Crumbs (7 page)

Obviously she didn't know how to use a knife and fork. All this intense, wanton battling resembled a parody of sex. It was both funny and revolting.

I got up, took the tray to the hatch, and pushed it through. On my way to the exit, the girl and I looked at each other once more. Eyes, oh what eyes she had. You could drown in them. Large and boundless. I was falling into them. I knocked a woman's broth out of her hands just as she was sitting down. I caught the bowl with my thumbs pushed almost to the bottom of the broth. It splashed on her trousers. I wasn't in the mood for persuasion or argument.

I gave her one of my vouchers and apologised. She didn't grumble too much at all. She put away the voucher and started eating the remnants in the dish. I wiped my fingers on my trousers. A look back. The girl was looking at me but immediately looked away. I was angry with myself for having been so clumsy. The reflex of a hunk on a beach who struts with his lungs full of air in front of the admiring girls and then trips over something hidden in the sand and falls.

I stopped outside the door and leaned on the fence.

I bummed a cigarette. When the woman offered me a match, too, I refused, saying, ‘I've got my own, thank you.'

She came out. The only one around who looked like a woman in spite of the sexless blue dress that fell to her knees. Below that, beautiful legs in black tights. She leaned on the fence at the other side of the stairs, slightly lower down. We smiled at each other. I went to her and asked her for a light. With a lighter she lit my cigarette first, then
hers. I was falling into her eyes. She said, ‘Any time.'

The moment between her opening her mouth and her voice coming out seemed like eternity. A terrible fear. There are women who, however attracted you may be to them because of their looks, spoil everything when they open their mouths. Some get over that hurdle okay. The ruin comes later, with the meaning of their words. Maybe that's what I was frightened of, I don't know.

I nodded and returned to the other side. Very rarely had a woman disturbed me so much. First, because of the surroundings. Looks are what you see first. But there was something else, something radiant. Spiritualists would call it a spirit. That's what I couldn't understand. Considering where she worked, she shouldn't have had one.

But I wasn't convinced. She confused me. I would've died if I'd found out that her eyes were so deep only because there was nothing behind them. I realised I was staring at her. I looked away, greeted acquaintances. My eyes kept going back in the intervals. Her eyes, too. She looked at her watch, put out her cigarette, and set off back to work. I followed her, a metre behind. She didn't look back. We were in the same group of women with which I'd come to the canteen. They sat down at the conveyor belt, which was going faster and faster. She was sitting at the end of the line. Small packets full of nails were sliding past her, already sealed. She pressed a large stamp with the date and a code on them. Her colleague, sitting a metre ahead of her, counted the packets.

One two three four five six seven eight nine ten.

Counted again.

Changed the boxes.

She was mouthing the numbers without a sound, as with a rosary.

Thud thud thud thud thud thud thud thud thud thud
fell the packets from a pipe.

Stamp stamp stamp stamp stamp stamp stamp stamp stamp
went the girl who I couldn't take my eyes off.

One two three four five six seven eight nine ten, counted her colleague. A new box.

Every stamp filled me with a new horror. Fucking hell, these two are here only because they are cheaper than a machine. Cheaper than an automated stamper and a photocell that would count. This was true about all the women in the hall. A sea of bodies.

She turned around and looked at me.

Her eyes.

My God, I'm falling in love with a machine.

Stamp stamp stamp stamp stamp stamp stamp stamp stamp stamp
went her hand.

Forever and ever. Amen.

I wanted to shout, ‘Hey, watch out, the machine will get you!'

But I didn't say anything. I went out. Quickly, nearly ran out.

The noise of the falling nails stayed behind.

I leaned my head on the wall and wanted to throw up.

I changed my mind and suppressed my disgust. A shame to waste two vouchers.

I went to my flat so depressed I could only lie down and stare at the ceiling. But before that I undressed. I held the overalls between two fingers and hung them back in the wardrobe. Moved the door back into its place.

Firmly.

I wasn't horrified by the fact that most people were like machines. There was something else about all the people I knew, men and women, who worked at the foundry or
anywhere else, that made me shudder.

A quiet, calm satisfaction.

With everything.

It's not such a problem to stamp and stamp and get a salary at the end of each month. It's not really work.

All of a sudden I loved them all. Those others. Hippy, Poet, Noodle somewhere there in the hills, all of them.

I fell asleep.

When I woke up, not long after I went to sleep, I thought I'd had a nightmare.

There was a smell of lunch coming from all the flats.

Just the right time for going to the National Library.

I walked a long distance along the fence to the opening for the railway tracks. I jumped from sleeper to sleeper, cut through the foundry, then across the bridge over a river far below, and came to the other side. At the foot of a mountain ridge that, like its neighbour opposite, had forced the foundry to grow only lengthwise. I went past the old, abandoned workshops and warehouses, rusting trucks.

I stopped in front of the National Library.

A huge mountain of used paper which the foundry bought by the ton. The long wooden shed intended for storing the paper was too full. The side wall had collapsed under the pressure. The paper spilled out. A chain of paper mountains rose above the bodies of rusted car parts piled into heaps. Our nation's mourned literary and automotive treasures.

Smoke was coming from the side of the hill. There was a Gypsy settlement on the hill, and this mountain of paper and steel was their shopping centre. Every Sunday I'd see them – usually children – rummaging through the cars,
scrap metal, and paper. They'd pile their catch on a trolley and take it home. The next day they would sell back to the foundry everything except any of the more useful or slightly more valuable parts, which they sold to mechanics or anybody else who might be interested in them. The fence was rusty and full of holes. I looked around the yard, even though there was no need to be afraid of the guard. There was only one man guarding all the scrap yards. An old man. Once, he must have been a giant. One of legs had been cut off in the middle of his thigh. All his strength was now trapped by the clumsiness of his wooden-legged walk.

I went in bent over, a suitable entry into such a distinguished establishment. Walking on paper mountains demands special skills. You're constantly losing the ground from under your feet. You can slide back by metres, there's nothing to hold on to. You have to go on all fours. That's how it is with paper.

I got to the shed by crawling on top of the mountains. Outside, there was newspaper and cardboard, inside this and that, as they call books around here.

At the shed door stood a large paper press for compressing the paper into enormous rolls, out of which you can't get anything, because it's all packed so tight.

I started rummaging, searching without aim. You can get real pleasure out of that. Every discovery is a pleasant surprise. I had a list of comics in my head I could sell to the brats in the blocks of flats. Some of them were passionate collectors.

My eyes got used to the semi-darkness. I discovered two gypsy girls who'd hidden in the corner of the shed, frightened of the guard. We'd met before. They carried on calmly. They were collecting the heaviest paper and tying it into bundles. They'd carry them over to their trolley and
bring them back again the next day.

They resembled each other. Probably sisters. The older one was tall and the younger smaller and slightly chubby. Indeterminate ages.

Children in the bodies of grown up women. I met quite a few here on Sundays. None of them lasted long. Their stomachs would start growing, and they'd stop coming.

I was knee deep in the well-known novels of social realism. This style must have once been very popular around here. I opened a thick, threadbare book. Read the first sentence:

‘In Moscow lives a leader, who is fairer and wiser than any other born on this Earth, our comrade Stalin…'

I looked at the author's name on the cover. I'd never heard of him.

I threw the book away and rummaged on. I pulled out a first edition of Meyrink's
The Golem
from 1913. It went in my pocket.

The Gypsies were picking through the pile non-stop. They didn't seem to see me as competition. After an hour's rummage, I only had a couple hundred grams of paper on me.

The younger Gypsy brought another bundle of heavy magazines to her sister. She threw it on the heap.

Her sister got a piece of string ready. From the top a face familiar from somewhere was looking at me.

I pretended to approach them accidentally and made sure. It was a
Playboy
. Nastassja Kinski was on the front cover.

Suddenly, I became thirsty. I thought of beer. Or of Selim, I should say.

And I foolishly said without thinking, ‘Hey, how much do you want for that magazine?'

What a mistake! I became aware of it even before I even finished my question. They looked at me with surprise. It must have been something very important to have made me talk to them for the first time since we started meeting here. They looked at the magazine and then at me again.

‘How much are you offering?' the younger one asked.

So it'd be her and me negotiating. The older one didn't interfere, she just looked on with amusement.

‘I'll help you carry the paper home.'

She laughed at me cheekily. I put on an I-couldn't-care-less expression and a slight smile. I spoke with a deep voice, hiding impatience, which I couldn't get rid of. I was hoping at least it didn't show. I could let them take the mag home and then re-sell it again the next day. There was a ninety-nine percent chance that that was what would happen. But it was that one percent that fucked me up. I didn't want to risk it. It was I who had gotten myself into this bargaining, and it would be I who had to carry on to the end. The find would be worth a case of beer to Selim.

She picked up the magazine and waved Nastassja in front of my eyes. A red flag to a bull.

‘I want money. How much?'

‘I haven't got money.'

‘Forget it then.'

She threw the magazine back. The sister started pulling the string.

‘Okay.'

My surrender.

‘How much?' she asked.

I told her the amount. Two beers from Selim's crate. Immediately, I became aware of my second mistake. I just couldn't get it right. I should've done it differently. She should've said the price. I would've moaned a bit, trying
to lower it. We would've reached an agreement. But I was the first to say the price and now it was her who was bargaining. In the other direction. Up.

She said half a crate.

I shook my head to say that was too much and started rummaging through the paper again, moving towards the exit.

I'd let them know the mag was worth something. They knew me that much. They knew that there was very little I took with me. This wasn't about its weight.

‘All right,' I heard from behind me.

I went back to them.

‘Give me the money,' she said, looking at me hungrily and holding the magazine next to her hip so that I couldn't grab it from her and run.

I admitted, ‘I haven't got it on me.'

Added, ‘I can bring it back in an hour.'

It would work. Selim wasn't at work. A quick run to the dormitory and back.

‘If you haven't got the money now you can buy it next week. We'll bring it with us.'

I didn't quite get the purpose of that move. She probably wanted to gain time and ask around to find out the true value of the magazine. Most probably I would get it in seven days because they could never sell scrap paper at that price. Everybody'd laugh at them. It wasn't hardcore porn, which you could sell for quite a bit at the dormitories. On top of it all, I was really getting into this trading business now. The matter was becoming more personal by the minute. My success or failure.

‘I'm not interested. I want it today or never.'

They weren't too sure why the hurry.

She found the only probable explanation.

‘Oooooooh,' – I hated these prolonged ooooohs – ‘You're desperate? You'd like to jerk yourself off?'

She opened the magazine.

‘Go ahead, I'll turn the pages for you.'

Selim, if this succeeds, I'll want two crates.

I didn't react. I watched her with a smile. A cool guy. She'll finish her performance. There was no point in interrupting her. It could make her angry.

‘What's the matter? Haven't you got it in your hands yet? Don't you like the pictures? Look here, some different ones.'

She turned a page.

‘Still nothing? Would you like to be on your own?'

Her sister was very amused, or so it seemed.

Act two.

‘Sir is not satisfied with ordinary mortals. He wants actresses.' She closed the magazine, turned the front cover with Nastassja towards me, and put it in front of her face. With her left hand she held the magazine, while she lifted her flowery skirt with her right hand and showed me her cunt.

‘Do you like it better this way?'

She started moving her hips. Her tits were shaking beneath her dirty yellow T-shirt.

She was sighing, ‘Oh ooh oh ooooh…'