Just Call Me Superhero

by Alina Bronsky

  An hour later I felt bad. I pulled on my pants and slipped out of my room. To get out I had to go past Janne’s room. The floor creaked under my feet. It was silent all around. Everyone but me was asleep.

  I carefully pushed open the heavy entrance door but couldn’t keep it from closing behind me with a dull thud. I crawled around the roses beneath my window but couldn’t find the iPod. I looked everywhere, it was just gone. I laid down on the lawn and stretched out all four of my limbs. The grass was moist and the cold crept under my skin. I closed my eyes.

  And opened them when the door closed again. On the steps stood Richard in tight sweatpants and a tank top. It was suddenly light out, too light out. I must have fallen asleep. I quickly shielded my face with my hands. Richard looked at me at that same moment. His legs, aside from his prosthetic, were knotted ropes of muscle. His long hair was held back with a headband.

  “What time is it?” I asked from the lawn.

  “Six-thirty.” He waved and set off. I struggled to my feet and stumbled up the steps.

  The next person I saw was Kevin. His friendly face with the lurid lipstick was looking down at me.

  “Don’t growl, it’s only me. Breeeeeaaaakfast,” he sang melodically and pulled on my blanket. I grabbed it, too, and held it on me. I didn’t want to be naked in front of him.

  “Ten o’clock,” said Kevin. “Everyone’s waiting.”

  He stood next to the bed, nodded his head, and looked at me as if he would only leave the room together with me. I pulled the covers up to my chin.

  “Get out.”

  “You’re welcome.” He stomped out, hurt.

  I leaned my head over the edge of the bed and looked at the floor, where my dew-soaked clothes were lying. Then I looked at Marlon’s bed. There was a damp towel there now. His bag was still in the same spot but the zipper was open.

  He’d been there, I thought, grinding my teeth. He’d showered and seen me sleeping.

  Bullshit, he can’t see.

  My head felt so heavy that I just wanted to fall back onto my pillow. My eyes felt like somebody had poured half a sandbox in them. I closed them and imagined my fist smacking Marlon’s face. I licked my lips, and suddenly they tasted salty.

  They were indeed sitting around the table, which was already set. They were all in a better mood than I’d ever seen. The guru was telling a joke that I only caught the end of, and there was simply nothing funny about it. The camera was nowhere to be seen. Kevin was standing at the stove frying eggs, sunny-side up. The place smelled of butter and burnt wood.

  I straightened the sunglasses on my nose. They were all sitting in the same places they had yesterday. Janne was wearing a white dress and her black, still slightly wet hair fell to her shoulders. She didn’t look up when I came in. She was distracted. Marlon was leaning down to her and whispering something in her ear, and she nodded and laughed. I shoved my balled fist in the pocket of my pants.

  “What happened to you?” the guru asked cheerfully. “Sleep poorly?”

  “Slept great.” I poured myself a glass of orange juice.

  “I found an iPod in front of the building, who does is it belong to?” The guru held up the little silver device.

  “Marlon,” I said as everyone looked at the stupid thing blankly.

  “How did it get there?” The guru put the iPod on the table in front of Marlon. Marlon silently slipped it into his pocket.

  The plan for today was to go someplace together. The guru said he wasn’t there to lug groceries around for six big guys—or rather five big guys and one lady. We needed to decide what we wanted to make and then go shopping for the ingredients together and bring it all home. Who wanted to go first?

  Kevin was the only one who spoke up.

  I drank the juice, which sat uncomfortably in my cramped stomach, and studied Janne and Marlon. I wanted to know whether their faces had changed since yesterday. If they themselves had changed. I devoured them with my eyes. I wondered whether the marks on Marlon’s face were the imprint of Janne’s pillow. I wondered why the guru was permitting this Sodom and Gomorrah. Whether he even noticed what was going on here. Whether Janne’s mother would think it was cool that Janne was in such demand here that she could pick out her companion for the night.

  I was ready to deploy the entire arsenal of weapons so as not to see Marlon next to Janne. Nothing was verboten: I would have no problem tattling on him, denouncing him, or physically hurting him. I felt like I wasn’t even me anymore but rather the Rottweiler, capable only of drooling and biting.

  “Stop eating,” I said to Friedrich, who was spreading a third roll with butter, cream cheese, and jam.

  “Go fuck yourself,” answered Friedrich. I was so surprised I didn’t know how to respond. Even Janne stopped massaging Marlon under the table for a second and turned her almond-shaped eyes on us.

  “Good morning, Marek,” she said, as if she had just realized I was there.

  Good morning, roller-slut was on the tip of my tongue. And that was the nicest description of her that occurred to me. I hardly recognized myself anymore. I hadn’t felt so attacked since the Rottweiler.

  I carved up a piece of bacon just to have something to do. I wasn’t hungry anymore. The others had already stood up and headed off in various directions. Friedrich shuffled over to the sink with his shoulders slumped.

  Marlon was standing at the top of the stairs with a hand on the bannister. I thought about how much I had enjoyed the feeling of the bannister’s smooth wood yesterday. Now he had his hand on exactly the same spot. I never wanted anyone to touch anything that meant something to me, ever again. I got up and went up the stairs toward Marlon and ripped off my sunglasses so I could see him better. Marlon turned his head toward me before I even tapped him on the shoulder.

  “Can she feel anything at all?” I asked. “Down below, I mean?”

  Everything went quiet behind me. Marlon turned his whole body to me. Then he put a hand on my shoulder, practically hugging me. His other hand he put on my head. I realized too late that he was just finding his bearings with that hand. His punch hit me right in the middle of my face and took me off my feet. I lost my balance and fell down the steps.

  It was a little bit like the other time but also completely different. Once again I had no face and I pressed my hand, which hadn’t been able to protect me, to my face—only this time there was no animal attached to it. There where my face had been was now a raw schnitzel. No upstanding person would ever think to mutilate a good cut of meat like that. It hurt, but the pain felt strange, like it wasn’t a part of me. And anyway I didn’t generally have much of a problem with pain anymore. These days I could put my hand right on a burner and not even realize I’d charred my fingertips. Maybe back then I’d gotten an overdose of pain medication that was going to last for the rest of my life.

  “Take your hands away from your face,” I heard Richard’s voice. “It’s not like it could get much worse anyway.”

  When I didn’t budge, somebody tugged on my wrists. I kicked and—I was happy to feel—caught something soft and squishy. Moans of several different pitches rang out.

  I have wanted to scream. They said I screamed back then. I didn’t want to know the details—I would never have attributed the high-pitched, unmanly sound that rang in my ears to this day with myself. I felt their eyes on me, on the backs of my hands, the good one as well as the mangled one, on that which my hands could never really hide, just as the sunglasses couldn’t, either. I felt more naked than naked, like they had skinned me to see what I looked like underneath. I swung both elbows and hit someone else, someone solid. Then I sensed a moist, burning touch on the sides of my hands and I growled.

  “I’m just wiping off the blood,” said Richard.

  “Can you move?” To judge by the sound of his voice, the guru had already shat himself.

  The qu
estion interested me. My face wasn’t the only thing that hurt. So did everything from my neck down. That was also a big difference from back then. The Rottweiler had also knocked me over, and I had hit the back of my head and my ass. But it didn’t really play much of a role. Now for the first time I discovered I had a spine, and I wasn’t sure I could still use it. I was suddenly aware of my shoulder blades and hipbones in a way that I didn’t like.

  “Not sure,” I answered the guru. My voice sounded strange. I felt bad for the guru. If I ended up a quadriplegic he would be in some seriously deep water.

  “Did someone get that on film?” I asked.

  The cold washcloth slapped at my face again. I shoved it aside, fought gravity, and sat up with a groan. Something fell into my lap. I felt for the sunglasses and put them on and then opened my eyes.

  The first thing I saw was the face of the guru. In it I saw nothing but pure, distilled relief: like somebody had promised him a share of the winnings from a lottery ticket and then changed their mind, and then in the end they had paid him after all. Obviously he was of the opinion that somebody who could sit up on his own wasn’t badly injured. I basically believed the same thing. Richard reached toward my face unprompted and straightened my glasses. Now I saw it, too: one lens was broken.

  I looked into the distance through the cracked glass. Janne was nowhere to be seen. Marlon was standing off to the side. The others were all kneeling around me and the shock, mixed with a dash of morbid curiosity, slowly spread across their faces. The guru looked as if he had just stepped in dog shit.

  “What the hell is with you guys?” yelled the guru out of the blue, with his chin swinging back and forth between me and Marlon. Obviously he wasn’t worried about my bones anymore. “Have you lost your minds? Beating each other up, and on the stairs of all places? Do you have shit for brains?”

  “It’s all my fault,” I said before Marlon could open his mouth. “It won’t happen again.”

  “I guarantee that. I’m calling your mother.” The guru tried to stand up. He had been squatting down too long, his legs must have fallen asleep, and the feigned sadness in his voice sounded tense. “That’s it. I’m terribly sorry for you, Marek.”

  I staggered to my feet and was able to verify that I could indeed stand. My skull was humming again and my knees felt treacherously weak, but even so it felt better to be standing than to be lying there like a bearskin rug at their feet.

  “Don’t even think about it,” I said.

  The guru opted for extortion. Either I had to be examined by a doctor or he would inform my mother and let her decide whether I could stay or not. Even though prior to the fall I wanted nothing more than to get the hell out of there, now I was going to fight it tooth and nail.

  “Doctor it is then,” the guru concluded.

  The nearest one was in the village. His name and phone number were posted in big letters all over the villa. The guru went off to find a spot where he had phone reception so he could call the farmer and pay him to use his trailer as a medical transport.

  “I’m coming, too,” said Marlon all of a sudden.

  “No!” said the guru and I simultaneously, and then I thought: why not, actually?

  “It’s okay with me,” I corrected myself.

  The guru wasn’t so easily convinced. Apparently nobody had figured out why Marlon had knocked me on my ass. But everyone seemed convinced that he must have had good reason to do it. Nobody suggested, and nobody threatened, that he should be sent home.

  “I can go, too,” said Richard.

  “Really?” The relief in the guru’s voice sounded almost obscene. “Then I can stay here with the others. Don’t want them to beat each other to a pulp as well.” He playfully wagged his finger at Janne, who had just appeared on the horizon, as if she had nothing to do with all of this.

  Before the farmer showed up, I went into our room. I took off the bloodstained T-shirt and left it to soak in cold water in the sink. I turned my back to the mirror and took off my broken glasses, tossed them in the wastebasket, and grabbed a new pair from my suitcase. I felt around my face with my fingertips. Some spots were swollen and felt more numb than the rest. There were probably bruises there. There must have been a scratch above my right eyelid that was dripping blood into my eye. I wet a washcloth and cleaned everything up as much as possible. Then I contorted myself to try to feel my spine.

  The door opened and closed again. I turned around. Marlon was there with his ear turned toward me.

  “I’m here,” I said.

  “I know.”

  “How?”

  “You’re snuffling like a hippo. The faucet is dripping and you just turned it off. Also you’re shifting from one foot to the other.”

  I stopped shifting.

  “You’re an idiot,” he said.

  “What a novel way to apologize.”

  “You don’t deserve an apology.” Marlon spoke slowly and seemed to stretch the words as if he was saying something that didn’t need to be said. But with someone as stupid as me, well, he’d just have to spoon-feed it to me, obviously. “I didn’t realize you were standing right at the edge of the stairs and that I could have killed you, but I swear, if I had known, I would have done exactly the same thing.”

  “Because of Janne . . . ” I started to say.

  “Not because of Janne. Because of you. Because you’re such an idiot.”

  I wished I could have disagreed, but he wasn’t finished. And besides, we heard the tractor rumble up the house and suddenly we were both in a hurry to get out and we ran into each other in the doorway.

  He pulled his elbow away when I went to support him, and he walked a few steps ahead of me on the stairs, holding the bannister.

  We sat silently in the trailer as we trundled down the asphalt path passing sheep and cows. It would have been faster to walk. I couldn’t continue the conversation with Marlon because Richard was sitting across from us whistling away. The things on the tip of my tongue were intended only for Marlon and me.

  So nobody said anything and that was fine with me. Up front in the tractor sat the same boy and next to him the same shaggy dog. We jerked and bounced along and every time I knocked against the side of the trailer it felt like a bolt of lightning shooting through my entire body.

  “I really don’t think I need a doctor,” I said, finally breaking the silence.

  “A kick in the ass is what you need,” said Richard.

  After a good two hours the tractor came to a halt in front of a general practitioner’s office in an old timbered house. I felt like a cocktail. As I got out I tried not to spill any of my contents but refused Richard’s helping hand. Marlon hopped down and smiled nastily when he heard me groaning.

  “Next time I’ll throw you down the stairs,” I whispered.

  He laughed out loud. I wanted to kick him and could easily have done so. But I didn’t.

  In the waiting room sat two old men in dirty overalls, both with canes. It smelled like cow shit. They broke off their conversation as we came in, eyeballed us for several minutes, and then continued talking. I didn’t understand a word.

  The doctor, a fairly young, chubby man, pushed on the purple blotches, turned my head to the left and right, and shined a little lamp in my eyes. He had obviously been forewarned about my face. Richard had insisted on coming into the doctor’s office with me, he didn’t trust me as far as he could throw me. The doctor said I had no broken bones, just contusions and bruises and perhaps a mild concussion. He would be happy to stitch up the wound on my eyebrow, not for medical reasons but rather on aesthetic grounds. I looked at him skeptically. He didn’t bat an eyelash.

  “It’s fine as is,” I said. “Very nice of you.”

  He let me leave only after he gave me several prescriptions for cooling, anti-swelling, and pain reducing salves. The nearest pharmacy was in the n
ext village and the boy with the tractor was gone. I threw the prescriptions in the wastebasket at the deserted bus stop.

  “I told you guys I was okay,” I said to Marlon and Richard.

  “Do you even have anything in there to concuss?” said Richard, pointing at my head. I could have answered and even knew what I would say. But I didn’t say anything. I wondered silently why everybody was suddenly picking on me. They hadn’t even found as much fault in Friedrich. I mean, I hadn’t planned on becoming everybody’s darling here, but this was the first time I’d ever been treated as an enemy of society who needed to be constantly monitored.

  We went back by foot. It didn’t take half as long as it had by tractor. Marlon was between us, he clicked his tongue now and then and he stumbled just one time. Once again we didn’t speak to each other.

  The others had set up a circle of chairs on the lawn with an empty spot for Janne’s wheelchair. The guru was writing feverishly in his notebook. Friedrich was talking. The camera was nowhere to be seen.

  Everything’s back to normal, I thought. All good.

  My injuries weren’t life threatening, Richard answered the question in the guru’s eyes and then went over to the shed to get more chairs. The guru ran his hand over his forehead.

  “You’re back quickly.” He had probably been looking forward to having an entire afternoon to recover from us.

  “You look terrible,” Kevin said to me, shielding his eyes with his hand. “I can’t look.”

  Oddly enough, I was touched. Even though I’d only been away a few hours, I was happy to see them all again. They also seemed happy that I was alive and hadn’t ruined their week by dying a silly death. We were a big, happy family in which one brother beat the other up, but at the end of the day it was done out of affection.

  The sister was the only one who sat there with her face averted, ruining the joy of the reunion.