Best European Fiction 2010

by Aleksandar Hemon

  “If you can call Jean Paul a caretaker,” Laura interrupted with disgust.

  “Yeah. Jean Paul says I’ve got the dates all wrong and now I’m going to lose my deposit.”

  Mitchell wagged his finger at her.

  “There are worse things than losing your deposit. We were about to have you sedated and driven up to the mountains.”

  Kitty Finch lifted up the sole of her left foot and slowly pulled out a thorn.

  “It won’t be the first time I’ve been sedated.”

  Her grey eyes searched for Nina who was still hiding behind her father. And then she smiled.

  “I like your bikini.”

  Her front teeth were crooked, snarled into each other and her hair was drying into copper coloured curls.

  “What’s your name?”

  “Nina.”

  “Do you think I look like a bear, Nina?” She clenched her right hand as if it was a paw and jabbed it at the cloudless blue sky.

  Her fingernails were painted dark green.

  Nina shook her head and then swallowed her spit the wrong way and started to cough. Everyone sat down. Mitchell on the ugly blue chair because he was the fattest and it was the biggest, Laura on the pink wicker chair, Rachel and Jonathan on the two white plastic recliners, Nina perched on the edge of her father’s chair, avoiding his long toenails. They all had a place in the shade except Kitty Finch who was crouching awkwardly on the burning paving stones.

  Rachel wrung the ends of her wet black hair.

  “You haven’t anywhere to sit. I’ll find you a chair.”

  “Oh don’t bother. Please. I’m just waiting for Jean Paul to come back with the name of a hotel for me and I’ll be off.”

  “Of course you must sit down.”

  Laura, puzzled and uneasy, watched Rachel lug a heavy wooden chair covered in dust and cobwebs towards the pool. There were things in the way. A red bucket. A broken plant pot. Two canvas umbrellas wedged into lumps of concrete. She was making a place for Kitty Finch. Rearranging the space that had been claimed for the last two weeks by all of them. She was actually placing the wooden chair between her recliner and her husband’s.

  “Thank you.” Kitty wiped it down with the skirt of her dress and sat down.

  Laura folded her hands in her lap.

  “Have you been here before?”

  “Yes I’ve been coming here for years.”

  “Do you work?” Jonathan spat an olive pip into a bowl.

  “Yes, I sort of work. I’m a botanist.”

  “Ah. There are some nice peculiar words in your profession.”

  He stroked the small shaving cut on his chin and smiled at her.

  “Jonathan likes pe-cu-li-ar words because he’s a poet.” Mitchell said “peculiar” as if imitating an aristocrat in a stupor.

  “So, Kitty Finch.” Jonathan stroked his upper lip as if deep in thought. “Perhaps you could tell us what you know about co-tyl-e-dons?”

  “Right.” Her right eye winked at Nina when she said “right.” “Those are the first leaves on a seedling.”

  “Correct. And now for my favourite word…how would you describe a leaf?”

  “Leaves are the flat green parts of the plant at the end of a stem that contain chlorophyll. “

  “Yes.” Jonathan smiled and Kitty stopped winking.

  Nina noticed that her mother was drifting off, her eyes half shut, the untouched glass of water in her left hand about to fall on the paving stones.

  “And finally,” Jonathan Mines absentmindedly stroked his daughter’s sunburnt shoulder, making her flinch, “your prize will be a small glass of golden nectar…what is a rhizome?”

  “Kitty,” Laura interrupted sternly. “There are lots of hotels so you’d better go and find one.”

  When Jean Paul finally made his way through the gate, his long silver hair hanging in rats tails down his back, he told them every hotel in the village was full until Wednesday.

  “Then you must stay until Wednesday,” Rachel announced in her numb, flat voice. “There’s a spare room at the back of the house.”

  Kitty frowned and leaned back in her new chair.

  “Is that okay with everyone? Please say if you mind?”

  She was whispering and stuttering. Almost pleading. It seemed to Nina that she was asking them to mind. Kitty Finch was blushing and clenching her toes at the same time. Nina felt her own heart racing. It had gone hysterical, thumping in her chest. She glanced at Laura and saw the giantess was actually wringing her hands.

  Laura was about to say she did mind. She and Mitchell had shut their shop in Euston for the entire summer knowing the windows that had been smashed by thieves and drug addicts at least nine times that year would be smashed again when their holiday was over. They had come to the Alpes-Maritimes, the land between the coast and the Alps to escape from the futility of mending broken glass. She found herself struggling for words. The young woman was a window waiting to be climbed through. A window that she intuited was a little broken anyway. She couldn’t be sure of this but it seemed to her that Jonathan Mines had already wedged his foot into the crack and his wife had helped him. She cleared her throat and was about to speak her mind but what was on her mind was so unutterable, the hippy caretaker got there first.

  “So, Kitty Kat, shall I carry your valises to your room?” Everyone looked to where Jean Paul was pointing with his nicotine-stained finger.

  Two blue canvas bags lay to the right of the French doors of the villa.

  “Thanks, Jean Paul.” Kitty dismissed him as if he was her personal valet.

  He bent down and picked up the bags.

  “What are the weeds?” He lifted up a tangle of flowering plants that had been stuffed into the second blue bag.

  “Oh, I found those in the churchyard next to Claude’s café.”

  Jonathan looked impressed. “You’ll have to call them the KittyKat plant. Early plant hunters often named plants after themselves.”

  Rachel stood up and walked to the edge of the pool. The old Polish woman who lived next door was waving from her balcony. As she dived into the green water, her arms stretched out in front of her head, her eyes closed, a voice inside her head gave her some information she did not understand.

  When her fingertips touched the warm stone edge of the pool she flipped over and swam another length.

  The voice continued, Rachel’s voice speaking to Rachel under the water.

  She has arrived so I can leave.

  [UNITED KINGDOM: SCOTLAND]

  ALASDAIR GRAY

  The Ballad of Ann Bonny

  Blind and a beggar sir, also a sot that

  tells tall tales. Who’d buy me drink did I not?

  Don’t sit too near—I stink but crave brandy

  though won’t refuse beer. Thanks! Long life to us both.

  How I became thus, you will hear.

  A woman caused it, Ann Bonny by name,

  a little tough sailor, same as me then

  but twenty years older. Dressed as a man

  she’d swab decks, climb masts, reef sails, swear like the

  rest of us dodging land, law, family.

  She had pluck. Shame that her name did not fit her face

  but young men will fuck holes in planks. Those who sought

  swings in Ann’s hammock drove her mad.

  She broke my nose, being keen on a lad

  of fourteen who thought her a joke.

  Queer how shy Ann was with him near,

  unable to speak or look at him straight

  yet mending his breeks and scaring off

  buggars after his bum. On yardarms, she

  was the chum who steadied him—he’d a poor head

  for heights. He cried at night like me years before,

  when I joined ship and was whipped. I aint shed tears since.

  Who’d whip the young Prince (we called him that)

  must thrash Ann Bonny first.

  Nobody durst.

>   It was bad for the lad, being loved

  like a cub by a tigress. No rumpy-pumpy!

  Ann’s motherly rage cut that out, but boys

  past the age of ten need men to teach them

  men’s ways. Aye, you wink sir, think me a sod.

  More beer and I’ll explain your mistake. My thanks.

  Hard lives don’t make all men brutes.

  At sea we survive by helping each other.

  Had the Prince been ugly he could still have

  trusted me like a brother.

  His looks showed he know’d he’d fare better

  if Ann pulled out her hooks. When she was not nigh

  some would cry, “How’s your wife the Princess today?”

  or, “No beard this morning sir? I suppose, the Queen

  Mother shaved you before you arose?”

  If he sneezed, “Wrap up well! If you catch cold

  the royal nurse’ll give us all hell.”

  He’d go white, would yell, “That aint fair!

  I don’t need, don’t want, don’t like that old woman!”—

  when Ann was not there.

  At last I said, “Stow that gab!,” thrashed Abe the Yid

  who joshed him most, declared the next who did

  would feel my fist. The Prince looked up to me then,

  Ann too. Since I commanded the main topsail

  Ann got the first mate to let the Prince and she

  serve under me. On their first day Abe cries,

  “See aloft on the crosstree! A Sacred Family!

  The Pa, Ma and Holy Little One all complete

  and up in the air! How sweet!”

  I blacked his eyes.

  So before her last breath Ann did not know

  I wanted her death, which I did not plan.

  A stiff breeze struck sudden and hard

  while we put about on a starboard tack.

  We reefed in smart and Ann, not quite secure,

  thrust out her hand, sure of my aid.

  I just gazed back till her amazed face filled with fear

  as her other hand lost hold. Clawing, clawing air she fell

  eighty feet or more, smack onto the deck

  without a yell.

  That kind of end aint uncommon at sea

  but was, near me. The Prince alone knew

  what I’d failed to do so was no more my friend.

  That I’d failed Ann to make him a man he

  could not see. Others also grew strange to me.

  I changed too—no longer sprang lightly aloft

  but had to force myself up. I’d lost my pluck

  which is most of a seaman’s luck.

  In a few days I became the glum numb dumb

  Jonah of the crew.

  Before the next part of my tale I need

  fortified by brandy, not ale. My thanks sir.

  When mending rigging an iron fork

  is a handy tool, the space between prongs

  wide as eyes in a face. One night I woke in

  dreadful pain and dark and never saw light again.

  I lay below deck like a log for weeks,

  wishing those prongs had pierced my brain. Who

  had blinded me I neither cared

  nor knew.

  But my old mates grew kind, me being blind,

  fed me grub and grog. The Prince was now topmast king

  and sometimes bathed what were once my eyes,

  not saying much, but I knew his touch.

  Abe, a Scotch Jew, so doubly weird, sat by me

  talking of God who he called “Needcessity.”

  When I asked once, slightly curious, “Did you blind me Abe?”

  He said sternly, “That question is spurious!

  The past is unquestionable. Your job is

  embracing NOW, anyhow.

  “Forget your eyes. Days before losing them

  you stopped rightly using them.

  We all miss Ann but are glad you aint dead.

  Two murders on one trip is bad for a ship.”

  Great gladness filled me then

  and stays to this day. Confessing my vileness

  is pleasant, I admit. This punishment justifies it.

  Since coming ashore I begs from door to door,

  pub to pub, enjoying life how I can,

  a harmless old man.

  This dismal tale may not seem worth

  the price of the liquor you bought, sir.

  I disagree, and you need not believe it,

  unlike me.

  [UNITED KINGDOM: WALES]

  PENNY SIMPSON

  Indigo’s Mermaid

  Nell lay in the fishmonger’s window, recognisable even though she sported an acrylic peroxide wig and a long mermaid’s tail. The tail was made out of emerald velvet and studded with milk-bottle tops. Sebastian caught sight of her through the crowd of Christmas shoppers. She reclined on one elbow like Velasquez’s Venus, the ridiculous wig almost submerging her pale face. Nell’s ocean bed was more magnificent, consisting as it did of the shop’s original ceramic tiles, decorated with bouquets of fantastical lobsters and fish. She was a temporary replacement for the shop’s more usual fare; a one-off gesture to encourage new customers to Cliffe High Street, alongside reams of traditional paper chains, holly wreaths and the penetrating odour of roasted chestnuts.

  Sebastian edged forwards until he stood directly opposite Nell. He was certain she would catch his eye, but what then? What gesture could they possibly exchange, the false mermaid and the grieving father? What was common to them both, he knew, was silence and distance. Nell started to yawn, causing amusement amongst the onlookers.

  “Better than the zoo, innit?” said the man in front of Sebastian.

  Sebastian gave what he hoped was a smile, but in truth he could no longer work those particular facial muscles. He slipped away and headed towards Malling Street. As he walked, he saw Nell yawning all over again, head thrown back, her collarbones arching outwards like small strongbows. His son Indigo’s first (and last) girlfriend; the one who had been with him when he slipped down a wall, a stab wound delivered to his heart.

  Accidents happened and that was how Indigo’s death had been described in court over eighteen months ago. Stabbed accidentally, because someone else had held a knife out like a warning, but Indigo hadn’t seen it coming. In court, Nell had spoken with surprising eloquence about the warmth of her boyfriend’s body, pressed in against her bare skin at the fatal moment, but knowing simultaneously that his heart had stopped as suddenly as a watch plunged into water. She had screamed and screamed until a policewoman placed two fingers on her lips and said: “Enough.” Not unkindly, the policewoman explained when giving evidence later, but what else could she say to a naked teenager terrified out of her mind?

  What indeed, Sebastian reflected, opening up his studio and rushing inside to avoid a bitter squall of rain. He hadn’t been able to bring himself to speak to Nell during the trial. The defendant was a man unknown to either Indigo or his girlfriend, a vague associate of someone called Herman who still ran the squat in a rundown Georgian town house, just metres away from Sebastian’s studio. It was here that the fight had broken out, which started no one knew how, but that particular evening had ended so memorably.

  And now Nell was back posing as a mermaid for Christmas shoppers. Sebastian believed she might have moved away after the court case, because what was keeping her in Lewes with Indigo dead? She had never been welcomed into his immediate family; Sebastian had even boycotted the bakery over the road where she once worked to supplement her college grant.

  He pulled a chair up to his small escritoire and started to write out an invoice by hand. Some thought it was an affectation, but he was proud of his copper-plate handwriting. He liked to do things slowly, and it was the same with his carvings. He never felt inclined to stack up old car tyres, or fill milk bottles with paint and imagine he was challenging anyone’s perception of the world. What you see i
s what you get, he always told his clients, a stone block carved into the marvellous intricacy of a bonsai tree, or a woman’s elongated torso, ribs sticking out like coat hooks.

  A loud knock at the studio door broke into his reflections. The raised fist he saw when he opened up convinced him that he was about to be mugged. A second later, he realised the fist belonged to Nell. She had changed into a heavy white wool coat. She didn’t ask to come in, nor did she offer seasonal greetings, just brushed past him and made her way over to the studio fireplace. She seemed put-out to find there was no fire burning in the grate. She hovered for a while, as if hoping the flames would start up magically, like in a storybook. “You’re still here then.”

  “And you’ve lost your tail.”

  Nell’s feet were encased in a pair of black suede zip-up boots. They both looked down at the floor. Her hair was cropped in close to her skull and Sebastian saw the nape of her neck as she bent forwards. Her coat collar fell away when she put out her hands and steadied them against a block of stone. Her hands literally shook with the cold.

  “I don’t know what to say,” she said, addressing the bare floorboards.

  He flinched, remembering how he had ignored her at the trial.

  “I can’t help you,” he replied, but the sight of her trembling hands stalled him.

  Nell let go of the sculpture and faced him head on. “You never came for his stuff.”

  She had barely asked the question, before she slipped down onto the floor and began sobbing hysterically. Sebastian stood rigid with shock. He was guilty as charged, but more shocking than that, he resented Nell for what she had just done. She had a heart, if he did not. If he had a heart, surely he would have stuffed his house full of Indigo’s every last drawing and sculpture? He didn’t even have one of his schoolboy sketches pinned up on the fridge door. Nell’s question prompted more vicious undercurrents: had he resisted asking for keepsakes, because he had been jealous of his son? That’s what his partner Maura had hinted at, before helping him with college application forms. She had even bought him an impressive moleskin portfolio.