Best European Fiction 2012

by Aleksandar Hemon

  A second reason for his nickname was because he was an expert in Irish and the paper-covered Irish dictionary was penned by an Seabhac—the Hawk.

  Father Edward J. Flanagan from Ballymoe, North Galway, who founded Boys Town in Omaha and was played by Spencer Tracy, came to Ireland in 1946 and visited Glin Industrial School.

  The Seabhac gave him a patent hen’s egg, tea in a cup with blackbirds on it, Dundee cake on a plate with the same pattern.

  Billser used to cry salty tears when he remembered Glin.

  Michaela’s grandfather Torrie had been in the British Army and the old British names for places in Limerick City kept breaking into his conversation—Lax Weir, Patrick Punch Corner, Saint George’s Street.

  Cuzzy and Kennedy met at a Palaestra—boxing club.

  Cuzzy was half-Brazilian.

  “My father was Brazilian. He knocked my mother and went away.”

  “Are you riding any woman now?” he asked Kennedy, who had rabbit-coloured pubes, in the showers.

  “You have nipples like monkey fingers,” Kennedy said to Cuzzy, who had palomino-coloured pubes, in the showers.

  The coach, who looked like a pickled onion with tattoos in the nude, was impugned for messing with the teenage boxers. HIV Lips was his nickname.

  “Used to box for CIE Boxing Club,” he said to himself, “would go around the country. They used to wear pink-lined vests, and I says no way am I going to wear that.”

  “He sniffed my jocks. And there were no stains on them,” a shaven headed boxer who looked like a defurred monkey or a peeled banana reported in denunciation of him.

  A man who had a grudge against him used to scourge a statue of the Greek boxer Theagenes of Thasos until it fell on him, killing him.

  The statue was thrown in the sea and fished up by fishermen.

  Barrenness came on the country which the Delphic Oracle said wouldn’t be removed until the statue was restored.

  In the Palaestra was a poster of John Cena with leather wrappings on his forearm like the Terme Boxer—Pugile delle Terme—a first-century BC copy of a second-century BC statue which depicted Theagenes of Thasos.

  John Cena in black baseball cap, briefs showing above trousers beside a lingering poster for Circus Vegas at Two Mile Inn—a kick-boxer in mini-bikini briefs and mock-crocodile boots.

  Kennedy and Cuzzy were brought to the Garda Station one night when they were walking home from the Boxing Club.

  “They’ll take anyone in tracksuits.”

  Cuzzy, aged sixteen, was thrown in the girls’ cell.

  Kennedy was thumped with a mag lamp, a telephone book used to prevent his body from being bruised.

  Cuzzy was thumped with a baton through a towel with soap in it.

  A black guard put his tongue in Kennedy’s ear. A Polish guard felt his genitals.

  Kennedy punched the Polish guard and was jailed.

  Solicitors bought parcels of heroin and cocaine into jail.

  Youths on parole would swallow one eight heroin and €50 bags of heroin, thus sneak them in.

  One youth put three hundred diazepam, three hundred steroids, three ounces of citric in a bottle, three needles up his anus.

  Túr Cant for anus.

  Ríspún Cant for jail.

  Slop out in mornings.

  Not even granule coffee for breakfast. Something worse.

  Locked up most of the day.

  One youth with a golf-ball face, skin-coloured lips of the young Dickie Rock, when his baseball cap was removed a pronounced bald patch on his blond head, had a parakeet in his cell.

  Cuzzy would bring an adolescent Alsatian to the Unemployment Office.

  Then he and Kennedy got a job laying slabs near the cement factory at Raheen.

  Apart from work, Limerick routine.

  Drugs in cling-foil or condoms put up their anuses, guards stopping them—fingers up their anuses.

  Tired of the routine they both went to Donegal to train with AC Armalite rifles and machine guns in fields turned salmon-colour by ragged robin.

  The instructor had a Vietnam veteran pepper-and-salt beard and wore Stars and Stripes plimsolls.

  The farmer who used to own the house they stayed in would have a boy come for one month in the summer from an Industrial School, by arrangement with the Brothers.

  The boy used to sleep in the same bed as him and the farmer made him wear girl’s knickers.

  In Kennedy’s room was a Metallica poster—fuschine bikini top, mini-bikini, skull locket on forehead, fuschine mouth, belly button that looked like deep cleavage of buttocks, skeleton’s arms about her.

  “It was on Bermuda’s island

  That I met Captain Moore . . .”

  “It’s like the Albanians. They give you a bit of rope with a knot at the top.

  Bessa they call it.

  They will kill you or one of your family.

  You know the Albanians by the ears. Their ears are taped back at birth.

  And they have dark eyebrows.

  I was raised on the island.

  You could leave your doors open. They were the nicest people.

  Drugs spoiled people.”

  Weston where Kennedy grew up was like Bedford-Stuyvesant or Brownsville, New York, where Mike Tyson grew up, his mother, who died when he was sixteen, regularly observing him with clothes he didn’t pay for.

  Kennedy once took a €150 tag off a golf club in a Limerick store, replaced it with a €20 tag, and paid for it.

  As a small boy he had a Staffordshire terrier called Daisy.

  Eyes a blue-coast watch, face a sea of freckles, he let the man from Janesboro who sucked little boys’ knobs buy him 99s—ice cream cones with chocolate flakes stuck in them, syrup on top—or traffic-light cakes—cakes with scarlet and green jellies on the icing.

  He’d play knocker gawlai—knock at doors in Weston and run away.

  He’d throw eggs at taxis.

  Once a taxi driver chased him with a baseball bat.

  “I smoked twenty cigarettes a day since I was eleven.

  Used to work as a mechanic part time then.

  I cut it down to ten and then to five recently. My doctor told me my lungs were black and I’d be on an oxygen mask by the time I was twenty.

  I’m nineteen.”

  The youth in the petrol-blue jacket spoke against the Island on which someone on a bicycle was driving horses.

  A lighted motorbike was going up and down Island Field.

  We were on the Metal Bridge side of the Shannon.

  It was late afternoon, mid-December.

  “They put barbed wire under the Metal Bridge to catch the bodies that float down. A boy jumped off the bridge, got caught in the barbed wire and was drowned.

  They brought seventeen stolen cars here one day and burned all of them.”

  There were three cars in the water now, one upside down, with the wheels above the tide.

  “When I was a child my mother used to always be saying, ‘I promised Our Lady of Lourdes. I promised Our Lady of Lourdes.’

  There’s a pub in Heuwagen in Basel and I promised a friend I’d meet him there.

  You can get accommodation in Paddington on the way for €20 a night. Share with someone else.”

  He turned to me. “Are you a Traveller? Do you light fires?”

  He asked me where I was from and when I told him he said, “I stood there with seventeen Connemara ponies once and sold none of them.”

  On his fingers rings with horses’ heads, saddles, hash plant.

  His bumster trousers showed John Galliano briefs.

  Two stygian hounds approached the tide followed by an owner with warfare orange hair, in a rainbow hoodie jacket, w
ho called “Mack” after one of them.

  He pulled up his jacket and underlying layers to show a tattoo MAKAVELI on his butter-mahogany abdomen.

  “I got interested in Machiavelli because 2Pac was interested in him. Learnt all about him. An Italian philosopher. Nikolo is his first name. Put his tattoo all over my body. Spelt it Makaveli. Called my Rottweiler-Staffordshire terrier cross breed after him. Mack.

  Modge is the long-haired black terrier.

  Do you know that 2Pac was renamed Tupac Amaru Shakur by his mother after an Inca sentenced to death by the Spaniards?

  In Inca language, Shining Serpent.

  Do you know that when the Florentines were trying to recapture Pisa Machiavelli was begged because he was a philosopher to stay at headquarters but he answered,” and the youth thrust out his chest like Arnold Schwarzenegger for this bit, “that he must be with his soldiers because he’d die of sadness behind the lines?

  They say 2Pac was shot dead in Las Vegas. There was no funeral. He’s as alive as you or me.

  I’m reading a book about the Kray Twins now.

  Beware of sneak attacks.”

  And then he went off with Mack and Modge singing the song 2Pac wrote about his mother, “Dear Mama.”

  “When I was a child my father used to take me to Ballyheigue every year.

  There’s a well there.

  The priest was saying mass beside it during the Penal Days and the Red Coats turned up with hounds.

  Three wethers jumped up from the well, ran towards the sea.

  The hounds chased them, devoured them and were drowned.

  The priest’s life was spared.”

  They were of Thomond, neither of Munster nor Connaught, Thomond bodies, Thomond pectorals.

  The other occasion I met Kennedy was on a warm February Saturday.

  He was sitting in a Ford Focus on Hyde Road in red silky football shorts with youths in similar attire.

  He introduced me to one of them, Razz, who had an arm tattoo of a centurion in a G-string.

  “I was in Cloverhill. Remand prison near a courthouse in Dublin. Then Mountjoy. You’d want to see the bleeding place. It was filthy. The warden stuck his head in the cell door one day and said, ‘You’re for Portlaoise.’ They treat you well in Portlaoise.”

  “What were you in jail for?”

  “A copper wouldn’t ask me that.”

  A flank of girls in acid-pink and acid-green tops was hovering near this portmanteau of manhood like coprophagous—dung-eating—gulls near cows for the slugs in their dung.

  A little girl in sunglasses with mint green frontal frames, flamingo wings, standing outside her house nearby, said to a little girl in a lemon and peach top who was passing:

  “There are three birthday cards inside for you, Tiffany.”

  “It’s not my birthday.”

  “It is your fucking birthday.”

  And then she began chasing the other girl like a skua down Hyde Road, in the direction of the bus station, screaming, “Happy Birthday to you. Happy Birthday to you.”

  Flowers of the magnolia come first in Pery Square Park near the Bus Station, tender yellow-green leaf later.

  A Traveller boy cycled by the sweet chestnut blossoms of Pery Square Park the day they found Kennedy’s body, firing heaped on his handlebars.

  I am forced to live in a city of Russian tattooists, murderously shaven heads, Rumanian accordionists, the young in pallbearers’ clothes—this is the hemlock they’ve given me to drink.

  The Maigue in West Limerick, as I crossed it, was like the old kettles Kennedy’s ancestors used to mend.

  Travellers used to make rings from old teaspoons and sometimes I wondered if they could make rings from the discarded Hackenberg lager cans or Mr. Sheen All-Surface Polish cans beside the Metal Bridge.

  I am living in the city for a year when a man who looks as if his face has been kicked in by a stallion approaches me on the street.

  “I’m from Limerick city and you’re from Limerick city. I know a Limerick city face. I haven’t seen you there for a while. How many months did you get?”

  [RUSSIA]

  DANILA DAVYDOV

  The Telescope

  Ippelman was extremely lucky. The explosion killed everybody on the bus, the driver, the passengers, everybody except him. His good fortune must have been due to the fact that he was standing by the rear doors intending to get off in a few minutes’ time, and the bomb (if it was a bomb, rather than something else, something even more improbable) was at the front of the bus. Just at the moment Ippelman was thinking about the spirit of competition, there was a sound too loud to be heard, a blinding blaze of light, and the bus evidently toppled over. Ippelman saw green and orange ellipses, felt a stinging pain in his eyes, and fell but did not lose consciousness; instead he submitted to an instinctive craving for survival, his hands found an escape hatch that appeared to have opened specially for him and which flung itself into his arms. Ippelman still had little idea what had happened as he crawled out but, when there was a second explosion behind him (the fire had reached the fuel tank), he saw with extraordinary clarity that he was blind. Most likely slivers of glass had cut his eyes a moment after the explosion, although he wouldn’t have argued if told that his blindness was simply a symptom of concussion; he wasn’t clear about the effect of the blast. I may just be in shock, he told himself, and when I get over it my sight will come back. It wasn’t long, however, before he realized that this wasn’t going to happen. He tried to find out if anybody else had survived, although he was all but certain they were dead; he called out three or four times but there was no response. It was cold. It occurred to Ippelman that he shouldn’t stay there. He should get away. The town limit was about two kilometers away, but without visual clues, walking there wouldn’t be easy. The simplest thing would be to keep to the road, but when he crawled out of the burning bus Ippelman had no idea which side of the road it was laying on. I just need to walk, Ippelman thought, and either I’ll reach the town or a village along the road in the other direction. The main thing was to move, because otherwise he might die. Ippelman had no idea what he might die of, but suddenly thought of blood poisoning and decided that that was what he had to worry about. He tried to stand up, swayed, lost his balance, and sat down; he tried again, got up, took one step and then another. Apart from his eyes the rest of him was in one piece. I’ve got to go, he said out loud to himself. He liked the sound of that and repeated it, as if responding to applause from an imaginary audience which had taken its seats in twilit bushes he could no longer see. He walked for half an hour or so in total silence until he found he was exhausted. He sat down in the middle of the road in the hope of getting a lift from a passing car, but no car passed, there was only an owl looking for prey hooting in the darkness. Not surprising, Ippelman thought, you won’t get a lot of passing cars at two in the morning on a weekday in the middle of the countryside. Now there were two owls, they’d discovered each other and started arguing. Ippelman wasn’t sure whether owls ate human flesh. He knew crows did, but owls didn’t seem to have much in common with crows, and besides, they only came out at night. It got colder. Suddenly he heard a vehicle approaching. It stopped, a door slammed, and the driver crossed to Ippelman, grunted, and gave him a hefty kick that sent him rolling into a ditch, then the driver got back in the car and drove off. Ippelman dragged himself back onto the road and staggered on without knowing which direction he was going in. He walked for a long time, a very long time. On several occasions he collapsed helplessly on the asphalt before resolving again to go on. To his surprise the pain in his eyes was not unbearable, but neither could it be ignored. Ippelman reckoned it would be daybreak soon and, even if he was walking in the wrong direction, a passing car would stop sooner or later not to taunt an injured man but to help him. The thought came to him th
at news about the explosion on the bus must already have reached the forces of law and order, they would certainly be searching for survivors, and he would shortly be found. For some reason, however, he could hear no cars, only small animals squeaking or whimpering in the grass by the side of the road. Ippelman now relaxed and felt an inner calm. Like getting your second wind, he thought. The freshness of the morning, if, of course, it was already morning, seemed paradoxically in harmony with the stinging sensation in his sightless eyes, which, predictably, showed no sign of stopping. He heard a cock crow far away, so it was morning and there must be a village nearby. He felt no joy, only emptiness, of which there was so much that Ippelman overflowed with it and lost consciousness without even noticing. He didn’t notice waking up either, only why—a wet hand touched his forehead. What’s happened to you, a thin voice asked, seeming neither surprised nor scared. Where am I, Ippelman asked, or didn’t so much ask as just say. Here. Ippelman tried to get up but realized he no longer had the strength, and in any case the hay under his back was very comfortable. Lie there, the voice laughed, I’ll bring you some milk. The person ran off. Ippelman heard it clearly, the person was soon back. Drink it. The cold milk was just what Ippelman wanted. You need a bandage, you’re covered in blood. What’s your name? What’s yours? Ippelman, said Ippelman, for some reason very proud that his memory had so clearly registered that he was indeed Ippelman and not anybody else, and then, a moment or two later, he realized he had been thinking aloud and had exultantly shouted out his name and been behaving like a lunatic, a complete lunatic. You think I’m a lunatic, don’t you? I’m Lyokha, the voice said, laughing again. No, do you hear what I’m saying, Ippelman was embarrassed at his loud, unrestrained self-naming. It hurts, that’s why I’m a bit odd. It’s okay, everything’s fine. The boy called Lyokha suddenly put his arms round Ippelman, hugged him, and laughed again. How old are you, Ippelman asked? Granny went off to town yesterday, and then something like this happens. Something like what? You should answer when a grown-up asks you a question. Ippelman’s voice didn’t sound menacing, it wasn’t, you couldn’t have found a hint of schoolmasterishness in it. There was some gauze, I’ll see if I can find it. He ran off again. His grandmother went off to town yesterday, Ippelman thought, and then something like this happened. What does he mean, something like this? He began picturing all kinds of horrors, perhaps even an alien invasion, but not really, lazily, the way he might think back over the latest episode of some low-budget soap opera in bed, just to get bored and fall asleep. Hold your head up a bit, Ippelman hadn’t noticed the boy coming back, I’ll bandage it for you, oh, I forgot the iodine. Have you got iodine? Well, maybe just herbal disinfectant, I’ll go and look—he ran off again, and very soon, unnaturally soon somehow, he was back and lavished a stinging liquid on Ippelman’s eyes. Ippelman swore, but why, he immediately wondered, something stinging on something stinging should have been like a double negative. Do you know what two minuses make? he asked Lyokha. ’Course I do, the boy said, offended by this doubting, and began wrapping a bandage round Ippelman’s head, but without saying it made a plus. What are you doing here? Well, I took a bus to do some stargazing. Why couldn’t you do it in the town, aren’t there any stars there? Ippelman thought for a moment. Well, how can I explain. You can see them there, of course, but there’s a lot of light around, even at night, streetlights, light from windows, that sort of thing, and quite near here there’s a mound with open fields all round it, no trees, no houses, you can see to the horizon in every direction, it’s a good place for looking. What do you want to look at the stars for? The boy’s question might have seemed stupid but Ippelman didn’t think so, quite the opposite. He thought for another moment. You see, I’ve got a telescope, at least I did before the explosion. Do you listen to the radio? Ippelman asked, suddenly anxious, Granny’s got a television. Lyokha stroked Ippelman’s head: how is it, sore? No. It was sore but Ippelman preferred to pretend it was just the iodine stinging and not him demonstrating manly stoicism. What do you need a telescope for? It’s a hobby, something I enjoy doing, I like looking through the telescope, on Saturdays I go into the countryside and look at the stars all night, it makes you feel very peaceful. I’ve discovered a planet, he added proudly. You did! I did. Really? Yes, really. Lyokha pressed up against him once more and kissed him on the forehead. It’s only a little one, of course, five kilometers across, just a large rock in space, but I was the first, so that’s why they called it Ippelman. You know what? Lyokha said, there’s something going on out there, it was on the television, and then you turned up. Space invaders? No, the boy’s voice was very serious, a war, I think. He kissed Ippelman hard and started pulling his pants off. What are you doing, stop it, it’s okay, it’s okay. When they woke, Lyokha said, you lie here in the barn—Ippelman was pleased, he had been sure it was a barn—because Granny may have come back, if she didn’t get hurt like you, or something worse. He ran off. Ippelman decided to think about the stars. The information about a war didn’t upset him, he felt like someone who’s fallen on the field of battle and could now afford to let his thoughts be detached and unworldly, dealing with astronomical magnitudes, but his reflections on astronomy immediately ran off in the wrong direction and Ippelman unintentionally found himself picturing an armada of space invaders, the armada rather than the invaders themselves, because now he was thinking even big individual aliens seemed insignificant compared to a whole galactic flotilla. Granny’s done for, Lyokha said, coming into the barn, want some sausage before they get here? Before who get here? You know, them. What do you mean them? The enemies. Come on, tell me what you heard. Well, they said it was a war. You know, Ippelman struggled to lift his back from the hay, I was just thinking and realized there’s something behind all this. What? The war, the explosions, your grandmother not being back yet, me lying here. What? I think, Ippelman said, getting into his stride, it’s not just a war, it’s a special kind of war. Why? Nothing is ever that simple. Let me change your bandage. Wait will you, there’s time for that later. Ippelman was carried away by the image of global cataclysm and talking with his mouth full of sausage: it’s a takeover, you see, a takeover from space, it’s a very simple plan, nobody will believe it’s happening until they’re here as large as life, taking over everything, and it’s only then people will start coming to their senses, but by then it will be too late. He swallowed the last of the sausage. I think they’ve grabbed everything already, I mean, all the major urban centers, they’ve taken everything into their control. The boy burst out laughing and leaped on top of Ippelman. Hey, take it easy. Helping Ippelman to dress, Lyokha kept saying, you’re weird, you’re really weird, what do you mean aliens, it’s enemies, what are you going on about, there’s nobody in space, I heard it on the television, I bet it’s the Chinese. Yes, Ippelman thought aloud, maybe it’s the Chinese. But, and this he thought just to himself, aliens would make me feel more heroic, so let’s stick with that, and anyway who cares, I’m blind anyway, if they kill me I won’t see it. Lyokha, are you afraid of dying? What, yes, of course. Me too, only I don’t care anymore. He started crying, in spite of the bandage, in spite of his hurt eyes, and it only struck him an hour later or maybe more that crying must mean his eyes were still where they should be, just not working, so there was hope, although, of course, he was no ophthalmologist, he didn’t know the first thing about these things, and he doubted aliens would have field hospitals for treating earthlings. Lyokha pulled his bandage off, licked his tears away, and then the aliens came and took him by the arms and legs and carried him off and put him down somewhere, Ippelman was a bit surprised they just laid him down, very carefully really, and didn’t throw him like food for their extraterrestrial dogs, and then drove away with him, because the place they had taken him was a vehicle, it smelled of fuel, it bumped over the unevenness in the asphalt and then Ippelman started crying again and wanted to know where the boy was, Lyokha, where are you? I love you, don’t you know, I love you. Take it easy, the voice
was unexpectedly human, be brave. They were Chinese, Ippelman thought, feeling humiliated because if they had been aliens there was nothing to be embarrassed about but if they were Chinese it was a different matter altogether, they were like us, not cosmic. What, have you conquered us? Ippelman wailed. This guy’s not right in the head, the voice said. In shock from the pain, said another. No problem, we’ll take him to the district hospital, they’ll sort it out. You bastards, Ippelman wept, you bastards, usurpers, rats. The boy had hidden from the orderlies behind the barn until the ambulance disappeared around the bend and now ran home. Granny, what’s a telescope? You should be given a good beating, that’s what. No, it’s true. Well, I’m sure I don’t know. Granny, is there going to be a war? You’ll get your answer sooner than you think. Granny! Go milk the cow. Granny, who’s stronger, us or the Chinese? Us, of course, what do you think, and if you’re going to be bad I’ll tell your dad and when he comes back he’ll give you a good beating. Granny! But seeing the expression on his grandmother’s face, Lyokha fled from the hut and headed, needless to say, not for the cowshed but to the barn where, hidden under the hay, was that thing that looked like he didn’t know what.