the last book I ever read (Property: A Novel by Valerie Martin, excerpt one)

from Property: A Novel by Valerie Martin:

I could not bear another lecture on my failings as a wife. “How long can it take to warm a bowl of soup?” I said, rising from my seat. Just as I reached the door, Sarah appeared with the tray. “At last,” I said. “What makes you so slow?” I reached out to take the tray, but as I did so I saw that Sarah was looking past me with a grimace of revulsion. She backed away, allowing the tray to slip from her fingers and crash to the floor. Hot soup flew up onto my skirt; a few drops burned my ankles. I shouted, turning away to pull a towel from the washstand, and, as I did, I saw a sight so terrible it will haunt my dreams until I die. Mother was sitting just as she had been, propped on her pillows, her hands folded in her lap, but from her mouth, nose, eyes, and ears, a black fluid gushed forth. I screamed. Sarah ran, calling for Peek. I took up a towel and went to Mother, pressing it to her mouth and nose. She didn’t struggle. Perhaps she was already dead. “My God,” I said, over and over, mopping the viscous fluid away, but to no avail. I took her hand to find even her fingernails blackened and wet, and when I looked down, I saw two stains unfurling like black flowers at the toes of her linen slippers. “Can you hear me?” I said, as the towel turned slippery in my hands. Peek came running in, trailing towels, went straight to the washstand, filled the bowl, and brought it to me. Together we washed Mother’s face and neck as best we could. Soon the water in the bowl was black, and still the liquid seeped from her eyes and mouth. Her skin had turned blue, as if she were suffocating, and the veins in her neck and hands stood out against the flesh like spreading black tentacles. “Mother,” I pleaded. “Please speak to me. Please try to speak to me.” Peek put her hand on my arm and said, “She gone, missus. Nothing more you can do.”

the last book I ever read (If This is a Man by Primo Levi, excerpt ten)

from If This is a Man by Primo Levi:

“I have a ration of bread under the mattress. Divide it among the three of you. I won’t be eating anymore.”

We couldn’t find anything to say, but for the time being we didn’t touch the bread. Half his face was swollen. As long as he remained conscious, he was closed in a bitter silence.

But in the evening, and for the whole night, and for two days, without interruption, the silence was broken by his delirium. Following a last, interminable dream of submission and slavery, he began to murmur “Jawohl” with every breath, regularly and continuously like a machine, “Jawohl,” every time his poor rib cage subsided, thousands of times, so that you wanted to shake him, suffocate him, or at least make him change the word.

I never understood so clearly as at that moment how laborious is the death of a man.

the last book I ever read (If This is a Man by Primo Levi, excerpt nine)

from If This is a Man by Primo Levi:

Once the broken window was repaired and the stove began to spread its heat, something seemed to relax in everyone, and then Towarowski (a Franco-Pole of twenty-three, with typhus) proposed to the others that each of them offer a slice of bread to the three of us who had been working. And so it was agreed.

Only a day before, such an event would have been inconceivable. The law of the Lager said “Eat your own bread, and, if you can, that of your neighbor,” and left no room for gratitude. It really meant that the Lager was dead.

This was the first human gesture that occurred among us. I believe that that moment marked the start of the process by which we who had not died slowly turned from Häftlinge into men again.

the last book I ever read (If This is a Man by Primo Levi, excerpt eight)

from If This is a Man by Primo Levi:

When it rains we feel like crying. It is November, it has been raining for ten days now, and the ground is like the bottom of a swamp. Everything made of wood has the smell of mushrooms.

If I could take ten steps to the left, I would be sheltered by the roof; all I’d need is a sack to cover my shoulders, or the mere prospect of a fire where I could dry myself; or maybe a dry rag to put between my shirt and my back. From one swing of the shovel to the next I think about it, and I really believe that to have a dry rag would be positive happiness.

the last book I ever read (If This is a Man by Primo Levi, excerpt seven)

from If This is a Man by Primo Levi:

The personages in these pages are not men. Their humanity is buried, or they themselves buried it, under the abuse received or inflicted on someone else. The evil and stupid SS men, the Kaps, the political, the criminals, the Prominents great and small, down to the indistinguishable Häftlinge slaves—all the grades of the mad hierarchy created by the Germans are paradoxically united in a common inner desolation.

But Lorenzo was a man; his humanity was pure and uncontaminated, he was outside this world or negation. Thanks to Lorenzo, I managed not to forget that I myself was a man.