The Polish Boxer

by Eduardo Halfon

  Petar’s wife was named Casandra. As soon as she saw us, she started cleaning the table and chairs with a damp cloth, somehow scandalized, incessantly complaining or arguing or at least that’s what it seemed like. Not once did she look at us. Besh, besh, shouted Petar. Sit down, in Romany, said Slobodan, and we all sat down. There were little flowers painted on the walls. It smelled of nutmeg, laundry, and rubbing alcohol. Sons and daughters-in-law came and went and children ran past and somewhere a baby was crying. All the men were smoking, the boys included. But not the women. The women, with flowery handkerchiefs covering their hair, tended to the men. Dragan, the eldest son, sat down with us. He looked just like his father and was decked out in a huge quantity of gold chains and bracelets. The three of them talked in Serbian and then father and son started to laugh. Petar asked where you’re from, explained Slobodan, and I told him Guatemala. I smiled. I helped them to pronounce Guatemala. Casandra brought in some rolls called bogacha and a pot of Turkish coffee and, still grumbling, poured out four little cups. It was strong and sweet and I had another one right away. An old man arrived. He poured himself a cup of Turkish coffee and asked me for a cigarette with his fingers and sat down with us. Sometimes they called him Ursari, sometimes Vodja, sometimes Vashengo, sometimes Bengalo. He didn’t talk much and reminded me immediately of Mr. Bojangles, but the tender and tragic Mr. Bojangles of Nina Simone’s version. I accepted a black tobacco cigarette from Dragan, which he’d rolled himself. Smoking and listening to them chat in Serbian, I started to think about how this homely and supposedly settled atmosphere also retained an odd sense of the provisional, of the ephemeral, of the transient, and I remembered the Jean Cocteau quote. Suddenly, everyone applauded. I’ve just asked them what a Gypsy’s pirouette means, said Slobodan, and it seems they liked the question. All right, so translate, I said excitedly. Dragan says it’s like the Gypsy boy who, one night, could hear his pig squealing and squealing and went out to see what was wrong and grabbed the pig’s snout and he found loads of gold coins inside, thousands of gold coins, and then he did a pirouette. Galbi, said Dragan rather proudly as he mimed rubbing coins together with his fingers. Petar shouted something. Petar says Gypsies sometimes do a pirouette before they die. How come? I asked Slobodan. Petar says he saw it once. A long time ago. In the forest. When he still lived in a caravan. He says that all the adults were sitting around a fire telling stories, and he’d lain down and was about to doze off, when he saw a man get up without a word, do a pirouette, and fall down dead next to some trees. Petar says he remembers it as though it had been a dream. We were all quiet, picturing the scene, I suppose. The old man asked something in Romany and then started to tell a story, also in Romany (he didn’t speak Serbian or maybe didn’t want to speak Serbian), which Petar followed and translated into Serbian and Slobodan translated into English and finally, like the last little deformed doll of a matryoshka, I translated for myself into Spanish. There once was a Gypsy king, he said, whose food was being stolen at night and so, getting worried, he declared that he’d give half his kingdom to whoever managed to watch over and protect his huge store of provisions and delicacies. Is that how you say it, delicacies? Delicacies. The oldest of his three sons told the king not to worry, that he’d do it. And that night, the eldest son lay down in front of the food store, vigilant and holding a dagger or a knife or something like that, I’m not sure how to translate it, but just before dawn, a cool breeze blew in and he fell into a deep sleep, and when he woke up, all the food was gone from the store. The next night, the king’s second son sat proudly in front of the doors of the food store, holding an enormous sword, yeah, a sword, but just before dawn a cool breeze blew again and he fell asleep, too, and when he woke up, all the food was gone from the store. The old man stopped and Petar drank his coffee down in one gulp and started shouting at some children who ran past, kicking a ball through the room. The third night, said Slobodan, the king’s youngest son promised his father that he’d guard the food, and he sat down in front of the store, but not before he’d lain some tacks or nails on the ground, something like that, something sharp. And just before dawn, when the cool breeze came again and he felt sleepy and laid his head on the tacks or nails or whatever they were, the pain woke him up immediately, and the youngest son saw his gentle little sister, an adolescent girl, come in barefoot and in her nightshirt, then he saw his sister do a single pirouette and, horrified (the old man made a frightened face), he saw his sister’s hands turning into axes (the old man raised his hands), and he saw his sister’s teeth turning into pointed daggers or knives (the old man showed me what were left of his teeth), and he saw his sister’s hair turning into cobras (the old man pulled on his hair), and now fully transformed into a witch, Slobodan translated as the old man and Petar and Dragan laughed, he watched his sister eat up all the food in the store. Silence. Typical, I thought, confusedly shuffling the three stories around in my head, and I asked if that was the end of the story, but everyone’s attention had already turned to something else. A girl had appeared with a tray in her hands. She was blond and slim, with a white complexion and green eyes, but a deep green, a Mediterranean green. She looked at us, blushing, put the tray on the table, and walked out. It’s hedgehog, said Slobodan, watching her go. It’s what? Hedgehog, he repeated while the two Gypsies dug in, using their fingers. They love hedgehog. The last time I came, he said, Petar explained to me that hedgehogs are always tastier in autumn, when they’re all chubby and full of fat to get through the winter. He also told me that once they’ve killed them, the Gypsies hang them up outside overnight, on a clothesline, because they believe that the glow of the moon improves the taste, and then the next day, to get all the spines off, they stick a tube into the dead animal’s side and start blowing until they’ve inflated it completely and they can separate the skin from the bones and pull out all the spines. Try it, he said. It tasted like fish.

  We thanked them for the meal. The old man left. Petar and Dragan saw me out and Slobodan arrived a few moments later. It was still snowing. I held out my hand to Petar and he said something to me in Serbian. He says not to worry, translated Slobodan, if your Rakić does exist, he’s sure he’ll find him for you. I didn’t believe him. I could still hear the groaning of the truck or of a person being tortured or something equally horrific. We set off slowly toward the road. The snow creaked under our feet. In the distance, the groaning got louder. What the hell is that? I asked Slobodan, but he just lit another cigarette and kept walking.

  Once we were in a taxi, I told him I thought Petar’s daughter was gorgeous. The blond girl, I said. The one with the hedgehog, I said. I thought I heard him sigh, though it could have been the wind or else the taxi driver. That’s not his daughter, he whispered after a while. It’s Dragan’s wife. Her name is Natalja. She’s my age. We were at school together, until she quit her studies because they made her marry him. She was fourteen then. I thought of asking Slobodan how he knew so much, but there was no need. It was obvious. I rolled the window down a bit and the air was refreshing. It was snowing harder. There was a lot of traffic and we spent more than an hour in complete silence, the two of us probably having the same fantasy or probably having opposite fantasies while we watched the city gradually grow dark.

  The next morning it was snowing heavily. The windows were rattling and seemed about to explode. I turned on the TV and watched a whole news bulletin in Serbian, understanding no more than the apocalyptic images of deserted streets and trees blown onto electric cables and blinds of white wind and cars buried in the middle of small mountains of snow. Zdena called. She told me not to worry, that it was best not go to out, that this kind of storm generally lasted a day, two at the most, and that if I needed something, I shouldn’t hesitate to call them. I thanked her and we hung up. I looked out the window. No one. Irresistible, I thought. I grabbed my jacket, my gloves, and my hat, and went out.

  I was surprised it wasn’t colder. It was almost impossible to walk in a straight line. Pellets of
snow whipped at my face and neck, and a few times I had to duck behind a phone booth or a lamppost. I passed just one person and we greeted each other like two of those Japanese soldiers who never heard that the war was over and keep wearing their uniforms like total idiots and are still looking for the enemy in the middle of nowhere. The kiosk on the corner was closed. Nearly everything was closed. I kept walking down Pozeska Street. I could make out a red light in the window of a bar or café, but the door was locked. I rapped on it. A moment later, a woman arrived and said something to me through the glass and I shrugged and said hvala, which means thanks, and had nothing to do with anything, but it was the only Serbian word that came to mind. Scornfully, and at snowstorm prices, she sold me a liter of beer, a piece of smoked sausage, a bread roll, and a pack of cigarettes. Hvala, I said again, and walked back to the apartment, feeling strangely happy.

  I spent the rest of the day shut inside, smoking and eating the supplies I’d bought and reading a bit and listening to a few pieces by Melodious and watching Venezuelan soaps dubbed into Serbian, and Russian films dubbed into Serbian, and American cartoons dubbed into Serbian, and taking short naps without dreaming or at least dreaming very little, and it was one day less, one day lost, one day further from everything and closer to nothing, while the hours didn’t pass so much as suddenly become one single hour, one single static hour like a bedsheet with no creases, one goddamn shitty and unbelievably eternal hour, so dark and so lonely and tasting of dead birds.

  It’s passed, Slavko said to me over the phone, as though I’d had a fever. Maybe I did have a fever. It was nine in the morning. Outside, the wind had stopped moaning. I drew the curtains and saw that it had stopped snowing, too, but it was still overcast. Yes, I said, it’s passed. Are you leaving soon? he asked. Yes, soon, and I closed my eyes melodramatically, trying to imagine myself already in the warmth of Portugal. Slavko said I should have lunch with them, that a really crazy friend of his from Vojvodina was coming, and he wanted to introduce me. Sure, thanks, I said, and then, although I don’t know why, I went back to sleep for a few hours.

  I left the building toward midday and was looking for a taxi—from any company, of course—when I heard someone shouting my name. It was Slobodan. Without the black suit, finally, and his hair even more messy and disheveled. He had the eyes of a man who hadn’t slept. This is for you, he said without even greeting me, handing me a piece of paper. Gardoš, I read, confused. It’s the name of a district, he said. On the other side of the river. Petar says he can’t be sure you’ll find anything but that you should try walking around there. Gardoš, I repeated. A district. Is that it? I asked, and feeling frustrated, I crumpled the piece of paper and put it in my jacket pocket. And the photo of Milan? I asked, but Slobodan was looking at something else and I thought he was about to cry. He just sighed. I need your help, he said, biting his nails and looking at me as if I were guarding life’s great secret. I don’t know if Natalja had been standing there all along or if she’d just arrived or if perhaps I’d decided not to see her—but there she was, all rosy and sad. And I suddenly remembered a legend Lía had told me, studious and devoted to quantum physics as she was. The legend says that as Columbus’s fleet was approaching the shores of America, the native Indians didn’t see it because they couldn’t see it, they literally couldn’t see it, since the concept of galleons in full sail was so alien to them, so unimaginable, that it didn’t enter into their version of reality, and as such, their minds simply decided not to register it. There’s nothing there, I remember Lía saying to me, with her hand on her forehead, as though she was watching the horizon. I construct my reality solely on the basis of that which I know, she said. Or something like that. I need your help, Slobodan said to me again, and I stood looking at them and somehow inserted them into my new reality. They were like two teenagers skipping class. I wanted to hug them. Slobodan was quiet. Natalja, without seeing me, said a word in Romany that had a beautiful sound, like a goldfinch’s trill, but I didn’t know what it meant and foolishly didn’t ask. I understood everything else, though. I told Slobodan of course, no problem, that I wouldn’t be back till late, and gave him the key to the apartment. I started to go, somehow both satisfied and also rather melancholy. Hey, he shouted, and I stopped. According to Natalja, he said, gesturing at her with his chin, doing a pirouette doesn’t mean anything to Gypsies. I know, I was going to say, but I just smiled.

  When I got to the Lecićs’ house, a man with long gray hair and a goatee—the whole musketeer look—opened the door. I’m Neboyša Tuka, he said to me in English. I held out my hand. Have you brought the buffalo’s milk? he asked me. I didn’t say anything. Go and buy us a liter of buffalo’s milk, he said. I started to step back, a little afraid. Slavko appeared at the door on his crutches and, pushing him aside, said stop fucking around, Neboyša.

  Marko had spread on the table all sorts of nuts, cheeses, sausages, hard-boiled eggs sliced in half and served with coarsely ground pepper, a tomato salad, and a casserole of chopped vegetables and something spicy called ajvar. They poured a few glasses of beer. As we ate, Neboyša talked about Vojvodina and about his chauffeur, who was waiting outside for him, and he kept glancing out the window. I think my anxiety was sparked when I tried a bite of the apple tart, although when I think about it, that’s not right at all, because the anxiety was always there, but well camouflaged. Neboyša asked me something and, I don’t know why, I said yes. I drank half a glass of warm beer as an anesthetic. I was sweating. I felt the crumpled piece of paper in my pocket and became even more anxious. Gardoš, I whispered, as though to calm myself down. While she made the Turkish coffee, Zdena asked me if I’d been to Knez Mihajlova. It’s a really lovely pedestrianized street, she said, there are loads of restaurants and cafés with terraces. I don’t know, maybe, I replied, remembering the two Gypsy siblings dancing between the tables of a Degas painting. I lit a cigarette. I think you’d like it, she said. Neboyša said something in Serbian. Everyone laughed. They’re saying, Zdena explained to me as she sat down, that Knez Mihajlova is where everyone goes to be seen, all clean-shaven and dolled up and wearing their best clothes and their best shoes, even though they haven’t got two pennies to rub together. It’s ridiculous, added Neboyša. They spend all their money on some rip-off outfit and some rip-off coffee, when they don’t even have food to eat at home. Seventy percent of Belgrade is chronically depressed, said Slavko, and I wanted to ask him how he’d arrived at that number, but Marko, who until then had been quiet and pensive, started to tell me the story of a neighbor who used to beat a chopping board with a wet rag in the evenings. What for? I asked, finishing my coffee. So that we’d all think she was tenderizing a piece of meat, he said. She didn’t have the money to buy meat anymore, obviously, but it still mattered to her that her neighbors thought she did. Just like that lot on Knez Mihajlova, said Slavko. You see them walking around and having a coffee and laughing and they pretend they’re doing just fine, that they’re happy, that they’ve got money, but the truth is, they’ve built this glittering facade of clothes and makeup to hide the fact that they’re dead inside, to look the other way from the scars left by the war. Like the bombed-out buildings, I said without thinking about it much, and everyone looked at me in silence and no one said anything else after that.

  I asked Zdena to call me a taxi so I could get to Gardoš. Ah, Gardoš is lovely, she said. There’s a tower, Eduardo. Make sure you go up the tower. You can see the whole city from there. Neboyša asked for another taxi to go back to Vojvodina. I looked at him, confused, and as we both walked out, I asked him about his chauffeur. What chauffeur?

  Dusk had fallen when I got to Gardoš. All the streets were narrower and steeper and the Austro-Hungarian influence was obvious on this side of the river. I was still feeling anxious, and for some reason I was expecting to run into Milan at any moment, right there, hanging around on a street corner or sitting on a bench, and I started looking closely at everyone, scrutinizing them as they walked past.
I forgot his face for a few seconds and had to concentrate to recall it. Pale, I said to myself. Long, shiny black hair, I said. A nocturnal gaze, I said, and probably smiled stupidly. I passed by a landau or something that in the darkness looked like a landau. I passed by a guy dressed like a pimp, and maybe he was a pimp, but with no whores in sight. I realized then that Gardoš was a very quiet cobblestoned neighborhood, and walking among the old houses and the lights that looked like gas lamps and through a thick blanket of fog, I felt plunged into the eighteenth century, maybe the nineteenth, and I suddenly had the feeling that I was the lost one and someone else was looking for me, that someone else was following me. I stopped and rather ridiculously looked back and decided there wasn’t anyone there, even though I now know very well that there was.

  I went into a bar. It was empty and the waiter didn’t fill me with confidence. Then I went into a small restaurant, but no one spoke English. I kept walking. A little way off, at the top of a steep street, a group of people stood in a circle by a lamppost. I thought that in the middle of the circle there might be a Gypsy musician, an accordionist or perhaps a violinist, and I slowly began walking over. As I approached, I could make out six or seven men, all with cropped hair, black boots, thick chains, and leather jackets. They fell quiet as they watched me walk up the street. When I was closer to them, I looked up so that I could prove my passivity with a smile, and I noticed that one of them had a green or maybe black swastika tattooed on his neck. I felt sick. I quickened my pace. They shouted something in Serbian, but I ducked into a bar and went up to the counter and asked for a vinjak, which was the cheap whiskey, and lit a cigarette. Slowly, the sickness or fear or whatever it had been started to fade. At the other end of the bar, a fat guy was drinking something and reading the paper. I asked the barman if he spoke English. He shook his head, shrugged his shoulders, and started jabbering incoherently. The fat guy lowered his paper and shouted that he spoke English, then asked what I wanted. I’m looking for somewhere with Gypsy music, I said, and he translated it for the barman, who answered fully, complete with jerks and gestures. Says there’s not much around these parts, but you can try a couple of cafés where they usually turn up. And even though he mentioned the names, they didn’t stay with me. He held his arm out and said that I should turn right out of the door (the neo-Nazis were to the left) and walk three hundred meters and both places were just there, right across from each other. I thanked him, finished my whiskey, and paid. The neo-Nazis had gone, but I imagined them waiting for me around some corner, knives in hand. I followed the route and probably got lost, because I didn’t find anything. The little streets were tightly wound and they all looked alike, and who the hell’s going to count exactly three hundred meters? I went into a corner shop. I bought cigarettes and a packet of chewing gum, and a short, thin, friendly Chinese man came outside with me and showed me how to get there.