Читать книгу Wild Woman - Marina Sur Puhlovski - Страница 12

We live now like two butterflies flying over a meadow of flowers, fluttering here, there and everywhere... Lectures at uni in the morning, and once or twice a week the cinema in the afternoon, usually the one near my house that shows art films, Bergman, Godard, Truffaut, then we’d see friends from uni, couples like Petra and Filip, or just people like Adam, who had joined our crowd. We see each other every day after lectures, there are endless conversations in pubs – when you become a world-famous writer which, of course, you will – we philosophise, laugh, drink, all in clouds of smoke, because we all smoke a lot, we are together everywhere, in his apartment, in mine, holding hands, arm in arm, embracing, darling, sweetheart, honey, a kiss on the eye, on the cheek, on the mouth, on the chin, under the chin.

In the street we run into a poet, he’s our age, wearing a black, broad-brimmed Bohemian hat, with a black beard that I scan for any remains of food, it’s so thick it’s bound to get some stuck in it, I say to myself, he’s grown it because he’s going bald. He stops us, he wants to read us a poem that he pulls out of his pocket, alright, says my beloved, as long as it’s not long. He reads the poem as if he’s on stage, performing in front of an audience, full of himself, and we smirk, it’s good, old man, says my one and only, patting him on the back, while the poet looks at me goggle-eyed, as if he wants to grab me.

There’s a lot of flirting going on. Adam flirts with me, too; strange that people from the Podrava region should call their son Adam, I think when I learn that he’s from there, a rural boy, that his father is a tailor and mother a midwife, that they moved to Zagreb from Bjelovar five years ago so that he and his brother could get an education, and that they’re still building a house to which we’ll be invited once it’s finished. Whenever he gets a chance, he puts his hand on my knee, and I immediately remove it. I don’t get angry, I giggle, I like being twenty years old, having a boyfriend and an admirer, and I get along better with Adam than with the others, sometimes better even than with my own darling, whom I love more than anything... And from talking I move on to just enjoying his presence, his mere existence, being together, without any demands except that he be with me. And so in the evening I often doze off on his lap, I lie down on the sofa, my head on his lap, and drift off to sleep.

He’ll wake me up before he leaves, because we’re at my place, in my little room next to the kitchen, where I moved from the bigger room next to my parents’, because my father is in there dying, and it makes me feel uncomfortable. Anyway it suits me to have so much space separating me from them, the kitchen, the hall, it’s like being on the other side of the world. Of course, they come into the kitchen, shuffle around in their slippers, creak open the door, take glasses and dishes from the kitchen cabinets, pour water, say something to each other, but then they leave and we’re on our own again. Mind you, not for long enough that we can do anything, they’re too close by for that and you never know when they’ll burst into the kitchen, maybe even say something through the closed door, usually it’s to ask if we need anything, if we’re going to eat after all that studying, my mother has been known to come in with lemonade as a pick-me-up, though she does knock first, just in case, but we’re not really up to anything, we’re happy the way we are.

When he leaves, when I walk him out, laughing, kissing his mouth, his nose, his eyes and his ears, so that he can feel my kisses all over, I pull out the sofa, make my bed and go to sleep, all happy. At night I fly over my city, I simply leap off the pavement and fly. It’s wonderful to soar over the houses, the roofs, waving my arms like wings, my heart almost bursts with the joy of it, it’s better than flying on a magic carpet, like in Scheherazade, which I imagined when I was a child, better than anything I’ve ever known, even if it is only in my dreams, because, honestly, what’s the difference?

The only thing it’s not better than is being in the heavenly forest I dream about before the wedding. At first I’m somewhere down below, above there’s a clearing, greener than any green I’ve ever seen, sunnier than any sun I’ve ever seen, emanating something that makes me feel as if my lungs are expanding, a feeling I’ve never had before, it’s like some kind of magical breathing, and it’s all here laid out for me, it’s all mine, it’s all waiting to embrace me, and it’s merely the road to something even more perfect, to the woods at the end of that clearing, to the heavenly forest.

As soon as I enter it, I know it’s heavenly, it tells me so, there’s no doubt about what kind of a forest this is, it’s incorporeal, and yet with a body, with the bodies of the trees, the bushes, the grass, but there’s nothing hard, nothing sharp, nothing to prick you, nothing to hurt you, the way there otherwise is in nature, which is magnificent to look at, but don’t lie down because it will attack you.

When we’re not at my place then we’re at his, lounging on his living-room sofa after lunch. His father Frane nods off in the armchair, which is where he does everything anyway, reads the newspaper, hems, coughs, drinks his coffee, watches television, whatever’s on, he likes the news, we’re not interested in that, or in politics generally, we don’t even read the newspaper, except for the last page, for its humorous column, but his mother never sleeps, she sits down for a bit, washes the dishes and then tackles the sewing, because the clients will be coming later in the day.

We don’t sleep either, we just enjoy lying next to each other, side by side. Standing on the table are glasses of red wine with the wedges of peach inside, and when they soak up the wine we eat them with a fork as a treat; only soft, ripe peaches are good, they dissolve in your mouth, and we move to the balcony, where we can smoke, to finish the wine. We’ll stand next to each other, our elbows resting on the railing, and look down below, or off into the distance, feeling full, languid, floating through life like a cottonwool cloud, and he’ll tell me how a sparrow once fell off the balcony, the little bird hadn’t learned to fly yet, and down below was a cat waiting for it with open jaws, and it polished it off in a second.

In the evening we’ll go to the cinema. Or to a nearby restaurant, on the edge of town, where he lives, where his local friends go, where I don’t really like going, I’d rather be with our friends from uni; his crowd is too mixed for my taste, and they’re all men, one is hunchbacked, he always sits on the arm of the chair otherwise you can’t see him, he works at the telephone exchange, another is some sort of former football star, a dubious character, they call him Blacky, the third is an actor who’s never sober and tried, unsuccessfully, to make an actor out of my darling, because he’s supposedly talented, and because when you’re an actor you can earn enough money to buy yourself a Lincoln Continental, but he flunked the entrance exam, so that was the end of that. And he could have also been a painter, his mother Danica told me when we were discussing all of her son’s talents, showing me a watercolour he did when he was ten and they had framed.

Then it’s summer and we go to the seaside for a week, to Omišalj, the two of us, with Flora and her boyfriend Boris, whom she’d picked up at Ria’s, but she mysteriously vanishes, probably because she’s busy being a sorceress and casting her spell, I now think, but at the time I’m amazed that she can disappear like that, people here don’t just disappear, except when they die. The lads are in tents down below and us two girls are in the little hilltop town above, staying with a friend of my mother’s in a narrow, stone house. The friend’s mother, dressed all in black, her braided hair wreathed around her head, makes sheep cheese in the cellar, then puts the yellow rounds of cheese on the shelf to dry, they smell to high heaven, and she sleeps in the adjoining space. My mother’s friend and her daughter sleep in the room above that, and we’re in the room above theirs, which has a double bed, a wardrobe, a chest, and everything is ancient, huge, the room is so full you can barely move in it, but we love it.

The village is on a hill, and after dancing at the seaside hotel down below every night, my darling walks me back up to the house. On the way, we always stop and sit on the bench to make out, which we did that night, too, when I took off my sandals because they were pinching me, and when we finished, we continued on our way, with me barefoot, which I didn’t notice until I got to my room, even though I’d been walking on an unpaved road laid with stones.

What now, I panic, those are the only sandals I’ve got, except for the flip-flops I have for the beach, my boyfriend has gone back, and Flora’s not around to help me look for them. Never mind, I tell myself, collapsing onto my side of the bed, onto the damp sheets, my feet dirty, I’m sure I’ll find them in the morning, I tell myself, falling asleep before I know it. But my poor brand-new blue sandals are gone by the morning, somebody took them. I’m devastated, because, of course, that means no more dancing, so I run to the post office to phone my mother and tell her my tale of woe, she isn’t far away, she’s in Pula, staying with Aunt Višnja. My father was feeling better, his brother and his wife had come to stay for a week and so my mother had given herself some time off; I’m barefoot, I sob, as if they’d cut off my legs, and my mother says: come to Pula, you can buy yourself some sandals, I’ve just won the lottery! Auntie Višnja isn’t here, she’s gone to the hot springs in Serbia.

And it’s in Pula, where I immediately buy myself a pair of sandals like the ones I lost, blue with webbed straps, each one with a nickel-coloured clasp, that I first experience what is to become the rule of my life, until I extricate myself, though it still has a hold on me – my darling vanishes.

That happens on our third day there, he goes out to buy a pack of cigarettes and doesn’t come back. Like that joke about the man who went to the newsstand and disappeared forever. I wait for him and his cigarettes for five minutes, ten, then, after going to the corner newsstand to buy cigarettes, furious, obviously, I wait just for him, I wait half an hour, an hour, two, becoming more and more worried, where is he, where can he be, I pester my mother, maybe something’s happened, I lean out the window, stretching my neck to see better, firing nasty looks at passers-by for not being him, I go out into the street and stand there like a mad woman, spinning around, as if looking for a child who’s hiding. We were supposed to go for a swim, then come back for lunch and now everything is ruined. And that’s the least of it!

After waiting for two hours, I go looking for him, it’s noon already. Auntie Višnja doesn’t live far from the centre of town, which is small anyway, you just have to walk down the long dusty street, past the dilapidated houses neglected since the war, and you’re in the centre of town, near the ancient Arena, and the café garden, where I decide to look for him.

I find him immediately, as if I’d conjured him, sitting by himself at the table, under a sunshade, his legs crossed, with that thoughtful, hard expression on his face that sometimes escapes him. There’s a glass of brandy glowing on the table like amber, a cigarette between his long, slender fingers, virtuoso pianists have fingers like that but so do schizophrenics, I later learn; the smoke rises straight up like a candle’s, because there is no wind, his gaze is intense, the café is packed and I can’t see what he’s looking at, I don’t think he’s looking at anybody, he’s just looking, because he’s sitting, because he’s alone, because he’s got eyes and it’s natural to look.

And I’m livid, just livid watching him, I dig my nails into the palms of my hands, I could kill him, gouge his eyes out, pull his hair out, break his fingers, throw the brandy in his face, yank that cigarette out of his hand and crush it with my brand new sandals; there he is, leaning back, enjoying himself, while I’m at home waiting for him, worrying, despairing, how can this be happening, it can’t be happening, it’s not part of the agreement, it’s beyond logic, its madness, it’s not reality, it’s the end of the world and you can’t do anything about it because it’s the end and because it’s beyond comprehension; because it’s beyond you.

I know what I should do, I should leave without his seeing me and return to Auntie Višnja’s house, pack up his things and send him back home on the bus that same afternoon, no arguing, no discussion, that’s what I’ve decided to do and that’s it. I especially need to avoid any discussion, I know and I understand that, I’m enough of an adult, after all, so no discussion, that’s basically just mirrors and smoke, it doesn’t let you move on because you don’t know where you’re going, because the different sides of the world have disappeared and you’re happy just to see any object that belongs to this world and will show you the way, even though you don’t know where it leads: into the abyss, to salvation or to something else, neither here nor there... to something that’s maybe worse.

And though I know what I know, I reliably know, and though everything is as clear as day, I do not head for Auntie Višnja’s flat to finish what I started, no, I slip my feet into the new blue sandals that my mother won at lotto – it’s the first time she ever won anything and she’s been playing for years, working out the odds of probability, on the basis of which she writes down the numbers, because she’s mathematically gifted – and let them take me to the table where he’s sitting under the sunshade, none the wiser yet, and where they come to a stop. I wait for him to notice me, for him to slowly stand up, hesitate, his hand leaning on the table for support, the expression on his face changing from guilt and contrition to fear as it turns red, until, with a sigh, he slumps, as if life were too heavy a burden.

Because, having dropped the idea of not saying anything, or of sending him straight home, which would have been the end of it, I, understandably, want to know why, why, why. I want an explanation that I can accept, even though I know there isn’t any, why did he come here in the first place, and then stay, knowing that I was waiting for him at home, that I was sure to be going out of my mind, was it possible that he didn’t give me even a minute’s thought, or remember that we were here with my mother, who would be asking questions as well, even if she didn’t say anything, who would be unhappy that her daughter had to suffer such a lack of consideration, and for no reason? How could we continue our relationship after I’d seen what he was capable of doing, what I could expect? What does he want, anyway, to be alone, OK then, so be alone, let’s break up and be done with it, we each go our own way, I shout in front of everyone in the café garden, as if they’re not there, because for me they don’t exist. For me, the only things that exist are the two of us and the unresolved matter of him having gone out to buy cigarettes and ending up here. I continue shouting as we leave, and all the way home, beside myself that he has no explanation, that he says he doesn’t know. What do you mean you don’t know, I yell, shaking my splayed fingers in front of me, are you insane, if you don’t know then go to an insane asylum and leave me alone, I start repeating myself, I’m getting tired of myself, of my own voice which is beginning to crack, and of my futile questions which get no answers, just an attempt to calm me down, as if it’s me who’s crazy not him. And that only makes me even more furious; if I’m crazy then there must be a reason, it didn’t come out of the blue, we were supposed to go for a swim, and in the evening to the cinema at the Arena, and now it’s ruined. No it’s not, he says, we can still go to the cinema, if I just calm down, if I forgive him, if I realise that he didn’t mean to, he just felt like it, he has no idea why, he went into town for a glass of brandy and simply got lost.

And then I suppose he hugged me, and kissed me, and begged me to forgive him and said he would never do it again, that I shouldn’t be upset because he loves me, because he can’t live without me and that we need to calm down before we get home because my mother will be there, we have to think up some story for her, for instance that he ran into somebody and they got talking and he lost all sense of time, and we’ll have lunch, and a rest and then go to the cinema, at the Arena, just as planned.

***

When I think now about how I was heading towards certain disaster, towards him, not away from him, against all reason, I have an image of a solitary table, in an empty street, with not even a car, as if the table is in some kind of square, and a man is sitting at that solitary table, a table for one, as the song goes, the song comes to me with the image – because this is the century of songs, not of poetry but songs, which are played constantly, which are the omnipresent sound of this century – a nice song, melodic, sad, it says that all of us are alone, that’s our fate, a song full of profound forgiveness for this lonely being who can’t survive, he will die alone – and in my mind he and that song join forces against the facts, against the obvious, against the possibility of my recognising the wolf in sheep’s clothing who wants to gobble me up.

The wolf grinned at me, his eyeteeth gleaming, and then, like a phantom, disappeared, leaving me with just the poor sheep, bleating as it was being chased away from its young.