The Suffering of Being Kafka


1st EDITION


Sam Vaknin





Editing and Design:
Lidija Rangelovska




Lidija Rangelovska
A Narcissus Publications Imprint
Skopje 2006




Not for Sale! Non-commercial edition.













© 2004 Copyright Lidija Rangelovska
All rights reserved. This book, or any part thereof, may not be used or reproduced in any manner without written permission from:
Lidija Rangelovska - write to:
palma@unet.com.mk or to
vaknin@link.com.mk

Short Fiction in English and Hebrew
http://gorgelink.org/vaknin/
http://samvak.tripod.com/sipurim.html

Poetry of Healing and Abuse
http://samvak.tripod.com/contents.html

Anatomy of a Mental Illness
http://samvak.tripod.com/journal11.html

Download free anthologies here:
http://samvak.tripod.com/freebooks.html

Malignant Self Love - Narcissism Revisited
http://samvak.tripod.com/


Created by:
Lidija Rangelovska, Skopje
REPUBLIC OF MACEDONIA



C O N T E N T S






Short Fiction
A Beheaded Cart
Language of Black and Red
On the Bus to Town
The Butterflies are Laughing
The Con Man Cometh
Janusz Courts Dinah
My Affair with Jesus
The Last Days
The Future of Madeleine
The Out Kid
Pierre's Friends
Death of the Poet
Redemption
Shalev is Silent
Pet Snail
Write Me a Letter
Harmony
Blind Date
Nothing is Happening at Home

Poetry of Healing and Abuse
Our Love Alivid
Moi Aussi
Cutting to Existence
A Hundred Children
The Old Gods Wander
In the Concentration Camp Called Home
The Miracle of the Kisses
Fearful Love
My Putrid Lover
When You Wake the Morning
Narcissism
Prague at Dusk
In Moist Propinquity
Prowling
Getting Old
Sally Ann
Selfdream
Snowflake Haiku
Twinkle Star
Synthetic Joy
Tableaux (van Gogh)

The Author










The Suffering of Being Kafka





Short Fiction



A Beheaded Cart

by Sam Vaknin


Read the Hebrew original.


(In Hebrew, the word "Agala" means both cart and the feminine form of calf. A beheaded calf is among the sacrificial offerings enumerated in the Bible).

My grandfather, cradling an infant's crib, departed. Navigating left and right, far along the pavement, he reached a concrete, round, post. There he rested, sheltered from the humid sun by peeling posters for lachrymose Turkish films. He pushed the crib outside the penumbral circle and waited.
Curious folks besieged the old man and his orphaned frame and then proceeded to buy from him the salted seeds and sweets that he lay, meticulously organised, inside the crib. My grandfather smiled at them through sea-blue eyes, as he wrapped the purchased sweetmeats in rustling brown paper bags.
My embarrassed uncles built for him a creaking wooden cart from remaindered construction materials. They painted it green and mounted it on large, thin-tyred, wheels borrowed from an ancient pram. They attached to it a partitioned table-top confiscated from the greengrocer down the lane. Every morning, forehead wrinkled, my grandfather would fill the wooden compartments with various snacks and trinkets, at pains to separate them neatly. Black sunflower seeds, white pumpkin seeds, the salted and the sweet, tiny plastic toys bursting with candies, whistles, and rattles.
Still, he never gave up his crib, installing it on top of his squeaking vehicle, and filling it to its tattered brim with a rainbow of offerings. At night, he stowed it under the cart, locking it behind its two crumbling doors, among the unsold merchandise.
With sunrise, my grandfather would exit the house and head towards the miniature plot of garden adjoining it. He would cross the patch, stepping carefully on a pebbled path in its midst. Then, sighing but never stooping, he would drive his green trolley - a tall and stout and handsome man, fair-skinned and sapphire-eyed. "A movie star" - they gasped behind his back. Day in and day out, he impelled his rickety pushcart to its concrete post, there dispensing to the children with a smile, a permanence till dusk. With sunset, he gathered his few goods, bolted the fledgling flaps, and pushed back home, a few steps away.
When he grew old, he added to his burden a stool with an attached umbrella, to shield him from the elements, and a greenish nylon sheet to protect his wares. He became a fixture in this town of my birth. His lime cart turned into a meeting spot - "by Pardo", they would say, secure in the knowledge that he would always be there, erect and gracious. Like two forces of nature, my grandpa and the concrete post - older than the fading movie posters - watched the town transformed, roads asphalted, children turn adults, bringing their off-spring to buy from him a stick of bitter black chewing gum.