The time with the kitchen knife—the one you picked up, then put down, shaking, saying quietly, “Get out. Get out.” And I ran out the door, down the black summer streets. I ran until I forgot I was ten, until my heartbeat was all I could hear of myself.

After a minute she gives up. Sits there for a little while, then tries again. She knows by now there will be no response, but she’s after something else. She hears the tinny beep against her ear and it almost physically conjures for her the empty rooms and passages down which it carries. That corner. That ornament. That sill. She closes her eyes, listening. A commotion of longing and revulsion inside. How did it become so complicated? Home used to mean only one Thing, not a blizzard of things at war.

One child said he slept outside because the house was filled with the cries of nightmares. The doctor had the impression that no conversation took place in houses anymore, only vicious discipline, orders and brutal teasing.

You know, we all came out of the war aged, dearest Anna, with a sense of life and death that does not exist in normal lives. So, how does one look forward if all that exists as soft-weeping wounds? You cannot imagine any future . . . You just lie. And wait.

Living with your nose amidst death like that, every “normal” moment in the war is etched in your mind . . . but now, in the post-war life, it seems my life can never retrieve that intensity, as if the normal is now suddenly deathly. Meaningless. I yearn for the war, yes, pining for that vividness! A firmament of sorrow envelopes my thoughts.

It was on patrol. I was on the left flank, & dismounted Voska to inspect some tracks when a Tommy suddenly emerged from behind a taaibos. We were both frozen in shock, each with his loaded rifle in hand. I believe we both thought the same thought: He could be me. That was the first time I shot somebody down from such proximity. Though I recount it now, I possess no visual memory of it. Before, during & after, everything is missing. Only the words with which I am reporting here, remain.