I tore open the parcel as I trudged up the stairs. Along with Papa’s letter about the peasant woman dragging her sick pig into Uncle Ferenc’s surgery until they explained that he only treats humans, I found a vial of yet another insomnia cure that Mama (against my advice) purchased from the chemist. Did I not write that I needed socks? Or did clairvoyant Mama know what I really needed?
Remember how you’d promise that my insomnia would disappear? That I would grow out of it, that everyone slept, sooner or later. That hasn’t happened. The only difference is that I am no longer in my childhood room, lying in the dark, hating sleepers everywhere who take sleep for granted.
Paris is an insomniac’s heaven. There is always something to photograph, something hidden in the shadows. One can see so much more in the darkness than in the light of day. How fortunate that my problem should have turned out to be a blessing, sending me out to take pictures in the velvet night. I know what you are thinking: if I’d stayed home, my insomnia would have gone away on its own.
Back in my room I turned on the “light” and crushed a gigantic water bug that rose to fight me on its hind legs. I opened the vial from Mama and, as directed, dripped four drops into a glass. Red roses bloomed in the water. I drank the potion, lay down, and tried not to think about my embarrassing chat with Yvonne. You can imagine how easy that was for your hypersensitive boy whose throat has been sore for a week.
I recalled Dr. Drumas, or was it Dr. Fiksor—anyway, one of those “experts” to whom you took me—advising me to calm my racing thoughts by giving myself a task. I decided to translate Yvonne’s song from French into Hungarian. The vowels soothed me, and soon enough I imagined the scent of talcum, and it seemed to me I heard Mama singing me to sleep.
That’s when I made the fatal mistake of trying to remember the tune. Not Mama’s tune. Yvonne’s. My eyes shot open, and I realized what my talk with Yvonne had meant. I’d failed to notice her lizard because I have no talent and will spend the rest of my life taking wedding and graduation portraits in our dusty, provincial town.
I decided to write you, to bring you, if only in spirit, into this mildew-ridden but otherwise delightful room. This letter is the only good thing to come out of another white night. I know I am spoiled to be young and free and in Paris and complaining because it’s almost dawn and I am awake.
Don’t worry, dear parents, I’ll sleep. Yvonne’s tune eludes me, but I plan to hypnotize myself with the arpeggio of waves against the shore. Your sailor is dead. Your sailor is dead. That should put me right out.
Don’t forget to write. And if you get a chance, send socks. Silk, if possible. Black.
Hug and kiss each other for me, your loving son, Gabor
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About the Author
FRANCINE PROSE is the author of fifteen books of fiction, most recently the highly acclaimed Goldengrove. Her novel A Changed Man won the Dayton Literary Peace Prize, and Blue Angel was a finalist for the National Book Award for Fiction. Her most recent work of nonfiction, Reading Like a Writer, was a New York Times bestseller. A former president of PEN American Center, she lives in New York City.
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Also by Francine Prose
FICTION
Goldengrove
A Changed Man
Blue Angel
Guided Tours of Hell
Hunters and Gatherers
The Peaceable Kingdom
Primitive People
Women and Children First
Bigfoot Dreams
Hungry Hearts
Household Saints
Animal Magnetism
Marie Laveau
The Glorious Ones
Judah the Pious
NONFICTION
Reading Like a Writer
Caravaggio: Painter of Miracles
Gluttony
Sicilian Odyssey
The Lives of the Muses: Nine Women and the Artists They Inspired
FOR YOUNG ADULTS
Touch
Bullyville
After
FOR CHILDREN
Rhino, Rhino, Sweet Potato
Leopold, the Liar of Leipzig
The Demon’s Mistake: A Story from Chelm
You Never Know: A Legend of the Lamed-vavniks
The Angel’s Mistake: Stories of Chelm
Dybbuk: A Story Made in Heaven
Credits
Cover Montage from Photograph © Popperfoto/Getty Images
Cover design by Christine Van Bree
Copyright
Robert Alter, excerpts from “The View from the Attic: An Obsession with Anne Frank” from The New Republic (December 4, 1995). Copyright © 1995 by Robert Alter. Reprinted with the permission of the author.
Algene Ballif, excerpt from “Metamorphosis into American Adolescence” from Commentary (November 1955). Copyright © 1955 by The American Jewish Committee. Reprinted with the permission of Commentary.
John Berryman, excerpts from “The Development of Anne Frank” from The Freedom of the Poet. Copyright © 1967, 1976 by John Berryman. Reprinted by permission of Farrar, Straus & Giroux LLC.
Anne Frank, excerpts from The Diary of Anne Frank: The Revised Critical Edition by Netherlands Inst. for War Documentation, edited by David Barnouw an Gerrold Van Der Stroom, translated by Arnold J. Pomerans, B.M. Mooyaart-Doubleday & Susan Massotty. Copyright © 1986 and 2001 by Anne Frank-Fonds, Basel/Switzerland for all texts of Anne Frank. English translation copyright © 2003 by Doubleday, a division of Random House, Inc. and Penguin Books, Ltd. for The Diary of Anne Frank: The Revised Critical Edition. Used by permission of Doubleday, a division of Random House, Inc.
Miep Gies with Alison Leslie Gold, excerpts from Anne Frank Remembered: The Story of the Woman Who Helped to Hide the Frank Family, with a new Afterword by Miep Gies and Alison Leslie Gold. Copyright © 1987 by Miep Gies and Alison Leslie Gold. Reprinted with the permission of Simon & Schuster, Inc. All rights reserved.
Bernard Kalb, excerpts from “Diary Footnotes” from The New York Times (October 2, 1955) : 3. Copyright © 1955 by The New York Times Company. Used by permission and protected by the Copyright Laws of the United States. The printing, copying, redistribution, or retransmission of the Material without express written permission is prohibited.
Meyer Levin, excerpts from a “Anne Frank: A Play,” pp. 2, 7, 17, 41, 60, 68–69. (unpublished draft). Reprinted by permission of The New York Public Library, Dorot Jewish Division.
Meyer Levin, excerpt from “A Challenge to Kermit Bloomgarden” from The New York Post (January 13, 1954). Copyright 1954 NYP Holdings, Inc. Reprinted by permission.
Carson McCullers, excerpts from letters to Otto Frank and Fritzi Frank. Reprinted with the permission of The Lantz Office.
Laureen Nussbaum, excerpts from “Anne Frank” from Women Writing in Dutch, edited by Kristiann Aercke. Copyright © 1994 by Garland Publishing, Inc. Reprinted by permission of Garland Publishing, Inc. c/o Copyright Clearance Center.
Robert Warshaw, excerpt from letter to Otto Frank from the Anne Frank Archive in the Anne Frank Museum in Amsterdam. Reprinted with the permission of Paul Warshaw.
Cara Weiss, excerpt from a letter to Otto Frank from Cara Wilson and Otto Frank, Love, Otto: The Legacy of Anne Frank (Andrews McMeel, 1995). Reprinted with the permission of Cara Wilson-Granat.
Barbara Zimmerman, excerpts from editorial letters. Used by permission of Doubleday, a division of Random House, Inc.
Excerpts from The Diary of Anne Frank: The Revised Critical Edition by Netherlands Institute for War Documentation, edited by David Barnouw and Gerrold Van Der Stroom, translated by Arnold J. Pomerans, B.M. Mooyart-Doubleday & Susan Massotty. Copyright © 1986 and 2001 by Anne Frank-Fonds, Basel/Switzerland, for all texts of Anne Frank. English translation copyrigh
t © 2003 by Doubleday, a division of Random House, Inc. and Penguin Books, Ltd. for The Diary of Anne Frank: The Revised Critical Edition. Used by permission of Doubleday, a division of Random House, Inc.
ANNE FRANK. Copyright © 2009 by Francine Prose. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
Epub Edition AUGUST 2009 ISBN 9780061959165
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