The Collector of Names

by Miha Mazzini

  Quickly and jerkily she told him about the group of boys on the ferry and their invitation to the old villa. When she had finished, she noticed his hair was not as upright anymore but she could not remember when it had changed.

  Maybe she was not going to be stuck with a corpse after all?

  Her uncle turned round, picked up the fork, took it over to the sink and put it in. Ana watched him move away and come back again, wondering what had changed. There was something different about him.

  He was silent during dinner. She did not take her eyes off him, but it did not seem to bother him. She felt forgotten. He filled two plates with large portions of fish, put on the table a bottle of wine without a label, put a glass in front of himself, then for a moment noticing his guest, he went over for another glass and again lost himself in his thoughts, turning the glass in his hand as if not knowing what to do with it.

  She said grace on her own whilst Uncle stared at his plate with his head bowed. During her prayer she remembered the thin boy from the ferry. Was he religious? She was cross with herself for not having looked at his neck; he might have been wearing a chain with a cross. Quite exciting: a secret sign from the times of the first Christians. Maybe he wore his money and documents round his neck as well, a secret sign of young tourists?

  She took the first bite out of politeness, only to be straight away overcome by hunger. The first two fish she devoured in big forkfuls, each one catching the previous one still in her mouth, then her manners finally surfaced successfully. Ana looked at her uncle guiltily but he had not even noticed her. He was not eating; he was just staring at the fish in front of him.

  *

  "Wow," said Samo, as usual impressed by anything big.

  "Mama," said Raf, immediately becoming aware of having said it. Nobody had heard him. They stood amongst the last few pine trees looking at the villa in the middle of a meadow, surrounded by the woods in a sharp semi-circle. On the left gleamed the sea and the sun had dropped down just above it. The building was closer to the sea than to the trees and from the veranda a path led to the beach, finishing in small pebbles mixed with sand. On the border between the grass and the sand stood square concrete platforms, probably the last remnants of beach huts.

  From behind the house, peeped the wall of a small overgrown garden shed.

  The longer side of the villa was turned towards the sea whilst the front door with a porch supported by two pillars faced the boys. The villa really did look big in comparison with the village houses. It was built of wood which seemed totally dried out. Some of the wooden planks had warped and there were gaps between them. Only the bottom part of the house was built of heavy pale stones. The two cellar windows, boarded with wood, were almost completely obscured by the tall grass.

  These details did not escape Raf, even though he was busy thinking why he had uttered the word which was almost prohibited amongst the teenagers. Mama, he had said Mama. He tried to remember what had made him say it, but those few moments were swallowed by darkness and uncertainty. Yes, darkness! When they had been walking through the last trees he had thought: at last! His sigh of relief was overcome by a strange feeling, first of agreement, then loneliness and dense darkness as if a coat had been thrown over his head. He felt a restriction and pressure all over his body, which left him unable to move and he could only say the word in his mind.

  Mama.

  Whatever it was, had passed. A moment of weakness because of all the physical strain. Not surprising, after the long journey on a hot day. Luckily the others had not heard his foolishness.

  "So this is what your old man bought?"

  Samo could not conceal his admiration.

  Neither could Max, for a change. Alfonz did not say anything and Raf wiped his forehead trying to tear himself away from thinking about his little outburst.

  As they approached the house he watched it intently, especially the windows, but he could not see anything which would explain what had happened to him and the memory of it became more and more distant and pale.

  *

  The atmosphere in the kitchen was becoming increasingly unpleasant and Ana could not really blame it on her uncle. He was not doing anything, but that was what was wrong. He was just staring at the fish - which had by now gone completely cold - and was completely still. She used his absent-mindedness to do something very daring, something she could only do far away from home: she did not eat everything on her plate.

  She left a bit of bread next to the plate, secretly looked at her uncle - he did not move - and then bravely took the leftovers to the rubbish bin and put them in. Food really was a gift from God, but she was on holiday, on her own. That little piece of bread was just a visible sign of her determination to follow her own free will rather than a result of her stomach being too full.

  Ana had difficulty in remembering anything from when she was very young and sometimes - when she was talking to her schoolfriends - she got seriously worried that she was not normal. But it was interesting how one thing always remained fresh in her memory - the cult of the empty plate. Heavy verbal downpours under which she always gave in and ate up that one morsel. And then another one. And the one after. They became more and more difficult to swallow and her parents had to use more and more authoritative arguments to persuade her. The first morsel for mother, the next one for father and the last one for God.

  She could not swear to it, but it seemed to her that right at the beginning of her memories the first morsel belonged to her sister, who later ran away from home and took not just her rucksack but Ana's first morsel too.

  "Uncle..., Uncle Aco..."

  She reached out with her hand as if trying to wake him up but she changed her mind. Epilepsy? Maybe he was having a fit? No, he wasn't screaming and rolling on the floor with foam around his mouth, which was what she had heard about those attacks. She resumed her contemplation of old age. She herself would be twenty in two years, which seemed like a serious age, but the age of thirty, she had always thought, meant a rapid decline into old age. One day you were young, then came your birthday and in a moment you became old. Just like her Uncle. He had looked quite normal, even cheerful, and then suddenly...

  She cleared her throat a few times in succession until it hurt. No effect.

  "Uncle," she said as loudly as if she was trying to strike a conversation with someone who was nearly completely deaf, "Uncle, that monument to the war victims. How many villagers died in the war?"

  She was not expecting an answer and it caught her unprepared.

  "None," he said.

  None?

  "Just one of my friends died a few years ago."

  He raised his head swiftly and looked at her. She was expecting a remote, foggy, far away look in his eyes, but all she could see was a weary sadness.

  "I did everything a Christian could to make sure I did not live this long," he said.

  *

  Max was like a tourist guide at a place he had never visited before, but who knew every last detail from having heard descriptions of it and was now sharing the excitement of the first visit with the tourists.

  "Well, the villa was built by some diplomat who moved in when he retired. Soon after he had a stroke and the villa was deserted until my old man bought it."

  They were standing on the porch and Raf could not help wishing Max's speech was shorter - he did not seem in any hurry to look for a key in his pockets.

  "Oh," thought Raf, "what if he forgot to bring it?"

  Well, the door did not look too solid and if needs be they could smash a window.

  Max got the key out of his pocket and put it in the lock. He stopped talking and they all held their breath. The lock clicked noisily and the door creaked.

  "Those builders didn't seem to have oiled anything," said Max, "but it'll be alright. Let's go."

  They stepped into a hall covered with a thick layer of dust, full of footprints made by the builders' heavy boots.

  "I hope they sorted out the electri
city," added Max "not just trampled all over the house."

  Just enough light was coming through the dirty windows to create a stuffy semi-darkness. Raf was expecting it to smell musty but it was just hot and dry as if all the different smells had burnt away a long time ago.

  Slowly, they went a few steps further and Samo looked through the half-closed door on the right. It was surprisingly dark and cool in there compared to the room they were standing in.

  "What's down here?" Samo asked.

  They crowded round the door, blocking the light so that they could not see anything but the first part of a staircase.

  "A cellar," said Alfonz. "There's no light switch anywhere. Somebody did go down though, look here, footsteps."

  He pointed.

  "He hesitated or something on this stair and then came back up."

  "Well, what did you expect, did you think he would wait for us down there or something?" Max interrupted. "Sad Alfonz, the Scout. Let's close the door and that's that. Fuck it, we don't have to go down there anyway."

  "I've got a torch in my rucksack," said Alfonz, "we can go and have a look later."

  There was no real enthusiasm.

  He lifted his rucksack, unfastened it quickly and took out the torch.

  "What else have you got in there?" asked Max.

  "Anything I thought we could use," answered Alfonz with embarrassment.

  "Oh, yeah, pliers, fuses and look! a handy camper's axe. Are you going camping, Sad Alfonz?"

  Alfonz blushed, searching for an excuse.

  "Let's look here and on the first floor to begin with," said Max still with a grin on his face.

  They decided to have their party in the dining room. It had the right sort of table: long and sturdy. They took off the dust sheet and almost suffocated in the cloud of dust which forced them to open the window. The sun had touched the surface of the sea and the sky was red.

  The light switch worked and Max proudly remarked that his father had promised to cut the builders’ balls off if they did not sort it all out properly.

  "Can you imagine," he added, "if there were balls there instead of the light bulb?"

  "Illuminated balls," quipped Samo.

  "Hot ones," Alfonz joined in.

  Raf missed his turn and this time they did all look at him. He tried to redeem himself with a smile, desperate to hide his embarrassment. He went back to looking around the room which was what he had been doing while the others were trying to be witty. He could not quite establish what it was that seemed so peculiar.

  They examined the other rooms. In the kitchen, they were amused by the old fashioned water pump, the handle of which had to be pushed down a good few times before some smelly brown liquid came out. Max repeated his usual commentary. As for the toilet, they decided that they would go outside on the grass instead. On the first floor they walked around the bedroom and the study full of memorabilia belonging to the old diplomat - they established that the man had to have travelled all around the world and laughed at his portrait on a dried out old photograph which must have been taken in a desert, judging by the clothes he was wearing and the background.

  Only the nursery shutters were so tightly closed that almost no light came in. Max tried to put the ceiling light on - like he did everywhere else. The successful cooperation of the lightbulb was accompanied by his mumble of approval. He thought how the only thing he respected in his father was his ability to bully anybody who worked for him. Max had never seen any of them do anything but their best. But maybe the secret was his father's knack of recognising the right people in an instant. Just as he managed to choose his short-term female companions after a single glance.

  The fluffy elephant on the bed under the nursery window looked very sorry for itself. The heat and the dust seemed to have got to it. None of them touched it. Max started going on about how filthy the place was. In the corner they noticed a baseball bat and agreed on a short game the next day. If any of them still felt like it.

  Max was the first to notice the framed photograph of a young and extremely beautiful woman, the Indian woman, judging by her appearance and clothes. He started his predictable speech, which Raf found obscene, as it concerned a woman who had undoubtedly been dead for a long time, and Max talked about things which belong to the living only, the very things that make us alive.

  Samo sneezed a few times and suggested they went outside otherwise they would suffocate in all that dust. Max agreed immediately:

  "Let's go and have a ciggie!"

  "Something's wrong," a voice said inside Raf again when he was the last one to leave the nursery. He looked back at the fluffy toy. The elephant did not return his look, instead it kept stubbornly staring ahead as if the answer lay in its dark eyes almost completely obscured by dust.

  *

  Uncle Aco did not become any more talkative and made no effort to explain anything. He stood by the window looking at the sea. He turned round only once and he looked completely calm, just slightly remote. He started asking her very detailed questions about the boys, demanding a description of their appearance and anything else she could remember.

  Ana did her best to please him and she noticed how she spent most of the time talking about the thin boy who had not spoken to her even though he had a chance.

  Aco nodded from time to time and when she finished talking he turned away again. Ana pottered round the kitchen, put the rest of the fish in the bin, washed up, sat down, saw the red sky behind her uncle's head and tried to gather courage.

  She wanted to ask him for permission to go for a walk but she forced herself to change the question into a statement:

  "I'm going for a walk."

  She had to say it again, before he mumbled something which she interpreted as his permission even though she suspected he had not really heard her at all.

  *

  They sat on the sand by the sea giving in to the sunset. Max and Alfonz were smoking with the ferocity typical of smokers who have been deprived of cigarettes for a whole hour because of the heat and the burden they have been carrying, but whose bodies had now calmed down and were demanding tobacco.

  Alfonz had also brought a bottle of brandy and it travelled among them slowly.

  "Yuck, it's hot!" yelped Max.

  "Yeah, we'll have to cool it," agreed Alfonz.

  He took the bottle to the sea and spent a while trying to position it in the water by digging it in and surrounding it with stones so that the precious contents would not spill.

  "That won't work," said Samo. "We can't be coming here in the dark during the party. Besides, if the tide comes in, the sea-water will go into the bottle."

  "You're right," agreed Max.

  "What if we took all the drink to the cellar?" suggested Alfonz.

  "Yes, there was quite a cold draft when you opened that door. Alfonz, you sort it out! I leave it all to you. Samo, what do you think?"

  "You're right, Max. But it would be best to cool the beer a bit in the sea first, while it's still light."

  Alfonz got up obediently and made his way to the veranda to get the crate. Raf accompanied him with his eyes, wishing he would rebel just once.

  "What's the matter Raf, why are you so quiet?" Max prodded him.

  "Oh, nothing."

  Suddenly, Raf felt a strong desire to mention the girl from the ferry. Just like that, in passing, even though he knew what sort of comments about her he could expect from the others. But if she was not present at least in their conversation it seemed to him that she would become very remote, non-existent. He had to clench his teeth, so overwhelming was his desire for her presence. He had to talk about her, he had to!

  "I'm still knackered from the journey," he said.

  "Yes, it was boring," sighed Max. "It was too long".

  "No interesting passengers," added Raf, congratulating himself on his cunning.

  "Yeah, except that babe who wasn't too bad," agreed Max.

  "Well," said Samo, "she could be a bit fitte
r, her hips were too small."

  "And her tits weren't very big either," grimaced Max.

  In the background they could hear the clanking of the bottles as Alfonz arranged them on the veranda.

  "I do like them to have big tits," went on Max dreamily, "but they have to be nice and firm!"

  "Yeah, right," yawned Samo, stretching.

  Every word cut into Raf's heart. How nastily they spoke of her! But even that was better than the silence after they had exhausted the subject of all the relevant parts of the female anatomy.

  Raf got up:

  "I'm going to help Alfonz."

  He walked on the stones which slowly gave way to the thicker and thicker grass of the meadow. It was alright, he had been cunning enough, they did not suspect anything.

  "Well, well, how excited our good friend Raf is about that chick," said Max as he flicked his cigarette end into the sea.

  "Yeah," said Samo, "but I bet he's still a virgin."

  "What else do you expect? He's so clumsy that he wouldn't be able to find his aim even if he found a woman stupid enough to let him try!"

  They giggled quietly and turned towards the horizon, which was unbroken by ship or dry land.

  *

  Ana stopped in the harbour, which looked deserted. The sea there was greasy and dark, the bay itself was darkening, the lights in the houses were on, the hill behind the village had already obstructed the sun. There was no trace of the ferry and it seemed as if it would never return again.

  She walked on the large paving stones and avoided stepping on the lines. She looked back at the shop which was now probably a bar and became aware of the pensioners on the bench. Because they were not talking and because of the twenty-metre distance she could not be sure whether they were looking at her.

  Old men.

  "I don't want to get old," she said to herself, "I want to stay as I am now," she added and felt silly. And a bit sad.

  She stood there in the middle of the old men's horizon, the horizon which they had probably been staring at every evening for decades. She felt like a stranger and it was not a pleasant feeling. She went to the left side of the bay, stepping from the paving stones onto a concrete path, which after a few metres turned into the base of the monument.