Lost and Found

 

I am at an age where the future is a repeat of the present.  And the past is gaining in importance. So many perspectives, and so much that is distorted by memory.

For example, all my life I have been haunted by a car accident that killed a girl.  I see her face before me. I regret that I did not die in her place. I imagined her future life. How she one day, picks up her child from a stroller and, in full sunlight, showed it to the world.

The sadness is true ( I have felt that all my life, with every accidental death of a girl), but is the story true?  Time to investigate. It must have happened , during my  primary school days, when I was about ten years old.   So I did some research in newspapers, for reports of traffic accidents in my  hometown, in the 1960s.
 
On my first search I found this : 

[ The English translation reads :

Five year old child under car

KAATSHEUVEL, July 12 - Five-year-old Jeanette de Jong was hit by a car and died as a result of the injuries she sustained. The child was on her way to do some shopping and suddenly crossed the road.

De Tijd, July 12, 1968 ]

I thought I had found it, but began to doubt when her age dawned on me.  Did I know a 5-year-old child at that stage in my life? And  the article told me  nothing where had the accident taken place.  Her name meant nothing to me.  Further investigation was inconclusive.

Still, The brevity of the message did put me off my guard.

 I talked with my oldest brother about my findings. He couldn’t recall the accident or the girl’s name. He remembered a traumatic event in his youth.  This was about a girl, living in our street.  This accident had a tremendous impact on him.  It is possible that he told me about it, and shared his grief,  when I was older.  I was two  at the time, so could not have known about it. 

There’s a newspaper article on the accident : 

[ The English translation reads :

Girl (7) from Kaatsheuvel dies after collision

KAATSHEUVEL,  April 5 - Tuesday afternoon at about a quarter past five, the seven-year-old girl Groenendaal, living in the Leliestraat in Kaatsheuvel, suddenly ran across the road while playing and was hit by a BBA bus. She died that evening from the injuries she sustained. The girl was running after a ball that rolled onto the Dongenseweg and was caught by a passing BBA bus that was not carrying passengers. The child was dragged along for several metres and suffered serious internal bruising and bleeding. She was immediately taken to the Sint Nicolaas Hospital in Waalwijk, where she died in the course of the evening.

Nieuwsblad van het Zuiden, April 6, 1960 ]

I went to primary school with one of her younger brothers.

The report bears witness to the same fatal childish inattention as the accident of Jeanette de Jong.  

I see the face of the girl in front of me.  Did I know her before the accident?  Did I play with her? I don't remember. Did she live in my street, in my neighbourhood?

I think the accident took place on the Hilsestraat.  Search with the keyword Hilsestraat produces no results.  At the time this street was  at the border of my home village.  In my early youth  there were meadows beyond  this street.

In the 1970s, several new construction projects were started on that site. 

After some concentration, a second sensation came over me. I remembered  a feeling of anxiety when I passed a house in the Erasstraat. 

I searched for Erasstraat.  And found this newspaper article: 

[ The English translation reads like this :

 

Woman run over in Kaatsheuvel

In the night of Sunday to Monday, the National Police found the body of an initially unknown woman in Kaatsheuvel. The body was found in the Erasstraat near the former football field.  Further investigation led to the identification of the body; it was  Mrs. A. J. van Wanrooy- de Vries, living in Erasstraat 51. She had left the house to buy food in the nearby  chips shop. On her way back she was run over by a car,  coming from  behind her,  and  she was dragged along for some twenty metres. The driver of the car drove on. The police immediately started an investigation. Today an autopsy will be performed on the corpse in Tilburg. Mrs van Wanrooy was the mother of two children.

Nieuwe Tilburgsche Courant, February 3, 1964 ]

I have not been able to find any information about the continuation of the police investigation. For example, whether the driver of the car voluntarily reported to the police or whether he was arrested after  further investigation.

My girl was one of the children of Mrs van Wanrooy.  She was in the same nursery school  as me.

What did the girl look like? I happened to stumble on a newspaper article  about  a  recovered prayer card from 1964.  The card remembered the passing of Ria Doggen from Esch.  One week before her fifth birthday,  she died in a traffic accident.  The girl  is see before me looks a lot like Ria. 

In memory of all the deceased discussed in this post. 

And for the bereaved who are still mourning the tragic loss of their loved one. 

Flash, flesh

They say that when you die, life passes you by in a flash. You witness the key moments of your life. I didn't believe it, and yes, I was right. 

But death has allowed me this and assured me that every person, at least those who choose to be buried, is conscious for the first 5 minutes in the coffin, awake to taste the loneliness that inhabiting this nothing entails. Five minutes, because no one will last longer.

The Telegraph


Well, here I am. My first thoughts go to my father, whom I often thought of in the first days, weeks, months after his funeral, so alone in his grave.

How I pressed myself against him, sitting on the back of his bike. How I looked at him, on my own bike, during a trip, at a turn, a junction. Are we going left, right or straight on?

I see the penis of the boy next door, he was older than us. I feel that there were several children present, but who?  Who was there? Can I talk about it?  I remember nothing, nothing  about  how I ended up in this situation,   nothing about what happened next, no, only the image of his penis, his bent, not stiff penis, the glans is still hidden. Kinda cute. 

Those were  the years of "in the bushes" and it was written with chalk on walls that I went with that girl.  And when I passed that text, I wondered if she was really in love with me.

I see her before me now.  She had a beautiful  soft, round face, she spoke, what did she say? Her lips were moist, her eyes sparkling, she was eager  to live. 

I am thinking of the car accident on the ring road at the end of our street, in which a young girl died.  In order to save her for life, I would have liked to die.  This kind of sacrifice I have felt all my life, when reading about a tragic accident in which a woman died. Let  her live!   Most recently, the death of Bethan Roper, a twenty-eight-year-old woman, who died leaning out of the window of a moving train and being hit by a tree or a branch.

BBC

I remember my niece Marie, the first woman in my life.   I fell in love with her.  Her powdered face and pink lipstick, her dark hair in a beehive, the skirt and her legs in nylons.  Such a skirt that brought the knees together.  I longed  to wear such a skirt.   “The pencil skirt feels different from looser skirts, and impacts the wearer's movements and posture. Walking needs to be done in short strides, and entering and leaving a car gracefully takes practice. When sitting, the legs need to be close together. Activities such as climbing ladders and riding bicycles can be very difficult in a pencil skirt. Due to reduced ventilation, the pencil skirt is warmer than other styles, and it is less likely to be blown up by gusts of wind.”

Wikipedia

I remember rubbing my knees together, getting an erection and soon after that spraying my seed. I felt the little shocks behind my balls. I remember the sweet smell of sperm. It was during a mathematics class in the first class of high school.  I was terrified during those lessons.  Afraid of being asked to explain and solve a mathematical problem before class.

The stain in my pants. Seen by someone? The smell ? Did no one smell that?

To soothe myself, I have masturbated every day of all my life, say from the age of twelve. Nowadays I have to use my hand.  

Healthline

I remember the first issues of Transexual Climax, a magazine of the Swedish Color Climax Corporation, which I bought in the eighties.  I recognized something of myself in the models and was moved. I sensed a deep understanding. I was envious of them.  They looked beautiful and well-accomplished.   Hybrid creatures in beautiful clothes, fucking and sucking in luxury apartments.

I searched through Google Images, using the terms camel toe and thigh gap, collecting photos on my hard drive.  The first term refers to the print of the female genitals in textile, the second to the absence of the penis.

For the first we went to England for the holidays. We have arrived in Calais. I get out of the car. It will take a while before we can board the train that will take us through the tunnel to our destination.  I look at a couple nearby, they’ve just stepped out of the car to stretch their legs. They were clearly in love with each other. If only that  young blonde woman was my companion! No, I long to be that woman!

The five minutes are almost over. Have I come to insight? No, as usual I was only looking for distraction. But I have accomplished it. 

Mare Incognita

The cabin boy admired the captain.  His immaculate uniform suited his impassiveness. Innocence has something inhuman, the boy thought.

There was a story going around, in which was told that the captain had chosen the sea because of an unrequited love. A woman told him that his naivety was a pose that had to mask his numbness.

The boy dreamed once that this woman was standing next to his bed. She looked at him worriedly and her hand stroked his cheek for a moment. She did not wake him up.

He did not tolerate himself. He wanted to put his life in the service of others.

On his way to the harbour he saw the wind yanking the trees. The wind tries to convince them of something that is not possible, he thought. It was autumn. Green is the color of disappearing.

Why has God not created a domain as vast as the earth for every human being?

When the captain speaks, the boy listens.

The endless sea is a concept that has been familiar to us for centuries. For thousands of years  the world was bordered by waterfalls.  At the edge the water plunges down, sailors feared  that place, that moment.

Skipper’s delusion was a common known disorder.  Sailors, who thought there were seas where there were none. Those wretched and godless souls, the captain added. They opted for a renegade course.

The bow of the boat turned, to ‘mare incognita’, seas that had not yet been charted.  Seas, undiscovered, invisible, illegible and unintelligible. The ship's logs bear witness to hallucinations and visions, the captain said.

The seaman in the crow's nest called out  to the crew on deck : the end at the horizon! Soon the ship entered a kind of fog.  It were the mists rising from the base of the fall. The captain looks over his maps. With his navigational instruments he reaches  the conclusion that these waves do not exist. The ship is navigating coordinates, which have not been calculated so far.

The ship is floating on air, he said.  The wind in the sails made it move faster, faster.

No one returns from such a voyage because such seas are not of water, they are of time.

The cabin boy climbs into the ropes. He wonders if there are others up and about, besides the wind and himself. The ripples of time. All he could see.  

(image Vija Celmins, Untitle, 1970, lithograph, Collection Museum of Modern Art, New York)

Travelogue

               

The following happened on a summer day lost in September 1957.  We drive in the direction of the border, which must be somewhere behind the mountains.

There is a lot missing from this trip. Like a road map, a packet of cigarettes, says my friend.

We didn't discuss this trip, we got into the car, I started the engine, we left. That this trip would ever take place, we knew for several years. Like accepting a hangover after a nightly slamming party.

We drive fast and recklessly, “ as if we are fugitives from the law, who for a few days  raided a paymaster”.

We do not exchange words. In the rear-view mirror we see what we leave behind.

Perhaps the feeling of emptiness that has permanently settled in us,  is responsible for this enterprise.

Restless like a chameleon. That is how I described my mental state in a letter to a lady friend. Since the beginning of the summer I slept badly. I often woke up at night. I masturbated to calm myself down. My friend, his hands confidently hold the wheel, stared through his binoculars all the time in those days. Or for the umpteenth time he reread his favourite eighteenth century travel story.

One day, the day before yesterday?, he discovered a way out between the buildings

‘What an invention’, he says smilingly. ‘What do you mean? ‘  ‘The  steering wheel, all that's needed is a steering wheel.’

I wonder if the lifetime of a human is sufficient to pass all the roads, streets and paths that exist in the world.

'Can you say that you have seen the world?'

'Have you ever felt the pain of loneliness so deep, you had to hide away from people. And being alone was the only cure.?'

Girl on zebra (in homage to May Vandermark)

                          May Vandermark with her zebra - 1920s - Ringling Bros Circus

Last night I dreamt of a girl on a zebra.  I didn’t sleep much that night, but  I can assure you  there was joy in this dream.  You want proof : the smile that adorned my face when I looked in the mirror in the morning.

I saw a zebra  galloping through the streets.  I heard a zebra galloping through the streets.  I remember that  I wondered if there was a circus in town that rented zebras to young girls.  You must admit,  it’s a fair question.  An ordinary question,  but I am an ordinary person, though  I admit a dusty spirit.  As far as young girls are concerned, I am a fool.  I saw her go and thought : go follow her.

In  a park the zebra took a break,  thank God, I was gasping for air. While he chewed on some birch leaves,  I managed to kiss the girl. It didn’t take a lot of persuasion to agree to a kiss.  It was a dream, remember.   On her cheek, on her eyes,  in her neck.  Oh so pale her skin was.  The rest of her body was a blur.

While the  wind played in the foliage, we danced a waltz. I can still feel her belly, I can see her looking up to me.  How long did the dance last…?  Until the zebra whinnied,  and I heard the clopping, he was ready to go, how solemn can a sound be.

There was but one question left  : what’s your destination, beautiful?  She answered : soon I will make the big crossing. When she said so, it was as if she already withdrew.   As if the developing of a photo was reversed.  Chemistery!

I demanded , I begged, it was of no use.  She mounted  and kicked the horse.  I watched her as she changed course. She left the frame.

I returned home. For days I stared at the horizon to see if they had arrived.

Cindy Sherman

Why is it that some works of art immediately appeal to you and have and keep a resulting fascination?

I had that right away with (the early) photographs by the American artist Cindy Sherman.   [It took a lot of time before I saw these.  The experience of walking past these early photographs and seeing them in real life happened in 2017, when I visited the exhibition From Selfie to Self-Expression, in the Saatchi Gallery, in London!]

Of course they appealed to my cinephile heart. I saw Antonioni's films in it. Films, which I saw later by the way, I had read about them and seen the stills in books and magazines. Many film directors had actresses like muse, Von Sternberg had Marlene Dietrich, Jean-Luc Godard Anna Karenina, Antonioni Monica Viti. Hitchcock had many, one he lost to a kingdom, another he lost because he intervened in the life of the actress and sexually assaulted. [By the way, Hitchcock also had male muses ].

But with Sherman there is something else  going on. Sherman was intrigued by the stereotyped roles of  women in the 1950s and the 1960s. She featured herself in her work. Each time you saw a different version of Sherman, but you didn’t get to know her.  Sherman  is one of the predecessors of the selfie era. My first muse was my cousin M.. I still remember her beehive, her pink powdery face and the light pink lipstick that matched. I still see her in her sixties skirt suit, with the  knees visible.   When I saw Tippi Hedren in Marnie for the first time, I  saw Marie again. When I came upon this  photo of Joan Collins, I was looking at M..   {Marnie, by the way,  is the film of transformation ]

                 

                                  

In our western culture, this ability to transform yourself is actually mainly reserved for women.  By means of hairstyle, make up and clothing they are able to be different each time, to take on a different appearance each time. I was, when I went to school by bus, in  the late seventies, fascinated by a girl, who got into the bus two stops further, who always surprised with a different look. I envied her and got more and more admiration for the ability to invest in such an experiment. I have never considered the attention to appearance to be superficial.  And that's because I don't have a surface myself. No, I watched women, was a camera that recorded and in this way I could satisfy my desire. In my teens, I was convinced that I was coming down with an incurable disease. I believed in transmigration.   In fact, I always carry death with me, every day I think of suicide or I long that my life comes to a grinding halt.  This dysphoria, this alienation from my body,  has hit me hard, these last two years. It causes sleep deprivation, even physical pain.

In his foreword to the Cindy Sherman book of 1984 Peter Schjeldahl  writes about  the fact that people like to extrapolate stories from her photos, ‘discovering hidden meanings where none were present’, he quotes from an interview Sherman had with Els Barents, and goes on saying : “What is photographed is a face lost in thought- really lost, vacated, abandoned, consciousness drained out of it in invisible deeps. (We are observing a face oblivious not only to being observed but to being at all). Brilliantly, the face is deprived of its usual priority in any picture, becoming an element equivalent to every other. The linoleum floor is as ‘’expressive’’ as the girl’s features- an effect reinforced by Sherman’s increasingly eloquent use of colour”

I haven't changed since the day I met M. I didn't grow, still the person, 10 years old. Meanwhile a storm of thoughts is raging in my head. 

Dusk

Dusk

                                                                                     for Simone Weil

Do you believe in God?

This question was put to me by a Commissioner. I will save you the description of the good man and his premises. He was in office. He reminded me of our old schoolmaster, who looked at you during an examination, although question and answer were indifferent to him.

Yes, I believe in the absence of God.

I believed, when you, brother, died, during yet another famine. Did you know that grief about the death of a loved one can assault a human being?

Yes, I believe in the presence of God. Only recently. 

In the early hours we, you remember Olga, Olga, with her black teeth, when she opened her mouth you did not expect her to be able to speak, and you remember Aleksandra, you always pulled her braids, well we were on our way to the factory, it now has three chimneys and the smoke that rises out of it has the colour of honey but does not smell so sweet,. I believed because the earth breathed and the first rays of sunshine made you smell the dewy grass.

God has never hindered me in my actions. I doubt him. I can doubt him.

Do you know doubt? Do you know how comforting scepsis is?

The Commissioner did not look up. While I was so eager to see his eyes. Eyes, with a colour, not like the eyes I draw on the walls of my cell. He expected a confirmation, and the first 'yes' I gave him, met with indifference.  He looked at the form,  the beautiful  regularity of it eluded him, and filled in 'yes'.

I remember exactly what happened in the forest.  If someone is as alone  as I am now, and his memory connects him to a similar state,  then the memory is often precise.

I walked out of the house. I thought I could ward off your death by leaving. I dug a hole in the ground, next to a tree, and put my head in it and swept the hole with sand.

When I woke up, I lay in the dark. I wondered where this darkness could be located. With both hands I touched around me.  I'm not lying in our bed because if that were  the case I'd feel your  body  tossing and turning next to  me.  Moreover,  I would then be able to distinguish the door of the room and the wardrobe.  Mother still keeps your clothes. The other day I put on your trousers.  Mother's eyes got wet when she saw my bare calves.

Am I somewhere in the forest? Do I hear the chiffchaff's song there? Is it the wind that rattles the windows?

Now that I realize that I cannot imagine the location of this darkness, I still have one question: am I a human being? Am I a human being, I say it out loud.  I am hoping for laughter. My body would react with laughter. 

So I have reasons to assume that as soon as darkness rises, darkness comes from above, like avalanches of a mountain, have I summoned the night?, I will be something else. A tree? I don't mind being a tree. I lie, that is a certainty. I know: with one stroke of the axe you can fell this tree. Birds do not sing in felled trees.

I open my eyes. Brother, remember, when darkness turns you, open your eyes.

You see, I hear the chiffchaff's song. A spider crawls over my breasts. I look up along the trunk. A winding path that leads past the shaded leaves to the sun-drenched. I get up. I embrace the tree. I squeeze it between my thighs. I stroke and kiss his trunk.

I love this untouchable tree. His thinking resembles mine. His expectations are high. His movement does not take place.

Dusk had fallen when I went home.  It was quiet in the forest. So quiet that I heard  the heavenly trumpets welcoming someone. Before I took the path that leads to the village, I looked back for a moment. A birch tree at night.

A lot has happened since then, brother. Vladislav came and talked about the proletariat. 

Do you remember Sasha? I like him, despite everything. He probably is still wiping his dirty hands on his work coat. He walks cautiously, like a predator. He only trusts his machines.

Vladislav, grandmother always called him "ginger"", because of his red hair, was arrested with me.

He had hands like coal shovels.

The eyes of the poets froze.

The harvests failed.

I foresee a time when someone sets fire to himself out of despair. I shudder when I think of the years beyond that time when such a gesture is no longer felt and shared.

Brother, it is pitch-dark in my cell. I have measured the space with my steps. When I stretch out my arms I do not touch the ceiling. Not even when I stand on my toes.

 My tongue is dry. I hope I won't tire you too much with my talk.

From time to time I rub my body warm. Do you know when the shivers stop? When the freezing starts?

Remember how surprised we were when we walked out one morning? Never before had we seen such white sheep. Night frost had covered them with a beautiful dress.

Do you remember, grandfather, who called me 'his melancholic girl' and then put his wrinkled index finder on the tip of my nose?

The children laughed at me. They didn't mean any harm with it.

My face, do you  remember my face? My nose crawling to my mouth like a snail.  It seems as if I silently laugh at myself.

As a child I was convinced that my voice lived in my throat. I was afraid I would accidentally swallow it. 

Did God invent these lies?

Once the old schoolmaster read us from a heavy book. He spelled out the words of the story. Probably he didn't understand it.

 Do you remember?  Do you remember Amphion? With his play on the lyre  he managed to move the stones so they built a fortress for him.

Der ewige Student ( A Day in the Life of )

There are days when all sentences end in exclamation marks. Even : I woke up this morning. I woke up this morning!

I laughed at my laziness. But man created God and entrusted the creation of the world to God's hands.

Today I dedicated some of my thoughts to God. Just a few moments. You can't think of God for long. I established the cowardice of God.  He sent out his son to die for him.  From his heavenly palace he watched while his son was executed.

I was seized by the conservation of a pure body.

After I stepped out of the shower I put on my shoes and started to make known my discomfort to everyone, but especially to the older couple living under my rooms,  by stepping back and forth on the wooden floor.

I browse through an illustrated magazine. A picture of a clown strikes me. I admire the perfection of his attire: the rag coat, the big shoes, which make walking difficult.  His mouth is painted so that every smile will turn out sad.

At exactly three o'clock in the afternoon I woke up again. I looked outside. I waited anxiously for the unveiling of her face. The face of the woman, who removes her laundry from the washing line, on the balcony diagonally opposite me.

I read Kierkegaard. For the third time.  He writes somewhere that a woman is a man's dream.  He refers to the story of Creation. God let a deep sleep come over Adam when he created Eve.

I join in the company of my thoughts and get drunk.

Just after six p.m.  I wake up again. It is winter. I turn on the lamp, the bright light hurts the eyes...

I think of her. She told me she didn't understand any of my letters. Letters that I had written for her sake.  Her lack of understanding did not sadden me, I remember.

I close the door behind me. 

I visit the cemetery, which is in the heart of the city.  While I went past the graves, I wondered why we bury the dead with so many. Probably because of passers-by like me. Someone who reads the names on the tombstones and then forgets them. In such numbers it helps us to forget the dead, death.

I remembered that I was there once, ( I can't control myself very well sometimes) and I shouted: Wake up, get up and go. The dead have a hard time too.

Why didn’t stay at home tonight?  She could have paid me an unexpected visit.

Months ago I wrote her a letter in which I pleaded against myself. I remember one of the sentences from that letter: I don't want to infect you with my meaninglessness.

[ Just to be near beauty, surrounded by beauty, to examen beauty, (i.e.clarity). It is the only way to save me from tediousness, from despair ]

How wonderful a machine the body is. You can make it tired.

To restore order I washed my feet.

Around four o'clock a.m. I slept. Before going to bed, I remembered the last words of Schoenberg : "Harmonie.  Harmonie".

Return

It is the time when people cycle to work. In the station hall they rub their eyes once more. I move between people to whom sleep still sticks. I imagine their beds, which they slept in an hour ago. In each house there is a room which is reserved for silence.

I take the bus to my hometown. I, I was the last one to leave the parental home. It is not as difficult for the first child to leave as it is for the last child to do so.

I get off at a bus stop on the outskirts of the village. I prefer my own pace.

I count the trees. I am looking at the clouds. Yes, I am looking for a cloud that I saw here years ago. I am saddened by the sight of the truncated willows. The branches once connected heaven and earth with each other.

New developments.

I pass my old school. New classrooms and a gymnasium were constructed around the main building. I am moved by the difference in colours of the buildings.

We are passers-by. The lucky ones are passing by mirrors.

A boy is trying to catch his tame bird. He walks around a small public green square to get  the bird to leave in a certain direction. But the bird hops under the bushes, back and forth. The boy is shouting. he makes begging gestures. He gives up when he notices me. He looks at me and says: ‘ I have to go to school now. I will come back later.’

If he had asked for my help, I would have given it to him.  The bird has a yellow beak. His wings are shortened. I see him. He is coming at me. I am helpless.

It is half past nine. I  am drinking coffee with my parents. My father asks me questions, my mother answers them.

When I am in the bus, I can smile again.  The sun is peeking through the clouds to greet me. I left my parental home on time. Had I stayed there longer, I would have been tormented by questions about "my future".

Hey sweetie, where are you going? Me? Nowhere, sir. I feel flattered by that word ‘sir’’. Shall I tell you something? I'm coming with you. Where to go, sir? With you! To nowhere, silly.  It will be our secret. I've always wanted to share a secret with someone.

I drink a coffee at the station restaurant. I listen to the conversation that three Moroccan men are having at a table next to me.

I am walking on the platform. I lean with my back against the wall. I am waiting like a whore.

I am considering leaving for good. The platform is the right place to think about this.

Well, I would be worried about the vistas, the encounters, the right words to say.  I would be tormenting myself with the question of what is worth remembering. You return and they ask you to tell them what you have seen and experienced.

Do not return, never.

I will leave here when I am sure I will disappear.

Marinus van der Lubbe

I remember my childhood, as if it had been experienced by someone else. Someone I barely know,  I remember a fire.

They kicked me and beat me. But fortunately they didn't know who I was, so they didn’t know where they could  hurt me.

My stomach is empty.  My heart is like a dark, deserted room. My head is

rocking.

I wonder who they are talking about. The public prosecutor is raising such a hue and cry.

I felt better in my cell. I counted the bricks. The walls reflected my words and I replied to them. I could see I was the one who was speaking.  With every word I breathed.

Those people around me invent me on the spot.

But someone has got to take the blame.

“Give me Thy Guilt, I beg Thee.

 I am but an orphan. Who is my Father? Am I his Son?

 I’ll take the blame, because I understand guilt.  I feel it.“

A strange, cruel smile stuck on his face.

 A court assistant reads my statement. Words written years ago.

“There are no stars. There is only their light travelling towards us. 

I wanted to light a fire. A bonfire. A fire, visible to all.

A fire that dwelleth in the eyes of all men, so that they may see the night and the stars.”

It may be cold in my cell, but I feel good there, damn well, despite the beatings.  What fire awaits me? The Purgatory or Heaven? Hellfire?

Opening of the trial. YouTube

 [85 years ago Marinus van der Lubbe  was executed for setting fire to the building of the Reichstag ]

   

   

Wikipedia