Best European Fiction 2011

by Aleksandar Hemon

  (46) and now it was the summer of the year two thousand and it was raining continuously, the sky had suddenly opened (45) and now it was pouring, pouring, it had woken even Hasan from his eternal sleep (44) he raised his heavy head to watch the fat drops of rain falling onto the world outside his shelter under the colonnade (43) and then dropped it back feebly into his own vomit—that soft, tepid pillow which dispersed at once under the pressure (42) until his cheek finally met the cold stone once again (41) just beside the broken-down wheelchair in which Aurelio was snoring loudly (40) hunchbacked Aurelio with his bearded face covered with a layer of several years of filth and a horrible waxed hood (39) Aurelio who had somewhere along the way lost his left arm and both his legs (38) the one true friend he had left in this world

  Swimming had been all that interested Hasan in life. In Sarajevo, that city of non-swimmers, he felt like a bird among moles. “Do you realize, Dumbo, that around seventy percent of your contemporaries would sink like stones in this pool!” his trainer, fat Charlie, said to him sometime in nineteen eighty-seven—Charlie was the only person he didn’t mind calling him that name. “Well, you’ve got to swim for all of them, understand?” And: “Come on, Dumbo, faster!” he shouted at him in nineteen eighty-nine, “faster, damn you! Sixty seconds, bah! Sixty fucking seconds! When you break that barrier, kid, that’s your ticket to the championship, and then who knows—maybe the Olympics.” And: “Barcelona, Dumbo, remember that, Bar-ce-lo-na!” he promised him in nineteen ninety-one. But nothing came of it: Hasan never did manage to swim the hundred-meter back-stroke in under sixty seconds. That same year, war broke out in Croatia; Dubrovnik and Vukovar were in flames; and then, in ninety-two, in the spring, just before the Olympics, war came to his native city. But by then everything had gone to hell anyway, so why shouldn’t the plans and ambitions of Hasan Hali lovi—unfortunately known as Dumbo—go along for the ride?

  (37) “Aurelio, you’re the ugliest damn sight in this city, cabrón,” said Juan, Mexicano (36) who kept coming and going on his crutches and had now stopped here to shelter from the sudden downpour recently unleashed upon the city (35) “you’re the ugliest damn sight in Barcelona, pendejo, you ought to get a pension,” (34) he added in his singsong, drunken accent, laughing squeakily until Aurelio pushed his head out of its hood (33) looked at him with twinkling eyes that gleamed by contrast with his dark face and started to laugh himself (32) toothlessly and hoarsely—what did he know, but it was funny anyway (31) ha ha ha ha, his lungs hurt when he laughed but he couldn’t stop himself (30) “Hasan, Hasan!” he yelled, but how could Hasan hear him or see him or respond (29) his eyes had rolled back, his head was lying in smelly, crusty vomit, bloody snot was trickling down his rough cheek (28) just like on the postcard welcome-to-barcelona (27) “No, no, no, germà,” yelled Aurelio then and turned back to Juan, “Mira Hasan! Take a look at Hasan!”

  He entered the war innocent. The Chetniks shelled Sarajevo day and night. Charlie vanished from the city—it was only then that Hasan realized that Charlie was a Serb. Hasan’s mother was terribly worried about him and begged him to stay at home. But, since there were no more training sessions, Hasan was going stir crazy. Uncontrollable energy built up in him. He didn’t care whether he was killed, and he wasn’t killed—but his mother was killed when a shell flew in through a cellar window and exploded. Hasan spent the rest of the war in a unit of the Bosnian Army, mainly in positions around the city. Among his fellow soldiers he was known for his cold, merciless cruelty. No one dared call him Dumbo any longer. Once he found a stopwatch on a Chetnik prisoner. Just like the one fat Charlie had. He looked more closely at the body crouching on the floor—why, it really was Charlie. Wasting away, pale, with fear in his eyes. His mouth full of blood, he moaned something unintelligible, something that sounded like “Dumbo” to Hasan. “Goddamn it,” muttered Hasan through clenched teeth. He killed him quickly, in a rush of revulsion. Afterward he thought, maybe it wasn’t Charlie. He kept the stopwatch. Just before the end of the war, in the twenty-third year of his life, he fucked a woman for the first time. A young war whore, already worn out. Later he didn’t remember anything except that she stank of other soldiers.

  (26) “Hasan, Hasan!” Aurelio kept calling, then yelling, yelling, ha ha ha ha, his lungs were already burning (25) and he waved that blue stump of his that had been sewn together so badly that it looked as though it would burst at any minute (24) open up and the whole of him would pour out of it making a messy puddle on the asphalt (23) a perfect meal for the packs of city dogs that Aurelio fed in any case with the remains of the scraps he was given every day (22) by the owners of local restaurants, because Aurelio was—at least insofar as was possible (21) in his situation, of course—generous, though exclusively so toward those who had by his extremely immodest assessment (20) sunk even lower than himself, like Hasan, and Aurelio was right…because even if (19) someone had taken poor Hasan in, bathed him and cleaned him up, then gotten him treatment, treated him (18) for all his illnesses, those numerous colonies of bacteria and viruses which had colonized (17) his sick, collapsing body, the ulcers and pimples and rashes and hives (16) which had overwhelmed him like Job, even if someone had cared for him and knocked him into shape until (15) he became something like a man again, Hasan would probably continue to be the ugliest damn sight in the whole of Barcelona (14) but Hasan no longer cared about that because Hasan no longer cared about anything (13) his face was just a mask it was impossible to take off (12) while he himself, under that mask, was simply a pure white empty chrysalis

  He left Sarajevo as soon as he had a chance. He took a few things with him including that old stopwatch of Charlie’s. He saw that he wasn’t in control of his destiny and let the current carry him and it carried him through refugee camps all over Europe. He spent the most time in Denmark, picked pockets there, got used to heroin and alcohol, cheated his way to a fake passport, and one very ordinary evening in Copenhagen fucked a Ukrainian whore, the Balkan way, in a blind alley, pressing her back into a rough wall. A year later, he already looked like a wreck. He attributed this to the bad dope he was buying but he was afraid of an illness whose name he did not even dare pronounce. His body was decaying fast. He collected all the money he could raise and traveled to Barcelona. There he went through some terrible withdrawal symptoms on a park bench; the next night was even worse, and then on the third he was brutally attacked by some locals—they kept kicking him in the head, took everything he owned, and left him to squirm and writhe, like a worm, while the stopwatch kept ticking helplessly in his pocket—the only thing in the world he had left. He was taken up, battered as he was, by a group of vagrants. They gave him water to drink and a filthy waxed blanket to pull around him. What’s your name? they asked him. ¿Cómo te llamas? Com et dius?

  For a long time he could not remember, and then it finally came to him: Hasan Halilovi Dumbo.

  The one and only.

  (11) and in the meantime the downpour had stopped just as suddenly as it began (10) “Pues Juan, por favor, mira a Hasan, hermano!” said Aurelio once again to the barely interested Juan (9) switching from Catalan to Spanish in the hope that he would understand him better, and coughed and literally jumped in his wheelchair (8) while Juan, after examining Hasan carefully, jerked on his crutches (7) and without a single word turned and hastily fled from some sudden danger visible only to him (6) (for all his drunkenness he had seen what was still escaping Aurelio: that Hasan was no longer breathing and that his eyes were glassy and lifeless) (5) and while Aurelio was wiping all those flowing tears from his own eyes and bending over Hasan and nudging him with his stick (4) although there was no longer anyone there under it, no one other than a dead body (3) Juan disappeared round a corner and was lost in the crowd of tourists and shoppers that was once again milling under the eaves, among the stalls, colonnades, cafés, restaurants, shops, and doorways (2) and, pushing and shoving, slowly but persistently, like a solemn procession on a frieze or fresco

 
(1)

  making its way along

  (0)

  La Rambla

  TRANSLATED FROM SERBIAN BY CELIA HAWKESWORTH

  [RUSSIA]

  ANDREI GELASIMOV

  The Evil Eye

  “It’s good you called for me,” said old Potapikha, fussing over her magical dough. “Because nowadays it’s Kuzmich they ask for. As if only his spells work. But who, I’d like to know, set things right with Zubov’s bride’s belly? And who fixed Makarov’s boy’s hernia?”

  Potapikha pounded away at her wonderworking dough in a wooden tub and from the effort of it and having to stoke the stove in summer, she quickly broke out in a sweat and pulled off her high-collared black jacket of thick shiny cloth. Petka didn’t know what it was called. What he did know was that for a long time old lady Darya wanted one like it, but old man Artem just couldn’t put together the money to head off to Krasnokamensk for it, so old lady Darya had to be patient for now.

  “And what’s this one doing here?” asked Potapikha, squinting in Petka’s direction. “We don’t need a stranger watching.”

  “He’s Valerka’s friend,” Valerka’s mama answered softly. “Let him sit a while.”

  “Well, watch out, that’s a dark eye he’s got. Don’t you see it? That kind puts the worst hex on you.”

  Valerka’s mother looked at Petka in alarm.

  “He’ll hex someone for sure,” old Potapikha added.

  “I’ll close my eyes,” Petka said quickly. “I’ll go sit over there. Under the table. You can’t see me from there.”

  “Do, Petka,” Valerka’s mother asked. “You never know what can happen.”

  “It’s not that you never know—you can bet something will,” Potapikha confirmed, turning white as an undershirt, like a strange snowman, in the stuffy, dusky room. “Go on, get under the table.”

  It was dark in the house since Valerka’s mama and Potapikha had closed the shutters ten minutes before.

  “Light in this sort of thing gets in the way,” Potapikha had announced from the doorway. “Where there’s light there’s sickness.”

  And she also ordered the rooster removed from the yard so he wouldn’t start crowing.

  “Because if he crows, the whole thing’s over. Up in smoke.”

  So they locked the rooster in the bathhouse. Two scraggly chickens, who by some miracle had held out till Victory Day and weren’t eaten up during the last spring of the war, came over right on the heels of Valerka’s mama and tried clumsily to fly onto the vent to peek inside.

  “Kill the speckled one for me later,” said Potapikha, looking thoughtfully at the hens jumping around near the bathhouse.

  She always took a hen as payment for her services.

  Petka hadn’t expected that Valerka would be so sick. But Valerka was now lying on a wide wooden bed and his mother, beside herself with fear, was pacing around with a towel in her hands, unable to keep still.

  “Better sit down,” Potapikha said to her finally. “Or my dough won’t rise.”

  “What do you mean? How’s that my fault?” Valerka’s mama asked in dismay. “Why my fault?”

  “Well, who else then? The little fellow’s sitting under the table. Down there he’s got no chance to hex anyone.”

  “All right,” said Valerka’s mama, and Petka saw how her feet came to a stop near a stool. Next to old Potapikha’s feet, those feet behaved very timidly, and looking at them it was obvious they were waiting for something. If Petka hadn’t known where this table was—the table he was sitting under, squeezing his eyes shut (and at times, just in case, even covering them with his hands)—he’d have thought Valerka’s mama’s feet were the visitors, not old Potapikha’s. She stood solidly, like a landing barge, with half its hull grounded on the shore, while Valerka’s mama kept shifting around, holding her breath, and shuddering intermittently, lifting now one foot now the other onto the wooden crosspiece of the stool.

  “Will he die?” her voice asked softly.

  “Who? The little one? No, he won’t,” old Potapikha’s voice answered.

  Her slippers, cut from felt boots, which she didn’t take off even in such heat, turned toward the stool. She moved all at once, in one piece. Like a real ship.

  “What are you talking about—die? Where’d that come from? He’s too young. His ass ain’t even rounded yet.”

  Valerka’s mama’s feet froze for an instant then dropped together from the crosspiece to the floor.

  “Is that so?”

  Petka knew those ankle boots well. Valerka’s mama had bought them when Valerka’s father’s “Killed in Action” notice came. At first she sat a long time in the hall and looked at the holes in the wood and at the spider web—she didn’t even notice that the postman, Comrade Ignat, had said good-bye and left quietly. Then she hid the notice behind the mirror, put Valerka’s things together, and set off with him for Krasnokamensk. From there Valerka came back wearing these very same boots. Here in Atamanovka none of the kids had anything like them. Not even all the grown-ups walked around in real leather boots. There were felt ankle boots, knee-high boots, slippers. Now suddenly leather boots turned up. But Valerka didn’t take care of them at all. He got them all scuffed in just one winter so the other kids would take him along to play. And his mama didn’t scold him. When the boots wore down, she began to use them herself.

  Once she came to school in them to see the teacher, Anna Nikolaevna. She asked the teacher to point out where Stalingrad was on the map. She looked at the place, covered it with her palm, stood a while like that, and then said, “Thank you.”

  Either she was thanking Anna Nikolaevna or the entire big map of the Soviet Union.

  Staring at these broken-down boots and having forgotten what could happen when his eyes were open, Petka noticed that the string which Valerka’s mama used to lace the left boot was coming loose and that it would soon open wide like a hungry little cuckoo’s mouth. Petka extended his hand carefully from under the table, trying to tie up the string, but Valerka’s anxious mother unexpectedly moved again and stepped on the same fingers that had been smashed in a recent fight. Petka let out a hiss and instantly old Potapikha’s head swung down under the table. It was easier for her to bend over than to turn around.

  “Whaat?” she asked suspiciously. “What’s all this hissing?”

  Obviously she had decided that Petka in his malice had invented a new, vocal version—as yet unknown to her—of the evil eye. She was clearly furious, but Petka immediately squeezed shut his eyes again and even covered his mouth with both hands. Potapikha, after giving it some thought, softened up a bit.

  “Well, go on, instead of just sitting there like a dunce, go catch me some roaches. But don’t you kill them now, just press down on them a bit. Put them in this matchbox here. Mind, don’t come up out from under the table.”

  And Petka began his hunt.

  There weren’t many roaches because roaches live where there’s at least something left to eat, but leaving aside Valerka himself and Valerka’s mama, there was nothing left. There just couldn’t be. They hardly had enough for themselves. Any crumbs were swept up carefully into palms and, in full view of the disconsolate roaches, carefully deposited into mouths. Like coal in the mine near Krasnokamensk. One scoop—and it’s in the trolley.

  So Petka didn’t spot his prey right away. Especially since he kept squinting. He believed just as strongly in the evil eye as he did in Marshal Zhukov. Someplace deep in his heart there even flickered the suspicion that the Germans lost the war because he, Petka, had hexed their Hitler. That’s not to say, of course, that our troops didn’t fight fiercely and that, all in all, they’re not the best troops in the world…but still, Petka too had done all he could.

  Sometime around a year ago, in old lady Darya’s hayloft, he had begun scratching out dirty words about Hitler. At first just to amuse himself, but soon he discovered with astonishment that for each word he scratched our troops took big cities.

  Once
, having decided to take a chance and put this thrilling coincidence to the test, he quit writing his curses, but regretted this almost immediately. In the newspapers and those reports “From the Soviet InfoBureau,” the very same words began to repeat, over and again, like a broken record: “Stiff Enemy Resistance…Heavy troop losses…” Scared out of his wits, Petka then crawled back into the hayloft where he spent a feverish, sleepless night. He scratched and scratched dirty words about Hitler with a nail, all along the wooden walls, and by the next morning Comrade Levitan announced on the radio at the village council office that the troops of the Second and Third Ukrainian Fronts, under the command of Marshals Malinovsky and Tolbukhin, had—after sustained fighting—completely wiped out a 190,000-man segment of the German Army Group South and liberated the city of Budapest.

  Racing back from the village council, Petka lovingly surveyed the fruits of his night’s labor, then collapsed in the hay and slept through to the middle of the next day. There wasn’t a happier person than he in the entire Soviet Union. Except for Marshals Tolbukhin and Malinovsky. But Petka didn’t mind sharing his happiness with them.