6
As a child he had stood before the shut gates of the infectious diseases ward. How he had wanted to go outside! He had somehow suddenly turned a sunny yellow, like a lemon. Grown pensive. So then he wasn’t allowed to eat anything tasty anymore, but at least no-one scolded him for reading all day.
“You could build the Great Wall of China with all the books I’ve read.” N. was collecting his thoughts like bricks. “As for books I’ve written, well, that’s my age. I’m not forty something, I’m three books. Well, three and a half if you count the two slim children’s books on music as half an ordinary book… I like to think like that, but how is it really? The years we have lived dwell inside us, you know, set into a pattern of rings. Then all those rings appear on our necks, multiplying mercile
