A Spare Life

by Lidija Dimkovska

  Boris, from Ukraine, read an interesting essay:

  Just as the body rejects a foreign object, each nation rejects and discards the foreigner who wishes to work inside its living organism: like the dental prosthesis I never got used to in childhood or the contact lenses that cause my eyes, even after a full decade’s acclimation, to become scratched and bloodshot. Great Britain rejects me, discards me, kicks me. It does not want to accept me as an object to which it could offer new opportunity. Perhaps it is still early. I have only lived here for two years.

  It appeared Boris had a talent for writing and contemplation; perhaps that’s what led him to study migration.

  The title of Ervin from Bosnia’s essay was short: “On the Train” followed by a colon. Then:

  Three guest workers in stocking feet. The men with raspy, inaudible voices. The woman with fat oozing out on all sides. Cheap jeans, short sleeves. A mouth without sense or self-censorship. “I’ll fuck your ass; he says his nuts hurt not his asshole. You still want to feed the workers? If you only give ’em burek, they won’t finish in one day.” “They nibble, eat, drink, munch, go to the bathroom, laugh, and then they’re quiet again.” “Oh, my leg hurts something awful,” the woman keeps repeating. The men mumble something unintelligible, uninterested in her torment. “I love that Bosnian kefir, but not the buttermilk.” “Kefir isn’t any good, it’s too thick, I have to thin it with water.” Sajko, probably her husband, says the word for chitlins, kukurek, and starts to laugh; everyone laughs. The woman’s body is a naturalist painting—black disheveled hair permed into curls. When she comes back from the bathroom, she smells like flowers, carrying the scent of her floral wipes.

  We all laughed at what Ervin had written. Later, I learned that he had come from Bosnia two years before, from somewhere near Srebrenica. He had fled before that fateful July. In my mind, the thought just before Srebra and Darko’s wedding flitted. Ervin kept saying, “I can’t believe I’m in a secure place, that I am safe. I’m so safe here that nothing could happen to me.” He buttoned up his soft fleece jacket and ran his hands along it as if it gave him full protection.

  Peter, the Hungarian, one of the most spiritual and cynical students, always ready to comment on any topic, said that he had analyzed—theoretically, of course—the excrement of immigrants and of the native-born, and had come to the interesting determination that the excrement of primitive tribes weighs 250 grams, but Europeans’ only weighs 100 grams. And he added, “Currently, in Hungary, our excrement also weighs 250 grams, but that number will fall drastically when we enter the European Union.” He said the excrement of English people, because they are in the European Union, weighs 100 grams, but that of immigrants weighs between 300 and 350 grams. “And that’s normal,” he said. “Immigrants shit a whole lot more, in both the literal and figurative sense. Not only are they under more stress, which accelerates their metabolisms, but they are always dissatisfied, and from countries of primitive people.” We all looked at him in shock, but he was convinced of his theory.

  Raluca, the Romanian, had lived outside of Romania for years. She had completed high school in Vienna, university in Berlin, been married and divorced in London, and was now in graduate school. She said she would read to us from the diary she had written on her most recent trip to Bucharest:

  On leaving Vienna, the train was already filled with Romanian guest workers who had short-term work permits. Sitting next to me was a middle-aged woman who spent several months every year looking after an old woman near Vienna. Every time she went home, to Braşov, she brought four suitcases (two fake leather, two cloth) filled with various products: coffee (a hundred packages), special salami, candy, processed cheese (three slices for ninety-nine cents), chocolates, pita, kashkaval cheese, laundry soap, etc. Seated across from us was a younger woman, now on her second marriage to a man in Vienna, filled with self-confidence, certain of her good looks. Her daughter, a teenager, is now living through a second relocation. Although she had originally not wanted to live in Vienna because children in Vienna didn’t play outside, now she didn’t want to stay for long in Romania. While at her grandmother’s during vacation, the daughter sent her mother a message, “I miss our refrigerator.” Her mother was traveling to Romania to get her. Also in the train car, a young man, who had been living and working in Vienna for six years, found another young guy who wanted to drink, and the two of them drank and sang until the young man had drunk so much he became psychologically and physically violent (while smoking in a nonsmoking car) and even attacked me twice: first, two ping-pong paddles fell out of his bag (above my head) and struck my elbow; and then, before he got off, even though I had moved out of the way, he didn’t fail to hit me—accidentally—on the shoulder as he grabbed his bag. I arrived in Bucharest with two bruises.

  A Slovenian woman, Alenka, told us what happened in Ljubljana one day when she was contacted by a nongovernmental agency and asked if it was true that she translated from Romanian. She had been taking Romanian classes at the university for years, and had been to Romania for summer courses several times. She said that she occasionally translated, and agreed to help them. They told her to come to the Youth Crisis Center in the southern part of the city. There, waiting for her, was the coordinator of an NGO committed to protecting women who were being trafficked, and a fifteen-year-old Romanian girl named Rodica. Rodica was twenty weeks pregnant. She was carrying a girl who would be named Petra, after the father, Petar—a fifty-seven-year-old Bosnian Serb who bought her parents a house in exchange for her. That was the official version given to the police. For Rodica, Petar was the first man in her life, the man who bought a house for himself, for her, and for their baby in her village in Romania. Petar worked as a seasonal construction worker in Slovenia. They came from Romania by car. Her father brought her across the Hungarian and Slovenian borders, because he was also traveling outside the country, to Austria. There were no problems; her father told the border guards he was bringing her to her mother in Austria, who was in the hospital, sick with cancer. Her father continued on to Austria, but she and Petar stayed in Slovenia. They went to register at the police station, and there they remained: he in custody for the seduction and mistreatment of a minor, she in the Youth Crisis Center. As the interpreter, Alenka had to take a trip she hadn’t planned on that day: from the crisis center to the gynecological clinic. Rodica hadn’t showered for days and stubbornly refused to do so at the crisis center. Her body filled the exam room with the smell of rotten fish, or more specifically, dead fish thrown onto dry land in the hot sun. Her genitals exuded an intense odor, steaming vapors. The doctor said everyone had to work like crazy to air out the room after the examination. Alenka stood behind a curtain and translated, but the smell penetrated the material and into her clothes. But it didn’t disgust her. She didn’t feel like vomiting. She had taken a liking to Rodica. She trusted her. “Maybe I was crazy,” she said, “but I believed her. She was kind, beautiful, and mature. Maybe as mature as I was when I was fifteen and in love for the first time, when it seemed like it would last forever.” The psychologist—a blond woman—tried to help. “No,” she said, “Rodica isn’t going to commit suicide. But she can’t stand being without Petar any longer. I don’t know what the wisest course of action is.” Rodica was fifteen, pregnant, and, out of stubbornness, refused an IV. She refused food and liquids. She thought the baby would survive without them, and she had no real relationship with the baby. She loved it, but she loved Petar more. She carried his photo in her purse. White-haired, but strong. Now, beside his photo was the ultrasound of their baby. While they were performing the gynecological and psychological exams, the coordinator from the NGO bought shampoo, shower gel, a toothbrush, and toothpaste. The inspector, who was with them the whole time, dressed in civilian clothes, gave her a Fruitabella bar. The nurse gave her underwear and slippers. But she just wanted a telephone card so she could call her mother, whose number she didn’t know. Her parents’ number was in Petar’s cell phone. A b
it strange. Why didn’t she contact her sister’s fiancé, a Slovenian? Was her love for Petar real? “Love for a man of below-average intelligence, a lost man from the dregs of society, living in Slovenia in a barracks without water or a bathroom?” the inspector said. Did he really buy her, or did he love her, too? Once, when she was sick he cried, she said. Now she was crying. She was looking for Petar, who was already in custody and likely would get a long prison term for the seduction and ill-use of a minor. Rodica remained at the gynecological clinic. That whole time, another inspector was walking the hallway, dressed in civilian clothes, as if waiting for his wife to give birth. The nurses and doctors were obligated not to reveal that Rodica was under police observation. Alenka and the coordinator left. A few days later, the coordinator came to Alenka’s house so she could give him some books in Romanian to give to Rodica. He was very grateful to her. He told Rodica there was no way she and Petar could see each other again until she reached the age of majority. The baby would most likely be given to a foster home. She couldn’t go to Romania, because her father was evidently mixed up in the whole business. Petar would rot in jail. The story of Rodica and Petar would not have a happy ending.

  All these stories were a sick revelation for me. Some were connected with emigration, others with human fate, which knows no borders. Did something similar await me? Had I also become an emigrant the moment I left Macedonia? Apparently so. In exile because of my parents’ lack of love, in exile for hygienic reasons, in exile because of my love for Bogdan, in exile because of Srebra’s death. Paradoxically, I had emigrated to the place where Srebra died—where she had not survived. London, the city, in every sense, of our separation.

  Bogdan and I were in love, and if one didn’t take into account my spiritual torment over Srebra’s death, how the loss overwhelmed me, the guilt I felt because I had lived and she hadn’t, my conscience gnawing at me, my abrupt departure from my parents’ home, and the endless questions connected with our relationship and family, if one didn’t take the dark side of my soul into account, then I was as happy with Bogdan as he was with me.

  He would often say, “Oh, love of mine, I know what loss is. You know my mother died when I was a child. At that moment, something was torn not only from my soul, but from my body as well—as if an organ was removed. And even though I got a new mother, one I picked myself—which is no small thing—that part of me has always remained empty.” I knew that I, too, would always feel an emptiness where Srebra had been. What could possibly fill such a void? Bogdan said, “Some fill it with drugs, some with alcohol, some with religion, some with politics, and in each instance, to the extreme. But it doesn’t help.” He filled the emptiness with crosswords, prize coupons, quizzes, and various other games that were entertainment for other people but income for him. And what about me? How could I fill the emptiness Srebra’s death left in me? When she was alive, both of us longed for privacy, for solitude, to be without the other. But now, when I had privacy, I didn’t know what to do with it. In the bathroom, while I hunched on the toilet seat, I behaved as I had when Srebra was present: I tried not to make any sound except what was unavoidable, I peed quickly, in one stream, I shit just as quickly, my hands always on my knees, hiding me—from whom? I needed time to free myself from my self-imposed restraints and feel the freedom that existed behind a closed bathroom door where no one could be if you didn’t want them to be, and there’s no excuse for someone to come in while you’re in there, except if you allow it. Once I grasped the freedom of the bathroom, I slowly got used to it. I locked myself in, and showered for hours, sat on the toilet, changed pads, looked at myself in the mirror, combed my hair and studied how it grew, rubbed my body with all kinds of lotions, waxed my legs, polished my nails… What didn’t I do locked in the bathroom, even when Bogdan wasn’t home? The bathroom became my refuge, where I discovered my own identity, an individual identity, like everyone else’s, no longer one part of a pair of Siamese twins. Surely Srebra would have discovered herself in the same way had she lived and I hadn’t. Surely she would have wanted to get pregnant again. I still didn’t want that. I wasn’t ready for motherhood. Nor, I think, was Bogdan ready for fatherhood. Although we weren’t young anymore, we felt unprepared to be parents. We didn’t talk about marriage. We lived for ourselves together and for ourselves individually.

  I plunged into my graduate studies, which turned out to be extremely interesting. Since the courses were connected with themes of migration and migrants, they required field research, attending conferences, participation in projects, and travel. My mentor at the university proposed I study émigré writers. I was in touch with literary institutes that had information on this topic, or which organized events with émigré writers. The University of London’s reputation opened up many doors to me—to festivals, conferences, literary events. And housing and travel costs were always covered by the university. The university was clearly spending my 50,000 pounds. I also received a stipend of 500 pounds a month from an NGO that helped East European graduate students. That was enough for me to split costs for bills and food with Bogdan. He paid the rent and didn’t want me to give him money for it. In that way, he maintained his independence and I mine: we lived like boyfriend and girlfriend, but not as man and wife. It was as if he were simply treating me to a roof over my head.

  I began to delve more deeply into the politics of migration. Even as a child, I had read and had favorite writers, but I’d never attempted to write anything myself. Of all the authors I read, it was Marina Tsvetaeva, who, although for the briefest time, was the most present in my life, and I bought everything, in any language, I could get hold of. She was a typical example of an émigré poet—both in her own country and throughout the world. “We are interested in contemporary emigrants,” my mentor said, “not those of the past centuries.” From the theoretical works I read, I learned that a person is unaware that he is living at the same time as thousands of dispersed writers who had left their countries for political or personal reasons: writers who still wrote in their mother tongues; writers who had changed languages; bilingual writers; writers who stopped writing; writers who began to write after they emigrated. A huge topic opened up before me. I began to meet émigré writers. London was filled with émigré artists. With each conversation, I grasped again and again that we both are, and are not, born as citizens. It’s not only the soil upon which we were born that defines us, but all the ground we’ve trod, all the air we’ve breathed, all the people we’ve met, all the languages in which we’ve tested our power of transmutation. The person who writes is half chameleon, half stone. Before he dies, a worm in his soul says in his mother tongue: “Who are you? Who were you?” He dies before answering the question. The émigré writer has no answer to that question.

  One day, when I returned from school, Bogdan’s friends from the Society of Young Pro-Western Immigrants from Eastern Europe were gathered. Pizza boxes, plastic plates, and cans of beer were strewn all over the place. Bogdan quickly began to straighten up. His friends even more quickly began to stuff some cards on the table into envelopes. I went into the bedroom, and while I was changing my clothes, they cleaned everything up, said goodbye to Bogdan, and left the apartment. “Did they leave because of me?” I asked him. Although they often came over, I still hadn’t become friends with them. They always left quickly, as if avoiding my presence. I didn’t know why, but I avoided theirs as well, even though they were immigrants, the same as us, and their narratives could, at the very least, have served me in my studies. But there wasn’t a single writer among them. They either were, or were studying to be, economists and programmers. They worked a bit here and there, but didn’t have steady work. None of them had an internship or employment, but supposedly, through the help of their society, they would obtain this from their employers. That’s how Bogdan explained it to me. It was clearly difficult to succeed in London. It was more difficult to find work than to study. “Why don’t you enroll in a program, too?” I once asked him, be
cause it was surprising: here was someone who knew everything, who solved crossword puzzles in just a few minutes, who was the first to find answers in quizzes, but who hadn’t finished college. “Auntie Stefka felt it wasn’t necessary to have a university degree in the West in order to succeed. Under capitalism, it’s not education that’s important but resourcefulness. In socialist countries,” he explained, “so much revolves around one’s studies, but here, it’s important to make your own way, hustle, make a deal.” His adoptive mother’s way of thinking was a bit odd to me—Balkan somehow—but I didn’t say anything. We rarely saw her and Bogdan’s stepfather, who had once been the partner of Auntie Stefka’s sister. Stefka married him when her sister died. That didn’t mean Bogdan didn’t go to Brighton often to help her with this or that, as he said, but he never slept over. He always came home by train, bringing fresh fish that he bought at the main fish market. Perhaps I didn’t see Auntie Stefka more often because she could no longer be characterized as Macedonian, as the single woman who had been adopted by Bogdan and then one day left with him unexpectedly for London. She was no longer the beautiful woman with a bun who lost her parents in a fire and had, as a result, been left alone. She had been dignified and kind, the youngest single woman on our street. She was extremely annoyed when I greeted her in Macedonian and immediately said, in English, “We only speak English here.” I was stunned, but Bogdan reassuringly stroked my hand. Whenever I mentioned anything about Skopje, about the neighborhood, about the people whom she had also known, she looked through me, as through a glass door. She simply didn’t react, either with her body or her voice. She said nothing about Srebra. She completely ignored my story, as if she didn’t know it. In fact, in her home we only spoke of the present or the future, but not the past. Bogdan’s stepfather, an older, kind-hearted Englishman whom Bogdan called “Uncle,” made us such strong Irish coffee that I would be dizzy the entire train ride back to London. Bogdan and I didn’t talk about those visits to his adopted mother, whom he persisted in calling Auntie Stefka, and his stepfather. We never talked about them. In moments of sadness, he thought only of his real mother, whose photograph he kept in the bottom of a globe vase in which we never put flowers. There the small pale photograph of his mother sat, photographed with him in her arms, a smile on her face, and with such pride—as if saying to the world, “This is my son! Bogdan! The personification of his name—God given!” Occasionally, Bogdan would look at the photo through the glass, as one looks at fish in an aquarium, but he never took it out. And, though he never explicitly forbade me from taking it out to wash the vase, he would always prevent me from doing so, saying gently, “Don’t. She will die again.” That sentence frightened me. I didn’t want to be her killer, so I left her inside, and only wiped the outside of the vase. Inside, the dust was piling up, and one day a spider appeared, but the photograph was clean and remained there, at the bottom of the vase, at the bottom of Bogdan’s heart.