Best European Fiction 2011

by Aleksandar Hemon

  The exceptional part was that here in this space I felt the mood of panic enveloping me since Ralf’s latest escapade ebbing away. I cannot say why this was so, but it wasn’t that the frescoes had taken my mind off him. On the contrary, I saw Ralf everywhere. Not in any sense of similarity, even though the arbor trellis at the head of the room to the east, a fresco in which Marées painted himself together with friends, was also a pretty fair depiction of my, or our, relationship to Ralf, of both its comity and antagonism. But that analogy wouldn’t have been necessary.

  The seascape with oarsmen on the north wall, the fishermen with their nets at the rear of the room, or both frescoes of orange groves between the high doors of the balcony opening onto the sea—each individual fresco would have done the job; yes, I would be content even with a detail of the gull gliding just above the water behind the boat, or of the hand reaching for an orange. Marées could transform the everyday into art. That was my simple discovery. In his work a gull was both a gull and a messenger sent out over the waters. His oranges were oranges and at the same time the apples of the Hesperides and the forbidden fruit of Paradise.

  Each minute I stood among the frescoes seemed to lend me strength. My eye moved between the groves of orange trees and out into the Gulf. I couldn’t say whether what Ralf had done made any sense, maybe it was the wrong thing to do. I didn’t even know if I ought to hope that he caught up with the silver car or lost it from view. My only wish was to see Ralf again as soon as possible. The rest would work itself out.

  Finally we descended to the aquarium, where the odor wasn’t nearly as penetrating as on our arrival, and came to a halt before a large octopus stretched inert across the stones.

  The claim that his pose was that of someone in a chaise longue is not some after-the-fact invention of mine. Yes, in some way he reminded me of Tischbein’s portrait of Goethe, because the massive head and trunk—it’s difficult to exactly tell the two apart—was draped a little to the left, whereas it had extended all its arms to the right. I found it odd to see its suckers, more familiar to me from insalata di polpo or frutti di mare. Anna asked whether the octopus was alive. It did indeed look more like a splotch of algae. We would probably have soon moved on had it not been for Frau Groeben’s commentary. She told us it had three hearts, plus blue blood. It was a creature of nobility, since if you compared its brain mass to its body weight, it was more highly developed than Homo sapiens. “And in terms of elegance,” she added with a twitch of one corner of her mouth, “it was in any case an evolutionary mistake for life ever to have left the water.”

  The tips of its tentacles began to display some movement, although I did wonder whether the animal itself or water currents were the origin of those gentle curlicues. But then there was no mistaking a wavelike motion that passed along the arms, growing stronger and stronger, like a motor slowly revving up. Although its tentacles were all wriggling in much the same way, they were anything but in synch. Didn’t it seem incredible that the motions of this configuration should all belong to the same creature, were all an act of its will? Some of the tips were curling up, others unrolling, some lifted, others sank, some thrashed about a little, others hardly at all. The effect of this polymorphic and yet unified animation was hypnotic.

  The girls had already had enough and moved on to the next tank. Tanya followed them. Frau Groeben said that, given their intelligence, octopi are of great significance in research. And then she told an almost unbelievable story. A fore-forerunner of this current specimen had been teased in the research lab by one of the employees. The man had kept splashing the water, something that these creatures evidently do not like. He startled the octopus over and over. The next morning as the man stepped into the room, a surge of water hit him in the face. Before he realized what had happened, another volley landed square on the bib of his overalls. When he told his colleagues, at first they didn’t believe him. But they later discovered that the door was also wet and that the puddle before it could not have come from just those two shots. The octopus, they concluded—and our guide shared their opinion—had been taking practice shots at the entrance the night before.

  I was paying such close attention to her story that at first what I was seeing didn’t even register. The entire octopus was now caught up in the motions of its arms. It had raised itself from the stones, and now swam headfirst to the right, dived, swam back, tugging its arms like a bundle of garlands along with it, rose up again, and repeated the process. “It’s doing somersaults!” I said.

  As if I had spurred it on, it increased the tempo and at the same time reduced the radius of rotation. It was now executing one continuous forward roll, making it impossible for me to say to which cycle its rotating arms belonged, this one or the one previous. Several of them seemed to have taken on a life of their own, twisting and turning through the water according to self-imposed laws.

  “It’s doing this for you,” Frau Groeben said as she turned away. “These are the calamari.” She was now standing in front of the tank opposite, a few steps behind me.

  “So you’re saying it’s really doing it for me?”

  “Squids,” she said, “don’t live long in captivity, they barely last two days. We keep them alive for two weeks at any rate.”

  “So in two weeks all these will be dead?” I asked, turning to look at the tubular squids skittering through the water. Their lurching movements reminded me of bats, but in slow motion. I may be mistaken about this too, because I didn’t want to risk taking my eyes off my octopus for more than a few seconds.

  “Look at that,” I said, “now he’s doing backward somersaults!”

  I applauded, I called out to the girls, who shouted back. Tanya sounded excited as well. Frau Groeben walked on ahead to join them. Left alone now, I pretended to go on clapping. “Bravo, you’re great,” I whispered, as if this were a dog or a horse before me.

  The forward and backward rolls must have tired it somewhat, because it now took brief time-outs, during which I thought it would sink back onto the stones and I would finally have a chance to move on.

  I used its next time-out to take my departure, after first applauding one last time and whispering something stupid.

  I slinked away, passing by other tanks without paying them much attention—or I’ve just forgotten in the meantime. All I remember is a stuffed turtle by the name of Marlene, because it had died on the same day as Marlene Dietrich.

  Other visitors had entered now and were lingering in front of the octopus tank. I admitted to myself a twinge of jealousy. It was now displaying its talents for them.

  When I checked back in their direction they still hadn’t moved on. I waited another minute. Then I walked back toward them, well-aware that I wanted to catch my octopus in flagrante. But it was sprawled out on its chaise longue, and didn’t budge. I held my distance. Once the others set on their way again, I stepped forward as if to apologize for my behavior and at least say my good-byes. “You were great,” I said, “grazie mille.”

  In that same moment the octopus raised its head from the stones—and what it now did shocked me. Within a few seconds it had mobilized all its arms and flung them out, it was a veritable explosion of tentacles, the head of Medusa awakened to life—for what is more apt than a comparison of tentacles and snakes? It took only a moment and they were extended from one end of the tank to the other, while at the same time the white underbelly was turned toward me. I gazed into its mouth, stared at every single sucker. It was no longer a Medusa head, it was beautiful, magnificent. The simultaneity and randomness of its motions were an inconceivable miracle. Yes, a miracle, and somehow obscene. A dog will suddenly thrust its muzzle into your crotch or clamp onto your legs and whimper with arousal—even at its worst that’s merely unpleasant. This was different. It unnerved me and I sensed I was on the verge of losing my self-control and breaking into tears. Of course under normal circumstances nothing would have happened, but in this moment I too stretched my arms wide and pressed my
hands against the glass, the way I sometimes do against a train window when Tanya and the girls are leaving for a visit with her parents.

  That was our farewell.

  By the time we got back to Raimondo’s, Ralf had picked up his things. I called him. He was at the train station. He thanked me for our having notified the police. He sounded tired and just kept saying that everything was okay and we needn’t worry. I assumed he would wait for us on the train platform and bought two kilos of oranges at the station. I called his number several times from the train, only to be told over and over by the same woman’s voice that unfortunately my call could not be answered at present. I walked the length of the train twice, from the last car to the first. Even when we got off at Termini we kept an eye out, but there was no sign of him.

  We walked with our luggage to the taxi stand and joined the long line. There was still just enough daylight to see the starlings, hundreds maybe even thousands of starlings above Rome. Swarms of them in flight are beautiful, but eerie too, as if they’re tracing some message of doom in the sky. One theory says that, instead of flying south, these birds perform dances, metamorphosing into indescribable shapes, now a dance of seven veils, now spirals and banners of smoke, comparable in elegance only to the movements of tentacles.

  I asked myself whether the octopus shared my mood, whether it perhaps thought of us, its visitors, and what shape its image of us might take—a question I still ask myself today, with the angel hovering at last in the girls’ room, the angel of Ralf the orange man, who had danced the women’s dance for us, in the middle of the Villa Misteri in Pompeii.

  TRANSLATED FROM GERMAN BY JOHN E. WOODS

  [GEORGIA]

  ZURAB LEZHAVA

  Sex for Fridge

  The clumsy old Apsheron refrigerator, which had been handed down through the family as though it were an heirloom, together with a single, lonely kitchen chair, was all that was left in Albert Karbelashvili’s kitchen. Why the chair? Because it was a weird-looking piece and the guy who bought the four matching chairs wouldn’t take it with him. Albert was stuck with the ancient monolithic Apsheron fridge for the same reason—no one would buy it. Like an evil spirit, the old fridge would follow him around forever. It had been in the family’s first apartment—one that had four rooms. Karbelashvili’s parents sold it a long time ago and traded down to a three-roomer. Then they moved to another three-room apartment in a poorer neighborhood. Eventually, Karbelashvili’s parents moved even farther away, now inhabiting another country entirely—the undiscovered one. But their offspring continued their tradition—buying and then selling rooms, furniture, and other household items. Every so often, Albert would exchange his apartment for a smaller one and sell all sorts of things that he’d inherited. Then, for a while, he would live on the money he made from these sales. This way of life didn’t entirely satisfy him, to be sure, and he would wonder sometimes how long he would keep it up. But he was never able to answer his own question.

  All the time he was living in his tiny one-room apartment, he wasn’t in any position to change his lifestyle. His place was on the outskirts of the most miserable part of the city—an area people called “Eve’s Asshole,” because it was so far away from the world of men. Half-wild starving dogs and half-domesticated packs of jackals roamed the streets attacking each other around the filthy dumpsters and just causing havoc. The local human population loved to fight as well, and seized every opportunity. The majority was unemployed and God only knows how they supported themselves. In summer they hung around the streets in front of their houses all day and night, and in the winter, well, God only knows where they went or what they got up to. Eve’s Asshole was the last inhabited part of the town before the fields and tiny villages began. There was no way Albert could move any farther out. He would rather live under a hedge in the city than move to a village. In a village he would have to work and he avoided work like the plague.

  All that was left in Karbelashvili’s apartment was the solitary chair in the kitchen, a rusty, peeling iron bedstead, an ugly wardrobe in a style that had vanished long ago (made in the Khashuri factory), an out-of-tune piano, and the thirty-year-old Apsheron refrigerator. All things no one would ever buy. But the most irritating was the fridge. Purchased by his parents before he’d even been born. Something in its works would periodically kick in with an exploding sound that came with no warning whatsoever. This would set the fridge motor working—whirring and shaking. The thing would vibrate so vigorously that the kitchen cutlery would rattle in their drawers. The force of the vibration had been increasing over time, in fact, so that now, when the motor came on, the fridge would begin to move, and eventually do laps around the kitchen. Albert’s father had put a barrier of heavy silicate bricks around its base so that its mobility was restricted to one small area. Eventually, however, the fridge managed to escape. As if by magic, it would cross the brick perimeter and stand vibrating away right in the middle of the kitchen. Sometimes, summoning amazing strength and with an almost-human desperation, the fridge would make a dash for the nearby hallway or hurl itself against the walls. With its dangling electric cord, it looked like a big white dog on a leash—a dog that sometimes barked and ran in circles but which would then calm down and sleep peacefully for a while before waking up to bark again…as if someone was teasing it. Yes, it would be impossible to sell the fridge, but Karbelashvili couldn’t convince himself to throw it away either. In spite of its bad character, it did in fact keep things cold. It still had value.

  So Albert went over the want ads in the newspaper. With his pen at the ready, he scanned the page for someone who might want a used fridge. To his astonishment he found such a person. The ad informed him that the buyer’s name was Zhuzhuna and she would buy any cheap used fridges. There was a telephone number as well. Albert circled the ad, went to the bedroom, picked up his phone, and dialed. After several failed attempts, the receiver eventually made the appropriate sounds and Albert knew he’d gotten through. He heard a woman’s calculatingly high-pitched voice. There was something very peculiar about her pronunciation.

  She said, “Hall–ooooooooo?”

  Karbelashvili cleared his throat and said, “Hello—may I speak to Mrs. Zhuzhuna?”

  “This is Zhu-zhu-na speaking,” the woman answered in her piercing voice.

  “I’m calling regarding your ad, Mrs. Zhuzhuna! I have a fridge for sale.”

  “Ahhhh! What kind of fridge?” Zhuzhuna asked cheerfully.

  “It’s an Apsheron!” Albert shouted.

  “An Apsheron? How muuuuuuch do you want for it? Apsheron isn’t a very good make, you know,” the woman half-shrieked, half-squawked.

  “They’re fine! They’re great!” Albert said, trying to sound like a wholehearted Apsheron fan.

  “How much do you want for it?” the woman asked again.

  “Not much at all! A hundred laris.”

  “One hundred laris?” she asked, as though this was a fortune.

  “Eighty, then!” Albert conceded.

  “Eighty? That’s still a lot,” the woman said.

  “Seventy then,” Albert conceded once more.

  “What about fifty?”

  “No!”

  “Why not? Apsheron is a terrible make,” the woman said.

  “Good or bad, the answer’s no,” Albert retaliated. “I won’t take less than seventy.”

  “Is delivery included?” She’d found a new escape route.

  “What do you mean, delivery?” Albert shouted. “No, no delivery.”

  “Is the motor working?” the woman asked. “Is it in a good condition?”

  “The motor’s fine and it’s in excellent condition,” Albert answered.

  “I’ll come and have a look at it,” the woman announced.

  “Yes, come and look at it,” said Albert.

  “Whereabouts are you?” the woman asked.

  “Eve’s…End,” answered Albert.

  She repeated “Eve’s End” thoughtfully—�
�That’s so far away. Hard to bring a fridge back all that way. No, forget it.”

  Karbelashvili shouted in desperation, “Okay, look, I’ll knock off another ten laris—you can have it for sixty.”

  “What about getting it into the car?” the woman asked.

  “I’ll help carry it down.”

  “But what about carrying up at the other end?” Zhuzhuna asked, getting greedy.

  “No way—I’ll only help to carry it down and put in the car!” Albert said.

  Zhuzhuna took down Karbelashvili’s address and promised to come in the next hour or so. She said good-bye for now and hung up.

  After an hour and a half, Albert’s doorbell rang. The noise was so loud, it sounded as though his caller wasn’t pushing a doorbell but squashing some screaming insect into the wallpaper so hard that it would end up being absorbed into the pattern. Albert opened the door and saw a tall, hefty, red-cheeked woman with a big head. Yes, women of this type—tall, fat, red-cheeked women with big heads—often affect high, piercing voices. They think a thin voice will offset their bulk. If a tall, fat, red-cheeked woman with a big head also had a deep, husky voice, life would be simply hopeless. And it is true that to some extent an artificially high-pitched voice, a bit like a pig squealing, does balance things out. Bald men behave in a similar way. Having no hair on their heads, they often grow bushy moustaches, sometimes tropically abundant, to offset the absence of vegetation above.