Free PSALM 44 by Aleksandar Hemon and John K. Cox Page A

’ t doubt it, ” he said. “ You ’ ve certainly suffered a great deal up to this point. But have you really lost hope? ” She had no answer for him, despite the trust she ’ d begun to feel for him; she truly didn ’ t know how to respond, for who knows what ’ s going on in this game with no rules, “ I hope/I have no hope, ” like “ I will/I won ’ t ” or “ He loves me/He loves me not, ” because it was somehow always like this, both in the train car when they were being deported and on the way to the camp and earlier as well, on the Danube: she accepted it, and to her it seemed like she was reconciling herself to all that was coming her way, but later she realized that she had actually not acquiesced completely and that she hadn ’ t ever abandoned altogether a certain madness that could be called hope (perhaps not even then, at the Danube; but she was in no position now to be certain of that); thus she wanted to say to him that maybe none of it had anything to do with hope, for she had managed to stay alive that time by the Danube, back when it all started (it was three or four years ago), and instead maybe it was all nothing more than an absurd game without rules, a game in which it was impossible to stake anything, even hope, and she wanted to tell him the story of what happened back then by the Danube as she waited at the green peeling fence much as she used to stand in line for a shower during a summer heat wave; but she remembered that she hadn ’ t abandoned that insanity, which could also be called hope, she hadn ’ t abandoned it even then all the way up to the point at which she lost consciousness; but her eyes would shut — even then (leaving between her eyelashes a narrow razor-like blade that cut through in an instant the reddish darkness that had fallen over her mind, thereby slicing through the gloom and leaving in her mind a fissure opening into the future) — even then with the hope (or whatever it ’ s called) that she would awaken and start to see again: to live. Despite the facts. Despite everything. — But she still hadn ’ t told him everything, because she sensed at the moment she was speaking with this man in his white coat, whose name she still didn ’ t know, that even now she was unearthing in herself a glow that could not be and is not called hope, although the source of this feeling lay not in her heart but rather outside of her, pushing into her consciousness and her heart like an unexpected heat wave: from his voice and in his eyes. And she thought: Hope isn ’ t in my heart, in my hands. All my hope lies in your words. In the Doctor ’ s eyes . But maybe she would already have thought: in your eyes . For this was an intimate feeling for which one needed no social distance. — But then of course she didn ’ t say it that way; she just shrugged her shoulders:
    “ I don ’ t know, ” she said. Then mumbled: ( “ Maybe just once. ” )
    And then he asked, unexpectedly:
    “ Do you trust me? ” Just like that: “ Do you trust me? Or maybe that isn ’ t the right word . . . Anyway, it ’ s all we ’ ve got: trust . ”
    “ Yes, ” she said. “ I do. ” If he had asked her that question in a slightly different way or if he had posed it earlier, before time had provided the answer, she would have merely shrugged her shoulders in resignation or she would have lied: “ I think I do. ”
    But this was a day or two after she first met him. Or perhaps it had been five or six days since that first meeting. She no longer knew exactly. She remembered their first encounter: it was on the day following her arrival in the camp. They stood side by side in rows, naked, hair shorn; they were mostly young girls, still capable of working or of providing amusement to the German officers leaving for the Eastern Front or returning from there covered in medals and scars: Deutschland, Deutschland ü ber alles ; they worked doing the selections for the holiday camps: