Wild Woman

by Marina Sur Puhlovski

  What now, I panic, those are the only sandals I’ve got, except for the flip-flops I have for the beach, my boyfriend has gone back, and Flora’s not around to help me look for them. Never mind, I tell myself, collapsing onto my side of the bed, onto the damp sheets, my feet dirty, I’m sure I’ll find them in the morning, I tell myself, falling asleep before I know it. But my poor brand-new blue sandals are gone by the morning, somebody took them. I’m devastated, because, of course, that means no more dancing, so I run to the post office to phone my mother and tell her my tale of woe, she isn’t far away, she’s in Pula, staying with Aunt Višnja. My father was feeling better, his brother and his wife had come to stay for a week and so my mother had given herself some time off; I’m barefoot, I sob, as if they’d cut off my legs, and my mother says: come to Pula, you can buy yourself some sandals, I’ve just won the lottery! Auntie Višnja isn’t here, she’s gone to the hot springs in Serbia.

  And it’s in Pula, where I immediately buy myself a pair of sandals like the ones I lost, blue with webbed straps, each one with a nickel-coloured clasp, that I first experience what is to become the rule of my life, until I extricate myself, though it still has a hold on me – my darling vanishes.

  That happens on our third day there, he goes out to buy a pack of cigarettes and doesn’t come back. Like that joke about the man who went to the newsstand and disappeared forever. I wait for him and his cigarettes for five minutes, ten, then, after going to the corner newsstand to buy cigarettes, furious, obviously, I wait just for him, I wait half an hour, an hour, two, becoming more and more worried, where is he, where can he be, I pester my mother, maybe something’s happened, I lean out the window, stretching my neck to see better, firing nasty looks at passers-by for not being him, I go out into the street and stand there like a mad woman, spinning around, as if looking for a child who’s hiding. We were supposed to go for a swim, then come back for lunch and now everything is ruined. And that’s the least of it!

  After waiting for two hours, I go looking for him, it’s noon already. Auntie Višnja doesn’t live far from the centre of town, which is small anyway, you just have to walk down the long dusty street, past the dilapidated houses neglected since the war, and you’re in the centre of town, near the ancient Arena, and the café garden, where I decide to look for him.

  I find him immediately, as if I’d conjured him, sitting by himself at the table, under a sunshade, his legs crossed, with that thoughtful, hard expression on his face that sometimes escapes him. There’s a glass of brandy glowing on the table like amber, a cigarette between his long, slender fingers, virtuoso pianists have fingers like that but so do schizophrenics, I later learn; the smoke rises straight up like a candle’s, because there is no wind, his gaze is intense, the café is packed and I can’t see what he’s looking at, I don’t think he’s looking at anybody, he’s just looking, because he’s sitting, because he’s alone, because he’s got eyes and it’s natural to look.

  And I’m livid, just livid watching him, I dig my nails into the palms of my hands, I could kill him, gouge his eyes out, pull his hair out, break his fingers, throw the brandy in his face, yank that cigarette out of his hand and crush it with my brand new sandals; there he is, leaning back, enjoying himself, while I’m at home waiting for him, worrying, despairing, how can this be happening, it can’t be happening, it’s not part of the agreement, it’s beyond logic, its madness, it’s not reality, it’s the end of the world and you can’t do anything about it because it’s the end and because it’s beyond comprehension; because it’s beyond you.

  I know what I should do, I should leave without his seeing me and return to Auntie Višnja’s house, pack up his things and send him back home on the bus that same afternoon, no arguing, no discussion, that’s what I’ve decided to do and that’s it. I especially need to avoid any discussion, I know and I understand that, I’m enough of an adult, after all, so no discussion, that’s basically just mirrors and smoke, it doesn’t let you move on because you don’t know where you’re going, because the different sides of the world have disappeared and you’re happy just to see any object that belongs to this world and will show you the way, even though you don’t know where it leads: into the abyss, to salvation or to something else, neither here nor there... to something that’s maybe worse.

  And though I know what I know, I reliably know, and though everything is as clear as day, I do not head for Auntie Višnja’s flat to finish what I started, no, I slip my feet into the new blue sandals that my mother won at lotto – it’s the first time she ever won anything and she’s been playing for years, working out the odds of probability, on the basis of which she writes down the numbers, because she’s mathematically gifted – and let them take me to the table where he’s sitting under the sunshade, none the wiser yet, and where they come to a stop. I wait for him to notice me, for him to slowly stand up, hesitate, his hand leaning on the table for support, the expression on his face changing from guilt and contrition to fear as it turns red, until, with a sigh, he slumps, as if life were too heavy a burden.

  Because, having dropped the idea of not saying anything, or of sending him straight home, which would have been the end of it, I, understandably, want to know why, why, why. I want an explanation that I can accept, even though I know there isn’t any, why did he come here in the first place, and then stay, knowing that I was waiting for him at home, that I was sure to be going out of my mind, was it possible that he didn’t give me even a minute’s thought, or remember that we were here with my mother, who would be asking questions as well, even if she didn’t say anything, who would be unhappy that her daughter had to suffer such a lack of consideration, and for no reason? How could we continue our relationship after I’d seen what he was capable of doing, what I could expect? What does he want, anyway, to be alone, OK then, so be alone, let’s break up and be done with it, we each go our own way, I shout in front of everyone in the café garden, as if they’re not there, because for me they don’t exist. For me, the only things that exist are the two of us and the unresolved matter of him having gone out to buy cigarettes and ending up here. I continue shouting as we leave, and all the way home, beside myself that he has no explanation, that he says he doesn’t know. What do you mean you don’t know, I yell, shaking my splayed fingers in front of me, are you insane, if you don’t know then go to an insane asylum and leave me alone, I start repeating myself, I’m getting tired of myself, of my own voice which is beginning to crack, and of my futile questions which get no answers, just an attempt to calm me down, as if it’s me who’s crazy not him. And that only makes me even more furious; if I’m crazy then there must be a reason, it didn’t come out of the blue, we were supposed to go for a swim, and in the evening to the cinema at the Arena, and now it’s ruined. No it’s not, he says, we can still go to the cinema, if I just calm down, if I forgive him, if I realise that he didn’t mean to, he just felt like it, he has no idea why, he went into town for a glass of brandy and simply got lost.

  And then I suppose he hugged me, and kissed me, and begged me to forgive him and said he would never do it again, that I shouldn’t be upset because he loves me, because he can’t live without me and that we need to calm down before we get home because my mother will be there, we have to think up some story for her, for instance that he ran into somebody and they got talking and he lost all sense of time, and we’ll have lunch, and a rest and then go to the cinema, at the Arena, just as planned.

  ***

  When I think now about how I was heading towards certain disaster, towards him, not away from him, against all reason, I have an image of a solitary table, in an empty street, with not even a car, as if the table is in some kind of square, and a man is sitting at that solitary table, a table for one, as the song goes, the song comes to me with the image – because this is the century of songs, not of poetry but songs, which are played constantly, which are the omnipresent sound of this century – a nice song, melodic, sad, it says that all of us are a
lone, that’s our fate, a song full of profound forgiveness for this lonely being who can’t survive, he will die alone – and in my mind he and that song join forces against the facts, against the obvious, against the possibility of my recognising the wolf in sheep’s clothing who wants to gobble me up.

  The wolf grinned at me, his eyeteeth gleaming, and then, like a phantom, disappeared, leaving me with just the poor sheep, bleating as it was being chased away from its young.

  VIII.

  His parents leave on a five-day trip to Dubrovnik, his father’s home town, hurray, I mentally dance with joy, an empty apartment just for the two of us, to play at being married. I’ll have to sleep at home, though, because that’s only right, an unmarried girl can’t sleep at her boyfriend’s even though she’s already slept with him. Which my father knows, because he asked me and I told him, I don’t know how to lie, and it appears I’m brave to boot.

  We’re sitting at the kitchen table when he asks me, both of us are serious, it’s a serious question, especially when asked by a father who doesn’t want yes for an answer, he can’t take yes for an answer, but he asks because he suspects it, because he’s upset. He smokes Herzegovina unfiltered, and he knows that I’m also a smoker because I lit my first cigarette in front of him, when I came of age, I saw it as my right. On the table is a raspberry soda, mixed, exceptionally, with two fingers of wine, because of the importance of the occasion, because otherwise he isn’t allowed, not even one finger of wine, because his liver is disintegrating. His eyes are a murky yellow, the pupils strangely dirty and his face already has a dark tone to it, as if he’s been in the sun, which he hasn’t, it’s dark because he’s sick; he’s half-bald and the little that’s left of his plastered down hair is grey, only his Hitlerite moustache is black, because he dyes it. When he hears my answer, he immediately reaches for his glass, his face looking even deader than usual, which seems impossible until it happens, it literally collapses. And he’s breathing heavily, through his nose, in and out; he doesn’t say anything, but it’s hit him hard, to the very depths of his fatherhood. He shouldn’t have asked.

  I can’t spend the night with the man I’ve already slept with, that would only confirm something that mustn’t be confirmed, it has to be covered up, denied, the exact opposite has to be proved, as if I had just been joking. Never mind, I think, the coming days are worth more than the nights, days when we’ll be alone from morning till night, something I’ve been dreaming of for a long time. The market, stalls with vegetables, yellow, red, orange, green and purple, you pick them carefully, I like wild lettuce, but his family eats butterhead lettuce, we’ll have to choose, and I like a salad of grated carrots, with garlic, which they don’t eat because it upsets Frane’s stomach, salads without garlic have no taste, I say. A bit of haggling over the price is a must, for the pure fun of it; cheese and single cream for breakfast, the peasant woman will take the cheese out of the cheesecloth and scoop the cream out of the tub with a ladle, it will all be delicious. We’ll buy the hard cheese at the shop, along with the cold cuts, some roast ham, some aromatic kulen sausage links, smoked in pork intestines, that come from Slavonia and which he loves. And for our first lunch we’ll have fish, say mackerel, which he will bake, because his father bakes them. At our house we only eat sardines, which my mother prepares and cooks. And in our shopping bag there’ll also be peaches for the wine, tradition is tradition, I think happily as we see Danica and Frane off. They’re taking two pre-war leather suitcases with them on the train. They’re calf leather, but you can see that they are old, they’re scuffed, especially along the edges, and grimy somehow, like their once-gilded clasps that are now dotted with light spots. The suitcases would join the junk up in the attic if they had the money to buy new ones.

  It’s the first time Danica and Frane are going anywhere – at least since I’ve known them – the first time they are visiting the town where his father grew up, as a gentleman, a gentleman, his son keeps repeating, never having forgiven him for being a gentleman, well-born, upper-crust, with an ancestry and money and a mansion and power, somebody who wasn’t a nameless face in the crowd, part of the amorphous mob, only to become a nobody in this town, and to pass that on to his son, as if to mock him.

  Frane left Dubrovnik around the age of thirty, trained to work as a hotel manager in Zagreb, and for a few glorious years was the assistant director of the Hotel Esplanade, and he married a pretty woman ten years his junior who worked for a lawyer, the world was open to him even if there was a war on, because there are those, you know, who navigate their way through war as if it didn’t exist, they don’t take sides and they don’t get involved. The Esplanade’s guests were no longer kings, or princes, or dukes, or exotic maharajas, they were no longer famous actresses, dancers, singers, writers or shoe moguls – now they wore the officer uniforms of the Wehrmacht, the Gestapo, occupiers to some, allies to others, depending on how you looked at it; they took over the hotel, along with the personnel. The hotel offered its services to those who could pay for them, and that now meant these people in uniform: welcome to our hotel... And then the war was over, the uniforms discarded, those still in uniform were killed, imprisoned or banished, and those who had once welcomed them, received them, tended to them, cleaned for them, cooked for them and along the way chatted with them and even had a drink with them, would now pay the price for having provided their services to the occupiers – because they were no longer allies – even though that had been part of their job description and they described themselves as being neutral. But there is no being neutral in wartime, there is no doing things halfway... It didn’t help if you gave some money to support the partisans, like Frane, or felt compassion for the weak and persecuted, you should have picked up a weapon and not played the fool, kowtowing to criminals. Now, deputy director, you will see what it’s like to be out in the street, said the authorities, and be grateful that we didn’t hang, execute or banish you, be grateful that you can even stay here. True, he was left with nothing, except his life, which was the greatest favour that those interesting times could render; as the Chinese famously said: God forbid you should live in interesting times.

  Meanwhile, in Dubrovnik, his younger brother was executed in the clamour to find people to blame for all that had happened, which some used to settle personal matters, like the jealous neighbour who could not forgive the executed man for being an upper-crust gentleman when he himself wasn’t and never would be, so it was onto the rubbish heap with the upper-crust gentleman, as prescribed by all wars.

  Frane’s response to all this was bronchial asthma, because that’s the easiest, you languish, everybody runs around pampering and nursing you, feeling guilty about the good health they enjoy that you had been denied, so that in the end your illness is the only problem you have left, and it takes priority over everything else. I realised this last part watching my father die for over ten years, poor man, poor thing, such bad luck, such a pity, and still young, everybody felt sorry for him, although he slept as much as he wanted, got up when he wanted, did what he wanted, read detective stories and westerns while my mother was killing herself with work, the entire burden of life on her shoulders, but she wasn’t a poor thing, a poor woman, they weren’t sorry for her – because she was healthy.

  This is what I am thinking as I see Danica and Frane off on their trip to Dubrovnik, with their battered suitcases and hand-made tote bag, made of bast fibre, bought from the blind, packed with breaded chicken, tomatoes and layer cake, which they’re taking with them on the train because it’s a long trip. Their last words of warning before they leave is, the gas, don’t forget to turn off the gas, and of course the light, don’t leave the light on all night, and also be careful not to burn anything, set fire to anything, or leave the door open when you go out, or forget the keys and have to force open the lock. As if we are children or feeble-minded; we roll our eyes but we nod yes to everything they say. After we kiss them goodbye and wave at them from the balcony until the taxi arrives
, and then, laughing like crazy, return to the kitchen where breaded chicken, tomatoes and layer cake are waiting for us and I start talking about all the things we’re going to do over the next five days and what fun we’re going to have now that we’re finally alone, from cooking at home to going out, and we’ll go to the zoo and look at the animals, because I’ve wanted to do that for a long time, and the zoo is not far from the flat – I learn that actually we’re not going to be on our own because that same evening the daughter of his mother’s cousin is coming from the provinces to stay with us, somebody named Rafka, short for Rafaela I suppose, twenty-three years old, she’s coming for some medical check-ups and will be staying for three days... Almost until they come back!

  If he’d punched me in the face it wouldn’t have hurt as much as the news about the relative coming to stay, disturbing our five days, which I’d already planned in my mind, like an annoying fly trapped in a room with you, and there wasn’t an inch of room for her, let alone for her stay overlapping with our five days, and nights, when I won’t be here. The days, OK, she’ll be a pain, but the nights, now that’s a betrayal, I think to myself, in defiance of all logic – why would it bother me for his relative to sleep here? – but it isn’t just bothering me, it’s killing me, I literally go icy cold, as if it’s minus a hundred degrees both outside and in, I gasp like a fish tossed onto the quayside where it’s destined to die. I don’t even touch the drumstick he left, because he likes only white meat, or the tomatoes or the layer cake, which I love. I just drink my red wine, which I still drink even today, and smoke and run my fingers through my hair and sulk so that I stop laughing, and wonder why his parents hadn’t mentioned this relative before they left, not a word, I note, despite all the instructions they had for us. And you knew, too, but you kept quiet about it, I say. Then I’m told that his parents didn’t know about it, the cousin announced her daughter’s arrival out of the blue, when they were packing, and they couldn’t say no, and he was caught off guard, he forgot to tell me, and they probably guessed that having the girl stay would be a bother so they avoided saying anything. Blah, blah, blah... But as far as I’m concerned, all my plans have gone down the drain.