Best European Fiction 2012

by Aleksandar Hemon

  So, if what is happening in the world baffles you or scares you, you need to read some books. Best European Fiction 2012 would be an excellent place to start.

  ALEKSANDAR HEMON

  love

  [BELGIUM: DUTCH]

  PATRICIA DE MARTELAERE

  My Hand Is Exhausted

  There are faces she never forgets. There are different kinds of reasons why she never forgets a face, although there’s probably no single reason really, such as why she likes blue or chocolate or Bach, but then, on the other hand, that just seems completely necessary. The faces that Esther never forgets have nothing to do with the people who sport these faces. They’re sitting immobile in front of her, the people, in the wicker armchair roughly five meters away from her, under Gao Qipei’s tiger, back inclined toward the window, so that they appear like stencils cut out of the daylight. They are stiff and unnatural. Their legs crossed, hands convulsed on the armrests, lips pressed tightly together, they fix on some arbitrary point on the wall, the doorknob or the coat hook, for example, and try in the meantime to maintain an interesting look in their eyes. It never works. After half an hour, they get cramps in their legs, their hands tingle, and the corners of their lips begin to tremble. Their eyes become misty and stupid, as if hypnotized, helpless lambs. From time to time one of them complains the next day that he dreamed the whole night about the doorknob. That’s how it goes; everything lingers, without it having the least bit of meaning, the brain works that way.

  Esther also sits and looks. She is waiting for the moment that the face comes loose, like the postage stamp from a letter soaking in water. It always comes loose, one faster than the other. These are the faces she collects, the others don’t concern her. It’s about the moment a face becomes a mask, harder and more inflexible than itself, more real than itself. Or the moment a look merges into a landscape, deep, wide, but impersonal. She used to collect real landscapes. As a child, she had about ten of them, for nighttime in bed. She closed her eyes, framed the blackness, and copied the lines she had stolen while on holiday from real landscapes with a fluorescent finger. The most beautiful was that of the dunes, with fresh ridges blown by the wind in the sand, in the hollow a clump of beach grass, and in the bottom left-hand corner the rusty knots and spikes of barbed wire. The most difficult was the Swiss alpine landscape, not only because of the capricious shapes of the mountain peaks, the twenty-five tops of dark green spruces against the empty, elevated air, and the speckled bodies of nine cows on the mountain meadow, dotted here and there, but mainly because of the cable cars. The difficult thing about the cable cars was that she had been in one and the landscape had moved. What she remembered seemed like photos of a city at night, with ribbons of light through the streets, where departed cars raced through one another.

  Esther only drew the outside. A landscape doesn’t have an inside. You can plow through it, you can explore its most forsaken corners, you can get lost in it or live in it. But it’s never the inside. A landscape begins with dissent and stretches from there on out. It ends when it seems to agree.

  They become talkative, one and all. It comes from being silent for a long time, the hoarse throat, the drafty stillness in the head. But it also comes from being afraid, afraid of the portrait. They do want to be as they appear. Sometimes they hardly dare look, but they look all the same, all of them. And they are all disappointed, no matter what, whatever it is, however they are. Shouldn’t that chin be a little sharper? they ask in despair. Isn’t that nose much too long? But they can’t draw; they’re powerless in front of their very own face. They can comb their hair, or squeeze a pimple on their nose, or frown or straighten the shoulders. But on paper, they’re useless. That’s why they try it with words, at afternoon tea or during a quick break.

  Esther is washing her hands at the small white basin behind the painter’s easel.

  She asks if it’s the first time they’ve posed for a portrait.

  It’s always the first time.

  She tells them they have an interesting face.

  Come on, they say, hopeful and delighted, it’s boring, everyday, nothing special.

  Honestly, says Esther. It’s got something, it’s got character.

  And then, of course, they tell her their entire life story, from childhood to unhappy marriage, from bed to bed, desire to disappointment, and all in the hope that it might change something, that Esther might make an adjustment here or there, that she might make the chin sharper, the nose shorter. They hope she will paint the portrait of someone as he is when he is loved, that she will draw everything that isn’t there, and that it will be there all the same.

  Esther lets them talk and listens. She listens, very carefully, but actually she’s not listening. Listening is a form of looking. Watching how a face changes when the lips form words: I’ve always been lonely, or I never found what I was looking for. The face becomes serious and melancholic, as if it immediately believes what the lips are saying, just like that, and yet something isn’t right, something’s not completely sincere.

  Esther despises them, one and all. Especially the self-motivated crowd, the ones that come of their own accord to have her draw or paint them, and are even willing to pay for it themselves. But also the ones that have been sent by family members or friends, for an anniversary or a birthday, she despises them too. She even despises the ones she asks herself. The writers and actors who come and pose at her request, complaining all the while that they don’t have the time or that they think it’s ridiculous but they come all the same. She despises them because they come all the same. The only ones she doesn’t despise are the ones who don’t come, because they don’t come. The ones who come are mostly men. The only men in Esther’s life, but they are many. And they stay, just as long as she wants. Once in a while there’s a man who keeps coming back after his portrait’s done. Then she pushes him with profound contempt into the chair underneath Gao Qipei’s tiger and starts drawing his portrait anew. Sometimes there’s a man whose lips reveal, over coffee or during a break: I thought about you. Then she looks carefully at the changing face, the traces of desire, the sign of faith, the onset of emotions. But she does not change a single line.

  Gao Qipei was a Chinese painter who painted with his hands. Every painter paints with their hands, unless they have no hands, then they try with the feet or the mouth. But Gao Qipei painted by hand alone, without a brush. Chinese painters are so sick and tired of the brush because they have to write with it all day long so that there’s no longer any difference between writing and painting. That’s why Gao Qipei started painting by hand alone. It is an unusual tiger, impressive and endearing. A tiger from the rear, a little sheepish, with the chubby backside of a bear, but still with great dignity. As a child, Esther kept trying to turn the painting around, to see the tiger’s head from the other side. That’s what her mother says; every time she visits Esther’s atelier and sees the tiger hanging there. In that way it’s almost become the truth, impossible to distinguish from a memory. But Esther doesn’t believe it’s true. As a child she would have been much too scared to see the tiger’s head, even if she did believe it was on the reverse side of the painting. She does remember the television screen, which isn’t a television screen in this memory but rather a hutch with two white rabbits, and Esther as a child slipping carrots into the back of the set for the animals.

  Esther sees them coming through the windows of her atelier. She likes to see them coming, especially the first time, when they’re still new. The unfamiliar people on the other side of the street, looking for the house number, and then crossing over, nervous and excited. Frequently they comb their hair just before ringing the bell, which is of course ridiculous, as if they expect it to be reproduced lock for lock. Esther doesn’t hurry to open the door for them. Sometimes she lets them ring twice, especially if it’s a man she might just find a little attractive. Then she would have preferr
ed not to open the door at all.

  He finds the neighborhood particularly pretty. The house is stately and impressive, the weather chilly for the time of the year. She ascends the steep, spiral staircase in front of him, two stories up.

  It’s the custom, he says, for men to go first on stairs.

  I know, says Esther, while she holds her skirts together at the knees. In elevators too, apparently.

  That’s a throwback to the days when elevators were not completely reliable. If the cage was open and you stepped in, there was always a chance you might crash to the ground, and then it was better if a man crashed to the ground, a lesser loss.

  Everyone finds the atelier spacious and sunny and the view magnificent. None of them wants something to drink; they’ve just had breakfast, perhaps later. They stand there, boorish, in the middle of the attic, with their jacket and overcoat still on and their hands in their pockets. Esther lets them stand there. She messes about behind the painter’s easel, rips a sheet of paper from the roll, and attaches it to the plank.

  Where should I sit? they ask. What should I take off?

  If she were now to say: stay where you are, they would do it, for hours and hours on end. And if she were to say: everything, they would do it, like the hired models at the art school, but then with an unutterable shame, and shame makes them unusable. It is impossible to draw a naked man if he’s ashamed. Shame occasions shame. Love, on the other hand, does not occasion love. It’s the eyes in particular that make it difficult. If they had no eyes it would probably be simple. They would have to be blind, one and all.

  It’s better without the glasses, says Esther.

  Then I can’t see a thing, he says.

  But he obediently removes his glasses and places them on the wicker table next to the armchair.

  You’ll forget them, says Esther.

  He winks and slips his glasses into his breast pocket.

  Without the glasses he appears vaguer, half rubbed-out, a little blurred. He looks like a man waking up in a bed. Although Esther has never seen a man wake up in a bed; first there would have had to be a man who fell asleep in the bed. But a man asleep in a bed isn’t much different from a man asleep on a train, and that much Esther has witnessed, and also how they wake up. The question remains, how do you know which man it is?

  Godfried H., he says.

  He pretends to be a stranger, as if there were no possibility she might know who he is, no possibility she might recognize him from photos and interviews.

  But how do you know which one it is? Is it the man with the lopsided head against the grimy brown curtain, with his hands folded over his belt, the gleaming yellow wedding ring, his blue checked shirt open at the neck, with gray chest hair? Is it the man with beard and balding head, sitting rigidly with eyes closed, bolt upright, as if meditating, vigilant, as if furtively peeking between his eyelashes, but with his mouth open slightly, as though perhaps asleep? Is it the man called Peter? With crew-cut dark hair, pale complexion, and dark eyes, restless hands with broad hairy wrists? Is it the prince, the beggar, the knight, the dragon? You’re only sure if they appear to know the magic word, and they all seem to know it. They are all the one, but she alone is not, not in this fairy tale.

  You have a very interesting face.

  I know. Comes in very handy.

  It has character, something special.

  My face, sure, pretty much.

  Esther washes her hands again. She detests even the slightest traces of paint or charcoal on her hands. She washes them thirty times a day, sometimes halfway through a mouth or a nose. She would have preferred to be able to draw or paint under a running tap, then everything would wash off immediately, if that were possible. Or to paint with a sort of remote control, or with the eyes only, without hands. It’s actually a miracle she ever started to paint in the first place.

  She’s at the kitchen table, hates making a mess. Pots of paint arrayed before her, immaculate, never used: yellow, green, blue, and red. And next to every pot of paint a jar of water, a paintbrush, and a rag. Every paintbrush neatly rinsed and dried after every session. And after every rinsing, to the sink for fresh water. How is it ever going to be possible to learn to mix colors, to allow impurities?

  He’s sitting reasonably still. Sometimes they find it difficult, sitting still. They keep crossing their legs, scratching, folding their hands open and closed. Peter at the cello, hands on the strings, the only way to keep him immobile. This one’s doing it unassisted. He’s almost too still. There is nothing about him that moves. He hasn’t blinked once in half an hour. A fly crawls over his hand and there is no reaction to show that a fly is crawling over his hand. He begins to look like the motionless watchman at the wax museum, the one you want to shake to see if he’s real.

  He is a writer. Painting doesn’t interest him. He doesn’t even look at his own portrait. It’s your portrait, he says, of me.

  He once had the idea to make written portraits of people, for a fee and all that. He saw himself doing it, sitting on a street corner somewhere or on the Place du Tertre in Paris, between the painters and the sketchers, to have passersby pose for him on a stool for ten minutes while he portrayed their face in words. Like the description of a fugitive on the news: oval face, short chestnut hair, green eyes, bushy eyebrows, plump lips, a birthmark on the left cheek. Or, alternatively, the psychological approach: troubled look, melancholic eyes, serene forehead, sensual lips, willful chin. Or more romantic: a look of intense but unfulfilled desire, soft fleshy lips like a pouting child, but callous ridges along the cheeks, suggesting pent-up frustration, stubborn, dogged. Comparison with animals also works well: head like a mole, haddock eyes, rabbits’ teeth. Esther has never painted animals. In addition to tigers, Gao Qipei also painted spiders, dragonflies, and shrimp. They all look human.

  She’s busy with an ear. It’s a small ear, close to the skull, so that the dark—but here and there graying—hairs around the temples gently fall across it. The ear itself looks soft and downy, a few longer hairs growing in the middle, the earlobe partly attached. Under the ear, stubble from shaving, the short, broad neck, the dark blue silk shirt with the top button open.

  Is it a listening ear? He doesn’t like music, he says. He doesn’t care what CD she puts on; he won’t hear it. He says: music is like wallpaper in a room, it’s background, you don’t look at it. Nobody ever asks: do you like wallpaper?

  He stares at the doorknob without batting an eye and doesn’t budge an inch. But if he doesn’t listen, then what does he do? If he doesn’t listen, doesn’t see much without glasses, and doesn’t move, what does he do? Think? Feel?

  He stares motionless at the doorknob. Will he dream about the doorknob? Esther knows all about it, how staring evolves into imagining. But it remains strange and inexplicable that the eyes look and the hands draw what the eyes see. It’s like typing a page in typing class with the keyboard covered, without knowing what you’re actually doing or whether it’s right or not.

  Now she has his ear. She looks at his ear on the white grainy sheet of rice paper. It’s clearly his ear. It’s an ear you could cut off, out of desperation or in surgery.

  And why does she like blue? Blue is the color of Yves Klein’s flower, a blue sponge on a lanky stem, cheap, noxious blue ink, screaming and helpless. She is standing in the middle of the spiral in the Guggenheim, and the Guggenheim also looks like an ear, a giant ear pressed against the heart of Manhattan, listening for a pending disaster. It’s this color blue.

  The oleander, he says, about the budding red oleander in the window alcove. It sounds as if he is announcing the title of a poem he’s about to recite.

  The oleander is one of the most poisonous plants in existence. The flower itself isn’t poisonous but the leaf is. One single arrow-shaped blade is enough to send any adult to the grave, irretrievably. And yet, the sun soaked ave
nidas of the Italian Riviera, teeming with sauntering suicides, are lush with blossoming white, pink, and red oleander trees. And the resounding corridors of schools full of vigorous school children are adorned with unsuspecting oleanders in white plastic flowerpots, moved outside to the playground at the beginning of spring, the moment when suicides are, statistically speaking, at their peak. But nobody knows this. The oleander leaf is incredibly tough and hard. It would be easier to cut your wrists with one, so to speak, than to eat one.

  Sometimes she clamps her jaw shut so hard that her teeth hurt. Then she has to force them apart and she thinks: it’s from keeping silent for so long. At lunch, if she’s alone, she performs a whole battery of relaxation exercises to combat hoarseness, although there’s nothing wrong with being hoarse if you rarely speak anyway. Chewing with broad, round movements, as blatantly as possible, with the mouth wide open, first to the left, while the lower jaw makes a grinding circular downward curve, then the same to the right, like a cow chewing its cud. Yawning is also good for the vocal chords, a sort of inner ventilation. For the neck muscles, which suffer terribly from the long periods of sitting still behind the painter’s easel, it helps to rest the head on one side, against the shoulder, turning to the rear, then in a slow curve to the other shoulder, and finally letting it fall forward before starting again in the opposite direction. It strikes her every time she does this just how heavy a head is to carry. For the wrists: bend the hand forward and then backward like a robotic child waving good-bye.