The Physics of Sorrow Read Free

other people’s memories, and that was my biggest secret. And I hated the Yellow House, where they would’ve taken me, just like they’d taken Blind Mariyka, because she saw things that would happen.
    Nevertheless, I very secretly managed to find out something from Grandfather’s sisters, seven in number, who came to see him every summer until the end of their lives, skinny, dressed in black, dry as grasshoppers. One afternoon I cornered the eldest and chattiest of them and casually began asking her what grandpa had been like as a child. I had bought her candy and lemonade in advance—they all were crazy about sweets—and thus got the whole story.
    It was then that I learned that as a boy, my grandfather had suddenly gone mute. He had come back from the village fair and could only moo, he couldn’t utter a single word. Their mother took him to Granny Witch to “pour him a bullet.” She took one look at him and declared—this child has had quite a fright, I’ll have you know. Then she took a bit of lead, poured it into an iron mug, heated it up over the fire until it melted and started sizzling. In “pouring a bullet,”the lead takes on the form of whatever has frightened you. The fear enters the lead. Afterward you sleep with it under your pillow for several nights and then you throw it into a river, into running water, to carry the fear far away. Granny Witch poured the bullet three times and all three times a bull’s head appeared, with horns, a snout, everything. Some bull at the fair had scared him, said Grandpa’s sister, they’d go there to sell animals from the neighboring villages, buffalo, cattle, sheep, whole herds. For six months he didn’t utter a word, only mooed. Granny Witch came nearly every day, burned herbs over him like incense, they held him upside down over the crumbs of dinner to make the fear fall out of him. They even slaughtered a young calf and made him watch, but his eyes rolled up into his head, he fainted and didn’t see a thing. It cleared up on its own after six months. He came into the house one day and said: “Mom, come quick, Blind Nera has calved.” They had a cow by that name. And so his lips were unlocked. Of course, most of the details came from my smuggled entry into my great-aunt’s memory. Her name was Dana. She was hiding one other story, whose corridors I had already secretly slipped into.
    T HE B READ OF S ORROW
    I see him clearly. A three-year-old boy. He has fallen asleep on an empty flour sack, in the mill yard. A heavy bee buzzes close above him, making off with his sleep.
    The boy opens his eyes just a crack, he’s still sleepy, he doesn’t know where he is.
    I open my eyes just a crack, I’m still sleepy, I don’t know where I am. Somewhere in the no-man’s-land between dream and day. It’s afternoon, precisely that timelessness of late afternoon. The steady rumbling of the mill. The air is full of tiny specks of flour, a slight itching of the skin, a yawn, a stretch. The sound of people talkingcan be heard, calm, monotone, lulling. Several carts stand unyoked, half-filled with sacks, everything is sprinkled with that white dust. A donkey grazes nearby, his leg fettered with a chain.
    Sleep gradually recedes completely. That morning in the darkness they had come to the mill with his mother and three sisters. He had wanted to help with the sacks, but they wouldn’t let him. Then he had fallen asleep. They’re surely ready to go by now, they’ve finished everything without him. He gets up and looks around. They are nowhere to be seen. Now here come the first steps of fear, still imperceptible, quiet, merely a suspicion that is rejected immediately. They’re not here, but they must be inside or on the other side of the mill, or they’re sleeping in the shade under the cart.
    The cart isn’t there, either. That light-blue cart with a rooster painted on the back.
    And then the fear wells up, filling him, just like when they fill the little pitcher at