A Tale of Love and Darkness

ALONE AT home one late winter afternoon. It was five or half past, and outside it was cold and dark, windswept rain lashed the closed iron shutters, my parents had gone to have tea with Mala and Staszek Rudnicki in Chancellor Street, on the corner of the Street of the Prophets, and would be back, they had promised me, just before eight, or at a quarter past or twenty past eight at the latest. And even if they were late, there was nothing to worry about, after all they were only at the Rudnickis', it wasn't more than a quarter of an hour away.

Instead of children Mala and Staszek Rudnicki had two Persian cats, Chopin and Schopenhauer. There was also a cage in a corner of the salon containing an old, half-blind bird. So the bird wouldn't feel lonely they had put another bird into its cage, made by Mala Rudnicki from a painted pinecone on stick legs, with multicolored paper wings embellished with a few real feathers. Loneliness, Mother said, is like a hammer blow that shatters glass but hardens steel. Father treated us to a learned discourse on the etymology of the word "hammer," with all its ramifications in various languages.