Best European Fiction 2014

by Drago Jancar

  She rose, put her hands on his gray head, and pressed it to her bosom: “All right, darling, all right, now be a good boy.” He fell into a grateful silence. He was happy now, he was a good boy, and the day before, the playschool teacher had praised him before the other kids for article 25 of the Code, paragraph 9, item 3b: In an emergency, children of preschool age shall receive a double portion of positive emotions from either of their parents.

  Later, they lay in bed. He was fondling her gray head, which rested against his shoulder, as she whispered that he shouldn’t take it to heart, the girls would come back: Article 6, paragraph 10, item 4 obliged everyone to visit his or her retired parents no less than five times a year, and their retirement age was near, five months to wait for him and three for her. They’d manage. She was rated as a good worker, and her office had recently awarded her two privilege coupons for extraordinary psychological stimulation, not at some shabby district Psychotron but at the Central House for Consumer Service Workers, where they would get the highest-degree stimulation possible by attending the execution of a psycho-energy rapist.

  His mind dissolving in the soft music of her voice, he nodded and thought that everything would be okay.

  SECOND FEAST

  “I want you to deflower me,” she said, but he had no idea how to go about deflowering a woman who already had a son of fourteen. So he stayed silent and still.

  She lowered her blue eyes, like a Madonna by some anonymous medieval painter.

  “Darling,” she whispered, blushing.

  He looked at her with a mixture of admiration and hatred. What she was doing was downright criminal.

  “Have a mercy on me, sir! Do not deprive a poor girl of her only treasure! You will break my dear mother’s heart!” Provocative notes sounded in her little voice.

  He felt like an idiot. A noise from the kitchen rescued him.

  “The kettle’s boiling!” he cried as he beat a hasty retreat.

  When he came back to offer her tea, she was sitting in an outrageous position, right leg resting on her bared left shoulder, her miniskirt revealing pink lace panties.

  “Gimme a cigarette,” she said in a hoarse voice. “And a glass of porter.”

  Again, a wave of admiration and hatred swept over him.

  “No? You cheap bastard!” She flapped hands at him dismissively, her dark eyes turning green. Her big predatory mouth compressed into a small and sensual one, which then blew five smoke rings at once, and said coquettishly, “How tedious you are! You make me want to sleep with you.”

  He pretended to take her literally, and started making the bed.

  “What’s this, sir? Shame on you! Abuse of office, that’s what it is,” she said, now austere and refined, in an ankle-length black skirt and immaculate white blouse.

  He was losing his temper. This was a criminal offense she was involving him in, after all. This latest “sir” was the last straw.

  “Don’t you sir me!” he bellowed. “I’ve got a name!”

  “I’m sorry,” she warbled as she reassumed her own appearance and sprang up to nestle on the chandelier. “So you don’t want to deflower me,” she sighed as she swung to and fro.

  “Stop making so much noise,” he implored. “The people next door will squeal on us.”

  The chandelier was swinging violently.

  “So you don’t like me?” she said from up there.

  His intuition told him that this time he was hearing her real voice. He was a gentleman after all, and he didn’t want to be rude to the woman he was going to sleep with.

  “The very idea!” he protested.

  “Even a little bit?” she went on, still swinging.

  “Little bit of what?”

  “You don’t like me even a little bit?”

  She was really rather sharp, all in all.

  “I like you psychologically,” he said, honestly.

  “And my body?”

  He’d never thought a chandelier could squeak so loudly!

  “You’re good company,” he said.

  “How about my looks?”

  “You’re a very interesting person.”

  “But as a woman?”

  “Get down, please, before the neighbors hear.”

  “What if they do? They’ll never understand, they’ve never swung on a chandelier, I bet. They’ll think we’re having a fight. Morons, all of them. Plus, there’s no law against it!”

  “Against this? No, you’re right.” He gave her a meaningful glance.

  “Listen,” she whispered, landing on the sofa softly. “If you like, I can be a big, heavily made-up blonde. Only, I don’t know what sort of clothes they wear. You never tell me what you’d like me to wear.”

  He couldn’t believe his ears! Whatever she’d been doing up to this moment was already grave offence, but this new idea of hers was the worst crime you could think of. He remembered both of the appropriate articles in the Code. The first began: “Deliberate change of appearance through psychic effort within the limits of appearance potentially corresponding to the psychological type of the offender . . .” etc., etc.—five years’ hard labor. The other one was about “appearance potentially contradicting the psychological type of the offender . . .” He couldn’t bear to think of the consequences! But then, the punishment fit the crime. The first offence threatened mere social micro-destabilization. The second, according to the Experts, could undermine the System itself, should it be allowed to become common.

  He wasn’t so naïve as to believe the Experts, and he wasn’t really so cowardly as to be afraid of the comparatively mild punishment he would receive as her accomplice, but he still had enough common sense to disapprove of her constant pranks. After all, he wished her well, she really was good company and an interesting person, and very good in bed. As a gentleman, he didn’t want the woman he occasionally slept with to run such risks. And for no good reason.

  “What’s the point?” he asked.

  “You said you liked blondes.”

  Still, he didn’t understand.

  “Large blondes with lots of make-up,” she went on.

  “But the Code—” and he stopped short. He had never seen her looking at him like this before. Again, he intuited that this was her real look, her very own.

  “I love you,” she said softly, and started growing larger.

  He wanted to shout, “Don’t!” He was about to say that big blondes weren’t his type at all, and they’d never had any interest in him either. Too late. Her dark curls were turning into straight straw-colored tresses. Her face was contorting. It was so unlike her previous transformations, careless and playful, that he buried his face in his palms in terror. Agonizingly, she was becoming someone who would never love him.

  Many fists were banging on the front door, and many voices shouting on the landing. The man from upstairs was the loudest: “I was the first to catch the scent, it deviated half a degree from the norm! I’ve a good nose for this sort of thing.”

  When the Psychological Security officers were leading them out of the apartment, the man slowed down and did something he’d never done before. He put his hand around her shoulders tenderly, and hugged her.

  THIRD FEAST

  “Haaa! A-ha-ha-ha-ha!”

  They were laughing till it hurt.

  “Ooooh!” they roared.

  “That was a nice one!”

  She looked in consternation at the family writhing with laughter on the huge divan, then asked in a faltering voice:

  “Are you crazy, or what?”

  “Oooh!” they roared in a new fit of laughter. Her grandson was kicking his tennis-shoed legs high in the air, lost in ecstasy.

  “Silly boy,” she said.

  The child slid from the divan and beat his feet against the floor issuing short blasts of laughter to the family’s approval.

  “Get off the floor or you’ll have to wash your trousers yourself,” she said.

  Another guffaw and they all looked back a
t the television.

  “What did I say that was so funny?” she wondered a minute later.

  “Shut up,” they said in chorus.

  “Why do you always have to make such a fool of me?”

  “Stop it. You’ll miss this scene too, with all your talking, and then you’ll be begging us to tell who killed whom.”

  “So he’s already done her in?”

  “He who?” Six pairs of mocking eyes stared back at her.

  “The bearded guy. The musician.”

  “Aaah! I’ll be damned! She means the detective!” her grandson bellowed.

  “I don’t know what on earth goes on inside that head of yours,” her daughter winced. “What on earth made you think he was a musician? And there’s been no murder as yet. Just sit quietly and watch if you want to know what’s going on. It’s impossible to watch thrillers with you around!”

  “Tea!” said her grandson.

  “Oh yes, how about our tea?” asked her husband.

  She was silent.

  “A cup of tea would be just what the doctor ordered,” said her daughter.

  “Make it yourselves,” she said.

  “What?” they all cried.

  “Make it yourselves if you want tea.”

  “Who, us?”

  “Yes. All of you.”

  They sat in silence for a while, thinking it over.

  “Hmm, a well-grounded proposal,” her grandson brought out at last.

  “Appears so at first sight. But when you give it some thought . . .” her daughter joined in.

  “When you give it some thought, it’s very thin indeed,” the father summed up.

  It would be best not to serve them any tea. But then, she would have no other excuse for talking to them till supper. She shuffled to the kitchen.

  Stifled sobs reached the sitting room.

  “Crying,” said the daughter.

  “Serves her right. After all this is for her own good,” said the father, frowning.

  “Shall I check on her?” asked the daughter.

  “No!” said the father, an angry vertical fold climbing his forehead. “If you do, you’ll just be giving her another chance to over-communicate.”

  “Dad, are you really so sure the Experts were right?”

  “They’re always right. Don’t you see she’s over-communicative?”

  “She gave me the fifth degree yesterday about my astronomy lessons—as if she could tell an asteroid from a telescope!” her grandson complained.

  “Asked me if I was going to remarry,” her daughter giggled.

  “Asked me how I was doing with the new boss,” her husband whispered. “And that’s not all. The day before yesterday, our ground-floor neighbor said she’d been inquiring after his wife’s health and how his grandchildren were doing at school. See how far she’s gone! I did my best to explain our predicament. He was understanding, though—sympathetic.”

  “The other day, she . . .” her daughter started.

  “But now she’s doing something that by all rights is your responsibility,” the father cut in sharply. “The Experts told us to do something about her communicability, but they never said she was supposed to make your tea.”

  “What about yours?” the daughter asked nastily.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Did the Experts say anything about her making your tea?”

  “Stop quarreling, now. Please.”

  They all jumped. She was standing in the doorway, smiling, holding the tea tray. Such amazing reserves of meekness in this old woman! They smiled back, but became serious just in time, as decent people should.

  “Thanks,” they all said. Each took a cup and turned back to the television.

  “Is it good?”

  “As usual,” they all said in chorus.

  “But recipe number two might still be better, no?” she asked.

  “Sure,” they said, in chorus.

  She sighed, and made another try.

  “How many classes do you have tomorrow?” she asked her grandson.

  “Bang!” the grandson shouted.

  “What?” she gasped.

  “Now that was a great punch! Straight from the shoulder!”

  She looked at the screen, then at her husband and daughter.

  She knew better than to look at her grandson. The boy was so pretty, with his flushed cheeks, bright eyes, and disheveled locks! She knew her hand would reach out against her will and stroke him on the head. It was Monday, and her grandson hated to be fondled out of weekly schedule.

  FOURTH FEAST

  They order him to take off THE THING. He pretends to misunderstand and hastily unlaces his shoes. “Don’t act like an idiot,” they shout. And what does he think he’s doing undoing his necktie? He knows they mean something else entirely. And what is he unzipping his trousers for? They don’t care what he has in them. Maybe that woman might be interested. They giggle. Yes, that one. She might very well be interested. And don’t you pretend to be astonished. You know who we mean. We know all about her, and here’s material evidence. They show him a red pomegranate with cracked skin. The sight of it gives him a splitting headache. They click their tongues sympathetically and say that to stop it he ought to take off THE THING. After he does, he’ll never have another headache again. If he isn’t brave enough to do it himself, they can help him. They are approaching. He makes a desperate attempt to disappear. The tension makes his ears ring. It grows into a roar, and with a sigh of relief, he emerges in another dream. He still has a headache and, to stop it, he must put his head into his mother’s lap. Not the mother who celebrated her sixtieth birthday the other day, but the woman she was thirty years ago, when he was a child. He strains desperately to recollect how she looked then . . . and wakes up from the effort.

  His headache is still with him, and he doesn’t realize at once that this is no longer a dream. Then, he becomes aware that he’s awake. Next, he’s not so sure again. Then the final realization comes and with it panic. The men in his dream must have been right. Otherwise, why did they show him the pomegranate? Come on! He breaks into a triumphant laugh. That pomegranate was painted! What unbelievable idiots. He chuckles. They show him a real pomegranate instead of a picture and call it material evidence! The asses! They’d do better on a variety show than working for the Psychological Security Service. What did the goddamn fruit have to do with it anyway? Did they have a written complaint from the victim? Impossible. She never for a moment thought she’d been assaulted. On the contrary, she’d asked for it! He laughs and laughs . . . and wakes himself up with the noise.

  He switches on his bedside lamp, gets up, takes the Code from the shelf, and leafs through it—a stupid thing to do, he knows. Without a complaint from her, they can’t arrest him. And that’s out of the question. She won’t file a complaint because she wanted him to do what he did! As to the Code, well, he’s leafing through it out of sheer curiosity.

  The stool was gray and moldy, with sprawling crooked legs. It was obscene the way this ancient piece of furniture had positioned its legs. Even more obscene was the pomegranate lying on the stool and grinning with all its shiny crimson seeds through the cracks in its skin.

  The silence was getting awkward, so he asked the ginger-haired woman artist if the picture had a title.

  “Self-Portrait.”

  “Self-Portrait?”

  She came up to the sofa on which he was sitting and, narrowing her beady blue eyes to slits, asked what was so strange about that.

  “Oh, it’s all right,” he said. He couldn’t admit to her that he was embarrassed by the look of that obscenely decrepit stool and that insolently grinning fruit. A minute later, he saw that the pomegranate had nothing to be so cheerful about: The stool was actually devouring it! There it was, a barely discernible crack across the seat, sucking in its juice. But for the moment, he hadn’t noticed it yet. In the meantime, all he saw was the fruit smiling with all its seeds, and the slit-eyed ginger-haired woman wa
iting for his reply.

  “That’s all right,” he said again.

  She moved aside and asked in an unexpectedly timid voice:

  “Want to see more?”

  “Yes, please.”

  Another canvas appeared on the paint-stained table. She lowered her eyes. His nerves were on edge thanks to her sudden transition from arrogance to timidity, even submission. He looked away from her dirty skirt, the hem of which needed a stitch or two, and saw the new picture.

  It was an iron, not the streamlined electrical appliance everybody uses now, but one of those heavy cast-iron things he remembered from childhood. It stood in the center of a snow-covered field, and huge mosquitoes with fat snouts and protruding yellow eyes were perched on its handle and sides.

  “Another self-portrait?” he asked jocularly.

  “No, I call it Noah’s Ark.”

  Her voice was again frosty, like the field in her picture. It was her only canvas featuring the color white, and even this was not quite white, given the touch of gray in it. Gray must have been the favorite color of this woman in her stained skirt and with that sparse, carroty bun on her nape! Gray filled all her pictures. Her work always seemed to be covered in dust, through which shone an occasional red or yellow spot.

  “Solitude,” she said, and he felt a pang of compassion.

  “Solitude,” she repeated and held up the next picture at a different angle.

  It was an iron bedstead with a gray sheet on it. On this sheet, writhing in agony or passion was a woman’s washed-out nightshirt, with her flabby breasts and stomach, as well as her knees, spread wide, all barely discernible inside the threadbare garment. Its short sleeves were stretched upward to either embrace or fend off an invisible presence.

  “Magnificent!” he said with a pitying look. She threw him a glance, sharp as a needle—prick—or was he mistaken? He must be. The next moment, she was focused on her little fingers, which were engaged in a strange dance, now intertwined in a passionate clasp, now spread apart in helpless wonder.

  “Thank you,” she hissed.

  Sure, he was mistaken.

  He turned another page, and found what he was looking for. Article 59: Psycho-energy Rape. “It is a criminal offence to look one’s partner in the eyes without his/her consent during intercourse.” This was hardly applicable to him, though of course he did look her in the eyes, sometimes—just without intercourse. Catch him sleeping with that scarecrow! The next item, which banned talking with one’s partner without his/her consent during intercourse, was no business of his either. So the men from his first dream had no reason to demand that he take off THE THING. The thought made him shiver. He thrust his hand under his shirt and felt his chest—not to check if THE THING was where it should be: He knew it would be there, but it was still reassuring to feel it, and he heaved a sigh of relief. Neurotic anxiety, that’s all it was! It was an open question who had raped whom, anyway. True, he’d told her about his childhood. But what of it? Did the Code say a word about childhood reminiscences? But, wait a minute. Why the hell had he mentioned his complex about being short? There it was, item 7a: “It is a criminal offence to describe one’s psychological complexes and thus compel one’s interlocutor to show compassion.” But then, he spoke so matter-of-factly. It couldn’t have taken him more than half a minute to say it out. A minute and a half, at most. And, besides, she was hardly innocent on that score herself. Didn’t she try to move him to compassion when she babbled about her fear of insects, especially roaches? He listened quietly to all the nauseating details of her childhood adventure, when her big brother dropped a roach inside her collar, and it ran up and down her spine, tickling her. She got it out, at last, but only when it had been squeezed to death. Since that day, the sight of insects was associated with death in her mind. Well, he did complain about his morning heartburn to her. But so what if he did? What was his heartburn against her detailed account of her school years, how her classmates tormented her because she refused to go lice-hunting with them? She was afraid to tell the headmistress, because her class was exemplary-experimental and trusted with self-regulation. So, really, who was the victim in their little encounter? It was him! Didn’t his heart ache with pity as she rounded off her story? She turned pink with pleasure as she saw tears in his eyes. Yes, she blushed, he could swear she was glowing with masochistic pleasure! She even became a bit pretty, believe it or not. And having become pretty, she made him complain of feeling lonely. What do you mean, “made him”? Well, she kind of hinted he was free to complain. How did she hint? With a look. So there was no rape. And how many minutes did he complain of his loneliness, once he gave in? Or hours, rather? Look, let’s get it down in black and white: He spent several hours complaining to her of his loneliness, making her compassionate. And don’t try to convince us she wanted it. She might have liked it for the first five minutes—ten, at most. But to stand it for hours on end! Are you kidding? Here’s the Experts’ commentary on the law: “Compassionate attention to any person’s confession shall be regarded as voluntary for no longer than ten minutes. Violation of this limit by the confessant, even in cases where the listener offers no clear resistance, shall be qualified as psycho-energy rape and punishable by the Supreme Measure.” You know what that is, right? And stop groping around inside your T-shirt all the time! You’re not a child, and you know no one will take off your protective screen here. Never seen a criminal executed? They do it at the Central Psychotron, with lots of people watching. The condemned is placed in the center of the stage, and his screen is removed during a solemn ceremony, after which he’s left eye-to-eye with the audience, exposed. No one can say how soon the audience will use up his psychic energy. It all depends. He may be lucky and die instantaneously. Hey, stop that screaming. You’re not at the Psychotron yet. You’re at home! What’s going on? Why are they here again? He must be dreaming. He’d fallen asleep again without noticing it. All right, they believe he’s telling the truth when he claims he’s wide awake and that they can’t be a dream. Oh, don’t be so nervous. If you’re awake, you can’t be dreaming them. Fine, they’re not here, and they have no statement from his victim. And she’s no victim, for that matter. All’s well. It’s okay. Okay, we said.