Best European Fiction 2013

by Unknown

  “Why not?” Little Riding Hood dives indignantly into the bushes.

  When Little Riding Hood’s mother escaped to Odessa yet again with yet another lover, Little Riding Hood went to the Beremyan lake, swam five feet from the shore, and drowned. His disease caught him in the water.

  “Little Riding Hood,” the angels at the heaven’s gate asked him, “why did you go for a swim at the Beremyan lake? Didn’t you know that your disease might catch you in the water?”

  “Wha?” Little Riding Hood replied.

  “Watch out, Little Riding Hood. This isn’t foster care. You can’t run away from here.”

  Little Riding Hood didn’t know what to say. He wavered between “Wha?” and “I will too if I want to!” Finally he said:

  “I will too if I want to!”

  7

  Some pears are best left unpicked. They grow right out of the graves. These pears are large and juicy, they resemble human skulls. But I am not superstitious and can easily eat a dozen.

  Suddenly I see Lyuba Vulan and her younger brother.

  “Climb the pear tree,” the brother orders Lyuba. Lyuba roars with laughter and tries to kiss her brother on the forehead.

  “Climb the tree, I’m telling you!”

  Lyuba starts climbing. Right under the pear tree is the grave of Basilyovsky, the father of the three red-haired elves. Basilyovsky says to Lyuba:

  “Lyuba, don’t climb the pear tree. You’ve climbed the cherry tree before, and look what happened to you.”

  “Keep climbing! Move on!” Lyuba’s brother hurries her up.

  Lyuba has climbed onto the first thick branch and is roaring with laughter.

  “Climb higher,” her brother orders.

  “Lyuba, don’t!” Basilyovsky persists. “Your brother is evil. He wants you to die. Or at least for your baby to die.”

  Lyuba has climbed higher and reached the next branch up. She hangs over all of us and smiles. Her skirt flares up and I see that she is not wearing any underwear.

  “And now jump, Lyuba!” her brother yells. “Jump down to the ground!”

  “Lyuba, don’t jump!” I roar. “Don’t jump, no matter what!” Basilyovsky sorrowfully shakes his pear-shaped skulls in the branches.

  “Jump, Lyuba, jump!”

  “Don’t jump, Lyuba!”

  “Jump, Lyuba!” Lyuba is getting ready to jump.

  And that’s when my cow makes an appearance. Daisy. Her milk is red, and she moos mournfully. Soon she will die. But right now she knows whose side she is on.

  Daisy bellows like a bull, shoots fire from her nostrils, stamps her hooves on the ground, and attacks Lyuba’s brother with her horns.

  Lyuba’s brother doesn’t even have time to get scared, hurled as he is into Little Riding Hood’s freshly-dug grave.

  Daisy waits at the grave for a few more minutes, watching Lyuba’s brother. Then she goes back to the pasture to graze the withered grass and moo mournfully.

  “Lyuba, why do you listen to this freak?” I ask, helping Lyuba down from the tree.

  “Because I love him,” Lyuba replies.

  “Listen, you fell from the cherry tree, right? Or were you born without an upper palate? Is that why you are a mute?”

  “I don’t have an upper palate.” Smiling, Lyuba opens her mouth to show me.

  I give her my underwear.

  8

  My parents arrive on Sunday morning. They bring me chocolates and apricots. Mom presses me to her breast, then abruptly pulls back and starts yelling about lice. Just as I imagined.

  “Mom, the people here are so miserable that they don’t worry about lice. Everyone has lice around here, even the chickens. How was I to stay away from them?”

  In the evening, the parents are getting ready to leave.

  “I am going with you,” I say.

  “Stay another week. The cow died and Grandma is heartbroken. How can you leave her here all alone?”

  Grandma sits by the summer kitchen, stares at my dad’s car, at the dog in the doghouse, at her lousy chickens, at the empty barn, and doesn’t say anything.

  “I can’t stay here anymore!” I cry out on the verge of tears. “I just can’t! Who knows who else will die this week!”

  “Stay,” Mom insists. “There’s stuff to eat here. There are pears and apples. The grapes will come into season in a few days.”

  “Yes, child,” Grandma says, “stay. There’s this and that to munch on.”

  “Wait for me,” I start crying. “I’ll go get my things! I’ll be back in a minute! I’m going with you.”

  I run into the house and quickly gather my shorts and tank tops into a bundle. I grab my toothbrush, books, an outdated Soviet tape recorder, and some other stuff.

  I hear my parent’s car, an old Zaporozhets, starting.

  “Wait for me!” I run after them, almost breaking my neck. I come out just in time to catch a glimpse of their car disappearing in the distance.

  “Why did you leave me here?” tears are rolling down my cheeks, like large peas.

  Suddenly my cow Daisy appears. She bends her front legs and I jump onto her back.

  “Go Daisy! Run after that car!”

  Daisy gallops like a good horse. I am bouncing on her back, the wind tussles my hair and dries out my eyes. I look like a louse on horseback.

  “Daisy, we can’t stay here! It’s a graveyard, not a village! I can’t help these people!”

  The little Basilyovskys run out of their yard doing a little happy dance.

  “She died! Our aunt died!” they yell.

  “How nice,” I say to them and ride on.

  “I’m ready for a snack,” Daisy tells me, turning her head. “I won’t catch up with the car unless I have a bite to eat.”

  I tear off a piece of my thigh and toss it into Daisy’s mouth.

  The parents notice us approaching their car. Mom says to Dad:

  “Go faster! They’ve almost caught up with us.”

  “I can’t go faster,” Dad answers irritably. “The gas tank is leaking.”

  “Daisy! We can do it, sweetie! We can pass them!” I yell victoriously. “Turns out it feels really great not wearing any underwear! Come on, Daisy! We’re leaving them behind! We’re running away!”

  “Oh, Tania,” Daisy giggles flirtatiously, “we’re so crazy! So crazy!”

  TRANSLATED FROM UKRAINIAN BY

  OKSANA MAKSYMCHUK AND

  MAX POPELYSH -ROSOCHYNSKY

  [SPAIN: CASTILIAN]

  ELOY TIZÓN

  The Mercury in the Thermometers

  Oh my sweet, sweet, sweet aunt from out in the provinces, my aunt of gauzy curtains always drawn, of lovely delicate needlework, treats from the confectioner just off the square, and missionary nephews in Africa, oh my dear aunt, with her parish Masses, her well-ironed petticoats, her balconies overlooking the main plaza with its convents and children dressed up for their First Communion, and the sun shines equally bright on children and convents, a small round table, little to eat, little to drink, much suffering, the little foot of widowhood, and the framed photograph of her treasurer husband in a factory where they made porcelain boxes, forty years of selfless, devoted marriage to Uncle Roque, that gentleman, oh my aunt, always on Sunday, so tiny, so hardworking, a merit badge, candied fruit, tidy cupboards, and rice pudding. Her eyes were always moist and she always seemed to be sniffling about something. Why? Nobody knew why. She was tidy. Sensitive to the cold. Smoke-colored hair. She survived on practically nothing, a grape, a tiny glass of mistelle, a sliver of cheese under a glass bell, on the mystery of her own age. She belonged to a congregation of the Sisters of Charity who organized benefit raffles and living nativity scenes. She was the only one who remembered the exact date of each one of our birthdays, and every year without fail she sent—by mail—a package to our house in the city, prepared with loving care, with something sweet and oily inside, a box of shortbread dusted with powdered sugar, or a whole selection of those little
iced cakes called mantecados. After a few reluctant nibbles, they sat for months and months getting stale in the pantry, until suddenly someone got sick of seeing them there and tossed them into the trash can.

  Oh, my sainted aunt, we had her address and we knew that she lived on that exact street, above that pharmacy, and one cold, sunny winter day we decided to visit her in her provincial home, and we showed up unannounced, and you didn’t seem surprised to see us and received us on the threshold, chewing on something small, my dear aunt, I think it was an apple, smaller than normal, half an apple, or even less, a third, and extremely round. So there you were, Auntie, among your spare, spindly furniture, gnawing on your strange fruit, just as if you were gnawing on your provincial existence, and quietly clucking your tongue. On the floor, the doormat said Welcome. We took turns wiping our feet. We exchanged kisses at the door. Come in, come in. And in we came.

  Her house. This way. The hallway. Careful. Oh. We bumped into each other. We apologized. Doors opened and closed, doors that seemed, how to put it, like married life. Cushions embroidered with cats. The sound of clocks ticking. Chimes, ringing, tinkling, whirring, it was almost embarrassing to speak out loud, our aunt leading the way, we tiptoed along the hallway as if in fear of never arriving or of disturbing the air, of profaning it, and all the knickknacks danced happily around us as a sign of welcome, lace tablecloths, photographs, sideboards, china cabinets, mirrors, like dogs crowding around to sniff at our hands.

  And one room led to another, and the ceilings slid smoothly backward, each moment more quickly, more slowly, with their heavy drapes and clustered chandeliers, switched on or off, there was a pedestal table in our way, we had to dodge it, and a gelatinous light flickering at the end of the hallway. Or at least it seemed that way to us. We had to push through that heavy rarefied air, thick with oxygen breathed in days gone by, with overcoat sleeves, terra-cotta pots, lichens, carnivorous plants, Malaysian jungles, conifer forests, islands of melted lead, volcanoes in eruption, what an odyssey. And after all that: a wingback armchair.

  Here it is, said our aunt. And added, by way of explanation: All month I’ve been wanting to buy myself a pencil.

  Everything there was on a reduced scale, the chair, the table, the books (there were none). The cat, curled up into a ball on the carpet, looked like a mouse. Floating inside a bottle, suspended, a dried sea horse. A cuckoo clock (tick) pecked away at the time (tock).

  We went in, ducking our heads, to the room reserved for receiving nieces and nephews. We took up the whole three-seater sofa and still needed more room. Squeeeeeze in. Next, our aunt asked us about our health and the four of us responded in one voice that we were all well, very well. And would we like anything to drink, and we asked for coffee, coffee. Then our aunt disappeared from sight, swallowed up by the kitchen, and after a laborious rattling and banging and clattering she came back bearing a tiny toy coffee pot, trickling stream, our aunt dragging her feet along the hallway as if hauling a locomotive on her back, hunched like a cyclist, pedaling like a drunken soldier, gibbous, her face twitching with tics. She stretched a cloth atop the lace table mat. White. She ironed it with her edge of her hand. Taking her time. Next, she took out, from who knows where, a little cardboard tray with four sweets, some tiny, sticky egg-yolk confections named for who-knows-what saint, as she told us, and a bottle of thick, monastic liquor, from which she poured out a thimbleful of nothing, a shadow of color, into some minuscule glasses.

  There we were, face to face with our aunt. Our aunt staring back at us. In her provincial house above the pharmacy. Without knowing very well what to say to us, what to do, how to survive. We breathed with difficulty. We forgot to fill our lungs with air. We stared at our knees until we got dizzy: enough already. And we were starting to regret a little having come to pay this visit. We Fierros are like that. An inconsistent bunch. We want one thing, then we don’t want it. We want something else. The same thing always happens to us.

  The TV set’s paunchy screen, switched off, showed a curved reflection of the room with us inside it. Our aunt scolded us: “None of you ever remember your old auntie anymore,” she told us. And we—playing dumb—protested with our mouths full of marzipan cookies, well yes, well no, that the proof of it was that we were sitting right there on the three-seater sofa, the four of us together at that exact moment. We coughed. And, to banish any doubts, we held up our hands with our palms facing out.

  Someone pointed to a painting of some fishermen hanging on the wall and our aunt settled the matter: “It’s a sailing picture.” Next question. We surveyed that cluttered multicolored mixture of planes, textures, surfaces, odors, and in the middle of it all: our aunt. Our provincial aunt. Dorotea Fierro. Seated with her back to the light. So far away. More remote than a lighthouse far out at sea. We located, after a certain effort, the teaspoons. We used them to stir the … coffee? We chewed the thick pulpy strands of candied pumpkin, called … angel hair? We swallowed the … liquor? After all that, we sat quietly, drifting in our thoughts, with a monastic flavor in our mouths, each one of us alone with ourselves, thinking about our own filthy lives.

  Silence, as if an angel had passed through the room.

  “Are you cold?”

  “Hmmh?”

  “If you’re all cold?”

  “No, no. Not cold. What makes you think that?”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yes, yes, very sure.”

  “Ah, good. Because if not … ”

  Our aunt sighed. Our aunt always sighed, with or without a reason. Throughout her whole life, our aunt, Dorotea Fierro, had done nothing but sigh and cross herself over everything and step out onto the balcony and wrap herself in the fine light touch of gray wool and attend burials and religious processions and do needlework with a honeycomb stitch and be the widow of Uncle Roque, that gentleman, and chew efficiently, in front of visitors, little pieces of fruit. She didn’t go out much. She only attended, on occasion, some choral and dance festivals. Our aunt said that she had no liking for buzzing about here and there for no reason, no, she wasn’t like one of those pious women who spend the whole day in church, competing to see who can pray faster, none of that, she went to Mass once a week, at most, thank you. Not her. She went from her house to the market and from the market back to the house. You wouldn’t get her out for any other reason. God is a very serious thing, not to be taken as a joke, said Aunt Dorotea, you must not try to wear him down, said our aunt, it’s not good to test God’s patience.

  Other subjects. Age. The years. Time.

  Oh, children, at my age the years fly by and time is unforgiving. We count coffins instead of birthdays.

  Oh, she had been young once, too, what were we thinking, at one time she too had done some foolish things with her friends, like making prank phone calls to strangers or drinking carbonated beverages.

  Silence.

  That provincial city with its red cathedral. Black. Oblong. Slow. With towers that trembled against the watery sunset and gothic belfries filled with the sound of identical birds and amplified music. A cathedral that was not one but thousands, tirelessly repeated in the changing images on gaudy tourist postcards sold for a few coins at all hours, everywhere, along the damp archways and colonnades with drawings in schoolroom chalk and the echo of children’s voices scurrying downstairs, toward the river, which is always on the left-hand side as you go down, you can’t miss it.

  And the cathedral grew and grew, enormous, it didn’t stop growing taller and crashing down upon its stones, high as a tide, curved and wet, awash in the green waves of its stained-glass windows and its murmuring masses. Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. Its walls of living rock guarded, in an urn, the relics of some local martyr capable of working a miracle, of restoring eyesight to the blind, let’s say, and there they were, in the urn, the martyr’s tiny little bones.

  And it smelled like wax (and a little bit like cocoa), the smell of the melted candles floated along the whole street, it p
ermeated people’s clothes and slipped into the shops selling salted fish and pickles, it stormed the Athenaeum, where an usher sat snoozing between plaster busts, it crossed the gardens made not so much of trees and plants as memory and the past, it filtered beneath the doors toward the convent tables set with a still life composed of a white tablecloth, a loaf of bread, a jar of water, and the very whitest hardboiled egg, as if just freshly painted: supper. And the whole valley ate supper at the same time, the kitchens bubbling with spirited activity and conversations and not a soul in sight on the provincial city’s deserted cobblestone plazas, not one single passerby, the wind scurrying across them, hastening the flight of a newspaper page, a bandstand moaned with loneliness, nobody, only once in a while the sight of a cat’s sharp cinematic shadow flowing along the wall or the last old pious churchgoing woman hurrying home, God help us, coming back late from the doctor, having her blood pressure checked. And after a little while the lights of some balconies began to flicker and go out and the creaking of bedsprings was heard and the dream that pulled down the sleepers’ eyelids took possession of everyone and everything.

  Our visit was drawing to a close. Our aunt stood up from her rocking chair, smoothed her completely white hair, as white as powder, and suddenly time pounced backwards like a lynx, and for an instant she was once again young Dorotea from the past, happy, tender, skittish, the young girl who was afraid of the mercury in the thermometers, with blonde braids and stockings, on her wedding day with Uncle Roque, that gentleman, and she was neither alive nor dead, the one who coddles us, who spoils us, who indulges all our whims and silly outbursts, who gives us presents, sticker albums and superhero comics, who teaches us to read and write and ride bicycles, who cures our cuts and bruises with iodine and saliva, be-cured-you-shall-of-frog’s-bad-spell-if-not-all-cured-today-tomorrow-good-and-well, who dries the tears we squandered on an unlucky love, who consoles us, who makes us laugh, who blows our noses and then, with a slap on the bottom, sends us back out to the garden, upsy daisy, go get some sunshine, to go play with our cousins. But first she squeezes us tight in her perfumed arms, which produces in us the bittersweet sensation of being hugged by a wild rosebush.