Asylum Road

Home > Other > Asylum Road > Page 11
Asylum Road Page 11

by Olivia Sudjic


  Soon, if I was mired in my thesis or in a particularly vigilant mood, reading every unspoken message Luke sent me, I became terrified early onset dementia – out-of-mindedness – was happening to me too.

  When memories from the past intruded (tunnels, basements, waiting for contact, certain foods) I would worry about it even more. Maybe they were not a sign of what I thought they were. I would focus on physical sensations of relief. The sun on my face. Finding a precarious spot to balance a glass in the curved slats of a bench, releasing my feet from their shoes or sitting when my feet were tired. Coming into the cool when I was hot, washing my hands when they were sticky, pressing my cheek into the sleeping heat of Luke’s back.

  Is it shelling? she asked Daria, the way you’d ask someone if there was rain.

  Nope, all clear.

  What network are you from? she said, sitting up and cocking her head at Luke suspiciously, American?

  Reuters, Daria said quickly, passing him a pad and translating simultaneously. He’s just going to write some notes, he wants to hear your point of view. Shit. I need someone to get a can of cream. You still can’t drive?

  No.

  I’ll go, Luke said.

  No. Thank you. You stay here and talk with her. Entertain her. I’ll ring Dad. He must be on his way back by now.

  Listening to my mother speak then it was as though she was telling me a made-up story. The kind I’d once begged her to invent, not read from existing children’s books. Then, in the middle of saying something, she stopped and looked straight at me. Not as though she was lost, but had detected something, like a cat padding along a path who suddenly freezes.

  9

  The first thing my father did after closing the front door was to pick up Luke’s rucksack from the hall, walk gravely into the living room with it hanging from his index finger, and ask in a threatening manner if Luke knew that APC stood for Armoured Personnel Carrier.

  At least that’s how I translated it.

  His sense of humour can be unnerving. In the last census before the war he’d circled his nationality as Pacific Islander. Apparently I’d scolded him. I was too young to remember – it sounds like me. Beating my puny fists against his shins from underneath the table.

  Tell the truth Babo!

  This is the truth Anja! His voice mimicking mine.

  Stop being silly!

  Babo’s not silly, he protested, it’s everyone else that’s gone mad.

  His jokes are not intended to make other people laugh so much as frighten or confound them, which makes him laugh. This tendency made his sublime tenderness toward my mother all the more surprising.

  My father dropped the bag and his face creased into a smile. He was reassuringly the same compared to my mother. The very large hands and ears. I waited for him to address me individually.

  Here’s your cream, Daria.

  Then looking around, What, can’t this English guy take a joke?

  No one translated but Luke offered him his hand.

  Dad says it’s good to meet an Englishman, I lied.

  Thanks, Luke said, Well. Cornish technically. It’s good to finally meet him, say.

  Daria clicked her tongue as she got up to turn the oven on. I sat beside my father, opposite Hana and Luke, too close in a way that made it impossible to really look at or talk naturally to one another. My mother still in the central chair in the narrow gap, as if we sat around an open casket.

  I had expected, I realised, the conversation to focus more on me, or at least us rather than Luke. I did do the majority of the talking. Filling in for him more than I usually did and having also the task of translation. He explained – then I explained – his job so that, at first, I managed to make him sound like a eugenicist before I tried again to explain bioscience.

  The future is uncertain, I said, starting from the top.

  My father nodded impatiently.

  Crops get domesticated and can’t adapt, so we need diverse seeds to survive climate change and other bad things we can’t anticipate.

  Before, I’d always applied these ideas about domestication to myself. The task of translating made me heed what he was saying in a more objective way, less encumbered by other interpretation. Hana seemed enraptured. My mother’s mouth hung slightly open.

  Do you know the story about Leningrad, Dad asked him, via me.

  I said he knew about the siege.

  Leningrad was the home of the greatest, most diverse as you call it, seed vault in the world. Nikolai Vavilov’s. Stalin put him in a gulag. But his staff stayed at the vault, which became their safe house, though many of them actually died protecting the seeds. The curator of the rice collection starved at his desk surrounded by bags of rice.

  He started cracking up at this idea before I’d finished translating.

  In exchange for this anecdote, Luke described the vault they built in the Arctic circle. Though it was designed to be an impregnable deep freeze, it had barely been five minutes before rising temperatures caused the permafrost to melt and the entrance to the tunnel flooded. Both he and my father laughed at this.

  People are in denial, Daria said. They are afraid of their own death, the end of civilisation.

  The laughter ceased.

  And what do you do, Daria? Luke asked.

  I was about to translate again, forgetting Daria spoke perfect English.

  What do I do?

  She fixed her eyes on his as she spoke. She was using her lawyer voice. Hana looked from Luke to her mother, sensing danger.

  I’m a mother, she said, eyes narrowing. And I clean the surgery.

  She got up and excused herself.

  Where’s Daria gone? my mother cried suddenly. She hasn’t gone outside?

  She’s just in the kitchen, making dinner, I reassured her. Hana, why don’t you go and see if she needs help.

  The high-rises all rely on electricity, my mother said, addressing Luke so I translated again.

  The water is pumped, the lifts, everything. There wasn’t a chimney. So we had to move into a place someone we knew abandoned.

  I left out the last part.

  You don’t think much about how everything works under the surface until it’s broken – you just rely on each thing to do its job. Then you can’t keep clean, you can’t wash anything, when food does get through we can’t eat it. Pasta, rice . . . everything requires boiling and we have no water to do it with. No heat. No electricity. So then we moved in here with my mother. But my mother is no Chetnik, you understand. She was AFŽ.

  That’s like feminist Antifa, I added.

  The war is only between nationalists and those who are not insane, my father said, rubbing her hand in his.

  Luke seemed to be finding the polyphonic, repetitive conversation difficult. I too was starting to feel quite mad.

  What about her mother?

  He asks you how your mother is.

  Well she’s deaf now. Can’t hear the shooting, which is nice. But she can see how our faces change when it starts. She says the last war wasn’t as bad as this one. My father fought against the Ustaše also. Did you know Sontag came here?

  Not here, I said, not to the flat.

  Would you like another drink?

  Yes, please. Thanks.

  Hana, go on, get him one. And help your mother like I said.

  Mother? My mother said.

  Yes, my father said.

  Well, she was suddenly fed up, she knows all about wars. She predicted it. The women in this family have the gift of foresight.

  This time it was me who laughed.

  Some of the things she says, I said to Luke, aren’t memories. Or they’re not her memories. They happened to other people, or they’re threads from stuff she read as a child, not always real. But now all mixed up as if they happened to her.

  An acrid smell was coming from the kitchen. My sister called out that dinner was ready.

  As my father told each of us where to sit, I shifted my gaze between my mot
her, my sister and her daughter. Memory passing down generations like water seeping through a multi-storey building.

  At the table, he pulled the same trick he played on every first-time guest. It had been a while since I’d witnessed it and had forgotten the set-up until I heard him say slyly that Luke should be served first. I clenched my fists as Daria placed a plate of spaghetti Bolognese on the checked blue tablecloth before him and Luke raised his fork tentatively, sensing something was off by the way everyone was quiet and either watching or studiously not watching him. He tapped it suspiciously, then grinned.

  My father slapped his shoulder, roaring as if this had never happened before, announcing, as he raised his glass toward him, that Luke was OK for an ecofascist. The ritual over, Daria set down plates of real food, less appetising than the resin version. Overcooked white fish, boiled carrots and buns not quite thawed from the freezer. The smell turned out to be rice she’d burned while trying to reheat it. In the oven. Daria was always a sophisticated cook so she did this to embarrass me.

  She sat not eating, her elbows on the table, chin resting in her hands, so you could not see her mouth. I chewed the fish politely and tried to make myself swallow it, noticing an ulcer right between the skin and my bottom row of teeth. Throughout the meal I kept probing it with my tongue even though it made it hurt more.

  It was too much effort to continually translate banal bits of conversation, and I let a lot of it go over Luke’s head.

  So you had a look around, Daria finally said in English. Even Luke must have sensed her sarcasm.

  Yes, the old part of the town is great, he replied uncertainly. And the new bits are nice too.

  What else did you see, the genocide museum?

  No, I said curtly.

  Maybe next time. What about the tunnel? It’s very popular with the Chinese.

  Yeah, I’d like to see that, Luke said.

  I’m sure you would.

  What’s that supposed to mean? I said, switching out of English.

  We had enough of people like him at the time.

  Don’t do this now.

  Don’t what? Hana said.

  What’s going on, Darko?

  Nothing, my sister said. Who wants dessert?

  After Drago died and Daria returned, my father had affectionately started calling her Darko. A boy’s name. He joked she could live as a virdžina after he died – a sworn virgin – the old Balkan thing of allowing a daughter to live as a son. She could start dressing as a man, working outdoors, carrying a gun. The catch being a vow of celibacy.

  Darko found herself a boyfriend but the name persists.

  Clinton is the worst president we could have at a time like this, my mother said, back from somewhere else. He’s like a president from a TV show.

  Yes, Daria laughed, it’s a shame.

  Who’s she, sitting there?

  It’s Anja. Don’t you remember?

  Sometimes it felt easier to hate my mother. Certainly less painful.

  Oh yes, she said, a faint smile forming. Then her face fell and she pursed her lips.

  It was hard to pretend after that and I kept my eyes on my plate as something black rose up inside me.

  Daria watched me clear my end of the table before everyone else had finished eating.

  You have weak wrists, she said, following me to the kitchen. You could never be a waitress.

  She said she had wanted to do a dessert in my English boyfriend’s honour, and returned to the table with an Eton mess. She had, she explained, given it a modern twist using some leftover food colouring in the cream.

  Why green? I asked after a silence.

  Experiment.

  Then, to everyone else, in a more civil tone, At first, I only added a little, and actually too little is disconcerting, so then I added the whole thing.

  When she did things like this I willed Daria to admit that she was bored.

  How was Mira, my father asked. The first real question he had addressed to me. We miss her.

  I noticed my mother sweeping the table with her palm. It was something I’d seen my grandmother do, and now my mother was doing it repetitively. When she noticed me looking, she stopped.

  Happy in Belgrade, I said, then again in English.

  I gave Luke a look I hope conveyed that he should not mention Mira’s author.

  But she was visiting her family, Daria muttered, I don’t understand.

  What, Daria? I sighed.

  How can she be in another city and still find time to see her family?

  I ignored her, turning instead to my mother. Mum, what about some chocolate?

  No, Daria said, as she grabbed my mother’s wrist, you don’t get to do this, you can’t waltz in and out whenever you like! I’m sure you think I’m a bad person, she continued, wresting the language back into English, and addressing herself to Luke. I don’t know what she tells you, but it’s lies.

  Her voice was even and cold again, as if she’d been preparing this. I couldn’t speak. Luke began breaking his meringue into smaller shards, as if this might defuse the situation. Hana and my parents waited for the translation.

  We’re getting married, I shouted.

  My father looked astonished, and for a moment no one said anything.

  We’re getting married, I said more quietly in English.

  His first question was whether I planned to take Luke’s last name. I said I hadn’t yet decided.

  What’s happening? Anja’s getting married? When?

  We don’t know yet, I lied.

  Don’t look like that Anja, my father said. It’s not your funeral. I thought marriage had died out though, I must say. Do people still have weddings?

  Where’s the ring? Hana demanded.

  I don’t know why women do it, for men it makes sense, Daria sniffed. They get unpaid domestic labour.

  I unscrewed it from my finger so that I was left with a pale line, and gave the diamond to Hana who studied it. Then I took up a position at the sink, letting the hot water run to scalding. A cloud of steam rose, and still I held my hand under the column for as long as I could bear it, remembering when Daria and I got to Split and finally we had water, just running, running, running.

  I put gloves on when the pain became too much. Inside gloves the heat and pressure were reassuring. Starting with the sharp things, moving mechanically on to the blunt, I let the oily water drain then ran the tap again, waiting for it to turn hot before realising – I’d used it all up.

  From the table I could hear the conversation continuing without me. They had changed the subject from our engagement already.

  If I’d directly asked for my father’s opinion he would have told me that marriage was bourgeois. Only for women who wanted families. The family was also bourgeois. He should know. If I’d said I was actually doing it to escape, to make a bid for freedom, he would have said that this idea of freedom, which was Neoliberal freedom, was more bourgeois than the family and would prove to be just as stifling.

  I wanted to see the photo in the bathroom again, as if that could confirm I’d once belonged with these people. I moved slowly and experimentally, as if each thing in my path were a tremendous obstacle.

  I smiled exaggeratedly at Daria as I passed.

  Hana’s brushing her teeth, my sister said, you’ll have to wait.

  She got up, turned her back, went to the kitchen archway and calmly folded out the concertina doors behind so only her legs were visible. The overhead lights turned on. The candle flames bleached out. Things formerly outside the circle now emerged. The condensation on the windows, knives shining on the magnetic strip, a halo of needles around the potted cactus.

  Tell Daria she mustn’t go out or I’ll kill her! Mum said.

  You’ll kill her? I heard my father repeat, I thought that’s what you were worried about.

  I worry whenever any of them go outside, she said to Luke. My eldest wants to study abroad and never come back.

  This time I translated her fai
thfully. I was too tired to manage the situation any longer.

  At least we have good views! A sly grin spread across her face and she waved her bony arm in the direction of the hills all around us.

  All new windows since the shelling!

  She laughed then broke into anguished, noisy sobs.

  I sat in rigid silence with Luke while Dad shuffled her to bed and Daria put Hana to bed on the sofa, took her bag, and left.

  Hana, with her mother gone, asked to watch a movie. My father sat in the armchair this time, and she wriggled between me and Luke with her feet tucked under mine. As the opening credits began she settled into a rhythm of gently rasping breaths.

  I’ve watched Home Alone about ten hundred times.

  So have I, I said.

  I’d first watched it during the siege. It was the last VHS we bought before it started. I remember whenever the power came back on Drago would be watching it while rewinding another one with a fork. Then it was a Christmas ritual at my aunt’s in Glasgow, but I’d never found it very comforting. Her kids identified with the boy’s struggle to defend his home against the forces of destruction, whereas I could only think about the trauma of being left behind.

  It was even worse watching it as an adult. Or watching Hana laugh maniacally as the invaders were repeatedly foiled. I felt myself leaving my body. Floating up toward the ceiling, into another atmosphere where sound did not carry. From there, looking down at the child in the white nightgown, I experienced that version of loss which is a casting out of subject rather than an object.

  *

  In Hana’s narrow bed, Luke turned the lamp off and stars appeared faintly on the ceiling, adding to my sensation of floating outward into space. We lay in silence for a few minutes.

  I want to go home, I said.

  I knew he was awake but he did not respond. After several minutes, the glow of his phone. The nimbus around his back.

  Serious question, I said.

  What?

  Nothing.

  What?

  Do you still love me?

  What kind of question is that?

  He removed his leg from where it brushed the edges of my body – so that no part of us was touching anymore.

 

‹ Prev