Best European Fiction 2017

by Eileen Battersby

  The next morning the young class teacher sat at the breakfast table alone. Her colleague Mrs. Dvořáková hadn’t spent the night at the hostel. She turned up around ten, just before the bus was due to leave; it was already filled with students. Hurriedly she collected her travel bag and wheeled it out. Her colleague thought how tired she looked, with no make-up and circles under her eyes; yet she looked relaxed and even-tempered, too.

  The Semotice juniors won Sunday’s district league game against Borovnice FC by three goals to one. All goals were scored by a nimble center forward called Karel Potočný, known to his teammates as Roberto Carlos, after the famous Brazilian player. In its September issue the Semotice Bulletin wrote enthusiastically of this young blond talent, calling him the team’s “most prolific attacker.”

  TRANSLATED BY ANDREW OAKLAND

  [DENMARK]

  IDA JESSEN

  Postcard to Annie

  FOR A YEAR, between the ages of eighteen and nineteen, Mie lived in an attic room on Otto Rudsgade. She had just begun Nordic Studies at the university and only by a stroke of luck had she managed to find a room with such a central location, sharing with two other girls, Bodil, who was a Christian and in her final year at the diaconal college out in Højbjerg, and Annie, who was training to be a bilingual secretary. Mie knew there were many who had to make do with living on their own in dingy basements in Viby or even as far away as Tilst, and she was very fond of her room, from where, when she opened the dormer window, leaned over the sill, and poked her head out, she could see the red rooftops of Trøjborg, the woods, and the bay of Aarhus Bugt. She had painted the sloping walls white, and painted the desk and the bookcase and the chair white, too. On the floor was a mattress, and that was all. She had her own little landing with a large cupboard and a mirror, and the landing opened out onto the hallway where there was a bathroom and a little kitchenette that were shared with the two others. She was happy about living together and had even used the word “communal” in conversation with one of the young men from her study group. “How come you’ve got three fridges, then?” he asked when she showed him the loft where they dried their clothes and stored their various oddments, and she told him she had bought hers from the previous tenant and had only paid two hundred kroner for it. Afterwards, she had a nagging feeling it had been the wrong thing to say, and not only that, but she felt that it might have been an important moment, too. Something had slipped through her hands.

  Painting her desk and the bookcase at home in her parents’ garden that summer, she had felt like she was on the verge of stepping inside a new person. In high school she had realized that academic work came easily to her, and when after three years she graduated, she was in no doubt she would go directly on to university. Her parents made tentative noises about the benefits of a gap year and seeing the world first.

  “What world?” she asked. “Isn’t Aarhus a part of it? Isn’t the university? I don’t want to waste a year doing something I don’t want to.”

  “Of course, darling, you must follow your will,” they agreed, and she could almost feel their relief at her sense of purpose. “You seem to know what you’re doing.” She pictured herself, the way she would stand in front of the mirror on the little landing as she brushed her hair, how then she would grab her bag and dash down the stairs and out onto the street, immersed in important things to come. But as yet she was only halfway in and halfway out, and most of it seemed halfway familiar. The foolishness and the embarrassment. The joy that remained hidden. The light against the wall in the mornings when she awoke. Sound had been softer this night, and she could tell without moving from the mattress that snow had fallen. It was February 21. She had to get up, her study group was meeting.

  Then came three short knocks on her door. It was Annie on her way out. Every day she said good-bye in the same way. But Bodil was still there. Mie could hear her padding about in the hallway. She wore sandals all year with bare feet and slept only four hours a night. She rode a men’s racing bike and her eyes were so blue that anyone who saw her could only imagine her being a good, intelligent, an altogether perfect person.

  Mie stayed under the covers until she could put it off no longer. She got up and took out some clean underwear from the cupboard before going to the bathroom, which was so small she had to shower with one leg on the toilet seat. When she was finished she scurried back to her room with a towel around her and got dressed. She put her books and the folder containing her notes in her bag, and meticulously brushed her wet hair. After that, she went to the kitchen to make some tea.

  Bodil was there, cutting cheese with a slicer. Her movements were vigorous, and she placed the slices in three stacks on a piece of tin foil. Mie recognized her own block of cheese. She had only bought it the day before and now Bodil’s efforts had left it miserably concave with two upturned ends of rind. It wasn’t the first time things had gone missing from her fridge, but Mie wasn’t the sort to kick up a fuss.

  “Good morning,” she said instead.

  Bodil glanced up at her and carried on slicing the cheese. “What are YOU doing up?” she asked, without returning the greeting.

  “I’ve got study group,” said Mie. “At ten o’clock.”

  “And I’m supposed to CARE, am I?” said Bodil with a grin and looked her impudently in the eye in such a way that Mie felt obliged to lower her gaze. Bodil stuffed some cheese into her mouth before folding up the parcel of tin foil and putting it in her bag. “Move yourself,” she said and barged her way past. “I’m in a bit of a hurry. I’ve got study group as well. And this afternoon I’ve got to go to the dental school and get my jaw sorted out so it doesn’t keep dislocating all the time. They think I’m quite interesting for the time being. Ha ha.” She turned and gnashed her big white horsy teeth in Mie’s face, then swiveled around and went off down the hallway. Mie stayed out of her way in the kitchen until the front door slammed shut. As soon as she heard Bodil’s footsteps going down the stairs she filled the kettle and put it on the burner. “Idiot,” she muttered, meaning either Bodil or herself.

  She made her tea and drank it standing up, leaning against the counter. Through the little skylight she could see straight up into white sky. Soon it would begin to snow again. She thought about having some breakfast, but had lost her appetite. “How does a person get the better of another?” she wondered, but the thought was so complicated as to completely escape her endeavors to capture it. It leapt from her grasp in a display of sparks.

  It was nearly twenty to ten by the time she shut the front door behind her, and as she emerged onto the street she immediately abandoned any thought of going by bike. Down on Trøjborggade the traffic crawled along between banks of snow. But the snow made her happy. The city, now wrapped in white, seemed less daunting, less alien to her than before. She almost forgot the incident with Bodil and was consumed by the feeling that somewhere, one day, there would be a place for her.

  She got on a crammed bus, alighting at the city hall, from where she would continue her journey out to Viby. The sky was leaden and grey, the snow fell gently. The traffic, however, was in turmoil, and she realized she had been lucky to even get this far. The bus shelter was packed with waiting passengers staring down the street in anticipation. Now and then a heavy bus came flying past without stopping, and people exchanged stories of woeful journeys to work. One woman had been on her way for three quarters of an hour, another for more than an hour. Not many men went by bus, only a single young man stood out, a student by the looks of him, reading a newspaper.

  As she stood there, an elderly woman came along the pavement with quick, sprightly steps, white hair gathered stiffly at the nape of her neck. She walked with such purpose, and seemed almost to pierce her way through the waves of oncoming pedestrians. Her gaze was fixed firmly ahead and she did not seem to be at all bothered by the cold or the slippery pavement. Her coat was unbuttoned and flapped in her wake. From a distance it looked like the kind of garment more suited to summer. And w
hat was she wearing on her feet? Mie couldn’t take her eyes off her. Flimsy, open shoes. They looked like the slippers of dark blue leather she remembered wearing as a child. Surely they’d be soaking wet with sludge? And her coat was not a coat at all, but a dressing gown of padded satin with a large floral pattern. Pink peonies and green leaves on a creamy white background.

  Mie’s heart skipped a beat. She looked at the others who were waiting in the bus shelter, but no one seemed to be bothered. Some were chatting, others were silent, and the young man was reading his newspaper. Perhaps the woman had merely popped out for a minute on an errand. Mie told herself to calm down. There was no point making a drama. Things got so embarrassing when she did. She could work herself up until her voice became quite shrill, and she’d been making such an effort lately to keep herself in control and behave like an adult.

  The woman was wearing a nightgown that wasn’t properly buttoned at the chest. Then, at long last, a bus appeared and looked like it was going to stop. It slowed down and people moved forward to the curb. Sure enough, it indicated to pull in. Mie was swept along by the surge of eager passengers and found herself at the doors. But just as she lifted her foot to step inside, she changed her mind and went back to those who had remained on the sidewalk.

  Now the elderly woman had reached the bus shelter and Mie saw that her legs and feet were bare, and her slippers were indeed soaked. As she walked by, Mie stepped out towards her.

  “Do you need any help with anything?” she asked.

  “No, no, thank you,” said the woman without shifting her gaze.

  “It’s a nasty day,” said Mie.

  The woman didn’t reply.

  “Aren’t you cold?”

  Still no reply.

  “I can follow you home, if you like. Where do you live?”

  The woman said something Mie didn’t catch. She had to scamper just to keep up with her.

  “Sorry, what was that?”

  Another incomprehensible reply.

  “Are you going somewhere in particular?” asked Mie.

  The woman stared stiffly ahead. It was plain she wanted to be left alone and had no intention of conversing.

  “Where are you going?”

  People passed by them on the sidewalk and Mie felt increasingly silly, increasingly suburban and conventional. If the woman wanted to go for a walk in her nightie that was her own business, surely? And yet she heard herself repeat her question: “Where are you going?”

  “Over there,” the woman replied. At least, that’s what Mie thought.

  “Well, I’ll let you get on, then,” she said with an awkward chirp of laughter and halted as the woman carried on, looking neither left nor right. But Mie remained standing until she saw the woman vanish around the corner at the next crossing. Only then did she return to the bus stop. The time was by now twenty minutes past ten.

  It was no longer worth trying to get to her study group, but nevertheless she stayed put. Her thoughts kept coming back to the woman. She felt relieved. What would she have done with her if she had wanted to be helped? What if she had followed her home, what then? Her head was empty at the prospect. She stared out into the busy street and caught sight of another bus slowing down and indicating to pull in. A number five to Viby. Another surge of passengers, but this time Mie got on.

  She stood at the back as the bus pulled away, pressed against the window by people with shopping bags and prams. Next to her stood the young man from the bus stop. Mie carefully avoided looking at him. She wiped a peephole in the pane with her mitten, only for it to steam up again. The air was thick with the smell of damp clothes and stale tobacco. Shortly after they passed Banegårdsgade the bus and everyone in it suddenly lurched to one side. There was a thud that ran through the aisle from the front to the rear. People clutched at each other and let out small cries. Some laughed. The bus drew to a sudden halt and for a second everything was quiet. Then the front door opened and the driver darted out. Mie wiped the pane again. The passengers began to murmur and crane their necks.

  “What’s going on?” Mie asked a woman whose elbow had been perilously close to jabbing her in the face more than once already.

  “I’m not sure,” the woman answered. “It felt like we hit something.” Then after a moment she said: “They’re saying someone’s been run over.”

  “Has someone been run over?”

  “That’s what they’re saying.”

  “Is it bad?”

  The woman gave a shrug. “No idea,” she said.

  In the ten minutes that followed, talk increased. No one knew where the driver was. Someone pressed the emergency button for the rear doors and a number of people got off, some by the front doors, too. Cold air filled the bus and after a while there was room in the aisle and some empty seats. Mie went further up the bus and sat down, pressing her face to the window. A couple of people hurried back and forth outside. It was coming down heavily now, hard pellets of snow blowing across the road. The traffic was almost at a standstill. A single car edged its way forward halfway up the pavement on the wrong side of the road, wipers going full speed, and in the distance ambulance sirens were heard. One by one, the passengers were leaving the bus. Mie stood up again and went right to the front, and now she could see a huddle of onlookers at the radiator grille, all eyes staring towards the same point. It was true. There had been an accident.

  She did not consider herself to be an inquisitive person. She was a nineteen-year-old girl who behaved properly and politely, and refrained from indulgence. Often she would be approached by people who for some unknown reason had picked her out, wanting then to cling to her, to suck her dry, as though it were a kindness she would never have the temerity to decline. And decline she did not. But nor did she assent, or not really. She would steal away through the first available door with a lame excuse, to everyone’s bemusement and an intrusion of questions. They didn’t notice anything was wrong until suddenly she, the meek, apple-cheeked girl, had torn herself free. She had a feeling, or rather she knew, that ever since high school her fellow students had said of her that she was far too gullible, too easy to take for a ride, sweet and innocent, basically, and it upset her that they should judge her at face value, not least because she felt herself to be permeated by a bone-hard cynicism that came from inside her own heart and made her look straight through whoever she was with, and straight through herself as well. It was why she was so harsh on herself. She never engaged in gossip or tagged along on the heels of others, and did little for the sake of her own slender pleasures and comfort, and that was just about the only medal with which she could adorn herself at this point in her life. This January morning on M.P. Bruuns Gade, Aarhus, in 1983.

  But she got off the bus.

  The moment she stepped onto the sidewalk an elderly woman turned towards her and told her in an agitated voice: “She jumped out in front. Just jumped out in front.”

  “Who did?”

  “That poor lady,” said the woman. “She hadn’t a chance.” She took Mie’s arm for support. “Horrific, it was,” she said. The snow was as hard as hail and the fingers of the stranger dug into Mie’s coat sleeve like she’d never again let go. Mie felt a sudden jab of pain in her right temple, just above her eyebrow, and she pulled free and stepped aside. The sirens were very close, rising swiftly in intensity, until finally they stopped, leaving behind them a silence in which a door could be heard opening, and then others still, and a stretcher was rolled out, people were forced back onto the pavement, but Mie pressed herself against the front of the bus and remained standing there. She saw a figure being lifted up, swathed in blankets and coats, not even the head was visible. She had never seen anything like it before. Her heart was pounding dreadfully. It was as if it wanted to pound all the fright out of her and assure her that if only it beat with sufficient alarm then everything would be all right, nothing bad would have happened and it would all be over. An ambulance man inadvertently turned up the corner of a blanket, reve
aling a glimpse of floral print against a creamy white background of satin, and Mie spun round in the same instant to be sick. But nothing came up. She staggered to the sidewalk, gripped a lamppost and felt her stomach plunge as the stretcher was rolled back into the ambulance, and while she stood there she noticed out of the corner of her eye a pair of legs in black jeans step towards her.

  “Are you all right?” a voice asked.

  “I’m fine,” Mie gulped.

  “You need to sit down for a minute. Come with me.”

  She nodded, but did not move.

  “You need something to drink.”

  She lifted her head and saw the young man from the bus stop. He studied her with an impassive, critical gaze, with eyes that did not see her at all, only the state she was in. Had it been the elderly woman of just before, with the distressed voice and the unpleasant, owlish grip, she would have said yes. But she could not go with the young man who now stood before her.

  “I’m all right.”

  “You look like a corpse.”

  “I’m fine, really.”

  “You don’t look it.”

  It was starting to get embarrassing. She let go of the lamppost.

  “Okay,” she said. “All right.”

  He took her to a café a bit further along the street. It was bright inside, as if all the snow outside had accumulated in the mirrors and the white tablecloths, and Mie’s headache grew worse. Her nausea returned with a sudden jolt and she desperately wanted to go somewhere she could lie down. The young man had gone up to the counter and was gathering things on a tray. She closed her eyes and straight away it was as though everything that had happened vanished. A tremendous sense of fatigue came over her.

  “How are you feeling now?” said the voice.

  She didn’t react.

  “Are you okay?”

  She grimaced, to say: Wait a second.