Solved Balle

Barabara Haveland

On the Calculation of Volume II

Marek Hnatiak

And now I am walking around the streets, superfluous and out of circulation. It is not a disaster. It is not nothing, but it is not much either.

I tiptoed past it and across to my parents’ bedroom. I stood for a moment looking at them in their bed: my parents, fast asleep, each making their own sound, two different sounds which I had never noticed as a child, possibly because it was always me sleeping and them listening, or maybe these are sounds they have acquired with age.

My sense for detail sees him smile, but then it is gone again, that sense, and I take my book out of my bag.

I write it all down: a street on which the wind suddenly picked up, an exhibition by which I am caught and held for hours and which draws me back again the following day, a snug corner in a café where I read a book. All of this speaks of autumn, a light and curious autumn. A circle being closed. 

If I go out into the backyard at night the noise is more nuanced, a welter of sounds unfolds. Leaves against twigs, leaves against leaves, a medlar falling to earth. It lands with a little thud and rolls a short distance across the ground before it stops. It sounds as if the world is saying danke when the tree drops its fruit.

On the Calculation of Volume II quotes

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