30
I DIDN’T QUITE understand the email Michael sent from his new address. He wrote that he’d done as I asked, he met the woman in Washington. I didn’t know who the woman was he referred to. And that’s how it all ended, he wrote. He sounded like a Michael who’d started drinking again.
He said they hadn’t found anything concrete in the samples Alex brought for now. In short: nothing. But they like collecting samples of isolated groups, especially of white men, because maybe one day they’d see something they hadn’t seen before. Therefore, our shares can be sold at a symbolic price.
He thought he’d pass, he said, because maybe these guys would bluff even if they did find something. Sell only if you really have to, he wrote. He said he hoped the money I earned from my fieldwork came in handy.
That’s for sure, I thought. The only thing they can still pay for at the factory is the electric bill, and right now it looks like I’ll need to lend money to Nikola, who’s also drinking, for his trip to Switzerland. Sure, you can imagine the Colonel paying them for a turbine he hadn’t seen, but he should check anyway. Especially since they’re building a new turbine, because he didn’t have the heart to stop the workers. That’s my opinion, although today he also gave me his reasons for letting them continue.
“It’s like when I couldn’t explain to you why it was so important for me to know what you were working on for the Yanks,” he said. “I can’t admit to the workers that Oleg has gotten trapped with the Colonel, who is under attack from the whole civilized world. Only you and Lipša know. If anyone else found out, someone would spread the word and then we’d stand no chance. Besides that, they have the material for the second turbine, and at the moment, they’re working without pay. We may have better luck with the next one, maybe we’ll find the first one, find more customers. What good would it do just to send them home? I can’t just throw up my hands.”
“Maybe you can’t deal with the truth,” I said.
He fixed his gaze on the floor.
“You came here, you acted like good capitalists, and now you’ve already gotten used to playing the role,” I said, thinking that by now he’d be better off without this. “It may be time to take off the mask.”
He looked at me, offended. “I told them: write up what the company owes you as shares in lieu of wages, and we’ll see. Okay, maybe I did get used to playing the role. But I am not even an entrepreneur. I just work here, supposedly as the director. They don’t need me, unless I manage to pull off some kind of miracle. Something Oleg would do.”
He looked at me, then he looked straight ahead again. “What would he do now?”
“From what I know of him, he probably would be drinking and snorting.”
“Don’t insult him. He had the guts to go down there, who knows if he’s even alive.”
“I’m not insulting him. I’m sorry. Just be realistic. Who can you sell that turbine to?”
“To the Colonel,” Nikola said. “If he wins his war.”
“They’ve got oil there, and his socialism. That doesn’t suit either the West or the Islamists. Once they’ve started in on him, they’ll finish him off.”
“I’ve been reading up on him. He’s gotten away many times.”
“Okay, let’s see what else we have. Who else is there to sell it to?”
“I don’t know,” he said with a reticent smile as he opened another beer. “Maybe the director of the local museum.”
I guess he expected I’d laugh, too.
“They exhibit all the historical periods of the town. They could put the turbine under ‘The Age of Industry,’ you know, the final artifact.”
“I doubt they have a big enough budget for that,” I said.
“It’s too big to fit.”
“All right, Nikola. I want you to know that I’m with you in this till the end, okay? I’ll help. We just need to be realistic.”
“Thank you, sister,” he said, and hugged me.
“Don’t call me sister.”
“I’m joking.”
We kissed. We hadn’t kissed like that for a while, the way we kissed when we first got together.
Michael’s email ended with a P.S. containing information he probably would have disclosed sooner if he had been in his sober phase.
He said that the bosses at his firm didn’t like him putting us in the contract, and that his company demanded more loyalty. They might have even read his emails, he said.
So he was in his final days there.
“Oh Michael, dammit, you’re in trouble, too?” I said out loud.
Now I’ll have the time to fight them, he finished. Michael did sound as if he’d been drinking again. He also added that I could write my own postscriptum now, after Washington.
I started writing: Dear Michael, I’m terribly sorry to hear you lost your job . . .
You acted incredibly fairly. Thank you.
Anyway, I am doing fine. I’m in a new relationship, after many years. Everything’s fine. I’m in my hometown, involved in something of a strange story that my boyfriend got me into (that word sounds so funny as I write it; his name is Nikola). I know this sounds stupid, but we’re trying to save a factory in which his cousin invested money to build turbines. But he . . . Oof, it’s complicated, too complicated even for us, and probably incomprehensible for you. All in all, now I’ve become a part of it, because of Nikola, and because of the general atmosphere, too, I suppose.
It feels good to write to you again, to talk to you after everything.
I don’t know what you meant by what you said about the woman in Washington and the end of the story. Is that something I’m supposed to understand? I forget some things. Maybe I suppress some, too. It took me a long time to forget our love . . . love time is strange time. Some of it is so condensed, yet some is very stretched. I lost the habit of being in a relationship, so sometimes I don’t feel as if I’m a part of it and am observing it from the outside. I can’t say I’ve had much experience with love, and I’m a little bit afraid, afraid of love time. This is, or so it seems, special time.
You remember when our time was limited? When it seemed to be running out, that we were stealing it, when you ran toward me and I toward you, when it was now-now-now . . . or never . . . Afterward, when you were divorced, we had all the time in the world, and all the future, there were no obstacles between us, everything was ours, for real. And then the “now” disappeared, especially the now-now-now. Did you notice?
It’s love time number two for me, limitless and too big, like baggy pants. That’s what I’m afraid of. I remember how this went in Tbilisi with all the time and it turned out to be too much. Oh yes, it hovered around us, a few sizes too big. The contours of the body got lost and everything seemed so baggy. I was too young to understand, but now I see—love time number two, that’s the whole fucking problem. At first it’s condensed, like poetry, then it stretches out and loses form. I don’t know whether you have this problem now in marriage. I don’t want to pretend it’s not there, although, as you know, the pretending is mandatory. Now I’m in a loving relationship and the assumption is that it should last a hundred years, and that assumption is the thing that hangs over our heads. Like—security. Although everything else around us is shaky. To say the least.
But somebody has turned things around here. I think society did, promising individual security with eternal love, though love and this baggy eternity thing seem to have problems to work out. Hell, not just problems—deep shit. Security, as you know, Michael, is only stapled onto love as an afterthought. The two have nothing to do with each other. Security is, in fact, an insidious promise, and it suffocates love. And the insidiousness of the promise, Michael, is because society wants to give itself an excuse for all the other security we’re missing, they’re giving up on me and you and they say to us: There’s your love. Happy now? Find your security here, o
r scram.
Okay, say it like that, just don’t drown me in the fake, insidious myths of a love you destroy while piling onto it the burden of fixing all the crap and being a cornerstone, a pillar for mortgages, for rescuing drowning people and for who-gives-a-fuck once you’re sick and old. There you have love, it’s eternal, believe in it.
I see right through it, Michael, because, as you know, I have a knack for analyzing things. And the thing about not continuing with chemistry, I’m not even so sorry about that: I grew tired long ago of thinking about the formulas we learned at school, so detailed, like we were going to make bombs, but these things I’m talking about: nothing. Not even an intro course. Just some fancy deceptions, so you get to Tbilisi like I did and think to yourself: Here I am, in eternity, love is here and everything will be fine. Yeah, right.
And then for years I chew over this: what did I do wrong? Later, I realize I was wrong because that was all I had, only love, no other supports, so love became the prerequisite for dinner and an evening dress and the future—a source of income, in short, in my specific random case. You have nothing, get yourself some love, that’s what my society told me, because it’s a bit more direct than yours. The situation was like that, stripped naked. But, as you also know, it’s a lie that love can complement and fix everything that’s missing. Even if I’d been smart, like some gold diggers I know, and cast a whole net around you, was your shoulder to cry on and a maid and a consultant and an ally and a nurse and I don’t know what else, all of this wouldn’t be love, but business. It’s just business moved into another realm of life, business for unemployed cunts (okay, I know you didn’t treat me like that, I’m being ironic), which I knew nothing about, so I just sat there and waited for love to flourish.
I don’t know what you told that woman in Washington . . . as I’m writing this, memories are coming back to me, that I mentioned a woman once in Istanbul. . . . Oh yes, that’s it . . . When I was dying of grief and couldn’t make out what the cause of it was. Yes, yes . . . That’s what you’re talking about.
You remember it so clearly! I’m impressed, Michael. . . . It must have been troubling you, too, this enigma of our imminent doom, because you knew that you loved me. (I never once doubted your love for me, even in hindsight, for I was certain of your love and that certainty could have been a beautiful thing if it hadn’t fallen into the category of things I preferred to forget for being so unbearable. Even now as I write this, it stirs old memories, and once again I feel the endless gulf where once there was something. This no longer has anything to do with you, it’s just emotion with no address, emotion I ripped out and discarded; it’s like watching Pompeii and reminiscing about death; a death you shared with the person you once were. You know those gulfs—it’s dangerous to stare into them for long, so you avert your gaze as if they’re suddenly burned.) But what are you going to do when we believe the lie about love being a replacement for other kinds of support, which is being served to us every day, so all the loser boys and girls can hang on to hope.
The problem was mine, but I can see that you, too, were troubled—this proof that love isn’t everything, that poetry doesn’t last when losers are hooked. Of course, I was a loser with false hopes. Santa Claus didn’t come to town, the IMF did; Switzerland didn’t come, instead the war over the municipalities did, but—okay—there’s still love, and if you keep an open heart, everything will be fine. I’m telling our local version of the story. I don’t know the American version. There’s probably more Hollywood in yours.
I don’t know what you told the woman in Washington, but here, now that it’s all over, after all these years of silence, but also of shame, I feel like talking. Everything I’m saying may not seem like the best way to start new love, but the saying is good, I realize this, because I don’t want to fall into the same trap twice, the baggy eternity of love time number two. What do you think, Michael, can things be different?
I’m involved in another episode here with Nikola, an episode comparable to a love episode in a way. I said it’s complicated, but still—as I already mentioned—the workers here could be said to be waiting for love from investors, and the investors even gave them signs of love. The money’s running out here, but the love is in full bloom. Nikola is . . . No, I shouldn’t speak of how he’s feeling, telling you about that would be inappropriate.
Anyway everything here is pretty much over, and I have to keep myself from frittering away all the money I earned by helping. I guess I’m a romantic even at this level, but this isn’t the sort of thing promoted every day: not a lot of movies about it. Although this, too, is love, it’s not a calculation. That is, even if it were a calculation, it hasn’t worked. But it has had its honeymoon: the town sprang to life, became better, my town, the one I’d abandoned and stopped caring for. As if I found another one someplace else. But, in fact, I didn’t. It was nice seeing this place become less glum and pathetic. I liked that. Maybe that’s why I fell in love with Nikola, through that, possibly, although it’s better if I don’t mention this.
And now everything’s going downhill again, and I can tell people are still hoping for a miracle, but realistically I should leave. I can save myself like that rich woman from the Titanic while her boyfriend, the poor worker, romantically freezes to death. I’m not only talking about Nikola, he could probably also save himself one way or another, but I’m talking about the people on the lower decks, the people who made the turbines while thinking the Titanic was operational again. It isn’t. Their last lifeboat was bombed.
They’re still coming to work, putting together a second turbine, no money left for paychecks, and Nikola has no clue what to do with this turbine that’s antiquated and huge. They’re building an artifact. They’re more like artists, in my opinion, than the artists today are like artists . . .
My phone rang.
Nikola.
I saved the email as a draft. Maybe I shouldn’t send it, I thought.
31
SOBOTKA, THERE’S NOTHING there. Only numbers left. That are called us. And I. I exists and does not exist. As far as I’m concerned, I is the only thing that does exist, but therefore, it also doesn’t exist. Only I exists, but therefore, it also does not exist, because my I-self exists to handle the influence of the other numbers. My I, the thing that is spun by the tongue, which lies in grammar, which lies in this body deserted, my I is a cardboard shelter, Sobotka, like your I that lies there and doesn’t speak, that lies there with a hole in its head, which I also have, but without the bandages. Then I say our I, because everybody is I, Sobotka, that’s the basis for god, because we are all I: you feel it, I feel it, and we are in I united. Have you, Sobotka, thought about the fact that everybody is I? And that everybody says I thinking the same, the thing inside they are protecting, yet which cannot be protected? Does this, Sobotka, mean that we are all the same being, only scattered but the same, the same feeling, the same folly, the same lie of itself? I think reincarnation is not necessary because we are all already I. You are also I. And I am I. Why should we reincarnate into one another when we would be the same again? No one shall become you, or her, or him. You are always I and are always in the same problem. My plan, Sobotka, was to leave my I. That is my plan, politically. That has been my intent ever since I was fed up, brother, with being I, if you understand . . . it may sound strange to you . . . but for me, think about it, it’s strange how others aren’t bored by this. How I was the only one bored by it, that’s what feels strange to me. Is it simply a matter of the body? I am I, and you are you, because you are another body? Is it that? Seems to me that it is only a matter of the body, otherwise—your I and my I—where’s the difference in feeling? I know, you remember something else, you are in your I, but I don’t care about remembering, because I have seen through the distinction: it’s not a distinction, it’s the same thing. You’re lying in a coma, I’m speaking in a language, and language makes me exist, but I’m lying dead in language,
because I’ve killed myself, technically, by seeing through the I as an asshole. Everybody’s got one, as someone once said. Sobotka, you’re in a coma now, I can speak to you frankly. I gave up when I realized there is nothing that binds me to my I, a futile endeavor. Wasting time to experience language. I like you because you tried to live with your I, to wrangle with it, with the belief that you exist. We are complete opposites, Sobotka. But in between are all the others who openly lie. I respect you, but the ones who say I, and there is nobody there, and say I again, and there is nobody there again, and say I again, and there is nobody there again, well, Sobotka, they are unbearable. You have also changed, since I gave up on I—I can see it more easily. You used to be cocky, that is, you were full of life and the courage of life, and then later you became like someone who was grieving for himself. And then again you came back to life for a little while until they killed you. There is even some continuity of I present in you, so you didn’t quite lie when you stood up and introduced yourself. But brother, all the rest of them in this country, on TV, cannot utter I, without me laughing, without me going mad from laughter so much that I give up on I, because how could I constantly say hi to false I-selfs all the time—I don’t know how you managed it, but for me it was easier to leave the grammar. I, as you have realized, don’t care about meaning, because the meaning is I. I don’t care that I am not holding on to the logic, because the logic is I. Because I is the thing that makes stories and wants to sustain itself. I only care about the cosmic flow, freedom, seeing as I’m left with nothing else. I would like for you to wake up and for the world to seem to exist again. Because you are, of all the people I know, the only one to try to make the world exist so I can recognize it. You were greatly mistaken, but hats off to you, you really did try to exist. It’s a rare ambition, when you think about it. You were ambitious, Sobotka, by wanting to be you, that is, I, wanting to prove there is something behind grammar. My dear friend, you are one of the rare ones I have met on earth. You were a man, something I have surpassed, but nonetheless, that was a touching attempt.
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