Mr. Potter Read Online Free

matter, as if knowing her name, the one that was not Mrs. Weizenger, would ever matter to him. And when Dr. Weizenger looked at his wife (her name was May, that was the name Mr. Potter wondered about), something passed between them, words perhaps, a meaningful silence perhaps; it was words but they spoke in a language that Mr. Potter did not understand, it was English but Mr. Potter did not understand it, and that exchange between Dr. Weizenger and his wife ended and he, Dr. Weizenger, now turned again to Mr. Potter, resuming his interrogation, but silently now, he picked up where he had
left off, as if nothing had come between them, not silence, not its opposite, and Mr. Potter said, “Me name Potter, Potter me name,” and the sound of Mr. Potter’s voice, so full of all that had gone wrong in the world for almost five hundred years that it could break the heart of an ordinary stone, meant not a thing to Dr. Weizenger, for he had been only recently inhabiting the world as if it were composed only of extinction, as if it were devoted to his very own extinction. And Dr. Weizenger was of the mammal species, not reptile or amphibian or insect or bird, but of the mammals, and so used to observing, not being observed, and so used to acting, not being acted upon. And his own extinction had almost succeeded and how surprised he was by this, and how surprised he would remain for the rest of his life, as if such a thing had never happened before, as if groups of people, one day intact and building civilization and dominating heaven and earth, had not the next found themselves erased and not even been remembered in a prayer or in a joke by the rest of humanity; as if groups of people had not been erased from the beginning of life and human memory. And the sound of Mr. Potter’s voice as he spoke his own name, giving his own name the character of a caress (or so Dr. Weizenger thought), made Dr. Weizenger furious, angry, and how he hated Mr. Potter then, Mr. Potter whom history had made into nothing, a thing of no spiritual value, nothing had the luxury
of self-love, and Dr. Weizenger could hear it in his voice, “Me name Potter, Potter me name.” Those were the words that were spoken, but the sound of Mr. Potter’s voice, so full of love for himself, so full of certainty that his name and he were one, made Dr. Weizenger just then want to shut off Mr. Potter’s ability to take in oxygen, he wanted to silence Mr. Potter forever, or certainly just now, but all of this murderous rage was distilled into commands: where to place the suitcases, when to come again and carry them for a ride to some destination or other in Mr. Shoul’s car. And Mr. Potter and Dr. Weizenger were standing face-to-face and Dr. Weizenger and Mr. Potter were standing opposite each other, and memory, which is to say, history, that frail recollection, that unreliable gathering of all that has happened, did not abandon them: Mr. Potter took off his hat (it was a cap worn by children, schoolboys, in England) and held it in his hand with his head bowed low, his head had come to a rest on his chest, and he looked at the ground in front of him as it lay at his feet, the floor it was and it was made of pitch pine and he did not wonder who made pitch pine and Mr. Potter did not wonder who had made such an idea as pitch pine possible and then turned it into floors and then tables and chairs, and who made anything valuable. Mr. Potter did not think of any of that, his eyes were cast down on the floor (made of pitch pine) and the floor became a relief, for
the floor was nothing, just itself, a floor, a man-made barrier against the shifting disorder of the earth; how Mr. Potter loved the floor just then, just at that moment when he was standing in front of Dr. Weizenger and the views and the light just outside the window (or the windows, as it may be) were now behind him. And when Mr. Potter said to Dr. Weizenger his name, he did not long to know