He adjusted his diamond tiepin, cleared his throat, and tapped on a glass with a gold teaspoon. Further taps on glasses were heard as the five interpreters—Spanish, French, English, Russian, and German—discreetly followed suit. Everyone got to their feet. Except Berger, who remained sitting on the backseat of the Lincoln, smiling radiantly.
“A great day…!” whispered the prompter. “Some days…”
“A great day…!” Berger spoke up. “Some days are greater than others, of course…This is one of the great ones…One of the greatest, perhaps. But what if this day really is the greatest? Does this make the rest of our days insignificant? Less worth our whiles?”
The corner of his mouth twitched and he leaned over to Krištof, who was sitting on the seat next to him. “Can’t we cut this short?” he muttered surreptitiously.
Krištof shook his head. “The punch line, sir…You have to give them the punch line. ‘And what is greatness and insignificance?’”
“And what is greatness and insignificance?” Berger forced through his clenched teeth. “What can we measure them by? Is greatness the measure of insignificance and insignificance the measure of greatness? Or is there one standard…” he broke off.
The guests wriggled uncomfortably.
“That’s really too much…” Berger exclaimed furiously, grimacing. “Shit, can’t you stop feeding me this ridiculous nonsense?”
Krištof’s stoical face convinced him that more nonsense must follow. The prompter shook his head.
“…by which we must measure greatness…!”
“…by which we must measure greatness…and another by which we must measure insignificance. But let’s turn this question around…Let’s ask ourselves, is insignificance, true insignificance a suitable measure for greatness? The answer is yes…without a doubt!” Berger recited, more and more disgustedly.
“The sea is great. The world is great. This is a great day! We are all great! Greater than the planet! Than the sea! Thanks to ideas! Thanks to great ideas!”
The hall filled with a storm of applause.
Krištof smiled. Berger shook his head in disbelief. He raised a glass of Mumm champagne, then hesitated for a moment before pulling the microphone towards him once more and gesturing for silence.
“Ehm…God is great! Thank you…!”
When all the five interpreters translated this, the applause reached new heights…It was like a typhoon. Gee-Aye nodded in satisfaction.
Skirkaniová was the only one to look remote; to make sure no one—for heaven’s sake—would be able to get a photograph of her smiling. Everyone thought she must be someone exceptionally important, given her aloofness. And they weren’t far wrong.
The official banquet went as expected. A total of one hundred and forty-five bottles of Mumm champagne were drunk, along with two hundred and thirty of Piper-Heidsieck and one hundred fourteen bottles of Dom Pérignon. These—now empty—were carried away to the recycling center by one of the waiters, for which task he received a remuneration of nine hundred and ninety-six crowns.
Part of the program accompanying the summit was to be the planting of a memorial tree in the president’s garden. Several of the foreign participants suggested that, given the topic of the summit (“The Sea”—despite this country being landlocked), it should be some coastal species. After an exceptionally dramatic vote, taking two long days, with the choice being made from among two hundred and fifty-six suggestions, of which fifteen reached the final round, the olive tree won in the end, because the olive branch is a symbol of peace. A few months later—on the fifteenth of February of the following year, at four in the afternoon, to be exact—the tree froze and never recovered…but none of the participants in the summit ever learned of this.
Well, of course, the delegates couldn’t forgo the traditional ceremonial ascent of Hump Hill, which rises majestically over the capital. This hill, with a height of one hundred twenty-five meters and twenty centimeters above sea level, was hardly chosen by chance. Many of the participants in the summit were of an advanced age—including Baron Salzundpeppär, who was nearly eighty—and Berger’s secretary Felix didn’t want to risk any of them having sudden heart failure or an asthma attack. When they reached the very top, the delegate from Austria muttered scornfully under his breath, “Well…At least it’s above sea level!”
By contrast, the Dutch people present praised this beautiful massif, since it reminded them very much of their distinctive hills, Watchman, Dreamer, and Sleeper, created by mistake from three piles of earth during the construction of dikes to prevent flooding. As Hump evoked nostalgic memories of their homeland, all five were moved to tears and together they sang their national anthem.
The person who was happiest to reach the summit, however, was Baron Salzundpeppär himself. He particularly appreciated the beauty of the young girls in folk costumes who were keeping him company day and night.
“It’s vunderful, vot your girls vill do, ven they meet a real man at last…!” he exclaimed enthusiastically. “I feel zo young! Zo young! Zeventy, maybe zixty-five!”
Since folk costumes are easy to take off, but hard to put on, the foyer of the Baron’s hotel was crossed at regular intervals every night by half-naked maidens drifting like fairies under the gaze of the accommodating porters and receptionist, who had received strict orders not to intervene. Finally, when the summit was winding up, it was decided to convene the delegates in the bedroom of the Baron’s own suite, so that the participants wouldn’t be forced—as had been the case until then—to wait hours for him to appear. He presided over them in elegant striped pajamas and a velvet dressing gown, designed especially for him by Jean-Paul Gaultier.
TRANSLATED FROM SLOVAK BY HEATHER TREBATICKÁ
[SLOVENIA]
ANDREJ BLATNIK
FROM You Do Understand?
AND SINCE I COULDN’T SLEEP
I’ve left. I know I have to leave a note. I know it’s not right for a girl to walk out like this after you’ve taken her to dinner, or rather, after you’ve been wining and dining her for three months, virtually every night, and after she’s said, for the first time, after your nearly one hundred dinners together, that yes, tonight she would like that nightcap. I know it’s hard to wake and find an empty bed when the night before you were so sure it wouldn’t be empty in the morning, to wake up to an empty apartment when you thought it wouldn’t have to be empty anymore. But I had to leave, I couldn’t sleep, you do understand, don’t you.
What can I say? That it was a lovely evening? You know that already. I always told you so. It was always lovely. That I couldn’t stay? You know that too. You can see I’m gone. All those dinners—I wasn’t really that hungry, you know. But it was nice afterwards, when they’d cleared away the dishes and we just sat there, chatting. I liked the way you always slowly shook your head no when I offered to pay the bill. I could have paid, you know, almost every time, not just once, but I liked your slow head shake. It made your hair undulate.
Yes, I know we’d had too much to eat already and it was time to move on to other things. That’s why I said we could go to your place. But the moment we walked in through your door I knew we shouldn’t have come. All that stuff in your apartment! There was no room for me. While we were out eating it was less—personal. Here, though—I don’t know, maybe we should’ve gone to a hotel, maybe that would have worked. Like in a restaurant, you come and you go. This, though, was your home. All those things on the walls, objects you and your wife had brought back from trips. You even showed me your kids’ room. Yes, that was a mistake, as I’m sure you realize. I know they’re grown up and on their own. But they still have a room at your place. They can come back, anytime. And what would I do then?
I felt bad when you cried. I wish I could’ve been more of a comfort to you, but I couldn’t. Yes, I know you care about me. I care about you, too. And I’m really sorry, because you’re a nice guy. Other guys wouldn’t have made up a bed for me in the living room. But I r
eally couldn’t. Sleep. Too many things. Those books that can’t really belong to you. That music you never listen to. Too much for me, sorry.
You know something? I’m very full. I don’t think I’ll be able to eat anymore, at least not for a while. And what else is there for us to do? You’re not offended, are you? You do understand, don’t you?
A DAY I LOVED YOU
I lay there with my eyes closed, waiting for my husband to vacate his half of the bed. To go to work, of course. He’ll get a sandwich on the corner. He’ll have a coffee during his first meeting. Then he’ll call home. To make sure that I’m still here, and haven’t run away. I’m not going to. I’m going to open that box of old snapshots again. There were no hard drives back in those days. I’ll go through it all photo by photo, and with each one think: That was a day I loved you.
THIRTY YEARS
It’s awful how time changes things, she thought. Everything used to be open, it seemed like everything was still ahead of us, but then it’s all over and it all comes down to a moment when there are no longer two paths in front of you.
It’s awful how a man you’ve loved for so many years changes, she thought. His skin used to be smooth as glass and warm as cotton. Now it’s furrowed like the earth and cold as ice.
It’s awful how a woman who’s loved someone for so many years changes, she thought. Her hand used to caress, now it holds a knife.
THE POWER OF WORDS
They say: you can’t blame the tiger for eating the antelope. Eating antelopes is its nature. It’s nice, being a tiger: the endless grasslands, plenty of antelopes waiting for you to get hungry. Night is coming; you’ll fall asleep, sleep, and dream of being a tiger. Now test your power in a different way: explain to another tiger that an antelope is a living, sentient being. Tell him: picture this: you’re not a tiger anymore, you’re an antelope now, running from a tiger, your strength is failing but you run, you run, the tiger is gaining on you, you think you should’ve run in the other direction but it’s too late now, the tiger is coming from that direction. And when your legs buckle and the tiger finally catches up, as is bound to happen, you, the antelope, say to the tiger: “You’re not going to eat me, are you? Meat is murder. Your steak had feelings once, you know.” And the tiger stops. Thinks. The power of words.
CRACKS
Many stories have happened. This is one of them. You have a wife, you have kids, you have a job, you have a car, you have a house in the suburbs. It looks like you’ll die happy, your children will cry at your funeral, and your neighbors will be sorry you’re gone. Then one night as you’re driving home in the last evaporating tendrils of light, going no faster than usual, there’s a thump, you hit something. You haven’t seen anything, there was just this thud against your car. You stop, you get out to see what’s happened. There’s a child lying under your car, seven, eight years old, you’ve got one just like him waiting for you at home, he could’ve been yours. He doesn’t move. A pool of blood is forming under his head.
You cry out, bend down, feel for his pulse, find nothing. You look around, there’s no one there, the street is deserted. You drive along this street every day without knowing anyone, a housing development, gray and disheveled. There’s no one watching, all the lights are out.
What now? What do you do when something like this happens to you? You know: if the child were to moan a little, it would all be simple. You’d load him in your car and rush him to the hospital. Or call for an ambulance. But you can see there’s nothing to save. When you calm down a little you see the streetlights haven’t even come on yet. You see there are no cars in the street. You turn and look around to see if anyone’s coming, if anyone’s lurking behind the dumpsters, watching. But there’s no one anywhere.
You’d like to call someone, but whom? Besides, your phone battery has suddenly run out and you realize that nobody would answer even if it did still work. You look at the child again. He seems to have been lying there for hours, his face has grown colorless, the blood under his head has dried. You look around again and the buildings along the street seem to be crumbling, the asphalt crackling, huge fissures appearing in the night sky, through which the void will begin to seep in at any moment. You’re still holding your car keys, you look at them, you look at your car, and you know it will never move again. You drop the keys, they slowly fall into the dark beneath you and you’re not even surprised when you don’t hear the metal strike the asphalt. There’s no sound left anywhere. No dogs barking, no televisions buzzing, no phones ringing. Again you bend over the child. He’s getting tinier and tinier and more and more dried out, you look at your hands and wait for the cracks to appear on them. You think: I had a wife, I had kids, it seemed I would die happy. Now things will happen differently. Many stories don’t have happy endings. This is one of them.
THE MOMENT OF DECISION
The man decides that things can’t go on like this. The man realizes all the women he knows only want to be friends, even the ones who sleep over only sleep over because they’ve been rejected by his best friend. The man quits his job, leases his apartment. The man goes abroad. The man travels a long time and is silent, people speak to him, he answers as briefly as possible. The man is finally tired, the man stops somewhere, the man rents a room. The man watches the girl making his bed. The man feels something inside him stir, something he thought he had left far behind in the past. The man tells the girl she is beautiful. The man is glad when the girl laughs and thanks him. The man asks if she has time for a drink after work. The man is pleased when the girl says she does. The man thinks it perfectly all right when, after the drink, or rather, the drinks, the girl declines to come up to his room, or rather, the bed she has made. The man tells himself it’s really too soon. The man is glad when he sees the girl in the hallway the next morning and she smiles. The man is in love. The man decides not to travel anymore, this place is just as good as the next one, or rather, better, far better. The man takes the girl out to dinner many times, out for drinks, out on trips on her days off. Then, when she has two days off, the man invites her on a longer trip. After dinner in a faraway town the man asks her if she feels like staying, like spending the night. The man is happy when she says she does. The man knows: it has to be in some other hotel chain, not hers. The man pays for the room, leaves a tip, orders drinks up to the room. The man enjoys feeling the looks of envy on his back as he climbs the stairs to their room. The man doesn’t understand why the girl starts crying when she sees the bed meant for two, them, and not one, him. The man thinks: this is love, a surprise, it always catches you by surprise, and it did her too. The man tells himself: you have to live for something larger than yourself. The man walks up to her, places his hands on her shoulders. The girl looks at him, she looks at him for a long time, then she crosses herself and starts undoing her blouse. The girl asks him: will you always love me? The man thinks: yes, this is the right question for this moment. The man is happy.
THE MAN WHO DIDN’T THROW HIMSELF UNDER A TRAIN SPEAKS
I didn’t want to fall in love. But I did. It didn’t work out. I remember everything. How I threw the rings I’d bought us in the river and she got scared I’d hurt her if she refused me. Each and every note I stuck behind her windshield wipers. I wrote so much, on every one of them, even though the pieces of paper were so small. I gave all of myself. Burned my bridges. My wife said I was crazy, the kids were still small, I used to have a good job, what was I thinking, roaming the city all day long. I know what I had in mind. Running into her. But I never did. And even when I did, I pretended not to see her. Because I didn’t know what to say. Because she’d told me: no more. So I didn’t. I didn’t want to. But then, after she’d thrown herself under the train, I heard. They said I had goaded her into it. That she cried every time the phone rang. Because she always thought it was me. But it wasn’t. Not always. That it was my fault. But I didn’t want that. I only wanted her to hear me out. So I could tell her about us. Once and for all. One more time. But she wou
ldn’t have any of it. She left and never said she was leaving. If she had, it would’ve been different. I would’ve told her. But I didn’t. Because she didn’t say. So now I go to the station, every day, to see if maybe I can leave town. My wife won’t let me near the kids anymore. She has it in writing, too. It says I’m dangerous. Likely to do something. But I’m not going to do anything. It wouldn’t change a thing. Maybe she never really died. I didn’t go to the funeral; they said I’d better not. Maybe there never was a funeral. Maybe she’s waiting at some station, waiting for me to arrive. I just don’t know which train to take. I look at them and can’t make up my mind. I just look.
SEPARATION
It’s odd to wake up in a strange apartment. You look at the woman lying next to you. How did you get here? You can’t strike up a conversation with a woman reading Coelho on the train, really. And yet, it happens. Now you’re here. She’s asleep. You listen: she’s still breathing. It would be awful if she wasn’t. Who would you call? How would you explain? As it is, everything can be repaired. On the floor, the remnants of last night, leftover food and drink. You feel like cleaning up, you don’t want to be useless, last night seems to have been nice, you didn’t talk much, it all went ahead without words. But: it’s not easy to clean up when you’re on strange turf. How do you figure out what’s garbage? You used to assess strange apartments by the books and the records. Wherever you went: a quick glance cast along the bookshelves. And you knew. But you can no longer rely on that. Everyone’s books and music are increasingly alike. Waste separation is the thing, now. Where do you put the paper, the glass, the organic waste? You look all around, you peer under the sink, but there are no options, just a single container. No other choice. Quietly, you put on your shoes.
Best European Fiction 2010 Page 31
