Coming

by Andrej Nikolaidis

  As they passed me, heading for the nuns, one of them pointed to the Jameson I was carrying: ‘That’s haram – you’ll burn in hell!’ he promised.

  ‘Cheers,’ I seconded.

  If any pub is open tonight, it’ll be Johnny’s, I reckoned. I got into the car. It started up straight away. Then the shape of a man emerged from the snow, approaching with mighty strides. It was Salvatore.

  ‘Get in,’ I told him.

  ‘How are you tonight?’ he asked politely.

  ‘Same as ever. When you look at it, it’s a day like any other, don’t you think?’

  ‘I was up at your place. When I didn’t find you, I told myself to go for a walk through town, thinking that perhaps I’d meet you. And there you go: I run smack bang into you. It’s a small world. Anyway, you know why I’m looking for you. I thought that by now you could perhaps tell me who killed my son, and why. My wife is waiting for me at home – it’s she who sent me to look for you. She said: “Go and ask him so at least we can wait in peace for whatever this night will bring.”’

  There was nothing for it, I had to improvise. Salvatore listened in silence as I explained what I’d learned: his son had been killed by a madman – an escapee from a mental hospital in Kotor:

  ‘The doctors and nurses left the hospital and a horde of lunatics is now free to roam the country. I pursued the killer for days. Tonight I finally caught up with him in the marsh. It was either him or me. I couldn’t get him to give himself up, so I had to shoot. He was swallowed up by the dark water. Now he’s lying there somewhere in the mud.’

  Salvatore buried his head in his hands and sobbed. ‘I knew it,’ he said after wiping away his tears. ‘What sane person would do that to a child?’

  ‘You can go home,’ I told him. ‘It’s over. It’s all over now. I’ve done what there was to be done. Go back and tell your wife that everything’s in its place again.’

  He shook my hand firmly and looked at me with tearful eyes full of gratitude. I watched him in the rear-view mirror running off through the blizzard to take the good news home.

  I arrived at Johnny’s just in time to witness a collective confession. My regular drinking mates were preoccupied with the looming Apocalypse, which they now took for granted. Alcohol was flowing in hectolitres and Johnny was handing out bottle after bottle from behind the bar without a break, obviously determined to have the pub drunk dry by the end of the evening. As they used to say in Partisan films: Not one grain of wheat should be left for the invaders! In this final hour, the drunken gang felt the need to let out its deepest secrets and worst sins. They demanded that Father Frano hear their confessions.

  ‘I can’t, guys: most of you aren’t Catholic, let alone christened,’ he said in his defence. This pragmatic country priest had come from Dalmatia thirty years ago and had had to learn quickly how to get on with the wily local flock which gathered in his church on Sundays. He knew that God had no need to listen to the garbage these drunkards would confess. ‘We’ll do it like this –,’ he proposed, ‘you’ll confide in one another because the most important thing is to be frank with your neighbour and with yourself. God is satisfied with that.’

  It really must be high time if even Catholic confessions have become like AA meetings, I thought.

  Božo was the first to open up his heart. There was silence while he spoke, apart from the sound of clinking glasses. He made a dramatic pause after every act of adultery he admitted, and Father Frano gave him an indulgent look to embolden him to continue. When Božo finished, his listeners were mildly disappointed: infidelity, drunkenness and domestic violence – all in all, Božo had lived an ordinary, mainstream life.

  Frowns crept over the men’s faces when Zoran began to tell his sins: ‘I’m a poof. Johnny will probably tell you himself when it’s his turn, but he’s one too: we’ve had something going for fifteen years. The wife and the kids don’t suspect anything, neither mine nor his. I can see in your eyes that you condemn me. I knew it’d be like this, and that’s why I never told you. Now you’re probably asking yourselves: How many times did the bugger look at my backside? I know you are – there’s no need to be ashamed. The answer is: not once. I want you to know that – you’ve always just been friends to me. Before you reject me, ask yourselves if I’ve ever betrayed you…Now that you know the truth, I just want to ask you one thing: please don’t turn your back on me.’

  An ambiguous request, to say the least! I’d always found him pretty unbearable: his macho pose, easy rider and cowboy boots – what a put-on! I could imagine him wearing red lace knickers under his leathers.

  Then it got even worse: Fahro admitted that he’d been sleeping with Božo’s wife for years. Even Father Frano seemed bewildered – he was obviously losing control of this little nightly collective confession. It was as if someone had opened Pandora’s box and now people, one after another, were saying things which in different circumstances would cause friendships to be broken off and blood to flow.

  When Johnny recounted having been raped by three young men at high school in Bar, Father Frano began to cry. Is there anything more unbearable than the moment when people open up their heart, as the expression goes? I’d rather watch open-heart surgery than be around at times like this when the toxic waste of human lives leaks out.

  In tears, Father Frano described the day he stopped believing in God: ‘Nothing spectacular happened that day, I just woke up in the morning and realised that I knew nothing about all the people I had advised on how to lead their lives. I didn’t understand the souls I had to give pastoral care to, nor did I respect them. I was just the guy that peddled God,’ he blubbered.

  ‘That morning I opened my eyes and my whole dismal life flashed before me, right up to its unavoidably wretched end. But I didn’t have the strength to throw off the cassock and put an end to the lies. Above all, I didn’t have the courage to appear so naked before my family. My vocation as a priest was a great source of pride for them, and leaving the priesthood would definitely be the ultimate disgrace. I thought: if I tell the truth I’ll hurt many, and if I keep lying I’ll only destroy myself,’ Frano said.

  Fuck this life! Is this ordeal ever going to end? I screamed to myself. I downed shot after shot of whisky, getting absolutely plastered in the hope of falling unconscious from inebriation and escaping this hell of cheap sincerity – that bastard born of despair from an illicit liaison with fear.

  Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Gogi kneel in front of Frano and lower his head into the priest’s lap.

  ‘I killed a man,’ he said, and an icy draught flowed through the room. ‘I’ve killed a man,’ he repeated and stood up, tears running down his face. ‘I’ve killed more than once,’ he shouted, drawing a revolver from his pocket and pointing it at his temple.

  I couldn’t stay a second longer. I felt sick from all the whisky I’d drunk and all the repulsive things I’d heard.

  ‘Stupid, bloody fools!’ I yelled and stormed out into the blizzard. Now everything’s fallen apart, I’ve just lost all my friends. As I was striding swiftly towards the car, I heard the shot. That was the seal on our doom.

  Chapter Eight

  in which we learn of an unhappy love affair and the deaths of loved ones, Hedvige reveals to Emmanuel her last and greatest secret, we hear of the cruel death of countless animals and are overwhelmed with powerless remorse

  from: emmanuel@gmail.com

  to: thebigsleep@yahoo.com

  Dr Schulz was particularly intrigued by my father being a detective. ‘How interesting, how very interesting,’ he muttered into his beard as he paced in circles, gnawing on his pipe and puffing at his vanilla-scented tobacco.

  ‘You see, the desire for an Apocalypse is a sure sign of the inability to cope with anxiety – the inevitable angst of waiting for the endgame which we hope will provide an outcome and an explanation. Not to mention the anxiety of waiting for an answer to the question: is there an outcome and an explanation at all? This anxiety grows a
s we get closer to an answer and as it becomes ever clearer that there is actually no answer. When we desire an Apocalypse, we’re instinctively reaching for the remote control so we can fast-forward through our own life history to the end, like we might do with a gripping detective film. It’s like we can no longer resist the urge to find out who committed the crime,’ Dr Schulz said.

  ‘God the Father, who brings the Apocalypse, does the same as the sleuth at the end of a well-crafted detective story. At the end, God assembles all those involved in the crime – and what is history but a crime story with humanity as its cast? He gathers everyone together, be they now living or dead, and explains the role of each character in turn: he discloses their hidden motives and intentions, exonerates the innocent, brandmarks the guilty, reveals the truth and clarifies the meaning of every seemingly senseless move by each of the actors. When a good sleuth and God are finished, no further interpretation is possible, there’s only applause,’ Dr Schulz exclaimed and clapped his hands loudly because he’d noticed that my thoughts had wandered off.

  When he was in a good mood or I’d done or said something to arouse his intellectual curiosity, which must have been simply irrepressible in his younger days, Dr Schulz would launch into a long monologue. Of all the days I’ve spent in this asylum – where I’m confined for my own good, they never forget to say – I best remember those when Dr Schulz held one of his inspired discourses.

  ‘Do you want to hear about the funny side of the end of the world?’ he asked me once, and, in his usual way, continued without waiting for my reply. I swallowed his words avidly as he spoke about the apocalyptic prophecy pronounced by the Montanists in the second century AD. The sect was founded in 156 AD by Montanus, a prophet who seems to have had the ability to speak in unintelligible languages. This phenomenon has virtually become part of pop culture today: we know it under the name ‘speaking in tongues’ and it’s an everyday practice in Pentecostal churches. It’s also common in mental institutions, where we call it schizophrenia. In any case, Jesus had scarcely gone, but Montanus believed he’d soon come again. The prophet wrongly predicted the date of Christ’s return, but his cult lived on for several centuries.

  ‘Elipando, Bishop of Toledo, described the uproar which took hold of the city’s inhabitants on 6 April 793. He wrote that a monk by the name of Beatus, a manic street preacher, called the people together on the main square and told them the end of the world was coming that same evening. The city was panic-stricken. Later, when the people realised that the End hadn’t occurred, they were enraged and went on a spree of plundering.

  ‘Who better than the Pope to answer the question When’s the next time round?’ Dr Schulz laughed loudly. ‘Pope Innocent III was unequivocal: the Second Coming would occur in 1284, that being 666 years after the advent of Islam. Jesus didn’t come, despite the Pope’s authority. Since the Pope was infallible, by inference Christ himself must have been wrong.

  ‘Botticelli couldn’t resist Apocalypse forecasting either. On a painting completed in 1500, he added a caption in Greek saying that the great cataclysm was coming in three and a half years: “Satan will be chained and cast down, as in this picture.”

  ‘Martin Luther believed the End would come by 1600. Tommaso Campanella was even more precise: the Earth would collide with the sun in 1603,’ Dr Schulz said.

  ‘Isaac Newton devoted a large part of his life and thought, which was not only mathematical but also theological, to the attempt to find what he considered the Bible code. And ultimately he succeeded, as he himself asserted. In 2003, the media were all abuzz about hitherto unpublished writings by Newton which state that the end of the world will come in 2060.

  ‘The London Stories about the End, if I may call them that, are especially cheerful and bring out the British sense of humour,’ Dr Schulz explained and refilled his pipe. ‘In June 1523, a handful of London astrologers calculated that the end of the world would be on 1 February of the following year. It would begin with a flood in London. The water would then cover the entire world. Tens of thousands of people left their homes, fleeing before the predicted deluge. When the day of the prophecy came, not a drop of rain fell in London.

  ‘The prophet William Bell said there would be a devastating earthquake on 5 April 1761 which would destroy the world. Previously he’d predicted a quake for 8 February. “So it didn’t occur, but don’t worry – it’ll be on 8 March,” he assured his listeners. Oops, wrong again. People left their homes and took to the hills yet again on 5 April, and when there was still no earthquake, an angry mob threw Bell into the London madhouse, Bethlem.

  ‘In his Book of Prophecies, Christopher Columbus wrote that the world was created in 5343 BC and would last for 7,000 years. The End would therefore come in 1658. He got it wrong, but what can you expect of a man who was searching for India and discovered America?’ Dr Schulz gibed.

  He wasn’t always in such a good mood. There were days, oh there certainly were, when he was gloomy and almost inscrutable. The warm laughter which had resounded in his study the day before would unexpectedly switch to a cold keenness, a presence almost like a scalpel, and I felt he could dissect me with his thoughts if he wanted.

  And again, there were moments when he seemed to truly sympathise with me, when a story I told him in confidence shook him more than I thought a person in his position was allowed to be shaken. Sometimes I felt he sympathised with me so completely and sincerely that I suddenly had the desire to help him, as paradoxical as it may sound. Gentle and pensive, he’d listen to me without interrupting with a single gesture as I told him about my love for Marushka.

  I was in love with Marushka even before I met her. One day Hedvige dropped her wallet and it fell under the sink. When I stooped down to get it, I saw her picture on the floor. She was my age, pallid of face and ethereally beautiful. I knew from what Hedvige had told me that she was of fragile health and that her chronic bronchitis had developed into asthma at an early age.

  I often imagined her coughing blood and holding up a snow-white embroidered handkerchief in her slender fingers. There was something compellingly romantic for me in that scene of beauty separated from death by a single strand of maiden’s hair. I’d always be there to keep her from falling. I’d bring up a chair and offer her a glass of water. She’d then raise her angelic blue eyes to me and, not letting go of my hand, say: thank you. The love between us couldn’t last for long. Her illness would tear her away from me, I imagined, and for that very reason I was convinced that she was the love of my life: the only love I’d have would be unhappy, but I’d fling myself into that tragedy like the Spartans charged the Persian hordes.

  We met at the Amarcord brassiere, where I used to go in my late teenager days to watch the tumult of Naschmarkt. This marketplace had exercised a magnetic pull on me even as a child. It was strictly off-limits for me, needless to say. Yet how many times had I toured Naschmarkt wide-eyed, absorbing every nuance of the fruit and vegetables on display, every wrinkle on the faces of the dark-skinned porters and the fat saleswomen with their stentorian laughs and wide, aproned bellies which looked like they were hiding kangaroos. Amidst all those sounds, colours and not always pleasant smells, I felt a heady excitement such as only comes over us on the greatest of adventures – asail on the most distant oceans, braving the most perilous battlefields and scaling the highest mountain peaks. My heart beat like a tin drum whenever one of the saleswomen leaned towards me and spoke to me in her poor German. What a treasury of stories Naschmarkt was for me! Green olives and white cheeses, smoked salmon and pickled legs of pork, dried figs from the Adriatic islands and dried tomatoes from Turkey, early cherries from Italy and late oranges from Egypt: every market stall had the power, like an invisible lock, to sluice me into a dangerous new world far away from Schikanedergasse. But you mustn’t think I really wanted to travel to all those places: my journeys were so spectacular because of my confinement, and my confinement was so agreeable because of my journeys. Any change would only
have disturbed that delicate equilibrium and would only have been for the worse.

  As I mentioned, the Amarcord was directly opposite Nasch-markt. Here I’d drink Julius Meinl coffee, smoke and gaze out at that unofficial Vienna theatre of life, where I staged and played some of the most exciting episodes of my childhood. When Marushka got a job as a waitress at the Amarcord be cause Hedvige’s wages working for us weren’t enough to cover her education, I began dropping by every day. They served Guinness on tap and crispy roast duck in spicy orange sauce; everyone there knew me, from the cooks to the regular guests – failed artists who hung around all day in the alcoves, waylaying visitors careless enough to sit down at neighbouring tables and abusing them with tales of their ‘new art projects’.

  When Marushka and I left the Amarcord together for the first time and I accompanied her to St Stephen’s Cathedral where she lit a candle on the anniversary of her grandmother’s death; and when we sat in the Bräunerhof afterwards drinking tea; and when I took her to the bus stop; and when she gave me a kiss on the cheek before running to the bus – we knew our relationship was inconceivable for everyone else. And precisely for that reason it was the only conceivable one for me.

  We were as discreet as only those can be who know that to be noticed means danger. The slightest carelessness on our part could have brought a torrent of adversities, because maman et papa weren’t the only obstacle to our love: Hedvige would oppose it just as forcefully, if not more so. But I’d been good at keeping secrets since childhood – was I not Hedvige’s pupil, after all?