Wild Woman

by Marina Sur Puhlovski

  XIX.

  It’s November, the worst month of the year, neither autumn nor winter, a time of shadows, it’s early afternoon, but we’ve already turned on the lights, and my mother, the dog and I are sitting in the dining room, she’s darning the heel of my husband’s sock on a wooden mushroom because she refuses to throw things away, she mends them, the dog is curled up on the chair, dozing, and I’m leafing through the newspaper, which is empty; suddenly there’s a blood-curdling scream from the other room. The dog leaps out of the chair terrified, my mother and I stand up, the darning mushroom rolls under the table, what is it, what is it, we shout, the three of us running into the hallway, and then into our room where we find my husband on the floor – he’d fallen off the sofa he was sleeping on – his back twisted, shaking as if he’d had an electric shock, his face distorted and blue, his mouth spewing blood-speckled foam. An epileptic seizure, I immediately realise, I’d read about it in Dostoevsky, and there was a boy in my secondary school class who was epileptic and had a few seizures during our lessons, he was dark and his last name was Habulinec.

  We’re standing there feeling helpless, me with an image of Habulinec in my mind, when my mother, who is more level-headed, quickly grabs a pillow to place under his head. But how, when she’s afraid to approach him, so am I, I’m shivering as if it’s cold, the dog sneaks under the four-legged table, watching quietly, resting its head on its paws; we keep waiting, waiting for this horror to end, we wait forever, until he finally looks peaceful, though he is still unconscious, but at least now we can put the pillow under his head, and he opens his eyes, which look faded. What happened, he asks, because he doesn’t remember a thing, not that he screamed, not that he fell, not that he shook. He sits up, running his tongue over his lips in astonishment, he can taste the blood in his mouth, he says, I bit my tongue, he says, wiping the spittle away with his finger and then cleaning his finger on the track suit he had been sleeping in. I help him get to his feet, he stands there not knowing why he got up, do you have to go to the toilet, I ask, no, he says, he’s tired, he says, and I help him lie down on the sofa again.

  The doctor in Zagreb, not the one in Rijeka who’s too far away to contact, tells me what I need to do the next time he has a seizure, a grand mal, he says, the worst kind, he says, which I already know from my Medical Lexicon, I keep it on my bedside table close at hand; just put a pillow under his head, he says, or anything soft, a roll of clothes, that sort of thing. Don’t touch him while he’s having a seizure, he says, that can only make it worse, and when he comes to, keep him calm. Do I have to put something in his mouth, like a hanky, to stop him from biting his tongue, I ask, but he says better not, he could hurt himself on a foreign object or it could block his breathing, no just calm him down. And he gives us barbiturates to prevent or at least minimise the seizures, but they have to be taken regularly, he says.

  So that’s that, epilepsy from a brain tumour that’s still there because they didn’t remove it, and now we have to live with it. Illness has been a part of my life for as long as I can remember, first my father’s and now his, isn’t that strange, I think, feeling guilty because it’s unkind to think like that, one should be compassionate and make one’s peace with it, not complain, which is anyway pointless. Because you’re certainly not going to show illness the door, you’re not going to pass the buck, and anyway there’s nobody to pass it to, Danica and Frane have long since dodged the issue, behaving like guests. My poor son, Danica moans, crying her eyes out, while Frane just nods inconsolably, shakes his head and brings her coat so that they can return to the peace and quiet of their own home, or at least the peace and quiet of a place where they don’t have to look at a sick person all day.

  They don’t have to wait for the next seizure, to jump every time there’s an unexpected sound in the flat, the sudden flushing of the bathroom toilet, the door slammed shut by the wind, shouts in the street when the windows are open, they don’t have to tremble if he calls out from his room to the kitchen – not knowing if he needs something or is screaming – and then run over to him, prepared for the worst. Make sure he takes his pills, and if you discover in the middle of the night that he’s run out, go straight to the duty pharmacy, wherever it is, on foot if need be, and get a hold of those pills, even if you have to do it without a prescription.

  The nights are the worst, we still sleep on the sofa, but not the way we used to, with my head on his chest, or me spooning him, no, now I always turn my back to him, as if that will save me. I stay awake afraid that he will have a seizure in his sleep, that I’ll be awoken by him screaming, that the grand mal will explode in my face, that I won’t survive it. I lie there curled up, staring into the dark, thinking, thinking, but not really thinking about anything because there’s nothing to think about when there’s nothing you can do, it’s like thinking about how to get out of your body when you discover it’s a prison, how to get out alive, not dead, how to leave and still stay inside it, you feel so helpless that you grind your teeth until sleep gets the better of you. But the real torture is when he reaches out for me in bed, because I don’t like it but I can’t tell him that, I don’t want to kill him, I’d rather simply endure it, I just have to keep my legs together so that he doesn’t push in too far, because it’s too big, it will hurt me.

  The nights are a nightmare but everything changes in the daylight, when I get out of bed and slip on the human skin of the day, like in a fairy tale, although there, it’s the other way round, a swan by day, a beautiful girl by night, never mind, one way or the other it’s two different faces. My daytime face is happy because dawn has finally broken, everything will be alright, it’ll all be alright, I tell him, his mother, me, I spread the optimism of believing that he will be fine, we’ll stop the epilepsy with the pills, and anyway you don’t die from epilepsy, I say, as if in cahoots with the keeper of the keys to life. See, I say to my darling, now you’re Dostoevsky, you just have to write The Brothers Karamazov and there’ll be no stopping you, I joke, not to go crazy, and you’ll buy your Lincoln Continental with the money you get when you’re published in the U.S., I laugh, not to go crazy. He responds with an ironic grin behind his beard and moustache, nodding only half good-naturedly because he does and doesn’t like the joke, it’s a joke, yes, but on a serious subject, and he plans to be Dostoevsky and to be published in the U.S., and he swears it’s all going to happen, you’ll see, he says... And for a second, that never-to-be famous, rich and successful person is standing on the prow of the Queen Mary, sailing into New York, greeting the Statue of Liberty where he’ll be welcomed with speeches and flashing cameras.

  Because fame and wealth exist only in New York, as his father Frane told him when he was thirteen, on a boat trip to Opatija, standing on the deck, looking out at the sea and the ships and the distances they imagined lay ahead, his father’s dream, one he did not fulfil but he had a son to leave it to, a son who could fulfil it for them both.

  And that turned out to be my entire inheritance, he says sardonically when he’s finished his story about his father, himself, Opatija. New York, the Queen Mary that would take him to all this, furious at his father for having deluded him – because other people’s dreams never take you anywhere – yet still perfidiously in the grips of that subversive dream.

  And then his disappearances became more frequent.

  The first time he disappeared was in Pula, when I didn’t kick him out because of his fragility, which I thought would be lifelong, and how could I go against that, and now, of course, there’s his illness, an excuse for everything. Bad boy has become poor boy, you can’t rebuke him, as my mother says, at least not too much, you can’t get angry at him, at least not too much, until I go crazy because I can’t take it anymore, I’m going to explode.

  I usually sit on the sofa in the hall, in front of the TV, it’s evening, then night-time, it’s just the dog and me, my mother’s not around, she’s probably already left to work, saying that she has to earn money for my fa
ther’s headstone, because his grave looks pathetic without it.

  I sit, I smoke, I drink, I’m grey with fatigue and worry, my greasy hair lank around my face, even when I wash it, which isn’t often, because I don’t wash much anymore, I smell in the hope that it’ll disgust him and he’ll leave me alone. Because he’s obsessed with cleanliness, he always scrubs himself down with soap and splashes on the cologne, he keeps 4711 cologne in his toiletry bag, along with some face and hand cream, which I used to think was funny but now I think is sick. I wait to see when he will unlock the front door, at one, two, three in the morning when he comes home, having gone out to buy cigarettes or see Leon, or whatever, ten, twelve, fourteen hours earlier; he unlocks the door as silently as he can, but it’s no use because the dog has already heard him and runs over, the little traitor. But he keeps hoping that I’m asleep, although I never go to sleep until he comes home, not anymore, I wait until I drop. Because I never know if something has happened to him, maybe he had a seizure and fell in the street, under a car, under a tram, maybe he’s already dead in one of the hospitals, bad news travels fast they say, but I can’t help it, I have to see him walk through that door. And when he does, I can’t not be angry, not be furious that he does what he does, that he disappears without a word, I can’t not have a go at him, ask him where he was, and why, why, repeating it a hundred times, not choosing my words, until he slaps or punches me, because he can’t listen to me anymore.

  I never hit back, he’s sick, I might hurt him, so I just twist away, try to fend him off with my hand, as I used to with my father who also hit me, when he was drunk, not on the head, my mother would cry out, but it was no use because, if I protected my face, his hand would automatically go for my head. And it stopped when I told him that the next time he hit me I would kill him, I was already of age. And then I brought my husband into the house only to have it continue, as if I couldn’t live without being hit.

  I don’t hit back even when he hits me because I haven’t written the article for the radio; the money for it goes to him, to his bank account, but it doesn’t come into the house because he spends it on himself, on his disappearances, so I never see any of it. I won’t do the writing and have you do the spending, I say, which seems logical to me but not to him, because he was counting on me, he shouts. Because I promised him I would write it. I say, no I didn’t, I’d warned him that I was done with it, but he shouts that he can’t just jump in and take over like that, that I’ve got the hang of writing these pieces and he hasn’t, so until he has I have to write them, or else.

  And here I am, with a black-blue-and-yellow eye, behind sunglasses that I still have to remove sometimes, and Filip, who has dropped by, asks me what happened. And I say, you know that high shelf in the kitchen where I keep the scales (an old iron one with weights), well, I was trying to take it down and it fell and gave my face a hard smack, I say. But Filip looks at me doubtfully, that was wasn’t caused by scales, he says, and he’s serious, he’s not laughing at me.

  He’s come to advise me how to continue my studies so that I can keep my father’s pension, I lose it when I graduate, and I don’t expect to find a job. Make your second subject, philosophy, your first and that will give you another two years, and by then he’ll probably graduate as well, he says, thinking of my husband who, of course, isn’t at home even though it’s already dark outside.

  In the morning, he was going to write his senior thesis for his second elective subject, also philosophy; I’d already finished mine, all I had left now was my thesis for my first elective, comparative literature. But he didn’t do anything, he was tired, tired today, tired tomorrow, I can’t, I’m not getting anywhere with it, he moaned, and anyway what was I going to do with a degree in philosophy and comparative literature, I could wipe my ass with it, it wasn’t going to get me a job, and so he put a stop to all our efforts, the ashes and dust of life. OK, we’ll study together, I said, because I can’t stand leaving things undone, and I took out the notebooks I had studied from, and the summaries of the books I had read, because that’s how I study, by writing, not just reading, I have to rewrite the book if I’m going to remember it. You can learn everything you need to know from these summaries without ever having to read the original if you don’t want to, I said, determined not to give up. And he agreed to it, because he thought it would be easier to learn the summaries by heart, with somebody who could explain everything to him, lay it out on a platter, and so we started with philosophy, to finish with that first, because officially it was his first subject.

  And now, just before his written exam, he’s disappeared, disappeared, can you believe it, after months of studying, I say to Filip, who doesn’t know what to say, he just stares at the bruises on my face, keeping his opinions to himself, probably thinking that I’m an idiot to go to all this trouble for nothing, which is what I think, too. All the same, I get dressed and go out to look for him, having first seen Filip off because I don’t want him to know what I’m going to do, how pathetic I am, and I cover my bruised face with sunglasses, which nobody sane wears at night.

  Like a machine, I walk here, there, street after street, from the restaurant to the café, in, out, sweat pouring out of me, but I keep on walking and walking, then I stop to light a cigarette and look around as if I expect him to appear out of nowhere, out of a shadow that’s swallowed him up and is now going to disgorge him because it can’t digest him. At “Peščenica”, his old restaurant, all his pals are still at the table, all except for Leon, and they shrug, saying that they haven’t seen him in a long time; the hunchback, sitting like a frog on the armrest of the chair, swinging his legs with their laced shoes, scrutinises my sunglasses, It’s not easy, he says, as if he knows what happened and understands, though we both know whose side he’s on, and he asks after his health and says to give him his best when I find him, but I won’t do that, there’s nothing here for me. I catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror at the front door, unable to recognise this face behind the sunglasses that claims to be mine, the face of the madwoman I’ve become without realising it.

  But then I run out of places to look for him; everything in town is closed, maybe he’s gone home, I think, and I’m not there, well, never mind, now it’s his turn to worry about where I am, I think, feeling mean. Still, I give it one more shot and rush over to the bus station, to “Gumenjak”, that’s what they call this drinking hole, “Rubber Boat”, and there he is, sitting at a table, hunched over a glass of brandy, his trousered legs crossed, swinging his top leg as usual, a sign that something is eating at him, I suppose. I realise his hand was between his legs, under the tablecloth, when, after noticing me, he places it on the table, as if he had taken it out from somewhere. A fleeting thought instantly disappears in the face of the urgent need to get him home right away. He has to get up early in the morning.

  What are you doing, I snarl between clenched teeth, you’ve got your written exam tomorrow; I don’t let him finish his brandy, get up right now, I say, glancing at the two mini-skirted women sitting at the bar, swinging their naked legs, he was probably gawking at them, I think to myself. He immediately stands up, his hands resting on the table for support, and the two women at the bar snigger, their faces lopsided because they’re drunk and their skin won’t listen to them. He pays at the bar with a crumpled bill that he’s pulled out of his pocket, and then follows me out, hunched over, as if he’s on a leash, as if he’s a slave, not a man.

  And now here I am in the morning, my sunglasses still on my nose, sitting on one of the benches in front of the large lecture-room in which students write their exam papers, a prerequisite to having your orals. Beside me is a stack of notes with possible exam topics. I’m waiting for him to come out, allegedly to use the bathroom, to tell me what topic he’s been given to write on so that I can pull it out of the folder and give it to him to take inside beneath his jacket.

  Socrates and the sophists, he whispers when he comes out, leaning over me, a strand of hair falling o
nto his perspiring brow; here, I’ve got it, and I take the papers out of the folder that’s on top of the stack because this is the beginning of continuous thought, an easy subject, he’s lucky, I think to myself, later it all gets complicated. He turns red as he shoves the papers beneath his jacket, terrified that he’ll get caught, even though there’s nobody in sight.

  He passed the written exam with a B, and got another B on his oral, which we celebrated with friends and a mound of food as the event of the century, and for days afterwards we were eating leftovers, the empty bottles lined up by the front door. But I listened to Filip, prolonged my studies for two more years, and the agony for two more years, blocking out myself, blocking out the obvious – that I was continuing a life where there was no more us, no more, no more, no more, as the song goes, which was hard to understand because supposedly there still was an us, there still was happiness and love and music and dance, so why was there no more us in all this, I wondered, banging my head against the question; there was, but there wasn’t, you had no place to return to, no place to go to because you didn’t exist; absolute torture.

  To thank me for helping her son with his studies, Danica gave me a fur collar taxidermy, a silver fox with a horrible pointy snout, fluffy fur tail and poor little paws, you didn’t know what was worse, the glass eyes or the lifeless paws. I shuddered when she took the poor thing out of the cardboard box and placed it in my hands.

  Still, I pressed the fur against my face, looked in the mirror, said it was lovely, a marvellous gift and thanked her, which brought tears to her eyes, but when she left I stuffed the revolting thing in the storage compartment of my mother’s sofa, under the instalments of The Witch of Grič, beside the balls of wool and old clothing, mothballs generously strewn across her petty oasis, although the moths were still in residence, as became obvious in the summer.