138 CL AUDI A SIMONE FR A NK LIN
Berlin, 1945 and 1947, East Kingston, 2015 From: A Cartography of What Is Left: A German Lyric
My father had, over the course of many decades, a dozen depressions that I know of. Even if you survive, wars take a toll. They began in 1947, in Berlin. Father left his room as little as possible. He was thirteen. If he made it to school, he was late. He lay on his bed and slept or read all day. Karl May’s books, Winnetou and Old Surehand. He complained of one ache or the other. Ear. Stomach. Throat. He pulled the curtains shut. Made the room dark. As a kid, in Peru, I could hear him wandering around the house in the middle of the night, the cigarette stench drifting up into my bedroom, my hair. Later, he would take to bed for the weekend, or weeks on end. Or he would park himself on the baby blue settee in the TV room, in front of Judge Judy, and pull at his cuticles, pick at scabs on his hands. I don’t know when the scabs started showing up. His early sixties, maybe? But I know why they never healed. The last couple of years of his life, he sat in an assisted
