Best European Fiction 2017

by Eileen Battersby

  WATER BEDS

  I took a liking to H. from the time of our first conversation when, asked what he most missed in Warsaw, he replied: “junk mail.” In those days we didn’t really understand what he was talking about. H. arrived in Poland in the mid-1980s during the death throes of socialism, by mistake. The University of Warsaw had sent a leading authority on Baroque architecture to Cleveland on a year’s exchange, expecting in return a scholar of equivalent status. The university administration was not functioning at its most efficient, however, and so it was H., a sculptor and hippy, who disembarked at Okęcie Airport. He came with his large family, all very laid-back, smiling and amicably disposed toward the world. Unaware of the mistake, H. and his wife took up residence in a regular tower block and sent their kids to a local school, hoping ten months would suffice for them to pick up the hissing language. Then they set about familiarizing themselves with a country stunned by their presence. During that year a fire broke out in their uninsured American house and destroyed everything. On their return, they had to start all over again, like eighteenth-century settlers. The first thing they did was purchase water beds—for the whole family plus guests. This impulse, understandable in their situation, was prompted by an advertising campaign unleashed in the newspapers and on television at precisely that moment. Soon afterwards M. and I flew to the States. On our way from the East to the West Coast we visited them in their new home. We spent a sleepless night lying on a double water bed, taking care lest any movement from one should catapult the other onto the floor. We genuinely enjoyed our reunion with H. but, confronted by the prospect of another night, we cut short our visit. Not long afterwards, like thousands of Americans who had succumbed to the fleeting fashion, H. and his family were faced with the difficult task of disposing of the beds, as several hundred liters of water had to be pumped from every mattress! How they managed it, I have no idea. Ever since then, whenever I cannot get to sleep, instead of counting sheep, I remember my night in Ohio. I then feel a little better. Although I continue to regret that, thanks to the inventor of water beds, we didn’t stay longer with H. As a souvenir of that visit, we have a ceramic dragon standing in our Warsaw bathroom. No one remembers water beds anymore, but the dragon—transported across so many states and masterfully packed for plane travel—looks brand new.

  AIRPLANE

  For the past quarter century I have been travelling twice a year across the Atlantic and have watched a lot of films in airplanes. For reasons I would rather not go into, a fair proportion of them portray if not air disasters then at any rate panic on board. I have seen Turbulence, The English Patient, and Airplane!, in addition to other films which, despite the melodrama, were bad enough to erase themselves from my memory. Who selects the intercontinental repertoire? The most logical answer would be: representatives of competing airlines. Passengers on a flight from Ohio to Detroit, however, did not have to wait until the start of the screening for their nerves to be severely tested. Here is the description of an event recently supplied by the press. It began with a female passenger, next to whom a nun from the Convent of Our Lady of Mercy in Dayton, Ohio, sat down. Having settled comfortably by the window, the nun pulled out her rosary and began to whisper her prayers in Latin. “I was at once suspicious,” the passenger said later. “She was wearing a Muslim headscarf and just before takeoff was mumbling something in Arabic.” “As soon as she entered the cabin, I noticed she had an odd grim look about her,” another passenger testified. The alarmed stewardess asked Sister Cora-Ann for her documents. Hearing her name sounded like Koran, a third passenger sitting nearby informed the rest of the travellers. “Once we discovered the suspect was called Koran, we couldn’t control our emotions any longer,” explained someone from the back row. Before the hysteria reached its zenith, someone else pushed a piece of ham in Cora-Ann’s direction. If she fails to eat it, then it will prove she is a Muslim. Since the incident took place during Lent, the nun did not eat it. The passengers calmed down only after she had left the plane. “As soon as she got off, we felt as if a huge burden had been lifted from our shoulders,” rejoiced the next passenger. Meanwhile the only Muslim on board, Abdullah Abdullah XXIII, kept his mouth well sealed, just in case.

  SPELL

  I had the misfortune to visit one of our Polish cities with a foreign friend who had hired for the occasion a local guide. He was a young man exuding an icy professionalism, typical of his generation, that wiped the smiles from our faces. Another reason for our wilting smiles was the masochistic, martyrological tone of the information he imparted. Even I, raised after all in this land, was impressed. In a voice that bore no contradiction, the good-looking fellow informed us about wars, invasions, rapes, and betrayals, perpetrated by our so-called allies, and the indifference of the world at large. The powerful word “genocide” summed up every event described. His gloomy monologue was interrupted only by questions directed at my friend and disapproving frowns at her answers, which proved her ignorance of the history of this country. The poor woman muttered something in reply with an escalating sense of guilt, no doubt mentally cursing her decision not to have chosen a more cheerful destination. The list of nations waiting to do “us” in was so phenomenally long that my own birth started to appear barely possible. The guide’s attitude toward the perpetrators was highly personal, and the punch line to most of his tales prophesied well-deserved revenge. I had already begun to tremble for the safety of the tourist who did not belong to our clan, when he revealed a human face, magnanimously announcing that we had forgiven the Swedes their invasion of four hundred years ago. My friend and I eventually emerged from our tour unscathed, though whether she will ever visit me again, I am not at all sure. Shortly after this adventure I listened with joy to another acquaintance’s story about her visit to our country. This one did not hire a guide, since her purpose in coming to Warsaw was to uncover the secrets of tea-making ceremonies. For it was here that a Japanese master had chosen to pass on to posterity the arcana of his art. My friend therefore walked the streets I knew well, without looking around unduly, preoccupied with going over in her mind the freshly confided mysteries. Of the local color, she remembered one thing. Like all foreigners, she was amazed at the natives’ habit of tormenting fellow passengers in train compartments with mobile phone conversations. She was quickly reassured however by the sight of a girl sitting by the window. When the course on tea ceremonies came to an end and my acquaintance was preparing to depart, she described to me her encounter on the train: “A girl sitting by the window was also irritated by the people with mobile phones. Unfortunately for them, they were too occupied with shouting into the receivers to observe that she was no ordinary person, but a cat-woman! She had a predatory look on her face, sat motionless like a cat with her tail no doubt tucked under her skirt, had catlike ears, and held her hands under her chin like cats hold their paws. She paid no attention to me but stared at the mobile users with glassy green irises as she cast her spell upon them. Both she and I knew it was their last journey. It was fantastic!”—my friend assured me.

  BANANAS

  To a potluck party someone brings banana ice cream. Among the many excellent dishes, this is the one that arouses the greatest interest. Far from approving. In the cross fire of questions, the person who brought the ice cream confesses he made it. A murmur passes through the little crowd. Eventually the first brave guest pipes up and says he too does not know what to do with bananas. A second admits the same. And a third. And a fourth. The tension provoked by the appearance of the ice cream slowly dissolves into a sympathy generated among the partygoers, solidarity with others in an equally difficult situation. A fifth guest still hesitates a moment before saying that although she had decided many times to buy no more bananas, she always returns from the shop with the hated bunch. Community spirit now unites the majority of guests. It turns out that almost all feel confronted by a similar dilemma. Although they do not eat the bananas, or only nibble them at best for the sake of a clear consci
ence before chucking them, they are unable to control themselves on their next shopping trip. Ashamed at their weakness, they return home with shopping bags laden. Is such a love-hate feeling linked to the bananas’ phallic shape? To the place they occupy in obscene jokes? Their role in slapstick comedy? The fact that they cannot be kept in a fridge, so the obligation to eat them arises the very next day after unpacking the damn bag? The ensuing hour of lively discussion engages even the most taciturn. It transpires that the strange affliction is not alien to them either! Thirty plus people randomly assembled are all suffering from banana phobia. Did they really meet by chance? Are they victims of a conspiracy? Or—following the model of cat-food producers—is someone injecting the banana flesh with an addictive additive, surely harmful to one’s health? Who? Large trading networks? Plantation owners? Terrorists preparing a new biological weapon hidden in banana skins? How to fight it? Create support groups? Appeal to the authorities? Emigrate, if it’s possible, to countries still free from threat? Long into the night we discuss plans to cure ourselves of the addiction. We all feel a weight has been lifted from our hearts, since we have at last overcome the psychological barrier, and are talking openly about something that has troubled us for years. We have stopped denying the issue, but this is merely the start of the recovery process. The next day we will devise a plan for group therapy. In the meantime, we have to clear away the mountain of melted yellow dessert that no one has touched. Its creator isn’t upset: the most important thing is that he got rid of six pieces of unwanted fruit whose name begins with a B. I return home exhausted. It’s not long before dawn and I must try to get some sleep before the day that could bring a solution to the embarrassing problem. I decide however to take a quick shower. On the way to the bathroom I try not to look at the four brown crescent moons ominously rotting on their silver stand.

  PREMONITION

  It’s obviously not worth wasting time on either printed or internet gossip magazines. D. did so, however, and immediately found my photograph. I appear as the lover of an aging pop star. On one side of the page, there he is with his wife, on the other—separated from them by a colorful jagged line—there I am, the instigator of their divorce. A friend of the couple, cross-examined by a gossip columnist, simply cannot believe my cruelty. I do not know the pop star. My picture was taken by the alleged lover, hence it pops up whenever her name is entered into Google. The editor must have been illiterate, since the caption indicating who the photograph represented did not ring any alarm bells. I tell this story to A., who is not in the least bit surprised. “I knew you would call,” she says. “Last night I dreamed about you. We were trudging through the snow on our way to a New Year’s Eve ball, and you were wearing high-heeled sandals. Each foot a different shape and color. And what’s more, asymmetrical. I asked if you wouldn’t catch cold, and you replied: ‘Haven’t you noticed I always wear fur boots in summer and sandals in winter? Otherwise it would be so banal!’” Visions of a new collection by the reincarnation of Elsa Schiaparelli prevent me from being angry. If A. only dreamed such a dream in order to predict my telephone call, then even crap articles have their raison d’être.

  POLONEZ

  In the early 1980s I passed my driving test. I should never have received my license because I did not know the highway code, drove too fast, and, just to make sure, did not look to either side. There were fewer cars around then, so I did not immediately cause an accident. But luckily it happened soon enough for me not to be a danger to others for too long. In the middle of the empty Constitution Square, I veered to the left and sideswiped a white Polonez driving straight ahead. The little Fiat 126 survived the collision better than the other vehicle, at that time a symbol of socialist affluence. The attitude in those days to one’s own means of transport, acquired after many years of hard slogging and saving, was such that I could expect a lynching from the driver, carried out with the full understanding of the gawping onlookers. Meanwhile, opening the door with difficulty, a kind lady got out, while an elderly gentleman emerged with greater ease from the other side and asked if I had fainted. My maneuver had been so irrational that it did not occur to them that anyone could have performed it who wasn’t about to have a heart attack. I did not dare initiate them into the arcana of my driving art. So we took out our documents—they were magnanimous enough not to call the police—and I realized I had smashed up the car of a well-known Warsaw figure, the director of the Museum of Caricature. Many years of working in that place no doubt afforded him such a cheerful reaction. Then we politely said our good-byes and got on with pushing the cars onto the sidewalk. The whole business upset me a great deal, of course. Not only had I damaged the little car belonging to M.’s aunt, who had been unaware of the danger to which it was exposed, I had also wrecked the vehicle of such a nice man. And yet everything ended unexpectedly well. Less than three weeks later I heard a report on the radio connected indirectly with my hapless adventure. The Director of the Museum of Caricature, said the announcement, had won a competition to guess the scores of World Cup football matches. His prize was a silver Polonez. “Well timed,” added the commentator. “His old one had to be scrapped following an accident.”

  TIME LOOP

  After twenty years of living in the States, E. came with her adult children to show them their old house in the Sadyba neighborhood of Warsaw. The house had changed little, except that in these ecological times a glass recycling bin had sprung up beside it, yet was barely visible beneath the mountain of smashed bottles. E. was too deeply moved to let the sight upset her, though she did not at any cost want her children to notice it. She wanted them to have the best possible impressions of the country. Trying to direct their gaze the other way, she began to tell them a rumor she remembered from those dim and distant times. In the house next door, a pretty woman had lived with two husbands—which back then, even in artistic circles, had caused something of a sensation. The children liked the story. There was still hope they wouldn’t notice the ecological shambles. And then, as they stood with their backs to the bottles, in the window of the flat where a quarter of a century ago the pretty woman had lived with her husbands, the curtains were drawn aside. Against the backdrop of a brightly lit interior, a girl appeared. A moment later a young man popped up by her right side and kissed her on the cheek. She had no time to respond with a smile before a second young man approached from the left and also kissed her. She took half a step back snuggling up at the same time to both. The man on the left and the man on the right put their arms around her. The whole troika froze in a state of bliss, staring at the autumn—early that year—beyond the window. E. and her children were afraid to move lest they should shatter the spell. Tears trickled down E.’s cheeks. For the first time in her life, she had observed how time goes around in a loop. In order for the miracle to happen, very little was required. It was enough to concentrate one’s thoughts on something as banal as a heap of broken glass.

  MYSTIFICATIONS

  N. likes to say that she would rather fall victim to a chance murderer than a terrorist attack targeted at her as an American. In her final moments she would rather not be part of a group. I understand her well. Recently, in less dramatic circumstances, I was twice made to feel what it meant to be pinned to a place. As a consequence of one of my books being translated into French, I was invited to a magical spot in the Pyrenees for a festival devoted to literary mystifications. The story of the female saint dreamed up by me had already been described by the catalogs of two major Warsaw libraries. The authors of the first entry understood my heroine to be an historical figure, the second—a figment of Surrealist fantasy. The Warsaw librarians had no faith in my imagination. In the Pyrenean village things took an even worse turn. As I presented Leonora’s story among the academic papers about literary mystifications perpetrated by now dead writers, silence descended on the room. Disturbingly few people laughed. It took me a little while to realize that the festival participants, like the Warsaw librarians, had taken my tale s
eriously. During supper, someone asked me what the Vatican archives had to say about my heroine. Someone else muttered that interest in saints was proof of naivety. The penny then dropped (the festival participants were convinced an arrival from a Catholic country could not make fun of saints), forcing me to climb onto the podium on the final day and confess the truth. What happened next also astounded me. Part of the lecture theater applauded in relief, part sat looking offended. Shaking his head in disbelief, the editor of a cultural radio program handed me his card. I could not believe that he too had believed! In the moment when a well-known writer was persuading me he had seen through the mystification immediately, his wife approached saying, “You see, wasn’t I right? Leonora de la Cruz did not exist.” Before leaving, I overheard a conversation in which someone accused me of not treating my audience seriously. Having returned home from that beautiful remote corner of the Pyrenees, I watched an animated film based on a fairy tale I had written years before, dubbed with foreign distributors in mind. It was about a magic clock that went fast in bad times and slow in good. The American translator, however, rendered the sentence the other way round, giving the story a masochistic twist. Again I felt I had been pinned to a place. English-speaking viewers were confirmed in their vision of the Slavic soul. The clock born out of it rushed ahead in happy times, to the undoing of the kingdom’s subjects, and prolonged—in so far as it could—the unhappy ones.