Sul Campo Del Mare - Vilenica

V2-2010.PM51616/13/100, 12:14 PMTaras Prohaskoand the right moment to shoot. But instead of a rifle Shtefan was to havea camera. Franz would give Shtefan three months’ time. After this he wouldtake a hundred of his photographs and pay the rest of the money. Themain thing was that neither Franzysk nor anyone else should ever noticehim. Once he was told the amount of the payment, Shtefan enthusiasticallyagreed, unperturbed in the slightest that he didn’t even know whata camera looked like.Among other things, because of this irresponsibility on Shtefan’s part,a lot of people were alive. Shtefan—as is typical of Ukrainians—was constantlytaking on more commitments than he was able to handle. And sosome contracts took years to be realized, and some were simply forgotten.But now Shtefan understood that with Franz, delays were out of thequestion. He had been told that Franz knew those eighteen words thatmade the rifle tremble, and the target show up of its own accord, in tears,and stand where you could aim at it directly from the window.Franz showed him how a camera worked and left. Shtefan quicklyrubbed the blood from the wall all down the barrel. He knew it was aterrible sin and that he would belong to Judas, but he always did this, sothat the rifle would never miss. Especially after the blood began to boil.10. Every day Franz took Sebastian for a walk around Ialivets. The frostswere severe and the ice-rinks didn’t begin to melt even on sunny days.Finally Franz had someone to talk to—it turned out that Sebastian, as a realmarksman, was able to see just as much. It seemed that they should behaving endless, serious conversations, because the problem of CentralEurope is stylistic: but no—just a few words, pointing out things they saw.When they went into bars, they drank gin diluted with boiling water,with chasers only of fresh juice from slightly frozen apples that had beenleft on the trees in the autumn and were only recently picked from underthe snow.Sometimes they went to the place where the first Anna had died, andFranz drew in the snow sketches of ever changing versions of the familyhistory. “There are things more important than fate,” he said. “Culture,maybe. And culture is family, and a deliberate adherence to it.” Franz askedthat Sebastian and Anna’s children be sure to visit this place. And also theplace where Franz had met Sebastian (he almost added the beech forestwith the undestroyed film but stopped himself in time, because, after all,he didn’t know a great deal about the Unsimple), and other places thatwould appear with time. For time is the expansion of family into geography.11. There were days when Sebastian would take his African rifle withhim. On especially steep slopes it provided good support. On one suchday they spoke of their dreams. It’s no surprise that Franz’s dream was themore complicated.Sebastian dreamed of being old, living on a small cliff-island in a warmsea, and walking around in nothing but canvas trousers all year round;but also of walking little, mainly sitting on a stone bench beside an empty161