Bruno Schulz on the Street of Crocodiles

Howie Good

It is spring in name but not in substance, the trumpets of glory sounding strangely vexed, as if struggling with metaphysical doubts. And this isn’t even the worst part. No, the worst part is that all that survives of The Messiah, the novel he was writing when he was shot dead by the Nazis, is the first sentence. A 100-year-old former concentration camp guard has only now been arrested on 3,518 counts of being an accessory to murder. I heard about it and thought, “Up, you corpses, get up.”