Caging Skies

by Christine Leunens

  What I saw became a banal sight by the end of that day. The occupiers were leaving for good, going back home where they belonged, and taking with them whatever they considered a souvenir, or had grown attached to over the past ten years and couldn't bear to part with, or felt they were entitled to for their long service — meaning whatever wasn't nailed down. No, I take that back: including what was nailed down. I saw Russian officers who, with the help of their troops, left hotels bearing antique beds, consoles, paintings, lamps, lion-footed bathtubs, marble basins. Even more unexpected, I saw the Americans doing exactly the same. The Austrians threw tantrums, insulted them no end, but were treated as ungrateful runts, and, if they got too out of control, given a knock or two with the butt of a machine-gun — just a little reminder of the recognition due to them.

  I saw one troop of Americans — and this is no exaggeration, though it will sound grotesque — carrying off war material from centuries earlier: cannon, armour, lances, medieval flags. I don't know where they got their hands on these, perhaps in someone's mansion or in a museum; in any case, they no doubt found themselves back in a mansion or museum somewhere over there.

  The general mood wasn't as bad as I make it seem; after all, not all Austrians had what it took to be ransacked: desirable possessions. Ecstatic people were flooding the streets. The postwar period was over. Strangers kissed strangers, linked their elbows, danced in circles, worn-down shoes kicked high in the air. People threw confetti from their windows, the throngs in the streets shouted up to those on their balconies to jump down, holding jackets out to soften landings. The clapping and cheering were deafening. Not fond of crowds any more, I thought it best to get back before I got stuck in the celebration.

  At home, yet another surprise awaited me: an orange banner strung across one of the windows with 'Sold' in bold black letters. I was hoping it wasn't a mistake — someone confusing our house with another, or, worse, some bailiff having sold it out from under me. Nervously, I wondered if Madeleine could have seen it, and then, even more paranoid, whether she wasn't behind it somehow. Two men emerged from the back yard. I recognised the real estate agent I hadn't seen for ages, and the architect.

  'Seen the good news?' Herr Eichel asked, as casually as if we'd seen each other yesterday.

  'I have.' I said it with rancour.

  'If you really want to know, I tried to dissuade him, but I couldn't talk any sense into the man. Yours. His. What's the point with the big toot and bang of everyone leaving? I guarantee you the Russians will be back before you can scratch your rear end with the first coin. Then it won't be his any more than it'll be mine.'

  The architect found this hilarious. 'That's a bunch of cow manure,' he retorted, and turned to confide in me in an undertone meant to gain all the more attention, 'I called Herr Eichel hoping it hadn't been sold after all this time, but knowing the chances must be zero. Lucky for me, the common lot has no taste. Don't believe what he or anyone else is saying.'

  Herr Eichel used a side swing of his foot to decapitate mushrooms that had infested our garden. 'Being the owner of a property like this could play against you if the tide turns. You're not afraid?' he challenged the buyer with a smug smile.

  'Yes, actually I am. Of another of your red-tide metaphors.'

  'Okay, okay. You know the old saying: you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it drink. Herr Betzler, come by my office tomorrow morning. Ten, okay? We'll take care of the formalities. Make all this official. Not that the notion of private property is going to last long with the commies coming . . .'

  The architect was only too glad to see him go. Circling around the house, he got on my nerves by, ironically enough, admiring every angle of it. He pointed to where O5 had been painted over and asked me if that smudge over there didn't come from a medallion bearing a coat of arms that had once distinguished the rear façade. I told him he was perfectly right and he was proud to think he'd restored another fragment of the abode's history.

  He pointed up to Elsa's window. 'I'm going to rent out that room and the one next to it to students. They're reliable, usually stay until the end of the year. One down, I'll rent out to professionals needing a foothold in Vienna. I'll have the ground floor to myself. If I get rid of the staircase and build one in pine out here, put up a plaster wall, I won't see the renters going up and down. In fact, we'll have separate entrances. I'll just open up right here.' With his finger, he signalled where he could cut the wall. 'Their rent will pay for the renovation. And I'll have to put a toilet and a sink on each floor for the renters.' He fished his business card out of his back pocket and jotted down some notes.

  I twiddled with my handkerchief, not knowing what to say. I tried to come up with any phrase — a banal one, a grunt of agreement — but nothing was able to make itself out of my throat.

  'Back here, I'll get rid of the garden,' he went on. 'It's a lot of maintenance. Run some cement over it, make it a carpark. People will start being able to afford cars again. You know, with all that's happening, Vienna will soon be enjoying a golden era for artists, investors like us. A renaissance. Imagine, the opera soon opening! Would you have believed it just two years ago — Austria in the United Nations? Ten years of blasted foreigners telling us what to do: I tell you, Austria's ready to take its destiny into its own hands. The horizon's blue.'

  'Sounds nice.'

  Perceiving my ill disposition, he misunderstood. 'You're selling to build a hotel on Parkring, Herr Eichel told me? This is one of the secondary residences you inherited?'

  So that's what Herr Eichel had told him. I made myself straighten my shoulders. 'Yes, that's right. In fact, I must go now and look over the plans. If you'll excuse me.'

  The grand tale of the hotel on Parkring made the state of my finances seem all the more parlous and I began to fear the deal would fall through. But it didn't, and the sale price made my spirits soar. When I was a boy, it would've made us sound like millionaires, but I learned the hard way that figures are relative. It was only when I went to buy another dwelling that I realised the truth. True, the proceeds of the sale would've enabled me to buy a smaller house in good shape, but there was another problem I hadn't thought of until then. If I put everything I had into another house, there would be no cash in hand to cover the daily cost of living. Experience had taught me how much this could add up to, and how rapidly. I was thus forced to give up the idea of buying another house and look rather at flats. A large flat was nearly as expensive as a small house, sometimes more so, depending on the neighbourhood.

  I calculated and recalculated, drew up budgets, made them tighter and tighter. A nice flat in a chic quarter would mean living meagrely inside grand walls. A modest flat in a bad district would give us financial freedom, time for me to find some way to get back on my feet. The older buildings were dark and pockmarked by the Russians, but the recently built ones were so cheaply constructed, block-like and utilitarian, they were eyesores. Poor immigrants sat on their doorsteps, leaned out their windowsills, smoking cigarettes, watching life go by. Children didn't have the look of children — they were little disenchanted adults, playing as routinely as if going to work. Even the cats and dogs slipping in and out had that dishonest look to them.

  Going up a communal staircase was an adventure on its own, stepping over broken toys, turning sideways if I happened to encounter someone coming down, watching out for carpet not properly nailed down. Some had lights that turned off automatically, so I had to feel my way back down in the dark to press the button again. The smells of cooking brought about unwanted intimacy with the family behind each door. The same held true with the sounds of babies crying, old folks coughing, and the unbearable sound of those aged in-between: mattress springs squeaking. I already missed the privacy of our home.

  The descriptions in ads were full of white lies — dirty ones at that. I read of tiled stoves and bathtubs, but one tiled stove I saw was so rickety and soot-stained, a small log would have had to be cut into five to get in the ha
tch. Burning, it would have thrown out as much heat as a match consuming itself in an ashtray. Some of the baths were so small, your chin would have been on your knees — if you had the heart to get in in the first place, with the rust beard under the tap as long as Old Man Time's. You couldn't help but wonder if someone hadn't been murdered there.

  I had more important considerations than aesthetics and space. In each flat I walked over to all the windows and looked out carefully. There were few places with no building across the street, and those that didn't would probably not stay that way for long. Being able to see other people was, in my opinion, almost like living with them, and this wouldn't do with Elsa. One building was so close, the woman opposite and I could have reached out our arms to shake hands. I recall a flat with a kitchen window perpendicular to one belonging to another family whose radio antenna was sticking out, while newfangled music was being emitted with the moronic lyrics of no human language (but perhaps a human baby's): 'Be bo pa lu la!' — and then in total rupture, the news came on.

  Packing was a pain in the neck. I thought I'd sold most of what we had, because our place looked empty. That was before I grouped together what was left and tried to fit it into the flaking leather suitcases that had been Pimmichen's. What was left represented fifty times that amount. I went around from the tobacco shop to the fruit stand to the bookshop asking for boxes. I didn't know it would end up being a treasure hunt.

  Then there was the question of Elsa's paintings. We had no room in what was to be our new home, and couldn't afford to rent storage space. I don't think Elsa imagined just how many had accumulated under our feet. I couldn't bring myself to throw them away, which maybe was good, because anyway, the city dump would never accept such a mountain of bric-a-brac — enough to fill two rubbish trucks. Throwing them out a few at a time would have attracted less attention, but I would have had to start years earlier. In two days the architect would be at the door with his own truckload of belongings.

  I could possibly leave everything where it was without saying a word, though the idea made me edgy, as if that would mean leaving behind traces of a crime. I was getting too old for all this. Enemies lurked everywhere, wanting to steal Elsa from me — spying eyes, dallying ears. I longed for a normal, prosaic life with her. It was time for us to live outside the fantasies we'd given life to in our juvenile minds.

  Elsa beamed at the stacked boxes like a child who saw a predicted avalanche as recreation, while adults sat in a shelter, sick with apprehension.

  'You're not going to leave me behind?' she asked excitedly, as if she were hoping I would.

  I stroked her coarse hair. 'Elsa, I want our future relationship to be full of truth, honesty, mutual trust.'

  'Oh, how boring! Don't promise me that! Holy Moses! I've lied to you too, before — what do you think? Do you think a man and a woman can be one hundred per cent honest to each other? Only truth, truth, truth and more of the boring truth? What do you want to do, kill all the mystery, the charm?'

  I didn't recognise her face as she spoke these words, nor her manners. She tossed her hand about superficially, not to mention her chin, which had long become a double chin, so that she was transforming into a spoiled angel before my eyes. Her face had a cynical smirk to it like Madeleine's — heavy-lidded, whorish, which I'd never known existed anywhere in her. Sure, such attitudes were taking hold in those days, among the wrong kind of women seeking their so-called emancipation, but I'd never expected Elsa to act that way. More than anything else, though, it was her words that scandalised me.

  'You've lied to me before?'

  'Of course I have.' She fluttered her eyelids. 'How can you expect me to hurt your feelings day in and day out with the absolute truth? Can you imagine how life would be? How did you sleep, honey? Horribly. You snored like a Schwein; I could've killed you. Did you miss me? Not one bit, the time flew by, I reminisced the whole while about my first love. Why are you with me? Who else would see me as a giant? Who else would see me? I've no one left! Can you imagine how abominable it would be living among the razor-sharp blades of truth? If you could read each other's mind all of the time? How would you feel if you knew I'd lain with you thinking you were another man?'

  My lies were all of a sudden petty next to hers. I'd even say that my lies, next to hers, were proof of love.

  She continued. 'I'm sure you've done the same — of course you have. You can't tell me I was never Petra?'

  'Yes, I can. I swear it on my mother's memory!'

  'Oh, come on, Johannes. It's one of the cruel facts of life — the whole world knows it, generation after generation, but no one ever wants to admit it. It's a collective lie. Perhaps a better way of defining mankind, humanity, than "the maker of tools". That's right, "the maker of lies". Now come on, you can admit it to me, I won't be offended. Never have I been someone else? Never have my breasts been slightly modified? When you've closed your eyes, have I never had another face? Was I a nurse? A school teacher? I know. Madeleine. You can say it.'

  'Never. You've always been you! Worn your own face, your own name and your own body parts!'

  By then I was pale with fury, which seemed to please her no end. It was as if I'd been freed from a spell, a curse, for I was able to look down at her roaming hands having no effect whatsoever on me, not even as they made their way up my legs to that part of me usually most willing to make up. I was about to walk away but some nagging curiosity tempted me to check if what she was dissimulating was true. I probed her genitalia like a gynaecologist for the truth — that was one narrow portion of her that could not lie. Her desire was authentic, which I hadn't expected. My cold medical attitude was, in fact, enhancing her lust for me. I found myself staring at her with utter hatred. 'So, tell me. Who am I now?'

  She bit my lips, dug her nails into my torso as if she'd gone mad. Her inflictions of pain were increasingly sadistic but I did my best not to flinch. 'Finally, a man . . . a Mensch,' she said, squeezing my testicles with undue pressure.

  If I let myself fall, it was only to test her, though pain must have played a part too. I observed her. Her eyes were closed as she inflicted her minor tortures.

  'Open your eyes!' She did so with that gleaming, whorish face I disapproved of. 'Look at me, I said! Here! At me! Don't you dare!' I made her take a good look at my genitals from front view and then profile, and applied pressure to her temples so her eyes would open wider. My own were hard, menacing. 'Chase him away or I'll kill you with him! If I catch you transforming a fraction of me into someone else . . . A fraction!' I prodded her eye sockets with my penis.

  It all ended up more like wrestling, fighting, hurting, than love. When this ugly act of domination or whatever it was drew to a close, Elsa twisted a lock of my hair around her finger. 'I know you love me, Johannes. At times I think I don't deserve you. I'm a bad person.'

  I lifted an eyebrow for the apology I felt I deserved. 'Oh, really? And why's that?'

  'Well, I wonder, oh, just sometimes, from time to time . . .'

  'Yes? Sometimes, from time to time . . .'

  'Well.' She paused and fingered the flooring, where a rough relief of a chessboard pattern was left from all the tiles having been dislodged. 'If, well . . . with all you've sacrificed, risked, done and lost for me. And the way I've tortured you. You and I both know I've tortured you.'

  'My body seems to have a fresh memory of it.'

  'It's just, if the truth ever came out . . . All the truth. Who I am, inside and out. Who you are, inside and out. All about us and our real place in the world . . . The big beautiful truth, the big ugly truth. Remember what you once said to me when I lost all reason and will to live? Truth is a dangerous notion you don't need to live.' She seemed to relish the word 'truth' each time she spoke it, rolling the 'r' on her palate like fine wine.

  How much did she really know? How much did she refuse to know? Was she telling me her gruesome lies so that I'd own up to mine? Or just the opposite: giving me permission not to? As her protector,
I excited her. As an ordinary companion, I'd bore her. From heroic and powerful, I would shrink to a mere man who needed her. She needed to need me to want me. I needed to own up to the truth, for my sake, but had to test the terrain first.

  I murmured, 'I was an idiot to have said that. Lies are like easy friends, there to help you out of troubled waters. Short term. But long term, they're traitors only there to make a wreckage out of your life . . .'

  'Many creatures take refuge in wreckage, make a home out of it. You think without a few lies here and there I could live like this? I don't know that I could. Wouldn't I just fly away? I mean, make a go of it, like that little bird out the window, away, keep flying to the end of the world, no thank you, no nothing, no redeeming me, no redeeming you, no looking back, no, not once, just flappity flap flap.'

  Her thumbs were hooked beneath her underarms in an effort to turn her arms into wings that she beat up and down, a glow in her cheeks, a sharp, wild light in her eyes. 'And then outside reality hits, fanged freedom. A mind heavy with thoughts, a soul heavy with guilt. No one to take it out on but me. No one to torture and drive mad but me. It's a long drop from the sky.' She whistled down the scale. 'To hit earth a fan of bones and feathers. No, Johannes, I warn you, keep the truth to yourself if you care to keep me.'

  ***

  The trunk was ready. No man would ever lay his dirty eyes on Elsa besides me. Nor would she lay her eyes on any man but me. I'd suffocate her in love if that's what she needed to love, desire me. I held the lid open for her to step inside. I'd lined it with duvets, drilled holes in it for her to breathe through. From her furtive glances, I saw how insecure she was after what she'd admitted, perhaps sizing up whether or not I'd dump her in the Danube. She stalled for time. It wasn't easy for her to get comfortable, especially with the extra weight she'd put on. Her legs, short as they were, were too long for her to cuddle up on her side, and on her back, her knees had to bend to press down on her chest, her neck bend sharply. I adjusted the linings, told her not to worry, and turned the key.