Fingers Pointing Somewhere Else (7 page)

The question takes me by surprise. I don't love Sasha at all! It would never occur to me to love Sasha! Everest loves Kilimanjaro with the insanity of pure frost, but it has nothing to do with Sasha and me. We are mere players — a finger pointing somewhere else. We are only representatives, even if I don't know what of.

A numb tension dogs me all day. I read a little, but made-up stories irritate me. I stuff myself with cookies. Finally, just before supper, I get an idea for the next act of our play.

The exhausted Kilimanjaro is asleep in the cliff grotto. Everest sets out for the summit. He stands right below it. One more step and he could leave his thumbprint upon the very apex of the world. The lofty vacuum turns his blood to foam. Everest is alone like no one anywhere ever. He sits down on a ledge and takes out a piece of stationery. Beloved Kilimanjaro!

The love letter is an utterly alien genre for me. Laboriously I hunt for sentences to borrow, cobbling them together into something exceedingly odd. I don't believe what comes out of my pen. What I understand perfectly as a mute feeling is, when put into words, even thinner air than my Christmas Party.

Kilimanjaro! It is high time the truth be told. Until today I did not know what love was! … They call me to supper, three times. Woodenly I stack line upon line. I love you. Meanwhile, the
spinach on my plate is getting cold. Till I die I will love only you. The fourth time around, they hound me to supper.

Next, I figure out how we can correspond properly this far above sea level. With the help of some string, of course! I run downstairs. Miss Zámsky is in the kitchen, curlers in her hair. I'm hopping with impatience, I've explained it to her so many times! I'm even shouting. Miss Zámsky wants to know why I don't just hand her the letter. With a speed borne of exasperation I rattle it off again. Miss Zámsky asks: And what kind of game is it? Finally she throws up her hands and goes to wake Sasha up.

I stand on the balcony, tying the string. Carefully I lower the letter. WRITE BACK IMMEDIATELY! Everest adds. I mope around upstairs, trying to hypnotize the twilight. Hurrah! Sasha's hand sticks out from the rocky grotto. She attaches a note:

“My temperture's allmost normal. My aunts going to the movies tomorow so if you want come over.”

As if to spite me, the heat today is like a frying pan. The sun beats against the closed windows. The basement apartment is oppressive and stifling. Mr. Zámsky is asleep in a chair in the garden, and Sasha is sitting on her bed in a rumpled nightgown.

“Do you still feel sick?”

“Uh-uh.”

“Still have a temperature?”

“M-hm.”

Suddenly I don't know what to say. I stand up and look around. Most of all I'd like to crawl right into playing, like a hand into a glove.

“So are we going to play? Like always?”

“Hey, could you bring me something to drink?”

“I'll bring it to you when we pretend.”

“What do you mean, pretend? I'm dying of thirst!”

“So pretend like he's coming back to free her from the snow.”

Everest brings her warm lemonade in a plastic glass; even Miss Zámsky has had a plastic attack, only she doesn't have a refrigerator. He finds Kilimanjaro sleeping. No, she's frozen. Everest stands for a while, completely beside himself. Then he puts the glass aside and begins to massage the forearms of this victim of the Mountain.

“Kilimanjaro! Don't die!” he whispers — today he's not at all convincing.

The victim opens one eye slightly: “Got the drink?”

She gulps it down at once and wipes the spills off her nightgown.

“You know what you have to do!” she says, and freezes. Mount Everest takes his time. It's not easy to introduce sheer frost into hundred-degree heat. Sasha breathes loudly. The hairs on her neck glisten gold with sweat. Everest still cannot get into the role. Finally he leans over, perplexed. A dying arm grabs him around the throat. He didn't expect this; his legs slide out from under him and he topples headlong into the featherbed.

When a shadow crosses the window, Everest's first fear is that they will find him in the Zámskys' bed in his sneakers. He jumps up and comes to attention like an army officer. Mr. Zámsky is squatting outside, tapping on the glass and snickering.

“Go jump in a lake, old man!” Sasha says irritably.

“What's he want with us?”

Sasha puts on an idiotic expression:

“Go on, girls, that's right, do it!”

Then she tumbles back into the featherbed and snores. Mr. Zámsky shuffles inside. He slaps me on my rear and sits down on
the bed.

“Well, girls! Want to look at some pictures? Not a word to Miss Z.! She doesn't need to know everything, right, girls?”

Sasha is snoring like a steam engine. At the same time she is nudging me in the back with her foot. The fever has unleashed her somehow. Mr. Zámsky pulls out a tattered book. “Come on, girls, let's have some fun together! After all, I saw you — you know how to have fun!”

Sasha leans forward on the mattress and props her chin on his shoulder. Cardboard figures stand out from the page: a ballerina and a man holding a hat right below his belly. Strings hang down beneath them. Mr. Zámsky winks at us. He pulls one string and the ballerina raises her leg up high. It turns out she isn't wearing any panties.

“Hey!” Sasha yelps, and she rips the book away from her uncle. She pulls another string. The man jerks his arms away.

“Give it back! Sasha!” Mr. Zámsky shouts. Sasha jumps around the bed, the bed flexes like a trampoline. Panicking, her uncle grabs hold of the footboard.

“Get over here!” Sasha calls to me. I hesitate, but she holds out her hand. I don't recognize her at all today. Hastily I kick off my shoes and clamber over.

“Sasha! You little devil!” Mr. Zámsky moans. He's afraid to stand up and can barely hold on to the rail. I'm jumping as well. It's easier than keeping my balance. Suddenly a strange hotness enters me. Sasha jerks on the string, the man thrusts his naked belly onto the ballerina, and we both yelp, “Whee!”

“You! Little girl! Make her give back the book!”

I'm choking in the stifling room. I don't recognize either Sasha or myself. I jump and shriek with all my might, “Whee!”

Suddenly Sasha yells, “Auntie's coming!” and quick as a flash tosses the book behind the bed. Mr. Zámsky is horribly frightened. He leaps up, dropping his cane, but leaves it lying on the floor and flees. I too am horribly frightened; I've turned white as a sheet. Sasha laughs wildly and burrows her nose into the featherbed.

“There's no one coming, don't worry. I just said that so he'd leave. Come crawl under the featherbed so he can't see us!”

She picks up the book and blows off the dust. She nods to me and pats the place next to her.

“I'm still going to tell my aunt on him tonight!”

She sits up, takes off her nightgown, and spreads her legs apart. Carefully she examines the picture and then between her own thighs. Everest stands on the bed; he can't move, must be frozen.

“Come on already!” Sasha snaps at me. The featherbed rolls over us like an avalanche.

As I run up the steps, lightning flashes. It gives the impression that evening has arrived early today.

My parents aren't home, but there's a letter on the table. I walk right past it. Only when I get out of the bathtub do I see that it's from Hana. I spend a long time drying my face with a washcloth. My hot skin itches, as if an electric current were buzzing through the air.

The letter takes me by surprise; I had completely forgotten about Hana. I remove a folded sheet covered in writing and can barely focus on it.

Two, three pages, an ordinary vacation letter. Swimming, the country house at Strakonice, colds, trips, mushroom picking. Do you already have your assignment done for September? Not me. Then I turn to the last page.

“And I also wanted to write you and say how much it bothers me that we ended what was a beautiful friendship. Maybe you already have another friend, but I still love you and will love you till I die.”

All of it in tiny, perfectly formed handwriting, good enough for the American government. Just outside the window, lightning flashes. Fear instantly pins me to the wall. Scarcely a second later the thunder hits.