The Woman from Bratislava

by Leif Davidsen

  ‘He thought about them too, but you were the one he thought about most. Maybe because you were the youngest. He asked to be forgiven.’

  ‘What about my big brother?’

  ‘I think it was him who took the picture.’

  ‘When was it taken?’

  ‘On February 17th of this year,’ she said. ‘He did not live to see one last spring.’

  ‘Why didn’t anyone tell me?’

  ‘It didn’t involve you in the same way. You’re not a child of the war,’ she said.

  ‘So why drag me into it now?’ I retorted angrily.

  ‘Is it so strange that a man anxious to make his peace with God should also wish to make his peace with the people in his life. To receive the forgiveness which we Christians are taught to grant?’

  ‘I can’t answer that right now,’ I said. Although it would have been easy to do so, and I could probably have got rid of her without any more debate. But I was not going to give her, my siblings or my real father that satisfaction. They could stew in their own treacherous juice as far as I was concerned.

  ‘Would you please go,’ I said, far too imploringly, instead of simply kicking her out.

  ‘Of course,’ she said politely, getting to her feet. She offered me her hand and I took it. My own felt cold and clammy, hers was dry and cool.

  ‘Might I see you tomorrow?’ she asked, letting go of my hand.

  ‘We’re off to Budapest tomorrow,’ I said. ‘Give me a call. I need some time to think about what you’ve told me.’

  ‘Fine. I’m sorry,’ she murmured.

  ‘Yeah,’ was all I said.

  She slipped the last photograph carefully back into the manila envelope and placed the envelope on the tiled table.

  ‘Have a look at that once you’ve had time to digest it. You’ll find my address and telephone number in Zagreb there, too, along with our father’s letters. His thoughts about you and about the past.’

  She crossed to the door. She looked disappointed by my rebuff, and by the fact that I had not given her my phone numbers, addresses and so on. That all I wanted was to get rid of her. But she did not fool me. She had followed me more than halfway across Central Europe. If she wanted more of me then there was nothing to stop her following me to Budapest. I did not know whether I wanted to speak to her again. All I knew was that I did not want to speak to her any more that night. In the doorway she turned, as if about to say something else, but I shut the door on her, turned the second lock and put on the chain, loudly and clearly. Now did she get the message?

  I went into the bathroom and sat down on the toilet. The pain hit me utterly without warning, like a knife being driven into the small of my back, just above the right hip, and twisted around. I had never known pain like it. I had no idea that anything could hurt so much. A white-hot tongue of flame shot across my back and up to the nape of my neck. I thought I was going to die; not quietly and peacefully in my bed, but locked in a loo in Bratislava with some new knowledge about my past which I could happily have done without.

  3

  THE NIGHT WAS HORRENDOUS, the morning worse. Can there be anything more ridiculous than lumbago? Because that was what I was suffering from. A perfectly common, perfectly awful case of lumbago. But one which was to have serious consequences. I have little memory of how I got to bed. The pain encircled my lumbar region like a barbed-wire belt, but that was not the worst of it. It was the helplessness, the fact that the most ordinary, everyday actions were now almost impossible. I managed to brush my teeth, got myself undressed and onto the bed and lay there, flat on my back, staring at the ceiling and feeling downright sorry for myself. I ought to have been thinking about the story I had just been told, but I had no thought for anything but the pain. Anyone who says you can’t hurt in two places at once is talking through a hole in their head. My teeth ached, and so did my back.

  I woke as usual around six thirty and thought for a moment that it had all been a bad dream, both the story and the pain, but my relief was short-lived. I went to swing my legs out of bed, but could not. I lay there under the sheet and bedspread in nothing but my underpants, unable to get up. I could hear the sound of the morning traffic in the street below, the singular racket produced by the mix of modern cars and noxious old Central European rust buckets driving along the broad thoroughfare which ran from the Hotel Forum to the Presidential Palace. There were other people in the world. Lucky people. Free to move around. Driving to work without giving any thought to how privileged they were. While the great university lecturer with so many academic works and lovely women behind him was helpless as a baby. He could not get out of bed. He could only lie staring at the ceiling, wracked by the pain in his back, wracked by self-pity, and thinking of himself in the third person, like an actor in a second-rate movie.

  How I did it I’ll never know. I remember nothing but the pain, but I grabbed hold of the bed-head and hauled myself into a sitting position, while three or four torturers who had learnt their trade from the grand masters of the Gestapo and the KGB drove ice-picks into my back. This manoeuvre took some minutes, then I sat for a few minutes more with my feet on the floor, bringing my breathing under control. I felt utterly ridiculous. I considered calling Lasse, but that would have been even more ridiculous. No grown man wants anyone to see that he cannot get out of bed unaided, or take a shower and dress himself before duly proceeding to pack his case and catch the bus to Budapest. It really was too stupid for words.

  I sat for a moment, bracing myself for the pain. And it was every bit as bad as I had feared when, by using both hands, I first managed to hold myself upright on the edge of the bed and then, as I started to keel over like a drunk after a long night’s journey into oblivion, clutched at the bed-head and hauled myself onto my feet – my torturers laying into me all the while with sadistic glee. There I stood. In my underpants, with a roll of flab around my middle, almost weeping with rage and mortification. But it helped to stand up, and it helped to have the hot water from the shower massaging the small of my back. The indignity of my handicap hit me again when I tried to get dressed. The socks were the worst. Who would have thought it could be such a long stretch to one’s feet, even when seated. By some miracle I succeeded in getting into my uniform: trousers, shirt, tie, grey merle jacket. Mr Nice, Old-Fashioned Tweed. The lecturer in Russian history ready for the day. For some time he stood there, with pains shooting up his back like fiery dragons. And he could not help laughing at himself and the whole situation. Now he needed cheering up.

  Slowly I bent down to reach the telephone and keyed in my own home number. I pictured the phone at home in our beautiful, tasteful, well-proportioned five-room flat in Østerbro, in Good Queen Margrethe’s lovely Copenhagen. The morning rush would be in full swing, a pandemonium which I usually hated, but which at this particular moment I missed with a fervour that surprised me, in spite of my pain. Janne would be in the midst of the great morning ritual of getting the kids to eat their breakfast, put on their clothes, brush their teeth and get out the door in a reasonably orderly fashion. I always left her to see to things in the morning. While I sat in the kitchen in my dressing gown, with the paper, coffee and a ciggie, and endeavoured to ignore the inexplicable uproar that small children are capable of creating in the morning. How is it possible to fight and eat cornflakes at the same time? Janne was as grumpy – or quiet, as she put it – in the mornings as I was, but she was also a mum, so she bustled about, dishing up breakfast, making packed lunches, chivvying and chiding, and almost every morning I found myself wondering why the hell they didn’t just get up earlier. I had actually come right out and said this once to Janne, a couple of months after she moved in. She had not spoken to me for a couple of days. ‘Why don’t you just lend a hand instead?’ she had hissed. ‘That wasn’t part of the deal,’ I replied. ‘I’ve done my bit with my own kids.’ Which wasn’t exactly the smartest thing to say, either.

  Amazingly, every morning the operation was successfully accom
plished and the little darlings were escorted to school along with all the other poor beggars. Sometimes Janne returned home after seeing them through the perils of the morning rush-hour. Then she would sit down and have her coffee, read her section of the newspaper and we would have a nice, quiet breakfast together. Being a lecturer I earned more than Janne who was only an assistant lecturer. She, on the other hand, had more duties to attend to at the university. My lectures to the few classes I now took did not make for too heavy a workload. So she was often the first one to leave, off to join the daily migration that is the lot of your normal wage slave, while I poured myself another cup of coffee before repairing to my desk to write or do some research. Although if the truth be told, lately I was more liable to end up gazing at the big poplar tree outside the window. It is amazing how long one can spend watching a little squirrel scurrying about in some bare branches, thereby managing to put off working on a project in which you really have no faith. The writing had to be done, though, if my petty, jealous colleagues on the Research Council were to be persuaded to allocate funding to me rather than to their cronies.

  But with my back on the rack I missed my mornings in Denmark. How nice it would have been to feel a tender hand on the small of my back, to be kissed and caressed. How nice it would have been to be surrounded by the morning chaos of normality instead of being here alone in a modern hotel room in a city which most Danes could not have found on a map. I let the telephone ring until I heard my own voice on the answering machine, then hung up without leaving a message. Why weren’t they home? Where the hell was my family? My indignation may have been irrational, but I felt they ought to be there when I needed them. As if I was ever there when they needed me. And anyway, what could they do? Give me a few words of comfort. Tell me they loved me. Isn’t that what we are all looking for in our dealings with other people? To find love. To be loved.

  I ran an eye around the modern hotel room. I was in Bratislava. I could have been anywhere in the world, wherever today’s hotel chains have moved in with their professional smiles and tasteless, efficient interior designers and decorators. Fresh colours. Fresh furniture. The only thing that wasn’t fresh was the smell. Slovakia might have been in the process of putting its past behind it, but the place still smelled of the old days. Just like the memorial that towered over the city, testifying in all its socio-realistic monstrosity to the erstwhile Soviet Union’s liberation of Czechoslovakia. Another country which no longer existed. Otherwise Bratislava displayed all the other chaotic signs of the transition from communism to democracy. Mildewed concrete tower blocks rubbed shoulders with McDonald’s and stolen Western cars. Newly renovated houses with beautiful, freshly painted ochre walls were not to be deterred by their neighbours’ dirty-grey walls: the symbolic reflections of a lifetime of communism’s physical squalor. This was how my thoughts ran: from backache to mornings in Copenhagen to the shambles that was Bratislava. I couldn’t think straight for the pain. I stood by the telephone, trying to weigh up my options. To get some kind of grip on this godawful morning. If I could do that I would never complain again.

  The room was like a tip: strewn with clothes, books, overflowing ashtrays, empty glasses, old newspapers. One unpacked suitcase, half-open, putting me in mind of a gaping mouth. The fat manila envelope lay where she had left it. My so-called half-sister, who had introduced herself as Maria Bujic. But did she even exist? Or had she merely been some bizarre vision. A pyschedelic image, the mind’s way of giving me a warning: something dangerous and unpleasant is about to happen. Right now it’s your back that’s given out, the first part of your fifty-something anatomy to do so, but that is only the start – because, Mr University Lecturer, sir, it’s downhill all the way from here. Which was also, of course, a load of garbage. The envelope was right there, after all. Stiff-legged and with my hand pressed to the small of my back I tottered over to it, picked it up and peeked inside. Sure enough. There was the concrete proof: photographs, some handwritten letters, a handful of newspaper cuttings and a few typewritten sheets of paper. That turn of the wrist, slight and subtle though it was, proved to have been a bad move. The torturers returned, digging their red-hot knives into my back, causing me to drop the envelope as if it was on fire and had burned my hand. There was nothing for it but to give in, so I did, and called Lasse before my self-pity could incapacitate me completely.

  Good man that he was he came right away, quickly sized up his ailing friend’s situation and showed himself to be both capable and reasonably sympathetic, although even he could not hide the fact that he felt, as we all do, that there is something rather funny about a grown man with a bad back. It is not as if there is anything to see. It is not like an open wound. He could tell that I was in agony, but I knew he was thinking: it can’t be that bad. Lasse’s experience of illness did not extend beyond a dose of the flu, and I was well aware that he viewed the rest of us, in whom the first warning signs of old age were already being felt, pretty much as hypochondriacs. Strong, healthy individuals who do nothing in order to keep themselves strong and healthy but simply are so, are a downright pain in the neck. Lasse was that sort of person. But he was a good mate for all that. I was just in pain and feeling sorry for myself. None of my wives have ever really seen eye to eye, but one thing on which they are all agreed is that if the martyrs of the world were ever to form a club I would be the obvious choice for chairman.

  Lasse packed my suitcase deftly and efficiently while I sat bolt upright on a chair next to the small desk. I had not told him about my mysterious night visitor and when he picked up the envelope I merely motioned to the suitcase. I wanted to have as little hand luggage as possible. I had a hell of a job getting back onto my feet, pain shot up my back again. It was the last straw. My mind was made up. When he was finished packing I said:

  ‘I’m not going to Budapest.’

  ‘Oh?’ the heartless bugger said, ‘Aw, it’ll pass, don’t you think?’

  ‘It’s sheer agony, Lasse. I can’t stand the thought of sitting for hours in a bus and then having to spend several days in Budapest, with all those lectures and rotten chairs.’

  ‘It’s only for two nights.’

  ‘I’m going to book a seat on a flight home, so just leave my case here, I’ll get one of the hotel staff to help me.’

  ‘Well, I’m sorry to hear that, but maybe it is the wisest thing to do. And Janne and the kids’ll be pleased. They must be feeling so bad for you.’

  ‘I can’t get hold of them!’

  ‘Oh? Where are they?’

  ‘That’s the problem – I don’t bloody well know!’ I snapped at him with undue testiness.

  ‘Sorry, Teddy,’ he said.

  ‘No, it’s me that’s sorry. But I really would like to talk to Janne.’

  ‘Do you normally call home regularly?’

  ‘Do you?’

  ‘Every day. When Lisbeth’s at home, that is.’

  ‘Every day! I’ve called home once. I can’t afford to be on the bloody phone all the time.’

  He laughed and slapped me on the shoulder from force of habit, but it felt as though someone had kicked me in the back, I swore so loudly that Lasse looked quite alarmed.

  ‘Oops, sorry Teddy. I didn’t mean to hurt you.’

  ‘That’s okay. Come on, let’s go down and have some breakfast,’ I said and attempted to take a couple of faltering steps while still trying to hang on to some shred of dignity. He put a hand gently under my arm to support me.

  ‘Why don’t you get a mobile phone?’ he asked.

  ‘Janne doesn’t feel it’s necessary. All folk use them for anyway is to phone home from the supermarket to check whether there’s enough milk in the fridge.’

  ‘Well, it’s a good thing to have,’ the practical old sod remarked as I hobbled off. Downstairs, at the lavish breakfast buffet, I had a couple of cups of coffee and some juice, but left my plate untouched. I had filled it, a mite optimistically, with scrambled egg, bacon and chipolata sausages. I ne
ver eat much in the morning, but one feels almost duty-bound to help oneself to all sorts of things merely because they are included in the price. Lasse tucked in with gusto: egg, bacon, bread and sausages, which he would normally never touch, while he read the previous day’s Herald Tribune which the hotel took along with a whole range of other Western newspapers. CNN in the rooms. The Trib in reception. There was no reason to miss the old days, when there was nothing to be had but communist mis-information, and happiness was a two-week old copy of the daily Land and Folk or The Morning Star.

  Again I had trouble getting up. I had to brace myself before even attempting it. My back did not hurt when I was sitting still, but I knew that as soon as I made to rise the pain would kick in. Although the pain was not, in fact, the worst bit, it was the fear and the knowledge that it would come. And that perfectly normal, everyday actions had suddenly become almost insurmountable ordeals. I saw the looks my travelling companions gave me. I looked like a man with a terrible hangover who had a hard job getting to his feet and had to hold onto the back of his chair just to stay upright. But I did not care. I would be only too glad to see the back of my fellow lecturers, not to mention the cultural tourists, always trying to engage one in urbane chit-chat of the sort designed to show just how well up on things they were.

  Obviously Klaus Brandt, our glorious leader, was pissed off. He hated it when things did not go exactly to plan. He would have felt right at home in the old GOSPLAN in Moscow, where specifications were worked out for everything from nuclear power stations to the tiniest children’s sock. That their schemes were untenable did not matter a jot to the planners. All they did was juggle numbers and letters about.

  ‘Now look, Teddy, there’s no way I can refund the cost of your ticket or your hotel room. Everything was paid for in advance,’ Brandt fumed.

  ‘I didn’t ask you to, Brandt,’ I said.