I CALLED HIM NECKTIE
New Vessel Press
www.newvesselpress.com
First published in German in 2012 as Ich nannte ihn Krawatte
Copyright © 2012 Verlag Klaus Wagenbach
Translation Copyright © 2014 Sheila Dickie
All rights reserved. Except for brief passages quoted in a newspaper, magazine, radio, television, or website review, no part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the Publisher.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Flašar, Milena Michiko
[Ich nannte ihn Krawatte. English]
I Called Him Necktie / Milena Michiko Flašar; translation by Sheila
Dickie.
p. cm.
ISBN 978-1-939931-14-6
Library of Congress Control Number 2014936216
I. Austria — Fiction.
... You are so far removed from this world,
which is beautiful and perhaps meaningful,
so far from any natural fulfillment,
so alone in your emptiness,
so alien and deaf in this great silence ...
Max Frisch, An Answer from the Silence
... wie ausgeschieden du bist aus dieser Welt,
die schön ist und vielleicht einen Sinn hat
wie ausgestoßen aus aller natürlichen Vollendung,
wie einsam in deiner Leere,
wie fremd und taub in dieser großen Stille ...
Antwort aus der Stille
Contents
I Called Him Necktie
Glossary
1
I called him Necktie.
The name pleased him. It made him laugh.
Red gray stripes on his chest. That’s how I want to remember him.
2
Seven weeks have passed since I last saw him. In these seven weeks the grass has grown dry and yellow. Cicadas sit chirping in the trees. Gravel crunches under my feet. In the harsh light of the midday sun, the park looks strangely desolate. Blossoms burst open on branches, bending wearily towards the ground. A faded blue handkerchief lies in the undergrowth, without a breath of wind to stir it. The air is heavy and oppressive. I’m all scrunched up. I say goodbye to someone who will not come again. I’ve known that since yesterday. He is not coming again. Above me stretches the sky that has swallowed him up – forever?
I still cannot believe that our parting is final. In my mind he could return at any moment, perhaps as someone else, perhaps with a different face, could throw me a glance which says: I’m here. Head turned to the north, smiling at the passing clouds. He could. That’s why I am sitting here.
3
I’m sitting on our bench. Before it became ours, it had been mine. I came here to try to work out whether the crack in the wall, that hairline fissure crossing above the bookshelves, had any meaning internal or external. I spent two whole years staring at it. Two whole years in my room, in my parents’ house. Behind my closed eyes I traced its broken line. It had been in my head, had continued there, had penetrated my heart and my arteries. I myself was an anemic stripe. My skin pale as death, for the sun didn’t shine on it. Sometimes I yearned for its touch. I imagined what it would be like to go outside and finally understand: There are rooms one never leaves.
One cold February morning I gave into my yearning. Through the gap in the curtains I could make out a flight of cranes. They flew up and down, with the sun on their wings, and dazzled me. With a stabbing pain in my eyes, I felt my way along the walls of my room towards the door, pushed it open, pulled on a coat and shoes, one size too small, went out onto the street and beyond, past houses and squares. Despite the cold, sweat ran off my forehead and I experienced a strange sense of satisfaction: I can still do it. I can put one foot in front of the other. I have not forgotten how. All efforts to forget were in vain.
I didn’t try to delude myself. Now as before it was about me, it was about being by myself. I didn’t want to meet anyone. Meeting someone means getting involved. An invisible thread is tied. From person to person. Real threads. Back and forth. Meeting someone means becoming part of a web, and I wanted to avoid that.
4
Like on that first walk out. That’s how a prisoner must feel, looking through the bars of the cell he carries around with him, knowing full well he is not free. When I think back to that first walk out, I feel as if I was a figure in black and white walking through a color film. All around the brightness screamed. Yellow taxis, red mailboxes, blue billboards. Their loudness deafened me.
With my collar up I turned the corner and took care not to stumble over anyone’s feet. I feared the thought that my trouser leg could graze the hem of someone’s coat in passing. I clamped my arms to my sides and ran, ran, ran, without looking right or left. The most horrible thing imaginable was the double glances, catching one another at random. The ones that linger for seconds. That never leave you. Such nausea. I was full of them. Full to the brim. The further I ran the more aware I was of the weight of my body. Someone bumped into me. I couldn’t hold it in any longer. With one hand to my mouth I ran into the park and threw up.
5
I knew the park and I knew the bench by the cedar, too. Distant childhood. Mother would beckon me to her, pick me up onto her lap and explain the world to me with a pointed finger. Look, a sparrow! It said chirp, chirp. Her breath was on my cheek. A tickling on the back of my neck. Mother’s hair swayed gently to and fro. When you are small, so small that you believe things will stay the same forever, the world is a friendly place. That’s what I thought when I recognized my childhood bench. This bench, where I should learn that nothing stays as it is, and yet it is still worthwhile being in the world. I am still learning that.
He would say: It was a decision.
And I did really decide to walk over the lawn, towards the bench, and to stand in front of it. I was alone, surrounded by silence. Nobody was there to catch me as I walked once, then once more, around the bench, in ever tighter circles. The taste in my mouth as I eventually sat down. The wish to be a child again. To look with eyes full of amazement. I mean, it was my eyes that became ill at the very beginning. My heart simply followed them. And so I sat in clothing much too thin. I shivered under my skin, which was even thinner.
6
After that I was compelled to come here every morning. I watched the snow as it fell. I watched the snow as it melted again. A gurgling rivulet. With the spring came the people and their voices. I sat with clenched teeth. A retching in my throat. That was the crack in the wall. It separated me from those who were woven in. A couple in love strolled by me whispering. The secret words flowing by me sounded foreign, like the words of a language I had not mastered. I am happy, I heard, inexpressibly happy. A sticky surge on my tongue. I stifled the retching.
Whether anyone was aware of me, I doubt it, and if so, then only as you are aware of a ghost. You see it clearly and distinctly, may not believe that you have seen it, and it’s gone in a blink. I was such a ghost. Even my parents were barely aware of me. If I encountered them in the entrance or the hallway, they murmured incredulously, Oh, it’s you. They had long given up counting me as one of them. We have lost our son. He has died, well before his time. That’s how they must have experienced it. As a deep loss. But gradually they came to terms with it. The sorrow they may have felt to begin with gave way to the realization that it was not in their power to win me back, and however strange the situation may have been for them, even in the strangeness a certain order prevailed. You lived together under the same roof and so long as nothi
ng about it got out, you regarded it as completely normal, to live like that under the same roof.
7
Nowadays I realize that it is impossible not to encounter anyone. In that you are there and breathe, you encounter the whole world. The invisible thread has bound you to the others from the moment of birth. To sever it requires more than a death, and there’s no use opposing it.
When he appeared I have no idea.
I say: He appeared. For that was how it was. One morning in May he suddenly appeared. I sat on my bench, my collar turned up. A pigeon took flight. I felt dizzy from the beating of its wings. When I closed my eyes and opened them again, he was there.
A salaryman. Mid fifties. He wore a gray suit, a white shirt, a red and gray striped tie. In his right hand swung a briefcase. Brown leather. He walked, swinging it to and fro, shoulders bent forward, face turned away. Somehow tired. Without looking at me he sat down on the opposite bench. Crossed one leg over the other. Stayed like that. Motionless. His face tense as he looked away. He was waiting for something. Something was going to happen. Soon, soon. Bit by bit his muscles relaxed and he leaned back with a sigh. Such a sigh, like there was something inside him waiting to occur.
A fleeting glance at his watch, then he lit a cigarette. The smoke rose in ringlets. That was the beginning of our acquaintance. A sharp odor in my nose. The wind blew the smoke in my direction. Before we had exchanged names, this wind introduced us to each other.
8
Was it his sigh? Or the way he flicked away the ash? Absentmindedly, absent from his own mind. I was not afraid to watch him, as he was, sitting opposite me.
I observed him like a familiar object, a toothbrush, a washcloth, a piece of soap, which all at once you see for the first time, quite separate from its purpose. It may be that this familiarity was what stimulated my particular interest. His well-pressed figure was like thousands of others who fill the streets day in and day out. They stream out of the belly of the city and disappear into tall buildings, whose windows break up the sky into separate pieces. They are average, typical in their inconspicuousness, with smooth-shaven suburban faces, all of them interchangeable. He for example could have been my father. Any father. And yet here he was. Like me.
Again he sighed. This time more quietly. Someone who sighs like that, I thought, is not just a bit tired. More than thinking it, I felt it. I felt this is someone who is tired of life. The tie constricted his throat. He loosened it, looked again at his watch. It was almost midday. He unpacked his bento box. Rice with salmon and pickled vegetables.
9
He ate slowly, chewed each bite ten times. He had time. He slurped the iced tea in little sips. I watched him doing that too. I was surprised at myself now, because at that time I could hardly bear to look at anyone eating or drinking. But he did it with such care that I forgot my nausea. Or how should I describe it: He did it with a full awareness of what he did, and this transformed an everyday act into something meaningful. He took in each individual grain of rice, presenting it to himself with a grateful smile.
With anyone else I would have gotten up and run away, I would have seen his grinding jaws as a threat, his chomping teeth as a danger. I found it horrific, how one mouthful after another slipped in and down into his digestive system. I was gulping, without thinking about it. The inner compulsion to protect myself above all was a mystery I avoided solving. Better not to think about it.
As soon as he had finished eating, he became a normal salaryman. He spread open the newspaper, read the sports section first. The Giants*, printed in bold, had pulled off a triumphant win. He nodded in agreement as his finger traveled along the lines. A ring. So he was married. A married Giants fan. Once again he lit a cigarette. Then another and another, as the smoke enveloped him.
10
The park had grown smaller due to his presence. It consisted of just two benches, his and mine, separated by a few paces. When would he get up and go? The sun had traveled towards the west. It was cooling down. He folded his arms. The newspaper lay open on his knees. A gaggle of schoolchildren came tripping noisily over the grass. Two old ladies were discussing their ailments. That’s life, said one, you are born to die. He had fallen asleep. Heavy-headed. The newspaper fluttered to the ground. It can end at any moment, I heard, sometimes I have no feeling at all inside.
In sleep his face relaxed. Silver strands hung on his forehead, beneath his eyelids one dream chased another. Twitching thigh muscle. I felt something, as thin as the thread of saliva which hung from his open mouth. But the word for it was missing. Only now does it come to me. Sympathy. Or the rash impulse to cover him up.
When he eventually awoke he looked more tired than before.
11
Six o’clock.
He pulled his tie tighter. The park filled with the sounds of the approaching evening. A mother called out: Come, we’re going home. The gentle sound as she summoned them home, as if tugging at their navels. He brushed the hair off his forehead, yawned, and stood up. The briefcase was in his right hand, and he waited for one undecided second. What for? He disappeared, a gray back, behind one of the trees. I watched him until he had completely disappeared, and it must have been in that moment, in the short moment when I lost sight of him, that I sighed like him.
And so what. I shook myself. I shook him off. What connection did I have with someone I’d never see again? I was overcome by the old nausea. Unbearable, how I had meddled in the fate of a stranger. As if it had anything to do with me. Full of the old disgust I shook him off my hands and feet. As I’ve said: I had no idea. That evening, as I went to bed, the covers rising in waves, that evening I hadn’t the slightest idea why, shortly before going under, I should see his face crumbling away on the wall. I waded in the waters of my ignorance. The moon shone through the gap in the curtains.
12
I had not forgotten him when I made my way to the park a few days later. In my dreams he had appeared to me by turns as a grain of rice, a cigarette, a baseball bat, a necktie. The last image was blurred: a man in a room with no walls. It grew fainter with each step, then I extinguished it.
Reaching my bench, I was relieved to find his empty. Where he had sat, there was no trace of him remaining. A sanitation crew was emptying the trash bins. The cigarette butts had already been swept up and dumped into a plastic bag. There were no flakes of ash left to remind me of him. The park was just as big as it had been before. A dewdrop sparkled on one of the blades of grass that grew out of the gravel here and there. I bent down and found it warm from the morning sun. When I got up again he had suddenly appeared, as on the previous day.
I recognized him by his walk. Tilting a little. As if he wanted to avoid someone. That’s how people walk who are accustomed to moving through teeming masses. He wore the same suit, the same shirt, the same tie. The briefcase, swinging. He sat down, crossed his legs, waited, leaned back. Sighed. The same sigh. Blew smoke rings from his nose and mouth. To try to put him out of my mind from now on was futile. He was there, had gotten inside of me, had become a person of whom I could say: I recognize you.
13
He had a piece of bread with him. He unwrapped it carefully, tore it into smaller and smaller pieces, shaped them into little balls and scattered them in front of the cooing pigeons. For you, I heard him murmur. And when he finished: Kish, kish. White feathers swirled all around him. One landed on his head. It was caught up in his slicked back hair and gave him a playful air. If he had sat there in a t-shirt and shorts, you could have taken him for a child. Even the boredom that soon overwhelmed him was that of a child. He rocked restlessly to and fro. Ground his heels into the earth. Puffed out his cheeks. Let the air slowly escape.
I was forced to think about the persistent eternity of a day that had just begun, stretching endlessly ahead. The certainty that it would pass was nothing compared to the pale melancholy of its passing, and melancholy, I considered, was the word written on both our foreheads. It connected us. We met inside
it.
In the park he was the only salaryman. In the park I was the only hikikomori*. Something was not quite right with us. He should really be in his office, in one of the high-rises, I should stick to my room, within four walls. We should not be here, or at least not pretend we belong here. High above us was a vapor trail. We should not look up, in the blue, blue sky. I puffed out my cheeks. Let the air slowly escape.
14
At midday others like him arrived. They came in small groups, their ties thrown over their shoulders, to the benches further to the side, and sat, each with his bento box, chatting happily together. At last a break, one of them laughed, at last we can stretch our legs. Others joined in on his laughter.
Why was he not with them? I speculated about it. Perhaps he was just traveling through and he’d missed his connection. Had to wait until. Or was just simply. I could not find an explanation.
His bento, this time it had rice balls, tempura, a seaweed salad. He separated the chopsticks, paused, stroked his eyes with the back of his hand, a surreptitious movement. His clenched jaw, I saw it, it was trembling. I was embarrassed to see he was weeping. It was a suppressed weeping, and I alone was his witness. The embarrassment continued: Who weeps in broad daylight? Who reveals himself to that extent? And not only to himself, but to me, the observer! He shouldn’t weep, not in front of me. He should be behind closed doors. He should know that. That weeping is a private matter. I shuddered at the memory of a squashed body on the asphalt. Dreadful. To stand nearby, dumb with shock. The white hand, strangely bent, pointed at me. Of all the bystanders, at me. I wanted to be blind. The sirens of the rescue vehicle blared at me. Never again, I swore to myself, would I share the pain of others. He should know that. That weeping and dying are private matters.
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