In a burst of concentration, I succeeded in catching the hen and stood withit in my hands. Strangely, it didn’t really feel alive:stiff, dry, an old whitefeather-riddled woman’s hat that shrieked out truths from 1912. Thunderhung in the air. A scent rose up from the fence boards, like when you opena photo . . .
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Mrs. Ebelmayer had not seen the world. She had spent her childhood and youth in a pleasant, roomy house in the suburbs of a large city and , once married, had outgrown the early stages of her life in a house very similar to her first, in another suburb of the same . . .
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My grandfather Franjo Rejc lived his life in Bosnia. As a high-ranking railroad official, he moved from station to station until, several months before the outbreak of World War II, he arrived in Sarajevo to work at the main headquarters with the title of chief railway inspector. When I first wrote about . . .
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All day the sun moved over the rock I sat on.All day I tried to think like an elk.I’d been drinking bad winefrom a thermos and counting the bladeson little bluestem. It was nearly darkwhen they finally appeared under the gnarled oak,brown legs in prairie grass. And there’s the bull——from “Ghost Child,” . . .
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We stayed together like two voicestrying to find each other in the dark.She had an uncle like a father to herexcept when like a king he made herbow her head, and if he held itto his groin it was in a secret lifeshe kept from no one save herself. . . .—from . . .
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The pass through the mountains led into a narrow, serpentine ravine with dense forests of birch and poplar on both sides. A caravan of nine camels loaded with bridal dowry and accompanied by a couple dozen men and women on horseback slowly made its way along the rocky trail, now ascending steadily, . . .
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By the age of eight, I had heard all the horror stories about my father. I had heard the one about him literally putting his fist through a cop’s face. I had heard the one about him sending a badass Irish gangster into convulsions with a single jab. And who hadn’t heard . . .
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Through the window, the day probably looks less distant that it is, Sebastian decided. Or he himself wasn’t ready to interact with it. Ones step into a new day changes the course of time, he read once on a sign at the mall. For today he chose a T-shirt with blue and . . .
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he told me he was glad I wasn’t fat yetbut this time, with flesh glutinous on my arms and back,hips spread like grain, I wax at his bedside and watchhis violeting cheeks, their bruised orchids flutterwith every labored breath and I allow myselfto imagine what he must see: five years and my . . .
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A few days after Italo Calvino’s funeral I jotted down the notes that follow, in order to remind myself of the situation and the feelings of the moment. I had just returned from France, and that evening Calvino’s wife (Chichita) called to tell me that Italo was dying. I left that night . . .
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