The Ministry of Pain

by Dubravka Ugrešic

  The anonymous note was a leftover piece of shrapnel. But even though it had landed in my drawer, I had no interest in discovering where it had come from. I picked up a red (yes, red) felt pen and corrected the spelling mistakes with a kind of affectionate apathy. Then I tore the sheet of paper into tiny bits and threw it into the air like so much confetti. The war was over.

  CHAPTER 9

  I walked slowly down the five flights of stairs and who should I run into on the ground floor but Laki, Laki the Linguist from Zagreb, who had attended a few classes during the first semester only to disappear. He paused for a moment, as if in doubt as to how to proceed, then screwed up his eyes, looked away from me, and said in a lazy drawl, “So how are we doing, Mrs. Luci?”

  “I’m fine, thank you. And you?”

  “Fair to middling. Still hanging around the Department, as you can see.”

  “Right. Otherwise we wouldn’t have run into each other.”

  “And starting September I’m going to be here every day.”

  “Really?”

  “They’re giving me an office. So I can finish up my dictionary.”

  “Good for you.”

  “Not bad, and things will be even better once the dictionary comes out.”

  “I’m sure they will.”

  “We could never have dreamed of this when the Commies were in power.”

  “That’s for sure,” I said, the irony in my voice clearly going over Laki’s head.

  “I’ve got some funding from the Ministry of Tourism in Croatia. It’s in their interest, after all. It’ll help the Dutch tourist trade. I’ve managed to squeeze something out of the Ministry of Culture, too. And the Department here is doing its bit with the office. No great shakes, of course, but they may also let me teach a few drill sections.”

  “Sounds great.”

  “Not bad…. By the way, you going home for the summer?” He used the word “home” as a neutral substitute for the country that, while it was still in existence, the Gastarbeiter had all called Yuga and pronounced with extra-long vowels.

  “I may.”

  “Well, I can’t wait. My parents have this great house on Hvar. I spend two months there every year.”

  “Yes, well…. See you.”

  “Best of luck, Mrs. Luci,” he said.

  The screwed-up eyes that refused to hold your glance for more than an instant, the anti-Communist stance so fashionable after the changing of the guard (though Laki had had nothing to do with Communism one way or the other), the mishmash of “now” urban speech, dialect, and literary affection (it was as if grandfather and grandson were speaking out of the same mouth), the ever so forced “Mrs. Luci”—it was all vaguely nauseating, like a premonition of something unpleasant.

  Instead of going out, I went back upstairs and knocked on Cees’s door. He was alone.

  “Come in, Tanja. Good to see you. I’ve been meaning to track you down.”

  Neither he nor Ines had made any attempt to “track me down” since I’d been to their place that evening. In fact, I had phoned them once or twice and been treated to Ines’s warm words about how busy they were and had no time for anything and I’d been constantly on their minds and they’d been hearing such good things about me from my students and we’d eventually get together and “have a good chat.” She made the “good chat” sound almost physical.

  Now Cees explained that despite the excellent reports he’d had about my class that semester (did he mean “reports” in the literal sense or was it just a polite phrase?), he would be unable to hire me back come September, because he’d been unable to find the necessary funding. The Dutch Ministry of Education had been cutting the budget for higher education for the past few years now, and until he could come up with funds for a position in Croatian language and literature—and he was doing everything in his power to do so—Ines would have to take over on a volunteer basis. It was a real sacrifice on her part, but it was the only way of keeping the program alive. The Department was in trouble: even Russian, its bread and butter, was losing enrollment. He couldn’t ask me to work for nothing. No, he wouldn’t dream of it, knowing the situation I was in; he wouldn’t want to exploit me. I’d find something, he was certain. After all, I had a doctorate, I had teaching experience and “a big heart.” And what was most important, Slavs are natural-born teachers, aren’t they? Ines had sent her regards and was sorry she hadn’t been able to see me. She’d just left for Korula with the children, and he would be leaving soon as well, as soon as he handed in his grades. Would I see Anneke in the next few days about the formalities of moving out of the flat she had found me: keys, deposits, and the like.

  Cees’s voice radiated sincerity. There wasn’t a hint of ill will. Of course he didn’t broach the question of where I would be going after Amsterdam—cautious people don’t ask questions whose answers might bind them to something—but the whole time he held forth I had only one thought in mind.

  “Cees,” I broke in, panic-stricken, “my visa is running out.”

  “I don’t see how I can be of any help.”

  “You can write a letter stating that as head of the Department you confirm that I will be teaching here next year.”

  “But that would be unscrupulous. I couldn’t risk it.”

  “The authorities don’t care about truth; they care about documents. There’s no risk whatever.”

  “I don’t know…”

  “I’ll come for the letter tomorrow,” I said in a voice I barely recognized. “You can leave it with Anneke.”

  I left the office secure in the belief that the letter, departmental stamp and all, would be waiting for me the next day. Then I sailed down the stairs and into the café across the street. I reached the toilet just in time. Never in my life had I vomited with such vehemence.

  Later I asked myself what I’d meant to accomplish with the letter and why I’d humiliated myself so to get it. What good was an extension when there was no job to go with it? I’d seen émigré fever symptoms in others—Goran, for example—but I thought I was immune to them. All that talk about “papers,” the willingness to go to any lengths for the proper “papers.” And then what? “Then we’ll see.” I’d watched faces change expressions in quick succession or combine cunning, condescension, and fear; I’d watched the tense, sad, half-criminal look that goes with the scramble for the last mouse hole. I’d heard lively conservations break off abruptly as an invisible shadow of despair descended, but people would snap out of it and conversations resume with the same intensity.

  I am not an émigré. I have a passport in my pocket. Why did I humble myself before Cees, to say nothing of Ines, who would certainly hear of the incident immediately. (“I mean, we did everything we possibly could for her. You have to help your own, after all. It’s never so clear as when you’re abroad….”) Oh, Ines! All sweetness and light, all airs and graces, the Austro-Hungarian charm, the soft Croatian chauvinism, the warmth of the south, the complacency that comes of a house whose walls are resplendent with booty, the booty of the first marriage (“Something to show the Dutch that we weren’t beggars, know what I mean?”). They saw themselves in a solid, bourgeois bunker, while I saw them balancing on an ice floe, smiling all the while, babbling all the while, as they take down Grandmother’s silver. The silver and the naive paintings are their only weapon against fate, against evil: they are sure signs that they belong to a class which no harm can befall. As for me, I’d find something. I had a doctorate and a big Slav heart. Slavs are natural-born teachers, aren’t they? I’d get the visa and a few crumbs from the table, and then what? Then we’d see….

  After calming down a bit, I realized Cees hadn’t promised anything. Nor was he to blame for anything. I was without resources, inner or outer. I was vulnerable, up for grabs. Anybody could pick me up, toss me on my back, do what he wanted with me, and leave me battered and bruised. That’s why I was such easy prey for Ines’s babble, why I got stuck in the honey of her words. Nor was she to bla
me any more than Cees. I had lost my integrity. I had put on a mask as a means of defense, and it had merged with my face, made deep inroads into my person. I was no longer myself.

  On my way out of the café, I passed Igor. He was in his usual pose: earphones on and book open. He didn’t notice me. Suddenly I thought of the Americans whose children I’d sat for in Berlin, the ones who never failed to introduce me to their friends. “This is Tanja, our babysitter. She comes from the former Yugoslavia. Tanja is wonderful with children. She really has a way with them.”

  CHAPTER 10

  “You one of us?” he asks with a shrewd look and a grin that shows a gold tooth. His pal has a moist cigarette dangling from the corner of his mouth.

  “Yes, I’m one of us,” I say. “Where are you two from?”

  “I’m from Smederevo, and this guy here’s from Kumanovo. You?”

  “Me? I’m from Mars,” I say.

  Now both are grinning.

  “There ain’t nothin’ like our guys,” the Gypsy said to his pal. “It’s the lip on them.” Then he turned to me. “Want us to play somethin’ for you?”

  “Why not.”

  “Somethin’ from home how’s ’bout. From Mars.”

  “Great.”

  He picked up his clarinet, and his pal slung his accordion around his shoulders and threw down his cigarette.

  I pulled a hundred-guilder banknote out of my bag and dropped it in the hat.

  The accordion player glanced down at the banknote and wailed, “For God’s sakes, sister. You crazy or somethin’ throwin’ away money like that? Keep it for a ’mergency, for one of them rainy days. Sure, leave us a guilder or two, but this? Aaaii! Don’t be crazy, man. Money don’t grow on trees!”

  I dismissed his concern with a wave of the hand and moved off into the crowd, feeling the painful Gypsy shrapnel—“Set, O golden sun, go down. Make the sky dark for the moon…”—explode in my heart and lodge there. And suddenly my heart was bathed in blood, and the ice coating its walls started to melt, and I staggered through the marketplace dripping blood.

  The Albert Cuyp Market is the largest and most famous in Amsterdam. It is located in the Pijp, a former working-class district. Its scales, of which there are said to be over three hundred, come out every morning and don’t come down until late in the afternoon. The idea of buying fish, fruit, or vegetables was only a rational cover for the vague magnetism that would draw me toward the market, engulfed as it was in a mist of pollen and the strong scents of spices from beyond the seas—cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg—shot through with wind and salt. The air fairly sparkled with the bolts of rich silk and thick plush, of exotic jewels, of gold and beads, of the mother-of-pearl of immodestly open shells, of the glittering silver of fresh fish. The apples in my marketplace had a golden luster all their own; each grape glowed like a tiny lantern; the milk was as rich and white as a Vermeer woman’s skin.

  There were times, however, when the magnetism lost its force, when a dead fish lay heavy on the scales and the apples, though still red, and the lettuce, though still green, had lost their sheen. Not far from the scales were seedy vendors of cheap clothing, the air around them electrified by the synthetic fabrics; not far from the scales were vendors of bric-a-brac one would be hard put to find names for: cloths that might be dusters, plastic brushes of various shapes and sizes, nylon chignons in all colors, wooden backscratchers with plastic fingers, packaged snack foods. Not far from the scales were vendors of soap, shampoo, face cream, shabby handbags, artificial flowers, shoulder pads, patches, needles and thread, pillows and blankets, prints and frames, hammers and nails, sausage and cheese, chickens and pheasants, moth-eaten scarves…

  Wandering among the stands, my heart full of Gypsy shrapnel, I chanced upon something that immediately caught my eye: a plastic tote bag with red, white, and blue stripes—Ana was right; I paid only two guilders for it—and like a wound-up mechanical toy, I made for the butcher’s called Zuid (South), a code word to the local Yugos, who were its principal patrons. The butcher’s window proudly displayed jars of pig’s knuckles, and the shelves were lined with a modest selection of Yugonostalgic delicacies: Macedonian ajvar, sausage from Srem, olive oil from Korcula, Plasma Biscuits (whose ridiculous name made them an instant cult item the moment they appeared on the market), Minas coffee (which of course came from Turkey), and Negro Chimney-Sweep toffee (also a cult item because of the name). I bought a jar of ajvar and some toffee. It was a ritual purchase, purely symbolic: I hated ajvar and the toffee was bitter.

  Thinking of the thousands and thousands of émigrés who leave their countries for countries like this one, who buy ajvar they hate and toffee they know is bitter, carryalls they will never use, ludicrous plastic-fingered backscratchers, and nylon chignons, I proceeded on my mechanical-toy journey, now heading toward the side street off the Oosterpark where a Bosnian café by the name of Bella was located. There I found a group of sullen, tight-lipped men playing cards. The looks they gave me were long but completely expressionless: not even a woman entering their male space could throw them off guard. I took a place at the counter, ordered “our” coffee, and sat there, penitent, so to speak. Before long I began to feel the invisible slap on my face and noticed I had hunched over like the men.

  Having finished the coffee, I picked up the relics I had gathered on my pilgrimage—the Macedonian ajvar and Negro Chimney-Sweep toffee in the plastic carryall with red, white, and blue stripes—and set off for home. The Gypsy shrapnel had dissolved in my heart in the interim, and I was no longer bleeding, but I was confused as to whether I had just bid farewell to something or filled in an invisible application form. “For God’s sakes, sister. You crazy or somethin’?”

  PART 4

  CHAPTER 1

  I’m like a stepping razor

  Don’t you watch my size

  I’m dangerous, I’m dangerous

  Treat me good

  If you wanna live

  You better treat me good.

  Peter Tosh

  I knew it was Igor the moment I heard the doorbell ring. I knew he’d be coming for an explanation. He came in, walked around the room as if it were too small to contain him and he wasn’t yet sure whether to stay or not, but then he put his backpack on the floor and said, “Hmm. So this is your pad.”

  “Yes, this is my ‘pad.’”

  “Living room–bedroom, kitchen facilities, and bath,” he said ironically. “‘Tight quarters, two meters by three.’” He was quoting a Yugoslav TV commercial.

  “I hope your place is better.”

  “So you’ve made your little nest in the basement.”

  “Let’s just call it the lower level.”

  “Don’t have many books, do you,” he said, glancing around the room, “considering your profession, that is.”

  “Would you like something to drink?” I asked, ignoring the remark.

  “Coffee will do. I don’t see you stocking anything else in this place.”

  While making the coffee, I thought of what to tell him. Although the cups were clean, I gave them another wash. It took me forever to find the sugar bowl. I did everything I could to buy time.

  She is from Zagreb, Count, a true product of Zagreb and a truly remarkable young woman. Though still in her salad days, she has a will of iron and is steadfast and intrepid. I hardly need state that she is at home with the standard school subjects, but she also knows French and Italian, can sing and draw, and is a dab hand at embroidering. She is so taken with her calling that she performs her duties with great passion, and there is an idealistic strain to her nature, which makes her regard the reform and ennoblement of the souls entrusted to her as a sacred mission.

  It was an excerpt from šenoa’s Branka, that classic of Romantic prose in which a young teacher, imbued with the ideals of the Croatian national revival movement, leaves Zagreb for the remote village of Jalševo to teach the village children. Pouring the coffee with my back to Igor, I listened to him read from the copy I had
taken out of the library. I could feel my chin trembling. I was afraid I was going to cry. It was a childish way to provoke me, but I sensed it was no more than an introduction to the extravaganza he had planned.

  “So you’ve been spending all this time staring at people’s legs,” he said, putting down the book and nodding in the direction of the barred window.

  “You can cope with anything if you know it’s temporary,” I said in as calm a voice as I could muster. “Besides, I’m leaving in a few days.”

  “What makes you so sure it’s temporary?” he asked, either unconcerned about where I was going or feigning lack of concern.

  I took him his coffee on a tray. I knew what he’d come for and decided to take the bull by the horns.

  “Look, Igor, I’m terribly sorry…” I began, putting the tray down on the table.

  “Great. You’re sorry.”

  “Sit down,” I said, and sat down. He remained standing. He had turned his back on me again and was staring out the window.

  “I know you’ve come because of the grade.”

  He turned and trained those dark, slightly crossed eyes on me.

  “And if I have?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. I heard my voice crack and felt my chin tremble again.

  He turned again and crossed the room to the basket I used for various knickknacks including the presents I’d received for my birthday. Igor started going through them.