My sister’s death was the beginning of my attempts to free myself from my past. There were periods when I raged and stormed about, the suppressed revolt flared up and cursed the old forces that had dominated me and lashed out, but the blows fell wide of their aim and the insults reached no one’s ears. Hatred and violence were no longer of any use, the opportunities had been missed, the enemies were no longer tangible. I did not know where the enemy was concealed. I did not know what had happened to me. I was furious with myself for only in myself were there unprotected flanks to attack, only in myself was the past contained and I was the custodian of the past. Past events rose up in me like a gasping for breath, like the pressure of a straitjacket, the past would hem me around in a slow, black seepage of hours, and then suddenly recede and become nothing and allow a brief glimpse of freedom. Then I saw my parents and was full of sympathy and compassion. They had given us all that they had to give, they had given us food and clothing and a civilized home, they had given us their security and their orderliness and they could not understand why we did not thank them for it. They could never understand why we drifted away from them. In the confused knowledge of having made mistakes they bought themselves off with expensive presents, birthdays and bank holidays were the days fixed for paying out their unconscious guilt. And the presents were always wrong, however much we received we always stood there with dissatisfied faces asking for more. We never got what we wanted to have and we did not know what we wanted to have. Thus we confronted each other, children dissatisfied, parents insulted. And we were unable to explain ourselves to each other. And this obstacle I took over into myself. I took over my parents’ misunderstanding. My parents’ embarrassment became my embarrassment. Their voices live on in me. I chastised and beat myself and drove myself to forced labor. Again and again the swamp fever of inadequacy gripped me. There I was again, a failure at school, sitting locked into my room, and the warm seething life outside was unattainable. There sat my mother next to me and heard me repeat my lessons and I could get nothing right. Schwein is pig, pig comes from to pick—pick, pick, pick, and she took hold of me by the scruff of the neck and pressed my nose into the vocabulary book, pick, pick, pick, so now perhaps you’ll remember it. I remembered it. At times I could be startled out of my dream, still feeling the grip of my mother’s hand on my neck, still feel the slap of my mother’s hand on my cheek, and hear her furious voice, see her index finger next to me travel down the keys of the piano, to point out to me the correct note, the note that I was unable to find, and she did not find it either, her finger missed its mark, the dissonance still shrills in my ears. And I take my mother’s hands and put them aside and my hand strokes her hands and I see my mother sitting under the floor lamp, her hands busy with pieces of clothing, her hands active, a whole lifetime at our torn stockings, shirts, and trousers, her hands, devoted a whole lifetime to caring for us, her hands a whole lifetime holding us, cleaning us, disciplining us, and suddenly these hands lie down tired, suddenly they have served their time, and her face, lit up by the floor lamp, stared in front of her, and her mouth opened and the hard lines of her face relaxed, and the face listened for the incomprehensible, and the face’s listening is so intense that it takes on a look of nameless astonishment. This had always been a part of her, the fear of being stricken dumb, of becoming paralyzed, a fear that she resisted with all her energy, and which made her domineering and angry, and which at times overcame her with sudden fainting attacks. As if struck by a terrible blow she would sink to the ground, where she then lay, a ghastly sight, like a mountain, and as she aged these states came slowly and stiflingly, lay across her chest, encased her joints with lead, deadened the power of her voice. In her diary I found the following entry, Had a dreadful dream. Mamma took me by the hand and proudly introduced me to all the people in a large room. Then we came into a hall, where on a raised dais a bluish-red eagle sat. Everyone shut into the room was led up to it and the eagle slowly forced its talons into his mouth and ripped out his tongue. I too was led there. I woke with a loud scream. My mother once said to me, you’ve always been a stranger to me, I’ll never be able to understand you. To hear this was harder than to suffer her blows. The need to be embraced by her was not yet dead. (Leavetaking)