Who Is Martha?
Page 19
Joyously, as his suns speed
Hasten brothers on your way
It must be coming from the Musikverein, thinks Levadski, the singing, I can’t think of any other explanation. Unless there is an entire choir hiding in the hotel … A red feather twirls through the air, while the door of the elevator slowly closes. Or am I mistaken? Perhaps the house is on fire? A blood-bespattered bird feather and a spark of fire are not the same thing. But it is of no importance now whether it is burning.
It has been snowing on the fifth floor. Levadski gets out, his steps crunching across a carpet of feathers. It was most likely the barman who wanted to surprise me, Levadski is amazed. Who else would have emptied so many pillows onto the floor? Only that rascal of a bartender, wanting to give me a special treat up here on the fifth floor. As if it were my birthday! While Levadski makes a pathway for himself through the white splendor, he feels a slight apprehension. Is it really fall? If it really were my birthday today, it would have to be spring. Or, fall? Levadski remains rooted to the spot. A piece of down is stuck to his lower lip. Another piece of down covers his left eye. He wipes his jacket sleeve across his face. The feathers in the corridor have suddenly disappeared, blown away by the wind. Whether summer or winter, the reality is that the fifth floor doesn’t have any windows! How am I to look into the empty nest if there are no windows? His hand pressed to his chest, Levadski walks along the corridor. His dentures are missing. Missing, like the drinking stick he has forgotten in his room. As if he knew he could do without the services of those accessories today. Why take fright then? Not a single window, who would have thought it?
Joyously as his suns speed
Through Heaven’s glorious order
Exulting as a knight in victory
The voice of the chambermaid sounds behind one of the numerous doors. Levadski balls his hand into a fist. But he will not knock. It is joy that spreads through him like a cramp. A muscle ache such as he has never before experienced. Levadski drags himself from door to door with fists clenched in pleasure. Behind every door the chambermaid is singing. Behind every door Levadski hears her song.
Be embraced millions
Brothers above the canopy of stars
He must dwell beyond the stars
Breathing heavily, Levadski comes to a halt at the end of the corridor. There is nowhere to go from here. Or is there? A fire door stands ajar. A small stairway leads upward. The chambermaid’s singing, which seems to be coming from everywhere, blinds him, whips his eyes, his face. He wants to kneel, to fall and disappear into the ground, but he is holding onto the door handle and looking up at the top of the stairs, where in the half-darkness he can make out the oily leaves of a rubber plant and a door, which, as he observes it, slowly begins to open.
Mr. Levadski?
Yes.
Mr. Levadski, what is your first name?
Luka. Luka Stepanovich.
When were you …
Yes.
When were you born?
I don’t know.
What year?
The year that Martha died.
Who is Martha?
Her name was Martha!
Levadski is staring intently. The door slowly opens. The leaves of the rubber plant give a swaying nod.
Her name was Martha.
Who is Martha, Mr. Levadski?
The door opens wider and wider. A beam of light falls onto the floor like a panel of blond linden wood.
I don’t know.
Was Martha your mother’s name?
I don’t know.
When did Martha die?
When I was born.
When was that?
I don’t know.
Mr. Levadski?
Her name was Martha. Levadski screws up his eyes. He wants to see further, deeper, behind the light bursting through the open door. And further still. Further than possible. Further than conceivable.
Mr. Levadski?
Her name was Martha, Martha! Levadski bows in front of the pane of glass separating him from the girl, and throws up. Her name was Martha, Martha. And throws up. Martha, her name was Martha. Levadski throws up in front of Martha, a second before the man with the moustache kisses her hand, in front of the chocolate cake, the cake that remains untouched, in front of the girl’s eyes, eyes that penetrate everything, the window pane, Levadski, hunched over, who can’t stop vomiting, can’t stop turning his insides out.
Mr. Levadski?
Yes.
You were born on?
Yes.
You were born?
Mr. Levadski?
Mr. …
I owe my inspiration and ideas to:
Malcolm Tait, Olive Tayler: Vögel, Geflügelte Wunder, fantastische Schwärmereien und ordentlichen Ornithologie. Translated from the English and edited by Arnulf Conradi. With a foreword by Hark Bohm. Hamburg: Hoffmann und Campe 2008; Pascal Picq: Die schönste Geschichte der Tiere. Von den Geheimnissen des Lebens. Translated from the French by Friedel Schröder and Marita Kluxen-Schrö-der. Berglisch Gladbach: Lübbe 2001; Peter Hayman, Philip Burton: Das goldene Kosmos-Vogelbuch. Europas Vö-gel – bestimmen verstehen schützen. Kosmos Gesellschaft für Naturfreunde 1988; Das Reader’s Digest Buch der Vo-gelwelt Mitteleuropas. Stuttgart: Verlag Das Beste 1973; Bernhard Grzimek (Editor): Grzimeks Tierleben. Enzyklo-pädie des Tierreichs. Volumes. 7, 8, 9. Zurich: Kindler 1968ff.; E. Thomas Gilliard, Georg Steinbacher: Vögel. Knaurs Tierreich in Farben. München, Zurich: Droemer-sche Verlagsanstalt 1959; Karl von Frisch; Verständliche Wissenschaft. Volume 1: Aus dem Leben der Bienen. Berlin: Verlag Julius Springer 1927; Karl Krall: Denkende Tiere. Beiträge zur Tierseelenkunde auf Grund eigener Versuche. Leipzig: Verlag Friedrich Engelmann 1912; Claus Obalski (Editor): Taktlosigkeiten, Komponisten als Kritiker. Mu-nich: Obalski & Astor 1986; Alfred Brendel: Nachdenken über Musik. With an interview by Jeremy Siepmann. Mu-nich: Piper 1977 Das groȕe Buch der Musik. Freiburg i.B.: Herder 1962.
I CALLED HIM NECKTIE BY MILENA MICHIKO FLAŠAR
Twenty-year-old Taguchi Hiro has spent the last two years of his life living as a hikikomori—a shut-in who never leaves his room and has no human interaction—in his parents’ home in Tokyo. As Hiro tentatively decides to reenter the world, he spends his days3 observing life from a park bench. Gradually he makes friends with Ohara Tetsu, a salaryman who has lost his job. The two discover in their sadness a common bond. This beautiful novel is moving, unforgettable, and full of surprises.
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GUYS LIKE ME BY DOMINIQUE FABRE
Dominique Fabre, born in Paris and a life-long resident of the city, exposes the shad-owy, anonymous lives of many who inhabit the French capital. In this quiet, subdued tale, a middle-aged office worker, divorced and alienated from his only son, meets up with two childhood friends who are similarly adrift. He’s looking for a second act to his mournful life, seeking the harbor of love and a true connection with his son. Set in palpably real Paris streets that feel miles away from the City of Light, a stirring novel of regret and absence, yet not without a glimmer of hope.
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ALL BACKS WERE TURNED BY MAREK HLASKO
Two desperate friends – on the edge of the law – travel to the southern Israeli city of Eilat to find work. There, Dov Ben Dov, the hand-some native Israeli with a reputation for causing trouble, and Israel, his sidekick, stay with Ben Dov’s younger brother, Little Dov, who has enough trouble of his own. Local toughs are encroaching on Little Dov’s business, and he enlists his older brother to drive them away. It doesn’t help that a beautiful German widow is rooming next door. A story of passion, deception, violence, and betrayal, conveyed in hard-boiled prose reminiscent of Hammett and Chandler. n this quiet, subdued
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COCAINE BY PITIGRILLI
Paris in the 1920s – dizzy and decadent. Where a young man can make a fortune with his wits … unless he is led into temptation. C
ocaine’s dandified hero Tito Arnaudi invents lurid scandals and gruesome deaths, and sells these stories to the newspapers. But his own life becomes even more outrageous when he acquires three demanding mistresses. Elegant, witty and wicked, Pitigrilli’s classic novel was first published in Italian in 1921 and retains its venom even today.
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THE GOOD LIFE ELSEWHERE BY VLADIMIR LORCHENKOV
The very funny -and very sad -story of a group of villagers and their tragicomic efforts to emigrate from Europe’s most impoverished nation to Italy for work. An Orthodox priest is deserted by his wife for an art-dealing atheist; a mechanic redesigns his tractor for travel by air and sea; and thousands of villagers take to the road on a modern-day religious crusade to make it to the Italian Promised Land. A country where 25 percent of its population works abroad, remittances make up nearly 40 percent of GDP, and alcohol consumption per capita is the world’s highest – Moldova surely has its problems. But, as Lorchenkov vividly shows, it’s also a country whose residents don’t give up easily.
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FANNY VON ARNSTEIN: DAUGHTER OF THE ENLIGHTENMENT BY HILDE SPIEL
In 1776 Fanny von Arnstein, the daughter of the Jewish master of the royal mint in Berlin, came to Vienna as an 18-year-old bride. She married a financier to the Austro-Hungari-an imperial court, and hosted an ever more splendid salon which attracted luminaries of the day. Spiel’s elegantly written and carefully researched biography provides a vivid portrait of a passionate woman who advocated for the rights of Jews, and illuminates a central era in European cultural and social history.
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KILLING THE SECOND DOG BY MAREK HLASKO
Two down-and-out Polish con men living in Israel in the 1950s scam an American widow visiting the country. Robert, who masterminds the scheme, and Jacob, who acts it out, are tough, desperate men, exiled from their native land and adrift in the hot, nasty underworld of Tel Aviv. Robert arranges for Jacob to run into the widow who has enough trouble with her young son to keep her occupied all day. What follows is a story of romance, deception, cruelty and shame. Hlasko’s writing combines brutal realism with smoky, hardboiled dialogue, in a bleak world where violence is the norm and love is often only an act.
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THE MISSING YEAR OF JUAN SALVATIERRA BY PEDRO MAIRAL
At the age of nine, Juan Salvatierra became mute following a horse riding accident. At twenty, he began secretly painting a series of canvases on which he detailed six decades of life in his village on Argentina’s frontier with Uruguay. After his death, his sons return to deal with their inheritance: a shed packed with rolls over two miles long. But an essential roll is missing. A search ensues that illuminates links between art and life, with past family secrets casting their shadows on the present.
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SOME DAY BY SHEMI ZARHIN
On the shores of Israel’s Sea of Galilee lies the city of Tiberias, a place bursting with sexuality and longing for love. The air is saturated with smells of cooking and passion. Some Day is a gripping family saga, a sensual and emotional feast that plays out over decades. This is an enchanting tale about tragic fates that disrupt families and break our hearts. Zarhin’s hypnotic writing renders a painfully delicious vision of individual lives behind Israel’s larger national story.
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