Best European Fiction 2013

by Unknown

  Still no sign of her. He shifted his position and looked around. This summer, Marienbad isn’t as crowded as the previous year: there are fewer Germans, fewer Russians, the rich Istanbul merchants in their red fezzes nearly gone. Political squabbles proving stronger than people’s desire to be rid of their physical ailments, the Russians are now taking the liver-curing waters at their German allies’ resorts, while rumor has it that the Turks, with their radiculitis and gout, have flooded the Caucasian spas. As for the Germans, they need no medical treatment at all—the Germans, according to their Kaiser’s recent statement, are made of steel. Instead, the French are here in record numbers, cocking their bowlers and soft American hats (the latest fashion, that), drinking a lot, and not mineral water either, curling their theatrical moustaches, threatening to give a good beating to the Boche, the Cossacks, or the Turks if they should lay a finger on “la belle Autriche,” “the land of the divine Beethoven and the sublime Rilke.” Swashbuckling show-offs. Smug nonentities. They only mention Beethoven to refer to their own Napoleon, while Rilke once had the good fortune to serve as a secretary to their pompous Rodin, if you please. And where is he now, anyway, our Rilke? Not in Paris, you can be sure of that. He recalled visiting that city, so foul and full of bad food, with Max some ten years ago. Max himself was foul too, flopping on his companion’s bed in the morning just as he was, in his dirty clothes, waking him up, urging him to forgo his ablutions, to hurry. Where to? What was so very special about Paris? Still, the two of them would stroll grandly, take in various new sights, having agreed to write a novel together; they would pay diligent visits to cafés, the Opéra-Comique, parks, the Louvre, the brothel. That is, The brothel he liked best of all. Even though the way that big-mouthed blonde manipulated his body was fairly routine, the order that reigned in the place, that solemn and rational order, almost redeemed all the chaos of Paris. The French were classed as the enemy back then, so Max with his usual fussiness even printed a little article in Prager Tagblatt, titled “Militant Paris”—one wonders if he remembers about that now? One wonders, indeed, what he’s even up to these days? He’d come across Max’s articles in newspapers recently, something along the lines of the goals of world Jewry in the Triune Monarchy. He hadn’t read them, cautious not to read anything at all that might remind him of his past life and all its paraphernalia: Max, their bachelor trips to Paris and Weimar, Wolf the publisher, Löwy the actor, Zionist leaflets, Greta, all that writing, the dull headaches, the insomnia. These days, thank God, he slept every night.

  Marienbad was, indeed, full of Russians only last year. Army types, their hair close-cropped, accompanied by ladies; lawyers’ families with children so numerous he shuddered at the thought of the amount of energy and money required to bring them all up; authors dressed in a true liberal fashion, in French-style jackets; girls not wearing bustles, holding books in their hands, sweet, dreamy Russian girls. When it came to Russian girls he was knowledgeable, having read a lot about them in his time, in books by the severe Tolstoy, the gentle Turgenev, the terrible Dostoyevsky. The year he met Felice he also discovered that famous Russian revolutionary with a German-sounding name. Herzen, that’s right. Missing a beat momentarily, his heart resumed its normal rhythm. Oh yes, it was Herzen he happened to strike up a conversation about, with a young Russian lady, here in Marienbad, last summer, on a bench by the white, fretted gallery, white hats and umbrellas all around them. He was here alone, his wife having gone to Berlin to deal with some family affairs. The already familiar marital routine broken, he came back, quite unexpectedly, to what he used to enjoy so much, all that wandering around and staring at things. There was a time when he cultivated that stupid habit, telling himself that a writer, above all else, must be an observer. Now that his writing was reduced to business papers, he took to it again out of sheer boredom. After his medicinal water and breakfast, he would walk to the gallery, sit on a bench, open a newspaper, and, while skimming through the usual exchange of cantankerous notes between Petersburg and Paris, Vienna and Berlin, Belgrade and Istanbul, he would glance at passing saunterers, taking in their awkward stances and comic gestures, and listen hard to their multi-tongued conversations, trying to grasp their meanings. So he sat there for days, watching the Turks complain to the Russians, the Russians demand explanations of the Austrians, the Austrians ask the French for support, and the latter shake their republican fist at Emperor Nicholas and his cousin Willy, while agreeable bourgeois strolled around, emboldened by the half-century-long continental armistice, reassured just enough to start spending their leisure time and substantial amounts of money on cures for gallstones and gastritis. Once he noticed a girl on the bench opposite; for some reason her features reminded him of his wife, so he rose to leave. As he was getting up, he caught her intent stare. He walked up to the Kurhaus and back again, hoping to find her gone. But she was still sitting on the same bench, spying on passersby over the red cover of her open book. He strolled past, noting her clothes, the same as Felice’s in that memorable photograph, a white blouse and a dark skirt. He also noticed that the only resemblance between her and his wife was in the large nose; the rest—her lips, the shape of her eyes, the hue of her skin—being different. She kept watching him, which made him angry. He decided to say something biting to her, in German, hoping that the Russian wouldn’t understand and he would be able to retreat safely, his revenge exacted and no harm done. How did he know immediately that she was Russian? It was because of the book—he recognized Cyrillic letters on the cover. There was a time when he used to think about Russia often, to the point of dizziness; he would dream of the sentiments he found in Dostoyevsky and Herzen, even imagine himself living in some Russian backwater, in a hut by railway tracks going nowhere. After that unfortunate Serb killed the Archduke, a war with Russia seemed unavoidable, and he had been terribly worried, tormented by his desire to join the army in order to put an end to the hell his life had become, to finish it all in one swoop. He started reading French memoirs about Napoleon’s Moscow campaign, savoring the idea of the most powerful army in the world being swallowed by huge, snow-covered Russian plains. Perhaps that was why he wanted to go into the army, to march upon Moscow and vanish forever on the outskirts of Asia. He could no longer remember the exact reason. However, Rasputin persuaded the Czar not to declare war, and the Serbs, very bitter at Russia, accepted Austria’s ultimatum and so changed patrons yet again. He remembered his distress, shortly afterward, at the news of Austrian sleuths looking for conspirators in Belgrade. Back then, in the summer of 1914, everything seemed lost to him: he had been sentenced by Felice, a conviction she herself was to quash later, as it turned out, and his plan to take Napoleon’s route to Russia failed. Nailed to himself, he began to write a novel but never got past the first sentence. “Someone must have slandered him, for one morning, without having done anything wrong, he was arrested.” He had memorized this phrase, the only one he could now remember from his writings, having given all the papers, notes, and diaries to Max after the wedding, telling him to burn everything. The treacherous Max asked, acting innocent, why he didn’t destroy them himself. What could he say? He said nothing. A few days later, Max telephoned to inform him that he had fed his scribblings to a bonfire at his friend’s allotment in Nusle. The choice of the place was ideal: he used to work on that allotment himself, trying to harden his soul-tortured body. He never saw Max again.

  He managed to make out the lettering on the girl’s book, having learnt the Russian alphabet eight years ago. The cover had the name “Herzen” on it. Approaching the girl, he faltered: “I could hardly stay here with your spying on me. So there.” With that, he turned around and, already starting to walk away, heard a reply, in immaculate German, “You started spying on me first!” He stopped, turning back. She was looking at him, cheerful and composed. “I thought you were too busy with your Herzen to notice.” It was time for her to be surprised then, but she gave nothing away, retorting, “And I thought you were too occupied with your
paper.” “Not at all—I was just contemplating what that misanthropic Socialist might have said were he to witness a parliament emerging in Russia, with the government led by that liberal Mr. Nabokoff.” “Do you think he would have been pleased?” “Unlikely.” “I think you’re right.” They laughed. They introduced themselves. She was proud of her Greek name, Lydia; she was proud and independent all around; she studied at Marburg, where her teachers were serious philosophers; she appreciated Marx; she was translating into Russian a French novelist who had, she told him, undertaken an epic work to eclipse Balzac. Although her parents, who still lived in a seaside town in Russia, supported her financially, she saw her dependent status as a burden and wanted to stay on in Germany, to teach. He felt a pang of envy—cupidity, even—in the presence of her young vitality, her posture never bent by a six-hour workday in an office, her carefree attitude to geography, her seriousness. Despite being seventeen years younger than him, she was more knowledgeable and talked with more confidence. She even saw her Jewish origins differently; when he recalled seeing a famous Chasidic Rebbe from Beltsov here in Marienbad six years ago, she listened to his story and remained indifferent, apparently having little idea of who that was, and when he asked her if she was going to Palestine she replied with an ironic smile that she preferred to be a subject of a Russian emperor than a Turkish sultan. And so the conversation went on, he telling her about Werfel and Meyrink, the “Falcons” and Kaiser Karl; she telling him about Rasputin and Plekhanov, Gumilev and Kuzmin. Ah yes, of course, it’s all coming back to him now, he read that novella once, in his previous life, it was by a Russian author, what was his name again, about Alexander the Great. Of course it was, there were crocodiles in it, whose urine was capable of burning a hole in a piece of wood. He caught himself too late, one doesn’t talk about such things with young ladies. “What, about crocodiles?” “No, no, I didn’t mean those, I’m sorry.” They chatted about everything and anything, even politics—she was well-versed in international affairs, suggesting at one point that when it came to the Aegean problem, Russia would always stay on the side of its ally, Turkey. “Then you and I will be in opposite camps,” he offered sadly. “It may be for the best,” she replied, somewhat awkwardly.

  They finally parted in the evening, after dinner, as she hurried home to translate her French author, having agreed to meet the next day by the gallery; he, too, went home, to write a letter to his wife, finish reading his paper, calm his suddenly rebellious heart. Around ten, already in his pajamas, he went to bed intending to browse through Goethe’s travel diaries before falling sleep, the only book from his previous life he still allowed himself to touch. Outside it was a stormy night, the weather so inclement it would be best to stay indoors, yet for some reason he leapt out of bed, dressed quickly, and went outside. There, in the street leading to the town center, dark and empty, he experienced a feeling of loneliness, so unusual for Europe that one couldn’t help but call this feeling Russian. The town center was still smoldering with the usual resort activity, but he wanted no noise or light, so turned into the very first side street instead. Walking past low houses, he kept looking in their windows, as was his old habit. Although most of them were shuttered, he could still see through some: in one of them there was a woman sitting with her sewing in a yellow circle of light; in another a fat man in braces, reading a newspaper, looking somewhat aggrieved; in a third a chambermaid making a bed. The street was a cul-de-sac. He stopped, caught his breath, and went back. Drawing level with another window, he peered inside through the partially drawn curtains. He saw a girl at a desk with her back to him, writing something. Or rather, not so much writing as copying something from a book, and not just copying whole pages—she was being somewhat selective, from time to time leafing through a huge volume fixed vertically on a special stand. For a moment he imagined that the girl must be writing a commentary, perhaps to some Talmudic text, but he drove that absurd thought away. Next to the books on the desk he noticed a photograph of a young man with large sad eyes, his head resting on his left hand, the index finger sunk into his cheek. The young man looked Italian or French, but could just as well be Jewish. He came closer to the window and stood there for a while. She kept working with great concentration until another girl came into the room, probably German, a petite blonde with an amazingly large bosom. The scribe, as he dubbed her, dropped her pen, annoyed, and turned around. As he recognized Lydia it dawned on him that she was neither copying nor commenting but translating the very Frenchman she had mentioned. Perhaps it was the novelist himself in the photograph. He thought it apt; let the translator’s labors be blessed by the author’s presence, his benevolent gaze. Meanwhile Lydia must have said something very harsh to her friend, who became weepy and dabbed her eyes with a handkerchief. He would never forget what happened next. Lydia went up to the blonde and kissed the neckline of her dress. The blonde looked up and embraced her. It was a long embrace, long enough for him to realize he was awake. The lovers were kissing, whispering something to each other, then finally Lydia waved the blonde aside, went back to the desk, put the finished pages in order, closed the dictionary, and stole a glance at the portrait before going to the window, very quickly, giving him just enough time to step back. He was already walking away at a brisk pace when the screech of the drawn shutters scraped through his hearing. Early the next morning he packed his suitcase and took the first train to Prague. The day after that he was standing in his office, dictating to his secretary a letter to Phoenix Bohemian Insurance Company.

  Still his wife did not come. The crowd around him was getting thinner, time to go, to have tea and talk to the other guests sitting at their table-d’hôte. He shook away the memory, so reminiscent of one of his dreams, and made a few circles around the pavilion with the mineral water spring. The relentless August sun burning through his dandyish light-colored suit made him take refuge in the shade again. And then he saw his wife at the end of the alley. She was walking fast, nearly running, her long bony face full of dismay and extreme anxiety, her large mouth askew, some terrible word she had to deliver struggling to come out of it, so he started toward her, a little frightened, her ugly face and awkward figure causing a wave of forgotten pity and tenderness in him, and as he grasped her hand with a thumbed newspaper tightly gripped in it—my God, what’s the matter with you, Felice my dear, what’s happened—she looked at him, her eyes full of fear, and said: “It’s war, Franz.”

  TRANSLATED FROM RUSSIAN BY ANNA ASLANYAN

  art

  [MOLDOVA]

  VITALIE CIOBANU

  Orchestra Rehearsal

  When the professor of linguistics went to see who was knocking on the classroom door, interrupting his soporific discourse from the lectern, I had a presentiment that the person out past the threshold had come for me. There wasn’t anything to justify this feeling, unless we are to believe that the longstanding expectations you nourish within yourself, often accompanied by a diffuse sense of guilt, are able to convey unmistakable signals from the outside world. A few moments later, after engaging in a short dialogue in the form of curt whispers, leaning half into the corridor, Mocreac turned on his heel. Above his thick lenses, his myopic eyes wandered over the class until they fastened on me. “Aristide, step outside for a moment: there’s someone here who wants to talk to you.” With an even gait, I made my way to the door, haughtily ignoring the indignant eyes of my classmates, all envious at my opportunity to avoid, legitimately, as it were, the monotony of an insipid and somnolent lecture. But only I knew, as I approached our professor’s mysterious collocutor, what anxieties undermined the aplomb I had been trying to project to the rest of the class. It was Porfirich, the head of the student folk music ensemble, the man they also nicknamed Quasimodo, out of the kind of malice that is always prone to monstrous exaggeration, because he somewhat resembled the famous character from Victor Hugo: squat, with a bulbous head and an unnaturally large mouth that looked out of proportion to the rest of his swarthy, deeply wrin
kled face. It’s worth lingering for a few moments on that face: from the corners of his eyes the wrinkles spread out in a fan, which the mouth, acting as a spring, corrugated whenever he smiled or laughed, for he was constantly quipping, flinging innuendoes left and right, such as, “Natasha, stop blowing that clarinet on the stairs,” to the delight of his listeners. Because, after all, what else is an ambiguous wisecrack, spoken by the right person, but an invitation to indulge in a vicarious sexual fantasy? Porfirich liked to foster an atmosphere of merry complicity around himself, in a wholly natural way, the same as other people might exude a particular musk, and his entourage, it goes without saying, enthusiastically joined in his game. Of course, Porfirich lacked the cathedral to be a genuine Quasimodo. It would have been more apt to say that he had access to infernal bolgie.