De Litouwse dichter en schrijver Antanas Škėma werd op 29 november 1910 geboren in Lodz in Polen. Zie ook mijn blog van 29 november 2008 en ook mijn blog van 29 november 2009en ook mijn blog van 29 november 2010.

Uit: Steps And Stairs (Vertaald door Kęstutis Girnius)

„Our apartment house does not have a full-time janitor, so the garbage no longer fits into the cans. Wax paper, egg shells, a cracked cup, milk cartons He on the side walk. Across the street—a boy’s school. During recess four boys run to the area between two doors and play cards. Coins flash on the linoleum. The kids swear like old troopers sitting on bar stools in taverns. A carriage with an infant rests in the sun. He is dozing, the milk bottle and its slimy nipple slip out of his toothless mouth. His mother, a corpulent Ukrainian, is talking with a neighbor on the other side of the street. About money earned, about money saved, about money which floats above New York in thousands but settles as single dollar bills on Driggs Avenue.

I climb to the fourth floor. My steps splatter sound which sticks to the dusty walls. My steps rumple the high notes of an Italian song (a radio is playing on the second floor). Piles of accurately carved out steps accumulate on the stairs. I climb to the fourth floor, to the fourth, to the fourth, to the fourth. My steps are a mechanical saw slicing off the ends of planks. I climb among invisible plank ends flying in an enclosed space, surrounded by greenness I ascend toward the sun. On the top floor, not unlike an artist’s atelier, a skylight in the roof, the sun’s rays drill their yellow screws toward which the blind man thrusts out the viscous whites of his eyes.

Our neighbor is the corpulent Ukrainian and her large family. Husband, son, the son’s wife, the son’s son (the infant in the carriage), a sister, and the half-blind old man who now stands, head bent back, grasping the handrail, who thrusts out his eyes toward the sun’s yellow screws. He grasps the rails as a ship’s captain the spokes of the wheel when a thick fog is all around and murky white icebergs are ahead. He stands like this for whole hours, straight and immovable, an old and experienced wolf in this ocean of shimmering light.

Evening comes. The constant boring kindles the yellow screws, they redden, and the glowing light exhales a remembrance of a fire-site; and when the mechanic stops the saw, the screws revolve no longer, but cool and disappear in the approaching night. Below the ceiling a little electric lamp lights up. Covered with spider webs, the remnants of last year’s flies, the lamp announces that you have changed course, experienced captain.“

Antanas Škėma (29 november 1910 – 11 augustus 1961)

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