Psalm 44

“To me it feels like we’ve known each other forever,” he said. “But never mind that now. This night isn’t over yet,” and she still couldn’t move and she seemed to hear a noise in the corridor and all she could do was cling to him and whisper “Jakob!” and at that same time she realized that he was no longer at her side but somehow here and there by the door listening to the thumping of steps audible right outside, and she felt herself losing the ability to speak on account of fear, and before she could snap out of it and think This was perhaps my last night with Jakob, my first and last, before she was in a position to think or say or do anything definite, Jakob was already holding his cupped hand over her mouth. And she was already in the cabinet and realized that its doors were creaking behind her as they closed when she sensed Jakob’s face on hers and heard his breathless whisper: “That’s Maks,” and before she had time to be astonished or at least ask Maks who? she nearly simultaneously heard a key start to turn on the outside of the cabinet door and subsequently Jakob’s Ja, ja and his rapidly receding steps.

Only then did she grasp why she hadn’t seen Jakob’s face when he said “That’s Maks” and that thing about a short-circuit: the light had already been extinguished before he locked the door, for otherwise she would have been able to see Jakob’s face; yet she remembered clearly that he hadn’t put out the lamp with the shade, and that his tall silhouette had still been visible before her, blocking her light with his back, and then visible too when he turned and bent down and stretched his hand out toward her to cover her mouth and lift her up and deposit her in the cabinet. Now it became clear to her that the light had still been burning when he picked her up and carried her in essentially one swoop, because she remembered seeing a broad swath of wide, dark cracks along the open doors of the cabinet and she understood that he would have to use his foot to fully open those doors that were already ajar. The last thing she saw then was the elongated white stain like some kind of unfleeced animal hanging on a hook, but then right away it struck her that it had to be Jakob’s white hospital coat because she could smell the heavy, thick odor of iodoform and ether. So the darkness must have begun at the moment that Jakob’s head appeared and touched her face to tell her not to be afraid and to tell her about Maks and the blown circuits, since the cabinet door must have still been open but she nonetheless wasn’t able to see him, only to perceive his low, low whisper and his breath on her face.

She stood motionless in the gloom, straining her eyes to pick out some light through the crack along the cabinet’s door, and she thought she felt the cabinet vibrating from her suppressed trembling, which the plywood transmitted in every direction, the cabinet shaking and creaking as if it contained a monstrous heart, or else some useless mechanism like a wall clock with no face and no arms with which to carry its weapons: only the frantic, invisible, and pointless click-clack-click-clack of a tremendous pendulum. Her head was at an impossible angle, lying nearly horizontally across the top of her shoulder, but she didn’t dare to feel about with her hands in the dark (lest she send an empty clothes hanger flying) or even push that coat farther away, with its sickly sweet hospital smell permeating her eyes and leaving her insides cramped and ready to heave up bile.