by Frank Wynne
And though at this point everything becomes enveloped in mist again, we can guess exactly what happened.
6.
The waitress switched off the light and shut the door after the other girls. For some reason she didn’t feel like going with them. She sat down for a short rest and looked through the window at the passersby and the brand names atop the buildings. As she bent over to take off the slippers she wore at work, her hand happened to graze her knee. She let her hand rest on the knee and froze in that position as if listening for something. Then, heaven knows why, she thought of the dark handsome guy who’d left his umbrella in the cafeteria a week or so before and that good-looking young policeman with the funny, kinky questions—both of them so attractive and somehow connected … Or had she noticed them and had they registered with her mainly because they had—of that she was sure—noticed her?
Sheltered by the darkness, the cartons, and the glass, the girl sat with her legs slightly parted, relaxed, peering out of the window at the passersby, when suddenly her hands reached by themselves for one of the cardboard boxes, pulled out a few packages of hot dogs, and started tugging feverishly at the cellophane wrappers. God, what was she doing? What was she doing? What if somebody saw her …? Nobody saw her.
She slowly brought a raw hot dog to her lips and quickly stuffed it into her mouth. The hot dog slid down her throat, leaving practically no taste behind. She grabbed a second and quickly chewed it up. Then a third, a fourth, a fifth …
There in the heart of the city, enslaved by the darkness, the cartons and the glass, sat a waitress with her legs slightly parted and her dark, shining eyes peering out at the passersby while she gobbled hot dog after hot dog. At one point the image of a gigantic, ravenous female mouse flashed through her mind, but she immediately forgot it. She was following the movements of her jaws and listening in on her gullet.
7.
In the afternoon of the seventh of April there was a nervous ring at Kovalić’s door. Kovalić was a bit taken aback to see a good-looking young policeman carrying an unusual-looking bundle.
“Are you Mato Kovalić the writer? Or, rather, the novelist and short story writer?”
“I am,” said Kovalić with a tremor in his voice.
“Well, this is yours. Sign here.”
“But…” Kovalić muttered.
“Good-bye,” said the policeman and, with a knowing wink, added, “and good luck!”
“But officer …!” Kovalić cried out. It was too late. The policeman had disappeared into the lift.
Kovalić unwrapped the bundle with trembling hands. Out of the paper fell a bottle filled with a clear liquid, and floating in that liquid was his very own …! Unbelievable! Kovalić was beside himself. For several moments he stood stock still; then he went back and cautiously removed the object from the bottle and started inspecting it.
That’s it, all right—the real thing! Kovalić thought aloud. He’d have recognized it anywhere! And he jumped for joy—though carefully clutching it in his hands.
Since, however, it is a well-known fact that nothing on this earth lasts for very long, our hero suddenly frowned. He had had a terrifying thought. What if it wouldn’t go back on?
With indescribable terror in his heart Kovalić walked over to the mirror. His hands were trembling. He carefully returned the object to its former place. Panic! It refused to stick! He brought it up to his lips, warmed it with his breath, and tried again. No luck!
“Come on, damn you!” Kovalić grumbled. “Stick! Stick, you stupid fool!” But the object fell to the floor with a strange, dull, cork-like thud. “Why won’t it take?” Kovalić wondered nervously. And though he tried again and again, his efforts were in vain.
Crushed, Kovalić was left holding his own, his very own and now, very useless part. And much as Kovalić stared at it, it clearly remained indifferent to his despair and lay there in his hand like a dead fish.
“Ba-a-a-a-astard!” Kovalić screamed in a bloodcurdling voice and flung the object into a corner and himself onto his bed. “No, I’m not dreaming,” Kovalić whispered into his pillow. “This can’t be a dream. This is madness, lunacy …” And with that he fell asleep.
8.
Lidija typed out the word malady and paused. She was still on page one. The translation of the report was due on Monday morning at the Department of Veterinary Medicine.
She stood up, stretched, and switched on the light. She glanced out of the window. It was still day, but the street was gray and empty and smooth from the rain.
She went into the kitchen and opened the refrigerator door out of habit. She peered in without interest and slammed it shut.
Then she went into the bathroom, turned on the tap, and put her wrist under a jet of cold water. It felt good. She glanced up at the mirror. All at once she felt like licking it. She moved in close to its smooth surface. Her face with tongue hanging out flashed into sight. She drew back slowly. A smooth and empty gesture. Like her life. “Smooth, empty, empty, smooth,” she murmured on her way back to the kitchen.
On the kitchen table Lidija noticed a few dried-out bits of bread. She touched them. She liked the way dry crumbs pricked the pulp of her fingers. She moistened her finger with saliva, gathered up the crumbs, and went into the combined bedroom and living room. Again she looked out at the street, preoccupied, nibbling on the crumbs from her finger and on the finger itself. The street was empty.
And then she noticed a good-looking young policeman. He had a limber way about him and was crossing the smooth street, or so it seemed to Lidija, as if it were water. Suddenly she opened the window, breathed deeply, pursed her lips for a whistle, and stopped … What was she doing, for Heaven’s sake? What had got into her …?
The policeman looked up. In a well-lit window he saw an unusual-looking young woman standing stock still and staring at him. His glance came to rest on her full, slightly parted lips. He noticed a crumb on the lower one … Or was he just imagining it? Suddenly he had a desire to remove that real or imagined crumb with his own lips.
“What if she really …” flashed through his mind as he noiselessly slipped into the main door. But what happened next we really have no idea.
9.
Kovalić awoke with a vague premonition. His head felt fuzzy, his body leaden. He lay completely motionless for a while when all at once he felt an odd throbbing sensation. He tore off the blanket, and lo and behold!—it was back in place.
Kovalić couldn’t believe his eyes. He reached down and fingered it—yes, it was his, all right! He gave it a tug just to make sure—yes, it popped out of his hand, straight, taut, elastic. Kovalić jumped for joy and leaped out of bed, rushing over to the mirror for a look. No doubt about it: there it stood, rosy, shiny, and erect—and just where it had been before. Kovalić cast a worried glance at the bottle. He saw a little black catfish swimming about as merrily as you please. Intent on engineering clever turns within its narrow confines, it paid him no heed.
“Oh!” Kovalić cried out in amazement.
Then he looked back down below. Situation normal: stiff and erect! Trembling with excitement, Kovalić raced to the phone.
At this point, however, the events are temporarily misted over by censorship, and the reader will have to deduce what happened from the following lines.
Exhausted and depressed, her eyes circled in black, her mouth dry, Maja the invoice clerk lay on her back apathetically staring at that horrid black fish. It was making its two-thousand-one-hundred-and-fifty-first turn in the bottle. At last she picked herself up slowly and started gathering her clothes the way an animal licks its wounds. Suddenly her eyes lit on a slip of paper lying next to her left shoe.
The paper contained a list of names in Kovalić’s handwriting. Vesna, Branka, Iris, Goga, Ljerka, Višnja, Maja, Lidija. All the names but Lidija’s (hers too!) had lines through them.
“Monster!” she said in a hoarse, weary voice, and slammed the door.
Kovalić stared apathet
ically at the lower half of his body. It was in place, sprightly and erect as ever. He flew into a rage, bounded out of bed, bolted to the bottle, and smashed it to the floor. The catfish flipped and flopped for a while, then calmed down. Kovalić gleefully watched the gill contractions subside. But it was still erect.
“Down, monster!” Kovalić shouted and gave it a mean thwack. It swayed and reddened, but then spryly, with a rubber-like elasticity, sprang back into place and raised its head at Kovalić almost sheepishly.
“Off with you, beast!” Kovalić screamed. The object refused to budge.
“I’ll strangle you!” Kovalić bellowed. The object stared straight ahead, curtly indifferent.
“I wish you’d never been found,” Kovalić whimpered, and flung himself onto the bed in despair. “You bastard, you! I’ll get you yet …!” And he burst into sobs, mumbling incoherent threats into the pillow. Then, wiping his tears, he raised his fist into the air, Heaven knows why, and muttered, “I’ll put you through the meat grinder!” And all of a sudden the old butcher’s saying went off like an alarm in his brain: My knives go with me to the grave!
And the fear and trembling caused by this new piece of data sent Kovalić reeling—and into a dead faint.
10.
Well, dear readers, now you see the sort of thing that happens in our city! And only now, after much reflection, do I realize how much in it is unbelievable—starting from the alienation of the object in question from its rightful owner. Nor is it believable that authors should choose such things to write stories about. First, they are of no use either to literature or to the population, the reading population, and secondly, they are of no use … well, either. And yet, when all is said and done, there is hardly a place you won’t find similar incongruities. No, say what you will, these things do happen—rarely, but they do.
For my part, I have a clear conscience. I have stuck to the plot. Had I given myself free rein, well, I don’t know where things would have ended! And even so, what happened to Nada Matić? Who is Milan Miško? What became of Vinko K.? And Lidija and the waitress and the butcher? To say nothing of our hero Mato Kovalić? Is he doomed to spend his life getting it—down?!
But I repeat: I have stuck to the plot. Though if the truth be told, I did insert two nightmares from my own childhood, to wit: 1) the sausage dream (“Watch out or a sausage will sprout on your nose,” my grandfather used to say when he got angry with me), and 2) the beet dream (I can recall no more terrifying story from my childhood than the one in which a whole family gathered to pull out a big, beautiful, and completely innocent beet!).
In connection with said plot may I suggest the following points as worthy of further consideration:
1. How did the object alienated from its owner, Mato Kovalić, find its way into the bun?
2. How did Vinko K. discover its owner?
3. Miscellaneous.
All that is merely by the by, of course, in passing. I myself have no intention of taking things any further … But if you, honored readers, decide to do so, I wish you a merry time of it and a hearty appetite!
FAMILY LIFE
Quim Monzó
Translated from the Catalan by Peter Bush
Joaquim Monzó i Gómez (1952–). Quim Monzó, as he is widely known, cut his teeth as a war correspondent in the 1970s, reporting from Vietnam, Northern Ireland and East Africa. His first collection of short stories was published in 1978, and he has since published three collections of stories and several novels. In an interview in El Punt Monzó says “… the air is full of stories. You walk along the street and they’re everywhere. However, to find where the story is, you have to go sculpting it, removing everything that is accessory.” Monzó has also translated authors as diverse as J. D. Salinger, Thomas Hardy, Ernest Hemingway and Roald Dahl.
Armand ran into the workshop, making an engine noise with his mouth and stamping on the wood shavings on the floor so they crackled underfoot: the louder the better. He walked twice around the carpenter’s bench; looked at all the tools perfectly aligned on the wall, the saws, gouges, clamps and planes, each in their rightful place (marked by a suitable outline, roughly penciled in); and went up the passageway at the rear of which the house, properly speaking, began. Uncle Reguard had put his workshop in the back of his house, and although the grown-ups always entered through the front door, Armand preferred to go in via the workshop. He was fascinated by the fact that his uncle’s workplace was right at the back of his house. In contrast, he lived in an apartment, and his father’s carpentry workshop occupied a ground-floor space four blocks from where they lived. His cousins had a similar set up. Uncle Reguard was the only member of the family to have his workshop and home together; separated by a small bedroom, that now acted as a junk room. If you came from the workshop, you then reached the parlor with the big table, chandelier, armchairs, passages, and bedroom doors.
By the time Armand reached the parlor everyone was already there kissing, laughing, chatting, raising their voices to make themselves heard: his father, uncles and aunts, and more distant uncles, aunts, and cousins, who weren’t cousins at all and were only described as such because they belonged to branches of the family so remote they didn’t know what precise labels to give them.
They ate lunch, a meal that lasted hours, and then the post-lunch conversations started, when the smoke from the cigars began to curl around everything. Empty champagne bottles piled up in the room between the house and workshop, the aunts kept slicing cake, and the older cousins put records on the turntable. The atmosphere was heavy with the aroma of hot chocolate. The young cousins (Armand, Guinovarda, Gisela, Guitart, and Llopart …) asked permission to leave the table and ran to Eginard’s bedroom to play with wooden houses that had roofs, doors, and windows painted in a range of colors. When the bedroom door was half open, Armand could see the harp in the corner of the passage. It was a harp Uncle Reguard had built thirty years ago, and it was one of the family’s prized possessions, because (so Armand’s father would say) he had combined carpentry with the art of crafting string instruments. For as long as he could remember, Armand had seen the harp at Uncle Reguard’s and always in the same place: in the corner made by the bend in the passage. He thought it was more beautiful than all the harps in the photographs and drawings that he’d cut out from magazines (and kept in a blue folder at home): a harp in the hands of a mythological god, a Sumerian harp topped by the head of an animal he couldn’t identify, the Irish coat-of-arms, two Norwegian harps (one topped by a dragon’s head and the other by the head of a blind-folded woman), and a harp made from a tree branch that Harpo Marx was plucking.
*
Cousin Reguard came into the bedroom, crying and smiling, in the midst of cheering adults. His right hand was holding a chocolate and peppermint ice cream, and his left hand was bandaged. It was a scene Armand had often seen in these family get-togethers, whether they were held in their home, their cousins’, or the homes of other more distant cousins, some of who even lived in other cities. A boy would appear with a bandaged left hand. The bandage was always wrapped around his ring finger. Armand knew there was no longer a finger under the bandage, and that the bandage would eventually fall away, revealing a tiny, perfectly healed stump. Armand surveyed the hands of his family. As he’d registered some time ago, everyone over nine was missing the ring finger of their left hand.
Armand was seven when he first realized it was no accident that one of the boys would always leave the party with his ring finger cut off. He’d not really paid much attention till now. It was true he’d noticed the older kids were missing that finger, but it was a completely normal state of affairs for him. It had never been any different. He thought the absence must be synonymous with adult life. Every adult in the family lost that finger for a reason that eluded him and that didn’t concern him one little bit. So many things eluded him—he knew he wouldn’t understand them until he became an adult, and he didn’t worry about a trifle that was quite unimportant when compared
to the other issues that preoccupied him at the time: the spirit of sacrifice displayed by St. Bernard dogs, the origins of existence, or the offside trap in football. As he saw it, in order to hit adolescence and abandon the world of little kids, he too would have to lose his ring finger. He thought it was understandable, normal, and desirable, like losing his milk teeth.
When he started to go to school, he was surprised to see how many adults had four fingers and a thumb on each hand, as if that were completely normal. He thought theirs was a surprising, eccentric, and rather unpleasant circumstance, and he was proud to belong to such a consistent family. As the months passed, and he spent more time in the company of other kids, he started to think that perhaps the members of his family experienced random accidents and that these accidents always led to the loss of the ring finger. The boy he shared a desk with at school told him it was quite common for carpenters to lose fingers. The carpenter near his house (he went on) was missing three. His mother had told him it happened to lots of carpenters, because one day or another the blade of the circular saw would slice a finger off. Armand knew that wasn’t the case in his family. They were carpenters, but it wasn’t the circular saw that sliced off their fingers, or any other accident. At the age of nine, the kids weren’t yet carpenters and didn’t even know that’s what they wanted to be when they grew up; even though from time immemorial all the members of his family had showed an undeniable inclination towards that trade, and apart from a few exceptional cases, they invariably ended up as carpenters.
Armand spent his nights ruminating about this mystery. Perhaps there was a guild rule that obliged them to chop off that finger? He reached a conclusion he wasn’t sure how to verify; they chopped that first finger off to get them used to the idea. Losing that first finger meant they lost their fear of the possible loss of others. They realized it wasn’t such a big deal; it gave them courage and helped them tackle their trade with true valor. One thing sent his head into a whirl: he’d met the father of a school friend, from another class, who also happened to be a carpenter, and none of his fingers were missing (he used to take a look whenever he picked up his son at the end of the school day).
