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The Balcony
- University of Wisconsin Press
- Chapter
- Additional Information
15 The Bal cony When she saw a book that Father had left be hind on the bal cony, my mother knew that the day be fore, in that mo ment between dream and re al ity, in a flash of in sight, her hus band must surely have come to that long-sought-after de ci sion, the de ci sion that now in the day light he must under take. Then, ten derly, as if pro long ing my father’s touch, Mother would take the book that had been left be hind and place it care fully on one of the shelves in the cab i net built into the bal cony walls rather than in the li brary, where nearly all of Father’s books were ar ranged. In the cen ter of the large, win dow less wall of the liv ing room, the room that ac tu ally ad joined the bal cony, there was a two-winged wooden cab i net, which evoked for us chil dren the un fail ing il lu sion of a world be yond, on the other side of the wall, in the bal cony cab i net . . . That cab i net was rarely opened, and there fore it, more than any thing else, sparked our child hood cu ri os ity. It was al ways locked up tight, with its own lock and a sep ar ate pad lock. The cab i net was a sort of annex to my father’s li brary, its heart, for there in side it were the old est man u scripts, hand writ ten sa cred books, rare geo graphic maps of im a gined Bal kan states, the family’s pre cious doc u ments: papers that proved the family’s iden tity. The cab i net was wide, deep, bound less. Most often, it was my father who went in there, more rarely, my mother, and then only when she needed to free the books of their col lected dust. When my father en tered the cab i net, we chil dren had the feel ing that he was en ter ing some new di men sion of time in the lab y rinth of his man u scripts. We chil dren thought that there, in my father’s cab i net, in that lab y rinth of lost time—how quickly time was lost in the Bal kans—were to 16 be found the hurt books, those dam aged by too much read ing, too much time. As soon as he had “cured” a par tic u lar one of his hurt books, my father would re turn it to its usual place in the li brary. My father or di nar ily kept the cab i net locked up, and he left the key with my mother in case the books should rise up . . . ...