Tonio: a requiem memoir

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‘Tóóóóóóó-niii-óóóóó!’

Never have I called out his name more often than in the scant four months since Black Whitsun. If I add ‘at the top of my voice’, I am referring to my inner voice, which is infinitely louder and more far-reaching than anything my vocal cords, brought into vibration by a thrust of air, are capable of. There’s no sign of it on the outside.

Compare it with crying. Sometimes I’m ashamed of myself in front of Miriam, who, unlike me, is able to surrender completely to the natural force of a sudden fit of sobbing.

‘Even though you don’t see the tears, Minchen, I am crying with you,’ I once explained to her (with a choked voice, mind you). ‘For me, this damn grief is like internal bleeding. It trickles away, or gushes, on the inside.’

2

At the beginning of Vladimir Nabokov’s novel Lolita, the narrator savours the name of his lover, syllable by syllable: ‘the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth. Lo. Lee. Ta.’

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