The Taste of Translation

by Anne Gambling

  He helped with the bags, climbed the stairs slowly, his left leg stiff at the knee.

  And this one? she asked.

  Sniper. Nada wanted to take it out but it wasn’t worth it, not with everything else on her dance card. So it just sits in there, grinds away. He shrugged. If the girls raped by the bastards can live with their mongrel children, I can put up with a damn bullet in the leg.

  Solidarity, she said.

  Yeah, Ki-. He stopped on the stairs and looked up to her shadow on the next landing. That’s right. Solidarity.

  He sat at the kitchen table, smoked. She made coffee, smoked. The balcony door was open. The breeze was warm, unseasonal.

  When did you get here? she asked.

  A few days back. I’ve been staying with Almir down on the lake.

  She nodded. Enge. Yeah I know where he is.

  But you’ve never bothered to catch up? he said. You’ve both been here – what – three, four years now? And you’ve never bothered?

  It’s not about bothering, Marko. It’s about –

  What? His voice shot through the air.

  She got up, went and stood out on the balcony, looked back at the face which confronted her like a battle shield. Who had they become? Who? Atoms split, divided, razed off on different tangents.

  It’s about forgetting, she tried again, staring at the golden maple. It’s about not being able to handle the memories.

  Her hand shook as she placed the cigarette to her lips and inhaled deeply. So much they didn’t know about their journeys. Where to start? Why even start? She tapped her fingers on the railing, contemplated the tree.

  Listen, she said. And turned, tried to smile. Can you stay? Shall I show you around town? What about this evening? Hotpot, pita, baklava?

  Can’t you make any Swiss food? he teased. Still clinging to the exotic Balkans?

  You always liked my hotpot – don’t deny it!

  They walked by the lake, sat beneath lemon-showered willows in the park, tiptoed around the past, skirted damaged souls, clung to the together-memories before life soured like milk left out in the broad sun.

  She looked at her watch. I need to do some more shopping before they close. I could meet you back at the flat later?

  He traced a finger through the grass, didn’t meet her eyes. I brought a few things over for you – they’re at Almir’s. I’ll go get them, OK?

  Sure, she said.

  And they walked off in opposite directions.

  He arrived with a plastic bag tucked under his arm, handed her a bottle of slivovica.

  Not the best brand, he apologised. But at least it’s Croatian rather than Serbian.

  She brought the same out from her afternoon’s shopping and grinned. It’ll be quite a party, she said. What’s in the bag?

  That’s for after the first few shots.

  They had eaten, drunk, reminisced, she’d asked about everyone’s lives. Nada? she said, leaving the best to last.

  Marko ran a hand through his hair. They’re getting married – she and Kasim. He smirked. Already talking about kids – reckon it’s their duty to re-populate Sarajevo.

  Kisha laughed. Too right it’s their duty, she said and took a tray of chestnuts out of the oven.

  She flipped them into a bowl, covered it with a towel and sneaked a look at him. When are you going to get busy, lover boy?

  Aw, who’d want a joker like me? He played with the matchbox on the table. Miki’s got a girl – can’t play tricks like we used to, though. Scar gets in the way. And smiled softly into a long-past of teenage fun. So? he said, shaking his shaggy hair back to the present. Anyone here for you?

  No. I’ve got a lot on my mind. Guess I’m just not interested …

  Yeah, I know what you mean.

  They sat inside their own thoughts, the sound of cracking and peeling chestnuts filled the small void held aloft by kitchen light.

  So, she said, stopping to suck a torn fingernail underlain with gunk. What’s in the bag?

  You sure?

  As I’ll ever be.

  She cleared a space of chestnut debris and reached over to the rubbish bin under the sink, all the while listening to the noise of crinkly plastic and the rustled extraction of contents.

  She took her time turning back to the table. Three books in a pile, a thin envelope.

  The last books before the gas came back on, he said.

  No! You made it through that long?

  Well, he shrugged. We knew they were your faves so we burnt everything else we could find – shoes, scraps of carpet, even cut up the tyres on Plato’s Beetle. That was pretty disgusting. Plus we were at the front a lot, or in barracks, or at Plato’s. Nada and Kasim even moved back up to Alifakovic. When it got quieter, he footnoted.

  Three books. Three which remained – Hesses she had squirreled to the bottom of the last tottering tower. Narcissus and Goldmund had been sacrificed, Steppenwolf as well, a few more. She couldn’t remember in which order they’d been placed. But three survived. Siddhartha, Demian, Journey to the East.

  I work in a bookshop.

  Yeah? How about that. All those books.

  Mmmm, been there a couple of years now. She cleared her throat. Haven’t wanted to pick up any old favourites, though. I read new stuff now. Her eyes misted and she noted her tinny laugh. I can’t believe how special it is to hold these again!

  A quantum of together-life flashed through her head, resurrected by the sight of grubby paperbacks.

  Phew! she said. I think I need another drink before I can go on. And sent the shot down fast.

  She picked up the envelope – light as goosedown, as a snowflake returned to sky. To Ki-, she read. The Letter I Said I Would Never Write.

  Her throat was thick with refluxed brandy. Where did you find this?

  Marko fumbled with the matchbox again. In behind the boiler in the bathroom. After the electricity came back on and Susu got cleaning.

  His pause was long. I guess he never told you.

  She shook her head, couldn’t trust herself to speak. But it welled by itself, a sudden cloud-burst of tears, and she screamed: Why? Why did this have to happen? Why do I have to go through it again?! Why is he doing this? Now!

  She banged her head on the table. Down-down-down. Cracking a heart already stoned and ritually bled. Bang-bang-bang. Till she only felt its pain, till she only saw white light.

  Marko shunted his tin-legged chair around the table, scraped it across the floor, sent razor cuts down her back. Marko came, and hugged her tight.

  The night was long.

  She cried, he sang: Kisha pada trave raste …

  Not the way they had learnt in school, upbeat and full of childhood joy, but the slow melancholy of lament like the day at Samir’s grave, his voice a baritone mandolin.

  Come home, Ki-, he said.

  I can’t. Can’t.

  Why? He stood up and paced the small room. Is this place home? This stinking sanitised hovel too perfect to be believed?

  He kicked the chair and it tipped. Loss clanked through her head.

  Stop it! she cried. Her hands over her ears. Stop! There is no home. Anywhere, for any of us!

  Sarajevo – he began.

  They killed it! she screamed. They fucking slit her throat! We have no home – no here, no there, no anywhere! OK? she shouted. OK?

  Silence seeped through and into them, heavy, stale, grainy with dust.

  It doesn’t end when you leave Sarajevo, she tried. You don’t leave, so you can’t live. Don’t you see? Once I was Yugoslav. Now I’m nothing!

  Then come home, damn it! Come home!

  They were two frantic children caught on different plateaux and she couldn’t see to the bottom of the gorge.

  Each night Ki- there’s a glass for you and one for Samir! Each night we sit and toast you in your other worlds!

  He picked up his chair, came and sat before her, took her hands, his face an inch from hers.

  D
o you remember the dream? he said. Before it all began? Do you? How you crossed the bridge to the other side and I stayed?

  She nodded.

  I had another dream, Ki-, after you’d gone. You walked back across the bridge. You came home to us. He looked at her steadily. Without that dream, I’d have gone mad.

  I never had a dream like that, she said standing up, voice drifting across the gorge, a monotone of matter-of-factness. And took the remnants of brandy into the big room, retired to the couch.

  Marko’s sigh followed at a distance, but soon enough he was at the bookshelf, head tilted to read the spines. You’ve got some good stuff here, he said. The Hesses will feel right at home.

  His eyes moved to the top shelf. Hey, I remember this! And took down her notebook, flipped it open. We used to write down the crazy things we heard people say on the tram in here!

  At his side in one fluid movement, she whipped the book from his hand. Safely back on the couch, it trembled in her lap, still open.

  Dark storm clouds gather

  But they do not signal war

  It’s already come.

  Marko kicked an invisible stone into the depths of the gorge. I need to get going, it’s late.

  He hesitated. Take care, Ki-, he told her hair, and kissed softly the top of her head.

  She listened to him close the door, listened to his footsteps echo in the stairwell, listened to the deep bass note of the front door shut behind him, the crunch of his shoes through gravel, the clank of the gate swung to.

  She did not move, could not. Held fast there, in an enclosed and well-guarded space. Where all she could do was listen.

  Three

  The weather bureau was correct – wind, driving rain, a cold front coming through. She listens to it the whole night through, a solid sheet of water which leaves the sky, all the tears of years spilt out in a singular act of heavenly cleansing. Has not slept, only slept-walked to the kitchen where she looks out on the storm’s debris at first light, sodden leaves in a courtyard of decay, a sea of fragmented mush.

  I only cried once today, she says again next day of the permanent welling and falling of a stream from an unblinking eye, but eventually sleeps, drifting in and out of dreamscapes. No longer able to block their entry by sluice gates no longer functional, dreams vivid with colour and sound overtake her senses, each a surprise, each as cryptic as the last.

  In one, she walks in an industrial area of town along a long busy street carrying Baba’s pink scroll. A van pulls up under a motorway flyover. More vans pull up and a Gypsy camp takes shape. She watches a man and woman talk before the woman leaves to go shopping, walking right past her. She feels the touch of curly hair brush her cheek, hears the swish of full skirts in her ear, catches the scent of sticky perfume on the air.

  The scroll is heavy, too heavy for a mere sheaf of parchment, too heavy to carry. She places it on the ground in front of her when the man comes over. He is a large man, broad, with light skin, sandy-brown hair. His eyes so blue! Is he really a Gypsy? But with earring, waistcoat and baggy trousers, she trusts the dream image and apologises for intruding. It isn’t often she meets Gypsies in this town, she explains, and makes to leave, reaching for the scroll at her feet.

  Gone! Disappeared. No, not Baba’s scroll!

  The Gypsy calms her frenzy, tells her to kneel on the ground. He will help her find it. But the pavement has turned to sand, deep shifting sand. The weight of the scroll has sent it far deep! She scrabbles about, randomly, ineffectively – sifting and sorting nothing from nothing.

  Again, he speaks calmly from blue-blue eyes. Quiet your mind, he instructs and plunges his hands deep in the sand. Ah, he says, and guides her hands into the same deep dive. Her fingers close around the cylinder, she lifts the scroll free, feather-light once more.

  Her relief short-lived as she tumbles into the next dream – now she climbs a steep street to a group of blindingly white houses. By the side of the road on a marble stupa, an ancestral tomb inscribed with hieroglyphs, sits a man playing the accordion who invites her into his home.

  We want to know what you think of us, he says, and shows her into the kitchen of one of the houses where his family sit about a large table – several generations sharing a coffee, discussing small things. Till a phone rings.

  It’s for you, says a woman to Kisha.

  Come over, says Nada. I’ve made baklava!

  I can’t. I’m here, and you’re there.

  But you are here, Nada insists. You’ve come back!

  Only in a dream, and I’m visiting this dream family, not you. It’s only fair I should stay.

  Well, how about I put the baklava in the fridge and you take it out on your side – OK?

  It makes no sense but Kisha goes to the fridge while the family sit at the table, nod, smile, show their white teeth. Yes-yes, they say. This is how it’s done.

  Indeed, the baklava is in the fridge but when she tries to grasp it, her hand passes right through. Only a mirage, and she goes back to the phone.

  See? I told you it wouldn’t work.

  Oh yeah, says Nada. I forgot that family died.

  Kisha turns back to the table and watches them disintegrate before her eyes. Although he’s no more than grit on the breeze, accordion man speaks loud in her ear:

  This is how it always ends. In dust.

  No more sleep. No more dreams. Who is the blue-eyed Gypsy? Who is accordion man? She gets up and goes to sit at the kitchen table while the sky cries on. Willing herself to silence, a silence not permeated by thought, she lights a cigarette, her silence cradled by the crackle of tobacco, by the gap between in-draw and out-breath.

  Sudden it is – a voice breaks the silence.

  Azra, it says.

  She turns sharply, but no one is there.

  And her trembling hand trickles ash to the floor as the voice calls again.

  Azra.

  I’m sorry, she croaked into the neighbour’s phone. I must have the flu or something.

  I’m sure it’s the sudden change in weather. Tobias’ voice rumbled down the line. Stay where you are and get better – I can manage for a bit.

  Can I bring you anything? asked the neighbour as she shuffled out and across the landing in thick woollen socks. Soup? Tea?

  Kisha shook her head. You’re very kind but I’ll be fine. She coughed and closed the door.

  She shivered on the couch, registered each aching bone, threw a blanket about her shoulders, pulled on a second pair of socks. And then lay down coiled about a cushion, trying to reconstruct the past hours, days, since he had come with debris, and left without it, since Rilke’s fall had gone very slowly past her. Debris which sat on an upturned cardboard box in the corner and stared at her.

  Yes, she could place the books on the shelf to converse with their fellows, tell tales of horror from a burning world. Or no – should she read them as if she were there, not here, and after reading, burn them? Finish here what should have been finished there? What about the letter? A slim horizontal plane housing a single sheet. How could she pretend it never existed? Should it burn with the books, but unread?

  Not knowing what to do, she placed a candle on this cardboard altar from the otherworld, lit it each night, night after night, watching these fallen warriors return from the dead to shapeshift in the light.

  Becoming. Becoming.

  Intermezzo

  The chorus now speaks:

  We know Kisha doesn’t like to wake to the dark of winter days and see our shadows slow-slide up the wall, confirming our presence all night at her side. We know that’s why she sets the alarm for eight, to roll over slowly, pillow hugged to her belly, and prepare to push through the barrier which says: Don’t get up today.

  The stone is heavy on her chest, but she pushes through, rises, takes her first step to banish the dark with cigarette – coffee – cigarette – coffee. The ritual fits snug as a glove, like day draining to night, darkness following light, as in
evitable as siege itself it seems. But we also know that night fades to day and light banishes dark. She need only wait some months for the world to shed this mantle, re-wake after a winter-dark sleep.

  While she waits, Kisha walks by the lake on a day leaden-cold, steely-skied, on a day of no shadows. Still she senses our presence. Still she sends her hand into the fog to be swallowed by the other side. The other world is always there, within reach it seems. Ah, but not quite. There is a density to her form which roots her to this place, no matter how close her scouts come to our knowledge.

  By the upper lake, far beyond the reaches of the city, she crunches and sploshes through snow-muddy paddocks on her way to a shore-side chapel. Tiny it is, a mere pinprick on the landscape, yet sturdy enough to host spire and bell, and a plaque remarking a millennium of prayer. The door is locked. Understandable. In the middle of a paddock, in the middle of winter, at the end of a godless winter-dark century. Sleet-filled clouds hip-hug the frozen hills. There are clouds of unknowing in the face of the water. Driftwood and mushed leaves line the gravel beach. No wind disturbs this plane.

  A thought rises at random in her frozen landscape, a thought shunted up from the lake’s depths. These must be the halcyon days, she thinks, when the god of the winds is silent. The thought thin, unfleshed, no more than a fragment, of high school Greek and schoolgirl sighs, of the myth of true love beyond the grave and winds stilled across a winter-dark solstice.

  Her thought remains frozen in the stillness of the moment, of the space, till a kingfisher rips through the air and pierces her silence with his sharp-pitched call. The water shadow-ripples and she steps back from the edge, re-traces her steps across a snow-muddy paddock. While we watch.

  Each night Kisha lights a candle on the shrine to her past. Baba’s scroll has joined the tableau, and she salutes the Lady with a double-shot.

  Maybe you’ll have some ideas what I should do with my life, she says. But don’t ever tell me to open the letter. And she points a finger at the inscrutable face.

  I’ll re-read the books though, she offers. Nothing bad ever comes from reading Hesse, and she reaches for the brandy bottle, lights a cigarette, and begins with Demian.

  Sinclair sits, sketches, sits, sketches, communes with the face he has sketched – a god-image arisen from half-serious scrawls: