Crumbs (16 page)

‘Egon, don't take this personally but… how shall I put this… you two are somehow similar—'

I interrupted him.

‘You mean I don't jerk myself off either?'

‘Don't be like that, that's not what I meant… I'm sure you do…'

‘How do you know that?'

‘Well… I don't really… I…'

He got confused and waved his arms. The breeze they made couldn't blow away the redness on his cheeks.

I savoured his embarrassment for another second and then stopped his torment.

‘It's all right. I do understand what you're trying to say. Just relax.'

The last sentence was intended for his toes, which were waiting in readiness by the edge of his shoes, slipping in slowly.

He did as told and took off his winkle-pickers.

A terrible stench.

‘Are you angry?' he asked.

‘No. Why?'

He was watching me with fear, as if expecting me to bite him any minute. I took a sip from the bottle.

‘Just wondered… Maybe you're not comfortable talking about this.'

‘No less than talking about anything else.'

Ibro stood the empty bottle by the bed. He opened another one.

I followed his example.

‘Egon,' he started, ‘you don't mind if I lie down, I'm so tired.'

I shrugged my shoulders.

Ibro sprawled on the bed. Bent the pillow over to raise his head, holding the bottle on his stomach between his hands.

‘The work tires me out,' he apologised once more.

‘It's all right.'

I switched on the lamp on the cabinet and turned off the light.

We emptied the bottles. Third round.

He broke the silence.

‘What do you think of Ajsha?'

A sudden attack of honesty even though it was of no interest to me. It wasn't my problem.

‘I don't know if you're the right one for her.'

‘You think so?'

‘You'd better give up.'

Silence fell.

We spoke again during the fourth round.

First he gave a sigh, long and sad.

‘You're probably right, but I can't help it. I've fallen in love.'

‘That's true, too.'

‘She's my first love.'

First loves hurt most. I felt sorry for him.

‘There was another woman. A middle-aged widow. I thought I loved her, but that was nothing compared to this.'

Ibro stared at the ceiling and talked, clutching the bottle.

He wasn't drinking anymore. I opened another one for myself only.

‘She always smiled at me when she went to work in the fields.'

He stopped talking. I took the cigar out of my pocket and lit it. This was the right moment. I had plenty of time. Ibro was at that stage of talking when he didn't need a listener anymore.

But it's still nice to have somebody there so that you don't talk to the walls.

He sighed again. I was watching the smoke curling in the light from the lamp.

‘I'm still a virgin,' he said.

I didn't say anything.

‘Ajsha must need somebody with experience. What can she do with me? I don't know how to approach her. What to say, what to do.'

I looked for an ashtray and remembered that both he and Selim were non-smokers. I shook the cigar into the empty bottle and managed to get half the ash on the floor. Ibro talked without a break. I pulled the Rimbaud out of my pocket, read a few poems, and put the book back again. I opened another beer.

‘I was grazing sheep at granddad Mehmet's one day…'

My tongue started burning. I wasn't trying to get the ash in the bottle anymore. I just shook the cigar over the floor.

‘I liked it really. After that I did it every day.'

Another beer. I stared in front of me. If I moved my head quickly the room lost definition. The view multiplied.

‘Once my granddad caught me. I nearly died with embarrassment…'

I bent forward. Put my elbows on my knees. Smoked the cigar. Belched. Ibro wasn't disturbed.

‘Everybody found out, the whole village. Granddad told them.'

I'd smoked two thirds of the cigar already. Blue smoke was floating around the room.

‘And that widow laughed at me. She shouted after me whenever we met. Little boy! Do you still let the sheep lick your willy? That's exactly what she used to shout. I was dying with embarrassment…'

The factory siren went off. Slowly, risking the failure of my sight, I turned my head towards the window. It was night outside. All I could see was the reflection of the room in the window. A guy lying on the bed, talking
in a monotonous voice, just about to fall asleep, and another guy sitting on a chair next to the top of the bed, bent forward, leaning his chin on his palm. A fortnight's stubble. A cigar in his mouth. I started shaking. I went to the window and opened it. I was convinced that I would see the streets of Vienna from the turn of the century. Coaches on the roads. I was looking at the foundry but couldn't recognise it. I ran my hand over my forehead, wondering where and who I was. When I was. Were my visions returning? Was I
floating
again, into the worlds of stories I'd heard, or read, or written? I was losing myself. If I didn't hold on, I'd be lost. Again, like all those times before. The doctors called it
issues of identity. Loss of the self
. I had to hold on. I threw the cigar down and vomited over the windowsill. There was nobody on the road. The sound of a crane moving helped me to catch the space and time. I looked at Ibro asleep on the bed.

I closed the window and stepped into the corridor. Most of my strength was taken up by trying to control my legs. I had to take a shit. I stepped inside the bathroom and nearly drowned in the sea of sewage on the floor. Balancing on the tips of my toes, I made my way to the toilet. There was no toilet paper, of course. I went back to the sleeping Ibro, fumbled through the cupboard, and went back with a packet of toilet paper. I splashed back to the shitting position.

It was difficult. Bloody difficult.

Standing on the tips of my toes, I pulled my trousers and my underpants down to my knees, sacrificed the right hand for holding them there, while lifting my jacket up with my left hand so as not to shit on it. I was clutching the paper between my lips as I pushed my arse back. My head was nearly on my knees. I was just about to start. With my
right hand I just managed to catch the Rimbaud, which slid out of my pocket. I saved my trousers from falling into the flood by quickly spreading my knees. I pushed the book back into my pocket and grabbed hold of my trousers. I leaned forward and again only just caught the poem collection. I nearly lost my balance and fell into the stinking mess on the floor. The water had already gone below deck and wet my socks. At last I realised why all the inhabitants of the dormitory wore shoes with raised heels.

My bowels were letting me know they wouldn't stand for this messing around, delaying things much longer. I wanted to stick Rimbaud in my mouth, but was afraid to open it and lose the paper. I was beginning to panic.

‘Think,' I said to myself. Quietly, of course, because of the full mouth.

And I thought. I pulled my trousers up again and waded to the corridor and put Rimbaud on the radiator. I turned the front of the book up so that REMBO could be seen. So that nobody would think it was a pulp with the adventures of Wyatt Earp. I ran back to the toilet and took my shit.

There was no soap. Only cold water came out of the tap. I rubbed my hands and shook the drops off my fingers and stepped out, leaving wet footprints behind me. On the way to the exit window, I reached for the book. It wasn't there.

With both hands I felt the whole of the top of the radiator ribs, looked behind the radiator and under it, I even knelt down to see better.

Finally I grasped the indisputable fact. The Rimbaud wasn't there anymore.

It had disappeared.

I searched all around the radiator. Ran up and down
the corridor looking for the book. It wasn't there.

You adjust your expectations to the world around you. Everything around you depends on constants that are so ordinary and unchangeable that you pay no attention to them. It took some time before I dared say it out loud and even longer to grasp it:

IN THE MIDDLE OF THE DORMITORY SOMEBODY HAD NICKED RIMBAUD'S POETRY.

The world had collapsed. As if a stone dropped from a hand had hung in the air. It was unimaginable. I was struck by terror. Panic. All drunkenness disappeared in a moment. My brains were rattling in a hellish rhythm.

There was no logical explanation. None.

I knew most of the inhabitants. There wasn't one poetry lover among them. Those who would take a book like that have never even ventured into a dormitory. I thought about the cleaner. I ran to the end of the corridor and looked around. The bin was full of rubbish and paper, but no book.

Maybe somebody took it to put it under a rickety table or wardrobe. The probability of that was very small.

I was in the bathroom for three, maybe four minutes. And just then somebody needing a book of that thickness would walk past.

My brain was trying to patch up the logical world, which had fallen apart.

It you remove a little stone, the whole sphere around you collapses.

Suddenly I became aware of a terrible smell, which I smelled every day. I should've been used to it completely but it still hit me with all its strength and clarity.

It stank of sulphur.

At the same time as the smell hit me, a sentence from
Spränger's book, the one about there not being anything inexplicable in this world. Those things that seem inexplicable fall into the sphere of demonology.

Footsteps could be heard in the corridor. I pressed myself against the radiator, trembling with fear. The footsteps were coming nearer. The hard sounds of hooves. With my back against the wall, I slid into a squat.

From around the corner came a thin guy with huge winkle-pickers. He noticed me and immediately looked down. He was probably more scared than I had been earlier. He sped up, staring in front of him, and disappeared up the stairs.

The presence of another human being helped me. The world was still holding together. Maybe I'll manage to put my missing stone back in. A lot of things that seem inexplicable at a certain moment are explained later on.

I decided to wait. I had no other option. I jumped onto the road and set off home. The wind was taking the clouds of smoke from the tops of the chimneys and blowing them towards me.

I pushed my hand under my jacket and felt the T-shirt on my back. It was soaking wet. I trembled in the cold.

I couldn't get rid of the feeling that something was sitting on my neck.

The whole way home I tried to stop my body from running. A headless rush.

It clouded over. The sky was completely black without a ribbon of light. The air was heavy and thick with smoke, which was settling on the ground and dissolving the outlines of the blocks of flats under the weak light of the streetlights. A dead cat lay on the ground, its innards squeezed out onto the road.

The smell of sulphur was getting stronger and stronger.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

PART TWO

Hell is more bearable than nothingness
.

– PJ. Bailey,
‘Festus'

 

 

 

6

For two weeks, I didn't see any of the people I talked about earlier. I wasn't there. I was absent, as they say at school. After I got back, the first thing I did was to take a walk along the foundry. With my ears and eyes open. Looking for any changes. There weren't any. There never are.

A note was stuck in my door. It told me to collect the books. Alfred's signature, dated the day before. I took a shower and set off to see Poet. I didn't have to climb the fence. Marble stairs, guarded by a female guard, led to his place. Before she let me go up the stairs she made a phone call.

Poet's office was on the first floor.

He had his head stuck between two heaps of paper.

‘The books are printed.'

His face lit up.

‘Did you bring a copy?'

‘No,' I shook my head, thinking of how I could politely remind him of the payment.

There was no need to do anything.

‘If you meet me when I finish work, we'll go to the bank together to get the money.'

‘Okay.' I waved Alfred's note in front of him. ‘This is a receipt with which you can get the books.'

I put it in my pocket.

He opened a drawer in his desk and pulled out a bottle of red wine.

We toasted each other. To success. That was his suggestion, not mine.

He looked at his watch.

‘Half past ten. Another three and a half hours.'

I left him stewing with impatience and counting the minutes.

I went to the bar. I saw Karla through a supermarket window. She was just paying.

She grinned at me from ear to ear, all the way to the door, carrying two full grocery bags.

‘Hi, Egon.'

‘Hi,' I said hesitantly. I found her cheerfulness suspicious. I wasn't used to it.

She put the bags on the floor. From the top of one of them she produced a booklet, printed on the worst possible paper.

‘Look.'

I took it. It was the romance I'd written. It had been published very quickly. I couldn't see anything unusual about it, no reason for Karla to be so amused. The cover was in the usual style. Two lovers on the spring grass. They had left my title.
Naked and Barefoot
, it said.

‘I don't understand, what's this got to do with me?'

I gave the book back to Karla.

She grinned even wider and pushed the cover right in front of my eyes. I looked at the photo and the writing twice before it dawned on me.

‘Ooooooh, shit,' I said with great difficulty.

I knew the editor wouldn't forgive me my outbursts in his office. He'd published the novel under my real name.
No English female name. Egon Surname was what was under the title.