Best European Fiction 2014
Page 21
FIFTH FEAST
OR
THE ADVENTURE
“Rat-a-tat-a-rat-a-tat,” the wheels beat on the rails in the dark tunnel.
“Rush-shur-rush,” newspapers rustled in the passengers’ hands.
“Hero Square. Next stop, Hero Square,” the silvery voice sang over the train PA.
He leaned back on his velvet seat and smiled happily. The boyish face reflected in the opposite window—his own—smiled back in silence. He winked at it, and the face winked back. He winked again. The prim gentleman sitting opposite thought the wink was addressed to him, took a paper out of his briefcase, and angrily unfolded it like a screen. The boyish face over this man’s left shoulder disappeared. The winker could lean left to see his reflection over the gentleman’s right shoulder, but he didn’t do so, lest he could be misunderstood.
The wheels were beating their merry tattoo.
He listened to them and sighed as he tried to recover his joy, but all in vain. Something had clicked up there in the celestial spheres that defied his understanding, and he could no longer tune his joy to the vigorous wheel beat and drew on its vigor. It was a feeble little joy now, ready to die at any moment.
The papers rustled in the passengers’ hands, hiding their faces.
His joy was waning, so he tried to feed it with the announcer’s voice, which merrily sang that they were approaching Hero Square. Ageless and sexless, it was an ideal voice synthesized out of thousands of individual voices, a meta-voice that defied all emotional contact. He had to refer to his pocket reference book. He thrust his hand into the back pocket of his blue jeans, took out the little book in its brightly colored binding, and opened it. The title page had large, beautiful lettering: A GUIDE TO EMOTIONS. He found the chapter on joy and concentrated on the subheadings: The Impact of Joy on Digestion, Joys Desirable and Undesirable, Unexpected Joy: Regulation Of, Unmotivated Joy: Positive and Negative Results Of. But none of this had to do with his own particular joy. He turned some more pages. Ah, there it was! Independent Joy Intensification. Now, how did it go? “In case you need to intensify your joy, and Method Three is not available (e.g., in the absence of a person willing and able to collaborate on said method), you ought to resort to Method Five, self-service. Establish contact with your reflection in the mirror . . .”
He shut the book. Nothing new there! He’d like to see the author try to establish contact with his reflection when there was a newspaper between him and the nearest reflective surface.
The gentleman opposite him folded his paper, and it disappeared back into his case. The train emerged from the dark into the floodlit Hero Square station.
“Next stop, Affluence Avenue,” the silvery voice rang, and the train was back in the dark tunnel.
The wheels’ rhythm got quicker. He smiled and contacted his reflection. Again, it was smiling back from the window, triumphant at its liberation from the void into which the gentleman’s huge newspaper had cast it. The book’s author was right after all: Half a minute after he established contact, his joy was twice as strong as before, and fell in with the wheels’ merry rat-a-tat. It grew and grew, and was four times greater by the time the train reached Human Rights station, and had trebled by the time it stopped at Founding Fathers.
At Festival Square, a little old lady entered. She gave him a sweet smile and sat opposite him. His reflection was gone, but not quite, because she was so tiny. An ear and part of a cheek were visible above her shoulder. And yet, not enough for joy contact. He went on smiling angrily, simply out of inertia. The woman’s wrinkled face smiled back not only with its thin pale lips but also with its merry blue eyes in their nests of crow’s-feet. She smoothed out her faded headscarf. His joy must at this point have grown large enough to withstand all external influence, as he found himself smiling from ear to ear against his will. The old lady’s smile grew even more endearing as he scrutinized her, trying to figure out what she reminded him of. It dawned on him at last: the joy thief from an old story he had read at school! The original joy thief. He wondered why he hadn’t seen it from the start. It wasn’t her shabby clothes—many passengers were poorly dressed—and not the absence of a newspaper in her hands—many weren’t reading. But then, everyone who wasn’t reading was contacting his or her reflection. Some smiled to intensify their joy, others frowned to work off their negative emotion with a bit of facial exercise, while this old woman was smiling directly at him, the only one in the car paying any attention to his or her fellow-travellers! Didn’t the old dear see her efforts were pointless now that psycho-protective screens were no longer a luxury item that only the well to do could afford, and everyone had one on him to fend off psycho-energy thieves? She must have had bats in her belfry. She looked lonely, looked like she’d stumbled out of an old movie. What an adventure he was having! Pity he couldn’t tell anyone about it at school. No one would believe him. The elderly no longer had any problems with communication. They received psycho-stimulation coupons once a month or even once a fortnight. But what if . . . ? The idea was so funny he couldn’t fight back a splutter. What if she was smiling for no reason at all? Her little face became radiant. The smile meant for him revealed pink toothless gums. Now he knew! He felt a pang of shame. Here it was, the only plausible explanation of the old lady’s behavior. She’d lost her stimulation coupons for the month, poor dear. He sat thinking for a long time—a whole minute—then resolutely thrust his hand under his jacket, felt the screen under his fluffy sweater, and switched it off. Now his brain was emanating fluids of joy, first in tiny drops, then in a trickle. All of a sudden, joy flooded from his entire being. Unable to withstand it, he laughed, and the other passengers looked out from under their newspaper screens in shock.
TRANSLATED FROM RUSSIAN BY NATHALIE ROY
[SLOVAKIA]
VLADIMÍR HAVRILLA
The Teacher and the Parchment
A young high-school teacher (31) falls in love with a dapper student boy (17) and, when they find themselves alone, when everyone else has left the classroom, they lunge at each other and kiss wildly. They also often end up in the basement, where they grope each other hungrily and partly disrobe. Over time, their affair begins to affect their minds, to the point where they actually hold hands for a moment while leaving school.
The boy suggests they slip away together for at least a week, that there’s no point hiding like this, and he found a cheap ticket to Tunisia. He’ll pay for their holiday so they’ll have a free week, a week to themselves.
But they’d been seen in the basement, from time to time, and word gets back to the boy’s father.
He immediately calls the teacher, demanding an explanation, insisting they meet at the Crimea restaurant, where he intends to give her a piece of his mind. And this happens. And the father, as dapper as his son, and in his forties, is initially quite severe at their table, but when the teacher tells him she likes jazz and often goes to the Jazz Café, he softens up a bit and makes a clean breast of his affection for the music of Gerry Mulligan. When the teacher invites him back to her studio flat in Petržalka, for a quick coffee, she tells him that she also plays tenor saxophone and will play something for him if he goes with her.
And again, this happens. In the morning they have another coffee together, this time she doesn’t play her sax, but turns on a Lester Young CD. She’s charmingly tousled, considerably confused, and says that only now does she know what it’s like to be in the arms of a real man.
They enjoy more than one jam session. Father proposes—he’s divorced, you see. She agrees.
On the day of the wedding, the teacher goes to visit the father’s house. The son greets her, looks at her sadly, and says Dad isn’t home, and that he actually did go ahead and book that trip to Tunisia for the teacher and himself, and that he doesn’t want anything more from life than to have her accompany him.
“My silly little thing,” the teacher exclaims and presses him to her bosom. The boy immediately covers her with kisses.
“Are you coming or not?”
The organ plays in the wedding hall. Today is May 24th. There are clusters of people milling around. We can’t help but notice the father milling too.
The pleasant voice of a stewardess announces that the plane is now cruising at ten thousand meters. The teacher and her high-school beau sit back in their seats and drink with two straws from one glass, probably champagne.
“I’ll miss a week of class. Will that be all right?” the student asks with concern.
“We’ll work on it together and you’ll catch up. I’ll be teaching you . . . day and night.”
“I don’t mind, so long as it’s in the moonlight . . .”
The teacher puts on headphones, adjusts the volume, and nods to the boy to do the same. They listen to Dizzy Gillespie’s “A Night in Tunisia.”
The hallway of an average hotel. Two figures stand in the doorway of room 6853, a seventeen-year-old boy and a young woman around thirty. The boy turns the key, opens the door, and they both enter the room. The woman immediately walks to the window, opens it wide, and takes a breath of fresh air. “Look darling, we have the view of the sea.”
The boy approaches her, grabs her by the shoulders, and covers her with a thousand kisses. He kisses her lips, eyelids, ears, neck, tears off her clothes, and rolls her onto the bed.
“Slow down, slow down, don’t be impatient,” the teacher murmurs, softly but resolutely pushing away the boy’s eager hands. She holds his head in both hands, holds him close and says, “First I have to tell you a story about me. You should know who you’re dealing with.” The boy keeps kissing her hair, chest, shoulder, and hands, but she begins to tell her story:
“You know, little one, it’s not so long ago that I was seventeen. I was what you’d call an ugly duckling. Very ordinary. And there were always these boys in front of our apartment block revving their motorcycles. One of them gave me a ride and I fell in love, like an idiot. You know how it goes. I wasn’t ready yet. But he kept demanding that we go all the way, and I was so crazy that I gave in. Maybe I should have held out a little longer, then he might have appreciated it more. Anyway, that’s behind me. So, what I’m saying is that I’ve had several nasty experiences, but I never knew any better than to give my all each and every time. I’ve been hurt pretty badly—I’m one big bruise, after all my adventures. If you want to heal me, darling, then by all means do it. If not, then leave now. It’s up to you, you fruitcake.”
Tired from the trip, the teacher is napping. The boy adjusts her blanket, kisses her forehead and tiptoes out to the hallway. He closes the door behind him and takes the elevator down to reception.
When the elevator door opens, he sees his father, sitting in a chair and sucking on a huge cigar.
“Dad, I’m glad you came. The teacher is really getting on my nerves. She gave me a sermon, even. I almost fell out of bed.”
“Son, there are some problems that can only be solved with a glass of whiskey. You’re underage, but nobody will ID us here and I can tell you need a little first aid. Waiter!” He snapped his fingers.
All this took place in the hotel lobby, near a bar built into a niche in the reception area.
The father pulled out two plane tickets. “Tomorrow we’ll look around town, check out the market, and leave in the evening.”
“I’m really looking forward to being back in Bratislava, at good old General Štefànik Airport and the 83 bus home,” the boy says.
The teacher wakes from her nap; someone’s knocking on the door. “Come in, I think it’s open,” she says in English.
The door opens slowly and a waiter comes in. He’s older, slim and quite elegant. He pushes a serving cart with refreshments ahead of him.
“Madam, I’m sorry to interrupt your sleep, but someone ordered salmon sandwiches and white Chateau d’Avignon.”
“Oh yes, my little boy is so attentive,” she says, first to herself and then aloud. “No matter, what’s done is done . . . how long have I slept, anyway?”
“Sleep is always beneficial, madam,” the waiter says vaguely, “Madam, please allow me a personal word here. I’ve been observing you ever since you arrived. I’ve taken a real interest in you, and, in fact, why should I prolong this agony—I love you. I’m particularly in love with your hair. It was I who came up with this refreshments idea. I ordered this food at my own expense. I joined the marines when I was young, made some money, gambled in casinos and was lucky—won a considerable amount. I bought a villa in the Caribbean on Abocada Island. But I was bored being there alone, so I began wandering, and at some point I came here.
“I’ve always liked big women, and since today’s fashions have made such proclivities almost impossible to indulge, I never settled down with anyone. But when I saw you, your curvy body, I couldn’t look away. Please don’t let me down!”
The teacher is surprised from the get-go, but sympathizes with the older man, moved by his sincerity, and says quite frankly, “Well, not all my body parts are chubby, but perhaps those might be improved, in time. Right now I don’t have much on, would you like to test me out?”
“If you don’t expect visitors.”
“Not in the next half hour, anyway.”
“I’ve often watched sumo wrestling on Eurosport—that is the ideal to which I hope my wife would aspire. Me, I’m way too thin. Perhaps that’s why I’ve always wanted a chubby woman. Would my thinness be a problem for you? If not, perhaps I would work at losing even more weight while you work on moving your beautiful hips—but really all your parts—in the opposite direction.”
“I like crazy ideas. When do we leave?”
“This week. And now—may I close the blinds?”