Best European Fiction 2011

by Aleksandar Hemon

  Then they dressed and Zhuzhuna phoned her husband and told him she’d bought a fridge. She made him write down the address and asked him to come over. Forty minutes later, he arrived in a van, shook hands with Albert, and then shyly stepped aside. For some reason Albert liked him at once. Zhuzhuna took out a ten lari note and gave it to Albert, telling him to go into the bedroom. She gestured to her husband that he should stay in the kitchen. In the other room, Zhuzhuna embraced Albert once more and kissed him on the lips like a horse. Then she let him go, but gave him one last small, “graceful” kiss before tiptoeing to the doorway.

  Albert and Zhuzhuna’s husband, with a lot of effort and groaning, brought the fridge to the stairs and, because the elevator was out of order, carried it all the way down while Zhuzhuna shrieked out useless advice, got under their feet, and generally made a nuisance of herself. When they were halfway down the stairwell, the light went out.

  Finally, the fridge was in the van and Albert climbed back up the dark stairs, locked his door, laid on his bed, switched on his radio, and reached for the leftover bread and sausage. He began to chew and fell asleep among the crumbs. After a while he was woken by a headache and an unpleasant dryness in his mouth. He got up, drank some water, undressed, and laid down again. When he laid down he felt dizzy and a wave of nausea forced him to rush barefoot to the bathroom, where he threw his arms around the toilet bowl and vomited several times. In spite of careful aim, he made quite a mess on the floor. He then carelessly washed his face and hands, poured some water on his feet—because there was vomit on them—and staggered out of the bathroom. He drank some more water and threw himself onto the bed. It still smelled of Zhuzhuna’s perfume, which turned Albert’s stomach even more.

  Albert dreamed he was going into his own kitchen and up to the old fridge. The motor was on and shrieking, the fridge was shaking and trying to jump out of its corral. Albert opened the door and reached in for a bowl, jumping around from all the vibrations. There was some stew in the bowl and also a spoon. Karbelashvili stirred the stew and was pleasantly surprised when he discovered that it was still warm. He slurped a spoonful and stirred it again, in order to get some meat this time. He caught a piece but when he saw it, he screamed. The meat was a part of Zhuzhuna’s fat body—a big chunk with a mole like a currant on its boiled skin, and even a little tuft of hair. Albert woke up terrified, but calmed down a little when he realized that this dream, like all others, would fade in time, and soon only exist as a vague reminder of an experience that had left an unpleasant taste in his mouth. On the other hand, he could look on the bright side: Life was possible because Albert Karbelashvili still had the money that he’d gotten for the fridge of his fathers—fifteen laris and thirty-five tetri.

  TRANSLATED FROM GEORGIAN BY

  VICTORIA FIELD AND NATALIA BUKIA PETERS

  [FRANCE]

  ERIC LAURRENT

  American Diary

  LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA.

  SATURDAY, MARCH 14, 1998.

  The Venice Beach Cotel, where I’ve just spent my first night on American soil, is a modest hotel, situated on Windward Avenue, barely a hundred or so meters from the Pacific Ocean. Built no doubt several decades ago, it’s a three-story building, the main façade of which, with its windows vaulted in ribs, its facing of white and golden bricks, in a diamond-shaped pattern, and its archways, all pointedly pastiche, it seems to me, the late Gothic style of the Doge’s palace. A long mural fresco revisiting Botticelli’s Birth of Venus adorns the whole lower section of its occidental façade: while he might have his Zephyr, Flora, and Hora virtually indistinguishable, the artist has, on the other hand, outfitted the Goddess of Love in a pair of roller-skates and clothed her in an indigo monokini and royal blue thigh-high socks; he’s also put a harpoon in one of her hands, which she clutches against her breast, ensuring that the Anadyomene has metamorphosed under his brush into just another summer tourist: half skater, half huntress. To be comprehensive I should add that the sea conch of the original has been made to disappear, while the sea itself, upon which she once rested, is here completely paved over—a choice justified, I imagine, by the goddess’s new gear: it’s rather improbable to go roller-skating in the water, and even more so in a scallop shell.

  Right now I’m sitting at a table in a bar on the premises, drinking a too-watery coffee, closer to tea in color, against a background of conversations held by ten or so youths of every nationality as they eat breakfast, and of pop music too, in this case exclusively Anglo-Saxon, played quietly through four speakers suspended in the corners of the room.

  Through the sash-window opposite, I can see the street below, both sides of which are lined with basic stalls, made of simple, white plastic tarpaulins, held up by iron poles with banners stretched between them that bear, if not a company name, at the very least the name of the articles in which this particular stall specializes (bikes, incense, blades, jewelry, etc.); then, in the background, there’s the beach whose sand, a grayish yellow, is bristling with palm trees, their tufts swaying limply in the wind; and finally the ocean, on the murky water of which slide the large shadows of several clouds.

  Hanging on a wall to my left is a canvas painting representing, in a vaguely impressionist style, a view of Venice, no doubt the way it was half a century ago, before they discovered oil and ripped it open to bore into the ground, with a charming lacework of canals spanned by bridges and lined with houses of a…Venetian inspiration; the glass plate protecting this painting reflects my face with an imprecision that seems to me to perfectly allegorize the semi-conscious state in which I find myself, thanks to the time difference.

  SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA. MONDAY, MARCH 23.

  Many times along my way I passed neon signs for massage parlors. My senses stirred by abstinence, as well as from chatting with a certain young woman, I decided in the end to step inside one of these establishments, which I imagined were a sort of whorehouse. So I went down a few steps that led to the basement of the building and rang the bell at a door with frosted glass, which was opened immediately by an automated system. A few steps later I was standing in front of a kind of counter, similar to a hotel reception desk, except that the place was dark, deserted, and silent. A black and obese woman, with alarming features, her hair in braids, wearing a black dress and wooden sandals, appeared before me and asked me for forty dollars before handing me a folded towel and showing me to the showers. I went into a stall, which was faintly lit with a green wall light, and undressed. After drying myself, I came out, the towel tied around my hips, and took a few steps in a dark corridor without bumping into another living soul.

  The colossal black woman then found me and directed me into a massage room, windowless, with a kind of examination bed, on which she invited me to lie down. Before my incredulous eyes, she gave me to understand that if her person wasn’t suitable to me, I could be massaged by another woman. I informed her that I’d prefer that. She left the room, impassive. I remained standing close to the bed, wondering what sinister joke was being played on me.

  You can imagine my terror then when, a minute later, a woman with the same build and an equally upsetting face—though white-skinned—joined me. I didn’t dare utter any recrimination, lay down without saying a word, and, tense and knotted, let myself be palpated by the enormous hands of this matron, praying that she wouldn’t indecently assault me in the process.

  When the creature left, I dressed again swiftly and left that crypt, less frustrated by not having been able to enjoy the charms of a lady of the night than relieved to have escaped safe and sound from that terrifying ordeal.

  LOS ANGELES. WEDNESDAY, MARCH 25.

  Tonight I had a long phone conversation with Martine, telling her in great detail about my life since I departed Paris—a way of sharing my experience, to a certain extent. I miss her company, and her body too. In order to contend with the continence imposed on me by the distance between us, I bought a copy of the magazine Hustler yesterday, the American versio
n. Flicking through it, I was struck right away by the extreme anesthetization of the bodies displayed in its pages, which were not only perfect in their proportions, but appeared refinished, made-up, hair done, almost completely waxed, including the men, whose torsos were bare and scrotums smooth—even the vulvas and anuses seemed to be made-up, offering their folds and creases in the tones of pale and tender roses. This overwhelming banishment of any corporeality seemed to me to reveal a puritan approach to pornography.

  LOS ANGELES. FRIDAY, MARCH 27.

  I was awoken, as I had been every morning since taking a room in this motel on Sunset Boulevard, by police sirens. Their wailing comes at such a high volume that its only function seemed to be forcing other drivers to move to the side of the road, or to stop; quite obviously, there’s a political design behind this resounding ostentation: that of asserting the omnipresence of the forces of law and order, a way of reassuring the citizen—and perhaps, who knows, of dissuading an offender from doing anything too sinister.

  Yesterday the hotel cleaning lady threw out several copies of Le Monde that I’d managed to get hold of here, which made me furious, as I hadn’t read them all yet. With the help of the little bilingual dictionary I’d brought with me, I carefully put together a few sentences in order to convey to her my desire that she spare herself such enthusiasm in the future—I rehearsed my lines several times to get them right in my mouth. When I passed her at the bottom of the stairs, I reeled them off in one go. No comprendo inglese, she replied when I’d finished.

  The little old couple staying in the room next to mine must be deaf as posts. They turn on their TV at daybreak and set it at such a volume that I can even hear the actors of the shows they’re watching breathe. When this noise ceases, that means they’re going out: I hear them speaking then as far away as the street corner, as they express themselves just as loudly, without a doubt intending to be heard.

  LOS ANGELES. THURSDAY, APRIL 2.

  On Wilshire Boulevard there’s a monument commemorating the conquest of the West: it’s an equestrian statue depicting the actor John Wayne, whose pedestal is sculpted with bas-reliefs featuring battle scenes with cowboys and Indians. Can you imagine, in France, a monument commemorating World War I being adorned with an effigy of Jean Gabin, on the grounds that he starred in Grand Illusion?

  Los Angeles abounds in places of worship to such an extent that it’s not impossible that everything on this planet which might be considered a religion, from the most ancient to the most recent, the most widespread to the least known, the most serious to the most harebrained, has a home here. There’s no one building manifesting any sort of spiritual heritage, like Notre Dame in Paris. They all seem to be equal.

  While the city is equipped with multiple areas where you can let your dog defecate, you can’t find, on the other hand, any public toilets in Los Angeles. This is no doubt due to the fact that people only get around here by car, rarely on foot. In the event that some pressing need should take you, you have no other choice but to go into a snack bar or a restaurant. Most of the time, the toilets there are designed so that it’s impossible to have any privacy, the stalls not being separated from one another except by thin partitions which don’t go down to the ground or up to the ceiling, consequently allowing all kinds of smells and noises to circulate. This doesn’t seem to perturb the natives, who relieve themselves there with great casualness: burping readily, farting amply. This relaxation is all the more surprising given that, in everyday life, Americans are very civilized people—these places of relief thus seem to have for them, over and above their customary purgative function, the function of relieving stress as well.

  Americans, or at the very least Los Angelenos, display an excessive preoccupation with prophylaxis. In bars, in restaurants, in nightclubs, in cocktail bars, it’s striking to observe that, for fear of contracting some malicious virus, nobody puts their glass or tumbler down; should the case arise nonetheless, they never take their eyes off the vessel in question; and if they aren’t certain, having retrieved it, whether they reached for the right glass, they simply won’t take another sip: or, worse, they’ll go and empty their container, then wash it; ideally, they’ll change it for another.

  In the same vein, there isn’t a single place in California—stores, supermarkets, shopping malls, post offices, restaurants, nightclubs, and I forget where else—where you won’t see a janitor permanently pacing back and forth, brush in one hand, dustpan in the other; not a one either where you won’t catch sight, placed in the middle of an aisle on a shiny floor, of one of those yellow cones—it’s sometimes a sort of trestle-shaped sign—on which the following warning is written: “Caution wet floor” (often accompanied by its Spanish translation: Precaucion piso mojado), a warning intended, one assumes, to prevent any lawsuits in case of a bad fall, Americans having become for some years the most litigious people in the world. (I have, on this point, read recently that some people, victims of a road accident driving back from a very alcoholic dinner, had sued their host on the grounds that he’d gotten them drunk during the meal.)

  MEXICAN HAT, UTAH. THURSDAY, APRIL 9.

  We were hungry in Tuba City. By a stroke of luck a little market was being held there in a vacant lot, barely amounting to twenty or so stalls, above which a delicious aroma floated. We stopped and immediately headed toward the stand where the smell was coming from: there we fed on pancakes of fried maize filled with red beans, green chili peppers, and other ingredients simmering in tin-plate stewpots resting on gas burners, and mutton too, which was cooked on a grill placed over a wood fire. We ate standing up, among Indians who were doing likewise. We were quickly approached by an old, mangy dog, whose watering eyes and hanging tongue implored us, and whose master, a miserable Navajo with a weathered face, brown complexion, and long braids, didn’t take long to join him, and very politely beg us for a few dollars. “Marc, you make more than I do,” I said, while removing a few pieces of meat from my taco. “I’ll take care of the dog, you take care of the gentleman.”

  Martine and Stéphanie wanted to buy stamps to send some postcards. So we pulled our car over somewhere on the side of the road to Cameron, under a sign that read: “Historic Post Office.” As soon as we’d pushed open the door of the presumed post office, we realized we’d been fooled: it was a souvenir shop. Hundreds of stamps were offered to the shopper, all inspired by the conquest of the West, in an endless glorification of the cowboy figure. The most tragic thing was that Indians were running this shop, in other words the descendants of the victims of said conquest. Relatively speaking it was a little as if, forced by necessity, some Jews undertook in two or three centuries to establish a trade in Nazi weapon displays at Auschwitz.

  There’s no other country on this planet that gives such a feeling of privatization of space. You have to ask yourself sometimes if there’s still any land that doesn’t belong to anyone here. The country roads are perpetually lined with fences that don’t open onto any passing track for miles, which results in giving you the impression that you can only brush over this continent, can only touch it with your eyes.

  Moving eastward at dusk we were able to watch the darkening ultramarine blue of the night in the frame of the windscreen and, at the same time, scaled down in the rearview mirror suspended on it, the oranging nightfall behind us, as though by way of that cinematographic effect called split screen, which enables the division of the frame so as to show two actions simultaneously.

  SALT LAKE CITY, UTAH. FRIDAY, APRIL 10.

  One rarely pays attention, it seems to me, to the common origins of Salt Lake City and Las Vegas, both founded in the nineteenth century by the Mormons. Their two atmospheres couldn’t seem more opposed, and yet, these two cities remain absolutely linked, all you have to do is visit the Mormon Temple in Salt Lake City to be convinced: it’s lit up during the night like the hotel-casinos on the Strip and, like them, built with an ostentatious design that pastiches every known style—in the image, as it happens, of the r
eligion in whose name it’s consecrated: syncretism of all the practices, reformed or not, of Christianity. Salt Lake City is in fact only the mystic version of Las Vegas, its puritan reverse: here, marriage “seals the spouses for eternity” there, prostitution is almost legal; here, the night completely empties the streets; there, it fills them; here, the consumption of alcohol is banned; there, they serve you free drinks.

  But where the two cities coincide is in their ideology. To rechristen the lost, as the Mormons do, really proceeds in the same spirit as winning the jackpot: in both cases, it’s a question of raising the curse bound to original sin, either by assuring the eternal salvation of the soul through a new purification or by liberating oneself, through rapid profit, from the divine retribution that followed the Fall, requiring that man live from the sweat of his brow. (And if, behind this, there is the unconscious desire, quite simply, to free oneself from God entirely? In any case, to this day, the only hotel rooms in the U.S. where I didn’t find a Bible in my nightstand drawer were those that I occupied in these two cities.)

  Salt Lake City gives the impression of not having any homeless; the pavements there are spotless; you never hear police sirens; the people passing express themselves in low voices and their cordiality is such that it’s not at all rare to be greeted in passing; at night, as I wrote earlier, the avenues are empty, just like the lobbies and offices—often still lit up—and everything’s quiet. A permanent curfew seems to reign here. If Las Vegas is a puppet town, Salt Lake City seems, in many respects, a ghost town.