Best European Fiction 2013

by Unknown

  But why did I say “his” client, when I should have said “her”? As a matter of fact, I call them all by their nicknames, which are always feminine. There are seven men, or rather women: Sophia, Ingrid, Macha, Jeanne, Greta, Lauren, and Marylin. They keep their true identities secret; only Madame Zabée and the inspector know. The inspector tried all of them before deciding on Marylin as the only one worthy of taking care of him. I can tell that having been rejected by the inspector is a relief for the others. At the guesthouse, nobody ever says his name, as if to allow him his anonymity. They just call him “the inspector.” As a client, he has a terrible reputation. As an inspector, though, the girls have nothing to complain about. He lets them work without any drama. He’s too attached to Madame Zabée to risk spoiling the relationship with her. It’s impossible to tell who is more indebted to the other.

  Each boarder has a painful history, and each one lives in unstable circumstances. Sophia is originally from Mozambique, Ingrid is Lebanese, Jeanne is from Brazil, Greta comes from Ukraine, Macha from Turkey, Lauren grew up in a Palestinian camp, Marylin was born in the Caucasus. Madame Zabée’s guesthouse is a temporary refuge for each of them. They dream of changing their lives and living somewhere else. They feel close to me since they know my background, even if they lead such different lives. I may be a stranger in their world, but I am nonetheless a part of it since I am the watchman. I never could have imagined that such a thing would happen to me. Before becoming night watchman in Madame Zabée’s guesthouse, I had never met a transvestite. In the Movement, nobody even joked about that kind of thing. And in prison, a transvestite who revealed himself as such would not have survived.

  Even when they exasperate me, I feel fondly toward them. I find them funny, imaginative. They like to act out scenes inspired by cult films whose scripts they know by heart. Their nicknames are a wink to the actress of their dreams. They were born for the stage. I like the provocative way they dress and make themselves up. I like their gestures, their glances, their hoarse and seductive voices. They all borrow one another’s dresses, accessories, and even accents, vocabulary, and roles. They play at resembling one another so that the clients mix them up, or else they’ll change their nicknames just to create pandemonium. They take stimulants and soft drugs to give themselves the courage to face the nighttime clients of the Evening Passage. They certainly don’t work for their own pleasure, I can attest to that. The clients allow themselves total license with the girls, at least to the extent that this is permitted. They spare them nothing. The girls are left to the clients’ mercy. Despite their toughness and their cynicism, they are fragile. And yet, they expose themselves to danger, as if to scorn their own lives.

  Madame Zabée has forbidden hard drugs in her guesthouse. Any boarder who violates the ban is immediately thrown out. She repeats the rule regularly in a solemn tone: “No hard drugs in the guesthouse.” She asked me to keep an eye on the clients and to throw out anyone who’s shooting up, because the serious problems always start with them. It’s on account of this prohibition that the inspector turns a blind eye to the nocturnal activities of the boarders. And if one of the boarders should happen to go into withdrawal, she has only to leave. There’s no shortage of similar guesthouses in the Quartier des Perles. I pretend to enforce Madame Zabée’s orders, but I have no illusions. The residents and their clients do what they want in their rooms; I’m not there to watch them. The important thing is that there is no evidence, and no drama.

  To amuse themselves, the boarders try to seduce me. Marylin is my favorite. She invites me into her room whenever she has a break. She needs to unburden herself. She talks to me about the village in the Caucasus where she was born, which no longer exists because it was bombed on the pretext that it was harboring terrorists. She lost all of her people. Now she has nowhere to go. She goes where chance takes her. Playing at changing her sex is her way of responding to the drama of her life, of mocking her life, all the time. That’s the only thing you can do, she says, shuffle the cards and throw off the game, get dizzy and pretend, and never stop, because that’s when everything would crumble. I never get bored listening to her repeat her stories. I find her magnificent in her sequined dress and the boa thrown around her neck, with her false eyelashes and her platinum hair, lying on her bed where she takes breaks as she waits for a client to call. She rolls her Rs outrageously and everything about her is excessive and alarming. She spends all her money on having dresses made for her that are copies of the ones that Marilyn wore in her classic movies. She wears them for her clients who are Marilyn fans. But she also goes out of her way to botch her impersonation, to ridicule her clients. Deep down, all the way deep down, there’s a small lost girl, softly crying. Marylin may eventually come to identify with her heroine, even if she pretends the contrary. She intimidates me, so I stay in my role of attentive and protective night watchman. I don’t want to take advantage of my position to gain her favors. I also don’t want to incite any jealousy among the other residents. They love each other even as they hate each other. Their complicity does not exclude cruel rivalries.

  Madame Zabée respects them, and perhaps more than that. I don’t know exactly what kind of rapport she has with each of them. She never unveils her true identity, even in her moments of abandon. The boarders are grateful to her. Thanks to her, they can work in good conditions without being harassed by the police. Certain mornings, when the clients have left, and there’s been some small, happy reason to celebrate (a birthday, a holiday, a gift offered by a client, an upcoming trip), there’s suddenly a festive atmosphere at Madame Zabée’s guesthouse. Ingrid and Macha play music to accompany Marylin and Lauren, who take turns singing songs about their villages. Marylin’s was destroyed by a Russian bomb, and Lauren’s was scratched off the map after being razed by Israeli tanks. Their voices rise miraculously, bearing no relationship to their regular tones. When they sing, they seem like twin sisters. Sophia dances a little apart from the others to a melody that she alone can hear. Greta and Jeanne mimic the grotesque mannerisms of their nighttime clients. Madame Zabée appreciates these moments of intimacy with her boarders. She reserves special tendernesses for each girl, like a suitor. She loves spectacle and revelry. Despite my fatigue, I join the party, dressing myself up as the Queen of Sheba and offering extravagant gifts to Greta and Jeanne. Madame Zabée likes my little number. She feels I’ve adapted well and quickly to my work at the guesthouse. It’s been a success; this probationary period has been conclusive. I’ll do just fine as the night watchman.

  When there’s a moment of calm and nobody needs me, I turn on the TV and flip through the foreign news channels. I try to understand the state of the world from which I’ve been severed since my detention at Fort Gabo. What I see is total upheaval, as if all our ideas had drowned in the sea, and the Movement, like an old ship that’s rotted from the inside out, had sunk into the bottomless depths. I feel like I no longer understand anything that’s happening.

  Like Madame Zabée and the other boarders, Marylin is interested in my plans to become a filmmaker. She wants to be an actress in my film. She says that she would prefer acting in a movie to playing the role of Marylin with her clients. Playing around, she begs me: “Please, Diego, write a part for me so that for once in my life I can appear on the screen just as I am and I won’t be forgotten. All the roles that I play here are false. I want finally to play a part that’s mine and that’s still unknown even to me. Please, do it for me.”

  I hear Marylin’s request, which is the same as all the boarders’ and Madame Zabée’s as well. But for the moment I am unable to respond. How could I invent roles for them when I haven’t even started to write my screenplay? As soon as I start to think about it, my mind goes blank. Marylin’s request has come too early. She’ll have to wait. My response saddens her. She tells me that she can’t wait, that she’s in a hurry.

  I am deeply troubled by living surrounded by men who seem to be women. I want each of the boarders, especially M
arylin, even if I don’t let myself act on it. All night, I’m highly aroused. When I see women walk on the streets of Paris, I find them bland. Not one of them holds my attention. Women for me at this moment in time are Madame Zabée’s boarders, and Marylin is their queen.

  Madame Zabée has noticed this attraction. She hasn’t forbidden me from having relations with the boarders, but she does warn me, “Above all, don’t get attached to them, you don’t know where that will lead. I love them all; I wouldn’t rent my rooms to them if I didn’t. But I also know that they’re unbalanced, and that most of them will come to a sad end. My guesthouse is only a way station for them. They stay here for a few months, a year, then they leave, attracted by this or that enticing proposition and by the desire for change. None of them is able to stay put. When I hear news of them, I could cry. But I’m like you, I’m under their spell—I have to endure their appeal. I can’t live without them now. I’ll give you some advice: Make a movie in order to become yourself; if not, you risk losing yourself. Your life so far has hardly been a success. It could finish badly if you don’t take control of it. Nobody can make your film but you. It’s up to you to give yourself the means to do it.”

  Madame Zabée spoke openly with me. It was up to me to think about what she said.

  The inspector comes once a week. He arrives at eight P.M. sharp, when the bells ring eight times at Saint Ursula. He always wears the same outfit, a severe three-piece suit, and everything about his approach is composed, as if none of his gestures were natural and he was afraid to show who he really is. He tries to deceive me. He greets me with a glance, as if I was his accomplice. Accomplice in what? I respond politely but without being friendly. I am instinctively wary of him. As soon as he arrives, the atmosphere in the guesthouse changes, though no one could say exactly how.

  He dines with Madame Zabée in her apartment and spends a good deal of time with her. Then he’s received by Marylin, who keeps him in her room until morning, something she never does for anyone else. When he leaves the guesthouse, he looks disheveled and haggard. It makes me uneasy all day. I try to talk about him with Marylin, but her lips are sealed, undoubtedly because the inspector is a client that Madame Zabée referred to her in particular. Marylin doesn’t call me, the nights she spends with him. She doesn’t need anything. There’s no noise from her room. Everything happens in utmost secrecy. The inspector acts like a man obsessed.

  I told Marylin what I think of him, at the risk of displeasing her. She shrugged her shoulders and replied, “Soon it will all be over. What good is it to stick your neck out and cause trouble? Take advantage of the time that I’m here, instead of thinking of the inspector.” I don’t know why, but her response saddened me deeply.

  One day, at noon, I wake up a little earlier than usual. Without thinking what I’m doing, I knock on Marylin’s door. She had still been sleeping. She opens the door for me, half asleep, and she takes me in her arms without saying a word, leading me over to the bed. I close my eyes and give myself to her as if I were a man in the arms of a woman in the midst of becoming a man while I in turn am metamorphosing into a woman. Marylin, she’s like Cinderella’s glass slipper that I somehow lost. She fits my foot exactly. But unlike Cinderella, I only wear a single shoe.

  From then on, I continue going to wake up Marylin and make love with her just before breakfast. She doesn’t give me a lot of time, as though she's on the clock, or as though she just didn’t want me to get too attached to her. She’s happy to give me pleasure, she likes my company, but she certainly isn’t attached to me. For her, I’m only a friendly and kind night watchman, nothing more. She never speaks to me again of her desire to act in my film, as though she no longer believes in my plans. How could a night watchman at Madame Zabée’s guesthouse manage to make a movie? It’s just a dream that he has to help him get through life. I try not to think about anything other than the moment that I spend with her each day. It’s a singular experience, calling everything that I’ve ever been into question.

  TRANSLATED FROM FRENCH BY KATINA ROGERS

  [LITHUANIA]

  IEVA TOLEIKYTĖ

  The Eye of the Maples

  It was my parents who brought me to the house of the Davydas brothers. My mother found out about the Davydas brothers from my aunt. It was already well into autumn, in the mornings the fields were flooded with a sticky fog, and the light quietly glided through it to the damp August grass. I had just turned nine—my father, hiding in the kitchen, would cry at night, as they thought I would not live to see autumn. My sister started to be afraid of me, and even avoided touching me. No one knew yet if Clavin’s disease was infectious. I often remember the wet, velvet eyes of my mother—“Our child isn’t going to die, she’s just scaring us.” It wasn’t clear how I’d gotten sick. Clavin’s disease is one of the most mysterious maladies on earth. The blue disease—an old friend of mine. It’s very hard to catch in time, or rather, it’s very hard to convince yourself that you’re sick in the first place. I only realized in January that my neck was turning blue. Slowly. At the beginning it just seemed like a bruise, like blue streams were flowing under the skin. It didn’t hurt at all.

  When they brought me to the Davydas brothers, my neck was as blue as an azure stone, as if my it had been soaked with ink. I remember that I was calm, that day. During the trip, Mama let me sit in the front seat, and Vijole· , my sister, was angry because of that. We always fought over the front seat. There the road opened up right in front of your eyes, and you felt almost grown-up.

  The house of the Davydas brothers is outside of town. It’s a wooden, three-story house painted yellow, drowning among hundred-year-old, bluish-green larch trees. Next to the walls of the house, the blossoms of huge, reddish hollyhocks swayed, and the grass was mowed. I can still see it: in the windows there were many white, thin children’s faces. I saw that my mother was afraid; after stepping out of car she said cheerily, “It’s really very beautiful here,” but she tried not to look at the windows.

  We went inside, and my father was carrying a small suitcase; he didn’t let me carry it. I got angry, I didn’t want anyone in this house to think that I was weak or spoiled. Two graying men met us, Paulius and Matas Davydas. They were dressed simply, in jeans, and at the beginning I thought that they were also someone’s parents, but they introduced themselves to my parents, and I realized that I was mistaken. Inside it smelled of sage and wood, everything caught my eye because it was new, unknown, and I almost didn’t hear what everyone was talking about, until the thinner man said, “Goodness, what a blue little neck,” and shivers ran up my spine when he touched my bluing skin. The Davydas brothers, my mother, father, and even Vijole· smiled. Looking at them I thought that I would certainly die.

  Saying good-bye, my father kissed me on the forehead, and I felt ashamed. He’d never behaved like this before. I saw that my mother didn’t want to go, she was afraid to leave me here, but my father took my mother by the hand unequivocally, and they left.

  The Davydas brothers were the only ones who treated children with Clavin’s disease in our town. As far as I know, they weren’t doctors. They were herbalists, Paulius and Matas, with dark blue eyes, and black hair going gray. It looked almost silver because of the white strands. The brothers reminded me of shriveled wolves, forever stuck in winter. And then I was unnerved when I found out that the other children called them the Wolves, in private.

  Paulius brought me to the attic room. There were two narrow wooden beds, a small table, a lamp, an old and small cabinet that had absorbed the smells of the past, and a small white bookshelf with a few books on it. A soft light flooded through the window. You could hear children playing in the yard. My new roommate was reading a book in bed and acted as if I wasn’t even there.

  “Vainius, say hi to your new roommate, Kasparas,” Paulius said happily.

  He shut his book, looked at me for maybe half a minute, and I remembered that my mother called those kind of eyes amber—she says, “Look, that chil
d has amber eyes like a bird’s!”—Vainius looked very weak, so thin, pale, but in those eyes were the little flames of a strange insolence. The feet sticking out of his jeans were bright blue.

  “Welcome,” he said.

  That August there were thirty-nine children being treated in the house of the Davydas brothers: thirty boys and nine girls. All were about the same age. Some of them had spots that were quite small, while others frightened even me with their scars. “My poor little blue children,” Matas would repeat, while rolling a cigarette, but on the first floor, in the room with the window to the apple orchard, there was an eleven year-old girl with blue palms. Blonde, with small bones, with extremely thin wrists, watery eyes, she amazed me with her indifference toward everything. It was as though she didn’t see the blue skin. She hardly talked with anyone, and sometimes the boy they called “the Leader” would make fun of her, but she, Ofelija, simply didn’t react. This fascinated me to no end.

  One day I asked her why she wasn’t afraid of anything. She told me: