Belladonna

by Daša Drndic

  Something breaks, that late summer of 2008.

  A crack opens and grows.

  In Andreas a longing for small creatures continues.

  In the Rovinj evenings, before rain, a low-flying flock of swifts circles frantically in the sky. They emit ominous, rhythmic cries.

  The little cosmopolitan birds, perhaps the most powerful and surely the fastest fliers (sixty meters a second, up to two hundred kilometers an hour), with their strong pectoral muscles, long, narrow wings, hardly know how to walk. Swifts have short legs covered in down, barely visible, they seem not to have any at all. Apodidae, creatures that only fly, for whom walking is a threat to their life, for when they land, they are slow, lame, vulnerable creatures, they waddle awkwardly, turning their heads this way and that.

  What freedom! Swifts spend their whole life in the air, they feed in the air, they mate in the air, they sleep in the heights.

  They slide, circle, squeal. And they move from sky to sky.

  On the earth, swifts land on vertical surfaces, on chimneys and trees, on rough walls, as far from people as possible, and there they build nests. On their miniature feet with sharp four-toed claws, trembling, terrified, they approach for them dangerous humans.

  Little birds, swifts. From nine to twenty-five centimeters long, with a wide wingspan. Light as a breath, they weigh from two to five hundred grams. Andreas Ban would like to put several swifts on his chest to rest, to breathe with him like sleeping children.

  Little black birds like cheerful death. Painless.

  Little birds with big eyes and a small beak, which peck noiselessly at his insides, see what is there and are silent.

  Andreas Ban stretches his arms toward the sky, imagining that he is flying, imagining himself in a flock of swifts and lets out a stifled cry.

  Small birds, they die when they are alone.

  He, Andreas Ban, is alone.

  Apus apus, the European swift, a bird without legs, manages well in dark places, in caves for example, where it rests, where no one intrudes. So he, Andreas Ban, will step into unconsciousness, into unworldness, when the time comes.

  Now Andreas Ban watches that black playful flock drawing near, performing astonishing acrobatics while the sun goes down and the swifts with their short beaks draw a dark curtain across the sky, and Andreas Ban sees himself melting into the darkness, disappearing.

  Not long ago on a high wall in the hospital complex Andreas Ban had seen a blackbird facing the closed windows of the psychiatric ward. There are bars on the windows of the psychiatric ward. The blackbird was standing motionless as though waiting for someone to appear at the window. No one came. Mesmerized, Andreas watched the stillness of the small black bird, while people passed, shaking their heads suspiciously, why is that man standing there when there is nothing to see, when nothing is happening. After half an hour, Andreas whistles a short tune and the blackbird looks at him. Between the bird and Andreas Ban flits a small black shooting star, a comet.

  Had he not at first every three months, then every six months, gone for tedious checkups (markers, blood tests, ultrasound scans of his chest and abdomen, appointments, referral slips, waiting), had his diary not been scribbled with reminders of painful hospital meetings, had his mobile not regularly reminded him when, what and with whom, Andreas Ban might have forgotten that whole cancerous episode, or at least ignored it, he would have given himself up to life as seen in advertisements, with a smile, but also energetically, even hysterically, with the euphoria of a consumer, and thus repressed the sense of a beauty acquired genetically, but also through life, a feeling for an exalted, complicated and decadent aesthetic he is composed of and which keeps him uprooted. And which requires a lot of money. But poverty is swelling all around him, threatening. Soon he will find himself in an overcoat of pennilessness, in a cage with no way out, locked in, and he will toss and turn, with heavy limbs and labored breathing, to extinction. He is stalked by a tedious unease, particularly when he passes the hospital or walks through the hospital garden, which is collapsing. As time passes, as his medical problems pile up, the garden becomes ever darker, dampness sways from its bare, sickly trees, the stone paths are now dug up, the lawns covered in dead leaves and undergrowth. In spring, violets suffocate under the piles of debris and rotting matter and Andreas Ban sometimes liberates their petals with his foot, bequeathing them uprightness.

  So, Andreas Ban continues to live more or less normally, mostly observing, participating less and less. But small pointless tensions, episodes of groundless anger, more frequent swearing, are the first indicators of his disintegration, his decomposition. I’m changing, says Andreas Ban.

  On the bus, the woman in the seat in front of him is turning her head with lightning speed left-right, left-right as though she is watching the landscape pass by, there is virtually no landscape, nothing is happening either to the left or right, while she keeps turning her head like a frenzied sparrow pecking at a breadcrumb. Andreas taps the woman in front of him on the shoulder and asks, Why do you keep spinning your head like that? The woman turns around and shoots Andreas the gaze of a madwoman hidden in the tightened pupils of her swimming pigs’ eyes. Who’s spinning? asks the woman.

  He got hooked on Skype, but then gave it up, along with idiotic Facebook. But he did find Oskar and, as if playing a game of patience, they combed through their student days. Forty years had passed. Andreas and Oskar celebrate their masters’ degrees in a dark tavern in Chicago’s Little Italy, breaking lobster tails offered at bargain prices that evening. Afterward they cruise through London, Brussels, Amsterdam and Paris and end up in Rovinj. After they have thoroughly gone through all those past years, there is nothing left for Andreas and Oskar and they lose each other again.

  Andreas also finds Violeta with whom he had gone to secondary school, Violeta from a little room in the attic of the inn “At the Sign of ?” opposite the cathedral. Violeta studies technological engineering, marries an Italian from Trieste, has two daughters, takes another degree in Italy, this time in chemical engineering because the Italians do not recognize her Belgrade diploma, her husband died twenty years earlier, she teaches math in a school in Udine and is fearful of approaching retirement. While she waits, Violeta plays golf and travels, a bit to Morocco and a bit to Portorož because of the warm sea water pool and low prices in winter, and spends time with her grandchildren and says, Let’s meet up. Andreas says, OK, but when they eventually settle on a date, he sends Violeta a message, I’m ill, another time.

  He finds loads of people, even some former friends, once close. That lasts for about a year, maybe two, that foray into long ago, that swimming through the thick waters of twenty, thirty, forty years before, then Andreas Ban says, I’m sinking, and signs out of Skype, signs out of Facebook, out of his email, signs out altogether. In the meantime, that slow burning up, that gradual disappearance, that scrambling toward the waters of Lethe opens up paths of forced continuity, tracks along which Andreas Ban (nevertheless) seeks landings of salvation.

  On the terrace of a tall building (what is Andreas Ban doing on the terrace of a tall building?) he sees a couple. The young man has thick curly black hair, dirty from physical work, the girl is zipping up his fly, We won’t make a little girl, she says.

  Then the hemorrhoids appear.

  Pain, bleeding, humiliating examinations, tedious therapy, ointments, cold compresses, potassium permanganate, showers, diapers. Waddling grotesquely, Andreas Ban hurries into the doctor’s clinic, waves that crooked hand of his and says, If this is some kind of cancer again, a shit bag is out of the question. It’s not cancer, they say, the treatment is lengthy and tedious, if it doesn’t work, we’ll operate. Andreas Ban spends a year occupied with his bottom, he (almost) forgets his breast. Go for walks, they say. So he goes for walks. Fanatically and aimlessly. Then he gives up. Because while he walks his thoughts walk too and currents of tension pour through Andreas Ban’s bo
dy. When he tries to block out his thoughts, his walks feel hollow.

  They open a jetty in the center of town for pedestrians, 1,730 meters to and 1,730 meters fro. The pedestrians are delighted, the view is wonderful, they say. And Andreas Ban sets out on that walk, but he hurries back home, sweating. The view is nothing, ugly. He can see the view of the small town every day (if he wishes, but he does not), so why would he also want to look at it from a distance which makes the town seem ever smaller. From the left, down the length of the jetty, there is a high protective wall with enamel tiles that warn No climbing! so from the jetty the sea cannot be seen, nor infinity, nothing sparkles, nothing twinkles, only, as one walks, on the right, the small, narrow, elongated town gazes at the crazed, idle walkers. Nonetheless, on that jetty, where on the left the wall comes to an end and on the right the town, there is a dizzying point. For fifty centimeters at its end, at the edge is a point of breakthrough, a point for breakthrough, for departure. That point of stupefying spaciousness before death is where suppressed aromas blend, childhood shines, youth beats against the temples, a fifty-year past like a slimy snail squashed into its fragile little shell.

  Couples walk along the promenade. They walk slowly. Older women walk, slowly. But Andreas Ban marches with his limp as though hurrying somewhere, to a place he does not reach, as though treading briskly on a crazed fitness track.

  By the edge of the quay, in the sea with its patches of oil, on whose surface float the remains of food, apple and pear cores, cigarette stubs, plastic bags swollen like cadavers, a diver is swimming in full gear.

  A north wind lashes and Andreas breathes with difficulty.

  .

  The Case of Rudolf Sass

  Rudolf Sass, pruritus ani, of the itching anus, Rudolf Sass scratches himself constantly. For seven years Rudolf Sass scratches himself to the point of frenzy. To the point of drawing blood. Rudolf Sass is a doctor. He is about sixty when Andreas Ban is almost forty. Rudolf Sass lives an orderly life. He has an orderly marriage. A grown-up daughter. He has a granddaughter and savings. He has a handsome face, a bit pockmarked, but handsome. He is a good height, he has no belly, he is not flabby. He is not bald. He has made a fine job of his life.

  Like Andreas Ban many years later, Rudolf Sass goes for examinations, rectal and ultrasound, has laboratory tests, tries out a multitude of therapies, reappraises the possible causes and comes up with . . . nothing. Seven years of scratching one’s anus is a lot. Rudolf Sass loses concentration, he is superficial in his work with his patients, he eats little, sleeps badly, he is beset by fears that prowl around him like tiny beasts lying in wait, They’ll get into my head, Rudolf Sass says, they’ll addle my brain, drive me mad. Like poisonous gases those fears spread through Rudolf Sass’s space, internal and external. Rudolf Sass feels a sickening swaying that forewarns of danger. I could become aggressive, I could harm my wife, my granddaughter, pedestrians. It’s not good, he says.

  Rudolf Sass sinks into depression. A deep, acute depression. Rudolf Sass comes from Switzerland (where he lives and works) for consultations with the then clinical psychologist Andreas Ban, employed at the university hospital of the city of Belgrade. Realizing the complexity of Rudolf Sass’s case, Andreas Ban sends him to a psychiatrist, a friend from his school days, Dr. Adam Kaplan.

  The neuropsychiatrist Adam Kaplan then embarks on a lengthy process of probing into Rudolf Sass’s life. Adam Kaplan slips under Rudolf Sass’s eyelids, rummages, delves and turns his life, his childhood, his past, distant and recent, upside down. Miraculous landscapes open up, surfacing out of dense fog, swamps of quagmire, amputated memories. In the repository of his soul Rudolf Sass has been storing a horde of dormant ghosts that now, risen, stir into a mysterious, macabre dance that he finds petrifying.

  In 1941, Rudolf Sass is fourteen. Almost overnight, Rudolf Sass’s face becomes sensitive to cold. Large swellings, lumps, appear on his cheeks, his forehead, his chin, around his eyes, particularly on his lips, distorting Rudolf Sass’s face, making it unrecognizable. This unpleasantness is repeated every winter until he meets with the psychiatrist Adam Kaplan. Admittedly, over the years the unpleasantness becomes more bearable (milder), because Rudolf Sass develops small tricks to protect himself from the cold and the resulting frostbite. Nevertheless, Rudolf Sass continues to find this inconvenience irritating and somewhat perplexing. I’m simply allergic, he repeats, that’s all there is to it.

  It is not.

  So, Rudolf Sass is fourteen, it is Sunday, February 2, 1941, it’s snowing, the wind makes walking difficult, and in St. Anne’s Church, in the small Serbian town of Šabac, Candlemas is being celebrated, candles are lit as a representation of the Lord who brings “light to lighten the Gentiles,” people who only become enlightened, if ever, when it is too late. That evening, February 2, 1941, young Rudolf Sass does not feel well, he is shaken by a mild fever, he would prefer not to go to the service, to that church which always gives him an upset stomach. Rudolf Sass’s father says, There’s no question, we’re going! because Rudolf Sass’s father is a devout father with a hard face and calloused hands. In church, Rudolf Sass can hardly stand, he sways as he watches through half-closed eyelids the flickering of the candles which believers bring to be blessed by the Blessed Virgin Mary and St. Anthony of Padua, as though they were both alive. Through their sticky lips the believers whisper something to St. Anthony of Padua and the Blessed Virgin Mary, with their submissive eyes they watch them humbly, they raise their heads, they stare at them obtusely, fall at their feet, which in itself resembles a dumb slapstick comedy, because both the Blessed Virgin Mary and St. Anthony of Padua remain silent, stiff and immobile, expressionless, so this worshippers’ performance, entirely meaningless, provokes in Rudolf Sass a new horror, because the Blessed Virgin Mary and that St. Anthony of Padua are ordinary statues, pieces of carved and painted linden wood, he in his Franciscan habit, balding, she with a veil on her head. Then his father says, Go up to them and kneel, but Rudolf Sass says, No, wild laughter could have burst from him, he could have kicked the Blessed Virgin Mary and St. Anthony of Padua, which would have made them collapse in a frenzied amorous embrace onto the little flames of those hundreds of candles at their feet and vanish in a magnificent blaze.

  That same evening, Rudolf Sass has arranged to see his friends Kari and Enzi, a few years older, to whom he is supposed to take some partly collected and partly stolen money, altogether a negligible sum, a contribution to their renewed attempt to flee to Palestine. So Rudolf Sass leaves the service surreptitiously and hides beneath the internal stairway determined to escape. Crouching there, he falls asleep, overwhelmed by a terrible weakness. His father wakes him. Is the service over? asks Rudolf Sass while his father stands over him like a giant, casting a black shadow. His father does not say anything. His father lifts Rudolf Sass by his hair onto his feet, where he sways. His father pulls his ears, twists them as though he were opening a tin can, as though he were unlocking a door, then lands him two hefty slaps, which make Rudolf Sass’s head swing first to the left, then to the right like a poppy in the wind. The marks of his father’s fingers are imprinted on Rudolf Sass’s cheeks. Rudolf Sass says nothing. His father takes Rudolf Sass back into the church, but at prayers Rudolf Sass faints. Then someone lifts him (not his father) and carries him home. The next day Dr. Bata Koen, who will soon cease to be, comes and says, Rudi is seriously ill. The diagnosis: variola minor — chicken pox. The treatment is lengthy. Rudolf Sass spends the days in his room, in bed. His father rarely visits him, there is no question of any, of even a mild effusion of tenderness toward his son.

  My father seems to have surfaced out of a Haneke film, Rudolf Sass will tell Adam Kaplan many years later. The same feeling, the same hatred, the same fear. His white ribbon around my neck, redemption of sins where there were none, loads of accumulated fury into which violence and guilt poured alternately.

  That is when Rudolf Sass becomes sensitive to cold,
in 1941. Every winter his face tells him, See how your father’s hand has disfigured me, but Rudolf Sass does not hear. At the same time repulsion, intolerance grows in Rudolf Sass toward believers and all religions, so it does not cross his mind to satisfy his father’s wish that he enroll at the Higher Theological School in Djakovo, for Rudolf Sass wants to be a doctor.

  On the evening Rudolf Sass faints, there are worshippers gathered round the Šabac synagogue as well, among them many newcomers, non-Šabac dwellers, all kinds of mysterious people telling terrible tales, but also youngsters having fun, some lads are excellent soccer players, there are girls dancing ballet, playing the guitar or piano, and these people speak various languages, German, French, Czech and Polish, there are older people, and there are children, there are people in love. Rudolf Sass makes new friends. In those years life in Šabac is as exciting as it is terrible, it’s filled with foreboding that creeps into spaces that until now have been hidden in the quiet little town. Šabac touches Europe, Europe comes to Šabac bringing with it wondrous landscapes. Šabac grows from outside and within.

  Andreas Ban knows this story, this little wartime story which is not included in encyclopedias or in world history, perhaps it just glimmers from time to time at its edges, in some preserved letter or diary chronicle like that of Father Grigorije Babović, or a few people post it online for the sake of remembering, for searching, for not-forgetting, in broken images, and so also in the past of Rudolf Sass, in names, which at the end of the 1980s Andreas Ban hears from his friend Adam Kaplan, and acquires a visa for an extended but crippled life. And now, in 2011, this story draws Andreas Ban off into a quite different world, into a different time, far from the sickness of Rudolf Sass, far from the pains in his, Andreas’s, degenerated spine and his lame knee, far from his hemorrhoids, his glaucoma, his asthma and the blackened scar on his left breast which is no longer breast, and so he, Andreas Ban, forgets how often he has, by means of some knot, some decades-long strap, unbreakable, endeavored to connect, bring close, clasp and tie periods of human existence to find meaning in their madness.