:                Does Malenka Dotchka feel anguish? No, Malenka Dotchka feels exactly nothing. M.D. is a sock monkey. Malenka Dotchka does not, properly speaking, speak!

 

 

:          It is a country of beautiful forests and drunken boys. The Ukrainian poet (not drunk) read a beautiful poem, almost chanted it in the metal ring or outcry of some bells, but with something anti-semitic in it. The American heard it. Later I saw it. Did I get on the wrong train? I worked on trains, I am terrified of them. Hundreds of thousands were  deported on trains. Millions, deported on trains. France was deported on a train. Hungary, on a train. Ukraine, no: only part of Ukraine left on a train. Ukraine that was not! Ukraine that was forced to be Poland. Today we sit in our sushi restaurants and we grieve! We sing of ashes! We wear these strips of cloth we call our clothes. Incense or metonymy! Shades solemnal! Abscess in the mouth! Sewer grate! I am this terrified. When they were crowded into the cars, they had already lost their names. Chalked origins, chalked numbers. They were not counted! They were stuffed.

 

(silence)

 

I fell into her whispers.

 

            (silence)

 

I went deaf in the ears. Box sandwich! Ramen! Coulis de tomate! I went grey in the temples, grey at the neck! Solitude of the stars! You think you are with someone but you are alone. Fundamentally, piss-dry basin of regret! Try again. Salute an onion! Make yourself rich in a jar! Fortitude! Lost heart! When we tried to be… when we… when… Tryptophan in the north! Hello Kitty knew me too. Cough, sputter, silence. Old collapse! Modernity! The North! I ache! I hate you! Brigade of eaters!

 

            (silence)

 

I have a disease caused by chemicals and the voice. I ate diseased vegetables and cattle. I was no worse off. They tried to serve me orange juice, which made me sicker. Up one side and down another! The leaves were too big, they were gorged with water. I was attacked, I smoked, I did not dare return to the building so I had no jacket. I plunged into the woods. I boiled some chestnuts and ate even the skin. I was sick on plants. I cried, I threw up, I danced with the others, following the strange movements of their limbs in the hills, mimicking them so they would not betray me. I was unable to say how long I had been in the forest without water. I ate the leaves. Skin came off my fingers. I fell in love with a girl and I was a girl. In the dark, I sobbed where no one would see me. In the day, I was saint or hooligan, I carpet-bombed life with my demons, no one could see me. I could switch, my bones hurt, the tumours had come back, I threw them up in the toilet, I was still on the train, I was never on a train. The train had no toilet.

 

:          We moved into the water. We moved into the air as ashes of our houses! The ones with the caps burned our skins off. The ones with the trident caps fought tyranny the only way they knew how! Desperate for the obvious, and so long denied! Freedom! Burn even the trees! I crouched in the field, I was eight years old, I was two, my sister strangled me to stop me from crying out and now she is alive and I am dead and there is no one to hear me. After the Jews had gone on the trains or into the forest, they came after us, who were they, they who! They swore off ambivalence in their wet boots, they swore off bread! Because of a name, a sound of a name, because of an h in a nhame, because of a word for food!

 

:          Malenka Dotchka. Speak!

 

            (the sound of a siren)