Best European Fiction 2011

by Aleksandar Hemon

  Well, what now?

  Well, now you have before you Best European Fiction 2011. If the great thing about Best European Fiction 2010 was that nothing like it had been done before, the great thing about Best European Fiction 2011 is that we are doing it again.

  Let me, then, hasten to report that our 2011 European fiction vintage is one for the ages. This tormented anthologist had a painfully hard time picking one beautiful piece of literature over another. While reading, the anthologist was often privileged to revert to the elating state of a pure reader—only upon finishing the story would I remember that I had a cruel duty to perform and, wearing again the anthologist’s tight uniform, select the volunteers for the charge at the front line of contemporary fiction.

  I therefore implore you, lucky reader gripping Best European Fiction 2011, to read one piece at a time and not rush through this book or skim it for the purposes of informed party conversation. Whether you’re reading Olga Tokarczuk’s (Poland) masterpiece “The Ugliest Woman in the World” or Hilary Mantel’s (England) heartbreakingly clear-eyed “The Heart Fails without Warning”—take your readerly time, for this is a book, not a website. Enter Ingo Schulze’s (Germany) mesmerizing images in “Oranges and Angel,” counter the indelible melancholy in Toomas Vint’s (Estonia) “Beyond the Window a Park is Dimming” with the brazen hilarity of Kevin Barry’s (Ireland) “Doctor Sot.” Indeed, pick any piece of fiction in this book and relish it, read it slowly, let it breathe with the lungs of common humanity.

  Some years from now, you might discover this book dormant on your shelf and recognize it as a remnant of the time before e-readers, before digital entertainment flattened generations into information receptacles. You will be astonished again—I promise!—with the depth and width and beauty of human experience contained within its pages, coming from a piece of earth we arbitrarily call Europe. You will remember reading it for the first time and become overwhelmed with a sense that something great, important, and enriching was taking place in the English language, and you were there to bear witness.

  ALEKSANDAR HEMON

  BEST EUROPEAN FICTION 2011

  [UNITED KINGDOM: WALES]

  WILIAM OWEN ROBERTS

  The Professionals

  Before then, I wouldn’t really have known him from Adam. Of course I’d seen him now and then at the butcher’s. But there we were together on the pavement after stop tap, him cadging a light off me.

  “Fancy making a night of it?”

  “Got work tomorrow.” I pocketed the lighter.

  “Me too.”

  Big bags were hanging off his eyes. We picked up a taxi by the Black Lion and ended up at a club in town. Thursday night, so quite a few students about. Mathew was taking ages coming back with the drinks so I get fed up and go over. At the bar: him and some elfin-crop woman in a full-scale domestic.

  “Sorry,” back he’s come with the drinks slopped onto our table.

  Gave me the whole caboodle, not that I’d asked. Name of Jadwiga. She was his ex-wife. From Krakow. (He was dying to light up.) Three years shacked up and no children to show for it.

  “Sorry,” had he given too much away? “I’ve done fifteen hours straight today.”

  A minute later he’s gone and leaves his drink for dead.

  Months pass and no sign of him. November last year, though, he turns up: on the front page of the South Wales Echo. Mathew outside a bank, his desk emptied up into a Tesco’s box, Security standing guard behind him, “Stunned” and “Sulky” slapped across his forehead. The headline was BANK GOES BUST, subhead MANAGEMENT MANGLED. The lead para didn’t point the finger exactly, just bolded words like bungling, blame, and bound to happen.

  By mid May I’m in Le Garcon down the Bay for my sister-in-law’s fortieth. The starter done and the main is on its way when who walks in with a blonde but Mathew. Even though he’s shown to a table practically next door, he doesn’t see me.

  Main course digesting and I’m on my way back from the Gents: hover at his elbow. Up he looks, lost until I let him have the clues—my name, where we last met—and with a click of his fingers and a flick of a grin I’m found. But he still didn’t introduce me to his date. She was in her early thirties and her face was gentle, serene, propped up on palms in an open prayer. Still, we all need a little privacy.

  As our party was shuffling on our coats, Mathew’s at my side.

  “Listen. Not here…but can we talk?”

  “Talk?”

  “Professional thing.”

  A stiff nod. “Of course.”

  He took my card.

  “Thanks.”

  From then on I was his weekly appointment. I feel bad pulling the wool over your eyes like this, but Mathew’s not his real name, any more than Jadwiga is hers. But they are real enough people, I can tell you, it’s just I’m a professional and the rules are there to be respected.

  The root of his distress was this:

  Mathew had been a banker and the son of one, but not the sort of banker our fathers used to beg a loan from in their best suits, more the flashy transnational deal. Money ran green in his veins with the taint of copper. Once, on the couch, he recalled dream-diving into clean, clear coins that buoyed him up like they were his best friends. Back he kept coming to the same subject like a dog to his tail.

  “I got shafted.” Most of the blame he shunted onto one man: we’ll call him Adrian. A tad younger than Mathew, Adrian was apparently just as ambitious. “If it wasn’t for that bastard I’d still be in a job. But I got shafted.”

  “Shafted” was the signifier, pardon my jargon. The word took him down with it and there he flailed until neither of us could stand it any more. I decided to do it by the book and go back to the original trauma. His father had been a Midas, a big man whose every next move was better than his last. At least that was the myth that was left of him, because Mathew had lost him when he was nine.

  He wasn’t close to his mother: hardly saw her. They were Catholics. Jadwiga was a Catholic. She divorced him, citing his long hours and Mathew’s lust for money. He couldn’t stand his own company, took to hanging round pubs and picking up lovers for the sake of not going home alone. He’d been promoted twice at the bank then bettered even that by moving into the high-risk world of the Hang Seng Stock Exchange to take up what I’d call authorised international gambling.

  Mathew had tried for head of department. He was made for it, he said, but Adrian got it. Adrian, two years his junior, was apparently better than him. The “shafting” image was all he could see, with Adrian taking the active role, until our sessions started to go whirlpool. Things were going bottom up. Mathew didn’t feel he was getting any better and now it was me who was at fault. Now it was me he was beginning to hate.

  At the Heathcock one night I’m waiting at the bar when some woman, God knows who, smiles at me from over by the sofas. She was sitting with two much younger girls. As I was downing my last pint, though, it clicked: she’d been Mathew’s bit at Le Garcon. I could hardly go past without saying hello, could I? She was just seeing the girls off and said she was Anna.

  “Two of my PhD students,” she nodded towards the door. “Clever girls.” Politics was her subject. “Thanks for helping him.” She swung her bag over her shoulder.

  “It’s my job.”

  The shrink in me thought it significant that Mathew had never mentioned Anna. The way she talked about him, they were obviously pretty close. She knew all about our sessions anyway, although she respected that from my end they were confidential.

  “I’ve tried to help him too, in my own way. Get him to see himself—his situation—in a different light; see it clearer, maybe.”

  “‘Different’ in what way?”

  “In a social context. That’s what counts: not Freud.”

  As you’d expect, this got me going. “That’s a matter of opinion.”

  “Not in Mathew’s case.”

  “I disagree.”

  “Well, you would, wouldn’t
you?” Pity had caramelised her anger.

  “He’ll get over it,” I said. “I can tell.”

  “I wish I could.”

  Next session I asked him, “Mathew, would you like to talk at all about Anna?”

  “No.”

  “Why?”

  “Don’t want to.”

  “Why? Any particular reason?”

  “’Cause I don’t want to.” A pause. “Leave her be. I don’t want to discuss Anna. There’s no point. I’d rather explore my father a bit more again…”

  Mathew didn’t come to our next appointment, nor the following one. I was getting worried so I started phoning him but all I ever got was the answering machine. The autumn nights were drawing in. By the end of November the news was full of protests against the banks in the city. Pictures of crowds in chaos, pushing and booing, windows smashed and the police like medieval infantry trying to keep a lid on things. The anger I understood: not so much the violence.

  One cold morning in early December, Mathew called by.

  “I haven’t come to fix another meeting. Just came to settle up.”

  “My secretary deals with all that.”

  He was paler than usual, as though he had a bad cold. “I’ve finished with Anna.”

  I didn’t answer straight away, just tried to curb my response in case he felt like explaining. But he just stared out of the window. The wind was rattling it but he was silent and just kept on staring out.

  After a while, I asked, “How d’you feel?”

  Mathew shrugged, then let his body sag a second. Our small talk filled the gap this time until I tried once more to ask him about Anna. He changed the subject with a deft, false smile. “It’s not all bad news though…”

  “Glad to hear it.”

  “I’ve given up smoking!”

  “Wish I could.”

  He wiped his nose in his hand.

  “I’ve found a job too.”

  “Congratulations!” (This was news.) “Around here?”

  “No.”

  “London?”

  I could see he was gasping for a fag. “You must be happy, Mathew.”

  “What do you think?” (“What a daft question!”)

  I kept quiet to get him to speak. Time gaped once more. “Yes, I’m happy.” A smile. “Very happy.”

  “Good.”

  “Happier than I can remember. Now I know it’ll all be okay.” Mathew got up and stretched his hand across the desk. “Thanks for everything.”

  “You know where to find me.”

  He paused at the door as though he’d forgotten to say something.

  “Good luck,” I said.

  He gave a nod. Off he went. And that was that.

  The last I heard from him was a postcard from Hong Kong wishing me a Better New Year.

  TRANSLATED FROM WELSH BY GWEN DAVIES

  [UNITED KINGDOM: ENGLAND]

  HILARY MANTEL

  The Heart Fails without Warning

  September: When she began to lose weight at first, her sister had said, I don’t mind; the less of her the better, she said. It was only when Morna grew hair—fine down on her face, in the hollow curve of her back—that Lola began to complain. I draw the line at hair, she said. This is a girls’ bedroom, not a dog kennel.

  Lola’s grievance was this: Morna was born before she was, already she had used up three years’ worth of air, and taken space in the world that Lola could have occupied. She believed she was birthed into her sister’s squalling, her incessant I-want I-want, her give-me give-me.

  Now Morna was shrinking, as if her sister had put a spell on her to vanish. She said, if Morna hadn’t always been so greedy before, she wouldn’t be like this now. She wanted everything.

  Their mother said, “You don’t know anything about it, Lola. Morna was not greedy. She was always picky about her food.”

  “Picky?” Lola made a face. If Morna didn’t like something she would make her feelings known by vomiting it up in a weak acid dribble.

  It’s because of the school catchment area they have to live in a too-small house and share a bedroom. “It’s bunk beds or GCSEs!” their mother said. She stopped, confused by herself. Often what she said meant something else entirely, but they were used to it; early menopause, Morna said. “You know what I mean,” she urged them. “We live in this house for the sake of your futures. It’s a sacrifice now for all of us, but it will pay off. There’s no point in getting up every morning in a lovely room of your own and going to a sink school where girls get raped in the toilets.”

  “Does that happen?” Lola said. “I didn’t know that happened.”

  “She exaggerates,” their father said. He seldom said anything, so it made Lola jump, him speaking like that.

  “But you know what I’m saying,” her mother said. “I see them dragging home at two in the afternoon, they can’t keep them in school. They’ve got piercings. There’s drugs. There’s Internet bullying.”

  “We have that at our school,” Lola said.

  “It’s everywhere,” their father said. “Which is another reason to keep off the Internet. Lola, are you listening to what I’m telling you?”

  The sisters were no longer allowed a computer in their room because of the sites Morna liked to look at. They had pictures of girls with their arms stretched wide over their heads in a posture of crucifixion. Their ribs were spaced wide apart like the bars of oven shelves. These sites advised Morna how to be hungry, how not to be gross. Any food like bread, butter, an egg, is gross. A green apple or a green leaf, you may have one a day. The apple must be poison green. The leaf must be bitter.

  “To me it is simple,” their father said. “Calories in, calories out. All she has to do is open her mouth and put the food in, then swallow. Don’t tell me she can’t. It’s a question of won’t.”

  Lola picked up an eggy spoon from the draining board. She held it under her father’s nose as if it were a microphone. “Yes, and have you anything you want to add to that?”

  He said, “You’ll never get a boyfriend if you look like a needle.” When Morna said she didn’t want a boyfriend, he shouted, “Tell me that again when you’re seventeen.”

  “I never will be,” Morna said. “Seventeen.”

  September: Lola asked for the carpet to be replaced in their room. “Maybe we could have a wood floor? Easier to clean up after her?”

  Their mother said, “Don’t be silly. She’s sick in the loo. Isn’t she? Mostly? Though not,” she said hurriedly, “like she used to be.” It’s what they had to believe: that Morna was getting better. In the night, you could hear them telling each other, droning on behind their closed bedroom door; Lola lay awake listening.

  Lola said, “If I can’t have a new carpet, if I can’t have a wood floor, what can I have? Can I have a dog?”

  “You are so selfish, Lola,” their mother shouted. “How can we take on a pet at a time like this?”

  Morna said, “If I die, I want a woodland burial. You can plant a tree and when it grows you can visit it.”

  “Yeah. Right. I’ll bring my dog,” Lola said.

  September: Lola said, “The only thing is, now she’s gone so small I can’t steal her clothes. This was my main way of annoying her and now I have to find another.”

  All year round Morna wore wool to protect her shoulders, elbows, hips, from the blows of the furniture, and also to look respectably fat so that people didn’t point her out on the street: also, because even in July she was cold. But the winter came early for her, and though the sun shone outside she was getting into her underlayers. When she stepped on the scale for scrutiny she appeared to be wearing normal clothes, but actually she had provided herself with extra weight. She would wear one pair of tights over another; every gram counts, she told Lola. She had to be weighed every day. Their mother did it. She would try surprising Morna with spot checks, but Morna would always know when she was getting into a weighing mood.

  Lola watched as their mother pulled at
her sister’s cardigan, trying to get it off her before she stepped onto the scales. They tussled like two little kids in a playground; Lola screamed with laughter. Their mother hauled at the sleeve and Morna shouted, “Ow, ow!” as if it were her skin being stretched. Her skin was loose, Lola saw. Like last year’s school uniform, it was too big for her. It didn’t matter, because the school had made it clear they didn’t want to see her this term. Not until she’s turned the corner, they said, on her way back to a normal weight. Because the school has such a competitive ethos. And it could lead to mass fatalities if the girls decided to compete with Morna.

  When the weighing was over, Morna would come into their bedroom and start peeling off her layers, while Lola watched her, crouched in her bottom bunk. Morna would stand sideways to the mirror with her ribs arched. You can count them, she said. After the weighing she needed reassurance. Their mother bought them the long mirror because she thought Morna would be ashamed when she saw herself. The opposite was true.