I know you take money out of Eva’s wallet, she wrote in Spanish.
And only after sending it did she realize that, as soon as he received the message, he would also have her number. She thought of Inés, who still insisted that having a kentuki meant opening the doors of your house to a complete stranger, and for the first time she understood the real danger it implied. Her phone’s chiming ringtone let her know she had a new message, and a shiver of terror forced her to her feet. Could she really already be receiving a reply from that giant German? She thought of her husband, though she didn’t really know why. Finally she gathered her courage and reached for her phone. The message said:
She pays me 50 a week in exchange for great sex. Want to join in?
She understood the English, and the message left her breathless for a few seconds. Then the phone rang, her own phone in her own hands. It was Klaus’s number. She knew that if she didn’t answer soon, it would go to her voice mail, and she imagined Klaus listening to her voice, her old-woman apologies in Peruvian Spanish, her promise to return the call. She was afraid to look back at her computer screen. Klaus could have taken her out of her dog bed while she was sitting here trembling, trying to reread the message over and over without her glasses; he could have finally indulged himself and stuck her under the faucet in the kitchen, or he could have thrown her out the window. Maybe she was already dead and she just didn’t know it yet. She left the phone on the table, gathered her strength and turned around to look: the horizontal image on the screen was still motionless. She waited until she was sure Klaus wasn’t nearby. She had to calm down. She took a deep breath and waited. There wasn’t a sound from the TV; in fact, the apartment was in complete silence. Maybe Klaus was too much of a coward to retaliate, because in the end, any action he took against her would only end up causing him problems with Eva. From where she was she didn’t have a complete view of the living room and kitchen, but there didn’t seem to be anyone there. The bag Klaus usually brought with him and left beside the door was gone. She sighed in relief. And then she saw it. On the living room mirror, written with Eva’s lipstick at the height where a kentuki could have written it—though no kentuki could really write anything on a mirror—it said: Whore. The handwriting was terrible. He’d written it in English, and she wondered if Eva would be able to understand it, too. There were still almost twenty minutes before Eva got back, and yet, whatever Emilia might do with her kentuki, she knew it would be impossible to erase the writing by herself.
When Eva came into her apartment, she set her bag on the table and caught sight of her lipstick uncapped and ruined on the floor.
“What happened here?” she asked.
The voice was trying to be authoritarian. Eva came over to the dog bed and discovered the message on the mirror. Did the girl really think that a kentuki lying on its bed was capable of such a thing? Now Emilia did want to write to Eva, she wanted to shout: “It wasn’t me! You have to get that man out of the house!”
“Who did this?”
Emilia moved her wheels, and she had the feeling that if Eva took her out of the bed and she could finally manage to move, she would find a way to explain herself. But Eva seemed too angry. She wiped the mirror with glass cleaner and threw the lipstick into the garbage. Then she sat down in front of the TV in a position very similar to Klaus’s, which to Emilia seemed almost like a provocation. The girl reached for the beer that had been left beside the sofa, and she took a sip as she looked uneasily at Emilia out of the corner of her eye. After a while she got up again, came straight over to the bed, picked up the kentuki, and brought it into the bathroom. What was happening? Emilia had never seen the bathroom. A mixture of fear and excitement overwhelmed her in Lima as she sat in front of her computer. Eva set her down in the bathtub and scolded her one last time, then turned off the light, closed the door, and left her pet bunny alone.
Emilia sat stock-still before the dark screen. It would be hard to escape a bathtub, and still more difficult to process all the things that had just happened. She was still sitting there some minutes later, when the sound of the doorbell startled her.
It took her a moment to remember Gloria’s visit and get up to answer the door. She smoothed her hair a little and crossed the dining room. She hadn’t finished tidying up the house, but now that seemed like an absolutely minor issue. The doorbell rang again, and Gloria called her name and knocked on the door. As soon as Emilia opened it, Gloria came bustling in, carrying a box that she set on the dining room table.
“Open it,” she said, with a mischievous smile that Emilia didn’t like.
The two of them stood looking at the box.
“Come on, then.” Gloria pulled off a corner of the wrapping paper.
Emilia understood right away that it was a kentuki box, already opened and a little scuffed. Gloria took out a charger, a cable to connect it to the wall, the user’s manual, and, finally, a kentuki wrapped in a dish towel. She handed it to Emilia with the utmost care.
“It’s a gift,” said Gloria. “So you can’t return it.”
Emilia thought about Klaus, and about Eva’s rage when she threw her lipstick into the garbage. She thought it was all too much, more than she could manage. When she unwrapped the kentuki, she discovered something absolutely unexpected: it was a bunny, identical to the one she dwelled in, in Erfurt. She remembered she had a strong-enough ribbon in the bathroom, and she thought that if she tied it around the bunny’s ears, it would be like having herself moving around her own house. Emilia smiled; she didn’t want to encourage her friend, but she couldn’t help it, and Gloria was already clapping with her usual enthusiasm.
“I just knew you were made for each other,” she said.
Emilia left the rabbit on the table. She wondered how anyone could get rid of such a sweet little thing. So soft and cute. She saw its eyelids were closed, and she realized it had been a very long time since she’d seen anyone with their eyes closed. Years, maybe? Maybe since the one time her son had come to see her from Hong Kong, when he fell asleep in front of the TV?
“He must be resting. But he’s all charged up,” said Gloria, and she plugged in the base next to the living room door. “Should we have a little tea?”
When Gloria left, Emilia collected the cups and changed into her pajamas. The bunny was still motionless, so she left it on its charger in the living room and went to bed. She woke up with a start at midnight. What had she been dreaming? She could have sworn it was about Klaus, something terrible, though she couldn’t remember exactly what. She turned on the lights and crossed the living room. The kentuki was still on its charger with its eyes closed, just as she’d left it before going to bed.
Since she couldn’t sleep, she went over to her desk chair and woke up the computer. It was the first time she’d turned on in Erfurt at that hour. She looked at her watch: 3:10 in Peru was 10:10 in the morning in Germany. She was on the kitchen table. It was a spot she’d never been before, and it gave her an absolutely new view of the apartment. Then she saw the charger signal on her screen and understood. Eva had forgiven her. She’d taken her out of the bathtub and placed her on her charger, as her son had told her must happen every night while she slept peacefully in Lima. There was already light in the apartment, and she didn’t need to get down from her charger to see the photos hanging on the refrigerator. There were none of Klaus, but in the center, below a calendar, there was a photo of Eva and her, Eva with her bunny. She was sitting on the sofa—the photo was taken from above, maybe by Klaus himself—and Eva held her bunny as if it were a puppy. Her lips were pursed, she was blowing it a kiss, and Emilia saw herself sweetly asleep, her little eyes closed. The tenderness of the image moved her. She picked up her phone and took a picture of the screen. The next day, she would print it and hang it on her own fridge. She’d hang it in the center, away from all those delivery magnets, so she could look at it every time she passed by, the way Eva looked at her.
Sierra Leone—Hong Kong
HE SAW A DARK
NIGHT, and below the night, the hands of a crowd tossing him up into the sky. He spun in the air, fell, and was hurled upward again. On the horizon, the shining teeth of a large city, and in front of him, for seconds at a time, the stage. The music vibrated and surrounded him. Every beat of the bass drums shook the audience in a single quake. He saw the trumpet players, the bass players, the lights, and the cameras crossing between the musicians at top speed, flying over the stadium end to end. One voice shouted and thousands answered, in raptures over their own harmony. Now they threw him into the air. Caught him and tossed him up again. At times there was only the navyblue darkness of the sky. Sometimes, as he fell, first he saw the sea of hands and heads, and a second later there was a face he’d never seen before and would never see again, as he almost collided with the expectant smile. This was more than he’d dreamed of. He wanted to stay there forever, with all those faces that took turns waiting for him and flinging him up again. The shouts and the vibrations, again and again, that loud and velvety voice that was a match for the audience. To be that and nothing else. There was one face that repeated, the large and feverish eyes of a girl who caught him, entranced, and launched him upward again. He spun around, aware that at times the crowd opened up with a dangerous porousness, and that it would all be over if no one was there to catch him. They were on the ground, or on the ground that was sometimes in the sky, and he was in the air, spinning between two worlds, praying for that other life, one that could deliver him.
When he did hit the ground, the music went silent, and the screen blinked for a few seconds before going out. Ishmael fell back into his seat. He waited with wide eyes, because all the noise had disappeared in an abrupt instant, and for a moment he was disoriented: the camp sirens had stopped. The explosions had stopped. The gunshots had stopped. The lights of the nursing tent were lit again. Soon the next shift would arrive and they’d ask him to leave the makeshift office. Above the shack, from the other side of the stream, among the hundreds of white tents and above the hill and the whole Sierra Leone night, the silence was now a dense and suspicious dome; and his hand, rough, still trembled above the mouse.
Umbertide
IT WAS A GOOD DAY, and the forecast was for sun all weekend long. Enzo had already packed his bag, his one-person tent, and his fishing rod. Now he only had to take care of making breakfast for Luca, who was staring sleepily into his chocolate milk, apparently feeling the weight of the days he’d be spending at the beach with his mother. Enzo had made plans to meet Carlo at nine in front of the rotunda at the Umbertide exit. He was going to bring the kentuki. He knew Carlo would be annoyed—the invitation to go fishing, aside from getting him out of the house, was meant to get him away from the kentuki—but he had a plan, and it seemed infallible. The mole—that little soul hell-bent on not communicating with him because of whatever he’d done to hurt or infuriate it—would soften when Mister saw the calming green flow of the Tiber’s water, when he heard Enzo having a nice long chat with Carlo, when he found out who Enzo really was for his friends and Mister could see just what kind of company they could be for each other. He’d become obsessed, he understood that, and the fact that he realized it was proof that the situation was not beyond his control. Deep down, simply, Enzo believed that two lonely people, from two possibly very different worlds, had a lot to share with and teach each other. He needed that company, he wanted it for both of them, and he would end up winning it.
He started the coffee and made toast. The mole, maybe alerted by all the commotion, moved among the bags.
Enzo explained his plans over breakfast, and he didn’t beat around the bush:
“You’re coming with me, Mister.”
Enzo knew the kentuki might worry, since it had never been out of the house for so long, and especiall y—and he knew this was what could upset Mister most—he didn’t like being away from the boy any longer than he had to. The kentuki didn’t move. It stopped short beside Luca’s chair. It didn’t chirp or hit the table legs. Enzo and Luca both found its stillness so odd that they leaned down toward it, father and son, thinking maybe something strange had happened. They heard Giulia’s car honking outside and the boy jumped up, grabbed his coat, and hugged his father. He put on his backpack and said goodbye again before he left. From the floor a few feet away, the kentuki was still looking at Enzo.
He picked up a few dishes from the breakfast table and then heard Giulia’s horn again—what was happening?—and one of the doors slamming. Luca was coming back, he could see him now through the window’s curtains. The car engine turned off and he heard the driver’s-side door shut. His ex-wife was getting out, too?
“Dad,” said Luca when he was back inside, in an apologetic tone.
“What are you thinking?” said Giulia, who followed the boy inside. “He’s going to be gone a whole weekend, and you don’t even put a jacket in his bag!”
Giulia wasn’t looking for any jacket, that much was clear; she was scanning the floor, checking behind furniture legs and under the chairs around the table. She was searching the house with a hard smile that Enzo knew very well—it was her clumsiest and most disinterested way of pretending.
“Here it is,” said Luca, holding up his jacket.
But his ex-wife had already found the kentuki.
“Let’s go,” said Luca, and he pulled his mother toward the door.
Enzo understood that the boy had lied for him. She must have asked him if the kentuki was still in the house, and Luca had lied, lied for him. For the sake of his father’s marvelous friendship with “the toy.” Then the phone rang. It rang three times and stopped. And Giulia, who had taken a step toward Enzo to start raging at him over the kentuki, stopped.
“That happens here, too?” she asked.
“What does?” asked Enzo, though he’d understood very well what his ex-wife was referring to.
Luca looked at Enzo, and the boy’s round face was now white as a sheet. The phone rang three more times and then stopped. As far as Luca knew, it was the first time this had happened in his house, but the boy’s face disturbed him. When the phone rang again, the boy let his backpack fall to the floor, looking scared, and Giulia leapt to the phone and answered.
“Hello,” she said. “Speak. Say something, damn it.”
She looked at Luca and hung up. Enzo noticed that Mister had disappeared during the commotion; maybe he was hiding out under the sofa.
“They don’t say anything at my house either,” she said, troubled by the call and seeming to forget all about the kentuki. “At least, not when I answer,” she said, and glanced at Luca, who was staring down at the floor.
Giulia picked up Luca’s backpack and grabbed him by the wrist.
“Let’s go,” she said.
They headed for the door, and Enzo followed them. She opened it and pushed Luca ahead of her toward the car, and then, careful not to raise her voice, she turned back to Enzo, furious.
“I’m going to get a lawyer,” she told him. “I’m going to take Luca away from you, and then I’m going to impale that thing in the middle of your fucking greenhouse.”
Enzo stood staring at her. There were many things he wanted to say, but the terror he felt would hardly let him breathe. Only when he finally heard the car start up and pull away did he raise a hand to wave. Neither Giulia nor Luca waved back.
He waited for a moment in the living room, but the kentuki was nowhere to be found. He didn’t want to keep looking for the thing anymore; he was sick of playing the needy, offended party. He was furious, so furious he felt frozen in place, paralyzed.
“Call!” he shouted in the middle of the room. “Make the damned phone ring!”
What was happening? What was going on between his son and the kentuki? He thought about all the ways he could break it, smash it, and dismember it, and they were infinite. Still, he took a few steps back. He picked up his bag and coat and left the house. He stood for a second on the other side of the door, looking at the wood, the peephole, the weathere
d knocker. Then he saw it, on the other side of the window. Between the glass and the curtain, the kentuki was looking at him, unmoving.
Zagreb—Surumu
THE WEEK WAS ONLY HALF OVER, and Grigor was already out of tablets. He left Nikolina working alone again and ventured back to downtown Zagreb. He went to one of the few stores on Ilica that he had yet to visit, bought two tablets there and three more across the street, at a small phone shop. He felt like it had been a long time since he’d really taken a minute to relax, and he plopped into a chair at a little café table in the sun on Tkalčićeva Street. He felt like he’d just returned to the city after a long absence; he decided to have lunch. Across the street, an older woman who was also lunching alone smiled at him, and Grigor smiled back. He realized he was calm; Plan Fallback had worked out, and when the waiter came over, he felt a hunger so voracious he could have ordered two meals.
At the table beside him, two men were playing cards with a kentuki. The three hands were fanned out before each player, faceup. In the center was a discard pile. If the kentuki moved over one of its cards, it was immediately added to the pile. Those gadgets were everywhere now, so common that even his father seemed to be starting to understand how they worked. They were on the news all the time, in local-color stories or reports on fraud, theft, and extortion. Users shared their videos on every social network, with homemade contraptions that had kentukis attached to drones, riding skateboards, or vacuuming floors. Decorating tutorials, personal advice, miracles of survival after bizarre accidents. A panda kentuki scaring a cat and making it leap into the air. An owl kentuki in a Santa hat hitting seven glasses with the tip of its nose to play the notes of a Christmas carol. It was almost a miracle that there was still no regulation on the use of kentukis. A miracle that was the divine fire of his blessed Plan Fallback.
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