by Frank Wynne
Half an hour later his father comes back to the bar. His blond hair is wet and freshly combed (B’s father combs his hair back) and his face is red. He smiles and says nothing; B observes him and says nothing. Time for dinner, says B’s father. B and the ex-diver follow him to the Mustang. They eat an assortment of shellfish in a place that’s long and narrow, like a coffin. As they eat, B’s father watches B as if he were searching for an answer. B looks back at him. He is sending a telepathic message: There is no answer because it’s not a valid question. It’s an idiotic question. Then, before he knows what is going on, B is back in the car with his father and the ex-diver, who talk about boxing all the way to a place in the suburbs of Acapulco. It’s a brick and wood building with no windows and inside there’s a juke-box with songs by Lucha Villa and Lola Beltrán. Suddenly B feels nauseous. He leaves his father and the ex-diver and looks for the toilet or the back yard, or the door to the street, belatedly realising that he has had too much to drink. He also realises that apparently well-meaning hands have prevented him from going out into the street. They don’t want me to get away, thinks B. Then he vomits several times in the yard, among piles of beer boxes, under the eye of a chained dog, and having relieved himself, gazes up at the stars. A woman soon appears beside him. Her shadow is darker than the darkness of the night. Were it not for her white dress, B could hardly make her out. You want a blow-job? she asks. Her voice is young and husky. B looks at her, uncomprehending. The whore kneels down beside him and undoes his fly. Then B understands and lets her proceed. When it’s over he feels cold. The whore stands up and B hugs her. Together they gaze at the night sky. When B says he’s going back to his father’s table, the woman doesn’t follow him. Let’s go, says B, but she resists. Then B realises that he has hardly seen her face. It’s better that way. I hugged her, he thinks, but I don’t even know what she looks like. Before he goes in he turns around and sees her walking over to pat the dog.
Inside, his father is sitting at a table with the ex-diver and two other guys. B comes up to him from behind and whispers in his ear: Let’s go. His father is playing cards. I’m winning, he says, I can’t leave now. They’re going to steal all our money, thinks B. Then he looks at the women, who are looking at him and his father with pity in their eyes. They know what’s going to happen to us, thinks B. Are you drunk? his father asks him, taking a card. No, says B, not any more. Have you taken any drugs? asks his father. No, says B. Then his father smiles and orders a tequila. B gets up and goes to the bar, and from there he surveys the scene of the crime with manic eyes. It is clear to B now that he will never travel with his father again. He shuts his eyes; he opens his eyes. The whores watch him curiously; one offers him a drink, which B declines with a gesture. When he shuts his eyes, he keeps seeing his father with a pistol in each hand, entering through an impossibly situated door. In he comes, impossibly, urgently, with his grey eyes shining and his hair ruffled. This is the last time we’re travelling together, thinks B. That’s all there is to it. The juke-box is playing a Lucha Villa song and B thinks of Gui Rosey, a minor poet who disappeared in the south of France. His father deals the cards, laughs, tells stories, and listens to those of his companions, each more sordid than the last. B remembers going to his father’s house when he returned from Chile in 1974. His father had broken his foot and was in bed reading a sports magazine. What was it like? he asked, and B recounted his adventures. An episode from the chronicle of Latin America’s doomed revolutions. I almost got killed, he said. His father looked at him and smiled. How many times? he asked. Twice, at least, B replied. Now B’s father is roaring with laughter and B is trying to think clearly. Gui Rosey committed suicide, he thinks, or got killed. His corpse is at the bottom of the sea.
A tequila, says B. A woman hands him a half-full glass. Don’t get drunk again, kid, she says. No, I’m all right now, says B, feeling perfectly lucid. Then two other women approach him. What would you like to drink? asks B. Your father’s really nice, says the younger one, who has long, black hair. Maybe she’s the one who gave me the blow-job, thinks B. And he remembers (or tries to remember) apparently disconnected scenes: the first time he smoked in front of his father; he was fourteen, it was a Viceroy cigarette, they were sitting in his father’s truck waiting for a goods train to arrive, and it was a very cold morning. Guns and knives, family stories. The whores are drinking tequila with Coca-Cola. How long was I outside vomiting? wonders B. You were kind of jumpy before, says one of the whores. You want some? Some what? says B. He is shaking and his skin is cold as ice. Some weed, says the woman, who is about thirty years old and has long hair like the other one, but dyed blonde. Acapulco Gold? asks B, taking a gulp of tequila, while the two women come a little closer and start stroking his back and his legs. Yep, calms you down, says the blonde. B nods and the next thing he knows there is a cloud of smoke between him and his father. You really love your dad, don’t you, says one of the women. Well, I wouldn’t go that far, says B. What do you mean? says the dark woman. The woman serving at the bar laughs. Through the smoke B sees his father turn his head and look at him for a moment. A deadly serious look, he thinks. Do you like Acapulco? asks the blonde. Only at this point does he realise that the bar is almost empty. At one table there are two men drinking in silence, at another, his father, the ex-diver, and the two strangers playing cards. All the other tables are empty.
The door to the patio opens and a woman in a white dress appears. She’s the one who gave me the blow-job, thinks B. She looks about twenty-five, but is probably much younger, maybe sixteen or seventeen. Like almost all the others, she has long hair, and is wearing shoes with very high heels. As she walks across the bar (towards the bathroom) B looks carefully at her shoes: they are white and smeared with mud on the sides. His father also looks up and examines her for a moment. B watches the whore opening the bathroom door, then he looks at his father. He shuts his eyes and when he opens them again the whore is gone and his father has turned his attention back to the game. The best thing for you to do would be to get your father out of this place, one of the women whispers in his ear. B orders another tequila. I can’t, he says. The woman slides her hand up under his loose-fitting Hawaiian shirt. She’s checking to see if I have a weapon, thinks B. The woman’s fingers climb up his chest and close on his left nipple. She squeezes it. Hey, says B. Don’t you believe me? asks the woman. What’s going to happen? asks B. Something bad, says the woman. How bad? I don’t know, but if I was you, I’d get out of here. B smiles and looks into her eyes for the first time: Come with us, he says, taking a gulp of tequila. Not in a million years, says the woman. Then B remembers his father saying to him, before he left for Chile: ‘You’re an artist and I’m a worker.’ What did he mean by that? he wonders. The bathroom door opens and the whore in the white dress comes out again, her shoes immaculate now, goes across to the table where the card game is happening, and stands there next to one of the strangers. Why do we have to go? asks B. The woman looks at him out of the corner of her eye and says nothing. There are things you can tell people, thinks B, and things you just can’t. He shuts his eyes.
As if in a dream, he goes back out to the patio. The woman with the dyed-blonde hair leads him by the hand. I have already done this, thinks B, I’m drunk, I’ll never get out of here. Certain gestures are repeated: the woman sits on a rickety chair and opens his fly, the night seems to float like a lethal gas among the empty beer boxes. But some things are missing: the dog has gone, for one, and in the sky, to the east, where the moon hung before, a few filaments of light herald dawn. When they finish, the dog appears, perhaps attracted by B’s groans. He doesn’t bite, says the woman, while the dog stands a few yards away, baring its teeth. The woman gets up and smoothes her dress. The fur on the dog’s back is standing up and a string of translucent saliva hangs from his muzzle. Stay, Fang, stay, says the woman. He’s going to bite us, thinks B as they retreat towards the door. What happens next is confused: at his father’s table, all the card players a
re standing up. One of the strangers is shouting at the top of his voice. B soon realises that he is insulting his father. As a precaution he orders a bottle of beer at the bar, which he drinks in long gulps, almost choking, before going over to the table. His father seems calm. In front of him are a considerable number of banknotes, which he is picking up one by one and putting into his pocket. You’re not leaving here with that money, shouts the stranger. B looks at the ex-diver, trying to tell from his face which side he will take. The stranger’s probably, thinks B. The beer runs down his neck and only then does he realise he is burning hot.
B’s father finishes counting his money and looks at the three men standing in front of him and the woman in white. Well, gentlemen, we’re leaving, he says. Come over here, son, he says. B pours what is left of his beer on to the floor and grips the bottle by the neck. What are you doing, son? says B’s father. B can hear the tone of reproach in his voice. We’re going to leave calmly, says B’s father, then he turns around and asks the women how much they owe. The woman at the bar looks at a piece of paper and reads out a sizeable sum. The blonde woman, who is standing halfway between the table and bar, says another figure. B’s father adds them up, takes out the money and hands it to the blonde: What we owe you and the drinks. Then he gives her a couple more bills: the tip. Now we’re going to leave, thinks B. The two strangers block their exit. B doesn’t want to look at her, but he does: the woman in white has sat down on one of the vacant chairs and is examining the cards scattered on the table, touching them with her fingertips. Don’t get in my way, whispers his father, and it takes a while for B to realise that he is speaking to him. The ex-diver puts his hands in his pockets. The one who was shouting before starts insulting B’s father again, telling him to come back to the table and keep playing. The game’s over, says B’s father. For a moment, looking at the woman in white (who strikes him now, for the first time, as very beautiful), B thinks of Gui Rosey, who disappeared off the face of the earth, quiet as a lamb, without a trace, while the Nazi hymns rose into a blood-red sky, and he sees himself as Gui Rosey, a Gui Rosey buried in some vacant lot in Acapulco, vanished for ever, but then he hears his father, who is accusing the ex-diver of something, and he realises that unlike Gui Rosey he is not alone.
Then his father walks towards the door, stooping slightly, and B stands aside to give him room to move. Tomorrow we’ll leave, tomorrow well go back to Mexico City, thinks B joyfully. And then the fight begins.
OPPRESSIVE TANGO
Herta Müller
Translated from the German by Donal McLaughlin
Herta Müller (1953–) is a Romanian-born German novelist, poet and essayist. Her work offers an unflinching account of violence, cruelty and terror, often set against the backdrop of Ceaus,escu’s repressive Communist regime in Romania. In 1982, her first novel was published in Romania – though in a state-censored version; her second The Land of Green Plums was published in Germany. Having been previously refused permission to emigrate to Germany, she was finally allowed to move to Berlin in 1987, where she still lives. Many consider her greatest work to be The Hunger Angel, a prose poem depicting the persecution of Romania’s German minority during the Stalinist occupation. In 2009, Müller was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. In its citation the Swedish Academy praised her as a writer who “with the concentration of poetry and the frankness of prose, depicts the landscape of the dispossessed”.
Mother’s suspender belt cuts deep into her hips, pushes her stomach over her laced corset. Mother’s suspender is a light-blue damask with pale tulips, has two rubber studs and two rustproof fasteners.
Mother lays her black silk stockings on the table. The stockings have fat see-through legs. Black glass, they are. The stockings have opaque round heels and opaque pointed toes. Black stone, they are.
Mother pulls the silk stockings up over her legs. The pale tulips float from her hips over her tummy. The white studs turn black, the fasteners close.
Mother slips her stone toes, presses her stone heels, into the black shoes. Her ankles are two black stone necks.
The bell sounds a single word, hard and dull. The bell sounds from the graveyard. The bell tolls.
Mother is carrying the dark wreath of fir and white chrysanthemums. Grandmother is carrying the wreath that rattles, with its little white stones, the round picture of Mary, smiling, and Szüz Mária Köszönöm in the faded script of the old monarchy. The wreath shakes between Grandmother’s forefinger and her thin wrist that is rubbed-raw.
I am carrying a bundle of the untidy delicate fern and a handful of candles as white and cold as my fingers.
Mother’s dress falls in black folds. Mother’s shoes take short clattering steps. Mother’s tulips float round Mother’s tummy.
The bell tolls, and in its toll is one word. There is an echo before it, and after it, that never fades. With her glass legs and stone ankles, Mother toddles into the echo of the word, into the toll. Ahead of the steps Mother takes, walks little Sepp with a wreath of evergreen and white chrysanthemums.
I walk between the dark wreath of fir and the wreath of rattling stones. I walk behind the untidy fern.
I walk through the graveyard gate, the bell before my eyes. I can feel the toll of the bell beneath my hair. I can feel its toll in the pulse next to my eyes, and in my wrists, weary beneath the fern. I can feel the knot at the end of the swinging bell-rope in my throat.
Grandmother’s forefinger is bruised at the bottom of her nail. Grandmother’s forefinger is dead. She hangs the rattling wreath with the little white stones over Father’s face on the gravestone. Where Father’s deep eyes are, is now the smiling Mary and her exposed-red heart. Where Father’s firm lips are, is now the Hungarian script of the old monarchy.
Mother stands, bowed over the dark wreath of fir. Her stomach presses over her tummy. The white chrysanthemums roll onto Mother’s cheeks. Mother’s black dress billows in the wind blowing round the graves. Mother’s black glass foot has a slight white crack running up her leg to the stud, to where the tulips float on her tummy.
Grandmother plucks at the untidy fern round the edge of the grave with her dead finger. I place the white candles between the fern’s fine fibres, bore my cold fingers into the earth.
The match flickers blue in Mother’s hand. Mother’s fingers tremble, and the flame trembles. The earth devours my finger-joints. Mother carries the flame round the grave. Don’t bore into the grave, she says, it’s just not done. Grandmother sticks out her dead finger, points to the smiling Mary, her exposed-red heart.
The priest is standing on the chapel steps. Black folds lie over his shoes. The folds crawl up over his stomach to beneath his chin. Behind his head swings the bell-rope, its thick knot. The priest says: Let us pray for the living and the dead souls, and joins his bony hands across his stomach.
The fir bends its needles; the fern, its crumpled fibres. There is the smell of snow from the chrysanthemums, the smell of ice from the candles. The air above the graves turns black and hums a prayer: and Thou, O Prince of the Heavenly Host, deliver us from exile. Above the chapel tower, the night is as black as Mother’s glass feet.
The candles ooze a tangle of trickling roots from their fingers. The trickles hit the air, turn as stiff as my ribs. The charred wicks have crumbled and won’t light. A clod of earth falls beneath the fern between the spent candles.
The chrysanthemums are now on Mother’s forehead. Don’t sit on the grave, she says, it’s just not done. Grandmother extends her dead finger. The crack on Mother’s glass leg is the breadth of Grandmother’s finger.
The priest says: Today, my dear faithful, is All Saints’ Day, today our dearly departed, our dead souls, rejoice. Today is their feast day.
Little Sepp stands with his hands joined over the wreath of evergreen at the next grave: Deliver us, Lord, from this exile. In the quivering light his grey hair quivers.
On his red accordion, little Sepp accompanies the white brides who waft through the vill
age; accompanies the paired-off wedding guests, with their bows of white wax, round the altar to below the smiling Mary, her exposed-red heart; accompanies the cake, a Vanille Torte with two wax doves on top, to before the bride. On his red accordion, he plays the oppressive tango for the arms and legs of the men and women.
Little Sepp has short fingers and tiny shoes. He spreads his short fingers to press the keys. The broad keys are snow, the narrow keys earth. He seldom presses the narrow keys. When he does, the music is cold.
Father’s thighs press against Mother’s tummy, where the pale tulips are floating.
The bride who wafts past is our neighbour. She beckons me with her forefinger. She cuts me a rib of cake and, with a weak smile, places the doves in my hand.
I close my hand. The doves warm against my skin, begin to sweat. I poke the wax doves into a meat dumpling and into the bread I then bite from. I swallow bread and hear the oppressive tango.
Mother dances past the end of the table with the floating tulips and Uncle’s thighs. The chrysanthemums are round her mouth now. Don’t play with your food, she says, it’s just not done.
The priest raises his bony hands in the name of the Lord: Deliver us from exile. From his hands, a shifting tangle – smoke, this time – rises and floats around the knot in the bell-rope, then climbs into the tower.
The grave has sunk, Mother says. It needs two loads of clay and a load of fresh manure if the flowers are to grow. Mother’s black shoe crunches the sand. Your uncle can do that for his dead brother, Mother says.
Grandmother hooks the wreath with the small white stones on her dead finger.
Father’s deep eyes look at Mother’s black glass foot with the white crack. Mother’s black shoes walk over the molehills between the graves of strangers.
