A Short Tale of Shame

[7]

Everyone was drowning here, he was surrounded by drowned fruit flies and other little bugs, and he was swimming, swimming away, so as not to drown, but at a certain point he reached the clear wall of the glass and could go no further, he couldn’t hang on to it, because he didn’t have vacuum feet like the flies, which, by the way, also weren’t able to hang on to the glass, wet and disheveled, they could only go back to the center or wander the outlying districts, along the periphery of the glass wall, but the important thing was not to stop swimming in the strange liquid with its undefined color and smell, flat beer or cold tea, from time to time new gnats would arrive from outside and would sink into the liquid with an inexplicable urge towards self-sacrifice, kicking their little legs, trying to flap their stuck-together wings, but they would soon drop lifelessly into the glass. Spartacus wondered how he had ended up here and what would happen if someone decided to drink the liquid, he already felt a traitorous exhaustion in his muscles, he couldn’t keep swimming forever, even if only in some glass, and completely businesslike, without fear, he thought to himself that in the end he, too, would surely drown like all the other bugs, but suddenly it hit him that he could float on his back and relax, he tried it and wouldn’t you know, it worked, his body submissively went slack in the liquid and for some time there was nothing.

But then a brrrm-zhhhush-zoop started up, obviously some fly, not a fruit fly, but some bigger one had slipped out of the glass with him and was now ramming the netted corners of the tent, let’s have a brrrm now for Mom, a zhhhush for Dad, a zoop for Grandma and Grandpa, okay, the fly obediently carried out the instructions, keeping up the rhythm and, as annoying as it was, Spartacus was thankful for it because they were moving after all, cutting a trail through the forest together, he carefully pushed aside the branches, brrrm-zhhhush-zoop and at one point, so late that he felt ashamed of his own foolishness, he realized that this was no fly, but the writer with the Caucasian Ford, the humming and buzzing were coming from the engine, and there was no forest anywhere nearby, nor any glass of cold tea, the old, decrepit car puttered along the rural route, I’ve written two novels and thrrrrreee! collections of poetry, the fly said and Spartacus suddenly realized that he had read one of those two novels, he now remembered it perfectly clearly, it was called Ascension Day and in it one of his classmates axe-murdered the girl he was in love with, until now, however, Spartacus had thought that the novel was by Leo Tolstoy, but now he realized that, in fact, it was by the windbag with the Caucasian Ford, he was impressed, then confused, so how did he know it was his book, since the guy hadn’t said anything about his novel, not even the title, but still he knew it, he knew it instinctively, the way he knew not to touch a hot stove, so, he asked, you know my classmates? I don’t know them, the guy replied, buuut! art moves in mysterious ways, and I mean mysterious with a capital M! Now Spartacus was holding the novel itself on his lap, paging through it and instead of letters he saw scenes from it before his eyes as if he were present at the events, at the same time he also saw the windbag writing the novel and wanted to shout at him, what are you doing, keep your hands on the wheel, but the guy had fallen into some kind of blissful, artistic trance, his hand raced over the pages that Spartacus was simultaneously reading, the windbag turned to him and asked should I tell you how it ends, no, Spartacus replied indignantly, why would you tell me, well, because, the windbag replied, if I don’t tell you, we’ll crash. But Spartacus stubbornly refused, he didn’t want him to give away the ending, he wanted to find out for himself, to see the final scene projected like a hologram from the book on his lap, the windbag shrugged, let go of the wheel and they really did crash instantly.

Now the important thing is to fall asleep, Spartacus told himself, if I fall asleep the car will start moving again. But he never figured out whether he managed to fall asleep or not, in any case the car was no longer there and he was completely convinced that he was in his tent, to make sure he even flipped through some of what had happened that day, yes, exactly, Elena’s dad had picked them up, they had taken the ferryboat to Thasos, they had gone swimming, drunk beer, eaten dinner, afterwards they all had felt really tired and had gone to bed, now he was furious that he couldn’t fall asleep properly, this night was his chance, they had gone to bed so early, when would he have a chance to sleep the following nights, some pachanga would start up, Sirma topless with a lei of Hawaiian flowers around her neck, now the petals of the flowers covered her nipples, but the more he looked at her, the more he realized that the flowers were, in fact, growing, multiplying and taking over an ever-larger part of her body, this was happening slowly and she didn’t seem to notice it, she kept dancing some strange dance, look, Maya told him and squeezed his hand, look, the flowers will erase her, he again tried to shout to warn her, but he only heard some mooing in his ears, while the fly stirred again, brrrm-zhhhush-zoop, and besides the fly he heard very clearly someone walking around outside his tent, sniffing and wheezing, was that a dog, could somebody steal his backpack, somebody walking around his tent with a dog? Zoop, said the fly. It wasn’t a fly, it was the zipper of his tent. Spartacus struggled to get up, but his body was terribly heavy, he couldn’t even move his arm. Zoop, and a little later zoop again, and female laughter. That was Sirma’s sister, he was absolutely convinced of this, true, Sirma had never mentioned having a sister, but now it was as clear as day to him that this was Sirma’s sister, they looked alike, but this girl was somehow softer and smiling, she was kneeling in the sand in front of his tent and quickly pulling the zipper up and down, now showing her face, now hiding it, she was playing with the zipper and laughing, Sirma’s sister. Suddenly the whirr of the zipper stopped and for a long time there was nothing again.

He woke up once and for all from the heat. The sun had clearly climbed high enough to warm the tent and it was gradually becoming a greenhouse inside. But he didn’t feel like getting out. If the sun was already high in the sky, then he’d slept a long time. He could still remember most of the strange dreams he’d had, it must’ve been really stuffy, and a fat black fly was crawling over the netting of the tent. But the zipper of the tent was sitting there, quietly closed. Sirma’s sister. He felt his cock apathetically harden in the usual morning erection, that tiresome caprice of the hormones. He suddenly realized who the girl from his dream had been, hidden behind the inexplicable idea that Sirma had a sister. She was a girl from high school, younger than they were, whose birthday party they had ended up at more or less accidentally a year ago, they were already in college, but they still had friends in high school and the latter had dragged them to some party. Spartacus snorted, that was surely his last true high school stunt. He knew the girl in passing, who, in fact, did not particularly resemble Sirma, but she was attractive, still he had gone to the party without any plans, but gradually and imperceptibly he had had way too much to drink, so much so that he blacked out and whatever he knew about that evening had come from Sirma and Maya’s giggling stories. He wondered how much to believe them, because he had a hard time believing that in his drunkenness he had been so hyperactive so as to do everything they had attributed to him. According to them, he was racing around everywhere, he had chased a solitary and sullen skinhead, insisting that he explain exactly what his problem with blacks was, he was the life of the party until at one point he definitively homed in on the birthday girl, dancing a slow dance with her, the song ended, but they kept spinning around, staggering in the middle of the room, Spartacus perhaps remembered that vaguely when they told him, a soft, dazed spinning around the girl’s warm breath, and the realization that he couldn’t see anything, who knows what kind of alcohol they had foisted on him, but the next part he really didn’t remember: according to Sirma and Maya everyone in the room was laughing loudly, shouting at them that the song was over and it was time to finally untangle themselves, but they kept spinning, so finally one girl said well, let’s not let a good dance go to waste and sat down at the piano, that sounded believable, because there really had been a piano in the room, and so the girl had started playing another ballad on the piano and they kept spinning for a while longer, and when it finished, Spartacus and the girl as if on command tumbled under the piano and started vigorously making out. Here Spartacus had tossed back his head and started laughing in disbelief, indignant and satisfied, now you’re making stuff up, he kept saying, even though that could’ve been true, too, he had some memory of the warm taste of the girl’s mouth, of her busy tongue, while Sirma and Maya swore they weren’t embellishing a single detail, well, if that’s how it was, he shrugged, that makes it even funnier, it’s just too bad that I clearly had no idea what was going on, so you were having fun without me. In any case, it was true that in the morning or some time around then, he woke up in a huge bed in which five people were sleeping or pretending to sleep, the birthday girl was snuggled up to him and looked extremely out of it, he tried to kiss her, so that thing about the piano must’ve been true, otherwise why would he have done that, but she couldn’t even move, she merely looked at him numbly, they really must have drunk some very sketchy alcohol, lift your head a little, he said jokingly, but she replied I can’t, I’ll throw up in your mouth, and shortly thereafter she cleared out, maybe she really was going to throw up, however, there were two other girls in the bed, they looked pretty young, but he played dumb, putting his arms around one of them and lying down comfortably, she gave in to his embrace, without saying anything, but also without moving closer, and at one point he woke up or sobered up or enough of both to ask himself what the hell am I doing here, he removed his hand from the random body he had come across, got up and went to splash cold water on his face, but in the kitchen Sirma and Maya, who were drinking coffee, met him with a round of applause, and shortly thereafter dragged him outside to go home, the first buses were already lazily humming in the darkness.

Spartacus stepped out of his tent and the day sprawled before him, plentiful and yellow, and the seconds, milliseconds and the other finer beats of time stuck to his legs, as he waded through the day with Maya and Sirma, and with that strange, sad person who had suddenly hit the road, only to wake up the husband of a dead wife and the father of an ex-lover, ex-friend, ex-threat. All four of them lazily watched the sand from the glass upper globe slip into the lower one, Spartacus continued running various memories through his head, as he had done for most of the previous day while they were in the car, and at one point he wondered if he hadn’t changed places with Elena’s father, who certainly had more right than he did to dig through his memories and pay so much attention to them, and perhaps to sit here on this island beach and to look out at the sea with the feeling that everything that was going to happen had already happened. But Sirma and Maya had also gone silent, sunk into themselves, mulling various things over, as if they, too, inhabited some previous stories, perhaps at the end of the day everything was due to Elena, to her invisible yet tangible presence ever since they had gotten into her father’s car, had she ridden in it recently, had she seeped into the seats like a scent, like an infection, she really had a knack for being present, for hovering nearby, even when she was thousands of miles away, maybe she had also captured their minds in some way, forcing them to race down the steep slope of memory, but perhaps in the end there really wasn’t much of anything that could happen here, on this island, on this sandy beach, in front of the greedy maw of the sea, which fawned in the surf and licked at their toes.

His romance with Elena had lasted less than a month. Their bodies had raged in a staggering frenzy, they had kissed furiously in the middle of the street, she had bitten his lips as he pressed her to the façade of public buildings downtown, sometimes the doormen would come out and chase them away, not so much angry as amused, they would take off and Elena would whisper in his ear, did you see that, the doorman had a hard-on, and he would go crazy again, seized by the thought of the hard, grinning doorman in his blue uniform, they would sink into the park somewhere, into its wooded part, throwing themselves on the ground and unbuttoning their clothes with trembling fingers. Afterwards, tamed for a few hours, they would find Sirma and Maya, who eyed them mockingly, timidly or with outright hostility, so are you screwing them, too, Elena had asked him at the very beginning and he laughed, it wasn’t the first time he’d heard that question, others usually asked which of the two he was sleeping with, and he would put that topic to bed once and for all by saying both, and even though it wasn’t true in the literal sense of the word, it was nevertheless the truth in its own, uh, metaphysical way. But when Elena had asked him so are you screwing them, too, he had hesitated as to what to answer and his hesitation had lasted long enough for her to decide that that, his hesitation, was the answer and that in that case she could choose to believe whatever she wanted, and she had chosen to believe that yes, the three of them indulged in wild orgies, and she had started telling him what nice breasts Maya had, how much she liked Sirma’s green eyes, he had thrown her onto the couch in the sleeping office, which her father had given her the key to, stripped her and rushed into her, to make her shut up, but once, when they were doing it, she had again begun fantasizing out loud about the girls, how nice it would be if they were here, too, she had said it like that, kneeling on the couch, he had covered her mouth with his hand and pulled her towards him, her body twisted and trembled, she bellowed, but he pressed her mouth tightly with his hand and didn’t let go until he had come as well, at which point he groaned you’re crazy, but she just smiled exultantly and said: Aren’t I, though? They didn’t see each other for the next three days because her parents had made her go with them somewhere on a long weekend. Without meaning to, Spartacus glanced at her father, rather ridiculous in his black swim trunks, just as all older men looked ridiculous in their swim trunks for some inexplicable reason, even though he was still in good shape, he didn’t have a gut, yet the first premonition of old age hovered around his body, it wasn’t a mark on the skin, it wasn’t a wrinkle or something visible, but Krustev seemed to exude his own uneasiness, his reduced sense of comfort in his own body, or at least that’s how it seemed to him, the girls surely were of another mind entirely, he had long since realized that they saw older men in a different light, he thought about him driving the red car which had brought them here or maybe some other car, a previous one, and next to him was his wife, who was now dead, and in the backseat was Elena and she was replaying dirty scenes in her mind and she smelled of sex, of him, of the couch in the office and the cool dirt under the spruces in the park, he couldn’t imagine those people together, he didn’t see anything in common between that fury in the body of the half-Slavic girl and the anxious man who looked as if he had been cold for a long time and was now gradually beginning to feel the rays of sunlight on his skin, and he felt a deep thankfulness that Krustev didn’t know what he had done with his daughter, although on the other hand he had surely been wondering about it the whole time, surely all fathers were like that and he would become that way, too, if he had a daughter, sometimes he thought abstractly about some other time and place in which he would have a family and children, but in these visions, too, he could not solve the problem of who, in fact, would be the mother of his children, couldn’t the kids somehow be born without a mother, while he would stay with Sirma and Maya, or else perhaps he would have one child with each of them, that was now possible, and all thanks to Elena, wasn’t that right. While she had been on that long weekend with her parents, the three of them had gone out alone and he had thought that everything would be as usual, since they had learned to leave their hook-ups and relationships, insofar as they existed, aside and not to let them into their triangle, he didn’t feel like he had let Elena inside and hadn’t even thought about it, but Maya and Sirma, it seemed, had another opinion on the matter, they were mad at him, they sipped their beer and let fly snide comments meant to insult him, what the hell is your problem, he asked angrily, we don’t have a problem, Sirma declared, you’re the one with a problem in your head, and not your big one, but your little one. He got up and stalked across the lawn with long strides, but behind his back he could hear Sirma yelling after him, now there, don’t you see, he felt offended by their unfairness, especially by Maya, who had spun 180 degrees, hadn’t she been the one who had brought her friend and had wanted them to buddy up to her, and in the beginning Sirma had been angry with her, while he had defended her, he didn’t understand what the two of them wanted from him, yes, maybe things between Elena and him were more serious than with his previous girlfriends, than with Sirma and Maya’s guys, but he hadn’t expected such jealousy and it all seemed incredibly irrational, absurd and childish, which, he thought to himself now, perhaps it really had been.

When they again hopped over to the bar, because in the end there wasn’t much else to do between the sea and the campground fence, on the coarse sand that unexpectedly flowed into the dry soil beneath tall, straight pines, so strange and uncharacteristic of the seaside, Krustev again insisted on treating them and they took him up on it, each time they put up less of a fight, the man obviously enjoyed doing it, while for them every free round was a breath of fresh air. In the car, Maya had told him that they’d taken the year off to think about whether they really wanted to study what they were studying, and that was true, but only almost. In fact, it was Maya who had taken a year off not just because of that, but because she needed money, after the divorce both her mother and her father’s finances were not exactly rosy, while her brother was growing and eating a lot, at least that’s what Maya said, half-joking, half-serious, but on the other hand, she could translate and teach French without taking a year off her major, so the idea of taking a step back and reflecting on things really was important, in any case she had suggested it and he and Sirma had taken her up on it, because it had seemed wise to them, they wouldn’t lose anything by doing something else for a year, and in any case Spartacus was growing ever more skeptical where law was concerned, while Sirma, who had gone to fantastic lengths to get into her dream major of architecture, was simply furious about the way the teachers blocked their students’ progress so they couldn’t become competition. The year would soon come full circle and they had to decide what to do from then on, but for now they could still travel, think, and earn some money with which to think and travel. Spartacus calculated that if things went on like this, even if they extended their vacation, he might still have some money left over when they got back. He had set aside the payment from the last brochure, and now, of course, tourist season was starting and there would be work, new groups of German grannies and Mesozoic Americans. His own grandmother, from the village near the Sea of Marmara, always loved to say that easy money was the most fun to spend. Now, having earned a little something and despite the fact that he still lived with his parents, he no longer asked for an allowance, Spartacus was convinced that his grandmother was dead wrong: it was the most fun to spend money you earned yourself and which you knew you’d put time and energy into, which you were now free to squander in one fell swoop, getting your revenge on the tourists by turning them into beer and fried fish, draining them and gnawing them down to the bone, or better yet, transforming a glossy brochure into a concert ticket, watching for an hour and a half as the smoke of your burning cash envelops the musicians on stage, watching with delight as the time-turned-to-sound breaks loose and flies off. He didn’t like carrying cash, no matter how little, he hurried to turn it into other things, and sometimes he wondered what in the world he would do if some day he made a lot of money, say what Krustev made, it seemed logical, maybe he, too, would take a shine to some kids who reminded him of his own youth and would pick up their tab, but Krustev, with his promoter’s agency, at whose concerts Spartacus had turned his cash to smoke and time to sound, and with his stores for home entertainment systems, that Krustev was probably too rich to be able to squander his money, he didn’t have enough time. No matter how egotistical it was, there was something deeply pointless, some insult to being itself, in dying without having relieved yourself of that burden. Once, only once, had Spartacus ended up without a single cent, he had been maybe seventeen, he was going to meet Sirma and Maya on the bridge over the Tonzos, they were late and for lack of anything better to do, Spartacus dug into his pocket and found only a small coin, it wasn’t even enough for ice cream, so he raised his arm and chucked it far into the river; cars whizzed past on both sides of the bridge, it was noisy and he didn’t hear it splash into the river, but he told himself, okay, now I don’t have a single cent in my pocket, and he felt an incredible rush of freedom. He spent three days like that, until the next installment from his parents, of course, that was easy at seventeen, what do you really need to buy, when it comes to beer in the park, there was always someone willing to cough up cash for it instead of you, and if nobody does, then you go without beer, but despite that for those three days he completely consciously lived the joy of the penniless, looking to spend most of his time out and about, wandering through the streets, looking in the shop windows and feeling pride and relief that he could not buy himself anything whatsoever, not even a bottle of water. He knew, with that knowledge which stands in the corner like a heavy block of stone that you can’t budge, that those three days would never repeat themselves. The older he got, the more doomed he was to earn money and spend it, spinning his toothy gears in the machine of exchange, grinding coins in his molars.