Free Diary of the Fall by Michel Laub

as to me, and if seeing the scene from below had the same effect — if, in his dream, the people at the party were wearing tallits and kippahs, like an army formed up around the throne of David, with me standing above the throne holding an open Torah, and it’s then that the door opens and João sees his father enter pushing a wheelchair, his father surrounded by nurses who all look at João and smile and put João in the wheelchair and the next scene is João in the classroom with his atrophied legs and his toes turned in and his arms grown strong from pushing the wheelchair back and forth.
18.
    João never knew that I fought with my father because of all this. That I hurled a Scotch tape dispenser at him because of all this. That for a moment there was a chance I could have hit my father on the head and injured his face, resulting in an operation on the cheekbone under general anesthetic, leaving him with one eye that he would never be able to open again and all because my father — with his stories about the Holocaust and the Jewish renaissance and the obligation every Jew in the world had to defend himselfusing whatever means he had — was in some way responsible for what happened to João, making him the enemy who will always be there before you and who will always be in your thoughts because now he’s in a wheelchair.
19.
    I never told João that the quarrel with my father was the closest physical contact I’d had with him for thirteen years. On the day I found out he had Alzheimer’s, I went to a bar and ordered a whisky and then another and then several more and ended up leaving the bar and sleeping on a park bench. When I woke it was broad daylight and I was filled with a feeling of immense weariness when I thought about how I was going to break the news to my father, and I remember that one of the things I thought was whether or not I would touch him when I gave him the news, whether I would take his hand or place my hand on his shoulder or give him a hug or attempt a smile indicating a minimum of optimism about the initial prognosis.
20.
    I never told João what happened to me after I saw him fall. Surely he must have thought about it. Didhe, for example, imagine that I became his friend out of pity? Or out of guilt? Or because I was alone and no one else would speak to me after my conversation with the coordinator? Or for any one of those reasons that would justify the resentment that would perhaps have remained hidden had it not been for the new circumstances, the new school, the new classmates, the numerous friends he’d never had before and who allowed him to do something he had perhaps always wanted to do, a month after the start of term, two months, then three, and there comes a moment when João realizes that he doesn’t need me anymore, that I serve only as a reminder of the worst moment of his life, and he needs to move on from that memory and it’s then that he can do something he’s been planning for a long time, the one occasion on which he doesn’t bother to lie when his new classmates ask him about the previous year.
21.
    I’m not sure whether it happened in March or in April or at the latest in May, João telling them about the birthday party, the one occasion on which he let it slip in the middle of the jokes they had got used to making about me, at least they would sound like jokes now,after all the years that have passed and all the times someone has looked at me and talked about money and about a conspiracy by the rats that have infested our houses ever since the Middle Ages and spread discord and hatred among decent people. I wasn’t there on the day, of course, and it wasn’t perhaps João’s deliberate intention, not directly anyway, but the fact is that it became public knowledge that I had allowed him to fall at his birthday party, my Jewish rat paws letting go of his head, my Jewish rat instinct fleeing in the ensuing confusion, my parasitic moneymaking cancerous Jewish rat