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5
Is your heart still beating? And why?
Life is strange; as far back as he can remember, education
had been the promised land that echoed under and over his
mother’s letters— his only education until now had been in
preparation for his confirmation, and one month of lessons
with an itinerant teacher when he was ten or twelve years
old. Yet he was able to read and write fluently by the time
the sea claimed his father, and he practiced writing
whenever he could, scratched letters on ice, on mouldering
rafters in the roof of the cowshed, in the snow, at first
without constraint, neglected his chores, the rafters barely
held up against the weight of the words, and one morning
when people came out of the farmhouse it was nearly
impossible for them to step into the snow due to the sheer
amount of words, the boy hadn’t been able to sleep because
of the moonlight, had gone out while it was still night and
started to write. Twelve strokes of the switch for three days
in a row and no dinner brought him to his senses. He was
beaten, not out of malice but necessity, for, in the first
place, writing words in the snow or dirt is bad luck, and
second, his chores went unattended in the meantime, and
how were people supposed to live in this land if they
neglected their work? And what would happen to you, who
would employ you if word got round that you wrote in the
snow instead of worked, you’d soon end up on the parish,
you’d be kicked at like a dog, so welcome these twelve
strokes, let them teach you, they’re not given out of malice,
but necessity, even care. But now he wakes up, does light