As a man of fifty-plus, he had dark hair with hardly any gray and thick stubble; he shaved with great tenacity, leaving only his magnificent mustache, which he cared for and curled with the use of a pomade, the base ingredient of which was tallow. As a result, his son, Mieczysław, forever associated the smell of rancid fat with his father; it was his second, aromatic skin.
January could easily have made a good second marriage, but he had lost all interest in women, as though his wife, who had died several months after giving birth, enfeebled by the effort of producing a child and by some sort of inexplicable depression, had permanently destroyed his trust in the fairer sex—as if he felt cheated by this, or even disgraced. She had given birth and promptly died! What nerve! His mother had passed away prematurely, too. There was something wrong with these mothers; they seemed to do a terribly dangerous job, risking their lives tangled in lace in their boudoirs and bedrooms, leading a lethal existence among the bedclothes and the copper pans, among the towels, powders, and stacks of menus for every day of the year. In Mieczysław Wojnicz’s family world, the women had vague, short, perilous lives, and then they died, remaining in people’s memories as fleeting shapes without contours. They were reduced to a remote, unclear impulse placed in the universe temporarily, for the sole purpose of its biological consequences.
Denne historien er fra June 03, 2024-utgaven av The New Yorker.
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Denne historien er fra June 03, 2024-utgaven av The New Yorker.
Start din 7-dagers gratis prøveperiode på Magzter GOLD for å få tilgang til tusenvis av utvalgte premiumhistorier og 9000+ magasiner og aviser.
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LIFE ADVICE WITH ANIMAL ANALOGIES
Go with the flow like a dead fish.
CONNOISSEUR OF CHAOS
The masterly musical as mblages of Charles Ives
BEAUTIFUL DREAMERS
How the Brothers Grimm sought to awaken a nation.
THE ARTIFICIAL STATE
A different kind of machine politics.
THE HONEST ISLAND GREG JACKSON
Craint did not know when he had come to the island or why he had come.
THE SHIPWRECK DETECTIVE
Nigel Pickford has spent a lifetime searching for sunken treasure-without leaving dry land.
THE HOME FRONT
Some Americans are preparing for a second civil war.
PRESIDENT FOR SALE
On a mid-October Sunday not long ago sun high, wind cool-I was in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, for a book festival, and I took a stroll.
SYRIA'S EMPIRE OF SPEED
Bashar al-Assad's regime is now a narco-state reliant on sales of amphetamines.
TUCKER EVERLASTING
Trump's favorite pundit takes his show on the road.