Crumbs

by Miha Mazzini

  She went off and came back with an older guy, bald, with glasses. He looked like a Prussian officer. Huge.

  He got the pliers, grabbed hold of the tooth, and pulled.

  I didn’t even have time to shit myself with fear, it came out so quickly.

  The tooth lay in the spittoon.

  The nurse came back.

  ‘Shall I make another appointment?’

  ‘No, he’ll come. When he needs to.’

  The nurse looked at my health card and started to say something. Probably something about payment. Lisa shook her head. I put my health card into my pocket.

  ‘Rinse the wound with chamomile tea,’ she said, businesslike.

  She started shaking her head again. I quickly went out before she could say that she really didn’t know why she was doing all this.

  While closing the door behind me I heard her voice.

  ‘And try not to kiss anybody at least for a day if you can manage it.’

  Before I finally left I caught the nurse’s surprised look.

  Spitting blood, I walked slowly towards the bar. I looked at the pipes between the hot air stoves – Selim’s favourite spot.

  He was there. He called me.

  I climbed over the fence and ran to his hiding place.

  ‘Ibro’s brothers have sent your aftershave.’

  ‘Really? Where is it?’

  ‘In our room.’

  His head wasn’t bandaged anymore. An ugly scar ran across the middle of his forehead.

  ‘Where’s Ibro?’

  I was burning with impatience.

  ‘He went to work in the morning. After lunch he set off for the doctor’s surgery. I don’t know where he is now.’

  I looked at him pleadingly. ‘Come with me to get the aftershave!’

  ‘I can give you the keys.’

  ‘I don’t want to rummage through somebody else’s room on my own. Let’s go together.’

  He nodded.

  We let the guard go past, jumped over the fence, and ran towards the dormitory. Not because we were afraid of the wardens, but because of my impatience. This time we both climbed through the window.

  ‘The most fucked up of the wardens is on duty. A real spy. He’d definitely report me if he found out that I was playing hooky. He doesn’t do anything but listen for who’s coming and going and what’s going on in all the rooms.’

  We tiptoed to their door. He looked for the key and put it into the keyhole quietly. Opened the door. I peeped over his shoulder. Ibro stood in front of Nastassja’s pictures, wearing his cowboy suit, masturbating. He heard a noise and looked back. He froze. His prick deflated in his hands in a split second.

  Selim walked over to him slowly. Ibro’s eyes widening with horror.

  Selim started hitting. Slowly. Like a machine. Every blow could kill an ox, let alone Ibro. He knocked him over. Bent over him and kept on hitting rhythmically.

  Droplets of blood were spraying around the room.

  A bone cracked.

  He’ll kill him, I grasped with sudden clarity. I jumped over to Selim and tried to pull him back. He didn’t even notice me.

  I ran to the door, wanting to call for help.

  Ibro wasn’t even moaning anymore.

  I looked at the bloody mess that used to be a face.

  I grabbed an empty bottle from the table. I held it in my raised hand trying to decide how hard I should hit. I didn’t want to hurt Selim, just stop him.

  Ibro was progressively changing into ajar of red jelly.

  I hit.

  It seemed that Selim didn’t even feel the blow.

  The second time I put all my strength into the blow.

  Selim collapsed over the body on the floor.

  I ran to the warden and shouted to him to get an ambulance.

  ‘What, where?’ he wanted to know. He asked question after question.

  I was jumping up and down with impatience in front of the door of his office and finally told him to fuck off.

  I ran back to the room.

  Selim had disappeared.

  Gurgling noises were coming from Ibro’s throat.

  I turned him onto his side and hit him between the shoulder blades. He threw up his lunch and the teeth that had been knocked out. The hair on his chest got unstuck and curled into a roll. I started sniffing the air. It stank of vomit and blood.

  And sweat.

  And something else.

  Cartier.

  I bent over and sniffed Ibro. He’d put on my aftershave before having it off with Nastassja.

  I looked on the table. The aftershave was there. I put it in my pocket.

  With the corner of my eye I noticed that Selim’s wardrobe was open. The bottom drawer was pulled out.

  I looked at it, wondering what it was that bothered me.

  The bundle of letters was in there, and the documents.

  The pistol.

  Walther wasn’t there.

  I squeezed the box with the bullets. It was soft and gave in easily to the pressure.

  Empty.

  Shit! Ooooooooh shit!

  I looked around in panic as if I was expecting Selim to be hidden somewhere in the room.

  The corridor was empty.

  I jumped out of the window.

  Nobody anywhere.

  A group of children came around the corner.

  I ran towards the foundry but changed my mind. Back to the blocks of flats.

  Selim was nowhere to be seen.

  I stopped and listened.

  I couldn’t hear any shots.

  Not yet.

  The ambulance siren was getting closer and closer.

  11

  I got up before the alarm clocks in the other flats went off, leaned on the basin, and had a close look at my face in the mirror. I looked as if I’d been trampled on. Large circles under my eyes.

  I couldn’t find Selim. He wasn’t in any of the bars I looked in. Nobody had seen him. I assumed he’d escaped into the hills. If he was going to kill himself he must have done it by now. If he was going to kill others, he must have changed his mind after all this time. At least that was what I hoped. There was no news of a murder or a massacre.

  I waited for Selim in front of the foundry. He didn’t come. Sheriff told me Ibro was going to be in the hospital for at least a fortnight. Ibro hadn’t told anybody who had beaten him up so badly.

  I went to sit in the bar. There was nothing I could do. And I couldn’t just sit there either. The sound of Selim’s blows against lbro reverberated in my head. Only now it sounded like a pneumatic drill. Mixed in with the music they’d played at the dance. And with the sound of the boxes of nails falling in front of Ajsha. The sound of stamping. The rhythm of the heart.

  It was all the same shit. Boxer was asleep on a low, wide radiator. Around midday, two policemen took him with them. He winked sleepily. Didn’t try to resist them. I nodded to him, but he didn’t recognize me.

  The siren announced the end of the day shift at the foundry. I went out onto the road. I’d had enough of sitting. It was the right day for departure. A cloudless sky.

  The wind was twirling thin dust on the pavement.

  I looked around the town during the only three minutes in the whole day when this town is busy. Children were leaving school, workers were leaving the factory.

  I spotted Long Legs from quite far away. I made my way slowly through the crowd and walked directly in her path.

  She noticed me. We stopped and played a little game, which of us was going to the left and which one to the right. We laughed. I opened my mouth, wanting to start a conversation.

  Out of the corner of my eye I noticed Selim walking down the pavement. I looked at Long Legs with regret and pushed towards Selim.

  We bumped into each other. He was deadly pale. The corner of his mouth was twitching.

  I felt a light poke in my stomach.

  Something pointed.

  The pistol.

  ‘Take i
t,’ he said.

  I took it and stuffed it in my pocket. I took the bullets from his left hand. I looked at the passersby. It seemed nobody had noticed anything.

  Selim spoke slowly and wearily. As if he’d squeezed the last drop of his strength out of himself, then collapsed. As if it was the end of everything. When actions are finished, words want to have their turn, too.

  The fucked-up body can’t give them any energy or sharpness.

  ‘I walked past the school. Earlier. All alone on the pavement. With my right hand on the handle of the gun hidden in my pocket. The doors opened and suddenly children were all around me. My body just turned towards them of its own accord. I was pushing among them. They bounced off me like little balls. I held the heavy school door for a little girl. She was carrying a large drawing. An elephant in various shades of grey. Slowly I walked upstairs to the first floor. Children were sliding down the banister.

  ‘Shouting. Or at least so it seemed to me. I didn’t really hear them. No sound reached me. They were just opening their mouths. At the top of the stairs a girl was turning around and around trying to reach the other strap on her schoolbag. I helped her. She said something and went. I took the gun out of my pocket and shot twice into the bag on her back. A badge in the shape of a teddy bear shattered into small crystals. All without sound.

  ‘Deadly silence. I went down the corridor towards the classrooms. I was completely empty. I felt nothing. A faint wondering why they were all running away from me and somewhere right at the bottom a feeling that this wasn’t what I wanted. I couldn’t stop myself. My body wasn’t mine anymore.

  ‘I registered a door opening on my right. I didn’t even look there. Just pointed at it with my right hand and shot. Went on. A group of children escaped on my left. I didn’t turn around. What was behind me was safe. A man in a blue coat jumped at me. He impaled himself on the barrel. I counted how many times I pulled the trigger. Once, twice, three times. On top of a locker there was a pair of small boots. Donald Duck was winking at me. I shot both the boots. Left and right. I registered a door closing. Pointed the gun at the wood. Pressed the trigger. It didn’t do anything. I changed the cartridge. Walked at the same time. Dropped the empty one. Kicked it. Shot at it and missed. The window was half-covered with a curtain. A pair of shoes peeped out from under it. I pointed the gun about half a metre higher. Shot. Controlled the gun. The curtain waved. I looked at the hole in it. I noticed a small body falling through the glass and down. I stopped at the end of the corridor. I thought I could see a shadow through the frosted glass on the bathroom door. Two bullets. I didn’t go to see whether I’d hit the target. I opened the door in front of me and went in. On the teacher’s desk there was a model of the heart made of plaster and painted red. It burst. With another two bullets I shattered the skull on the skeleton in the display case. I went to the window and looked down. Waited.

  ‘A police car drove up. An ambulance behind it. Three large blue vans. Their lights were flashing in silence. The feeling that this wasn’t what I wanted was growing stronger. My body escaped. I had done something against my will that couldn’t be undone. I couldn’t go back anymore. Policemen in helmets and bulletproof vests were running into the school. I raised the gun and looked into the barrel. At first it was just a dark spot against the background of the members of the special unit, who were surrounding the building. I focused on the barrel and everything around it became foggy.

  ‘No, this wasn’t what I wanted. My body continued doing its own thing. My trigger finger bent. I wasn’t there anymore. Didn’t exist. NOTHING.

  ‘NOTHING.

  ‘NOTHING.

  ‘Me NOTHING. An indescribable terror I’d never experienced before pulled me out of it. I found myself in the middle of the road. I was turned towards the school. Children were bumping into me. I was still holding the pistol in my pocket. The children weren’t running away. They were playing catch. I tried to understand where I was. It was all just a dream. A vision. And suddenly I was filled with joy that I existed. It didn’t matter where and how, what was important was that I was there at all. For as long as I can be. It’s better to live, however shitty you life may be, than to have no life at all. The experience of nothingness is still pressing somewhere at the back of my head.’

  He stopped talking.

  Those eyes were my eyes. Then in the mirror. Years ago. I wanted to put my hand on his shoulder and squeeze it. We had gone the same way. Selim, too, had finally and painfully arrived at what everybody knows.

  Some of us just find it more difficult to grasp it than others.

  He went.

  Past me, down the road. Following the last of the line of workers.

  I’d never noticed that he was hunchbacked. Or maybe he just held himself like that now.

  He caught up with the workers and joined them. Became part of the crowd.

  Disappeared.

  I reached in my pocket for cigarettes. I felt the metal and moved my hand away as if I’d touched something slimy.

  I ran.

  Past the foundry between the blocks of flats. The air smelled of food.

  I crossed the tip, the rubble of deserted factory buildings. Through the ghetto, past the Gypsy settlement, I ran up by the river.

  A forest came down the slope and let me into it. I tripped over a root and rolled down onto a narrow stretch of sand by the water. I picked myself up and sat down. Small waves were splashing against the soles of my tennis shoes.

  I watched the weeping willows on the opposite bank. The branches reached down into the water that tried to carry them with it.

  But they never went.

  I put the pistol on my palm and looked at it. Something in its ugliness attracted me. It was cold.

  With a swing of my arm I threw it in the water. The barrel stood up just across the middle of the river for a second. And then it was carried away by the current.

  I took the cartridges. Swung my arm once more and created a few small splashes on the surface of the water. They disappeared even before I could count them.

  I lit a cigarette.

  From behind the treetops, which framed the sky, floated a dark cloud of red dust.

  I didn’t move until darkness came.

  PART THREE

  Now there comes a time to every man

  When he must turn his back on the crowd

  When the glare of the lights gets much too bright

  And the music plays too loud

  When a man must run from the deeds he has done

  Recalling those days with a sigh.

  – M. Heron, 1968

  12

  The driver dropped me off in front of the foundry. It had changed in the fortnight since I’d last seen it.

  I stood in front of the fence and watched. They were shooing a film.

  They’d erected a wooden machine gun tower. Workers dressed in concentration camp uniforms were wandering around among the heaps of scrap metal.

  The camera whirred.

  An SS officer shot a sick woman in the head.

  A guard walked past me dressed in a German uniform, with a helmet and a gun. He looked good.

  I grinned at him.

  He looked back at me with poisonous hatred and marched off onto the set. It must have made a good shot. He’d make a career in his old age. I noticed Sheriff in a row of prisoners. He’d replaced the Stetson with a striped cap. He was pretending he hadn’t seen me. I waited for a break and called him over. He fiddled with the cap in front of his groin and hesitated. Without his boots and the cowboy suit, he felt naked and powerless. I understood that. I had been without my Cartier for a while, too. I didn’t mean to torture him, just to inquire after Selim.

  He hadn’t seen him. He’d not been seen either at work or the dormitory for two weeks. Ibro was getting out of the hospital that day.

  I said goodbye and left. He got back in line.

  The bar was half empty. Ibro and Selim were sitting in the corner. Having a friendly
chat. There really was nothing that Ibro would begrudge anybody.

  He waved to me cheerfully. I nodded. I didn’t sit down at their table.

  Selim lowered his eyes. He was eager to get back to chatting about women and football.

  I took my beer to the shelf along the wall. Above it there was a mirror that ran the length of the wall.

  I watched their reflection. I couldn’t tell them apart. They looked alike.

  Just like everybody else in there.

  I raised my glass and poured a drop into my mouth. Saw myself in the mirror. There was nothing different about me either. I could easily have joined them.

  But I didn’t go to sit with them. We all need to deceive ourselves, as well as others, if we want to survive. We all need a pose, a mask to hide behind. Without one, is it worth going on at all?

  I left half the beer in the bottle. I turned towards the exit. In the middle of my move, Selim’s and my eyes met for a moment. I opened my mouth, immediately changed my mind, and gave up.

  If there is any emotional or physical state you’re unable to express in three simple sentences it’s better to give up. To leave it. To fuck off.

  I went. After my legs, as they happen to grow out of my ass.

  I stopped in front of the dormitory.

  I slid the top off the skip. It stank.

  I jumped onto the edge and dropped in. The real summer heat that had been around for just over a week had turned everything into a stinking, shapeless mess.

  It squelched under the soles of my shoes.

  There wasn’t much rubbish there. Just a few rotting bits of this and that.

  I bent over and rummaged through old empty tins. Pieces of streaky bacon and onion peels between sheets of paper used in shops for wrapping slices of salami.

  When my eyes got used to the dark, I saw it.

  It was leaning on the back wall as if somebody had gently put it there.

  A large photo of Nastassja’s face.

  I flicked a piece of rancid yellow bacon off her chin.

  The other photographs were there, too. Both the posters. There was still a drop of Selim’s blood on Tess.

  They all went back to where I’d brought them from. They had done their work. I asked myself what was the matter with me, why didn’t I just leave them there.