A Book of Memories

Начало книги

It is my pleasant duty to state that what I have written is not my own memoirs. I have written a novel, the recollections of several people separated by time, somewhat in the manner of Plutarch's Parallel Lives. The memoirists might conceivably all be me, though none of them is. So the locations, names, events, and situations in the story aren't real but, rather, products of a novelist's imagination. Should anyone recognize someone, or — God forbid! — should any event, name, or situation match actual ones, that can only be a fatal coincidence, and in this respect, if in no other, I am compelled to disclaim responsibility.

The last place I lived in in Berlin was at the Kühnerts', out in Schöneweide, on the second floor of a villa covered in wild vines.

The leaves of the creeping vines were already turning red and birds were pecking at the blackened berries; autumn had arrived.

No wonder this is all coming back to me now: three years have passed, three autumns, and I know I'll never go back to Berlin, there'd be no reason, no one to go to; that's also why I write that it was the last place I lived in in Berlin, I just know it was.

Читать дальше →