High as the Waters Rise

by Anja Kampmann

  To hear about it, in the back room of the butcher shop, to look at Milena’s mother, next to an immersion heater covered in limescale and an oilcloth on the table, her legs swollen, her few remaining eyelashes adorned with dark kohl below her hair net, the apron she wiped her hands on countless times while she looked past him at the field, a fallow plot filled with crows. While she talked, too, her gaze seemed to stray, her hands smoothed her apron, under which her heavy body was hidden, her voice soft, plaintive, she’s gone, she said, she’s there, she said, she’s wrapped in fog, sleeps, can’t be reached, and again and again: my child, my child. At thirty-nine, Milena lay there and her life lay far beneath anything visible. At thirty-nine, after a not terribly serious accident, she’d suddenly fallen into this kind of coma. She didn’t have any other word for it. A few times her mother stood up, and he heard her counting a new customer’s money into the till, the chime of the doorbell, the heavy steps into the half-darkness of the back room where she’d left him alone with a few pictures. You mustn’t think she didn’t miss you a great deal. Listen, she said, but then it seemed that she didn’t know how to continue the sentence, perhaps she’d been confronted too often with another finality, with the misery of sectioned pigs, with pigs’ heads, out of which she made the aspic that was her specialty—Móżdżek po polsku, czernina, salceson—the people came to her for these dishes. Brain with eggs and lots of vodka, blood soup, headcheese. There were feet that went to animal-feed producers, bones ground to light powder. The body is lifeless if we’re not able to imagine that it dreams, that it talks in its sleep.

  He listened and imagined Milena, how she lay there. He wanted to stroke her face, hold her, rock her. It made him think of deserts where the rock formations surged into the morning out of a bluish grayness like relief panels, the first play of colors in the cold.

  He said he would come back to visit her in the afternoon, and he had to force himself to drive there. Her mother was waiting for him, but Waclaw didn’t want the sweet pastries. In the dry, overheated living room, she took the cups out of a papered cupboard, he saw the clock again, here of all places. Its yellow face hung over the door. Involuntarily, he felt his back.

  November, she said, and pointed to the rain clouds over the land. She pointed to the pickup and said he should put the truck in the garage. Then she walked in front of him and pulled feebly at the big metal garage door and he helped her heave it up. She seemed to be freezing in her green crocheted cardigan and he sent her inside, he’d be right here. He drove the Fiorino into the narrow garage and squeezed out of the door. Then he saw how the light changed and grew darker, and then he heard a creaking and saw the garage door, which had started to move, and roared down behind him and closed with a bang.

  After the sound, it was quiet. Only the metal still reverberated, and he leaned against the wall and stared into the darkness. A silent black cube and the humming of a fluorescent light in the corner that gave off an irregular, flickering light. Gasoline. The smell of rain from the Fiorino. The wet metal. Motionlessness.

  He thought of Milena. He heard the buzzing of the air conditioners that had cooled his rooms like ice cubes in a big warm drink, just beyond began the muggy air of the cities, homeless people who hid their belongings with ropes in the dense treetops, tattered hammocks and garbage under the bridges, the rhythms of the evenings, the legs of countless plastic chairs, the girls, the pastel faces of the saints. He could close all those doors behind him, and the air conditioners shoveled cold air into this other world, into which he retreated night after night. He could lie there, he could think of Milena, and from a distance Europe was a picture in which all was still, evening over the fields, lines of dykes over which a few swallows flew.

  On the other hand, the room keys, live chickens at the markets, he had eggs fried for him, he had rice cooked for him, he could still hold out. The light pollution of the cities erased the stars from the night, it was summer when he realized, it was summer when he booked a ticket for the first time, no longer to her, he went to the Curonian Spit, where he counted birds, where the ornithologist wore his tight leggings, turquoise, pink, and it seemed the rest of the world had been done away with, and soon there would be no one. He was alone for years out there. In every room it grew dark at night, in every room he was with her in the evenings.

  He was startled by a light knocking. Someone was rapping against the metal from outside. The sky over the house had changed color, twilight was falling. Her mother stood in rubber shoes in the wet grass, she looked at him, but she didn’t say a word.

  He didn’t know how long she’d been waiting. He brought her to the door, he could smell her hair spray, maybe she’d dressed up for the afternoon. She was small and her cheeks were red, traces of highlights remained in her dark hair. A color like plums.

  He embraced her briefly, and she remained in the doorway, in front of the small, overheated living room, and he drove the truck across a landscape in which it had begun to rain, clouds rolled over the mounds of the plowed fields. Feed silos. Pig farms. He drove past Poznań, woods, plains, he stopped the truck at the edge of the woods. He could see the highway in the distance, all the haste, all the faith in geographical distances, he walked, walked half an eternity, until the distant villages were only points in the darkness. No city lights in the distance. Walking, he had the feeling of letting his face slowly ice over: a mask, like the skin of the sea on calm days.

  Endless rows of sugar beets, light wisps of haze that covered the land. He could see her lying there, completely motionless. A long, dark hallway and the light on the blanket like a shimmering ring. Who had smoothed the blanket so flat? He heard how still it was in the room. Clouds passed by Milena’s window, they glowed weakly. Are you cold? Waclaw asked softly.

  He walked a little way along the edge of the woods, in the middle of the path a brown strip of grass, dandelions, here and there a cherry tree at the sides, and the valley, through which the cars in the distance shot like projectiles, as if they could speed up without ever having to fear a crash. He thought of cold water corals in the deepest trenches, whose branched skeletons swayed like feathers against the darkness. It must be very cold.

  And a man stands on the earth at the edge of an unfathomably large field, he will form the earth into a clod and throw it, and he will watch as it breaks apart. He will feel the cold in his hands. It will be nothing more than that. The dark earth that can be balled up, and only in the air, in the middle of the throw, does it shatter into a thousand pieces. It’s a supernova, the moment when something very small becomes something it had never imagined, something it can know nothing of as long as the smallest bit of what it once was remains. It will happen over and over again. For a moment his lower lip will protrude with a slight quiver, and he will stay there as he last did long ago, his eyes shiny, November is only the first breath of cold over the earth. He will run, just a little way, until his lungs burn, he will stand there, leaning over, bowed, propping his hands on his knees, and then this panting is all there is.

  He waited for the sound of the crash, but the field swallowed the earth that he threw almost soundlessly, almost soundless were his cries, there on the plains. Exhausted, not calmed, he walked back to the truck. It’s too much to ask. It was supposed to sound like a reproach, but as he said it, his voice only formed a question.

  32

  Lidia

  It’s cold. A thick layer of leaves lies under the sycamores. The waitress carries the tray with reluctance. Lidia had insisted on sitting outside. Her legs are tightly crossed, she smokes. Her pantyhose give off a bluish shimmer. Her telephone, covered in glittery stickers, lies on the table. As if to say: I’ll be off soon. I have things to do.

  She avoids looking directly at him, but he knows that nothing escapes her, not a single detail. The work shoes that he’s now wearing again, below the suit.

  On the phone she’d asked where he was living.

  She said he’d have to come to her.

  No
w she was sitting there, barricaded in her thin stockings, coat, and smoke.

  Her eyes were pale and rimmed with bright blue eye shadow, her cheeks sagged a bit. She could have been a pretty woman, if only the cheap nylon stockings and makeup hadn’t made her look so average. He hadn’t planned on seeing her again.

  Lidia was one of four sisters, a few years older than Milena, and she’d worked for a cosmetics company, overseeing the big vats where toothpaste was mixed. She wore a hairnet half the day, the tips of her fingers turned yellow in the little shelter next to the parking lot where she met her colleagues to smoke, a rough wind over the industrial park. He didn’t know exactly. Just those years that the five of them had lived alone in the house, had gone to school and to their apprenticeships, after their father had died. Milena had been ten. She couldn’t talk about it without crying. She preferred not to talk at all, and kept silent. Leaving the Ruhr Valley together was the first step. Lidia had helped them back then, and he hadn’t expected that she’d still be in the area. She’d had two children, he looked at the pictures as the waitress set down the tray, and Lidia put her wallet on the table. She said she wanted to pay right away, now. She didn’t even look at Waclaw as she said it. Her wallet clicked open, and he tried to steal a glance at the pictures, at the second one, behind, half-hidden. A group portrait that he recognized, of the four sisters. He wanted to put a finger on it, but she pulled it away.

  She always talked about you a lot, you know, Lidia said. And actually, she never told me that you’d stopped coming back. I couldn’t follow what was going on, we saw each other so rarely. And then there was that wooden elephant she had. It was as big as a flowerpot, reddish wood, sort of oriental-looking, polished smooth. And there were lighter lines cut into the back, and a few white dots on the forehead. It was a nice piece, the tail was made of real hair, and the sun was shining through it when I visited. We sat and drank coffee, and she’d gotten so terribly thin. And then I pointed to the elephant. Where’d you get it? I asked. And she smiled and looked happy for a moment and pointed to the photo in the corner so that I knew you’d brought it for her. But I wondered. For days, I couldn’t get that elephant out of my head. She’d said nothing else about you, but several times during the conversation her gaze had wandered in the elephant’s direction. I didn’t dare to ask anything more about it, she didn’t exactly look like you’d just seen each other. Her days were like always, she said: The little library had no money for books, so she collected some from the neighbors, sometimes she got a few boxes from some elderly gentleman who had no use for them anymore. And so a few weeks later I happened to pass a store, right in the middle of town, it had those sorts of Indian odds and ends, everything very colorful, and at the back of the store I saw a shelf with the exact same kind of carvings. Even through the store window I recognized the outline. I was so confused, I didn’t even go into the store. And then for a long time I didn’t say anything. I waited for an opportunity to bring it up, and then she told me that Jakob had taken her home a few times, and we went out to the countryside together for our sister Nany’s birthday.

  We picnicked half the day. The ground was still cold, and lots of kids were running around, the baskets on the blankets were full of meatballs and salads, and everyone was eating with colorful plastic utensils, and Nany danced with Luca, the whole field was full of molehills. We laughed a lot, she sat next to me, only sometimes she looked around a bit shyly, suddenly quiet, as if turned inward. The evening was foggy, and I drove us home. We didn’t speak. Everything was exhausted, even the colors. But I was uneasy, and it got worse as we got closer to home. Finally I pulled over to the side, right in the middle of the stretch of road. Behind us there were power lines looming out of the fog, the engine was still on, and she didn’t look at me when I pulled the handbrake. She knew something was coming. And I didn’t want to make a big speech.

  Last week I was downtown, I said, and I walked up a street and past the store with the colorful scarves outside.

  What do you care about scarves? she asked quickly. Well, why?

  You know, I just happened to pass by and I stopped. I looked in the window. And usually I don’t bother much with that kind of thing, but they had some really extraordinary figurines.

  Now Milena understood what I was getting at, her mind was racing, I could see it.

  But she said calmly: Lots of them aren’t real, you know, the ones you can get here—

  The whole time I’d been looking at a pair of headlights that were moving steadily across the plain, not much more than a pale shimmer, but now I looked at Milena. And I was horrified. I hadn’t asked myself why she’d told me the story. She had her hand tight on the collar of her jacket and she was turned away, completely speechless. She started tugging at the seat belt as if it were smothering her. Suddenly I didn’t know why I’d said anything or what the point was: What was wrong with fibbing about a wooden elephant? Why couldn’t I let her make up a story that had you in it? Why couldn’t I even leave her that elephant? All she’d done was give you a place in her life, and she’d only mentioned you with her eyes. I didn’t understand myself anymore, but I couldn’t take it back. I felt wretched, as if I’d betrayed her. We looked in front of us at the plain, finally I said something banal like: But some of them are really quite pretty, and I drove her the last few miles home. She got out without turning around, I couldn’t even touch her.

  No, she was never angry at you. But I was. How could you—

  Lidia interrupted herself, looked at her watch. While she spoke, her gaze had been somewhere in the gravel of the garden café. He could imagine it all so perfectly that he couldn’t think.

  Maybe I shouldn’t have told you that, it won’t change anything.

  She pressed her bag against her stomach and stared ahead of her, as if going over it all again in her mind.

  Imagine where I was then, Waclaw said. Imagine that it was no different for me.

  She furrowed her brow and looked at him suddenly. No different?

  She grabbed her bag and stood up. Your no-different was pretty fucking far away.

  He had no means of proving her wrong.

  Did you ever talk about it again?

  What do you think, Waclaw. It hung in the air, like everything with you two.

  He saw her leave, and watched her go. Now, more than ever, when Lidia was angry and trying to walk very erect, her silhouette looked tiny under the trees.

  33

  Hic sunt dracones

  It’s dark. He’s driven all day and now understands why Flavio spent so much time fiddling with the lights. He drives with the brights on, but they hardly penetrate the rain. It’s as if there’s nothing else, only this rapid falling, little glowing nails, the landscape dark as a fairground stall where a second-rate puppeteer makes his figures dance. The street so wet the drops seem to spring right back up from below.

  He hadn’t thought about it. He’s freezing, he’s wet, soaked. The fan blows cold air, and he turns it on and off and on again, as if that will change anything. He looks thin in his big black jacket, and he’s turned down the flaps of his fur hat, in front of him is the outline of a bony face. The pigeon basket is empty on the seat next to him, and on top of it are the gloves that have gotten wet, and the bundle with the soapstone, which has gotten wet. The tropics and all the distant lands are far away, and so is the highway with its smooth surface, bitumen, extracted from oil. That it doesn’t matter.

  Later in the night, the rain has almost stopped. It’s no longer far to the coast. He drives the Fiorino up a dirt road, the clutch grinds when he shifts from second to first gear, and the wood on the truck bed is soaked, the tarp wet with rain. When he tosses the match in the gasoline, the fire flares white and hisses, and the flames are blue, and they buckle in the wind. He waits. The warmth is slight, the smoke like a prophecy of all that’s to come.

  He’d seen the old stable up on the field. As he gets closer, he sees the white lines of an electric fence that was
put up recently. He won’t be able to stay long. The straw is old and wet, but farther up he finds a bale of hay that’s burst open and dry. Sharam had called him: Come to London, I left you something, you’ll find everything there that you need to know. Don’t give up now, Wenzel, come to London. For fuck’s sake.

  He lay in the straw and he breathed the damp air. He thought of the sparks and the smoke, a brief light on the plain. He thought of what London was from here. His memories were of a restless, trundling people who never seemed to arrive anywhere. He lay in the darkness and he knew the smell.

  He’d spent several nights that way. He’d heard other men snoring through the thin walls of hotels, and he’d seen an indifferent light shining down on him through the cheap fabric of the curtains. He’d spent a few weeks on a farm: a room, a high window and hardwood on the ground floor, a narrow bed and faded wallpaper. Enough to stow a life, big pale pink flowers trailed over the walls as if they held something together, something he wasn’t sure of when he walked over the meadows during the days, grassy hills, fields, endless, a rain jacket, a pair of stout shoes and nothing he could have explained.

  Sometimes he wanted to talk to someone. The farm belonged to two siblings, he saw the girl outside, mending some fence, or bringing hay to the rick. Once he lent the boy his truck. That same afternoon he saw the Fiorino tearing up and down the dirt path of the adjacent hill, over and over. A dog with white fur ran after the truck, snapping at a piece of meat tied to the truck bed with rope.

  The dog was a boxer, it was deaf and didn’t even bark. But the boy was bent on training it to fight, and that afternoon the Fiorino looked angry, the way it braked and accelerated, and the animal ran after it and soon grew slower, until finally it stopped and looked around. Through the big window in the kitchen, Waclaw could see the boy in the distance jump out of the cab and run to the dog, who cowered, and it looked like the boy was screaming at him in words that neither Waclaw nor the dog could understand. The boxer simply lay on its back on the gravel road, and even from a distance, Waclaw thought he could see the pink shimmer of its belly.