Best European Fiction 2011

by Aleksandar Hemon

  I felt an organic satisfaction and (childish) delight in emptying myself so noisily onto the little tin house where (I learned later) that significant curtain had been hanging for three days already, and where they had even begun thinking about how to install some sort of chimney, so they could do their cooking indoors. I was enjoying the sound in my ears, as well as the sensation in my body. My own sound was barely distinguishable from the rain’s. Maybe a little louder. I stretched my head back and closed my eyelids. I bent backward at the waist and thrust my suspended organ through the balcony railing. I started swaying and writing something in piss on the roof. I swayed until I was frozen by a yell.

  “What the hell are you doing, you idiot? So now you want to piss on my head, goddammit?”

  The first thing I registered was that here was this black tattooed phenomenon in a yellowing athlete’s shirt—I knew him as the leader of all the courtyard clan, be they children, adults, or elderly—calling me an idiot. Then with the simple tightening of a muscle I stopped my stream and covered myself with my hands. I stepped backward into the room. I didn’t want him to see my ass on top of everything. Now, a month and a half later, at the feast table, he keeps hugging and kissing me and begging me with his eyes to ask him for something, anything, and I can’t think what—I’ve already been given everything in the world. I’m young, good-looking, loved, and a hero to boot. My act, spontaneous, snatched from death a life that had barely begun…

  If I were to roll back the day around which my story revolves, the day that would be crowned with a feast, you might see me in its early moments floating in a bathtub, taking refuge from the heat. It was an immense tub in which generations (some of them already dead and gone) had washed away their dirt—one of the old sort of tub you don’t see anymore, standing on lion’s paws. It never seems to rust! There I was lying in cold water wondering whether to jerk off or to wait for my girlfriend to get home from work. Sometimes I used to push her up against the wall when she was barely through the doorway, egged on by the pressure built up in me all day thanks to my idleness and youth. As soon as night fell, I would make sure to take the time to repay her for having given herself to me virtually through her clothes.

  I splashed myself with the tepid water of the Sava River, feeling bored (perhaps even desperate, who knows). That water, sometimes yellow, sometimes even red—as though it had not yet been cleansed of the last war, during which the people I live among had slaughtered and been slaughtered—reached me through an unimaginable confusion of pipes. Boredom weighed on me with all its enormity. And now I was thinking about the war—the one during which no one could have guessed I would ever come into being. A country full of mountains and rocks, a man weighing barely sixty kilos (including his rifle), who, if he survived, would become my father, either walking toward or fleeing from death (attacking and retreating not by his own volition). My mother was tiny, just a little bundle in flight. There was jewelry hidden in this bundle as well. How much distance spanned between that young man, already lightly injured once, crazed by shooting and hunger, and that little bundle, made heavier by the gold hidden inside it. My own war had not yet begun. It was sending signals from the future. But that has nothing to do with this story. Maybe it’ll go somewhere else in my book.

  My days were all monstrously similar. They were determined by a certainty so clear it might as well have been filtered, purified, screened. My girlfriend divided up the day. She would decree when I had to get up, eat, study. She was preparing me to be her husband. The only thing that was mine alone in my day (in my life) was working out on the balcony, or running in place. She forbade my friends from coming over. She called them disease carriers. After a few attempts to get close to me and revive the friendships we had forged when I was running free, they all gave up. It was easier that way.

  On our street that year the only excitement was when someone stole a side-view mirror or slapped someone. Without fights, killings, even attempted killings, life was dull. As one of the strongest people in our square kilometer, I knew I didn’t have any enemies, but no friends anymore either. By force of circumstance, my girlfriend had become everything. I realized then why the lion, king of the animals (not the lioness), was so bored. There was nothing to excite or frighten it. And I thought about all these things one after the other while I lay in the tub. In water which came up over my neck. Another five minutes passed on the clock. It said 12:05 in digital figures.

  Then, that afternoon—dreadfully calm till then, if stuffed with thoughts about wars, lions, and jerking off, about the fact that it was more dignified and appropriate at my age (about twenty-five) to come in my girlfriend’s arms rather than in the bathtub—was torn to shreds from top to toe by a hideous shriek (atavistic), a shriek which was amplified and seemed to hammer at the sky thanks to the silence that had preceded it, thanks to the implausibility of anything so lively happening in that heat. The scream originated in the courtyard. Instead of dulling the shriek, the buildings all around had magnified it, acting like a gigantic megaphone.

  I jumped out of the bath and pulled my Bermudas onto my wet body. As I zipped them up, I accidentally caught the tip of my prick and added my own small contribution (scream, I mean) to the noise from the courtyard. Like all the other inhabitants of the buildings around the courtyard, I ran out onto the balcony to lean over and see what was going on. And what was going on was this:

  A woman was running round the courtyard. If she hadn’t been shrieking, her gray hair loose to the ground, I would have recognized her at once as the wife of our biggest and strongest Gypsy neighbor, the one who was always smoking. The sun beat down from above, illuminating everything, down to the most insignificant detail. There was no chance at all that the scene below was some hallucination. Then, through that yelling and wailing in a voice hoarse with age and panic, I heard a child’s cry. The woman was clutching something to her—that’s where the cry had come. “A doctor! Call a doctor! Quick!” was screamed into the pit from some other floor. In the depths of the well the old woman was still thrashing around, her white hair streaming like a banner. “My little pigeon, oh, my little pigeon!” she kept repeating. The bundle was wailing, though the wails were getting weaker.

  The courtyard went dark. The black hand of death, or just an innocent cloud? Whichever, I leaped over the railing and jumped down (it wasn’t far). There was no time to walk down the steps and out the door that was always locked for some long-forgotten reason. My fall tore my shorts and hurt the soles of my feet. I got to my tingling feet and reached the old woman. I snatched away what she was holding, and, shielding it from the light, unwrapped it. In my arms I held a half-cold baby. A few months old at best. A boy.

  “What happened? Tell me!” I didn’t care that I’d startled the old woman and woke her from her trance. “My little pigeon, my little pigeon!” she yelled. “Fuck your pigeon, tell me what’s wrong!” Half the building had poured into the courtyard by this time. People think they’re helping even when they just stand around watching.

  I gave her a slap to bring her back to our own dimension, the world of places, dates, hours. There was no time for Gypsy sorcery.

  “Why are his lips burned?” I shouted. “What’s he been drinking?”

  “Juice,” said the old woman and burst into tears that were altogether of this world.

  “What kind of juice, show me.”

  “Apple.”

  “Oh, you old cunt—that’s a juice bottle, but it’s got varneesh in it! Fuck your empty gray head!”

  This last was spoken by a young Gypsy girl in a miniskirt, made up and teetering on high heels, the old woman’s great-granddaughter perhaps. Her heels were thinner than pencils. It wasn’t clear whether she had come from somewhere out in town or was on her way out. Everyone in that poor scattered family worked. Even the children. Nothing was too shameful. Only the baby and the old woman didn’t work. One was waiting to grow up and the other to die.

  I didn’t know exactly what varneesh
might be, but it sounded dangerous and poisonous. I was already driving to the hospital with the dying child, burning up from the inside. The tires squealed, the engine screamed. I kicked the brake and the accelerator with my bare feet. The child in the back was rolling and bouncing around free and began to snivel more loudly. “Fuck me—if the varneesh doesn’t kill him I’ll certainly finish him off with my driving,” I thought. I drove the last kilometer right through the park, rattling over the unpaved ground and avoiding the benches and trees. We popped out into traffic right at the hospital. Nothing that drives on this earth could have gotten him there more quickly.

  As though she had just been waiting for me and that stranger’s baby all day, my girlfriend, in her white doctor’s coat, ushered us in…and, in fact, I don’t know what she did with us next, that’s where my memory shuts down. Anyway, I just knew, as soon as I saw my girl, that the baby would survive. And it did.

  When the news arrived from the hospital that the infant was saved and that it would be back home in a few days’ time to continue to grow and to be for a little while the youngest tribe member of all, the courtyard exploded with joy. My girlfriend and I were invited to a feast and the old woman who had mixed apple-juice with wood varnish began to be forgiven. When I cooled down from all that leaping, running, and lunatic driving the soles of my feet began to get really sore. My girlfriend gave me some medicine and I soon recovered. Even the pain had been welcome: it reminded me of what I was capable of doing for someone else.

  At dusk, when the heat had passed, I was placed at the head of the table in a new armchair. I would never have imagined that it could belong to one of the basement people. The price tag fluttered on the chair. I was the first to try it out.

  Out of the basement, in a jumble, dark-skinned people of all genders, ages, and inclinations emerged. They occupied chairs as diverse as themselves. The chairs bore almost no resemblance to one another, so by comparison the people began to show their similarities. They were held together, as a family, by habit, and also by the sense that they were more secure and stronger this way. One thing they all certainly had in common, however, whether old or young, male or female, one shared feature that remained undiminished despite the other traits they’d carried in from all over the world—this fragment of that enormous tribe that had washed up in our courtyard—was that they were, every one of them, natural musicians and singers. On one side of the armchair that was already molding itself to me, a violin appeared, and on the other side a harmonica. At the first scrape of the violin, the first breath in and then out through the harmonica—neither of which were truly being played yet, so much as being warmed up—my soul swelled, and my body tingled. Several women and girls, among whom I recognized the one whose job required that she be made-up and sweet-smelling (which didn’t necessarily mean clean) even in her sleep, brought food and arranged it in layers on the table.

  And let’s repeat, if not exactly word for word, that the table was overflowing with food, that it had to be squeezed together to get it all on, that there were so many bottles with foreign labels that it occurred to me that it could not all have been paid for honestly. There was even an as yet unpacked bottle of cognac, with CAMUS written on the box, and a freshly roasted suckling pig. Its little legs were contorted and its little tail twisted into a question mark. With my bare hands I carved up the pig and threw it onto the nearest plates. I pushed its little head away from me so that its wide open muzzle and tightly closed eyes laughed in someone else’s face. The only part of the crispy roast that would reach the people at the far end of the table would be its aroma. All the richest and most expensive foods on the table were thrust toward me and hardly a minute passed without my being offered something more. I had undone my shirt and shorts and given my stomach space to expand. I had been eating and drinking for not quite an hour. The violin and harmonica, now harmonized, led us slowly into the night. The girl (could she still be the same one? did she really play so many roles?) began to sing, and she wasn’t bad at all. She placed her hands with their long polished nails on my bare shoulders (I had taken my shirt off) and massaged me. When I tossed my head back to down some cognac, I saw her dark shining face and white teeth. Her tits barely fit into her thin, short dress. I imagined how tight and hot they must be, and how sweat was trickling between them. Everyone was barefoot or wearing cheap plastic shoes, apart from her, still teetering on her high heels because it was her job to be beautiful. From time to time I saw the man that I’d nearly pissed on from the terrace sitting next to me. He was the boss. He was the one directing everyone. He embraced me and his eyes begged me to ask something of him, anything, but I couldn’t think what—I’d already been given everything in the world. A child, specializing perhaps in side-view mirrors and windshield wipers, but only from German models, placed a crown on my head made of cardboard sprinkled with golden dust and studded with little pieces of glass. I could not have imagined that I would ever in my life be king for a night. Another child, more a young woman, poured water from a hose over my bare feet, cooling me in the heat. I splashed my feet on the concrete and grinned. This must be how the chief of a tribe must look and feel when his people really make a fuss over him—not out of fear, but love.

  Stars shone from the sky and a candle shone on our table. It turned out to be nice that there was no electricity. Upstairs the windows on the buildings went out one by one. Since I was unemployed I didn’t care what day, even what year it was. Now in the dark (or rather half-dark), the instruments appeared to be floating and playing themselves. They drew up another armchair beside me and the head Gypsy, with the word KARMELA tattooed in huge letters on his back, sat down. He threw his heavy arm around me, made still heavier by a gold bracelet. It was the first time I’d ever been in a place where such extremes of wealth and poverty existed side by side.

  “Well, brother, thank you. That child is my favorite. By the time we all got back from work, he would have been dead. Here’s to you! I have a brother in Germany, and now I have you here.”

  “It was just a stroke of luck that my speed and her brains were able to work together,” I shouted, and then was astounded by this combination of words that paper, perhaps, could have borne, but not real life.

  I pointed to my girlfriend, who was taking that old granny’s (probably someone’s great-granny too) pulse with the help of her watch and an extended finger. The old woman’s hair was now pushed back under her scarf and she didn’t look so terrible. Ever since her peregrinations around the courtyard earlier that day, in the claws of her otherworldly fit, she had not stopped trembling. Maybe we’d saved her life too. Who knows.

  “So you slapped my old lady, eh! That’s fine, that’s fine. She hasn’t had a hand laid on her for fifty years! She brought me up and never poisoned me, but she was younger and stronger then.”

  “Well, she’s still pretty strong. You should have seen her leaping round the courtyard!”

  “That wasn’t her leaping around. But you wouldn’t understand—you’re white.”

  “So who did I slap, then?”

  “Ah, now, better you don’t know.”

  And I never found out. I gave him some of my brandy. Now everyone was stretching out their hands to my girlfriend opposite, for her to take their pulse. Karmela had given her a white T-shirt with a crocodile on it. Having a doctor in the courtyard was a source of amazement for them. Free of charge, and beautiful as well. Karmela put his arm around me again and pulled me toward him. He was drunk.

  “Hey! Now you can piss from your terrace to your heart’s content. No one can stop you. We all have our little foibles,” he said.

  “That was the first time! My bathroom was full of bugs, I don’t know where they all came from.” I protested. “Big as toy cars!”

  “It was us who sent them up to you, ha! Come on—drink, eat, everything in front of you is yours, I tell you, you just let rip from up there if you want…just don’t strip in front of the kids. They wouldn’t know what to make of it.�
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  “Are you crazy?”

  “No, but I’ve seen a lot. When I was visiting my best man in Munich I saw a house where people went in on one side normal, men like you and me, and came out women.”

  I realized that there was no hope of convincing him. This Gypsy had classified me and determined my place in this world.

  “So, what else did you see, eh?”

  “I saw a man with a branch of boxwood up his ass trying to hitch a ride.”

  “Ha! And did anyone stop for him?”

  “Well, would you?”

  Karmela and I had already sniffed around each other enough for him to be able to ask me something personal.

  “So you like this girl of yours a lot?”

  “Are you guessing or do you know?”

  “I know, my friend, you make a racket when you’re together, but where are your kids, it’s no good to keep running on empty—if that’s what you want, here’s our Princess, you give her a poke. There’d be a discount for you.”

  “How much?”

  “Free, the first time.”

  “How about tonight when my girlfriend goes to bed? She goes to work early.”

  “Come on, I’m not that much of a Gypsy! Have you screw three meters away from her? Out of the question tonight, even if you paid. Why, the doctor’s like my own kin now! She saved Tiger! Hang on a minute. Cool down. And look, the rubber’s free, thin, German. Guys even forget to take it off.”

  “Until they need to take a leak.”

  “That’s right. And you know how long I’ve been offering my own rubbers along with her?”

  “How long?”

  “Ever since some assholes began puncturing theirs out of spite. You earn a few coins and then pay a hundred for the curettage, is that what it’s called?”