“I remember protesting . . .” Did I protest the smashing of windows, the burning of books, the teasing of helpless girls? Did I protest power? Did I protest poetry? Did I protest the poor shine on my shoes? I pretend to remember doing so. Ah, well, then, did I? Did I protest my two sons’ circumcisions? did I? Did I complain when men were beaten for having beards? for wearing skullcaps instead of freshman beanies? for poisoning the pure blood of the nice? Did I? Did I protest the schoolyard bully? the coldness of my wife? mass bombing? overeating? public beatings? Did I? Did I protest red tape? black presumption? white whips? useless meetings? hair hysteria? bomb business? the elders of Zion? Zion? Did I? Did I? Do I in these filthy present days when the sincerest work of the world is composing turds?

But such praiseworthy scrupulosity: to catch myself in cross-examination like a crook. And how that crude word dates me: ‘crook.’ So I write that of course there were others, as if it were so natural to talebear that my gossipy betrayal was inevitable, customary, doubtless witty, even right.

The shelves await their fill. Upon the books the dust is light.

I hated having a small cock, the bad jokes of small boys upon that point I hated having a round face like a fat doll. Hitler hated being ordered around. He hated sitting in the failure-seat. He did not learn French. He got bad grades:

Moral Conduct: satisfactory

Diligence: erratic

Religion: adequate

Geography & History: adequate

Mathematics: inadequate

Freehand Drawing: praiseworthy

Handwriting: unpleasing

He hated not being heard, having to shout at the insides of himself, having to live in his dreams the way he lived in one of his rented rooms, being opposed, denied, neglected, refused. Kicked out. He leveled whole towns with a single bolt, and then imagined them rebuilt in his—the future’s—image. He was a man made of impatience compelled to be patient, and then suddenly let out like an explosive fart. He said to himself, “I am not incompetent, cold, hungry, poor,” though he seemed so—so perfectly he was so. And he cried out, “You—you others—you do not envision a world over which your thought is more a king than any Hapsburg, therefore you—you others—are the poor ones, the incompetent ones, with cocks as clumsy as clowns.” And I said secretly, “I am not like any of you.” Already my breasts are budding. Ah. Lie still, my soul, like a good dog. Yap not. Snooze.

Though I trip myself up, what skins when I fall? Nice. So I protested to myself. Ah—nice. Nice. How many were engaged in that dispute? How many of me were there in those days? in the streets of my youth? in the slow soft life? As many as the volumes of Magus Tabor? As many as the works of Zola? Zangwill? Eugène Sue? When young I multiplied [X]. Now I divide [÷]. I am a two [2], a twelve [12], a twenty [20], hung beneath that skimpy horizontal rod [–] with its skinny upright line [|], and there I sway like a rack of out-of-season clothes.