Tours of the Black Clock

106

UNTIL THAT MOMENT IN the tower it never occurred to me he might still be alive. I left that possibility behind in Vienna when they moved me; I have no certainty when that was, I have no recollection when or how it happened. The Germans continue to broadcast his speeches but I thought he’d only become a myth the world couldn’t allow to die. Sometimes I see the broadcasts on the small TV smuggled in by the fishermen who live out on the islands. There’s always a picture of him from when he was much younger, with his voice speaking over it. I’m not sure how they’ve worked the voice. I suppose they’ve taken the old speeches and spliced them together into new speeches and cleaned up the sound. In my room I continue to write of her but I never thought I was still writing for him. I assumed someone else had fallen in love with her; she’s seduced so many. I write each day, and each night someone comes to take what I’ve done, not unlike the way Holtz did long ago. Our passion has become mechanical in the way of most passion, I build it like a house. No one’s ever been so good at it. I build my own house that defies architecture, I’ve compelled the landscape of history to readjust to my visions. I’ve done it from a blind spot where no one sees me yet my presence cannot go unacknowledged. The guard comes and whether there are ten pages or one, a sentence or a word, he takes the work; no one comments or changes or complains. I assume this is meant to go on until I die, since there seems no chance the seduced will ever be sated.