A Part

No one knows the pain of my pain, not I even I do, seeing as I no longer have possession of it, its seat, the body, the last thing a person loses, the least among us at least has his body to host his pain, I thought, sitting there in that chair at the concert, with the bows sawing up their horse-gut strings with the nervous music of one of those fanatics between the wars, but not me, for I could see myself, perfectly, three rows ahead and five chairs apart to the left, the unmistakable bald pate and the green cord that gave the glasses the illusion of safety, that the worst thing that could happen was to merely hang but not fall, never fall, but there I was, but how could I be there and also be here to see myself being there, three rows ahead and five chairs apart from myself, or whatever it was I now was here in this being that was not myself, here in this seat where something of myself still was, feeling a hairlike inkling of a feeling of imminence, some precipitate thing that was happening or was about to happen, or maybe this was just an emanation of the state I was in, and so sitting in that chair as if strapped for much longer than perhaps I should have been, trying to understand who I then could have been now in this chair here when the true me was unmistakably in that chair there, three rows ahead and five chairs apart, I finally stood up when the polite, aspirational clapping began and I saw myself rise up and make for the exits, and I, or whatever this being was that was seeing me, also followed, and lost him, that is myself, for a moment, and then saw him with his coat in his, that is my, hand, and out he goes through the revolving door, which was painfully slow, and halting, and I waited, to come out there into night, into rain, where he was, no umbrella, pulling his coat over my bald head and we crossed the square twenty paces apart, and we turned into that familiar street, twenty paces apart or more, and into another, and the third was ours, where we lived, it turned out, and I was amazed at the house we have managed to acquire, what is it I do now, I wondered, to enable us to do it, and the rain had stopped by now, that cheerful late summer drizzle, and up we went to the stoop and pulled the key and he entered, but the door shut before I could enter and I stood there confused, and rang the bell again and again but no one came, and it was like this for a long time, and then when I saw the lights were out, I went across the street and watched the house where we lived, wondering what we were up to and where we were going, and I yawned, and stayed exactly where we were.

Elvis Bego was born in Bosnia, fled the war there at age twelve, and now lives in Copenhagen. His work has appeared in Agni, Best American Essays, Granta, Kenyon Review, Tin House, Threepenny Review, and elsewhere.

Published July 15 2025