TE23 Double Feature

The Lamentations of Zeno

Ilija Trojanow

to the next with similar dedication. Such keen regard for sensational headlines and pathetic ads irritated me. I had to step out into the corridor. When we reached Salzburg three girls with blank faces entered our compartment, without paying any attention to us old-timers. The woman permitted herself another candy, the man remained buried in the Krone, the three girls regaled one another with gossip from school, and when the train stopped in the middle of a field I was overcome with the fear of being trapped in this compartment, my view blocked by the Krone, with nothing to eat but a last piece of candy, my ears ringing with the vapid talk of the young generation, and never being able to make it back to my glacier. The train started up again, I calmed down somewhat, little did I know things would only get worse. So I wouldn’t have to wait for the bus in my weakened condition, the host of the Zum Kogl guest house picked me up at the station. A shaggy dog was panting in the back of his jeep. I have to tell you 22

right away, you’re not going to like it, something’s happened, you’re not going to like it. The road was all switchbacks and hairpin turns, with bare landscapes on both sides: without ice and snow the Alps are grossly ugly. I’m glad to see you’re back in shape, we prayed for you, our whole family— the man has seven daughters, or is it eight, in any case all daughters, and praying isn’t alien to him. For a moment I was distracted by a racing cyclist hurtling downhill, the car swerved left, the wheels grated on the gravel, I looked up through the windshield and saw . . . nothing. No glacier. No living glacier. Only fragments, individual pieces, as though its body had been mangled by a bomb. The escarpment was still iced over, but all that was left further down were lumps of darkened ice, strewn over the cliff like rubble waiting to be removed from a building site. All life had melted away. I told you it would be hard, that’s not a pretty sight. The host’s voice evaporates in my memory. Apparently I 23