Best European Fiction 2012

by Aleksandar Hemon

  “Always on the road! You know, I’m jealous.”

  “It’s nothing to be jealous of.”

  “No, really! And I’m a teensy weensy bit proud of you. D’you know why?” Your brother drinks his schnapps. “You’re living your dreams.”

  You almost choke on your drink when he says it. A stranger, you think, is what my brother has become to me, and vice versa, the exact same thing. But you’re related, nevertheless, by your bloodline. It stretches between the two of you like an elastic band. You could free yourselves from each other and go your separate ways, but only for a certain distance. You only get so far apart and then the elastic pulls you back together, tighter than ever, just like this evening. And now the two of you are sitting in a bar, only a stool apart, and have nothing to say to each other. And yet it feels good.

  TRANSLATED FROM GERMAN BY GERALD CHAPPLE

  [SPAIN: CATALAN]

  PEP PUIG

  Clara Bou

  This time I was It. I leaned on the mulberry tree, and hiding my head between my arms, I began to count one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten: first slowly and loud, to give everyone a chance to hide—and then faster and in a lower voice. From forty I jumped to fifty, from sixty to seventy and from seventy to eighty. When I turned around, nobody was there.

  There was just the town’s main drag. A street so quiet that for an instant I only heard the crickets chirping. And on the opposite sidewalk, the murmurs of the older folks washed away with the fresh evening air.

  Without moving from my spot, I looked over my surroundings. Maybe one of the gang was too lazy to have run off very far and was hiding nearby, waiting for his chance behind one of the mulberry trees to the side, or laying under the baker’s van or the Mestreprats’ two-cylinder Citroën. Maybe that someone was Clara Bou, who’s recently “become a woman” (as I’d been hearing lately from my grandmother Lola), each time playing the game with less enthusiasm and only waiting for us to call her name so she can sit on the bench and relax. But this night Clara Bou was nowhere to be found.

  Looking continuously around me I crossed the street. But carefully: if someone decides to leave his hiding place, I have to have time to return to the mulberry tree and, knocking three times, call his name. For example: One, two, three, Pere Estevet!

  That summer we were eleven, twelve, maybe thirteen years old. Even though adolescence was approaching, most of us still preferred to go out every night to the street to play our endless, familiar games. Of all the gang, I was the only out-of-towner. My dad had grown up around here, and he was the one who deposited me at my grandparents’ house for a while at the end of every school year, so I wouldn’t be a nuisance at home.

  The street where we played was the Carrer de la Serra, a road so long and wide in comparison with the others that, as they say, it was in effect the only one in town. Like the banks of a river, there were two quite distinct sides. On one—which looked west, which is to say to Montserrat (for this it was called the “Serra Road”)—the main houses of the town were arrayed: the carpenter’s house, the Mestreprats’, the barber’s, the shoemaker’s, the baker’s, the ploughman’s, the post office, the Bous’ house, and then came the cinema. On the other side was just a row of bushy mulberries, and between each group of three, a bench.

  Our meeting place was the bench in front of the town hall, an unlit whitish building, more imposing than modest, preceded by two rows of stone steps that first ascended in divergent directions, coming together at the top landing. When we played hide and seek, the easiest place to run was straight to the steps of the city hall to hide behind the undulating railings or between the plantings of the little garden at the large balcony to the side. Another possibility was to shoot for the pujada de l’escola and creep up the hillside to the school, where there was a little plaza with four olive trees and some swings. Finally, to the right of the city hall, past the Mestreprats’ garage (where Quim Mestreprats’s dad kept his tractor rather than the “Doscavalls” Citroën) there was the Casanoves’ alleyway, a kind of narrow and resonant alleyway through which the bravest of us could dash into the darkness and appear, after a circuit of the town, via the school hill.

  Little by little I moved away from the mulberry tree. In order for the game to have a point, I had to put myself at risk. Otherwise, it could go on forever and there was the danger that the other kids would give up from sheer boredom. When I was It, this was never a danger. Beyond the fact that I didn’t mind being It, I was the fastest of our group and could run long distances. Now, so many years later, however, I’m struggling to understand our game. I don’t understand, for example, what made us run so far if we only had to turn back. Wouldn’t it have been better to hide ourselves at the start, behind some other mulberry tree, or beneath the baker’s van or the Mestreprats’s cars? Maybe I’m confusing this game with another that involved two teams which chased each other through town? But this can’t be the case because on the night in question I was It all by myself. Maybe I pushed everyone so far for the pure excitement of escaping the watchfulness of the adults and exploring the back alleys of the town.

  Whatever the case, that night, without a doubt, I was It by myself. Suddenly, between the plants of the little garden of city hall I saw some braids quaking.

  “Mariona! I see you!” I said, sure that I wasn’t wrong. Without turning, I backed up to the mulberry tree and said, knocking three times: “One, two, three, Mariona of the tailor’s shop!”

  “It’s not fair!” exclaimed Mariona, pulling her head through the railing. “When you were counting, you were looking through your arm!”

  I ignored her comment and waited for her to come down the city hall stairs. Then I asked her if there was anyone else with her.

  “I don’t think I’ll tell you,” she said in childish bad humor. But as soon as she sat on the bench, she spilled the beans: “There’s Pere.”

  I thought that maybe she wasn’t being entirely dishonest, the little snitch. Since several days before, Pere Estevet and Mariona had discovered that they liked each other and had been hiding together whenever they could. But if they liked each other, why would she rat him out? I crossed the street again. Between the plantings, something was moving, but I couldn’t be sure that it was Pere. All at once I heard a noise behind me, a kind of muffled, light knock. I turned my head, and there, at the center of the road, beyond my mulberry, squatting like a toad, was Joan Forner.

  He had just finished leaping from the only climbable mulberry tree—the only one he could climb (the rest of us couldn’t climb at all)—and now he was considering running for it to save himself. Joan Forner was my best friend in town, though I’m not really sure why. He had a wild and indomitable character, and he almost never spoke. It’s funny. This year he had begun helping his dad at the bakery. We looked at each other for an instant: both of us were about the same distance from the mulberry tree. We broke into a run at practically the same time. A moment before he could stretch out his hand and cry “safe!” I touched the tree and called his name.

  “One, two, three, Joan Forner!”

  Now I’d gotten two. I headed back to the garden.

  “Pere, Mariona told me that you’re back here! I know you’re here, I see you.” Someone was obviously moving behind the bushes, but I couldn’t take the chance of saying the wrong name. I grabbed a handful of pebbles from the ground and flung them at random.

  “Hey!” It was Pere’s unmistakable voice. So I had a third.

  I walked to the mulberry and rapped three times.

  “One, two, three, Pere Estevet!”

  I went on to call them all out: Quim Mestreprats (the Mestreprats’ son), a boy who would die five years later, falling right off a cliff with his father’s tractor; Amàlia Pastora; Roser from the Palets’; Vicent Pardall; I wasn’t sure about Dolors Mussa and Eloi Pastor, two kids who lived on t
he other side of town and didn’t play with us every night.

  “Who’s missing?” I asked as soon as I had them all together and seated on the bench.

  “I’m missing,” said Pere Estevet, raising his finger, repeating this joke as usual.

  I didn’t have to do a recount to realize that the only one missing was Clara Bou.

  Clara was missing, and this was strange because for the past two summers she was the one who took the games least seriously. With hardly a glance I crossed the street, climbed up one set of the city hall stairs, and came down the other.

  “Anybody seen her?”

  “Keep looking, because I’m sure you know where to find her!” Mariona from the tailor’s shop, still resentful, threw in my face. It so happened that everyone knew I was sweet on Clara Bou. Clara, however, was not sweet on me, nor any of the other boys in the gang. And even though this seemed a bit sad to me, in my heart I understood what my grandmother said about her: “Clara is becoming a woman”—a woman who doesn’t hang out with little boys. I liked Clara a lot. I liked her eyes and her long arms. There was something in her gestures, in her way of talking, that intrigued me terribly. I couldn’t take my eyes off her, was always spying on her. At times I was overcome and speechless around her. I grinned stupidly like a fool. Her wry face humiliated me and made me happy at the same time. At night, I hugged my pillow and imagined that Clara and I were telling each other our secrets. Yes, I was developing quite a crush on Clara Bou. Even so, in spite of the platonic cast of my feelings, during the town festival the summer before, I had worked up my courage to ask her for a dance. I went to a Catholic school and girls were scary. I suppose that in some way I felt that I had to live up to my duty as a romantic male. All of the boys took their girls dancing and I could do no less. The ball had begun. The tent was packed. Finally, I broke away from the boys and crossed the dance floor as cautiously as possible until I arrived at the girls’ side of the floor and held out my hand:

  “Do you want to dance with me?”

  My boldness left her speechless. I remember her eyes widening in a light, mocking daze. Then she said to me, drily:

  “No way.”

  And then came the laughter. Immediately, however, she stood, took me by the hand, and we began dancing a two-step that was playing just then. These were the four most painful minutes of my life. I was on tiptoes with my neck stretched so that she wouldn’t look taller than me. But I couldn’t keep the careless girl from steering me right into the middle of the dance floor, where the reputable married couples of the town wheeled in concentric circles, including my relatives and parents. “Look at the boy,” I remember my mother saying into my father’s ear. My dad turned his head and spread his moustache with a sort of smile that made me feel like killing him. I wanted to melt away. And then I imagined the entire tent, filled to capacity, with everyone laughing at the difference between the ever-so-womanly Clara and me, such a child. Fed up, I returned to my friends with my face red, and a sense of humiliation so vast that even today, when I think about it, the color rises in my cheeks. Despite what might be supposed, however, this predicament hadn’t been enough to disenchant me with Clara Bou once and for all. On the contrary, after a few minutes I found the strength to look up, and I realized to my surprise that nobody was staring at me. I found Clara and kept looking at her until she noticed—and then she smiled at me. As always, she left me speechless, but this time as I tucked my head back down, I was even more hopelessly in love.

  With the sense that the game had finished that night, I climbed up the school hill to see if I could find her up there, perhaps sitting on a swing and smoking a cigarette. Maybe I hoped she would invite me to sit with her and she would tell me some secret. But then I’ve already told you that Clara Bou was nowhere to be found that night.

  “She’s not anywhere,” I said when I went back to the gang.

  “She must have gone straight to her house,” Joan Forner said coldly.

  “What a spoilsport! What a jerk!” added Roser of the tailor’s house.

  “Come on! Leave her alone,” said Amàlia Pastora protectively.

  Besides being Clara’s best friend, Amàlia Pastora was the bossy one of the group (but a kind and honest girl just the same) and she left us no choice but to do as she said. They made some room for me at the end of the bench, and we sat in silence for some moments, ruminating over what might have led Clara to go home. That night we played no more. With the bells ringing twelve times, we got up and said goodnight and went off to bed. It was an agreement we had with the adults: at midnight we’d be home. My house was the shoemakers’ shop, and there, waiting for me, seated in a wooden chair outside, her hands folded on her lap, was my grandmother Lola, the nicest lady in the world. Grandpa Pau had died the winter before of a stroke and at my grandmother’s side there was now only an empty chair. After helping her get up (not because she couldn’t on her own, but because she had asked me), I brought in the two chairs, drank a glass of milk, and went upstairs. At the door to my room, my grandmother asked what I would like the next morning for breakfast.

  “An ensaïmada bun with jam,” I replied, “or a ham sandwich,” because if I asked for something sweet one day, the next it would be salty.

  “Okay then, goodnight child.”

  “Goodnight, Grandma.”

  I still hadn’t fallen asleep when I heard the sound of voices coming from outside, and someone calling my name. I jumped out of bed and threw open the balcony doors. In the middle of the street, headed straight for me, were the sleepy faces of Joan from the bakery and Pere Estevet.

  “It looks like Clara Bou didn’t get home,” they told me.

  My room was the only one at the shoemaker’s place that looked out over Serra Street. It took a moment for my grandmother to arrive.

  “They say Clara Bou didn’t go home,” I told her.

  We got dressed and went down to the street. At that point I had the sense that half the town was up looking for Clara. A nervous man said to me:

  “Pau, they told me you were It during the game. Do you remember which direction Clara ran off in?”

  I didn’t have the least idea, but I wanted to help and told him:

  “I think she went off to the Casanoves’ alley.”

  “Well then, you have a look in the alley, and then check the soccer field.”

  With the anxiety of the good children we still were, we rocketed off for the alleyway and then shot up to the main highway. The soccer field was vast, but with one look we could see that Clara Bou wasn’t there. We began searching through the neighboring meadows and stumpy abandoned vineyards, but soon we realized we were now looking for her as though we were looking for a corpse. All at once our eyes met. In the town above us, the air was full of voices. From time to time we heard someone cry Clara! and an echo replied, Clara! With a desperate determination, Pere Estevet took a deep breath and yelled, Clara! I imitated him: Clara! Joan looked at us and let out a laugh. Ignoring him, Pere Estevet again inhaled and yelled again. In the distance someone returned the same cry. We climbed back up to the highway and began a sweep through town. For a while we ran very fast. I’m not sure why we ran like that. Instead of looking for somebody, we were fleeing something. From time to time we stopped and made a search behind some bushes, at a roadside, inside an abandoned old manor. At times we crossed paths with the other people looking for Clara, and then made sure our most serious faces were on display.

  Finally we returned to Serra Street. On the steps of city hall a group of people were talking. On the other side the girls of our gang were seated on the bench. From their faces I could tell that they hadn’t found Clara. For some seconds we looked at each other. I remember that not everyone was worried—most of us were just sleepy. The one who was most worried was Mariona from the tailor’s shop. She suddenly started bleating like an idiot. It made me so mad that I
wanted to kill her.

  “Why are you crying!” I wanted to yell at her. “Can’t you see that Clara’s just hiding?”

  In fact, that was the conclusion that the mayor arrived at when he called for everyone from the steps of city hall a little while later. At the mayor’s side, forming a wide half-circle, were the sheriff, Father Ramon, Mr. Ferrer, Ms. Marta, and Mr. Morral (the coach of the soccer team), the majority of my friends’ mothers and fathers, some of the grandparents too, my grandmother Lola, Clara’s father, her older sister and brother-in-law, and a bunch of other people I didn’t know by name, though I remember they looked related. Much more than its streets, you couldn’t escape the fact that those faces were the town. The mayor was a little man, but he had a reputation for intelligence. “The first thing we have to do is calm down,” he said. “If we haven’t found her it’s obviously because Clara wants to stay hidden, and the best thing we can do is stop searching for her the way we’ve been searching for her.” Some people agreed with him and others did not. To everyone’s surprise, however, Clara’s father was one of those in agreement. “It’s true,” he said laconically. Clara Bou’s dad—everyone called him Bou—was a bit of a frightening man. He was a sullen farm worker with a bad reputation. For a long, long time we watched him to see if he would say anything else. “Yes, it’s obvious that nothing’s happened to my girl,” he grumbled through his teeth, in a strangely humble tone, or maybe he was just uncomfortable, as if he didn’t like the whole town hanging on his every word.

  An intermediate solution was decided upon. While a small team would continue searching for her, the best thing the rest of us could do was go to sleep. As if I was four years younger than I was, my grandmother Lola took me by the hand and made me return home to the shoemaker’s shop. It was the second time that we went to sleep that night. Before going to our rooms, she told me that I should say an Our Father and ask Our Lord God for my friend to be found safe and sound. That’s what I did. Once again under the covers, I put my hands together and asked Our Lord (or the Baby Jesus—I don’t remember who, assuming I even prayed to anyone specific in those days) for Clara to be found soon and for her to be safe and sound. Then I looked toward the balcony and listened for a few minutes to the voices coming from outside. Unlike Mariona from the tailor’s shop, I didn’t feel like crying. Rather, I felt fascinated, profoundly intrigued. “Where are you, Clara? Where are you hiding?” I began to ask under my breath, hugging my pillow. For a moment I imagined Clara coming out of my closet, with a naughty smile on her face, asking if I could make room for her. Half embracing, holding back our urge to laugh, we listened together to the barking of the dogs, perhaps a sign that she had been found. Little by little, however, the voices dropped off, or maybe I did. I suppose I ought to say that I couldn’t sleep through the night, but I’m not so sure of that. I was a boy of twelve and sleep probably won me over. I got up late the next day, and after washing my face and combing my hair, I went downstairs. As I did, it seemed to me that today was no different from any other day. The harsh glare of July, the murmurs from the street, the scent of rope for espadrilles that permeated the house . . . My grandmother was in the shop helping a customer. I took a moment to say good morning and then went to the kitchen to eat up the ensaïmada bun with jam, or maybe it was the ham sandwich. Everything was so normal, even the words of my grandmother seemed unremarkable when she came back from the shop and told me: