DEATH-MASQUE

DEATH-MASQUE

I was not a student or a politician. I worked at a brewery in Pilsen. For twenty-four years I had spun my life in circles like a spider. Here and there it caught the light but it seemed to lead to no centre. I was trying to draw something out of my body but could not say exactly what. When they came a dreadful hopelessness possessed me. My arms and legs still moved at my work. I still maintained some unity. But the web of my life was caught in my throat. Then when you ran flaming through Prague I saw that from my birth the web had been leading me in circles towards a centre: Not from Pilsen to Wenceslas Square as the centre of Prague; not to Prague as the centre of my country; But to you as the centre of the holocaust that I was to become. Perhaps if I had seen myself as a raw piece of meat, more prey than spider, quivering at the centre of a blazing web, I would not have lit the match. I do not know. All I do know is that as the petrol ignited and the flames licked around me I saw him. And he took my hand. And he drew my burning head down onto his shoulder. And he smiled at me.