“Ha ha ha . . . Miss? Why so formal?”
“I’m sorry, I was carried away by an urge for elegance.”
“I’d say: for you,” said Vlatka.
He placed the coke on the table. Each of them snorted a line, they started talking more, and then the dessert came, and some wine, and some beer, followed by more snorting. Their eyes sparkled.
The newspaper editor asked derisively, “Wait, what sort of workers’ self-management are you up to?”
Whoa! She’s really landed me in it this time, thought Oleg. He could see why the newspaper editor would be intrigued. Instantly he became aware that everything came across differently here than it would at a dinner party in Vienna, where people would bat their eyelashes with curiosity and think it amusing. But he felt he was merely reminding the newspaper editor of the past. Damn, I’m going to have to explain the inexplicable again, he thought.
“No, it’s not self-management. The workers just organize what they have to do on their own. Meaning: self-organization.”
“And what’s that?”
Oleg smiled and said, “A bourgeois form of organizing, maybe the most bourgeois form.”
He hoped they’d find this amusing, but they didn’t.
“Where’s the difference?”
You really won’t let it go, thought Oleg. He stopped to think.
“Well, I’m not really an expert. This is a case of sheer practicality. If this were self-management, wouldn’t they be co-owners?”
“In theory, yes. Workers’ self-management is simply the way the company is managed. How this goes down in practice is something else, but in theory it is management of revenue,” said Vlatka’s husband lightly.
“Now that’s not part of my plan, not even in theory,” said Oleg. Vlatka smiled. Oleg wondered if she was being friendlier because she thought her husband had screwed Lorena and was figuring out how to get back at him and Lorena in one fell swoop.
“It’s simple: the owners decide where the profit goes—into paychecks, reinvestments, or the owners’ pockets. If someone else is the owner, how could you self-manage?” went on the former guitarist, today’s commercial producer, knowingly. He’d said he had a master’s degree in sociology. Oleg understood he was dealing with an expert, albeit a failed one. “This means that self-management is possible in cooperatives or companies where workers own most of the shares, but that isn’t the case here, if I understood you correctly.”
“Now you’ve explained it all,” said Oleg.
“It’s interesting, nevertheless,” continued the editor, who would not leave the topic alone—Oleg believed on purpose—having sensed it was making him skittish. “What prompted you to allow them to organize themselves this way?”
Oleg spread his hands righteously and said, “Well, it’s so much better than having me organize them!”
Finally. They found this funny.
“Isn’t it much better that those who aren’t using coke do the organizing?”
They laughed, just like in school when you’re not supposed to but you laugh anyway. They have a sense of humor after all, when you shake them up a little bit, thought Oleg.
“You know, Lorena was a bit worried about this. But it’s all rational. The people who have coke should provide the initiative and the people without the coke should do the organizing.”
They laughed as if his joke had a good punch line.
• • •
The next time Šeila went to Nikola’s rented manse they ate a dinner Nikola prepared. He was not a good cook, and he apologized too much for everything.
He was not relaxed. Over the last few days he’d been thinking too much about her, and all of this created a parallel world in his head. In this world, in his mind, he came across as easygoing, witty, and charming; in his mind, he and Šeila would spontaneously end up in bed and make love. But now the mood was different than it had been in his mind, because he was in no way the guy he’d fantasized about. He was not the master of ceremonies, the man for atmosphere, the person suavely steering the mood toward intimacy, leading to a touch, the touch so achingly desired, and so forth. His mind was on his management responsibilities, and this was apparent. It was apparent that he had images in mind and was jutting from them like somebody snared in a self-made cage. He felt that the essence of a man was to take matters into his own hands, to fashion the mood, to shape the world, and this weighed on him, but he believed this was his task.
Šeila didn’t think much about such things. She only saw how anxious and tense he was. He was funny in the cute little role he thought he had to play. She’d seen this many times. She had watched countless men try out this kind of magic on a woman, which was supposed to lead to sex (they were always, anew, so full of hope). There was something amusing about watching men attempt to play at being the director, while invariably tripping themselves up in the process, since all these unfortunate wretches might as well be one and the same, so similar were they in how they acted. She watched men struggle with this ambivalence. The coarser specimens couldn’t handle it, so they’d “get down to business” in a hurry and had to be stopped. The ones who were this type had to be identified before finding herself alone with them in a room. The only ones who were worthy of any consideration were those who could mentally endure the tension and didn’t rush things as much.
These men were more skilled, tried telling racy stories, broached the touch barrier almost imperceptibly through jokes, and put off any kind of action until the woman gave them a sign—recognized by such men through steadily held eye contact with the woman. But the problem with these womanizers was exactly the fact that they were so intent. This fascinated Šeila in earlier years, but, with time she realized these men were cold as ice and taxidermically stuffed with experience. No, they were not bumbly like Nikola, who was so completely wrapped up in his own thoughts that he hadn’t even caught her responses (he even avoided touching her, probably fearing he’d come off too strong). He clearly wasn’t noticing anything. Apparently he was unable to read body language at all. He couldn’t interpret what was hiding behind her smiles, her squirming legs, or how she nudged her chin ever so slightly toward her bare shoulder in response to the music he put on.
Thinking this was all up to him, he sank completely into the isolation of his own thoughts.
His eyes fixed downward and to the side (what was he looking at?), he started confessing about his love life.
Holy shit, thought Šeila, but nevertheless she smiled.
And he talked. He told a long story about an ex. It might be deemed sad. A story that said a lot about him. He was a fool. He said so himself.
“Why say you’re a fool?” said Šeila.
“Because I am.”
“No,” she said, though she wasn’t so sure now.
“What am I then?”
“Well, you are . . .”
She really did want to say “a fool.” Instead, she laughed. She laughed at her train of thought, and he glanced at her, anxious.
Nikola knew he shouldn’t be rehashing his sad love story. He himself didn’t know why he was doing it, but he was already talking about how long he’d dated Mirna, how the relationship became a drain, how he met her parents and felt like their confidant (the word made her laugh), how he had dinners at their house, how the plates clinked; how he became absent, officially present, but absent in spirit, as if he had a doppelgänger who was involved in the game; and how the love faded away. But despite that, he didn’t give up. So it goes, he thought. After all, he was not so young anymore, and it was about time he accepted life, life as it is, that is just how life is, that’s life. (Šeila was really annoyed by his repetitions.)
After years of indecisiveness, he and Mirna finally stopped “saving themselves,” because this was her last chance, and they actually didn’t know why they’d been putting all this off. Then she got pre
gnant, and he—anxious. However, he didn’t attribute his anxiety (which was why he started taking the pills in the first place) to her pregnancy because that would have upset her. Then what happened happened. Mirna miscarried, and he was maybe even a little relieved. This was, nonetheless, awful. They wept, she was desperate, and he did what he could to console her. Everything was so terribly sad. He felt guilty. He felt everything happened because he hadn’t wanted the baby enough. Had he, deep in his subconscious, even willed the miscarriage? All of this created even more tension between them. He felt guilty, and his anxiety levels shot up, but he didn’t want to be a pig and leave Mirna after everything, which is why they were preparing to give it another go, but while they were preparing, while they were “working on it,” she found another man out of the blue.
This surprised him so much that he didn’t know where he was, and he couldn’t believe it was happening, so he behaved like a lunatic for a while and made Mirna’s new life a living hell. But he heard she was pregnant and he stopped—he didn’t want to be at fault again if something bad were to happen. Recently, Mirna had given birth to a baby boy, and he still couldn’t believe all of this had happened in less than a year. He even thought the baby might be his. He thought maybe she’d lied about how far along she was so she could take his baby from him—he did not know why, but suddenly he wanted the baby to be his, perhaps so he wouldn’t have to face complete defeat. Or maybe because, while, imagining all of this, he started feeling it might be much easier to have a child with Mirna now that they didn’t have to live together.
He thought about what he’d do if he heard the baby was born prematurely, because that would mean all this had been a lie and he’d have to nose around the maternity ward (he went so far as to consider the necessary strings to pull to get the right information). He waited, asked around among their mutual friends, kept his ears open, and carefully analyzed everything he heard or got wind of.
When all was said and done, the child was born two months too late to be his. And this is how his final hopes were dashed for staying at least partly in the life he’d been leading for years. He was left utterly alone—and this was his situation when he arrived in the small town of N. where his loneliness took a physical form. It was as if he had been kicked out of his world, so he drank loads of beer every evening, often chased with pills, until the image faded away.
He looked at Šeila (because until now he’d been staring downward to the side). She looked at him, anxious.
Now he realized—he continued—while thinking about it in retrospect, and while telling her (because there was, after all, a good reason for telling her), that he’d actually left Mirna before she left him. His rage, his inability to accept it all, making her new relationship a living hell—all this was just his delusion. And he couldn’t face the defeat of his delusions, delusions about what life should be like, delusions about the life Mirna saved him from; because if they’d stayed together, they’d have blamed each other forever for their life together and yet would have felt obliged to act as if they were a perfectly happy couple, which they might have been once, but stopped being somewhere along the way, after all they’d been through. Yes, he had left her even before she left him, he left her for real, because he really didn’t want to be involved in it anymore—he was only there because he thought he needed to be. And then, luckily, she left him officially and saved him.
“She really is a decent woman,” he said, finishing his story.
He also added that, now that it was all over and done with, when he thought about it, he was glad he was in N. because, in some way, he really couldn’t have figured all of this out back home, maybe because he’d had nobody to confide in the way he’d just confided in Šeila. Why? Because he was ashamed and probably would have become the grist of the rumor mill. It’s weird how you cannot trust people you’ve known your whole life, but can trust someone you’ve just met.
“All right. Yes, you are a fool,” said Šeila, like this was sort of funny, a comforting compliment. “But hey, if you are interested in having a baby with someone you are not going to live with, I should tell you, I’ve been thinking about the same thing.”
This told Nikola that perhaps sex might be an option after all, which made him realize he should snap out of the glum mood that had taken over while he was telling his story. He considered flashing a devilish smile like Oleg would have done, and half-tried it, but felt it was too obvious and a cheap gesture. This attempt (to smile devilishly) looked more like a sort of apology for wrongdoing he hadn’t committed yet.
She thought about telling him he was cute. Yes, she’d thought he was handsome from the get-go. But for some reason, men don’t really know how to act when they’re told they’re cute. It throws them off, and the poor guys don’t know whose line it was (weren’t they supposed to be saying that?). She’d noticed this a long time ago, and, considering that this guy didn’t know what to do anyway, maybe it was best not to confuse him any further.
Besides, she badly needed to use the bathroom. She had been thinking about this for some time during his confession. Dammit, she needed to take a shit. She wondered if he’d hear her or if he had to use the bathroom after her and would smell the stink she left behind. She felt like laughing aloud because of what she was worrying about, but then again, she thought, No, I mustn’t go take a crap now, it’ll totally kill the mood.
She did laugh aloud, and Nikola didn’t know what she was laughing about.
She stood up and said, “Sorry, I have to go home.”
“Because of me talking that way?”
“No,” she said. “No, really, it’s not that.”
She was at the door, and he stood there before her like a rejected child, so she hugged him and then suddenly kissed him on the lips.
“See you.”
Nikola was baffled. Touched by the soft kiss, he couldn’t interpret the jumble of signals. Had he driven her away? Why did he speak of Mirna? He must have made himself sound like a complete lunatic, thinking another man’s baby was his.
Instead of making a fool of himself in the end, this time he did so right at the beginning. That’s all the progress he’d made.
He stood by the window and watched her walk away down the road; he thought of how, in this small town, others might also be watching, and how they must already have declared her his mistress.
She, on the other hand, was walking and thinking about the unearthly woman, about the taboo of the body, about how she couldn’t reveal herself in her corporality; she mulled over the aesthetics of the feminine, which was unearthly, which drove women into using cosmetics and into faking their bodies, into wearing corsets and telling lies; she thought about how she was afraid to use the bathroom. Is this normal? She felt she wasn’t going to make it home with the pressure in her gut, and began looking around. Luckily, street lighting was not a top priority in the depressed town.
Nikola sat by the coffee table and turned on the TV. After drinking wine with dinner, and later switching to beer, he now poured himself a scotch. There were efforts to reach an agreement on whether to help Greece. The Europeans will manage somehow, they must know what they’re doing, thought Nikola. He figured the crisis would soon end.
There was talk of a lack of investment, of fear. “Oh I see, now all the investors have crept into their mouseholes,” he said out loud. “Right . . . Look at the collective fear! Where’s your individualism? Where are the challenges? Where are you, pussies? Oleg and I are the only ones riding through the wasteland!”
While billions of euros and words like bailout, IMF, and José Manuel Barroso echoed from the TV, he poured himself another scotch. He wanted to reach proper drunkenness and dissolve in it.
“Very well, Manuel,” he said to the TV screen.
Then he heard the doorbell. He went there thinking it was, who knows, maybe Oleg. He opened the door.
It was Šeila, with an odd
look in her eyes that seemed to last as long as a free dive.
Then she stepped inside and kissed him.
Their tongues entwined like eels; he finally wrapped his arms around her body, felt her thighs in his hands and his erection, which painfully sought its way. They staggered off to the couch. He noticed the front door was still open, fresh air flowing in from outside; the TV creaked, the voice was reporting on riots in Kyrgyzstan, the sound faded into the background. The couch was like the frothing sea during southern gales and she was so supple, her vagina so thick, the opposition was, apparently, taking over the government in Kyrgyzstan. Their bodies writhed as if fighting something from within. President Kurmanbek Bakiyev, they said, flew in from Bishkek. She found this hilarious, he yelled—What?—she answered—Come on, come on, keep going! The TV crackled; the head of the opposition, Roza Otunbayeva, formed a provisional government, waves were lifting her, he kissed her as if he were going somewhere; then, later, the couch subsided, the fresh air flowed in from outside.
13
EROL FOLLOWED SOBOTKA’S instructions to the letter while they spent two days preparing the base—after they’d checked and oiled everything and replaced the decayed paneling—for the rotor installation, along with four other workers. Erol had a flair for mechanics and tried very hard, but at times he lost the thread; he’d never been to a university and, unlike Branoš, couldn’t understand everything Sobotka said. Sometimes he felt as if he’d be able to do it by himself next time, but today must have been one of those days. A feeling of dejection took hold of him. At the moment, it hit Erol that he would never make it as far as Sobotka had, that he couldn’t keep up with Branoš. He felt as if he were missing vital parts.
He went outside and lit a cigarette.
He told himself, Okay, you should be satisfied even with this. You’re working, in your hometown, people respect you. Just this past summer, in the scorching heat, you labored up north in the big city on rutted streets, amid the pounding of compressors, down in the dust, practically invisible, next to the pipelines and the gas fittings, getting the job done, while the city’s residents were off, floating on air mattresses on their vacations (that’s how he imagined them).
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