Impossible Stories

by Zoran Zivkovic

  The silence that reigned once again did not last long. It was broken by the old man near the tile stove, though this time not with his music. He was overcome by an attack of dry, wheezy coughing that appeared to come from the very bottom of his lungs. It seemed as if he would never be able to stop; at times it even resembled a death rattle. Although she was sitting some distance away, Miss Adele nonetheless took out her lace-edged handkerchief to cover her mouth, just in case. The last thing she needed right now was to get sick, like her sister. When the organ-grinder finally caught his breath, he stood up slowly, straightened his untidy clothes, raised his bulky instrument and headed ponderously for the door. Miss Adele felt relieved when he left. She only hoped that he had gone for good.

  It was already quite dark in the waiting room, but it was not clear who should turn on the light. This was finally resolved by the officer, since he could no longer read beside the window. He laid the open brochure on the bench and headed towards the switch by the door, his boots squeaking on the bare wooden floor and leaving a wet trace. The very moment light poured over the large room from two bare bulbs in the high ceiling, Miss Adele’s ears were once again filled with the organ-grinder’s music. She thought at first that he was playing for the soldiers in the corridor, even though the music was quite clear, as if he were still here in the waiting room. But she had no time to wonder at this curious fact for just then she experienced a second vision.

  The officer was returning to his seat when he was suddenly concealed by the smaller picture. Miss Adele could still hear his sloshing footsteps on the floor, but now she saw him not in the waiting room, but in some dark, bomb-cratered landscape. He was advancing cautiously, crouched down, revolver in hand, leading a small squad of soldiers, making his way through dense fog or smoke. Noiseless flashes flared up suddenly on this greyness, forcing the soldiers to hit the ground. As they were getting up after the third explosion, the officer suddenly grabbed his neck with both hands. He stood there frozen for a moment or two, and then slowly sank to the ground. His hands fell along with his body, revealing blood pouring in torrents from a gaping wound in the middle of his throat. It soaked the upper part of his overcoat that a moment before had been hanging from a hook in the waiting room.

  Miss Adele quickly covered her mouth with her handkerchief, smothering a cry of horror. Terrified by the appalling scene, she closed her eyes tightly. Her rapid heartbeat seemed to boom loud as a drum. She waited for her pulse to calm down a little before she dared to look again, shuddering, at what she feared to see. But when she opened her eyes, all that greeted her was the innocuous waiting room, now harshly lit. The officer was sitting calmly in his seat by the window, once again intent on his reading.

  Although she was not in the least inclined to stare at people, and particularly not at people she didn’t know, for some time she could not take her eyes off the officer’s powerful neck. The vision was gone, but the image of blood pouring unquenchably from it was vivid in her memory. He must have been hit by a stray bullet or shrapnel fragment. The wound seemed serious, so he had certainly lost a lot of blood before anyone could help him. How awful! thought Miss Adele. He was still relatively young. It was extremely unfair to die like that. She had to warn him of what awaited him. Then maybe he could avoid such a fate.

  But she didn’t do anything. She sat in her seat and finally, with great effort, lowered her eyes to her hands in her lap. What could she tell him, anyway? That she had seen a vision? That she had seem him die in a cratered battlefield? That it was all because of that ragged organ-grinder’s music? She would only get tangled up in her attempts to explain something to him that she herself did not understand. He would think her an old fool, bothering people with her prattle. And what if the vision were wrong, just like the one of Teresa on her deathbed? She would look ridiculous! It was all so unpleasant. What had she done to deserve this, in addition to all her other troubles?

  Somewhere from the distance came the drawn-out whistle of a locomotive. Miss Adele turned hopeful eyes to the windows. The sooner the train arrived, the sooner her suffering here would end. She expected the public-address system, located conspicuously above the door of the waiting room, to announce the train’s arrival in the station, but it remained silent. Several minutes later a seemingly endless string of cars began to pass slowly by one of the platforms, a black clattering stream sliding through the barely paler night. From its lack of lighted windows, Miss Adele concluded that it must be a freight train, not scheduled to stop at the station. But if this train had arrived, that meant the track was passable.

  The little girl sitting between her parents whispered something to her mother again. She nodded, and the two of them got up and headed out of the waiting room, holding hands. Father continued to sit there stiffly, staring straight ahead, paying them no attention. The moment the door closed behind the mother and daughter, the organ-grinder announced a new vision. Once again, he played so loudly and clearly that Miss Adele suddenly looked in suspicion at the two men sitting there, seemingly deaf to this obtrusive music, before she returned her fearful attention to the ominous, smaller picture, unconsciously clutching her handkerchief.

  The inside of the car was cramped, particularly the back seat where the little girl was sitting. She seemed somewhat older, by maybe two or three years. She was surrounded by piles of luggage and even had a small suitcase in her lap. Father was driving and he often turned his head to say something to Mother on the seat next to him. Although she couldn’t hear him, Miss Adele concluded by his wife’s demeanour that he must be reprimanding her. Her head was bowed, and she frequently raised her fingers to wipe away tears.

  Everything happened very quickly: the lights of another car suddenly appeared around a curve, aimed straight at them; Mother opened her mouth in a silent cry, her eyes staring; Daughter instinctively lifted the suitcase to shield herself; Father wrenched the steering wheel to avoid the collision, but was unable to turn it back again in time. The car flew off the road and started to plunge down a steep hillside, rolling over and over. Seen from inside, the car seemed to be immobile while the whole world spun madly around it. And then there was a violent crash against a boulder at the bottom of the cliff and flames that suddenly engulfed the whole of the smaller picture.

  This time Miss Adele did not even try to hold back her cry. She jumped up from her seat, holding her muff to prevent it falling to the floor again. The fiery image suddenly melted before her when she changed position, to be replaced by two bewildered faces. But now they made no difference—no more misgivings about inappropriate behaviour could stop her.

  What had happened to the officer was horrifying, but his death had at least been something one could expect, a professional risk run in the line of duty, while this was a true tragedy. An entire family—and the child in particular! She had only begun to live, so to speak. No, this could not be allowed. Even if she looked ridiculous and they thought she was a crazy old fool, the child must be saved. Adele had to tell Father about this fateful event. All at once she felt certain that it would take place, that all the visions she had seen would come to pass. This, of course, meant that the vision about Teresa must also be a true one, but right then the inexorability of that event seemed less important to her.

  She walked over to the man with the blue scarf and got straight to the point. “You must drive carefully, sir. You mustn’t argue with your wife. Because another car will appear and then . . . ”

  She did not have time to tell him what would happen. The loudspeaker suddenly crackled and a mechanical female voice announced the arrival of the long-awaited passenger train. The door to the waiting room opened at the same instant and Mother and Daughter returned. Behind them came the sounds of the soldiers’ commotion in the corridor. The woman looked at her husband inquisitively as she came up to him, but he only shrugged. The officer rushed past them, trying to put on his overcoat with one hand while holding his sheepskin hat and brochure in the other.

  Miss Adele kn
ew that she had to go on, that what she had said was insufficient and confused. She could tell by his expression that he hadn’t understood a thing and didn’t believe her. But somehow she couldn’t find the right words. A feeling of increasing helplessness came over her as the precious seconds passed, and with them the chance to do something. Instead she just stood there, mute and foolishly staring. Finally, Father ran out of patience. He picked up his coat and travel bag from the bench and led his wife and daughter towards the exit.

  Miss Adele was left alone in the waiting room, feeling useless and discomfited. She had not succeeded in warning them, and had made a fool of herself by trying. If she tried to approach them again on the train, they would certainly refuse to listen to her. Yet she had to do something—she couldn’t give up on a literal matter of life and death. But in her overwhelming panic she could think of nothing. She heard the rhythmic clacking of metal wheels outside, and soon the nearest platform was filled with a moving string of lighted windows. That snapped Miss Adele out of her paralysis. She would think of something later, now she had to hurry. Since the train was late it would certainly not stay in the station very long.

  She picked up her suitcase and hurried toward the corridor. The soldiers were no longer scattered but had assembled into two columns, ready to move out, the officer to the fore, giving sharp orders. Just as Miss Adele was heading past the military formation toward the platform, the organ-grinder’s music started to blare all around her. At first she thought the ragged old man had somehow reached the public-address system and was now seeking to cheer the entire station with his unbearable music through all the loudspeakers. It was so loud that she wished she had both hands free, so she could cover her ears. But that desire soon lost urgency in the face of another vision.

  She could not see the context; there was nothing but a pile of bodies. They covered the entire smaller picture, in which nothing moved: these were the corpses of the young soldiers she now heard marching in the background. Death had visited them in countless horrific forms. Here the back of a head was blown off, there was a bloody hole instead of an eye; scattered intestines, a red crater across a chest, stumps where there used to be legs, torsos without heads, unrecognizable joints of human flesh . . . some battlefield’s insane harvest of youth curtailed and beauty mutilated.

  Miss Adele started to trip over her feet and lose her balance. The last of the marching soldiers turned towards her briefly but had no chance to offer help. Their commanding officer was in a hurry to see his detachment settled on the train to military glory. She was overcome by nausea. Her hand over her mouth, leaning against the wall, she staggered down the corridor and found herself in the station’s main hall. She headed for the restroom, not the platform, but ran into two waves of arriving passengers heading for the exit. In other circumstances this would have embarrassed her exceedingly, but now she barely even noticed.

  Miss Adele spent a long time leaning over the toilet bowl, until her stomach was completely empty. Although it had been very disagreeable, vomiting had brought her some relief. She splashed her pale face with icy water from the sink, then wiped it with her lace-edged handkerchief, neglecting to remove the drops that had been sprinkled on the upper part of her coat. When she finally returned to the station hall, it was empty. The train was long gone, bearing into the snowy night people about whom she knew what she would have given anything not to know.

  When she went back to the window to get a refund on her ticket, the ticket-seller had no way of understanding the sudden sigh that escaped from her as she watched him work, nor the bewilderment that appeared in her eyes, as if they were looking at something terrible, and not these commonplace surroundings. He was even less able to hear the repetitious music of the organ-grinder ringing in her ears—unsurprisingly, since there was no organ-grinder nearby.

  The taxi driver who picked her up from the station was equally confused. Looking at her for a moment in his rear-view mirror, he saw her hold her hands over her ears and shake her head, eyes tightly closed. He was used to passengers acting oddly at times, but they were usually young people, not serious-looking, elderly women. He thought of asking her if she needed help, but abandoned the idea. He was suddenly sure he could do nothing to help this lady.

  Back home, Miss Adele found a new telegram on the mat below the front door. She locked it away unread with the previous telegram in the carved wooden box where she kept her photo album and old letters. There was no need to open it, since she knew what it said. Just as she knew she would not go to Teresa’s funeral. Not because the trip would be too strenuous, nor because she could not tolerate Jacob, but because she would inevitably encounter people along the way. And that had already become a nightmare she could hardly endure.

  She had not been one to go out much before, and now she scarcely left the house. This did not seem unusual to any of the neighbours, since she was known to be a woman of retiring character who was not on intimate terms with anyone. Her behaviour had become rather strange, indeed, whenever she ran into anyone, but it is well known that old maids sometimes lose their marbles.

  Miss Adele’s final wait took its time. She would have found it easier to bear could she have seen the end, but the organ-grinder who played for everyone else refused to play for her. After pondering this at length, she could not tell whether he was being especially kind to her or whether this was his ultimate damnation.

  15. The Puzzle

  Mr Adam only started to paint late in life, after his retirement. It happened quite unexpectedly. For the first sixty-five years of his life he had never shown any predisposition towards painting, for which he had neither talent nor interest. The arts in general attracted him very little.

  The only exception might have been music, although he didn’t really enjoy it. Sometimes he would find a radio station devoted mainly to music and leave it on low, just enough to dispel the silence that surrounded him during his long, dreary hours at work. It didn’t matter what sort of music was being played; almost any would serve his purpose equally well, although he preferred instrumentals since singing distracted him. All he did at home was sleep, and often not even that, so there was little opportunity for anything else.

  Retirement brought Mr Adam an abundance of empty hours which he must fill. Experience gained at work had taught him that whenever he had to wait an indeterminate time for something, he had to impose obligations upon himself, and then discharge them doggedly, regardless of how unusual they might seem. This at least gave a semblance of meaning to everything. And one could not live without some meaning, however illusory.

  He set himself one obligation for every day of the week. On Sunday he cooked, something he had never done before. He bought the biggest cookbook he could find in the bookstore and set himself to prepare every dish in it, in alphabetical order. The uncertainty of how far he dared hope to get at this tempo did not disturb him. He was aware that he would require extreme longevity to reach the end of the book, but that was of no importance to him.

  He followed the instructions for each recipe to the letter, and the only trouble he encountered was when they were not specific enough, but allowed the cook to use his own judgement or taste. He did not like everything he cooked, but that did not bother him greatly. He ate his culinary creations down to the last spoonful, throwing nothing away. This was almost a matter of honour to him. Sometimes, when the recipe was intended for several people, he ate the same food the whole week through.

  On Monday Mr Adam rode his bicycle. This was also a new departure. He learned how to ride easily and quite rapidly, despite his advanced age. He was not deterred by bad weather, though he would dress accordingly. The only trouble he had was when the rain spattered his glasses, unpleasantly fogging his vision. He preferred to ride without glasses in a downpour, though that rendered his vision equally foggy.

  He always took the same route, each time increasing the distance a little. He tried to conserve his energy so he had enough left to go back by bike. He was onl
y forced to return by other means of transport on the few occasions when there was a sudden turn in the weather, or he was overcome by fatigue. His conscience always plagued him when he gave up like that.

  Unlike cooking, cycling had its limits. The route he took never actually ended, since it connected to many others, but even if he were to ride the whole day without stopping, which was not very likely, at midnight he would be required to stop. Tuesday was not for bike riding, but imposed its own obligation.

  While still employed, he had read very little except professional journals. Not because there was no opportunity—many of his colleagues read for pleasure to pass the time at work—but because it seemed to him a sign of insufficient dedication to the job. Of course, his work would not have suffered for it, particularly since computers had taken over the bulk of his responsibilities.

  Now he decided to make up at least partially for this lapse. He became a member of the town library and went there every Tuesday. He entered as soon as it opened and stayed until it closed, only taking a short break early in the afternoon to eat something.

  His initial subject was science fiction. This was a natural choice, but Mr Adam soon gave it up. What he read about first contact seemed unsophisticated for the most part, often to the point of inanity—pulled out of thin air, at best. The number of writers demonstrating any knowledge of the real state of things was quite small, though such knowledge was easy enough to obtain. Disappointed, he was briefly tempted to abandon reading entirely. But giving up in the face of adversity was not in his nature, and besides, he had paid his dues a year in advance. Finally, were he to stop going to the library he would have to think up a new obligation for Tuesday, and that prospect did not please him at all.