Best European Fiction 2013

by Unknown

  “Win? What would I win?”

  “Stop answering my questions with questions! What’s wrong with you, anyway?”

  “I was just asking myself the same thing.”

  Ernest thought—if it could be called a thought—that it wasn’t right to live to the fullest, all systems go, just for one’s own pleasure, just to feel good about oneself. Scratching and poking around inside him, there was some ancient—even sacral, it seemed to him—beast, some sort of ermine that kept reminding him that Ernest wasn’t the most important thing in this world. There are bread trees and baobabs, tigers and queens, incarnations of Buddha, clairvoyants, thinkers, women giving birth—just like there are leaves fallen by the side of the road, hops, and marsh tea.

  “You’re not thinking straight! You can’t accomplish anything, precisely because you aren’t the most important thing to yourself! Believe that you’re magnificent, and then you’ll be magnificent!”

  “Idiot,” he had said aloud. How dreadful.

  But one could make just about anything seem real, if one could get a certain number of other people to attest to it. Even better if they were influential people. What would Ernest do within such a reality? But then, isn’t he already living in one?

  Ernest pulls the remains of the fried liver out of the garbage and throws it out into the clearing in front of the cabin. Pavlov immediately pounces on it. Like Maije, Ernest thinks. He feels a sharp pain. The cosmos shouldn’t feel pain.

  He conjures up apple blossom season and a light breeze. And Maije, almost nude, starting to run through what had once been the cowberry patch. Maije’s javelin soars and soars and they both can’t wait for it to touch ground. Splendid.

  It’s her javelin that now pierces his chest.

  “Pavlov, come and have a drink.”

  In the nighttime light the dog’s cautious and vigilant eyes flash; he licks his own nose with a long, rosy tongue, and then enters the kitchen, shaking his thick, shiny coat. For a brief moment the two hesitate. Ernest and Pavlov. Then Ernest folds up a blanket for the dog and places it in front of the door.

  “Good boy. Here we are—us two. Both alone in this world.”

  Ernest reaches out and scratches Pavlov behind his ear. The dog tenses up, but Ernest sees a tiny movement at the end of his tail. Friends.

  Before falling asleep, Ernest thinks about his aversion to so many things. And he feels guilty about that, guilty with all his heart and soul. But what can he do about it? He avoids shifty men and superficial women, he’s always given all the things that he finds repulsive a wide berth, because he doesn’t want to collect stones in his heart, but now look at him, he’s arrived at his cabin in the woods. He, alone with a bloodhound.

  “You’ve consolidated all your assets in this one little cabin. Everyone else is going crazy about property.”

  He falls asleep with Maije’s words sounding in his head.

  The morning lies on Ernest with a dog’s weight. Pavlov is licking his face.

  Snow is sprinkling outside, the titmice are chirping, everything is as it was before, but Ernest now senses that something has changed. It’s true that he wasn’t awake when the decisive moment arrived, but it had arrived nonetheless. From where? And how? Through his nostrils? Perhaps his mouth had fallen open while he was sleeping?

  He opens the door and looks all around, slowly and carefully. Ernest and the cosmos. Just think of the scale of it. The stars in their proper constellations have done their job; all he has to do is find a home for Pavlov. Maije would say that he was now thinking straight.

  Someone is running toward him from the woods. A slender figure with flowing hair.

  Pavlov snarls threateningly.

  Ernest, arms joyfully extended, freezes on the threshold.

  By the time he’s tied up the dog, Maije has stopped breathing. She no longer has a face.

  TRANSLATED FROM LATVIAN BY

  MARGITA GAILITIS AND VIJA KOSTOFF

  death

  [UKRAINE]

  TANIA MALYARCHUK

  Me and My Sacred Cow

  1

  I hated my cow and she hated me.

  Even though we were like two peas in a pod: both of us crazy.

  We competed with one another in mental abnormality, and the cow always won because she was the better runner. She had four legs, and I only have two.

  Take this, for instance: we are walking across the village, it’s high noon, the sun burns, the skin on my nose is peeling, the cow, black as tar, cautiously wobbles in front of me, now and then prudently glancing back, trying to assess my mood. I say to her:

  “Bitch, now that it’s all over, will you explain to me why you ran off into the woods?”

  Daisy glances at me with a large black eye and doesn’t say anything.

  “Have you given a thought to how I feel?” I’m beginning to raise my voice. “You saw me reading a book. And the book was very interesting! Had you read even one book in your life, you’d know how it feels: when you’re reading and some stupid cow you have to watch runs off into the woods!”

  Daisy hopes that I’ll blame the gadflies.

  “What about those gadflies? They bite me too. Do you see me running off into the woods?”

  We’re passing the Volan household. Lyuba Volan is standing at the gate—a large deaf-mute girl, who’s always getting raped in the pasture by her younger brother. She roars with laughter, and it makes me shudder.

  “You know how much I wanted to kick your ass?” I continue. “A lot! But you run so fast I can’t keep up! Wait till we get back to the barn—then I’ll get you. I’ll get you, believe me! With a broomstick! That’ll teach you!”

  We’re passing Kamaykina’s house. I’m hurrying the cow along because I’m scared to run into her—the old senile woman who’s been after me for the past two years. Daisy’s mother once knocked down her haystack while I was reading Hugo’s Les Misérables.

  We pass yet another house. Ours is coming up next. It’s right next to the store. The store sells nothing but apple-flavored sparkling water, Turkish chewing gum, and matches.

  “I’ll kick your ass alright! Like there’s no tomorrow!” The cow glances at me anxiously with a large black eye and lowers her head as if she’s going to graze.

  “Don’t even try to make me feel sorry for you! I’ve pitied you before, for all the good it’s done!”

  Grandma’s gate is wide open. Secured with a brick. Daisy will dive in and drink from a bucket under the ash tree, even though I’ll yell to Grandma to give her some pesticide instead of water, because she’s already managed to fill her gut at the puddle near the compost heap. Daisy will stare at Grandma sorrowfully, as if I hadn’t tended her but tortured her with a hot iron rod. And I’ll yell to Grandma to give her a taste of a whip, or to hobble her legs, or to tie her by the neck because she’s mad.

  Daisy slows down, hesitates. The gate is a few feet away. I can see the Basilyovskys’ yard from here. A tall thin mother and her three girls, their hair as red as mouse fur, are sitting on the staircase of the brick house waiting for an old aunt to die.

  “Come on now, don’t worry. I won’t beat you too hard.”

  Daisy makes a radical decision and picking up her pace, passes the gate and in an instant gallops away.

  “You bitch!” I yell, running after her. “Come back! Where do you think you’re going? You won’t get away from me!”

  The cow knows exactly where she’s going. She’s going to the store. Before I can manage to call her a bitch one more time, she enters its wide iron doorway and disappears into the stony coolness.

  Once upon a time the store was the village elementary school. My grandma went to first and second grade there. Then she quit because she had to tend a cow. What’s happening is deeply symbolic. Daisy ran into the schoolroom to pray for the redemption of all of Grandma’s previous cows, especially the one on account of which she remained illiterate.

  Auntie Ant sits at the store counter. She’s an aged sa
leswoman, who thinks it’s a matter of honor to remain in the empty store till the very end. She eyes my cow melancholically, and the cow pleadingly eyes Auntie Ant. If I hadn’t come in right then, Auntie Ant would surely have said to the cow: “Hello! How can I help you?”

  “Daisy! Come home! I promise I won’t beat you,” I say wearily. And, “Hello, ma’am,” I address Auntie Ant. “How about slaughtering this cow? You’ll finally have something to sell.”

  Auntie Ant is delighted, but quickly comes to her senses:

  “Wouldn’t your Grandma mind?”

  “We won’t tell her. I’ll say that the cow has been taken to the insane asylum.”

  At last we two crazies come home. Grandma anxiously peers out of the gate.

  “What took you so long?” she asks, and lets Daisy drink the cool well water out of a bucket.

  “Better give her some pesticide!” I cry out defensively.

  Daisy rubs her neck against my grandmother’s thin torso. Just like a dog.

  “My sweet baby,” Grandma pets her. “Tired? Would you like some water?”

  “I am very tired,” says Daisy. “And she’s the worst of all,” Daisy nods in my direction, “How she torments me! When will her parents finally come get her?”

  My parents will come in a few days. In a little while. I have to be thoroughly scrubbed before school. Especially my feet. And I have to be rid of head lice. They have to buy me notebooks and textbooks. So they could be here any minute now. Bitch.

  2

  Lyuba Volan hasn’t always been a deaf-mute. She fell from a cherry tree as a child, when the owner of the tree caught her red-handed. She had such a scare she hasn’t spoken since.

  But some people say that she was born with no upper palate and has never spoken a word.

  She wears long ragged skirts and walks barefoot in all seasons. To save on shampoo, her mother always crops her hair close to her skull. Lyuba is in a perpetual state of regrowing her hair. When she has her period, she’s splattered all over with blood. Her younger brother Vulan rapes her daily in the pasture, and she laughs eerily. Sometimes, when it’s over, Lyuba hugs him and kisses him on the forehead. Meanwhile, I keep an eye on Lyuba’s cows. If anything happens to them, Lyuba’s mother will order her son to lash Lyuba with a whip, and he will gladly do so.

  Lyuba is his brother’s first woman. Soon he will become her first and only gynecologist: to save money, he’ll give her a home abortion.

  She roars with eerie laughter, and sometimes I think this is her way of smiling.

  3

  The Basilyovskys, the tall thin mother and the three red-headed girls, sit on the staircase of a brick house and wait for their ancient aunt to die.

  When she dies, the house will become theirs. They have no other place to live. Meanwhile, the four of them live in an old summer kitchen next to the house. They, especially the red-headed girls, are anxious to move into the luxurious quarters, mossy and moldy, just like the old aunt herself. They will jump on the mildewed embroidered pillows, sleep on the chicken-feather beds.

  The youngest girl’s first words were:

  “Auntie, when will you die?”

  The aunt’s reply was: “I will die, child.”

  The girls take turns bringing food and drink to the old aunt’s quarters. They quietly enter the room, stand next to the bed, and keep silent for a while, hoping that the aunt will not wake up.

  Their aunt has lived through the whole century.

  Every day Mother Basilyovska takes the train to Kolomiya. She works as a security guard at the historical museum. When the museum personnel don’t show up for work, which happens almost every day, Basilyovska locks herself up in the museum and doesn’t let anyone in. The occasional visitors—lovers of antiques, or the tipsy Polish tourists—bang on the door, plead with her to let them in (because it’s not a holiday and the museum has got to be open), and Basilyovska peeks out from behind a curtain, like a frightened ghost, like a sixteenth-century museum piece, and bobs her head, as if saying: “History is not available today, she is depressed, and I am only a Basilyovska, with three red-haired daughters and an immortal aunt.”

  The young Basilyovskys have nothing to eat. They wear bright colorful dresses given to them by the villagers. They wear bows in their hair, but no underwear. Their noses always run, and the girls lick off the snot. Their legs are covered with mud up to the knee.

  The Basilyovskys are so red-haired and their freckles are so bright that each of the girls reminds me of a large sunflower containing an elf with a dirty face.

  4

  When the cow got sick, Grandma started taking her out for an evening walk.

  Daisy’s milk turned red and she mooed mournfully.

  I am sitting at the gate, waiting for my parents to arrive. Grandma is walking Daisy in circles around the yard.

  “Don’t just sit there, child. It’s getting late,” Grandma tells me. “I don’t think they’re coming tonight.”

  “They may come late at night. It’s not so scary when you travel by car.”

  “Or they may be busy,” Grandma keeps thinking out loud.

  “Hard, so hard!” Daisy adds. “There’s blood in my milk.”

  I’m waiting for my mom, and I’m scared. I imagine her pressing my head to her breast, then suddenly pulling back:

  “Tania, your head is full of lice!”

  I pretend that I’m shocked:

  “What are you talking about? What lice?”

  “The lice are prancing around in your hair like horses! How did you let it come to this?”

  “Mom, I don’t have lice!”

  “And what’s this?” She pulls a large chubby louse out of my hair. “Do you ever brush your hair? Do you even wash it? Where in the world did all of them come from?”

  “Mom, all the kids around here have lice! It’s not my fault! They just leap from head to head!”

  I am really nervous about my mom’s arrival. Some time ago she reacted like this when she discovered I had worms. I hid behind the barn and picked the worms out of my turds to convince her that I didn’t have them.

  “Don’t leave me at Grandma’s for so long! Soon enough I won’t be expected just to take the cow to the pasture, I’ll have to milk it too.”

  Grandma pets Daisy on the forehead, and slowly walks her around the yard. Daisy obediently shuffles back and forth.

  “Gran, why are you dragging the cow around?” I yell from the gate.

  “She wants to walk around a bit. You’re enjoying this, right?”

  “Right,” says Daisy.

  5

  Kamaykina has a beautiful young daughter, Lyuda. At one point, she initiated the transformation of the local children’s library into a pool hall. The old portly librarian was forced to send some of the books to a library in a nearby village and to distribute the rest among the village children. That’s how I got The Adventures of the Elektronik and The Little Witch. So I felt really good about the pool hall.

  Lyuda was a brilliant pool player. She also played the guitar and sported a tattoo on her left arm. She had a Kolomiya boyfriend who came to see her on a motorcycle. The wedding was planned for fall. At the end of the summer, she went to Tlumach with friends and jumped from the third floor.

  “Don’t come near me. I’ll jump,” Lyuda told her drunken boyfriend, climbing onto the windowsill in the dormitory where they were staying.

  Her boyfriend didn’t believe her and kept coming.

  Lyuda broke her spine and became forever wheelchair-bound. The village union bought the wheelchair. Her boyfriend came a few more times, made sure that Lyuda would never walk again, and the wedding was canceled with mutual consent. The last thing he said to her was this:

  “I love you, and will always love you. If you ever get better, let me know. Even if I’m already married, I’ll come back to you.”

  And right away he married another woman.

  Lyuda quit playing pool, but she learned to embroider and to go wit
hout walking. Her arms became her legs.

  That’s when my cow, Daisy’s mother, knocked down Kamaykina’s haystack with her hoof. I lost sight of the cow because I was busy reading Les Misérables.

  The old Kamaykina was immediately informed whose cow ruined her haystack. And right away she came by to pick a fight with me. I muttered something in my defense, but I had nothing to say to the last thing she kept repeating. She screamed:

  “Who will pile up the hay for me now? Who will pile it up?”

  6

  And then there is Little Riding Hood, a boy of about eight years, who is always being sent to foster care by his mother, and who always escapes. The mother also escapes. A few times a year. To Odessa. With lovers. But she always comes back.

  Little Riding Hood suffers from epilepsy. When you say something to him, he answers: “Wha?”

  I go to the cemetery, which I call “the fruit and berry medley,” and Little Riding Hood follows me there. Everything I love most grows at the cemetery: huge wild strawberries, the size of a fist, sweet cherries, sour cherries, apples, pears, and plums of two kinds, yellow and purple. You can pick anything you want, gather it into the folds of your shirt, and then go for a pleasant stroll among the tombstones and study the inscriptions.

  Little Riding Hood breathes down my neck.

  “Little Riding Hood, I’m going to the cemetery. Are you coming along?”

  “Wha?” says Little Riding Hood and takes a step away.

  “You’d better watch the cows. They’ll kill us if the cows get into their vegetable gardens.”

  “Wha?” says Little Riding Hood, and comes one step closer.

  “Aren’t you scared to go to the cemetery, Little Riding Hood?” Little Riding Hood doesn’t know what to say. He wavers between “Wha?” and “I’m not scared.” Finally he says:

  “I’m not scared. What’s to be scared of? When I die, I’ll lay there.”

  “Maybe you won’t. By the time you die, there won’t be any room left for your grave there.”