Excerpt

Chapter 2
That was her fault. Not so long ago - it could have been ten days, it could have been a month ago, no one knows, we didn't pay much attention to time then - she took my rag doll and suddenly threw it into the cellar. Now we walked upward toward the person we feared; but when she threw the doll into the cellar, we had to go downward, running hastily into the unknown. Whether upward or downward, we feel that we are moving toward fear. Even though these fears existed before we were born, they were always waiting for us. At the time, we hadn't been in the world long enough to figure out what was a disaster and what was the source of it, and probably didn't feel the need to know about it. What about the adults? They were looking forward to "tomorrow", to the "now", to a "yesterday" before the "now", or "The day before yesterday", or at most a week ago, and they don't want to think about the rest. Children don't understand the meaning of "yesterday", nor "the day before" or "tomorrow", everything is in the "present": the street is here, the gate is here, and the door is there. Everything is in the "present": the street is here, the gate is there; these are the stairs; this is mommy, that is daddy; this is the day, that is night. When I was a child, my rag doll probably knew more than I did, and when I talked to her, she talked to me. Her face was celluloid, her hair and eyes were celluloid, and she was wearing a sky blue dress that my mother had sewn, a rare pleasure she had, and my dolls were beautiful. And Leila's doll was put together with torn pieces of cloth, with so many rips in it, and I thought that doll was ugly and dirty. The two dolls peeked at each other, sizing each other up as if they would be ready to run away from us if it thundered and rained if a tall, strong, sharp-toothed man tried to tear them apart.
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