A Spare Life (34 page)

I decided to do what Bogdan said. Take my time. Find relief for my soul. But I could not do it alone. I felt torn inside, in my very center. Some kernel inside me had begun to sprout, to grow and blossom, but its scent was not beautiful. Everything was mixed up inside: Srebra, God, Bogdan, love, faith, and now sex as well. It was as if I were not one being, but many rolled into one, each one ashamed in front of the others. They reproached one another, sinned, made mistakes, set stumbling blocks in each other's path, mocked and destroyed one another. How immature I was, how inexperienced both personally and with others. I had never seen farther than Srebra, and now, left to myself, I fell from one existence into another. The icon of Saint Zlata Meglenska poked me in my pocket, and Bogdan's penis under the blankets. I always felt the absence of Srebra's right ear beside my left. I nearly fainted, horrified, whenever I saw myself alone in the mirror. My nerves and my soul churned both day and night. I didn't know how to pull myself from my accumulated pain and impotence. I contemplated what event had meant the most to me, what my moment of greatest happiness, peace, and spiritual fulfillment had been. The chipped edge of the icon in the pocket of my sweat suit jabbed me again, as it had at the doctor's. There was no question: it had been the short stay in Sister Zlata's convent. Without a doubt, that is where I had been the happiest, the most satisfied, the most fulfilled; Srebra's head and mine were conjoined, but we had such joy in our souls. We both felt it, though Srebra didn't want to demonstrate her happiness the way I did. It was there I discovered my song, the
Cherubic Hymn
. It was there that I felt blessed, blissful, because of God's presence within me for the first time. The convent would cure my sadness. I didn't intend to live a monastic life, like Darko, but I would go to the monastery for a period of time so I could return to life. To my life with Bogdan. I needed a long church service, confession, Communion, a conversation with a priest, a stroll with a radiant nun or monk, who, with downcast eyes, would call me
sister
. I didn't know where to seek such salvation in London, a shoulder like that to cry on. The only church in London Bogdan knew about was the chapel of St. Barnabas in Soho, where a Macedonian service was held occasionally. I needed something
more. I needed someplace more authentic: a spiritual community. I needed brothers and sisters in God, who, I thought, would know how to heal me with their love—not corporeal, but angelic, and as deep as the universe—from my loss, from my own conscience, from my pain. There are no accidents in life; I was sure of that. And one day, at the Liverpool Street station, I was checking to see what track the train to Hyde Park was on, and I noticed a group of two women and three men walking toward the ticket window. One of the men was carrying a sign in English that said, “Essex, Monastery of Saint John the Baptist.” Those words spun in my mind for several hours while I sat in Hyde Park looking at the lake, drowning in my depression, my mind otherwise empty. I repeated the word Essex, as if it were connected to something I knew, but I couldn't remember what. And then it came to me. I remembered that once, during a service in Krivi Dol, the priest mentioned the name Essex as he listed all the patriarchs and bishops in the world while blessing the bishop at the monastery in Essex. That place name had stuck in my mind, but I had forgotten about it. Later, I asked Bogdan where Essex was, and whether he had ever been there. He answered that, around the time he and his adopted mother settled in England, they had gone to Essex with her sister and her sister's partner. They had gone to the church there, and inside, it was just like the church in our neighborhood where his mother had taken him for holidays before she fell ill. There were candles burning, and the scent of icon lamps; there were icons, the women's heads were covered with kerchiefs, the mens' were bowed. Bogdan said they just went in and listened for a few minutes before going to eat at some big restaurant—he didn't remember where. “It was only later I found out that the only Orthodox monastery in England is in Essex, but I never went back,” he said. “Do you want us to go?” he asked. I wanted to go, but alone.

It was only thirty-five miles from London. I took a train to Witham, then a taxi to the monastery. Evening service had just begun. I made my way to a corner on the left side, where I pressed my head to the wall. I, too, wore a kerchief, black with white dots. Huddled in the corner, I felt my head open. I felt my scar slowly dry up, and then, without blood or pain, the flesh where our heads had been conjoined opened, and flowing in, almost like a physical sensation, like a warm and summery gust of wind, the evening service entered: all the prayers and hymns, each sound around me came in, and outside there wasn't a single sound; my head had become their sanctuary. Of its own accord, the door of my head, a well-insulated door that didn't let in sounds, closed behind them; the incision from the operation vanished. It smoothed over, invisible. It no longer existed. Only the most luxurious sound remained, the voices of the nuns and monks from the monastery. Songs to God's glory and prayers for the human soul. I sat transfixed until the last person left the church. I turned around. On the wall behind me, where my head had been pressed, was a small fresco of Saint Christopher. The child Jesus was on his shoulder and he said to him, “Why are you so heavy, child? It is as if I were carrying the whole world on my shoulder.” Jesus smiled, and through the expression in his eyes, told him who he was. I pressed my face to Saint Christopher and Jesus. I pressed the icon in my pocket. I felt secure. This was the corner that would revive my life. Only here could I save myself from myself.

I felt ready to go to the University of London and inquire about the Centre for Migration and Diaspora Studies, which had opened a few years earlier and was still interested in having foreign students attend the graduate program, even though I was more interested in sitting in the apartment by the window and looking out at the building opposite us, reciting the Lord's Prayer to exhaustion.

The building had four floors, the same as Bogdan's. The ground level was all glass but stood empty; it had probably been a restaurant or bar. On the floor above that, there were windows with the blinds lowered, and on one of the blinds was the word
Stone
. The only visible thing through the windows on the next floor up was a table. Everything else was hidden by curtains. A small open tower had been built above the apartment on the top floor, containing a spiral staircase that led up to a terrace. The terrace was gorgeous: potted coniferous plants, green when everything all around was gray, snowless, but also without sunshine, wintery and melancholy. There was a small table and two armchairs on the terrace. A man would appear on the terrace, sit in one of the armchairs dressed in his housecoat, then stand, touch the plants, enter the square tower, and descend the stairs to his apartment. The terrace was bordered by a low metal fence, but on the far side there appeared to be no fence between the building and the gap. There must have been, however, a small addition, a paved landing of some sort, because the man would walk up to the fence, jump over, pause a moment, then return. He would continually repeat that strange ritual. I often saw someone else at his place, drinking something, probably tea or coffee. One day, standing at the window and watching the strange, perhaps even mad, neighbor, I saw the person sitting with him stand up, go to the back edge of the terrace, jump the fence, and not return. He disappeared. Had he thrown himself off the terrace? Or was he the strange guy's neighbor from over the fence and had simply gone home? I never found out. There were no emergency sirens, and the man from the terrace went down the stairs; he didn't appear again that day. But he did appear in my dream, when I dozed off watching the BBC on television and I imagined myself going into the building across the street.

Entering the building, I had to pass through the glassed-in area, which appeared empty from the outside. But inside, there was, in fact, a large glass booth in which a uniformed policeman was sitting. There was an ashtray filled with cigarette butts and a box of Multivitamin Juice on the table. When he saw me, he asked sadly, “Why?” “Why what?” I asked, stopping in front of him. “You don't know?” he said, “This is the Suicide Center.” It had the required registrations and permits. There were so many suicides in East London that the government had decided to legalize it, and this was the center for suicides. On the ground floor, those who wished to commit suicide were greeted and their names entered into a ledger. They were given leaflets and brochures, and then sent to the psychosocial services office on the next floor. There, a psychologist, a social worker, and a representative of the Queen worked with the client, for hours, to try to dissuade him. They solved his problem symbolically. They gave him an empty matchbox, some paper, scissors, and glue. He wrote something on the slip of paper, and then cut up each unhappiness pushing him to commit suicide. Then he glued them onto the matchbox, constructing a palace, cabin, automobile, anything that could be made with a matchbox and several torn sheets of paper. Some were thrilled by the task, others barely managed to make anything. The agency gave him something to eat or drink; they ordered a pizza, Chinese food, sushi, whatever. The state paid for it. If the suicidal client held out against all the persuasion and was still intent on committing suicide, he was sent to the next floor. There, the person he loved most in life waited for him: his first love, a school friend, his favorite teacher, his best-beloved grandmother, his craziest cousin, his idol, his five-year-old sister. That significant person tried to persuade him to step back from his intention. He was hugged, kissed, begged on hands and knees. Sometimes, a stronger step was taken: a slap or a punch. If the meeting also didn't help, the client went to the top floor. There was no one there. The kitchen was locked, and the other rooms were empty. He could do whatever he wanted. The windows were hermetically sealed. Some who reached those rooms would fall to the floor, crying, shouting; others prayed; some threw themselves against the walls. Still others climbed
directly up the small stairway in the tower and stepped out onto the terrace with the coniferous plants. The owner of the house sat there. He greeted the client warmly, invited him to sit down in the armchair. Then he went down for tea or coffee. He'd hand him a cup and ask sincerely, “What would you do if you were alive again?” The client usually said nothing. The director would say, “You're the master of your fate.” The client either went back down the stairs in the tower or over to the back edge of the terrace, where he would throw himself over the fence.

I woke up, numb from the dream. It was so long, so detailed. It had a beginning, middle, and end, which was rare for my dreams. I looked through the window. There was no one on the terrace. I went into the kitchen to make dinner. Spaghetti with ground beef and tomato sauce. I looked through the window in the kitchen. From that angle, the apartment looked directly into another apartment, whose blinds were always raised. In the living room, a young woman was ironing clothes, while in the kitchen, in a sweater and boxers, a handsome young man sat in front of a laptop. Then she went upstairs to the bedroom and put on a short black dress and high boots. She put on perfume and came down. Only then did he look up. He stood, slapped her behind, and pulled on his pants. They left the apartment. My spaghetti was overcooked. Too much so for Bogdan's British stomach. I boiled some more. Then he came home and kissed me like he always did. We ate, and he told me some friends were coming over that evening—members of an association they had recently formed—the Society of Young Pro-Western Immigrants from Eastern Europe. “You now belong with us,” he told me. “You will see what outcasts these people are. They're all educated. They are the brains drained from the Balkans. They want to meet you.” “What does the association do?” I asked, but he answered vaguely, “Everything. They help new immigrants; they research jobs, stipends, opportunities for education. They look for apartments, organize cultural events, everything. They will help you, too; you'll see.” “I already know what I want to do. I told you, I'm going to enroll in a graduate program in migration studies. I have 50,000 pounds from the operation.” “Well, wouldn't it be better to get a stipend and not spend that money? We might need it. You'll need it in the future,” he said, correcting himself. “No,” I said. “This is exactly what the money's for, for graduate school, and that is what I'll use it for.” That evening, four men came over, all about twenty-five or twenty-six years old. The other men couldn't make it, and as for the young women, they had remembered they had Pilates that evening. They sat around the kitchen table. One was from Romania, another from Moldova, a third from Ukraine, the fourth from Serbia. They all spoke English. They were formal and stiff. They spoke
about Leo, a guy who had recently come from Moldova and lost his passport at the British Museum. “Without a passport, he's going to get kicked out of the country pretty quickly. He needs help,” said Bogdan. “Didn't they find his passport at the museum?” I asked, standing by the refrigerator. I had the feeling that I was not exactly welcome at the table with them. All four, except Bogdan, began to laugh. I shrugged and went into the bedroom. I put on warm clothes, and then with just a wave, I left.

I set off toward Bunhill Fields, which was not far from the apartment. Bunhill Fields is an old memorial graveyard, where, in past centuries, the nonconformists of London were buried, among them Daniel Defoe and William Blake. Defoe's monument was tall, imposing, almost unnatural among the low broken tombstones of the other dead. In a row beside him stood a small sagging stone, Blake's memorial. He was buried with his beloved Catherine. On his cenotaph, some admirers had left dried figs, café sugar packets, and an earring with a little blue fish. Those items on top of Blake's marker took root in my soul. The gesture of those who had left him sugar, figs, an earring, filled me with delight. I had nothing to leave. I decided to go to Blake's cenotaph whenever I could. I felt, in the instant of my encounter with Blake, that Srebra was also present. I felt as though I were at Srebra's grave and had left her figs, sugar packets, and an earring. Blake's grave would serve for years as my substitute for Srebra's. Only when I could stand, or better yet, lie atop her grave in Skopje would I forget about Blake's grave in Bunhill Fields, that cemetery for nonconformists, the outcasts. In her life, Srebra wasn't an outcast, she wasn't alone, and the two of us were cast out together. But she became one after her death. She became an outcast because she did not survive. She was nonconformist to her life. When I got back to the apartment, Bogdan was alone, engrossed in the computer, and didn't even notice me.