Who Is Martha?

by Marjana Gaponenko

  “There is nothing else I can do but trust in this clock, trust in the power of thought …” A question that loses its urgency is written in Habib’s wide-open eyes. They are hazy, dream-veiled images which remain an unfathomable secret to himself. A glance at the watch above the white glove – a day has passed, or maybe even two, and still Habib remains seated. Day after day he enters Levadski’s suite and stays sitting on a pouf with no back support, the most beautiful piece of furniture in Levadski’s suite.

  Levadski pulls his handkerchief that looks like a trampled concertina from his pocket and dries his forehead. “There is something I can’t get out of my head. Habib. It was a long time ago. I was on the way home with my mother. Sometimes we came across a farmer who let us sit up on his team of elk. The further we got, the more astonished the farmers were who gave us a ride. The elk turned into bony farm horses. Summer turned to winter. We rode on the roof of an icy train, too, but most of the time we went on foot. We walked along the snowy rails, wrapped in the furs of farm animals we had raised in a kolkhoz, fed and then skinned. We knew we had a long journey ahead of us, straight across Eurasia, you understand what that means? I was your age. Although half your size. We didn’t eat much in exile, but healthily. Mainly mare’s milk and cheese. I assume that’s why I lost my teeth when I was very old and not at the age of fifty like my colleagues.

  Levadski licks the roof of his mouth with his tongue, as if he were counting the ribs. “On one occasion, when we were following the rails, I heard a noise. The leader of a flock of swans was counting its team by pronouncing every member’s name in a wild trumpet call. Just as I turned my head towards the sky one of the swans flew into a power line. I saw it fall like a shooting star, only much more rapidly. My mother let out a cry, the swans flew on in a tapered formation in the direction of the arctic to breed, as if nothing had happened. After searching for a long time we found the swan in a boggy field. A bloody bone protruded from its feathers. It looked like a pale bellboy with a crude wooden sword. We came closer. The swan, its face distorted in fear and pain, dragged itself further and further away from us. We had no intention of catching it. It was impossible to fix it, but something forced us to follow the animal, with respect, slowly, so that it had a chance to escape. Why did we torment the bird like that? Because we were mesmerized. It was, if I may put it this way, one of the most peaceful moments in my life. How should I explain it?”

  “Your story reminds me of my father’s last days,” Habib says, clearing his throat. “I noticed he was preparing to die. It was a similar magic, a similar peace. His apathy acquired new dimensions from one day to the next. While he lay there rigidly before me and I read aloud to him, I had the feeling that my words were not falling into an empty well, as usual, but were colliding with a wall of carpet. I realized, my father was no longer listening. He no longer needed to. He no longer needed my living voice or the living word. I would have liked to feel insulted or at least sad, but something larger would not allow for this petty feeling. Now I know: it was the magic of farewell, a promise that wanted to fulfill itself far from this world. And that this promise would be of no use to me in the here and now, that was an elevating feeling. More elevating than what we call love.”

  “I presume it is the same thing.” Clouds of tenderness drift across Levadski’s moist eyes. He sees the swan, its yellow-black beak slightly parted, a wooden sword clamped beneath its arm. The bat of an eyelash, and the swan is already dragging itself across the field. “Only love can be that elevating. I am completely sure of it. Love for its own sake. Perhaps you are right, Habib, What’s in a name? Yes, what’s in a name: In the end we always mean one and the same thing. We mean well, don’t we?”

  Habib nods and gently clearing his throat, adjusts the cap already sitting perfectly on his head. “My name, for example, means Dear One, but I don’t think of that when I hear my name. Habib here, Habib there. I know people mean well. Even if I my name were Stick or Idiot, it wouldn’t bother me.”

  “You are a good person, my dear Habib. Do you mind if I call you that?”

  “No, why?”

  “Because it’s a tautology, like sweet sugar.” Once more Habib’s fingertips touch the cap on his head. The further the swan drags itself through the mud, the bigger its crushed body grows, until it gets up and stands perfectly straight – a pale bellboy with oriental eyes.

  “It would be different if you called me Habiba by mistake. For your sake, I would have to make you aware that Habiba is the feminine form of Habib. But that wouldn’t bother me either, because I would know you mean me.”

  “For my sake?”

  “Yes, because you seem to be an inquisitive person.”

  “Do you know why it is that swallows prefer to make their nests on the roof beams of horse stables?”

  “Because they like the smell of the stables?”

  “The bird’s sense of smell is only slightly developed.”

  “Then why?”

  “Perhaps it is because the horses have a calming effect on these restless birds, and there is always something to eat in a stable, loads of insects. I have always been interested in such relationships. Inquisitive or not. I have observed the finely woven fabric of the universe, thread by thread. From the insect to the swallow I found certainty that I too must belong to it.” Levadski remains still and listens to his own thoughts. “Irrespective of how lonely you might feel from time to time, irrespective.” Two floes of ice project from Habib’s rosy mouth. With arms crossed he is rocking back and forth on his seat.

  “A beautiful song is priceless. At home people like to sing, and for no particular reason. Here they point a finger at you if you think of singing in public.”

  “We should let the birds set an example! A clever soliloquy, like the birds demonstrate in song, can’t possibly harm us humans either. On the contrary. You know, Habib, if there is something I regret from the bottom of my heart, it’s that I do not sing.”

  “Why don’t you sing?”

  “It’s not that I am not enthusiastic about song. I have just always had a despondency in me that forbids me to do it. It’s clear I have always sung to myself, inside me. But it is something different when you think your own soul out loud, with the volume turned up. Birds do it, Habib, it is their way of conducting a monologue.”

  “Do they?”

  “You can bet your life. Birds innocently give their souls up to the wind and to the entire world when they sing. Their thought is anchored in the structure of the world.”

  “What about our thought?”

  “Not long ago I was on the verge of believing that human beings keep their thoughts secret from the world. Humans lie, even if they are being honest. They lie because they have fallen out of the framework of the world, from the tree of life … Only a few days ago I was convinced that human beings were worse than animals because of it. After the few chance acquaintances made under this roof – What is chance anyway, Habib? – it dawned on me that I was mistaken. We are not worse nor fundamentally very different from birds. A part of the same animate world.”

  Levadski carefully exhales. “I am not talking about externalities, Habib. At no point in evolution have we ever been able to keep up with the birds, with their hollow bones and featherweight. Just think, the Quetzalcoatlus, one of the largest flying reptiles in the Cretaceous period, had a wingspan of fifty feet and weighed as much as you do. What an astonishing experiment of nature. In comparison, the crown of creation is a laughingstock.” Habib laughs.

  “Do you mean us?”

  The picture of the swan lands in Levadski’s eye like a grain of dust. He rubs it in slow circular motions. The swan stands upright with its wooden sword beak and the tiny bellboy on its arm. Holy Mary!

  “Think about it, Habib, how many millions of years later did we arrive at the air-filled tire, when all that would have been necessary was to observe the birds more closely, to dissect them and not just eat them. We should not have stuck the feathers on our
heads as jewelry, but have examined them carefully. Or the behavior of birds, how they eat and hunt, live and breathe. A little more relaxed and patient, and I bet we would not have fallen from the tree of life so calamitously.”

  “We compensated for the fall with fantastic inventions like the telephone, refridgerator and automobile,” Habib says triumphantly. Levadski makes a dismissive gesture.

  “A product that arises out of desperation and wounded pride cannot be good. The hummingbird, the size of a bumblebee, never invented anything in its life, but in a long process has perfected itself beyond the limits of our imagination. Fifty wing beats per second! We can only wiggle our ears. But I am not talking about externalities. What is at stake is the art, the art of existence.” With a silver rippling gaze, Habib appears to be seeping into the essence of things he does not understand.

  “I must have been dazzled, believing all this time that we were different from birds. We may have invented the fridge and the telephone – perhaps that was a necessary deviation. But in doing so we took a long way around the tree of life from which we fell and to which we will hopefully return. Perhaps it really did have to happen this way.” Levadski’s voice is shaking.

  “Good things come to those who wait,” Habib says, shrugging his shoulders.

  “Now here we stand again, in front of the magic tree, the last representatives of the evolutionary line of hominids. We are so lonely, Habib.”

  “You are not lonely.”

  “We are so lonely, so terribly lonely. Like the horses, who are the last representatives of equids. Not surprising that we have fraternized with the horse. We are the last.”

  Gigantic floes of ice collide with each other in Habib’s eyes. Crystals of ice flash like daggers. With a sigh Habib lets his head drop to his shoulder.

  “Think about it, Habib, think about it, there have always been several species of humans. Neanderthals and Cro-Magnons and many others, God knows how many there really were. Now we are alone. And have been for almost 35,000 years.”

  “Not alone, no …” groans Habib.

  Levadski peers into Habib’s round face. The cawing swan with the wooden dagger beak and the bellboy on his arm drags itself to the edge of the ice floe.

  “We are the only survivors of our line of ancestors, Habib, a temporary appearance on earth.” Habib listlessly rubs his cheek against the padded shoulder of his butler jacket. The wind plays in the à-la-Liszt hairstyle of the swan. Motionless, the animal stands on the edge of the ice floe, silently snapping its wooden beak open and shut, as if in prayer. The wing on which the bellboy sleeps is a bloody bone.

  “Not alone …” Levadski hears Habib hoarsely telling the wind in defiance. “What’s in a name? You yourself said, a name is nothing. We do not bear a name, it bears us.” Habib’s voice is lost in the squawking of the seagulls.

  “Oh, Habib, you are a precious young man, you are right. Whether hominids or equids, they are only names, aren’t they.” Levadski nods and shakes off a little ice floe that is obscuring his vision. Another and another. “When I think of centaurs and sphinxes, of mythology where men and animals were one … all of it has a genuine core. The definition of animal is essentially a foolish idea. That it is a lower being, a thing, a non-person. High time we abandoned this anthropocentric way of thinking that is thousands of years old. Heaven is meant to be sublime? Don’t make me laugh.” Levadski laughs and chokes.

  “Paradise,” the butler’s voice is a brown trout, “has always been alive with animals,” a brown trout in the belly of a snake, “go to the museum if you don’t believe me.”

  The snake, like a rapid little stream, curls around Levadski’s forest hut, nuzzles up to Levadski’s mother’s feet, to the red shoes with their buckles which, blinded by the water, Levadski can’t tell if they’re rusty or golden.

  “In the museum you can see for yourself that earthly paradise has always been represented in the same way by painters of all ages and peoples: it is alive with animals.”

  Smiling, Levadski tilts his head to one side. “I won’t go to the museum any more, Habib. I believe you.”

  Chemotherapy and radiation to prolong life (several months) recommended. Severe weight loss, night sweats, fever, metastasis, feelings of faintness. In the advanced stages: metastases in the brain, liver, skeleton; skeletal pain, morphine, tablets or patch, Fentanyl, Methadone.

  What am I to do with that?

  You have the choice.

  I have nothing.

  I am fine. No complaints, nothing. I can hardly feel anything. I am a feather, I could say. Now I know what it is to molt, Professor Doctor. Experienced it myself, Professor Doctor. Levadski gropes his way to the window. That darkness has descended, he didn’t notice. Has he been sleeping? It is evening. An evening in fall, with hooded crows. Like in a coffeehouse, Levadski smiles, that’s the way they are sitting there on the branches, back to back, the hooded crows, like at tables in a coffeehouse, airing their behinds, as if they intended to pull their wallets from their plumage and pay … An evening in fall with hooded crows and a bird’s nest. Levadski picks up his opera glasses and tries to look into the crow’s nest. But his window is too low, and the nest is too high.

  Drop dead in two weeks … Habib did not say a word to that. He has always had something to say to everything, and now? Each to his own, my mother would have said. She would have removed her glasses, blinked at me through her shrunken eyes and laughed. Without glasses her eyes were naked; naked and dull. God knows whether they were green, gray or blue. But they were naked with-out glasses. As naked as I must be for others without my dentures. Where are they all? Where is Habib? Shall I ring for him?

  Levadski’s gaze wanders to the telephone and the button with the butler. On his unwavering calm hand he is balancing a tray with steaming coffee cups. Over the last few days Levadski has not pressed the button, but Habib has come anyway, appeared in the doorframe every day, swearing to the beauty of the morning. And now? Levadski pokes his head through the curtains. An illuminated streetcar with two passengers drives past: a lady with a puffball hairdo is wiping a child’s nose. A rocking horse hangs over it like a threatening cloud. A balloon on a thin thread, which Levadski can only divine from his lookout post.

  Levadski makes his way to the door. The northern bald ibis flies over the Alps, headed south. Its foster father in a small plane leading the way. Inaudible is the sound of the inner clock ticking, inaudible the turning of the propellers. He steps out. The babble of voices spreads out from the foyer over the gallery, like a scent. In two steps Levadski reaches the elevator and presses the button, keeps on pressing until the elevator arrives. The bartender with his mixing glass in hand steps aside smiling.

  “Good day, did you sleep well?” Levadski thanks him, he had a nice dream. “Which floor?”

  “Five.” The bartender smiles and lets his forefinger glide across all the buttons. A rascal, Levadski thinks.

  On the first floor the bartender gets out and turns left, shaking his glass vigorously. The chambermaid from Novi Pazar nimbly walks past the open elevator door and waves to Levadski by raising and lowering her wicker basket. It is exactly the same movement that Levadski once saw in the window of a lighthouse in a spa town on the Black Sea, shortly before a black-headed gull ripped a piece of cake from his hand. You stole my joy! he most likely shouted at it, stamping his foot, red in the face. The elevator door closes with a slight squeak, the chambermaid is singing in the corridor. Levadski can barely understand her, but he can hear her, he can make out the words: Joy. Beautiful spark of divinity? He dives towards the elevator door and presses his ear against the cool metal. He must have misheard.

  On the second floor the elevator jolts to a halt. The door opens hesitantly. If only the bartender had not pressed all the buttons, Levadski thinks. The rascal … Once more the barman is standing before him. Levadski steps aside. “Sleep well?” The bartender thanks him by giving his mixing glass a short, energetic shake.

 
“I dreamed about you,” he says, “that you honored me with a visit to the bar.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes, and then a hatch opened behind my bar that looked exactly like this elevator, and you suddenly wanted to go to your room and I accompanied you downstairs. Have you already pressed?”

  “You already pressed them – all the buttons.”

  “Nonsense, I only dusted the buttons, but now!” The bartender’s forefinger reaches towards the flat golden buttons. He hastily presses 3 and 4, applies a certain thoroughness to 5.

  The bartender gets out on the third floor. “Good luck,” he says to Levadski, rattling his mixing glass. And again the chambermaid walks past the open elevator door. Levadski looks in her basket. What is lying inside, covered by a white napkin, reminds him of raspberries. And again the oscillating motion of her hand. The chambermaid, so it seems to Levadski, turns the corner singing. The door of the elevator closes. There is no mistake, she is singing, she really is singing! Again Levadski presses his ear to the door. Along with the squeaking of the cable and the wheels he can clearly hear the chambermaid singing.

  Drunk with fiery rapture

  All men become …

  Where your gentle wing rests

  “Brothers! Brothers, it goes!” Levadski shouts, clasping his forehead. That’s the Ninth. She is singing Beethoven’s Ninth!

  All beings drink joy

  Both the good and the evil

  “Draw joy from nature’s breast,” Levadski softly joins in.

  “Be embraced, millions,” the chambermaid replies.

  “Take this kiss for all the world,” Levadski sings em-barrassed through the door crack.

  On the fourth floor there is not a soul to be seen. Levadski pokes his head out of the elevator. Only the crystal drops of the wall lights are tinkling softly. Powerful singing.