CoDex 1962

by Sjón

  I won’t put up with this for a minute longer …

  Marie-Sophie peered over the side of the invalid’s bed: he was asleep, his suffering face revealing nothing about the events of the night.

  The girl wrapped the eiderdown around her, sprang to her feet, snatched her clothes from the chair, darted behind the screen and dressed herself: a pungent smell rose from the chamber-pot which she hadn’t had time to empty last night.

  I’m going mad …

  She took the potty out of the priest’s hole, holding it at arm’s length, and laid it by the door of room twenty-three. The raw Monday light penetrated between the curtains, flashing on the motes that hung in the air waiting for someone to come and inhale them.

  Marie-Sophie drew back the curtains, opened the window and breathed in the new day: on the far side of the square, between the draper’s and the butcher’s, a young man was leaning against a lamppost. He was struggling to light a cigarette that seemed to have a life of its own between his lips, flicking nimbly away from the flaring match he raised to it.

  The girl smiled at the man’s clumsiness.

  Look at him, always the same old butterfingers …

  It was Karl.

  Marie-Sophie stuck her arm out of the window and waved to him. Karl tackled the self-willed cigarette one final time but it got the better of him. He looked over at the guesthouse. She saw him notice her and beckoned him to come across the square so they could talk. He shrugged, pushed the hat back on his head, snatched the cigarette from his lips and dropped it on the street, grinding it underfoot, then turned on his heel and walked away without returning the greeting of the girl in the window.

  What have they done to me?

  She hissed with rage: damn the day off she had missed yesterday and damn the fact that she had to change the nappies of a fully grown man who was none of her concern; there was no way she was going to let the owner and the Inhaberin deprive her of her boyfriend.

  Marie-Sophie had had enough of being a good girl.

  Hearing the front door of the guesthouse open, she climbed on to the window sill and peered out through the leaded panes: the owner was standing on the pavement below, having a drink. The servant boy came out of the house carrying a small table.

  — No one’ll want to sit out here today, it’s going to rain cats and dogs – anyone can see that.

  The boy put down the table and stared up at the sky.

  — I don’t give a damn about your weather forecasts; the wife tells us to run a pavement café and that’s what we’ll do – for all I care the fools who sit out here, going along with her pretentious nonsense, can be struck by lightning. And here’s one for you.

  The owner gave the boy a box on the ear.

  — Now get back inside and fetch the chairs, you bloody weathercock!

  Marie-Sophie clenched her fists with rage: she’d had it up to here with the blows the owner dealt out to the boy every morning in an attempt to work off his hangover.

  I’ll see to it that the boy’s weather forecast comes true – and it won’t be him that gets a wetting but that swine of an owner, thought the girl.

  She jumped down from the window sill, fetched the piss-pot and positioned herself so she could follow what was happening on the pavement and empty the pot without being observed.

  She waited.

  The servant boy arranged the chairs around the table while the owner fussed, finding fault with how far the chairs were placed from the table and which way they faced; his hangover made him ultra-sensitive to distances and ratios.’

  ‘Tell me about it! I once woke up at a composer’s house – I wouldn’t be surprised if that was on a Monday morning too. And when I went into the living room the musician was sitting stark naked at the grand piano, knocking together a sonata.’

  ‘You know artists? I don’t know any.’

  ‘That’s a shame. They’re generally quite amusing; pickled in drink and self-pity, of course.’

  ‘My father used to associate with them, but he never brought them back to our house…’

  ‘Anyway, where was I? Oh yes, the composer sat there wearing nothing but his prick, his big head hanging over the keyboard. The sun shone on his curly hair and his left hand scuttled like a spider across the keys, spinning wonderful phrases, while the nicotine-yellow fingers of his right hand held a fountain pen, with which they trapped the sounds in a web of paper where the black notes glittered on the lines like flies…’

  ‘Now who’s telling stories within the story?’

  ‘Me.’

  ‘And who can’t stand digressions?’

  ‘Me.’

  ‘So what do you say?’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘I should think so.’

  ‘Marie-Sophie held the cup of wrath in a firm hand, making sure nothing slopped over the brim: the servant boy and the owner were so preoccupied with solving problems of relative space and distance on the pavement below that they didn’t notice the chamber-pot hovering over their heads like a gilded rain-cloud.

  — Wouldn’t it be better like this?

  The servant boy grabbed a chair and pushed it defiantly under the table with a loud screech. The owner ground his teeth.

  — Or like that perhaps?

  The boy scraped the chair back.

  — Eh? Bit closer?

  The chair legs grated on the paving stones. The owner raised his hand to strike.

  Marie-Sophie released a torrent of golden liquid from the chamber-pot.

  The owner gasped as the cold urine struck his head, poured down his neck and ran between his shirt and his skin.

  The servant boy looked up with a smile.

  The girl winked at him, drew herself and the cup of wrath back inside and descended in one bound from the sill and into the priest’s hole.

  She closed the door carefully as she listened to the owner swearing; his curses made such a fitting dawn chorus that morning that she hummed along.

  The invalid looked enquiringly at Marie-Sophie. She hushed the man she was supposed to be encouraging to talk, a fact that amused her. Then she yanked the bell-pull that hung by the doorpost and heard a faint ringing in the kitchen:

  — I hope they’ll send the boy up with our breakfast.

  The invalid nodded gravely: he had to keep on the right side of this girl who had begun the day by running around with her chamber-pot. This suggested that she was at home in this house that had all the appearances of a set for a great whore-atorio; from where he lay he couldn’t avoid noticing the bite marks in the black silk pillows, the nail stuck in the wallpaper above the bed and the red crêpe shading the light-bulb to soften the imperfections of the flesh.

  He stole a glance around him: there ought to be a reminder of the Father and Son somewhere around here.

  — Good morning.

  Marie-Sophie stood over the invalid: he seemed to be awake, and although he didn’t look as if he could hear her any more than he had yesterday – his eyes were spinning like tops in his head – she was so pleased with herself after her morning’s work that she just had to say good morning to somebody.

  Yes, there it was! The invalid fixed his gaze on a finger-length brass crucifix over the door.

  Marie-Sophie studied the invalid: was this stare his way of saying good morning? Wouldn’t it be typical if he decided to recover just when she had got herself all psyched up to tear a strip off the owner?

  The invalid’s face twisted in a wry smile: nothing boosted the carnal vigour of Christians like the knowledge that the heavenly Father and Son were watching over their every move.

  What was so funny? Marie-Sophie followed the man’s gaze: Oh my God, was the potty on the table? And completely empty too!

  The invalid watched her spring into action, whip the chamber-pot off the table and vanish behind the screen: the crucifix convinced him that he had been brought to a brothel. And so the girl, this early bird who dashed around with her chamber-pot, must be the siren-whore whose ro
le was to madden him into confessing.

  The man listened to the girl swearing to herself: yes, here people must start the day by hoping that “the boy” would bring them breakfast. He could imagine what type “the boy” was: a pale-eyed muscle mountain in his forties whose name began with a letter towards the end of the alphabet and who was filled with resentment against the world because on his first day at school he had been read out last of all the class.

  He used his remaining strength to peel off his smile and sink into oblivion.

  From behind the screen came a sigh of pleasure as a stream of liquid sang in the chamber-pot.

  Marie-Sophie had just managed to finish before the door of room twenty-three opened.

  Well now, it’s the owner himself or the Inhaberin. It’ll do them good to learn to bring people their breakfast. Who knows? By the end of the day they might find themselves without help. Who knows where I will be by then?

  The girl covered the chamber-pot and went out to meet the newcomer.

  The Inhaberin had slept badly and wore a scowl.

  — We need to talk.

  Marie-Sophie smiled as if butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth: the Inhaberin measured every minute she slept in carats. She had been a member of the Unisomnist Association before the war and, although the movement had been banned, Unisomnists still gathered every night on the lowest level of the astral plane to synchronise themselves.

  “Her nerve endings have been ruined by spoiling,” as the cook said, referring to what the Inhaberin had told her in confidence: that her family thought she had lowered herself by marrying the plumber who today was the owner of Gasthof Vrieslander. “As if he ‘owned’ anything!” Old Tomas claimed that the Inhaberin was addicted to sleep because she was having an affair with an Indian warlord on some higher plane and the reason the “owner” allowed this to go on was that he only existed between his wife’s inverted commas.

  But today the Inhaberin was to be pitied: no one deserved to be rudely awoken by a urine-soaked husband.

  Marie-Sophie took the tray from the woman’s hands.

  — How kind of you to bring up his food yourself.

  The Inhaberin looked down her nose.

  — You’re very generous today, Marie-Sophie, but don’t try to throw dust in my eyes. I should think the drenching you gave my husband was enough for us to be going on with.

  The girl looked uncertainly at the Inhaberin: she had been hoping for the servant boy to share a laugh with, or the owner so that she could add insult to injury by demanding compensation – holidays, etc. – for the incident with Karl. But she didn’t dare take any liberties with this woman, who would kill for forty winks.

  The woman looked Marie-Sophie coldly in the eye.

  — My husband’s beside himself, I could hardly understand a word he said, but from what I could gather I thought the town must have been hit by an air raid at the very least and that I alone could have prevented it.

  The Inhaberin pursed her lips and continued:

  — Do you think it’s remotely amusing for a spiritually minded person to be woken by a carry-on like that, by the yelling and blustering of a husband drenched in piss?

  Marie-Sophie gulped: it was her fault that the Inhaberin had been toppled from her astral plane, from the embrace of the Indian prince into a dingy grey morning in Kükenstadt. She deserved what was coming to her for being the cause of such a poor exchange.

  — Answer me! Do you think it normal for someone to wake his wife by hurling himself on her bed, wet as a dog after a dip in the river, and screaming for vengeance?

  The Inhaberin extracted the girl’s fingernails with her eyes.

  — Well, say it!

  Marie-Sophie’s grip tightened on the breakfast tray.

  — Say what?

  — That this is no way for a fully grown man to behave!

  The girl had to choke back her laughter: the Inhaberin hadn’t come here to berate her after all; she hadn’t the slightest interest in her husband’s sufferings. What she wanted was sympathy. And Marie-Sophie was grateful for this chance to add fuel to the bad feeling between this couple who were responsible for turning her boyfriend against her.

  — Well?

  The Inhaberin stamped her foot and hissed:

  — Or perhaps you side with him in this act of domestic violence?

  — Are you mad? Why do you think I gave him a royal drenching this morning? Because he uses violence against me too.

  The woman gasped.

  — The bastard!

  She was about to rush out of the room when Marie-Sophie flung down the tray, took a firm grip on her arm and held her back: the Inhaberin was angrier with her husband than the girl had guessed; she was out for blood. And although fortunately the woman was sane enough to realise that she was bound to meet with more understanding from the authorities if she killed her husband because he had raped a member of staff than because he had woken her from her dreams, nevertheless the guesthouse couldn’t afford a murder investigation, not while the invalid’s life depended on them.

  — It’s not what you think.

  — Oh?

  The Inhaberin couldn’t hide her disappointment.

  — So he didn’t rape you, then?

  Marie-Sophie snorted.

  — No, I wouldn’t let anyone rape me, least of all – forgive me for saying so – your husband.

  The invalid listened patiently to the girl. She sat beside him on the bed, feeding him watery gruel and the tale of her triumphs.

  He had feigned unconsciousness when she entered the room with the tray: he meant to hover on the brink of starvation until they gave up on him and shot him, but the girl clearly had orders to get some food down his neck, whether he was conscious or not.

  The girl obediently raised him up, put the bib on him and commenced shovelling. The invalid chewed feebly, dribbling enough of the gruel out of his mouth for her to believe he was dead to the world: he wondered whether the absurd story she was telling him was part of her orders; did it contain hidden elements designed to elicit unwary comments from him? Something as innocent as: “Really? She gave you time off to visit your boyfriend, did she?”

  During the interrogations they had twisted his most banal statements into proof of an international conspiracy against the Führer’s rightful view of existence. But as the girl continued her story, he began to doubt that it was learned by rote and merely an act; it was too convoluted and ridiculous for that.

  Marie-Sophie finished feeding the invalid. She rang the bell and took out the tray: the Inhaberin had been upset enough to believe every word she said: her husband was trying to come between Marie-Sophie and Karl. If it wasn’t violence to prevent a girl her age from meeting her intended, then what was it? God knows what the man was up to! And although the woman was generally dead against Karl and his visits to the guesthouse, she had given the girl permission to pop out at coffee time; of course the Inhaberin couldn’t watch the invalid herself as she was going egg-collecting in the countryside with her husband, but the cook would sit with the man for the hour that Marie-Sophie was away.

  When the servant boy came to fetch the tray and they had laughed themselves silly, Marie-Sophie scribbled a message on a napkin, folded it neatly, drew her butterfly on the front and asked the boy to run along with it to Karl. Payment was cheap and easily achieved: one kiss on the cheek.

  Marie-Sophie whistled “His name is Valdimar, he’s simply wunderbar!” as she returned to her charge in the priest’s hole: now all she had to do was kill time. The two men were due at noon for a report on the invalid’s condition. The Inhaberin was going to see to it that they would agree to his being left in the care of the cook.’

  12

  ‘Marie-Sophie went to the skylight and opened it, took off her maid’s uniform and laid it on the bed, fetched a mother-of-pearl box, which she kept hidden beneath her underwear on the bottom shelf in the cupboard, and bathed her face in the steaming water in the basin. Taking a s
liver of perfumed soap from the box, she rolled it carefully between her hands.

  The two men had given their permission, though she had nearly blown it when they looked in on her and the invalid in the priest’s hole. They had asked her – yes, because now it was she who knew him best – whether she thought it was safe to let the cook look after him.

  After spending the night with the invalid she had somehow taken it for granted that he would stay with them at the guesthouse for ever and ever, that he was like a new Tomas who anyone could look after, and she had answered the two men against her better judgement that the cook was no novice when it came to nursing, no, someone who had nursed on the battlefields in the last war ought to be up to coping with this pathetic creature. However, the truth was that the cook had the greatest contempt for nursing and said you could tell what kind of “profession” it was from the career of Florence Nightingale, yes, apparently she’d been a fast piece and there was no need to ask the colour of her lamp.

  The two men conferred, with grave faces.

  Marie-Sophie grew uneasy and began to repeat the words “last war” as if to convince them that the cook was all right and that she herself knew what she was talking about: “In the last war, yes, wasn’t it supposed to be the last war?”

  At that they shot her a look and asked in unison: “Why are you talking about war?”

  She was taken aback by the sharpness of their tone: the question blew up like a storm in her ears; the vowels merged and consonants scattered in a discordant choir that roared in her head. But as her inner ear grew accustomed to the roaring she discerned within it the voices of the men who had been dearest to her in her childhood.

  She heard the distressed cry of the headmaster when her classmates surprised him by hiding in a ditch and jumping out at him; she heard the suppressed moans of pain from her Uncle Ernst, who couldn’t swallow without wincing; she heard the sobbing of her father who wept alone in the kitchen when he thought she and Boas were asleep.