In/Half

by Jasmin B. Frelih

  ‘How do you think Bojan ended up without fingers?’

  ‘What do you mean, ended up without? It was the circular saw, when that unfortunate roof…’

  Backwards, forwards. He’s almost made it.

  ‘Don’t be naive, Bernard, better people than you have suffered because they’re naive.’

  ‘Yes, but what…’

  The sand sags under the weight of the tyres and gives way. The candles fall into the depths. All four yell and Bernard races to the driver’s door. He knocks on the window. Janez doesn’t answer. The front right tyre is in the air, the car is tilted. He bashes. Nothing. He grabs the handles, pulls, and the door opens. The car sinks.

  ‘Janez! Fuck!’

  His withered hand is useless. With his good one, he grabs Janez by the collar and shakes him. Janez jolts upright, grabs the wheel, ‘Don’t you worry, sir…’, and steps on the accelerator. One wheel spins into emptiness, the second churns up sand, there’s a call of ‘Janez!’ and the front of the car is well over the edge. Bernard almost falls, tries to regain his balance, and keeps on trying to grab hold of Janez, who is now staring wide-eyed into the abyss and frantically attempting to undo his seatbelt. Olga grabs Bernard, ‘Are you crazy?’, and yanks him towards her. ‘Telephone!’ he cries when the car silently tips into the abyss. The silence lasts an eternity. A flock of crows has come to see what’s going on. A hazelnut stalls in the squirrel’s claws. Thousands of ants remain unconcerned. Flies rub their little legs and a single woodpecker releases his anger over the cuckoo’s egg. The owl’s hooting is, in the end, unnecessary.

  ‘Guten Morgen.’

  Today this language is foreign to this land, although once it had thickly spread itself here and then it tried many a time to coat it, with the prowess of a conqueror.

  The romance didn’t last long, but the mouths were left salivating for a long time still. Lust is a very genuine emotion.

  To Alan’s ear, Guten Morgen sounds like a woodsman talking. Ghud’n môhg’n. The window is slightly open.

  ‘Good morning.’

  ‘Can you toss a couple of antacids into some water for me, please?’

  ‘I was just about to ask you the same thing.’

  Laughter.

  ‘My head.’

  Ko-pf.

  ‘Mine’s no better.’

  ‘Well, who’s going to go?’

  ‘You.’

  ‘No, you.’

  ‘I’ll tickle you.’

  ‘Pretty please.’

  They’re naked, that’s now clear. Alan’s eyes are going to fall out from all that gawking, from trying to see something in the half-dark. Olive is on her back, but Grace is hidden under a sheet.

  ‘Let’s stay in bed today.’

  ‘That sounds good. Let’s avoid all these nutters.’

  ‘Grace, I can’t believe…’

  ‘I told you to prepare yourself.’

  ‘But still…’

  ‘But nothing. That’s the way it is.’

  Alan can’t understand them, so he dreams up obscenity-rich conversation, dirty talk. Hoy-tuh, mensh-un, tsu-ryk, vee es ist. It’s all very erotic. He has to adjust his position as he lies there.

  ‘Do we really have to stay another week?’

  ‘No. We can leave tomorrow, if you want.’

  ‘I want.’

  ‘Good. I’ll make it happen. But you have to…’

  ‘Water.’

  Wass—. Laughter.

  Olive lets out a half-dramatic sigh and gets up. Alan can’t see her head, but he gets a look at her breasts, which, though large, are a little droopy and one of the nipples is surprisingly shiny (there’s a ring hanging from it). Her wrinkled belly splashes in all directions, not exactly attractive. Underneath there’s a black thicket of the type he never saw in those magazines, and her legs look like they’re wrapped in loose cellophane, and it’s all less delicious than it had been in his head. He grimaces. He doesn’t know whether he’s disappointed by reality, or whether he’s more disturbed by the false illusions that he’d harboured. Are women, in fact, ugly? Or is Olive just too old? Maybe he should surprise Mila when she’s in the shower. Nothing too forceful, he just has to make sure that he didn’t in fact fall in love with paper. Damn, if he hadn’t been holding on to the big nail he would pinch his thigh. Is that why pornography is prohibited? Because it spoils the flesh?

  Grace yawns, stretches and looks straight into Alan’s grimacing, blood-flushed, gawking, pimply face.

  ‘Alan!’ she shouts.

  Alan gets a shock, slackens his grip and almost falls, but manages to latch on to the gutter with both hands and get up, legs atremble. He’s been caught, and he grabs his thigh so hard he’ll have a bruise for a whole week.

  ‘No, I don’t understand, Edgar, why would someone think up something like that?’

  Katarina is driving Kras’s jeep. At the checkpoints they recognize her already from afar and, heads bowed, wave her through, sometimes even with a salute. Edgar’s in the front, awkwardly resting his weight on his uninjured side. Mila is sitting in the back and looking out of the window. White façades, endless white façades among the thin rows of the orderly forest, and then shadow-rich fields. Mila does not feel outraged. Maybe someday she will, when she forgets what they taught her. Then she’ll say it’s already too late, or that it’s still too early. Any way you look at it, she’ll be right.

  ‘Katarina, look, people are a strange mix. If we can’t even know ourselves, how are we supposed to know anyone else? You can live for a hundred years, but you’ll probably only get to know the hearts of two, three, people, and if you really put your mind to it, you might stop being at odds with your own heart, that’s all you can hope for.’

  ‘Yeah, I know what you’re saying, but you always generalize, and it’s not always like that when it comes to people. You don’t have to talk about everything and everybody only so you can say that some things are abnormal and just shouldn’t be done.’

  ‘All right then. Let’s take Alenka. The way I see it, it’s all very simple. What’s the fundamental characteristic of the disease Voranc allegedly has?’

  Edgar likes to adopt a didactic tone and use questions to steer people towards what he’s thinking, which is an exquisite tactic because it deludes them into thinking they arrived at that thought all on their own. Mila had seen through him years ago, back when he wanted to plant a more favourable image of Mitja in her head.

  He failed.

  ‘That it kills you in the end.’

  ‘Yes. And?’

  ‘That it’s contagious.’

  ‘And what follows from that? What does it mean for other people?’

  ‘Well, that they do not want to become infected.’

  ‘And what do they do so they won’t be?’

  ‘They avoid you.’

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Alenka’s just a loner. Nobody paid much attention to her until she adopted Voranc. Then she was suddenly overwhelmed with invitations to kids’ birthday parties, to the zoo, the movies… She very elegantly shed you, to put it somewhat bluntly.’

  Katarina purses her lips. It really had become more difficult – when you thought about everything that could go wrong – to see Voranc in the company of other children.

  ‘Poor child. Now I’m going to drag her everywhere on purpose!’

  Edgar’s laugh cedes to pain.

  ‘But didn’t you two have something going on?’ says Mila icily.

  ‘Mila!’ exclaims Katarina.

  Edgar feigns ignorance.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Berdo once said he caught you two…’

  ‘Mila! What are you thinking?’

  ‘Hold on, Mum, I’m sorry, but Grandma has just stabbed Edgar with a shard of glass she’s dipped in what she thought was HIV-positive blood, and carried out a whole raid on Grandpa’s family with those freaks, and you two are going on about Alenka and her idiocy, I mean, who car
es about Alenka now?’

  ‘Mila,’ says Edgar, wincing as he turns to look at her, ‘people in such situations always talk about the things that are least difficult. Olga has never concealed her grudge, and if this is going to calm her down, then at least there’s that. It’s time to move on. Besides, we all understand Olga. And, yes, I did kiss Alenka one time. This is going to sound bad, but I felt sorry for her.’

  ‘Edgar, just one thing, I mean sorry, but isn’t she your sister?’

  ‘To tell you the truth, I don’t really know.’

  They are approaching a checkpoint. Three soldiers stand there, legs apart. Katarina is crying.

  Raven stretches out on his back and beholds the sky.

  ‘The only roof that covers everything.’

  Kras bookmarks the notebook with his fingers. He doesn’t want to open it, to read on. A mean, cowardly trick. Mitja didn’t dare say it to his face, so he confided it to his diary, like some little old lady. Now he is expecting it to have the same effect. It won’t. If he’d faced things like a man, if he’d demanded respect in that way, perhaps he would have got it. Courage is a virtue. He, however, set up an ambush. Tail between his legs and twelve hundred miles away, complaining long-distance. To avoid the cries and the moaning sobs. Just words, no face. Mitja has proved himself a continuous disappointment to Kras. Not a Wolf, a mouse! That’s what he used to call him: Mouse. Though he’d always added: but you have to become a Wolf. In a world like this mice are squashed under boots. Five years old and wearing Katarina’s pumps, in make-up. He put that masquerade out of his head, almost literally. Nothing but tears. He couldn’t go to sleep in the dark, always had to have the light on. Daddy, Daddy, malice eater! And that at the age of seven. A timid, spoilt mouse. How quietly he spoke. He didn’t eat anything, he was totally picky, no meat, no potatoes, just sweets. An emaciated little stick. Couldn’t even do two chin-ups. No order, no discipline, no strength. Katarina spoilt him. Wiped his arse and tidied his room for him. If it weren’t for her, everything would have been different. But Kras wasn’t at home. There were always elections, then there was war. And then, when he was ten, they sent him home from school, and Kras had to go to a parent-teacher meeting, because Mitja kept pinching his classmates’ arses and kept trying to snuggle up with them. An uncouth beast, and he had no idea where he got that from. Right before the election. The headmaster grinned at him and Kras had to grin politely back at him. He would have smacked that smile off his face, if he could. The first time they won the elections, Kras and Mitja had tried to build the little house. The kid had no talent for tools. The hammer swayed in his hands like a pear in the wind. He didn’t manage to hammer in a single nail. But back then Kras was in good spirits because of the victory. So he didn’t scold or humiliate him. He showed him, and again, and again – even encouraged him a few times. But all in all it didn’t help one bit. The first time he hit his finger, he went off crying to Katarina and never touched the hammer again. He brought him a board, every now and then, but otherwise he just stared. Kras had to do everything himself and at the same time stave off his father and his constant offers of advice. Maybe he will come back as a Wolf. If he comes back. If. That stupid little word gets stuck in his throat. He coughs it away.

  Raven spreads his arms, like wings.

  ‘I do not want to go down,’ he says.

  Kras looks at him.

  ‘Never again,’ he adds.

  ‘You’ll have to,’ says Kras.

  ‘I know. Unfortunately.’ He strokes his beard with a hand that’s short one index and one middle finger. ‘But did you see the old girl, see how much fire she still has in her? That she’s still capable of something like that, after all these years. You know, son, it’s kind of flattering.’

  Kras nudges him in the ribs with his shoe and nods at Po. Everyone knows what a blabbermouth she is. Raven stretches out, grabs her and tickles her. Po laughs.

  ‘You, my little dumpling, need some breakfast.’

  ‘I’m not hungry.’

  ‘Mummy will be mad,’ he says.

  ‘Mummy’s never mad,’ she replies.

  ‘Something like that, eh?’

  ‘But I am.’

  ‘Who are you mad at?’ Raven asks her.

  ‘At those annoying aunts and at Aunt Crabby.’

  Kras laughs out loud. Raven looks at him and shrugs an apology.

  ‘Seriously, sweetie, an empty sack doesn’t stand upright, you know how it is,’ he says.

  ‘But I haven’t finished drawing yet.’

  ‘Do you always draw up here?’ asks Kras.

  ‘Uh-huh.’ Po nods and makes another line. The wobbly figure under a plane gets a dog’s face. Or a wolf’s snout.

  ‘At least someone got something out of that ordeal,’ says Kras.

  ‘Alan and Mila come up here to visit now and then.’

  Kras narrows his eyes.

  ‘Really? What do they do?’ he asks. Raven turns on his side, looks at Po and jerks his head at her.

  ‘I don’t know,’ says Po.

  Kras looks at his father, who’s once again stretched out on his back.

  ‘But they have the keys,’ says Po and opens the hatch under the plane.

  ‘Keys to the drawers? They read this?’ Kras wags the note-book threateningly.

  ‘One is Mitja’s, one is Mila’s, and one is Alan’s. Grandpa Raven, when will I get one?’ asks Po. Raven is getting up slowly, holding his back and feigning pain. Kras glares at him. He takes the head of the hammer in his hand and in one move pries off the other drawer. He feels around inside, but doesn’t find anything. Dust sticks to his fingers. When he rubs them together, an orange dust emerges. He puts his fingers up to his nose. Inhales.

  ‘When you learn to be quiet,’ says Raven. ‘Until then you don’t need one anyway.’

  Kras doesn’t need the hammer’s head for the third drawer. He tears it open by hand. The wood snarls wetly before giving way. Raven descends from the floor of the house onto a branch and pulls himself a little higher, out of pure instinct. He has a pretty good idea of what his son’s going to find there.

  ‘Po.’

  Kras’s voice could whet a knife.

  ‘Go down. This instant.’

  The road is long and leads nowhere. Bernard has never been farther away from his world. And yet it all seems vaguely familiar. Things that grow without encouragement. Stout branches that selfishly force their way towards the sun, while the muddy undergrowth withers in the shadows, seeing little, seeing less and less, and reeking of abandonment. Dissolving into the shapeless backdrop of the scenery on which the trunks stage their insignificant struggles. Homo humus. His shoes are muddied, soaked through. They squeak as he walks. The wind plucks the dead leaves like kids plucking at daddy longlegs. Twingeing in his knees. He can’t remember the last time he walked so far. When he sees a clump of mushrooms sprouting from a stump, he’s suddenly convinced his soles are ridden with blisters. He’d forgotten that such things exist. His mother and his aunts are tramping ahead of him. Olga has taken on the role of guide, grimacing and placing a hand on her forehead as she seeks the west, salutes the shades of grey, licks a finger and sticks it in the air, waiting for the stars. When they don’t appear, she gets angry at her sisters.

  ‘Jesus, how can you not know where we are? We can’t be far, he just went the other way.’

  ‘Olga,’ ‘Olga,’ ‘I don’t know but,’ ‘but, maybe,’ ‘maybe we’re in,’ ‘in the white,’ ‘the white wood.’

  Bernard is disgusted. Two heads, echoes in both.

  ‘I don’t see any birches,’ he says.

  ‘Be quiet, silly,’ says Olga.

  ‘Dad never,’ ‘let us come here,’ ‘never let us.’

  ‘Yes, well if it is, then all we have to do is go around the hill, right?’

  The sisters take a collective step back.

  ‘If it is,’ ‘If,’ ‘then,’ ‘then it’s bad,’ ‘bad,’ ‘white wood is enchanted,’ ‘so
rcery,’ ‘everyone knows that,’ ‘everyone knows.’

  ‘Superstition!’ cries Olga, extracts the cross from her bosom, kisses it and puts it back. Bernard laughs.

  ‘Keep going,’ commands Olga. The sisters obey. Whenever Olga speaks to Bernard, she inevitably turns up her nose, which is why he can see well ahead of time when to pay attention to her.

  ‘Did Kras really say that?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘That he’ll throw me out?’

  ‘What do you think he’ll do with you? I definitely would.’

  ‘Ungrateful imp. Thirty years I slaved for you, and now you’re all on Bojan’s side. Imps.’

  Bernard smiles sourly and straightens his face again.

  ‘The last time I was in the woods like this, I was six years old.’

  ‘Nobody’s on my side.’

  ‘With Kras. Wolf drove us. He herded us like cattle. He walked ahead of us with long strides, wiped away the sweat with his hand, stopped every hundred yards to look back at us, impatiently tapped his foot until we caught up with him, then he stormed ahead again. He didn’t say anything, just tap-tap-tap. I could hardly breathe. Kras walked just slightly in front of me, but not because he was being considerate. He lagged behind on purpose so he could watch him tapping. Then he disappeared. Wolf.’

  ‘Him again, it’s always about him.’

  ‘We didn’t know where he went. I thought it would be night soon and then, panic. Some kind of attack, I think.’

  ‘You and your attacks.’

  ‘Kras didn’t say a word. He put me on his shoulders and carried me home. How old was he then? Eight? It was six miles, for sure. But I was pretty light.’

  ‘You didn’t have anything to eat.’

  ‘Alenka had chickenpox at the time.’

  ‘Alenka.’

  ‘Right before the divorce.’

  Olga stops.

  ‘What?’

  ‘That was right before the divorce, I think.’

  ‘You went into the woods?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Olga ponders, then asks.

  ‘You were six years old?’

  Bernard nods.