I won’t remember the night when the seven women from the past came to recount my most grievous sins. Or the old man who led me to think he was the ghost of Beckett. Or the babbling baby boy, the talking cat, the singing windows, the women in the bed. Soon I will forget this very room, my house, and all poetics. I will trade recollections of my brother for some new experience, perhaps with another brother. All that’s left of mother and father will vanish, as will every memory of friend and acquaintance. A lifetime of choices and opinions, the carefully constructed persona, vagabond experience, and the hopes and hurts and everything in between passes. Even now, I lose myself, my name escapes me. Sita, love of my life, will disappear from memory.
All of it will be erased completely, and even the simplest things will have to be relearned. Those voices outside will be my new guides to language, to talking and walking and eating solid foods. To make sense again of the material world, to read what’s in another’s heart by their signs and deeds. Someone will have to show me right from wrong, right from left, how to draw, what to eat, how to tie my shoes, why it is best to keep a cheerful disposition. I sincerely hope that I get reintroduced to the writings of Bachelard. But who will laugh at the Marx Brothers with me? Who will wait with me for Godot? All of it to be learned over and over and over. Here’s a kick for you, lady, to remind you I am here. I am filling the last available space, dark as it is, and when all is taken and there is no more, I will fall down, out into the world and light to begin.
Here we go again. Another chance to muck up not only my life but so many others. Another go around, a new desire path to follow with or without the lessons learned. Round and round and round. Soon all this babbling will be just bubble and drool. The stopped watch is now ticking.
Here we go again. Another chance at life.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Thank you to John Glusman and Peter Steinberg. To Bill Pugh and Lee Owens. Rose, for the French, and Melanie, for the red pen and support.
Although some of the characters in this novel actually existed historically, they are fictional representations.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
KEITH DONOHUE is the author of the bestselling novels The Stolen Child and Angels of Destruction. For many years a ghostwriter, he has worked at the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Historical Publications and Records Commission. Donohue holds a Ph.D. in English literature, has published literary criticism, and has lectured on literature and writing at several colleges and universities.