This time there was no cigarette interval.
“And now shoot!” announced Glass and Tereza both at the same time, prompting another outburst of inappropriate merriment.
Shoot!
That was it, the last and most treacherous of the tests demanded of me. Didn’t the two women notice this was the summit of all summits, the mother of all tortures? How could they possibly believe I was able to shoot a ball that I’d already been too stupid even to throw? By now I was totally discouraged, but it seemed best to get the altogether undignified business over and done with.
I placed the hateful leather object in front of my feet and stood there uncertainly. Should I take a run up to it? Shoot standing? With my left foot or my right?
Tereza nodded at me encouragingly.
“Now come on, have a go, darling,” Glass egged me on.
“But Mom—”
“Just do it!”
The scars behind my ears began to tingle. I stared into my mothers large, enthusiastic eyes with their strangely contracted glistening pupils. Then I stared into the other deeper gleam I thought I could detect behind the pupils, and this was the moment when I knew what Dumbo must have felt before he jumped down from his sixty-foot tower into the porridge. In some terrible way Glass had changed into one of Those Out There.
Dianne had at last put her doll aside and was now watching me as well—lusting for sensation, it seemed to me. Tereza was standing next to me looking slightly vacant. There was no dribble oozing from her half-open mouth, but all the same she looked like a drooling idiot.
I smiled and hated every one of them.
I bundled up my hatred, took a run, and shot.
I hit the leather precisely with the tip of my foot; the kick could not have been better aimed. The ball detached itself from the ground and in a magical dreamlike way described a perfect parabolic arc. I stretched my neck and gazed after it. No wobbling, no swerving, just this shining noiseless black-and-white rotation around its own axis. Passing the vertex. Then the gently described downward arc.
And landed in the river.
There was a gentle splash, and I wasn’t clear who or what had caused it, the bouncing of the ball or my heart, which had just lurched down into my stomach, turning it to liquid. I held my breath.
“Passed!” shrieked Tereza beside me, and clapped her hands. “That was brilliant, my little one!”
“And that’s it?” asked Glass doubtfully. She was watching the ball sailing happily down the river, swept along by glittering waves. “You can tell someone’s gay if they’re no good at games?”
“Rather if they don’t want to be good at games.”
“Well, I don’t know… .”
“But I do!” Tereza insisted. “I have it from a reliable source. Every gay person knows about these tests, and they laugh themselves silly over them. Believe me, your son’s a fairy!” Tereza bent down and planted a kiss on my forehead. “I’ll never forget how he wanted to be Sleeping Beauty, and that’s years ago.”
I couldn’t understand why I was a fairy, let alone what a fairy had to do with Sleeping Beauty. All I knew was that I’d just kicked this expensive football, my birthday present, into the river, which therefore made it sacred, even though I’d detested it, and all the fundamental laws of reason were turned topsy-turvy because no one, absolutely no one, was cross about it.
Glass now tipped up my chin with one hand, stroking my head with the other.
“If that’s the way it is … well, that’s the way it is, then.” She looked at me thoughtfully. Something flitted across her face, a dark shadow that came and went as quickly as the blink of an eye. “Well, it’s all right by me.”
At last she smiled. I breathed a sigh of relief. I’d searched her face for telltale signs, for the slightest indication that having a fairy for a son wasn’t all right by her, and which she might relentlessly attempt to correct, surgically if necessary, like the position of my jug ears. Had this thought been behind the fleeting shadow over her face, it was now forgotten. Evidently being a fairy was nowhere near as reprehensible as having protruding ears.
“I was on the point of giving up when he kicked the thing. Nonetheless—Tereza burst into another fit of giggling. “Nonetheless, he’s a hero. You’re a hero, Phil! And now there’s cake for everyone. Boy, I really feel like something sweet!”
So I was a hero. Which was incomprehensible to me, because in my eyes I’d failed miserably, whereas in the view of my mother and Tereza I’d given a brilliant performance, making me a hero nonetheless. It was a good feeling that kept getting better the more I thought about it, and in the days that followed I wished there was someone I could tell about my glorious deed, like Annie Glosser or Mr. Troht. But for the past year Annie had been in that dreadful sanatorium, where they wrapped her in diapers and maltreated her with electric shocks, and as for that kindly old crock, Mr. Troht, an eternal smile playing on his lips, it was already two years since he’d ended his days, going straight up to heaven. There was no one I could trust. All I could do was wait for Gable’s next visit.
While Tereza, Glass, and Dianne pounced on the cake Tereza had brought along, with much clattering of plates and cups, I made my way through the whispering grass to the river and tried to catch a last glimpse of the football. But the current had long since swept it away; by now it must already have passed the Big Eye, and it was no longer to be seen. That was exactly what I wanted to be sure of. The prickling behind my ears hadn’t gone, and that worried me. It had something to do with my newly acquired status as a fairy, the implications of which weren’t clear to me, and above all, for all the giggling and laughing, with the way Glass had said, Well, that’s the way it is, then. A brief hesitation had preceded the words, and she hadn’t laughed as she hesitated. And not afterward either. Afterward this shadow had flitted across her face in a flash.
Well, it’s all right by me.
Suddenly I knew what this shadow had meant: anxiety. Not any old anxiety, but very specific anxiety regarding my future. Never mind the hero bit; all of a sudden I was no longer sure whether it would be easy to lead a life as a fairy.
What I was absolutely sure about was that the life that lay ahead of me was closely connected, however mysteriously, with the football I’d kicked away. After all, it had all begun with the football. So I continued to stare into the water. I was nine years old and I knew there were no evil spirits and no slimy river god covered in algae that could reverse the flow of the water to bring back the football. I knew it, but I wasn’t absolutely sure.
So I kept my eye on the water.
Just in case.
I felt a hand on my shoulder. “There’s someone I want you to meet, my little one.”
I turned round to Tereza and found myself gazing into the face of a black doll.
“This is Paleiko,” said Tereza. “He’s something very special, Phil.”
The doll was smaller than Dianne’s, smaller and a lot older. Big white eyes shone out of the dark porcelain face, and the naked sexless body was covered in scratches. Paleiko was no match for his blond counterpart, but it was precisely this that made him irresistible and beautiful in my eyes. A tiny pink stone was embedded in his forehead, a fragment of coral or gemstone that seemed to me to glow softly.
“Paleiko was a present from my mama when I was a little girl,” said Tereza. “And she got him from her mama when she was little. He’s very old and has seen a great deal. Sometimes he’ll speak to you and answer your questions. You’re his little friend now.”
“Why does he have such a funny name?”
“That’s a secret,” said Tereza, “and the only question you must never ask Paleiko.”
“Why not?”
“Because that will make him shatter.”
I took the black doll and flopped down on the spot into the grass by the riverbank and pressed his mouth to my ear. I couldn’t think of anything to ask him there and then, and so all that I heard was the gurgling and murmuring o
f the nearby water, the rustling of the grass between Tereza’s calves as she went back to Glass, and the sound of the two of them talking quietly.
“He’s too old for a bloody doll,” said Glass.
“You’re never too old for a doll. Just look at how he’s treating Paleiko. He’s in love with it already.”
“I don’t know. … Is that just a cliché or another of your weird bits of evidence?”
“Both and neither, my beloved. Your boy is a little fairy, mark my words!”
“Is there a difference between a fairy and a gay person?”
“Is that important?”
There was a moment of total silence.
“At any rate, he’s a dishy-looking fruit,” said Glass at last. “With very handsome, tailor-made ears.”
“Oh, he certainly is, no question. Sooner or later the men will be at his feet.” I heard Tereza stifling a snort of laughter. “In any case, that’s the only place they’ll be safe.”
“I want to be a fairy too!”
I lowered the doll and turned round. Dianne, who’d been listening and watching the whole scene without a word, alternately chewing on a piece of cake and her long hair, now turned to Glass. Doll and pee were forgotten. Her dark eyes blazed with envy, and I didn’t begrudge her it. I was a hero, I was a fairy, and I had Paleiko. There was now no way Dianne could be a heroine, because the football had disappeared. In order to achieve the esteemed status of being a fairy, her only hope was if she exchanged her vapid blond doll for a dark wonder like Paleiko. And she knew that she wouldn’t get Paleiko from me. She hadn’t lifted a finger to protect me from those tests.
“You can’t be a fairy, sweetheart,” said Glass, trying to distract her.
“Why?”
“Because you have to be a man to be one.”
“Then I want to be a man.”
“Dianne, don’t be silly, of course you can’t.”
“Why not?”
“Too expensive,” said Tereza drily. Then, shrieking with laughter, she rolled onto her back.
You see, my little friend, Paleiko whispered in my ear, it’s not that easy. You’re the only hero.
Kat lurches. She holds out her palms to me; they gleam white. “Oh, shit. I … I’m so sorry, Phil.”
I don’t know what to make of Paleiko’s being dead. It’s years since he spoke to me. Damn it, he never spoke to me, he was just a toy! But he was Tereza’s toy too, and it’s this that makes the sight of the shattered pieces strewn across the floor so painful. After she’d given him to me—entrusted, a voice inside me whispered, she only entrusted him to me—she never asked about Paleiko again. I don’t have to tell her what happened; it might unnecessarily hurt her. And I’ll never have children of my own to pass Paleiko on to.
She only gave me to you for safekeeping, and you didn’t look after me.
Time is completely out of joint. Smoochy music comes from the radio. I crawl along the floor, avoiding the tea lights glowing with heat, and search for the pink stone that had been sunk into Paleiko’s forehead, hunt for it and hunt and hunt. It’s nowhere to be found; maybe it’s slipped down in between the floorboards. I sit down with my back to the wall, next to Nicholas, who’s been watching me hunt without making a move, and scratch tiny splinters from the palms of my hands. Kat hasn’t budged.
“Hey.” Nicholas puts his arms round me and pulls my head onto his chest. “Don’t cry, eh? Don’t cry. We’ll just stick him together again.”
“OK.”
“I’ll get a dustpan and brush.”
“OK.”
“We’ll pick up all the pieces, every little scrap.”
“All right.”
“And then we’ll glue him together again.”
“Mm.”
“Don’t cry.”
“Come,” says Kat. “Get up.”
She pulls Nicholas and me up from the floor by the hands, puts her head on my shoulder and an arm round Nicholas’s waist. Slowly, carefully at first and swaying together in time to the music, we move closer and closer toward each other. I close my eyes, swing round and round. When our bodies touch, it’s as if I’m stumbling through an open window. Under my feet broken pieces crunch and splinter, we’re going to knock the tea lights over, soon the hot wax will spread across the floor, we’re going to set Visible alight. I feel lips on my lips, on my neck, very gentle, and don’t know whom they belong to, Kat or Nicholas or both.
It’s one in the afternoon when I wake up on Sunday, with my head feeling as if my brain’s been transformed into the air bubble inside a spirit level, being tilted to and fro. I stumble out of bed, tear open the windows, and soak up the cold air that hits me. The world on both sides of the river is hidden under a finely woven glittering cloth of hoarfrost.
Kat and Nicholas left around three in the morning. They turned down my offer to stay overnight, and I was too tired to persuade them. I look at the aluminum-gray containers of one hundred burnt-out tea lights and the shattered pieces and splinters that are all that’s left of Paleiko. Then I put on woolen socks and go downstairs to the uncomfortably cold kitchen and make myself some strong coffee. It’s so hot that I burn my lips and tongue, but it does succeed in bringing the air bubble in the spirit level to a tolerable equilibrium. I don’t even attempt to light the fire or the decrepit water heater in the bathroom. Instead I call Tereza, who is pleased to hear from me, as she’s free all afternoon because Pascal is still busy producing amber jewelry for the opening of the Christmas market. As I’d secretly been hoping, she invites me for coffee. I don’t make the slightest allusion to Paleiko’s passing and intend to leave it at that. But the sound of Tereza’s voice is enough to unleash the guilty conscience that until now has remained hidden in my aching head, like a rabid dog running away without its chain and dragging me with it. At the end of the call, I sweep up the broken pieces and throw them into the garbage can in the kitchen. It’s pointless trying to piece them together; there are just too many of them. I still can’t find the pink stone from Paleiko’s forehead anywhere. Sometime I’ll hunt more thoroughly.
On Sundays the buses run only every two hours. I’m standing in the deserted marketplace almost half an hour early, in the icy cold. Only now and again a car roars past; there are hardly any people about. Colored Christmas lights and candles flicker inside two or three windows of the surrounding houses, and it occurs to me it’s the first day of Advent. I stamp my feet and rub my hands to keep my circulation going. I’ll ask Tereza if I can use her shower, or better still her bathtub. Even the two soldiers on duty by the fountain duck down against the cold and look as if their frozen hands can barely hold on to their rifles fitted with bayonets. On more than one occasion Handel has attempted—in letters to the editor of the local paper, and at meetings of the town council—to draw attention to the fact that an enlightened society really cannot afford the anachronism of armed soldiers looking heroic and warning against war, but as usual he got no response. He must feel terribly misunderstood, a lone voice in the wilderness. I ask myself what could have brought a man like him to this sad little provincial town at the back of beyond. Maybe he suffers from excessive missionary zeal.
In the bus I close my eyes, lulled by the dry warmth, my thoughts on the past night. I’m being unjust to Kat with my jealousy, which probably isn’t jealousy but envy—envy of the uninhibited direct way she has with people, that I’m accustomed to from her, for which I admire and like her, and which I myself utterly lack.
Shit.
It’s five minutes’ walk from the bus stop to Tereza’s. The street with its fine old buildings lies still and quiet. Inside the windows there are considerably more candles, electric and wax, than I saw earlier on in the marketplace. Christmas music filters into the stairwell through one of the doors. Pascal opens when I ring. She looks the way she always does, sullen, bedraggled, and half asleep.
“Hail to thee, Maria,” she growls. She stands aside. “Come in.”
I hang my coat up in the
closet and peer down the hallway. “Where’s Tereza?”
“Gone.”
My heart sinks. “But she—”
“She asked me to tell you she was sorry, but some important client called and she was off. She did try to call you, but there was no one at home.”
No, I’d been at the damned marketplace, standing till I was fit to drop in the lousy cold.
“If you can put up with me, you’re welcome to stay. Except that I’ve got work to do and”—Pascal looks at her watch—“I have to disappear in an hour at the latest.”
“I know.”
“Won’t you stay all the same and have a coffee? You look as if you could do with one.” She’s already turned round and started off in the direction of the kitchen. “Have you been having a good time?”
“Yes. Actually, I’d rather have a hot shower.”
“You can have both.”
“Even better.”
“Anything to please a guest,” Pascal calls over her shoulder. It sounds more as if she means guests ought to be shot immediately on entering the apartment.
“Come into my workroom when you’re done.”
I could stay under the shower forever. I let the hot water rain down on me for ages before I turn the control to cold and a short icy burst drives the last gray cobwebs from my brain. When I leave the bathroom I feel newly born. Barefoot, with wet hair, and wrapped in nothing but an enormous Turkish towel, I pad across the soft carpet through the apartment. The door to the kitchen is open, and the aroma of coffee wafts into the hall. As I pass the pin board on the wall the white postcard that Tereza received from Pascal five years ago catches my eyes.
My heart for yours.
A life for a life.
I’m familiar with Pascal’s workroom, her little jewelry factory, as she calls it. To me it looks like major chaos. Tools strewn about on a large work surface make me think of miniature medieval instruments of torture. Design drawings are pinned to the wall with tacks. Silver wire and nylon cord spill out of open drawers. Boxes and small baskets are filled with amber in varying stages of completion, from rough unpolished lumps to the finished milky translucent pieces with typical reddish brown inclusions. But Pascal’s speciality is actually the tiny, carefully polished chips that she arranges in openwork patterns mounted on pieces of wood she has polished herself.
The Center of the World Page 27
