The leather coat, children, he said in a whisper, I’ll tell you this much—he’s only a bigmouth.
And he burst out laughing, Nina laughed too, a bigmouth and an asshole, she screeched, and that made Duran laugh even more, a bigmouth and a dickhead, screeched Maria, and I looked round at her before saying what I thought of the leather coat straight into Duran’s face (I’d never seen such kind eyes before, nor since either), a bigmouth and a stupid cunt or whatever we used to call people at that time.
The sigh at the end of his laugh, it was still there: longer, louder, a sign of relief because he hadn’t laughed so heartily in a long time, since he was a child himself, maybe.
And Johnny, he said with his chest heaving as he tried to hold in his laugh long enough to finish the sentence—another bigmouth! We just roared and roared.
When the laughing stopped Duran started coughing deeply for a while and then he took a gun out of his pocket. It was a pistol, one with a barrel for not five, not seven, but six bullets. He crouched down and looked at each one of us after the other. Here you are, he said and put the gun into Maria’s hands. Keep that, a little present for you, he said (of course, it wasn’t loaded), but don’t tell anyone about it, you know what I mean?
He got up, looked at the sea a while before walking back to the car, just like when he first came, with an easy sway, strolling with one hand in his pocket, looking from the rough ground at his feet up to the sea, now on his right. He got into the car, waited a long time before moving his mouth and then his nephew started up the engine.
I said that was Maria’s dream but now that I’ve put it all down I remember it really happened—Maria still has the gun to prove it.
And my own dream? I didn’t get to work for Duran, that was all I wanted from that day on. I was with him a few times, in the same room as him is what I mean, some bar or other, but I couldn’t make myself go up and talk to him, remind him of that day, how much it affected me. And then, one day, he was gone. They said it was the biggest funeral in the place in a long time. A great man, they were all agreed on that. There were things he’d done they didn’t like but even so, everyone said he was a great man and the leather coat or Johnny were blamed for any badness he was involved with. People always made excuses for Duran, and anyone who didn’t you just stayed clear of that person (if you could). I was sixteen and my dream didn’t come true, seventeen, eighteen, nineteen, twenty, twenty-one and then he was dead and my chance was gone. For my dream I had to make do with watching the car with its engine running, being driven at speed up the road—Duran’s nephew was a really fast (but very good) driver. He reversed the whole way up, a narrow road with a bad surface. He could have turned round, there was space enough at the bottom of the road for a two point turn, but Duran preferred it that way, being driven backwards, because he liked looking at the sea, spring tides and neap tides, tides coming in, tides going out.
TRANSLATED FROM IRISH BY THE AUTHOR
[ITALY]
MAROSIA CASTALDI
FROM The Hunger of Women
Pause with me—Reader—in the suspended time of the eternal present, and look at the things that have no end, because the book of life, every book, is an infinite work, and the cut of the frame is arbitrary as a Pollock painting
A WOMAN IN A LONE HOUSE vacuumed every morning I saw my life reflected in her lot Like her I spent my time cleaning and cooking for my family I had a grown-up daughter who still lived at home It was just us two but still we were a family I was a widow I passed my recipes on to her My husband died in a car accident He was in the hospital a long time I spent sleepless nights beside him as he suffered He slipped into a coma and I made the terrible decision to pull the plug Since then the wisdom of the centuries has nestled in my memory I kept pictures from the happy times when we would go to the country house we sold later I tell my neighbor about him I give her recipes like the eggplant one You slice some eggplant fry it with garlic put it in the oven with mozzarella parmesan and tomato sauce
Sometimes she would try to cook my recipes like me We have little dinners we three lone women She looks into our eyes She doesn’t say much Like me she had cut herself off from society When I went to the neighbor’s to eat I would bring pasta and bread from my house to her table and we would light candles for us three lone women My daughter didn’t always come She said we seemed like a pair of war widows Our malady was living on anxiety or abandonment Solitude eats the soul—Reader—
The three lone women saw each other at dinner and the neighbor would tell us about the appliance and housewares store she used to have She would spend hours arranging coffee pots and salad bowls in the window She’d invested all her savings in that business after her husband died The neighbors praised her for her hard work and strong will In the little town where we all lived everyone remembered her shop She had a boundless love for the objects in which she took refuge like an inviting beach after a storm That’s where she got the vacuum she now used at home
The sound of the vacuum she used maniacally was a savage drone that ruined sleep and peace Maniacally she cleaned the whole house every day Nothing was ever clean enough She looked around The dust of time was her enemy Ravenous time nipped at her ankles
The sound of the vacuum was a deafening drone that wafted like a storm wind into the houses of the little town where we lived on a hill that held the wisdom of the centuries in the ancient earth Every window had bars and inside a clock and an old pot and a threadbare doily Everything seemed ancient Everyone seemed to know everything about everybody People talked about those three lone women who had the impudence to do business and commerce on their own They cursed the din the vacuum made growling night and day like a bound animal The deafening ticking of clocks marking the time of death and life drove them crazy The neighbor’s husband was a butcher who spent his days till ten p.m. preparing stuffed chickens and liver wraps and veal with bay leaf thyme sage rosemary whose roasted scent emanated from the shop They made dinners to order for fifty in the little rich town in the lower Po Valley full of fog and crime in winter when they closed themselves in for the cold and wet skies and sad nights Incest theft violence multiplied In the drawer they kept a gun
The neighbor devoted herself to dusting her terracotta and porcelain knickknacks left over from the shop she ran for years She’d had the inside painted in blue and white stripes It was the envy of all the neighbor ladies who gossiped about her enviously She was still young They said she’d gotten the money for her shop using her graces like a slut on a rich businessman in the area who had a candy factory Every day they saw him taking packages to the blonde widow with her beautiful arms She’d put on weight since her husband’s death A good meal was all she wanted after a day’s work She ate the businessman’s candy lazily and ravenously while the neighbors whispered
The store was white blue and bright When it was quiet the neighbor ducked out to look at the street and the oaks and the alders on the boulevard Everyone in town went to her for wedding and baptism favors The coffee makers the cups the glasses showed the sun their skin from which the dust of time had been lifted by the hands of the shopkeeper who dusted them daily The dust of time, time was her sworn enemy At home and in the store she silenced every annoying tick-tock every screeching alarm She would die from the madness of clocks
She looked around and found refuge in a sandwich or dessert that filled her yearning for love and affection I gave her my dead mother’s recipes I’d seen her in a white shroud Before she died I brought her pasta with fresh tomato sauce You take a bunch of tomatoes sprinkle them with salt sugar and oil and basil no garlic and after a quick sauté pour them steaming hot over pasta al dente
I gave her my mother’s pastry recipe You combine flour with equal parts butter and sugar Mix everything by hand and knead until it’s a dense coarse ball that you leave to set under a cloth after carving the sign of the cross You place it on the counter and roll it out then place it in tins with fruit cream and glaze You bake it at medium h
eat for half an hour
The shopkeeper tried to cook but she wasn’t very good Her true talent was cleaning
After the housewares store she got bored and got rid of the knickknacks and replaced them with shoe selling The empty shoes watched the road like sentinels of time They were empty of themselves as if waiting to be filled by the warmth of a foot They held the enigma that shoes have like in the Edita Broglio painting where they’re waiting like vestals with a lamp and oil for when the time comes for all to leave the earth She even dusted the shoes maniacally and was eager to try them on her chubby feet She gave me a pair of red shoes like a pair I had as a little girl a gift from my mother In exchange I gave her my recipe for puff pastry You mix flour water oil and salt into a silky mixture by rolling it out and kneading it for a while until it’s a stretchy dough that you roll out over a large surface until you have a big layer of dough that you cut and put onto sheets to make rustic pizzas filled with meat and vegetables You cover the sheet with dough and bake on medium until the pizza turns golden These dishes are filled with centuries of Mediterranean wisdom My mother passed them on to me and when we were little the smells from the kitchen wafted through the old house like the indelible trace of what has been Be quiet be quiet my soul’s voice repeats when my mind turns to the chapped white hands of my noble mother worn by the strain of extreme domesticity that ate away her life Only by passing on the taste for the preparation of food that her mother had passed to her did she earn a crumb of eternity on earth
I taught the neighbor simple things like bread with butter and tuna or sugar and bread with oil tomato and salt or caponata campana which you make by soaking a piece of frisella and covering it with diced tomato mozzarella oregano salt and oil Those heavenly slices of bread taste like childhood I also gave her the recipe for stuffed peppers You roast the peppers until the skins come off then stuff them with pasta and olives and sauce or with oil soaked bread and capers parmesan parsley and olives You lay them out in a pan and cover them with bread crumbs
One night when I invited her to dinner she ate four peppers ravenously It was a joyful hunger My daughter looked on astonished It was a joy to watch her as warmed by wine we drank our coffee She told us about her shoes enumerating them like daughters The shoe store shone throughout the neighborhood
My daughter had no interest in housekeeping or cooking After working my whole life I lived off interest from my savings I didn’t look back I didn’t want nostalgia or remorse
As we were having dinner I started thinking about a trip to the sea we could take together and as we ate I could see in my dead mother’s eyes centuries of Mediterranean wisdom My mother died thirty years ago eaten away by the disease of the century that confined her to bed for nine months the time to give birth to her death and her life and to go to the land from which there is no return where she would be reunited with my dead brother The lands of the nevermore are invisible to the eyes of the living but apparent in the wisdom of madness and delirium We dined on dishes made from her recipes which my daughter had as little interest in as housekeeping We ate fried anchovies You coat rinsed anchovies with flour and fry them in boiling salted oil You can also marinate them cold with salt parsley lemon and oil As she ravenously devoured the fish I told her about my mother’s endive pizza and other pizza recipes In the kitchen that was the prison and salvation of her life my mother made the dough by mixing flour yeast water and a little salt and oil She kneaded the mixture until it became a dense and stretchy ball that she left to rise under a cloth in a warm place for an hour after carving into the raw loaf the sign of the cross that was on the missal and the prayer book that she kept in the cabinet that’s now in my house full of papers her bills her recipes and her jewels as if the recipes were worth the same as gold She passed on to me the wisdom of the recipes that earned her a scrap of eternity on what we call earth Then she would take the mound of risen dough roll it out with her hands dip the round shapes in boiling oil then cover them with tomato parmesan basil and oil or would roll out a circle of dough on a sheet and put on top basil tomato oil and mozzarella and bake it in the hot oven for twenty minutes
In the evening we sat at the kitchen table overlooking the sea finite lashed furrowed by ships carrying centuries millennia gold wines spices oils crafts freemen slaves This sea struck by waves by lights from which a vessel a lighthouse a house never disappears This sea of buried dead And back come the millennia and centuries past the buried and reanimated dead and dark women huddled chafed They weave cloth by the sea They wait rip sew gather rip scrape cut crumple They give substance to the sea A sea written drawn corporeal They make it the closed open body of the ancient sea barred with columns with vessels with lighthouses Sea of war sea of earth paper sea of flesh paper Egyptian Sicilian African sea Italian sea sea of Spain France Greece Albania Rome sea inked handcrafted articulated sea worn out never tired of setting forth Mediterranean
We would eat pizza and salad with broccoli tomatoes and potatoes and green beans dressed with garlic basil vinegar and oil and oregano drizzled over the fresh steamed vegetables We ate in silence I would grab my brother’s ears to distract myself from my father’s gnashing teeth and smashing jaws as he ate silently as if just sitting with us were a favor to my mother At Christmas he didn’t accept her gifts He would open the packages and put everything aside until the following year when he finally decided to use the socks or housecoat she had given him the year before At Christmas our mother became sad and cried over his semi-rejection and scorn for her consideration and care but my father was tired too eaten away by his job selling fabrics that took him all over Campania and Lazio One day he brought home a Jewish textile merchant named Ettore Diveroli who had sold out his stock of fabrics Our mother wasn’t comfortable with my father’s colleagues but even for them she would draw on her age-old culinary wisdom Knowledge of food is the knowledge of the Mediterranean centuries that were alive in my mother’s eyes She prepared a dinner for Diveroli and our father that was like the one we ate on New Year’s She made tagliatelle with clams and sole in butter and poached salmon That morning she called me over and showed me how She combined flour eggs water salt and a drizzle of oil to get a dense stretchy dough Then she rolled it out over the counter She let the thin rings of dough rest on the flour and then rolled them and cut them into small strips That evening she boiled the pasta and dressed it with the oil and fish The Jewish merchant praised her and gluttonously devoured those wise foods My mother looked on barely eating at all When she cooked a lot and was tired she rejected her own wisdom Her ancient sadness spread to me That was the origin of the seed of sin and waste that later I saw in food Before it had been something divine simple and natural and then something controlled organized and terrible But food preserves the nature of the centuries and the wisdom of God That was when I abandoned my childhood habitudes which I perhaps had already buried when my grandmother died and became what I was: a creature destined like my mother to carry on the wisdom of the centuries in food In our food there is the wisdom that lives inside this sea finite lashed furrowed by ships carrying centuries millennia gold wines spices oils crafts freemen slaves This sea struck by waves by lights from which a vessel a lighthouse a house never disappears This sea of buried dead And back come the millennia and centuries past the buried and reanimated dead and dark women huddled chafed They weave cloth by the sea They wait rip sew gather rip scrape cut crumple They give substance to the sea A sea written drawn corporeal They make it the closed open body of the ancient sea barred with columns with vessels with lighthouses Sea of war sea of earth paper sea of flesh paper Egyptian Sicilian African sea Italian sea sea of Spain France Greece Albania Rome sea inked handcrafted articulated sea worn out never tired of setting forth Mediterranean
TRANSLATED FROM IRISH BY THE AUTHOR
[LATVIA]
MĀRIS BĒRZIŅŠ
FROM A Taste of Lead
I FEEL QUITE SPRIGHTLY coming down the stairs on the morning of November 18. I make my own breakfast,
brew coffee, carry in some firewood, and light the wood stove. The frog in my throat begins to scratch and act up, but I don’t panic. I’ve learned my lesson—a pill under my tongue and a mouthful of water to wash it down. After fifteen minutes the cough is gone. My mood is easy and upbeat. I want to sit idly and enjoy the lovely winter scene outside the window, but then I remember Wagner and, with him, my tuxedo. So be it, what must be done must be done—having pulled out the suit from the wardrobe, I brush off the dust collected over the summer. I just have to remove some stains still there from That Time. Dried-in soil doesn’t yield easily, but if it’s soaked long enough, out it comes. Then I heat up an iron and press my suit pants under a dampened cheesecloth. I also iron a shirt. I clean off my patent leather shoes with half an onion, then rub in some Vaseline and polish them until their surface becomes a mirror. It looks like I haven’t forgotten anything, everything is top-notch, and I’m totally ready for battle. I take another codeine tablet so that Tamara won’t have the slightest doubt about the state of my health and, sitting down once more by the window, I continue to celebrate the day. A monument should be erected to those who discovered this wonderful medication. If it were only possible, I would embrace and kiss them. I mustn’t forget the tablets at home, just in case I have a relapse during the performance.
“You look quite dashing, Matīss.” Tamara studies me as she starts to get dressed for the performance. “Do you feel alright?”
“Uh-huh!”
Each in our own corner of the room, we put on our finest clothes. Every now and then we exchange looks and smile at each other, but when we’ve finished, we jostle at the mirror.
Best European Fiction 2017 Page 16