Belladonna

by Daša Drndic

  The terrace is half empty. Next to Andreas Ban, at a round table, sit seven middle-aged women, all seven in black, all seven with sunglasses on their noses and all seven with an intensely red drink in their right hand, which all seven middle-aged women raise simultaneously to their mouths. It is not clear whether the women are sorrowful or celebrating something while the brass band plays “Blue Night” and “Pretty Woman.”

  Where is that lovely hair? Andreas then hears a woman at the next table ask the woman to his left.

  Something had to be sold, the woman replies.

  The Gift of the Magi. It was probably the 1917 version, because when he saw the film in Manhattan he was not even six years old, and he cried. He had been taken to an evening of short films based on O. Henry’s stories, in his memory the film is the one about the last leaf and the dying woman painter and the two create epiphanies in his head and body. The cinema was small, the seats wooden, the floor black, and the cinema smell of the early 1950s now blends with the smell of the sea in the Rovinj square where Andreas Ban waits for Victor in La Viecia Batana café, uncannily similar to the famous Pete’s Tavern in Manhattan where O. Henry used to write his stories.

  Then Jan, a painter born in Bradford to an English mother and a Polish father, educated in Cardiff, hurtles by on her bicycle. She has a gallery, Sotto Muro, in the old part of town, and she waves to him, Hi, Andreas! Back again? Andreas Ban met Jan Ejsymontt at radiation therapy, and after they had been bombarded with invisible Mevatron and Oncor rays, they would go for a white wine and talk about trains and cats. Later, that late summer of 2008, in the early morning hours, Andreas Ban and Jan Eysymontt would meet on the empty beach under the lighthouse and fling their scarred, radiated torsos into the sea to cool them. That year Jan made a picture in which a red ray cuts through the breast that had been operated on and visitors asked What’s that?

  A year later, Jan opened an exhibition entitled That Day, which was also called One of 9, an exhibition with new paintings and nine plaster torsos of mutilated women who had been operated on for carcinoma of the breast. The exhibition also contained fishermen’s nets, stones from the sea, pebbles rimmed with tar, driftwood, there were music and flowers, red wine and Parmesan cheese, there were those who had been slashed and irradiated and those who had yet to be.

  Andreas Ban often says, When I die, play “Let the Sunshine In,” sing as you carry me to the water and make sure it is a bright day. I want my funeral to be like Mrs. Batalita’s.

  Mrs. Batalita ran a shop selling provisions in the old part of Rovinj, in ulica Trevisol. She died in 1906, at the age of eighty. In her will she stipulated that on the day of her burial she wanted ulica Trevisol to be a cheerful street with music, and sweets to be handed out to the children. So the day of Mrs. Batalita’s funeral was transformed into a festival about which people talk to this day. That is what he wants, a cheerful farewell.

  Then someone on the terrace of La Viecia Batana says, I have to climb up to the fifth floor, and someone else says, They gets (I gets, you gets, he gets) a heart attack from her voice, and a third says, Then night falled, once again Andreas Ban is upset by the linguistic monstrosities of Croatian speakers. Then a woman says, You didn’t ask him nothing “by the way”? at which Andreas is overcome by intolerance, so he turns and says, Oh, you speak English,“by the way”?

  And that heavily made-up la-di-da says, Cut the crap, old man.

  And he remembers the numerous diminutives that some people scatter all over the place, that drive Andreas Ban to distraction, and he becomes even more irritated, so when Victor finally arrives Andreas asks him, What kind of country is this, a sycophantic Croatia, who are these Croatlets (a diminutive they do not use), when to them everything is so tiny and feeble, colorful and sugary?

  The latest is Serbling, says Victor. I’ve brought you belladonna.

  Belladonna, also known as deadly nightshade, devil’s berries, death cherries, beautiful death, devil’s herb, which sound terrifying and threatening. Belladonna also carries a tamer name, dog’s cherry, and an almost magical one, fairy plant.

  Belladonna is a bushy plant that grows up to two meters high and contains atropine, still used today to dilate the pupils, while in the Renaissance women would drop the atropine into their eyes to make them shine. And so those idle Renaissance ladies, squeezed into their corsets, in their silk, brocade, velvet and cotton dresses walk around with dilated pupils, disoriented, half-blind, winking without knowing at whom and smiling foolishly into space. Their eyes appear dark and deep, but are in fact empty and colorless. They were beautiful women, le belle donne, blinded fools.

  Up until the First World War, in Europe most belladonna was cultivated in Croatia, in Slavonia and southern Hungary. Annual production was between sixty and one hundred tonnes of dried leaves and 150 to two hundred tonnes of dried roots.

  Belladonna conceals its poison in beautiful mauve-black berries, and in its leaves and roots. The berries are full of dark inky juice, bittersweet, the size of cherries, and are as refreshing as a vitamin drink, so they tempt passersby: pick me, pick me and fly away to the land of dreams. Those poisonous berries nestle comfortably in little green, five-pointed cups and sway there quietly in the summer and autumn breeze. If consumed, just a few berries can kill a child, while an adult requires twenty to slip away, to set out for fantastical landscapes, because belladonna has a powerful hallucinogenic effect. In Istria, belladonna grows on shady slopes where the soil is moist. The plants bloom from June to August, while their fruits ripen from July to September.

  Here you are, says Victor to Andreas Ban on the terrace of La Viecia Batana, without asking questions. Here are the leaves and the roots and about a hundred fresh berries.

  It is cold. The apartment smells of darkness and damp. Andreas Ban switches on all the heaters and all the lamps. He climbs up to look at the electricity meter, it is spinning vertiginously. Andreas Ban smiles. He pours himself a grappa with rue and sets off limping down the hallway, swinging Victor’s plastic bag. He waits for the warmth to pour over the parquet and lick at the walls. An hour passes. Andreas Ban settles into his gray armchair, takes the dried belladonna leaves out of Victor’s bag, crumbles them and fills his pipe. The pipe was handmade by the renowned Emil Chonowitsch in the 1970s, it has the trademark chonowitsch–denmark, handskaaren. Andreas Ban was given the pipe in 1975 by the psychiatrist Erick Aho of Geneva, when Andreas Ban was there on a one-year training course in clinical depression, anxiety and phobia. Andreas Ban does not normally smoke a pipe. Back then, Erick Aho was packing up his life. His wife had walked out, taking their two daughters with her and selling their furniture. Erick Aho was left in an empty house with five or six camping chairs, a low plastic folding table and four blow-up mattresses. It was at that table that the psychiatrist Erick Aho sketched out his battered past for the psychologist Andreas Ban. Their backs were guarded by tall white bookshelves with no books. In a corner lay children’s toys, some blocks, dolls and soft toy animals with no limbs. Through the dirty windows a garden with a swing could be seen. The lake was not visible. I have a great collection of pipes that I no longer need, said the psychiatrist Aho. Here’s one for you, it’s elegant and sits nicely in the hand. That is how Andreas Ban came by a pipe. Now he puffs at it.

  Mild dizziness.

  Tachycardia.

  His pulse quickens.

  His face burns.

  Andreas Ban goes to the kitchen, his gait — stable.

  Andreas Ban shakes half of Victor’s belladonna berries, some fifty of them, into a yellow porcelain Chinese dish as fine as tissue paper, almost transparent. Big blueberries, he says. He sprinkles sugar over the berries and goes back to his armchair.

  Belladonna soothes asthma attacks.

  Belladonna is dangerous for people with glaucoma.

  Belladonna is a trap for Andreas Ban.

  Andreas Ban eats the sweetened belladonna
berries. Slowly, one by one, six of them.

  His lips become dry.

  His vision clouds.

  The pain in his back eases.

  One berry.

  In the distance someone whispers. Who is whispering? The voice is familiar but distorted. Andreas Ban never mistakes voices, Andreas Ban recognizes voices perfectly, he does not need faces. The voice comes closer, slips under the door and rises, stands upright and sways. Why is it swinging? It is a voice in lines, a voice resembling a prisoner, except that its stripes are red-black with little green dots in between. I am a musical voice, says the voice. Andreas Ban recognizes the voice of Strauss.

  His mouth is full of saliva.

  Perspiration.

  Vertigo.

  Andreas Ban rocks backward and forward in his armchair.

  Two berries.

  Pain in his eyes. Pulsing in his eye sockets. His eyes sting. The light sends arrows like the prickles of little albino hedgehogs into their whites. His lids flutter. They will not close.

  Someone switches on the radio. Stalin is speaking. Stalin’s face grows in Andreas Ban’s room, swells like a balloon, hovers. Through the closed windows enter gigantic crabs. We’re Stalin’s crabs, they say, we’re the Red Army of Stalin’s crabs, red royal crabs. We come from Norway, they say, and we are going to Gibraltar. There are ten million of us, we are indestructible. The crabs cover the room, crawling, each weighs at least five pounds, the span of their pincers is more than three feet. One clambers onto Andreas Ban’s chest. Andreas Ban gets up with difficulty. I’ll nip off your nose, says the crab on his chest, I’ll gouge out your eyes, I’ll break your hips. The other crabs are devouring the room. What was left of the room. They devour the empty shelves, the chest of drawers, the crystal mirror in its gilt frame, they devour Andreas’s rocking chair, the one made of black bamboo.

  Five berries.

  Piercing pain in his ears. His parotid glands pulsate, swell. An unbearable din in his head.

  The tip of his nose tickles. His nose is red and swollen, blood drips from it.

  The smell of a forest, the smell of rotten fruit, the smell of a corpse, the smell of freshly baked bread.

  Andreas Ban would like to say something, words will not come out. They come in waves, from his stomach, a whole ball of hairy words rolls in Andreas Ban’s mouth as though he is about to vomit but they just fall onto his tongue and sink.

  Four berries.

  The radio comes on suddenly. Out of it leaps a Chinese circus with two monkeys and a little curly-haired dog. The Chinese have pigtails and they sing women’s opera arias. Andreas Ban cannot decipher them, a great din.

  Pain in his teeth. His gums itch, bleed. His teeth chatter.

  His stomach clenches. Nausea.

  Small tortoises clamber up toward Andreas Ban’s knees, then the twenty small tortoises line up along Andreas Ban’s thighs and settle there. The twenty small bald tortoises raise their heads at the same time and stare at Andreas Ban. All the small tortoises’ faces are Elvira’s face, twenty little Elviras smile at Andreas Ban.

  Leo hangs from the ceiling. I dreamed of an army and acrobats, says Leo. Andreas Ban stretches his arms out to him, tries to touch him, but Leo is transparent. I am air, says Leo. I perform virtuoso saltos. Here’s a bit of Kafka, he says and from the ceiling starts hitting Andreas Ban with fat black worms. That’s not Kafka, Andreas Ban wants to say, but he cannot.

  His tongue is growing. It is like a gigantic strawberry.

  Pain in his spine.

  Pain in his stomach. He cannot cough.

  Pain in his rectum.

  Six berries.

  A window pane shatters, a miniature bronze Glenn Gould falls at Andreas Ban’s feet from the sky, he takes a white piano and his piano stool out of his back pocket, and starts playing Brahms in yellow gloves. You’ve warmed the room up brilliantly, he says, I like it like this. That lasts a while.

  Then a flood. Andreas’s living room is transformed into a lake. The lake fills, grows, on the surface of the lake float heads from Andreas’s albums. They bob around. Some heads have open eyes and they blink, others just look, some have no eyes at all. No one smiles. There are young faces and some very old faces.

  Three berries.

  Andreas Ban has shat himself. A thin green stool spreads over his behind, slips down to his knees. Andreas wets his pants. Worms wriggle in his penis.

  On the floor lies an enormous treble clef, splattered with muddy earth. The tremble clef stands up and twists, in spasms. It dances. My name is Tranquility, it says. I was exhumed in Transylvania. Three times.

  A shaggy white dog lifts its leg and pees against the wall of Andreas’s room. The wall cracks, opens, and out of the wall come Andreas’s father and Andreas’s mother. Put on a waltz, they say. No music. Andreas’s parents spin in silence, then they stop on a chocolate cake, he is wearing a white tuxedo and she a crimson evening gown. The white dog is sleeping on the rug that Glenn Gould has neglected to take away. Shall I make you a kilt? Andreas’s mother asks him, Scottish, she says. Andreas falls onto his knees and eats the dog’s food out of the silver dog bowl.

  Four berries.

  His testicles are hard. Swollen.

  His breathing is uneven, spasmodic, rapid. A rasping cough causes pain in his left hip. Andreas Ban spits out a blood clot.

  Palpitations. His heart drums in his head. His heart swells uncontrollably.

  A hearse carries a coffin to an open grave. The road is rutted and the coffin jolts at an indecorously crooked angle. A yellow brocade cover with gold tassels pokes out of the coffin. The cemetery has hillocks overgrown with mauve grass. Through the cemetery float boats full of shoes. A blackbird lands on Andreas’s shoulder. Those are the shoes of the citizens of Sarajevo, the blackbird whispers. Out of the shoes sprout sunflowers.

  Three berries.

  His knuckles are shiny, streaked with red lines, they rise like dough.

  Jerking of his arms and legs.

  His neck stiffens.

  One berry.

  Waterfalls gush down the windows. Out of the floor rises snow, it winds like a stalk and moves toward Andreas. It wraps around him, he is tied in snow chains, he cannot breathe.

  His body temperature rises. Thirty-nine degrees.

  I am an immortal unicorn, I am looking for my lost brothers who are lying at the bottom of the sea, says a blue animal speckled with little gold stars. Andreas Ban removes the gold stars, one by one, from the blue unicorn, and sticks them over himself. He is all golden and starlike.

  Three berries.

  His fingers are stiff. They tremble.

  Shaking. Convulsions. His carotid glands pulsate. Madness in his eyes. His eyes are sightless.

  Andreas Ban sways backward and forward like a paranoid schizophrenic. He waves, catches a ball, swivels his fingers, picks through wheat.

  One more berry.

  A young magician swings on a trapeze. Out of his hat fall ostrich eggs out of which leap: a football team of naked dwarf Hitlers, all the players lack their left testicle. Tiny black angels land on them singing:

  Hitler had but one left ball,

  Mussolini had none at all,

  Stalin was three-ballin’,

  That’s the dictators’ rise and fall!

  The door opens, Arnold Schoenberg comes in. He is singing too:

  Behind Schoenberg comes Steve Reich on tiptoe, Listen to my trains, he says. The trains sing, they thunder and sing, they tell stories, the space fills with journeys, tracks spread out and join, they have nowhere to disappear to, in them lies history. Bosch arrives with a basketful of Lilliputians under his arm. Bosch scatters the Lilliputians through the room as though they were marbles, the Lilliputians roll around making faces, they jump all over Andreas Ban, slip into his trousers, into his pockets, his socks, unde
r his eyelids, they slide down his back and snatch his berries. The music stops. The trains stop. Andreas Ban defends himself from the Lilliputians’ attack, he yells, he screams, but produces no sound. A threatening dark silence reigns.

  Then he loses consciousness.

  Around Andreas Ban dance Parca moths. Andreas Ban lies on the floor, soiled, wet and blind. The room is in darkness.

  Three days have passed. Clotho and Lachesis wave their wings and say, Our work is done, bye-bye. Atropos lands on Andreas Ban’s heart, out of his bosom he takes a pair of scissors, hugs them, raises them up high and says, This should be the end.

  Andreas Ban stirs. He slithers on his belly to the toilet. He pushes his finger into his mouth. He vomits. He drags himself to the kitchen, half fills a glass with dishwashing soap, dilutes it with water and drinks it. He vomits. He drinks a glass of diluted vinegar, vomits. He crawls to his medicine cabinet, dragging after him trails of vomit and green shit, he is wet and blind. Among his medicine he feels for his carbo medicinalis tablets, crushes ten of them with his teeth and swallows them. His throat is full of dust and tight.

  Then he calls an ambulance.

  For a week I’ve been trying to reach Andreas. He doesn’t answer.

  I send him text messages. Nothing.

  He’s not on Skype.

  I telephone Andreas’s sister, our Bubi, in Rovinj, she says, We met about ten days ago. He came for lunch and he hugged me. That was unusual, says Bubi.