Best European Fiction 2010

by Aleksandar Hemon

  6.

  The girl sat at a table in a restaurant in the little square. The chimes of church bells reached her from time to time, but she was never able to count from the first ring, so she had no idea what time it was. Most recently she counted out three chimes, but when she counted before that, she’d counted five. She raised a hand to call the waiter, but when she asked him, he too had no watch.

  7.

  Then night fell. Abruptly—though the day, the girl thought, still hadn’t actually ended—but perhaps that was how night fell in Lyon, as if it had been waiting in ambush. From the place where she sat having her third espresso, she couldn’t see across the square. The darkness was dense and tangible, so she kept brushing it off her face and picking it out of her hair. She wanted to pay, but she could no longer see the waiter (just as he, probably, couldn’t see her), so she got up and looked for the door to the restaurant. She found a door, which she hadn’t seen before, opened it and stepped into a room full of people. They were standing in groups of three and four, deep in conversation and paying no attention to each other. Someone did notice when she came in, stopped talking and stared at her, and soon all the little groups were standing there, silent, staring at the girl, and the only thing audible was the pat of her footsteps, which continued, though she had no idea of where she was. Since I got to Lyon, thought the girl, I know less and less, and soon I won’t know anything at all. There are cities like that, she thought, in which you seem to disappear, as if you melt into the houses and streets, unlike those cities in which you grow and multiply and you’re always becoming someone else. She couldn’t remember any of the latter sort of city, though there was a wisp of memory hovering in her of a small town in which she saw herself as if she were slipping around a corner, but now she was in Lyon, or at least she hoped she was in Lyon, and she had to forget everything else. By now she had made her way back to a narrow door on which the word “Exit” was written and when she reached for the doorknob, the room became noisy again. No one looked at her anymore. And she didn’t look at them. She opened the door, went out, shut it behind her, and leaned against the wall. Her heart was pounding so loudly that the pounding echoed off of something. The girl thought: Finally I have arrived. On the floor, between her feet, she noticed a crumpled envelope and now she reached for it. On the envelope were the words: “For You—Open Immediately.” “How did they know,” said the girl, “that I’m here?” She looked to her left, she looked to her right, but there was no one nearby who could answer her questions. There was a slip of paper in the envelope on which was written: “I am waiting for you by the basilica.”

  8.

  “Excuse me,” the girl asked a policeman the next morning, “where is the basilica?”

  The policeman raised his eyebrows, clearly surprised, and then gestured skyward with his head.

  The girl laughed. “I didn’t mean the heavenly basilica,” she said. “I meant, is there a basilica here in town, in Lyon?”

  The policeman kept on gesturing with his head and making faces, until he realized he was getting nowhere. “Not in the heavens, my dear,” he said, “right there on the hilltop, up on the hill!”

  The girl looked up and, sure enough, straight above her, up on the hill, she could see the basilica. It seemed as if all she needed to do was jump up to touch it, but later, as she panted as she climbed the steps and steep paths, she cursed the basilica, and the letter, and whoever wrote the letter, and herself, and especially Lyon, which, so harmonious and beautiful, was stretching out before her more and more, gradually filling the whole horizon.

  So what now, thought the girl when she finally reached the basilica, which was surrounded by large and small groups of strolling tourists, how will I recognize the person who wrote to me?

  “Sorry,” said a youngish man, “would you be willing to take a picture of me in front of the basilica? Everything is all set,” he said and handed her the camera, “all you have to do is press the button.”

  The girl took the camera, looked it over, and asked: “This button here?”

  “No,” said the youngish man, “the other one.”

  The girl placed her index finger on the button, waited for the youngish man to strike his pose, and then she pointed the camera in his direction, but when she looked at the little screen, she saw only the basilica. The youngish man stood on the steps and grinned, but no matter how much the girl tried, his figure wouldn’t appear in the image.

  “Are you done,” asked the youngish man, “can I move?”

  “Sure,” said the girl. If she handed him the camera quickly, she thought, and then turned and went, maybe he wouldn’t notice anything, or, by the time he did notice, it would be too late. She couldn’t say why she was feeling guilty about this, but she was already fed up with Lyon and everything that had been happening to her there. What a story she could put together out of all of this!

  The youngish man was quicker than the girl had figured, however, and, without breaking the movement with which he took the camera, he brought it to his eyes and looked for the picture the girl had taken. “Brilliant,” he said, “you take photographs like a professional, we came out beautifully!”

  The girl walked over to him slowly. She looked at the little screen and saw what she had seen before: the steps and no one standing on them. Yes, she thought, high time for me to leave Lyon.

  “Would you like me to take a picture of you standing in the same place,” asked the youngish man, “or somewhere else?”

  “No,” said the girl, “I want to go home.”

  “All of us want to go home,” replied the youngish man. “But really, it’s no trouble, it won’t take a minute—not even that.”

  The girl didn’t like it when people pleaded with her. “Fine,” she said and went over to the steps. She didn’t know where the youngish man had been standing exactly, so she decided on the sixth step.

  “Great,” said the youngish man, “exactly where I was standing.”

  “Strange,” said the girl, and raised her hand to her face. “That’s what I was thinking.”

  “Coincidence,” said the youngish man. He kept holding the camera pointed at the girl.

  “There is no such thing as coincidence,” replied the girl, “there’s just someone’s willingness to believe in coincidence.”

  The boy shrugged and said that he did believe in them.

  “I figured as much,” said the girl, and sighed. If he believed in coincidence, then he wasn’t the man who had left her the message. But, she stopped herself, why am I saying “man”? Couldn’t it have been a woman? And while the flash went off on the youngish man’s camera, the girl began to look at women out on the terrace in front of the basilica.

  9.

  “I see you’re looking for me,” said a small woman who resembled a mouse. She came up to the girl slowly, first on one step, then the next. She stopped on the second step. Then she moved up to the third.

  The girl wasn’t crazy about anyone standing so close to her on the steps, least of all a person she didn’t like, but she also knew that if she herself went up a step or two, the small woman would just keep coming closer. That’s how it is with mice, thought the girl, you can’t stop them. And then she said, “I’m not looking for you, you’re looking for me.”

  The small woman stopped on the fourth step. She said, “Who is looking for whom is not what matters, believe me.” She breathed with effort, as if she’d only just climbed up the hill to the basilica. “What matters is who will find whom.”

  “Was it necessary,” asked the girl, “to climb all the way up here to the sky, just beneath the clouds?”

  “We are far away from the clouds,” said the small woman, “and farther still from the sky.”

  The small woman raised her right foot, lowering it onto the edge of the fifth step, and the girl felt herself breaking out in a sweat. I can’t let myself pay any attention to this, she said to herself, though she didn’t stop staring at the woman’s foot for
so much as a second. “So, what now?” she asked. “Is this all?”

  The small woman said nothing for a moment, then suddenly moved up to the fifth step, lifted her face to the girl, and said, “I have a bicycle.”

  The flash that went off just then was not on the camera of the youngish man, who, the girl concluded, had disappeared without a trace. The flash that went off just then was on a camera held by a fat woman who, obviously, had been listening to the conversation on the steps. “In Lyon,” said the fat woman, “everyone has a bicycle.”

  “Who asked you?” snorted the small woman. “Get out of my sight this minute, before I claw your eyes out!”

  “How dare you talk to me like that!” said the fat woman. “I’m trembling. Look at her, would you?” She turned to the girl. “If I were to sit on her there would be nothing left.”

  “With an ass like that,” said the small woman, “you’re lucky you can get up at all.”

  “Midget freak,” screamed the fat woman.

  “Elephant,” shot back the small woman.

  “Ladies, ladies, calm down,” a voice could be heard behind the girl’s back, “what will our guest think of us?”

  The girl turned and saw a policeman. He was the same policeman who had shown her where the basilica was. Or, even if he wasn’t really the same one, thought the girl, he looked enough like him. Anyway, there was no difference between one policeman and the next.

  “Oh,” said the policeman, “you’re wrong about that. Sure,” he said, “all uniforms make the people wearing them look alike. After all, that’s the whole purpose of uniforms, but that doesn’t mean that each of us isn’t different, distinct, full of various emotions, love, joy, and sorrow.” His voice began to quaver, so he stopped for a moment. “There,” he said after a moment, “for instance: this morning my rabbit died.”

  “What an awful shame,” said the girl.

  “Poor bunny,” said the fat woman.

  “So sorry,” said the small woman.

  “And now?” asked the girl. “Will you buy a new bunny rabbit?”

  “Ah, now,” said the policeman, brushing away a tear, “that would be too soon. First I need to grieve, overcoming the pain so I can face reality, and only then, after all that, I might decide to buy a nightingale.”

  “Oh,” said the small woman, “I’ve always wanted a nightingale.”

  “I’m not sure,” said the fat woman, “it’s such a good idea.”

  The girl said nothing. Everything happening in front of the basilica made her feel like she should be on her guard. Simply put, she could not believe that all these people just happened to find themselves near her, and she couldn’t understand why such a large group of people would be working to draw her into a game—a game, furthermore, about which she understood nothing. And, on top of all this, the policeman had read her thoughts a moment before, after which, in fact, she was doing all she could to think about nothing at all, to be an empty mirror, until the moment came when she could slip away and leave for somewhere else. That’s the way it is with stories: they could begin in Lyon and end anywhere, leaving traces everywhere along the way, just like the way a dog trots around and marks its territory. One of these days, who knows when, the story would come back this way and pick up the abandoned fragments just as a person picks ripe fruit. And when she thought of this, the girl raised her hand, signaling to the policeman and the women to stop talking.

  “You don’t have to talk anymore,” said the girl, “because there is no rabbit, nor has there ever been a rabbit.”

  The women were shocked, the policeman tried to object, but the girl, with a grin, cautioned them, wagging her finger.

  “There’s no cause for dismay,” said the girl, “because life, even though it looks as though it only belongs to us, is actually a story being told by someone else. That’s why we met here in front of the basilica—there’s a story for each of us in which we each play a role, but all these stories are different, and we all need to walk away from here and go find our own. The story in which we’ve all found ourselves is the wrong story and we got here because our storyteller was careless, but if we leave now, and if we hurry, perhaps we can all still catch the ones we really belong in. A story, after all, which begins in Lyon, needn’t necessarily end there. The real basilicas are inside, not outside, of us.”

  10.

  Nice job, said the girl to herself once the policeman and women had gone. She didn’t know what she’d do, but if she was patient enough, something would occur to her. Good, she thought, I’ll wait, what matters is that the story is coming to an end. The end may not seem like an ordinary ending, but then again Lyon is not an ordinary city. She understood this as she climbed up the stairs and looked for the way up to the basilica. Her legs shook with the effort, sweat coursed down her face, her throat was dry as sandpaper, and she didn’t like Lyon at all, but when she got to the basilica and looked down at the city from the surrounding terrace, she believed she would stay here forever, curled up under a tree or on a bench, in a darkness she didn’t fear. A story can’t feel fear, it thought, it can only shiver at the thought that it might be interrupted or chased downhill, but at least as far as the latter was concerned, after the long climb, this was no longer really a cause for concern. When a path leads downhill, everything is much easier.

  TRANSLATED FROM SERBIAN BY ELLEN ELIAS-BURSA

  [SLOVAKIA]

  PETER KRIŠTÚFEK

  FROM The Prompter

  The preparations for the summit took over a month. The whole of the city center, where the meeting was to be held, was completely rebuilt. Facades of disintegrating buildings were renovated and faded brickwork of old walls touched up; wooden doors received a fresh coat of paint and the statues were all restored. The result of this monumental effort was that the city now contained numerous phantom doors that led nowhere and false windows that could not be opened. However, the important thing was the final impression made: the city should fit the modern view of historical style, and come as close as possible to resembling the photographs the drunken mayor once discovered in a family album of holiday snapshots.

  Of course the houses behind these splendid facades were left to rot and decay as before, because the honored visitors would never go inside.

  The mayor personally arranged for the loan of brand-new buses and trams from neighboring towns, but understandably no passengers were allowed to travel in them in case they might wear out or damage the furnishings. Instead of passengers, these excellent vehicles transported dummies, which from a distance looked convincingly real. They were all fitted with mechanisms to enable them to move, and they even leaned out and waved joyfully at the foreign delegations.

  Technicians from the Cinecittà and Babelsberg film studios were hired to lay down new paving in the streets. The primary aim was for these to resemble the originals as far as possible, and to produce the most genuine sounds.

  The hired extras (for security reasons, of course, the hustle and bustle of normal city life was excluded from the venue of the summit) were to be organized by a world-renowned film director, whose famous name was, however, kept a closely guarded secret.

  And, indeed, everything went smoothly, along these lines, looking just like the genuine article. The only problem was with the woman who’d been contracted to play the blind flower girl (the director with the famous name hadn’t been able to resist including this little tribute to a certain classic auteur): having fallen ill with infectious hepatitis, she was unable to appear in the production, and they had no replacement.

  The city’s budget wouldn’t allow for a sufficient number of extras to be hired, so the players all had to rush from one spot to another at breakneck speed, depending on where the members of the delegation happened to be at that moment. In order to achieve the most realistic effect, they were often forced to run alongside the delegates’ limousines and dash through hidden passages and secret courtyards, to hide the fact that the street around the corner was entirely de
serted.

  While conducting sightseeing tours of the city, the guides led their foreign guests in circles around four streets, relying on their own eloquence to keep the dignitaries from noticing this deception—after all, you only need to see a statue from three sides for the fourth to be implied!, as the great Belgian architect Le Fantin used to say. The guests admired the “consistency” and “homogeneity” (yes, these were their exact words!) of the architecture in the capital.

  On the eve of the summit itself, a banquet was held at which Prime Minister Berger was to deliver a formal speech. The grand hall in the presidential palace was filled to capacity, everyone smiling and bowing respectfully.

  The Grand Inquisitor—a conservative Catholic politician with a face that seemed carved out of stone (called Gee-Aye by his friends…and he was particularly proud of this nickname)—tapped on the window of Berger’s Lincoln limousine.

  “A word with you, Prime Minister!” he said in his grating voice, brooking no refusal.

  Berger lowered the window.

  “Yes?”

  “I just want to remind you that our country stands on firm Christian foundations!” He lowered his voice and leaned close to Berger’s fleshy ear. “There are an awful lot of left-wing liberals, feminists, communists, and—I’m told—even some prostitutes and homosexuals in the hall. I know that if Inquisitors Sprenger and Institoris—may God grant them lasting glory—had done their work better, more thoroughly, the whole of Europe wouldn’t now be lousy with that sort of person…but what can we do?” He raised his hands emotionally and rasped: “All I’m concerned about now is that your speech emphasize the proper values! Please keep that in mind!”

  “Will do, boss!” Berger said. He rolled his window up again and leaned over to Krištof. “Did you hear that?”

  The time for the speech was getting uncomfortably near. The limousine had been driven indoors and pulled up to the main table so that Berger’s window was aligned with his place setting. Thus, he had a good view of everything, and could preside over this elite gathering without leaving his car.