"My Prison-Cure in America", Chapter 13
Adapted from Annemarie Schwarzenbach, by Cleo Varra
Read previous: #12. How Did I Overcome This Fear?
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WHITE PLAINS, NY-- 1941
I walked through the triangular glow of a streetlight: not too quickly, because I told myself that I was very weak, and needed to save my strength. On both sides of me I saw roiling darkness.
And what stillness, what coolness, what freedom!
I heard nothing but the sound of my footsteps— but these were so booming that the whole ground seemed to tremble—
And then, with doors opening everywhere, sirens blaring, pools of lights circling, and a dozen voices shouting at once, I swerved off the path and smacked myself into the darkness, arms crossed in front of my face, against bushes, and ran until I could no longer.
I didn't need to think.
When my pounding heartbeat gave up, I threw myself forwards.
And how still I lay then, my forehead pressed in the damp earth.
I lay like that for a long time.
They didn't come.
***
Sometimes my mouth twisted into a smile. —But if they come! I thought.
—If one of them stands up behind me like a shadow, then I'll jump up too and grab onto his neck, and I'd much rather die than have them put their hands on my shoulders and my mouth, and tie me and take me away again.
That thought calmed me.
—You were at least free to fight back.
There was still a way out, you could still call upon God….
***
But none of them ever found me.
I lay in the moonlight, with my head in my arms, and I didn't move, while their headlights scanned the horizon, and sirens blared like hunting horns.
And not even their shadows found me.
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