The bone fire, p.10
The Bone Fire, page 10
The man curses, crouches down to pick it up, while the bag swings back toward Iván. He grabs it by the handle; I see the mouth of the bag is half open. Iván quickly reaches in, takes something white out of the bag, something like a broken piece of chalk, and throws it into the largest tin cup, then he raises the cup to his face, spits into it, lifts up the iron lid of the chestnut pot, places the tin cup inside, right onto the roasted chestnuts, then slams the lid back down, and the whole thing happens so quickly that by the time the chestnut seller has straightened up again with his tin mug holding the change, Iván’s bag is back on his shoulder.
He grabs my wrist and says, Run, orphan girl, and he’s already running along the walkway, I’m running next to him; he’s still holding my wrist, pulling me along with him.
We’re almost up at the top of the square, by the row of trees, where the paved brick comes to an end and there’s regular asphalt. I don’t go any farther; I try to snatch my hand away, stand still. Iván lets go of my wrist, but he too comes to a stop; he turns back toward the chestnut seller, and he says: Watch this, orphan girl! He points toward the chestnut seller, and in that moment a piercing thundering sound is heard, the cover of the iron pot suddenly lifts up; it flies up to the sky like a rocket, and beneath it the yellow chestnuts come showering down everywhere.
The chestnut seller is thrown back on his bum from the detonation; his fur cap falls off his head, the chestnuts are clattering down all around him on the paved bricks.
Iván begins to guffaw; he yells out, Well, fuck that, I nearly sent the whole kit and caboodle flying up to the sky!
The chestnut seller gathers up a few chestnuts from the ground, and he’s still sitting there when he throws them at us, missing, but he’s laughing as well as he calls out: Your father’s going to shoot you to the moon, Iván, that’s how hard he’s going to kick you in the ass when I tell him about this.
Iván looks at me, says, That was a good prank, eh? He jerks his schoolbag onto his shoulders and starts running down the walkway.
I stand there looking at him as his bag slips off his shoulder from running. He looks back at me and calls out: Bye, orphan girl, see you tomorrow.
I’m still holding the bag with the chestnuts in my hand. I put it in my coat pocket, then I reach into it, grab one, squeeze it hard. I turn it around; the skin of the chestnut breaks off in pieces, falling off between my fingers.
I keep on walking home, squeezing the scalding-hot chestnut. I will eat it in a moment, it will be hot and sweet.
It really is very good. The skin comes off easily; I eat one after the other, and at the same time I think about how the lid of the pot flew upward, how the chestnut seller fell down, and how Iván cackled so loudly.
By time I get to the gate of Grandmother’s house, there are only three chestnuts left. Before I go inside, I turn out all the broken chestnut shells from my pocket, and I watch as the wind grabs them and sweeps them all away from the sidewalk.
I give the last three chestnuts to Grandmother, telling her that I saved them for her: Eat them, they’re sweet, I say.
Grandmother gives two of them back, says one will be enough for her, but it’s good that I reminded her, because she has some chestnuts put away in the larder, for roasting; one of these evenings we’ll cut them up, roast them, and eat them.
I go out into the garden with my last two chestnuts, holding one in each hand, and I walk in a circle around the flower bed and the walnut tree, the chestnuts warming my hands for a long time.
* * *
It’s evening, I’m eating roasted chestnuts with Grandmother. We cut open the tops of them together; I use Grandfather’s staghorn-handle pocketknife, Grandmother uses her own pocketknife with a fish-shaped handle. The chestnuts are scalding; they burn my fingers. Grandmother says we can’t wait, they’re good if they’re so scalding that we can hardly breathe while eating them.
As we chew, she suddenly asks me if it’s true that my mother never, really never, told me anything about her? Not even one word, ever? Nothing about her, nothing about Grandfather?
My hand, with the chestnut in it, stops moving; it’s hard for me to speak, but still I say, No.
It’s as if the wrinkles on Grandmother’s face just deepened; she nods.
I ask what the argument was about. As soon as I say the words, I know I shouldn’t have.
Grandmother doesn’t answer. She squeezes a chestnut between three of her fingers, it crackles loudly, she slowly turns it around in her palm; the shell falls in tiny pieces onto the oilcloth. She says that I have a right to know, and I will know—later on, of course, she will tell me, but not now, let’s not ruin these lovely chestnuts, she says. I should know, however, that she truly loved my mother.
The shell has completely peeled off the chestnut, there’s only a smudge-size piece still stuck at the bottom. Grandmother tries to pick it off with her nail; it doesn’t come off. She asks me to tell her something about my parents. Something about our old life.
I nod, and I stick my hand beneath the small pillow being used to keep the chestnuts warm; my hand rummages around in the warmth. I remember how one autumn we went biking up the mountain path, going as far as the brook, because Father wanted to teach us fly-fishing, and we were already at the top of the mountain when it turned out that Father had forgotten to put the box of fly lures in his kit bag; by mistake he’d brought a bunch of tempera paints instead, and when we got off our bikes, and we realized this, I saw on Mother’s face that she was afraid that Father would start shouting, and it’s true that Father’s eyes flashed in such a way that I too was certain for a moment that he was going to yell, but instead he just swallowed once, then said, Well, if we can’t catch any fish, then let’s make some for ourselves, and we climbed over onto a big long rock sticking out from the brook, and we drew the eyes and the fins and the scales of the fish onto the rock with the tempera paint; I remember this. I take a chestnut from the plate, start to peel it, and suddenly I smell the smoky, slightly acidic scent of Father’s woolen sweater, and I know I won’t be able to tell this story. I can’t, and I don’t want to.
I look at Grandmother, shake my head, and I want to say, Please don’t be angry, I can’t tell you about this, but I can’t even say that.
Grandmother swallows a morsel of chestnut, and she says that she can tell from the way I was looking at the chestnut that something did come to me, that I was thinking about something, something that I saw very clearly in my mind’s eye, but just then I was not able to say it. She asks me if that’s how it was.
I nod.
Grandmother says that sometimes it’s easier to be silent. But I should know that the more I am silent, the harder silence will become, and so will talking.
She pokes at the pieces of chestnut shell scattered on the tablecloth with her ring finger; the tip of her nail slowly circles around the oilcloth, leaving long spiraling tracks.
She says that she too was once quiet for a very long time, so long that she was almost not able to speak again. She reaches out and touches the closed pocketknife with the staghorn handle; she doesn’t open it, merely runs her fingers along its dented white surface. She says that Grandfather helped her then. He helped her by telling his own story, his own stories.
The most painful stories can only be told in such a way that the people who hear them feel like the events happened to them—as if it were their own story. Grandfather knew this, and so he told her his own story, and she too told Grandfather what she could. She will tell me as well—all in good time.
She flicks the knife, and it begins to spin around on the oilcloth. Grandmother looks at it; she is quiet. I too look at it; the golden copper tip of the knife scatters light into my eyes.
When the knife stops spinning, Grandmother says I should believe her when she says that she understands my mother. No matter how much it hurts, she understands that she chose silence. She reaches toward the plate of chestnuts, takes one, cracks it; it bursts out of its skin. She rolls it toward me; the chestnut stops in front of me. Grandmother says I should put it in my mouth quickly, before it cools off.
I chew on the chestnut, and its taste is sweet. I think of Mother’s hands. With her finger dipped in the green tempera, she drew scales like half-moons on the damp stone.
Grandmother begins to speak.
* * *
The little girl doesn’t know who you are, and she doesn’t want to know, she wants you to leave her alone, you can tell right away from how she looks at you. You don’t even care about that; what interests you is that gesture with which she brushes her hair back, the way her hand runs all along her hair, trembling nervously; you know this movement very well, it’s there in your own hand too, wild and angry. You look at her; her eyes are different, set more deeply, darker, but her chin is just as pointy, her nose has that same curve, and she holds her head in exactly the same way, you can’t believe it’s true, but now you know who you are looking at: it is the daughter of your daughter, there is no doubt. You think of your daughter, of when you saw her for the last time; you didn’t know you were seeing her for the last time. Now that you look at this other girl, as she steps into the office, and she comes over, and she stands in front of you, only now you know. You look down, in your hands the coffee cup is empty; you have to squeeze the coffee cup very tight so it won’t tremble, you can’t keep holding it so hard, it’s going to crack; Let it break, you think. The girl utters a greeting, not to you but to the headmistress, her voice is as if you were hearing your own daughter’s voice, your own voice. The coffee cup trembles on the saucer, the coffee grounds in it are too black, you cannot bear this blackness; you reach over and with a sudden movement you turn the cup over, placing its mouth down on the saucer, and with the other hand you grab it, you have to grab onto it, the name of the manufacturer is there on the porcelain in blue letters. You look at the girl again; she’s adjusting her skirt, pulling it down; you look at her hand, it’s different, that must be her father’s hand, there’s a bruise on one knee, now it’s beginning to spread; she sits down next to you in the other armchair. There she is beside you, completely close to you, and she doesn’t know who you are. The bitterness of the coffee rises in your throat; you swallow it back, you make a decision. You are going to speak.
9
Olgi says she’s going to take me somewhere and show me something I’ve never seen before. As we walk, I tell her about the prank Iván played on the chestnut seller. Olgi laughs. She says that Iván’s father is a big person in the city, he’s the head of the local National Salvation Front, so Iván thinks he can do whatever he wants.
We walk through a door into an inner courtyard, then from there into another one, then into a third one, where there is a wire fence. Olgi knows where the fence can be lifted; she picks it up, holds it, I slip through, then I hold it up while she slips through the fence.
We are now in front of two large iron doors. No matter how often I ask Olgi where she’s taking me, she doesn’t answer, all she says is that I won’t regret coming. We are about to see something we’ve never seen before. She places the palm of her hand on the iron door painted blue and beats out a rhythm on it, not haphazardly, but with three long and two short beats; she repeats this many times.
Nothing happens. I want to suggest that we leave, or if she doesn’t want to, then I’ll go, but suddenly I hear the clattering sound of a bolt being pulled on the other side of the door, then a second and a third. The door slowly opens a crack; a fat face with a quivering double chin, a stubby nose, and angry eyes looks out at me. A voice, harsh and raspy, says, What are you doing here? But before I can speak, the face changes, a smile spreads across it: Olgika, is that you? So you came, welcome, come in quickly, before they see you here.
Olga greets her—I kiss your hand, Godmother—then she says that she’s brought a friend. The fat woman nods. Fine, Olgika, that’s fine. She opens the door, leads us into a fluorescent-lit space smelling like mint tea, then she quickly closes the door behind us, pushes the bolts back in place one after the other, and at the same time murmurs in a raspy voice: Oh, but it’s so good that you came, my little Olgika, you have to see this, the opening will be on Monday, but everything’s prepared already, everything’s in place, she says, all while leading us through a labyrinth of crates and boxes piled up on top of one another.
The air is full of strange scents: mint, laundry detergent, plastic, earth, fresh paint, all mixed up together—it’s nauseating and cold. The fluorescent lights hiss and vibrate. I know that my head is going to start aching in a moment, as if we had already been winding in and out of these crates and boxes for a long time. From above, from the direction of the ceiling, there is a soft creaking sound, and I see that high above, meters above the crates and the boxes, there are huge puppets hanging down—paper birds with outspread wings, an owl-headed horse with red wings, a many-headed dragon, a violinist with a green head and a black coat, a sun, a moon, stars, clouds, a tractor, a cat wearing gardening pants and a miner’s helmet.
I nudge Olgi to look up. She does and is so surprised that she bumps into one of the crates, which then makes a rattling sound. The fat woman looks up as well, and she croaks, Yes, these puppets are still here, and a few of the old stage decorations too, but don’t worry about that, because this hasn’t been a puppet theater for a long time, it’s something much more fantastic now. The whole place has been transformed, the front hall, the theater, everything.
We come out from among the crates, walk alongside a wheelbarrow, then we reach another door. As the woman pushes open the wings of the door, there is soft music; I recognize it, “The Blue Danube,” it’s playing in some kind of extended electronic version. The woman says, Look at this, you’ve never seen anything like this before. She grabs our shoulders and pushes us through the door.
The sharp white light blinds me for a moment, then I look around, squinting. I see that Olgi and I are standing in the middle of a large department store. Everything is packed on gigantic shelves, the colored boxes nearly tumbling off; I see large, thick bars of chocolate, packs of chewing gum piled up in heaps, bags of candy, cake packages, canned goods, one-kilo tins of coffee, huge cases of laundry detergent, cigarette cartons, and there are ten, one hundred, one thousand varieties of each item, and fruit juices—orange, apple, lemon, grape—in enormous boxes.
I look at everything; I can’t move. I hear Olgi snort next to me as if she has suddenly been hit in her solar plexus. I too sense that I can’t catch my breath, I feel that all these items will collapse on me any moment now, they’ll bury me, but at the same time I think about going over to one of the shelves, the first one I can reach, the closest one, grabbing a bag of candy, ripping it open, and snatching up its contents, not to eat but because I want to see if there’s really candy inside, and if there really was candy inside, then I would rip open another one, and one after that, all of them, and I would unwrap all the chocolate bars and the chewing gum, everything, all the boxes, all the bags, even the ones filled with items I don’t recognize, I would open up every single package and rip out the contents.
I imagine how all these things would flow between my fingers, the colored wrapping papers ripping open, making crackling noises, the snap-snap of the cellophane tearing, and all the while I hear Olgi’s godmother murmuring behind us, saying that this is a real supermarket, the very first one in the city. There’s everything here, everything that exists under the sun, everything, but really everything, thirty different kinds of toothpaste, eight different kinds of butter, fifteen different kinds of cheese, sausages, salamis, hams, and so many types of soap that even if we used a different kind to wash our hands every day, it would still take at least two months before we had tried them all, and there is much more of each item, not just what’s displayed on the shelves, but an infinite amount, transported here with trucks packed to the gills.
She talks about the jams, the toilet paper, the tinned fish, the chocolate creams; there is everything, and there will be everything, because from now on there will always be everything; she utters these words as if they are a prayer, as if she didn’t even believe it herself, as if she were trying to persuade herself of something nonetheless true. In a hoarse, cracked voice, to the tune of “The Blue Danube,” she sings of the milk in boxes and the vacuum-sealed coffee; before she could never have even imagined that such things exist; she sings of cocoa powder that already contains milk and sugar, you only need to add water and it’s ready to drink; she chants how she thinks all this plenitude did not come into existence only recently, but that it always existed, even when we couldn’t get any of it, even when the shops here were completely empty, and you could never get anything, people were ready to murder each other just for the one kind of plum preserves and tinned fish that you could get, she doesn’t want to think about it, but she can’t think of anything else, that’s why she wanted us to come and see it for ourselves, because she has been among these shelves for almost two weeks now, she stacked them with her own hands, but never will she be able to grasp the entirety of it. Perhaps she’s already too old for this, perhaps it’s too late for her, because all she can think about is what it was like when there was nothing, when you had to steal and cheat and lie for a bit of cornmeal, and as she says this, suddenly she begins to sob; she sobs loudly, blubbering like a child, nearly choking on the tears, she says that she did it all for us, she did it only for us, so that we could have all of this, so that all of this would be ours.
She steps over to Olgi and embraces her; with her thick arms she squeezes Olgi into her. Olgi embraces her back, she’s crying now too, tottering; they stagger in front of the shelves; there is a large bar of chocolate in the godmother’s hands, she rips off the lilac-colored paper and the foil, breaks off large pieces and shoves them into Olgi’s mouth—Eat, my little dove, eat, she blubbers—she too bites into the chocolate, I see half-eaten currants and hazelnuts in the chocolate, the marks of the godmother’s teeth; they both eat the chocolate, clutching each other, tottering.
