Best European Fiction 2011

by Aleksandar Hemon

  She was white. When she looked down, his head was like a black stone between her legs. His lips were pressing against her pubic hair and his tongue slid in slowly. She wanted to stop him. A stranger…but a warm and dark glow made her belly heavy, her legs heavy, and she closed her eyes—following the path of the heat.

  “Don’t stop,” she said, startled at her sudden desire, her craving to hold onto this heat. “Just keep doing that.” Her pelvis pushed up and she ran her hands through his stiff dark hair, forcing his head down harder, as if she were a nut with a hard shell, and now that the shell was cracked, power and rage came pouring out, and a wanting, a wanting that frightened her.

  The heavy strands of his hair fell across her fingers.

  “Keep doing that,” she said again, but he stopped. She heard the crackling of paper, a rustling. His elbow jabbed her suddenly and sharply in the side.

  “I’m going in you,” he said, bending over her, enveloping her. “Don’t be afraid. Don’t yell or scream.”

  She saw his shoulders where the muscles bunched together, and the pounding of the vein in his neck. The mouth with the full red lips. She tensed her own muscles, but he was faster than she’d thought. A flaming white pain and a sharpness between her legs. With all her might she tried to pull back, but his mouth bore down on hers and his back and limber hips arched over her like a net.

  “Don’t fight,” he said. “Don’t fight.”

  But the pain, which stabbed harder now that she had tensed all her muscles in panic and pushed up her pelvis to force him off, made her stronger. She bucked so hard that he shot out of her. Hipbone cracked against hipbone.

  “Don’t!” he said. “What are you doing? It’s going to happen anyway!”

  “No!” the girl said, feeling a sudden powerful rage. “You have to fight too!”

  He grabbed her by the waist and pushed her back on the sheet.

  “You’re scared,” he said. “But don’t be scared.” With a hard lunge he went back in her and grabbed her buttocks hard with his fingertips.

  “It hurts!”

  She dug her nails into his back and pulled down hard. The skin began swelling under her fingers right away, and she saw his eyes pinch shut in pain. She pushed her mouth against his and bit into his lower lip. Lukewarm blood dripped into her mouth. He looked at her with dark gleaming eyes. There were beads of sweat on his forehead.

  “You have to fight too.”

  There was squeezing, growling and thrusting. His hands and hers were everywhere, and everywhere her nails left clawing stripes that filled with red, but he didn’t remove himself from her, and the flaming feeling between her legs remained. Even though she bucked her hips and hissed words she’d never used before.

  Slowly the burning ebbed away and the heaviness disappeared. He was still in her. She had braced herself for new pain, but he moved only slightly, or not at all. Very calmly. Obliquely. Suddenly she heard her own moaning, and she gushed out like water on a stone floor. He went on, moving in her like a young animal.

  “Woman,” he whispered in her ear. “Now you’re a woman.”

  The girl took her hands off his back and looked. The man’s blood was deep under her nails and he was swathed in an odor she’d never smelled before. There was sweat on his shoulders and his stomach moved up and down. His lower lip was thick and swollen where she’d bitten it.

  To her own surprise, she wasn’t tired. The pain was gone and she didn’t know whether she was happy or frightened, furious or proud.

  He lay down beside her, sighing.

  “I’m not tired,” the girl thought, pulling the white sheet up over herself. “I’m not tired.”

  The stripes on his back were white and his hand reached for hers across the sheet, but she pulled her hand back and looked. At his shiny hair. The darkness of night. The rips in the curtain fastened with a safety pin. At the little lines of clotted blood. His cock lying limp across his thigh, which she dared look at only now. The condom leaking out slowly on the sheet.

  And when he was rested and went into her again, her fingertips pushed hard against his ass, setting the rhythm for him to go in. She bit his throat, sniffing up his smells, and cupped his neck in her hand, as though she was holding a kitten.

  The next morning they hardly spoke. He woke up, kissed her, went to sit on the edge of the bed, and quickly and silently put his clothes on. The light from outside was struggling through the window.

  “Where are you going?” she asked, feeling around between the sheets for her underwear.

  “Work,” he said. “I have to go to work. What are you going to do? Will I see you again tonight? Will you come to me tonight?”

  “No,” the girl said. “I won’t come back here anymore.”

  “You’re a woman now,” he said. “I’d like it if you came here tonight.”

  But she shook her head.

  Ten minutes after he went away, she left the room. The men were sleeping in their beds, breathing quietly, their backs hunched under the gray blankets. The magazines were lying open on the floor.

  Outside it was chilly, but the sun was already shining weakly. She searched her coat for a bus ticket. She found one and waited for the bus that would take her home.

  At the house, her mother was sitting at the table with a cup of coffee. The lady from next door across from her.

  “Well? Did you have fun at your girlfriend’s?” she asked. “Did the two of you go out dancing?”

  “Oh, no,” she said. “It was kind of late. We didn’t really feel like it.”

  She left the room and climbed the stairs. The door to her brother’s room was open a crack. He hadn’t come home. The book about the geisha, with the picture of Amaryllis and Lucille on the cover, was still lying on his bed. Their firm breasts with nipples touching. The girl closed the door and turned the key in the lock. She pulled her torn jeans and panties down carefully over her shaking legs. There wasn’t much blood, just a little dark spot. The sheet in his room had been worse. She looked at the spot on the cotton and at her pubic hair curling up. She thought about the Little Mermaid, who had traded her beautiful singing voice for real human legs. The pain that had cut into her at every step—and how she had turned to foam on the sea.

  She thought about the Ice Queen in the solitude of her cold palace, where every human heart froze at once. She thought about the angel Gabriel, standing before the doors of the church with a flaming sword, waiting—for the little girl who danced and danced, her feet in red shoes, across her mother’s grave, and on and on and on. Until her feet were cut off, and she found rest. But didn’t get the shoes back.

  “At least I fought,” the girl said out loud to herself, pulling up her panties and jeans. The zipper’s copper-colored teeth stuck out crookedly.

  TRANSLATED FROM DUTCH BY SAM GARRETT

  [MONTENEGRO]

  OGNJEN SPAHI

  Raymond is No Longer with Us—Carver is Dead

  They were drinking juice. Watching TV. The old set could only pick up two channels. She was expecting to give birth by the end of the week. He was an accountant at a sock and underwear factory.

  “Perhaps I’ll go round to Vladimir’s,” he said.

  His wife was leafing through the newspaper and did not raise her head.

  “Perhaps?” she said a minute later.

  It had been raining for three days without letting up. He had read that especially painful births were seventeen percent more common in humid weather. Medically unproven but true. He believed in statistics. And hoped the statistics would bypass them this time.

  “The phone number’s on the fridge. If anything happens—just call.”

  “Do you have to tonight?”

  “What do you mean have to?”

  “Do you have to go out?”

  “You know where I’m going. What’s the problem?” he said as he put on his coat.

  He had no idea where to go. The only thing he knew for sure was that he usually ended up at Vladimir’s
. Vladimir lived alone and went to bed late.

  She supported her back with her hand as she walked. She went with him to the door so she could lock it afterward. Her full belly looked healthy. At the hospital they said hers was a “textbook pregnancy.”

  She believed the doctors and liked their “bookish” comparison. She straightened the collar of his coat and said:

  “Bring me a book. Let Vladimir choose. I want to read something exciting. Okay?”

  “Of course,” he said, checking his umbrella.

  She kissed him on the cheek and locked the door twice.

  The stairway stank of urine. The rain wouldn’t stop for the rest of the week, he thought, and looked up—the sky was the color of a dead TV screen.

  He would stroll along some neighboring streets and then take the boulevard to Vladimir’s. He would not have to avoid the puddles. He had good, watertight American boots. His socks would stay dry. The socks made by his company bled dye when they were wet. You had to keep them dry.

  When he went round the corner he thought of the baby and tried to imagine how it would look. But he could only picture pale skin and helpless arms waving. An unborn child—a nameless being, he thought as he entered the drugstore. He would buy a bottle of whiskey for Vladimir and try to stay sober tonight.

  “Twenty, please.”

  He searched through his wallet—he only had fifteen.

  “I’ll put the whiskey back then,” he said.

  “You’ll have to,” the cashier said, punching the buttons of the cash register.

  If the baby came on Thursday, it would be born on their wedding anniversary. Double luck, he thought as he left the shop. But he still didn’t feel real joy. That was probably normal the first time. He thought everything would change when he saw the baby, when he held it in his arms and called it by its name. He looked to the left and then to the right, down the street.

  There were no crowds downtown that day. So much water, he thought, it had to run off somewhere. He skirted the largest puddles and chose the sidewalks under the eaves. The wind snapped two ribs of the umbrella, opening it became impractical. He would have coffee in the bar on the other side of the street and wait for the weather to calm a bit.

  “Your face, sir,” the waiter said, pointing to his own face.

  “What’s wrong with my face?” he asked, perplexed.

  “There’s blood on your face.”

  He touched his nose and looked in embarrassment at the blood on his fingers. Now it made sense—the metallic taste in his mouth in the last few minutes.

  “It’s my blood pressure,” he said and pulled out his handkerchief. “Sometimes I just start bleeding,” he said.

  They brought him napkins. Lots of napkins.

  In the bathroom only one bulb was working. As he washed himself with cold water a man and a woman were arguing. They paid him no mind.

  “You could at least have asked. I was the father.”

  “You pig.”

  “That’s murder!”

  “It’s my business.”

  “Is that so?”

  “It sure is.”

  He turned off the tap and wiped his hands with the last napkin.

  “You think our child is just your business!”

  “Yep, it was inside me, and it ain’t no more. Simple enough?”

  Instead of answering, the man slapped her hard in the face. As he was headed back to the table he heard a second slap.

  He finished his coffee and waited for the two to come out. Maybe he should have done something. He was sure he would never hit his wife. He loved his wife and knew hitting her would destroy him.

  It began to thunder. Every explosion made the image on the TV screen above the bar disappear. Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman were blanketed in electronic snow. The waiters swore.

  First the man came out, then several minutes later the woman. She was leafing busily through a smallish bundle of bank notes. Large dark glasses covered her face. He saw them once again the same evening, arm in arm under an umbrella and staring into a store window full of TVs. The central screen was the focal point for their two faces, now drawn into smiles. Before continuing off down the street the woman adjusted her hair. The man waved at the camera in the window and they walked off again in silence.

  Vladimir’s apartment was on the fifth floor, just round the corner. Vladimir was a writer. He was forty-three and wore his age like an old man. He was divorced and had a daughter. Little Ines lived in another town with her mother and came to visit once a month.

  He knocked, and behind the door heard a “Coming!” and then an amiable “Hello! Roll on in.”

  They shook hands and patted each other on the back. Vladimir took him by the arm and led him into the dining room.

  “Sit down. I’ll be with you right away,” he said.

  He sat down and looked at the books scattered over the table. Piles of books. Instinctively he wanted to turn on the television, but his friend had voluntarily relinquished his TV.

  “I’m much better known as ‘the man without a TV’ than I am as a writer. Shocking, isn’t it?” he sometimes commented.

  Vladimir rummaged in the kitchen, there came the clink of glasses.

  “A sad night, old friend,” he came back with two glasses and a bottle of whiskey.

  “The greatest among us is no more. The great text tamer. The prince of the short story. The baron of metonymy…”

  “Cut the crap. Who are you talking about?”

  “You really don’t know?”

  Vladimir poured the whiskey and pronounced solemnly: “Raymond is no longer with us—Carver is dead.

  “Oh, and so I don’t forget: your beautiful wife called,” he added.

  “What? Are you out of your mind? Why didn’t you tell me right away? Give me the phone. She’s pregnant, you know!”

  Six.

  Two.

  One.

  He thought of the little yellow cot in the corner with the designer bedcover they spent ages choosing.

  Five.

  Eight.

  Four.

  “Come on, come on, come on, for God’s sake!” he stamped his foot impatiently. The phone rang seven times. He worried he was going to be late for the birth. That she was in the hospital already or perhaps still there in the apartment, on the floor, unconscious.

  But then her voice came, a sleepy “Hello?”

  “Is it you?” he yelled.

  “Sure it’s me. What’s up?”

  “You’re okay? And the baby? Everything okay?”

  “Everything’s okay. Why?”

  “Just say that again, please.”

  “Everything’s okay, I said. What’s wrong?”

  He put his hand over the receiver. Vladimir stood leaning against the doorpost with his glass of whiskey and wide inquisitive eyes.

  “Everything’s okay. False alarm,” he said with relief and put the receiver back to his ear. She asked why he had gotten so worked up, she didn’t understand. She had called to ask Vladimir about a book. He said he’d send “a good, dead American writer.”

  “Carver died today, I guess?” he asked.

  “Yes, he did.”

  She said it was interesting to read someone when you know that the author—far away in America—is still lying in an open coffin.

  “And a wave of sadness, strange and strong, rolls in from across the ocean.”

  “You weren’t there when I called,” she said.

  “No. I stopped for a coffee on the way.”

  “Did you get wet?”

  “A bit.”

  “Ha! I can feel the baby moving. It tickles.”

  “That’s normal. It’ll be coming soon.”

  “Please don’t come back too late. I want the book. And you’re not so terrible yourself,” she said cheerfully.

  “I’ll be right back,” he said and reached for his glass of whiskey.

  Carver was in his pocket. Before he left he had one more glass wit
h Vladimir and drank to his health. There was an American way of life, and there was also an American way of death, he thought. It wasn’t good that the summer had begun with such unpleasant weather. Warm, boring rain. She couldn’t go outside, that dampened the mood a bit. So far they hadn’t had any serious arguments. He thought the two of them would have a harmonious, easygoing marriage. A little more money would remove all misunderstandings. But it was good like this too, he thought, as he looked up from the street at the window of their rented apartment. They hadn’t bought curtains yet. All of a sudden he felt sorry that he had left her alone. He wouldn’t do it again. At least not at night. She had to be relaxed and feel secure. He couldn’t give her the Carver tonight for the same reason. Carver’s stories were unsettling. They radiated a particular kind of anxiety. They were too much like real life, he thought.

  She unlocked the door, put her arms around his waist, and hugged him. As she kissed him on the cheek he felt her belly against his stomach. He wasn’t sure he liked the feeling. And her face was moist. As though from tears.

  Usually she watched television before going to bed. She turned off the lights and lay down on the couch. The freshly whitewashed living room was bathed in the flashes from the TV screen. Hues of red and green danced on the objects, on her face. The bright reflections of film explosions glistened in her eyes. The cool inexorability of the cathode tube.

  “Did you bring the book?” she asked.

  “Sorry, I forgot it. Your call threw me,” he said, going into the kitchen.

  “I felt it in your coat pocket. Why the lie?”

  “Listen, I don’t want you to read Carver tonight.”

  She went into the hall and got the book.

  “It’s cold and wet around the edges,” she said.

  “I’m afraid it’s like that inside as well. Cold and wet,” he said.

  She sat down and began turning the pages.