First Cycle - Spring

by Sarah Kassem

  “Correct. Good night, sweetheart.” She kissed him on both cheeks, her lips pressed firmly on his skin, then she turned off the light and left the room.

  Viktor lay in the darkness, thinking about Darth Maul and about Chewbacca and decided that Darth Maul was perhaps cooler than the hairy Wookie.

  Just before falling asleep, he felt it again, the small, ugly dark spot, the small black marble in his head. He blinked a few times with his left eye, scratched his head, curled up and fell asleep.

  Outside it was a windy night. Autumn approached and Hedera Helix experienced the fore of the first autumn storms. The first trees were strewn with golden leaves. The first birds moved away in droves in the sky. The first fields were long since harvested. A couple of sheets of paper and a chocolate bar wrapper flew past Viktor’s window in the wind. A little bird, sitting in the tree outside the window with ruffled feathers, clung to a branch before the wind caused it to fly up and disappear.

  Sporangium

  The next day Viktor ran slightly tilted to the left. The small, ugly dark spot had shifted the balance of his body, bent his inner axis and caused an obliquity. Viktor did not know why he was bent this way, where it had come from, nor what it meant. The only indication he had that something was amiss, aside from the tilt, was the small, hard, marble-like spot he could feel in the left half of his head, a spot which radiated a special density and whose load – like a weight on a scale – seemed to press one of his two sides down.

  Meeting Gem on the playground, the two of them ate their lunch on the short wall next to the drinking fountain. Since yesterday, and the events under the cow’s udder, the mood had become quite strange between them. Hala, Gem’s little sister, either ignored them or glared furiously at them whenever she happened to pass, refusing to speak to them anymore. Even with this glum mood between them the sun continued to shine, the children were noisy in the schoolyard and, from time to time, a ball flew towards the two lunching boys so they had to crouch and hold their food to avoid it. Throughout the break not once did they speak to each other.

  Then, in maths class, Viktor stared at ‘64+5’ and, though he knew that the ‘6’ remained so he only had ‘4+5’ to work out, he found the task impossible to solve. His thoughts couldn’t stay on the ‘4+5’ with the ‘6’ at the beginning, instead always returning to Kennedy, her kittens, and the events of the day before.

  Yesterday, after school, Viktor, Gem and Hala had been in the backyard of the tailor shop playing ball. Originally, they had been in Maricel’s flat, but that had proved boring. Next they had moved next door to Viktor’s flat, but there it had proved too hot. They then worked their way down into the tailor shop, but were soon thrown out after Gem had started throwing the ball around and Viktor had knocked over a jar of beads that Hala then slipped on, bashing her elbow and causing her to scream in pain. Finally ending up outside in the backyard, they had been running around on the grass playing ‘airplane’, before, with plastic zoo animals, they played a bit of ‘house’ with Hala and then, desperate for anything else to do, resorted to kicking the ball back and forth between them. They were not allowed out on the street, and, as all their toys were boring, there was nothing much to do, everything being extremely dull and the weather simply too hot.

  Kennedy was in a cardboard box next to the tool shed watching them sleepily. The white cat had recently had some kittens and they were lying huddled near her belly. Kennedy was the neighbourhood cat and, though no one knew exactly who she belonged to, everyone fed her and she in turn chose varying houses in the neighbourhood as her breeding sites. The origins of how she came to be called ‘Kennedy’ is as unknown as when she first appeared in the neighbourhood. No one could say for certain but, as far as anyone could remember, Kennedy had always been there, and Kennedy was almost always either pregnant or had just once more become a mother. This summer she had chosen Helena’s tailoring workshop as her delivery room. She had been inspecting each corner of the garden for days, till finally she hurried into the workshop, looked around and found a suitable place under the stairs that led up to the flats. When Helena saw her, she grabbed Kennedy by the scruff of her neck with one hand and, with the other, took hold of a blank cardboard box that had been lying on the stairs before going out into the garden and putting the box under the roof of the tool shed. She then went back into the studio still carrying the snarling Kennedy, took a handful of towels, and proceeded back outside where she first stuffed the towels in the box before then shoving in Kennedy. The cat sniffed the box, smelled the towels, turned around a few times, lazily hissed at Helena and then lay down. Four days later, early in the morning, you could hear loud whinings and a cry, and an hour later Kennedy was surrounded by her five tiny babies. Following the birth, Helena brought her something to eat several times a day as well as a cup of water now and then, and the two were soon therefore reconciled.

  Yesterday, when Viktor, Gem and Hala had been listlessly kicking the ball back and forth in the yard, they had suddenly heard in the silence of the warm afternoon a tearful wail. It was so quiet and so squeaky that it was not actually perceived immediately, but must have been going on a while before they became aware of it. They looked toward Kennedy, but the cat was dozing and looked deeply relaxed. The squeak was heard again, and Viktor and Gem looked to where the sound came from. In the flower bed, a few feet away from Kennedy, they saw a tiny, scruffy kitten. Viktor checked in the box and saw that Kennedy had only four kittens. Thinking therefore that one must have escaped, they then tried to put the scruffy kitten back in the box only to have Kennedy spit angrily and show them all her claws before she pushed the kitten away with her paw.

  They stood and looked down at the black-haired thing. Its eyes were encrusted and it was emaciated and too weak to walk with white lice swarming in its matted fur. The kitten crawled slowly toward them and Viktor was creeped out. He took a step to the side. The kitten meowed, tumbled over, picked herself up trembling all over and continued to crawl toward Gem. He pushed it slightly with his foot, causing it to fall over again and once more have great difficulty getting up.

  Suddenly Gem had the grand idea of playing football with the kitten. He knocked it with the side of his foot and then passed it to Viktor. Viktor, looking at Gem, who looked at him defiantly, pondered for a moment before kicking it back. By this time the kitten was letting loose wailing noises and whining incessantly. Kennedy simply yawned and once more returned to sleep.

  Hala called them both monsters and shouted that they should stop immediately. They, however, continued, finding the game much more interesting than playing with a ball. Eventually though even that became boring, especially as the kitten soon ceased to make any noise and was barely moving. Gem went into the studio and came back with a lighter. He knelt beside the kitten, held the flame on its matted tail, and, after a while, the tail began to catch fire. Hala ran screaming into the studio and when the adults came streaming out the kitten was already in flames, dark smoke curling high from her body as a terrible stench filled the yard.

  Hala cried and buried her head in Maricel’s dress as the adults stood around and stared at the small fire in horror. Kennedy blinked tiredly and yawned. Hamid, the tailor, took a bottle of water and poured it on what was left of the kitten, which was only a black lump of unidentifiable material upon a patch of charred grass.

  Helena grabbed Viktor by the ear and dragged him upstairs to their flat. She threw him on the couch, stood over him and yelled at him for a long time. She waved her arms, yelling until her voice broke and only a hoarse croak was possible as she banged her fist repeatedly on the headrest of the couch while intermittently circling Viktor like a rabid, hungry tiger. Pausing momentarily, she took a deep breath before continuing to scream until her voice finally collapsed, at which point she began to cry.

  Viktor sat there with his mouth open, clinging on to the couch’s cushions. He had never seen his mother like this, and he knew nothing at first. He knew that she was not angry, that anger
in her always looked quite different. Helena’s anger was scary, but what she was now was just ... overwhelming. Viktor had seen a documentary about a storm at sea on TV once. It had been night, a ship had been on the sea and you could barely see anything, everything was a horrible mess of water, air and noise coming from all directions till there was no longer anything constant, no horizon where you could be based, what was up one moment was down the next. Viktor had, since that documentary, long understood the phrase ‘force of nature’. Therefore, while he was sitting in the living room watching the ‘force of nature’ called Helena Abies, like the ship in the storm it made him dizzy. Though he could not really listen and therefore took in only about every fifth word, the whole monologue was, as far as he could tell, almost solely formed from the word ‘cat’ and the question ‘how could you?’

  Eventually, he too began to cry as everything became all too confusing. He had never seen his mother scream and cry at the same time before. He understood that what they had done to the kitten was wrong and from below he could hear, from the loud voice of Maricel, that apparently her son too was receiving a similar explosion of anger and grief.

  When Helena was finally done, she stood there for a few minutes simply staring at him. Viktor sniffed, wiped a hand across his face and his nose on his sleeve and stared at the carpet. He checked furtively every now and then to see if she still was still looking at him before once more casting his eyes back down. He knew that the ‘force of nature’ had passed and that now probably the anger would come. That was in fact even reassuring.

  Helena shot forward toward him and grabbed his arm in her inimitable way, grabbed it in a grip so tight that it paralysed every muscle, yet at the same time such a delicate grip that it caused no pain, and pulled him into the bathroom. She turned on the faucet in the bathtub, and breathed through clenched teeth, “Undress. Bathe. Wash hair. Five minutes. Five minutes!” She left the bathroom and he heard her return to his room and open his closet.

  Viktor hurried. He didn’t quite know what was happening, but still he quickly undressed, climbed into the tub and lathered himself. He held his head under the faucet, worked shampoo into his hair and scrubbed it. Then he quickly washed his face, climbed out, took a towel from the shelf and ran to his room. Helena stood beside his bed with both hands on her hips, pointed at his laid out tux and whispered,

  “Dress. Quickly.” She had made the suit last year when he’d wanted to be James Bond on his birthday. He towelled himself dry, dropped the towel and swiftly pulled on his pants, trousers and then his shirt. Helena tucked his shirt into his trousers, tied his tie and ordered him to wear the jacket and the shoes. While he was tying his laces he thought for a second about what was happening and why he should therefore now be putting on his James Bond costume, but such thoughts were cut short when Helena came at him with a comb and drew first a clean parting before combing his dark brown hair until it lay smooth and neatly on his scalp. Then she grabbed him by the shoulders and steered him down the stairs and into the garden. All the employees were standing there, joined by not only a few neighbours, but also the greengrocer and the bar owner from across the road. In the middle of the yard stood a very red faced, hands on hips Maricel, next to a rather battered and bruised Gem. The boy looked up, startled, as Helena approached him.

  Helena grabbed Viktor’s ear with her left hand and, with the right, grabbed Gems ear and pulled them both toward the black, charred lump on the lawn. Leaving them standing over their folly, she then went to the tool shed and came out with a spade that she threw at the feet of the boys. Viktor was ordered to pick up the body and hold it in his hands, which he did while dry-retching a few times. The lump reeked of sweet smoke and was soft and flabby with black water that dripped from it onto his shoes. When finally he vomited and dropped the kitten, Helena turned on Gem and told him that it was his turn to hold it. He shook his head and began to cry, but his mother too shouted at him to pick it up and, having no choice, he finally held the dripping thing in both hands with his arms outstretched in front of him and sobbed. When Helena believed the boys had held the thing long enough, she told Viktor that he should dig a small hole in front of the flowerbed. When the hole was deep enough, Gem placed the remains in the hole, the hole was filled up, and Viktor and Gem had to stand in front of the grave.

  No one said a word. All that could be heard was the cooing of a dove in the lime tree and the sound of a car driving up the road.

  Twenty minutes later Helena went to the tool shed, came out with a small bucket and told them both to go to Barbacenia farm and return with some milk. The farm was located just ten minutes from the tailor shop and when they got there, Hugo the farmer, apparently already notified of their arrival, led them to the barn and showed them a cow who stared at them with big brown eyes and mooed. He took a small stool, put it under the cow, and told the boys that it was on them to do the milking. Both refused as the cow was not only massive but her udder was huge and disgusting and had thick blue and purple veins running all over it. When Hugo threatened to call Helena if they didn’t do the milking immediately, it was enough to get Gem to sit down, grab a teat and start milking. He vomited immediately. Viktor too did likewise and found he couldn’t stop gagging. His eyes watered and his throat burned as Hugo towered over them and gave short instructions on the art of milking.

  Two hours later, when it was already dusk, they finally had the bucket a quarter filled with milk. When they returned to the studio with the bucket, they first had to fill up a small bowl to give to Kennedy. By nightfall they had to stand in front of Kennedy and apologise. Kennedy looked confused at first, then meowed expectantly, and when nothing happened, she put down her head and fell asleep. Viktor and Gem were not allowed to talk to each other, but instead had to take turns holding a monologue with Kennedy, asking for forgiveness and explaining in great detail what they had done and why it was so terrible. Oded was ordered to stand by monitoring them and was forbidden to speak a single word to them. He fidgeted uncomfortably and looked uneasy but after a while he took out a manga comic from his pocket and read secretly. The boys then had to pick some flowers from the flower bed, light a few candles, stand up in front of the grave of the kitten, and wait until it was time to sleep.

  In the dark garden the boys stood staring at the heaped earth of the little grave. Around them crickets chirped and the linden tree rustled softly in the night breeze. The candles gave off a golden glow and Viktor could see Kennedy sluggishly licking her children. He thought of the day’s events, from the lighter to the udder, wiggled his toes a little as he felt the onset of a slight headache. The James Bond shoes had grown a little too small for him and he also realized that the shirt and the jacket were too tight around the shoulders and chest. The collar pressed too hard into his neck. He thought of his new birthday costume and suddenly no longer felt any desire to be Darth Maul. He thought about who he would rather be and thought of the kitten in her shaggy coat. Then he thought of Chewbacca, who also had a shaggy coat. Maybe it would somehow make up for what he did if he wore a shaggy coat too. Darth Maul was a Sith after all and the Sith were evil and creepy, dominated by the dark side of the Force. Chewbacca and the Wookiees were tall and strong. Also Chewbacca was the friend of Han Solo, he’d saved Yoda and there was nothing creepy at all about Chewbacca and his friends. He decided then that he would tell his mother that evening before bedtime that he wanted to be Chewbacca.

  Viktor sighed and continued to stare at the grave.

  Anemophily

  “What do you have now?” Viktor asked as the school bell rang.

  “Bio. You?”

  “Sport.”

  “You seeing your dad today?”

  “No, tomorrow.”

  “Alright.”

  “I’ll see you this afternoon at home.”

  “Sure.”

  “Ok.”

  “Alright.”

  “Alright.”

  “Later then.”

  Gem walked toward the
school building while Viktor went to the gym. He pulled his sports bag along with him as he went, letting it drag along the floor like a dog on a lead. He’d asked both his mother and father multiple times for a dog but, even though he’d begged and pleaded, it’d been to no avail as neither showed any inclination to buy one. Now, in light of the events of yesterday, even the slightest chance that they may have one day been persuaded, had no doubt vanished forever after the affair with the kitten. Viktor was also sure that his father would already know what had happened. His parents had separated when Viktor was two years old, but, despite the separation, Helena and Immanuel Abies shared both a long-standing friendship and continuing partnership, a partnership that saw Immanuel deal with the taxes of the studio while Helena tailored almost the entirety of his wardrobe. As such they also saw Viktor as a joint project and meticulously informed each other about every little thing in his life. Therefore devout in the opinion that everyone in his father’s company, Bresolino Views, would already know about everything that had taken place, Viktor wasn’t sure if he should be in a bad mood, feel sad, or simply just blame Gem. Such thoughts haunted Viktor so much that, in his physical education class, he ran his warm up laps so fast he felt dizzy and was struck by a nosebleed. For the remainder of the class he had to stay seated on a bench with wads of toilet paper stuffed up each nostril. As he could then only breathe through his mouth, this in turn made him thirsty, but when he drank, such a pressure grew in his ears that he could no longer hear. At the end of the school day, when Oded came to pick him up, he let loose his anger by first grumbling to himself, then throwing his backpack on the back seat of the car, before finally declaring that he wanted to go home immediately.

  That evening he sat on his bed and turned back to his Star Wars’ sticker book. Next to it lay the football album that, because it was already completed, he now happily flicked through. It had taken him a long time to get every sticker and he thought about how he and Gerald van den Berg had sat together one long afternoon, discussing and exchanging stickers till finally the album was full from start to finish. The feeling he’d had when gluing the last sticker, that of René Higuita, in the correct box was one he’d never forget. He now turned to his Star Wars album and thought about when he would have the same moment of completion, which, as the album was not even half full yet, still lay unfortunately far in the future. He dreamed of the feeling that would flood over him as he smoothly stuck the final few stickers in the book, taking care to avoid air bubbles before releasing a cheer at the precise moment of completion.