Best European Fiction 2013 (20 page)

“Laura, today is the first time you’ve done that for me here. I didn’t even know you knew how to make smoke rings like that.”

“Yes, on the way over here I vividly recalled who’d taught me. The man was named Alfredo. I only met him once, but it was wonderful for a young girl like me, simply wonderful. It was on some Friday or another, I think it was Father’s Day, when I’d just turned fifteen. My parents, some relatives, and I had stopped for a bite to eat at a popular local café during a day’s outing. Everyone was still eating and talking animatedly. So I was able to go to the restroom and smoke a cigarette without anyone noticing.”

Laura paused for a moment and explained with a giggle: “My parents were very sweet but a little strict, you know. If they’d even suspected me of smoking they would have been flabbergasted.”

Then she returned to her story.

“For that reason I didn’t want to stay away too long, and so I smoked rather quickly. After peeing, I stood in front of the mirror with the nearly finished cigarette in my mouth and watched myself puffing away. Then amid the sound of flushing, I heard whistling and giggling from the men’s restroom beyond the thin wall. I examined the wall and quickly discovered a little hole next to the mirror. It was so small that a finger could have just barely fit into it, but it was still large enough to look through. I blew the last puff of my cigarette into it and heard someone on the other side curse. I waited with bated breath, curious. After a short silence, suddenly a whole series of little rings of smoke came floating through the tiny little hole. The last itsy-bitsy one flew—as if directed by the hand of a magician—through the next-to-last, bigger ring. I was very impressed and absolutely had to be able to do that myself. So I positioned myself right in front of the hole and said, ‘Hello, could you please teach me to do that?’ Well, I wasn’t exactly shy, and more than that: I was curious. I said through the hole that I’d go into the restaurant’s garden, and asked whether perhaps we could meet at the rear of the house. I’d have a cigarette behind my ear so he could tell who I was, and he should do the same. The man answered, audibly amused, that he would be glad to. And his laughter gave me the guts to go to this small, secret meeting.

“I told my parents that I wanted to walk around outside until they were through. So I stepped outside and around to the rear of the house. Leaning against a small shed, I only waited a little while before the man showed up with a cigarette behind his ear. I was startled because he was much older than I’d expected. He smiled and rubbed the eye that must’ve been the target of my smoke. He gave me his hand and said his name was Alfredo, I told him my name, and because I was rather impatient, I didn’t even ask why he had been looking through that hole in the wall. I wanted to keep him in a good mood so he would hurry up and teach me how to blow smoke rings. I quickly lit up my cigarette, even lit his, and urged: ‘Okay, let’s go, hurry and teach me how I can make those rings. I haven’t got a lot of time and I absolutely have to learn how.’ The man looked very nice and he could easily have had a daughter my age. When he looked at me brazenly and said, ‘Well, big girl, is it fun to sneak a smoke in the john?’ I just answered him very cheekily, ‘Well, Uncle Freddy, it must be fun to sneak a peek at girls through a hole in the wall!’ We laughed.

“That sort of peephole was the first he’d ever encountered in a restroom, and who wouldn’t have been curious? ‘You would have looked through it, too, I think,’ he said with a very friendly grin. And he was right. I admitted as much, and we got right down to the business of smoke rings. It took ten minutes, and I needed a number of cigarettes before I could manage halfway decent rings, and I got a little lightheaded from all the smoking. But then, when I was more or less able to manage it, the man asked me—can you believe it?—asked me outright for a kiss. He even said I certainly would not regret it. I kept thinking: ‘Eyes shut, get it over with, just like blowing a smoke ring through a little hole in the wall.’ Because the man was so likeable and good-looking to boot, and it seemed harmless to me, I let him. I just hoped he didn’t have bad breath and would get it over with quickly. I stood up stiff as a poker right in front of him and closed my eyes. I thought he’d press a kiss onto my lips like you see in the movies, smush around a bit, and be done. But when he held me lightly by the shoulders and just as lightly pressed me back against the wall of the small shed and began to smooch with me at length—intensely, wonderfully—I wished he’d been teaching me to kiss these last ten minutes, rather than how to make smoke rings.

“First the man had opened my not too unwilling lips with his, ranging with his tongue deeper and deeper into my mouth. I was somewhat taken aback, but I liked what he was doing. He played with my lips and my tongue, explored the entire space of my mouth. I imitated what he was doing and found a great deal of pleasure in my new discovery. He must have noticed this, and became more insistent. I had closed my eyes and was hoping he would never stop. The man tasted good. Not like peppermint candies or anything, no he tasted like much more. The taste of ‘I want more and more’ spread throughout my mouth.

“On the one hand, Alfredo’s kisses were like a form of anesthesia, on the other hand they were delicious slaps waking me up, as if I’d been a sleepwalker. I was uninitiated in that sort of kissing, and hadn’t the least experience with such an active tongue.

“Now I was even more lightheaded, and my knees had gone wobbly. Man oh man, I thought aloud, and in my befuddlement even said thank you. All out of breath, I held onto his arm. I’d become quite dizzy, and I noticed he’d kissed awake something inside me. But I immediately felt ashamed. I believe my ears had turned all hot and red. That sort of kissing was something I’d never experienced before, and something I’ve never known since.

“Good thing I was standing against the wall of the shed, and that he still had hold of me. Otherwise I probably would have fallen over in my delirium of astonished pleasure.

“Certainly, the kissing had only lasted a few minutes. But it seemed like I’d been swimming for hours, that’s how exhausted I was—though I also felt satisfied and excited and taller by several centimeters.

“Since then I have kissed many men, dear Frau Merk. I am still waiting for those sort of Alfredo-kisses today. Back then, when the man had finally let go of me and was looking at me silently but inquiringly, I felt like a small child caught with my hand in a honey jar.

“I heard my mother calling for me and flinched. The man took a big step backward and gave me his hand. ‘Pity,’ he said, smiling, ‘I would have enjoyed practicing more ring-blowing and kissing with you, Miss. You have a talent for kissing, Halfpint.’

“‘Yes, a real pity,’ I said, and honestly meant it.

“We never saw one another again. I never told anyone about it, either. I thought of Alfredo often. But gradually, his image went blurry in my memory. Sometimes I thought I had only dreamed it all, but when I make smoke rings like these, I remember him again. And I know it wasn’t a dream, just dreamlike.

“Do you know, Frau Merk, why I thought of it today, of all days? When I stepped out of the bakery with the packet of cake in my hand, I saw a fifteen-year-old boy leaning against a wall, smoking. He looked at me with a wink and made smoke rings, yes, several tiny rings blown through a larger one.

“I must have stared at him openly because the handsome boy said in a rather tauntingly impudent tone of voice, ‘Well, Granny, can’t believe your eyes, eh? No one can match me.’ I don’t know what came over me, but since no one else was around, and I felt as cocky as a fifteen year old, I handed him my packet of cakes, took the unfinished cigarette out of his mouth, and asked him just as impudently what he’d give me if I could match him. The boy must have been dumbfounded, and said ‘Hey, Grannykins, you’ll never be able to match this.’

“‘And what if I do?’ I asked him. ‘If I do, then I get a kiss.’

“The boy made a face as if to say eww, eww. I closed my eyes, took a drag on the cigarette, concentrated hard, and blew a big ring, opened my eyes and puckered my lips in dreamy memory of Alfredo’s kisses and sent several small rings right through it. My God was I happy that it worked. I hadn’t done it in so long. Lucky try, I thought, and looked at the boy with a triumphant smile.

“The boy grew uneasy and shuffled from one foot to the other and said with a wagging head and sheepish voice, ‘Man oh man that’s cool, where did you learn that?’ I thought he would turn and run away, but he must have been too nonplussed for that and I was fast enough to claim my prize. Without further warning, I held him by the shoulders and kissed him lingeringly on the lips. Greetings from Alfredo. The boy still held tight to the packet of cakes that I’d pressed into his hands. He was motionless, but nonetheless I sensed what he was thinking: Old woman. French kissing. Nasty business. I didn’t kiss badly, mind you, but the poor boy was shocked anyway, perhaps even slightly revolted. He looked at me with enormous eyes. I quite calmly took the packet of cakes from his hands, told him to wait a moment, opened it quickly, and took out a particularly sweet tidbit. I held it under his nose and the boy opened his mouth quite automatically. He chewed on it with quick bites, visibly relieved. When he’d swallowed all of it, I asked him, ‘Well, what do you say?’ He shook his head in disbelief, mumbled, ‘Thanks,’ and ran away.

“‘I thank you, my boy,’ I murmured after him. Looking all around, as if I had done something forbidden, I took off. But I felt good nonetheless and couldn’t help but think of Alfredo. Yes, dear Frau Merk, as if bewinged, I made my way to you today.”

The Memory Cultivator had listened attentively to Laura, enthralled, and had smoked several cigarettes, all the while bobbing her head again and again in amusement. “Such a lovely memory,” she said, smiling. “That is truly a very special memory, suitable for our celebration of this halfway mark. Let’s toast to it with another glass of sparkling wine. I think our heads, both of them, have gotten quite warm, so that we’re in urgent need of something cooling, dear Laura.”

She brought the tray over to the velvet couch. On it stood a silver wine bucket cooling the bottle of sparkling wine and two glasses. She poured the bubbling liquid. The two women clinked their glasses a second time.

“One thing you still have to tell me, dear Laura,” said Frau Merk after the first few sips. “Did this special kissing experience so influence you that you flirted with other older men in order, perhaps, to experience something like it again?”

Laura drank her sparkling wine in one swallow and said with gleaming eyes:

“Oh yes, it was just as you say, my dear. And I had wonderful kisses from many men who were several years older than I was. But nothing like those Alfredo-kisses. They were always lovely and always different. No one person, I think, kisses exactly like another. In such kisses there’s always an interplay of souls, or of distinctive, individual thoughts. They are unique each and every time—the bodies that belong to these heads that are kissing with their mouths, experiencing something special. And that, dear Frau Merk, is why I think I’ll never ever experience an Alfredo-kiss again. Unless I were to run into him again. But even if that were to happen, I can’t imagine that I’d want to kiss a ninety-year-old man the way I did back then. No, that will remain deep within me as an especially lovely memory.”

Frau Merk smiled, patting Laura’s shoulder. Then she stood up and went to stand in front of the bookcase. “I think it would be appropriate today to read each other a few poems out of this volume. It’s called
Die lieben Deutschen
. Frau Merk took the book from the shelf and handed it to Laura. The book was small but rather heavy. “645 Fiery Poems from Across Four Centuries” was written beneath the title.

Then she said, “Dear Laura, I’ll loan you this little book; and as a farewell, I will read you these lines.” As she spoke, she pointed to a poem by Kurt Schwitters on the back cover of the bound volume, and read with sparkling eyes:

My sweet dollface girlie

the universe goes swirly

when our lips go smacko

I feel simply wacko

TRANSLATED FROM GERMAN BY MARILYA VETETO REESE

[PORTUGAL]

DULCE MARIA CARDOSO

Angels on the Inside

To my friend Anabela, who gave me this title
We were coming back from the river and going up the path we always took. It was little more than a footpath. Very steep. The dirt was hard and faded. Hardly anyone ever took that path, but it was our mom’s favorite route. We were coming back from the river. My brother on the right and me on the left, with our mother in the middle. Our mom was proud of us, more than she was of anything else in life.

The water was cold, even though summer was well underway. Above the most uneven parts of the river bottom the water turned white and bubbled noisily because of the strength of the current. The bubbles were so big that it seemed you might walk across the river stepping from one to the next. If we’d been able to do it, we would have arrived at the village we could see on the other bank in no time. It took hours in a car. Our car was old and the roads were in bad shape. We rarely went anywhere. Everything was too far away.

Our mom laid out my towel and my brother’s on the flagstone and put our picnic basket in the shade of the umbrella pine. Our towels were identical, except for the color. Mine was orange and my brother’s was blue. Both had white stripes. Our mom always bought us the same clothes and toys, or at least similar ones. I was a bit taller than my brother and had started to grow hair on the hidden parts of my body. Other than that, there didn’t seem to be a big difference between us.

The flagstone was a little bigger than our lean bodies as we lay out in the sun, side by side. We always brought a wooden stool for our mom to sit on in the shade of the pine tree. She never did anything. She looked out at the river and the trees, at the sky and the village on the other bank, as if she were seeing it all for the first time. Our mom didn’t like to talk. Sometimes she sang.