He took two days off to go to Auschwitz.
The problem was that he didn’t know what anything was called. Names and names and names—streets, neighborhoods, trains, all made of syllables that passed through him like elements of a dream. Directions were the death of understanding: links at this incoherent set of sounds, rechts at this one, and through all of it his mind whirring with impotence.
Thankfully he had his friend with him, Adam, who knew German. Meanwhile A. was a baby, pointing and wishing for things, but a baby who never learned, never grew.
They took a rideshare with a long-haired Polish man. Afterward A. would remember the rutted roads, the scarred tar across the border, how bumpy it was. His friend sat in the front and talked…
You're reading a preview of
The Paris Review (Digital) - 1 Issue, Winter 2024 (250)