I’ve seen that the apartment on the third floor in the building next door can fill up with clouds. That there can be so many, they are pushed up against the windows, and meanwhile I imagine what it’s like to stay in the apartment, if anyone can breathe in there at all. 

On April 16, 1981, at approximately three P.M., little Peter Möhlendorf, whom everyone called der schwarze Peter, “black Peter,” went home from the village school. His house was on the eastern edge of 

On an unusual day during my childhood, my mother showed up at school and asked me questions about myself. I was twelve or so then, and generally I found my own way home: bus, walk, bike, hitchhike.

Say a boy is born in a middle-class suburb of the large Midwestern metropolis of C. Say he is born in the year 1989. This is the last of years. This is the first of years. This is the year the walls come down and the webs come up.

It was raining as they drove out of Tacoma that morning. When the first car appeared he could see it from a long way off, dragging a cloud of mist like a parachute, and when it passed he touched the wipers to clear

We stop in a place called Smith’s in Paso Robles and order turkey-gumbo soup and lemon-meringue pie with black coffee. This ensemble somehow fits together although it sounds as though 

I was told they found themselves retired and so they said, Now’s finally the time to form a band! You should see the instruments they fished out of attics and basements. Not so much the instruments themselves

Rach’el died six months ago. He was thirty-three. One day, about two years ago, something in his head just snapped and he started tearing around all over the place. He lost his health. Then his job. Then his mind.

Even before their departure, when he goes to meet her flight from Cape Town, he knows he’s in trouble. He last saw her a month ago and she was in a bad way then, but look at her now. 

This was what he did when he felt like a failure: he withdrew. Erika said he withdrew into himself. He said, No—his self was no refuge. He understood what she meant, of course, the figure of speech.