Best European Fiction 2011

by Aleksandar Hemon

  To cut a long story short, this Zhuzhuna who approached the door with her characteristic shrieking and squawking carelessly brushed her feet on the mat like a horse cantering in place and entered Albert’s apartment. Albert showed her into the kitchen and pointed out the fridge.

  “This is my fridge,” he said instructively.

  “Oh!” And the red-cheeked woman started nattering on in a loud, demanding voice. She was looking for faults in the fridge. Probably she enjoyed finding fault. She couldn’t see anything wrong with the thing but took careful note of its contents—an opened bottle of Minimo vodka, a piece of salami, and some mustard in a miniscule plastic container. With barely concealed pleasure, she examined this excuse for a delicatessen and began to quiz Albert about his marital status. As soon as she learned he had no wife, she told him the story of her life. According to her, she had a husband, a small apartment, and a job in some unspecified kind of office doing some unspecified kind of work. Zhuzhuna’s husband, according to Zhu zhuna, was an uneducated, insensitive man who only knew how to spend money. Creditors would come by their apartment, trying to track him down. He had all these schemes and plans and would invariably get into debt trying to bring these plans to fruition. Creditors would come more and more often and track dirt into Zhuzhuna’s home. Her husband would sneak out in the morning and return late at night and poor Zhuzhuna, as she referred to herself, had to endure everyone’s continuous whining, complaining, and grumbling, not to mention their threats. She didn’t love her husband and didn’t respect him and dreamed only of making him suffer—but she didn’t know how best to do this yet. Their apartment was on the top, ninth, floor of their building and when it rained, water came through because the roof was so terrible. Her useless neighbors, who shared the same staircase, refused to contribute any money to get it repaired. Her no-good office job, where Zhuzhuna was simply wearing herself out, didn’t pay her or any of the other employees anything close to a living wage. In fact, it was no longer paying any wages at all. There was no work to do anyway, and even when there was, well, why bother killing yourself over it? Really they came to the office to drink coffee and gossip. Not that Zhuzhuna came right out and admitted this. She didn’t care for being criticized, especially when this was justified. Everything and everybody around her was in the wrong, whereas she was right in every way about everything and everybody. In that respect she was the same as Albert. They were soul mates. Though they differed in at least one important respect. She had most qualities in excess, but she was missing a vital ingredient in her life—love.

  Although, actually, Albert was the same on that point too. Forget that bit about them differing. They were soul mates.

  Mrs. Zhuzhuna had one dream. She very much wanted to find an elderly, rich lover who owned a car. He would, by necessity, be married to someone else, and would provide her with money and presents. They would have a regular meeting place and he would be, to quote Zhuzhuna, hygienic and discreet. This large lady of forty-plus couldn’t understand why she hadn’t found such a man—or, more generally, why such men seemed to have become such an endangered species. Yes, such men are few and far between and there is no shortage of women younger and more beautiful than Zhuzhuna.

  She drank like a man—she could drink any man under the table. She enjoyed long witty toasts, particularly if accompanied by the recitation of a little poetry. Red-cheeked and fluttering her eyelids, she would explain to her drinking companions the meaning of brotherly love—for example—and how siblings can love each other best of all. She liked to talk in more or less the same terms about family love and motherly love and about all the subjects that might come up over a night of drinking and toasting. She could sing, and if there was a piano nearby, she would bang the keys and shriek out a song, overwhelmed by emotion. When she could get away with it, Zhuzhuna liked to use strong language. She liked rich food and had a prodigious appetite, about which she’d make apologetic jokes. Then she’d start eating away. Especially anything made with pork. Zhuzhuna liked pork.

  Somehow—almost imperceptibly—between Albert, who had just turned forty, and Zhuzhuna, who was over forty, a very lively conversation developed, which Zhuzhuna directed quite deliberately toward her own indirectly expressed and simple suggestion. This consisted of Zhuzhuna and Albert consuming the vodka and sausage in the fridge, then frolicking in bed together until such a time that Albert, with a feeling of gratitude, would hand over the fridge free of charge.

  To put it briefly, the fridge would be exchanged for sex.

  But Albert, like all men, wasn’t too clever, and didn’t understand what this strange woman was up to. This was partly because he was worrying about an embarrassing possibility that had only just occurred to him. While it was true that the fridge kept things cold and its light came on when the door was opened, he realized that the motor might start up at any moment. He had no idea what to expect if the woman saw it happen. Would she still want to buy the crazy thing? A fridge that every so often decided to take out its frustrations on the tiled floor around it, jumping over its brick fence and lurching around the room like a mad animal?

  Still, Zhuzhuna was, as they say, gently, gently, bit by bit and step by step, leading their stilted but sociable conversation toward her desired conclusion—the exchange of sex for the fridge. But she wanted the owner of the fridge to think it was his own idea; she wanted him to be the one to suggest such a transaction. And, naturally, to suggest it in a form acceptable to a respectable woman such as her. Finally, after much persuasion from Albert Karbelashvili, and many demurrals on her part, she would yield at last to temptation.

  “If my husband was good for anything, why would I be here?” Mme Zhuzhuna speculated aloud, wondering now at Albert’s failure to take the hint and offer her some vodka and sausage. “Why would I be buying such a terrible fridge if I had a man to buy me a decent one? Besides, if my husband were a real man would he have allowed me to come to Eve’s Asshole to buy this fridge? The only thing he brings home is creditors. He creeps out of the house early in the morning and comes back at midnight so I have to deal with them. Just the other day I had to take our fridge to the repairman myself. It was broken for two weeks and I had to pay for the repairs with my own money. I don’t know what to do with him! Is he a real man? Is he a real man?” She paced the kitchen, like a queen giving orders, or like a snorting broodmare. As she did so, she repeatedly—“accidentally”—brushed against Albert.

  And Albert in turn lifted his hand in a tentative way. Then he mustered his courage and suggested punishing her husband a little.

  “Really, he can’t be a very responsible man, your husband,” Albert said uncertainly, smiling at Zhuzhuna in an appeasing way. “Men like that deserve whatever’s coming to them. They should be made examples of! And of course the best way to do this is to make a cuckold out of him. Yes, adultery! You must be unfaithful to him.”

  “Adultery! Be unfaithful?” Zhuzhuna raised her innocent eyebrows. She didn’t seem to be offended by the suggestion. It was a surprising idea, that’s all. One that had never occurred to her. Be unfaithful! “Yes, but is it worth it? And with whom? Nowadays men just don’t appreciate a good woman like me.”

  “Why not me? Be unfaithful to your husband with me! Believe me, I’ll appreciate you.” Albert reached out for Zhuzhuna’s big, wobbly backside.

  “Hey!” Zhuzhuna pried away his sweaty hands with her strong stubby fingers. “How can you appreciate me properly if you’re more of a beggar than my husband? All you have in the world is a fridge and you’re selling that!”

  “Well, so what? You can’t measure everything with money.” With a smile on his big-nosed face, Albert looked down at his pants, at what can’t be measured with money but only with a ruler. Then he looked up and reached out again for Zhuzhuna’s big wobbly bottom.

  “Leave me alone, for heaven’s sake!” Zhuzhuna tried to remove his hand. “Who needs a poor man? If only there was a rich old man who wanted to support me. Do you know
anyone like that? Perhaps you could introduce someone like that to me…”

  The woman was greedily bustling around the fridge. She opened and closed its door, poking her head inside as if really trying to gauge whether it would be worth buying. In reality, she was hoping that her host would finally take the hint and offer her some vodka and sausage. Albert didn’t, however, take the hint, because he wasn’t entirely certain that a little vodka and sausage would really be enough to convince this woman to be unfaithful to her worthless husband.

  This delicate situation would perhaps have been diffused by the fridge’s motor, but the fridge seemed to have no intention of switching on. It was impossible to predict when it might next want to stretch its legs. The thing would only switch its motor on when it felt like it; it didn’t follow any set schedule. But then, just when Albert began to forget to worry, the motor did kick on with its usual explosion, and the fridge, making a neighing sound, began to shake as though it were having an epileptic fit. It tried to jump out of its brick corral, but couldn’t manage—Albert had added more bricks as a precautionary measure. Still, Zhuzhuna shrieked in terror and threw herself into Albert’s arms. Then she pushed him away again and yelled:

  “My God! What is it? What was that?”

  “The motor’s a little noisy, that’s all,” Albert said soothingly.

  “It certainly is! It’ll drive my neighbors crazy if it starts working at night.”

  “No, they’ll be fine,” he said. “Really.”

  Eventually the motor switched itself off and the woman calmed down a little. Then she tried to use the noisy motor as a way of reducing the price of the fridge, but Albert was determined to dismiss this defect as minor and not really worth their consideration. Zhuzhuna had decided she’d pay no more than twenty laris, but Albert was demanding at least forty.

  “Twenty!” Zhuzhuna shouted and put her foot up on the only chair in the kitchen, which wobbled slightly. Having done this she caressed her own plump thigh, making her dress fabric cling to it, and with a twinkle in her eye repeated: “Twenty.”

  Albert slid his hand under her thigh. “Thirty-five,” he said, voice trembling. He felt her bare skin.

  “Twenty…” she whispered and nibbled his ear.

  “Okay, thirty.” Albert moved further up her thigh. Zhuzhuna took his weak hand in her two strong hands and began to move it up and down along her leg as though it were a sponge.

  “Damn it, let’s go!” Albert said through gritted teeth, succumbing to his fate. He plucked at Mrs. Zhuzhuna’s substantial waist with his frankfurter-like fingers and guided the devoted family-woman out of the kitchen into the bedroom. He tried to push her onto the bed, but she refused to move because they hadn’t settled on a price. Help me take it downstairs and load it on the car as well, she asked in a whisper.

  “Yes, okay!” Albert agreed and then tried again to push Zhuzhuna toward the bed.

  “Let’s drink first,” Zhuzhuna said. She steered Albert back into the kitchen and made him open the fridge. As there was no table in the apartment, Karbelashvili put everything on top of the fridge. He then went into the bedroom and opened the wardrobe where he kept all his other possessions, including his groceries. He brought out a half-eaten loaf of stale bread and stained dirty glasses and put them on top of the fridge as well. Then he took everything off again, blew the dust off the top of the fridge, and put it all back. He still wasn’t satisfied and so pulled out a plastic bag that had been stored behind a redundant radiator. He moved the food out of the way, put the plastic bag on top of the fridge, then laid the food out for the third time.

  “Come on,” he told Zhuzhuna, inviting her to the feast. Zhuzhuna protested and made some sarcastic comments about having to stand at a fridge in order to eat. First she asked him to move the food onto the windowsill, but since they had only one chair, which wobbled, Zhuzhuna made another suggestion. On her initiative, they moved the only chair into the bedroom and put it next to the peeling bedstead. It was good timing, because the moment Albert took the vodka and glasses off the fridge, the motor started up again. The once white but now yellowish, preternatural fridge shook its frame with such strength and persistence that the bread, sausage, and mustard were thrown onto the floor. The vodka and glasses had had a lucky escape. Zhuzhuna and Albert picked up the groceries and put them on the plastic bag on the wobbly chair together with the vodka and glasses. They sat side by side on the peeling rusty bed. Albert poured Minimo vodka.

  “You forgot the salt,” Zhuzhuna muttered, her mouth full of bread and sausage. She pinched Albert very hard on his backside.

  Albert got up and brought some salt. They were drinking vodka, eating, and touching each other. More precisely, Albert was caressing Zhuzhuna while she was pinching him as if she wanted to tweeze off bits of his flesh. Occasionally, they listened to some music from a small cheap radio. The radio’s plug was burned out and its batteries were almost dead. This meant that Albert couldn’t plug the radio into the mains, and since he couldn’t afford to replace the batteries, he could only turn it on for short periods of time. After that you had to switch it off to allow the exhausted batteries to recover their strength. Zhuzhuna could play—or, more precisely, bang—the piano, but she couldn’t do so here because there was a meal set out on the only chair, and anyway, the terribly out-of-tune piano lacked a key. Not that Zhuzhuna was too interested in playing. She was knocking back her vodka faster than Albert and composing a toast as well, a toast that included quotations from famous poets and a lot of cursing into the bargain. She cursed out her husband, her neighbors, her colleagues, her bosses, her elected officials—everyone. The whole world was her personal enemy. There was a conspiracy to keep her miserable. They were all criminals. Albert more or less agreed.

  When the vodka began to take effect, Karbelashvili pushed his hand into his pocket and said that he would go get another bottle of Minimo. Zhuzhuna demurred, reluctant to let him spend money—but it was obvious that she wanted more herself.

  “Can you afford to be so generous?” she asked him in a soft voice and went back to sponging her leg with his hand.

  “Money? No, I don’t have money,” Albert answered, tipsy. “But you owe me twenty laris and I’ll buy the vodka out of that twenty.”

  Zhuzhuna, unlike Albert, was not the least bit tipsy—she just wanted more to drink. She weighed up the situation and decided against this course of action, because to be honest, it was impossible to buy an old fridge at that price and still come out ahead.

  “No, it’s not worth it, don’t bother,” she whispered to him, continuing to rub his feeble hand against her thigh. “No, you don’t need it. Don’t bother.”

  “What do you mean? I want to,” Albert said. He was completely lost in pleasant thoughts, thinking himself rich and consequently omnipotent. “Give me the money.”

  “No, I won’t!”

  “Give it to me!”

  “No!”

  “You know it’ll be great to have more vodka.”

  “No, it’s not worth it!”

  “Give it to me now!”

  “Fine, but only ten for now, you lunatic.”

  “Fine, first give me ten. What’s wrong with you—don’t you trust me?”

  “Yes, I trust you—ooooooh.” Zhuzhuna neighed like a horse and handed over the money.

  Albert tidied his rumpled clothes and went down to the shop, adopting what he considered the bearing of a businessman. Scowling at everyone he saw, he bought bread, one bottle of Minimo, more sausage, and some batteries for his radio. He asked the shopkeeper to put everything in a disposable plastic bag and took the change, five laris and thirty-five tetri, and went back home. There, Zhuzhuna was making a racket playing the piano and singing a love song in her high-pitched voice. She had moved what was left of the food to the bed and was sitting on the chair. Albert put the bag of groceries on the piano, took out his new batteries, and swapped them with those in the radio. He turned up the volume to check whether it was w
orking, then turned it off and listened to Zhuzhuna. She had already been singing for a long time, though, and was getting bored. She got up and pushed her chair toward the bed and put the food back where it was. They sat down and continued their feast. The woman was talking, the radio was playing, and finally they finished eating, cleared away the leftovers, took off their clothes, and got into bed.

  Albert didn’t like the sight of naked Zhuzhuna. When dressed, she had seemed tall, plump, somehow appetizing. When she removed her clothes, she just sagged. He also caught sight of a big sanitary pad when she undressed. Yes, this woman was large and very unhealthy. Sure, Karbelashvili was also unhealthy looking: frankfurter-like fingers, huge feet, skinny legs. After they had both undressed, there was a strong smell of feet. But look, to cut a long story short, as a result of the above-mentioned details, and more besides, Karbelashvili did not enjoy their encounter too much. Besides, unlike Zhuzhuna, he was quite drunk, and as we know, this can put a damper on a man’s abilities. Albert no longer had any desire for this woman, and he was sorry for having wasted his money. He was sorry too about the fridge, the fridge of his fathers, which he had let go for a song.

  Zhuzhuna kissed Albert, vigorously. There was no emotion in her kissing—she was simply wiping his face with her wet lips while brushing his hand against her body as if reapplying soap after rinsing. Thus did Albert reach what would have to be defined, in medical terms, as orgasm. At precisely that moment, with the help of his female partner, he accidentally touched a mole the size of a big currant, somewhere high between the woman’s thighs, close to her pubic hair. This finally made him feel disgust. He pulled away from Zhuzhuna’s body and reached for a damp cloth he kept under the mattress. He wiped himself off and then threw the same cloth across to the woman. They lay still for some time. Zhuzhuna tried to kiss Albert on occasion, but he wouldn’t let her. They lay still for some time. Albert smoked. The woman stroked his head, not caressing him so much as consoling him.