Trafika Europe 6 - Arabesque

oblivion

a thimble that had become ingrown on a finger of his left hand and in the finger of the right, a fish hook that had jabbed his calloused skin, yellow as candle stearin, was hanging as if from the lip of an old fish; and the one who had been whittling wore a darkened ring. “The dogs got themselves lost,” said the fisherman. The man spoke as if they were still just three; as if they had always lived the three of them and a fourth never was and never could be, and thus I did not fit into his field of comprehension and he might not figure out for several days that there was a stranger among them. Their solitude together was older than they were, time had vanished within it, and the old men had aged not only with the years but

because the days of their lives resembled one another, and the days did not bring new impressions but merely subtracted old ones from their memory. “The dogs got themselves l os t , ” the f i she rman repeated, and the other two replied, “Lost.” Their voices were like old things being used af ter a long hiatus; the sounds did not f it together properly, hanging on by hook or crook, dangling like a loose button. They sounded like dead men who had acquired new flesh but could not adjust the new voice to the old words. The man with the axe leaned against his sharpener, the fishermen stuck the needle in his jacket, and the whittler put the knife away inside his boot. Wind came from the higher reaches of the river,

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