by Miha Mazzini
‘Where are Alfred’s plantations?’
Even I knew where Hippy’s was. But Alfred was more of a conspiratorial type. Noodle told me the way to Alfred’s bliss in this life without hesitation.
‘Fuck it, that’s life,’ he sighed at the end. More to himself.
I looked at him carefully to see if he wasn’t getting one of his attacks.
He didn’t seem to be. He put the joint out against the sole of his boot. He made another one, which travelled between us. He leaned back and closed his eyes. I smoked to the end. I thought he was asleep.
I got up quietly, covered him with an opened newspaper, and went. When I got to the door, I could hear him behind me,
‘Thanks for the food.’
I looked back.
‘That’s okay.’
He was sitting motionless with his eyes closed.
I waited for my eyes to get used to the moonlight. As I set off, I could still see the flickering flame of the candle in front of my eyes.
The night was fresh, but not cold. The moonlight distorted trees into shapes unknown to me. I didn’t feel comfortable. I’m a city child. Neon lights and skips are my type of exterior.
On my right the dog barked. The sound of the collapsing tent mixed in with the cursing in all known languages. I ran.
The ghetto was dark and silent. I ran through looking back.
Higher up the barking turned to whimpering.
Somebody was beating the animal.
The foundry lights were coming nearer.
5
I still hadn’t shaved. I preferred to squeeze the Cartier bottle. But it was dead. Empty. I remembered Ajsha. I went inside. I stopped in front of the block of flats where Alfred lives. I opened the main door and climbed to the third floor to see if he was at home. He worked in the rolling-mill, which, with his education, he didn’t have to do. He explained to his listeners that working there was a penance, the suffering that cleansed him.
Shit.
Local Jesuses are terribly unpleasant.
I listened at the door. One of those long-winded Pink Floyd numbers from their most nirvanistic period could be heard from the flat. I grinned like a pig.
I leaned on the banister and lit up. I took slow puffs, waited and laughed.
I put the cigarette out on a metal plate on the banister. Sparks fell down into the darkness.
The music was getting louder and louder. The male choir was singing a high AAAAA AAAAA AAAAA. Timpani struck. The right moment to go in had arrived.
The door was locked of course. I looked through my pockets, found a rusty nail, pushed it in the lock, and unlocked the door. I crossed the hall quietly and put my hand on the bedroom door handle. The music reached its peak. The voices in the choir had crashed apart and joined again to the rhythmic sound of the organ.
I opened the door.
‘Hi, Alfred!’ I shouted from the door, terribly glad to see him.
‘I rang the bell. Nobody answered, probably because of the loud music. I tried the handle and it was unlocked.’
The scene was what I expected and wanted it to be.
Alfred was sitting on the floor with his back against the bed. There was a female figure in a colourful cotton Indian dress and with very blond hair between us, obstructing my view of him.
The girl jumped up. She didn’t look in my direction. She ran into the corner and leaned on the window, as if something terribly interesting was happening outside.
Alfred was trying to quickly do up his fly.
‘If I’d known you weren’t on your own I wouldn’t have come in at all,’ I tried to comfort him.
He forgot to say hello, he was so busy with his fly.
I stepped over to him and tapped his shoulder.
‘Well, what’s happened has happened.’
He nodded and mumbled something. He looked me in the eyes. At least he wanted to. But to look up at someone from a half-lying position is very awkward. You feel inferior. He got up quickly.
His cheeks were still red.
‘Hello,’ he said at last.
I nodded to him pleasantly and turned to the girl, who was still gazing through the window. An ear was sticking out from her hair. It was bright red.
I stepped forward and, with my leg in the air, noticed stains on the carpet and stepped over them jerkily.
‘Alfred, you dripped something on the floor.’
I bent over to have a closer look.
‘Some fat or something like that.’
Alfred couldn’t collect himself at all. He kept looking at the girl. She stayed motionless. Only her ears were getting redder and redder.
‘No,’ he said, ‘I’ve just had coffee with cream. I spilled a little.’
He took a handkerchief from his pocket and started wipe the carpet.
Alfred was a fox and a half. He did certain things in his own way. He chased young girls at Sunday school or in church, took them to his flat, excited them with his words and hands until they were beside themselves. Suddenly he stopped the pretending and started talking about the sin of fucking before marriage. He let them stew in their red hot bodies before taking them in hand. Or, to be more accurate, before they took him in hand.
He always put the same record on, laid back on the carpet, and enjoyed it. I was looking at him with my back turned to the wardrobe. He was rubbing the stains with an expression of terrible disgust. He finished and held the handkerchief between two fingers, stretching his arm out in front of him, excused himself saying he’d be back in a second and went to the bathroom.
I decided to walk around the room and have a look around.
The girl gave no signs of life. Three walls were covered with a long line of still-lifes in varnished wooden frames, and the fourth wall had a bookcase along it.
Photographs of lonely trees. Streams running through the morning mist.
Pastoral idylls.
Last time I was here, not in the same circumstances, a row of images of saints, the Virgin Mary, Jesus, and God hung on all three walls.
I thought about how much effort must go into taking all the saints off the wall and replacing them with the pastoral before every hand-jerking session, and then restoring the room to its former look.
I went over to a photograph of a lonely baobab above which the savannah sun was setting and turned it around. The pope was giving me his blessing with his arms wide open. I nodded to him in a friendly way and pressed him back against the flowery patterned wall.
If an earthquake should ever destroy this building, only these well-blessed bricks are going to remain in one piece. Amen.
I took a peep at the other side of a baby deer drinking from a stream, only to see the Virgin Mary with her baby in her lap.
I concentrated on the books. One long row of cheap religious crap. In the middle of the shelf stood a box of Cuban cigars, leaning on the spines of the books. I opened it, took out one cigar, sniffed it, and put it in my pocket. Running water could be heard from the bathroom.
Reading the book titles brought me right next to the girl.
I looked at her. She was quite tall, quite a bit taller than Alfred.
I went over to her right side and leaned my cheek on the windowpane. She wore large, horn-rimmed glasses. Slowly, taking pleasure in my impudence, I studied her face. She didn’t even twitch.
Neither beautiful nor ugly, conditionally interesting. Middle-sized breasts with upturned nipples. Between the breasts a metal pendant of a dove in a shape of a cross. I bent down towards her hair and took in a deliberately noisy breath. She smelled of shampoo. Birch tree. She was dying with embarrassment. I let myself take pleasure in my power. Power is a balm. It heals all wounds and takes away pain, however strong it may be. It makes you lose reason.
Her dress had slipped off her right shoulder, revealing almost all of it.
Slowly, from close up, I observed the pores of her skin.
Oh, the eroticism of a woman’s shoulder. Forgotten so many times and
then again resurrected.
I kissed her lightly on the warm skin.
She trembled from head to toe.
Alfred walked into the room. Looking his usual sweet and slimy self. He’d recovered very well.
‘Be greeted, my friend.’ He threw his arms open.
We didn’t embrace.
I started talking in a pathetic, jerky voice.
‘Alfred, you’re a man of high morals. Don’t object. I know you too well.’
There was no sign of him objecting. He nodded smilingly.
I went into theatrical mode. Circled the room in both directions. Waved my raised right thumb high in the air. Alfred acted, too. He knew very well I knew of his pleasures. I hadn’t come to him without a reason.
He was smiling widely and waiting for the cards to be put on the table.
‘You’re the only one I can trust with this delicate matter. It’s a question of morals.’
He pricked up his ears. I went on.
‘I went for a walk this morning. Up into the hills, where you’re nearer to God, if I may quote you.’
He gave his permission by nodding.
‘Just think about it. I’m walking. Threading through the thicket I come to an old, lonely, dried-up tree. An overhanging rock on the left. Another rock sticking out behind the tree.’
Alfred interrupted me with a stretched out arm.
‘Would you like some coffee?’ he asked and looked at the girl.
I’d completely forgotten about her.
‘I would,’ I answered.
Alfred went over to her and put his hand on her shoulder.
‘Ann, dear, would you make us some coffee, please?’ he asked her softly.
She ran out without looking at me.
I continued.
‘What do you think I saw? A whole plantation of ganja.’
Alfred wasn’t smiling quite so widely anymore. He didn’t know I knew of so many of his little pleasures.
‘You most probably don’t even know what that is. Marijuana, Alfred. Drugs.’
The smile disappeared. His look became hostile.
‘Immediately everything became clear to me. A whole plantation, can you imagine?’
I stopped talking and looked through the window. Sparks were still coming from the foundry chimneys.
‘What happened then?’ he broke the silence.
‘Nothing.’ I turned around.
A short pause.
‘You didn’t report it?’ A hint of fear.
‘No. That’s the problem. I’ve never reported anybody. As you know, I’m not on the best of terms with the police.’
A sigh.
‘But on the other hand, a plantation like that means…’
I waved my arms in the air and spread them wide. In middle of the gesture I realised I was imitating the pope.
‘The owner must be a terrible drug dealer. A criminal leading young people astray. Getting them used to poison. Killing their youth.’
Nicely put.
Alfred couldn’t hide his nervousness anymore.
I shook my head with exasperation and went to look at the chimneys again.
It didn’t take long. He spoke again.
‘And what… are you going to do?’
I leaped close to his face and hissed at him, ‘I’ll report him, the bastard. Principles or no principles.’
He jumped away.
‘I’m going to the police this very moment. Will you come with me so that I don’t change my mind on the way?’
He undid the top button on his shirt.
He was almost sure I wouldn’t report him. But with build-up like that there had to be a reason. The real matter would follow soon.
‘Let him stew in his own juices for a few years and think about it. He’s guilty before the law and before God. Isn’t that so, Alfred?’ I didn’t wait for the nodding.
‘Just what the pope said in his latest encyclical, am I right? They’re giving young people drugs instead of poetry and culture. Speaking of which, you do some freelance work at the printers, don’t you?’
Enough of the comedy. Enough jerking about. Cards on the table time. He too was visibly relieved.
‘Yes,’ he said, ‘I do.’
‘Wouldn’t they print a small book of poems for our Poet? Some five hundred copies on good quality paper. A hundred advertising posters. So that the young people get some real food instead of narcotic illusions?’
‘That costs money,’ he mumbled.
‘You’re right. Why am I standing here talking about poetry? I should be at the police station.’
I stepped towards the door.
We looked at each other.
We assessed each other.
‘Yes, maybe it could be done,’ he said.
I smiled at him nicely.
‘Well, you see.’
We smiled at each other. When I go through the door I must be careful not to show him my back. The dirty brown of the kitchen knife handle doesn’t go with the colour of my jacket.
We stood there and he gave no sign of an invitation to sit down.
‘What’s happened to that coffee?’ I asked.
He opened the door and shouted sweetly, ‘Annie, darling is the coffee made?’
It was. He had to go and get it himself. The girl never appeared. I sniffed the coffee first and tried it with the tip of my tongue only. It didn’t taste of bitter almonds.
We sipped from our cups.
‘This is your second cup in half an hour.’ I pointed to the stain on the carpet. ‘Don’t let your blood pressure rise too much.’
I drained the cup right down to the dregs and put it on the bed.
‘I’m going. I’ve got lots to do.’
He didn’t want to keep me there.
He went with me to the corridor.
‘So it’s a deal. I’ll bring you all the texts and the instructions. Okay?’
‘Okay,’ he said.
We said goodbye and I left.
The lock clicked twice behind me.
The bar was empty. I sat in my place and stared in front of me. The Cartier was almost mine. Alfred would print the book for nothing. Poet would pay me for it. I’d buy the aftershave and still have quite a bit of money left. I could, of course, just ask Alfred for a bottle of Cartier as a reward for my silence. But there are gifts only women can give you.
Otherwise you have to earn them.
Boxer rolled through the door. Middle aged, stomach hanging over his trousers. He wasn’t really fat, just stocky.
‘Hi, Egon.’ He waved to me.
He didn’t ask me anything. He ordered two glasses of schnapps at the bar, brought them over, put them on the table, and sat down. We shook hands.
‘They’ve let you out then?’ I started the conversation. He was taken away for alcoholism treatment every few months to hospital, half of which was a lunatic asylum. The two parts of the hospital were separated only by some metal bars.
‘Yes, they’ve cured me. Or so they say.’
We toasted each other. He emptied his glass with the wonderful movement that only old drunks can make. The position of the bottom lip, so that it moulds itself perfectly around the curve of the glass. Swallowing the liquid in the position of a sword swallower, without it touching the walls of the gullet, going straight to the stomach. Or rather straight to the pelvic bones as the stomach, liver, and kidneys have all been burnt-out by the alcohol. That’s where that characteristic splosh originates, the one that younger and less skilled guys can’t quite manage.
‘The doctors still remember you,’ he informed me.
I nodded.
‘Those from the other side,’ he added. Which meant those from the lunatic asylum. They probably really did still remember me. It wasn’t that many years ago.
‘They never wanted to tell me why they had you there.’
He leaned forward and looked at me questioningly.
I smiled at him.
‘I’m not gonn
a tell you either.’
He didn’t mind.
‘You’re right. It’s none of my business. Everybody’s got their own prison.’
We grinned.
The schnapps had already gone from his pelvis to his prick.
‘I’m going to take a piss,’ he said and went.
I slowly sipped the schnapps to the bottom of the glass.
He came out of the bathroom and waved to me from there.
‘Hi, Egon.’
He didn’t ask anything. He bought two glasses of schnapps at the bar and sat down at my table.
We shook hands.
‘They’ve let you out then?’ I asked.
‘Yes, they’ve cured me. Or so they say.’
We toasted each other and drank up.
He looked at the empty glasses from the previous round and concluded, ‘You’re doing well today.’
I nodded and smiled.
The schnapps had eaten away Boxer’s memory, too. Sometimes he’d think he was somewhere else, sometimes he’d think he was somebody else. He usually mixed his tenses. He was often like this. It had been known for us to say hello like this five times in succession.
He took a newspaper from his pocket and unfolded it. He put a piece of bread and three slices of salami on the table.
‘Want some?’
I did. We ate up. The bread was divided in half. I got one slice of salami and he got two. He went to take a piss. He left the newspaper on the table.
This time he took a long time. I spread the paper out and glanced at the headlines. I looked at the date. It was that day’s. And that was the only fresh news in these newspapers. My eyes stopped on the TV program. The clock above the bar told me I had another half an hour. Boxer came and waved to me.
‘Hi, Egon.’
He brought two glasses of schnapps.
‘They’ve let you out then?’ I asked.
‘Yes, they’ve cured me. Or so they say.’
We shook hands.
‘Since when do you read newspapers?’ he asked me and pointed to the table.
‘It’s today’s. Do you want to read it?’
‘I do.’
‘Just take it.’
I offered him the newspaper. He took it and stuffed it in his pocket.
‘Thanks,’ he said.
‘That’s all right’ I nodded.
We drank up.
He pointed to the empty glasses on the table.