Therefore I devoted all my efforts to furthering mutual respect and friendship. Whatever the hand of the translation editor touched I considered flawless. I saw no need to denounce the translator who forgot he wasn’t the author of the original. There was one who freely added ideas of his own whenever he thought something was missing. Another used footnotes to record his associations, or particularly interesting everyday events. A third attached an apology to his translations for omitting whole sentences in some places because of the chronic headaches which crippled his concentration. Another translator was working on several projects at once and sometimes got them mixed up; the encyclopaedia of contemporary architecture contained some passages of theological debate. And why not, when everything is interrelated? With or without them, I was pretty sure the world out there wouldn’t perceive any difference; I just checked to make sure no commas were missing. And every instance like that confirmed what I expected: not one single reader complained.
But the domestic Literati certainly did: we’d ruined their book, and our shameful indolence was to blame for only seventeen copies having been sold; the critics had picked on it to vent their frustrations; an evidently illiterate idiot had snatched the prize from beneath their noses; they hadn’t been invited to take part in the talk-show although they’d won it, and because the whole literary scene behaved as if it was none of their business and irrelevant; the book’s key statement unmasking all that hypocrisy and falsehood once and for all had been edited out; the apparatchiks had prevented them from being internationally successful; their collected works had still not been issued, in a leather binding impregnated against ageing; a monument still hadn’t been erected to them here in their home country; they had a creative block of many years’ duration and were calling the editors for no particular reason to kill time until the next tide of inspiration came; we’d treated their manuscript with criminal negligence, and why, oh why was there no room for a quality book like theirs, given all the shit we’d published?
Our country may be small, but it can pride itself on having so many Literati. In terms of membership, their associations need not fear comparison with telephone books. Moreover, some of them have produced several books each. Not that anyone reads those books, but one likes to talk about them, especially if they’re exemplary in demonstrating the author’s feeblemindedness, vulgarity, betrayal of national interests, or even more far-reaching evils.
It turned out that my greatest talent, my most valuable contribution to the firm, lay precisely in the domain of communication with the Literati and other collaborators. Something about me encourages even complete strangers to confide in me and tell me their innermost feelings, and our staff recognised that. Regardless of whether they had outstanding claims against us or owed us money, people clearly preferred to discuss the situation with me, often as a package deal involving an exhaustive case history and explanation of the side effects, which took up most of my working time.
At the firm they were dubbed patients. Once a colleague, just to be witty, put one through to me unannounced in the middle of a long discussion I was having on the other phone about a translation, late but almost finished, which burglars had made off with together with the translator’s computer. Soon all such calls were routinely transferred to me as soon as the patients had introduced themselves.
My docility and pliancy could turn into servility if required; I wasn’t proud of it, but nor did I interrupt what they considered necessary to tell me. Some preferred to come in and see us rather than talking on the phone, to sit down in an armchair and explain, sometimes for hours, the multifarious ordeals they went through to feed the family plus the children from their previous marriage and to afford their mistress a liposuction in the hope that it would cure their insomnia. I learnt the patterns which made up the mosaic of their depression and the odds for their liver, which charlatans had already written off twice. Some kept a bottle in the filing cabinet, and in it dwelt their decades-old animosity due to an article which ruined their career right at the very beginning, before it had properly started. Then there was the unhappy romance with a Russian beauty which had lasted only as long as the postmodernism symposium by Lake Baikal or Lake Balaton, or was it in Bratislava? The magnificent live-poetry episode in Brazil, where their verses drew rousing ovations from capacity grandstands at the Maracanã…
Some patients opened newspapers and, with a satyric smile, admiring their own lucidity and wit, gave themselves over to the passion for dissecting and glossing the world. With others, the mask of politeness unsuccessfully concealed that they’d actually come to glean information about their rivals and enemies, to search for a trace of a conspiracy, the behind-the-scenes dealings which caused them so much torment. Some, when no one took note of them any more, stayed sitting like wax figures, their arms crossed and mouth pouting like abortive decorations angry at their maker.
I must admit that, despite the stress, occasional friction and hostility, it was an agreeable and stimulating environment to work in; people liked to spend time there. There was always something going down: a scandal from the life of another publisher, a freshly unearthed scam, a public debacle, or at least someone getting dirty in a mudslinging match. My colleagues never lacked hidden illnesses, domestic tragedies or symptoms which prompted us to elaborate diagnoses. A family spirit of mutual care prevailed. Problems to do with keeping pets and children were resolved in working groups. If a female colleague had her period, or the onset of her period was delayed, everyone knew by morning coffee. Whatever delicate matters someone mentioned on the phone were retold almost simultaneously in the other wing of the building.
Everyone contributed to this vivacity in their own way. Some ladies developed a peculiar sort of humour among themselves which consisted in imitating children’s speech: talking with squeaky voices, mispronouncing things, saying l instead of r, calling out to each other from one end of the corridor to the other, usually for no reason, and all the more if someone had asked them to stop or blew their top at them. The colleague at the desk next to mine listened to the same cassette of his favourite soft-rock artist at least once a day; it disappeared, of course, but the next morning he came in with a new one; then of course the cassette player was sabotaged, so from then on he carried it around with him. Another guy had the secret passion for breaking wind as soon as others left the room. But it happened that someone came back in soon after the crime. This would be embarrassing for both of them and he would turn bright red. But it didn’t prevent relapses.
Although tight-fisted in his business dealings, the Boss was never miserly when it came to the satisfaction of his extended family. At the very least, he endeavoured to stimulate our work ethic in ways he considered appropriate. That didn’t include frills such as air-conditioning, hot water for washing hands or paid overtime, but instead he used every opportunity to turn work into a party. We celebrated each step in the development of the firm and would come together in the meeting room at the end of the day to mark the occasion with a little feast. The Boss would order wine by the canister, a roast suckling pig, and sometimes a lamb as well. Music was put on, and often there was singing. This merrymaking was tacitly considered a work commitment, and to excuse oneself, even on the pretext of an illness in the family, was risky.
One of these occasions dragged on until late evening. People needed to be driven home; I took two. One was a lady from Accounts shortly before retirement, who was rumoured to be a lesbian, but maybe that was just because she lived alone. The other had been in Marketing for two or three years, and that’s also how much older than me she was; that was all I knew about her. She’d glanced at me several times with eyes that could have meant something, but that didn’t mean she had her sights set on me–she looked at others that way too.
Bashful snowflakes had appeared that afternoon, and now the snow was falling in thick clumps. The lady from Accounts lived close by; now we were heading slowly for the suburb where the other lived, at the opposite end of the
city to me.
The wipers were working flat out, but tons of the white stuff descended as if it intended to stop all movement. No one could be seen in the streets, just the occasional stray headlights like will-o’-the-wisps. The radio played American lullabies from the fifties, one after another, with velvet voices and violins.
As we got closer, I reflected on the possibility. I didn’t find her particularly attractive in any way. She wore clothes which were probably those recommended in women’s magazines, but they regularly looked wrong on her. Her mouth was always brightly lipsticked and looked like a warning sign. She spoke too loud and her laugh was somehow artificial, coming at peculiar moments like a hiccup and showing the gap between her two top front teeth, which some were sure to find charming. As we drove she was constantly fussing around with her tresses, plucking at them in search of hairs which had fallen out. With each hair she found she would first straighten it out, meticulous and frowning, then roll it between thumb and forefinger into a neat little ball, put it down on the floor and start all over again. The instinct to beg her not to do it any more became ever more urgent.
Still, when she asked me in front of the building if I’d like to pop up for a coffee, I said Sure. Instead of looking for her keys, she rang. A boy of roughly ten opened the door. She said she would just put him to bed. I asked if I could use the phone.
I should actually have been thinking about the possibility of a polite withdrawal. The flat was tidy, even disturbingly so: pedantically neat, without a single thing where it didn’t belong, without crockery left in the sink to drip dry, without a speck of dust. That brought back unpleasant memories and claustrophobia. I went to the window; the snow had become one of those winter wonders you wish will never stop once they’ve set in so well. It looked far too strenuous to go out.
When I declared to Mother that I didn’t know when I’d be getting back and that she shouldn’t wait up for me, she gave a snort of disdain and hung up without seeking an explanation. Go and get snowbound if you’re too dumb to come home on time, she thought, and washed her hands of it.
Except for at work, we saw each other exclusively at her flat. Six months? A year? That time is lost beneath the snow. I only know that we never once went out together; out relationship wasn’t of that kind.
I did go out with her son, though. I took him to the pictures and ice-skating–I even tried myself for the first time–and once to his recital at music school. He played the bassoon most brilliantly, his teacher said; she was really glad to have met me because she’d heard a lot about me. In fact, he and I really became close friends. He was exceptionally well-behaved, quiet and a little timid, and outside he held my hand.
I saw a photo of his father. He’d never seen his son but only heard his voice over the phone on some of his birthdays. His mother saw him for the first time at a party, they’d had a lot to drink, and he later claimed not to remember anything. She was booked in for an abortion, but in the waiting room she suddenly got up and went home. After the boy was born, the father showed a few signs of good will and then refrained from any further efforts because he didn’t have strength enough even for his own life. He was studying film direction, punctuated by periods of intensive drug-taking. I recognised him on television a few years later as the co-author of a prizewinning omnibus film; and a few years later still, in a discarded newspaper while waiting to board the plane which took me out of the country: the photo showed him being taken into custody after robbing a foreign exchange office.
No one at work knew we were seeing each other. Perhaps she was ashamed of it, perhaps she wasn’t; we pretended by tacit agreement that nothing was going on. Why exactly did she choose me? Because I didn’t show any outward signs of interest? Possibly she was seeing others at the same time; I didn’t ask. I went to her place when she called me, two or three evenings a week, sometimes with intervals of ten days or so. Gradually the relationship turned into a kind of friendship. On some evenings she preferred to chat on the phone; in the end, we just watched television together at her place. She kept calling from time to time, without saying why, but you could hear the solitude washing over her in those moments and her going under. She carried quite a bag of blackness along with her, whatever was inside; we didn’t touch on those things.
Some conversations were difficult, punctuated by intermittent sighs and long silences; in others, she talked about her admirers. About one of our colleagues from the firm who didn’t know the meaning of no, although the police had twice prevented him from spending the night at her door. About the man she’d met over the internet who sent her a one-way ticket to Cape Town. About the one who’d sent her a bunch of tulips every birthday since high school. About the university lecturer who would drop his wife and three children at her single word. About the high official in the Ministry of Defence who was gay and offered her marriage for appearances’ sake. About a chair of a board of directors, voted Manager of the Year, his villa with five-metre banana trees and his insistence that she sexually abuse him. About the crime-column editor of a daily paper and the weekend spent with him in Vancouver. About the extreme-sport enthusiast who introduced her to hot-air balloons and paragliding. I’m sure that at least part of it all was true.
Our relationship ended for good when she resigned from the firm without warning or explanation. She didn’t call me, but then again I didn’t call her.
That’s how much I knew about love when I met you.
* * *
My first love. That’s what went through my mind when I saw him this morning on the way to Father’s. His eyes met mine as soon as I got out of the tram. There was an unrecognisable ambience in them but they hadn’t aged a day. They were still that same watery blue and had the same boyish simple-mindedness in them. An immunity to any complicated thoughts. He’d been the hero of several volumes of women’s diaries and the main demon in the nightmares on his male counterparts. Or a role model unattainable because of his cool conceitedness undergirded with tragedy. This was based mainly on the reputation of his elder brother, with his police file and time in various correctional institutions. He himself hadn’t collided with the law, but he had an irresistible talent for reflecting outlawishness in his eyes and showing the romantic suffering it brought him. He wore it so photogenically.
As a girl, I was long dazzled by that look. And when finally he met me in the dark one time and told me he just happened to be going the same way, how special I felt! I trembled with excitement as if I was the chosen one. As we walked towards home, I felt that something terribly exciting was happening which would mark me for the rest of my life. There was ample opportunity for that because he only occasionally muttered a few words. That increasingly became a problem over our next few encounters because the only topic which interested him were his brother’s exploits and the paper-tiger imitations of his own. The rest of the time was consumed by awkwardness and a nascent boredom. But these were drowned out by the chorus of my exalted peers. And so I finally asked him if he’d like to kiss me. But of course! That was the goal of the operation–remuneration in gold for one who had endured so much hassle!
I was thirteen, he fourteen. Both of us invested great effort in our first kiss to make up for not yet knowing how. We didn’t relent even when the saliva was running down our faces and our jaws cramped up. We may not have been having sex but we certainly showed no lack of passion. He fumbled around to unbutton my shirt and slipped his hand inside but quickly pulled it out again, probably to spare me the shame of such futile groping. When we were worn out we stopped for a breather and then repeated the exercise. That’s how the next two or three dates turned out too, and we realised it was hopeless. Even with the best will in the world, there was nothing with which to fill the gaps between our exchanges of spit.
All that I’d heard about him until this morning was that he got married straight after high school. I saw him as he was carrying crates of empty beer bottles out of the shop. He still sported the remains of poetically flowin
g locks, despite his now bear-like frame. His blue overalls nicely accentuated his eyes. They rested on me for an instant as if a memory had come alive, and he put down the crates he’d been carrying, clapped the dust off his hands and came across the street…straight to one of those tin kiosks where joie de vivre babbles and morning self-confidence is downed by the half-pint. Who knows how far his brother made it–to Lepoglava prison or to a high position in government.
I was met by the smell of burned milk. Grime crackled underfoot like fine glass. The kitchen was chilled and the windows wide open, but bitter smoke still filled the air. Father lay sprawled on the couch, his eyes riveted to the ceiling and his face covered in tears.
‘There’s nothing more for me,’ he moaned, his whole body lifeless, ‘they can come and take me away now.’
His jumper was covered with grease spots and the bottoms of his trouser legs were encrusted with dried mud.
‘Come on now,’ I said, wiping the milk up off the floor and then scrubbing the stove with a sponge. ‘It doesn’t work like that. You don’t get taken away when you want to be.’
How many little old ladies with rosaries in their hands send prayers to heaven day after day and still end up waiting for years. Theoretically, instead of lying on the couch I could have found him hanging from a rope, but he’s not like that. Every morning he carefully counts out his daily serving of tablets and replenishes supplies as soon as they start running low. He hangs onto that butt-end of life if only to show how much he despises it. He hates doctors because they don’t listen to him–understandably so, because whoever sees him a few times knows off by heart what he’s going to say. They also remind him of the unlikely truth that he suffers most of all from old age and knowing he’ll never be a day younger.
A Handful of Sand Page 12