by Daša Drndic
Tina gets fatter and sings. It’s because of Printz, Tina repeats at every meal. They have lunch at an oval table. Aunty Hilda circles round the table, she is new. Aunty Hilda does not take her little cap off. The little cap sticks up, like a cockerel’s crest, only white.
Printz has fallen asleep.
Yes, I’ve fallen asleep.
Printz has a brother.
We’ve said that. I have a brother.
His brother is called Herzog,
Herz — heart. He’s not as handsome as me and he can’t be called Printz.
Herzog lives with his wife and children in the same building, on the same floor, in a flat whose walls adjoin the walls of Rikard Dvorsky’s flat. Herzog has little fish and a Rottweiler, black. He has ornaments and works of art. Little silver ornaments, small ashtrays, dishes for sweets, ivory elephants, tusks, crystal plates and vases, he has lace doilies, he has a huge Buddha made of sandalwood who sits, cross-legged, behind the front door and is all golden and fragrant.
I brought Herzog the Buddha, from Burma.
He has Persian rugs.
Herzog keeps gradually and silently transferring the ornaments, the paintings and the carpets from Rikard Dvorsky’s flat to his small one across the hall. For two years Herzog carries things away, while his mother, the former opera diva Ernestina Dvorsky, née Bosner, lies in a morphine landscape, blissfully. That small flat, very convenient as it is right here, next door, was bought for Herzog by his father Rikard Dvorsky, retired scientist and intelligence officer who had long ago published a collection of patriotic, somewhat pugnacious, poems, which no one remembers anymore.
What am I going to do, asks Printz, I’ve nowhere to go.
In the course of two years, Herzog Dvorsky’s small flat has become even smaller and then overnight it has grown cramped. There are too many things in it. There is no space in it for Herzog Dvorsky’s family because Herzog Dvorsky’s family is growing, spreading, becoming fatter. Herzog is big and pale, he was always pale, he was born pale,
and big, I was not born, they pulled me out,
the green snot no longer drips from his nose because when it comes he swallows it. There is no space for Herzog’s wife Matilda, known as Tilda, it is cramped for his children (Herzog has two children, also big and fat); there is no space for the little fish because the aquarium is huge although the little fish keep eating each other so there are fewer of them; the Rottweiler almost jumps up at the chandelier, it is so powerful. And unruly.
What about the flowers? Herzog has lots of flowers on his pink balcony. His wife Tilda likes pink. All the flowers are pink. The flowers face the street, the street is noisy, but the flowers live, they even bloom. Pinkly.
Herzog’s wife looks like young Ernestina. It seems to Printz that he and Herzog have two mamas, one old, one young;
Ernestina is no more, only the copy that does not sing is left.
It seems to Printz that Rikard has two wives, one old, one young. It is muddled. Herzog’s wife is called Matilda but known as Tilda. She is as fat as Ernestina, who is known as Tina. She talks as loudly as Ernestina. She is cheerful
she’s acting
she is kind
she’s not
her belly shakes when she walks and goes to the market every day.
Call me Tilda, says Matilda as she turns round in front of the mirror in Ernestina’s stage dresses. Yes, Tilda wears Ernestina’s dresses because — they fit her. Sometimes she adjusts them, sometimes she does not. They are evening dresses, made of brocade and lamé, of silk and taffeta, red, black, lacy, transparent, shot through with silver thread and gold thread, fluttery with pastel voile, long, with a deep décolleté
so her tits show.
Matilda has big tits. Matilda has the same hairstyle as Ernestina. She has brown hair and blue eyes.
It is very confusing. Perhaps the two women have a plan. Printz is confused. Matilda does not sing. Nor does Ernestina sing anymore. Ernestina only sweats. Ernestina is dead.
So, Printz and Herzog are brothers and they love each other.
No.
Sleep, Pupi. And take your socks off.
Printz loves Herzog.
Mr. Rikard Dvorsky, retired chemist and communist, speaks French, Italian and English from his youth.
When he was in the Partisans those languages made him suspect, he was also suspect because of his degree in chemistry, but he survived, he was even awarded a badge. Later, because of that badge, he got credit for a car on hire purchase, interest-free for five years.
I would have bought the car for that credit, says Printz, who is already a mature chemist with a wife. No way, chirps Ernestina-Tina, Herzog will buy the car.
After the war (1948), Rikard Dvorsky is advised (ordered) to move into the Villa Nora. Sit there and wait for directives, they say. Villa Nora is a furnished villa in a long street, going downhill like a mountain path. The bedrooms are upstairs. Printz sleeps on his own and there is no Herzog yet. Afterward Printz sleeps on his own and Herzog with his mother. Rikard learns new languages at night, downstairs in the living room. Printz goes downstairs in his pyjamas, he has hair as black as a raven’s
while Herzog’s is fair and curly
Herzog is born later
little Printz goes downstairs, twisting a lock of his hair between his right thumb and forefinger, twists it and goes down drowsily.
This is Russian, Pupi, says the chemist Rikard Dvorsky.
Printz says: I want some milk.
Rikard Dvorsky brings Printz a glass of cold milk, I want a bottle of milk, says Printz.
Printz drinks a liter of cold milk straight off and he is very little.
Life is good.
Ernestina sings on the radio, she sings at the opera, she performs in nurseries and old people’s homes, in factory halls. She is paid between 367 and 953 dinars. Rikard works in the Institute, he works on medicaments, but he is told: you work for us and it will remain secret. So Rikard works for the secret service. That is before Printz asks what about me, where shall I go? A long time before. Printz is small, he gulps the milk and twists the lock of his raven hair, always the same one, on his right temple. Later they will be moved.
They’ve moved us into this flat here. A city flat. They’ve moved Maristella as well.
Printz twitches in his sleep. The camp bed is short, rickety and narrow. The thin checked blanket slips off.
That’s why it’s better not to take one’s socks off, that’s why.
Half-asleep Printz listens. The door of the bedroom where Rikard Dvorsky, the once powerful informer, sleeps curled up on the big bed is open and no longer white. It is a sickly yellow door, yellowish-gray, in fact dirty, especially around the handle. Round the handle there are stains of spinach, of porridge, of unwashed hands. There are red stains of rouge for the face, with which Ernestina tries to conceal her inner and outer grayness, her lurking death.
Pupi, bring me my makeup and put color on my cheeks. And my eyelashes, Pupi. And my eyelashes.
But Ernestina does not have any eyelashes. Eyelashes fall off with radiation. Then the eyes are left bare and very round.
The walls are not white anymore either. For two years the walls have been sucking in the decay exhaled at them.
Rikard Dvorsky withdraws to the edge of the bed as though he was fleeing from the invisible but existing Ernestina. Lying on his side, he looks at the neon light through the half-lowered blinds, it is quiet outside, the night is deep. What will he do now?
Printz waits. Printz waits for his Mama Tina to call him, Pupi, the toilet, quick, Pupi. Tina groans, Pupi leaps up, he does everything required. What does he do? He takes off Ernestina’s underwear, puts them on the toilet shelf, goes away, comes back, wipes her, wipes her in front and behind, it depends whether Ernestina is peeing or pooing, pissing or crapping.
Then he washes her. He places her on the bed, big as she is, fat as she is and says open your legs, and (with a little moist towel) wipes between her flabby buttocks, between her flabby labia with their dramatically thinned pubic hair, he washes the woman who gave birth to him with a curse.
He does not touch anything.
Only Rikard Dvorsky moans softly in the double bed.
Have they burned Tina yet? Maybe they burn people collectively. In bulk. What are those ovens like? I’ll go and see. I’ll go and see what the ovens where dead people are burned look like.
What about the coffins? Do they burn the coffins as well? There are some very expensive coffins. I’m interested in that. Perhaps that’s what interests me most now — do they burn the coffins?
(the black notebook)
Printz keeps an exercise book for notes under his pillow. When he folds up his camp bed (and he does so increasingly rarely), the notebook is left locked inside with the squashed days like cramped ghosts.
It is an old exercise book, half a century old, big, with a hard cover. The cover is wrapped in black canvas and is stained with time, there are holes in it, which fray. The canvas has been corroded by damp, neglect and forgetfulness. There are unused pages in the notebook, which Printz uses to note down his ideas because Printz is inundated with cascades of ideas that he wants to tame. Between 1946 and 1950 Rikard and Ernestina Dvorsky had recorded the income and outgoings that determined their life. The notebook is like an enigmatic mirror of the past, in it the postwar period is glimpsed through the price of provisions, items bought and sold, in it days are reduced to headwords and then only some days. Other days are not there. The years are compressed into columns, numbers. Printz likes that, that distance, that starkness. This exercise book is part of his past, a past that is not remembered and that is why he needs the notebook, to remember. Printz.
I love this notebook.
Printz was born in 1946, but in the notebook he is hardly mentioned. There is a brief, roundabout reference: baby carriage, secondhand, 1125 dinars, bought on 3 December
but I was already six months old.
You didn’t take me for walks when I was little, says Printz to Rikard Dvorsky in the course of their nocturnal conversations in the library while they waited for Tina’s departure.
Each time Rikard Dvorsky would wave his hand: Don’t confabulate, he said.
In January 1947 (19 January) they buy medicine for Printz and take him to the doctor. That costs 150 dinars. Five days later (24 January 1947), they pay 97 dinars to have his ear examined.
You were born with a hole in your ear, says Rikard Dvorsky.
Printz: Which ear?
Rikard does not remember. He thinks it was on the outer ear, behind. The hole was sewn up, he says, don’t worry.
Photographs of the wedding — 580 dinars (January 1946).
Printz was born in June.
I already existed at the wedding, Printz tries to remember, every night he tries to remember because nobody remembers any longer the way it is recorded in the notebook. No one remembers him.
Perhaps I hiccuped. People drink at festivities. I must have hiccuped in Tina’s stomach, fetuses get hiccups, that’s a well-known fact.
Lying on the camp bed by the table, almost under the table, like a dog in a kennel, Printz leafs through the black notebook every night as though it was a prayer book. Tonight he gets up, feels his way through the darkness so as not to wake Tina, correction, not to wake Rikard, he gets up, goes in his socks to the kitchen, over whose cheerful floor cockroaches scuttle. City cockroaches are the biggest and fattest cockroaches, his socks are sticky,
Rikard drops honey on the kitchen floor, his hand shakes,
instead of going into the porcelain dish with the gold rim, instead of going into the cup waiting on the marble board under the window, the honey drips onto the floor this morning, before the funeral,
careful, Papa, the honey’s dripping
this morning, a long time ago, the precise hand of Rikard Dvorsky surrendered
leave me alone, I don’t care about the honey
you’ve wet yourself, Pa, you’ve peed in your pyjamas
his father’s flaccid willy peers out of his open fly, his father’s willy with no hairs, brown — when he pees, he pees haphazardly
who’s going to clean it up now, we’ll have to get a woman to clean, Papa,
to clean what?
Printz gently taps one sticky smear then another, as though he was dancing. That cheers him up. Printz opens the fridge and standing there drinks milk, two liters of milk, he drinks up all the milk in the fridge, illuminated by the light of the little bulb in the huge stone kitchen, entirely dark, always dark, in the stone kitchen that looks out at the street light. From the edge of his lips, down his chin — in mischievous streams run little white roads that cross like small lively snakes, benign, like grass snakes — and fall onto his chest.
That cools, oh how nicely that cools.
Printz goes back to the dining room, perhaps he should wash the kitchen floor, it is four o’clock in the morning, he will not wash the floor, Printz sits down in the pink armchair, switches on a small lamp — 40 watts, and tears out page after page.
I’m tidying the past. I’m making space for my thoughts, I have new thoughts, says Printz in the night.
October 1946:
10,000 in the cash-box, Lisa returned 217 (who’s Lisa?), darning thread and white thread 350, hair oil 150, hairnet 60, socks for Rikard 350, face and hand cream 310, 3 jars of mustard 600 (!!!), a kilo of sweet conserve 240, jam 380, 1 kilo of walnuts 120 (preparing for a family celebration), glass for Rikard’s clock 45, shoes for Olga 1316 (who’s Olga?), two pairs of stockings for Tina 501.60, 1 kerchief 135, jumper for Rikard 836, jumper for Tina 585.50, road tax 101, shoes for Tina — 957.40, shoes for Toni (who’s Toni?), silk for underwear for Tina 390 (!?), loan to Ernest (who’s Ernest?), cash for beggar 20 (only?), 300 to Lisa (Lisa again), water 106, apples 48, lemons 60, 1 egg 24, 1 kilo of pears 56, 1 kilo of rice 145, skirt, made by dressmaker, 100, sausages, ham and olives 452, padlock 130, 2 tops for Tina 264, 3 pairs of knickers for Tina 234, 6 pairs men’s socks (Rikard) 420, washing powder 50, total 11,270.
November 1946:
Receipts: 6000 + 6000.
half a kilo of figs, bus 40, passes 45 (for what?), gift for Ada (who’s Ada?), pictures 80, thread for socks 80 (they get through a lot of socks), 2 kilos oranges 300, cabbage 525 (how much cabbage?!), oranges (again?) 140, juice (what sort?), suit for Rikard 3000, cinema 45, for the canteen (what about me?), flowers (who for? social life), oranges and mandarins 240, tram 80, 2 kilos of meat 520, 10 eggs 350 (eggs are going up), 1 kilo of rice 125 (they eat a lot of rice — rice has come down), henna for hair and comb 150, apron 950 (who for?), trousers for Rikard 1000, pyjamas and 2 shirts (no price — they buy a lot of clothing).
December 1946:
1 tin of meat, 10 tins of fish, 5 kilos of sugar, 2 liters of oil, 1 kilo, altogether 1270 dinars (preparing for New Year’s eve, 1947), umbrella for Paula (who’s Paula?), umbrella for Rikard (a rainy December), 2 caps and a hat 2600 (expensive), 1 spoon 130 (why only one?), cinema and theater 250 (who looks after me?), 10 kilos of dried meat (Heavens!) 5500 (Heavens! Half Rikard’s salary), half a kilo of plums (why do they save on plums?) 85, 1 kilo of beans 75, for the lift 47.
Perhaps they lied to me? Perhaps my memories are an illusion, perhaps my memories are someone else’s memories? Printz wonders, looking at his toes. He takes his left foot to his nose and smiles: my feet never smell.
3 kilos of cabbage (fermented? I don’t like sauerkraut), 1 kilo of spinach 56 (for me?), half a kilo of lettuce 30, greens for soup (for me? I’m a baby), Papa returned money for children’s shoes — 1000 (whose papa?, whose children?) cakes 240, 10 eggs 240, electricity 27, 6 meters of material (for sheets?), gift for Alma
1900.
Maristella was born!
4 pairs of socks, scarf for Rikard 600 (New Year gift?), cap for Olga 400 (Olga again, who’s Olga?), small bag for Olga 220 (I didn’t get anything), sale of Rikard’s suit — 10,000 (dinner suit?).
End of the year of Printz’s birth.
End of the year of my birth.
In January 1947 — three outings to the theater 200 + 100 + 165, for books on two occasions 100 + 520, they buy butter twice — 200 + 150, they sell a suit — 3,500 (to whom?), photographs are developed — 380, someone is ill: 280 for medicine, eggs — 6 for 90 dinars.
In February 1947 yet another suit of Rikard’s is sold for 3,800, a bra costs 160 dinars, 4 eggs and wire 130 (what kind of wire?), a haircut 100 dinars, Arsen appears and is given 730 dinars (who’s Arsen?), butter for Melita (?!) 160, butter “for us” 100, flowers for Melita 375 (maybe Melita is Maristella’s mother Alma?).
I have a defective memory concludes Printz in the night. Pegs 100, locksmith (!), more flowers — 350, in February soap is bought, in April two light bulbs for 310 dinars (why two?).
It is five o’clock, it is still dark.
In April 1947 a lamb and bits and pieces — 500, spinach 15, paint for a cupboard for 1000. April ends with a deficit of 1604 dinars.
In May 1947 Unra appears — one packet 500 dinars, needles (!?) — 60 dinars and lace 100, 2 ice creams and tram — 20 dinars, bread costs 6, Rikard’s shoes are repaired twice, for 29 and 30 dinars, they pay into a commune, wine is drunk, eggs come down in price: 10 for 36 dinars, beer is bought by the liter — 2 liters: 56 dinars. Shoe polish 8 dinars, a lot of cherries are bought, and calendars (!), and more thread, more lace and 3 kilos of milk powder, flowers cost only 10 dinars.
Good times. Family times. Communist times, says Printz and by then it is morning.
In the mountains Printz and Rikard go for walks. The walks bore them. Their steps are short. The mountain is deserted, the hotel is deserted, the tablecloths are gray and have holes in them. The sheets have holes too, stained with rust, and the towels are thin and frayed. They get soaked straight away. Soaked with what? They just get soaked.