Moszkowski Would Have Liked It

Moszkowski was a man who lived longer than he was prepared to admit.

East European people often pretended they couldn’t remember the war. I had a East European wife who said she had never heard of the war, let alone remembered it. I think she had blocked it out and when I showed her a history book she pretended it was blank.

“Do you remember Moszkowski?” I asked, as a sort of trick question.

He had been our next door neighbour. We often listened to him playing unknown tunes on the piano. He dug our potatoes. Straightened the edge of our lawn. He once showed us black and white photographs of his parents. He eventually moved away. And our lawn grew straggly, our potatoes undug.

“Yes, I can remember Moszkowski,” she replied.

“Ah,” I said. “Moszkowski lived during the war, even if he was just a toddler.”

“La la la la la la la…” she incanted, even as I spoke.

I could see she was upset – so I found one of her ornaments from home. A brass woman with a cart pulled by a dog.

“Moszkowski would have liked it,” I said. “And Moszkowski would have liked this, too.”

And I brought out a blackboard rubber from inside my desk – and I banged it, a cloud of chalkdust rising from it, hiding faces from each other.

After the cloud gradually subsided, she had vanished.

I wept. I could not even remember her. I wonder if she can remember me. But my mind was as blank as a blackboard with nothing written on it.


An old man entered the room, and wrote on the blackboard with a stubby chalk.

Squeaking and scratching. In an East European language. And signed it: Moszkowski.

Then, he, too, was gone. Leaving one potato.