Best European Fiction 2013 (40 page)
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Authors: Unknown
The machinery of war had not really gotten going yet when about ten soldiers moved into my parents’ house. It had become the custom at that time for the army to take shelter in private houses, while their owners put up with this honor without a word. Well, those ten of ours were the most utterly vile individuals imaginable, and drunkards to boot, so the house resounded with banging and crashing all day long. None of my family had ever been particularly quick to anger— they were always mild people. My father, but particularly my mother, put up with various insults at first—admittedly, still on the edge of the tolerable, but eventually developing into something really unpleasant. Up until the moment that I’m about to describe to you, right up to that moment—or, more exactly, right up to the third day after it—I knew almost nothing about what was going on in that house. I too had been mobilized and billeted in someone else’s house, and I considered it my duty to endure that burden silently as well, although the knowledge that soldiers were occupying my parental home was never far from my thoughts … (I even carried the key to the locked room in which I still kept most of my books and other personal effects, with me, just in case some stranger found his way in there.) It turned out that those soldiers did whatever they liked. They turned the house into a real pigsty. A certain Brekalović particularly excelled at this—a true alcoholic with a pale, drawn, ghostly face. Only the thin, blue veins on his nose disturbed the eerie pallor of it. He was particularly talented, I say. And he had several serious quarrels with my folks. You can imagine, I suppose, that they were about politics. He didn’t fail to mention, during every argument— for he had presumably heard me talking during one of my visits home—that their son, despite being in the army, was a traitor to his nation. Brekalović wanted, also, in the name of said nation, for my room to be unlocked so that he could personally see what I was hiding in it and what kind of books, if you please, the philosopher reads. Mother demanded that Brekalović leave the house. God only knows all the things she’d already learned about Brekalović—but, in any case, she didn’t dare share any of this with father and me. One evening, finally, that loathsome figure from our nightmare life broke down the locked door of my room and found himself among my things, among the books and papers of my philosophical work and essay-writing. He stood, the obscurantist, in the middle of the room with Kadare’s
The Castle
in his hands, God knows how he managed to hit on that, of all things, among all the works by Nietzsche, Kant, Spinoza, or Hegel … The author’s name was probably just what he was looking for—Albanian—for, at the height of the war and its atrocities, he was looking for a straw to cling to, and then … do what he did. Seeing him there, my mother screamed, and my father wasn’t at home just then, and I don’t think that I’ll ever forgive him for that. “Bitch, you spawned one treacherous bastard!” hissed Brekalović before he set about raping my forty-nine-year-old mother, who, apart from anything else in her life, had married her very first boyfriend, I mean the man who later became my father.
I stopped by three days after Brekalović’s crime and found the house in silence. The soldiers had left, and my mother was sitting hunched up on her bed with a pillow clutched to her stomach. My father, broken. He was crouching in the corner of the room. Silent. Hardly fifteen minutes passed from the moment I heard what had happened till I found Brekalović in front of a nearby bar, led straight to him by some animal instinct. I beat him senseless. His injuries were severe enough that he will never be able to walk normally again, and the four months he spent in hospital are a testament to what happened that afternoon. I admit, I was wholly out of control, there was no voice of reason left in my consciousness then to point out the barbarity of my action. I’m writing this to you today, God help me, to report that a sentence kept resounding in me that day, as in an empty church, a simple, harsh sentence, as though read in some cheap novelette: “So you thought you could fuck an old woman and not pay for it, did you? Well, guess again!” And, over and over again, that sentence filled me, completely, with hatred. I had avenged my mother, and remained just aware enough not to take my action to its ultimate end. I left Brekalović alive and later I told the police and the judge the truth, down to the last word. What happened then, however, simply confirmed some of the attitudes I’ve already expressed over the course of this letter, I mean about our people and our country. It turned out that Brekalović was related to the dean of the school where I taught. There followed pressure, telephone calls. Soon I was summoned to have a “talk” with my superior. Briefly, I was told that if I did not withdraw my accusation of rape, I would lose my job. Which would be fatal for my family and myself—or so I was told. After all, I no longer lived in my parents’ house, which meant that I could hardly know what went on there in every detail. If I retracted my claim, they would, they said, for their part,
do what they could
. (In the office at that moment, I should say, in addition to the dean and myself, was Brekalović’s lawyer.) I repeat, they would, for their part,
do what they could
. As though it was I who had raped Brekalović’s mother, as though my mother had not been so viciously, cruelly humiliated! We did not withdraw the accusation. But now, thanks to you won’t believe what pressures, here we are, my wife, my children, and I, in Szentendre, outside that country—although, I have to say, not far enough away from those people there. At a certain moment my mother demanded that we go, because the threats and blackmail could no longer be borne. The judicial process is still going on and will continue to go on, no doubt, for a while longer yet. As long as it takes, I hope, for Brekalović to see the inside of a prison. And then, of course, I know that one day he will get out of jail. As though nothing had happened, he’ll stroll along to the first bar for a double brandy, he’ll knock it back, maybe pinch the waitress’s behind, or tell some drunk that he’d done time just because he humped some traitor’s mother. That his beloved country had punished an innocent man; that it was he, in fact, who was the victim and not that stinking old whore who could have given him a nasty disease. But there we are! Everyone gets what he deserves. He’ll go to prison, while I’m already in exile. Voluntary or not—that’s a different question. Besides, I am not myself blameless as regards the country in which I spent virtually all my life up to now.
Incidentally, it’s nice here. This “little bit of Serbia” is extraordinarily good for my nerves, and it seems to me that, although there aren’t many of them, the Serbs here live quite differently from those there. Or perhaps I should say “you there”?
Tomorrow we’ll be getting money from Stockholm: a relative is sending us German marks to buy supplies for the coming three months, which I believe is as long as it will take for us to get Swedish immigrant visas for my family and myself. Refika brought me your collection of stories and one dreadfully bad volume of poems, translated into Serbian, by one of his countrymen, which I intend to throw in the trash. He laughs, the bum, and says, pointing at the book of poems: “Read one every night, before you go to sleep.” “All right,” I say, putting it aside. And he falls onto the bed, roaring with laughter. He told me I was a “Serbian cultural racist.” Once in a while, I do feel better. We were right to leave Serbia, because of the children, because of my wife, because of my mother. That’s how it is in a foreign land, my friend. Here, my hand writes of its own accord: “Waging war, shedding blood for a foreign master …”
TRANSLATED FROM SERBO-CROATIAN BY CELIA HAWKESWORTH
[SLOVENIA]
Fucking complicated, you think to yourself, as you walk along the smooth, slippery, shining surface and beneath your thin leather soles feel every joint between the paving stones. You’re afraid that you will get tangled up in this dress, to which you are not accustomed. If you do, that will be a sign, and if you do not, likewise; the whole street is somehow bulging, because of fear, rainwater, or time, certainly because of something. A few months ago you would have described this moment with the word paradoxical; now that word, along with several others, is stuck somewhere behind you, somewhere in time. Tell me which words you use and I’ll tell you with whom you spend time and what you are. You can still change your mind, in spite of the fact that the world has been speeding up from month to month, from week to week, from day to day; today it’s speeding up from hour to hour, and that’s all you can think of, that there’s no time left, and of how everything is so fucking complicated.
In front of you is the red, white, and blue flag with the checkerboard, probably there’s also one somewhere at the back, not to mention those left behind in the parked cars; around the flag are hired musicians who sing of the beauties of our homeland and about the beautiful Dalmatia that they will defend with their last drop of blood; everyone is singing along, Goran is walking beside you and behind you are a whole lot of people. All your folk from back home are here and you know exactly what they’re thinking, that this isn’t our kind of climate, it’s too hot. They’re mixed in with Goran’s people, brown, green, and washed-out pastel shades among black, blue, and colorful modern; your folk aren’t used to being away from home, the most elegant colors for them are brown and moss green, they’re not made for these hot white stones on this hot Saturday afternoon, but for you they’d do anything and what our Nuša does is always right. You don’t even know that at the pub your father is known as OurNuša because he begins every sentence with your name. OurNuša, he says, adjusting his glasses. Goran’s people are also dressed up. The men in elegant suits, on their feet sharp Italian shoes but no socks. This is another reason for that pain in your diaphragm. What kind of world is it where men dressed for a special occasion are not wearing socks? What’s wrong with them?
You go along the seafront, there’s a smell of salt in the air, mixed with a smell of oil and, come on, let’s admit it, a smell of sewage. On your right yachts are moored, flags hang in the still air like limp rags: the foreigners on deck watch and size you up. A small man on an Italian yacht stretches to take a picture of the men. You are somehow floating but you notice all this, your eyes take in all this confusion. You see yourself walking on the centuries-old stones, you know you’re hot, you’re afraid that something isn’t quite right, you also see the camera in the Italian’s small brown hand. It’s possible that as early as the autumn some male models with icy, imbecilic looks will be stalking down the catwalk without socks, a nice trick, skin against skin, he’ll be dreaming about these tall Dalmatian men, flags, this scene. In memory of this summer day he’ll dress the models in shorts and raincoats, he’ll put a flag in their hands, your wedding will be frozen in the bizarre images of an upside-down world. Damn queers, Goran will say one day sitting in front of the television, and change the channel. But where will you be then?
Even last year you yourself would also have said they were good looking, these Dalmatian men, and they sing nationalist marches at weddings, interesting, and they have flags with them, which isn’t all that strange when you think how those madmen from the hills bombarded them … But last year is last year, while this year is this year and this is no longer just a bit of exotica for you to photograph and keep for a rainy day. Now those flags are above and below you, and the questions have only increased, they’re multiplying and getting under your feet, and it’s not the best time for questions to which you don’t have answers, although in reality you do, otherwise you wouldn’t feel so bad. Over a couple of days a whole arsenal of images has appeared, each bad in its own way, while the moment is approaching when all the questions will be combined into one and there will be only one answer.
Suddenly, for instance, you noticed Nada’s tablecloth, Nada and the kind of things she said … Goran wasn’t at home. Two days before the wedding and he hadn’t been home all night. He had said he was just popping out, that he’d be right back, and that right back had stretched until morning. His mobile phone stayed at home, you see, that’s what life with him is really like, and you sat with Nada in the kitchen waiting for him, quiet more than anything, strangers. You noticed that her tablecloth was plastic and worn and, come on, admit it, also dirty. It wasn’t as if you had never seen a plastic tablecloth before, it wasn’t that. It was that you would be living with Nada, Goran has already told you. And will you rip the tablecloth that has suited her all these years right off the table? That’s what your home will be like. Will such a home help make you a new homeland?
Nada was looking at you in despair; through the cigarette smoke you heard those words that threw a new light on everything. What can I say, she said, you know where he came from, and with disgust she gestured somewhere between her legs. Now you’re asking yourself if this is hereditary. From mother to son. Forever. Can it be fixed? What do you do with despair?
The most frightening thing about your own mother’s reaction was the hint in the words look here, plus the same desperate look, plus the same silence. Look here, she said to you, when you told her. Look here. Is this what you studied for? Is this what you worked so hard for? Your father won’t be able to bear it. He used to get up at night just to check that you were still breathing. Who’s going to give you a job there? And you hadn’t even told her the half of it. Now your mother and father are somewhere at the back asking themselves whether this is really happening, and what’s going to happen next.
Your mother is so afraid. Last year she showed you a holiday photo in which there were some female refuse collectors. Female refuse collectors seemed a safe and neutral theme; there are donkeys here, a cathedral damaged by shelling, but women on a garbage truck, yes, it’s terrible that in Dalmatia they have women refuse collectors. It seemed good that in your world at least that wasn’t the case. Nor was it the case that men came home in the morning, saying give me a glass of mineral water, dear, I drank a bit too much, and went to bed without another word, and you weren’t even allowed to ask them any questions because the answer was always the same. That’s what I’m like, you know what I’m like, so what now? Is the first pain not better than the last?