Читать книгу Homunculus - Aleksandar Prokopiev - Страница 5

This fairy tale is to be told in the morning while eating a fry-up for breakfast after a night’s heavy drinking

Tom Thumb

Have you got back together with that fellow who’s the same age as me, Mum? Oh, if only I weren’t your son... It’s not that I’ve got anything against him. He’s a good man, and he paid the 714 euros for my treatment. I’d like to take this opportunity to thank him for thinking of me and paying for my stay at the sanatorium, although it did look more like some kind of corrective institution than a place where people are cured. You know what I mean. Soon after I got there, during the first week of my stay, I was punished for listening to music during the so-called ‘hours of rest’ between 3 pm and 5.30 pm. How could I have known that the music from my iPad would be a nuisance to anyone? But I was caught. And she – Kyrie the Matron – ordered that I be locked up for two whole days and nights in an empty cellar where a chair riveted to the floor was the only furniture. I was tied to that chair and an unbearably strong spotlight was set up to shine straight in my face. You can imagine how I felt, Mum, with that sharp needle of light piercing the pupils of my eyes and the tight rope cutting into my body. I was so distressed and helpless there in the ‘Damned Cell’, as the kids at the sanatorium called that dreadful cellar with no windows and only a slit in the iron door. Within just a few hours you lose track of whether the sun is shining outside or people are sleeping peacefully in the stillness of the night. After a terribly long time, someone opens the hole in the door and peers at you. You can feel their cold, sneering gaze but can’t see who it is because your eyes feel like they’re covered with blisters of light from the constant aggression of the spotlight. Somewhere out there, beyond that little hole, behind that sarcastic tormentor, there exists a world in which people talk, move about, and sometimes, perhaps, even laugh.

You start to feel that the unpleasant, restricted world of the sanatorium is beautiful and free compared to the ‘Damned Cell’. Yes, free! But then you’re back in prison with the light stabbing you like an executioner’s knife for a long, long time without end... Until you start yelling and screaming like crazy, and that’s what you’ve become. You scream like a wild thing and howl with frayed vocal chords in a voice you’ve only heard twice before: at your own birth, and that time in the bathroom. They unlock the door. You hear Kyrie the Matron approaching and recognize her step but can’t see her in the murderous light. She comes up to you and you know she’s observing you with disdain. You can imagine she’s wearing black trousers, as usual, and the black coat she always buttons up, neat and orderly, with the blindingly white collar of a freshly ironed shirt showing at the neck. And then you hear her voice.

Mummy, if anyone has cared for me since my birth, it was you, even though I was such a shock to you! You couldn’t even admit to yourself that I was your baby. And how could you have? Such a little runt, all covered in black hair as a result of the irritation in your belly. I can imagine how hard it must have been to carry me all through pregnancy, and how much harder when you first saw me – like a wet rat straight out of the sewer. Even the honoured gynaecologist who helped with the delivery, with all respect for your unequalled beauty and the splendour of your vagina gazed in horror when he saw me. And all the more so when he first heard me cry! I know that everyone in the maternity ward was shocked by that horrible noise, which did not sound at all like a baby’s voice but much more like the protracted howl of a sick animal. At the time, of course, I was unaware of the terrible effect of my appearance and voice, but ten years later, when puberty took hold of me, I realized I had registered that event in my subconscious, poor me!

I was in the bathroom again, as usual, looking at my face in the mirror and feeling guilty about its appearance. I hated my big nose with its pus-filled pimples, my fat lips with white scabs in the corners – that whole, huge noggin stuck on top of my puny body, like something out of Punch and Judy. Only my eyes, which were very bright like those of a ginger tomcat, stared back at me, unpleasantly inhuman and cold even when my body was full of seething anger towards myself. Maybe they were like that because all the difficult experiences I had had since I was a baby had left my eyes dry, without a single tear.

But just when I was standing in front of the mirror facing my ugliness for the umpteenth time, some unknown urge from my rickety chest, some deep sorrow burst out through my carious teeth and escaped as a cry, loud and animal-like, followed by another and yet another, and I began howling there alone in the bathroom, squatting on the floor because I couldn’t bear to look at myself any longer. It’s lucky you weren’t in the flat at the time; you were at a rendezvous with your lover in Café Journal and couldn’t hear my barbaric cries for help.

Please forgive me, Mummy, for my ugliness! Forgive the worthless­­­ness and putridness of this freak that dares to call itself your son!

Now in the ‘Damned Cell’, just like in the bathroom, I shed a pool of tears and then started wailing most horribly. Kyrie spoke to me as I was yelling and screaming and blubbering, my face smeared with tears and snot. Her voice was terribly calm: ‘Why are you making such a racket?’

‘S... sorry... Miss,’ I answered, still blinded by the sadistic blade of light and unable to see anything but her dark silhouette.

‘How dare you call me Miss!’ she interrupted. ‘What am I?’

‘You’re the M... Matron,’ I sniffled.

You can imagine how dejected and miserable I felt, Mummy. I tried hard to stop my tears and not make another noise. But I failed; it just wouldn’t work. So I wailed for all to hear, and inside as well, and when I was finally able to see her eyes scrutinizing me coldly with no feeling in them other than mastery, I felt so wretched and so punished.

‘You deserved your punishment, so now put up with it. And stop that pathetic bawling!’ she snarled, as if she could read my mucousy thoughts and was making me feel the full weight of my sentence, now when I was weakest and unable to defend myself.

It was ghastly, but even in that lowliest of positions I cursed Kyrie, that damn bitch. And when she left the cell, still indifferent and harsh, I swore to myself a hundred times over that I would have my revenge. That is the price that tormented souls exact of their tormentors. What else can a midget do – a Quasimodo like me – in the face of the appalling and endless humiliation those such as Kyrie subjected me to in the ‘Damned Cell’? Whenever I raised my eyes heavenwards to beg for help, the artificial glare of the spotlight whipped me back to earth, and whenever I tried to heave a sigh, as one small way of relieving my pain, the rope cut deeper into my chest. I know, Mum, that even in such harrowing hours you would be able to shake off evil thoughts and vanquish all misfortune with your inner peace. But I am far from possessing your virtues!

I stuck through the rest of my punishment, the second day and the second night, although I was no longer aware how much time had passed, and when they came in to tell me it was over and untied the blasted rope, I stayed sitting on the chair, withdrawn and dismayed, unable to move a muscle, although the rope had been removed and the door was open. I simply couldn’t move, and for a few minutes it felt as if I was blind and deaf – as if I was dead.

Then I pulled myself together, got up from the chair, and walked out of the cell, and even managed a smile. From that day on, I behaved like a model patient, ever obedient, although my spiteful mind was working to devise my revenge.

I will never forget how devotedly you cared for me when I was little – and I must have seemed like a baby for a long time, for I was five times smaller than the other boys my age, more wrinkled and wizened as well, and I didn’t grow any bigger. You were torn between your obligations to me and to your lover, it was a real martyrdom, yet you always managed to strike a balance and never gave up despite all the difficulties.

That’s why I’m so happy you’ve found a man who suits you, Mum. Young, capable and virile! Although I have to admit that when you first introduced him to me I felt like taking a bite out of his pretty face. I found him unbearably handsome, with the dark, lively eyes of a dandy, with teeth that shone when he stretched his mouth into a smile, and a charming dimple in his manly chin. I wished I could savage the seductive symmetry of that face – I wanted to bite deep, draw blood, and butcher that victorious young male’s air of superiority. And then his height! That was the end of me, Mother. I had the uncontrollable urge to shorten his long, elegant legs. Not only did I mean him harm but I started plotting straight away how to do it.

With ugly people like me, the spirit is easily corrupted into hatching hellish plans. Our flat is on the fifth floor of a building with no lift. I knew he had the habit of bolting up the stairs on his way to see you and bolting down again after a good lay, like a self-assured billy goat, and I knew he didn’t really watch his step. And so one day while he was relishing your voluptuous curves for hours on end – after having first ripped off your black lace knickers, a throwaway learnt from watching too many cheap movies – I set my trap. I stretched a piece of grey string across one of the stairs between the fifth and fourth floors, tying it tightly to the banister on one side and tacking it to the wall on the other. I made sure the string was quite low down (my sort of level!) so he wouldn’t notice it.

I know the unpleasant feeling of losing your balance, of your rootless body flying through the air, with your heart beating like mad in fear of what’s going to happen when you come down. It only lasts a second or so, but in that short space of time I had the great pleasure of seeing fear change his pretty face into a twisted, bewildered, ugly grimace. He swore, waved his arms in the air and came down on the stairs with a crash. There was a loud crack, like the sound of a thick branch being snapped in half. Then complete silence reigned for a moment as he lay sprawled across the steps, his legs in different directions; he groaned, and his face contorted like in a silent movie as he tried to sit up. But his right leg jutted out sideways, the trouser leg was torn at the knee, and his shin bone stuck out through it, pink and unreal. In that moment of astounding silence my chest filled with a lovely warmth, and then he screamed, and you came bolting down the stairs after him as fast as you could. You dabbed the cheek of his swollen, uglified face with a white handkerchief (loverboy was crying!) and knelt beside him like a good fairy, comforting him with gentle, caring words and constantly kissing him as if he was an injured little bird, not a grown man.

And so I was separated from you again, imprisoned within the walls of my monstrosity. I withdrew into the bathroom, but you didn’t even notice I was gone. You were obsessed with your lover’s injury, dashing about around him; you called an ambulance and various friends, moved him from the stairs to the bed and pampered him there with devotion, while a whirlwind of jealousy raged inside me despite my best efforts to prevent it. Oh yes, he enjoyed the role of the wounded man, with you there to wait on him day and night, and now he could relish your velvet skin and culinary charms in equal measure. Meanwhile I suffered as the worm of envy gnawed at me and my heart crumbled, but it was all in vain – you were bound to be constantly by his side, and all because of my idiocy!

I know I was a burden to you, Mother, even when I was still in your belly. That Party functionary who enjoyed your magnificent body night after night, my supposed father, shamelessly abandoned you when you told him you were pregnant. He kicked you out without a word, forgetting all the times he had crept between your legs and whispered sweet nothings about not being able to live without you. That power-hungry jerk, that selfish crawler, was petri­fied lest you impinge on his fucking career. The stinking bastard left you on the streets like a homeless, pregnant bitch.

How your kind, elegant soul suffered because of that injustice! You had those heavy bags crammed with encyclopaedias, from A to Mai in one hand and Maj to Z in the other – four thick, heavy volumes on each side. You lugged them through the steep streets of the city all day and arrived home exhausted and bathed in sweat, still carrying the encyclopaedias, which you had to heave up the stairs of our block of flats, five floors up, and then down again, and up, and down again. But despite all your superhuman efforts, I wouldn’t let you rid yourself of me. Why didn’t I let you do it? We would have been happier, both of us. You would have enjoyed your life with your lover, or lovers, because, Mum, you’re the most attractive, sexiest woman I’ve ever met. From my earliest childhood, there was no overlooking the way men devoured you with their eyes, with all their male ganglia firing, the way they flashed seductive smiles at you, and the more daring ones, with one eyebrow raised, would venture on into the realm of allusions. But as soon as Mr Bold’s glance wandered down to me, his expression changed abruptly: the enchantment swiftly ebbed away, leaving a face full of unconcealed horror. I felt so ashamed at times like that, Mum, to have embarrassed you, to have humiliated you with my presence!

I don’t understand why even now, so many years after the incident in the bathroom, I still get the stupid urge to cry again. For­give me, Mum, I know my crying is not like that of a normal human being, but I’ve never been normal. It’s not that I haven’t tried to live and to find meaning even where there is none. But it never worked. I wasn’t even able to kill Kyrie, although I planned everything meticulously, just as I did with your lover. The time: midnight, when all the patients, nurses and orderlies at the sanatorium were in bed and Kyrie was returning to her room after her last round. The place: a dark corridor, and I was waiting for her behind a toilet door. The weapon: a long screwdriver I stole from the garage where we had to wash Kyrie’s VW Golf as part of our ‘occupational therapy’.

I forgot just one thing – that I’m so short. I needed ten centimetres more to be able to stab Kyrie with the screwdriver where I wanted to; in the heart. I also disregarded the fact that she was no walkover: Kyrie the Matron was a little surprised by my attack but in no way scared. With a quick, sure move that seemed part of a well-trained repertoire, she grabbed me by the wrist, whipped me around and pushed me to the floor. My lunge had only grazed her in the groin, and she managed to grab the broom that was leaning against the wall and brought the handle down on my face with all her might. I blacked out and all I felt was the warm blood splashing my face and filling my mouth. I only have a vague memory of what happened afterwards: the cops dragging me away and hitting me, an old doctor stitching the cuts on my face without anaesthetic and disfiguring me even more, if that’s possible, and a judge sneering: ‘You’ve got it coming to you now, midget, you’re up shit creek!’ If anyone had asked me if I had really been to a sanatorium and if people were really cured there, I wouldn’t have known what to say. I also have a fleeting memory of a supposed lawyer pretending to be my defence counsel and arguing that I was a victim of my circum­stances, which had made me a helpless multiplier of irrational violence, but I didn’t care any more. I just have to admit being a bit disappointed, Mum, that you didn’t come to the trial. But when they told me later that you were on holiday at the Borovets ski resort in Bulgaria – with your lover, what’s more – I was glad you were able to take a break from all the mess and problems I caused you. I’d like to take this opportunity to thank your lover for the present he sent me, although it only cost eight euros (that’s what it says on the box) and I did the jigsaw in just a few minutes. Twenty-piece jigsaws like that are for small kids.

But don’t you worry, it’s not as bad here as you might expect. They call the place a Corrective Centre for Juveniles, although it reminds me more of a dungeon. Still, it’s not that grim. I’ve learnt that there are many boys here with stories like mine, lads much taller and better looking than me who are just as hapless. My cell here, unlike the ‘Damned Cell’, has a window with bars on it, but it is still a window. I can watch the weather through it and tell if it’s sunny or cloudy, raining or snowing, and every night I can watch the stars and count them idly as I chew my potatoes; there are always boiled potatoes for dinner. If I stand on tiptoe in the cell I can even see beyond the walls of the Centre and spot people and cars going down the street. I can even see the crowns of the trees: in leaf yesterday, and with bare branches today. They say our only task here is to kill time, but I have no problem with that. I could live here in this prison for years without getting bored. The days might seem long, but viewed in sequence they actually become shorter. I’m satisfied. The food is frugal but you can rely on it – three meals a day plus a morning snack. We have compulsory PE every morning in the courtyard. You know what they say, Mens sana in corpore sano. Perhaps I really will succeed in strengthening my body and building up some muscles, and maybe then I will improve on the inside, too...

How long will I stay here? – until I’m nineteen. Then I’ll have to leave the place, but I’ll manage. I’ve actually heard that if I attack one of the guards I could get a few more years, and then be moved to a real prison. But don’t you worry. Now that you’re a safe distance away from my obnoxiousness it’s only fair that you now finally enjoy love and all those other little things that make one’s life fulfilled.

Just imagine, Kyrie the Matron testified at the trial – ostensibly in my defence – that I had wanted to stab her with the screwdriver because my mother hadn’t given me enough warmth and affection. How despicable of her! She even mentioned my phoney father, that gutless Party functionary, as if he was the reason for you becoming unfeeling towards me. I was still in a daze from the thrashing the policemen had given me and the slapdash operation by the old doctor who first sewed my cuts without anaesthetic and only sprayed some kind of painkiller on my face afterwards; my mouth was numb and I could only mutter:

‘That’s not true, Matron.’

She turned around towards me – tall, slim, and a little pale without her make-up.

‘Sorry, I didn’t understand a word of that,’ she said, and, turning back to the judge, she added: ‘Poor little blighter, I really do feel sorry for him.’

I so longed to reply and slap the truth in her hypocritical mug, but I had been beaten black and blue; my ears were still ringing and my knees still shaking from the beating I’d been given, and all I was able to do in that abyss of pain was to spit. But, being so weak, I couldn’t even do that properly, so the spit just oozed over my contorted blue lips. That must have made me look particularly revolting because an awkward, nauseated silence descended on the courtroom, and the policeman standing beside me grabbed me under the arm forcefully and squeamishly, the way a dog catcher nabs a mangy stray.

I’m feeling a bit jaded, Mum. So much has happened recently. And I feel better here, on the inside. There’s peace and quiet, I’m hardly ever plagued by hallucinations or bad thoughts, I wake up rested, I do my PE and I have regular meals. You promise you’ll come and visit me? Don’t get me wrong, but there’s no need for you to come all that often. Your love warms me from afar. I just need to think of you: then I can smell your delicate perfume and am rapt, just like an ugly bumblebee is intoxicated by the queen rose. Your beautiful hologram is etched deep inside me, so wherever I am and wherever you fare, you will always be with me.