Dear ,
 

How many boxes might you have looked inside of by this time in your life? Which held contents that you still remember?

WordPlay Opportunities

Featured Writing

00an Excerpt from

When Time Stopped:
A Memoir of My Father's War and What Remains

by

Ariana Neumann

A BIT OF SCENE SETTING: In a bit of synchronicity, given last week's prompt was about what we had wanted to be when we grew up, the scene below begins with Arianna Neumann's sharing that, when she was "very young," she had "wanted to be a detective, or even a spy," and that, when she was eight, she "started a spy club with my maternal cousins and a few friends." 

After a number of Saturday meetings holding "what seemed like hundreds of unmemorable reports," her cousin Rodrigo reported that he had seen Ariana's father move "a strange gray box from a locked drawer in the watch workshop (repairing watches was her father's passion) to a cupboard in the library."
 

. . . That afternoon, as soon as the spies left after their lunch and swim, I went to look for the box. I found it easily enough. It was dark gray and made of board and cloth. It sat below the shelf where the checkers board and the wooden chest set were kept. It was not concealed, it just lay there inside a cupboard in which it did not belong. I remember thinking at the time that it may be filled with broken watches. I moved it and, contrary to Rodrigo’s intelligence, was struck by how very light it was.

I sat on the carpet in front of the bookcase and lifted the lid with the tips of trembling fingers. I sensed that this was the mystery we had been waiting for. The box contained only five or six papers and cards. On the top was a long-expired Venezuelan passport, much smaller than the ones I had seen. It was dated 1956 and bore a picture of my father as I knew him, smiling and already wrinkled, with glasses balanced on a boxer's nose. Underneath the passport lay other documents, thin and fading.

They were printed in a foreign language. The paper seemed delicate and old. I lifted each sheet with my two hands and placed it on the lid of the open box. Then, at the bottom of the box, I saw it. A picture of my father's face on a pink card. He was much younger than I had ever seen him, with no broken nose, no wrinkles or white hair. Still I had no doubt that it was him—I recognized the eyes. His lips seemed to be about to smile, but his eyes stared out at me with an acute and questioning intensity.

At the bottom of his picture, below his chin, almost covering his tie, was a stamp. I was too young to know much history, but I recognized the man on the stamp. I had no doubt he represented evil, and the sight of my father's face above it made no sense. I tried to find more clues. I could see that it was some form of identification. I look for my father's name, but it was not there. Instead, the card seemed to belong to someone called Jan Šebesta. It was dated October 1943 and was valid until October 1946. On the reverse, the bearer’s date of birth was recorded as March 11, 1921. I knew my father's birthday was February 9, 1921.

I do not remember much else from that moment other than being terrified. I had to find my mother. My father was not called Hans. He was lying about his name and about his date of birth. The evidence was undeniable, printed on an official looking document. I ran down the long checkered granite terrace, past the sofas and armchairs and the enormous bronze and limestone sculptures. I flew through the white hallway, thinking then that the eyes of the Botero portrait of my father watched me as I ran. . . .

    Click title to learn more about 
When Time Stopped: A Memoir of My Father's War and What Remains.

* For sharing this book with you, Amazon will give me a small portion of their proceeds from its sale.