Читать книгу A Pretty Sight - David O'Meara - Страница 10

‘Allen Gewalten zum Trotz sich erhalten’

‘Despite all the powers closing in, hold yourself up’

– Goethe

After the war, he stays underground,

still wary of the necessary

horse trades and occupying powers.

Le Monde, Die Zeit, New York

Times; Vietnam, Rwanda, Srebrenica:

years go by. In the stone arch of a busy

coffee house, Sophie is waving him over

past the billiards table, unfazed, looking

for all the world like she’s just

breezed in from 1933

and there’s no nightmare to come.

But the picture’s all wrong, her face

unaged, and where are Alex,

Willi or Christoph?

Sophie sighs, presses

a hand against her brother’s cheek.

‘Hans, it’s because we died.’

She describes the trial,

its forgone verdict, the bulbs

that burned all night in their cells,

the shared last cigarette

in the courtyard. Hans has turned

the details over again,

his memory tightening the blurs

like a Leica lens while the tension

in his face subsides

in the respite of knowing

at least they tried. They’re even laughing,

aping the parrot shrieks

of Friesler’s indignation,

gossiping over the Führer’s last pose,

Hans with a finger

cocked against his temple.

They order café viennois.

Sophie pokes at the dollops of whip

while ordered traffic crawls

past the painted glass

of the window. The newest papers

in wooden clips

fanned across

the billiard nap. Skinhead rallies,

latest dictatorships. Hans makes

another hopeless gesture.

Did everything change, or nothing?

Coffees done, they consider the years

like doors they never entered,

as if history’s just a lot

of people trying

to get from one room

to another. Outside, Hans

mounts the steps of a slowing tram.

Sophie ties her hair back

with an abalone barrette

as she turns

down Leopoldstrasse

and waves, looking for all the world

like she’s going to haunt it.