Chameleon and Nightingale
Published in Issue #15 Translated from Hebrew by Philip Simpson(Excerpt from a Novel)
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1945: Paris at the end of summer, in the Luxembourg Gardens
After lunch they called me into the office and put me on the scales. My weight is close to sixty kilograms and I need another seven to return to what I was three years and nine months ago. In other words: if I add seven kilograms to my weight I shall be the same man that I was three years and nine months ago and nobody will owe me anything.
“Forgive me,” the commandant will say. “You see, we have given back to you what we took. What more do you want?”
When I came out of the camp my weight was thirty-seven kilograms. When I arrived at the hospital I weighed forty-five, and today they told me that I am discharged, and the official of the Joint gave me thirty thousand francs and at half past three I went out into the street and began to walk.
This, in fact, is all I would want to say, if I am asked how it was. Anyone who wants to know details can think whatever he pleases. There is no alternative. For the moment I have finished. Now I think that I want to marry some woman, who will help me not to talk. She needs to be one of those who were not there. She also needs to agree to marry me. Why she should agree, I don’t know exactly. I hope she will have reasons.
Then something good happened to me. I went...
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