FRITZ
For Frederick II the Great of Prussia
“The first thing she had a mind to ask me, while I was still writhing in pain reside her dormant husband, was why I was searching for her. I felt sorry for having sunken my fingers into her spine, pulling strongly on the vertebrae in an outward direction. Weren´t the natural pains of a galloping diabetic neuropathy enough? But I needed her, I told her, and maybe because she was a historian and her name was Wilhelmina, and she reminded me of the woman I most loved in my life. Vilma, please, I´m known as Vilma even if on my birth certificate I am Wilhelmina..she hissed while her husband continued sleeping at ease in the enormous bed without having an inkling that his poor wife was struggling with me, her star nightmare of the week. It was then when I decided to resort to her intellectual´s ego, throwing aside any compliment having to do with her womanly self-esteem. I didn´t tell her that she had fascinating eyes, or that she looked better alter having lost 10 kilos of weight…you see, nobody like her could submit to paper the anguish that I went through so long time ago for the mere fact of having loved beyond measure.
“That about love without measure struck a response in her. She sat upright on the bed, smoothing her long camisole with a drawing of Taz the Tasmanian Devil, she lit her dark green night lamp with a graceful tap of her long iguana-like hand and she smiled for the first time. She reached over for a glass half full of water, swallowed a white pill and a small light blue capsule,and she said she was ready.Let go, she said, paper and pencil ready. I sat on the edge of the bed and she handed over to me a flat yellow cushion with Pikachu on it..Fritz,she said, just let yourself go, we will yarn.
“Fritz. Since how long ago had I heard my loving nickname pronounced? And she mentioned it with such a particular softness. The iridescent Nicaraguan Spanish got stuck in my German tongue, but I tried to speak to her in the best manner possible so she wouldn´t escape again before I could give her my testimony. Where could I begin? Okay, you know that my Dad was one of the greatest disciplinarians in history, and his rule began at home. My mom was told that he could FIRE the housemaids and she should do the laundry with her own hands. That was my old man. He saved even the last penny, and he had traced a plan for each one of us from the moment my mom´s belly bulged with child .We were 14, not all of us lived. It was the usual thing back then. I didn´t hassle my tutors, I got good grades, I loved history, but there weren´t big plans for me because there were males older than myself. I ask myself if I could have been happy if my older brothers hadn´t died. Once that all hopes befell on me, between one army training and a session of document signing, my dad started to pay attention to me. Too much I would add. But this attention was not like the tender handslapping going on with his huge sergeants who were over six feet tall. There was nothing I did that was right, according to him. My mother howled in horror as she saw him come in with the best disposition to get his hangover out on me, battering me, and afterwards I would weep on my sister Wilhelmina´s lap(she was three years my senior).
“Soon my outbursts with my mother and sister were not enough for the blonde adolescent that I became,To make things worse my hormones were activating, and it felt like hell candy to have my dad hitting me all the time in public, over things that I hadn´t even done yet. Who could understand what I felt? It wasn´t possible to do it with Doris, the daughter of my music teacher…not alter the beating my father gave me in public and throwing her in jail so that she never CAME too closet o me again) I tried escaping to France. Well, I spoke the language of the Louises better than my own native German, and it could be possible that on one of my dad´s work tours I World take advantage to cross the borders .But I needed the help of some youth who was bold and daring like myself. I spoke of my plans to my friends Keith and Katte, who agreed that I could not continue being my dad´s official punching bag anymore..
“But with Katte, who had stormy skies in his eyes, and they made me think of things that I could not confess, something strange happened. While we were planning my escape, I felt that his silky white skin was more myself than my own body and if I didn´t smell his odor of fresh sweat and incense. I could not find peace neither day nor night. At age 18, my fingers still had the suspicious chubby roundness of my fat childhood, and Katte World chuckle when I asked him to open his mouth and let me rub the edge of my short nails on the living rose satin of his inner cheeks. In fact, it was even too much coincidence that the sound of his last name, Katte, was so like the English word for cat. I always loved cats, and for me Katte was like a big white cat with dark blue eyes, a cat I always wanted to cuddle. Everything was ready for my escape,
I had already cried saying goodbye to my sister Wilhelmina,
When somebody blew the whistle on us to my dad .Keith managed to flee but Katte and I were caught. Days before this happened, my sister had warned us that we were playing a game way above our heads,too bold a plan, and Katte, with luminously shining eyes,had repeated to me that if he lost his head, life and everything for me it was worthwhile. A good thing he had though likewise, for the sake of both of us whose disgrace was about about to come.
“My father interrogated me as if I were the worst convict. I told him I wanted to go because he wasn´t like a father, but like an executioner. He told me I was a disgusting deserter from the glorious Prussian army. And that was the reason why I had no honor. It was then that I told him I had as much honor as he did and I couldn´t bear to be treated like a lowly slave, precisely because I had honor. My father wanted to kill me, and I think his foreign friends really exerted pressure on him not to do so and that saved my skin. He even told my mother he had killed me, although later he had to confess that he had only jailed me at the Kustrin fortress. Perhaps it would have been better if he would have killed me then and there, because I had to be the witness of something that exterminated my soul. Katte was taken before my window at the fortress and I was forced not to close my eyes and watch the horrible reality: my father had Katte beheaded. A true barbarian, right? It is not the same thing reading about this on a text, a cold historical Fac., than to have me tell it to you with tears in my eyes, Vilma, or Wilhelmina, or as you see fit to call yourself. Down there on the courtyard was that beloved body, more adored by me than if it were my own flesh. And the head! A sad and bloodied roundness, the stormy eyes with no final peace, the mouth opened in one smothered scream muted forever! Never being able to put my chubby fingers along his inner cheeks while he laughed. He was taken away and I could never keep his head like when Queen Margot de Valois saved the head of one of her lovers. I was alone now,jailed, without being able to do anything else than fainting after he died, crying and crying afterwards. I hated my own body that continued living, although I told myself that Katte had only loved me beyond measure. I had nightmares, and in them the headless corpse of Katte would follow me, ominous peals of laughter sounding from a head he no longer had, from a bloody mouth that wasn´t there anymore. A chaplain was brought to me so that I got religious books. Do you think at these heights that I had any wish to pray?There was born the philosopher that many insist that I was, but there died the man that could love I could never have a restful sleep anymore,and I couldn´t love anyone after Katte. Afterwards I was wed to a sweet dummy Isabel Christina, and although I was adored by my wife I could never love her nor beget children with her. I ruled and I was called the Great, the forger of what my nation is today, but in truth, although my palace was called Sans Souci(no worries,,I wasn´t but a tenuous peel of what I could have been. In fact, when I left this world, after having hemorrhoids and awful pains on my legs, I didn´t have peace either. And I haven´t had any throughout so many years of not existing except like a reference in history. When I left that time in 1786, I felt that my essence or soul or what you want to call it, fled from my skin through a tunnel that looked like Katte´s open mouth when he died by beheading. I have sought for him everywhere that I go gravitating, in this nothingness and there are no lengths to which I won´t go ,even waking you up from your well earned sleep, so that if by coincidence, like a transparent and gentle entity that navigates among the red hairs of your cats and the subset, Katte returns and he should know I´m looking for him. Let him know that I will never give him up for good, Don´t you think have justified myself for having disturbed you even knowing that I shouldn´t have caused you more pain than what you already have to deal with? You say nothing, Vilma. You just want to cry even though tragedy has never knocked on your life´s door, never like what happened to me. Forgive me, forgive your Fritz for this hassle and continue talking about me to your students the way you have done, with so much love and tenderness, mention that I loved cats like you, I´m your colleague as historian and military. But when you say that Frederick II of Prussia was a great king, think about it. I like the flattery…but remember how much I suffered and still do for what I was. Now, put away your notebook and your pity, go back to your bed, let me place your Pikachu pillow below your painful knee, the pills will start working and your column will straighten again, hug your husband and try to sleep, because later you will pour this nto writing even though you might have smiling desires to cry and tearful cravings to smile, because even though you may peg me as a sadist, we finally met.”
Fritz, through CeciliaLevallois
October 25 th, 2003. I was getting out of my straitjacketed wheelchair
For Frederick II the Great of Prussia
“The first thing she had a mind to ask me, while I was still writhing in pain reside her dormant husband, was why I was searching for her. I felt sorry for having sunken my fingers into her spine, pulling strongly on the vertebrae in an outward direction. Weren´t the natural pains of a galloping diabetic neuropathy enough? But I needed her, I told her, and maybe because she was a historian and her name was Wilhelmina, and she reminded me of the woman I most loved in my life. Vilma, please, I´m known as Vilma even if on my birth certificate I am Wilhelmina..she hissed while her husband continued sleeping at ease in the enormous bed without having an inkling that his poor wife was struggling with me, her star nightmare of the week. It was then when I decided to resort to her intellectual´s ego, throwing aside any compliment having to do with her womanly self-esteem. I didn´t tell her that she had fascinating eyes, or that she looked better alter having lost 10 kilos of weight…you see, nobody like her could submit to paper the anguish that I went through so long time ago for the mere fact of having loved beyond measure.
“That about love without measure struck a response in her. She sat upright on the bed, smoothing her long camisole with a drawing of Taz the Tasmanian Devil, she lit her dark green night lamp with a graceful tap of her long iguana-like hand and she smiled for the first time. She reached over for a glass half full of water, swallowed a white pill and a small light blue capsule,and she said she was ready.Let go, she said, paper and pencil ready. I sat on the edge of the bed and she handed over to me a flat yellow cushion with Pikachu on it..Fritz,she said, just let yourself go, we will yarn.
“Fritz. Since how long ago had I heard my loving nickname pronounced? And she mentioned it with such a particular softness. The iridescent Nicaraguan Spanish got stuck in my German tongue, but I tried to speak to her in the best manner possible so she wouldn´t escape again before I could give her my testimony. Where could I begin? Okay, you know that my Dad was one of the greatest disciplinarians in history, and his rule began at home. My mom was told that he could FIRE the housemaids and she should do the laundry with her own hands. That was my old man. He saved even the last penny, and he had traced a plan for each one of us from the moment my mom´s belly bulged with child .We were 14, not all of us lived. It was the usual thing back then. I didn´t hassle my tutors, I got good grades, I loved history, but there weren´t big plans for me because there were males older than myself. I ask myself if I could have been happy if my older brothers hadn´t died. Once that all hopes befell on me, between one army training and a session of document signing, my dad started to pay attention to me. Too much I would add. But this attention was not like the tender handslapping going on with his huge sergeants who were over six feet tall. There was nothing I did that was right, according to him. My mother howled in horror as she saw him come in with the best disposition to get his hangover out on me, battering me, and afterwards I would weep on my sister Wilhelmina´s lap(she was three years my senior).
“Soon my outbursts with my mother and sister were not enough for the blonde adolescent that I became,To make things worse my hormones were activating, and it felt like hell candy to have my dad hitting me all the time in public, over things that I hadn´t even done yet. Who could understand what I felt? It wasn´t possible to do it with Doris, the daughter of my music teacher…not alter the beating my father gave me in public and throwing her in jail so that she never CAME too closet o me again) I tried escaping to France. Well, I spoke the language of the Louises better than my own native German, and it could be possible that on one of my dad´s work tours I World take advantage to cross the borders .But I needed the help of some youth who was bold and daring like myself. I spoke of my plans to my friends Keith and Katte, who agreed that I could not continue being my dad´s official punching bag anymore..
“But with Katte, who had stormy skies in his eyes, and they made me think of things that I could not confess, something strange happened. While we were planning my escape, I felt that his silky white skin was more myself than my own body and if I didn´t smell his odor of fresh sweat and incense. I could not find peace neither day nor night. At age 18, my fingers still had the suspicious chubby roundness of my fat childhood, and Katte World chuckle when I asked him to open his mouth and let me rub the edge of my short nails on the living rose satin of his inner cheeks. In fact, it was even too much coincidence that the sound of his last name, Katte, was so like the English word for cat. I always loved cats, and for me Katte was like a big white cat with dark blue eyes, a cat I always wanted to cuddle. Everything was ready for my escape,
I had already cried saying goodbye to my sister Wilhelmina,
When somebody blew the whistle on us to my dad .Keith managed to flee but Katte and I were caught. Days before this happened, my sister had warned us that we were playing a game way above our heads,too bold a plan, and Katte, with luminously shining eyes,had repeated to me that if he lost his head, life and everything for me it was worthwhile. A good thing he had though likewise, for the sake of both of us whose disgrace was about about to come.
“My father interrogated me as if I were the worst convict. I told him I wanted to go because he wasn´t like a father, but like an executioner. He told me I was a disgusting deserter from the glorious Prussian army. And that was the reason why I had no honor. It was then that I told him I had as much honor as he did and I couldn´t bear to be treated like a lowly slave, precisely because I had honor. My father wanted to kill me, and I think his foreign friends really exerted pressure on him not to do so and that saved my skin. He even told my mother he had killed me, although later he had to confess that he had only jailed me at the Kustrin fortress. Perhaps it would have been better if he would have killed me then and there, because I had to be the witness of something that exterminated my soul. Katte was taken before my window at the fortress and I was forced not to close my eyes and watch the horrible reality: my father had Katte beheaded. A true barbarian, right? It is not the same thing reading about this on a text, a cold historical Fac., than to have me tell it to you with tears in my eyes, Vilma, or Wilhelmina, or as you see fit to call yourself. Down there on the courtyard was that beloved body, more adored by me than if it were my own flesh. And the head! A sad and bloodied roundness, the stormy eyes with no final peace, the mouth opened in one smothered scream muted forever! Never being able to put my chubby fingers along his inner cheeks while he laughed. He was taken away and I could never keep his head like when Queen Margot de Valois saved the head of one of her lovers. I was alone now,jailed, without being able to do anything else than fainting after he died, crying and crying afterwards. I hated my own body that continued living, although I told myself that Katte had only loved me beyond measure. I had nightmares, and in them the headless corpse of Katte would follow me, ominous peals of laughter sounding from a head he no longer had, from a bloody mouth that wasn´t there anymore. A chaplain was brought to me so that I got religious books. Do you think at these heights that I had any wish to pray?There was born the philosopher that many insist that I was, but there died the man that could love I could never have a restful sleep anymore,and I couldn´t love anyone after Katte. Afterwards I was wed to a sweet dummy Isabel Christina, and although I was adored by my wife I could never love her nor beget children with her. I ruled and I was called the Great, the forger of what my nation is today, but in truth, although my palace was called Sans Souci(no worries,,I wasn´t but a tenuous peel of what I could have been. In fact, when I left this world, after having hemorrhoids and awful pains on my legs, I didn´t have peace either. And I haven´t had any throughout so many years of not existing except like a reference in history. When I left that time in 1786, I felt that my essence or soul or what you want to call it, fled from my skin through a tunnel that looked like Katte´s open mouth when he died by beheading. I have sought for him everywhere that I go gravitating, in this nothingness and there are no lengths to which I won´t go ,even waking you up from your well earned sleep, so that if by coincidence, like a transparent and gentle entity that navigates among the red hairs of your cats and the subset, Katte returns and he should know I´m looking for him. Let him know that I will never give him up for good, Don´t you think have justified myself for having disturbed you even knowing that I shouldn´t have caused you more pain than what you already have to deal with? You say nothing, Vilma. You just want to cry even though tragedy has never knocked on your life´s door, never like what happened to me. Forgive me, forgive your Fritz for this hassle and continue talking about me to your students the way you have done, with so much love and tenderness, mention that I loved cats like you, I´m your colleague as historian and military. But when you say that Frederick II of Prussia was a great king, think about it. I like the flattery…but remember how much I suffered and still do for what I was. Now, put away your notebook and your pity, go back to your bed, let me place your Pikachu pillow below your painful knee, the pills will start working and your column will straighten again, hug your husband and try to sleep, because later you will pour this nto writing even though you might have smiling desires to cry and tearful cravings to smile, because even though you may peg me as a sadist, we finally met.”
Fritz, through CeciliaLevallois
October 25 th, 2003. I was getting out of my straitjacketed wheelchair
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