- [first lines]
- Jakob Beer: [narrating] I did not witness the most important events in my life. My deepest story must be told by a blind man, from behind a wall, from underground.
- [last lines]
- Jakob Beer: I pray that soon my wife will feel new breath inside her own. I pray and press my head against her side, and whisper a story. Child I long for, child I dream, if we conceive you, think of us sometimes, your mother and me, when it rains. And one day, when you've almost forgotten, I pray you'll let us return. That through an open window, even in the middle of a city, the sea air of our marriage will find you. I pray that one day, in a room lit only by night snow, you will suddenly know how miraculous is your parents' love for each other.
- Jakob Beer: My son, my daughter. Bella. Bella. If we conceive you, know that once I was lost in a forest. I was so afraid my blood pounded in my chest, and I knew my heartstrings would soon be exhausted. I saved myself without thinking. I grasped the two syllables closest to me, and replaced my heartbeat with your name. Bella.
- Jakob Beer: Now I see that I must give what I most need.
- Jakob Beer: [narrating] When we were married, I hoped that if I let Alex in, if I let in a finger of light, it would flood the clearing. And at first, this is exactly what happened.
- Jakob Beer: [narrating]
- [burying Athos]
- Jakob Beer: I know only fragments of what Athos contained. Salt, olives, vine leaves, sea foam, a life spanning two wars and one love. Elena.
- Jakob Beer: Were there words that they regretted? Did they imagine children? When a man dies, his secrets bond like crystals.
- Jakob Beer: [narrating] I tried to bury images, to cover them up with distractions, with attempts at love. By day, I entered the world, but at night, my mother, my father, Bella, simply rose, shook the earth from their clothes, and waited.
- Jakob Beer: To live with ghosts requires solitude.
- Athos Roussos: I think about her too.
- Jakob Beer (child): You think she's dead.
- Athos Roussos: I don't know, Jakob. Maybe it's better to hope.
- Jakob Beer: [reading some of his writings to a tearful Athos] There is earth that never leaves your hands, rain that never leaves your bones. At night, memory roams your skin. While you sleep, the sea floods your house. You wake in the bog, burning with the smell of earth. Nothing releases you, not death in the dream, not waking. This is how one becomes undone by a smell, a word, a place, a photo of a mountain of shoes. By love that closes its mouth before calling a name.
- Jakob Beer: [Michaela reading some of Jakob writings] While I hid in the luxury of a room, thousands were stuffed into crawlspaces, stables, pigsties. While I was learning Greek and English, learning geology and poetry, Jews were filling the corners and cracks of Europe. I didn't know that while I listened to stories of explorers, a Jew could be purchased for a quart of brandy, for sugar, cigarettes. What do our bodies make us believe? That we're never ourselves, until we contain two souls.
- Jakob Beer: Now I'm not afraid when harvesting darkness. Night after night it is happiness that wakes me. There is room at last for everyone I have ever loved. As Michaela approaches, I shake like a compass needle, feeling for the first time a future, my words, my life, no longer separate, after decades of hiding in my skin. Here is a woman who will slowly undress my spirit, bring my body to belief.
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