Best European Fiction 2010

by Aleksandar Hemon

  TRANSLATED FROM ITALIAN BY ELIZABETH HARRIS

  [LATVIA]

  INGA BELE

  Ants and Bumblebees

  Father wanted to go to Ventspils. And right he was—they hadn’t been there for almost two years. Marta told Father to be ready early on Saturday. It’s hard to drive during the heat of the day, but in the morning it’s a whole different story. Look—a dog’s been run over during the night near the concrete factory; the dog was large and gray, it’s lying in the sand but its head is still on the asphalt. Marta and a hundred others like her make up a mob that rolls itself over the bodies of dogs, deer, hedgehogs, and so forth, every single day, as though these were just bloody rags in the road the drivers have neither the time nor space to pull over and inspect. Still, seeing this sight so early in the morning, Marta suddenly wants to stop the car, to sit down next to the dog in the sand, to be with it for a while. A strange wish—Marta hasn’t stopped for years. She just keeps going forward. In other words—she lives.

  Father is sulky when he greets Marta, for some reason. He limps up to her car and examines it critically. “Not very impressive,” he says, “it’s too low.” “Take it or leave it,” Marta snaps back—“I want coffee!” “Well, go and make some then, the water’s already boiled.” Marta enters the small kitchen, which smells of mildew and damp wood, and where the window is plaited over by pale creeper plants. An endless, shining cargo train is moving past the window, and the black oily surface of her coffee is trembling in its cup. Marta stands by the window, sipping her coffee and counting the cars. She’s had an obsessive need to count train cars ever since she was a child: if you can count them all, everything will turn out all right.

  Father appears wearing his good suit. In the eighties a derailed train car had crushed him against a stack of wooden planks. Since then he’s been receiving a disability pension, and year by year he’s been getting increasingly lopsided—and petulant. He can’t get his limp arm inside the sleeve of his jacket. Marta helps. He yells at her—“I don’t need your help!”—once the jacket is safely on. Father refuses to sit in the front seat of her car. He folds himself into the back and disappears as if sucked under by the current. Marta searches for his face in the rearview mirror, but can’t find it. Men are only happy when they’re free to disappear, she thinks to herself. Clear glistening drops of morning dew fall onto the windscreen from two nearby trees: a sallow and a goat willow. The car radio is long gone.

  ‘We could go through Jurmala,” Marta says aloud, to break up their prolonged silence. “Why go through Jurmala when we need to get to Ventspils?” Father grumbles, watching the scenery rushing past out of the corner of his eye. “Jurmala is beautiful. Nice buildings and that sort of thing,” Marta says, not giving in. “Jurmala is disgusting,” Father replies. Marta clenches her fingers even tighter around the steering wheel. She senses that the trip isn’t likely to get any easier. “Jurmala is beautiful, Dad. You know that. You’re just being difficult.” “Jurmala is disgusting. The newspaper says there’s more piss in the sea there than water.” “Fine. We don’t have to talk if you don’t want to,” Marta says. The expression on Father’s face remains unchanged.

  Horseflies and a bunch of hungry kids greet them at Lucija’s—Mom’s sister’s place. Half-naked, the kids attack the sacks of food Marta’s brought and pull them into a pergola to divide. Marta hasn’t even managed to get out of the car when, accompanied by a few burr-covered dogs’ heads, Francisks sinks into her lap. He grabs Marta by her cheeks and kisses her gently on the eyes. “Marta, Marta,” he says, “finally!” Marta has no idea what’s happened to her brother. As she opens her eyes, she realizes he’s dyed his hair black. There’s a dark streak around his forehead still—he must have dyed it pretty recently. “It doesn’t suit you,” she says, “you look like a woman.” Francisks stops being demure and dismisses her comment with a wave. He hadn’t expected much else from Marta. Father, on the other hand, is acting in a strangely tolerant manner. He tries not to stare at Francisks’s hair and asks about life, school, the animals, and finally asks Marta to take a picture of them. She finds her mobile phone and takes a picture of the two—her asymmetrical father and her brother with what looks like a black wig—feudal-era ruins in the background.

  Then Lucija shows up and gives Marta a cuddle. Marta asks if she’s been growing those beautiful round cemetery plants again this year—those plants that are so patient they can even be planted in sand. “Oh yes,” Lucija replies, “I just happen to have a box left over from what we brought to sell at the market.” She gets out a wooden box full of hen-and-chicks houseleeks. Marta hands her some money. “I don’t really want to charge relatives,” her aunt objects, but immediately enquires, “how much do you have there?”

  Marta puts the box into the trunk of her car and yells out at Francisks, “Get ready!” “Get ready for what?” he asks. “Aren’t you coming along to the cemetery?”—“I can’t go running around cemeteries during working hours,” Francisks says. “I was five when she died and I don’t remember her at all. I have to mow grass for the cows.” “For God’s sake,” Marta says, “Lucija will do that, Francisks!” “Fine,” Francisks says, “but only if you let me drive through the forest.”

  Marta lets Francisks drive for a while. He’s good at it. When some people see a ditch coming, they hit the breaks. Francisks knows to keep going, knows how to straighten out, how to correct for it as much as he can. Marta decides to stop for some gas. She asks if anyone wants ice cream. Father does, but Francisks declares: “I just want you to get me my favorite drink.”

  He fills the tank and goes with Marta into the dusky gas station. “So Francisks, what’s this drink you want?” she asks. He points at some Aldaris beer. “That’s alcohol,” Marta says. “Barely two percent!” Francisks says. Marta tells him to forget it. “Take me home then!” he yells. “You can walk,” Marta snaps back. The station’s door slams shut. Marta buys three ice-creams and exits into the midday heat. Father is sitting quietly in the back of the car.

  “Where’s Francisks?” Marta asks. “Took his bag and left,” Father says. Marta pulls around the gas station and notices a small determined silhouette walking uphill through the fir-tree forest. She drives up next to Francisks on the sun-heated road. He picks up his pace. Marta beeps. He flips her off. Marta puts the car in park and steps out into the sweltering dust.

  Tears start streaming down her face, on cue, as if she were an old actress. “Why are you doing this?” she wails. “I’ll never, and I mean never, buy you alcohol or cigarettes or any other shit that’ll kill you. How can you not understand that? You promised to come along if I let you drive for a bit—what are trying to pull? You’re going to abandon us because I won’t buy you beer? You traitor!”

  Francisks glances at his sister’s dust-covered face and gets into the car. Marta wipes the tears off her face and sits down behind the steering wheel. “I’ll come along,” he says, fastening his seatbelt, “but I won’t say a word for the rest of the day.” “Eat your ice cream before it melts,” Marta orders.

  Father manages to get ice cream all over himself, and Francisks gobbles his up like there’s no tomorrow. Still fuming, he’s left holding an empty wrapper and a naked popsicle stick. Naturally, Marta has neither tissues nor a plastic bag in the car to clean up with. She stops near a lonely white bus stop on the main road. Without saying a word, she steps out and opens the trunk. Nothing there either—not a single trash bag. What to do with the garbage? Marta looks back at the bus stop. There must be a trashcan there. She opens the back door of the car, where Father is sitting. “Give me the wrappers,” she says and he puts the warm, wet paper into her open palm. She opens the door on Francisks’s side. “You too,” she says. “I put it down,” he says indifferently, without looking at his sister. “Where?” she asks, looking around his seat. “Nowhere,” Francisks snaps back. Marta gets down on her bare knees on the sharp pebbles on the road and looks under the car. It’s shady there, there’s
a bit of a draft, and yes, Francisks’s stick and wrapper. With difficulty, Marta manages to get the wrapping back. “Litterers are disgusting pigs,” she declares and slams Francisks’s door shut. Francisks sticks out his tongue. Marta brings the wrappings over to the bus stop. Disaster: there’s no trashcan. People have been throwing their garbage right on the ground. There’s a thick layer of it all around, being blown here and there by the breeze kicked up by passing cars, under and over the single brown bench. Marta gives it a moment’s thought, then drops her trash on the ground and returns to the car.

  In protest, Francisks goes to sleep. He droops in his seatbelt with his black-painted head bobbing around like a flower mown down by a storm. Occasionally his head sways right over into Marta’s lap or the gear shift. She pushes it back, touching his soft cheek. Francisks doesn’t wake. A tiny dribble of sweat is streaming down from his temple in the heat. Father is quiet in the back. “Father,” Marta says, smiling, “you still know some people around here, right? People you don’t speak to anymore. You haven’t seen them for years. Should we stop by, while we’re here?” Father can’t believe what he’s just heard and goes a little berserk: “What relatives,” he hisses, throwing himself repeatedly against the rear passenger door, “we’re going to the cemetery! Drop me there and then you can go wherever you want! I’ll take the bus home!” “Calm down,” Marta laughs, “I get it, I get it—we’re just going to the cemetery.”

  At the cemetery all three stand in the hot sand gawping at the reed canary grass-covered graves. They cast short, stocky midday shadows. “Let’s get cracking,” Father says and takes off his jacket—but it’s only Marta and Francisks who get cracking. Father can’t bend down very well. Marta takes out the box with the bright green houseleeks and hands Francisks a chisel. Uncle Fricis’s tombstone is overgrown with moss and lichen; it’s cracked and sunken now like a well-worn stepping stone. Francisks begins tearing strips of moss off it. “You see Francisks,” Marta says, relaying a family legend to him while planting the houseleeks on the other grave, “Uncle Fricis is under there, Fricis who cried his eyes out when his wife passed away even though they were both so old.” “It wasn’t Uncle Fricis, that was Uncle Ansis,” Father tells her. “Keep quiet if you don’t know what you’re talking about.” “But did he at least cry his eyes out?” Francisks asks impatiently. “Of course,” Father replies.

  The big forest ants have built a nest in a nearby ivy bush. Marta happens to be crouching in their way. Soon her legs are covered with shiny black spots. Still planting the houseleeks and brushing a handful of ants away from time to time, Marta raises her head and sees her mother coming toward her—though perhaps not with the eyes in her head. Her mother is dressed in a light cotton suit and has a blonde curl in the middle of her forehead; she’s holding a cherry-red handbag in her hand. She is young-looking, unconstrained; before Father, before Marta, before Francisks, before Lille, before the disaster. “Mom, save yourself,” Marta whispers. The trembling trees, the narrow path, the heat—Marta stares into empty space for a moment, and then looks back to her work.

  “Anybody home?” Francisks asks jokingly, banging the stone on his uncle’s grave. A swarm of dark fluffy balls flies out at this provocation and chases Francisks away—some bees must have taken up residence nearby. “How about I just carry the water?” he shouts. Marta agrees. She won’t give up, however. The bees go after her instead as she continues to plant the expensive houseleeks. There’s about half a box left. The insects keep flying close to her face but don’t sting. Is it true that bumblebees don’t sting? Either way, they keep landing right on Marta’s nose. She screams whenever they do. “Be quiet,” Father rumbles. “I’d like to see you keep quiet, down here between the ants and the bumblebees!” Marta says. When she screams again, a nearby funeral takes notice. The attendees jump and look in her direction. “You idiot,” Father says. Marta removes Father’s rail worker’s jacket from the nearby thuja and puts it over her head. It smells like her childhood under the jacket—it’s dark and nice. Marta can see just enough of the ground to continue planting. The bumblebees can’t bother her now, and she doesn’t feel the ants stinging her legs. “Don’t you dare get my jacket dirty in the sand!” Father mutters somewhere over her head. “It’s my only good jacket.” After a while he can’t take it any longer—he grabs the jacket and puts it on, then walks off to have a cigarette outside the cemetery.

  “Here, take a picture of my grave.” Marta hands her phone to Francisks and crouches next to Uncle Fricis’s or Ansis’s plot. Francisks asks why Marta’s calling that narrow strip of land her grave. Marta replies, “Because Father once told me he’d bury me here. He said, ‘Here, my dear daughter—here is where we’ll plant you.’ And I always believed him. He said it gently, but firmly too. Like it was a promise.” Then Marta smiles and shouts “Now!” Francisks takes her picture together with all the ants and bumblebees, with the wind and the sand and that funeral procession in the background; and perhaps Marta isn’t his sister after all, maybe she’s really Francisks’s mother, or maybe their mother hasn’t even been born yet; maybe their uncle wasn’t named Ansis or Fricis but was actually Francisks, and Father has long since cried his eyes out over them all. Who knows—it’s all so easy to mix up when there aren’t any inscriptions. “We need to do some engraving,” Marta tells Francisks, staring at the wind-and-sand-polished headstones. Father comes and asks if maybe they could all leave the cemetery already.

  They get in the car and start the return journey. The heat has broken and the sun is far away in the west. Nevertheless, Marta keeps her sunglasses on. Her window is open and the wind keeps blowing her light blue silk scarf up against her neck. Marta is quietly humming a song about perfect mates who nonetheless never cross paths. Francisks is hanging asleep in his seatbelt again. Just before they reach a bridge, a long cargo train passes by. Marta laboriously counts up to fifty-seven cars. She’s been counting train cars since she was a child, but never quite figured out what to do with the numbers she obtained by doing so. She texts a friend of hers that she’s just counted fifty-seven carriages but has no idea what the significance of this might be.

  Once the exit to Lille’s house appears, Marta gets jumpy. Father hasn’t said a word since they left the cemetery. His silence has a kind of superhuman tension in it. She swerves off the main road, and then Father’s silence intensifies so much that he might as well be giving her directions, pointing out the right house. Marta takes a side road, braking suddenly—sand goes flying in the air, Francisks hits the dashboard, and Father sighs.

  “Did we really have to?” he asks quietly, the house’s front gate having settled directly out his window. “Go on, stop in for a chat,” Marta says quickly, almost angrily.

  Father pulls himself out of the car, straightens out his jacket, and opens the gate. A massive crowd of geese is running around in the dust. Father splits the flock down the middle and, accompanied by their honking, proceeds toward the entrance at the other end of the house. He disappears around a corner. Red geraniums are growing in bunches on the windowsills.

  “Who lives here?” Francisks asks. “Dad’s old lover Lille,” Marta replies. “Jesus fucking Christ,” Francisks mumbles, then falls back asleep. There’s nothing to see—just the evening, a pine forest, sand, some geese, and a lonely white house. Marta remembers the view from her childhood—how Mom took Marta’s hand and they both walked to this house; they stood quietly behind the gate after Father had been away from home for a couple of days; he was inside the house, behind the curtains, which were and are blowing around in the wind—he was wearing a white shirt and sitting behind a full table and Mr. Lille was pouring vodka into his glass from a glass carafe. The nearby gravel pits radiated heat. Father glanced at his wife and daughter—so did Lilija. Mother turned around and they both went home. And usually not long after these incidents, Father came home too. Marta’s cell phone beeps, and she jumps. Her friend has sent her a text message: “57 carriages means that you have
57 summers ahead of you!” Marta says, “Jesus fucking Christ.”