You

by Zoran Drvenkar

  “Is everything okay between us?”

  “Of course.”

  “We stand up for each other, Mirko.”

  “I know.”

  He makes a fist, you make a fist, when your fists meet you look at each other and Darian says, “Glad we’ve sorted that out.”

  “We did.”

  “And think about tracksuit bottoms.”

  “If I wear tracksuit bottoms I look like I’m on my way to play football.”

  “You have a point there.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Say hi to your mom.”

  “I will.”

  “See you tomorrow, then.”

  “See you tomorrow.”

  After you’ve crept into the apartment, you creep on into the bathroom and wash your face. You turn on the shower and sit motionlessly on the edge of the tub, as if someone had removed your batteries. Every now and again you pass your hand through the running water. Your head is absolutely empty, the pain in your nose a dull thumping. The hiss of the shower calms you down. It’s like a movie that you can watch as often as you want. And if you stretch your hand out, it gets wet and you’re part of the movie.

  You get into the shower. You scrub the panic off yourself and enjoy the water on your back. The hammering on the bathroom wall tears you from your thoughts. You turn the water off, rub yourself dry, and wrap the towel around your hips.

  “Why do you have to shower so late?”

  Your mother is lying on the sofa in the living room, romantic novel in her lap, cigarette in her left hand, right hand where her heart should be. Her question is one of those questions that don’t need an answer. You say hi from Darian and go into your room. You shut the door behind you, let the towel fall to the floor, and get dressed as if the day had only just begun. You are still disappointed in yourself. It was wrong to run away. Darian will never forget that. Lucky nobody else was there. Imagine one of the guys witnessing your cowardice. Whichever way you look at it, you know you have to make it good again.

  Somehow.

  The smell of falafel and cigarette smoke drifts in through the window, the voices of the two drunks are clearly distinguishable from each other and sound hoarse. Some nights your mother goes down and complains. You live on the second floor, you’re the only ones who complain. The drunks laugh at you.

  You button your shirt; your hands are still dirty from the oil on the chain, it’ll take a few days to come off. It looks as if the cops have taken your fingerprints. You check your watch. Uncle Runa will kill you. If you don’t show up at the pizza stand before midnight, you might as well stay home. Your uncle was expecting you an hour and sixteen minutes ago. You wish you were Darian. The kind of person who doesn’t get bossed around. Apart from tonight, tonight he sure got bossed around, you think, and are immediately ashamed of the thought.

  There are no customers about. Not even an exhausted taxi driver taking a break and giving his hemorrhoids a rest. The night buzzes with insects. On the other side of the street people are sitting outside the cafés. Laughter every now and again, the scrape of chairs when someone stands up. You wish you were on that side. The telephone booth next to the café is like a yellow eye that flickers irregularly, blinking nonsensical messages at you.

  Uncle Runa leans against the battered freezer and stares across at the cafés as if they were his very private enemies. He doesn’t understand how four cafés can open up on one corner. There are lots of things your uncle doesn’t understand. He wears a white apron and a red T-shirt with a silver Cadillac on the front. The T-shirt is tucked into his trousers, his belly hangs over the belt. You have no idea why he can’t wear normal clothes. He isn’t twenty years old anymore, he’s in his mid-forties and acts like he knows what’s cool. He should ask you. You know what’s cool, because you’re the opposite of cool.

  “What are you doing here?” your uncle asks and spits between his front teeth. When you were six he wanted to teach you how to do it. The brilliant art of spitting. You never got the hang of it, so he called you a loser. Uncle Runa likes to say that he feels guilty about your father, and that’s why you’re allowed to work for him. He’s doing you a favor. Which doesn’t stop him paying you only six euros an hour. From ten in the evening until four in the morning you take charge of the pizza stand, and then you fall into bed or you’re so wired that you stay up all night and fall asleep in class. It’s been going on for three months. You’d rather be roaming the clubs with Darian, selling grass and pills. But no one respects you yet. You’re still no one.

  “Tell me, shitface, what are you doing here?”

  Uncle Runa goes through the same routine every time you turn up late. There are no variations, always the same pissed-off face as if he’d stood in a pile of dog shit with your name on it. A train goes over the bridge. When it’s quiet again, you mumble, “Sorry I’m late.”

  “What happened to your hands?”

  You hide your filthy fingers behind your back.

  “Your mother’s a good woman, you know that?”

  “I know.”

  Suddenly Uncle Runa explodes, as if you’d claimed the opposite. “You never say a word against your mother, you hear me? Your mother’s an angel! Don’t you dare say anything against your mother! Your father is a son of a bitch! You can say whatever you like about him.”

  “He’s also your brother—”

  “That’s how come I know he is a son of a bitch!”

  Uncle Runa falls silent again.

  “How else do you think I know, eh?”

  He looks over his shoulder at the clock. You know he has a thing going with your mother. The way he touches her and how they kiss when they meet, the way he’s sometimes sitting in your kitchen in the morning as if he’s been there all night. You’re sure your mother doesn’t hit the bathroom wall when Uncle Runa spends too much time in the shower. His dressing gown hangs on the inside of the door.

  He’s probably glad my father disappeared.

  Your uncle takes a deep breath as if to make an important decision. The Cadillac on his chest stretches. Someone starts a motorbike, a woman laughs.

  “What am I to do with you, boy?”

  You say nothing. Uncle Runa scratches his head and sighs. You know it’s all fine now.

  “Get to work. Just get to work and we won’t mention it again.”

  It’s fifteen minutes later and Uncle Runa raps on the back of your head as if someone lives there, and leaves you alone. You imagine him walking down the streets, nodding at the drunks, as if they were his very special guard dogs, climbing the stairs to the second floor and your mother opening the door to him, and then they’re both laughing like the woman earlier on—high and superior—because they know you’re busy for the next few hours, while they have all the time in the world to fuck each other’s brains out. Eventually they’ll pay for it. More than six euros an hour. You’re sure of that. The justice of the world will recognize you one day. You have no idea what kind of justice that will be, you don’t really think seriously about it either, because right now you’re glad to be alone behind the counter at last.

  Alone.

  It’s half-price Tuesday in the cinemas, the evening screenings will be over in half an hour, and this place’ll fill up. You get ready and pull the drinks to the front of the fridge until they’re lined up neatly, you cut vegetables and mix salad. Music whispers out of the radio, you turn it up, and no one tells you to turn it down. No one wants anything from you. Apart from the customers, but that’s okay, they’re supposed to want something from you.

  While your uncle generally rolls the pizza bases out in advance, you prefer to make them fresh. The customer should see that you’re doing something for him. Tomato sauce, a bit of cheese, then the topping, then a bit more cheese. You love the sound when the baking tray slides into the oven. A glance at the customer, asking if he wants anything else. Always a smile, always content. You.

  Yes, me.

  “Me?”

  “Yes,
you, what are you staring at?”

  It’s two o’clock in the morning, the wave of cinemagoers ebbed away at midnight, and after that you could count the customers on one hand. You’ve stopped counting the drunks a long time ago, because they’re not real customers, they’re alkies, gabbling away at you and loading up on one last drink before they roll onto some park bench and tick off another day in their lives.

  “I … I’m not staring.”

  You are wondering how long you’ve been staring at her. Her green eyes gleam like distant fires, her hair is such a dark red that it’s almost black. You can’t concentrate on her mouth at the moment, because it moves and says, “Where’s the guy who makes the pizza?”

  “I’m the guy who makes the pizza.”

  “You’re at best twelve years old.”

  You don’t react, you turn sixteen in the spring but you keep it to yourself because you’re worried that she might be older. She must be older, arrogant and loud as she is. You can’t know that she’s playing with you. She knows who you are and that you hang out with Darian, she sees you at school every day and knows you’ve noticed her too. If you’d known all that at that very moment, everything would have been a lot easier for you. As it is you’re just startled and look nervously past her. She’s alone, it’s the first time you’ve seen her alone. Normally she hangs with a group of girls who buzz around her as if she were a source of light. You particularly like the little scar on her chin, it makes her look like she is truly fragile.

  She snaps her fingers around in front of your face.

  “Well?”

  You don’t know what she means.

  “How old are you now?”

  “Fifteen.”

  “Never.”

  You shrug and wish the moment would stay like this. Hours, make it days. You wouldn’t even have to speak. You’d make her one pizza after another, give her free drinks and look at her the whole time. Nothing more than that.

  It would be nice if she would laugh and say she was sorry that she thought you were twelve, you don’t look twelve at all. That would be really nice. Only now do you notice that her eyes are glassy. She’s either stoned or drunk.

  “Your name’s Mirko and you live on Seelingstrasse, right?”

  “Above the falafel shop,” you say and feel as if she’s paid you a compliment. But how does she know all this? you wonder, as she says, “I’ve seen you coming out of your house a few times.”

  “Ah.”

  “Yes, ah.”

  You look at each other, and as nothing better comes to your mind you show her your hand.

  “I was in a fight today. I defended myself with a bicycle chain.”

  She looks at your sore palm, looks at you, she doesn’t seem impressed. But she goes on talking to you. She says she urgently needs a phone. Her forefinger goes up in the air.

  “Just one call, I swear.”

  You don’t point to the phone booth behind her, you don’t ask what’s wrong with her phone. Girls always have a cell phone. Just don’t ask. Go to the back, reach into your backpack, and come back with your phone.

  “Sure.”

  You go to the back, reach into your rucksack, and come back with the phone. She doesn’t thank you, she takes two steps backward and taps away. You turn down the radio to hear her better.

  “… no, I’m stuck here … Don’t … But I … I’ll give you ten euros, I promise. What? Please, Paul, come and fetch me … What? The what? You know what time it is? There are no buses around here. And I hate them anyway, you know that. What? Aunt Sissi can go and fuck herself.”

  Suddenly she looks up, phone still to her ear, looks at you, caught you red-handed, you duck a bit but hold her gaze.

  “Fuck this shit!” she says, and you are not sure if she’s talking to you.

  She snaps the phone shut. You ask if there’s a problem.

  “What do you know about problems?”

  “I … I could take you home.”

  “How are you going to take me home?”

  “I can if I want.”

  “But I’m not giving you ten euros.”

  “That’s okay.”

  You laugh, you really don’t know what you’re doing. Uncle Runa will strangle you if you shut the place for as much as a minute. But you’re making things even worse, because after Uncle Runa has strangled you he’ll cut you into pieces as soon as he finds out you’ve borrowed his old Vespa.

  “On that thing?”

  She has walked around the pizza stand. You pulled the tarpaulin off the bike like somebody performing a magic trick. She stands there as if she wants to buy the Vespa, then she kicks the back tire so that the bike nearly tips over. You flinch but don’t say anything. Uncle Runa drives around the block once a week to charge the battery. He got the Vespa from scrap and rebuilt it himself. He calls it Dragica.

  “But I’m not wearing a helmet, just so we’re clear on that.”

  She points to her piled-up hair. You nod: if she doesn’t want a helmet then she doesn’t want one. You untie the string of your apron and for a moment you smell her breath. Definitely drunk. The key to the Vespa hangs on a nail above the radio. You take it as if you do this every day. Perhaps you’ll drive along Seelingstrasse afterward and beep two times. Perhaps Uncle Runa will recognize the rattle of his Dragica and come running after you.

  Once you’ve shut up shop you put on your uncle’s helmet. It’s too big, but it doesn’t matter. She stands there and holds out her hand.

  “What is it?”

  “Did you think I’d let you drive me?”

  “But—”

  “Come on, make a choice.”

  You hand her the key and imagine what it’ll feel like sitting behind her. Her warmth, her presence. You’ll lean into the bends together and be like a single person. Not just you, not her–both of you. And just as you feel your excitement growing into an erection you quickly think of your mother gutting a chicken and at the same time the Vespa springs to life with a cough and bumps over the curbstone and zigzags along the street. A taxi beeps, then the lights of the Vespa come on and it disappears around the next corner.

  Without you.

  You don’t exist anymore. When you move, the air around you is still. Not a breeze. You speak, and silence replies. You’re there, without being there. And even though you don’t believe it right now, it’s a pleasure to meet you at last. You’re always present in the thoughts of your girls, but we’ve learned as little about you so far as if you didn’t really exist.

  Don’t worry, you don’t need to talk, you don’t need to think or, for a while, exist, we’ll find out everything about you anyway. Why you became a shadow, why you don’t want to exist anymore. Invisible. We’ll open a window into your life and let the light in, and we’ll shake you awake until you scream with fury. But there’s time for that, that comes later.

  The table in front of you is vertical, but nothing’s falling off it. Not the glasses, not the magazines or the ripped bag of powder. Even the hand-knitted tea cozy doesn’t move. Every time you look at it you wonder where the teapot’s gone and how small you have to be to live in a tea cozy. Between sleeping and waking you see your phone vibrating, it quivers from left to right before freezing again. The walls stay horizontal, the light comes, the light goes.

  Your nose runs all the time, sometimes it’s blood, but mostly it’s just snot. You smell urine and the acrid smell of vomit. But that’s nothing compared to the stench coming from the kitchen. You shut the door because you thought it would help. Closed doors don’t keep out flies. They come through the cracks, they come from all around and make straight for the kitchen. They’re everywhere. You don’t want to think about it. You take a sip of water, and a few seconds later it’s as if you hadn’t drunk anything. You wish it would rain. Your mouth is so dry that you’re wishing it would rain in the middle of the room. You don’t have the strength to sit up, you can’t even stretch out your arm to reach for the edge of the table. You try, an
d you think you can hear the sinews in your arm creaking. Your fingertips touch the edge of the table. You give up exhausted, you pull back your arm and fall asleep again.

  You believe in time. You pray to time and hope it hears you. Just a bit, go back just a bit, you think and know how absurd the idea is.

  Still …

  Sometimes you stare at the clock above the fireplace, at your dad’s awards. Platinum—gold—gold—platinum—gold. And in between the clock, like a special prize for …

  Nothing?

  You concentrate. Sometimes you manage to make the hand of the clock pause. It lingers. That’s all you can do, whatever you try, the hand never moves backward. It’s like arm-wrestling with the world champion arm wrestler. Eventually there’s no juice behind your will, and the hand unfreezes and ticks on a bit.

  And another bit.

  And another.

  And time is time again and laughs at you in seconds and minutes and hours. You hate it for that. At the same time you yearn for it. You can’t be without it, and you want it to disappear forever.

  Time is your new religion.

  Sleep is traveling inside your head. No packing, no waiting, just being there. And that’s what your There looks like: a house on a cliff, water below you, sky above you. You’re sitting by a fjord. Even though you have no memory of the place, you know: I was born here. It’s a gray day. Snow falls and turns the valley walls into Japanese ink drawings. An icy wind scratches over the water. That’s where you are, that’s where you want to be. On a terrace, wrapped up in several blankets, on your right a table with a cup of tea, in the background the silence of the house. You pick up the cup, you feel the heat of the tea through the china, your palms warm up.

  There’s nothing more, nothing more is needed.

  You wake with your face buried in the sofa cushion and sneeze twice. Blood drifts down onto the pillow like a fine mist, you feel dizzy and lay your head back so that the blood flows down your throat like a gentle lava flow, feeding and warming you. Everything in your body hurts and throbs. Your thoughts are sore. Your hand claws onto the back of the sofa, you inch your way into a sitting position. The table turns horizontal, the walls vertical and your legs tremble, even though you’re not standing. You set your feet down on the floor and try to get the shaking under control. You stay like that for a while. Your face in your hands, the trembling in your legs. You look between your fingers at the powder and feel the stinging in your nose like far-off longing. You know what will ease the pain and let you sleep again. It’s as simple as that. As if the thought has reached your legs, they stop shaking. You lean forward, pick up the teaspoon, and stick it into the plastic bag. You scatter the powder on the tabletop and use one of the brightly colored straws. It doesn’t take long, it hurts and your senses greet the bitterness of the drug with jubilation, then you feel like retching, you fight it and fight it and sink back, draw your knees up to your chest and become a warm, pulsating ball.