“Don’t be lazy,” he said eventually. “Laziness is truly unpleasant.”
—
I wanted to be good to the cat, to meet his needs and requirements, so I pulled on a pair of black pajama bottoms and brown-leather ankle boots, slipped a gray woolen sweater over my pink long-sleeve T-shirt, took my jacket from the coatrack, and left the apartment, because the cat had already turned his nose up at the porridge I’d tried to offer him.
“I’m not eating fucking porridge,” he’d said, demanded to be given a clean towel, and disappeared into the bathroom.
I stepped out into the cold, biting February morning and pulled a packet of cigarettes from my pocket. After the previous night there were only three left. With a sense of routine, I gripped one of them between my dry fingers and fumbled with my other hand for the matches. I lit the cigarette and took a first, dizzying toke, and in a matter of seconds my whole being felt lighter.
Naturally, I couldn’t possibly smoke in front of the cat. He was too sensible to smoke and far too intelligent to understand such an obnoxious habit. In his opinion cigarettes smelled disgusting and were almost amusingly unhealthy.
I headed to the corner shop, a cigarette in my hand. I’d had a headache all morning—after all, the cat and I had been knocking back tall drinks at the nightclub and we’d had to shout at each other over the music.
But at the very first pedestrian crossing, there between the ice-covered ground and the houses surrounded with snow, I stopped in my tracks as though someone had pointed a gun at me. My heart sank and seemed to plummet down my trouser leg and burning sweat oozed from every pore of my skin.
—
I reached my front door, wiped the sweat from my brow on the back of my hand, panted in and out in an attempt to steady my breathing. I pushed the key into the lock and turned it slowly so that the cat wouldn’t notice my return or take fright. I opened the door as quietly as I could and peered inside my apartment as though I were breaking and entering. To my relief I soon realized the cat was still in the bathroom, still singing the same song, “Grenade” by Bruno Mars. The cat couldn’t properly pronounce the English lyrics, though he thought of himself as a full-blooded citizen of the world.
I dashed into the living room and looked around in a panic. I checked the radiator, all the corners of the room, all the cupboards and cubbyholes where the snake might have curled up—they slither into hiding when they are afraid—but I couldn’t find it in any of the usual spots. Then I noticed it peering from beneath the sofa. I dropped to my knees in front of the sofa and looked underneath: the snake was stretched out behind the sofa. Its skin was rough and had begun to turn gray. It would shed its skin at any moment. Its eyes were dim but otherwise it was in the same position as always.
I grabbed its tail with both hands and began dragging it away, but it had been in the same spot for so long it was stuck to the linoleum floor. I shook it and tried again, but it only started thrashing and slid out of my grasp like a slippery eel. It was so large and powerful that it could decide for itself where to lie. You couldn’t move it as easily as all that. It slept wherever and whenever it pleased.
When I heard the cat turn off the shower, I dropped the snake’s tail and sat down again, placed both feet against it, and pushed it as hard and far as I could behind the sofa, and though its irritable hissing made me worry for my feet, the most important thing was the cat didn’t see anything.
I went to the front door again, slipped into the corridor, back outside, and hurried to the shop, because I wanted to surprise the cat by buying him all kinds of delicacies while he was getting ready. I would have liked to tidy up a bit, put fresh sheets on the bed, put things back in order, and spray air freshener round the apartment.
I was already home again by the time the cat finally stepped out of the bathroom, where it became apparent that he enjoyed spending especially lengthy periods of time. He licked his paws and smoothed his eyebrows and whiskers with his own spit.
I was sitting on my fake-leather sofa, nervously biting my nails, because I couldn’t think how to explain the empty terrarium to the cat in case he asked about it. Or what I’d say if the snake suddenly decided to slither into view, for that matter. Fortunately, the cat didn’t notice it. Instead he ordered me to my feet, saying, Aren’t you fat and lazy, lounging around like a slab of meat!
I stopped biting my nails and decided not to respond. I fetched a cloth from the kitchenette, picked up the bits of nail, and wiped the edge of the sofa, a place the cat might like to settle down.
The cat watched me for a moment, combing his fur, then hopped onto the coffee table and stood between the cans of cat food I had left there.
“What are these?” he asked, his voice skeptical.
“I went to the shop,” I answered, as though it hadn’t been the least bit of trouble, as though I’d sorted everything out in the time it took him to wrap a towel round his waist. “I thought you might like to eat something different. The porridge was a bad idea. Sorry about that.”
The cat examined the cans for a moment, sniffed them and felt them and read the advertisements on their labels. When he realized that there were all different flavors, he eagerly began reading the ingredient lists. He began pacing round them intensely. After watching all the pacing and sniffing for a moment, I came to the conclusion that going to the shop had been one of the brightest ideas I’d had in a long time.
“Such rubbish…,” the cat said eventually, leaving enough room for his next comment. “I certainly won’t be putting that anywhere near my mouth!”
“What do you want to eat, then?”
I looked at the cat and he looked at me, first curiously then more intensely.
“They’re full of all kinds of additives. I’ve got a reputation to uphold and I won’t eat rubbish like this!” he retorted aggressively. “Got any meat? Fresh meat?”
“I’m a vegetarian.”
“Of course you’re a vegetarian. Christ, how embarrassing,” said the cat and rolled his eyes.
At that he irritably knocked over a can of chicken-liver pâté, pointed at it with his paw, and turned to look at me.
“Open it!”
I opened the can and scraped the contents onto a plate using a spoon. I placed the food on the coffee table and wished the cat bon appétit, though the smell of chicken liver made me want to retch. He didn’t answer, but he seemed to eat his food contentedly enough after all.
I took a container of yogurt from the fridge, joined the cat, and wondered whether I should give up being a vegetarian and start eating meat. After gobbling down his food, the cat astutely noticed that I hadn’t moved for a short while.
“What the hell? Give me that!” he snapped, grabbed the container, and began pouring yogurt into his mouth. “Liar. Christ almighty,” he muttered between mouthfuls. “Don’t put on a face like that. You’re ugly. Butt ugly, if I may say so. That’s a bad expression for you. Change it this instant,” he continued and buried his head in the narrow container and licked it clean.
—
The cat wanted to spend the morning at the apartment. Pretty good service here, he’d said after stuffing himself so full of food that he slumped on the sofa rubbing his swollen belly. I’d taken it upon myself to put the cat’s clothes in the washing machine, I’d ironed his shirt, polished his shoes, and aired his woolen coat. That’s how much I liked him already.
After his nap the cat asked me to recommend a book that would make him happy, because that was the subject I knew best of all. I fetched him a copy of Günter Grass’s Cat and Mouse because I thought the cat might enjoy that. After all, he seemed to love all kinds of games, pursuits, and tomfoolery.
With the book in his mouth the cat leaped up to the windowsill—and how lightly he leaped, like a hang glider. He lay down on his back, opened the book, and leaned against the window, gave a sigh of boredom, and peered around for a moment at the bookshelf along the opposite wall, the light-green rug whose tassels I’d al
ready had to straighten out after he had clawed at them.
“Bring me my glasses,” he said. “This minute.”
I rummaged in the side pocket of the cat’s satchel, took out his glasses case, and handed it to the cat, who was staring at me like a murderer.
I tried to peer under the sofa as regularly as I could, and to my relief the snake was always in exactly the same position.
“What an awful book. Quite dreadful,” he scoffed after finishing the first chapter. He folded his glasses and put them in his breast pocket. “I’m bored with such absurdity,” he added and opened his mouth in a wide yawn. “Bored to death.”
—
Before leaving the cat placed his card on the hall table and told me to call him the following week. Let’s do something nice, go to a nice place for dinner maybe.
When the cat finally closed the door behind him, I was relieved.
I took the card and began turning it in my fingers like a bunch of five-hundred-euro notes. I wanted to call him right there and then and not wait until next week, because that was days away. I would spend too long thinking about our encounter, mulling over the things I’d told him, and that would mean I’d never have the courage to pick up the phone and ask him out. What would he say when he found out about my snake? Or when he finally found out the truth?
My head felt like I’d immersed it in a pot of boiling water.
I fanned myself with the card and dashed outside, went to the store, and walked straight up to the dairy shelf. I placed a tub of yogurt in my basket, went to the checkout, and came straight home. I fetched a spoon from the kitchen drawer, sat in the middle of the floor, and started eating.
The snake joined me and tasted some, though it didn’t know how to eat yogurt; it just smeared the stuff all over the place and made a mess.
Once I’d eaten I gripped the snake with all my strength. It wound itself round my wrists like a length of rope and struggled, and when I started walking toward the terrarium it began nibbling my fingers, constantly trying to escape.
When I dropped it into the terrarium and saw how painful it was for the snake, heard what a dreadful noise and commotion it made, watched as it thrashed against the glass, looking crushed and trapped in its own body, like a child having a tantrum in a candy store, it broke my heart.
Spring 1980
THE CUTICLE
I hadn’t been able to sleep that night. It was only in the morning light that I noticed how the floors in our house were trampled, dirty, and covered in litter. Packets of West cigarettes had fallen to the floor, and the tables were strewn with empty chip and cookie wrappers and ash flicked here and there. As usual I got up early and slipped quietly out to the veranda, my feet slapping against the cement floor.
I sat down, raised my knees firmly against my chest, and began nervously chewing my nails. I stared at the silent landscape around us, the chairs populating the yard. It was still cold. The late spring morning was spitting out its final chilly winds, trees in fresh bloom swayed along the blurred mountainside, and my skin tightened into goose bumps. I bit through my cuticle, and blood instantly began to flow from beneath my nail.
I looked away from my bloodied finger and stared once again at the yard, pressing the wound with another finger. My mother had already hung out old tattered clothes, worn-out pairs of jeans and torn shirts, on a cord strung between the apple trees. White chairs were dotted around the yard like a frightened shoal of fish, and the lawn was awash with cigarette ends that looked almost like small pieces snapped from the white plastic chairs. The mountains rose wide and tall, to the right and to the left, which made it look as though the world began and ended on the veranda where I was sitting. And yet nobody knew about us. None of us was anybody special, none of us spoke any languages, and everybody had less than everyone else. The world felt like an impossibly small place.
My mother opened the front door and leaned against the doorjamb. The most important day of your life, she began. She had raised her eyebrows exceptionally high and the lower half of her face bore a broad smile. There was still plenty to do, she continued—too much perhaps: food, drinks, dress, hair, makeup, cleaning, food, drinks, dress, hair, makeup, cleaning, she repeated, paced up and down the veranda, and eventually gripped my hand and tried to haul me to my feet.
“Food, drinks, dress, hair, makeup, cleaning. Don’t just sit there, girl. Go and get yourself ready.”
“In a minute, Nanë.”
“Right this second. Now! Nxito!”
Mother stomped back indoors.
When I tried to stand on the step up into the house, I felt dizzy. I took a few hobbling steps across the veranda, pressed my forehead against one of the supporting beams, and closed my eyes. In addition to the sounds of nature around me, I could hear my mother rattling the dishes and picking up rubbish. I gave a resigned sigh and stepped inside.
By ten o’clock everything was ready: I’d been to the hairdresser, and we had collected all the litter, vacuumed every last corner of the house, ironed and folded the laundry, washed all the dishes, thrown all the plastic bottles, cans, and pieces of wrapping paper into a black garbage bag and begun burning it at the edge of the field.
—
At around midday I was standing in the middle of the living room in my white wedding dress, with patterns embroidered in golden thread decorating the shoulders. It had a round neckline and fitted chiffon sleeves, a wonderful pleated hem, and the train was made of translucent, shiny lace. The dress was unbelievably beautiful, and though it swallowed me up so that it almost felt as though I was made for the dress and not the other way round, I felt like the prettiest woman in the world.
By one o’clock I was wearing more gold than any woman I’d ever known. There were rings on every one of my fingers, my golden earrings were large and impressive, and there were so many necklaces round my neck that I almost had to hunch my shoulders. The sun shone diagonally from between the clouds, though the forecast had promised us a cloudless sky. My entire family had gathered to wait for the guests and the highlight of the afternoon when, as custom dictated, I would be fetched and taken to my Bajram in an entourage of several dozen cars whose drivers would blow the horn throughout the journey in honor of my wedding day.
I’d imagined everything differently, assumed it would be so oppressive that I’d be unable to stand for shock, unable to speak for the choking sensation in my throat. I’d imagined I wouldn’t even be able to breathe, that my wedding would leave me with memories I would rather not revisit, that I’d sweat so much my dress would be soaked, that you’d be able to wring it out like a wet towel, but there wasn’t a single person who saw me that day who didn’t marvel at my glowing, serious expression, my sheet-white skin, and how beautiful I looked.
“Give me the veil,” I told my sister.
There was only one piece missing from my reflection in the full-length mirror. Then it would be perfect. I placed the veil over my head, positioning it carefully until it was securely fastened to my hair, which flowed prettily down to my shoulders. I looked at myself in the mirror. From beneath the two layers of the veil it was hard to make out the contours of my face or lips, now drawn boldly with bright red lipstick. It was hard to recognize the people who had come to watch me being fetched.
“Are you ready?” Hana asked, a little anxiously. Her bright voice broke off halfway through the question.
For a moment I looked my sister in the eye, and in reply I smiled at her long enough for her to pull herself together and ask the question again.
“Of course,” I said. “I’m happy now.”
I lifted the veil over my head, kissed her on the cheek, and lowered it again.
7
My father had nothing to his name when he arrived in this country. He had a wife and five children, a wallet containing the sum total of his worldly possessions, his head full of fear and hatred and plans that, if he followed them to the letter, would turn him once again into the same man who had left Kosovo.
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In this way my father had planned the course of our life before it had even properly begun. His three daughters would grow into good, obedient, honorable wives and his two sons would become strong, hardworking men who would return to Kosovo as soon as it was safe again, they would marry good Kosovan women and build grand houses next to each other. The plan flickered in his mind like stars, like small bonfires burning in the sky, because to his mind there was nothing about his plans that was remotely unrealistic.
I learned to speak and read in a language he didn’t understand, to live among people whose culture he despised, to talk about subjects he couldn’t fathom. I learned to avoid him and everything to do with his life. Over time I forgot the most basic words in my mother tongue and started speaking Finnish to my siblings, and though he punished us harshly for it, we carried on because none of us wanted him to understand.
He urged me to go to technical college and study car repair, electronic engineering, or information technology, the building or printing industry, and the minute I said I wanted to do something else he interrupted me and said I would study whatever and wherever he told me. I’ve always been fair to you, he said and asked me to fetch his cigarettes from his coat pocket. Don’t try to defy me. Defying me will have severe consequences. You know that. I’ll hit you so hard your face will never look the same again.
I dug the cigarettes from his pocket, my blood boiling. I’d been avoiding him since I was a small child, because he saw our desire to live life the way we wanted to as selfishness that should be punished.
I declined his suggestions and handed him the cigarettes, furiously shaking my head. My father’s lips tightened like a rubber band stretched to the extreme. I could feel his blood beginning to boil too.
Fine, I said eventually, I’ll go to the technical college if you say so. You’ve always been fair to me, and there’s no sense doing anything except what you have decided. As I said it I felt almost as though I were bursting into flames.
My Cat Yugoslavia Page 8