The World in Pieces

by Bart Midwood

  “What does this mean?” said Blima.

  “The poem?” said Yusef.

  “No. These men. Look behind you.”

  The moment Yusef turned, they were upon him. The waiter drew a dagger from inside his coat and placed the point of the blade under Yusef’s ribs as the two dishwashers each seized one of Yusef’s arms.

  “If you make one sound,” said the waiter in guttural low German to Blima, “I will cut his guts out right here.”

  On the north bank of the lake the waiter cut the laces on Yusef’s skates and pulled them off.

  “He’ll catch his death!” cried Blima.

  “He’ll catch worse than that if you don’t shut up,” said the waiter.

  Then the dishwashers dragged Yusef along on his stockinged feet toward the forest and the waiter grabbed Blima and dragged her along too. She still had her skates on and kept stumbling.

  Once they all got well behind the trees, a giant clump of firs, and out of sight of the skaters on the lake, the dishwashers pushed Yusef to the ground and began to kick him everywhere and to curse at him.

  After a bit the waiter stopped them and leaned over Yusef and said, “You stay away from our little Blima, you got that?”

  “Yes,” said Yusef.

  “Good!” said the waiter and he broke Yusef’s legs, just below the knees, one at a time, with the pipe. He had to hold the pipe with both hands and swing five or six times with all his might to accomplish his purpose.

  Then he clapped one hand over Blima’s mouth and dragged her out to the road and put her in the back of a cart hitched to two gray horses. She knew this cart. It belonged to her father. In the driver’s seat sat Friederich Bremmer, the pastry chef. He too worked in her father’s coffee house. He would not look her in the eyes.

  Presently the two dishwashers came out of the forest and got into the cart. In the distance could be heard the voice of Yusef in agony. Bremmer cracked his whip in the air and the horses set off down the road at a good pace.

  Soon the cart arrived at the coffee house, which was in the heart of Vienna. Bremmer brought the horses to a halt at the rear and the two dishwashers pulled Blima from the cart and took her in the back door. They dragged her along on her skates clumsily, holding her up by the armpits, and brought her to her father in his office off to the side of the kitchen and pushed her down into a chair and left.

  Her father, Herr Klau, was a tall barrel-chested man with a full beard, nearly twice her size. He went to her at once and struck her face.

  “I don’t care what you do,” she said quietly. “Kill me if you like.”

  He struck her again.

  “You’re a fanatic,” she said.

  He pulled her coat off and took a long flat stick from a corner and, pushing her face down on his desk, began to beat her on the back again and again.

  Then he sat her in the chair once more. Her face had grown pale and her eyes were dry and dull.

  He said, “This Yusef, you love him. Is that not so?”

  “It is so.”

  “Good. Then you will do what I tell you to do or I will kill him. Do you understand?”

  “They broke his legs!”

  “In time the legs will mend. Meanwhile he still breathes.”

  Herr Klau put on his waistcoat and looked at his watch, a gold watch that he kept in a vest pocket. He said, “Stay here.”

  And he left the room.

  Erika, the chef’s helper, arrived with hot coffee and rolls and butter on a tray.

  She said, “Herr Klau has told me to sit with you. May I sit with you, Fraulein?”

  “Sit.”

  “Have coffee.”

  “Thank you.”

  Blima took the coffee and sipped it. Her hands were trembling.

  Erika said, “Your father has chastised you with a stick, yes?”

  Blima nodded.

  “I heard,” said Erika. “From the kitchen. Whack, whack. Terrible. He is very stern, yes?”

  “Yes.”

  “You have been naughty, yes?”

  “Yes.”

  “On account of your Yusef, no?”

  “Yes.”

  “I know. I heard. Your father has forbidden you to see your Yusef and you went to see him anyway. At the lake. Bremmer told me everything.”

  “Yes?”

  “Only Bremmer did not tell me why. He says he does not know why. This Yusef of yours, I have seen him. He seems a nice young man. Very handsome and polite. And not poor. Is that not so?”

  “It is so.”

  “So why does your father forbid you to see such a nice young man who is not poor?”

  “I cannot tell you. You will not understand.”

  “Why? Because I am not educated?”

  “Because you are not a Jew.”

  “Does a Christian girl not have troubles with her father?”

  “You have troubles with your father?”

  “Many times he has beaten me with a stick.”

  Blima took Erika’s hand and said, “I’m sorry.”

  “Ach, never mind. It is nothing. I am used to it. Tell me why your father forbids you to see Yusef.”

  “Yusef has a sister, a very pretty sister, Leah. This Leah she married a non-Jew. A Christian.”

  “And he is poor, this Christian?”

  “No. Not poor. Not rich either. Money is of no consequence in this affair. What is of consequence is that she married a Christian. In my father’s mind, this makes her unclean.”

  “Ah, yes, I see. She should marry a Jew, yes?”

  “In my father’s mind, yes.”

  “So what does this have to do with your Yusef?”

  “In my father’s mind, Yusef too has become unclean as a result of his sister’s marriage to a non-Jew.”

  “Ah, yes, I see. In my family we have the same idea. This is why I never permit myself to become intimate with a Jew, not even a rich one. I would hurt my parents and my brothers. I have five brothers, did you know that?”

  “No.”

  “Yes, five. I am the only girl. If I were to marry a Jew, I would blacken all of them. All my brothers. And my father and mother too. All would be covered in shame.”

  “You believe that?”

  “Yes, Fraulein.”

  “This is crazy.”

  “No, it is natural. A Jew and a Christian are different animals. In God’s world you cannot mate a cat and a dog. Or a fish and a bird. Or a spider and a worm. Is that not so? Well, so, there you are!”

  With this triumphant conclusion Erika got on her knees before Blima and unlaced her skates and removed them and massaged her feet in silence for a few minutes.

  Then Erika said, “Would you like more coffee?”

  “No. Thank you.”

  “I must go now and help with the pastry.”

  “You are taking my skates?”

  “Herr Klau told me to take them. Forgive me.”

  “I forgive you.”

  “Where are your shoes?”

  “I left them at the lake.”

  The Floating Symposium

  Mid-Atlantic, 1906

  In bitter whirling winds and surging sea the great iron ship heaved this way and that, groaning like a cow as Blima climbed the rail and straddled it. From there the world, lit only by a flimsy bit of moon and a few lanterns flickering in the portholes, seemed to her nothing but a vast frigid ruin and at the moment a thing well lost, until she caught sight of a sailor running toward her along the narrow deck and shouting in French. It was that, the sound of French, that gave her pause. She took a look at the ocean, much too serious a look, and then all of a sudden found herself shivering and beset by the idea that the moonlit whitecaps were like teeth, gnashing teeth eager to chew her up, and before she had a chance to take the measure of this idea, the sailor was upon her, wrapping his arms around her chest and pulling her from the rail. As he steadied her on her feet and fixed her with a fierce gaze, she could not catch her breath to speak and so tried to in
dicate by way of a weak wave of her hand that she intended to offer no resistance to his gallantry; at this he softened his eyes; then, with his fingers dug into both her arms, he hurried her forward along the deck, scolding her in the shrewd argot of the Marseilles ports. Near the forecastle he pushed a door open and led her down a narrow iron staircase, and into the galley. Impatiently he shoved the cooks aside and made straight for one of the big steaming pots on the stove. With a ladle he scooped up some soup into a bowl, handed it to her and told her to drink. The soup was salty and hot and contained tiny shreds of fish and flakes of bright green stuff, maybe parsley. As she drank—gratefully, with her lips on the rim of the bowl and both hands around the base—the cooks leered at her from the stoves and whispered to each other out of the corners of their mouths, and the sailor stood close by, breathing on her hair. The cooks, three of them in filthy white aprons, were broad-bellied swarthy giants. The sailor was likewise a giant, but slender, fair and blue-eyed.

  When she had drained the bowl, she returned it to him and thanked him in French.

  “You’re very kind,” she said.

  Amused by the purity of her accent, the sailor winked at the cooks. “She speaks like an aristocrat,” he said.

  “Ah, ah, mm,” they muttered. And two of them exchanged a few words in Turkish, but she cut them off sharply.

  “There’s no need for that sort of talk,” she said in their language.

  “What sort of a witch are you,” said one of the Turks in astonishment.

  “I’m no sort of witch at all,” she said.

  “Are you a Turk? Are you French? What are you?”

  “I am Viennese.”

  Then the third cook said to her in Hungarian, “Do you speak Hungarian too?”

  “Oh yes,” she answered in Hungarian. “Better than Turkish. Better even than French. I love Hungarian passionately.”

  At this the Hungarian laughed. A big ugly laugh.

  Very stupid, she thought. He’s like a bear.

  By and by the Frenchman gave an account of his adventure with her on the deck. All three cooks had a little French. When here and there they complained that they couldn’t understand, Blima translated for them.

  “But why,” interrupted the Hungarian irritably, “why would you want to throw yourself into that filthy ocean!”

  In the back of her mind Blima heard a cautionary voice telling her that the Hungarian’s interest in her reasons was not likely a sympathetic interest, but that voice was of small consequence in the circumstances. The steamy warmth of the little galley, the spicy emanations from the enormous pots and the brute sensual air of her four companions, all this wafted over her cold desolate body and overwhelmed it, and the mere fact that some interest in her reasons had been expressed, sympathetically or not, was enough to make her weep with a sort of pathetic gratitude and without restraint.

  “It’s all on account of my father,” she said in a breaking voice. “He forced me to abandon my Yusef, the man I love, and to marry one I don’t love.”

  “Ah, ah,” said the Turks. “Yes, yes, we know all about such things. In Turkey such things are quite common between fathers and daughters.”

  And then they tried to encourage her to give this husband of hers a little time. In a few years, they said, she would have children, would come to love the man who gave them to her and in the end would forget all about her Yusef.

  “No, no!” she cried. “You don’t understand!”

  At this one of the Turks, who was called Mustafa, went to her and stroked her hair gently and said, “Tell me, little one, what is it we don’t understand?”

  “Two weeks I’ve been on this boat,” she said, “and every night I lie with my husband.”

  “Yes? Yes? And?”

  “And afterward, after I lie with him, I feel so terribly alone.”

  “Ah, yes, yes, I understand. But that’s only natural. One moment a man and a woman are together, united in a great pleasure, united in God. And the next moment they’re separate. You see? No more pleasure. No more God! And each of them is alone again. It’s terrible, terrible. Many times, after I’ve lain with a woman, I’ve wanted to commit suicide. Yes! And there’s only one thing that’s prevented me. Would you like to know what this thing is?”

  “Tell me,” she said warmly but rather sadly and less-from curiosity than from a certain delicacy of feeling, for in Mustafa’s eagerness to show that he understood her, he had boyishly assumed that his own suffering and hers were one and the same, and she hadn’t the heart just at this moment to correct him.

  With a self-satisfied cunning smile he reached into his trouser pocket and pulled out a little brass cigarette case and opened it.

  “This,” he said, “is the thing that’s prevented me. A good Turkish cigarette. I light one up, I take in the smoke, take it in deeply, a good long draft, and then I blow it out, and then I take another, and another, and little by little I’m not so miserable anymore. Why this should be so, I can’t say. Perhaps the smoke is the Holy Spirit. Perhaps it’s just smoke. Whatever it is, I breathe it in and I breathe it out and then I don’t want anymore to cut my throat. Would you like to have one of my cigarettes, little one?”

  She nodded and he gave her a cigarette, putting it between her lips and lighting it for her with a wooden match.

  She took a deep draft of the smoke and then, holding the cigarette between two fingers, withdrew it from her lips and shut her eyes as she exhaled with a sigh of pleasure and relief.

  “I can see this is not your first cigarette,” said Mustafa.

  “Far from it. Yusef and I have smoked since we were children. Every day one or two cigarettes. Usually in the woods. He used to pinch them from his father.”

  “I’ll give you some to take with you.”

  “That’s good of you.”

  “Then, when you miss your Yusef too much, you can smoke a cigarette, and all will be well.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Yes, yes, it will!”

  “No, Mustafa, all will not be well.”

  Mustafa opened his mouth to utter a protest but the words caught in his throat when he saw that tears had once again begun to fall from Blima’s eyes.

  “Even with a cigarette she weeps,” he said to no one in particular, and he fell silent again, clearly puzzled and at a loss.

  Then the French sailor put his arm around her and said, “Don’t worry, little one. I have just the thing for you.”

  And he released her and looked up and scanned the shelves on the wall behind the stoves until he saw the thing that he wanted, a large bottle of brandy, nearly full, and he went and got it and uncorked it. The Hungarian, muttering and grunting his approval, at once took five tarnished tin cups from a cupboard and distributed them, and the sailor poured a generous amount all around.

  “To a long life!” he said and they all raised their cups and Blima even managed a smile. And they drank. Then they drank some more.

  But Blima hadn’t much practice with strong drink, and so the brandy, this tart kitchen brandy, went quickly to her head, filling it with what felt like a warm undulating vapor, wherein the many injustices that had been afflicting her mind for weeks came together, then dissolved, taking a new form, that of a single rich and exquisite sorrow.

  “You’re sad,” said the sailor.

  “Yes,” she said, “I’m sad, wonderfully sad.”

  And she lay the side of her face on his chest.

  After a moment he took her chin in his hand, compelling her to look up at him, and he searched her eyes, not so fiercely as he’d done a little while ago on the windy deck, but with equal interest; then, apparently encouraged by what he saw, he lifted her up to sit her on the counter and kissed her on the mouth, sliding his hands along her legs under her skirt while she stroked the back of his neck and his hair.

  Soon she felt other hands caressing her, caressing her everywhere. This went on for a while. Then the sailor took off his coat, and the cooks got
their coats from hooks on the wall. And she saw the four coats thrown on the floor one on the other to form a soft bed, and the Hungarian cradled her in his arms and put her down on it.

  Before she knew it, she was tangled up with all four men, turning this way and that in a fantastic muddle, so that for the most part she couldn’t tell one from the other, neither the hand nor the seed nor anything.

  And all this would have been perfectly agreeable, if only the Hungarian hadn’t spoiled things by rolling her rudely onto her belly and attempting to insinuate himself into the one place she didn’t like to be touched. To his credit he withdrew the moment she protested, but she went on at him anyway, on and on, scourging him in his own tongue and lashing him with all its scratchy consonants, until at last he came round to look her in the eyes and asked her to forgive him.

  “Never mind, you fool,” she said and promptly served him in a way that was more to her taste.

  In the end he seemed happy enough, roaring in an agony of laughter and triumph, and collapsed onto the floor beside her with such a thump that the spoons rattled in the closets.

  When she and the men were spent and satisfied, they lay sprawled across each other and drank more brandy, passing the bottle from hand to hand, and Mustafa brought out his precious cigarettes again and lit everyone up to ensure that they didn’t suffer too much from what he called “the terrible loneliness.” And they didn’t. In fact, as they lay in their dreamy heap, watching the Turkish smoke and stroking each other wearily in a mood of tender gratitude, they all seemed quite content.

  “Tell me, little one,” said the sailor after a while, “do you think you could ever love me, or any of us, as you love your Yusef?”

  Though this question was put sincerely enough and even with a sort of plaintive charm, Blima didn’t wish to be transported back to the world of questions just now, so she hesitated, trying to think of some delicately humorous remark with which she might evade an answer without disturbing the mood.

  However, she needn’t have troubled herself, because by the time she was ready to speak, a sharp rapping on the door and the stern deep voice of the second mate Keller in the entry made an abrupt end of the party and put everyone on alert—but a quiet, scrupulous alert that started the Turks to scurrying about on their toes like elves, while the Hungarian, wrapping his fat arms around the sailor and Blima, whispered obscenities at them and stuffed them into the larder.