Best European Fiction 2013

by Unknown

  Translation is, therefore, essential to language and literature, as is the impossibility to translate exactly. “Poetry is what is gained in translation,” Brodsky said, countering Frost’s claim that poetry is what is lost in translation. Languages and literatures overlap, seep into, and contaminate one another, blocking—thankfully—the very possibility of purity. Literature is about nothing if not about continuously trying to say what is hard to say, to convey what is difficult to convey, translate what is impossible to translate. Those who harp on the impossibility of translation betray a belief in the superiority of their own language; as far as they are concerned, nobody can say it better than those who have already said it; our language is perfect for us as it is; the world is complete, in all its hierarchies.

  Reading and inquiring about what is outside our experience means willfully adopting another worldview, putting ourselves in a position to look at things in a way that is, shall we say, displacing or even disorienting. But, as Graham Greene said, “When we are not sure, we are alive.” Of course, there are plenty of books, writers, and readers who seek a confirmation for what they already know, who hope to cement the position from which it all looks solid, unalterable, and, therefore, bearable. If that is what you’re after, stay away from this book. The Best European Fiction 2013 anthology is proudly difficult and imperfectly translated.

  ALEKSANDAR HEMON

  space

  [SLOVAKIA]

  BALLA

  Before the Breakup

  Miša discovered there was something in the apartment.

  It was behind the TV set in the corner of the living room. But later in the evening when she phoned Jano, who had left on a business trip a few days earlier, she made no mention of her discovery. Why make him worry? He had other things to worry about out there in the Asian metropolis. Or maybe he didn’t? Doubt started gnawing at her: only the other night she’d dreamed of her husband in karaoke bars and the things he was getting up to with sluts; though they might go by a different, fancier name in those parts—Miša couldn’t remember the exact word—she was quite sure they were just sluts, engaging in slutty practices.

  After the routine call was over she sat in the kitchen until late at night, and as the light of a small lamp above the freezer illuminated her hands and fingers, and long shadows crept along the floor and the opposite wall, Miša wondered why this had to happen to her, of all people. Actually, not just to her, to Jano as well—but Jano didn’t have an inkling of it. Or did he? Was he lying in a hotel bed somewhere with an inkling? Was he on the twentieth or thirtieth floor of a skyscraper, in the middle of negotiations, with an inkling?

  Miša had grown up in a family where nothing ever appeared behind the TV set. Her parents had never even mentioned such a possibility to her, though they were happy to discuss in her presence the petty scandals involving their neighbors or people at work. But perhaps they’d had it in their bedroom too. Their daughter had never been allowed to go in there. Could it have been in their bedroom? Did they take it along when they went on vacation? On one of those outings they used to go on, leaving their daughter with her grandma in the countryside?

  She went to the hallway and called a friend from the landline, for she felt the need to discuss this unexpected problem with somebody. A few sentences into the conversation she replied, baffled:

  – You mean I should go and see a psychiatrist?

  – Of course. You’ve got to. What if you’re just imagining it all?

  – You mean … hallucinating? You really think I’m hallucinating?

  – But what if it isn’t there at all? From what you’re saying, it’s almost the size of a wardrobe … Could something like that even fit behind the TV set?

  – Soňa, believe me, it’s there!

  – I doubt it. Look, you know Dr. Monty …

  – The one with the beard?

  – No, the one who goes to the Irish Pub.

  – Where does he sit?

  – Right at the back, underneath the speakers.

  – I don’t know him at all.

  – Well then you know the other one, what’s his name … help me out …

  – You mean Dr. Ráthé?

  – Exactly.

  – But he’s not a psychiatrist, he’s a psychologist.

  – All right, all right, a psychologist might do for starters …

  – What do you mean, for starters? It’s as big as a wardrobe and you’re calling this starters?

  – I’ve already told you there’s no way it could be as big as a wardrobe. Just calm down. I’m sure it’s much, much smaller.

  – So how big do you think it is?

  – Let’s agree it’s the size of a matchbox, at most. It’s absolutely tiny.

  – Listen … How about you come and take a look?

  – That’s out of the question. I can’t.

  – Why? Look, come over! Please! Help me.

  – But how?! What’s this got to do with me? And anyway, I’m in a complicated situation.

  – I don’t understand.

  – …

  – What is it? Can’t you talk?

  – Uhm.

  – All of a sudden you can’t talk when I need you to do me a favor. Can’t you even whisper?

  – I can do that. But what am I supposed to whisper? You’d better go and check again …

  – But I’ve been watching it the whole time. Actually … not the whole time, just now I was looking out of the window … and … by the door to the hair salon … you know where I mean …

  – Of course I do. By the door. So what’s there?

  – There …

  – C’mon, what is it?

  – Nothing! Nothing at all! Don’t you understand? It’s not there. It’s only here, behind the TV. Why don’t I imagine it’s out there, too, if I’m only imagining it? Let me tell you why: because it just isn’t out there, only here. And you were lying.

  – How was I lying?

  – When you said you could only whisper. Just now you were so curious about what was there by the door to the hair salon that you started shouting. Out of curiosity. And the only reason you found it so fascinating was because you go to that salon yourself. So the only time you’re willing to listen to me, without accusing me of being crazy, is when it involves you too?

  The phone call ended on a rather uneasy note.

  Miša sat down at the kitchen table, picked up a mirror, and examined the pale skin of her pale face. It shone in the kitchen night. The eyes, the nose, the mouth, the corners of the mouth. Thoughtfully, Miša went on to examine her shoulders, chest, and legs. It would have been almost impossible to distinguish the whole from other wholes of this kind. Or perhaps only sometimes, thanks to the clothes, the situations in which they were discarded, by a particular whole’s way of being naked. Way of being naked? Yes: see yourself for who you are! Step in front of the mirror, get to know yourself from the outside, but intimately! Let the inside follow. Follow the inside!

  Miša stood up and sat down again.

  She was sitting on her backside in the kitchen again.

  Jano came home a few days later, left his bags in the hall, took off his shoes, went to the bathroom, took a shower, and, after thoroughly drying himself with a big thick bath towel, headed for the living room. She was waiting for him by the door. Thinking of the sluts and the karaoke. And also of herself, her role. Was she supposed to float up into the sky now, all dreamy-eyed and happy? Or should she let barbiturates, medication, or a psychiatrist take care of everything? She stepped back a little to let Jano pass. He sat down in the armchair and switched on the TV with the remote. The flickering blue light carved objects out of the dark.

  That’s when Jano spotted it.

  It was moving slowly, sinister and inevitable. Jano didn’t say anything. His face looked like a mask stretched on a rack of bone. Only when his wife whispered hysterically to him did he respond, commenting that, in his view, it made the living room even cozier than before, co
vering himself with his statement as though it were a precious Tibetan rug. Miša ran out of the block and called Sona on her cellphone. She was panting:

  – I know everything!

  – What do you know?

  – It’s turned up at your place too! That’s why you can’t talk! It’s watching you! It’s listening to you! It’s growing!

  – …

  – Don’t you have anything to say to that?

  – I told you I can’t talk.

  – Well, whisper then.

  – Yes, it turned up here too. But that was a long time ago. It’s stopped growing now, although, I admit, it’s not getting any smaller either. We’ve gotten used to it. As it is. Look, I know how you feel. It’s not easy to come to terms with the new situation at first … But is it really new? Okay, I know you never counted on this. You didn’t expect … didn’t visualize it quite like this. What woman would expect such a thing? I was hoping it wouldn’t happen to you—to you and Jano. Last time you called, I thought you might be exaggerating a little. Because in our place it didn’t grow quite so fast! Peto and I had been together for six years by the time we first noticed it! But times have changed, life is moving faster … I know I’m probably not putting it well, but the fact is, the world’s gotten faster, so that you and Jano … Even though you’ve only been together for two years—it’s been two years, hasn’t it? Or three? Anyway, for some reason it’s happening faster. Oh dear, I guess I am just behind the times.

  – Soňa, I love you, you’re my only friend. But why did you have to keep this secret from me, of all things?

  – I’m telling you: I was hoping it wouldn’t happen to you!

  – And what about your parents? At home, when you were growing up … Did they have a problem too? You know what I mean.

  – Of course. Nearly every family on our estate had it. I remember the Kropács, they had to move out because of it: it simply pushed them out of their apartment. One morning it was sticking out into the hallway. Can you imagine how delicate the situation was? Actually existing socialism, and you’ve got something sticking out of your apartment door? And you and your children have to sleep on the stairs? Well, my parents took their children in for a few days, the kids stayed in my room, but I didn’t like them, they cried all the time. By the way, it eventually turned out to be a blessing in disguise for the Kropács: it followed them everywhere; in the end they were staying in a workers’ dormitory in Smíchov, in Prague, but one night, after it caused a scandal by swelling up, making the whole house burst, waking up half the city of a thousand spires, they took a radical step: emigration. Now they have a wonderful life in the West, she’s living in Italy with the kids and he’s somewhere in Switzerland. They split up as soon as they crossed the border. Don’t you get it? It was a question of life and death. But actually, in cases like this, it’s always a question of life and death.

  – But why did Mom never even hint at it?

  – That’s what women are like: though we can see—right from the beginning, actually—how things happen and how they’re going to end, inevitably, we keep hoping … and making the same mistakes. We just don’t learn our lesson. Typically. Not even seeing the way that our own parents have ended up prevents us from letting the same thing happen to us and our children. From their earliest days we push them toward doing the same thing to their kids when the time comes. It’s like some compulsion, can’t you feel it?

  – Soňa! I thought I was going round the bend!

  – That’s right. You are going round the bend, but nobody will notice you’re mad. It’s a collective madness. You’re no different from anyone else. How can you diagnose madness if everyone is mad?

  Miša had no idea.

  For weeks she just moped around the apartment.

  She could see it was watching her intently from behind the set. Or rather, not from behind but from underneath the TV, which by now was floating on top of it, swaying from side to side like a vacationer on an air-mattress.

  Miša stood on the balcony.

  Miša leaned against the stove.

  Miša even dreamed of going for a hike in the genuine, unadulterated countryside.

  And wherever she happened to be, she wondered what it was that she and Jano actually wanted from one another. Wherever she might be she also wondered how she could get into the closet where she kept her large suitcase from before she was married, because by now it was cluttering up the whole room, blocking the way to the closet. And when it got especially bad, between the thirteenth and fourteenth cigarette, between a wistful stare from the balcony down to the street and at the skyscraper opposite—into the windows of prison cells similar to her own—between calm resignation and quiet horror, in addition to other, more important and essential things, Miša also thought that you need a partner to close the clasp on your necklace, and that you need a necklace to find a partner.

  TRANSLATED FROM SLOVAK BY JULIA SHERWOOD

  [MACEDONIA]

  ŽARKO KUJUNDŽISKI

  When the Glasses Are Lost

  It was a stifling summer outside when suddenly everything stopped. The faces of the little girl and her father went pale; maybe the father was even more terrified than the little girl. She wasn’t able to recognize real fear, nor was she aware of the danger of the situation; she only felt that her father’s grip had suddenly become tighter, and this caused her face too to turn white as a sheet. As for the others: the tall fellow— destined always to experience life from so presumptuous a height—was wobbling to such a degree that he had to lean on the inside wall with his elbow. Actually, he wasn’t so much leaning as bumping against the wooden surface of the wall, taking advantage of its proximity to avoid collapsing onto the floor. The elderly couple were huddling together quietly and moving gradually into the corner, as if trying to conceal themselves. The remaining four—the soldier, the man with the beard, the woman in red, and the man in the suit—were dispersed in all directions; one fell down, the other hit his forehead on the edge of the panel with the buttons, the third tumbled onto the floor, and the fourth pulled at the tall man’s sleeve and stumbled forward.

  Out of all of them, the woman in red, with the pierced navel, responded to the event the loudest, letting out an inarticulate sound followed by a salvo of curses, but nobody objected—as they might have done under different circumstances. The man with the beard, who knew precisely what was happening, continued to lie soberly on the ridged, rubber floor, caressing the hairs of his beard with his fingers. The gentleman in the suit—a striped jacket and trousers of indeterminate color—quickly stood up again and looked at his expensive watch, demonstrating to everyone else that he was in a terrible hurry to get somewhere. The soldier was the only one with his fleshy hands on his forehead, in noticeable pain, although he had in no way admitted defeat. After the first wave of shock had passed, the father concluded that the elevator was indeed stuck. The rest of them neither confirmed nor rejected this conclusion. It seemed too soon for them to replace their usual formal head-nodding on stepping into the elevator or stingy salutations when exiting with alarm, sympathy, and unity in a common cause. But it wasn’t long before it seemed that everybody, except the two silent old people, had accepted the reality that they would have to communicate and work together.

  The man with the beard suggested pressing the emergency button, but, as was the case with all the other elevators in the town, nobody believed that it would actually work, despite what the law required. Maybe one of them even put his thumb on that big round circle, without the least hope that this would lead to an observable result. Wanting to determine the altitude at which they were stuck—as if that would solve part of the problem—they tried to guess the floor they were on. At first, the digital readout only showed two eights, indicating that the power supply had been interrupted, throwing off its calculation. The soldier smacked the number display and then rapped on it with his knuckles; perhaps we might see these attacks as the expression of some naïve thirst for vengeance
on his part? However, not only did the screen still refuse to display their vertical location, it now lost even those few flickers of life it had retained. The passengers began a verbal inquiry; the last person who’d come in, the tall fellow, who was sitting at the rear of the car—he’d gone to the back, since his destination was the top floor—confirmed that he’d entered the elevator on the tenth floor. Now they were all asking each other on which floor they’d joined the party, and where each had planned to exit the elevator, and concluded finally that they must be somewhere between the tenth floor and the fourteenth—the destination of the father and his little daughter.

  The father, a doctor, holding the little fingers of his daughter tightly, went up to the soldier after a while and looked at his bruised forehead in the dim elevator light. The doctor examined the head of the man in uniform, and told the soldier that his injury couldn’t be treated in these conditions, and all they could do was try to make him comfortable. They looked for a hard object to bandage against the soldier’s bump, which looked like a small horn growing on a newborn calf. Not having too many other options, the doctor’s daughter pointed to the soldier’s belt where a gun hung in a white holster that would have been more or less level with her head. The soldier reached for his gun slowly and bashfully, checked the safety, and put the handle on his forehead. The sudden coldness surprised him and he dropped the weapon. It bounced off of the door and fell on the floor. Some of the passengers looked at each other silently— keeping their fears to themselves. The woman in red was the first to reach for the gun. But rather than give it back to the frightened and clumsy soldier, she went up to him and pressed the handle to his reddened skin herself. Yet, it didn’t bring him relief; on the contrary, now he was embarrassed as well as in pain.