A Short Tale of Shame

[10]

Since they had come to this island, everything had been somehow strange and unreal, as if the dreams she had dreamed recently had gradually escaped their designated boundaries and were at first hesitantly, then ever more freely and confidently having their way with reality. And perhaps it was also due to the approaching mysteries, they were supposed to be tomorrow, they would have to look for a secluded place tomorrow night and play out the ritual of their intimacy, theatrics which she had made up without much hope that the others would go along with it, but now look, it had been two years and they had done it every month since Elena had left them, up until this week, when they had come across her father and he simply set off with them, he was an odd person, strange like his daughter and Sirma wasn’t surprised when, hemming and hawing, he had begun explaining that he had to go somewhere on his own, besides it also immediately crossed her mind that tomorrow they would have to tell him the same thing, and now look, this was a golden opportunity that freed them from the need for unnecessary explanations or to sneak out during the night. The tree was digging into her back, but she stubbornly leaned against the twisted trunk, all around dusk was brushing the ground like a light blanket and in the warm twilight things took on an unreal appearance, the fortress wall, the bridge a little further on, and the bushes along the path, an empty bottle was lying slightly off to one side and in the falling dusk Sirma jumped in surprise upon seeing that it was a bottle of Thracian vodka, Terres, and she spent a long time staring foolishly at the bottle, Terres, that was the same vodka she had brought to Elena back then, she had taken a bottle of it to the office her father didn’t use, she had slipped Spartacus’s phone out of his pocket unnoticed the previous evening, while he, with his usual enthusiasm, had been talking about Radiohead’s latest album and whining that they still hadn’t come to Thrace, and by the way, now there’s a good idea for Krustev and his promotional agency, but she hadn’t gone to talk about that with his daughter: when she had called her on the phone, she wasn’t even surprised, could she possibly have been expecting such an invitation to meet, that decisive clash, and she took advantage of her right to hold it on her own territory, you know, just to talk, Sirma had told her, and had gone over there with vodka, she didn’t even know why she’d taken it, she wasn’t hoping to get her drunk, she wasn’t hoping to get drunk herself, but in fact, maybe they really had gotten drunk, she remembered that she left the bottle there half-empty, but a lot of time had passed, half-empty, just like Elena’s story. You’ve come to get rid of me, Elena said directly, after she had poured them each a drink and they had sat down on the floor, facing each other, blue eyes against green, Elena in a tight green shirt and no bra, her round breasts clearly outlined, wearing close-fitting jeans, and she’d tossed her leather jacket onto the couch, and Sirma thought to herself that maybe she actually remembered her, that she had remembered her the whole time and had been playing with her, just as she played with Maya and Spartacus, and with all the others, you’ve come to get rid of me, Elena said, and Sirma replied yes, and the blood rushed into her ears when she repeated yes.

Until then she had never had a conversation like this with anyone. Elena told her everything, about her family, about the money and the house, the beautifully painted façade of their affluent life, about her school and how she had met Chloë, things that Sirma didn’t want to know, didn’t want to hear, but clearly that was the price she had to pay, so it was necessary to hear her out, was that it, would the witch finally shove off once she had blurted out everything, all the trash she had collected inside of her, or perhaps she expected Sirma to start feeling sorry for her, to hug her in consolation, to take her tear upon her cheek in an act of self-sacrifice and then patiently to offer up her other cheek, but the more she listened, the more she was unable to pity her, and the more she learned about her, the more difficult it was to understand her. It was so simple at first: there was this obnoxious tagalong, this schemer, who was trying to muscle her way into their triple life, but then she could also connect her with that green-eyed witch from years ago, the girl who squeezed money out of other girls with her fists and kisses and gave it to her friends to buy drugs, a girl who was simply evil and who loved watching others suffer; but now she was forced to find out more and more things about her life, to look at her face-to-face, a human being like all others, and to understand less and less her passion for meddling in the lives of others, for experimenting with them and watching them fall, as if projecting onto others some part of herself that she wanted to calmly examine and analyze from the outside. Elena’s story jumped back and forth in time and in the end she stopped somewhere in her distant, half-forgotten childhood, when I got lost, Elena said, I only remember sitting on some gray street and watching some boys fight, it was amazing. An hour ago, two hours ago, before however much time had passed, Sirma would have been able to mock her, to make her look ridiculous, to tell her you’re scum and stay the hell away from my friends, you’re trapped, I’ll simply tell them what I know, Spartacus isn’t in love with you, it’s just teenage hormones and you know it, and Maya is pissed at you, because she’s jealous, plus for her the story of what happened that night would be more than enough, I’ll tell them your story and there’s nothing you can do about it. But now that story had swelled, it had become so bloated and heavy that it could no longer be told, not by someone else, and suddenly Sirma felt duped. It had become impossible to treat her like the scum that she was after those hours on the floor, blue eyes against green, she had walked right into her trap. What do you want, she asked, and Elena replied: Nothing. She fell silent and then repeated, I don’t want anything, that’s the problem. Well, Sirma said, despite the fact that she’d lost her nerve and was afraid that this was terribly obvious, well, I want you to leave us alone. Lucky you, Elena said, you know what you want, and she started laughing, she started laughing so resoundingly that Sirma felt humiliated, took a sip of her vodka, and said, well if you ask me, I think you want me to give you a nice big black eye. But Elena kept laughing and Sirma didn’t hit her in any case, should she have hit her or not, that was the question, which even now she hadn’t found an answer to, would she have defeated her if she’d hit her, or would she have been defeated, she didn’t know, because, even though Elena really had left them alone, to this day she wasn’t sure which of the two of them had won back then and this uncertainty was even more sickening than defeat; Elena, even from far off in time and space, possessed the ability to make everyone feel like a fool. You don’t mind, do you, she said and reached for Sirma’s glass, she had finished her own, and took a sip right from the place where Sirma’s mouth had been, and gave her the glass back, she stared at the bright lipstick stain Elena had left, her lips on the glass, and suddenly she went back to that evening on the street, and once again she was jumping between the two bodies, that of the helpless girl up against the wall, and Elena’s compact, aggressive body, and she was clearly drunk because even to this day she wasn’t completely sure whether that moment had really happened or if it was just her imagination, had Elena really darted forward and kissed her on the lips, the same kiss which she had wrongfully and secretly felt that night, since it hadn’t been meant for her, or perhaps it had, perhaps it had been meant precisely for her, for her alone, now she felt it again, but she didn’t know whether it had happened in reality, in that which she could at least from time to time with a certain approximation call reality, because in the next instant Elena had returned to her place and was sitting there calm as can be, and all of that remained in a moment which had leapt into her time from some other, parallel time of passed-over opportunities, a time in which they all lived other stories, again fully possible stories which they had no inkling of and which they could only come into contact with accidentally in such a momentary intersection of times, like the spontaneous twitching of a nameless nerve which you don’t expect to twitch since your brain hasn’t sent it a command, and in such cases had she not really jumped from one time into another? But the kiss, real or not, seemed to put an end to everything.

Spartacus seemed crushed, Elena told him that they needed to talk and she dumped him completely cold-bloodedly, we’re not going to see each other anymore, she had said, but why, there is no why, because that’s how I want it, and Sirma once again felt duped, not to mention guilty and shamefaced, maybe Spartacus really had been in love after all, maybe some part of her had even suspected this, and Elena had played her yet again, by refusing to say why she was leaving, if she had told him Sirma made me, then they would’ve had a fight and in the fight everything would have come out and been cleared up, now it was pointless for Sirma herself to tell him how she had gone to her, how she had listened to her and listened to her, and how she had felt her kiss on her lips, a conspiratorial sign, a seal of silence. Maya didn’t want to talk about her erstwhile best-friend-from-grade-school, and in the end Sirma had no choice but to keep quiet. But she thought up the mysteries to make sure that something like that could never happen again, and perhaps, she said to herself now, also in some desperate attempt to finally experience some satisfaction from that overrated physical exercise, as one of their acquaintances put it, who else to have sex with, if not your friends, and if she hadn’t thought up this form, it surely would’ve happened anyway, but unexpectedly and abruptly, it would have pounced on them unprepared, and perhaps everything would have fallen apart. As for Elena, she disappeared, she must’ve gone to America, but what really would have happened if they had nevertheless let her into their magic circle, in one of those other times, which intersected with theirs and could you always tell when one time jumped into another, Sirma heard footsteps, human footsteps, scraping along the gravel-strewn path, and heard Spartacus’s voice, wasn’t it somewhere here, so why don’t I see them, because you’re blind, she yelled at him from the tree, I’m right here, and explained to them how Elena’s father had slinked off.

And the next strange thing: he came back with a guitar. He looked more surprised than they were. How could this have happened to me twice, he said, just look how the story has repeated itself, and it’s a nice guitar, so that means you’ll play, Maya clapped and Sirma entered the picture she knew Maya was imagining, a beach at night and a guitar in the hands of the likeable man, she even felt like laughing, but the hesitation Krustev wore like a coat again hung on his shoulders, I guess I could play a bit, he said, but I haven’t touched a guitar in a long time, in a really long time. Why not, asked Spartacus, and Krustev replied I have no fucking idea.

She dreamed of sand that stuck to her skin, as if she had broken out in a tiny, glittering rash, but that was because she was playing in the sand with her brother, they were little again, and both naked, and she tried not to look at the thing jutting out so ridiculously between his legs, her mother had told her that it wasn’t polite to talk about things that were between people’s legs and she decided that in that case it surely wasn’t polite to think about them either, so she tried to think about the castle they were building together, but the sea washed over it at regular intervals and demolished it, their castle was a failure because the professors didn’t want to teach them anything, and while she was thinking this, she was left alone in the castle, naked and ridiculous, well yes, after all her brother had left, hadn’t he, she had to figure out this castle on her own, but she could feel how the grains of sand sticking to her body were multiplying and becoming like armor, at one point she looked down and saw that it wasn’t sand at all, but tiny flowers, while Maya and Spartacus were standing a little ways off, looking at her and pointing, and yelling something, but she couldn’t hear them, what, she yelled in turn, come on, what’s wrong, talk louder, they pointed at her, at the castle her legs were straddling, she looked down and saw a baby squirming between her legs, a real baby, but how had she given birth without being pregnant, and then she realized that she hadn’t given birth, but precisely the opposite, it was backing up into her, without her even feeling it, and right before the monstrous creature hid inside her and disappeared, she managed to see its face, it may have been a baby, but it had Elena’s face.

In the morning she quickly forgot her repugnant dream, but it popped into her mind again as she was waiting for Spartacus to come out of the bathroom so she could go in, too, and again, like on the ship, like so long ago over her bowl of cereal, her stomach suddenly heaved, this time bringing up a stream of black coffee along with the stomach acid, which dribbled down her chin, right at that moment Spartacus opened the door, saw her and jumped, what’s the matter with you, are you okay, I’m fine, she said, wiping her chin, did you get yourself nice and clean for tonight, and pinched him on the ass, but after she was left alone in the bathroom and had locked the door, she realized that she had no desire whatsoever for that which awaited them that evening.

But still they went, how could they not go, Spartacus and Maya obediently followed their reluctant leader, yesterday, as they had splashed around in the choppy sea, which was now smooth as a mirror, as far as could be seen in the darkness, it was cloudy and there were no stars, yesterday she had noticed that hill at the edge of the city looming steeply over the water, surely no one goes there at night, she had pointed it out to them then and they had agreed, so now they were climbing the hill off the road that led to the city, looking for a good spot, well, well, said Spartacus behind her back, here we’ll have ourselves a nice view of the sea, real box seats, and he laughed, but quickly fell silent, perhaps because Maya had shot him a stern look, they weren’t supposed to laugh during the mysteries, laughter pulled them out of the magic of the ritual and revealed its full absurdity, Sirma thought to herself and sat down on the ground. The view really was nice and the wind wasn’t blowing like last night. I wonder what Krustev is doing, she asked herself, this is all so stupid, it’s surely completely obvious to him what they were up to and now he must be laughing at them for their strict adherence to a timetable to restrain the hormones, in his place Elena would have been going crazy with curiosity, to say nothing of insisting that she be allowed to join in. Breathe, said Maya, having taken up the lotus pose, breathe, doesn’t it smell wonderful. It smelled of all sorts of grasses and herbs, a whole symphony of scents, in which it was impossible to distinguish any one aroma. Still sitting in her snobby lotus pose, Maya began fondling her own breasts lightly and Sirma suddenly burst out laughing, the loud giggle burst from her mouth like stomach acid, scattered into the night and startled the scents. Spartacus and Maya looked at her in surprise, she kept laughing, it was like an allergy attack, she couldn’t stop herself, her eyes swam with tears, her stomach shook with uncontrollable spasms and the laughter jumped from her throat like gravel, tiny grains of laughter stuck to it and in the end she choked, the laughter passed into coughing, she finally got a hold of herself, but she saw Spartacus and Maya’s astonished faces and burst out laughing again, this time only a short, single swath. Spartacus also gave a crooked, bewildered smile, what’s the matter, Maya asked, well, nothing’s the matter, said Sirma, isn’t it funny, she got up and said, come on, enough of this ridiculousness, let’s go, but what about the mysteries, Spartacus asked, confused, what about the mysteries, Sirma mimicked him, if you’re all hung up on a fuck, well fine then, if you’ve already gotten it up, we’ll help you out. That’s ridiculous, Spartacus said, offended, isn’t that exactly what I’m telling you, it’s ridiculous, Sirma replied and remained standing as they kept sitting on the grass foolishly, silent for some time, then Maya said so it’s all over? I don’t know what it all is, Sirma said, but I think something’s over, only I don’t quite know what yet. But still, said Maya, it really does smell good. Spartacus got up; and what will we do now? What else, said Sirma, we’ll go find the Big Boss. On the way down, she heard Spartacus start snickering, followed by Maya, she started laughing, too, and the three of them came down the hill like a scree of laughter.

But when they reached the apartment after a half-hour of fast walking and one or two wrong turns in the old town, Krustev was gone and the only sound in the house was the monotonous and unintelligible buzzing of the TV in the landlady’s room. Sirma couldn’t imagine Krustev keeping the desiccated old woman with the aquiline nose company in front of the TV, but she still held her ear to the door and listened for the sound of a second person. She shook her head. He took the guitar, Maya noted. Nothing else was missing. Hmm, Spartacus put in, I wonder if he decided to take off just like that in the car again, actually he would have every right to do that, Sirma added, but I doubt it, I say we look for him on the beach. As they made their way out of the old town and set off on the coastal road along the harbor, which was piled with the overripe fruit of yachts and tourist boats, she asked herself why they were even looking for him, but they didn’t have anything else to do in any case and certainly none of them felt like going to bed just now, so the three of them continued quickly striding along the sea, it was still cloudy and when they reached the zone where the hotels were not yet completely full, a few of them hadn’t even opened yet, beyond the bright circles of the street lamps you couldn’t see much of anything. And so they had almost made it back to the hill they had come down earlier and surely they were all thinking it, but no one said it aloud. They took the last sets of stairs from the road down to the beach, took off their shoes and set out over the coarse brown sand. He might not even be on the beach at all, Maya said, he might not be, Sirma agreed, but then again he might, it depends on which time we’re in, which time, Maya was confused, never mind, she replied, it doesn’t matter. The sea murmured pleasantly and its black mass rocked slightly, in the dark it looked like a huge, living, gentle monster. Here at the very end of the beach, there were no umbrellas or chaise longues, in fact, there wasn’t anything, but right when she was telling herself there’s nothing here, Spartacus suddenly said what’s that? In the darkness, which was disconcerted by the distant lights, they could make out some lump in the sand, they headed towards it and finally saw that it was the guitar, with jeans, a shirt and a beach towel carefully set on top of it. Fuck, Sirma said and suddenly felt afraid, fear hit her like a punch to the stomach, she felt herself dissolving into the surrounding darkness and collapsing to the ground like a handful of sand. Spartacus and Maya were already getting undressed in feverish silence, she followed their example, but never before had her fingers unbuttoned her clothes so clumsily, she found herself in some terrible slow time, which trickled like rough sand from the globe of an hourglass, and she wanted to say something, she wanted to curse Krustev and his flippant whim to go into the sea alone at night when he couldn’t swim, then she was seized with the total certainty that he had gone in to drown himself, fucking Mr. Depressed, to drown himself in the sea and to slip away from everything, from his dead wife and his distant daughter, the sight of his bloated body floating all too calmly on the waves hit her right in the eye, the drowned Herr Burgher, a luxury-loving corpse, a lump of death upon the funereal dance of the sea. Spartacus and Maya were already running down the beach, racing into the water and quickly swimming out, growing distant, and she followed them, going in a little to one side so they would be spread out in their search for him, perhaps he was still alive, perhaps they would find him in the darkness, drag him out by his seaweed-tangled hair and pump his stomach until he spit out all the black water he had swallowed, but it was dark, fiendishly dark, the fucking clouds hadn’t budged; and without stars and the moon, with only the city lights reflecting on the black sea, a greasy semi-darkness spread, in which she could no longer even see Spartacus and Maya’s heads, but she suddenly saw something next to her, she jumped, screamed and Krustev’s voice, offensively alive, said, well now, fancy meeting you here. You’re here, she shouted, well, yes, said Krustev, adding proudly, I was swimming. She felt like kissing him and slapping him, a mother to this man twice her age, she tried to call to the other two, but a sudden wave filled her mouth with water and as she spit angrily, Krustev, who had remained on the surface, yelled out loudly, hey, I’m over here, and they soon saw Spartacus and Maya’s heads swimming towards them from different directions.

As they came out of the water together, Sirma was still shaking from fury and relief, even though, she told herself, the three of them were not supposed to be here at all, and if everything had gone according to plan they wouldn’t be here, then this whole scene would never have happened, but in that case every moment and every action gave rise to and at the same time ruled out countless possibilities, tiny grains of sand, indistinguishable from one another they all dried off with the same towel which Krustev had prudently brought along, how had the thought that he would go and drown himself ever crossed her mind, given that the man had brought a towel, and they sat down on the ground. You brought the guitar, said Spartacus. Yes, said Krustev, I brought it, yes, and he drummed his fingers on the body, scattering the brief buzzing of the strings in the air. He finally made up his mind, picked up the guitar, put it on his lap and tested the strings, sighed, and started playing some melody, Sirma didn’t know it, maybe Spartacus did, given his obsession with rock music and his ability to fish out all sorts of things that had been crammed helter-skelter into the depths of his memory, she looked at him, but he didn’t respond, he was just listening and watching Krustev’s hands, the melody was nice, lively, and somehow charmingly infantile, it crumbled out from under his fingers and settled crystallized onto the sand, and when it was done, Krustev laughed and carefully set down the guitar. What was that, Spartacus asked, there was no way you’d know it, he replied, an old melody of mine that never made it into a song, I wrote it when Elena was born. Sirma jumped, suddenly jerked back to her repugnant dream from the previous night, but the image of the monstrous baby shoving its way inside her immediately scattered into the air and Krustev’s melody returned, completely ordinary, such a soothing ordinary melody, she called me tonight, Krustev added. She did? Sirma felt a coldness in her teeth. She decided to come home without telling me, Krustev explained, and when she didn’t find me there, naturally she called. So that’s it, said Sirma, Krustev seemed to drift off somewhere, but he soon started talking again, I remember, he began, I remember how once she got lost as a little girl, at a market, her mother and I were out of our heads with worry, we turned the whole market upside down, it was awful, I’ve never been so scared in my whole life, but in the end we found her; and where did we find her, on a side street, sitting and watching some boys fighting, I couldn’t believe it, they were just kids, eleven or twelve years old, wailing away with their fists, two boys were beating a third, they pushed him down to the ground, they were kicking him, it’s like a black-and-white movie in my memory, them kicking the boy on the ground, and Elena, just a little girl, was sitting on the curb, watching them and smiling, she was entranced, I yelled at them, only then did they see me and run away, and the boy they were beating up, I wanted to help him, but he jumped up and ran off, too, while Elena was just sitting there smiling. They hung there in awkward silence, like wet laundry on a clothes line. So, he said finally, you want to head back tomorrow? Spartacus coughed. Yes, said Sirma, and it was as if the whole sea burst into her and filled her when she repeated yes.

In the house the walls are sleeping, the rugs are sleeping, the television is sleeping, the switched-off presence of sounds and images. The lamps are sleeping, bat-like bracket lamps and quiet ceiling lights, loudly snoring chandeliers. Krustev is sleeping, hung on the wall, his wife is sleeping on one side of him, his daughter on the other, they are sleeping with open eyes, smiling amid the lawn outside. The half-empty bottle of expensive whiskey taken out of the liquor cabinet with the magnetic door is sleeping.

But in the garden all times are awake at once, the leafy clocks of the birches spin around like mad, the grass bends uneasily, along the fence ants scuttle, headed every which way, they touch antennae, disappear into the dirt and come above again, and there in the unmowed lawn, where the family portrait was taken five years ago, now amid the unwitnessed licentiousness, the only person nearby lies sleeping, Elena is sleeping on the lawn and inside her names and stories spin, and in one of those simultaneously possible wakeful times, in the quiet and carefully stored time of shame, right at that moment she opens her eyes.