Best European Fiction 2013

by Unknown

  “I was in the Eye of the Maples, nothing’s scary after that.”

  I had no idea what she was talking about, but I understood that if I was worth something, I had to get there.

  “Maybe you could take me there?” I asked.

  “Me? I can’t. The Leader will invite you, when he decides that you can go.” She smiled strangely. “But at that moment you probably won’t want to go there anymore.”

  “Of course I’ll want to go there!” I said. I couldn’t let her think that I was a chicken.

  “They all say that.”

  The children called Saulius, the oldest boy in the house of the Davydas brothers, the Leader. He had just turned fourteen. He was the only one of all the children who was tan and not too thin. Saulius had a single blue spot on his forehead. He looked as though he was the chosen one. The first day, when I had just arrived, Saulius came up to me in the garden and asked with a inquisitive look:

  “Your name?”

  I looked back at him, confused. “I asked, what’s your name?”

  “Kasparas,” I replied suspiciously.

  “Hello, Kasparas. I’m the Leader here. You can come to me for everything. You understand?”

  “Um, okay,” I said. I didn’t really understand what was going on. He was already turning away, but then he turned back, as if remembering something, and said, almost mockingly:

  “Your parents lied to you, you know.”

  “What?” Nothing was making sense to me.

  “You’ll never leave here. Children are left here at the house of the Davydas brothers to die.”

  “No way,” I said.

  “I know what I’m talking about.”

  And he left. I walked around the garden for a long time afterward and chewed on the juicy white sour apples. I was certain, somehow, that he was telling the truth. I suppose that’s why I respected the Leader from the very first day.

  The Eye of the Maples, the yellow one, my old friend,

  I remember like it was yesterday. Already on my first night I noticed that something was going on. Around two in the morning I heard thumping steps down below. On the fifth night Vainius went out again. He quietly dressed in the darkness, and afterward, almost without a sound, slipped out of the room and went downstairs.

  I didn’t sleep, I was waiting for him to return. It was maybe half past three when he slipped back into our room. The air was filled with a pungent, unfamiliar smell. I opened my eyes for a second and our glances met. A cold eye glowing in the dark. His blond hair wet, Vainius was shivering all over. I don’t know why, but I closed my eyes then and pretended to be asleep, pretended that I hadn’t seen anything, or heard anything—if there was anything to have seen or heard.

  In the morning we didn’t even discuss it. He was very happy. His eyes simply glowed with an incomprehensible light. I was itching to ask where he’d gone at night, but I already knew that you didn’t do that sort of thing at the house of the Davydas brothers. I just needed to wait a little longer—the Eye of the Maples would show herself.

  We were given strange medicine. Three times a day we had to drink one glass of it. “The brown water,” Ofelija called it. And it was indeed a translucent brown liquid, like tea. I still feel its sweet, acrid taste now.

  I had just finished my last glass of the day as the Leader passed by in the cafeteria. He put his hand on my shoulder, looking at nothing in the distance, and whispered in my ear:

  “This night you will come with us to the Eye.”

  And then he left, as if nothing had happened. Vainius looked at me conspiratorially and said, “It will be interesting.”

  And she came,

  we woke up at the same time and dressed quietly. Then we left, our steps thumping, we went downstairs, and the Leader took out a key and gently opened the door. It was cold outside, and there was steam coming out of our mouths. It was almost like an autumn night. Someone said, “Faster, faster.” We ran, and my heart was beating as loudly as our steps in the night.

  The Leader stopped running, and we slowed down to a walk. No one spoke. There were ten of us, and Ofelija was not there. Only boys. The smell of bonfires wafted from the fields, and we stepped into a fir grove. I was barefoot, and my feet were aching from the dew and sharp fir needles. You could see the Milky Way, and the forest was full of the pale light of the night. However, as we went deeper into the black foliage, there was only one thought running through my mind—“Fool, where are you going?”

  My jeans were already wet to the knees,

  the fir trees began to thin out, and a forest of yellow maple opened up in front of us. Like a park. The ruins of a house and a well could be seen. I still avoid abandoned houses now, because I always feel as though I’ve broken in, as though I’m soiling something holy with my presence.

  It was already there, waiting for me, the Eye of the Maples,

  smaller than our little room in the attic. I don’t know another word—not a lake and not a pond, an eye, an eye, an eye,

  black water surrounded by yellow maples.

  Then the Leader said:

  “Tonight, Kasparas will dive.”

  My heart sank. I didn’t understand what he had in mind.

  “You have to dive to the bottom and take a handful of sand,” he said, as if reading my mind.

  “But Leader, it’s his first time here,” Vainius interrupted.

  “Do it,” he said curtly.

  I had never been so scared in all my life. It’s hard to explain. You’d need to see that black water, you’d need to feel that ice, freezing your bones. I felt entirely alone. Everyone fell quiet, watching expectantly. There was nowhere to run to. I had to dive,

  and I dove in, I jumped with my head down. I opened my eyes, but it was so dark under the water that I could only grope around. But there was nothing to grope. I swam deeper still, but was running out of air. Even then I knew that if I didn’t want to drown, I’d need to turn around while I still had enough air to swim out again. But there was no bottom. Just black water. My head started to spin, and after giving up, I began to rise to the surface. I climbed out gasping for air, there was that terrible sound, lungs hysterical, aaaaa aaaaa aaaaa aaaaa aaaaa aaaaa aaaaa. I got sick. Almost crying, I said:

  “You tricked me! It’s bottomless!”

  “If I’d said that it was, you wouldn’t have dived in so deep. But, in fact, it does have a bottom.” His calm tone infuriated me even more.

  “Then show me, if you’re so smart!” I yelled, the disgusting taste of forest water in my mouth.

  “One night, one dive,” he said curtly, and everyone turned to go home.

  I tried to understand, why, what all of this meant, but I couldn’t. I’d never been so angry in all my life—and maybe I’ll never be that angry again. We went quietly, and when I saw the yellow house and larches, suddenly I understood: “But I didn’t die! I’m still alive.”

  September was already creeping up. With mist, painfully green fields, people’s glances getting browner, the drumming of the rain on the roof, the children staring out of the window unthinkingly, the softly dancing dewy white spiderwebs on the junipers and harvested fields, the bloody rowan berries, the smell of putrid leaves, the smoke of bonfires, the sound of falling apples,

  when they fell like that the smell of the grass changed, it blended together with the damp smell of reddish fruit. Everything smelled of autumn, the horizons spread out, the blue contour of the forest and the misty sky passed by slowly, like lazy, even brush strokes in the landscape. It was then that the coming autumn began to scare me.

  I had been at the house of the Davydas brothers receiving treatment for three weeks now; a few days later, the children back home would be starting school. Everything here was so different from what I’d known before: no parents, no sister, no relatives, no friends, no home, no school. Nothing. Though some of the most wonderful and important days of my life were spent in that house. It was as though the house of the Davydas brothers was under a
spell. You won’t ever return, you won’t ever return rang in my head.

  And one morning Vainius woke me up, he was so excited that I could hardly understand what he was saying. Only his eyes were clear: burning like they never had before, as if triumphant following some victory. He was holding a bottle in his hand, full of some kind of liquid, and I, having just awoken from sleep, didn’t understand at first what it was.

  “Kasparas, they duped us! There isn’t any medicine! Look, it’s identical to the stuff in the pool, the Wolves have been giving us the damn water of the Eye to drink!” It seemed like he had twenty birds flapping their wings in his lungs, and he might explode right there.

  The smell of water from the forest thinned out in the room, and I understood that Vainius was telling the truth. We started to laugh. We laughed so hard that it seemed like our last joke. Vainius fell onto the ground and simply rolled around from laughter, doubled over. He repeated, “I’m going to die, I’m going to suffocate, I can’t anymore,” tears were running down my face, but I couldn’t stop either, hell, it was the same damn water from the Eye, and every time, when I laugh, I remember Vainius, my old friend, his loud, triumphant laugh: eye eye eye eye eye eye eye eeyee.

  He was punished. There was no other way.

  That same evening the Leader invited both of us to go to the Eye. Wading through the pine forest I was hounded by the thought that tonight Vainius would have to dive in. I don’t know why. Both of us had been feeling guilty, though no one else should have known about our discovery; and yet, it seemed that the Leader knew everything, and would now discipline us.

  We stood in a circle around the black, glimmering eye, and after a good long silence, he said ceremoniously:

  “This night Vainius will dive in.”

  I hated the Leader for those words. My heart was beating, my legs were shaking, it wasn’t in my power to stop it. I wanted to shout, “You bastard, you’re doing this on purpose, you want to kill us,” but I kept quiet. I apologized to my friend in my thoughts; I knew that I couldn’t help him. Vainius, forgive me, you understand, I don’t have the right to help you, you are alone. You have to jump. That silence. And the black water.

  Vainius turned to me, smiled, and said:

  “Bye, friend.”

  He dove in so gently. This was the second time that I’d been to the Eye. It’s only now that it’s clear to me how horrible it was to see what I saw. I counted in my head: one, two, three … thirty, thirty-one … seventy … ninety-two …

  I don’t like this, I wanted to shout to Vainius, but I understood how stupid that would have been … one hundred thirty …

  I was about to jump into the water, but the Leader wrestled me to the ground. I could feel the damp grass on my face, and hot acrid blood ran from my lip. He said, “Don’t you dare.”

  Silence, the kind of silence you can only hear near the Eye of the Maples. About five minutes had passed. I was already sobbing, my whole body was shaking, I dug into one phrase and repeated it obsessively: “We killed him, we killed him, we killed him.” I didn’t see anything around me. It started to rain, I returned to my empty room in the attic completely soaked. I howled the whole night. I hated myself. I hated everything.

  I woke up well after noon. There was a sweet, yellowish autumn light that filled the room. I heard voices outside, someone was crying out joyously over and again, “Come, come here, look at this, a miracle, a miracle, my God, a miracle, heyyyyyyyyyyyyyy, eeeeeeeeeeeveryooooooonneee.”

  I stuck my head out the window. I thought that I must be dreaming. There was a maple with yellowing leaves in the yard. I ran outside and was struck dumb. I stood bolted to the ground, entranced. A huge, beautiful yellow maple. Vainius sat on a branch high above. He was naked. Smiling. He was swinging his legs. He was so thin and pale. He was white now all over, even his feet.

  I was speechless. “Vainius, my old friend, the Eye of the Maples took my voice …” The Davydas brothers came, and I heard, “What on earth … ?”

  By the afternoon many people had come. “It’s a miracle,” they said, “that maple was never there before.” The parents of all the children came. Only the Leader’s parents weren’t there. My crying mother hugged me: “My child, you’re healed,” she shouted. It was only then I saw that everyone was as white as Vainius. As if that night the autumn mist had wiped away the sad, blue wounds.

  Paulius lifted Vainius out of the tree and wrapped something around him. I never saw him again. Just that last glance. Paulius carried him away thrown over his shoulder, because he was struggling, not wanting to go. I still hear now how Vainius triumphantly exclaimed:

  “Friend, there are only rocks on the bottom!”

  Afterward, a sudden, happy return home followed, but in reality it wasn’t all that much fun—I still thought about Vainius, sitting in the tree, about the confused Leader, looking at the parents of the other children, about Ofelija, so calm and courageous, about our strange doctors and the house where I spent so much time, where you could hear the thumping steps of the children in the night and the whispers near your door, where laughter and clinking glasses echoed in the cafeteria, where we drank the sweetish water of the Eye, where everything seemed strange and mysterious, where your past life didn’t count, and the only thing that could help you survive was the strength that was hidden inside you.

  My thoughts went on living in the house of the Davydas brothers for a number of months. I wanted to find Vainius and Ofelija, but I didn’t have a thing to work with, no telephone numbers, no addresses, no last names. Later it started to seem that none of it had happened, but even now, after many years, I sometimes wake from my sleep at two in the morning, as if about to be summoned to the Eye. I am sitting in a dark room, heart pounding. I can still see the black water, and fear shackles my bones.

  I was in the Eye of the Maples.

  TRANSLATED FROM LITHUANIAN BY JAYDE WILL

  [BULGARIA]

  RUMEN BALABANOV

  The Ragiad

  1.

  As she was dusting in the kitchen, Nevena Krusteva heard a voice:

  “Oh, woe is me, thrice accursed!”

  Nevena transferred her rag to her other hand, listened carefully, but hearing no more, she continued the job into the entrance hall. The coat rack was massive and collected a lot of dust. Then the voice welled up again.

  Nevena Krusteva listened frozen, cast a frightened glance at her husband’s raincoat, but the wail was not repeated, so she went to dust the living room. The television was white with dust, you could have written your name on the screen, so she went to the kitchen to wash out her rag before proceeding.

  As she wrung it under spurting hot water, the voice cried out again:

  “Ow! It’s unbearably hot!”

  Now Nevena was really scared, she threw down the rag with a shriek and took refuge in the corner. The rag splashed in the sink and cried:

  “Brrr! You couldn’t care less! Straight from boiling hot to freezing cold. I’m not made of steel, you know!”

  It slid up the metal surface of the sink and in one jump landed on the kitchen table, right by the vinegar bottle.

  At last Nevena Krusteva got a grip on herself and managed:

  “How on earth … ?”

  “I don’t know,” the rag replied sadly and practically shriveled on the tablecloth. It fell silent a moment and then asked, “Can I have a sip of the vinegar? I’m parched …”

  Nevena didn’t answer and the rag slithered up and pushed its way down the bottle’s throat. Several noisy sucks later, it swelled up like a sponge.

  “Hrrrrrrrr!” it purred with pleasure. “That’s better now!”

  Nevena remained in the corner, clenched tight, watching the talking rag with staring eyes, not daring to take a step closer.

  “My dear lady,” it continued serenely, “I’m not used to heavy physical labor! And so I would beg you to treat me with more care. I’ll have you know, I’m not just any rag. Until yesterday I was Petraki Nik
olov!”

  This last revelation proved too much for the woman, she clutched her chest and fainted, having first made sure to place a protective hand on the arm of the kitchen chair.

  The rag was not unmoved. It spent some time wondering whether it ought to jump onto Nevena’s forehead. It had heard that vinegar helped with fainting spells …

  2.

  The rest of the day Nevena Krusteva didn’t set foot into the kitchen. She locked herself in the living room and swallowed valerian every hour, waiting for her husband.

  Her husband didn’t grasp the situation immediately. Only after he’d calmed his wife down and got her to sleep in an unfastened dressing gown on the sofa did he open the kitchen door to find the rag hunched defiantly over the sugar bowl.

  “It’s not my fault—what happened!” the rag defended itself right away. “All I said was that, up until yesterday, I wasn’t a rag, I was Petraki Nikolov. That’s the whole truth!”

  With trembling hands Nevena Krusteva’s husband took a bottle of rakia from the fridge and drank two hundred grams in one gulp. He waited for the spirit to flow into his veins before quietly asking:

  “So … Petraki Nikolov?” he lifted his hand and pointed his finger. “It’s you, is it, my friend?”

  “I say, steady on!” the rag was hurt. “Don’t call me friend! After all … I do deserve some respect! And another thing … It’s not good manners to drink on your own when you’ve got guests!”

  The husband thought this over, sat down at the table, and poured a few drops over the rag.

  “Ah, now that makes all the difference!” It relaxed and prepared for conversation.

  While he was listening to its confession, Nevena Krusteva’s husband took so many gulps from the rakia bottle that he scarcely remembered any of the rag’s revelations. He only managed to write down Nikolov’s old address on a scrap of paper.

  Around midnight, the two of them said goodnight. The husband went to lie down in the living room, after locking the kitchen door, just in case, and the rag stayed draped over the sink.