Asymmetry

by Lisa Halliday

When, then, does one man’s delusion become the world’s reality? Is it every generation’s destiny to contend with a dictator’s whims? “By shrewd and constant application of propaganda,” we read in Mein Kampf, “heaven can be presented to the people as hell and, vice versa, the wretchedest experience as a paradise.” But only when the people in question fail in their duty toward vigilance. Only when through inaction we are complicit. Only when we are sleepwalking ourselves.

Longer still were the lines to use the old-fashioned phone booths earning another stay of execution: people approached them warily, even sheepishly, as if entering confessionals right there on the street.

“My darling, funny, cuckoo Mary-Alice! I’m afraid you’re going to be very lonely in life.”

“Forget about world affairs. World affairs can take care of themselves.” “They’re not doing a very good job of it.”

Beneath the surface, Alice’s hands, still coming together and swiveling apart, began to look less like instruments of propulsion than like confused magnets, or hands trying to find their way out of a dark room. But still, she swam.

“She’s wonderful. Though perhaps a little aloof.” “Stockhausen is aloof.

Meanwhile, their hourglasses were running down. Everyone’s hourglass was running down. Everyone’s but Beethoven’s.

Forty isn’t too old to have a child. Fifty is too old to have a ten-year-old child.”

Some were asleep, and in this position looked as though they were trying to decide whether death might be preferable to another hour in this fluorescent beeping limbo.

Sometimes only one passport would be stamped; other times you heard two or three or four stamped in quick succession—like library books, once upon a time. And

Oh, I’m not good with other women, Maddie replied simply. They make me feel inessential.

I didn’t know you believe in God. I don’t. Or rather, I’m agnostic. A foxhole agnostic. There’s a Mandelstam poem that goes: ‘Your form, agonizing and fleeting / I couldn’t make it out in the haze /—God!—I said by mistake / Without having thought to speak.’ That about sums it up. You?