In the evenings she sewed baby clothes.
“You know,” she would say, stopping for a moment and fixing her eyes on a single faraway spot, “people are so fragile, so alone. I feel sorry for them as they sit there in front of me, staring at my face. It’s as if they themselves are empty, as if they have to take a good look at something, fill themselves up with something. Sometimes I think they envy me. At least I’m something. They’re so lacking in anything exceptional, so lacking in any specialness of their own.”
He winced as she said it.
She gave birth in the night, without any fuss, quietly, like an animal. The midwife only came to cut the umbilical cord. He gave her a wad of bills to make sure she didn’t spread any stories too early. His heart thumping, he lit all the lamps at once, to be able to give the thing a close inspection. The child was horrible, even worse than the mother. He had to close his eyes to keep from retching. Only much later did he satisfy himself that the newborn child was a girl, as the mother had proclaimed.
So here’s what happened: he went into the dark city, it was Vienna, or maybe Berlin. Light, wet snow was falling. His shoes trailed pitifully over the cobblestones. He felt divided inside again—happy, but at the same time desperate.
He drank and remained sober. He daydreamed and felt afraid. When he came back several days later, he had ideas for their itinerary and promotional engagements all ready. He wrote to the professor and arranged for a photographer to call, who with hands shaking through flash after flash of magnesium recorded the monstrous ugliness of both creatures.
As soon as winter ends, as soon as the forsythia blooms, as soon as the cobbles of the great cities are dry, he thought. Petersburg, Bucharest, Prague, Warsaw, farther and farther, all the way to New York and Buenos Aires…As soon as the sky stretches tight above the earth like an enormous azure sail, the whole world will be bewitched by the ugliness of wife and daughter, and will fall before them on its knees.
At more or less this point he kissed her on the face for the first time ever. Not on the lips, no, no, but on the brow. She looked at him with brightened eyes, almost human. Then the question returned—the question he could never ask her: “Who are you? Who are you? Who are you?” he kept repeating to himself, failing to notice when he started asking this question of others as well, even himself in the mirror while shaving. It was as though he had discovered a secret—that everyone is in disguise, that human faces are just masks, the whole of life one big Venetian ball. Sometimes he drunkenly fantasized—because he never allowed himself this sort of nonsense when sober—that he was removing the masks, and with a gentle crackle of glued-on paper they were revealing…what? He didn’t know. It began to bother him so much that he couldn’t bear to be at home with her and the child. He was afraid that one day he’d give in to his bizarre temptation and start trying to scratch the ugliness off her face. His fingers would rummage in her hair, seeking out the hidden edges, the straps and the strips of glue. So he’d slip out for a drink and then think up the next itinerary, design the posters and draft new telegrams.
But in early spring came the terrible epidemic of Spanish flu, and mother and child both fell ill. They lay beside each other in a fever, breathing heavily. From time to time out of some panic-stricken instinct she would cuddle the child to her, trying to feed it in her delirium, not understanding that it had no strength left to suck and was dying. And when it finally died, he gently took it and laid it on the edge of the bed, then lit a cigar.
That night the Ugliest Woman briefly regained consciousness, only to start sobbing and whining in desperation. It was more than he could bear—it was the voice of the night, the sound of darkness, straight from the blackest abyss. He covered his ears, until finally he grabbed his hat and ran, but he didn’t go far. He walked up and down beneath the windows of his own apartment until morning, and in this way he helped her to die as well. It happened quicker than he could have expected.
He shut himself in their bedroom and looked at both bodies; suddenly they seemed heavy, burdensome, substantial. He was surprised how much the mattress appeared to be sagging beneath them. He had no idea what to do now, so he told no one but the professor; drinking straight from the bottle, he sat and watched as the twilight gradually effaced the contours of the motionless shapes on the bed.
“Save them,” he pleaded incoherently once the professor had arrived to perform a postmortem.
“Have you gone mad? They’re no longer alive,” the man snapped.
Afterward the professor handed him a piece of paper and the widower signed it with his right hand, taking the money with his left.
But that same day, before vanishing into the port, he helped the professor to transport the bodies by carriage to the university clinic, where soon after they were secretly stuffed.
For a long time, almost twenty years, they stood in the chilly basement of the building, until better times came and they went to join the main collection, including Jewish and Slavonic skulls, two-headed babies, and conjoined twins of every possible race and color. They can still be seen today in the storerooms of the Pathologisch-Anatomisches Bundesmuseum—a glass-eyed mother and daughter, frozen still in a perfectly dignified pose, like the remnants of some new, unsuccessful species.
TRANSLATED FROM POLISH BY ANTONIA LLOYD-JONES
[NORWAY]
FRODE GRYTTEN
Hotel by a Railroad
He stood by the window smoking. If he went back to the indoor pool now, maybe he could still catch a glimpse of the girls. They had gotten into the water just as he and his wife were getting out. He had suggested that they get a cup of coffee in the restaurant beside the pool. You could sit there and look at the bathers. But his wife wanted to go back to the hotel.
Are you hungry? he asked without turning around.
No. Are you?
Not really. We’re going out to eat tonight I suppose?
Do you have someplace in mind?
No.
She sat in the armchair behind him reading a book. After they had gotten back from the pool, she had complained about the heat and taken off her dress. It irritated him when she went around half-naked like that. There was something carefree and unseemly about it, as if she had given up and just couldn’t be bothered anymore.
What do you feel like doing tonight? he asked.
What do you mean?
Maybe we could do something special since it’s our last night.
Yeah. I suppose we could.
He decided to go back if a train passed before he had finished his cigarette. The room began to shake every time a train approached. It was a vibration that increased in strength right up until the train was visible from the window for a few seconds. Then the trembling subsided and the room was quiet again. He had tried to work out the system behind the train schedule, how long it was between departures, but hadn’t figured it out.
He had looked at the trains and concluded that they seemed different depending on what time of the day they passed. The morning train carried individuals, people on their way to school or work; something was about to commence, something was about to begin. The night train carried groups of people, the darkness creating a fellowship, the light in the cars gathering together those who sat there. At night he stood at the window with an entirely different feeling. Different things were at stake. People were on their way toward peace or pleasure.
He stubbed his cigarette out against the window frame and threw away the butt. No train had passed. He turned to his wife. She looked ridiculous in that pink slip.
I’m going down to buy a pack of smokes, he said. Do you want anything?
Get me a Coke, she answered without looking up from the book.
Anything else?
No.
He stood in the doorway waiting. She didn’t take her eyes from her book. He remained standing longer than was natural, but still she didn’t look up. It struck him that you could stop looking at people, you could just refrain from looking at peopl
e, and in the end get exactly what you want.
Out in the corridor he regretted having said that he was going down to reception. It made it impossible for him to go back in and get his coat. He was dressed in a shirt and pants and a sleeveless sweater. The weather was warm but he felt naked without a coat. There was something temporary about not wearing a coat, something unfinished that he disliked.
The hotel had gone downhill since they were there last. He had warned his wife when they booked their room but she had insisted that they stay at the same place as on their honeymoon. Back then they could hardly afford to go, and she had gotten a little loan from her parents. The hotel facade was still grand, but the years hadn’t been kind to the interior. He imagined the facade hid rooms that had suddenly lost their content. It was like a person who had changed character—not an organic aging, but brutal and unexpected.
After they had checked in, she had complained about the place.
What did I tell you? he asked triumphantly.
It’s so sad, she had answered.
We should have stayed somewhere else.
Don’t start.
When he was on the stairs down to reception, the train thundered past. I’m cheating, he thought, I’m a cheat. The entire hotel vibrated. That shuddering and shaking was perhaps what he remembered best from their honeymoon, the initial shock when a train made the building tremble, while the staff hardly seemed to notice. And then he remembered how they had made love, he remembered days that had been full of appetite and waste. They had gotten out of bed and dressed themselves only in order to undress and go back to bed again.
He nodded to the fat guy at reception.
Ran out of cigarettes, he said, as if he needed to explain why he was on his way out.
We have cigarettes, Fatty called out after him.
He stopped and gesticulated.
I need a couple of other things too, he said.
All right, smiled Fatty.
The sun washed over him. For a few seconds it was as though he neither knew who he was nor where he was going. Gradually his vision returned. Shadows flickered across buildings and asphalt. The afternoon sun burned patiently. Gothenburg had also changed. He couldn’t explain it, but it wasn’t the same city. Maybe it was just his memory that had failed him; the distance in time had opened up a rift that the days here couldn’t close.
He walked back to the pool as quickly as he could. There were fewer people in the water than an hour ago; all the same he couldn’t see the two girls. They must have gotten out. He bought a cup of coffee and sat down by the window where you could look into the pool area. The girls had moved in the water in a natural way that had appealed to him. One had short hair and wore a light blue swimsuit. The other had long, dark hair and a red bikini. The straps of her top had slipped down, exposing a clean expanse of skin.
He sipped at his coffee and felt disappointment, but relief as well, that the girls had gotten out. He yawned. He’d been woken last night by noise from the neighboring room. At first he’d thought they were fighting in there, because it seemed like someone was breaking up the furniture. Then he had realized that they were making love. He had lain awake listening to the woman’s groans. He had wondered if his wife had also been woken by the noise. She lay with her back to him, but the deep breathing that sleep brings was absent.
He could have reached over and kissed her, but he had lain still until it was quiet in the neighboring room. Finally he had fallen asleep, before being woken by someone down on the street talking. At breakfast he had examined the other guests, wondering which of them was staying in the room next door. He hadn’t been able to make any of the people in the breakfast room fit with the sounds of the night before.
The girls came up from the changing room by the time he had finished his coffee and decided to return to the hotel. They looked different now after having dressed and dried their hair. The blonde one was wearing a beige summer dress. The dark one was wearing jeans and a T-shirt. He hesitated a moment before he got up from the table and followed them out into the street.
Suddenly Gothenburg was closing in on him. The city snatched at him with cars and bulldozers. A bus lurched past. His head shrank and seemed to be without contour. He had no idea what he was going to do. All the same, he viewed the girls as a gift, something he had to take care of and look after as best he could.
Calm descended as he walked along the pavement. He strode and dropped back, strode and dropped back fifty or sixty meters behind the girls. It was as if the sunlight helped him breathe and his heartbeat fell into the same rhythm as his steps. He was following his initial impulse without pondering the alternatives.
He crossed the street and saw the girls disappearing into the Liseberg Amusement Park. He bought a ticket and followed them in. He and his wife had been there earlier in the week. The funfair had actually been even more of a disappointment than the hotel. They had gone in the middle of the day, and the sunlight exposed the place in a merciless way.
Inside, the girls stopped at one of the restaurants and sat down. He positioned himself at the table beside them. He looked at them while they ate ice cream and wondered which he liked best. He had had so little time in the pool that he hadn’t been able to decide. He would have gone for the dark one instinctively, but right now he thought that the blonde one had something calm and clear about her.
The girls spoke loudly about boys, as if to impress the people around them. Their chatter was very grown-up, but it was interrupted all the time by giggling and laughter. He tried to listen to what they were saying, maybe catch their names or find out if they lived here in town. He sat there and wondered how old they were. He concluded it was best not to know.
Suddenly the dark one looked straight at him. Her glance was sharp and inviting, as if she was aware of the power she had over him. Then she looked away and continued licking her ice cream. He remained seated without thinking. His head couldn’t manage to hold onto anything. He only felt a faint murmuring in his skull.
Three boys stopped at the girls’ table, but fortunately they moved on quickly. The girls drank Coke and fiddled around on their phones. After a while they strolled over to the roller coaster. He followed and studied their movements, first in the line, later up in the car, high above the earth. He heard them screaming as they rushed down toward the ground in the red cars.
While the girls tried other attractions at the funfair he sat on a bench in the shade and squinted over at them. He wondered if they had noticed him following them. A lot of girls enjoyed that, even when they hadn’t realized they were being trailed. He had reached the conclusion that there was no such thing as a one-sided pleasure; both parties had to enjoy it. On holiday last year, for instance, he and his wife had made love, and when she happened to say that it had been lovely, he’d seriously considered making it clear to her that this would be the last time that they would have sex.
He tried to remember if they’d actually had sex after that, but he wasn’t quite sure. He hadn’t gone near his wife this week, even though a hotel room is almost an invitation to be intimate. He’d read an article about how much sexual intercourse took place in a hotel in an average twenty-four hour period. Someone had calculated how many kids you could expect to be conceived in a normal hotel room per year as well. He couldn’t recall the exact number, but he remembered being surprised at it.
On the bus downtown he stood three or four meters behind the girls. The dark one smiled teasingly at him at regular intervals. She could actually be the type of girl that likes to be followed, one of the ones who liked to know he was there, to feel the hold she had over him. In the window he saw his reflection appear and disappear. A face that came and went. He wondered what the girl saw when she looked at him. Who was he? What errand was he out on? He himself saw a man without a coat. He saw a balding head, a forehead with wrinkles, and a graying moustache.
When they got off the tram at Göta Place, the girls hugged each other and laughed. The blonde g
irl’s hand rested on the dark girl’s backside while they walked along the pavement. Then her hand slipped further down, as if they were lovers. They laughed and giggled again. It was a game, an intimate act in the middle of a crowd.
The one following them was the only person who had seen what they did. He stopped in the sun, feeling how grateful he was. What he had seen wouldn’t happen again, wouldn’t be repeated. He had been the only witness to an almost perfect act.
He followed them down streets, in and out of shops, into a new café, out onto Kings Street where they met two other friends. The whole time he stayed at a suitable distance; the whole time he hunted for more acts of intimacy. He was happy with the choice he’d made; he had a talent for this, choosing the right girls, finding girls who were sensitive to a situation like this.
In a clothes shop on Fredsgatan, the girls disappeared into the same changing room. They undressed, tried on different tops, and looked in the mirror together. The dark one glanced at him, but just as he was going to maneuver himself into a perfect position, he was disturbed by a pushy saleswoman.
Can I help you with anything? he heard a voice behind him say.
He turned around.
No, thank you, I’m just looking.
He thought he had shaken the woman off with that reply, but the fat lady stuck to him. It must have been because he seemed out of place. He was the only male customer in the shop.
Are you looking for underwear for your wife? the saleswoman asked.
Yes, something for my wife.
We’ve got so many nice things for the autumn. Would you like to follow me?
Best European Fiction 2011 Page 16