Don’t hold back, Lou used to say. Bill, don’t hold back.

And the memory of Herr Tabor, I’m afraid of that. If I flatten myself like a (lot in tall grass, perhaps I won’t be seen. Yes. Fear around me like the singing of bees. I described the scene to my friends Ah. Friends. Who, then, were they? these friends. To whom I made my fun of my miracle man. Ha. Friends. But was this sallow, mouth-small Jeanne anyone to speak of Magus Tabor to? of his confusions? his disease? this florid Gerhardt, like a peony, this swarthy Rudy? I mocked Meg to please them. Krauske, Hintze, Link. And others maybe . . . I made my mock, my mockeries . . . toy jokes . . . Culps before I knew their First & Final Cause . . . ever so conversationally, casually as a hack scratch . . . ach, who cares? God knows old Tabor was no damn redeemer—merely vain, poor, miserable, and mean, Yes. “. . . others maybe . . .” My thoughts run back to underline that line. Others like Corresti, for Christ’s sake. Like Gleenal, Mullin, Sturm. Mullin—who used to sog doughnuts in his beer. Sturm—ah, these names which fall upon us like the droppings of the birds. And Gleenal, that skinny fairy, only his cock seemed free of consumption. Why should I mind my “maybe”? is it my pride? to be so finicky? I haven’t Marcel’s made-up memory. And there are no longer any nickel souvenirs. Ackermann, Hiatt, Teasor, Lam. What continues me to write this but biology? So I fudged or began to. So what what what what . . . Here where no one knows me, can’t I still lie?

Yet if I can’t hide the smallest truth, like tunnel dirt, here in this hole—this mouth of mine which words only slowly silt shut—what of my public judgment of the Germans and their Jews? For what is true? only that I have a fat wife, one fatter than myself, with huge boobs, glaciers inching down the forefront of her body. So there were others. Of course there were others. I remember protesting to myself that it was too good to keep and too soon for loyalty. And now I have only my colleagues: my Planmantee, my Herschel, my Governali, Culp. My Culp.

There was a young blade named Trout,

who often got in but not out.

He stuck in the sheath

when he fucked underneath,

and the stick was as tight turned about.

I remember . . . Do I remember my parents? I refuse. My family? No, indeed. My childhood? children? birthdays? brothers? Not even appellations, titles, derivations, deaths. I remember the scuffs on my shoes. Do I recall the war? the first order given me? the humiliations of obedience? a pride that finally had no elevation in it but lay crushed and treaded as a box run over in the road? I won’t remember. I refuse. And the last man I saw hanged as well, and the last one shot. History has that nice advantage now. We no longer feel obliged to say, “Of the events of the war I have not ventured to speak from chance”; to claim, “I have described nothing but what I saw myself”; or pretend, either, to be composing “a history of great praise.” Nazis? I saw nothing of them. Krauske? pale as empty paper, I wrote over his nose. Link? the final failure of unnoticed light. Spee? a footstep several days old. Flautus Vocis. Noises not to be believed in . . . not to be sounded, not noted, again. Why should their ghosts Banquo me because I made a butt of this heimlich and bezaubernd professor? I have undone no one. There is nothing genuinely German about me. I merely felt slightly ashamed—a human feeling frequently praised—and so I began—only began, mind you—to compose a little lie about it, to say “maybe” I’d hooted at Mad Meg in the Maelstrom, when in fact I had—I’d babbled about it like a public bubbler in the park. Mon coeur mis à nu.