
“…and he coughs decorously and goes off decorously to his study. Where he decorously. Straightens. Some papers. Slowly. Carefully. Tap-ping them. To cut off the edges. It’s very important now. To the millimeter exactly. At the edge of the table. And we’re each of us alone again…
Ah, yes: childhood! Land of terror…”
From Alexandra Berková’s Dark Love translated from the Czech by Corine Tachtiris. The translation received a 2016 PEN/Heim Translation Fund grant and another excerpt from the book can be read on PEN America’s site.
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