The Arrival of Autumn in Constantinople

He got out of bed and, as every day, took a hot shower. Water, as always, filled his ears. It was when he tried to clear them that he noted it. First he thought that he was still asleep and dreaming, then that it was a mistake, false information transmitted to a brain still sluggish from rising too early. He tested it again and a cold sweat mixed with the hot water.

Slowly, with fear, he peered into the blurred mirror, where his confused silhouette materialized. He cleared the crystal surface with his palm, and that other hand met his. There he could see himself clearly, and he shuddered, raising both hands to his head and pressing at his ears.

He went to his bedroom. His wife was sleeping. He would have liked to wake her; cry out to her that he no longer had them, that he had lost them; ask her to help him prove that he was not dreaming. But he felt ashamed and kept silent, seated beside her. Tears fell from him. He wiped his eyes with an edge of the sheet and then he saw it, half-hidden under the pillow, rather transparent; without bitterness he picked it up--it was one of his ears. He looked for the other and found it on the floor.

When he had them both, in an instinctive if futile action, he tried to put them back on. He shut himself in the bathroom and there he observed them with care: they were not bleeding, they were as if withered and fragile. Again he looked at himself in the mirror and felt ridiculous. Several times he modeled his previous image, when he was whole, sustaining his ears with his fingertips. Also, in a fit of unconsciousness, he tried them on backwards and on various parts of his face. Then he grew serious.

Again he found himself sitting beside his wife, his head wrapped in a towel.

"Susanna," he called softly, "Susanna, are you awake?"

She responded with a murmur.

"My ears fell off," he said, very sadly, removing the towel."

Translated by H. E. Francis