Читать книгу Fleeting Snow - Pavel Villikovsky - Страница 23

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The homeless man I met in Heydukova Street could have been living in some suburb of Bratislava, say Trnávka or Karlova Ves, and he may have picked Trenčín out of a hat, on spec, but it certainly was a fortunate choice. He did grab me, not sure if by the heartstrings or by the balls, I didn’t have time to worry about that at first. What is it about Trenčín, as opposed to other Slovak towns such as Piešťany, Púchov or Považská Bystrica? Is it the fact that its name starts with a T rather than a P? I only worked that out later, after the homeless man and I went our separate ways.

There was an older memory of Trenčín lodged in my mind, somewhere deep down, almost completely buried under a layer of mud. I could hardly see it anymore. It went back a long way, to the time immediately after the war; I can’t even remember exactly how old I was, maybe eight or nine. My mother and I had visited Trenčín. We were on a special mission. It had to do with a fur coat.

Before being swept away by the whirlwind of the war, a friend or an acquaintance of Mother’s, who I no longer remember as I was too young at the time, had given her a fur coat for safekeeping. For all I know, it might have been my father or the father of my step-twin, I never asked Mother about it. I don’t know why this person was concerned about the fur coat, perhaps he was Jewish and Jews were prohibited from owning fur coats, or maybe he had an inkling that in those tempestuous times it would be hard to save not just a fur coat but even one’s bare skin; in any case he didn’t come back to claim it after the war. Unless memory fails me, he never came back at all. After a year or two Mother found that the coat was in the way, not so much in her wardrobe as in her soul, which is worse because, although a soul is larger than a body or a wardrobe, a wardrobe is far less troubled by the presence of someone else’s fur coat. She knew that this friend had a brother living in Trenčín; she didn’t know his address but discovered that the wife of this brother worked at the local hospital and decided she would hand over the coat to her. In hindsight, I guess it was a skeleton in the cupboard that she wanted to be rid at all costs, but all she said to me then was that what doesn’t belong to us ought to be handed back.

There are two sides to memory, as to a coin. Heads, the lighter side, tends to leave a deeper mark in a child’s memory. I hadn’t travelled much by train before then. It was a sunny summer’s day, the countryside rolling by in the opposite direction was all new to me, and despite the warnings of Nicht hinauslehnen, Ne pas se pencher en dehors and È pericoloso sporgersi, and despite Mother’s admonitions I kept sticking my head out of the window until a spark from the engine flew into my eye. It didn’t frighten me, I would even say it just enhanced my sense that this was a unique experience, as did the salami sandwich Mother had prepared for the trip. Ever since then, salami sandwiches have been inextricably linked in my mind with journeys, except that now I buy them from a stall at the station and they are called baguettes.

So this was the light, cheerful side of the coin, which included the warm breeze in my hair and the blasts of steam splashing my face. The tails side of the coin was dark – I’m not saying it was menacing or sinister, just incomprehensible to a child’s mind. I can’t remember how we got to the hospital because I was spellbound by the sight of the castle towering above the town like a strict history teacher; all I remember is a consulting room with a bed or bench covered in white oilcloth and colourful pictures of organs of the human body on the walls, which were unlike anything I had ever seen before. I don’t even recall what kind of surgery it was, what illnesses the doctor specialised in, only that, as soon as we appeared at the door, she pointed out to Mother that she didn’t treat children. Mother said she was there about a private matter and proceeded to unpack the fur coat she had wrapped in brown paper and tied up with string.

At first I didn’t pay attention to their conversation, gawping at the pictures instead. I assumed that the transfer of a fur coat between two grown-ups – the doctor was about Mother’s age – would be a straightforward affair, a simple handover. But the string on the package got tangled up and they raised their voices. I can’t recall their conversation word for word, but basically the doctor wasn’t asking questions but protesting – what kind of fur coat was it, where did it come from, she knew nothing about any fur coat and what did it have to do with her. Mother, on the other hand – rather like the song whose lyrics go something like ‘the one I love is not around so I might as well fall in love with the one who is’ – insisted she had only taken the fur coat for safekeeping and now, since its owner hadn’t come back to claim it, she wanted to return it to his brother as his next of kin and heir. After all, it was a good quality fur coat and he could surely use it in these difficult times.

Up until that point I had taken no interest in the fur coat. It was too big for me, and since nobody in our family had ever owned one, I had nothing to compare it with. The material on the outside was cloth and the lining on the inside was greyish-beige fur, rabbit or maybe dog. To me it was rather like a dog that had happened to stray into our house and moved on once it warmed up a little. I was happy that the fur coat had brought me to Trenčín and as far as I was concerned that was all there was to it. I couldn’t understand how it could possibly give rise to an argument.

‘How do you know’, the doctor said, ‘that he could use it? You can’t have any idea.’

I was struck by how quiet her voice had suddenly become after the loud protests; I turned my head away from the pictures and pricked up my ears, which is why I remember her exact words. The word definitely in particular, as it sounded sarcastic to me. It is usually things we don’t understand that we remember best.

‘Oh yes, he’ll definitely be happy about his brother’s fur coat’, the doctor said, ‘seeing as he has no idea that he’s got a brother. You can’t imagine what it’s like. He doesn’t even know his own name anymore. He doesn’t know if it’s spring or summer, what month it is, or the day of the week. He might even get the year wrong.’

She paused between sentences, as if wondering if she could bring herself to utter the next one, and if her listener was worth it. Whether she should make the effort on her account.

‘Yes, the fur coat might come in handy in winter, that’s for sure’, she said. ‘It will be a bit too big for him now but never mind. I’m sure it could be taken in. But who cares about winter, he might not live to see the winter anyway.’

‘I am really sorry, Mrs Königová’, Mother said.

‘It’s Mrs Kráľová’, the doctor corrected her. ‘I still remember my own name. But your fur coat really is the last thing on my mind.’

‘I’m sorry, I made a mistake, Mrs Kráľová. I am truly sorry about your husband, I just wanted to do the right thing. The fur coat isn’t mine. I made this trip specially to return it and I can assure you that I’m not taking it back.’

Or words to that effect. Now, after all these years, the doctor’s face has started to emerge from under the mud; it was an ordinary face, pretty in an uremarkable way except for two bitter lines around the mouth, the kind people develop when they have to give bad news regularly. Mother flung the fur coat, half-unwrapped as it was, onto the oilcloth, and made for the door without saying goodbye; I remember saying ‘I kiss your hand’ to the doctor. Yes, I said I kiss your hand, I was only eight or nine years old, later I was too embarrassed to use this old-fashioned greeting.