Malina

by Ingeborg Bachmann

The call is from America, and I say, relieved: Hello. It’s dark, I hear crackling all around me, I’m on a lake where the ice is beginning to melt, it was the deep-deep frozen lake, and now I’m hanging in the water by the phone cord, only this cable is keeping me connected. Hello! I already know it’s my father calling me. The lake may soon be completely open, but I’m here on an island far in the water, it’s cut off, and there are no more ships. I’d like to scream into the phone: Eleonore! I want to call my sister, but at the other end of the phone can only be my father, I’m extremely cold and wait with the phone, submerging, surfacing, the connection’s still there, I can hear America well, in the water you can still phone across the water. I say quickly, gurgling, swallowing water: When are you coming, I’m here, yes, here, you know where, it’s really awful, there’s no longer any connection, I’m cut off, I’m alone, no, no more ships! And while I’m waiting for an answer, I see how gloomy the island of the sun really is, the oleanders have keeled over, the volcano is covered with ice crystals, even it is frozen, the old climate no longer exists. My father laughs into the phone. I say: I’m cut off — come here, when are you coming? He laughs and laughs, he laughs as they do in the theater, that’s where he must have learned to laugh so hideously: Hahaha. Nothing but: Hahaha. Nobody laughs like that anymore, I say, nobody laughs like that, stop it. But my father doesn’t stop his s...