by Rein Raud
She looked in the mirror, and the face in it recognized her again.
Rat-faced Willem had just finished his meal at Emma’s Pancake House, but was in no rush to leave. Now that his search had reached its end, the evenings mostly felt empty and boring to him—pointless squares of paper instead of great treasures stared back out of his stamp albums; and even the task of sorting the lawyer’s old ledgers no longer captivated him.
Suddenly, he sensed that someone at the next table was staring in his direction. He looked up, and so it was. He was being watched by the young woman with a long, dark ponytail and heavy glasses from the Vital Statistics Bureau.
“Excuse me,” the young woman said shyly. “It’s just that you haven’t come to our office in quite a while.”
“There’s been no reason to come,” Willem replied.
“So, you did find what you were looking for, then?” the chipper young woman asked.
“I did,” Willem said, nodding.
“And what was it?”
“Oh, murky old things,” Willem said with a shrug. “I just needed everything to match up.”
“And now it does?”
“More or less,” Willem said, because he didn’t like to lie.
A moment of silence passed.
“Do you come here to eat often?” the young woman asked. “I haven’t seen you here before.”
“That’s odd, actually,” Willem replied, “since I come here every day.”
“I come as often as I can, too,” the young woman said, brightening up. “I really like the house-special pancakes with cranberry jam.”
“Is that so?” Willem asked, raising his eyebrows. “I’ve never tried them before.”
“You definitely should order them,” the girl said. “They’re simply exquisite.”
“Some other time,” Willem said. “I just ate my fill of ham-and-cheese pancakes.”
“I see,” the young woman said.
This time, the pause stretched a little longer.
“May I ask . . .” the girl began.
“Of course,” Willem said to his own surprise, and nodded.
“You weren’t planning on going to the cinema, by any chance?” the young woman inquired. “A really interesting film’s being shown today, I mean. About zombies.”
“It’s the first I’ve heard of it,” said Willem, who almost never went to the cinema, although at the moment, he couldn’t have explained to himself why not.
“I’m very interested in zombies,” the young woman detailed. “I mean, I have been for a long time.”
“I know truly very little about them,” Willem said. And then he hastily added: “Unfortunately.”
“You know, we could go together, then,” the young woman proposed. “I can explain all of the parts to you that you don’t understand. To tell the truth, I’ve actually already seen the film twice.”
“I’d be happy to,” Willem said, and realized that he hadn’t been in such total agreement with anything he had said for a long time.
They stood up, and everything was different.
The woman began her story about the unbelievable scandal in such an ordinary tone of voice that it took a moment of tense silence before her words sunk in for the lawyer, and it took yet another for him to realize that what he had heard was ultimate and irreversible.
And then he suddenly realized why he still carried a lighter in his jacket pocket, which he customarily offered to women for lighting their cigarettes, as well as an unopened pack of smokes dried to a crackle for all of those twenty years since he quit. The smoke entered his lungs like a homeowner back from long travels, and a sweet exhaustion spread through his veins, dispelling the shock for a moment. But just for a moment.
Funny, the banker mused. For me, things have gone the way they do for a man who merely wanted to see his friends off at the train station, but who accidentally got on board instead. This whole affair actually has nothing to do with me.
That didn’t mean he was unable to lose with honor.
For breakfast, he had toast with goose-liver pâté and a copious serving of caviar. I’m going to miss this, he thought, chuckling to himself. At the insistence of his attractive companion, he had also ordered a bottle of the hotel’s best champagne, but only poured himself a glass for looks; more for the girl. In reality, he quite enjoyed how she alternated between squealing and purring by his side; he was even disappointed to be experiencing something like it for the very first time.
He had sent his family away to the seaside, so only the butler knew where to find them.
The banker got up late, around midday, said goodbye to his companion, paid the bills, and ordered his car be brought around out front. At work, he asked not to be disturbed with less-urgent matters, and had his secretary fetch the overview of his personal assets. It took about half an hour to draw up the documents and sign the money transfers. Then, he asked for a single espresso and drank it unhurriedly.
The phone rang. It had to be something important, since very few people knew the number for his direct line. But instead of answering the call, he removed from his personal safe something that every banker who puts his heart into his work must always have handy.
The pistol’s cylinder held precisely one bullet. He had loved precision his entire life.
“Ah, you’ve arrived, ma’am,” the hotel porter said with a smile sweet as honey when Laila entered. “He’s in the restaurant, dining, and is doubtless already expecting you.”
“Why’s that?” Laila asked, confused.
“I assumed that you are coming to say goodbye,” the porter said.
“Is he leaving, then?” Laila asked in astonishment.
“He’s already paid the hotel bill, in any case,” the porter said with a shrug. “Although, the maid did mention that his things are still fully unpacked.”
But Laila had already breezed into the restaurant, where Brother was sitting alone at a table by the window, the daily special cut into equally-sized pieces on the plate in front of him, a small backpack on the chair next to him, and his long black coat hanging over the chair-back.
“So, it’s true then,” Laila said.
“Yes,” Brother said.
“Why?” Laila asked.
“It’s time,” Brother answered.
“Will you come again?” Laila asked.
“If I happen into these parts,” Brother nodded.
“Maybe you could wait until tomorrow,” Laila said. “I’ve invited guests to come over this evening, and it would’ve been great.”
“I’m quite confident that your guests will have a fine time, perhaps a finer one without me,” Brother reckoned.
“Still,” Laila pressed, not backing down, even though she knew that Brother was right. “Why so suddenly?”
“I simply have to,” Brother said. “I promised.”
“To whom?” Laila asked.
“To Father,” Brother said. “Even after we no longer met, Father sent me messages, and in his very last one, he asked something of me for the very first time. He asked me to find my sister and, if necessary, to help her in times of peril.”
“And then?” Laila asked, not understanding.
“Of course I promised—so what that it was mentally and to myself,” Brother said. “I promised, although I knew nothing more about that sister than the few bits and pieces that Father had let slip about her. But even those were enough to be sure: there’s not a doubt that she draws injustice to herself like bees to heather, and apart from me, there is no one who could come to her rescue when in great peril.”
Gradually, against her will, the substance of Brother’s words started to sink in for Laila.
“Forgive me,” Brother continued, “but I must go. You see, it really is true that, inevitably, at some point in every person’s life comes the moment when he has to count up the promises he intends to keep before he goes, and for me, you’ve always been one of those.”
Now, Laila could say no more.
She gazed at her brother in gratitude, she understood, she nodded, and her sadness was light.
“Keep your chin up,” Brother said. “Perhaps for you, today is the last day that will divide your life into what was and what is to come.”
He stood and picked up his coat and backpack so that what was to come could begin.
He strolled, a wide-brimmed hat on his head and his coat fluttering behind him; he strolled though the bright, sunny day with a slow tranquility, as if he paid the incredible weather no heed. Passing by a newspaper stand, he caught out of the corner of his eye the front page of the evening newspaper, on which a redheaded and plug-cheeked twenty-something promised to expose scandalous facts about a lawyer, whose name Brother didn’t recognize. He strolled and didn’t turn his head when a shot ringing out from the highest floor of the bank office sent pigeons into flight from the pavement, but on a narrow street on the edge of town, he did stop for a moment to cast a glance over his shoulder through a high attic-floor window, at which a girl with short-cut, chestnut-brown hair was humming a gentle but piercing melody, barely audible even to herself; a melody that he immediately recognized.
Acknowledgements
For those who didn’t notice the bows made to Alessandro Baricco and Clint Eastwood hidden in the story, I point them out now.
Usually, nothing that I write is associated with any specific music. This story is an exception. Each of its three more significant female characters has her own melody. Here they are in order of appearance: Dessa is to the tune of T Bone Burnett’s song “There Would Be Hell to Pay” off of the record The True False Identity, which speaks of her male doppelgänger: “When all the ladies / heard that he was dead / some wore black dresses / and some wore red.” Laila is accompanied by Bulat Okudzhava sadly playing “Nadezhdy malenkiy orkestrik” on the guitar, and Dark’s music is Chavela Vargas—actually all of it, but especially when she sings “Yo soy como el chile verde, llorona, piquante, pero sabroso” or “Si vienes conmigo, es por amor.” And playing anywhere that no character paints the author’s voice is Beth Gibbons singing “Lonely Carousel” on Rodrigo Leão’s record Cinema: “The pleasures I seek / are far too discreet / for me.”
While attending university in St. Petersburg, I socialized briefly with a man from the country of Georgia, who was studying painting and was in the habit of making copies of old masters’ works for practice. He possessed a strange quality: no matter how unannounced a new person might end up visiting him at home (as it was for me, for instance), that individual’s favorite painting was always hanging on his wall. In my case, it was Luis de Morales’s Madonna of the Yarnwinder. The original is actually on display in the Hermitage, but there are also several halls full of Morales’s similar works in Prado.
Rein Raud is the author of four books of poetry, six novels, and several collections of short fiction. He’s also a scholar in Japanese studies and has translated several works of Japanese into Estonian. One of his short pieces appeared in Best European Fiction 2015.
Adam Cullen was born and educated in Minneapolis, Minnesota, but currently resides in Tallinn where he’s translated dozens of plays, stories, and poems. He’s also translated three published novels, including Radio by Tõnu Õnnepalu and The Cavemen Chronicle by Mihkel Mutt.
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