Far from Vietnam

By Nadia Tesich

Far from Vietnam is a coming of age story that concerns, Ann, an American student living in Paris in the mid-1960s, who discovers herself first as a woman and then as a political activist. Her journey involves other American expatriates and their complicated relationship with French society, her travels to the former Yugoslavia and Greece, which are preludes to her involvement in organizing the first demonstration against the Viet Nam War in Paris, and ultimately to a trip to Cuba, where she sees socialism in action. Written in the immediate and tentative style of a journal, the novel draws us into the intimate world of a dedicated revolutionary who must change her own life before it can continue.
Milo Yelesiyevich, Publisher --- The Serbian Classics Press

Nadja Tesichs new novel Far from Vietnam, is a brilliant work on the level of her previous novels. here she takes on a new locale and time period in her on-going sensitive portrayals of a woman searching for tenderness in a lost world.
Laura Shaine Cunningham

Nadja teaches a lesson. She teaches of the difference between having money and being high class. And on why the single way to be high class in this world of ours -is to become a revolutionary against the Gordon Gekkos who rule all of us.
Nstor Gorojovsky, Journalist, Buenos Aires

Praise for To Die In Chicago

As seen through the eyes of an innocent and idealistic 16-year-old immigrant girl from Yugoslavia, a tale of disillusionment, struggle, and resistance in the American heartland of the 1950s. Beautifully told, deeply felt.
Rebecca Clare, Artist and Writer

This book surpasses Nadja Tesichs previous brilliant works, Shadow Partisan and Native Land--She is an interesting literary treasure.
Laura Shane Cunningham, author of Sleeping Arrangements

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Apr 16, 2012
• ISBN: 9781469794235

Nadia Tesich

Nadja Tesich was born in Yugoslavia and came to Chicago at age fifteen. She attended Indiana University and the University of Wisconsin and did graduate work at New York University Film School and the Sorbonne in Paris. She has taught Film at Brooklyn College and French Literature at Rutgers University. She is the author of the novel, hadow Partisan which received grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and the New York State Council for the Arts. Her other published works include: Native Land and the play After the Revolution, as well as short stories and poetry. She has worked in films, and is also the author/ director on her own movie, Film for my Son. As an actress she starred in Nadja A Paris by Eric Rohmer. Nadja Tesich currently lives and works in New York City.

Book preview

Far From

Vietnam

Nadja Tesich

iUniverse, Inc.

Bloomington

Copyright © 2012 Nadja Tesich

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, names, incidents, organizations, and dialogue in this novel are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

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ISBN: 978-1-4697-9422-8 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4697-9423-5 (e)

iUniverse rev. date: 4/2/2012

Contents

Prologue

Memory of a Girl

Les Invalides

Boulevard Jourdan — Paradise

A Boy From Wisconsin

A Girl from Saint Germain

Nights and Days with George

Jobs

Boots

Passy

Girls From Elsewhere

The Suitcase

Dreams in Red

Summer

Song of Loneliness

Mission

PART TWO

Love

Native Land

Two Contacts

Action

A Maid on The Eve of Revolution

After The Revolution

A Major Disturbance

Epilogue

To all my families, to my mother, my son Stefan

and his children, and all of my friends

In special memory of my brother Steve Tesich

Prologue

Memory of a Girl

I don’t know what brings her back, is it the smell of things, or an old tune or certain words. She is just a memory of a girl, a snapshot, a poster, until she moves, suddenly comes closer. I have no control over it, none. I don’t know why it happens most often in Europe around the old train stations as I get on still another train, just before the whistle, as the doors go thud, shut —with a sharpness of pain that makes me feel young, we travel together once again, with unbearable joy I am in Paris.

It’s summer on Saint Michel, everything bursting, exploding, a swarm of people everywhere looking walking coming going staring at you. The cafés are full, overflowing, men have mysterious eyes, women are beautifully dressed, and it looks like at any moment something wonderful will happen. It has to, this is Paris. I can’t get over it, I am in Paris, Paris, and I’ve been lucky about everything so far, including the weather.

Dear Mom,

It’s wonderful, everything, it’s hard to describe. You should see the cafés, the trees, everything is so beautiful, you just want to die. My hotel room is tiny but it has real lace curtains and a red checkered table cloth, and this morning when I woke up someone was singing outside. Don’t worry about me. I’ll be fine.

Love, A.

I don’t mention, how could I, that my clothes are unusable in this landscape where everybody is beautifully dressed and I’ll throw most of them in the garbage. Tomorrow maybe. All those pathetic Peter Pan collars, gathered skirts, ugly pastels, everything she had made for my trip would identify me immediately as a girl from Racine, Wisconsin, the very last thing I want to be. Tomorrow definitely.

Les Invalides

In the morning, the alarm produced terror. I didn’t know where I was. Not in the beginning as the dream lingered and I ran after a man, but he retreated then faded to nothing. Without a single window to orient me the walls hold me tight — fast before panic sets in, jump turn on the light get into pants and my black sweater, wake up. Run down the six flights, then across a large courtyard, up the staircase with a red carpet, finally huge wooden doors with their name in brass. Inside it’s sunny and large, the windows give on the Eiffel Tower on one side. I am in Paris, that’s where.

Monsieur is already up and soon the kids will be, then Madame will appear in a beige peignoir. I grab the money that sits in the blue china dish on the counter top and run down again then out the door past the concièrge toward the boulangerie on the corner and get two large baguettes, always two, that’s how much money they left in that blue dish. In the bread line with others, morning starts, Paris is waking up. This part is nice, the smell of croissants, bread, the sound of voices. "Voici Monsieur, the baker’s wife says to an old man. Merci Madame. It looks like rain. Bonjour ma belle," a baker smiles at me. Upstairs, cut the baguettes in pieces and in the middle so they can have breakfast with butter and jam and café au lait, something they call "petit dejeuner complèt in Paris. Hardly complete in my opinion, but they like it like this and have it every single day. Anything else like ham and eggs or bacon would be called le petit déjeuner Américain" in the textbook. I eat my bread in the kitchen waiting for them to get done in the dining rooms. Then my work will start.

Breakfast dishes come first, the easy part, then the kitchen floor then vacuum everything everywhere and once a week dust, seriously, all his books. He has many. Take them out, dust behind each book or the dust will ruin them she says and that’s serious.

If they left me alone with the books it would be OK. But you can’t look at them or even daydream a bit, you can’t even have simple thoughts because Madame buzzes around chatting, explaining. Doing nothing herself. Please go back to bed or go drink some coffee I want to tell her, her voice is annoying and her body behind me like a hornet. Anybody can figure out how to dust, why does she have to supervise. She has changed from her peignoir into her day costume with a gray dress with small flowers, has high heels on. She has a thinness I don’t like, I think her bones will crack suddenly, splinter. He loves his books, he is so careful about the paper, she whispers, … and this one here … she picks an old thick book in a reddish leather cover, …he spent years to find.

He couldn’t get it out of the library? I ask, making conversation about the book by Diderot. She laughs now and looks more like a bird than a hornet, her wrinkles multiply. "Oh it’s not the same, c’est autre chose. This way he can read at home at his leisure and touch the maroquin."

"What is ‘maroquin’?"

Why this is, she says, pointing at the leather cover.

"Isn’t it the same as the people who live in Morocco, aren’t they called maroquin too," I ask.

Yes of course.

They must make it there, right?

I am not sure, she says confused and leaves me alone for about two minutes then whispers as if there was somebody in the apartment: Do you know what he does? She must be talking about her husband and he must be doing something very strange and secretive, what could it be? I give up. No, Madame I don’t.

"He is professeur at the Sorbonne, she says smiling, all puffed up. As if I cared what he did. So what he is a prof at the Sorbonne, big deal, I have other things to think about. He could do anything as far as I am concerned — sell shoes, drive trucks like my dad did for a while. I am not here in this living room out of some sort of admiration or love but because of that maid’s room on the sixth floor which I get for nothing … well … for two hours of dusting and cleaning, except it’s never really two. She’ll always find something. Like, oh, you forgot the antechamber, or do you mind getting me some aspirin, today I have another horrible migraine." And so on and on. She doesn’t do it on purpose, it’s just that she doesn’t think at all about my time. But I am not the only one in this situation, judging by the line at the Alliance Française where all the foreign students wait — Swedes, Yugoslavs, Portuguese, English, occasionally an American. All girls. Men are not wanted for these jobs, what do they do I wonder, what can you do if you’re a man, a student, foreign and without money?

The room on the sixth I despise — both the john and the sink are in the hall and are used a lot by all sorts of tired-looking people who live in this section of the building, which you reach by the escalier de service. Around me, through the walls, I hear children cry and women scream in different languages. Now I could have had a better place near the Bois de Boulogne but I was afraid to get stuck there with the baby. That’s what happened to her, the Irish girl said at the Alliance. She said, Don’t take a baby for anything, they tell you it’s only during the day but it ends up being all the time and they are always going out and you’re stuck. That Boulogne room was sunny with large windows and a real bathroom separating me from the baby, and the tub was lovely but living there you are far away from the real Paris where all the interesting things are. Saint Michel would be the best, or Saint Germain or anywhere near the river in one of the small hotels where something fantastic must be happening all the time. Or might. That would be the best, then everything would fit, if only I could have a room there and start living really. However, if I thought that I would stay here the entire time I would pack and leave right this minute — these people and this place are not Paris for me. I might as well be in Racine.

One step at a time, I whisper to myself, can’t rush.

Madame took me in that day rather than the English girl because I am blond. (What else could it be since there was nothing wrong with that English girl who came almost at the same time?) She doesn’t tell me her secret reasons but I hear them talking from the kitchen one morning as I mop. Her friend, another birdy woman, says her full-time Portuguese maid is a very good worker but not really présentable because she is fat, dark, and has a moustache. And poor creature, what she did to our lamb the other day is depressing, we simply went out to eat, says this other woman. Mine doesn’t cook, says Madame, I prefer it that way.

Yes, but yours is blond, says the other woman, so much nicer if you have guests. Yours has class. Yes, says Madame, you’re right but I had also decided it had to be either a British or American girl so the kids can practice.

How clever of you, says the other, you’re so smart.

Yes indeed. Now I know. Every free moment, every time she remembers, she pushes her sons toward me, while I am eating my bread and café au lait and they are rushing to school. "Go say hâlo Jean-Pierre, she screeches, say how are you, how is their accent, Ann? Poor kids, poor Jean-Pierre, poor Patrick to be embarrassed like that. I take pity: Their accents are fine." Kids in general, no matter where, are better than their parents, they always are, it’s a real tragedy in general to have to grow up. To be a grownup here or there means your life has stopped, you even forget who you used to be. And…

She is still buzzing around, still giving me trouble, interrupting my thoughts. "Ann, mon petit, why, mais pourquoi, are you wearing your good shoes, she says, eyebrows uplifted in surprise (which bird is she?), and I am surprised she noticed them, my new brown flats, my first French shoes. You’ll ruin them, she insists, you ought to change into something older while you clean. She didn’t know I had nothing else right now since I threw the ugly embarrassing Wisconsin pair into the garbage along with the rest but I am not going to tell her about my private life and the shoes that were both ugly and worn so I offer coolly, It doesn’t matter, Madame, everything gets used up. I am learning to be clever, small tricks from books, who said it, I wondered, was it in Colette or was it Proust? But my cleverness is wasted on her, she didn’t even notice my wit. You Americans are different from us, she says. It’s not in your nature to think about those things."

She goes away, starts telephoning, arranging the flowers she had bought for tonight for this dinner they are having. I just dust and dust then trip on some damned pot. She rushes in pale, thank God I didn’t break it. It’s priceless, she tells me, she would die, Monsieur gave it to her for their anniversaire. Poor kids to be living with such expensive pots, not being able to fight on the floor the way I did with my dad. Once we even broke a window with a baseball bat and snow just poured in but he didn’t care. He said windows can be replaced. This sudden thought of him and the glass makes me feel funny, a bit dizzy but it doesn’t last long. He is dead, has been for a long time. The best is not to think about it, mother said. I have come here for a reason, have to remember that. My aim is not some sort of silly boring life that goes on and on and nothing ever happens like with all those people at home, just kids and pregnancies and more kids and maybe a new car. My poor mom never saw anything, nothing at all, but her life and mine will never be alike. Even now, mopping and dusting, with this birdy woman in the background, it’s still Paris, you are close to the illusion of light.

She comes back. In her hands a tall blue vase, she wonders where to put it — should it be near the sofa or next to the Chinese pot. In a family of men, she says with a sigh, she is the only one who cares about the small things that make life agréable. I say near the sofa but she puts it near the Chinese pot. She does this all the time, talks to me as if she were blind, what should I do with this or that, then she does what she knew she always wanted. Why ask me? She admires her flowers, pokes at them, lifts this one up, puts one down, shifts places with a third, gets the scissors, finally cuts the stems a bit. There, she says, the way some women do when looking in the mirror. There. A work of art. Perfect. Those flowers will not last long, maybe a couple of days, yet she does it as if it’s forever. A mystery. Is there anything forever? No. Do I wish there were? Definitely.

When it’s all done, cleaning and dusting, I run out except once a week on Saturdays when I am permitted to wash myself in their large baignoir. I must really stink the rest of the time but she says I am lucky that my first family in Paris, my very first important experience, was with the intellectuals and la gauche because had I landed by mistake with la droite they would not have given me this free bath once a week.

Why, Madame? I ask, curious about gauche and droite.

For no reason, she says, vague, they just don’t think about others. Left and right, what does it really mean, are my parents left or right, what am I? Mother always votes Democratic, father never did, they are all the same, just a bunch of crooks, he said to me. If they’re crooks, do something, change it, mother argued, but she never changed anything either. Nobody said left and right in Racine except for you hands and driving signs, but Paris is different. (Later, when I met Pascale, I knew that these people were just ordinary French bourgeois, that’s all.)

I know that a French girl in my home would shower daily, no doubt about it, my mother would even insist. Now, I clean their bath daily, they seem to use it judging by the grime, isn’t it sort of strange that I who dust and clean and get sweaty etc. should wait one whole week to clean up? There is something illogical here. Of course I clean my face and hands daily with cold water on the sixth but it’s not enough because you can’t wash your hair with cold water especially when it’s as long as mine. I write mother to send me a powder shampoo that you just brush out, a girl at the Alliance told me about it. Mother does not understand why I need it, and I don’t tell her why. It’s too difficult to explain why Madame Dupont didn’t want me to be clean. It’s too complicated, Mother would never understand. For Madame washing, shower, hot water were special; even the names — baignoire, cabinet — were big words, gifts of sorts like going to a theater or restaurant. She said hot water and bath with her head lifted, the way she spoke about his books, his work. It wasn’t ordinary or taken for granted — most people had only cold water sinks.

Monsieur is short and bald and more friendly in general. His face is pink and reminds me of that expression cochon au lait, which means piglet. Louise, isn’t her French magnificent, he says one morning around breakfast or slightly before. Madame just eats and he says some more. Louise, doesn’t she speak well, she really has a good ear and a nice voice too.

For an American she does, Madame nods, but the look she gives me is strangely sharp. I record: only women look at other women like that, I have seen it before, a mix of anger and what else?

Did you notice what she wears to work, she says, not looking at me, did you see the shoes she’s picked to clean and mop in? They are sweet, he says, looks at my feet. "Gentil," he repeats.

Maybe she started it all that day with that silly comment because everything was OK before. Like in the books we studied, that was the turning point. Maybe she provoked his imagination and then he developed ideas on his own. But it had to be her fault. He started acting strange all of a sudden.

First there is a whole week of very peculiar looks in my direction. I ignore it at first, think it’s nothing, just my imagination imagining. Like hearing footsteps in the night. But it’s impossible to ignore what happens next. He starts squeezing my hands as if they were made out of rubber, in the mornings, as I run in with the baguettes. Then gives me this mooshy wet look, the kind of look some old dogs have. Next he grows red in the face, sweats, breathes hard, only Madame’s slippers save me from further attacks. I continue to eat my bread, soon I will dust. She is in the dining room and doesn’t seem to notice what’s going on. Don’t forget your sweater, darling, she says to him, it might get chilly.

"Bon, let’s start on the living room first," she says to me.

The squeezing got worse in the next couple of days, it became more prolonged, he whispers too and is trying desperately to touch my butt. I retreat, he advances, where the hell is Madame, what if I yell, I think but don’t do it. I pick up the baguette, wave it in front of me like a sword, a dish falls with a bang, shatters. I am grateful to it for being so fragile, bend down to pick it up. Madame runs in, looks at us upset but then no longer is — this wasn’t one of her good dishes. I sweep up the blue bowl, throw it into the garbage. He is watching me still with one corner of his eye. What if he has the keys to my room, a sudden thought, they must, what if he appeared suddenly in the middle of the night and attacked me. I move everything against the door, the table and the chairs, but still can’t sleep. What to do next, nobody to ta1k to, should I leave or tell Madame?

Then I met Mike. It happened like this: I am sitting in a student restaurant near Odéon, an ugly place where the smell of soup dominates, and the sound of trays being stacked. Here the torture will start, after I have devoured everything but dessert — an apple, a pear, a peach. They, the French, get out their knives and forks, wipe them carefully off on the napkin then start dissecting the fruit carefully into even sections, hands never touch the fruit, even the chewing is discreet. I put mine in a pocket and eat it later on the street. It shocks them less if I do it this way outside, and if they look it’s in passing, their eyes have no time to hurt me. But it’s cold today, I want to linger inside the place, maybe a friend will appear and who knows what; in me an urge, a yearning for a smile, real ta1k. It would be nice.

I hesitate for that reason with this red apple, can’t make up my mind if I should maybe try to eat it their way or put it in my pocket — inside or outside I think, when suddenly there’s a very loud crunch and all heads turn in that direction — this guy near the window is eating his apple like a savage; he even chews it with his mouth open. Even though his clothes didn’t betray him, that’s how I knew right away he was American and I start eating my own just like him. They are still looking at him because he is chewing louder than me. The guy with black curly hair didn’t even notice they were looking at him, he was that cool. He didn’t give a shit, just ate that apple to the core, picked up the tray and got up. I followed him right away, my own apple not finished yet and as we are going through the door I tap him on the back. You’re American, aren’t you? I say. I am Mike, he says. how did you know what I was? At that moment I can’t explain what I could later, when I knew how to tell Americans from others, and when I would have said to him, it’s all over your face or something like that. I tell the truth. The way you eat your apple. Oh yeah, he says, but doesn’t ask for more details. Instead we go to a café, what everybody does in Paris, even the students — have coffee after lunch without which your meal is not complete.

He gulps his demitasse in one single throw, swoosh, looks at it in surprise as if it disappeared all by itself. They are small, he says then orders two more. Bring it all in one large cup, he tells the waiter, and a ham sandwich too. The waiter brings the sandwich but not the coffee, here you are supposed to have it afterwards, something Mike doesn’t know. He examines one thin slice of ham in disgust, you call this a sandwich, boy I know a place in New York, all you need is one, have you been to Katz’?

No, never.

Impossible, everybody has.

Not me, I was only in New York once, for a day, coming from Wisconsin.

Wisconsin! he says, as if it were Africa, what can you do there? Same as anywhere, I say. I’ve never been in New York except when I took the ship but he hasn’t been where I’ve been so we’re even. The waiter brings his coffee finally, but not in one cup. Mike chews with his mouth open, something you don’t do here, and having finished, he gets a toothpick, cleans his teeth. Soon he is humming a song that has only one word in it, nichego, nichego it goes, his grandfather sang it but never told him what it means.

"It’s nothing, I tell him, "it means nothing in Russian."

Really?

I know, I’ve studied it, but a new thought appears, my father was half-Russian, I invent.

Was he Jewish?

I don’t think so. I don’t know much about him. He’s dead.

I’m Jewish. What are you?

I’m nothing … I mean I’m not religious, same as my dad. He went to Spain but for some reason we were not supposed to talk about it.

You mean the civil war? I had an uncle who went there, Uncle Ben.

What happened to him?

I think he died in a welfare hotel. But listen, it can’t be true, he says, "why would my grandfather sing nothing nothing all the time, it has to be something else."

I let him believe what he wants to, no point in insisting. I am glad to talk to someone at last. Mike graduated in history and English but has no idea what he’ll really do next, maybe hang around in Paris for a year, maybe go back to New York, maybe work in a bar, maybe go to a kibbutz. I can’t imagine him working in a bar for some reason, he is slow and distracted, his eyes somewhere else. Of course he is a student, for the same reason as everybody, to have a student card, and learning some French won’t hurt him but he couldn’t stay here forever.

I don’t know what’s the big deal about French girls, he says, they are stylish but that’s about it. Around us on the streets the most beautiful women pass, bouncing, pouting, waists cinched, every one like Bardot. The best-looking ones in my opinion are in New York … a mix of Italian and Jewish would be the best.

This is a combination I’ve never seen. Dark, right?

Not always, but more substantial than here, you know, shiny hair and eyes … more human he says as if describing Sofia, Gina or maybe his girlfriend.

You know someone like that, I say.

Well … yes … I was sort of in love back there but I don’t know why I don’t want to marry her yet. I don’t want to be pushed around, I guess. And you? he asks.

Oh, I went out briefly with this guy but it’s not important. I’m not in love with anyone here or there.

You’re lucky, he says, you miss nothing, He stops, looks at me carefully. For some reason, I see you with a very tall man. They’d be too short for you in France.

Soon I tell him everything — my present worries — where I live on the sixth floor without water or john or a window and how Madame is pushy and he squeezes my fingers and who knows what else might happen to me at night. He perked up, became suddenly alert. It might get sticky. You got to split. He says this as if he were older, much wiser, yet tough. At this moment I think of Humphrey Bogart for some reason and I wish I could tell him but it would be too embarrassing. It’s not in the face but the way he talks, chewing on the toothpick. Listen, he says, the best is to come and live at the Cité where I live, do you know where it is? He describes it, the restaurant where he eats most of the time, much better, airy, a swimming pool, grass and trees outside, inside large rooms with hot showers — a real paradise. All for pennies.

We rush, jump into a cab right away, he insists because normally there’d be no room at this time but I am very lucky because on the third floor there’s an opening. She left, he says casually, the one who committed suicide.

Suicide, why did she…?

Who knows, he says, it happens.

I am not too happy about this, to take over the bed where this girl slept but don’t ask too many questions because he is telling me we have only half an hour before the office closes and I have to hear about the place. The director is an ex-army man, looks like Nixon, I am not to do anything, just sit there and look depressed. "And if he asks your opinion, just say it’s great, it’s great."

We march into the lobby, immense, gray, like a large hotel with students here and there, and on the door marked Director he knocks. Inside behind the desk with a picture of President Kennedy above sits this guy with a crew cut. Mike does all the talking and explaining and the man says yes I do qualify because I have a B.A. and have registered for classes.

What are you studying? he asks.

I look at Marc, we haven’t rehearsed this. Russian, I say.

Very very good, we’ll need it. Is it hard?

Very very hard, I tell him.

Just keep it up, the best things are hard … which reminds me of the time I was trying to decide whether or not to go to West Point and…

So how long will she have to wait? Mike cuts in.

It’s hard to know, the waiting list is long, look for yourself.

But sir, her case is urgent, says Mike and starts telling him about some slum hotel where I live in Barbès; he whispers and whispers until the man’s eyes look concerned.

That’s serious, he nods, then turns toward me and sure enough he says, Did you have time to look at this place, what do you think?

Mike winks, I smile, It’s wonderful, I say, it’s just great.

Why don’t you wait outside, he says. Let’s see what I can do.

Mike and I sit outside for about fifteen minutes then the door opens — he had done the impossible, Mr. Noland says, proud, he didn’t want to see an American girl imperiled. I can move the very next day, today I will fill out the forms and go talk to the accounting department. And that was that. Mike offered to help me move but wouldn’t say anything about all those whispers, lies he told to get me in. He had already drifted into his mood, was humming nichego, nichego again.

I set the alarm for five and we got my suitcase out of the room. In two hours they’d be expecting me to buy the baguettes, then cut them in pieces. Will they be surprised, too bad I couldn’t see it. I didn’t know what to say to Madame — should it be a nice note or a nasty one, I couldn’t decide. Mike said, forget it, it’s not important, and wrote on the wall with his pen Flew Away — in French. They did it like that in a film he saw. His French wasn’t good, he should have added an ‘e’ for feminine agreement, but I couldn’t start correcting him now, all things considered.

Boulevard Jourdan — Paradise

My disappointment is immense — the room on the third is large, with two windows that face Boulevard Jourdan, but nobody said that I would share it with a skinny girl from Boston who got up every morning with an alarm clock.

This one is yours, she points to my bed by the window. I look at the bed with the worn reddish cover, a narrow ordinary bed and think death, how did she do it, was it here or did she jump. Three floors then smash. Or maybe they found her dead one morning next to the pills, or maybe she hung herself in the john. If you don’t want to have nightmares you’d better know, that way you can’t invent new ones — what if I moved the bed around, maybe they’ll give me another cover, something less violent, blue perhaps.

This is your closet, Doris says, but there’s only one sink. Have you seen the showers, they are outside, not the cleanest in my opinion and there are no tubs. I really miss my old tub. Where’re you from?

Wisconsin.

"It’s cold there, isn’t it, but let me tell you it’s cold here too. They don’t turn on the heat