Best European Fiction 2013 (37 page)

Weee’ll letyouknow.

Great. Another job I’m not getting.

I turn and look back at the babe through the glass that separates the swells from the plebs, enclosed in their plastic boxes. I feel a terrible hatred, I feel the injustice of it, I feel the shame of it. A woman in a dress suit walks past me and gives my shoulder a friendly clap. “Don’t cry, they might still take you as a cleaning lady—they’re holding the next interviews in a week.”

I exit the office building and go off to buy myself something to drink. The salesguy at the grocery is in the middle of receiving goods. He’s got opened-up boxes of fruit everywhere and is setting some of it on the shelves. Oh, to be a salesgirl in a little kiosk by a bus stop. To weigh, to count, to bag.

I ask if I can have an apple.

“That’s up to you,” says the salesguy, without looking up at me.

So that’s how it is. It’s up to me.

A wave of near-erotic excitement overtakes me. The voice he said it in. And what was he referring to? “That” meaning
what
?

The longer I stand there astonished, the less I know what to do. Suddenly the little store turns into a vast stage, where each of us must pass naked before a crowd of people. Of men, women, maybe even our own house pets. A disco ball drops from out of the wooden ceiling, and the lights are glaring, and a guy in an Afro wig coos the same refrain into a microphone repeatedly: “That’s, oh yeah, up to you.” A little choir of older ladies waiting behind me in line begins to fidget. Yes, it’s up to you, child, but buy something already, and let us buy our things too.

Women march down the catwalk. Frenzied music comes out of the speakers, and you have to adjust your gait to fit it. Walk to its rhythm, defer to its rhythm. And I’m enchanted by it, I’ve never walked like that, under other people’s gazes, to their rhythm. In rejecting foreign myths about beauty, I let myself fall into the trap of the ugly bitch. Which is great, after all, there are so many of us around, and really we’re all terribly attractive after all, we’ve got that certain something. If we’re at all unattractive, it’s just what the man on the speakers calls a “unique brand” of beauty. Original beauty, an interesting and expressive face. A body that keeps its secrets.

I want to be like the ones that have known this music for years. They can sing it to themselves when it’s not even playing, and contort to it appropriately—at any moment at any point in their lives.

I ask myself excitedly why I haven’t really ever hung out with anybody; I’m in last place, with my hair looking terrible, and only even snuggling up to hairy-pitted minor deities in pants from two seasons ago.

“That’s up to you”—like a spell. With one sentence I had been liberated from lackluster evenings alone at the movies, three-cheese pizzas ordered over the phone, pads instead of tampons.

Meaning I might become like the babe at the office? I would paint my nails and laugh at everything. Use lip-gloss and shine in high society. It’s up to me, I can choose me. Sporty me, elegant me, domestic me. Like a doll. Have a simple life, lustrous in its ordinariness—the straight and narrow. Straight teeth. Stop listening to hard rock and start listening to smooth jazz. Quit thinking so much. Not bite my nails till my cuticles bleed.

I’d rather live like that, I really would!

Do you want the apples or not? Did you decide?

I had decided. I would go straight to the salon to get anything and everything that had ever poked out from under my underwear and that had roots waxed right off. I would get some clothes that were on sale that would show off my tattoos.

I would stop sleeping in an old T-shirt, I would invest in lace. Everything would change, I would get a job. Never again would I go up to the cash register with my cart and be told, “Hmm, transaction declined.” Never again would I take my card from the cashier and pretend that, wow, there must be some mix-up, I mean I definitely have money in my account, oh well, I guess I’ll just have to get some cash out of the atm. And she’s thinking, sure, I have money,
right.
I have nothing, and I thought nothing would be enough to get groceries. Actual humiliation, degradation, trying to go on a shopping spree before putting one’s plastic in order.

No, I don’t want the apples, so nothing. I exit the store brimming with my vital resolutions. It’s as if the sun is shining brighter, the world is smiling—the wind flares up, snatching at my old jacket.

If this had been a Bollywood film, I would have already been dancing in my pretty sari in the middle of the street. It was more, however, in the style of the American drama, with an accident at the climax.

I basically just wanted to get to my tram as quickly as possible. I didn’t notice that there was a street there, a street with cars, one of which was speeding toward me. All I knew was that something had hit me, and that my cigarette had flown out of my hand. And that I tried to get away from the paramedics. I mean I didn’t have health insurance—it wasn’t like I could go to the hospital and then not pay. Shortly before I passed out (I had every right, my leg had been shattered), it flashed through my mind that this might be a just punishment for thinking ill of the babe, for not feeling feminine solidarity, for only feeling jealous. For planning on fixing myself up, when really I’d never deserved any improvements. That terrible Christian saying about the wages of sin now paralyzed my brain.

Nothing is up to me, Mr. Grocer. As soon as somebody puts together even the outline of their screenplay, they get their leg ripped off, a steamroller rolls right over them, a plane bombards them. They steal your head right off your shoulders and then dunk it in the toilet to boot.

Nothing is up to us, everything takes place in a thick bell jar. Some people are born pretty, some homely. You can bend over backward, go to a plastic surgeon, and all the ugliness will only come to the surface. The great revolt of the hideous against Beauty is always doomed to fail from the very start, because before the ugly people leave their houses, powdering those broken blood vessels of theirs, the pretty people will long since have been laughing their pearly laughs over their glasses of water. Still water. Not sparkling. No calories, no preservatives, no artificial anything.

I wouldn’t forget again, now. Making resolutions regarding myself, revamping things, improving things—it just doesn’t work for me. I was programmed before birth to be a doormat. Where’d you get that face, was it on clearance, was it on Ebay, did you get it off an old homeless guy? And where’d you find that shaggy body, did you get it in some lake off a drowned guy, did it come from that movie,
La Grande Bouffe
, did it come from that book,
Fat Swine
?

Covering the bathroom mirror and keeping the lights turned off isn’t lying. Lying is when some babe says you look so great. I don’t believe in looking great, but I have to work, which is why I’m standing here with my legs torn off at an intersection handing out flyers for cosmetic dermatology. Lymphatic drainage massage, whole-body amputation. My hands are rotting, my ashen face winces in pain at the thought of coming into contact with myself. I stink, although I bathe; I howl, although I smile toothlessly at the girl who’s walking by now as I hand her her flyer. She, trying not to look at me, throws the flyer into the trash, because it’s not like she needs beauty treatments. Then she comes up to me, spits, kicks, snorts, and leaves.

You might well fight the system, you’ll get plenty of support. Be opposed, fight, protest. But your worst enemy is always the pretty girl, the hot babe, the working woman with her car. But then it’s like I’m protesting Beauty itself, like I’m an enemy to myself above all else. Blinded by embarrassment, ashamed of my own thoughts.

Caught in the trap of my own desires, I bitch about my butt-ugly life. God, but I’d rather not.

TRANSLATED FROM POLISH BY JENNIFER CROFT

men

[LIECHTENSTEIN]

DANIEL BATLINER

Malcontent’s Monologue

In a little country there is a little town, and the townspeople are few in number, and know each other well. They work, go to market, and pause to greet each other on the little square at the center of town. Children play on the square. Small towns are still places where one can feel at home, preserves of identity and character. While not sealed off completely from the other towns in this country, this town is left more or less in peace. The people too. They go about their jobs at the bank, the insurance agency, the town hall, and they wander, dignified and daydreaming, through their little village lives.

One day, the lawyer Joachim Kaiser crosses to the middle of the village square. He is wearing an impeccably tailored business suit and tie. In his right hand he holds a plastic cup from a well-known fast-food chain, and takes, now and then, a self-satisfied sip. A young boy, not more than eight years old, is torn from his game with his fire engine. Having abandoned it now, he frets about the townspeople: that they will fall victim to the very fire his engine should have doused. Joachim bends down to the little boy.

“My name is Joachim. Joachim Kaiser. I’m a lawyer. Twenty-eight years old. My whole life I’ve been perfectly average. I was trained to be that way by society. Always eager to do what was asked of me. Just don’t stand out, that was the accepted slogan, and we all did our best to live up to it.”

For a few seconds all is quiet. The boy looks, concentrating, somewhat perplexed, at Joachim. The lawyer, on the other hand, sees before him a long looked-for and understanding interlocutor. In answer to his nonverbal question, the boy motions for Joachim to sit.

“Have you made the acquaintance of Society, my little friend?”

The boy gives the question some thought, but finds no apparent sense in it. The grown-up, though, is undeterred.

“Actually, it’s really very charming. I got to know it as a child. Society guided my family. It showed me what morals are, and ethics. I was perfectly average … and not just me, but my whole generation … we were educated by Society. Very few missed out on the pleasure of that education. And they’re the ones we build prisons for. Jail. It’s not permissible, in a civil society, to let certain individuals go on opposing the views of the majority. Do you understand?”

He does not. How could he. No one understands it. He doesn’t normally talk like this, Joachim Kaiser, but no one understands him today. In the meantime a small throng has accumulated around the boy and the lawyer, who face each other, still cross-legged. At every pause the boy takes up his game with the fire engine again, firstly because the talking has gone on so long, and secondly, it really is about time he saved those people from the burning house. Lawyers aren’t necessary, but fire trucks … well. Joachim notices, or maybe not; in any case he doesn’t lose his footing.

“‘What’s the meaning of life,’ I asked Society once. It answered with speed and certainty: ‘The meaning of life is to be a good student, to earn your diploma, find yourself a well-respected position, earn money, and start a family.’ Naïve as I was, I believed it back then. I could hardly wait to get to university.”

Now Joachim rises and turns, so he can address himself not just to the boy, but to the curious onlookers all around him.

“Naturally it was out of the question that I study theater, philosophy, or any of the humanities. I could improve Society’s opinion of me only in business or law or medicine, with their practical qualifications. So I studied law, and now I have a job at a well-respected firm. Such a career demands that I give my all, and use all of my knowledge, each and every day. I have Society to thank for my understanding of law and morality.”

Joachim loosens his tie. His cup is empty, so he tosses it into the nearby trash can, which draws some murmurs from the crowd, but nothing more. All stand at attention, waiting for him to go on.

“Yes—yes, justice and morals. I had nothing else in my life. I had no need for anything else. Society lays out the rules for us to follow. Rules for how to act. Rules we grow up with but never speak aloud, just like we don’t chat at the urinal. Anyone who does so might as well be drunk; certainly they’re annoying. And we wouldn’t want to be annoying, would we?”

This whole scenario on the little square has begun to evolve slowly toward further absurdity: the lawyer Joachim Kaiser stands there like a preacher at the center, tense and interested listeners all around him, and now he’s talking about urinals. A few grin, but wherefore? Because of the scene? Have they really understood it? Or was it just the bathroom analogy?

“Society doesn’t want us to annoy. Such unspoken rules crop up all the time. People who take the bus every day, they know these rules of conduct well. What happens, for example, when a person gets on who you recognize. He comes on through the front door of the bus, you know him only by sight, that’s all. Then he comes right up to you. What should you do? Should you stare vacantly out the window, like you haven’t even noticed him? Ridiculous, since you’ve already made eye contact. In which case you’re practically obliged to say ‘Hello.’ And then … what if you do and he gives you the cold shoulder? You look like a dope. So you wait, see what he does, do the same. That’s how it works in Society. Mostly we hesitate—too late!—and ignore each other. Why didn’t he say hello? What a jerk! You didn’t say hello, but you were ready to if he did, but he didn’t, so neither did you, but you would have, in his position.”

The crowd on the little square is larger now, and quieter. Some feel moved, though without quite knowing why. But hardly anyone knows in what spirit to take these words. Glances shift from right to left and back again with increasing haste. Just to monitor how the others might be taking it all.

“Society is a mother to almost all the children of my generation. According to the moral system I grew up with, then, you’d have to call it a whore. That’s it—Society is a whore.”

A few now suffer a loss of confidence, but nobody speaks, since it remains to be seen whether this heretic might indeed be right. But Joachim is sure. He knows that he’s right, though he gains nothing by it. Being right is nothing more than a status symbol; it can’t be shared.