Breathing Into Marble

by Laura Sintija Cerniauskaite

  The gipsy was still out in the street. She was circling around lazily and seductively. A car would stop sooner or later. He wondered who these people were and how it was that they had come to this. The gipsy had hair similar to that of a woman who used to intoxicate him. She had a seductive dimple in her cheek which promised to take you to the sweetest, most fulfilling places, but never took you anywhere. He knew how it would all end. To be more exact, how it would never end - the misery and helplessness, the stupid inability to drop it all. To give up hope. Repeatedly, now, he blew cords of smoke down from the window as if he wished to bind the gipsy to the post of the bus stop. In his mind’s eye he waited there together with her. He imagined what she was like when she was with a client and what she was like later, back at home in a hut with no running water, with cockroaches rustling beneath the wall paper and babies murmuring in their sleep. She looked ageless; like a teenager matured too early through drink and men, with a tough but exciting body. Looking at her body he imagined her babies, like roasted sunflower seeds, all similar to each other. When the gipsy saw him with his hands in his pockets as he crossed the street, it was like she could see through him – could see the bare walls of his apartment with the Venetian mask and his son’s medicine that dropped out of his cupboard in the darkness. And she suggested that she had the antidote to his emptiness. Had it right there, with her.

  There we go, a car; a dark Audi with blacked-out windows. He thought he had seen the car stopping there before. The woman slowly straightened her cheap, light-blue handbag and jiggled her buttocks, which were squeezed into a denim skirt.

  The front door of the car opened and a palm flashed in the darkness. They always stretched out a hand but never showed their faces. He who has a cock has a business card, but they don’t get them both out at the same time, he thought, almost pitying the gipsy. She bent down and said something to the driver; she didn’t seem to be in a hurry to get in. Painfully he imagined her tight skirt dropping, revealing the cherry beneath her underwear – that was what the guy in the Audi was negotiating over now. Annoyed, he tossed away the cigarette butt and closed the window.

  It was nearly nine and dark but the phone was still silent. He checked the screen of his mobile – nobody had called or texted. The donuts were inedible; it was criminal selling them when they were so out of date. He threw them in the rubbish bin. But then suddenly he changed his mind and took them back out, put them into a paper bag and, still in his slippers, went down to the yard. He left the bag on the rubbish bin; it wouldn’t be long before they disappeared.

  ‘Probably you don’t know…but maybe you do.’

  The nervous voice behind him reminded him, somehow, of the hand in the Audi. He turned, startled. A woman wearing a black linen hat was standing so close to him that he could smell cheap vermouth on her breath. Her skinny body was drowned in a black garment from which protruded a pale face, distorted by sorrow. He stepped back and breathed in, ready to defend himself.

  ‘Probably you don’t know him. I’m looking for my former teacher, Kazimieras Ulbiskis. He must be very old by now, with grey…’

  ‘Where does he live?’

  ‘That’s the thing, I don’t know. I saw him in this yard not long ago; he was hanging around the bins - if you see what I mean?’ The woman’s eyes filled with tears. ‘Then I, you know, I didn’t have the courage to talk to him – I thought he might be embarrassed. But, you see, I came back; all the time I’ve been thinking about him, so maybe you know something…’

  ‘I don’t know, I haven’t seen him,’ Liudas replied impatiently. He waited for the woman to ask him for some money, but she just went on and on. Tears froze in her eyes, trembling like water in wine glasses.

  ‘I don’t know. I don’t know,’ he repeated, turning back towards the landing. ‘Ask somebody on the ground floor.’

  Back in his apartment he couldn’t get the woman out of his head.

  Something rustled in his son’s room. He listened and was almost glad; as if his son had not left, but had just fallen asleep reading a book. Quietly, as if afraid to wake him, he opened the door to the room slightly and pressed the light switch. Startled, the furniture was woken by the light. The writing table, an empty chair on wheels he had brought from the office, shelves full of books and models, the bed covered with a knitted spread, the chest of draws for his clothes, the straw crane on the windowsill with a dried poppy seed in its beak – his son’s room was the only thing that breathed any life into the apartment. He felt his heart squeeze. What was it that I heard rustling? he muttered. It was probably just in my head.

  He went back into the other room which was full of books and clothes and looked out through the window – the bag of donuts was still on the rubbish bin but the woman had gone.

  Just switch the TV on, he thought, and the humming in your ears will stop.

  At that moment the ring of his mobile phone pierced the silence.

  He picked up the phone and for a moment just gazed at his son’s name shining on the screen and probably for the first time during his son’s holiday he was reluctant to answer. Having waited all evening for the call, this hesitation confused him.

  ‘Hi, Gailius,’ he answered, at last.

  ‘Liudas…’ It was her. She sounded very far away; far away behind the trees and the stones and the shining road signs.

  He knew immediately something had happened.

  ‘What is it?’

  Her breath came jerkily, pushing random sounds from her lungs, as always when she was searching for words.

  ‘What has…Gailius...?’

  There was a strange squeak at the other end of the line.

  ‘Are you alone? Who is there? Isabel?’ He could feel that there was somebody moving next to her.

  ‘The ambulance is here…the police...’

  ‘I’m coming,’ he snapped, his voice dry and sharp. He disconnected the call so that he would not hear more than he could handle.

  In the yard the bag with the donuts had gone.

  I knew it, he thought. That could have been expected.

  THE CAR slid smoothly along the sun stitched road. Looking at the trembling light and the tapestry of shadows, he felt nothing but sadness; it was the same with anything that held his gaze for more than a moment. Even the sound of a match hitting the wooden parquet floor, having over-shot the rubbish bin. The pain never left him. Occasionally, for a moment, he would forget about it, or become inured to it, like a pulsing vein in the temple, until something reminded him of it again.

  Driving through the woods Liudas was stopped by a teenager, deeply suntanned, barefoot, with rolled up trousers and a dirty shirt.

  ‘Can you drop me at the Kurpiskiai bend?’ he asked through the rolled down window, his vowels dragging in the local accent.

  Liudas didn’t know him.

  The boy settled next to him, resting a bag full of yellowing mushrooms between his knees and fixing his half open eyes on the road. He was talkative. He was from the neighbouring village and was going to Kurpiskiai to drop off the mushrooms. Liudas was suspicious that the boy was drunk, though he couldn’t smell alcohol. The smell of the mushrooms was unpleasant, like damp soil.

  Liudas lit a cigarette.

  ‘Can I have one?’ the boy asked casually.

  Liudas thrust the packet of Wall Street cigarettes towards him.

  ‘When did you start smoking?’

  ‘I was born with a cigarette between my lips.’ The teenager smiled like an old man; he had probably heard the phrase somewhere and decided to use it.

  The boy only stopped talking when he was taking a drag on the cigarette. The shadows of alders slipped across their faces and Liudas barely listened to him, as if afraid he might hear the tap of the match on the floor.

  ‘A child got stabbed here just recently,’ the boy said, suddenly, when they had nearly reached the Kurpiskiai bend. ‘The killer came right into the yard, but they couldn’t catch him… Some kind of psychopath from prison,
they reckon.’

  The car swerved, momentarily, onto the opposite side of the road.

  ‘Hey, watch out!’ the boy shouted.

  Liudas straightened the car.

  ‘Let me out here.’

  Liudas realised he had passed the bend. He stopped and put the car into reverse. The boy’s bag smelt of sludge. The boy thanked him, slammed the door and strolled off thoughtfully along the road to Kurpiskiai.

  There were only a couple of kilometres left until the turn to Puskai where the woods started. The lukewarm September sun spilled across the landscape like molten gold. Somewhere beyond the golden mist a dog howled and he knew instinctively that he was remembering it rather than hearing it.

  The woods slid away from the road like a tablecloth; a clearing with a view of the farm opened up. The sunken, run down cottage had been painted green with white shutters, but now it looked washed out by the rain and time, burnt out by the sun, weathered by the wind. It looked as grey as a house martin’s nest.

  The yard was empty. He had heard, at the funeral, that Isabel might have sold her car.

  Liudas parked his Opel next to the well, in his old spot and waited for a moment; waited for a shadow in the window, for the door to creak – for something to betray that she had heard him.

  The windows were shut. There were no longer any heavy blossomed peonies under the kitchen window. The dew had taken forever to dry in their over-ripe petals that were the size of a child’s palm and which would slap gently on the rain-flattened soil. The flower garden around the house was thick with weeds; daisies grew chaotically around the yard, mixed with clover in the uncut grass. From between the foundation stones shone a couple of clumps of pansies. The shadow of a hawk slid across the grass.

  The pain that overwhelmed him was pitiless.

  Liudas got out of the car and walked round the house. Not once did he glance at the barn, but he felt its stifling silence, as if it hadn’t got its breath back after all that had happened there.

  The sudden squeak of a door pierced his temples.

  Again, he wasn’t sure if he actually heard the sound or simply remembered it, but the door to the house really was open and swinging in the wind.

  Before they had used to hold it open with a chair on which Isabel would sit and, in a few deft lines, sketch a phantasmagorical image – a wreath of people, plants or animals transfused into the same state. The lines were light and alive even when she barely touched the paper. She would draw in pencil in one of Gailius’ books and leave the pictures everywhere as if to annoy Liudas, or as if she was trying to tell him something. From aside it just looked like her general absentmindedness.

  Liudas never mentioned Isabel’s drawings or thought about why he avoided looking at them. He would gather them up and put them in a cardboard box in the veranda and in the winter Isabel would burn them.

  Liudas paused on the threshold. In the porch there was a new straw mat. The sewing table, not in use any more, had been pushed against the south wall, under the window. Thyme was drying on a heap of old newspapers. He hadn’t noticed that several weeks before; he had felt, only, that something had changed, that there had been an attempt at renewal, a screening away of the exhausting past – but it had been done doubtfully and inconsistently.

  He knocked on the door jamb and waited. Nothing.

  Isabel was sitting at the kitchen table, her hands like empty plates on the clean oilcloth, staring in front of her. She must have seen Liudas through the window approaching along the path, but she hadn’t moved.

  Liudas noticed straight away that she had changed.

  Her hair declared it.

  She had never let it down during the day. Only at night. She would comb it for a long time at the window, trembling as the desire rose in her, as if she was excited by her own hair that spread in shiny strands over her back and shoulders.

  Isabel had cut her hair.

  During the funeral it had been hidden under a black, velvet scarf and Liudas couldn’t understand what it was, apart from the mourning, that was different about her.

  Black didn’t suit Isabel. It emphasised the paleness of her skin, confined her already tiny body into an ascetic case. At the cemetery she was held up by two elderly women – one from Kurpiskiai, while the other he did not recognise. This second woman was trembling from the cold even though she was wearing a coat with a sheepskin collar at the end of August. The trembling, though it mirrored Isabel’s, was not from mourning and that, for some reason, annoyed Liudas.

  At the funeral Beatrice went over to greet Isabel. She kissed her shyly at the temple, stopping near the skin as if she wasn’t sure she was allowed that level of intimacy.

  Eimuntas Brasiskis, who was a well-known and valued architect in some circles, was standing some way off, under the trees, keeping his eye on his wife, Beatrice. Liudas’ glance swept over Brasiskis’ round face. Brasiskis nodded and then hastily fixed his eyes back on Beatrice, as if afraid he might have missed something.

  When Liudas took over from the woman and held Isabel by the elbow, she moved slightly, as if turning over in her sleep and looked right through him, as if she didn’t recognise him. They talked – or rather exchanged an insignificant phrase or two – communicating as if through rippling water. It was the others that caused the ripples. They were gathered in a black ring around the hole, their hands folded piously. They kept asking Liudas about things he didn’t understand, about topics too far removed from that hole with the rustling conifer wreaths. The whispered questions jarred against the solemnly clasped hands. Life throbbed in them.

  They did not look at each other. Liudas held her sharp, cold elbow like it was an umbrella handle and he was waiting for its owner to turn up and free him from the encumbrance of it. The fact was, Isabel’s despair was too heavy for him; he couldn’t cope with it. Right from birth he had avoided having to deal with difficult things. He attempted to keep his thoughts quick and simple. And today perhaps faster than usual, so his thoughts wouldn’t linger or explode into a painful fear and the ghost of self-pity.

  While Brasiskis had disappeared somewhere, Beatrice sparkled still among the procession of mourners. Though she kept herself at a distance, her facial expressions communicated themselves clearly, much to Liudas’ irritation. He didn’t, however, have the patience to try and interpret the signs she sent him. Liudas had found it easy to get used to not thinking about her during the few years they had not seen each other. After the ceremony Beatrice’s thick perfume enveloped him and he realised he was standing next to her lithe body. She was dressed in an expensive black suit; he looked at her carelessly and with half closed eyes, as if at an old black and white photograph, trying to remember what they used to have in common.

  Beatrice was still beautiful. She was packaged in such a civilised way, with her black curls glistening like coal in the sunlight. When Beatrice moved there spread around her waves of blood, and black soil, and of gold and almonds. She had the sharpness of petals and the dew-freshness of bubbles in a wineglass. It wasn’t important whether it was her hair, the twitch of her wrist or of her hip, each moved in the same scented manner. But it was all too subtle for Liudas. The remnants of any feelings he might have had could not be revived by that faint sensation of déjà vu.

  ‘She needs to be looked after,’ Beatrice said, watching as Isabel was led to the car.

  Liudas didn’t reply. He stared, as if hypnotized, at the back of Isabel’s white neck below her black beret. Her relatives behaved as if she were a fragile piece of furniture that might break at any moment.

  They ignored Liudas. He thought that, beneath their politeness, they were cold to him and, without noticing it, he withdrew. He would have liked to have held Isabel’s hand, just to have held her fingers companionably in his own, but he couldn’t imagine how he could have done this in the presence of her relatives. It was as if he had betrayed their property and now he had no right to touch it. The bunch of them in their black clothes had made it clear th
at Liudas could stand next to his son’s body only because they allowed him to do so. And that was their first, last and only concession to a man who had left a woman with an epileptic son.

  How terrible, dear, how terrible…if the poor woman hadn’t been left on her own in some forgotten corner this might not have happened. Liudas could hear how the women in hats whispered.

  ‘You know, it’s a strange coincidence but…Ilya disappeared that night,’ Beatrice whispered.

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘I’m just telling you…’

  ‘Beatrice, our game was over a long time ago.’

  ‘I know. You still think I’m interested? Hilarious.’

  ‘What do you want?’

  ‘Nothing. I won’t let anybody else know that he disappeared, because if I did we would have to divulge our little story as well; all the misunderstandings over the adoption and so on. I don’t want to lose my job. Do you understand?’

  ‘If you don’t want to say anything about it, that’s fine. You can start by not saying anything now.’ Liudas was annoyed.

  Hurt, Beatrice turned and disappeared among the conifers and grave stones, leaving the scent of her perfume in his nose.

  But her words wouldn’t leave him. From that moment Beatrice’s careless revelation at the cemetery began to obsess Liudas, even in his sleep.

  His apartment was unbearably stuffy. When he got back from the funeral he sat gazing at the Venetian mask as if seeing it for the first time. The mask stared back, pulling faces at something behind him. But the moment he turned to see what had caused the mask’s sour expression, it, whatever it was, turned too, staying behind him. The mask chuckled spitefully.