The Physics of Sorrow

VI. THE STORY BUYER

THE BABY CARRIER

Here’s the deal, why shouldn’t I tell you? I’m not afraid. You get pregnant here and around the seventh month you’ve got to cross the border into Greece. You suck in your belly, wear baggy clothes, that’s why it’s better to choose colder weather. You light up a cigarette while they check your passport, to keep calm and cool on the one hand, and to not give away that you’re pregnant, on the other. Of course, the guy who’s taking you across has greased some palms, but you’ve got to do your part, too. So you cross the border. You sit on the outskirts of Athens for two months in some windowless room, like a closet. You don’t go out anywhere, so as not to run into any trouble. You just lie around, watching TV and eating like a pig. They feed you well, because the goods have got to be healthy. So you carry it to term, they have gotten in touch with the buyers, they say you’re a relative, they find you a doctor and you give birth illegally. Your guy takes the money and that’s that. I just don’t want them to show it to me when it’s born, so I don’t get sad. If I see it even once, it’s all over, I can’t give it away and I’ll screw up the whole deal. I support my other kids with this gig, I’ve got four waiting for me at home. I’m only doing it for them. How much do they sell for? Around five or six thousand, for one they gave me 8K, it was a boy, boys cost more, I get ten percent. I’ve sold four and raised four, that’s the breakdown. But this one now is the last one, end of story. Hey, it’s kicking, it knows we’re talking about it, stop kicking, kid, you’re life’s gonna be a hundred times better there. Sometimes I dream about them and light candles for them.

I bought this story in late October, near the Greek border. When I offered her money, the woman looked at me in astonishment. She couldn’t figure out what exactly I was paying her for. I’ve got nothing to sell you, she said, plus I’m not gonna have any more kids. I replied that I had just bought her story. I’m not sure she understood. She took the money and turned it over in her hands, as if expecting me to ask for it back, then turned around, took a few steps, squatted down, and burst out sobbing. I thought to myself that only now had she begun to sell her children. When she started telling about them. Without a story, it was all nothing but business.

Telling stories is part of Judgment Day, because it makes people understand. But what the point of understanding is remains unclear. I put these stories in the box, too.

THE STORY BUYER

In the past I could implant, now I’m forced to buy. I could introduce myself this way, too: I’m a person who buys up the past. A story trader. Others might trade tea, coriander, stocks and bonds, gold watches, land. I go around buying up the past wholesale. Call me what you want, find me a name. Those who own land are called “landholders,” I’m a timeholder, a holder of others’ time, the owner of others’ stories and pasts. I’m an honest buyer, I never try to undercut the price. I only buy up private pasts, the pasts of specific people. Once they tried to sell me the past of a whole nation, but I turned it down.

I buy all sorts of stories — about abandonment, about unfaithful women, about childhood, about travelling and getting lost, about sorrow and unexpected deliverance. I also buy happy stories, but there aren’t many sellers of those. From the first word I can tell fresh from rancid goods, true stories from those of fibbing shysters who only want to make a quick buck.

Most people sell their stories for a pittance, some are even dumb-founded that I offer them money for something that doesn’t cost a thing. Others are thankful to have someone to take on the burden they had previously been carrying alone.

What’s in it for me? Thanks to an earlier illness and to the purchased stories, I could now move through the corridors of various times. I could have the childhood of everyone I had bought one from, I could possess their wives and their sorrows. I could pile them up in the Noah’s Boxes in that basement.

THE OLIVE OIL TRADER (THE WHOLE TRUTH ABOUT MR. G.)

1.

I’ve never met such a gentleman — and I’ve met plenty, believe you me — who respected women as much as the ever-so-gallant Mr. G., he was so respectful it was downright worrisome, I’ve never met a man who could sit calmly next to a naked woman, a woman who was ready for him, after he himself had prepared her, a woman soft as clay, feeling her skin burning and hearing her crying out for him and not laying a finger on her, not driving his stallion into her, as was written somewhere, I read a lot, not letting his horse run free, not drawing his sword, not releasing his arrow from the taut bow, I have not met and will never again meet such a man, who, faced with such an opportunity, would speak of how easily we drink from the cup of sin, as if it were an infusion of chamomile or mulled wine, and how we covet what is not ours like a fig tree growing in the middle of the road, dear God, how Mr. G. could talk, cleverly and outlandishly, peculiarly and prettily, our men don’t talk that way, they simply stick their hands up your skirt, grab your tits and push you up against the wall. I don’t know if that saintly man is still alive, does the gentleman know anything more about him, since he is asking?

Oh, the gentleman is so courteous, but must one pay even for that nowadays?

2.

It was rape, I’ll tell you flat out, rape, pure and simple, without physical communion, I know that bit about physical communion from the late Judge R., may he rest in peace, he spent more nights with me than with his lawfully wedded wife, we had physical communion, that’s what he called it, I didn’t mind, it was the same thing, it just sounded fancier, so unlike the late judge, Mr. G. and I didn’t engage in any physical communion, yet despite that I’ve never been so roughly and brutally raped, I had to suffer all his crackpot ranting about infidelity and sin, the likes of which I hadn’t even heard from my husband. you call a woman over to your house, strip her naked and then look her over as if inspecting sheep, you condemn her, as if you yourself weren’t the one leading her into sin, and in the end you throw her out. I’ve never felt so bruised and degraded after any other man, I got up, went straight over to Judge R. and told him that Mr. G. had tried to rape me and lead me into. I fixed him good, I don’t know what exactly my dear judge did or how he did it, but the very next day, in the darkness before dawn, Mr. G. slunk out of town, and no one ever mentioned him again, probably because in every house there was someone who had passed through his iron bed. all these years and you, sir, are the first to ask about him, why do you want to know. had we spoken of money, thank you, thank you.

3.

That’s exactly how he was, the Venerable G., sir, if you want an honest answer, incidentally I don’t know if he had an ecclesiastical title, he had devoted himself to tempting women, but not all women, only wives, only faithful, obedient wives. and when they ended up in his bed sooner or later, he would not lay on a finger on them, he would start asking them why they were there, what they expected of him, what had prompted them to abandon their husbands and children, he talked about morality, oh yes, he was big on morality, he was; the woman would be lying undressed in his iron bed, and he would wag his finger in her face, talking, looking her over, asking. I’ve already reached the age when I have nothing to hide, so I’ll admit it, I was there, too, never judge wives too harshly, sir, we are wretched creatures, they force you into bed and you start giving birth every year and a half, as if racing against the cow in the barn and the pig in the pen, while Mr. G. was not like the local men and he wasn’t a local, he didn’t stink like onion, he didn’t swear at animals and children, he didn’t spit on the floor, and he read books. all the wives were crazy about him, I swear, so he didn’t really need to do much at all to land them in his bed, with all the risk that entailed back then. When it was my turn to lie in that cold room, I meekly listened to all he had to say, because sin really was circling over the bed, but when he was done I asked him straight out why he did this, wasn’t it equally unnatural and sinful not to lie with a woman whom you had called over, who had come to you, and who had stripped herself bare of everything, her husband, her children, all of Divine Law. he was amazed that I had the courage to ask him anything at all in my state, then replied that he was a natural scientist studying sin and infidelity, he wanted to isolate it in its purest form, to distill it, and when he saw that I didn’t understand much of his scholarly fiddle-faddle, he said — and I quote: You, woman, are the olive from which I press sin like olive oil.

More than forty years have passed, but to this day those words give me chills, sir. his eyes when he said that looked like two dark-green olives, and again I tell you that I cannot judge him, the Venerable Mr. G., something terrible must have happened to him to make him do such things. he was an abandoned soul. never go into an abandoned house or visit an abandoned person, there are only owls and snakes there — that’s exactly how he was, if you’re looking for an honest answer.

Oh no, I no longer need money. But what exactly is he to you, sir?

.

What exactly is Mr. G. to me? And what am I doing way back here in the year 1734? I’m buying stories under the guise of olive trading. What makes me better than Mr. G.? And aren’t we talking about one and the same olive oil?

An old woman told me a story that her grandmother had heard from her grandmother about some guy who had possessed all the married women in these parts. That in and of itself wouldn’t have grabbed my attention if it hadn’t been for the name she uttered — a name that has been dogging me for some time now.

Gaustine. The person who would easily cross over eras like a shallow river and would always find a way to send me a sign from one time or another. I will never really be sure whether he existed for real or whether I’ve thought him up, or whether I myself was thought up by him. His latest move, I must admit, has surpassed all of my expectations. For several years now a book under my name (in German translation) that I never wrote has been circulating around the web: Ding, Kunst, Kant und Zeitgenossen (Wieser Verlag, 2005). You can look it up.

I’m waiting for his next book, under the name Gaustine, in which the main character will have my name.

I once Googled him. Immediately some Angelina Gaustine came up, who is known to have died exactly in the year 1900 at the age of 70 and who is buried in the cemetery in Paoli, Indiana. The source was the diocese’s death records.

In one family tree, a certain Lucinda Gaustine, born 1853, also turns up. In another place, there’s Molly Gaustine with a question mark after the name. Somewhere in Oregon we find one B. Gaustine. But everywhere the name exists only as a surname and never as a first, given name. Only his children were recorded in these books. A common, disappeared father.

After returning from this story (it was a rough journey, I had to transfer from voice to voice, it was a third-generation story, and after all, it’s becoming ever harder for me to reach my erstwhile empathy), I dug into the archives around the place of the story, made various inquiries and indeed found confirmation. In one “Common Book of Births, Burials, Weddings, Debts, and Other Unusual Events,” the name Gaustine came up. The very same person had arrived in the town precisely in 1700 and three years later was written off “without the right to return to the city.” With three strange little crosses in the book’s margin, which in those parts marked encounters with the Evil One.

THE UNDERGROUND ANGEL

The story of the guy born with angel’s wings. The night before his birth, a messenger appeared in a dream and told his mother, okay, so this is the deal, woman, your boy is a gift from God, he will be an angel in human flesh. And as the rumor in town had it, the boy with the angel’s wings would possess incredible strength. “Strength” here was taken literally — lifting weights, beating everybody at wrestling, going head-to-head with a bear or slinging two bags of flour over your shoulder. Or lifting up a full cask of wine with your teeth at town fairs like the famous Harry Stoev. The only condition was that the mother not tell anyone.

Now I’m imagining that boy like a classical angel, so different from everything around him, like the seed of an Italian pine or some other plant not found in these parts, blown in on a Mediterranean breeze. A gangly, skinny — here they’d say “wimpy”—boy who would be the target of taunts. His mom wasn’t supposed to say anything, but she got scared that her son would be different, so she started blabbering about it left and right and his wings disappeared.

As kids we would secretly wait to catch a glimpse of him. He was a miner. Always somber and dirty. I would imagine him with big, limp angel’s wings dragging along behind him, black from the coal dust. He walked slightly hunched over and never took off his shirt. Perhaps the wings had kept growing under it? And he had to clip them every morning. Just like he had to shave. Or like how my grandma would clip the chickens’ wings so they wouldn’t flit over the fence, so they wouldn’t leave the yard. He wouldn’t leave it, either. His mother had chosen the son over the angel.

As a child I despised that blabbering mother who had deprived her son of such power. But now I understand her. She refused to allow him to be taken away from the human species. Unlike Pasiphaë, the Minotaur’s mother. The miner-angel was morose, withdrawn, never said a word. As if by killing the angel within himself, in the end he had managed to obliterate the human as well.

The underground angel’s son was a few classes ahead of us, unusually tall, he went to Sofia to play basketball, then left for America.

THE UNDERGROUND ANGEL’S SON

My father was a miner. In the dark, at five in the morning, he would go out to the mine. They would bring him back by truck at dusk. Both in the mine and outside — in the dark. He didn’t remember what day was. Only one time he didn’t go to work and lay all day in his room with the curtains drawn, he couldn’t stand the light.

That’s how I remember him, he would come home at night, gloomy, not saying a word, on the table a big salad and a bottle of brandy. As if he weren’t here at all. I’ve heard that story about the wings, maybe it’s true, mute as an angel. He would turn on the TV, but not watch it. He would eat the whole salad, and drink half the bottle. He never said anything. He’d go to bed. And start all over the next morning.

The happiest day of my life was when the coach from the city came to see which of us would make good basketball players. They picked me because I was already a beanstalk, tall and wiry, with hands like shovels. My mother started bawling, my dad just patted me on the back. I got the feeling that he wanted to say something, he took a breath, but he hadn’t spoken in so long that the mechanism down there was most likely rusty, he cleared his throat, something creaked in it and he went to bed. The next day I took my duffle bag and left for the sports boarding school in the city. I trained like crazy, because I knew what awaited me if I was forced to go back home. I stayed late after practice, lifting weights, jumping rope, practicing free throws, everything. I didn’t have an ounce of talent for that game, actually I didn’t have an ounce of talent, but I just kept busting ass. like a miner. And I made the team, because I was ripped, I gave my all, I didn’t spare my strength. And when some guy showed up after 1989 from some amateur American club to buy up cheap Eastern European players, I didn’t hesitate to go. I knew I had no chance playing basketball there, I’d never make the cut. I just needed to get as far away from here as I could, from my father, from his bottle and his sullenness.

If I’d stayed, I would’ve turned out like him. I left, played for a year or so, they sent me packing — they really put up with me longer than they should have — so I started driving one of those big, long trucks, as long as a train, with smokestacks up on top. Lots of work, but good pay. You can’t find a wife with a job like that. I take off early at 5 A.M., then sleep at a truck stop somewhere in the evenings. Busting ass from darkness to darkness. Then I sit down, drink four beers, eat two Big Macs, and sleep like the dead. Every day. One night I dreamed about my father. He was driving my truck. And in the morning they called to tell me how it had happened.

H.K., age 48. He had come from Dallas to bury his father and settle his estate.

MALAMKO THE CAB DRIVER AND HIS HAPPIEST DAY

Swarthy, curly haired, a bit over twenty, wearing a pleather jacket, an incarnation of Michael Jackson from the ’80s. And, of course, a picture of Michael himself up by the mirror. This story starts with my getting into the cab. As if he was only waiting for a listener.

Bro (this is my role and name in this story), if you only knew what a babe got into my taxi today! Pushin’ forty, but a babe, I’m tellin’ ya. Maybe she was 38 or 39, who knows. A hottie. When she got in my cab, I felt downright ashamed to be driving this old Opel.

We’re at a stoplight. I, too, cast a glance over the car, the threadbare upholstery, the cracked dashboard, the overpowering scent of vanilla coming from the pine-shaped air freshener.

That woman was not meant for this car, Malamko goes on. She needs a Cadillac, pink. And she’s got tits on her. So she gets into my cab and says drive wherever you want, that’s what she says. She’s just gotten a divorce from her husband. She tells me everything, from beginning to end. How they got married, how many years they were together, how he turned out to be a slug. She’s like, he turned out to be a slug. I dunno what a slug is, bro, but it’s gotta be bad. A snail, I say. Huh? A slug is a snail without a shell. Really? Well, what’s so bad about a snail without a shell, hmm. And he’d been messing around with some other women, but she’d found out — in short, he’d screwed up big time, royally. A huge tragedy, like something straight out of a Turkish soap opera. And so I’m just nodding, bro, and driving, I don’t even know where I’m going. I can see she’s in the midst of a spiritual crisis, so I just drive and listen. And the more she talks to me, the more she’s checking me out. She’s givin’ me signals, right that minute she’s giving me signals. I get this kind of stuff. Stop here now. We’ll see each other again, she says, you can be sure of that. Then she starts digging around in her purse, that goddamn, slug-sucking son of a bitch took my cash! She’s cursing, but even cursing fits her to a T, like a fancy necklace, like a brooch, a bona fide babe no matter which way you look at her. No worries, I tell her, money doesn’t matter. Pay me back next time. What’s your name, hon, she asks me. I’m like: Malamko. Let me give you a kiss, Malamko, she says, and leans over and grabs my head and plants one on me right here (pointing to his cheek) before I know what’s going on.

He looks in the mirror to see if there’s still a trace of that kiss. The stoplight has turned green, the drivers behind him start honking. I’ll give you a call soon, she says, slams the door and disappears. Now there’s a real woman for you, bro, the real deal.

Silence. But how’s she gonna find me, I don’t know. She didn’t take my number or anything. Maybe she remembered the number of the cab and will call the dispatcher to ask. There’s no other Malamko working for us.

He falls silent. This question gnaws at him. This is my place to intervene, as a bro.

Listen, Malamko, I begin in my deepest voice. When a woman wants to find someone, she’ll turn the world upside down. In such cases, only clichés help. I’m probably quoting some novel, some bad literature, God damn it. Let it do some good in consoling a handsome young Gypsy.

(The truth is that I’m thinking about how that woman is getting free rides all around Sofia with that sob-story about the slug-husband. But who am I to ruin the happiest day of Malamko’s life? And the fact that I’m even thinking this and he’s not makes me a ten-times bigger loser. Lucky Malamko.)

I’m a really lucky guy, eh, Malamko says after a short pause, as if having read my thoughts in the mirror. Such a pretty woman, and she likes me, Malamko, of all people. Who cares if she’s 30 or 35, she might be even younger. I’m a player, I don’t go looking for faults.

I gave him the biggest tip I’ve ever given. Actually, it wasn’t a tip, I bought the story.

I add it here now, in the capsule of this book, who knows, maybe that babe will read it or someone else will tell her that Malamko is waiting for her, she should give him a call. Let literature do some good, goddamn it.

THE STORY SELLER

What exactly are you? A writer? I’m always running into writers. My grandfather was one, it must be karma. A month ago I was invited to a wedding. And who do you think turned up at the same table? Can you guess? They put me right next to Salman Rushdie himself. Yes, yes, the man himself. With the little round glasses and the goatee. To tell you the truth, I’ve always thought that the people they show on TV, the most famous ones, don’t actually exist in real life, they must be some kind of computer animation or hologram. Don’t you doubt the existence of Madonna or Brad Pitt even a little? Anyway. I sat down next to him, we shook hands, he said his name and my mouth hung open. The writer? As if a whole slew of celebrities lurked behind this name. He was even a bit flustered and mumbled something — you could say that, yes.

Know what I felt like the whole time? Like cannon fodder. Jesus Christ, I thought this guy didn’t even dare poke his nose outside. I must admit I haven’t read any of his books, but I watch TV from time to time and read the newspapers, for God’s sake. I mean, they burn this guy’s books, he’s got a death sentence, a fatwa. And those dudes who issued it, you know they aren’t messing around. So I had this strange feeling at that wedding, both proud and on edge. And I was constantly looking around to make sure none of the guests at that joyous event made any sudden movements. I was ready to dive under the table any second. I was more scared than he was, he’s surely gotten used to it. I wonder if he had anything under that dress shirt and bowtie? I mean a thin, elegant, cutting-edge bulletproof vest, with fibers made from a totally new and lightweight material. I thought about asking him, but decided not to. I could just pat him goodbye on the back and see for myself. Actually, the guy behaved very decently. He never once asked me what I thought of his latest novel. Begging your pardon, since you’re a writer. Insofar as I know them (present company excluded, of course), they never fail to ask that question. They have it in their heads that the world lives and breathes with their books. I was afraid that he might ask me and realize that I hadn’t read anything of his. But now there’s a great writer, he didn’t even ask. Either he’s sure you’ve read it or he doesn’t care. He was quietly cutting his steak, spearing his carrots. He exchanged a few pleasantries about the joyous event, about how adorable the newlyweds were, how they were made for each other, blah blah blah. Small talk you could make at a wedding with any ordinary neighbor to your left or right. I thought that writers talked more, well, you know, only about important things, about life and death. Anyway. I was a friend of the bride, he had known the groom since childhood. We both swore by our people. And in the end, I told him one of my stories. I never did figure out whether I’d really impressed him or if he was just pretending. I don’t know, people with glasses throw me. I’ll follow his writing from now on. Do you think he’ll use it?

I finally managed to get a word in. Writers are never innocent. They’re as thieving as magpies. Still, it’s important who steals from you.

But no, I gave him the story as a gift.

Well, then we’ll wait and see.

If you’d like, I could tell it to you, too.

I am curious.

But you do understand that it is already sold.

Didn’t you say it was given as a gift?

Yes, that’s right. given, sold. We didn’t sign a contract. If you really like it, you just need to work out with him who’s going to use it. I’ll sell it. in exchange for two large Four Roses.

So, for eight roses, I laughed. Deal. (That’s how I met the story seller.) And after the first bouquet of roses landed on the table, the story began.

. AND HIS STORY

Naturally, it’s about a woman, the storyteller began slowly. I appreciated that opening a la “naturally, a manuscript,” but for a moment I wondered whether he wasn’t trying to resell other people’s stories, trying to foist off Eco on Rushdie, hence sowing the seeds of unrest and discord in literature. I let the story unfold.

I had to get away from her if I wanted to live. I had to leave her, leave the city in the most literal way. I wandered around Europe for several months. To forget a relationship, some try promiscuous sex, I tried promiscuous geography. I picked cities at random, usually travelling by train, I changed stations and hotels, all the other tourists were in groups or couples, I wandered alone around the squares, which at a certain point all started to look the same. I looked like a person who wanted to abandon his own abandonment around some corner. Like someone looking for a distant and unknown place to release the cats of his sorrow, so that they would never find the way home. Do you know how hard it is to get rid of cats? They possess an incredible homing instinct, astonishing memory. Once my grandpa tried to get rid of all the housecats that had multiplied in the house and yard, he stuffed them in sacks and let them go a few miles outside of town, near the graveyard. When he got back home, the cats were there waiting for him. That bit about the cats is a bonus, I didn’t tell it to Rushdie, the storyteller said, taking a sip of his second Four Roses.

I soon realized that Europe was far too close, it was full of this woman, it reminded me of her. I needed more space, empty and unfamiliar. So I caught the first plane to the Americas. I needed to get lost like Columbus, but amid long-since charted lands. We don’t ever stop to think how difficult it is to get lost nowadays. Almost as difficult as it was not to get lost back then.

When I got home a year and three months later, I spread the world map on the floor and connected up all the places I’d been with a marker. It was a real round-the-world journey, I traced the route with my finger, saying the names of the towns and megalopolises aloud. The best mantra for forgetting a woman.

Sofia, Belgrade, Budapest, Wrocław, Berlin, Hamburg, Aarhus, Bremen, then down to Rouen, Dijon, Toulouse, Barcelona, Malaga, Tangier, Lisbon, across the Atlantic and up to Long Island, New York, Ontario, the North Hudson Bay, and back down to Minneapolis, Chicago, Colorado Springs, Pueblo, Phoenix, San Diego.

I got up, put the map on the wall, and only then noticed. The lines of my journey perfectly traced out a letter. Her letter. A big, clear M. An exquisite monogram of a foolish man. The cats had beaten me home.

It wasn’t a bad story, even if he had swiped it from a third party and already sold it once (certain phrases like “the cats of his sorrow” and others were definitely not his own). The bouquet of roses flourished. He looked satisfied, like a man who had managed to sell the same goods twice. But I, too, was satisfied with the deal, because I had bought two stories for the price of one — the one he had told me and the previous one, about his meeting with Rushdie, which I suspect is even more made-up than the second one.

TWO MEN BET ABOUT WHOSE WIFE IS MORE FAITHFUL

First, they decide to check up on one wife. The man announces that he’ll be going away for a few days. He and the other man hide in the yard and wait. The husband has even gotten a gun from somewhere. The first night — nothing. His heart lightens up a bit. But the very next night, once the darkness has become impenetrable, the woman steps out of the house, opens the door and a man slips inside, silent as a shadow. No lights go on inside, however. The two friends go over to the window, the scanty moonlight reveals the movement of two bodies, but even that is enough to see what is going on. How the woman is winding around him, what movements, the husband is downright thunderstruck, he has never seen her like that, the dirty bitch. His friend also looks on, open-mouthed.

We’re going in, the husband says quietly, and they slip into the house like thieves. The next scene is such a classic in cinema, literature and real life, that I don’t know how to describe it. The husband has opened the door, taken a step inside and to the right, standing with his legs slightly apart for support, that’s what he’s seen them do in the movies, and is pointing the gun at the tangle of bodies that is now lying there stunned. His friend is standing six feet away from him, his stance slightly ridiculous, because the situation itself is quite ridiculous, he doesn’t know where to look. He feels uncomfortable looking at his friend’s wife, because she is naked and had been having sex just moments earlier, it’s uncomfortable to look down, as if he himself has been caught in the act, he’s too embarrassed to look at his cuckolded friend, so as not to embarrass him all the more. In a word — awkward. The lover, who has been caught red-handed — or rather red-panted, in his red-and-black striped underwear — keeps glancing from one man to the other, as if not yet sure who is the husband, the one with the gun or the other one. The woman’s body is a complicated mixture of slowly waning desire, rage toward the intruders who barged in out of the blue, and growing fear. Sometimes seconds have immeasurable lengths and volumes.

The cuckolded husband is the one who had to make a decision. Matters (and the gun) are in his hands. It is up to him how everything will unfold, but he still doesn’t know what to do. He only knows that he needs to decide quickly, time is not on his side. The man has never before found himself in such a situation, he knows them only from movies and books. And none of that is helping him now. He pulls himself together. He points the gun at the man. That’s right, squirm, you dirty little rat. The rat has nestled into his very own bed. He has even left his watch on the nightstand. People kill someone just for setting foot onto private property, those kinds of signs are everywhere, so what should happen when someone enters into the holiest of holies, not just your home, but your bedroom, and not just into your bedroom, but into the woman you sleep with? On the other hand, what fault of it is his, he didn’t force his way in, someone let him in, what’s more, someone even called him over, gave him a sign. Isn’t that someone the guiltiest party in this situation? The guiltiest one — the woman. That is the radical decision, the adulteress must atone for her sin with death. Jesus, what melodramatic lines, is this Greek theater or a second-rate bourgeois play? To kill your wife over nothing, okay, well, it’s not anything, but she’s still your wife. And after he kills her, then what? Decision-making has never been his strong suit. Ever. If he has to pick out a pair of slippers from the store, his whole afternoon is shot. Black or brown? After he has mentally counted all his pants and divided them into two piles — those that go with brown and those that go with black — then he glances at the furniture in the room, because it would be good for the slippers to match it as well. After all of that, an hour has already gone by and he’s decided on the brown ones. But, horror of horrors, there are two types of brown slippers — with braid and without. On top of everything, there is darker and lighter braid. That’s how bad it is with slippers, but here we’re talking about murder and doling out justice. Who is guiltier in a case of fornication?

He lifts his gaze from them and sees, as if for the first time, their wedding photo above the bed. How could they do this right beneath it? It occurs to him that it would be very effective if he were to shoot their wedding picture, he imagines how the glass would shower down on their heads. What a metaphor. You, woman, have shot dead our married life itself, so our past gets a bullet to the head. Where should he aim, though — at himself or at her? We’re talking about the picture, but still. If he shoots at his own portrait that will be suicide of sorts.

The next moment, he turns and does the most unexpected thing before everyone’s astonished gazes — he pulls the trigger and shoots his friend. No external witness, no crime.

SCHEHERAZADE AND THE MINOTAUR

Usually stories are told by the one in the weaker position. This is clearest with Scheherazade. One doomed woman tells story after story to gain night after night. The thread of the story is the only thing leading her through the labyrinth of her doom. Inside the stories she tells, the most frequently tendered coins to buy someone’s life are again stories. It’s enough simply to recall the first — about the poor merchant who accidentally kills a genie’s son with an olive pit, and three passing sheikhs each buy a third of the merchant’s life from the fearsome father (here we really are talking about direct trade) by telling (selling) him stories. “O Genie, thou Crown of the Kings of the Genies! Were I to tell thee the story of me and this gazelle and thou shouldst consider it wondrous wouldst thou give me a third part of this merchant’s blood?”

If your stories are good and you really do impress me, replies the genie, then it’s a done deal. And it’s a done deal. The genie gives them the merchant’s blood, and Shahryar, who is listening to the story, gives one more night to the storyteller, Scheherazade. Blissful times. “By Allah, I will not slay her, until I shall have heard the rest of her tale.” But the story is endless. Just as the labyrinth is endless.

It’s obvious that that’s where Scheherazade got the idea from. You set off down the corridor of one story, which sends you off toward another, which leads you toward a third and so on. She has moved the labyrinth of stories into Shahryar’s bedroom. And — now here’s the secret — upon going inside, she has brought along her own executioner, she has sneaked him inside without him suspecting a thing. The two of them are there, but she holds the thread of the story, its thin opium leads Shahryar through the galleries and corridors. If the thread snaps, this mass murderer of women — because that’s what he is — will wake up, realize where he is, and all will be lost.

Where does the storyteller’s strength come from, even if it is the strength of the weaker one? Is it from his power over that which he tells? To hold in your hands, or rather, on the tip of your tongue, a world in which you can dole out death and put it off whenever you wish. A world that can be so real or so fabricated as to duplicate the real one, to become its double. If in one, death’s sword is hanging over you, you can escape down the redeeming corridors of the other.

Almost no one remembers or pays attention to how One Thousand and One Nights begins. In the exact same way as the myth of the Minotaur starts. With an infidelity. Pasiphaë, Minos’s wife, betrays him with a bull (Poseidon is peeking out from behind it). For their part, all the 1,001 stories begin thanks to the unfaithful wife of Shah Zaman, Shahryar’s younger brother, ruler of the Persian city of Samarkand. He sets out on a journey, realizes he has forgotten something, goes back and catches his wife embracing a slave. In one case, the lover is a bull, in the other a slave — always taboo bodies. For now, this infidelity costs only the couple involved their lives. Then the younger brother sets out to where he had been going — to visit his elder brother, Shahryar. There his brother’s wife’s infidelity is indeed on a mass scale, involving ten concubines and as many slaves. Shahryar decides to avenge his brother, himself, and the whole male world. Then the serial killing of women begins, along with the series of fairytales.

Night. Everything happens at night from here on out. In the eternal night of the Labyrinth, where the Minotaur lives, or in those thousand and one nights in Shahryar’s royal palace. Night is the time for stories. Day is another world, which has no inkling of night’s world. The two worlds should not be mixed.

A PLACE TO STOP

Some books need to be equipped with Ariadne’s thread. The corridors are constantly intertwining, crisscrossing one another. Sometimes I can see my grandfather going into the Esprit store on Friedrichstrasse with me, touching the cotton shirts distrustfully and muttering that he wouldn’t for the life of him buy anything that thin, which the wind could leapfrog through. Another time, when crossing the Doctor’s Garden with my daughter, a man wrapped up to his eyeballs in a scarf with his collar turned up high, nods at me as we pass. An episode I would have ignored if Aya hadn’t tugged at my sleeve and pointed out his strange two-horned shadow on the snow. The Minotaur had gone out for a walk in the labyrinth of the winter garden.