Best European Fiction 2013

[FRANCE] MARIE REDONNET Madame Zabée’s Guesthouse

My bedroom is tucked away in the attic, with a sink and a toilet hidden in the corner by a wooden screen covered with designs of lotus blossoms and birds. From my window, I can see the rooftops of Paris and the bell tower of the church, Saint Ursula, on the edge of the Quartier des Perles. Every hour I hear the bells ring. Pigeons and sparrows come and peck at my windowsill. The sky has been low and cloudy since my arrival, but when the sun comes out in the middle of the day, light pours into my room, which has a full southern exposure. For the first time I have a room of my own. It gives me a sense of well-being and freedom: I have a place where at last I can be alone with myself. It’s a new experience. In Ama and Lili’s home I slept in the living room, and in prison I always shared my cell with other detainees.

Madame Zabée lives, as I do, in the attic of her guesthouse. She insists on saving the loveliest rooms for her boarders. She has made up a very cozy little apartment for herself, with embroidered draperies on the walls and decorative objects from all over the globe displayed on shelves—souvenirs from her trip around the world. It’s hard to guess her age because it seems to change throughout the day, from one moment to the next, depending on her constantly changing hairstyles and outfits. Her smooth face is always perfectly made up. She wears exotic clothes that give her a certain flair. She also likes jewelry; she has a whole collection, from all the countries where she’s lived. Throughout her long trip, she always worked in hotels. She is proud to say that her guesthouse is her first home and that she worked hard to buy it and then fix it up the way she wanted. She wants her boarders to feel at home, too. Her guesthouse is very well maintained. She watches over everything, conscientious about the comfort of each tenant. She spares no effort and seems to live only for her guesthouse. She likes to play at keeping whomever speaks with her off balance, so that it’s impossible to have a stable image of her. With her, I can be sure of nothing, even if everything appears to be so well established.

My schedule isn’t very different from the one I kept in Loisy. I go back up to my room around eight in the morning after waiting for Madame Zabée to come and tell me that my shift as the night watchman is finished. She is usually punctual and respectful of my time. Then I sleep until the early afternoon. The boarders get up at the same time that I do, and I have breakfast with them at the host’s table. Madame Zabée takes advantage of the sleeping guesthouse to do the chores, buy groceries, and cook. Always thrifty, she has no household employees. She wants to do everything herself.

After lunch, I go for a walk. I cross the Quartier des Perles and go up the boulevard as far as the Gare du Nord. Then I go down toward the Seine. I walk softly along the quays. I find it so moving to walk alone in Paris. I need to walk, to walk without stopping. I don’t go far from the Seine, which is my landmark, much as the Canal Saint-Martin was for Amid when he lived in Paris. I don’t dare to sit on a bench or go into a café. With my false papers, I feel as criminal as an illegal immigrant. But as long as I walk, I have a sense of security because I melt into the crowd. Madame Zabée insisted that I should always keep my papers on me, in case I’m stopped, to have my identity verified, but that doesn’t reassure me, because the papers are forged. At Saint-Michel, I get on the metro and go up to the Gare du Nord, and then I come back on foot to the Passage du Soir via the most direct route, as it’s time to go back for dinner, just before I begin the night watch. I almost always dine alone because by then the boarders are already busy in their rooms. The night for them begins earlier than it does for me.

When I get back from my walk, I take care always to greet Ali. He’s finished his nap and is always in his shop at the end of the day. I buy what I need from him. You can find everything in his corner store. He comes from a small village located in the south of Tamza. What a coincidence that it was in precisely this town, in the teacher’s house, that I was arrested while I slept peacefully in Ama’s arms. I don’t tell Ali because I don’t want to remind him of my past. Unlike Madame Zabée, he has never been sympathetic toward the failed revolutionary movement that I was a part of. He made that very clear to me. According to him, there is no better regime than the one in Tamza. If he chose to live in Paris, it had nothing to do with politics, but with business. He tells me, laughing, that his shop is like a hive—it makes the best honey. I wonder what he does with the money he’s made from his honey, as he works hard and seems to live modestly. Every man has a secret, and to penetrate this secret would be fatal: that’s part of one of the Chinese poems that I meditate upon during my night watch, while I think of Mateo. It feels like he left a long time ago. I don’t want to admit that I miss him. I don’t want to think about the old train station at Loisy.

Ali always invites me to have a cup of tea in the back of his shop. He doesn’t drink alcohol and doesn’t offer any to his friends. He says to me: “I obey all the precepts of my religion. So far, I have had baraka, blessings. God is great and merciful. He protects the Quartier des Perles and its foolishness. Without Him watching over us, we would be lost.”

I am friendly but reserved with Ali. I don’t want him to try to indoctrinate me. It wouldn’t work and he would blame me for it. I don’t want to know with whom he spends his time in the neighborhood, aside from Madame Zabée. He lets me know that he is in contact with immigrants from Tamza who have been successful in Paris and to whom, if I wanted, he could introduce me. “They need a guy like you.” I thanked him, declining his offer. Out of the question for me to meet the legitimate Tamza network, whose reputation is known even in Fort Gabo prison! I want to lead my life alone, even if I have to forgo certain protections and advantages. With Ali, I maintain good relations while keeping my distance. I’ve asked him several times about Madame Zabée, but he pretends not to hear me. He won’t talk to me about her.

Madame Zabée’s guesthouse lives for the night, like the aptly named Passage du Soir—the Evening Passage. I understand now why Madame Zabée is so demanding of her night watchman. The boarders need me constantly. They call me incessantly. I have to bring them coffee or a drink, go buy them cigarettes, or maybe medicine, or oils with which to massage their backs, I have to fix sandwiches for them, comfort them on the nights that work weakens them and when one or two are sick or having a nervous breakdown. I learn to be a jack-of-all-trades: errand boy, waiter, counselor, psychologist, nurse. There are often little incidents that need to be handled carefully in order to keep things from going sour, such as a dishonest client with demands that can never be satisfied, and who starts threatening one of the boarders. Then I have to come and help the boarder so that his client can leave the hotel without doing him any harm. I must never call Madame Zabée unless there’s a serious incident. She only works during the day. At night I take the baton. So far I’ve managed to avoid any real trouble. I’ve had to be smart and cunning. I’ve discovered talents in myself that I didn’t know I had. I’ve entered into an unknown world that seems mysteriously familiar to me. The boarders are satisfied with me.

But why did I say “his” client, when I should have said “her”? As a matter of fact, I call them all by their nicknames, which are always feminine. There are seven men, or rather women: Sophia, Ingrid, Macha, Jeanne, Greta, Lauren, and Marylin. They keep their true identities secret; only Madame Zabée and the inspector know. The inspector tried all of them before deciding on Marylin as the only one worthy of taking care of him. I can tell that having been rejected by the inspector is a relief for the others. At the guesthouse, nobody ever says his name, as if to allow him his anonymity. They just call him “the inspector.” As a client, he has a terrible reputation. As an inspector, though, the girls have nothing to complain about. He lets them work without any drama. He’s too attached to Madame Zabée to risk spoiling the relationship with her. It’s impossible to tell who is more indebted to the other.

Each boarder has a painful history, and each one lives in unstable circumstances. Sophia is originally from Mozambique, Ingrid is Lebanese, Jeanne is from Brazil, Greta comes from Ukraine, Macha from Turkey, Lauren grew up in a Palestinian camp, Marylin was born in the Caucasus. Madame Zabée’s guesthouse is a temporary refuge for each of them. They dream of changing their lives and living somewhere else. They feel close to me since they know my background, even if they lead such different lives. I may be a stranger in their world, but I am nonetheless a part of it since I am the watchman. I never could have imagined that such a thing would happen to me. Before becoming night watchman in Madame Zabée’s guesthouse, I had never met a transvestite. In the Movement, nobody even joked about that kind of thing. And in prison, a transvestite who revealed himself as such would not have survived.

Even when they exasperate me, I feel fondly toward them. I find them funny, imaginative. They like to act out scenes inspired by cult films whose scripts they know by heart. Their nicknames are a wink to the actress of their dreams. They were born for the stage. I like the provocative way they dress and make themselves up. I like their gestures, their glances, their hoarse and seductive voices. They all borrow one another’s dresses, accessories, and even accents, vocabulary, and roles. They play at resembling one another so that the clients mix them up, or else they’ll change their nicknames just to create pandemonium. They take stimulants and soft drugs to give themselves the courage to face the nighttime clients of the Evening Passage. They certainly don’t work for their own pleasure, I can attest to that. The clients allow themselves total license with the girls, at least to the extent that this is permitted. They spare them nothing. The girls are left to the clients’ mercy. Despite their toughness and their cynicism, they are fragile. And yet, they expose themselves to danger, as if to scorn their own lives.

Madame Zabée has forbidden hard drugs in her guesthouse. Any boarder who violates the ban is immediately thrown out. She repeats the rule regularly in a solemn tone: “No hard drugs in the guesthouse.” She asked me to keep an eye on the clients and to throw out anyone who’s shooting up, because the serious problems always start with them. It’s on account of this prohibition that the inspector turns a blind eye to the nocturnal activities of the boarders. And if one of the boarders should happen to go into withdrawal, she has only to leave. There’s no shortage of similar guesthouses in the Quartier des Perles. I pretend to enforce Madame Zabée’s orders, but I have no illusions. The residents and their clients do what they want in their rooms; I’m not there to watch them. The important thing is that there is no evidence, and no drama.

To amuse themselves, the boarders try to seduce me. Marylin is my favorite. She invites me into her room whenever she has a break. She needs to unburden herself. She talks to me about the village in the Caucasus where she was born, which no longer exists because it was bombed on the pretext that it was harboring terrorists. She lost all of her people. Now she has nowhere to go. She goes where chance takes her. Playing at changing her sex is her way of responding to the drama of her life, of mocking her life, all the time. That’s the only thing you can do, she says, shuffle the cards and throw off the game, get dizzy and pretend, and never stop, because that’s when everything would crumble. I never get bored listening to her repeat her stories. I find her magnificent in her sequined dress and the boa thrown around her neck, with her false eyelashes and her platinum hair, lying on her bed where she takes breaks as she waits for a client to call. She rolls her Rs outrageously and everything about her is excessive and alarming. She spends all her money on having dresses made for her that are copies of the ones that Marilyn wore in her classic movies. She wears them for her clients who are Marilyn fans. But she also goes out of her way to botch her impersonation, to ridicule her clients. Deep down, all the way deep down, there’s a small lost girl, softly crying. Marylin may eventually come to identify with her heroine, even if she pretends the contrary. She intimidates me, so I stay in my role of attentive and protective night watchman. I don’t want to take advantage of my position to gain her favors. I also don’t want to incite any jealousy among the other residents. They love each other even as they hate each other. Their complicity does not exclude cruel rivalries.

Madame Zabée respects them, and perhaps more than that. I don’t know exactly what kind of rapport she has with each of them. She never unveils her true identity, even in her moments of abandon. The boarders are grateful to her. Thanks to her, they can work in good conditions without being harassed by the police. Certain mornings, when the clients have left, and there’s been some small, happy reason to celebrate (a birthday, a holiday, a gift offered by a client, an upcoming trip), there’s suddenly a festive atmosphere at Madame Zabée’s guesthouse. Ingrid and Macha play music to accompany Marylin and Lauren, who take turns singing songs about their villages. Marylin’s was destroyed by a Russian bomb, and Lauren’s was scratched off the map after being razed by Israeli tanks. Their voices rise miraculously, bearing no relationship to their regular tones. When they sing, they seem like twin sisters. Sophia dances a little apart from the others to a melody that she alone can hear. Greta and Jeanne mimic the grotesque mannerisms of their nighttime clients. Madame Zabée appreciates these moments of intimacy with her boarders. She reserves special tendernesses for each girl, like a suitor. She loves spectacle and revelry. Despite my fatigue, I join the party, dressing myself up as the Queen of Sheba and offering extravagant gifts to Greta and Jeanne. Madame Zabée likes my little number. She feels I’ve adapted well and quickly to my work at the guesthouse. It’s been a success; this probationary period has been conclusive. I’ll do just fine as the night watchman.

When there’s a moment of calm and nobody needs me, I turn on the TV and flip through the foreign news channels. I try to understand the state of the world from which I’ve been severed since my detention at Fort Gabo. What I see is total upheaval, as if all our ideas had drowned in the sea, and the Movement, like an old ship that’s rotted from the inside out, had sunk into the bottomless depths. I feel like I no longer understand anything that’s happening.

Like Madame Zabée and the other boarders, Marylin is interested in my plans to become a filmmaker. She wants to be an actress in my film. She says that she would prefer acting in a movie to playing the role of Marylin with her clients. Playing around, she begs me: “Please, Diego, write a part for me so that for once in my life I can appear on the screen just as I am and I won’t be forgotten. All the roles that I play here are false. I want finally to play a part that’s mine and that’s still unknown even to me. Please, do it for me.”

I hear Marylin’s request, which is the same as all the boarders’ and Madame Zabée’s as well. But for the moment I am unable to respond. How could I invent roles for them when I haven’t even started to write my screenplay? As soon as I start to think about it, my mind goes blank. Marylin’s request has come too early. She’ll have to wait. My response saddens her. She tells me that she can’t wait, that she’s in a hurry.

I am deeply troubled by living surrounded by men who seem to be women. I want each of the boarders, especially Marylin, even if I don’t let myself act on it. All night, I’m highly aroused. When I see women walk on the streets of Paris, I find them bland. Not one of them holds my attention. Women for me at this moment in time are Madame Zabée’s boarders, and Marylin is their queen.

Madame Zabée has noticed this attraction. She hasn’t forbidden me from having relations with the boarders, but she does warn me, “Above all, don’t get attached to them, you don’t know where that will lead. I love them all; I wouldn’t rent my rooms to them if I didn’t. But I also know that they’re unbalanced, and that most of them will come to a sad end. My guesthouse is only a way station for them. They stay here for a few months, a year, then they leave, attracted by this or that enticing proposition and by the desire for change. None of them is able to stay put. When I hear news of them, I could cry. But I’m like you, I’m under their spell—I have to endure their appeal. I can’t live without them now. I’ll give you some advice: Make a movie in order to become yourself; if not, you risk losing yourself. Your life so far has hardly been a success. It could finish badly if you don’t take control of it. Nobody can make your film but you. It’s up to you to give yourself the means to do it.”

Madame Zabée spoke openly with me. It was up to me to think about what she said.

The inspector comes once a week. He arrives at eight P.M. sharp, when the bells ring eight times at Saint Ursula. He always wears the same outfit, a severe three-piece suit, and everything about his approach is composed, as if none of his gestures were natural and he was afraid to show who he really is. He tries to deceive me. He greets me with a glance, as if I was his accomplice. Accomplice in what? I respond politely but without being friendly. I am instinctively wary of him. As soon as he arrives, the atmosphere in the guesthouse changes, though no one could say exactly how.

He dines with Madame Zabée in her apartment and spends a good deal of time with her. Then he’s received by Marylin, who keeps him in her room until morning, something she never does for anyone else. When he leaves the guesthouse, he looks disheveled and haggard. It makes me uneasy all day. I try to talk about him with Marylin, but her lips are sealed, undoubtedly because the inspector is a client that Madame Zabée referred to her in particular. Marylin doesn’t call me, the nights she spends with him. She doesn’t need anything. There’s no noise from her room. Everything happens in utmost secrecy. The inspector acts like a man obsessed.

I told Marylin what I think of him, at the risk of displeasing her. She shrugged her shoulders and replied, “Soon it will all be over. What good is it to stick your neck out and cause trouble? Take advantage of the time that I’m here, instead of thinking of the inspector.” I don’t know why, but her response saddened me deeply.

One day, at noon, I wake up a little earlier than usual. Without thinking what I’m doing, I knock on Marylin’s door. She had still been sleeping. She opens the door for me, half asleep, and she takes me in her arms without saying a word, leading me over to the bed. I close my eyes and give myself to her as if I were a man in the arms of a woman in the midst of becoming a man while I in turn am metamorphosing into a woman. Marylin, she’s like Cinderella’s glass slipper that I somehow lost. She fits my foot exactly. But unlike Cinderella, I only wear a single shoe.

From then on, I continue going to wake up Marylin and make love with her just before breakfast. She doesn’t give me a lot of time, as though she's on the clock, or as though she just didn’t want me to get too attached to her. She’s happy to give me pleasure, she likes my company, but she certainly isn’t attached to me. For her, I’m only a friendly and kind night watchman, nothing more. She never speaks to me again of her desire to act in my film, as though she no longer believes in my plans. How could a night watchman at Madame Zabée’s guesthouse manage to make a movie? It’s just a dream that he has to help him get through life. I try not to think about anything other than the moment that I spend with her each day. It’s a singular experience, calling everything that I’ve ever been into question.

[LITHUANIA] IEVA TOLEIKYTĖ The Eye of the Maples

It was my parents who brought me to the house of the Davydas brothers. My mother found out about the Davydas brothers from my aunt. It was already well into autumn, in the mornings the fields were flooded with a sticky fog, and the light quietly glided through it to the damp August grass. I had just turned nine—my father, hiding in the kitchen, would cry at night, as they thought I would not live to see autumn. My sister started to be afraid of me, and even avoided touching me. No one knew yet if Clavin’s disease was infectious. I often remember the wet, velvet eyes of my mother—“Our child isn’t going to die, she’s just scaring us.” It wasn’t clear how I’d gotten sick. Clavin’s disease is one of the most mysterious maladies on earth. The blue disease—an old friend of mine. It’s very hard to catch in time, or rather, it’s very hard to convince yourself that you’re sick in the first place. I only realized in January that my neck was turning blue. Slowly. At the beginning it just seemed like a bruise, like blue streams were flowing under the skin. It didn’t hurt at all.

When they brought me to the Davydas brothers, my neck was as blue as an azure stone, as if my it had been soaked with ink. I remember that I was calm, that day. During the trip, Mama let me sit in the front seat, and Vijole· , my sister, was angry because of that. We always fought over the front seat. There the road opened up right in front of your eyes, and you felt almost grown-up.

The house of the Davydas brothers is outside of town. It’s a wooden, three-story house painted yellow, drowning among hundred-year-old, bluish-green larch trees. Next to the walls of the house, the blossoms of huge, reddish hollyhocks swayed, and the grass was mowed. I can still see it: in the windows there were many white, thin children’s faces. I saw that my mother was afraid; after stepping out of car she said cheerily, “It’s really very beautiful here,” but she tried not to look at the windows.

We went inside, and my father was carrying a small suitcase; he didn’t let me carry it. I got angry, I didn’t want anyone in this house to think that I was weak or spoiled. Two graying men met us, Paulius and Matas Davydas. They were dressed simply, in jeans, and at the beginning I thought that they were also someone’s parents, but they introduced themselves to my parents, and I realized that I was mistaken. Inside it smelled of sage and wood, everything caught my eye because it was new, unknown, and I almost didn’t hear what everyone was talking about, until the thinner man said, “Goodness, what a blue little neck,” and shivers ran up my spine when he touched my bluing skin. The Davydas brothers, my mother, father, and even Vijole· smiled. Looking at them I thought that I would certainly die.

Saying good-bye, my father kissed me on the forehead, and I felt ashamed. He’d never behaved like this before. I saw that my mother didn’t want to go, she was afraid to leave me here, but my father took my mother by the hand unequivocally, and they left.

The Davydas brothers were the only ones who treated children with Clavin’s disease in our town. As far as I know, they weren’t doctors. They were herbalists, Paulius and Matas, with dark blue eyes, and black hair going gray. It looked almost silver because of the white strands. The brothers reminded me of shriveled wolves, forever stuck in winter. And then I was unnerved when I found out that the other children called them the Wolves, in private.

Paulius brought me to the attic room. There were two narrow wooden beds, a small table, a lamp, an old and small cabinet that had absorbed the smells of the past, and a small white bookshelf with a few books on it. A soft light flooded through the window. You could hear children playing in the yard. My new roommate was reading a book in bed and acted as if I wasn’t even there.

“Vainius, say hi to your new roommate, Kasparas,” Paulius said happily.

He shut his book, looked at me for maybe half a minute, and I remembered that my mother called those kind of eyes amber—she says, “Look, that child has amber eyes like a bird’s!”—Vainius looked very weak, so thin, pale, but in those eyes were the little flames of a strange insolence. The feet sticking out of his jeans were bright blue.

“Welcome,” he said.

That August there were thirty-nine children being treated in the house of the Davydas brothers: thirty boys and nine girls. All were about the same age. Some of them had spots that were quite small, while others frightened even me with their scars. “My poor little blue children,” Matas would repeat, while rolling a cigarette, but on the first floor, in the room with the window to the apple orchard, there was an eleven year-old girl with blue palms. Blonde, with small bones, with extremely thin wrists, watery eyes, she amazed me with her indifference toward everything. It was as though she didn’t see the blue skin. She hardly talked with anyone, and sometimes the boy they called “the Leader” would make fun of her, but she, Ofelija, simply didn’t react. This fascinated me to no end.

One day I asked her why she wasn’t afraid of anything. She told me:

“I was in the Eye of the Maples, nothing’s scary after that.”

I had no idea what she was talking about, but I understood that if I was worth something, I had to get there.

“Maybe you could take me there?” I asked.

“Me? I can’t. The Leader will invite you, when he decides that you can go.” She smiled strangely. “But at that moment you probably won’t want to go there anymore.”

“Of course I’ll want to go there!” I said. I couldn’t let her think that I was a chicken.

“They all say that.”

The children called Saulius, the oldest boy in the house of the Davydas brothers, the Leader. He had just turned fourteen. He was the only one of all the children who was tan and not too thin. Saulius had a single blue spot on his forehead. He looked as though he was the chosen one. The first day, when I had just arrived, Saulius came up to me in the garden and asked with a inquisitive look:

“Your name?”

I looked back at him, confused. “I asked, what’s your name?”

“Kasparas,” I replied suspiciously.

“Hello, Kasparas. I’m the Leader here. You can come to me for everything. You understand?”

“Um, okay,” I said. I didn’t really understand what was going on. He was already turning away, but then he turned back, as if remembering something, and said, almost mockingly:

“Your parents lied to you, you know.”

“What?” Nothing was making sense to me.

“You’ll never leave here. Children are left here at the house of the Davydas brothers to die.”

“No way,” I said.

“I know what I’m talking about.”

And he left. I walked around the garden for a long time afterward and chewed on the juicy white sour apples. I was certain, somehow, that he was telling the truth. I suppose that’s why I respected the Leader from the very first day.

The Eye of the Maples, the yellow one, my old friend, I remember like it was yesterday. Already on my first night I noticed that something was going on. Around two in the morning I heard thumping steps down below. On the fifth night Vainius went out again. He quietly dressed in the darkness, and afterward, almost without a sound, slipped out of the room and went downstairs.

I didn’t sleep, I was waiting for him to return. It was maybe half past three when he slipped back into our room. The air was filled with a pungent, unfamiliar smell. I opened my eyes for a second and our glances met. A cold eye glowing in the dark. His blond hair wet, Vainius was shivering all over. I don’t know why, but I closed my eyes then and pretended to be asleep, pretended that I hadn’t seen anything, or heard anything—if there was anything to have seen or heard.

In the morning we didn’t even discuss it. He was very happy. His eyes simply glowed with an incomprehensible light. I was itching to ask where he’d gone at night, but I already knew that you didn’t do that sort of thing at the house of the Davydas brothers. I just needed to wait a little longer—the Eye of the Maples would show herself.

We were given strange medicine. Three times a day we had to drink one glass of it. “The brown water,” Ofelija called it. And it was indeed a translucent brown liquid, like tea. I still feel its sweet, acrid taste now.

I had just finished my last glass of the day as the Leader passed by in the cafeteria. He put his hand on my shoulder, looking at nothing in the distance, and whispered in my ear:

“This night you will come with us to the Eye.”

And then he left, as if nothing had happened. Vainius looked at me conspiratorially and said, “It will be interesting.”

And she came, we woke up at the same time and dressed quietly. Then we left, our steps thumping, we went downstairs, and the Leader took out a key and gently opened the door. It was cold outside, and there was steam coming out of our mouths. It was almost like an autumn night. Someone said, “Faster, faster.” We ran, and my heart was beating as loudly as our steps in the night.

The Leader stopped running, and we slowed down to a walk. No one spoke. There were ten of us, and Ofelija was not there. Only boys. The smell of bonfires wafted from the fields, and we stepped into a fir grove. I was barefoot, and my feet were aching from the dew and sharp fir needles. You could see the Milky Way, and the forest was full of the pale light of the night. However, as we went deeper into the black foliage, there was only one thought running through my mind—“Fool, where are you going?”

My jeans were already wet to the knees, the fir trees began to thin out, and a forest of yellow maple opened up in front of us. Like a park. The ruins of a house and a well could be seen. I still avoid abandoned houses now, because I always feel as though I’ve broken in, as though I’m soiling something holy with my presence.

It was already there, waiting for me, the Eye of the Maples, smaller than our little room in the attic. I don’t know another word—not a lake and not a pond, an eye, an eye, an eye, black water surrounded by yellow maples.

Then the Leader said:

“Tonight, Kasparas will dive.”

My heart sank. I didn’t understand what he had in mind.

“You have to dive to the bottom and take a handful of sand,” he said, as if reading my mind.

“But Leader, it’s his first time here,” Vainius interrupted.

“Do it,” he said curtly.

I had never been so scared in all my life. It’s hard to explain. You’d need to see that black water, you’d need to feel that ice, freezing your bones. I felt entirely alone. Everyone fell quiet, watching expectantly. There was nowhere to run to. I had to dive, and I dove in, I jumped with my head down. I opened my eyes, but it was so dark under the water that I could only grope around. But there was nothing to grope. I swam deeper still, but was running out of air. Even then I knew that if I didn’t want to drown, I’d need to turn around while I still had enough air to swim out again. But there was no bottom. Just black water. My head started to spin, and after giving up, I began to rise to the surface. I climbed out gasping for air, there was that terrible sound, lungs hysterical, aaaaa aaaaa aaaaa aaaaa aaaaa aaaaa aaaaa. I got sick. Almost crying, I said:

“You tricked me! It’s bottomless!”

“If I’d said that it was, you wouldn’t have dived in so deep. But, in fact, it does have a bottom.” His calm tone infuriated me even more.

“Then show me, if you’re so smart!” I yelled, the disgusting taste of forest water in my mouth.

“One night, one dive,” he said curtly, and everyone turned to go home.

I tried to understand, why, what all of this meant, but I couldn’t. I’d never been so angry in all my life—and maybe I’ll never be that angry again. We went quietly, and when I saw the yellow house and larches, suddenly I understood: “But I didn’t die! I’m still alive.”

September was already creeping up. With mist, painfully green fields, people’s glances getting browner, the drumming of the rain on the roof, the children staring out of the window unthinkingly, the softly dancing dewy white spiderwebs on the junipers and harvested fields, the bloody rowan berries, the smell of putrid leaves, the smoke of bonfires, the sound of falling apples, when they fell like that the smell of the grass changed, it blended together with the damp smell of reddish fruit. Everything smelled of autumn, the horizons spread out, the blue contour of the forest and the misty sky passed by slowly, like lazy, even brush strokes in the landscape. It was then that the coming autumn began to scare me.

I had been at the house of the Davydas brothers receiving treatment for three weeks now; a few days later, the children back home would be starting school. Everything here was so different from what I’d known before: no parents, no sister, no relatives, no friends, no home, no school. Nothing. Though some of the most wonderful and important days of my life were spent in that house. It was as though the house of the Davydas brothers was under a spell. You won’t ever return, you won’t ever return rang in my head.

And one morning Vainius woke me up, he was so excited that I could hardly understand what he was saying. Only his eyes were clear: burning like they never had before, as if triumphant following some victory. He was holding a bottle in his hand, full of some kind of liquid, and I, having just awoken from sleep, didn’t understand at first what it was.

“Kasparas, they duped us! There isn’t any medicine! Look, it’s identical to the stuff in the pool, the Wolves have been giving us the damn water of the Eye to drink!” It seemed like he had twenty birds flapping their wings in his lungs, and he might explode right there.

The smell of water from the forest thinned out in the room, and I understood that Vainius was telling the truth. We started to laugh. We laughed so hard that it seemed like our last joke. Vainius fell onto the ground and simply rolled around from laughter, doubled over. He repeated, “I’m going to die, I’m going to suffocate, I can’t anymore,” tears were running down my face, but I couldn’t stop either, hell, it was the same damn water from the Eye, and every time, when I laugh, I remember Vainius, my old friend, his loud, triumphant laugh: eye eye eye eye eye eye eye eeyee.

He was punished. There was no other way.

That same evening the Leader invited both of us to go to the Eye. Wading through the pine forest I was hounded by the thought that tonight Vainius would have to dive in. I don’t know why. Both of us had been feeling guilty, though no one else should have known about our discovery; and yet, it seemed that the Leader knew everything, and would now discipline us.

We stood in a circle around the black, glimmering eye, and after a good long silence, he said ceremoniously:

“This night Vainius will dive in.”

I hated the Leader for those words. My heart was beating, my legs were shaking, it wasn’t in my power to stop it. I wanted to shout, “You bastard, you’re doing this on purpose, you want to kill us,” but I kept quiet. I apologized to my friend in my thoughts; I knew that I couldn’t help him. Vainius, forgive me, you understand, I don’t have the right to help you, you are alone. You have to jump. That silence. And the black water.

Vainius turned to me, smiled, and said:

“Bye, friend.”

He dove in so gently. This was the second time that I’d been to the Eye. It’s only now that it’s clear to me how horrible it was to see what I saw. I counted in my head: one, two, three… thirty, thirty-one… seventy… ninety-two…

I don’t like this, I wanted to shout to Vainius, but I understood how stupid that would have been… one hundred thirty…

I was about to jump into the water, but the Leader wrestled me to the ground. I could feel the damp grass on my face, and hot acrid blood ran from my lip. He said, “Don’t you dare.”

Silence, the kind of silence you can only hear near the Eye of the Maples. About five minutes had passed. I was already sobbing, my whole body was shaking, I dug into one phrase and repeated it obsessively: “We killed him, we killed him, we killed him.” I didn’t see anything around me. It started to rain, I returned to my empty room in the attic completely soaked. I howled the whole night. I hated myself. I hated everything.

I woke up well after noon. There was a sweet, yellowish autumn light that filled the room. I heard voices outside, someone was crying out joyously over and again, “Come, come here, look at this, a miracle, a miracle, my God, a miracle, heyyyyyyyyyyyyyy, eeeeeeeeeeeveryooooooonneee.”

I stuck my head out the window. I thought that I must be dreaming. There was a maple with yellowing leaves in the yard. I ran outside and was struck dumb. I stood bolted to the ground, entranced. A huge, beautiful yellow maple. Vainius sat on a branch high above. He was naked. Smiling. He was swinging his legs. He was so thin and pale. He was white now all over, even his feet.

I was speechless. “Vainius, my old friend, the Eye of the Maples took my voice…” The Davydas brothers came, and I heard, “What on earth… ?”

By the afternoon many people had come. “It’s a miracle,” they said, “that maple was never there before.” The parents of all the children came. Only the Leader’s parents weren’t there. My crying mother hugged me: “My child, you’re healed,” she shouted. It was only then I saw that everyone was as white as Vainius. As if that night the autumn mist had wiped away the sad, blue wounds.

Paulius lifted Vainius out of the tree and wrapped something around him. I never saw him again. Just that last glance. Paulius carried him away thrown over his shoulder, because he was struggling, not wanting to go. I still hear now how Vainius triumphantly exclaimed:

“Friend, there are only rocks on the bottom!”

Afterward, a sudden, happy return home followed, but in reality it wasn’t all that much fun—I still thought about Vainius, sitting in the tree, about the confused Leader, looking at the parents of the other children, about Ofelija, so calm and courageous, about our strange doctors and the house where I spent so much time, where you could hear the thumping steps of the children in the night and the whispers near your door, where laughter and clinking glasses echoed in the cafeteria, where we drank the sweetish water of the Eye, where everything seemed strange and mysterious, where your past life didn’t count, and the only thing that could help you survive was the strength that was hidden inside you.

My thoughts went on living in the house of the Davydas brothers for a number of months. I wanted to find Vainius and Ofelija, but I didn’t have a thing to work with, no telephone numbers, no addresses, no last names. Later it started to seem that none of it had happened, but even now, after many years, I sometimes wake from my sleep at two in the morning, as if about to be summoned to the Eye. I am sitting in a dark room, heart pounding. I can still see the black water, and fear shackles my bones.

I was in the Eye of the Maples.

[BULGARIA] RUMEN BALABANOV The Ragiad

As she was dusting in the kitchen, Nevena Krusteva heard a voice:

“Oh, woe is me, thrice accursed!”

Nevena transferred her rag to her other hand, listened carefully, but hearing no more, she continued the job into the entrance hall. The coat rack was massive and collected a lot of dust. Then the voice welled up again.

Nevena Krusteva listened frozen, cast a frightened glance at her husband’s raincoat, but the wail was not repeated, so she went to dust the living room. The television was white with dust, you could have written your name on the screen, so she went to the kitchen to wash out her rag before proceeding.

As she wrung it under spurting hot water, the voice cried out again:

“Ow! It’s unbearably hot!”

Now Nevena was really scared, she threw down the rag with a shriek and took refuge in the corner. The rag splashed in the sink and cried:

“Brrr! You couldn’t care less! Straight from boiling hot to freezing cold. I’m not made of steel, you know!”

It slid up the metal surface of the sink and in one jump landed on the kitchen table, right by the vinegar bottle.

At last Nevena Krusteva got a grip on herself and managed:

“How on earth… ?”

“I don’t know,” the rag replied sadly and practically shriveled on the tablecloth. It fell silent a moment and then asked, “Can I have a sip of the vinegar? I’m parched…”

Nevena didn’t answer and the rag slithered up and pushed its way down the bottle’s throat. Several noisy sucks later, it swelled up like a sponge.

“Hrrrrrrrr!” it purred with pleasure. “That’s better now!”

Nevena remained in the corner, clenched tight, watching the talking rag with staring eyes, not daring to take a step closer.

“My dear lady,” it continued serenely, “I’m not used to heavy physical labor! And so I would beg you to treat me with more care. I’ll have you know, I’m not just any rag. Until yesterday I was Petraki Nikolov!”

This last revelation proved too much for the woman, she clutched her chest and fainted, having first made sure to place a protective hand on the arm of the kitchen chair.

The rag was not unmoved. It spent some time wondering whether it ought to jump onto Nevena’s forehead. It had heard that vinegar helped with fainting spells…

The rest of the day Nevena Krusteva didn’t set foot into the kitchen. She locked herself in the living room and swallowed valerian every hour, waiting for her husband.

Her husband didn’t grasp the situation immediately. Only after he’d calmed his wife down and got her to sleep in an unfastened dressing gown on the sofa did he open the kitchen door to find the rag hunched defiantly over the sugar bowl.

“It’s not my fault—what happened!” the rag defended itself right away. “All I said was that, up until yesterday, I wasn’t a rag, I was Petraki Nikolov. That’s the whole truth!”

With trembling hands Nevena Krusteva’s husband took a bottle of rakia from the fridge and drank two hundred grams in one gulp. He waited for the spirit to flow into his veins before quietly asking:

“So… Petraki Nikolov?” he lifted his hand and pointed his finger. “It’s you, is it, my friend?”

“I say, steady on!” the rag was hurt. “Don’t call me friend! After all… I do deserve some respect! And another thing… It’s not good manners to drink on your own when you’ve got guests!”

The husband thought this over, sat down at the table, and poured a few drops over the rag.

“Ah, now that makes all the difference!” It relaxed and prepared for conversation.

While he was listening to its confession, Nevena Krusteva’s husband took so many gulps from the rakia bottle that he scarcely remembered any of the rag’s revelations. He only managed to write down Nikolov’s old address on a scrap of paper.

Around midnight, the two of them said goodnight. The husband went to lie down in the living room, after locking the kitchen door, just in case, and the rag stayed draped over the sink.

The next day Nevena Krusteva’s husband left work early and went to the address he’d written down.

The house was enormous, with a small front yard and an overgrown arbor in the bushes. The yard and arbor were empty so the husband rang the front doorbell. For a long time no one answered, then steps could be heard, creaking on the wooden stairs, and a woman appeared on the threshold. She was well preserved, Mongol-eyed with raised cheekbones and rouged face.

“Does Petraki Nikolov live here?”

“Nikolov?” the woman pondered. “He was living here, but I haven’t seen him for a long time.”

She managed a discreet yawn and shifted from foot to foot, throwing a quick glance over the empty yard.

“Where did he work?”

“He was the head of the Institute, but they kind of dismissed him…”

“And you, what are you to him?”

“It’s like, I was his wife…” she sank into thought again.

“And you haven’t looked for him?”

The woman stared at him questioningly.

“Why should I look for him?” She crossed her arms, tired. “Haven’t I just told you what happened?”

Nevena Krusteva’s husband didn’t know what to make of this. The woman in front of him looked too self-possessed to be lying.

“Do you realize that your husband has become a rag?” he at last found the strength to ask.

“It was in the cards!” The woman sighed. “I mean, that’s what happens once you get fired…”

This time she made no effort to hide her yawn and pulled on the wire buttons of her dressing gown.

“Please forgive my disturbing you!” Nevena Krusteva’s husband gave a slight bow and left. Behind him the door gave a lazy click.

As soon as he got home, Nevena Krusteva asked him:

“Well?”

“It’s true!” Her husband shrugged his shoulders.

Nevena Krusteva flopped onto the armchair and burst into tears, wringing her hands.

“What a horrible story!” She couldn’t calm down.

“Yes, indeed,” sighed her husband. “I never knew that people could turn into rags. It must be the result of some biological mutation…”

“What sort of mu… tation?”

“Biological! This rag used to be the head of the Institute. You don’t get to be head without being some kind of weasel.”

“That’s all we need—spies in our house!” Nevena’s sobs grew louder. “I’m scared, I’m scared…” Her whole body shook in the chair.

“There’s nothing to get upset about!” Husband reassured wife. “We’ll keep him under lock and key for a bit…”

He pondered a moment before continuing:

“Don’t do the dusting with him. It hurts his feelings.”

Nevena Krusteva jumped up:

“Let’s throw it out. Throw it out right now. It’ll do us some harm otherwise, you mark my words!”

“What do you mean throw him out?” her husband protested. “We’ve got to help him.”

“It’s always us doing the helping!” Nevena yelled. “Always us…”

Her husband fell silent. He was already planning what he would do. He had a good heart and, what’s more, a fatalistic sort of feeling that the same thing could happen to him, which nudged him toward heroic action…

The next day was Saturday; he went again to the familiar address. He rang three times and the same Mongol-eyed, tired woman appeared at the door.

“It’s you again?” she asked and wrapped her dressing gown more closely round her body as if feeling the cold. “Come in!”

The rooms were dark, with small windows and old furniture scattered about. Thick carpets covered the floor. Their feet sank as if into fine sand.

“Sit down!” the wife said and pointed him toward a disemboweled couch covered in real leather.

“Yesterday I told you,” said Nevena Krusteva’s husband, “that your husband has turned into a rag.”

“I remember now,” his hostess interrupted him. “He sold himself to the devil!”

A canary broke into song in the next room.

“To what devil?” Nevena Krusteva’s husband asked, stunned.

“There’s only one devil,” the woman calmly corrected him.

“When did this… happen?”

“When was it… ?” she thought for a moment. “It was five years ago! The devil came around one night and asked us if there was anyone looking to sell. He was out canvassing the neighborhood, collecting volunteers. I refused but my husband wasn’t so sure… I think that he agreed that very night.”

The woman listened to the canary’s singing from the murky room nearby.

“The devil was very convincing!” continued the woman, lost in her memories. “He said that anyway lots of people were turning into rags, but without realizing it, without getting any benefit from it…”

“But the benefit, what was the benefit?” Nevena Krusteva’s husband interrupted, unable to restrain himself.

“I don’t know,” the wife sighed. “They arranged to sign the contract the next day at the Institute.”

She lay back.

“But I can guess at the benefit…” she continued. “From then on, things went well for my husband. Quick promotion, I mean. We hardly saw one another, he was fantastically busy…”

There was a pause.

The canary stopped singing. No doubt exhausted.

“Even so, he tricked him!” she sighed.

“Who?”

“The devil! He didn’t spell it out that becoming a rag meant exactly that. My husband somehow got the idea that the devil spoke in metaphors. You know how people say, ‘Look at that wet rag!’… And it’s no big deal… People think up all sorts of nonsense…”

“You don’t happen to know where that contract is now?”

“No, my husband didn’t want us to talk about it! He insisted I’d dreamed the whole thing…”

Nevena Krusteva’s husband shifted his weight noisily on the sofa. “And why did they dismiss him at the Institute?”

“They threw him out… They didn’t dismiss him! That morning the cleaner saw a rag lying on his desk and threw it away. She didn’t realize it was Petraki Nikolov!”

Above their heads a cuckoo chirruped. Ten times.

“Don’t you want to see him?” Nevena Krusteva’s husband asked timidly.

The woman gave him a frightened look.

“No, no! I’ve got a weak heart…”

“Even so, I could bring him around one day… Maybe he would feel better in his own home.”

“Hardly,” the woman exclaimed. “He felt at his best in meetings.”

Nevena Krusteva’s husband stood up.

“If there’s anything new, I’ll get in touch again!” he said and offered his hand.

The woman stood up too.

“I can give you some advice!” she announced. “Don’t give him anything to drink… his liver’s swollen enough already after all those meetings…”

In spite of this, Nevena Krusteva’s husband decided to go to the Institute where Nikolov had worked. On Monday, dressed in his best suit, he took a deep breath and slipped under the entrance arch.

The porter stopped him. He was sitting in a glass cubicle, in a heap of newspapers, folders, telephone wires, and scattered scraps of everyday paper.

“I’m looking for Petraki Nikolov!”

“It’s not his day for appointments,” the porter muttered darkly.

“I’m his cousin! I’ve just flown in from Paris… I’m bringing him a parcel from the sister Institute…”

The porter eyed Nevena Krusteva’s husband suspiciously. He even rose from his comfy chair to look the visitor over from head to toe.

“Petraki Nikolov isn’t here!” this guardian of propriety concluded in the same gloomy tone.

“No, no! I know he’s at work! I spoke to his wife…”

The porter settled back in his chair and said: “Nikolov is in a meeting!”

“It’s a question of national importance!” Nevena Krusteva’s husband said in a sharper tone. The porter got up to look at him again.

Once back in his chair, the porter reached for the phone and demonstratively pressed three numbers. The phone gave a set of quick beeps.

“Petraki Nikolov?” he drawled.

“Petraki Nikolov is at a meeting in the center,” a strong female voice rang out.

“Well, you see, they’ve brought a parcel here from the sister Institute…”

“Let them bring it up!” the voice sang.

The porter gently replaced the receiver, then thought the matter over, but eventually reached a decision:

“Leave your identity card here! Third floor, room twenty-five…”

The secretary was very charming.

“Leave the parcel!” she smiled.

“Can’t I hand it to him personally?”

“Nikolov’s abroad!” she said.

“But didn’t you say he was in a meeting…?”

“Either he’s in a meeting or he’s abroad!” the secretary smiled again. “He’s terribly busy. I haven’t seen him for half a year…”

“In that case I’ll take it by his house…” Nevena Krusteva took a hesitant step backward.

“I doubt you’ll find him…” The secretary’s response was not quite as friendly now as she tapped at her keyboard with all her fingers.

Her visitor closed the door behind him and set off down the corridor. A clerk appeared hurrying toward him.

“Excuse me, I’m looking for Petraki Nikolov!” Nevena Krusteva’s husband said.

“He’s in the lab.” The clerk didn’t want to stop. “No, no… Actually, there’s a committee meeting today… Or else he’s abroad…”

The clerk slipped into an office.

As soon as he got home, Nevena Krusteva’s husband decided to begin a frank dialogue with the rag. Nikolov wasn’t sitting over the sink but had climbed up on to the sideboard, where the Krustev family kept its water glasses.

“Don’t touch me!” the rag shrieked and gazed in horror at the rest of the rags lying in the cardboard box underneath him.

“Silence!” shouted Nevena Krusteva’s husband, hoping to restore a semblance of order to the kitchen.

He sat down at the end of the table, poured himself a glass of grape rakia, and drank it. “The way things are going with this rag, my liver’s going to be in trouble too,” he thought, and filled up his empty glass.

“What’s all the noise about?” he asked.

“They want to make me dirty!” the rag Nikolov explained hoarsely. “They want to force me to wipe the dishes. I mean to say, I’ve worked in the Institute, after all, and I’m not going to let them treat me like a…”

He was going to say “like a rag,” but swallowed instead.

“I had an official car… a secretary…”

He’s got good reason to cry his heart out, thought Nevena Krusteva’s husband… I’ve never seen a rag sobbing.

Nikolov got a grip on himself and continued:

“And stop pouring yourself that horrible drink. Haven’t you got any vodka at least?”

“I have,” the host replied mechanically. “I save it for guests!”

He got up and from the living room brought a brand new bottle of Zubrovka and opened the top with a snap.

“Pour me some!” implored the rag and flopped on to the table.

“How’s your liver?” asked the host, as though in passing.

“Can’t you see?” Nikolov answered angrily. “It’s like an old rag.”

Nevena Krusteva’s husband sighed and poured fifty grams of vodka over the rag. He judged it a sufficient dose to loosen any inhibitions.

“See here,” he began. “I’ve been looking into your situation. I’ve gotten to know you, so I’m doing away with any formality. Your situation is really serious, friend, but you’ve got no one to blame but yourself!”

The host waited for his words to sink in before continuing:

“You’re the one who signed a contract with the devil!”

The rag Nikolov quivered. “How did you find out?”

“They told me at the Institute!” his host lied.

“So they’ve found out there?” Nikolov let out a heartbroken sigh.

“Most of them guessed long ago that you’d sold your soul to the devil.”

“So they found out about Nichev?”

“Yes about Nichev and about…” The host continued to lie out of his noble feelings of sympathy.

“And about Boyanov the former deputy director,” Nikolov murmured even more quietly.

“Yes!” his host nodded emphatically.

The rag fell silent. “It’s all over with me…” He let out a heartrending sigh and asked for more vodka.

Nevena Krusteva’s husband did not refuse him.

To find the devil is devilishly difficult.

After he’d taken a physical description from the rag Nikolov, Nevena Krusteva’s husband went out to look for him.

But he couldn’t find him.

Exactly the opposite happened. One evening the devil himself appeared in front of the man.

He didn’t look at all like the devil, except that his skin was dark. He was wearing a tracksuit with a silk scarf round his neck.

“You’ve been looking for me,” said the stranger. “In connection with the rags?”

At first Nevena Krusteva’s husband didn’t catch on. He wondered if his wife had sent an old mattress to be reupholstered—but then, his guest didn’t look like a workman.

“In connection with the rag Nikolov,” the stranger clarified.

Only now did his host understand. He invited his guest into the living room: his wife had gone to visit a neighbor, and Nikolov, daydreaming in the kitchen, could not be allowed to overhear their serious conversation.

The devil lit a Kent cigarette and crossed his legs.

“I’m really pleased you’ve come!” the host began. “I couldn’t find you anywhere!”

“I know,” the devil waved his hand. “I’ve been very busy recently.”

“I think we can work something out.”

“Yes?” The devil perked up.

He took a form out of his attaché case.

“Sign this and everything will be okay!”

“What’s this?”

“A contract! You sell me your soul, and in return…”

“In return for fast promotion, luxury…” the devil’s host finished the sentence… “We’re not on the same wavelength, I’m afraid. I was looking for you because of Nikolov. Nikolov worked in the Institute. He was the boss!”

The devil smiled.

“But he still works in the Institute. And he’s still the boss!”

“But I checked,” his host exploded. “They told me in the Institute that…”

“Nikolov’s abroad,” the devil helped him out.

“Yes!”

“Because he really was abroad.”

“But his wife…”

“Says she hasn’t seen him?”

“Yes!”

“Well, she wasn’t seeing too much of him even before!” the devil laughed.

Nevena Krusteva’s husband didn’t understand anything. “Well, and so what is that thing in the kitchen?”

“A rag!” the devil’s answer was brusque. He put out his cigarette. “Look, the whole thing’s not quite what you’d expect. I’ll be frank with you! Recently we’ve fallen behind with the plan. With us there’s been a significant shortfall, we just don’t have enough souls. So, I’m sure you’ve heard how, these days, people are constantly getting caught up in self-improvement schemes. And what happens as a result? It’s very simple. When they face the inevitable moral crisis, I appear and suggest they sign a contract. Then after a while I take their souls from their bodies. Recently we included a new clause which means we then turn the bodies into rags. It’s less wasteful than just letting them die. You can bear witness yourself that there’s no difference in the quality of the rags.”

“Aside from the fact that they talk!” the host interrupted, a little sarcastically.

“A small defect at first sight, but just think: we’ve created sentient rags! That’s nothing to be sneezed at…”

The devil fell silent a moment, was about to light another cigarette, but held back.

“Even so, please, I beg you, make him a human being again,” the host pleaded.

“Human being?”

“Yes.”

“He’s never been a human being!” The devil shook his head. “How can I make something out of nothing? That’s not in my power…”

The devil gave a guilty smile and finally lit his second cigarette.

In the growing silence, they could hear through the wall a sigh that was deaf to the world. The rag Nikolov was getting ready to sleep.