudding body coming back to her from the walls and from the corridors surrounding her like a vast barrel. The pain in her hands grew piercing, and she lifted them and pressed them to her face, tightening her face, and then she felt the terrible chill spreading through her body.

*  *  *  *  *

It was already dark in the peephole when she saw a crack and in the crack stood a warden. He asked if she was the one banging. She said she wanted them to inform the consul. He smiled kindly. He said: What consul? My country’s, she said. He smiled again, kindly. He said that a prisoner had no consul, and pushed her back inside. She said that she demanded a lawyer. He smiled again, kindly. He had small round glasses with pale steel frames, and he raised the glasses a little, smiling. What you can do is rot here, he said smiling and pushed her inside so hard that she fell on the floor. Her face was bleeding and she wiped the blood with her skirt.

The cell was all stone, yellowish-grey, and looked like a tomb, and there was an iron door in the tomb, and a bed and a lavatory and a light bulb hanging from the ceiling. And maybe not a tomb, maybe something like a dog’s kennel, only higher, she said.

And then the nightmare began, when she sat down on the bed.

*  *  *  *  *

Her face was blank when she told me this, leaving her at moments with an expression of shock, as if something sudden had fallen next to her face which was very pale, burning with a sickly pallor. She looked at me now in silence, not taking her eyes off me, eyes glittering but cold, an iron cold, blue-grey, a steely cold, and I thought that perhaps she could still hear the chords and metallic sounds here in the park, at a lower octave. For a moment it seemed to me that I could hear them too, and the closed echo zigzagging. She went on looking at me, her face faintly illuminated by the lamp above the bench, which illuminated small, rather chubby hands, almost a child’s hands, and suddenly I remembered the wide illuminated trams, the sausages and mustard, the long slender pears, the fruit rotten at the core and the hard winter I had spent in Zurich roaming the long streets, standing at night in empty stations, freezing in my little Israeli fur, leaning against the walls of the houses with the statues of monsters, of lions and tigers, looking for a pair of wings to shelter me, looking for a God to pray to, and a man standing next to me at the empty tram station, an elegantly dressed man with an umbrella bent over me with his umbrella: You shouldn’t look at the empty tracks, Madam, he said, anyone who looks at the empty tracks will die, Madam.

You were thinking about something, she said.

I denied it. I said I was listening. Her mouth twisted in an embarrassed grin, and for a moment she crossed her hands behind her back, then she put them back on her knees, stretching her legs and looking at me intently, her head lowered, stubbornly examining my face again. Of course you were thinking about something, she said. I denied it again, ignoring the signs of violence in her voice. She moved her shoulders, shuddering for a moment as if an electric current were running through her body, and went on as if there had been no interruption. Well, she said, and then I noticed the fresco.

Then the nightmare began, when she sat down on the bed. Then she noticed the fresco on the walls, a huge colorful fresco of names and writing and huge swollen penises that were drawn on all the walls, red penises and green penises and black penises and white and yellow and upside-down and cut-off and squashed-up penises, drawn with thick shining crayons and charcoal and chalk and iodine, as well as coffee and soup and blood. Most of them weren’t joined to any body or coming out of any body, but hanging from a little hairy triangle, which looked like medallions for hanging bathroom towels or kitchen towels, and only here and there they were sticking out of tiny little flattened-out bodies, like cartoon bodies. She looked, frightened, stunned, trying to read the names that were written in huge clumsy letters in Arabic and English and French, making out something like Abdalla or Hafez or Asad or Charlie or John, and trying to decipher the writing, but the monstrous penises swelled emerging from the walls advancing on her on her body. She began to shake. The hundred-headed monster came apart and the wall suddenly filled up with gigantic lizards covered in stocky hairy skin, and she heard the terrible swarming, she felt the hairy skin in her mouth and a resulting nausea. She went on sitting, clinging to the railing of the bed, but the hundred-headed monster came apart again. The lizards turned into snakes, and she saw them clearly advancing on her, on her body, slimy, hissing, closing in on her and climbing up her and coiling round her neck and crawling into her throat and filling her mouth and her throat and choking her inside her throat. She felt the bundles of flesh and blood, she felt gaping jaws and tongues and teeth and gaping jaws and tongues and teeth swelling without stopping, attached to gigantic bladders swelling without stopping, turning into frightening tumors covered with hard animal skin. She gazed terrified at the infinite expansion, gripping the railing of the bed, trying to get up and failing. The monsters moved, clinging to the wall. Then they crawled out of the wall. Everything whirled in a crazy vertigo. The nausea, the terror, the snakes and dragons, the throttled birds, the handles and the axes, the soft flesh and hard animal skin, and she felt a terrible pain in her stomach and heard a growling in her stomach and the gigantic penises writhing inside her stomach and she jumped off the bed, trying to stand and leaning against the lavatory. But all around her strange black wings moved with slender bones moved with nails and claws and she saw the ceiling getting lower and narrower, she smelled burning rubber and charred tires, the smell of the yellowish liquid in the lavatory bowl. She began a frantic jig. Her stomachache grew worse. The demented arabesque moved up and down up and down whirling in a carousel in the narrow illuminated den with the ceiling getting lower and narrower all the time and now she could see the letters clearly, the coats, the capes, the hooks and axes, she could see Ahmed and Hafez and Muhamad and Salah and Charlie and John and she felt a terrible force digging into her eyes ripping her eyes from her head. From the corridor came a vicious laugh. After that there was a scream. The gigantic penises swelled choking her throat and she vomited her guts onto the floor.

*  *  *  *  *

No, I can’t talk about that night, she said.

The light bulb on the ceiling burned all night. She tried to wrap herself in the blanket but there was an appalling stench coming from the blanket, and she lay frozen, wide-eyed, looking at the light bulb. From the neighboring cells she heard tapping. She didn’t answer. The tapping was repeated. She didn’t answer. Fear turned her body into a petrified lump and she could hardly turn over or lie on her side, staring wide-eyed at the light bulb on the ceiling. She asked herself if it was raining. Perhaps there was a storm. Yes, there was surely a storm. And she was here, what misery, what wretched misery, and she would die here, alone, misjudged, and forgotten, alone and forgotten, and no one would ever know, no one would ever look for her, even when they began to worry at home and Gerda would say: Where’s Rutchen what’s happened to Rutchen why doesn’t she call, and he would grunt or growl something into the green oilcloth.

This is where I’ll remain, this is where I’ll be buried, she said and sat up in a panic. The bed was high, and she sat, sweating, in the freezing cold, not connected to anything, in the air, at a great height, a terrifyingly great height. The tapping on the walls was repeated, tapping from the neighboring cells, from the corridors, from the elevators, from the iron doors. She tried to think who was here yesterday who was locked up on the other side of the wall tonight. She thought she heard murmurs on the other side of the wall in the neighboring cell, the murmurs of murderers, thieves, rapists, scorpions and nails. Her hands were frozen and she tried to warm them in vain, saying to herself that there was nothing to be afraid of, no murmurs were coming from the neighboring cell, no noises could penetrate these walls, no blows no hopes no fears. She felt a momentary relief, protected. From the frescoed wall opposite she heard a loud tapping, getting faster all the time. She listened. For a moment it seemed to her that she understood. The tapping was repeated more slowly, almost gently, almost warmly. It seemed to her that there were groans coming from the other side of the wall and someone on the other side of the wall was crying or singing. She listened intently, shaking all over. Somewhere in the distance a church chimed three chimes. She said: No, not chimes, it was eagles flying, three eagles flying. Now she remembered Herr Zutter saying something about a hurricane and she said: No, there aren’t any hurricanes at home, why did he ask about a hurricane? No, it’s the rain, it’s a storm, there’s a storm blowing, the trees are going wild outside, everything’s flying outside, there’s lightning outside. Suddenly she remembered how everything had happened, the empty bag gaping wide and being dragged down the corridors like a rabbit, like a little animal. She pressed her eyelids hard, searching for the snapped thread of lucidity. Her heart beat like a drum and she inclined her head to the wall next to the bed. But it was silent. Everything gradually froze. Everything was death. And she would remain here. She would be buried here. She tried to revive her hands.

*  *  *  *  *

But that’s impossible, of course I won’t be buried here, she said. There was a moldy smell in the cell, a smell of damp earth, of flesh and bones, a smell of unknown, decomposing bodies, and she said to herself: These must be the prisoners who died here, people must have died here. The saliva turned into a thick paste between her teeth and she clamped her teeth together. These are the prisoners who died here, she said, this is the smell of the prisoners who died here, the ones the warders found here dead in the morning, hanging on the gigantic penises in the morning, on the bundles of snakes on the empty jaws on the sheets on the strips of flesh. She trembled, bracing her arms at the sides of her body, trying to sit, but suddenly she jumped up and stood, suddenly she saw herself running, she was quite certain of it, she saw herself running in the corridors, in the empty courtyards, she was quite certain of it, in the windows and on the walls, flat against the walls and running, running, crushed in the carousel with the gigantic whirling penises, plummeting in the muddy air in the gaping barrel stuffed into the lizards, the snakes, the network of canals, the names and the eyes, the dancing demons, the cartoon bodies, the sour stench and the writing soiled with excrement. She felt such terrible nausea that she was forced to cling to the walls, pressing against the huge swollen maleness, and suddenly she felt that she was bleeding, it wasn’t her time yet but she was bleeding, suddenly she felt the blood dripping dirty from her body between her legs as if from an open belly. She moved her legs. Everything was sticky, her panties, her skirt, her stockings, everything was full of the thick stale mud and the sour smell of blood. She raised it to her face, sniffing, feeling it hot on her skirt. Her dirty, superfluous blood poured out of her interspersed with little lumps of glue, always too early always too late, and how life had stupefied her, and it was dark outside, outside the wind raced, the air was full of ink outside, and how thin her naked knees were, how strange, what short legs full of thin trickles of blood and red sweat, and she was a bleeding animal, that’s what she was, an animal bleeding between its legs, that’s what I am, she said. She had on a black skirt and she took it off. There was a big stain of black on black. The smell was unbearable. The skin between her legs was chafed and she thought she would get undressed and sit naked, but the cold was terrible, the writing on the wall grew bigger and so did the shiny colored penises embedded in the walls and passing through the walls and she felt their presence inside the walls and inside the floor opening the belly of the floor felt the hair in her mouth the smell of the urine of yesterday and Abdalla and Hafez and Asad and Charlie and John none of them bled, not from their legs, and she bled, that’s what she was, an animal bleeding between its legs, she said.

She felt a weakness in her knees, in her feet and toes, with a prickling in the toes, and said to herself that the blood wasn’t reaching her legs, she tried to lift her legs sitting high up on the iron bed. But they dangled, dropped, resisting her efforts, as if they were strapped down. Suddenly she felt a passionate desire to touch the floor, and she jumped on the floor, hearing the thudding of her feet on the floor. Her feet were hard. The echo was strong. And she felt something strong some strong invisible force coming from the floor and going straight into her feet. Again there were footsteps in the corridor. The light bulb burned like a little sun and she realized that it would never go out, it would go on beating on her eyes forever, and she didn’t know which was worse, the darkness or the light. She climbed onto the bed, she stood on the bed, trying to reach the light, but it was fixed into the ceiling, and she heard her own footsteps in the cell, with no day, no night, no watch, inside some eternal calendar. The silver ball opposite her eyes blazed, and something like laughter writhed inside her body, struggling in her stomach like an animal inside a sack. Suddenly she remembered reading stories in the newspapers about Israelis rotting in jails all over the world, in Amsterdam, Stockholm, Munich, New York, for taking drugs, selling drugs, and she, coins, coins, she exchanged small change.

*  *  *  *  *

And still it was something without substance, without meaning. She
stretched out her hands, as if freeing herself front a trap, and looked at me intently, with a sudden strength pulling in the opposite direction. There was a desolate expression on her face, as if something had happened, as if she had suddenly sensed the slow dissolution of time.

That’s it, and then it happened, she said, then she felt her whole body like a tattoo, she felt the ink inside her skirt and the smell of stale herring in her skin. Her hands were blue. Her body long. And long snakes with tiny heads crawled in the ink on the long body, rustling like paper butterflies. O God, paper butterflies, and she stared and stared, the two empty balls hurt her deep inside her face but she stared and stared and the little sun that would never, O God never, go out again burned over her. The cell was white. The fresco passed in procession. Quiet. Moving with an imperceptible tremor and white as white could be, it too illuminated by the light of the little sun that would never, O God never, go out again, and she was here, O God, she was here alone, and there was no God, no coins, no father, no people in the world, no sound came from anywhere no living soul and only the trumpet imitating the sound of weeping. A new fountain of vomit spewed from her throat. She screamed. Someone tapped on the other side of the wall. The snakes reared to the ceiling. The tattoo netting on her body burned like an inflamation. And then it came to her, the demented desire to write on the walls, she said. She looked at me, blinking her eyes as if they were out of her control, as if now too she felt the ink netting her body. She asked if I knew what she wanted to write. I said I didn’t know. She laughed quietly, shocked by her laughter. She said: For example, what’s the connection between lie and die, that was the first sentence. She asked if I knew what came after that. I asked what. She laughed again, quiet, shocked by her laughter. There was this one verse stuck in my head, she said, it simply flew onto the walls like a soul flies. I looked at her. I didn’t ask what. There was a kind of passion of revenge in her voice, but her face was completely blank and expressionless and only her eyes darted over me, now shining, almost radiant, as if held by two silver tacks.

She laughed nervously.

You’ll never guess, she said and laughed nervously.

Her words became more and more confused, and from the few confused words I understood that first she searched for her eyebrow pencil and undid all her pockets and linings, but there was nothing in the pockets and nothing in the lining, and she turned the lining inside out and stuck her fingers into the seams but there was nothing in the seams either, and then she tried with her nails but it didn’t come out with her nails, and then she wrote in her blood, opening her legs and dipping, and she wrote it big, round, the width of her finger, you know it, she said. She fixed me with the two silver tacks again. You know it, she said again. Her face was very white now and only her cheeks burned like two painted poppies. She coughed dryly. Now too I didn’t ask what. She still coughed dryly. You’ll never guess, she said again, casting nervous glances over her shoulder, as if she was sitting high above the floor like then, and that solitude, that loneliness, was still groaning in the stifling sourness, the words running through the air around her, smearing big, round, the width of her finger, smearing: AND I WAS LEFT NAKED AND BARE, that’s it, you’ll never guess, she repeated for the third time, big, round the width of her finger, on all the walls, what a celebration,
AND I WAS LEFT NAKED AND BARE AND FOR THESE THINGS I WEEP
AND I WAS LEFT NAKED AND BARE AND FOR THESE THINGS I WEEP
AND I WAS LEFT NAKED AND BARE AND FOR THESE THINGS I WEEP
you see, I’m not right in the head, she said. Her face was green and she held her hands so tight against her face that it looked as if she had nails on her face. There, between the giant colored penises, between Abdalla and Hafez arid Asad and Charlie and John, AND FOR THESE THINGS I WEEP, do you think I’m crazy, she said.

The lamp above the bench shed a sandy color on her hair and she pushed her feet into the damp sparkling grass. Then she tucked them up on the bench. There was a silly smile on her face, a horrifying, almost imploring smile. She was silent for a moment, gathering her strength. And I wanted to write something else, she said. Again I didn’t ask what. And again the same silly, almost imploring, almost horrifying smile spread over her face. She said: Something like the Golem, to run raving in the streets like the Golem, to lie here raving like the Golem, to break the walls, raving, like the Golem, a lifeless formless man. She spoke now without looking at me and I felt the words gnawing her, and that solitude, that loneliness, looking for the tattoo on her body. You can never reach the end of the snake, she said. She was still holding her hands to her face. And I wanted to write their throat is an open sepulcher too, she said, you know what I mean.

There was a silence. I didn’t know what to say. She smiled. Of course you know, she said. I didn’t know what to say. I said yes, I knew what she meant. But you were thinking about something else, she said. I said yes, I was thinking about something else. She didn’t ask what. It isn’t true, you were thinking about their throat is an open sepulcher, she said. She was still speaking without looking at me. Every woman knows it, she said. Now too I didn’t know what to say. I said yes, every woman knows, and I suddenly saw the fresco in yellow in black in raspberry red moving on the trees, on the back of the trunks, on the barrels and the damp grass, I saw the snakes rearing, the blind birds, the immense swollen maleness, the forest of black beams, the black cylinders, the total darkness eclipsing thought. I remembered the story about my friend in the Brooklyn subway, how she had once gone down at night to the deserted station and three little black demons had jumped out of the corners and pushed a sweating black fist into her mouth into her throat and thrown her down onto the platform of the deserted station and raped her one after the other with the fist in her throat and a train came and stopped and went away and came again and stopped and went away and the three little demons went on the fist in her throat and ran away leaving her in torn clothes and torn legs torn between her legs with her throat an open sepulcher.

She looked at me. Her voice blazed.

I heard there are men who make a woman do it in the throat, she said.

I said I didn’t know.

You never read about it? she said.

I said perhaps. I didn’t know.

I knew a woman like that, she said, all her life she walked around with an open sepulcher. She never ate, only vomited.

She looked at me again, very concentrated.

You vomit in your soul, she said.

Sometimes, I said.

Her face turned the color of ink.

In your soul, she said.

Sometimes, I said.

She laughed a cold bitter laugh.

Oh, no, there in the cell, with the fresco, and what was crawling over the floor, what was crawling from the walls, from behind the walls, they couldn’t have known there was a woman sitting there, but they knew, they sensed it through the walls, they masturbated through the walls, Abdalla and Hafez, and Asad and Charlie and John. I felt their gigantic penises poking through the walls and the spittle and the terrible smell. I saw the holes come alive. Suddenly she was silent, shrinking on the bench. I couldn’t even eat: It jumped at me from the filthy coffee from the dreadful soup, she said. She looked at me desperately, Oh, no, she said. Now her face was completely expressionless with big beads of sweat breaking out on it like drops of hot rain.

About birds of prey, she said suddenly. Her voice sounded strange, a whistling sound, and she pressed her back up hard against the bench again. There’s only one bird of prey, she said: Your thoughts.