Best European Fiction 2013

[SLOVAKIA] BALLA Before the Breakup

Miša discovered there was something in the apartment.

It was behind the TV set in the corner of the living room. But later in the evening when she phoned Jano, who had left on a business trip a few days earlier, she made no mention of her discovery. Why make him worry? He had other things to worry about out there in the Asian metropolis. Or maybe he didn’t? Doubt started gnawing at her: only the other night she’d dreamed of her husband in karaoke bars and the things he was getting up to with sluts; though they might go by a different, fancier name in those parts—Miša couldn’t remember the exact word—she was quite sure they were just sluts, engaging in slutty practices.

After the routine call was over she sat in the kitchen until late at night, and as the light of a small lamp above the freezer illuminated her hands and fingers, and long shadows crept along the floor and the opposite wall, Miša wondered why this had to happen to her, of all people. Actually, not just to her, to Jano as well—but Jano didn’t have an inkling of it. Or did he? Was he lying in a hotel bed somewhere with an inkling? Was he on the twentieth or thirtieth floor of a skyscraper, in the middle of negotiations, with an inkling?

Miša had grown up in a family where nothing ever appeared behind the TV set. Her parents had never even mentioned such a possibility to her, though they were happy to discuss in her presence the petty scandals involving their neighbors or people at work. But perhaps they’d had it in their bedroom too. Their daughter had never been allowed to go in there. Could it have been in their bedroom? Did they take it along when they went on vacation? On one of those outings they used to go on, leaving their daughter with her grandma in the countryside?

She went to the hallway and called a friend from the landline, for she felt the need to discuss this unexpected problem with somebody. A few sentences into the conversation she replied, baffled:

– You mean I should go and see a psychiatrist?

– Of course. You’ve got to. What if you’re just imagining it all?

– You mean… hallucinating? You really think I’m hallucinating?

– But what if it isn’t there at all? From what you’re saying, it’s almost the size of a wardrobe… Could something like that even fit behind the TV set?

– Soňa, believe me, it’s there!

– I doubt it. Look, you know Dr. Monty…

– The one with the beard?

– No, the one who goes to the Irish Pub.

– Where does he sit?

– Right at the back, underneath the speakers.

– I don’t know him at all.

– Well then you know the other one, what’s his name… help me out…

– You mean Dr. Ráthé?

– Exactly.

– But he’s not a psychiatrist, he’s a psychologist.

– All right, all right, a psychologist might do for starters…

– What do you mean, for starters? It’s as big as a wardrobe and you’re calling this starters?

– I’ve already told you there’s no way it could be as big as a wardrobe. Just calm down. I’m sure it’s much, much smaller.

– So how big do you think it is?

– Let’s agree it’s the size of a matchbox, at most. It’s absolutely tiny.

– Listen… How about you come and take a look?

– That’s out of the question. I can’t.

– Why? Look, come over! Please! Help me.

– But how?! What’s this got to do with me? And anyway, I’m in a complicated situation.

– I don’t understand.

– …

– What is it? Can’t you talk?

– Uhm.

– All of a sudden you can’t talk when I need you to do me a favor. Can’t you even whisper?

– I can do that. But what am I supposed to whisper? You’d better go and check again…

– But I’ve been watching it the whole time. Actually… not the whole time, just now I was looking out of the window… and… by the door to the hair salon… you know where I mean…

– Of course I do. By the door. So what’s there?

– There…

– C’mon, what is it?

– Nothing! Nothing at all! Don’t you understand? It’s not there. It’s only here, behind the TV. Why don’t I imagine it’s out there, too, if I’m only imagining it? Let me tell you why: because it just isn’t out there, only here. And you were lying.

– How was I lying?

– When you said you could only whisper. Just now you were so curious about what was there by the door to the hair salon that you started shouting. Out of curiosity. And the only reason you found it so fascinating was because you go to that salon yourself. So the only time you’re willing to listen to me, without accusing me of being crazy, is when it involves you too?

The phone call ended on a rather uneasy note.

Miša sat down at the kitchen table, picked up a mirror, and examined the pale skin of her pale face. It shone in the kitchen night. The eyes, the nose, the mouth, the corners of the mouth. Thoughtfully, Miša went on to examine her shoulders, chest, and legs. It would have been almost impossible to distinguish the whole from other wholes of this kind. Or perhaps only sometimes, thanks to the clothes, the situations in which they were discarded, by a particular whole’s way of being naked. Way of being naked? Yes: see yourself for who you are! Step in front of the mirror, get to know yourself from the outside, but intimately! Let the inside follow. Follow the inside!

Miša stood up and sat down again.

She was sitting on her backside in the kitchen again.

Jano came home a few days later, left his bags in the hall, took off his shoes, went to the bathroom, took a shower, and, after thoroughly drying himself with a big thick bath towel, headed for the living room. She was waiting for him by the door. Thinking of the sluts and the karaoke. And also of herself, her role. Was she supposed to float up into the sky now, all dreamy-eyed and happy? Or should she let barbiturates, medication, or a psychiatrist take care of everything? She stepped back a little to let Jano pass. He sat down in the armchair and switched on the TV with the remote. The flickering blue light carved objects out of the dark.

That’s when Jano spotted it.

It was moving slowly, sinister and inevitable. Jano didn’t say anything. His face looked like a mask stretched on a rack of bone. Only when his wife whispered hysterically to him did he respond, commenting that, in his view, it made the living room even cozier than before, covering himself with his statement as though it were a precious Tibetan rug. Miša ran out of the block and called Sona on her cellphone. She was panting:

– I know everything!

– What do you know?

– It’s turned up at your place too! That’s why you can’t talk! It’s watching you! It’s listening to you! It’s growing!

–…

– Don’t you have anything to say to that?

– I told you I can’t talk.

– Well, whisper then.

– Yes, it turned up here too. But that was a long time ago. It’s stopped growing now, although, I admit, it’s not getting any smaller either. We’ve gotten used to it. As it is. Look, I know how you feel. It’s not easy to come to terms with the new situation at first… But is it really new? Okay, I know you never counted on this. You didn’t expect… didn’t visualize it quite like this. What woman would expect such a thing? I was hoping it wouldn’t happen to you—to you and Jano. Last time you called, I thought you might be exaggerating a little. Because in our place it didn’t grow quite so fast! Peto and I had been together for six years by the time we first noticed it! But times have changed, life is moving faster… I know I’m probably not putting it well, but the fact is, the world’s gotten faster, so that you and Jano… Even though you’ve only been together for two years—it’s been two years, hasn’t it? Or three? Anyway, for some reason it’s happening faster. Oh dear, I guess I am just behind the times.

– Soňa, I love you, you’re my only friend. But why did you have to keep this secret from me, of all things?

– I’m telling you: I was hoping it wouldn’t happen to you!

– And what about your parents? At home, when you were growing up… Did they have a problem too? You know what I mean.

– Of course. Nearly every family on our estate had it. I remember the Kropács, they had to move out because of it: it simply pushed them out of their apartment. One morning it was sticking out into the hallway. Can you imagine how delicate the situation was? Actually existing socialism, and you’ve got something sticking out of your apartment door? And you and your children have to sleep on the stairs? Well, my parents took their children in for a few days, the kids stayed in my room, but I didn’t like them, they cried all the time. By the way, it eventually turned out to be a blessing in disguise for the Kropács: it followed them everywhere; in the end they were staying in a workers’ dormitory in Smíchov, in Prague, but one night, after it caused a scandal by swelling up, making the whole house burst, waking up half the city of a thousand spires, they took a radical step: emigration. Now they have a wonderful life in the West, she’s living in Italy with the kids and he’s somewhere in Switzerland. They split up as soon as they crossed the border. Don’t you get it? It was a question of life and death. But actually, in cases like this, it’s always a question of life and death.

– But why did Mom never even hint at it?

– That’s what women are like: though we can see—right from the beginning, actually—how things happen and how they’re going to end, inevitably, we keep hoping… and making the same mistakes. We just don’t learn our lesson. Typically. Not even seeing the way that our own parents have ended up prevents us from letting the same thing happen to us and our children. From their earliest days we push them toward doing the same thing to their kids when the time comes. It’s like some compulsion, can’t you feel it?

– Soňa! I thought I was going round the bend!

– That’s right. You are going round the bend, but nobody will notice you’re mad. It’s a collective madness. You’re no different from anyone else. How can you diagnose madness if everyone is mad?

Miša had no idea.

For weeks she just moped around the apartment.

She could see it was watching her intently from behind the set. Or rather, not from behind but from underneath the TV, which by now was floating on top of it, swaying from side to side like a vacationer on an air-mattress.

Miša stood on the balcony.

Miša leaned against the stove.

Miša even dreamed of going for a hike in the genuine, unadulterated countryside.

And wherever she happened to be, she wondered what it was that she and Jano actually wanted from one another. Wherever she might be she also wondered how she could get into the closet where she kept her large suitcase from before she was married, because by now it was cluttering up the whole room, blocking the way to the closet. And when it got especially bad, between the thirteenth and fourteenth cigarette, between a wistful stare from the balcony down to the street and at the skyscraper opposite—into the windows of prison cells similar to her own—between calm resignation and quiet horror, in addition to other, more important and essential things, Miša also thought that you need a partner to close the clasp on your necklace, and that you need a necklace to find a partner.

[MACEDONIA] ŽARKO KUJUNDŽISKI When the Glasses Are Lost

It was a stifling summer outside when suddenly everything stopped. The faces of the little girl and her father went pale; maybe the father was even more terrified than the little girl. She wasn’t able to recognize real fear, nor was she aware of the danger of the situation; she only felt that her father’s grip had suddenly become tighter, and this caused her face too to turn white as a sheet. As for the others: the tall fellow— destined always to experience life from so presumptuous a height—was wobbling to such a degree that he had to lean on the inside wall with his elbow. Actually, he wasn’t so much leaning as bumping against the wooden surface of the wall, taking advantage of its proximity to avoid collapsing onto the floor. The elderly couple were huddling together quietly and moving gradually into the corner, as if trying to conceal themselves. The remaining four—the soldier, the man with the beard, the woman in red, and the man in the suit—were dispersed in all directions; one fell down, the other hit his forehead on the edge of the panel with the buttons, the third tumbled onto the floor, and the fourth pulled at the tall man’s sleeve and stumbled forward.

Out of all of them, the woman in red, with the pierced navel, responded to the event the loudest, letting out an inarticulate sound followed by a salvo of curses, but nobody objected—as they might have done under different circumstances. The man with the beard, who knew precisely what was happening, continued to lie soberly on the ridged, rubber floor, caressing the hairs of his beard with his fingers. The gentleman in the suit—a striped jacket and trousers of indeterminate color—quickly stood up again and looked at his expensive watch, demonstrating to everyone else that he was in a terrible hurry to get somewhere. The soldier was the only one with his fleshy hands on his forehead, in noticeable pain, although he had in no way admitted defeat. After the first wave of shock had passed, the father concluded that the elevator was indeed stuck. The rest of them neither confirmed nor rejected this conclusion. It seemed too soon for them to replace their usual formal head-nodding on stepping into the elevator or stingy salutations when exiting with alarm, sympathy, and unity in a common cause. But it wasn’t long before it seemed that everybody, except the two silent old people, had accepted the reality that they would have to communicate and work together.

The man with the beard suggested pressing the emergency button, but, as was the case with all the other elevators in the town, nobody believed that it would actually work, despite what the law required. Maybe one of them even put his thumb on that big round circle, without the least hope that this would lead to an observable result. Wanting to determine the altitude at which they were stuck—as if that would solve part of the problem—they tried to guess the floor they were on. At first, the digital readout only showed two eights, indicating that the power supply had been interrupted, throwing off its calculation. The soldier smacked the number display and then rapped on it with his knuckles; perhaps we might see these attacks as the expression of some naïve thirst for vengeance on his part? However, not only did the screen still refuse to display their vertical location, it now lost even those few flickers of life it had retained. The passengers began a verbal inquiry; the last person who’d come in, the tall fellow, who was sitting at the rear of the car—he’d gone to the back, since his destination was the top floor—confirmed that he’d entered the elevator on the tenth floor. Now they were all asking each other on which floor they’d joined the party, and where each had planned to exit the elevator, and concluded finally that they must be somewhere between the tenth floor and the fourteenth—the destination of the father and his little daughter.

The father, a doctor, holding the little fingers of his daughter tightly, went up to the soldier after a while and looked at his bruised forehead in the dim elevator light. The doctor examined the head of the man in uniform, and told the soldier that his injury couldn’t be treated in these conditions, and all they could do was try to make him comfortable. They looked for a hard object to bandage against the soldier’s bump, which looked like a small horn growing on a newborn calf. Not having too many other options, the doctor’s daughter pointed to the soldier’s belt where a gun hung in a white holster that would have been more or less level with her head. The soldier reached for his gun slowly and bashfully, checked the safety, and put the handle on his forehead. The sudden coldness surprised him and he dropped the weapon. It bounced off of the door and fell on the floor. Some of the passengers looked at each other silently— keeping their fears to themselves. The woman in red was the first to reach for the gun. But rather than give it back to the frightened and clumsy soldier, she went up to him and pressed the handle to his reddened skin herself. Yet, it didn’t bring him relief; on the contrary, now he was embarrassed as well as in pain.

The old lady whispered something to her husband and he kneeled on the floor and started poking around the man with the beard (who, meanwhile, had informed the others that he was a painter); soon the old man was squeezing carefully through the other people’s legs. The old lady explained that the sudden stop had caused her glasses to fall off, and she’d only just realized that they were missing. Some of the other passengers kneeled then too, wanting to help the old man, who was still on his knees, impressing the younger people in the elevator with his endurance and persistence. The number of people in the car blocked a lot of the light from the weak fluorescents, their silhouettes casting numerous shadows—a deep darkness on the floor that made their joint quest significantly more difficult. The man in the striped suit—a dandy, really—didn’t pitch in with the search, but instead started calling for help. He started yelling various names, as if he knew important building personnel who were in charge of keeping the place running day to day. No matter the volume, it was all in vain. The building’s elevators had only been recently installed and they were, as it was said, absolutely cutting edge. They had thick walls and solid insulation, which kept their movements perfectly quiet— an utter joy. Nothing like those rickety, terrifying, ancient elevators you find in older buildings, their decrepit mechanisms straining to pull vibrating cords tied to old tin cans up musty tunnels. No, these new models moved quickly and silently, and always stopped with the utmost gentleness. They gave the passengers a feeling of trust and security.

But everyone present had no choice but to accept the fact that the system wasn’t working properly—perhaps a flaw in the installation process? Soon enough, when he noticed that his yells were useless, the man in the suit started to slam his open palms violently against the closed metal doors—something of a shock for everyone else. When he figured out that even this wasn’t loud enough, he lifted his briefcase and he started to smack its tiny wheels against the silvery, mirrored surface. The echoes from this latest assault bounced all over the elevator car, occupying every plane and angle, and inciting even more unrest among his fellow passengers.

Suddenly, the tall fellow grabbed the dandy’s hands. Having gotten his attention, the giant then pointed toward the little girl, who was covering her ears with her hands and looking at them both in confusion. Her father tried to convince the panicking gentleman to apologize to the girl for the scene he was making, but the dandy refused, explaining that he was doing what he was doing for the collective welfare and common interests of all the stranded passengers. The doctor didn’t give up, however, but continued in dignified persistence until their juvenile bickering turned into a heated argument. This was the first actual fight of their ordeal, and it put everyone even more on edge.

Moments later, when he realized that he’d already missed his meeting, the man in the suit removed his jacket, holding it in one hand while still clutching his briefcase in the other, as though there was something strictly confidential in it. The other passengers began to indicate that the temperature, which should have been regulated by the ventilation system, was now increasing in waves, each even more unbearable than the last; they had to do something about that. Most of the men removed some layer of their clothes, and loosened their ties if they had one—or, if they didn’t, like the painter, they rolled up their pants. The old lady pulled out an electric hand fan and started whirring it in front of her face, turning it to her husband’s from time to time, letting her husband work it when she got tired of holding it up. Everyone else was wiping their dewy foreheads with everything within reach—their sleeves or facial tissues that they’d been keeping in their pockets, thinking that they would never need to use them—everyone, that is, except for the soldier and the woman in red, who were chatting incessantly now on various subjects. At that particular moment, the soldier was explaining to the girl how his gun worked, how to switch the safety on and off, how to aim and shoot—things that he wouldn’t be talking about so nonchalantly in other circumstances. The father interrupted them, saying that it would be appropriate to try, for a change, to keep quiet and listen, in case anything was happening outside—whether the elevator next to theirs was moving, for example, or whether they might be able to hear any workers trying to fix whatever malfunction had stranded them all there. They were longing to hear the updates and instructions that rescue teams would surely be calling out, discussing their prognosis and planning the best possible way to get them out of there.

Except for the rumblings of their bodies and the clicking of the old couple’s dentures, however, there still wasn’t a sound to be heard. By now the old man had already stated his hypothesis that the tall fellow was the culprit. Despite everyone’s reasonable rejoinders, the old man blamed the tall fellow and his capricious decision to force himself upon the collective in the elevator for stranding them in this situation; the elevator must have had a weight limit, and the tall fellow must have caused an overload. On account of his being the cause of all of their troubles, the old man then demanded that the tall fellow—who had since revealed that he was a historian—tell everyone some stories, which would put their own unfortunate situation into the proper perspective. So he presented their time in the elevator as historically inevitable and spoke about the old legends, for instance when the galleys of the Githiesh navy got lost in the Salzburg Sea and so couldn’t take part in the battle of Getersburg, providing sea support to their infantry. Later, however, when the sailors worked together, and all the captains coordinated their movements, they surprised the enemy from behind, and thus defeated them utterly. The tall fellow would have certainly continued to dig through these musty catacombs if the well-dressed gentleman, who had been grinding his teeth all the while, hadn’t suddenly—after ferociously mashing his cell phone’s keypad—put his phone to his ear. Not a word was spoken, until this small cause for hope was extinguished as well: no signal.

It would have been one thing had the tenants in the building simply not cared about the passengers trapped in the elevator—that wouldn’t have concerned them quite so much—but the fact that there had been no sign of life, that not a single sound had penetrated the car, and that the passengers had been unable to get a single message through… this seemed to threaten their assumptions and beliefs about the state of the world they’d so recently left. Time was passing, and soon the woman in red, who was sitting on the floor with her back against the wall and her hands wrapped around her knees, declared quite loudly that she was about to faint from starvation. The soldier had leaned his head on her and was already dozing off. Swallowing his self-importance, the well-dressed man addressed the group as a whole, concluding that the day must now be over: it was probably night outside. The passengers had long since begun licking their dry lips, hoping to relieve their increasing thirst, and it was then that the artist pulled a liter water bottle out of his bag, and, after taking the first sip, passed it on to the others. When he was first offered a sip from the bottle, the man in the suit politely—albeit with a grimace— declined; a little later he was quick to grab the bottle and fiercely drink down what was left. The water seemed to calm the passengers down, and now they all lay down on the floor—inasmuch as this was possible—which had seemed wide enough at first, but now felt much smaller. Except for the soldier, who would occasionally wake up to keep an eye on his fellow prisoners, and the little girl, who kept complaining to her father—even though he was doing his best to placate her by telling her stories, patiently and quietly—the others soon fell asleep.

The snoring and the deep sighs that came from the passengers on the floor mixed with other bodily sounds, until the entire group sounded like a small, joyful band. Some of them bumped their heads together accidentally, or pushed aside their neighbor’s belongings, but overall there was no hostility, no angry shoves. This temporary respite didn’t last long, however: their peaceful dreams were interrupted by a jarring bang. Almost everyone jumped to their feet, save for the artist and the man in the suit, who—as if stuck to each other—didn’t budge. With messy hair and bleary eyes, they rose toward the light of the elevator’s ceiling; this time they looked at each other not with suspicion, but terror. Now several of them mentioned that they had to answer the call of nature. For a while they were wondering just what to do about this, until the tall historian came up with the idea to use the empty water bottle while the rest covered their eyes or turned their backs. Then they all fell asleep for the second time.

There were no outbursts of desperation come morning, only the gurgling noises of their empty stomachs, like abandoned kittens mewling on someone’s porch, permeating the car. Their shared vulnerability had turned into a mutual compassion and softened their lonely hearts. The woman in red went on and on about some recent events in her neighborhood. Reminiscing remorsefully about her lack of sympathy for a stray dog that had been playing in front of her building, she promised she would mend her ways once they got their lives back. Now they all started to evoke similar poignant memories from their lives, as if standing in front of some invisible adjudicator who would soon make a final decision about their destinies and allow only a few to go back to address their errors. Through these recollections they felt they were somehow guaranteeing their futures, giving evidence of their own worth—or their pretentions to superiority. After the soldier explained what had brought him out to the building the previous day, his companions concluded that he shouldn’t have been there in the first place—he’d gotten the wrong address. But squeezed between the bodies of the father and the woman in red, who every so often was taking out a book and pretending to read attentively, the soldier didn’t regret his mistake for a minute. The businessman, on the other hand, suddenly turned toward the old man and his wife, saying that he’d never liked old people and almost never let them cross the road, when he was driving—he’d zoom right into the crosswalk and cut them off. He demanded then that the old couple apologize in the name of their entire generation.

After they’d all purged their souls, they went silent again. The painter dozed off, snoring loudly. When they began to stir again, they noticed that the heat coming from the ventilation system had been replaced with cool air. It was blowing steadily from above and now everyone started to put their clothes back on and lie closer to each other. Some of them switched their seats, depending on their ability to tolerate the chill. Some time later, you could hear a sort of chewing sound coming from one of the elevator’s corners, shortly enough followed by a loud smacking of lips. Those who were closer to the old man and woman could see for themselves, and those who were farther could simply sense that they were chewing candies without sharing. The woman in red crawled closer to them and begged for some. At first the old woman held tightly to her bag and wouldn’t give in. She relented soon enough and opened her bag to give the woman a single nicely wrapped candy. This only served to reaffirm dislike of the old couple, especially given the way the doctor’s young daughter was staring with watery eyes at the woman eagerly munching her prize.

A new ray of hope emerged when the elevator suddenly restarted, moving down one stop. And yet, they were all certain that—if, for some reason, the elevator resumed its travels—it should go up, not down. Still, this development reassured them that their ordeal—which had lasted more than twenty-four hours now—was nearing its end. The well-dressed businessman and the tall historian jumped to their feet and again started to yell out to their invisible saviors and bang uselessly on the doors with the soles of their shoes. This time no one complained. This supposed glimpse of light at the end of the tunnel made them increasingly impatient. For a while now, the painter had been scribbling lines on the smooth walls of the car, using a pencil he’d taken out of his pocket. He claimed to be an artist, but, in fact, his drawings seemed more like imperfections being introduced onto the surface of the hitherto spotless elevator, which, until then, had been shining like a crown jewel. But such purity was lost on the car’s current inhabitants, who were staring at the painter without complaining or criticizing his sketch. The painter was scrawling from the floor to the ceiling, slowly turning their dungeon into a sort of scribbled whirlwind that they all felt they were being drawn into as time went by. To them it seemed that these lines were the only thing expressing their situation—cold, hungry, thirsty, tired—forced to contend with all the fallacies that their current ambiguous state brought into relief. It was because of this that the painter—who hadn’t said a word since beginning his drawing—became an object of renewed suspicion, since the passengers would have dearly liked to find someone to blame for their predicament. Spitefully, though with curiosity as well, they began to question the bearded man. The old woman accused him of stealing her misplaced glasses when she’d been unable to find them on the floor. The historian, who’d previously blamed everything on the inevitability of history, questioned the painter’s decision to keep his water bottle a secret for so long. And the old man concluded that only the painter seemed as though he’d been fully prepared for this incident. The soldier, the woman in red, and the father and daughter all refused to take part in this new trial, only mumbling quietly on occasion, as if trying to douse this fire. It was the father who eventually succeeded in calming everyone down by saying that it was useless to worry about who was responsible for the accident, and how it would make more sense to do so afterward, when they got out. But—they realized he’d said “when” instead of “if.” This was somehow the final blow. Exhausted and tired, they all gave up on the idea of being rescued. The soldier and the woman in red were hugging each other; he was playing with her belly-button ring while she was tracing the tattoo on his left forearm. The little girl finally calmed down and sat in her father’s lap, while the painter gave up on his drawings and dropped his blunt pencil onto somebody’s shoe, without checking whose.

The old man was exhaling into his wife’s hands to warm them up—the least he could do. Although it was cold in the car, the man in the suit had already begun to make himself a bit too comfortable; he’d dropped his suit jacket onto the floor, loosened his tie, unbuckled his belt, and even taken off the expensive watch that he’d been staring at so often in the dusky elevator light. Almost half-naked, he then leaned back, stretched out across the elevator’s door like a gatekeeper. They were all petrified, just waiting for his performance to end and the curtain to fall.

The following morning, the elevator finally moved up. As if some mysterious crown wheel had finally loosened, the elevator cut silently through a thick layer of air. At first, the passengers who were awake— or who were only half-asleep—thought that they were imagining things, that they were hallucinating, and that this meant they were on their last legs. Soon enough they realized that they were actually moving, but they couldn’t decide if the elevator was simply moving up to the next floor, where they were initially supposed to stop, or if it was headed for the very top of the skyscraper, or if perhaps it was about to drop back down into an eternal abyss. Regardless of what was happening—as the elevator rapidly accelerated—no one had any intention of detaching themselves from one another; their bodies were more or less glued together. Likewise, they had no intention of preparing themselves to make their long-awaited reentry into the civilized world with dignity. All they did was sit still, with no expectations at all, just sitting quietly and breathing heavily.

They only moved when the doors opened in front of them, but only to close their eyes, or cover them with whatever was at hand. An emergency team jumped right in, making sure everyone was okay. The passengers clung to the elevator’s walls as if caught on fish hooks and grabbed onto each other’s arms, making it difficult for the emergency team to coax them out onto stretchers. Even as they were exiting one by one, the paramedics couldn’t help but notice that the members of the now disbanded group were all trying to reach out to each other, perhaps waving weakly, as though hoping to schedule their next meeting as they passed each other in the hallway. Indeed, the presence of all these newcomers evoked a look of fear, uncertainty, and suspicion in the passengers’ eyes, as if the emergency crew had been sent with the express purpose of separating their little band from whatever invisible and mysterious feeling that their captivity had created, and which was now likely to be taken away from them.

When there was no one left in the elevator, and the ambulance sirens could no longer be heard, a lady with various soaps and detergents, a rag, a scrub brush, and a bucket full of water walked into the empty car. With her wet rag, she started to wipe away the thick, full lines of the drawings that covered the interior of the elevator like unobtrusive armor. Once she saw how tenacious the pencil marks were going to be, she tried to scrub them with her thick brush and some whitish powder. While bending over to rinse off her brush, she saw an old pair of glasses in the corner, seemingly abandoned, but she didn’t make any effort to pick them up.

[MONTENEGRO] DRAGAN RADULOVIĆ The Face

Winter in a seaside town like Budva has one advantage that makes all its shortcomings look ridiculous and insignificant—winter reduces people, things, and events to their true proportions, brings everything to light and makes it a topic of conversation. I know people who don’t like the winter, who are bored; but they don’t do anything to give meaning to their lives and instead wait for someone else to do it for them. Since that doesn’t happen, their time becomes hungry, and the emptiness in their lives grows until nothing can fill it anymore. Those people feel winter is merciless: in summer they manage to hide away, but in winter that becomes impossible, and they show themselves just the way they are—unfit for life.

In winter the men of Budva fish, booze and play cards, work on their houses, discuss politics, renovate bars and cafés, lend money and charge extortionate interest, seduce other men’s wives, and worry that their own might cuckold them… When you think about it, the “metropolis of Montenegrin tourism” only lives, in its own unique way, in winter. Whoever doesn’t fit into the rhythm of the town is condemned to vegetate on its margins—same as they would be anywhere else. But in order to fit in they first have to master a parlor game that people are very fond of in Budva: gossiping. They’re obliged to discover the attractive side of this sport and participate without worrying about the outcome. Petty souls see gossiping as something bad and unworthy, while connoisseurs of human values consider it an activity that brings people together and makes the town a more agreeable place to live. One local theoretician of winter social life, the freethinking Sniper, saw gossip as an inseparable part of the media landscape:

“Winter is a time when the men of Budva realize the ideal of direct democracy: everyone has a voice and the right to shape the sphere of public discourse through participation. And when they open the town television station everyone will get their own few minutes of fame on the screen,” he stated categorically.

Waiting for those promised few minutes, one harsh December evening I found myself in Budva’s best-known underground restaurant, Kod tužnog Tulipana (The Melancholic Tulip). Together with a few other card lovers I was playing round after exhausting round of Lora, drinking red wine, and waiting for the famous specialty of the house—Octopus Risotto in Mist. (Mists are actually extremely rare and short-lived in Budva, so this mist had nothing to do with the meteorological phenomenon; rather, it referred to the whitish film that covers people’s eyes when they get mindlessly drunk and pass out.) Malicious tongues claimed that the culinary skill of Tulip, the restaurateur, began and ended with this dish, and there was nothing apart from the mysterious name to distinguish it from any other risotto—but no one ever complained. On the contrary, since Tulip only prepared this dish once a year, it was a question of prestige for the people of Budva to be seen in his restaurant on the occasion.

All the tables were occupied that evening. I saw many familiar faces—the cream of local government, business, and the culture scene; there were also some people I didn’t know, ugly mugs who gave me a bad gut feeling. According to an established custom, dinner was served after midnight. As we ate we chatted casually, listened to the blues, and enjoyed the intimate, almost familial atmosphere of the restaurant—all up until one idiot (who Tulip then asked unambiguously to leave the premises) called on Gonzales to tell us all what happened to Geiger and why he died so suddenly.

As much as we adored gossiping about one another, there are some stories that one just does not tell: any inquiry about them is interpreted as an indecency, and the pryer loses his place in society and is branded untrustworthy. The story about what happened to Geiger had topped the town’s list of forbidden topics for several years. A fellow I know confided in me while we were fishing for mackerel off Sveti Nikola Island that he’d heard the tale from Gonzales, but he wouldn’t repeat it for me, even when I insisted. He said I wouldn’t believe him, and he couldn’t tell it well enough because he didn’t understand everything. And again, I know several people who got a fistful of salt in the ass for having hassled Gonzales; he kept a sawnoff double-barreled shotgun without a buttstock under the seat of his wheelchair (which was the basis of the morbid joke behind his nickname—he was anything but Speedy). One barrel of the shotgun had a buckshot cartridge and the other was loaded with coarsely ground salt: just which barrel he discharged depended on the type of idiot who was giving him a hard time.

The question about Geiger made Gonzales flinch in his wheelchair; he hissed several curses to himself and in the direction of the overly curious fool, but when he saw Tulip give the fellow his marching orders he acted as if he hadn’t heard and kept eating.

The evening went nicely, and when people were starting to go home, satisfied with Tulip’s risotto, Gonzales asked Tulip and me to help him to the toilet. He was an athlete at drinking but disabled when it came to negotiating the urinal. When he’d finished and wheeled himself back to the table, he ordered a bottle of wine and invited me to join him. Tulip was busy clearing away the cutlery, a drunk was snoring at the lowest point of the restaurant with his head on the table, and Gonzales filled our glasses and took a deep breath.

“Fucking jerks! As if they were really interested in what happened to Geiger—they don’t even deserve to hear his name!” Then he tilted his head to the side a little, gave me a probing glance through half-closed eyelids, as if he’d never seen me before, and asked:

“Does your brother stay in touch?”

“More or less,” I replied, realizing it would be best not to show how much I disliked talking about my brother.

“How long has he got left now?”

“Seven years.”

“What does he say? How are the jails in Australia? Does he have to kill kangaroos or make shoes for the Aborigines?”

“He doesn’t complain.”

Gonzales laughed. “A good guy, your brother. A bit of a hothead, and too harsh, but definitely good. We went to elementary school together, you know.”

“He told me about that,” I answered.

“What else did he tell you?”

“That if ever I needed anything, or got into any trouble, I could ask you for help.”

“And so you can, whatever it is. Just tell me, and I’ll sort it out.”

I nodded and muttered a scant “Thanks.”

“But you don’t get into trouble—they say you’re not like your brother at all…”

“No, I’m not,” I replied.

“What do you mean you’re not?” he asked.

“I don’t get into trouble and I’m not like my brother at all.” I probably repeated those words with a tinge of resentment in my voice, and Gonzales didn’t fail to notice.

“Hey, just a bit of fun, sonny—no hard feelings. I like to tease people. It’s all I’ve got left. And now pour us each another glass of wine and let’s bury the hatchet, all right?”

I nodded and did as he suggested. For a while we drank in silence, then he asked out of the blue:

“Are you also interested in what happened to Geiger?”

I felt awkward because, by asking that question, he was putting me into his category of fucking jerks, but I simply couldn’t say no. I was itching to find out, just like everyone else in Budva, so I aimed for the middle of the road:

“I’d like to hear, but if you don’t want to talk about it—just forget it.”

He withdrew into himself, evidently satisfied with the company he’d found, and showing no sign that my words had registered with him, and after a while he asked me what time it was.

“Ten past four,” I replied.

“Do you need to go home? Are you late for something?”

I shook my head.

“Good—” said Gonzales, “I’ll tell you what happened to Geiger. I feel like I need to tell someone tonight, and right now you’re my best choice.” He inhaled deeply several times, as deeply as he could, like a diver filling his lungs before the plunge. Then he reached into his shirt pocket, withdrew an almost new pack of cigarettes, took one out, and began:

“Geiger was in a particularly bad mood that evening. I could tell by his voice when he rang and suggested we meet at Kaktus Café. I was tired and not sure I really felt like going out at all; I’d spent the day trying to repair the boat’s motor. But in the end I decided to go out—I needed a bit of company. Geiger was sitting out on the terrace at a table next to a big cactus and sipping his whiskey; his mobile phone lay blinking with its green cyclops eye next to his pack of cigarettes. After we’d said hello he stewed in silence; he only waved to the waiter, and when the fellow finally lumbered up to the table he ordered ‘two doubles.’ I didn’t object, although I would have preferred a beer. But, ultimately, what did it matter? It didn’t make any difference what I got blasted on that night. Several attempts to engage in conversation with Geiger simply failed. Whatever I asked, he’d reply curtly and unwillingly, and when what I was saying didn’t demand a direct answer, he didn’t listen at all.

“‘Have you seen Kefir?’ I asked.

“‘I called him shortly after talking with you. He promised he’d come later.’

“Good, we’ll wait for him, I said to myself—maybe he’ll be less grumpy and more in the mood for a chat. I’d hold out for a bit longer, I thought, and then if Kefir still hadn’t arrived I’d go home for a bit of shut-eye. I felt weariness creeping over me and was starting to feel sick of it all. Just as I was beginning to sink into gloom and despondency, Kefir turned up at the gate and yelled jovially:

“‘Whereya been, ya freaks?’

“I couldn’t think of what to say back, but Geiger obliged:

“‘Up shit creek. Whereya been yourself, ya moron?’

“The question was part of the standard repartee and didn’t require an answer, so Kefir didn’t reply; he just said hello, looked at the table to see what we were drinking and, satisfied with what he saw, signaled to the waiter to repeat the order—this time with one more glass.

“Kefir’s arrival enlivened the conversation, if you could call it that at all, since he talked incessantly, while Geiger mumbled to himself and I expended the last of my energy trying to stay awake. And I definitely would have fallen asleep if there hadn’t suddenly been an uproar: a blockhead passing by our table with a few mugs of beer and a glass of tomato juice tripped on a bump in the floor, lost his balance, and spilled the drinks all over Geiger’s shirt and pants. Geiger didn’t quite realize what had happened at first, but when he saw the red stains on his clothes he smiled and slowly began to get up from the table with an expression on his face that seemed to say: Oh, never mind, these things happen: just apologize and everything’s fine.

“But Kefir and I knew very well what was brewing: Geiger had decided to beat the cretin up; he just didn’t want to frighten him with a yell and have him run away before he got his thrashing. We saw it coming: the cretin fumbled around at our feet, muttering a paltry apology, trying in vain to clean the blotches off Geiger’s pants with a tissue. Kefir held onto Geiger while I urged the poor fellow to move before it was too late. But he didn’t listen and bent down to reach the patches on Geiger’s lower trouser legs—just in the right position for Geiger to deliver a mighty kick in the head. We heard the sickening thud of the shoe connecting with his face. He recoiled and fell down on the floor, and the waiter reached for the phone to call the police. None of the cretin’s buddies showed any inclination to stand up for him. Kefir went up to the bar, paid the bill, and impressed upon the waiter that he keep this to himself. Then we left the café.

“We loitered around town for a while and peeped into a few bars, but there were none that took our fancy. As glum and silent as Geiger had been earlier, he now chattered incessantly and laughed just for the sake of it. Kefir and I looked at him like he was loony at first, but soon we started laughing too, especially when he imitated the cretin bending down and fumbling with his tissue. All in all, it had been an eventful evening out.

“It was getting toward the wee hours and we were tired of walking and complaining that none of us had come into town by car. Just as we were about to go our separate ways, Geiger suggested we spend the rest of the evening at his place.

“‘But it’s late,’ Kefir objected.

“‘Come off it—you call this late?’ Geiger argued.

“‘Shall we?’ Kefir asked me, not wanting to decide.

“‘If the idiot wants to listen to our whinging and has a bottle of whiskey on offer—I’d say we go!’ I resolved.

“Every time I went to Geiger’s place I was surprised, as if I’d never seen it before. The space he lived in didn’t appeal to me at all. Back then I didn’t know why I felt so uncomfortable, and when I finally found out it was too late to do anything about it. Geiger had studied architecture and was one of the best students of his generation. People who understood the town’s needs predicted a successful career for him, but unfortunately nothing came of it. In the early nineties, every turd from Podgorica and Belgrade who’d made it rich had to have an apartment in Budva (it was a question of power!), yet the developers’ mafia didn’t find my friend a suitable associate. Once I asked him why, and he replied that their interests didn’t square with any serious definition of architecture. ‘Any silly bugger with a diploma can design those sterile holiday hovels,’ he spat, and added after a moment’s reflection: ‘I hate this town from the bottom of my heart, believe me, but I don’t hate it as much as they do!’

“After his father’s death, Geiger sold off several plots of land and used the money to build a four-story building in the center of town. He designed it himself, in fact I think it was his only building. He used every square meter rationally: the first floor was reserved for commercial use, and the floors above accommodated offices and luxurious rental apartments, where his skill found its fullest expression. But his apartment at the top of the block confirmed a side of his personality that was completely incomprehensible to me and that I long considered the capriciousness of a wealthy man. This penthouse was a single, huge space of over one hundred square meters, with walls seven meters high. The kitchen installed in one corner was fully equipped and always immaculately clean, as if never used. The bathroom and toilet were housed in a rectangular room of dark glass at the other end of the main space. On the northern wall there hung six large graphics on one and the same theme—they showed different stages of the birth of a monster. They were repulsive and painful to look at but you couldn’t take your eyes off them. On the opposite wall were shelves crammed full of books from various fields, mostly architecture as you’d expect. Beneath the shelves were several armchairs, a richly inlaid mahogany table, and a stereo. In the middle of the penthouse stood a table of hewn stone, which, to be exact, was more like an altar than a desk or table. Five pillars were arranged in a circle around it and supported a dome, also made of stone, with an oculus one meter in diameter in the middle, directly above the table. It all looked stupid and useless to me, nothing but an ostentatious waste of living space. But now I’m convinced that Geiger had the house built for the sole purpose of erecting that dome on top of it.

“Kefir and I slumped into the armchairs while Geiger pottered around at the fridge, trying to ferret a few ice cubes out of its innards. Presently he came up carrying a bottle of whiskey, a pot of ice, and three glasses. For an hour, or an hour and a half, we listened to music, Nick Cave and Swans, and smoked one joint after another. We talked about life, the universe, and everything to a constant flow of alcohol until one of the two idiots opened a Pandora’s box of questions—it must have been Kefir because he was browsing through the books in Geiger’s collection. One of the titles probably induced him to start a highly intellectual discussion on a metaphysical topic: Did evil exist in the world, and if so, what was its nature? Was it something fundamentally and substantially separate from good or just a paucity of good—when the quantity of good tends toward zero? If God was our guarantee for the existence of good (as the ancient books say), did evil also have an authorized representative on earth? If so, was this representative on a par with God? If not, if he was subordinate, was this because of his inability to create, given his limitedness, meaning he could only spoil what had already been created and turn things into their opposite? If that were the case, didn’t good ultimately have to give its prior consent for parts of creation to be unmade, which would clearly mean it was abandoning its prior nature? Or was that not necessarily so? So how much freedom of will was involved, and in what way?

“The discussion gradually began to turn into a battle and they engaged in polemics about whether good could change its scope and quality or whether it was eternally immutable, unlike evil, which possessed the power to grow and transform. Accordingly, if we note that evil has prevailed, that doesn’t mean good has diminished or disappeared—it remains constant—but only that evil has amplified its possibilities on an enormous scale and fully obscured good. But there’s another side to the coin: that which possesses the power to grow so quickly and completely conceal its real nature, without any visible trace to counter that impression, is, inevitably, quickly expended and vanishes. But the breaking down of demonic simulacra is a process that often lasts several human lives, so the ‘quickness’ of the process is no consolation.

“I knew that evil is fascinating, can charm people, and is absolutely entertaining; I also knew it’s much more interesting than good, which can be so bland and banal as to make you sick; but I’d never thought about good and evil as seriously and with the passion that my friends did that evening. The matter is much simpler for me: I do good when I can and bad when I have to, which I suppose is a weak excuse, but I have no other, so it’ll have to do. The discussion they were having therefore didn’t interest me, and soon I didn’t understand anything they were saying anymore. Only later—to be exact: after Geiger bequeathed me his manuscripts and books—did I develop an interest, and then every new realization acquired in the light of what had occurred that evening only added to my anxiety and fear.

“Geiger was quick-witted and excelled at debate, I knew that, so it greatly surprised me how well Kefir countered him, and on several occasions his clever remarks undermined Geiger’s argumentation. I could tell this by the way Geiger had to struggle to defend his position; Kefir would immediately see how flawed it was and shoot it full of holes. I tried to interrupt them but that proved impossible. The discussion was of great significance for them both, although the reason escaped my comprehension, and, realizing I could do nothing, I went out onto the terrace so at least I wouldn’t have to hear them anymore. I wondered if we’d made a mistake by not simply separating and going home to bed, or if at least I had, seeing as I needed to keep repairing the boat the next day, and being tired and drunk like this I’d sleep all day and everything I’d planned would come to nothing. But at one point there was quiet in the house and it drew me back inside. The two had finished philosophizing, so I could return. I heaved a sigh of relief.

“I found them sitting in their chairs, empty-eyed and tired.

“‘It’s time to go,’ I said, but they didn’t hear me. The words passed through them without a trace. ‘Okay, guys, as you wish, but I’m going to get moving,’ I threatened, yet I couldn’t get up. A strange, leaden heaviness filled my body and weighed me down. This attack of weariness will soon pass, I thought. I reached out for my glass on the table, but halfway I changed my mind and slumped back into the armchair, my shoulders bumping against the backrest. I felt a dull emptiness in my head and the irresistible urge to vomit. I was sick of it all.

“Suddenly Kefir spoke, completely without warning:

“‘You say they’re always here: whenever two people are together, one of them is present as a third. That’s what you said, isn’t it?’

“Geiger raised his eyes: his face showed clearly how hard it was for him to reply, but he summoned the strength:

“‘Yes, I used those words… You understood me correctly: wherever there are people, they are also present.’

“Kefir didn’t give up: ‘Does that mean we’re not alone here this evening?’

“Geiger tried to smile but his smile turned into a canine grimace: ‘We shouldn’t overestimate our own importance—there’s probably more interesting company than ours here tonight.’

“But Kefir decided not to relent: ‘What would happen if one of them was here now? How would we recognize his presence?’

“While Geiger was thinking what to say, words shot out of my mouth without any prior thought: ‘What would happen? What do you expect, Kefir—the end of the world?’”

At that point Gonzales looked around as if to make sure that everything was in the same place as when he started his tale. Tulip had finished the washing up and was now sitting behind the bar filling in a crossword, the drunk hadn’t moved, and the fire in the hearth had burned to embers.

“Put on another log or two—” Gonzales said, “the mornings are terribly cold.” I got up and did as he asked. When I sat down again I expected he’d continue the story but it seemed he was no longer inclined. We sat there in silence for a while, and when I started to get bored I decided to prompt him:

“And? What happened after that?”

He looked at me with a wry smile in the corner of his mouth.

“Nothing—” he said, “the light went out.”

The expression on my face must have been pretty asinine because the gentle smile on his lips grew into a guffaw. How stupid of me, I cursed myself: Gonzales had found someone to pick on tonight. I was angry at him, but I didn’t say anything. He did:

“I think my words were still in the air when we suddenly found ourselves in the dark. We couldn’t see anything for a moment or two, but when the lights outside began to come in through the windows there certainly was something to see: in the middle of the room, right beneath the dome, there rose a regular-shaped cylinder of pulsating darkness. It moved quickly within the space bounded by the pillars but stopped and hovered next to each of them for a few seconds, as if gathering strength. Geiger got up and went toward the darkness, only to be stopped three yards from the closest pillar. He stood there utterly still, looking into the darkness before him, and then seized his head in his hands and fell to the floor without a sound.

“As soon as the light had gone out, Kefir had drawn his pistol and loaded a bullet into the barrel. That was evidently his habitual reaction to unfamiliar situations. He pointed his gun at the hovering darkness and muttered, ‘Sweet, bloody heart’—his favorite imprecation.

“And me? I didn’t budge from my seat. I wanted to flee but didn’t have any control over my body. Imagine—I couldn’t even close my eyes! It was as if I’d been destined to be there and see everything. I was a witness in this story.

“When he saw Geiger fall, Kefir fired two shots and was instantly thrown back against the wall; he slid to the floor and didn’t get up. I heard laughter and growling, which grew louder with every passing second, and then I saw it—actually I only saw its face, eyes, and jaws, which exuded a colorless slime. The face (if that formless mass deserved that name) consisted of disarranged clumps of what looked like cooked meat. Bloated and stillborn, it changed its shape, while the eyes remained the same: filled with a cold gleam, and in their depths I sensed an inkling of satisfaction. The face was enjoying itself, as least inasmuch as we were interesting objects for its gratification. Soon I felt a terrible pain in my head—and then I heard the song: the meat of the face issued sounds and words in a language I’d never heard before. It sounded tender and ominous at the same time, intimate like a lullaby but incongruous with the horror that sung it. I lost consciousness, and now I’m so glad I did, because if I’d listened to that singing meat for one second longer I think I would have lost something much more valuable.

“Day had broken by the time I regained consciousness and gathered my wits. Geiger was lying on the floor and trembling with spasms that washed through his body in waves, while Kefir crouched next to him and moistened his forehead and chest with water. We didn’t say anything: we waited for Geiger to come to so he could tell us what had actually happened.

“It was late afternoon before Geiger spoke, and what he said didn’t please us at all:

“‘If I’m right, and if that thing is what I think it is, we’re in big trouble and aren’t going to get out of it easily. I’m going to seek the help of someone who understands this sort of thing better than me, and until then it’s best that the three of us not meet. When I find help—I’ll let you know. I’m sorry.’

“We parted with insults all round, and even today I burn with shame when I think of it. But that’s not important; what is, is that I realized that the apparition we saw wasn’t a surprise for Geiger as it had been for Kefir and me; later—reading the documents he left about the dark side of architecture, specifically about the connection between space and the demonic, which he admits he started to delve into in the final years of his studies—I became convinced that what we saw was the result of his experiments: he’d invoked that creature on previous occasions only to meet it that night unprepared and suffer the consequences, as did we who were with him. Whether we were innocent or to blame doesn’t matter a scrap now. We all bore part of the burden and paid a price commensurate with our stake in the game.”

“What was the price?” I asked Gonzales.

“In a nutshell: Geiger died in hospital three months later, as dry as a stockfish, with the doctors unable to tell why his body kept losing fluids so quickly, what was draining the life from him. They played around a bit, tried this, that, and everything else, and came up with the craziest conjectures, but in the end they could only watch as he shriveled before their eyes. Kefir, on the other hand, was found on the beach six months after the event with two bullets in his body, his heart torn out, and minus his right hand. A friend who knows a few guys in the police said they all wondered why Kefir ended up like that, but when their surprise wore off they concluded that he’d probably gotten mixed up in the drug scene, made a mistake somewhere along the way, and ended up on a hit list.

“And me: one morning, nine months after that ghastly encounter, I discovered I couldn’t get out of bed. My legs had gone numb. And since then I’ve been a modern version of a centaur—half human, half wheelchair.”

“Didn’t you want to know what was behind it all?” I asked him.

“There’s no behind, sonny. Behind doesn’t exist,” Gonzales snarled, waving dismissively. “Everything is surface; it’s just that a few places are terribly deep, and if you look too long, you think you see something there.”