Who Is Martha?

by Marjana Gaponenko

  “Would you like your dentures?” Habib whispers through the slit in the door. In the background the second movement of the Ninth is budding, bees with bodies of metal plate, loaded with pollen of fine iron dust, smashed to pieces on the buds that turn into the flowers of a thorny violin shrub.

  “Thank you, I bathe without my dentures.”

  Habib leaves. Levadski falls asleep. He falls asleep and wakes up as an organ grinder. It is winter. Large snow-flakes are hovering around the street lamps and bare branches, a snowflake chases a matron’s behind. There is a hum in the air. His hat in front of him on the ground, Levadski starts to grind his organ. A few snowflakes hover around the emptiness in his hat. Levadski carries on grinding – the day has just begun. Soon some change is thrown into his hat. He carries on grinding, gives a nod of thanks for the coins thrown to him by strangers. The lady with the enormous behind is also a welcome sight, her beauty spot compensated for by her head, so like a bird’s. A parakeet. How charming, Levadski is pleased, and how practical: arms for grasping, a beak for pecking. A bee-eating couple walks past him, colorful like all coraciiformes. If they were not so lovable I would be compelled to compare them to gypsies, thinks Levadski. The woman promptly turns around and, on the attack, spits a curse at him: Eat and be eaten! Shove off, Levadski says to the wicked woman in his mind. Darling, what’s keeping you? her husband, who is standing a little to one side, asks in a guttural display of courtship. Brup-brup-brup, I am coming! the female calls to him. Brhxssrrhhhr! she hurls in the direction of Levadski. No understand, he retorts unmoved. You racist dog! the bee-eater hisses and turns back to her husband. Levadski carries on grinding his organ, he cranks and cranks, and then he sees that his organ is a cat he’s pulling by the tail. He carries on cranking, for he wants to earn money, after all. He tries to play Adieu, mein kleiner Gardeoffizier on the cat, and immediately the cat turns into his mother’s meatgrinder. But Levadski won’t be misled. He cranks and cranks. He cranks until the meatgrinder turns into a coffin, beneath the glass lid of which he recognizes his mother’s features. And still, he carries on cranking. He plays his song until he collapses.

  When Habib helps him out of the cold water, Levadski is ashamed of the joy he feels at the thought of having caught a cold or even pneumonia. It would be simple if he could outsmart the cancer like that. Without any ado, without a battle. Like a lethargic woman, like an Ophelia, Levadski feels like a corpse floating in the water, when Habib, turning a blind eye, holds an outstretched bath towel before him.

  “You know, Habib, there is everything in nature, murder, premeditated and otherwise, hunger and plenty, yet more murder of all stripes. The only thing that doesn’t exist is prejudice. I have just been thinking,” Levadski slips into the bathrobe, “that human thought has produced nothing more unnatural than prejudice.” Habib smiles out of the corner of his mouth. “I mean, of what good is it to the human species? Does it get us anywhere? No.” Habib nods. “Is there any sense in which it is a precautionary measure for survival? No, for we know the truth in our hearts.” Habib nods twice. “Prejudices don’t even have an evolutionary selective meaning. So where do they stem from?” Habib shrugs his shoulders. Levadski raps a finger on his skull. “From a sick brain, my friend. What do you think of gypsies?”

  “Me?”

  “Yes, you, Habib!”

  “In a course I attended for hotel personnel on etiquette, how kind of you to mention it, it was recently explained to us that you can’t call gypsies ‘gypsies’ anymore. They are ‘travelers.’”

  “How silly …” The bathrobe is too big or Levadski too scrawny. “How heavy the bathrobe is,” he says to Habib. Habib guides Levadski to one of the armchairs.

  “Travelers or Sinti and Roma,” the butler adds with a concerned expression.

  “Not everything at once, at least,” Levadski wheezes and takes a seat. “Who came up with the idea?”

  “The Minister of Culture?” Habib suggests, liberating himself from Levadski’s damp claws. Levadski shakes his head.

  “The purists, more likely. It’s laughable. When gypsy is actually a beautiful word.” Habib agrees with Levadski. You could hear guitar chords and the crackling of a fire at the word “gypsy.”

  “The gypsies,” Levadski turns his gaze away from the mountain melting in the sun, behind which he presumes Habib is standing. “Gypsies are like coraciiformes: powerful torso, short neck, large head, beaks long and pressed flat. I mean the bird.” The mountain bows its peak. “I bet,” Levadski smiles, glancing over at the bedside table where his dentures have sunk to the bottom of the water glass, “I bet the gypsies, in the course of their cultural history, held in high esteem and imitated the order of coraciiformes, particularly the kingfisher. After all, the coraciiformes and the gypsies are the most colorful birds there are. Seven families: kingfishers, motmots, rollers, bee-eaters, hornbills, hoopoe and todies!” There are three fingers remaining on Levadski’s right hand when he counts them up. “Oh!” Levadski exclaims, “I have just thought of a comparison – the seven famous gypsy clans. Hhm. Or was it the twelve tribes of Israel?”

  “I don’t know, I am from Palestine,” Habib admits.

  “I don’t know my way around history either,” Levadski confesses. “One thing is certain, prejudices get in everyone’s way.” Habib gives a lively nod in agreement with Levadski. Geologically, birds have been around for longer than we have, they are more deserving of paradise than we are! Habib makes a helpless gesture with his hand. “No gray hawk says to a fire-gold three-toed kingfisher: you are too colorful for me. No!”

  “No,” Habib repeats.

  “He just gobbles him up in silence, for it is the hawk’s nature. His thought and action are in tune with the laws of the cosmos, my dear Habib.”

  “He gobbles him up?”

  “Of course, and doesn’t even say thank you. To whom and for what? Animals don’t waste unnecessary words, that’s for sure. I, for example …,” Levadski asks Habib to take a seat on the sofa, “I myself am not a bird. I would like to be one, but then I wouldn’t be able to appreciate the advantages of my bird existence. I would know how to use it, but not how to contemplate it.” Levadski leans over towards the butler sitting stiffly. “I have to admit to you, Habib, deep inside me, when I saw you, I felt a kind of uneasiness, a prejudice against your dark skin.” With a light gesture Levadski scatters ash on his head. Habib blinks in hopeful expectation that he will carry on. “You have to understand me, in the region where I’m from, you hardly see people with your skin tone. I was also not used to …”

  “You should see one of the waiters in our restaurant, he’s from Ghana. That’s what I call black. In comparison, I’m pale as a mealworm.” Levadski laughs. “We have learned,” Habib scratches his chest through his shirt, “that Negros are now called people of color.”

  “Negro is a beautiful word!” Levadski says outraged.

  “You can’t say it anymore.”

  “Nonsense, that would mean the negrofinch would have to be renamed colored finch, those magnificent birds. What happens to the nigrita bicolor and the gray-headed negrofinch?”

  “The purists, or whatever they are called,” sighs Habib.

  “Yes. The purists, those scoundrels, as if there weren’t anything better to do. Ask your colleague in the restaurant, or even better, I will ask him myself, what he thinks of the phrase ‘people of color.’”

  “Better not!” Habib blinks his eyes, “it sounds so offensive.”

  “Exactly, it sounds offensive.”

  “I mean the question, it might upset him …” Habib clenches his lips, leaving only a small line visible.

  “Oh!” says Levadski putting a hand to his brow, “that is true. We don’t need to ask, do we Habib, since as human beings we already know the answer.” Habib nods, relieved. Levadski continues: “Your colleague from the restaurant, did he have color poured on him? No. Is he green, red, yellow or blue? No. He is plain and simply black.”

 
; “Yes,” Habib nods, “he is black.”

  “That’s why,” Levadski folds his hands as if in conclusion, “the word negro, black person if you like, is more apt. I would like to know since when has Latin been abolished? Has it been abolished?”

  “Not as far as I know!” Habib shakes his head.

  “Perhaps everything is a question of familiarization. Just as I have grown accustomed to your exotic face, I will one day no longer be offended by the word ‘colored.’ That’s fine. It’s just the bogus shame and trepidation of the purist crowd that galls me. Do you understand me, Habib?” Habib understands Levadski. He is impatiently sliding around on the sofa. “Perhaps the battle against prejudices is begun on the level of vocabulary and only afterwards on all other fronts?” Levadski looks through Habib and closes one eye. “You probably also have prejudices against us in your homeland, don’t you, Habib?” That we are white, gluttons, and above all, that we have good doctors and achieve a ripe old age?” Habib smiles.

  “White and gluttonous is just an image, like black and sand-covered. And old age – my grandmother also lived to a ripe old age,” Habib grins more broadly, “but only because she didn’t have any decent doctors.”

  2

  Zimmer / Room 202–235

  STRANGE BOY, NOW HE IS SITTING IN MY SUITE AND IRONing my shirts, polishing my spare pair of shoes … Levadski presses the familiar elevator button which instantly turns into a coral colored square devil’s eye. “Greetings from hell” is what Levadski christens the button. His thoughts drift to the butler again. Which newspaper would I like to read, he asked. He would iron it for me, too! The elevator door opens, a couple, locking hands, staggers past Levadski, exuding a faint smell of fish.

  Levadski gets into the elevator, his stomach rumbling. Today he would manage to make it to the buffet breakfast in time. He pulls his magnifying glass from his pocket and looks at his watch. His watch says a quarter to one. “Oh!” says Levadski, startled. Beside him hovers the hair-less skull of a gentleman who doesn’t appear to be much younger, but is at least eight inches taller than Levadski.

  “Good morning,” says the stranger. Levadski returns the greeting by smiling weakly and pointing at his watch. “I didn’t want to give you a fright,” the elegant gentleman says, passing his stick back and forth between his hands.

  “Where are you going?”

  “To breakfast.”

  “Then let’s get moving. Just one floor.”

  “I should really tackle it on foot,” says Levadski.

  “Witzturn,” the stranger introduces himself. Levadski shakes his hand and gives his name. “Go ahead, Mr. Levadski,” Mr. Witzturn says when the elevator door opens, “youth first!”

  “After you, dear sir.” With the silver handle of his stick, Levadski signals at a small party of hotel guests who are waiting in front of the elevator door. But Mr. Witzturn wouldn’t dream of conceding.

  “I am standing my ground,” he says to those waiting. The door slowly closes.

  “Excuse me,” Mr. Witzturn says, turning to Levadski, who is in a huff, “I feel that I am in the right, as I am the older of the two of us.”

  “Your feelings deceive you,” Levadski mumbles.

  “My feelings can’t deceive me,” Mr. Witzturn growls, wetting his finger and smoothing down his right eyebrow in the mirror.

  A pretty boy, thinks Levadski, as smooth as an egg. How old can he be? Eighty, eighty-five at the most!

  “That I don’t have any wrinkles in my face can be explained by cortisone,” Mr. Witzturn explained.

  While Levadski tries to remember in what connection he has heard the word cortisone before, the elevator door opens again. “Third floor,” Mr. Witzturn says indifferently. “What I actually wanted to do was have breakfast.”

  “Then let’s go!” Levadski tries to hit G with the handle of his stick. After missing several times he finally succeeds.

  “Bravo!” Mr. Witzturn says in praise and unsarcastically, and suggests stepping out of the elevator at the same time.

  Behind the opening door a tastefully dressed lady with a poodle in her arms stands waiting, its white locks accentuating the pallor of her complexion. If it were black, she would be really elegant, twitches in Levadski’s head.

  “I will count, one …” Mr. Witzturn counts, “and then we will step out into the open at the same time, two, three!”

  “What a song and dance!” Levadski complains, after the elevator has swallowed the lady with the poodle.

  “You are the one who insisted,” Mr. Witzturn pants, emphasizing you.

  “Well, well!” says Levadski, scraping his walking stick on the carpet, “our little trip has evidently made you very tired, you are out of breath.” Mr. Witzturn purses his lips.

  “I was counting and concentrating, that’s all. Some-body had to put an end to this schoolboy prank.”

  “I am not the one who started it,” Levadski said, looking longingly at the door of the café.

  “Mr. Levadski!”

  “Levadski, if you please.”

  “Mr. Levadski, I am going through that door now,” Mr. Witzturn signals in the direction of the café, “and I am going to devote myself to the reason why I made the effort this morning of shaving and getting dressed, forcing myself into my shoes and taking part in this unnecessary riding up and down. I am going to devote myself to my breakfast. I wish you a good day.”

  “Be my guest,” Levadski’s open hand points towards the door.

  Mr. Witzturn clatters past the illuminated display cabinets with his stick. “Youth first!” Levadski whispers after him. The narrow back stops as if rooted to the spot and then sets off again a moment later. Levadski waits for the door to stop swinging. Yesterday’s waiters dart back and forth behind the milky glass of the café door. In the engraved coat of arms a lion and a stag dig their claws into each other, which stops them from keeling over.

  He went left, so I will go right, thinks Levadski, grabbing the door handle. A wall of laughter mounts in front of him, the room to the right is filled with chubby grayhaired women who have strategically sat themselves close to the buffet. “I am sorry,” the waiter says regretfully, recognizing Levadski. “Good day, I am sorry, but we have a group of Americans.”

  “A gripe?” The shrieking wall is collapsing in on the waiter and Levadski.

  “No, a tourist party!” It is of no significance, he will find a table, Levadski says cheerily.

  “Coffee, like yesterday?” Levadski nods.

  “I will bring it to your table!” the waiter promises, and is gone.

  The room next door is filled with the sound of Mr. Witzturn’s rustling newspaper and the clatter of a female creature’s cutlery, who has not made a particularly convincing attempt at piling up her thin hair. “We should consider ourselves lucky for both having that one thing less to worry about,” Levadski says to Mr. Witzturn’s newspaper.

  “Excuse me?” Mr. Witzturn’s striking eyes become visible above the newspaper. With the corner of his mouth, Levadski signals in the direction of the strange hairdo of the solitary lady a few tables away. “You are not only a misanthrope but a misogynist as well, Mr. Dawalski.”

  “My name is Levadski, Mr. Turnwitz. Allow me?” Levadski looks hopefully at the padded chair beside Mr. Witzturn. “Thank you,” Levadski says, before Mr. Witzturn can say Please do, and, groaning, takes a seat. Mr. Witzturn lets the business pages drop into his lap, and he gazes disappointed into the distance, into which something valuable seems to be hurrying off.

  “You are …”

  “I wanted to apologize …”

  “You are a …”

  “… for my behavior.”

  Mr. Witzturn allows the words to stand without comment. “I am a lonely old man,” Levadski continues, “and seldom among people. My social aptitude has been withering away for decades.” Mr. Witzturn listens with his head slightly cocked to one side, stroking the handle of the knife lying next to his empty plate. “You ha
ven’t eaten anything yet!” Levadski remarks with dismay.

  “Yes,” replies Mr. Witzturn, “I am scared of the tourist party at the buffet.”

  “Americans,” Levadski shrugs his shoulders, “we can go to the buffet together!”

  Mr. Witzturn scans the room. There is not a door in sight, so he concurs.

  “I don’t understand,” Mr. Witzturn admits, “why the fair sex give up their splendid heads of hair with age. They look like men!”

  “Who is the misogynist now?” Levadski jokes.

  “No, quite honestly, I prefer the lady over there with the ridiculous bird’s nest hairdo to those bald chickens.”

  “Olala!” Levadski says, pleased. “You are getting angry! A blessing, that the ladies are making such a racket. And if any of them had ever made an effort to learn a foreign language like German, the merry club would tear us to pieces like two old traveling clocks!”

  Mr. Witzturn closes his eyes, opens his mouth and produces a melodic barking. Levadski also laughs. Armed with his magnifying glass and giggling, he inspects the array of cold and hot dishes at the buffet table.

  “Yesterday I came down so late that although the piano was playing, breakfast was over,” says Levadski, appraising the shreds of salmon spun with dill cobwebs.

  “What did you eat, then?”

  “Cake. Chocolate cake.”

  “Not bad. Right, I am going back to the table now. I find it difficult to stand without my stick.” Levadski looks at Mr. Witzturn’s ready plate. I am not surprised, that weighs at least a kilo, he wants to say, but pulls himself together and praises the beautiful composition.

  “And the small sour pickle on the tip of the tower is the crowning glory! Good luck!”

  What shall I eat, thinks Levadski, brutally surrounded by the short-haired women. A boiled egg can turn out to be a cold hard egg, better not go for that. Fruit salad? Kid’s stuff. Vitamins have been of no use to me for ages. Venison pâté, liver pâté with green pepper, a moldy French cheese? Horseradish to go with it, a piece of bread that the waiter has hopefully presliced. Yes.