Wild Woman

by Marina Sur Puhlovski

  Then she starts talking about her mother, who died prematurely, poor thing, and she starts to cry, so suddenly that I have no more questions for her, she blurs everything, and when I break through that blur and find her again, her son is already in school, he was good at drawing, at singing, at writing, he was a terrific footballer, they called him Amarillo, Rile for short, after the football player he resembled, and he was a top student straight through until puberty, and though his grades dropped they still told her he was the brightest student in the school, because they had done various tests. I’ve already heard it all before, but it’s as if I haven’t, I like hearing her praise her son; so, when she finishes, I say, you never noticed any sign of illness, anything like that, and again she doesn’t say no, I didn’t, she just waffles and you have nothing to nail her down with, she isn’t lying but she isn’t telling the truth, and that makes it all more than clear. That she knows but doesn’t want to tell me, not even now when everything has come, she keeps hiding it, as if to admit it would change something for me, as if I would say to myself: hey, stop, the man’s seriously ill, there’s something wrong, get out of here, run for it, the way animals do, the way they teach their young, but me, I was taught the opposite, that it’s at such times that I should step up, be compassionate and loyal, like my mother, who taught me to be that way, to love more because this is where it’s needed more, because this is where it’s missing. They prepared me for sacrifice, I later realised, and I had to pay for that delusion by living as a victim, in the here and now, not in the future, which is a huge difference, because a future victim is notional, and a notion is nothing. What is something is when you live like a victim, which I haven’t yet tried. Even sitting with Danica opposite the door to Intensive Care, waiting for Frane, I still don’t realise what’s waiting for me, what I am intended for, I am just slightly hurt that they kept something from me, because they didn’t believe in me. And that they still don’t believe in me.

  I don’t say that to Danica, who is sitting with tears pouring down her face, holding a crumpled hanky, her black hair a mess, and I would never say it to her, because she is a poor woman, as my mother would say, because I felt sorry for her the very first time I saw her, and because I think she is a good person. And also because I still love her son, so I share with her the terrible thing that has befallen us, whether expected or not it is now a fact and we have to accept it. Anyway, I am her son’s wife, it has only been two months, but still, I am his wife, and he is now my responsibility, mine first and only then hers, even though she is his mother. That is confirmed that day in the corridor, in front of Intensive Care, despite the fact that Frane had gone to look for work, because being sick costs money, and even though he is sick himself, he will sacrifice himself for his sick son. Not by taking care of him, but by helping us with money, if and when it’s needed. It goes without saying that we were living off of my mother’s income and I will be getting my father’s pension. And when he recovers, my husband will return to his job at the radio, because he is sure to recover. The son of Frane’s older brother, who also lives in Zagreb, an anaesthesiologist who is currently abroad on a scholarship, but is soon due back, has been informed of the illness and will be of help.

  A few days later, Leon appears and suggests that I write for the radio under Rile’s name (that’s what he calls him, though I never do), so that he can keep his job and not lose it to somebody else, and I happily agree.

  XVI.

  My head. I’m off my head...

  I’m running through life in a deranged frenzy, like a headless chicken.

  I’ve got too much on my mind, I say, if anybody phones – my relative Flora, or Adam, or Kostja, or Filip, or Petra or Irena, who recently married her engineer boyfriend – and asks me how I’m doing, suggesting we get together and talk, I say I can’t, I can’t, I can’t, and after saying it I sit there with my head in my hands, rubbing my sleepy eyes.

  I don’t sleep well; I toss and turn on the sofa that we moved over from the little room. Because we threw out my father’s sofa, and bought a nice small dark green sofa for the little room, which even when you open it up into a bed leaves enough room for you to move around, and that’s where Adam sleeps when he stays over, because to get to his house, the one that’s being built on the north side, he has to take a tram, then a bus and then walk, and the last bus is at eleven in the evening, and he’s always late for it.

  The worst thing is when I wake up too early, say at five in the morning, and I went to bed at midnight; it’s not a time for sleeping and it’s not a time for getting up, so I wait for day to break in the winter but it takes forever and when it does break the day is enough to make you weep, it’s so grey it’s as if there’s a huge dull lid over the city, not the sky, because what sort of colour is grey, or the sun, or thick clouds shaped like a dragon or crocodile to cheer you up so you have something fun to look at above, not wondrous snow that blends everything together into one, into whiteness, with always something quiet and formal about it, as if you were in the theatre. And then you spend the whole day traipsing from one job to the next, as if you were surrounded by Harpies, not three but countless numbers of them, competing in a championship.

  I don’t even fold up the sofa bed, I don’t put the bed linen away, I leave everything just the way it was when I got up, rumpled from tossing and turning and from the sweat pouring out of me like water, sweat from worrying and from images such as the empty bed in the hospital room where you’re standing devastated, like his former girlfriend Dunja, when she came to see her father and brought bowls of food. I have nesting nickel bowls like that, on a stand with a handle so that you can carry it. There are four bowls, one for the soup, one for the meat, one for a side dish and one for the dessert, I fill them and bring them to the hospital every day, every time with a different meal, until I start all over again, because I haven’t got the energy to be imaginative. At least he’s not eating slop, as he calls the hospital food, their soup is like dishwater, he says, it tastes of dirt, and the meat is so tough you could sole your shoes with it, he jokes, he doesn’t even mention the revolting side dishes. I bring him beef or chicken soup with home-made noodles or dumplings, sometimes with liver dumplings, and the meat is veal or chicken, roasted or breaded, or meat patties, or boiled beef in a sauce, or a stew or goulash, which he liked to dunk his bread in while it was still cooking on the stove, an image that makes Danica cry, and I’m close to tears myself, as if nothing is more moving than the image of somebody being fed and nothing is worse than to think of somebody dying of hunger. The side dish is potatoes, either sautéed or mashed or as a salad, or rice, or pasta, with or without vegetables, peas, carrots, chopped spinach with butter and milk, all of which my mother usually makes, I do the food shopping, the only thing on the hospital menu that he takes is the salad, because he doesn’t care. Twice a week Danica provides the dessert, she bakes whatever cake he wants, a layer cake or wonder cake or Dobos torte, there’s enough for the next day as well, and for the remaining days I make him floating islands with gelatine, or chocolate-sprinkled rice pudding, or my mother makes an apple pie with cinnamon, walnuts and raisins in one half of the baking pan, and a cheese pie with cream and eggs and raisins again, in the other. All these desserts look delicious and tempting, their aroma fills the room. When there are cakes for dessert, we share them with others. For breakfast, I bring ham and cheese, some fruit, oranges, bananas, when necessary, and since it’s winter, thank goodness, I can keep everything outside on the window ledge so that it doesn’t spoil, and I also bring him cigarettes because he hasn’t stopped smoking. They let him smoke, but only in the corridor, and he can walk, though not too much, because the most important thing is for him to rest. He’s got a transistor, so has everybody else, at least those who can hear because some of them are barely conscious, calling out to who knows whom – there are six of them in the room, which is considered a comfortable number because in some rooms there are ten or more – but the competing sounds
from the different transistors irritate him so he keeps his switched off. Except when his own articles are broadcast, the ones I started writing under his name, all of them aired in the morning. I write about important dates in the arts and sciences, in history and politics, about events and personalities, when something happened, when they were born or died, what they wrote or painted and when, what they invented or whom they defeated, or were defeated by, whatever you can find by leafing through the encyclopaedia and going to the library, digging around like crazy. I also write for a column called “The History of Everyday Things”, and that’s even more complicated, you have to work hard to dig up who invented napkins, or matches, or lighters, or umbrellas, or toilets, or nail files, because everything has been invented by somebody, nothing useful simply dropped out of the sky. And I write – again under his name – humorous pieces about modern-day life in the city, stories from the tram, the street, the marketplace, the café, from our impoverished universe, which depicts itself as the best in the world and is not to be touched – because politics, on which that universe rests, is untouchable, keep your hands to yourself if you don’t want to lose them, I’ve been taught since the day I was born – I think up these pieces when I’m exhausted, my throat tight with fear over what will happen to him tomorrow; and I’m supposed to make my listeners laugh.

  We had left the September exams for February, because we were only just married and because my father was dying, for real this time, we could feel it, and we figured that we could take the exams in February, but in February life went topsy-turvy, in February whatever was important became unimportant, making you wonder about the real importance of these important things, because surely what’s important can’t become unimportant until it is resolved, and so that’s what happened, the exams became unimportant, we didn’t take them and that left both of us without health insurance. And now he is in the hospital.

  Who is going to pay for the hospital, or for a possible operation, which is still up in the air because his tumour is going to grow, it isn’t going to stay as it is, because those damaged blood vessels have created a bomb, who will pay for it, who, I wonder in despair, running to the head of the university’s literature department, who’s a holy terror because that’s how he behaves, because he doesn’t really have any power so he likes scaring people. I have to ask this same man, who loves putting the fear of God in you, to set a precedent by allowing my husband to enrol in the next semester without having taken his exams, so that he can keep his health insurance, and take his exams later, if he survives. I have to say all this because it’s a serious matter, I don’t want him to think that I’m trying to fool him, and I’ll probably have to hear him say that he could have taken these exams earlier, in September, so why didn’t he, and I will then have to let him rap me on the knuckles and stoically take it. I’m not asking for myself, I don’t like asking for anything, and if I have to ask I forget how to talk, I have to drag the words out of my mouth, and it’s not attractive. And so I walk and walk, never reaching the office of the department head, it’s as if I’ve strayed into a labyrinth several times over, because either he didn’t come to work that day or I’m too exhausted and give up.

  Now, a different picture emerges from the menace of all these dangers, a different picture of the building and its corridors, as if I’ve never been here, every corridor seems a mile long and there are so many of them, and so many doors, but I can’t find the department head’s office because I don’t want to find it, and I can’t remember where it was yesterday when I did find it but he wasn’t there. I’ve been here three times already and something odd is happening, I seem to have gone deaf for a moment, like when you turn off the volume on your TV and are left with just what’s on the screen, somebody talking but no sound, just a moving mouth, like somebody who’s escaped a lunatic asylum, like a caricature of itself – it’s like the faces I see in the corridors, students on their own or in groups, whose eyes follow me as if I were an alien, an intruder, a magnified character from a cartoon who’s pushed its way into reality. Even with familiar faces it’s as if I have never seen them before, God forbid they should ask me anything. I make my way, moving on, and then there’s the door with his unmistakeable name plate on it, I can’t miss it, but it won’t open by itself so I knock, I hear a voice inside say come in, and I walk in.

  The department head, he looks like a badger, is good-naturedly chubby but inside he’s a brute, indifferent to feminine charms though I could do with some right now, they would lend a different tone to the scene, one in my favour, but this way he just looks suspicious, there’s no sympathy, no smile, a face that refuses a priori, that says no before you ask, a wall, not a face. I’m trying to figure out how to begin talking to this wall, how to start my story, but there is no start to it, I realise now that I’m searching for it, I’m at a loss, I pluck words awkwardly out of the middle of the story, which his logical mind immediately deems to be unimportant, maybe even false, he doesn’t see me, I’m of no interest to him, not me and not the person I’m telling him about, he doesn’t remember ever having seen us, he has no questions, asks for no explanation, he just says stiffly that there’s nothing he can do, that my request is against the rules, so leave, there’s no goodbye.

  I’m outside of the door, I don’t know how I came out, it’s as if it took me years to get out, I stand there as if I’ve been turned into a pillar of salt, I have nowhere else to go, no one to go to, and at that moment I think it’s all over, I can only withdraw into myself. And it’s there, in my inner self, that I discover the fury of impotence and in my fury I want the department head to go through what I’m going through, to face an illness, let me be precise, an illness affecting the brain, I want a replica of what’s happened to me, of somebody close falling ill, and I whisper these words hoping they will embolden the thought, give it body, who knows who’s listening beyond this reality, there where fairies and demons live, who knows who’s waiting for you to ask them for help with such a terrible task as mine. There is just as much good and bad on that side as on ours, we’re told in fairy tales, which are true if you believe in them, as I do now. And wouldn’t you know it, a few years later the damned man’s son gets a brain tumour, just as I had wanted.

  Impossible, I thought when they told me, it’s just a coincidence, I’m not responsible for it, though I know I am, and I’m not sorry, I’m not, even though an innocent person has suffered, at least at first glance, because innocence in general is debatable. And I want him to know that this was my doing, actually it was his, because he retaliated first, but I won’t tell him, not even when the opportunity arises – as it did years later when I invited him to the radio for an interview – because every side of that story is closed and there’s no way in. I wouldn’t have asked him for the interview if his son hadn’t recovered, I despise cynicism, even the surreptitious kind that mine would have been if his son had been dead when I phoned, but his son’s recovery liberated me from that, he and I could confront each other not as individuals but rather in our roles aimed at raising his public image, along with the demons I invoked. About them he knows nothing.

  We have a nice talk before the interview, while we’re waiting, he is a different man now because I am not his subordinate anymore, he even laughs, and when he does his teeth gleam, but he’s still a badger, just a little chubbier, and his closely cropped hair is greying, he remembers me from my final exams, that I was brilliant, he flunked students as if they were pawns he was knocking off a chessboard, but he didn’t flunk me. He doesn’t know anything important, he knows everything unimportant, which he would depict as important and convince others of the importance of this unimportance, because he could scare them, but now he’s famous and everybody wants to hear what he has to say, they have no idea that they won’t learn anything, not anything important, or that he will shower them with the evil that he inflicted on me, on his son, and through him on himself, because he doesn’t know otherwise. Because he’s comfortable with falsehood
s.

  But now, I’m still standing in front of his door like a pillar of salt; I’ve invoked demons from the reality of the other side, but I have done nothing in the reality of this side, which is why I came. So what now, what now; I decide to shake off the salt and look for another door, I feel stronger somehow after performing that ritual of invoking demons, the corridors don’t look miles long anymore, they don’t interweave, I don’t get lost in them, and the students are once again people with voices, not silent apparitions, so I move on and immediately find the other door, on the other side of which is a woman, his deputy.

  I remember her for once saying that we should read at home, and come to classes when we have nothing better to do, and it still makes me smile to think what a powerful sentence that is, how much she knows and how much she despises cheating – there, in her office, its furniture the colour of fresh wood, enlivened by the different colours of the books that are everywhere, she immediately emerges from that sentence as somebody who sees, who understands, who is empathetic. She knows who I am, who he is, she remembers our names and the essays we wrote for her, mine about Thomas Mann, his about Jack London, she can’t get over her surprise at his choice of writer, she has her doubts about the impressionism of that essay, but she’s interested in everything, what happened, when, the diagnosis, his present condition, future plans, she’ll resolve the health insurance issue right away at the Registrar’s Office, it’ll be done in a jiffy, she says, no problem, she says, and my eyes well up with tears.