Auto Da Fé
Posted by The Geecologist | Filed under Lies
‘How old are you?’
‘Nine and a bit.’
‘Which would you prefer, a piece of chocolate or a book?’
‘A book.’
‘Indeed? Splendid! So that’s your reason for standing here?’
‘Yes.’
‘Why didn’t you say so before?’
‘Father scolds me.’
‘Oh. And who is your father?’
‘Franz Metzger.’
‘Would you like to travel to a foreign country?’
‘Yes. To India. They have tigers there.’
‘And where else?’
‘To China. They’ve got a huge wall there.’
‘You’d like to scramble over it wouldn’t you?’
‘It’s much too thick and too high. Nobody can get over it. That’s why they built it.’
‘What a lot you know! You must have read a great deal already?’
‘Yes. I read all the time. Father takes my books away. I’d like to go to a Chinese school. They have forty thousand letters in their alphabet. You couldn’t get them all into one book.’
‘That’s only what you think.’
And then:
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- The Meter i am not the man i seem, not a stable craft, monumental in the storm. i have great difficulty in...
- Television I examined my son’s drawings one after another. They were magnificent (and I’m not just saying that because he’s my...
- Mr Rinyo-Clacton’s Offer Post addressed to Jonathan Fitch came through my letter-box, and that was who I was. I had a National Insurance...
Tags: alphabet, auto da fe, books, china, chocolate, elias canetti, father and son, india, tiger