Telegrams of the Soul

My Summer Trip, 1916

Three box cars heaped with hay were burning on an endlessly long freight train carting hay between Rekawinkel and Neulengbach. We had to wait somewhere for an hour and a half. So I was obliged to stop over in Amstetten*Amstetten, a town in Lower Austria on the from eleven in the morning til four in the afternoon.

I saw meadows that no man had ever tread. I heard birds in the beechwood forest or squirrels cracking beechnuts and letting the shells fall. I saw a girl of thirteen years standing in front of the work house with unbelievably lovely long and slender feet and toes, barefoot, of course. She sensed how I worshiped her naked feet. She followed me for a good long stretch, stopped, then gave up. I will never forget her. And one day she will say to her lover or bridegroom: “You’ll never be able to look me deep in the eyes and see all the way down to where our better self lives, like that old nut did that day, August 5, 1916, at two in the afternoon!” Three boxcars heaped with hay were burning directly in front of us and all the other passengers were up in arms, all except for a young lieutenant who was missing a right leg but made do with a pair of elegant, feather-light yellow bamboo crutches, who said: “Dear ladies, it’s generally a good deal more dreary in the trenches than it is here in Amstetten!”

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*Amstetten, a town in Lower Austria on the Ybbs River