Who Is Martha?

by Marjana Gaponenko

  “Is the lady an actress?”

  “No, but she has been coming here every Sunday for thirty years.”

  “Interesting,” Levadski says through his nose. The waiter is already at the other end of the room. “Interesting,” Levadski repeats and finds himself boring. Meaningless. For a split second. The waiter is already on his way back. The man whirrs from table to table with the grace of a dragonfly, races, tails flapping, through the rows of tables, almost collides with his two colleagues, walks straight through them.

  With withered steps, a couple approaches the table where the beauty was just sitting. The gentleman is wearing a tie and the lady has a brooch pinned to her jacket. Both are holding a newspaper in their hand. After they have ordered two glasses of sparkling wine, they hide behind their newspapers. The sparkling wine arrives. Cheers! The lady closes one eye when she drinks, as if she had whipped up the sparkling wine to a spray with her breath.

  “Here’s an interesting article about Transylvania.”

  “Aha.”

  “Yes, it interests me.”

  “Sir and Madam have chosen?”

  “Two cream of pumpkin soups, a small veal schnitzel and a small beer.”

  “I would have preferred duck, but you have run out, haven’t you?”

  “Do you know why Siebenbürgen is called Siebenbürgen? After the seven cities that the Germans founded in the 12th century.”

  “Very interesting.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Very interesting.”

  “Yes, my darling.”

  “Yes.”

  Which direction is she speaking in? Her neatly coifed head slightly cocked like a dove observing its reflection in a puddle, the lady appears to be speaking into a tin can.

  “Yes, my darling, yes, alright, my child.”

  The tin can is snapped shut.

  The husband waits for explanations behind the wall of newspaper.

  “When our daughters do come, they always arrive late.”

  The husband turns a page. He must be looking forward to his daughters’ arrival.

  The main thing is that they are coming. Better late than never. He must be looking forward to it. Nobody is coming to see Levadski. This sad certainty makes him feel superior to the married couple.

  “Yes, nuclear power really is a great threat to the world, it will probably be the end of it.”

  “This is newfangled soup. The pumpkins of our youth, they don’t exist anymore.”

  “Yes, it used be different.”

  “The pumpkins were never that dark.”

  Levadski’s gaze wanders to an inconsolable face. Two strings of pearls entwine the wrinkly neck they belong to. The old woman turns her head like a blue tit, looks around, before she plucks up the confidence to shakily steer the fork with the piece of cake in the direction of her mouth. She protectively holds her other hand beneath it, chews, swallows, and then, with a critical gaze, chin pressed to her chest, she checks whether any of the cake has fallen onto her lap, her bosom no longer able to catch crumbs.

  The red of a broad-shouldered jacket catches Levadski’s eye. Barely arrived on the threshold, the female creature with short hair strides towards the nearest waiter. Both come to a stop in front of Levadski’s table. “Is there a special Sunday menu today?” the red jacket wants to know. Her earrings are birdcages inset with egg-shaped gemstones. “No,” the waiter says regrettably, “the menu is the same as always, but we are serving brunch on the second floor.” The lady mumbles something and leaves.

  A group of guests traipses through the room. The leader has a sliver of wood in his mouth, which helps to identify him. A lumberjack, springs to Levadski’s mind, or perhaps a coffin maker?

  A Mr. Sulke arrives and asks for a table for three, father, mother, child. “Sulke is my name,” Mr. Sulke says in a deep voice, “we will eat and leave.”

  “Eat and leave,” he repeats. The echo of the name Sulke hangs in the room for a while.

  “The worst thing that can happen to you is a stain,” the older waiter instructs his younger colleagues, “a stain on a guest is the worst thing that can happen!”

  “I mean, I don’t begrudge any man for dying his hair, but gray is perfectly fine,” a faded beauty assures her friend who isn’t exactly a picture of freshness herself anymore. Both of them unleash their venom on a man seated at one of the neighboring tables, whose hair is apparently dyed. His younger companion seems not to be bothered by this at all. She lovingly guides a laden dessert fork towards the open sparrow beak of the man. “Ridiculous,” the girlfriends agree. There is nothing cheerful about them, nothing life affirming, thinks Levadski. They won’t allow the man anything, neither his dyed hair nor his lover. Under the false pretense of a Sunday breakfast they poison the surroundings with their disgust for life.

  Glumly Levadski pours himself tea, and while doing so it occurs to the lid of the teapot to rip away and hurl itself onto the carpet, where it innocently spins around and comes to a standstill in front of the riding boots of one of the girlfriends. She picks it up with two of her varnished nails and brings it over to Levadski, who on his part airs his flat behind and receives the lid with embarrassment.

  Shortly afterwards the two leave; the disparate couple also pay and leave. The piano player has left ages ago, something that escaped Levadski’s notice, so engrossed was he in his field studies. Levadski has the bill charged to his room. Leaning on his stick, waiting for the golden mirrored elevator, his eyes heavy, watching the coral-colored digits lighting up above the elevator button, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, M, G, he suddenly realizes that it is he, he is the one who despises life.

  M

  Zimmer / Room 71–86

  IN HIS ROOM, LEVADSKI TAKES A DEEP BREATH. THE AIR IS delicious and sharp, as if a brazen woman is lurking in the cupboard, a smoldering beast with sparkling rings on her cold fingers. Take me out, buy me this and that, protect me, build me a nest! An expectation hovers in the air in Levadski’s suite, an invitation, cloaked by an elegantly arranged bouquet of flowers.

  Up until now Levadski has not made a present of cut flowers to any living person; he has never had any in his apartment either. Now they close in on him and shamelessly exude their fragrant life in the middle of the table, looming above the exotic fruits, which Levadski wouldn’t willingly purchase either, out of protest, and in loyalty to local produce. The flowers are dying, that is perfectly obvious.

  Levadski rests his stick against the half open mirrored door to the bedroom and lowers himself into an armchair with a groan. “You too will die,” Levadski whispers to the banana in his hand, “not tomorrow, but now. I am going to eat you, not because you taste particularly good to me, but because you are soft, you old banana.” As if this weren’t enough of a threat, Levadski removes the ball retained dentures from his mouth. Toothless, he devours the fruit. Bite by bite, if that’s how you can describe it. For a split second the gloomy premonition of what perversion is, stirs in Levadski.

  When, still chewing, he puts the banana peel back on the plate, something causes his drinking stick to lose its composure. It falls to the floor with a dull cry, but Levadski does not move, does not rush to its aid. “I am too old, child,” he says to the drinking stick. Once more, Levadski is overcome by violent palpitations – he has just realized that he is spending more time talking to bananas and walking sticks than he is to people. Not a new revelation, Levadski thinks, getting up and going towards the bed on weak knees, without picking up the stick. He disappears beneath the gold embroidered bedspread in his suit, bow tie and shoes.

  It’s nothing new, he persuades himself half asleep, to be conversing with your walking stick, it is no big deal, after all, you’re all it’s got. This isn’t merely capricious behavior. You communicated enough with people, even if you were never very talkative. Your posture spoke for you, your gestures and countenance, your behavior, your vivacity. You always reacted appropriately to other people’s signals and remained respectfully silent. W
as that not communicating? What are you whining about? Levadski snaps at himself. But he is barely listening, the dreamer.

  Levadski falls asleep and dreams he is still sitting in the café and waiting for his order. Evening approaches. There are candles burning everywhere. Bored, he watches a couple of lovers kissing and throws up. He tries to throw up as discreetly as possible, into each of the sleeves of his new suit. Without a sound, timorously, considerately, he spews his soul out of his body, until his suit sleeves catch fire. Horrified, Levadski jumps onto the small table in front of him and starts to dance like mad. The lovers are annoyed, voice their outrage and spew the contents of their romantic dinner in the direction of the trouble-maker. The waiter, who has visibly aged, races past the rows of tables with Levadski’s order on a silver tray. Too late, Levadski waves him away, the waiter can’t believe it. He looks at the floor and then at Levadski, at the floor and then again at Levadski. The lovers grow hoarse from retching, but still they remain in a tight embrace, like two people drowning. Levadski is in flames and dancing, and the waiter, being obstinate, dares to step out onto the ice which a moment ago was still carpet, stumbles and falls and falls and falls …

  The memory of the dance in his dream and the fact that he went to bed without getting undressed warm Levadski’s heart on waking. He feels like a powerful ruler. Peter the Great is said to have spent the night wearing his riding boots in snow-white featherbeds, which every royal family in Europe considered an honor to furnish him with. This is how Levadski is lying there. Under other circumstances he would not have compared himself to a grand duke, but to a corpse in a coffin. However, in this midnight blue suite, filled with the rotting scent of exquisite flowers, he is what he is not. A booted Infante. It almost gives him physical pleasure to feel shame for his escapades and improprieties.

  Levadski sits up in bed. The mirrored door, beneath a battle picture, presents a bald sleepy old man, a hint of despair in his dull eyes, fingers fumbling with the buttons of his waistcoat.

  Suddenly Levadski feels a strong desire for a juicy blood-red carnation. Without a carnation in his button-hole he is half a man. “Habib,” he pleads in a whiney voice down the receiver, “come.”

  “Please,” he adds, after Habib has already hung up. A few minutes later the butler gently knocks on the door and enters.

  “Please be so kind,” Levadski asks him from the bed, “and see if you can find a carnation among the bouquet of flowers over there on the table.” Habib blinks several times before daring to admit he doesn’t know what a carnation is. “A carnation,” Levadski laughs, “is a flower. You make a present of it to your teacher after the summer vacation and you scatter it behind a funeral procession.”

  “Oh, I see!” Habib scratches his neck incredulously.

  “And you try not to step on it, just as you try not to step on any other funeral procession flower, otherwise you believe it is your turn to die or that you will lose a close relative.”

  “A carnation,” Habib repeats dreamily.

  “Lenin’s favorite flower.”

  “Lenin …” Habib gushes.

  “There must be a carnation among the flowers!” Levadski sighs.

  “Was he the first man to fly to the moon?” Habib asks, sniffing the bouquet.

  “That was Gagarin, he was first in space.” Levadski doesn’t feel like laughing. “A carnation, carnation …” He is dying of thirst. Bleeding to death. “It’s probably best if you give me the vase, young man,” he says coolly. With one leap Habib is at the bedside. “Damn it! No carnation! Oh well, none then.” Levadski shrugs his shoulders and hands the vase back to Habib. “Where were we?” Habib, eyes lowered, remains silent. “Never mind, please help me out of bed. The sun is shining.”

  “Not anymore,” Habib adds, placing the vase of flowers back on the table and helping the capricious hotel guest out of bed.

  A little while later and one floor down, Levadski is browsing the hotel restaurant menu, surrounded by the buzzing of two waiters and the humming of nostalgic music. Habib probably thinks I am a lazy and moody capitalist pig. Carnation or no carnation. If he only knew I can’t afford this luxury, that I am squandering my fortune because I am ill and that’s the only reason I am not counting the cost of the minutes I am staying here, as time is too precious to count. If he only knew that although I keep up my cracked façade, I am essentially on the run from my heart, am in a panic, which incidentally, is alleviated when I look at the appetizers. Levadski inspects the menu through his magnifying glass.

  Duet of red king crab with mango and peas in the pod, 25 euros. Levadski imagines the red king crabs singing a duet in a hot frying pan, growing more and more hushed, until only a death rattle is audible, a death rattle that suddenly rises and dies away for a last time. He wipes a tear of laughter from his eye and carries on reading.

  Praline of quail with goose liver, young chicory and apple and chervil confit, 24 euros. Confit sounds a bit like conflagration, he informs the waiter, who is busy pouring water into a glass the size of a child’s head. With a pained smile he displays his snow-white porcelain ivories to Levadski: Sir, you are pulling my leg. He has never been so serious in his life, confesses Levadski, suppressing a fit of laughter. For a second the waiter’s eyes rest on Levadski’s magnifying glass. “Give yourself time,” he says, rolling his eyes, and flutters from table to table in the direction of the kitchen. Meanwhile Levadski’s magnifying glass continues perusing.

  Goat’s cheese tartlets with smoked catfish and crayfish, 26 euros. A catfish and a crayfish meet. Both dead. Levadski bursts into a fit of laughter. I am ill, thuds in his head, It is a symptom I am forced to tackle like a schoolboy, breaking out into unprovoked fits of laughter, embarrassing myself in front of people, besmirching these magnificent vaulted chambers with my unseemly behavior. An unmistakable sign of my decay. Giggling, he reads on.

  Fillet of Iberico pork with roasted bell peppers and runner bean dumplings, 32 euros. “Cheers,” two women at the opposite table toast each other. “To you, my dear,” says the woman from the lower pecking order, in a nasal voice. Engrossed in the menu, they compress their pearl-laden concertina necks in an unappetizing way. Both seem familiar to Levadski. Aren’t they the friends from the café this morning? How rapidly they’ve aged.

  “Excuse me,” he says, detaining the waiter with the porcelain ivories who is sneaking around, “may I ask what the Iberico is?”

  “A breed of pig native to Spain and Portugal,” the waiter replies, “half-wild, fed on acorns,” he adds, topping up his water. “A wild boar!” he whispers into Levadski’s wide eyes. Levadski asks for a little more time.

  “Such a gorgeous blouse, darling. Well chosen.”

  “The ladies have decided?”

  “We are not talking about you.” The waiter disappears. Levadski grins and carries on reading.

  Lamb fillet poached in milk of sage and curry, 36 euros. “Have you got horse meat?” Levadski wants to know from the waiter, who has crept up to the table in the hope of finally learning what the guest has decided on. Levadski’s question wipes the smile off the waiter’s face. The sheen on his pearly whites fades.

  “I am afraid not,” says the waiter apologetically. “What I can recommend, sir, is a soufflé of turbot on a bed of truffled eggs and green asparagus, very soft and palatable. Or a fillet of veal baked in an herb-pistachio bisque with Pommery mustard puree and Madeira jus. Also very soft.” To spite the waiter, Levadski orders the Iberico. The ladies opposite have decided on a four-course menu. “Such a gorgeous blouse, modest, very modest and yet so smart. Not that flowery stuff for housewives and East Bloc grannies that the shops are filled with …”

  “By the way, my nephew,” the lady wearing the blouse interjects, “imagine, my nephew recently said to me, ‘Granny, you stink.’ I cried with laughter, ‘Why darling, Granny doesn’t stink, that’s perfume.’ ‘Granny, you stink,’ just imagine!”

  “Enjoy your meal,” the waiter arrives, depos
its a plate and immediately disappears again.

  “The Iberico is going to be a challenge,” thinks Levadski, admiring the dramatic composition of slices of meat and circles of smudged sauce through his magnifying glass.

  “It’s still steaming,” the ladies at the opposite table remark, an acknowledgement without envy.

  “If only my dentures would live up to the task,” Levadski whines, “they are not made for such delicacies.”

  “What kind of dentures do you have?”

  “A discontinued line.”

  “Porcelain is no good,” one of the friends remarks, “it clatters so terribly.”

  “And often cracks,” the other sighs. Levadski nods and turns to his Iberico, pure madness to order, a definite sign of his illness. While chewing, he can sense the concerned glances from the neighboring table.

  “Can you manage?” Yes, it’s manageable, the pig isn’t being too hard on him.

  “Soft as butter,” Levadski confirms. The ladies express their genuine delight and with a sense of relief continue calmly chatting about all the trivialities that seem to make them happy.

  Mollified by the tender Iberico, Levadski grants everyone their happiness. Over coffee his gaze travels from the ladies’ table to the bustling waiters, to the intently chewing restaurant guests, to the slender glass vases filled with anthuriums that remind him of polished water lily leaves with a jutting large-pored phallus. Levadski closes one eye.

  “A nice man, but the way he treats her, it’s atrocious,” the friends warble. “Today this, tomorrow that, money for everything, but she had to clean the house herself when she was in an advanced stage of pregnancy … Perhaps her obsession with shopping … What could she possibly need, she has money … Something nice to wear, makeup, the things you need as a young woman … But in an advanced stage of pregnancy, please. You just want your peace and quiet. Atrocious, I’m telling you, her husband … The crust is the best … The salt crust is melting … On your blouse, darling …”