Eleven Sooty Dreams

by Manuela Draeger

  I reached the entrance to the barracks without incident. It looked abandoned or rarely used, more like a center for prisoners than a collective shelter. The gratings opened onto a long, deserted gallery. I could see doors on each side. They delineated the walls up to a second entryway that led to a dark courtyard or another street. Right in front of me, before the grate, extended a vast puddle of water whose depth was impossible to determine. On its bank lay a half-submerged canvas shoe.

  I had no reason to dawdle and, after a moment, I continued walking. I crossed the last twenty meters and pushed open the glass door to the dairy shop.

  The store was saturated with the smells of cheese and milk. I swallowed the nausea traveling up my throat and stepped up to the counter. My eyes were at the same height as the waxed cloth on which the dairywoman placed products for her clients and made change.

  The shopkeeper was a large woman squeezed into a black dress adorned with little gray flowers, above which she had threaded a brown rubber pinafore that made her resemble a morgue worker. Her face was plump but her expression crabby, and she had pimples on her right cheek, which she had just been scratching and were bleeding. I immediately perceived her hostility. She leaned toward me, as if she was going to spit on or bite me.

  “I’d like a jar of cream,” I said.

  “Do you have your container?” she asked.

  Her voice was violent, resounding, with no attempt to sound friendly.

  “I don’t have a container,” I said. “I came from the soldier Özbeg’s.”

  “Bah, Özbeg,” the dairy vendor commented. “He never pays what he owes, that one. He never returns his bottles. I’ve had it up to here with Özbeg. He can’t have any cream without a container.”

  “It’s an emergency,” I said. “It’s to save someone’s life.”

  “So is it for him or is it not for him?”

  “It’s to save someone. Rita Mirvrakis.”

  “Is Rita your girlfriend?”

  “Yes,” I admitted with difficulty. “She needs something sweet to stop her pain.”

  “Did Özbeg tell you that?” the dairywoman asked.

  “Yes.”

  “The stupidest things come out of that shaved head of his. He thinks he’s a shaman. But he’s nothing. I hear he wasn’t even a good fighter. Those aren’t medals on his chest, just bits of iron he found in the dump.”

  “He’s taking care of Rita Mirvrakis,” I said. “He’s wiping away her tears. He needs some cream for Rita Mirvrakis. To take away her pain.”

  “You don’t have a bottle,” the dairy vendor persisted, making a face.

  We stared at each other. I wouldn’t show that I was afraid of her and that the smell of her store nauseated me. I continued hoping that she would ultimately yield. Behind her on a shelf were aligned several empty jars. I tried my best not to beg her to use one of those and to have pity for Rita Mirvrakis.

  “What’s your name?” she asked after a moment.

  “Özbeg,” I whispered. “I’m related to the soldier.”

  “Show me your sign.”

  I turned the sign that had been beating against my back around onto my chest.

  If this individual does not undergo dissection, it said, how can we know what its innards are like? Dissect, dissect. Something will always come out of it.

  “Oh,” the dairywoman commented. “Even when you’re dissected, you never know what your innards are like.”

  She shrugged, then turned toward the shelf that was drooping under the weight of plastic, glass, and tin jars. She examined them, her back turned to me. She had a plump back, with folds on the nape of her neck, as well as pimples and blotches around her head. I realized that she was going to fill one of those containers and give it to me after all. My heart began to beat faster, from both anxiety and gratitude.

  “What kind of cream do you need?” she asked me, looking over her shoulder. “Sour, fresh, or skim?”

  “I don’t know,” I said.

  As we both hesitated, the ground trembled for a second. The windows and jars clinked.

  “Well then,” the dairywoman said.

  There was a brief moment of stillness, then, once again, the earth trembled. Outside, we could hear an indistinct rumbling.

  “It’s bombs,” the dairywoman said flatly.

  I started counting in my head. If it really were bombs, two had already been dropped.

  The almost total silence returned, then a neighborhood siren tore through the night: hoarse, sharp, and lacking in power. Then, there was another dull quake. Each time, all the glass jingled.

  Three, I thought. Four.

  The dairywoman, too, was counting. Her mouth was open, her brows were furrowed—she seemed more annoyed than frightened. After placing a translucent plastic jar on the counter, she unscrewed a large container of cream, but instead of scooping out one or two ladlefuls, she was busy scrutinizing the street.

  “Four,” she said.

  I turned to look at what was happening on the other side of the shop’s windows. I examined the exterior with her. Nothing could be seen. The beacon above the entrance to the barracks had just gone out. The darkness outside was impenetrable. The neighborhood siren sounded strangled. It made one last dull groan and then stopped. The window clinked once more, the ground rose. The lights inside the shop flickered.

  Five, I thought.

  The explosions were not particularly audible. They were more like a prolonged roll, like the passing of a distant line of tanks.

  Then a man entered, out of breath and, skipping the customary greetings, he divulged what he knew. The war had started again, this time it was beginning with enormous, stationary bombs filled with bitumen. We had to leave quickly if we wanted to escape the pools of naphtha and gas. Vincents-Sanchaise Street had turned into hell.

  “Twelve in all,” he panted. “After the asphalt, they spit out gas. There can’t have been any survivors.”

  “Twelve what?” the dairywoman interrupted.

  “Twelve tons.”

  The man then quickly bounded outside and disappeared. He hadn’t closed the door behind him, and suddenly from the street came the stench of burnt dust, of hot tar, of gasoline, of charred mattresses, of rubble. It was a terrifying smell. There was no smoke. It announced the approaching gas and was simply terrifying.

  Now, in front of the store, there were people running in every direction. They were few in number, bent forward, and they were fleeing. No one had any sort of suitcase or bag. Aside from a few skeletal interjections, not a word was spoken. From time to time, the neighborhood siren struggled to emit another pathetic wail, but its gasps were short-lived. Above all else in the night was the sound of that continuous rumbling, which did not come from a line of tanks, but from the resulting combustion in the places bombarded. From the combustion, from the burial in progress, from drowning and asphyxiation in the bitumen.

  I was in the middle of wondering whether I should still wait to be given some cream or if, on the contrary, I should get out of the shop and run as fast as I could back toward Vincents-Sanchaise Street, when from the back of the shop emerged a man wearing pajamas who had to be the dairywoman’s husband. He walked with heavy steps toward his wife and placed his hand on the counter, his breathing labored. I think he was either very tired or very sick. Despite the time, he was half asleep. He was at least fifty and had the distraught face of a heart attack victim. The bags under his eyes were a sorry sight.

  “What’s going on?” he asked.

  “They started bombing again,” the woman said. “It’s standing bombs this time. Vincents-Sanchaise Street is on fire. Once the asphalt cools a little, the gas is going to cover the entire city. It’ll come on us from above. We won’t escape.”

  “It’s happening again,” the man said, gasping for breath. “The extermination.”

  The dairywoman, seemingly mistrustful, sighed. She had hung her large spoon on a nail behind the counter. She closed the container from whi
ch she had meant to take a bit of cream.

  “We need to get out of here,” she said.

  “Where can we go?” the man panted. “We’ll be trapped by the gas. There’s no place to run. Everywhere’s the same.”

  “We’ll go out the back,” the dairywoman said. “Through the black space.”

  “The black space,” the man repeated. “We don’t even know where it goes to …”

  “We have to go out the back,” the woman insisted. “It’s the only way.”

  “No one has ever come back,” the man sputtered.

  “You know how to open the door,” the woman said. “It’s either that or the gas.”

  “And the kid?” the man asked after glancing at me for a second.

  “What about the kid?”

  “Are we taking him with us?”

  “Are you serious?” the dairywoman protested. “First he wanted some cream for free, and didn’t even have a container. Now you want us to bring him along too?”

  The man couldn’t catch his breath. He rattled like an over-stressed asthmatic.

  “He doesn’t look too bright,” he finally said, fighting against the painful shuderrings of his lungs. “Out on the streets, with the bombs, he’ll be lost.”

  “He’s an Ybür,” the woman said.

  “What about internationalism?” the man protested.

  “What about it?” the woman asked with irritation.

  “You know very well,” the man panted. “Proletarian … internationalism …”

  The woman sucked her teeth contemptuously. “What a bunch of nonsense. You’d be better off taking off your pajamas and getting dressed.”

  The man grumbled.

  “We were egalitarians, once,” he remarked.

  “Well, yes, but not anymore,” the woman replied. “It’s all screwed up now. That was the past.”

  “It’ll come back,” the man assured.

  “Oh, it’ll come back alright,” the woman mocked. “After the bitumen.”

  They were obviously reviving an argument that had been going on between them for years. Worn out, discouraged, I observed their dialogue. I didn’t know what to do. I wanted to dive out into the street and never see the two of them again. But I felt that, despite everything, and especially if they were leaving, I still had a small chance of getting the cream or maybe stealing a ladleful or two, and I remained glued in place in front of the counter, almost as if I were at attention, like an apprentice soldier waiting for orders that would never come. Rita Mirvrakis would have surely called me an idiot in that moment. The street behind me rustled. The inhabitants of the neighboring barracks were scattering, saying nothing as they ran, dressed like residents of a psychiatric asylum, in who knows what direction. There were no more explosions shaking the ground or the store’s windows. All the sirens had died. Without the scraping and rush of steps, without the acrid smell of smoke, it would have almost been a normal night. I was waiting to find out whether the dairywoman and her husband were going to disappear or not, while, at the same time, thinking about Vincents-Sanchaise Street, the soldier Özbeg’s workshop, and my friend Rita Mirvrakis.

  “I’ll take him out back too,” the woman finally decided.

  “Good,” the man approved.

  “I’m only doing it to make you happy,” the woman said. “But once we get there, that’s it. We’re not bringing him with us.”

  “Then he’ll need a light,” the man wheezed. “Out back, the darkness is too dark.”

  “Go get dressed,” the woman said. “You know well and good that out there we can’t have any lights. Put our things in a bag with two bottles of milk. I’m coming.”

  The man returned to the back room.

  “Did you hear that?” the dairywoman asked.

  “No,” I lied.

  “You don’t have to go back to Vincents-Sanchaise Street.”

  “But they’re waiting for me,” I said. “I have to go back. It’s an emergency.”

  “There’s nothing there anymore,” the dairywoman said. “There’s no more street. They’re quiet bombs. They don’t make any noise but they turn everything to ash. They explode silently, houses crumble, people drown in a sticky paste. Then the gas spreads. It eliminates everything still breathing.”

  “Rita Mirvrakis is waiting for me,” I said.

  I tried to hold back my tears, but they were already beginning to blur my vision.

  “She’s not there anymore,” the dairywoman said with a horrible rictus, out of either compassion or discomfort. “She’s nowhere anymore.”

  “Where is she?” I started to panic.

  “Idiot,” the dairywoman said. “You know very well.”

  The tears welled up under my eyelids. I raised my head so as not to produce an obscene sniffling sound. I was ashamed of crying in front of someone I didn’t know, in front of someone other than Rita Mirvrakis.

  “No, I have to go look for her,” I said. “We’re together.”

  “You won’t find her,” the dairywoman reasoned with me. “It’s all over for her. For the soldier Özbeg too. Now, you have to go out back.”

  “Where does it go?”

  “I don’t know. No one I know of has ever been. Once we go through, we can’t come back. No one has ever come back. But it seems like our only chance to live.”

  “I don’t care about living,” I sobbed. “I want to bring Rita Mirvrakis some cream. She needs it. Otherwise, she could die.”

  “You’re never going to see your fiancée again,” the dairywoman explained once more. “It’s over for her. She doesn’t need cream or anything else anymore.”

  “No, she still needs it,” I sobbed.

  Through the door now came puffs of awful-smelling smoke. The street was empty once more. There had not been many boarders in the barracks, and everyone still alive had already fled. The smoke was suddenly visible, a velvety gray that made me want to vomit, and it carried with it memories of charred clothing, rooms drowned in tar, bodies braced in vain against the agony of the fire.

  A lamp above the creamery went out. The others were flickering. The light continued to dim. The back room had been plunged into darkness.

  “We have to hurry,” the dairywoman said.

  She walked around the counter and approached me, then took me by the hand. I resisted for a moment, on principle, but I didn’t have it in me for long. This woman was commanding and powerful. Few adults had taken my hand these past years. With Rita Mirvra-kis, I associated the gesture with loving tenderness, but, coming from adults, I saw only punishment or unpleasant obligation. Back at the meeting hall, the nurses and aunts rarely touched us, only for reprimands and medical examinations. When we went to the canteen or showers, the supervisors might push us to make us hurry along, but that was always accompanied by a furious exclamation or a glare. They never held the hands of boys or girls older than four or five.

  The dairywoman pulled me behind her as we came into an intermediary room that had not yet been overwhelmed by the fumes from outside and which smelled of rancid butter, whey, and rotten vegetables. It was also very dark. Without letting go of me, the dairywoman passed by a row of shelves full of ripening cheeses and knocked on a small door. Almost immediately, as if he had been standing on the other side and awaiting this signal, her husband opened it. Over his pajamas, he had slipped on a pullover full of holes and a coat that he had left unbuttoned and which went down to his ankles. He handed his wife some clothing of the same type, an enormous green raincoat she immediately put on without a word. He was carrying on a strap a shapeless bag. He was out of breath, and panic glistened in his exhausted eyes.

  “Did you get the milk?” the dairywoman asked.

  “Yes, three bottles,” the man said.

  “The good stuff?”

  “Top shelf.”

  “And the pemmican?”

  “All that was left.”

  “Good,” the woman said. “Turn off the lights. We’re leaving right now.”
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  “What about him?” the man asked.

  “He’s coming with us, like I told you,” the woman answered impatiently.

  The man went back into the shop, lowered the front grate, and switched off the circuit breaker. Darkness surrounded us. I then heard the man grope around as he approached us. His steps weren’t even and, when he reached the level of the shelves, he stumbled on a hurdle and protested. With a plopping, animalistic, almost tranquil sound, several creamy masses crashed onto the ground.

  “I knocked over some of the cheeses,” he apologized.

  “Who cares?” the dairywoman replied. “We’re not coming back. The cheeses are done for anyway.”

  “Oh,” the man wheezed. “Well, I’m walking in it.”

  “Go open the door,” the woman said.

  The man passed by us and began fumbling with a wall in which, when there was still light, I hadn’t seen any opening. We could hear his distressed, labored breathing.

  “They’ve gotten rid of the airlocks,” he grumbled.