The Inventory: A Novel

by Gila Lustiger

  She ate a generous amount in the mornings. She bought the bread rolls the night before and left them out uncovered on the kitchen table overnight, so that the crust grew hard. That would have bothered other people, but not her.

  It made her think of the skin of a fruit and she pulled out the white soft dough inside and pressed it against the top of her mouth with her tongue before spreading the roll with butter.

  Every other day, she soft-boiled an egg. When she had eaten the inside, she turned it over in the egg cup and smashed the shell with her spoon. She bought eggs, cheese, milk, cucumber, tomatoes, apples, cabbage, and occasionally slices of sausage meat shot through with islands of fat. This lasted her for the week.

  She sat for a long time in a world of her own at the kitchen table. When the little hairs on the back of her neck started to stand on end, she got up, put the dishes in the sink, and went back to her bedroom. That was her sign.

  She also had her routine for getting dressed, which she stuck to, for she did not want to be startled by any sudden change. First of all, she fastened her bra and nestled her breasts into the cups, then she smoothed her cotton vest over it, sat down, slipped into her panties, rolled on the stockings, which ran smoothly over her freshly shaven legs, and, after stretching out one leg then the other, she fastened them with her bright green elastic garters. She bought only silk stockings and washed them carefully every night in lukewarm soapy water before putting them over the line in the bathroom to dry.

  She shaved her underarms, and every morning after pulling on her vest she looked to see whether any stubble had appeared overnight, turning the armpits black. She shaved them almost daily, and the hairs had turned to bristles, turning the armpits from smooth to bumpy as though pitted with black craters.

  She did not wear makeup, not even mascara, and instead just pinched her cheeks before leaving the apartment to look fresh. If she went for a few nights without sleep she dusted skin-colored blush on her cheeks, forehead, and eyelids, where blue veins were shining through. Otherwise nothing.

  She was not fundamentally against makeup, choosing not to wear any because she only felt at ease when her face was anonymous.

  Once she had bought dark red lipstick, which she practiced putting on in front of the bathroom mirror, and then sat down to eat dinner with painted lips. The red imprint of her mouth remained on the bread. She had been surprised by the bitter taste of the lipstick in contrast to its color of sweet cherries.

  The first time the man molested her was on a Wednesday. He was a messenger and therefore a rank beneath her. That day, as usual, she had crossed over the play park of the still-empty nursery, and arrived too early.

  She had beaten the dust from her coat and with the lining showing like the flesh of a fig pressed from its skin, hung it over her chair and was just about to sit down when she was asked to take the files of last month downstairs, as they were blocking access to the new lists.

  “Right now?” she had asked, and then reluctantly pushed her chair to the side.

  Even before she heard his steps, she could feel his gaze, and had already sensed him in the corridor as she opened the heavy wooden door with her foot. He was coming down the stairs with the light feathery tread that belies a muscular body. He was coming down from the third floor or even higher. When he was standing directly behind her, he slowed his pace. She wanted to turn around and let him pass but was afraid of losing her balance. Because of the files she could not even put a hand on the banister.

  He did not offer to help her, instead followed her step by step down the stairs. She wanted to apologize for taking up the whole width of the staircase, but an inescapable heaviness took control of her mouth, lips, and tongue and made breathing difficult.

  She could feel his eyes clinging to her body and felt drops of sweat running from the hollow between her breasts down to the edge of her bra, where they were caught.

  When she reached the bottom she dropped the files on the stone floor and grabbed hold of the banister. Outside she heard the shrill whine of a saw cutting through metal. He slowly came up to her. She wanted to throw open the door and flee into the storeroom, but stood still. She could not leave the files, stamped with second-highest stamp of secrecy, with a man whom she knew only by sight, since he had once delivered a package to her office. Then she had hardly noticed him.

  When the man had come so close that she could smell his breath and could tell he had been drinking, he stuck out his tongue, and made a smacking noise.

  She stared at his tongue that seemed unusually long and thin. It repelled her. It was as though it wanted to crawl over to her. The man pushed past her to the door and rubbed his hips against her with a thrusting motion. She turned her head to the side and looked at the wall where the smoky gray paint was beginning to peel off.

  When she had gathered herself together again, she picked up the files and smoothed her skirt. There, where the man had touched her body, she could still feel him. She ran a hand through her hair. Then she went into the storeroom and handed in the files.

  2.

  In the evening she stood under the shower for a long time and rubbed her body dry until it was red, to get rid of the man’s cloying, rotten-smelling sweat. She rubbed herself with small, circling movements, rubbing particularly fiercely at the hollows of her body, and when she felt dry and clean again she spread the towel over the radiator. She liked her body smell, soaked into the material of the towel. It brought her back to something familiar.

  She put the plug in the washbasin and filled it with cold water. She submerged her head, coming up only when she felt her lungs were about to burst. She took several deep breaths, then submerged her head a second time in the sink. Her blood hammered in her temples. She pulled out the black, rubber plug and watched the gurgling water as it was sucked into the dark hole. Her hair tried to follow suit. She reached for the guest’s hand towel and tied it around her head.

  The next morning, she went to work on foot as usual. From the empty playground of the nursery school she heard the distant cries of a boy being pulled along to the entrance by his mother. As she passed them she saw a thread of spittle that stretched from the boy’s mouth to his woolen pullover. The same as him, she thought, not knowing exactly what she was referring to.

  Shortly after lunch, she saw him again. He was delivering papers and had the stack firmly pinned against his body under his armpit. As he went by her she did not raise her head but noticed the mound by his groin, made by his balled fist in his trouser pocket. He stood still in the middle of the room, bent over, and put down his load on a stool. Paper, she thought, it’s only paper. As he was straightening up and stretched she saw his back muscles through the material of his shirt.

  “Here,” he said, tapping with two fingers where he needed a signature.

  He had a high voice that did not fit to his body, and against her will reminded her of a sunny day in late autumn. She shook her head to rid it of the image and started furiously to clean her typewriter. She could not concentrate, so there was no point in typing.

  The messenger said thank you, and slowly turned around. When he came up to her table, he playfully put a straightened-out paper clip in his mouth and sucked on it. He had on the same blue overalls as the previous day and the same checked shirt, with sweat marks around the armpits that embarrassed her.

  When the man had left the room, she sat a little longer, lost in thought. She had heard his name. He was called Oswald. She wrote it several times on a piece of blotting paper. It was not a nice name. The head secretary came to her desk. She bashfully crumpled up the paper and finished typing the report that she had been assigned and had spent the whole morning doing. Then she cleaned her desk and put the dustcover over the typewriter.

  She was about to hand in the sheets of paper when she noticed a bloodstain on the label of the folder she had put the report in. Frightened, she reached to her forehead, but then saw she had hurt the skin of her ring finger on the sharp staple. She wiped t
he wet patch off the folder. Then she wrapped the bleeding finger in a tissue.

  One week later, she met Oswald in the corridor. He was standing next to the door of the workroom, his upper body leaning against the wall. She was busy taking off her coat and did not notice him right away. As he slunk up to her she felt her heart start to pound. Oswald let his gaze scan her body. His eyes lingered on her breasts. She held her bag to her chest, took several steps forward, only to turn around and dash into the ladies’ room.

  She stood motionless behind the door. She wanted to cry, but pulled herself together and listened. Dragging his feet, or so it seemed to her, the man came up to the door, drew to a standstill, and scratched his nails down the wood that separated them, as though he wanted to hint at what she was missing through this scraping noise. After a while she heard him leave.

  She took a look in the mirror at her red face, grown blotchy from the excitement. She loathed herself. She turned the yellow sticky bar of soap in her hands until it lathered, and scrubbed her face. It was burning. She gathered cold water in the hollows of her hands and washed away the soap. Then she tore open the window and let her skin dry in the morning breeze.

  That evening she stood for a long time in front of the mirror, her nightgown in her hand, and looked at her naked white body. Then she went to bed, lay back with one arm under her head, fumbled in her gown with her other hand, and held her breast, which was warm and heavy. Her heart pounded, muffled like a night serenade. With her hand still in her gown, she dropped off to sleep.

  Shordy before daybreak, she woke up bathed in sweat. She had dreamed that she was suffocating slowly and torturously in a dark green sea full of seaweed that squeezed her naked body more tightly the more furiously she tore at it. When the seaweed had completely overwhelmed her and dragged her to the sandy dark floor of the sea, she had surfaced from the dream and realized that she had pulled her nightgown over her head in her sleep.

  She snatched the white gown from her body and threw it on the ground. Then she looked for her cigarettes and matches. She was trembling, but was too tired to fetch another nightgown from the closet. She wrapped herself in the cover and made the sulfur head flare up in the dark room. Greedily she dragged on her cigarette. The smoke hurt her lungs.

  3.

  The bus rounded the corner of the street. First of all, she saw its rectangular nose, and then through the front windshield the outline of the driver. Inside the people were tightly packed. From a distance they looked like one single twisting body. She felt for her change. She had counted it out and tossed it into her coat pocket. The bus stopped. She took a step forward and positioned herself behind a man holding tightly onto the arm of a child. The child had a satchel on his back that was too big for him. Laboriously, it clambered up the high step. The father followed with a jump. She lifted a leg to mount the step too, but froze, seized by a sudden feeling of apathy.

  Later, she was wandering through the streets of shops. She stopped in front of a clothes shop and looked at the display. A red velvet dress was draped over a mannequin. One arm of the dress — the window dresser had stuffed it with tissue paper that poked through the buttonhole — was pinned to one side of the window display, covered with checked fabric. It seemed to her that the dress wanted to greet her or to entice her into the shop with an unspoken promise. A street cleaner was sweeping fliers into the gutter. He had a green band round his right arm. Many of the shops were still closed. Some had metal grates in front of the entrances. The market was almost deserted, too. She wanted to buy something, but didn’t know what. When she saw a man opening the door of a photography shop she entered the shop behind him. It smelled of stale tobacco and male sweat. A few minutes later she left holding a camera that had been on a pedestal in the window. It was the offer of the week.

  Then she went to a cake shop and bought a box of sweet liqueur candies. In the doorway she already had removed the red ribbon and the wrapping paper, scrunched it up and stuffed it into her coat pocket, embarrassed. She looked around searchingly and spotted a bench next to the pedestrian crossing. She gave her coat a hitch, sat down, tore off the cellophane, pushed back the greaseproof paper, and ate the candies, one after the other.

  Town had started to fill up. She was now one of the women going into the shops with their shopping bags or stopping in front of shop windows. She took the empty candy box over to a trashcan. The opening was too small. She tried to tear up the box, but had to stop and draw in a breath, for she felt a sudden queasiness from the rapid movement, and stopped altogether when she saw that the eyes of two women coming out of the bakery were on her. She felt dizzy. She sat back down on the bench and unbuttoned her coat. The cold air calmed her stomach. Scraps of cloud floated by like boiled oat flakes. It would rain soon. She took several deep breaths, buttoned up her coat, picked up her camera, and went home.

  4.

  The head secretary did not pose any problems, simply nodded with compassion, for she too often suffered migraines, and handed her a report to type up. She promised to have the report handed in before lunchtime, went to her desk, and straightened up the cushion on her chair. She didn’t need the cushion, but before settling down to work she did need her little routine. The plumping of the cushion and the sharpening of all the pencils were part of it.

  She worked with concentration up to lunchtime. She glanced from the propped-up sheaf of paper to the white sheet that was gradually filling up with black letters and numbers, and in a rhythmic cycle of several minutes laid sheet after sheet in the red folder for completed and corrected reports.

  During the first few months she had read what she wrote but had soon weaned herself from that because — distracted by the reading — she did not write quickly enough and could not keep up. She had made typing errors and thus had been the only one whose machine had not tapped away melodically in time. She had gathered all her willpower in order not to see sentences but only words.

  At first, she had removed the dustcover most reluctantly from the machine in the mornings, as the constant contact with the keys had rubbed her fingertips raw; she had meticulously folded up the cover to delay as long as possible the moment when she would type the first word and send pain like an arrow from her fingertips directly to her head. Then she had learned to abandon herself to her pain, to lose herself in it, so that while the other parts of her body slowly grew numb, she felt only the pricking pain, which laid itself like a fine gleaming scaly skin over her finger pads. In the office it was referred to ironically as novice’s pain. After a short while, she was to miss it as her hands, too, grew used to the cold smooth typing keys.

  During the lunch break she rubbed some eucalyptus oil into her neck, ate a sandwich, drank a glass of milk, washed her hands and face in the ladies’ restroom after smoking a quick cigarette that she threw into the toilet bowl, and went back to work.

  5.

  It had rained. She stood by the door and drew her coat tighter around her. The street’s surface was glistening. Pools of water with bits of floating paper and leaves had formed in the gutter. She carefully crossed the road, taking care not to step in the puddles, for she hadn’t yet taken her shoes with the thick crepe soles out of the suitcase where she kept her winter things. Next to her, people were hurrying home, all of them bent over in the same way. The streetlights will go on soon, she thought, and went over to the bus stop, for she was cold.

  Just as the driver was shutting the doors, he leaped on at the last minute. She had sat down on a double seat at the very back of the bus and recognized him immediately. He wound his way through and stood in front of her. Smiling, he ran his hand over his rippling thigh. Up and down, up and down. She could not bear the soft rustling sound, turned her head aside, and looked out of the window.

  “Marianne. Marianne Flinker.”

  She started. How did he know her name? Frightened, she looked at him. He smiled and touched his forehead as though in greeting. She wanted to get up, but that would have meant going past him. Sh
e shrank into herself and looked at her hands. They were trembling. A bead of sweat slid down her neck. She took a few deep breaths and decided to confront him. She sat up straight.

  “What on earth…”

  She scanned the overcrowded interior. He had gone.

  Her hands folded in her lap, she let the general chat lull her. Only occasionally did scraps of words reach her; it sounded like a piece of polyphonic music and gradually flooded the interior of the bus traveling through the blood-red dusk.

  6.

  She stared into the black eye in which she was reflected, took off her glasses, folded the earpieces, and put them down on the kitchen table, the lenses looking up to the ceiling. Then she raised the camera to her face.

  Carefully she pressed the little catch down with her index finger. The back sprang open wide.

  She looked at the camera’s insides. They glimmered blackly back at her. A big black hole, she thought, and nothing else, and she whirled the little cog. It purred like a contented cat.

  She pulled the lever to the side and it swiftly clicked back in place, and she pressed the release button. For a moment the center of the lens lit up like a comet. She repeated the process until she was tired of it. Then she opened the drawer in the kitchen table, groped behind the cutlery, and took out a roll of film she had gotten long before buying the camera. She went into the bathroom just to be safe, for she had once heard that light damaged film.

  Only a little light came in through the crack between the floor and the door. She perched on the rim of the toilet. A neighbor was running a bath and talking to someone. His voice was muffled. She traced the shape of the camera with her fingers. Her hands lingered for a moment on the protruding mound embedding the lens, then strokingly continued to the opening catch. With a stifled noise it sprang open. She took the film, which she had held between her lips, and tore off the packaging. After pushing up her skirt and opening her legs, she dropped the paper into the bowl of the toilet.