You Should Have Known
Short Story
by Kate Smith
You should have known, he said to the young man. Slowly and without
emphasis as he was no longer interested in the conversation's
development.
But he did think that this indifference was inappropriate to his
situation and he wondered how the man who stood facing him was despite their
acquaintance - able to put such an unfeelingness into his voice.
He would have liked to ask him whether he remembered the summer at home
when they had met for the first time, but he no longer knew whether
this summer, just like their acquaintance, had ever been reality but
whether he hadn't much rather been sitting on this chair all his life, in
this dark and cold room and whether all the pictures and faces that were
running through his head were not only phantoms of his brain to satisfy
his desire for freedom and a life.
You really should have known, the man said again and lit up his
cigarette that had fallen down because of the blow earlier.
The young man noticed that he didn't even remember what he should have
known.
He would have liked to have a cigarette now, too, but not to smoke it.
He always got sick, then because the smoke recalled thoughts about
little children in his head, they were burning. He would have liked to
press the cigarette against his arm to know whether he would still feel it
despite the chains.
The man took a step aside to put a small package from his pocket onto
the desk, on which stood a lamp that now stung into his eyes.
He wondered how it might be possible that the light could hurt his eyes
like that, but warm summers had not been made for learning and there
had been plenty of distraction, not least because of the man he now
suspected behind himself, smoking.
But that very thing, he didn't blame him for. Literacy had never been
important in their lives. Only discipline and courage. And later only
discipline.
Despite the biting light, the young man didn't want to close his eyes.
Almost did he enjoy the piercing feeling within his pupil that slowly
started to wander into his brain. Because it made him feel that he was
still alive and not dead. A part of his fault would also be burned away
like that, he hoped.
He tried to remember something, in his opinion, very intelligent that
Old Izak had always preached. About the pain. But he no longer seemed
to know anyone called Izak.
He wished he could have asked one of the many names, not faces that
were running through his head, way too fast to really recall any memories
in his bursting brain.
Aaron, Edith, Benjamin, Wilhelm, Klara, but not Rebecca. He had never liked her, he knew that much. And she was
the only one about whose death he was glad. For she had always blamed
him, and he had known that she was right.
He had always been ashamed for this though, still now. Hatred is only
human, he had thought. They had all only been human.
It wouldn't be much longer, now, he thought, when the man stepped out
of the shadows and back into the light, holding the package in his
hands.
-Edith, said the man and laughed shortly and sharply and he wished he
could laugh, too.
-I read them all.
She was dead, too.
-You wanted to hide her.
He was sitting in a tiny room on the floor with other people and they
were crying and praying.
-Because you wanted to have her to yourself.
They were crying and praying and he wasn't sitting with them at all and
he wasn't crying. He looked at Rebecca and then looked away.
-You fornicator.
Everyone was praying.
A click, he thought, and a short shot. A short pain, only a very short
pain that could no longer hurt at all.
Every pain is better than the pain of the heart.
That's what Old Izak had always preached.
-You should have known. They had all known.
You Should Have Known© COPYRIGHT 2004 Kate Smith. Reproduction prohibited without permission from the author. 05/27/04
