Time Ages in a Hurry

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“I asked him about the old days, when we were still so young, naive, hotheaded, silly, green. A little bit’s still there, except the young part, he answered.”

The old professor had stopped talking, his expression almost contrite, he’d swiped away a tear that had welled up on his eyelashes, tapped himself on the forehead as if to say how stupid of me, would you pardon me, tugged at his incredibly orange bow tie, and said in his French marked by a strong German accent: please pardon me, please pardon me, I’d forgotten, the title of the poem is “The Old Professor,” by the great Polish poet Wisława Szymborska, and at that moment he pointed to himself as if suggesting that he coincided somehow with the character in that poem, then he drank another Calvados, which was more responsible for his emotion than the poem was, and let out a half sigh, everybody rising up to console him: Wolfgang, don’t do this, keep reading, the old professor blew his nose with a large, checked handkerchief: “I asked him about that picture,” he continued in a stentorian voice, “the one framed on his desk. They’ve been and gone. Brother, cousin, sister-in-law, wife, daughter on the wife’s knees, cat in the daughter’s arms, cherry tree in blossom, above the tree, a bird, unidentified, in flight, he answered.”

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