Trafika Europe 2 - Polish Nocturne

with their grime. Our living room wasn’t a particularly venerated place, but it was very much his space, and now it’s difficult for us to make it our own. We need to do something, urgently; we can’t allow our living room to disappear from the house. (In my planner for killing time: Give new life to the living room.)

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When the moment for killing time arrives, I’ll have a lot of things in my planner. But I haven’t even started it yet. I spend my days answering letters and responding to phone calls: from students, acquaintances, friends who have reappeared from the past. Everyone has something to say, and if someone doesn’t say something, I do. If need be, I’ll take the initiative. I search my memory in case there’s someone left who doesn’t know; I check to see if there’s an acquaintance who hasn’t shown any signs of life, and if that’s the case, I’ll give her a nudge, help her get her act together. And when I’m done with acquaintances, I’ll start with strangers. Any available stranger will do: the plumber, the carpenter, the mailman, the telemarketer who phones asking for him . . . Yes, they too will learn. “No, he’s not in.” And if they insist: “He died the other day.”They stop insisting.

The problem is how to delay the moment when there is no longer anything to communicate, nothing related to his

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