Volume 39, Number 15 · September 24, 1992
A Matter of Survival
By Louis Begley
October, Eight O'Clock
by Norman Manea, translated by Cornelia Golna, by Anselm Hollo, by Mara Soceanu Vamos, by Max Bleyleben, by Marguerite Dorian, by Elliott B. Urdang
Grove Weidenfeld, 216 pp., $18.95
Late one Friday: a little boy waits by the window in an unnamed, desolate place. A phantom, 'a shadow, withered and gloomy,' appears out of the 'smoky steppes.' It is the boy's mother walking hurriedly, stumbling, bent under a sack heavy with potatoes, beans, prunes, and other scraps of food she earns knitting in houses of peasants whose language she does not understand. The father's work—we are not told what it is—pays only a quarter of a loaf of bread a day. If it weren't for the mother—believing 'that we would survive if we held fast to anything that might save us'—they would have 'faded very rapidly, right at the beginning.' Only this time, in addition to the food which she lays out as always on the floor in six piles, one for each day of the week to come, she has brought in her sack something miraculous. It is a sweater of many colors, like Joseph's coat, knitted of yarn ends scavenged in those alien huts. The sweater is bulky. Avidly, the boy imagines its warmth. The colors sparkle,
Review, 2430 words
To read the full text of this piece, please choose one of the following options:
|
If you are already a subscriber to the Review's electronic edition, please sign in: |
To subscribe to the electronic edition, please press the button below. |
To purchase access to this article for $3, please press the button below. |