Best European Fiction 2013

by Unknown

  The second: I cannot make it out, it is the size of a stool and so full of protuberances and ends or wiring that it, too, looks furry. I circle round it, crouch beside it, try to see what manner of being it is. I find a little hole that could lead to its insides—for a moment I feel like opening it and touching—but of course I do not. You are no toucher of insides, he said to me once. Although I do know how to fix things, a car even.

  The third, to me, is the most beautiful: the size of a large dog, and the shape of one too, because it stands on four paws and has a long neck stretched out to the front and side. I have seen pictures, and once even a live one. At the rear is a thin and long tail, an animal’s tail, it is curled round one of the back legs like a printer’s cable on a desk. The nose is longer and narrower than the dog’s I saw, its head was like a ball; on the end of the nose are two narrow nostrils. Ears I cannot distinguish at all, its big eyes are closed. Not everybody has ears, and some have only inner ears. Most beautiful of all in the creature are its color settings: the dark blue of the snout changes to the purple of the neck, the orange of the side elements and the bright yellow spot of the lower back, asymmetrical, and then through the red of the thighs and root of the tail to the bluishness of the tail-tip and paws, sky-color.

  The men pour the last drops from a bottle and look very happy, although the bottle is proven empty. The funny man doesn’t drink anymore, but walks past me into the corridor, does not want to touch my side this time, although I would allow such a thing. I guessed that the beautiful creature is his, the one that is as gaudily colored as the sky on evenings when the sun goes out and dyes the clouds. The creature does not appear to have any innards at all—the man bends down in front of it, strokes its side, breathes into its nostrils. At first nothing happens, the other men glance at funnyman but he just smiles. His forehead looks damp—perhaps he’s the kind that is called a pantshitter. “Pantshitters don’t know how to keep their nerves in order,” he said once when he was watching TV, and laughed. Not at me, he didn’t mean me. My nerves are very well-disciplined.

  But then the dog-snake, that’s what I’ll call it, opens up. First the eyes: their brilliance is fractured, as if they were made up of a countless number of little red lamps. Then the mouth: the creature opens its maw for a second and from its throat comes a quiet cooing, and I feel my internal rhythm missing a beat, for I have a rhythm too, after all.

  “Forma,” says the man, “sit!” The creature has lolloped around him with its sides like fire, flaring, we once had a fire in the grate here, but now it sits on its tail very obediently, just as I would sit down if I were commanded to do so, and if there were a tail behind me. They are so proud, all of them: the uncomfortable man of his mouse creature, red-shirt of his tousle-fleece, and then this last, the one with the dog-snake. There is a tickling in my innards: I would like to know what pride feels like.

  It is my turn last. He nods to me from his chair, is so relaxed, I’ve never before seen him like this. Doesn’t come to get me as the others did, trusts in the fact that I’m no vacuum cleaner, that I don’t need to be pulled from the cupboard.

  I walk into the middle of the room and look pretty damn good.

  They leave at last, when I have read myself to exhaustion and done all sorts of other things, showing off my talents. He is still sitting in his chair and does not look as if he intends to get up. Tired head nods onto the table where the empty bottles stand. In his hand is one that is not yet empty. Outside, the sun has been taken away.

  “Creation,” he says as if in thought, “makes a person into something sublime. Almost a god. If one can create, one can no longer be an ordinary person.” Then raises the bottle to his lips again. Sighs as the bottle empties, and lets it crash to the floor. I hasten to pick it up as I was intended to. Grasps my wrist. The wrist joint has been playing up over the past few days, really creaking, creak-creak, is he going to mend it now.

  But he pulls me to him, slightly into his lap and slightly onto the arm of the chair. Puts his hand on my face element and strokes a point on my temple where the casing is particularly smooth.

  “Do you understand?” he demands, as if I thought about such things at all. “Because of you, I am not ordinary, I am something quite extraordinary.” Suddenly he smiles again. Gets up from his chair, pushes me off his lap. “Stand there,” he orders, and his eyes gleam; he presses his hands to my sides and raises my chin into a better position. So I stand there. He paces around me and chuckles about something else, in a low voice that eludes my senses. From time to time he taps my surface, bends my fingers, at one point opening my insides but then closing them again.

  “You’re some beast, you,” he says at last, nodding his head. Although I am no beast, but a being of quite a different kind.

  I begin to tidy up, and go on tidying even after everything is in order.

  “What does creation mean?” I ask it casually, in passing, as I take the rug out to beat it, although I probably did that already. It is not my custom to question, to question anything, after all one would hardly suppose that I would take an interest in the nature of things in general. One would not suppose it, not of one like me, not even an exemplary one like me.

  He mumbles something, at first I doubt that he has heard me. Quite often a fault in the senses, ears not very accurate. He raises his hand in the direction of where the empty bottle was, I have not taken it away. Can’t reach it. I want to help, but really, why should I pass him an empty bottle?

  “Gods create,” he then says, his voice coming muffled as if he was shouting at other people from the other side of a wall.

  “Are y —, are you one of those?” I ask. I would like to tighten a screw somewhere deep down where something must have been jerked out of place—I am almost making mistakes. He begins to laugh, laughing from a deeper place than before and sounding different. I could even believe that it is not mere tiredness that makes him so fatigued.

  “Yes, people do create. Books, for example, which you also read. And paintings. It’s quite normal.” He leans his head back against the chair, is clearly pleased with me since he is talking so much. It doesn’t happen often, that. “Creation is making something that has not existed before.”

  A car light from the street makes a red streak on the floor. I click my head back and forth and try to understand, all sorts of things. Later he falls asleep in the chair and I am left on all night, for the first time ever.

  A long time ago when I first arrived, so shiny and smooth-cased, I was kept in a place where there were children, almost the same age, I spent time with them and learned to be. He thought it important. While the children drew, I sat on my chair by the table and was very charming. Sometimes someone came up and bashed me, but the dents only became evident later, at home, after he had fetched me back.

  “Great, very clever, you should be proud.” That’s the kind of thing they said to the children, and I listened.

  I read again:

  O how all speech is feeble and falls short

  Of my conceit, and this to what I saw

  Is such, tis not enough to call it little!

  O Light Eterne, sole in thyself that dwellest,

  Sole knowest thyself, and, known unto thyself

  And knowing, lovest and smilest on thyself!

  He no longer laughs at what I read, just nods. Then does something strange—leaves me alone in my own company and goes away, saying he will come back later: “I’m just going to do a couple of things, you’ll be fine alone for a couple of hours.”

  I fall into myself. First I stretch out on the floor, he encourages it because it straightens a lot of things out. When I’ve done it, I feel lonely and grease my bends. After that I walk around the house and look good, stroke my details and their permanence, keep stopping at the window for a moment, looking at the world as it happens to be at this moment.

  I read to myself, trying to pronounce well:

  Within itself, of its own very color

  Seem
ed to me painted with our effigy,

  Wherefore my sight was all absorbed therein.

  Then I take a pen in my fair hand and do something that I have never done before.

  At least a week goes by, and I do not count the evenings when I see all sorts of things before I am finally switched off. I do not understand where this comes from—there shouldn’t be anything new, no updates or anything like them in my systems.

  One time he is actually like me, someone with an outer casing, we are equal.

  One time the sky is full of terrifying things, wings, shadows.

  One time I stand in the kitchen, but it is dark, so dark that I cannot find myself.

  Fortunately these views never last long.

  One day he comes back from his trip and is silent. We are both capable of silence, that is the same in both of us. Outside it is cold, twenty-six degrees Celsius less than the interior norm, and the cold has entered him, I sense it as soon as I take his coat. Moves more slowly than usual—perhaps he is suffering from stiffness. Does not want his usual cup of coffee but leads me to the living room. Holds a hand to my side, I follow. He sighs.

  He keeps me by him even as he sits down.

  “You know—” he begins, but how should I know, “—lately I have been short of money.” I have not thought about such things. I am stunned for a moment. Perhaps this is just part of listening. I pull myself back together, however, as one should. “I have decided—” he continues, but falls silent, this is so completely new that I do not remember anything similar. Then he takes up a defiant position, raises his chin and straightens his back. “I am going to have to sell you.”

  What I find myself thinking is, sell, that’s what’s done to things, because he often comes back from shops where he has been sold food and bottles and small objects.

  “One of those men wants to buy you.”

  “Who?” he lets me ask—he wouldn’t always have done s0; now the situation is quite different and I sense it under my casing. I feel petrified now too—it starts gently in my heel and creeps from there through the groin joints to my innards. I think, and then ask further: “It’s the pantshitter, isn’t it?”

  Stands up, furious: “Is that what you call my friends, you—” he doesn’t finish his sentence but hits me, hits me really proper, BANG, so that my seams shudder. I fall on to the floor and clatter and have no understanding of how I have offended against my programming. My temples feel tight, there must be something wrong inside my head.

  Then he says nothing, I continue with former commands at least until evening and do not know what happens after that.

  Electricity is what I need, that and sometimes other things too, orders preferably, because otherwise my existence fragments and goes off the rails and I am no longer as I was intended. Volatility, that is the danger—I easily begin to drift if rules and meaning are taken away. My borders move too much. Everything spins in my head, all that I have read and all the things I have stored away, I have experienced too much and I have perhaps not edited it sufficiently.

  But through the sight, that fortified itself / In me by looking, one appearance only—I fumble for a moment in my memory—To me was ever changing as I changed.

  Men with horns on their heads, myself with wings, he with a case

  and children who are proud of what they have done

  and a funnyman who smiled his face in two

  and he paces around me and polishes me

  But my own wings were not enough for this, / Had it not been that then my mind there smote

  I grow dark.

  A flash of lightning, wherein came its wish I shut down once more for the night.

  In the morning the stakes are high. I am not intended for anywhere but here. Elsewhere I would be senseless, unknown. As useless as a house that does not offer shelter from the rain, a car with no room for passengers. It is necessary to have a reason, a task.

  I begin the morning with perfection. I execute my routines like an automaton, with unprecedented accuracy. Surely he will be dazzled, for life with me runs so smoothly.

  When I have finished all that is expected, I offer him a surprise. He doesn’t expect anything of the sort, believes I am still the untalented beetle he manufactured for himself. Standing in the hallway, about to go out, I walk up to him, almost in front of him.

  “I have become masterly,” I say, but politely all the same. He smiles, just a little. He continues to think he will leave, but I stand very fast in front of the door.

  “I can create too.” That is what I tell him, and I smile as well, trying to look new.

  “Oh, but you can’t do that.” I amuse him; he trembles now as he sometimes does while watching TV.

  “Oh yes I can,” I say, holding my head up straighter than ever. He notices it, his eyes flashing, although he doesn’t know he’s doing it. Allows himself to be led away from the hallway into the living room. There I sit him down on the chair and remember to smile all the time. Smile smile, be beautiful, he used to say it himself. Light floods in through the window, too bright, it forces him to screw up his eyes although I would like him to keep them open, more open than before. But that is how a soft-surface is, afraid of light. I open a drawer, in the desk, and stretch my hand inside it.

  The smallest child said, “I drawed a horsey.” “A horse,” the woman laughed, “—that’s lovely!”

  I listened my surface off.

  … as I changed …

  No, it didn’t happen until later.

  I draw out my creation—in a moment he will be dazzled.

  He raises his face and moves his eyes out of the sun’s path. Laughs until he’s doubled over, guffaws himself into exhaustion like a blocked drain I had to clean once. “I thought you were serious!” His words remain in the shade because the sound of his laughter is so loud, but I know all about shady things, I do. “That kind of scribble, you can’t even draw a straight line!”

  I turn my drawing toward my own visual sensors: it shows galloping dog-snakes, mouse-people, trees blossoming gaily, cloud-light birds flying in the sky. My arm twitches.

  “It is the world’s most beautiful picture. I created it.” I speak slowly, for clarity. He does not always understand me if I get upset, my skill is to be quick and accurate. I step closer, perhaps the sun is bothering him again.

  “You don’t know how to create! Even babies can draw better.” He grabs the picture from my hands, dropping it, torn, on the floor. The sun strikes my sensors, too, as I bend down to pick up the piece of paper. Something twitches inside me, in all my systems, no longer just in my arm.

  “My creator,” I cry in my steely voice, beautiful and piercing. I reach out my arm.

  TRANSLATED FROM FINNISH BY

  HILDI HAWKINS AND SOILA LEHTONEN

  memory

  [HUNGARY]

  MIKLÓS VAJDA

  Portrait of a Mother in an American Frame

  She stands in the kitchen, in a kitchen, not our kitchen, not the old kitchen, not any of our old kitchens, but her own kitchen, an unfamiliar one, not mine, and she cooks, stirs something. She is cooking for me. That’s another new thing, a strange thing. But there she stands, repeating anything I want, anywhere, whatever I happen to want most, at the time I want it. I am still here: she is not. And there are things I do want. But even if I didn’t want them she would carry on coming and going, doing this and that, entering my head, calling me, talking, listening, now in delight, now in pain, thinking of me or looking at me, ringing me up, asking me things, writing to me as if she were alive. I am insatiable: I am interested in all that is not me, in what is private, in affairs before me and after me, in her existence as distinct from mine, and I try to fit the jigsaw together, but nowadays, whatever she is doing—and I can’t do anything about this—is always, invariably done for me, because of me, to me, with me, or on my behalf—or rather, of course, for me.

  At this very moment I want her to stand there, in that kitchen, stirring away. Let’s have her coo
king one of those dishes she learned abroad, let her make a caper sauce to go with that sizzling grilled steak. But I often have her repeat a great many other things too: for example, I have recently taken to observing her secretly from my bed as she slowly removes her make-up at the antique dressing table with the great gilded antique silver-framed standing mirror before her, going about her task in a businesslike manner, applying cream with balls of cotton wool, her hands working in a circular motion, efficiently, always in exactly the same way, pulling faces if need be, puffing out a cheek, rubbing her skin then smearing it with, among other things, a liquid she refers to as her “shaking lotion” and which dries immediately so she looks like a white-faced clown. Then she wipes it off and I fall asleep again. The room is full of mirrors, each of the six doors of the built-in cupboard is a full length mirror.

  My bed is there in her bedroom: my own bedroom is being used by the German Fräulein. Sometimes I wake late at night just as she enters from the bathroom, wearing her yellow silk dressing gown, and I hear her as she applies creams and lotions for the night before going to bed, as she moves around, gets comfortable, clears her throat, and gives a good sigh before falling sound asleep, her mouth open, contented, exhaling loudly, exactly the way I catch myself doing nowadays.

  Or I am watching her at eleven in the morning as she steps into the car, fully made up, elegantly dressed, wearing hat and gloves and high-heeled shoes, as she throws back the fashionable half-veil, pulls out of the garage, turns in the drive, takes the left-hand lane—the traffic is still driving on the left—and sets off from our Sas Hill villa in the Buda hills into the city center to do her shopping before meeting her friends in the recently opened Mignon Espresso—the first of its kind in Hungary—or at the Gerbeaud patisserie where she might go on to meet my father who sometimes strolls over from his office to talk over their plans for the next day or whatever else is on their minds. Then they come home together and eat. Or I see her in Márianosztra, or possibly, later, in Kalocsa, at the end of the monthly visiting time, led away by a guard armed with a submachine gun, out of the hall that is divided in half by a partition of wire netting, leaving through double steel doors, overlooked by enormous portraits of Stalin and Rákosi, and I catch a glimpse of her as she is shepherded away in a procession of prisoners and guards, and she freezes for a moment, conscious perhaps of me looking at her, to look back over her shoulder, sensing me standing there, staring at her. The guard’s flat cap is covering half her face but her slight squint, her nod, her faint smile, and her suspiciously shining eyes tell me more than she could say to me in the fifteen allotted minutes in the presence of the guard.