Best European Fiction 2012

by Aleksandar Hemon

  I went out, I walked along Corso Umberto again, I saw the public library, I wanted to go in, I was actually going in, but just then an invisible hand seized me by the collar . . . but whose hand? And pushed me out onto the street, and pushed me on toward the amphitheater.

  I’m sitting up at the top of it, she’s not here.

  She’s here, she’s here, she’s very much here! I’m at the hotel, so much has happened that . . . where to . . . well, I went to the beach, from the amphitheater I went to the beach, down those narrow, winding streets, there weren’t that many people on the beach, it’s the end of September after all, I didn’t have a bathing suit, I didn’t have anything to sit down on, I was the only one sitting there fully dressed, my shoes sitting next to me, I must have looked like I’d come straight out of the People’s Republic of Poland, on some delegation, all that was missing was the handkerchief on top of my head, with its four tied corners. I sat, and I waited, and she came! With a helmet in her hand, with people, with a whole group of people, like a loud, laughing ball rolling along and dropping right into the water and flying off into a thousand individual, movable parts. Slapped savagely in the face by youth, I felt.

  She floated all the way out, her friends went to the bar, I didn’t take my eyes off her, she came out of the water slowly, so slowly she looked like she was standing in place while the sea retreated. When it had retreated down to about her knees, she waved at me, and in that instant she stumbled over a rock, she stumbled, and she started limping, so I stood up, rolled up my pant legs, got a glimpse of my skinny, white calves, rolled them back down, and I went into the water with my pants on, the water went up to my own knees, I offered her my hand, which she took, eagerly, and I felt like she was caressing my very heart, and we walked up to the shore, slower and slower, and who invented shores? Or this one, specifically, in Taormina? It should recede a little bit. If it has to be there at all, it could at least recede. The people on the beach gave me a round of applause as we walked up, for my chivalry, I took a little bow, we sat down, and then the moment I had been dreading finally came, conversation, a little bit in German, a little bit in English, parole, parole, parole, I felt like showing off, calling attention to myself, I said, isn’t it interesting that in English they use butter as a verb meaning to ingratiate, so imagine what it must sound like to them when they say butterfly, while in Polish, isn’t it interesting, we use the word for “bread” in the same way, chleb, so we say, for example, “don’t bread me up,” nie pochlebaj mnie, when in English they say “don’t butter me up,” and she said she did find that interesting, and she told me she earned her living as a waitress and performed in the evenings with the people that had gone to the bar, they’d sing something, recite something, and she had that gymnastic show of sorts, I didn’t understand exactly, and me? I am a journalist, I said, a reporter, I was sent here by a newspaper in Poland to write something about Taormina, and I had just about two days left, and then I was going back. Just two? That’s how she said it, just two? Looking at me in such a way that the word “just” meant fewer and shorter than it ever had before.

  They came back from the bar, she introduced them to me, they were young, with no clothes on, bad enough that I could’ve been everyone’s father, on top of that I was wearing these old ragged clothes. As though they’d just been introduced to the guy whose job is to collect fees for using the beach.

  I couldn’t understand what they were saying or what they were laughing at, I slapped something resembling a smile onto my face, just in case, and that was how I sat there, looking like the textbook definition of an eager-to-please idiot. Finally I stood up, started to say my good-byes, and she stood up too, asked if I wanted to go for a drive, I deduced based on her helmet that she meant on a motor scooter, the others made some comment or other, shouted out something to her as we were walking up off the beach, but it didn’t matter, only this ride mattered, on a scooter, around Taormina. On either side of us there were vineyards and citrus trees, and ahead of me there were her thighs coming out from under her black dress, I was altogether struck by the accuracy of their argument, and her hair in my face. And the vista sul mare, from every spot, and craters overhead, and portals, and cornices of lava. I wanted for us to get frozen like that. In the middle of Taormina. On the Piazza IX Aprile, for example. For us to stay like that, on that scooter, cast in lava. As a monument, to the last love of her passenger. Out of lava, her hair, flying back. Out of lava, her dress, lifted up by the wind. The wind out of lava, his tears out of lava.

  She dropped me off at the hotel. She told me where to go in the evening for their performance. I’m going . . .

  Night. Pacing up and down my room. I have to go home tomorrow. I have to go home tomorrow.

  I sat at the performers’ table, clapping, not knowing what was going on. Some sort of juggling thing, they gave some kind of recital, played some music, sang, and her? She came on and did her cartwheels, like spinning stars, and in front of the microphone she did her handstand, and standing on her hands she started to sing “Ich bin von Kopf bis Fuß auf Liebe eingestellt,” or “Head to toe, I’m ready to love,” a kind of parody, in Polish for some reason it gets translated into “I’m made just to be loved,” nobody would ever figure out what was really going on. She started singing, standing on her hands, and only then did she sit down on that barrel from The Blue Angel . . .

  I have to go home tomorrow. I have to go home tomorrow.

  And then, when we were all sitting around the table and drinking, she told me to stay, I said I had no reason to stay, she said I could perform with them, of course I knew immediately what my role would be. She said I would have dinner every day and a few euros, and where would I sleep, I asked, joking, because I thought that she was joking, too, and she said, well, where she—where they all—slept, in a big apartment, everyone had his own little nook, and I would stay with them, with her, in Taormina. I said that that would be nice, but that I had to go home, for work, she said, it would be nice, it’s a shame you can’t do it, and she asked if I wanted for her to take me back to the hotel, she felt like having a little walk anyway, because she had drunk too much, and when we were walking out, she ran her fingers through the hair of one of the guys, and then we got into a paddle boat that was sitting on the beach, by ourselves, the city above us, the sea before us, I took her hand and kissed it, she said we should push the boat into the water, the tether was long and we could float out a little, so we floated out, and she sat down on top of me, for the first time in over ten years I found myself there, a kind of cosmic relief on entering the gates of that wet heaven. Little by little I pedaled, little by little she rose and little by little she fell, we glided like a royal swan, almost soundlessly, noiselessly, waves came, from a ship crossing up ahead of us, and then, on those waves, the sea rocked us until it was over. And immediately I was surprised that there would be a ship so close to the shore. She told me to turn around, I turned around, the beach was far away, we had floated all the way out, I hadn’t realized, I was facing the other way, she’d let the tether out, it had come undone, we were dragging it behind us, we were like a kite loosed from grasp by the land.

  I have to go home tomorrow.

  I’m at the airport in Messina. On the terrace. I saw it start up, take off, and disappear. They’d called my name out, a couple of times. What do I have to go home for?

  I have my little nook. Mattress on the veranda, not enough space in the apartment, there’s always someone sleeping somewhere. But I like to be alone, anyway. She sleeps in a room with a girlfriend, she can always come out to see me. But she doesn’t. The starry night above me, mixed feelings inside me. Because she doesn’t. And because she seemed confused when I came back and sat down at their table while she was singing. She swayed a little on her hands, I thought out of emotion, but then when she came up she acted like an embarrassed student greeting the teacher who had surprised her with an unannounced visit t
o her apartment.

  During the day, while she works at the hotel, I’m at the beach, or walking around Taormina, or sitting at the public library. I know what Jaroslaw Iwaszkiewicz said about Taormina, the high heights, the silken sea, Mount Etna dissolving in the glow of the sun like a crystal, and the magical scenery of the Greco-Roman amphitheater, the only one like that in the whole world. I didn’t know that Goethe had written about it too, had written it was the greatest work of art and nature.

  At night I perform. My performance consists of going up on stage dressed like a clown and made up like a clown, my face looks out-of-date, I go on and carry her broken, heavy barrel for her, I can barely walk with it, I put it down in the middle there and want to get off, but the other clown shouts out at me (Idiot Augustus! Idiot Augustus!), he’s smarter than I am, he’s the one whose hair she ran her fingers through, he tells me to lift the barrel up and take it back to where it came from, and then he comes up to me, knocks it over, and shows me you can roll it, and then I, pleased that I won’t have to carry it, roll the barrel. At the end of the program, though, I carry it off the stage the same way I carried it on, in my arms.

  I wait for her at night, but she never comes, during the day she works at the hotel, fine, but only in the mornings, and there are fewer and fewer guests, and where does she go off to in the afternoons? I wait for her at the beach, I wait at the amphitheater . . . I only see her in the evenings, when I’m a clown, and then for a little bit at the table. It’s hard for me, it’s like I’m carrying that barrel in my arms all the time. I wrote before: ambivalence. Why don’t I just be honest with myself here? Ambivalence? I’m in agony. This is torment. Pure torment.

  I waited by the hotel, she came out, I wanted to go up to her and then thought better of it, so I hid, I thought I’d follow her, secretly, but I forgot about the scooter, she got on and went off, up, into town, I took the tram up, I can’t walk so much anymore, can’t exactly hop around and frolic in the hills, I saw her scooter, at the Wunderbar Bar, she was sitting with the other clown, they were fighting about something, I was standing behind a tree, she was crying, she jumped up from her seat, she left.

  I’m waiting, I’m lying on the veranda, stars above me. I wait in spite of everything.

  I was in the bathroom and heard her, in the other clown’s room, I heard her whisper.

  Mount Etna.

  It kills and nourishes. The eruptions destroy, burn houses, kill people, but from a bed of deadly lava there grow orchards and groves. In the fertile, volcanic soil vineyards are born, whole plantations of trees.

  Love is Mount Etna. Its heart is the crater the lava flows out of. It’s a curse and a blessing. It’s an active volcano, albeit dormant, in the best-case scenario, but it’s never altogether out.

  Fewer and fewer spectators, fewer and fewer tourists. A suspiciously large number of them departs, and a suspiciously small number of them arrives. Although it’s still warm. The beach is almost totally empty, I watched them put the paddleboats up in their hangars. In the sand, next to me, I saw a dead dove. Apart from the fact that it is a symbol of peace and the Holy Ghost, it is also a symbol of love, or, of course, the irony of fate. And the next day I saw it again, in the paper. Me and the dove! That was the first time my picture had been in the paper! Which is nice for me. A souvenir of sorts. I brought my camera but haven’t taken a single shot. The dove in the foreground and me, a lone tourist, expressionless, in the background. Underneath the headline, and the article, which the paper vendor explained to me using his hands and a couple of different languages:

  Bird flu in Sicily. Swans have tested positive for the H5N1 virus. Minister of Health Francesco Storace warns: “Do not touch dead birds.” Public outcry has intensified due to the delay in this information being released, as well as the subsequent warnings concerning this epidemic. A crisis crew has been called up to Rome. In danger zones, special safety sectors have been established with greatly heightened hygiene methods, particularly for places with a wet climate. A special problem is posed by birds in captivity, which must be either isolated or eliminated . . .

  The paper vendor pointed out that people in the area tended just to have a couple of chickens and turkeys, for themselves, so what use would they have for a henhouse? Nobody has one, so where could you isolate the birds? And that now the Sicilians are petrified of anything with wings. They look at their poultry just like the civilian populace looked at the Germans. That’s why there’s been such a panic among the tourists, and that’s why they’ve been leaving. And now this dove, right here, yesterday . . .

  We said our good-byes, but then he caught up with me and asked me if I wanted a Polish paper, because he had one. I read it like Sienkiewicz’s Lighthouse Keeper read Pan Tadeusz. And suddenly, for the second time that day and the second time in my life, I saw myself! My picture! In a “Missing” column. With a request for immediate contact with my daughter. She’d had to come back to Poland, and I hadn’t told her about my trip, I hadn’t told anybody. And she had no way to contact me, because, out of Reisefieber, I hadn’t brought my cell phone, even though I’d put it on the list. I’d brought my charger but not my phone. Typical me. On a bicycle trip in school, I once forgot my bicycle, I showed up with just the pump.

  Night, sitting at the amphitheater. I jumped the fence. I’m all made up, I’m wearing my clown costume. I ran offstage. After rolling that barrel up, the one I just caved in. I walked up to the microphone and made the announcement, I said, now ladies and gentlemen you’ll meet a woman who’s like Chernobyl, and I am her victim. She came out to laughter and applause but she didn’t do her cartwheels, she came on but she didn’t do her handstand, she just sat straight down on the barrel.

  On my second and final entrance I rolled in the barrel instead of carrying it. I spoiled their punch line, it’s true. But I just couldn’t lift the thing any longer, so the smarter clown came up on stage quick, unexpectedly, and started improvising. Or acting like he was improvising. He talked to the audience rapidly, and for me to understand, he illustrated his words with mimicry and pantomime. He pointed to her, to her belly, indicating with a motion of his hand that she was pregnant. He pointed to himself, to show that it was his, he repeated this once more, he pointed to me with his finger, mocking me, he made fun of how I went back and forth with the barrel, repeated the phrases stupido Polacco, meanwhile, he showed us, him and her, behind the scenes, making thrusting movements with his hips, he pointed to her and to me, he came up to me from behind and played me like I was a double bass. I was an instrument, a tool, she’d been trying to make him jealous, she’d played me, and him? He doesn’t want her, he mimed not wanting with his hands, he doesn’t want her, no, no, let her live with this stupido Polacco, stupido Polacco, so I lifted up that damned barrel and threw it, I meant to throw it down by his side, but he moved, right in the wrong direction, and it hit him, he fell over, there was a yell, I flew out onto the street, I ran away, on the street there were children pointing their fingers at me, I bowed, they asked me to pose for pictures. I posed. And then to the amphitheater, over the fence, because it was closed, and I’m sitting . . .

  I’m getting sleepy . . .

  Should I lie down here, on the bench?

  Did I break any of his bones? Either way, the police will be after me . . .

  If the police find me, they’ll arrest me. And maybe then they’ll deport me back to Poland, or I’ll be extradited . . . If so, then perhaps there was a method in this madness . . .

  On the beach. It’s . . . indescribable! It’s . . . But from the beginning, from the beginning! At dawn at the amphitheater I was awakened by shots, individual shots from a firearm. Their echo went through the hills. And there were more and more of them. On the stage of the amphitheater something fell, I went up closer, it was a bird. Shot dead. I left the amphitheater, there were more and more shots. No one was on the street. Dreadful cackling of hens, gaggli
ng of geese, quacking of ducks, and more shots. A turkey on the street, crazy with fear, spinning around its own axis. Cages with parrots, some of them lying on the bottoms, some of them repeating phrases in Italian. And birds falling, one after the next. I made it to empty beach, no, not empty, full of birds that had been shot. A carpet of bird carcasses. The paper vendor showed up, he was walking along the waterline, he had a little parasol over his head. I frightened him, done up as a clown, early on the beach, he didn’t recognize me, I asked him about the shots, where did people get all those weapons from, he said they’d brought in the Mafia, from Palermo, and that I ought to go back to the circus, it’d be safer there, nothing would fall on my head.

  I’m sitting on a little boat, the shots haven’t died down, in fact, there are so many of them now that you can’t tell between them and their echoes. Birds are falling like big drops of blood, some of them straight into my . . .

  One of them fell right onto my head! I’m shocked, I actually even passed out for a moment. My face is covered in blood. It’s lying in front of me, it’s pretty big, pretty heavy, is it an eagle? I don’t know what kind of bird it is, I can’t tell, I know that Sicily has around seventy species and that some of them fly off to Africa. It’s good it wasn’t a swan, I would have ended up the first human victim of the bird flu in Taormina . . .

  I don’t know why, but a minute ago, I cackled. I was walking down the shore, and I raised my elbows, and I cackled. And I crowed. Maybe because I’ve gone crazy, or else so that I don’t go crazy.