Best European Fiction 2013

by Unknown

  the banging fist,

  … by the Ministry of Education …

  the same banging again,

  … the University … is closed, the Student Council … has organized a demonstration, the situation … is serious,

  he would come down and start disseminating leaflets, black on white, big black flags, explosive slogans …

  GENERAL STRIKE / REVOLUTIONARY ORGANIZATION / POLITICS / IS IN THE STREETS

  now, a few people, following the proposition, were going obediently up along the narrow, spiraling stairwell, looking like medieval pupils ascending the stairs; it was very different from our wooden, terribly slanted stairwell that went up to the roof, the steps of which were mostly dislocated and cracked, rotten from rain and dampness, ready to collapse under anyone who dared step on them, but still working with a strange durability, and with the agility of a tightrope walker I would step on the most stable parts, at times leaning over the banister to peek into the window of Set Janet, who would yell curses in Arabic as if frightened, while I’d jump two stairs at a time, playing with my anxiety, flying up to watch the neighborhood from above;

  the street branched off from the main avenue into a small triangular square, or more exactly a place that for a moment belonged to no one, as the people who had paved the street had left it open by mutual agreement, where the slanting shadow, like an umbrella, stretched up on the hill, here—the roof of Arev’s house, the pergola, the strings of pepper, dried eggplant, and across, under the eastern white pine, Mr. Garbis who sewed trousers, a headscarf tied around his head like some Arab woman, was tying the vines to reed stakes so that they’d climb up to Simon’s clothesline, a little lower Nano was sitting on the edge of the balcony, the eucalyptus that shimmered under the sun right in front of her would extend, as it were, and touch the olive trees and the empty houses on the hill across from her, partially covering the gardens on the river bank, the sea in the distance, and in the evenings, when the sky turned a deep azure blue, when the last airplanes descended into the city from the east, on the far mountains, the embers in the ashes would slowly grow into flames;

  the banisters, two of them, formed a helicoid labyrinth, they turned, as if you were approaching an inaccessible place, an open area, a vaulted sky, and here were women with small handbags, men out of breath who emerged at the entrance of the mezzanine, moving to its edges and conquering the hall for a moment, above its confusion and noise, catching their breath, wiping their foreheads and temples with handkerchiefs, scanning the audience below;

  from there, from the front row, leaning sometimes against the low banister, sometimes against the seated people, moving, as if we were walking along a dangerous mountain path, we would head toward the center where now a young man with a moustache had arranged his tripod, focusing the lens of the camera on the stage, one eye closed—a black spot, the other—a pink circle, like a director who was pleased with his film, and was following the recording from another screen, which, with an automatic regulation, seemed to be progressing independently, while next to him, behind him, to his right and to his left, on the top seats of the mezzanine—men, women, old and young, chins resting against hands, hands resting on knees, were listening, or perhaps merely trying to listen, periodically moving their heads, listening to the presentations as if without comprehending, following with eyes that expressed complete boredom or total loss, immobile, detached like the empty eye-sockets of Greek statues, as if following the speech but surrendering to its tumble, its rhythm, being carried away, I suppose, to a different place where events were occurring that were not apparent here in this hall, but which formed a muffled, omnipresent noise, an unconscious tumult like that of a city’s unremitting, underground breath; a leaflet would spiral down from one of the upper rows, someone had written Je vois aime on it, captivated we would clap and smoke, spellbound by the new word that belonged to no one, to no one side! it had no owner, you’d get up from your seat, stand up and like a lover in the night, it would be yours for a second, and we, like the Renault strikers, were the actors of history who had been called to change life …

  the Chair was now inviting the last presenter of the panel, whose works were familiar to everyone,

  he was holding the watch in his palm, weighing it, as it were— what was time? it was gold, no, it was nothing! nothing, but sand, nonexistence, and there were things that never passed, things that were eternal, everlasting, he was scratching his beard, smoothing it with his fingers, and turning to the woman sitting at the very end of the table, protected from the semidarkness,

  so … you are this panel’s last presenter, ahem, bon, bon,

  gesturing with his right hand—

  shall we start?

  his voice would all of a sudden rise, now he was trying to make a joke, as if it were necessary to bring some sort of merriment to the atmosphere, he not only had to preside over the panel as a small, local tyrant, giving it a more invigorating air, but also had to make it lively, favorable, effectively making use of the breaks, the indefinite moments between presentations, et c’est pas facile, one had to maintain the seriousness, the circumstances of the material and place, avoiding at the same time the boredom that such materials, such analyses might cause, proceeding as traditional narratives do, long, winding, weaving into each other, as if the same mood had been recurring in different forms and voices from the beginning of civilization, and laughter introduced a personal note, conjuring up a noble, intimate atmosphere, as a few minutes ago, during the break, in that interstice of time when the Chair approached the woman, took her hand, but then kissed her on the cheeks, whispered a few words in her ear, then kissed the hand of the other woman standing next to her, a proof of my respect, in a loud, ironic voice, stepping away, smiling, showing his red gums and a row of uneven teeth,

  so … we’ll see you in a little bit … ahem! . . you look very nice today … but …

  almost grunting, as if to thwart, to kill his eager exclamations, yet at the same time asserting them,

  try … to speak, briefly … ahem! . . you’ll be more effective …

  there is an affirmation in his emphasis, an order, that perhaps registered in my mind only later,

  agreed? . . I beg of you,

  he had already said everything, there shouldn’t be any surprises, everything was set right from the beginning;

  we were descending, hanging on to each other, the noise, the laughter, the slogan of the day was rising from the front rows, beaming, splitting into fractions, like pigeons excreting on everything, bouncing off the screens, the red and black letters of the dancing, exhausted, crumpled, reforming sentence

  L’IMAGINATION PREND LE POUVOIR!

  it hung across the façade of the grand theater, from the huge columns, art is dead, and death is counter-revolutionary, really, why should one die? idiot! keep walking!

  hand radios were blasting in the distance, people were whistling from the front rows, there were small red and black flags, young, always beautiful girls in the back rows, then a huge slab of stone would hit a police van, bombs, tear gas, sobbing, red swollen eyes, the long and winding siren of an ambulance,

  but the crowds kept moving forward, merde!, they kept walking, with steady pace, confident, the smell of gas was everywhere, spreading underneath the trees, the sound of the spiraling helicopters, we would stop, close our mouths and noses, the photographer was taking photographs when the baton hit his head, I saw those batons, he says, but I was sure, this was France, they wouldn’t dare, he was rolling on his back, getting kicked in the face, they were rolling shutters down over the display windows, the shops were being emptied out, the batons were coming down fast, I was suffocating from the smell of gas mixed with the smoke of burning plastic and tires, we were running, people were running behind us, they kept pushing, groaning, we were going through the entrance of some building, while up above, the eternal good-for-nothings, the pensioners, the philistine officials, watched from behind their curtains, shaking their fists
at us occasionally, you’ll see! tomorrow you’ll see! they were waiting for all of this to end, they’d had enough, the riots had to be crushed; leaflets were being dropped in the police station, people were being hand-cuffed, they were being thrown into dark cells, others were being beaten, punched in the stomach, in the back, in the ass, a little blood from the nose

  imbeciles! assholes! castrates! freaks! … youth thus … repulsed … young people who dreamed of changing life … heh! words that would kill and curse life … me or chaos! reforms now! yes … a new program! end to injustices! no more masquerades! …

  the woman got up from her place, smoothed her dark-colored skirt, touched the scarf around her neck that came down to her chest, she was thin but had wide hips, promising calves, she walked toward the podium in her red summer stiletto shoes and her toenails were painted bright red, her shins were savagely white, she tried to raise the microphone, which seemed to have the tendency to slide down the stand: every speaker had to do it, draw his or her mouth close to the microphone to check the volume, then withdraw, look right, left, toward the Chair, to whom everyone was obliged to smile a fake, automatic smile;

  the woman glanced in that direction too, questioning, frowning a bit, looking behind the Chair, into the dark booth where a lamp shone and where the head of the interpreter moved in a regular cadence; after every twenty or twenty-five minutes, as the speaker changed, the door of the booth would open, a man or a woman would emerge, there were two of them, the entering and exiting persons would exchange a few words with one another, the exiting person would cover his mouth with his hand making a smoking sign, since smoking was prohibited and a nonsmoking sign with bold red letters hung on both sides of the stage

  that’s what they had tried to change years ago, the revolution was dislodging cobblestones, hurling them into the air in its final throes, weaving barricades, the radios were blasting, roaring, three thousand, three hundred thousand people in the streets, the law was retreating, abandoning the square, passions were spilling over, flowing, blossoming, burning, squandered, May was marching off the avenues, love was flirting from the sidewalks, people were unanimously revolting, rebelling in a tide, overflowing their shores, putting an end to the chewing of watered-down words, to smoking opium, getting fucked over, no ringleaders, no slogans, we were on top of the wave, loose, free, completely free, dancing, clapping, a Gitanes in her mouth, a masculine girl was writing on the blackboard as if in a calligraphy class—

  IT IS FORBIDDEN TO FORBID

  the hall was rumbling, thundering, roaring, the coils of smoke were everywhere, ascending, infiltrating the air, forming a thick misty dome, while the Chair, red, raging, as reported in the press, was trying to institute silence, so his colleagues could speak, one of them had Mao’s Little Red Book in his hand, another held Lenin’s tract: put an END to police brutality! END to civilization! SOON, SOON, the flames will materialize THE FUTURE!—and we only wanted to live, we wanted to unlearn everything that we had learned, the green or red or blue or black night, while the mezzanine was gradually emptying out, everyone was descending from the top rows, joining people in the front, coughing, wanting to speak, wanting to piss, the hall too would soon be empty, the footsteps would die out, dust, the smell of cigarettes, soon everything would be in ruins, and so everything is a question of language, of cultural revolution … raising the stipends … until the Pentecost, until the victory of law,

  when gasoline opened the way to vacation

  and Paris threw off its mask of fear

  the rats descended back into the cellars;

  a woman was going into the interpreter’s booth, the people in the audience had barely had time to take off their earphones when the light, metallic whisper recommenced, the head of the interpreter kept moving like that of a cow being herded uphill, with stooping shoulders, she was trying to follow the speaker’s rhythm, stopping, waiting for the sentence to end, after which she would start forming the same sentence in a different language;

  the woman standing at the podium was holding the pointing stick tightly in her hand in the half shadow, with the other she kept adjusting the projector, searching for the right position; she was coquettish, slightly pale even before reaching the podium,

  I have some transparencies … maps,

  meaning that after so many long, boring, abstract presentations there would be images, concrete things projected on the screen,

  finally!

  she was smiling at the Chair, while the technician was fussing with the projector in the back of the stage, going back and forth, trying to operate the machine, checking the electric cords, switching on the light, switching off the auditorium lights; the atmosphere in the room would suddenly become familiar, safe, almost unreal, the classroom slowly descended into the evening darkness, allowing the dream to emerge, like at the beginning of those “sword-and-sandal” films that I used to like so much with hundreds of actors and expensive sets showing military action, wars, easing into the story with a simple pipe melody, history framed by a bucolic setting, as though every detail had its place there, every voice its command, every person his calling and his role, and it was possible to flirt with melancholy then;

  her hand kept turning on the overhead projector, as if outlining two invisible intersecting circles, her fingers or, more precisely, the enlarged shadows of her fingers were projected on the screen, turning on one another, weaving into each other, inventing a jostle, a tumult of luster and shadow, a devouring mass, that would suddenly become clear when she removed her hand from the glass surface, leaving the transparency lightly trembling, with various tedious details, which nonetheless would be so important later;

  did she cough, clear her throat, smile coyly? but I noticed immediately that her voice was heading toward the distant mountains, on the border of which the flame kept flickering endlessly, there should have been a mountain range in the north, a rough mottle of lines, circles of waves that doubtlessly marked the sides or the planes; her voice oscillated, she couldn’t find the right words, while her left hand moved to join the right hand on the pointing stick, then abandoned it; the mountain range formed the border of a historical province,

  yes, an almost impenetrable natural barrier, that’s what all the historians and the travelers had said,

  at the same time, the flame followed another invented, winding direction marked by a bold dashed line, as an upward path on the ribs of the mountain, excavating those inaccessible lands, one of the images of which was drawn from memory by someone who had once lived in those places and was fond of that geography and had published it in some book,

  that’s that,

  the professor would say, a heavy-set man, he would take off his jacket and put it on the chair, roll up his sleeves, light up a cigar, his squint eye would switch from presence to absence in a dialectical shift, with the drive of someone in a continuous monologue with himself—

  I think that … we …

  he would try to visualize the words, puff out smoke, clear his throat,

  we can’t not be part of … the movement, it’s absolutely necessary that the intellectuals … help the workers and unite the students, we need … a general front,

  he would place the cigar on the edge of the table,

  … our action showed that the people’s … outburst had its place in the social movement …

  he was evidently waiting for his words to sink in, expecting perhaps to leave an impression on his audience, but a voice from the back, it could have been any one of us, neutral, arrogant, ironic, almost spelling out each letter—

  you’re so well-read …

  he was shaking his head in silence, blowing out smoke,

  … and such a bad politician,

  the man was leaning against the table,

  comrades!

  get back into your hole … you philistine!

  history had turned a page, on the walls, side streets, statues, pedestals in red letters, the crowd kept walking, taking over the all
eyways, sidewalks, the square, it would erect barricades, red and black flags, and “The Internationale” thundered along the entire length of the avenue again and again: FREE THE PRISONERS / CHAOS IS THE LAW / GASOLINE IS FREE / WHY DIE, STUPID? KEEP WALKING / FUCK THE PAST / THE OPERA BELONGS TO THE PEOPLE, the banner was hanging on the building’s façade, swelling from the warm spring breeze, bit by bit tearing and draping over the statues of Haydn, Rossini, cursing them … THE MORE YOU PHILANDER, THE MORE YOU REVOLUTIONIZE, THE MORE YOU REVOLUTIONIZE, THE MORE … / YOU WANT TO LOVE / HAPPINESS HERE AND NOW …

  here and now … I was at the starting point again, in the same place or almost there, as if it had all returned, I too had come full circle and could watch the marches over and again, in front of a box of old photographs, like mother’s bundle, where all the unnamed were revealed, here and now or nowhere

  TRANSLATED FROM ARMENIAN BY SHUSHAN AVAGYAN

  [RUSSIA]

  KIRILL KOBRIN

  Last Summer in Marienbad

  To GD

  He was waiting for his wife by a mineral water spring. She was late but that didn’t cause him any aggravation. It had been a few years since he had stopped being aggravated by her late arrivals, her vulgar manners—befitting the common Berliner—and her pragmatic Zionism. He stayed calm even as she dug her enormous teeth into a steak with a succulent chomp. During the last couple of years, acting with a doctor of law’s carefulness and consistency, he’d removed her from himself, installing her in a special room at the far end of the corridor of his life. There she stayed, never sticking so much as her nose outside; his body would occasionally sink into hers with reluctance, but even during those shameful moments his thoughts would remain elsewhere, sometimes at yet another labor litigation committee, sometimes in one of his recent dreams: painful narratives, long and disgusting as worms. True, he respected and valued her: she had, after all, saved his life by making him marry her—he’d been coughing up blood by then—and then curing him, one could say nursing him to health in that magic Swiss sanatorium. Indeed, she had spent six months sitting next to him, holding his hand, on that balcony—he would never forget those tartan plaids and wooden chaise lounges, those ostensibly cheerful voices coming from the consumptive maidens in the dining room, those coffins carried out of the hospital building in secret, under the cover of darkness. Or he might forget them—what does it matter. He had already forgotten many things, including those that had constituted his whole life for years and years; his officious friends; his writing, compulsive, pathetic; even his long-established habits, such as his silent walks to the green hill crowned by a squat copy of the Eiffel Tower. Now there was little left but dreams. They weren’t exactly gone—on the contrary, they would unravel their infinite threads nightly, entangling his mind, which was tormented, half-deaf, half-blind by now, and in the morning he would resurface, exhausted and breathless, in their huge conjugal bed, his wife’s large head resting next to him, birds making a lively noise outside, the maid already rattling crockery in the kitchen, well, time to get up, have tea, go to work. In the office, while dictating a letter to his secretary detailing an industrial accident in Nymburk, he would close his eyes and slip into the images of the most recent dream retained by his memory: there he is, being dragged by some businesslike men through a four-story house in Vinohrady; as they pass the second floor his arms are ripped off; by the time they reach the basement the assailants have only his head in their hands, yet he’s talking to his torturers in an animated manner, even apologizing for splattering their gray suits with his blood. That’s fine, they tell him, we’ve worn our aprons for the occasion. Very well, he says to them, closing his eyes and slipping into the next dream, where he is conscripted into the army and, being the most educated, is made to write letters home for illiterate soldiers. He zealously throws himself into this work but is faced with an insurmountable problem: his battalion consists of Croatians, Hungarians, and Poles, and he doesn’t speak their languages. He offers to write in German and have the letters translated afterward; an elderly lieutenant with a moustache, who looks like the late Emperor Franz Joseph, commends his resourcefulness and appoints him the head of a special correspondence unit. He spends every day composing letters, while several privates sitting next to him diligently translate these into the many languages spoken by the Empire’s subjects; his subordinates work so fast he can’t keep up with them, so instead of writing up his messages he starts simply dictating them. Then he opens his eyes and finds himself in his director’s chair, the office flooded by the spring sun, the secretary drumming away on her typewriter; it’s May 1923, the Empire hasn’t been at war with anyone for fifty-five years, he’s about to finish his dictation and head to a vegetarian restaurant for lunch. Tonight he is going to the opera with his wife.