Best European Fiction 2010

by Aleksandar Hemon

  dona malva vomited and then the other women got sick too. chaos. the women were screaming and i thought, well, this sort of malicious impossibility might very well destroy the world. dona malva herself yelled and swore and then fell into a stupor. without realizing it she opened her legs wide so that something could pass or be passed through, like gas being expelled. the smell was overpowering and the other women rushed to open the windows, screaming in unison. after that they drew together into a circle, facing outward, watching for any sign of evil. a few men came in too, but left quickly enough thereafter, since dona malva with her legs spread wasn’t a fit sight to be seen. if they watched her from the back, however, the married men were allowed to stay. as the smoke leaked from between dona malva’s legs, the men turned their faces away and called to each other for comfort. all was confusion and it became obvious that the men couldn’t handle the situation as well as the women. they either lacked courage or a natural tolerance for such occurrences. so finally they gathered together in the doorway and reminisced about how senhor josé ferreiro had been a good man and, truth be told, had never hurt anyone in life. they said that senhor josé must have come back like this because dona malva had been such a bitch to him. he’d been a peaceful man, they said, but now apparently he’d become a little impulsive. no, said someone else, once you’re dead it’s like you’re deaf and dumb. josé ferreiro is nothing more than a deaf, sad spirit now. he doesn’t know what he’s doing. another disagreed. death isn’t like going to sleep, it’s like waking up, he said. it’s like a blow to the head that gets all your senses going at last. dona malva vomited again and the men turned their eyes down the hall to the kitchen and then turned back, frightened, disgusted, numb, saying, that senhor josé, that son of a bitch, he’s really there, he’s sitting at the kitchen table, just sitting there while his widow succumbs to this insanity. and then everyone began to file out again and i went into the small backyard with my grandmother.

  the blossoms on the orange tree perfumed our walk, my grandmother behind me. we didn’t talk about anything important for a while. sometimes your grandfather seems so rude, she said, that son of a bitch. i’ve learned to expect anything. if he gets hungry, he demands to be fed on the spot. and i asked, grandmother, can you see senhor josé. and she said no, but fear can make him real. fear can make people think they see him. we had a good talk until my grandfather got back from the market and then we stopped as if we’d been switched off and pretended we were occupied with unrelated things. my grandfather came into our house looking preoccupied, went up and rummaged through the drawers in his room, and finally left again via the backyard. perhaps he needed to kill some bugs out in the garden, or perhaps two cats were wandering around out back and he wanted to give them a good kick. he was as hard as a rock, or like iron hardened in water.

  dona malva’s belly stayed distended for a few days and our daily life in the neighborhood took on a rather improvised, hurried pace. at the market, we loaded ourselves down with vegetables for soups and herbs for tea. there was a hand on dona malva’s stomach most of the day to measure her progress and check for changes. dona malva waddled around like an old woman, sad and with an enormous stomach, though she moaned convincingly enough like a new mother about to give birth. fumes constantly leaked from out of her skirts. slowly, very slowly, the days would darken. small children trailed behind her, frightened and fascinated, expecting her to act like a witch from their fairy tales. they told each other that she was going to mix vegetables with hair and nails, with dirt from new graves or else from some holy site, that she was going to cast a spell to drive away the fire in her belly. dona malva ignored their taunting and hurried on her way. rosa, left alone in the house, began to starve, and eventually the solitude ate away at what was left of her sanity. the more alone she was, the more the voices tortured her, and the more the blood of the dead seeped into the walls of her room.

  one day dona malva collapsed in mid step and more smoke began to seep out from between her legs. the black fumes thickened and eventually hid the moaning woman as people ran all around her calling for help. dona malva emptied out her belly right there and then, and in the darkness no one could tell if she was giving birth to anything living. when the smoke dissipated, only the groaning woman was there, obviously in agony, broken, as if she’d been carrying a whole house in her body. people approached cautiously, refusing to believe that all dona malva had held inside her was fire. people looking closely saw that her clothes were charred. it was ridiculous. there she was, alive and smokeless now, although she’d certainly smelled like smoke from time to time. dona malva was still moaning, begging for someone to help her. she said her soul had escaped between her legs and that she couldn’t stand up.

  a few terrified men picked her up and threw her into her house like a sandbag over a cliff. when she heard rosa calling out, she finally moved a little. it was late in the day, the sun was just a sliver in the sky. finally, my courageous grandmother went over and helped the disgraced woman get up, leading her to senhor josé’s old chair and telling her to rest while she saw to rosa. i stood in the doorway but didn’t enter. everyone else stood behind me and said that a house so corrupted by evil should be burned to the ground. they said that dona malva’s remains would continue to smoke even after everything else was ash. they stepped back then as my grandfather arrived, hoe in hand, crying out, you there, it’s only idiots like you who waste time being afraid of things that don’t exist. then he shook his hoe and threatened to split their heads open if they came any closer. like potatoes, he said. any one of you.

  dona malva stood up and pushed senhor josé’s chair against the wall. she looked at it a long time. she said, we’ll never move it. she said, and we’ll never see each other again. then my grandfather came right in and moved the chair. dona malva protested. be quiet, senhora ferreira, for god’s sake, my grandfather said, and he pushed her to the floor. she went quiet and seemed to doubt herself, rubbing her stomach, now shrunken. when nothing else happened, my grandfather approached the chair again, thought a moment, and then left to bring back bricks and cement. dona malva didn’t object. she watched him wall in that chair, and as she watched she seemed increasingly defiant. you’re not going to move from there ever again, josé. you’re going to be trapped between these walls. yet as soon as the bricks reached the ceiling, the noise in the attic started up again, louder than ever, and then louder still, until it seemed as if all the dead of the world had squeezed into the top of the house. dona malva cried out in desperation and collapsed. i looked for rosa. no one had the courage to acknowledge what was going on. an impossible wind began to blow through the house, picking objects up and then smashing them apart. again, chaos. objects began to revolve around rosa, knocking her to the floor. i grabbed her and held her against me, and i thought, what if this wind never stops, we’ll spend the rest of our lives like this, or else, what if we get ripped to pieces, they’ll have to search for us among the flowers. it was as though life had stopped. in that moment, life felt suspended.

  the following day was christmas eve. whenever someone tried to enter the house, they’d hear a soft snarl. rags were stuffed in the chinks in the walls and all the curtains were drawn. the members of the household worried that this supper would be their last, especially since the blood of the dead had begun descending from the attic again, seeping into every wall of dona malva’s house, except the one my grandfather had built. soon the dead too began coming down from the attic again. this is apparently what the dead do.

  TRANSLATED FROM PORTUGUESE BY KERRI A. PIERCE

  [ROMANIA]

  COSMIN MANOLACHE

  Three Hundred Cups

  If you find yourself hoping for something exceptional from a wholly ordinary day, wanting much more, that is, than you would ordinarily, had your expectations been at their usual modest and patient level, then it’s probably a good idea to forget the precise meaning of the word “exceptional.” At least until evening gradually settles its coolne
ss over half the globe. Forget the person you were at the moment of formulating your desire. Forget everything that led up to that moment. And, even after evening falls, it’s probably still a good idea not to remind yourself that you’d wanted much more from that particular day. At most you should say a simple, homely prayer of thanks for yet another twenty-four hours siphoned out of the intangible flux of time. Let a week go by, maybe more. Then, and only then: roll up your sleeves—be the bookkeeper of your own fate—and erase the dividing line between ordinary and exceptional days once and for all. Because every single day is ordinary or exceptional in almost equal measure. What was an ordinary day yesterday—whichever day it might have been—will be promoted to exceptionality only after its wounds have healed, only once the sun is setting at last…or perhaps only after an even longer interval, when, inside us, all that remains is a few vague memories, mingled together now and indistinguishable from the residue of countless other exceptional or ordinary days.

  That was what I was thinking yesterday evening, submerged in the late-autumn coolness, allured by the feast-day fervor of Bucharest around the Cathedral of the Patriarchate and the relics of St. Demetrios the New, having stowed the priceless Notebook No. VI 1965, (or, to be precise, Notebook Containing a Part of the Novel of My Life, by Potocianu) containing the memoirs inscribed (evidently) in Potocianu’s own tremulous handwriting, its cover emblazoned (evidently) with a pen-and-ink patron-saint-effigy of our national poet Mihai Eminescu (based on the well-known photograph from the poet’s youth, but marred by ham-handed draftsmanship, visible above all in the elongated eyebrows, which make it resemble that other well-known photograph, from the end of Eminescu’s life, the one with the big moustache), carefully into my knapsack.

  Yesterday was a day I somehow have to record. It was a day I had dedicated to myself. I probably should have spent my two weeks of freedom at home, or anyway, somewhere other than where I was (two weeks after a month of isolation, posted between the two shores of the southeastern extremity of the country), and above all according to a rigorous, organized timetable. Two weeks poking my head around the Danube Delta wilderness, for example—like the heads of the writers or statesmen who peek out from the pages of schoolbooks. (This is the only way, after all, that our national heroes can escape from the afterlife—our dreary lessons and homework assignments are, for them, brief holidays, dotted throughout the year: their only means of exacting revenge against the tyranny of the present day, mingling them all together in its—often false—histories.)

  And yet: what could be more hopeless than a period of “planned freedom,” however long it lasts? The last time I went away on leave, I spent the first week withdrawn, wasting the days in introspective confusion. It wasn’t until the second week that I realized the danger I was in. I had to start paying attention, had to put myself in an analytical mind-set, had to use my time judiciously—a revelation that struck me in a private art gallery. I had wanted to see as many seascapes as I could—no more, no less. Even without an expert’s eye, however, I had begun to notice that some of the huge, mostly second-rate canvases there resembled the ones I had seen in a book I owned called Dutch Paintings in Soviet Museums. And I finally understood. The gallery was full of imitators who were hoping to earn a good living off the ignorance of people like myself. I was wasting my time. I had to change my approach. I headed off to the National Museum of Art instead. I’d learned to spend my time wisely, then. But what about now? What was I supposed to do for the length of a day as vast as the Black Sea?

  Yesterday morning, at something past six A.M., I was already in the center of town, on Magheru Boulevard. It was still quiet out. A quiet that went well with the wind. For a couple of minutes—as long as the traffic lights kept the few buses running at that hour away—it seemed to me that I was in the middle of an abandoned city. In a city where there were no human beings left to keep me from investigating the remains of this world, which had only just ceased to exist. A city whose demise only I could have borne witness to—or written the obituary for. But the green light flashed at last and unleashed the rumble of car engines, shattering the silence once more. In that moment, I thought of my mother’s aviator friend. Dumitru, Doru for short—my secret godfather, whom I’d never met: a clandestine, outlaw figure. Maybe even my real father. In any case, a patron, a twin—imagined in every possible way, depending on my mood at the moment. And then I thought about how, up there, on a flight path his company had assigned him, there must have been the same sense of abandonment, of crushing silence, of solitude.

  He had been in the air force, which probably meant that he only flew on really big missions, or for training, but not often as an ordinary pilot. Or maybe he sat out most of his career in some personnel office or other. This last thought brought me back down to earth.

  Consequently, I decided to spend my day according to three simple, efficient watchwords: organization, planning, rigor; that’s what you end up with after a life in the barracks. I quickly decided on my mission goal: satisfaction of an affective need. Procedure: one of two options—either investigate a certain air-force base, or else visit the Military Museum. Execution: the Military Museum is closer.

  When I’d been at the academy, our visits to sites of military-cultural import were only intended to ensure that we obtain the maximum benefit from a trip into town—back then, the getting there and the getting back were the only parts of the trip that excited me. I couldn’t look at a halberd, a painting, or a two-hundred-year-old building with any degree of concentration. They meant absolutely nothing to me, nothing at all except their passage through time—and the grim efforts of the people who were employed to dust them day after day, week after week. Thus, my visit to the Military Museum—for once of my own volition, without having been ordered to stop there, without some commandant watching my every move—seemed all the more peculiar to me.

  I entered the courtyard containing the greatest number of statues in all of Bucharest. Our greatest national heroes, guarded—as is only fitting—by the most modern pieces of artillery. A good foretaste of the Last Judgment for our particular nation. I imagined us all lining up at the Throne of Judgment carrying our history books—so that we would actually be able to identify the various legendary figures being judged ahead of us—and reciting Matthew, chapter 12, verse 18. I imagined our forefathers’ shock at seeing their disappointing descendents. What would King Burebista of Dacia think if he caught sight of me somewhere at the back of the line? Where’d that fucking half-breed come from? Get out of here! You’re unworthy of the great history I founded! What worthless pagan tribe dumped this nonentity here in the bosom of my nation? Yes, Burebista wouldn’t be very pleased with the likes of me. (According to the history books, his kingdom’s borders hadn’t even reached to where I was stationed, in Portia, or as far as Musura, opposite the Isle of Snakes. Burebista was something like a sheriff, cleaning up the Wild East near the Crimea.) And he certainly wouldn’t be pleased to see what a good time I’d be having standing in the same line as St. Stephen the Great, Radu the Handsome, St. Constantine Brâncoveanu, and the Cantemir Brothers, all of whom, during their lives, never missed an opportunity to do a little sacking and burning, and all of whom would be standing around waiting for the same redemption as myself. And he certainly wouldn’t be pleased to see that I wouldn’t know which of these great men to offer my services as lieutenant to. A month ago I heard a priest—trying to persuade his parishioners that the apocalypse was nigh—say that all the weeping and wailing we see in soap operas is salutary, as it serves to prepare us for the weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth every one of us will witness at the end of the world. Back in military school, however, they never taught us anything about the horrible events we’re all, apparently, hurtling towards (at least according to the Bible). I’m willing to bet that the director of the Military Museum never once made the same association I had—between the row of statues in the courtyard and a catechism on the subject of the Judgment of Nations.
A pity. If he’d seen things my way, he would have been able to attract new visitors: not just academy cadets, but seminary school students, theology scholars, and even humble parishioners. If they got the proper encouragement, they could have brought new life to the cold and empty rooms of the museum. But: life and increased ticket sales? Probably too much to ask. In any event, as an officer on active duty, I didn’t have to pay full price to get in, and soon I was revisiting the sinful and bloodstained past of the Romanian people, on my way to the Aviation and Aeronautics room. I was on the trail of Doru the First.

  The hall was like an immense insectarium. I think so many bugs would have been a comfort to Kafka. Fighter planes from both world wars, early prototypes of crash-prone flying machines, fuselages fragile enough to scare you out of any future flights to visit relatives abroad, manifold models of helicopter rotor blades, bombs and bomblets, a rocket nacelle, and the landing capsule of Romania’s only cosmonaut, Dumitru Prunariu—in which he and his copilot, Leonid Popov, had returned to Earth at mind-boggling speeds. The capsule was accompanied by a cutaway diagram on a metal stand. The tiny, to-scale outlines of the two cosmonauts in the picture looked as though they were about to emerge from the womb after nine months of working to acquire human shapes. In the diagram, the capsule itself looked rather like an eyeball, or maybe the insides of a camera. I loitered around the vessel for an hour or so, finally reaching out to touch it—as though an object that had traversed the heavens would have to be imbued with some unsuspected talismanic powers; as though all I needed to do was entrust myself to it in order to pick up my aviator’s scent. If I saw that monstrosity plummeting to Earth, I don’t know what message I could relay to my regiment. Perhaps only a single code word, HEAVEN, HEAVEN being the emblem of fear, a cipher for both beginning and end, for α & ω, HEAVEN signifying a whole succession of heavens (how many are there again? nine?), the ascent through the aether, through the celestial tollbooths, each manned by an angel and a demon that vie for one’s soul, not at all like the Fall, not at all a descent from the glory of heaven, a plum dropping scorched and shriveled by the sun. Touching the capsule, it was as if I had entered a church and leaned my head against an icon during some precise, efficient prayer. Finally I copied the diagram down with as much talent as I could muster on such an emotionally trying day.