She passed these people, as if behind a glass wall, where no one saw her, and if they did, she was just an unperceivable mistake in the scenic exhibition of their lives, a misspelling in their autobiography. But they were to her, as well, a scenic exhibition, a dreamy mass of ways of belonging, which she was not a part of. It was a languorous experience of her loneliness, to be an observer of a world for which she was both too special and not special enough.
*
Qui s’excuse, s’accuse. Who makes excuses, himself accuses.
*
She quickened her pace – 9pm if he had meant it sharp – and veered towards the green metal railing holding up the pale-yellow sign of the métro, flicked her still burning cigarette the way she had learned to in Paris, and descended the damp, oil-stained stairs of the métro.
In the mouth of the entrance, she heard the echo of a micro-phoned voice. She tapped her métro card, and walked through the turnstile towards the voice, which was not so much singing as speaking with moments of melodious bruising. She turned left to go northbound, and went up a flight of stairs then turned onto the platform. There, next to the vending machine, a woman was holding a microphone with her sallow, shaky arm, the wire of the microphone twitching as she shifted side to side and spoke-sang. At the top of the small amp into which her microphone was plugged, there was a paper cup taped with slick brown packing tape.
The woman was waddling to the music, her hair thin, almost wet, brushed back and gathered limply with a blue velour scrunchie, revealing patches of her pale scalp. She spoke the lyrics out, pulling at certain words, as if trying to make them sing. Every time a person passed her on the platform, she gave them a wink, and continued speaking melodically.
“You, who loved me so
Well yes, a while ago
I was a different woman then
Had an apartment near Madeleine . . .
We kissed on Rue de Paix
You said I was your bien-aimée . . .
You played the violin, those days
You were exceptionel!
But then . . .
You went to Hell.”
Jana was slightly taken aback by the lyrics, but no one else on the platform seemed to be bothered by their narrative. The woman tapped her right foot emphatically four times, then raised her other hand, palm wide open, and swung into what seemed like the refrain. “Oh la la . . .” she spoke. “Ooohh laaa laaa,” she sang. “Oh la la!” she proclaimed. “Ohh l’la,” she admitted.
Two young women, tourists, with a tan complexion and pitch-black hair, stood on the platform. One wore a jean jacket with stylish tears, the other a mid-waist fuchsia coat bearing multiple zippers, at the cuff, waist, breast pocket. They watched the woman and swayed their heads playfully to the singing, not understanding a single word. Then the jean-jacketed woman with her slippery dark hair crimping over the collar, reached into her orange leather purse, and took out her iPhone, the plastic cover with a pouch in the shape of a wine glass filled with purplish liquid oscillating as she moved her phone. Aiming the camera at the singer, she snapped a couple of photos, then her friend unclipped her large magenta wallet, scraped out some coins, approached the woman, dropped the coins into her paper cup and returned to her friend.
“Merci,” the woman winked, then picked up where she’d left off.
“We never had a child, that’s fine
Alright it was a fault of mine
I started drinking too much wine
And then you went to Hell.
You were a Jew, that’s true
We shared une vie à deux
And now – just me, with my chagrin,
And you, in Hell with your violin.”
Jana glanced at the two women, who were listening to the singer, blissful for the sounds of the French language, as if the music was foretelling a romance awaiting them in the city. The singer tapped out another count of four, then just as she began swinging into her refrain, two shrill lights came from the dark tunnel and the train shoved into the station.
Jana and the two women stepped into a métro carriage.
“Oh la la . . . !” the singer’s voice echoed as the doors closed.
Inside the carriage, Jana glanced over the jean-jacketed woman’s shoulder as she flipped through filter options for the photo she just took. She stopped at one, showed it to her friend, who replied, “Claro, querida!” with an adorned, vowel-stretched Portuguese.
*
Jana got out at Ledru-Rollin métro stop, as did the two women, who walked up the stairs in front of her, then turned onto Rue du Faubourg Saint-Antoine and walked off into the noise and lights. Jana turned the other direction, away from the circulation around Place de la Bastille that was always alive, people drinking on the steps of the opera house, then walking down the steps and turning discretely into the graffitied wall to roll their joints.
She walked down the street, then veered left, looked up and saw that she was on the correct street: Rue de Prague. Here, there was no one. The road felt detached, reluctant to be walked on. The trees shadowed the pavement and the apartments leaned back, out of the light.
She walked gradually, spotting the street numbers, 2, 4, 6 . . . Then she saw it, a couple of doors ahead. A discrete-looking exterior, black-painted façade, two large windows also painted in black, and a wooden door as dark as the rest. Above the door, there was a blue glowing infinity-like symbol. As she came closer, she saw it was the electric-bulb glass body of an angel, lit up with blue as if with the hottest part of a flame.
*
Das Herz luegt nicht. The heart does not lie.
*
She felt around, but the door had no handle. She put her ear to the wood. No sound came from the bar, no sense of movement, nothing except for the neon blue angel above her head. L’Ange Bleu. The Blue Angel bar.
She drew her hand out warily and gave the black wood a push. It did not budge. She pushed harder, her forearms tensing, but it was like pushing against a wall.
*
Lož má krátke nohy. A lie has short legs.
*
Mieux vaut tenir que courir. Better to hold on than to run.
*
She pushed again. Then again.
*
There flames a desolation, blazing . . .
. . . Yet, Lord, Thy messengers are praising.
*
9PM.
*
Jana slammed the door with both palms.
Come on, what did you expect? She could hear Zorka saying somewhere. You let your cunt get duped like that, Janka? She thrust her palms into the door. Is that it, Miss K—? She heard Mr Doubek’s voice chime in. Do you have a gullible cunt, Miss K—? There was something behind the door. A rasping thing. An echo. Zorka’s laughter. Not only. And Mr Doubek. Chuckling. Yes, they were inside, laughing together. There was saliva in the corners of their mouths. Their laugh was stretching towards each other, becoming one mouth, and the whites of their eyes began rolling around and around, circling the globe—Is that it, Janka? Is that it, Miss K—?
Jana rammed her shoulder against the door and the wood stunted her flesh.
The groan, however, did not come from her, but from the gutter.
*
It smelled warm, a spoiled dampness. Jana turned around and saw, at the kerb on the sewer grid, a pile of stained and faded blankets, inside of which there was someone, breathing. She ran her eyes over the creases and dips within the blankets trying to find the head or the feet but saw instead a set of charred fingertips sliding out from beneath the sodden covers, towards her.
There was another groan, then the full hand was present, smudged and bloated, flaking at the fingertips. It lifted and turned and curled in, and then did it again.
“Donnez moi une pièce, madame,” the voice said. Give me some change . . .
It was neither a man’s nor a woman’s voice, with an accent that seemed dug up like a long-buried vestige.
“J’en ai pas . . . d�
�solée.” I don’t have any . . . Jana said without thinking.
“Madame . . . S’il vous plait,” the voice said again, more demanding, more unearthed.
Jana instinctively pressed her purse into her hip and shook her head.
“S’il vous plait, Madame!” the voice groaned so fully, that the blanket shifted and twisted.
S’il vous plait . . . ! Cil ooomm shay . . . The begging voice was stretching in sound. Il roumm shii pay . . . Liiroum shdii! Lak rimi shhhffff . . . Lak’ rimi Shifdi! Lakrim eesi finti!
Until the phrase found its home and, all at once, Jana remembered something.
*
Lacrimi şi Sfinţi was the first collection by Emil Cioran, the Romanian philosopher, that Jana had read. She had almost taken up Romanian for him, despite his blatant anti-Semitism, which he later retracted becoming an à la mode nihilist in France. His lines like metaphysical threats or ancestral grudges, she kept them as company, as companionship, as a sense of self-justice – she recited them out loud the way Zorka flung her middle finger up towards the daylight.
Tears and Saints.
Just as she was coming back from her memory, a weight vaulted her from behind. Her body was on the ground. Her eyes closed and inside of them, all black water.
*
Jana had been jumped and pinned down by the kids. There were four of them.
“Baba,” one of the kids said to the lump. Jana turned her head and saw it was a boyish-girl, dark stringy hair, a big purple and red striped sweatshirt with Mickey Mouse patch at the centre ballooning over her thin torso. She was sitting on Jana’s legs. Jana squirmed at the sight, trying to get the girl off, but she couldn’t budge her in the slightest.
Jana flipped her head to the side. A flower-clip, hanging off another child’s cropped hair. The grip that was holding down Jana’s arm had scraped knuckles and on its meagre wrist, a clunky white and pink plastic Hello Kitty watch, sliding down against her hand, too big for the child. Jana tried to pull her arm out from beneath the girl’s hold, but her shoulder muscle rolled back and stuck – it was like her whole body was beneath a layer of cement.
“Baba,” a third child with greasy, curling hair said over to the lump.
This child’s huge blue and white striped overalls bunched over her short body. At the chest pocket, Bugs Bunny was giving a thumb’s up and smiling with his two front teeth pushed out. The girl looked down at Jana with a teething concentration. From her dirt-streaked neck hung a necklace she had most likely strung up herself from a leftover cable and a clear plastic key chain with “TOYOTA” written in red. The girl itched her collarbone with her free hand. At the top, Jana saw a temporary Spiderman tattoo, blue and red, already partly worn off.
“Baba . . . ?” said the last child.
Jana’s eyes darted to the voice. She looked the oldest or maybe it was the way her Spice Girls T-shirt hugged her chest. Across the shirt, all five Spice Girls were jutting their colourful outfits one way or another, the girl’s prepubescent breasts pushed out against their heads. A candy ring stuck out on her index finger, lint and hairs covered the partly licked cherry-red candy diamond.
“Babička, can we?” she asked.
“Can we??” the others repeated.
The lump shifted with a deeper groan.
And so, together, the children worked like a harmonious team as they held Jana’s shoulders and wrists and thighs and waist and rolled her over onto her stomach with impersonal ease, unaffected by her squirming and twisting. The belt of her coat was untied, her blouse pulled out, her trousers unhooked and unzipped. The Toyota necklace girl clasped her Spiderman-hand over Jana’s mouth, as Jana muttered and spit and tried to bite her flesh. Two of the other children helped push Jana’s face against the cement, until her teeth dug into her cheeks.
Spice Girls Tee pulled out a worn beach towel from beneath the layers of blankets on Baba’s sewer grid, a whirl of purple and magenta, ragged with threads and small holes at the corners. Across the towel was Aladdin on his magic carpet, holding Princess Jasmine to him at her waist, and in big teal letters it said A Whole New World. The girl took the corner of the towel and shoved it into Jana’s mouth, until the tattered fabric stuffed against her tonsil, and absorbed her scream.
Altogether, the children began to wedge their small hands beneath Jana’s stomach, getting at her trousers and pulling them down to her thighs. They grabbed her underwear and pulled that down too, the elastic rolling on the flesh of Jana’s buttocks, bunching with her trousers.
Jana was choking on the towel when the kids all huddled in closer and began lulling in unison, “Shhhhhhh . . .”
“MADAME,” one of the children whispered. “I’m a piece of shit.”
“Me too . . .” another hushed.
“Me three . . .”
“Me four, Madame.”
“We are unhappy here . . .” the first pouted louder.
“We’re homesick . . .” another murmured.
“We just wanna go home . . .” the fourth voice trembled.
The children began whimpering, trying to find their words. Then they grabbed hold of Jana’s buttocks with their small hands, taking handfuls of flesh and pulling her butt cheeks apart.
“We wanna gooo hoooommme . . . !” they whimpered even louder as they stuffed their noses into the open flesh between her butt cheeks. They pushed and pressed against each other’s messy heads, trying to squeeze further inside.
“WE WAANNNAAA GOOOOO HOOOOOOMMME,” they sobbed into her anus.
Home
Aimée was watching TV on the couch when she noticed the light-blue hardcover book sticking out of the bottom shelf of the white bookshelf. She walked to the rows of books and crouched down and grabbed the corner with her fingers. She gave a tug and the book slid out from its tight spot.
Aimée sat right down where she was, leaned her back against the bookshelf, opened the book and began to read.
Next to her elbow, in the space where the book had been, a trail of blue smoke began to seep out, just barely brushing across her skin.
As she turned the page, the paper rubbed against itself, like a throat cracking in mid-breath.
The blue trail continued groping its way along her arm, around her shoulder, against her neck . . .
PART TWO
Gejza and Tammie
Gejza parked his truck on their driveway, on Argyle Avenue the one lined with red bricks and a yard sprinkler he’d installed himself. It was almost summer. He was sweaty. His wife Tammie was still at the nearby public high school, no less than ten minutes up, past Johnson Controls and right below Bayshore shopping mall. Tammie was a petite woman who always wore ‘creative’ tops, where the neckline veered to one side or a zipper allowed a two-inch opening to occur at the bottom seam. She taught French classes at the high school and had her greying-blonde hair cut into a childish bob that she wore with a thick fabric-covered headband as if she were Godard’s mod ingénue, refusing to age.
One of the reasons she even fell for a Czech immigrant construction worker at the time, was that, instead of whistling at her, he had said, “Oh la la!”
Gejza had always worked with his hands – he had been labelled a labourer from boyhood. But even during the brownest polyester years of communism in Prague, he still lived his little life as if it were a French film. His older sister Marja, however, lived hers more as an experimental screening. Whereas Gejza walked down the listless street with a private poetic gait, Marja kept her right hand in her pocket, acute and suspicious, as she found certain trees, like birches, incredibly funny, and others, like pines, brought her to tears. On one of Marja’s school trips, doused with Soviet socialist values and allusions to State-building, they were going to help plant apple trees. On the way to the farm they had to cross over train-tracks. Marja lagged behind and lingered too long over the tracks and almost got run over by a train. Even Ruzena, the girl with the lazy eye, saw it coming. But Marja was looking at a patch of grass that leaned into t
he metal rail with such sumptuousness that the girl could not bring herself to part with it.
When one of the older boys retold the story in Gejza’s presence, the consensus was that, perhaps a girl that was slow in the head should be run over by a train. Gejza drifted away from the group, broke a low branch off an oak, then came back with a focused calm, raised his branch high as if he were simply bearing a flag, then started whipping the boys in the heads with it.
Although the episode only left them with some lashes on their cheeks and upper arms and necks, Gejza and Marja’s parents decided that their weird daughter was having a bad influence on her normal little brother. They explained that having one off child is enough. Opportunity coincided. Gejza was sent away to an apprenticeship, to learn construction. Their parents focused on Marja’s one asset, her looks. The thin nose, spark-eyed, fluffy haired girl grew into an attractive woman in the 1970s, where her quirks were suddenly decade-appropriate, and she caught the eye of a square-jawed, handsome, hard-working Slovak, and for a moment Marja was just right in her doses. They married.
But in their first year of marriage, Marja suddenly began to speak her mind and act her will in a way that surprised even her. She couldn’t quite find the balance between what she should resist and what she should bend towards, so she ended up twisting in all the ways that proved to those around her that she was a cripple of her gender, not quite a righteous woman, and not wholly a defunct one.
*
Her husband broke down the bathroom door and grabbed Marja’s flailing legs into his chest, pushing her up, and reaching one hand high for the rope’s noose.
*
After Marja tried to hang herself in the bathroom, it was unanimously decided that she needed electricity. And so, a couple of sessions of shocking did it. Marja was fixed. Voilà.
Then their first and only child, a baby girl, was born.
By this time, Marja’s little brother, Gejza, was long distant, in America, after getting a chance ticket to come over, passing as the son of his employer.
And now, long after, Gejza was an American citizen, married to the local high school teacher, Tammie, living in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
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