In/Half Read online

  ‘You’ve forgotten where you’re from?’

  ‘It’s all the same. I don’t know, maybe… I was born somewhere near India, I think. Spent my childhood on a ship. What can I say? A citizen of the seas.’

  ‘Nice.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘It’s hard to grow roots out at sea.’

  ‘Would you like to? I’ve had a lot of trouble yanking them out.’

  ‘Are you better off now?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Well, there you are.’

  She was silent.

  ‘What are you doing in Edo?’

  Hoping it will end soon, leaving no trace.

  ‘I’m a director. In the theatre.’

  ‘Bravo!’

  ‘But you don’t know whether I’m any good.’

  ‘If you’re here, you must be.’

  ‘If you only knew.’

  ‘Ah, you have doubts? That’s healthy. Better than blind self-confidence, yes?’

  He didn’t answer. An ambulance siren filled the air. He opened his mouth and leant his forehead against the window. Every hole in the road shook him, but he didn’t move his head. The rattling of his skull roused him from foggy despair. Before going to bed he’d gladly down one more bag of mAk. He hoped Gordon had more.

  ‘We’re here.’

  She turned into a sloping driveway. Gordon lived in a luxurious house that he shared with five other sponsors. A doorman opened the taxi door. Evan rummaged around in his pocket for change and paid her. Five.

  ‘Thank you.’

  She winked at him in encouragement. He smiled. Even taxi drivers pitied him. He got out before she could give him any change.

  The doorman was a tall man with close-cropped hair and teeth like a row of blank dominoes.

  ‘Are you a client?’ he asked as they walked towards the door.

  Evan nodded.

  ‘Whose, if I may?’

  ‘Gordon’s.’

  The doorman stopped.

  ‘I do not quite know how to tell you this, sir, but Mr Falstaff has just been arrested.’

  ‘What?’ Evan’s heart stopped.

  ‘Do not worry, it’s probably nothing, there has surely been a mistake.’

  ‘A misunderstanding,’ said Evan.

  ‘Yes, yes, that’s it, I guess.’

  They stood in front of the door. Evan peeked inside.

  ‘So he’s not here?’

  ‘They took him to the station.’

  ‘Why was he arrested? Do you know?’

  The doorman leant towards him.

  ‘Drugs, they say. Nonsense, if you ask me. Today they banned them and they’re already bullying…’

  ‘Maybe they want to make an example of him.’

  The doorman raised his eyebrows.

  ‘I hadn’t thought of that.’

  Evan smiled knowingly. The sun had disappeared behind the peaks of skyscrapers, and they were engulfed by darkness. The doorman crossed his hands and tried politely, through his body language, to intimate that he should leave. If Gordon was not here, then he had no reason for being here. But he did. He had a damned good reason. He’d come for a very specific purpose – and certainly not just to stare again into Gordon’s dishevelled half-bald head. He’d come for what he’d been promised, and he didn’t care whether Gordon had landed in detention, or jail, or wherever. He quietly ground his heel into the asphalt.

  ‘Is there anything else I can help you with?’ asked the doorman.

  ‘Did Gordon leave anything for me?’

  The doorman thought about it and shook his head.

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  He raised his head, as if seeking the answer in a street lamp, and shook his head again.

  ‘Maybe he left it with someone else…’

  ‘Sir, I’ve been here the whole day. I was here when he came home. He went into his flat and right after that the police stormed in.’

  ‘They were in his flat?’

  The doorman’s patience was wearing thin.

  ‘Yes, they were. If I can do anything else to help you… otherwise…’

  ‘No, I understand. It’s just that he promised me something, and I desperately need it.’ He bit his tongue. Everyone needs something, but when that need is drug-related desperation seems so tawdry. He didn’t care even enough to deny it. The doorman straightened up and frowned.

  ‘Sir, he did not leave anything for you. Please, if that is all…’

  Evan shook his head nervously and turned to leave. The doorman relaxed, but then Evan dashed towards the door and smashed into it. It was locked. He looked foolishly at the doorman, who smiled at him, took a card out of his pocket and waved it.

  ‘That won’t work, sir. Now I must ask you to leave.’

  Evan muttered a docile excuse me and, with his head tucked between his shoulders, slunk away. He threw a few more threatening glances in the doorman’s direction, thought about how he might distract him, relieve him of the card, looked out for a drain he could shimmy up to a window, slip inside, and rummage through everything… Out on the pavement he admitted defeat. He kicked a can and it flew high in the air, bounced off the tarp on a parked lorry and landed back on the ground.

  By way of a greeting he told the cab driver, ‘Not in the mood for talking. Take me home.’ The cab driver obeyed. During the drive he silently nursed neurosis. When they arrived, he puked it out onto the pavement. Pancakes. The viscous chocolate remnants sluiced into the gutter. He wiped his mouth and staggered inside, where the receptionist instantly accosted him.

  ‘Mr Z—!’

  Evan didn’t look at him; he waved a hand and tried to get to the lift right away. He felt entirely open to the annoying encroachment of strangers, while he just wanted the safety of his room, to be shut away, locked away, alone. The receptionist didn’t let it rest.

  ‘Mr Z—! You have a visitor.’

  He ignored him. He dragged himself to the lift, where he pressed the button at regular intervals. The doors opened and he already had one foot inside when he heard her.

  ‘Eeeevan.’

  She’d whispered into his right ear, but when he turned, there was no one there.

  Her smile now came from the other side. She grabbed him by the shoulder and gently pulled him to her. When she looked at him, her smile faded.

  ‘Eeeevan, you look a mess.’

  The doors were closing. He stuck a hand between them. They bit him, ever so gently, before moving apart again.

  ‘I’ve had a bad day, Oksana.’

  ‘You look it. What happened?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Nothing is bad?’ Her eyes were innocently wide-set, curious, slightly stupid, cow-like in their depth.

  ‘Nothing is bad.’

  ‘Better than bad, is nothing?’

  Tired, he smiled.

  ‘I need a shower, Oksana… Are we… Did we have a date? What time is it? I’m late, no? At seven? Sorry.’

  ‘I was mad,’ she said.

  He nodded.

  ‘Sorry.’

  She reached out for his cheek. He wanted to withdraw, but failed. Eyes closed, he swayed into her touch. She entered the lift and pulled him in behind her. He was expecting a kiss, but when he opened his eyes she was staring at the floor. He went over to her and lifted her chin. She wriggled free. That didn’t surprise him.

  He didn’t care. The red numbers increased. The lift went up with a gentle murmur of metal.

  ‘You’re going to wash up,’ she said.

  He ran a finger around his mouth. Chocolate again. He swore under his breath.

  ‘I will.’

  She was dressed in a white evening gown and wearing anklets in open-toed, high-heeled shoes. She looked beautiful. She showed cleavage but managed to remain tasteful. She’d tried to powder over the birthmark on her neck. What was she ashamed of? It was in the shape of a crescent. Her hands weren’t the hands of
a lady, so they betrayed what she had been before. Cracked skin on her fingertips, the echoes of blisters. Her hands had been gnawed by the earth. They’d turned hay, beaten cows, and, dammit, shovelled shit. And now they held him.

  They entered the flat. Evan turned on the light and asked her to sit down. She didn’t cross her legs. They were pale, smooth, not wholly thin, with a hint of flab here and there. Under her left knee, barely visible, was a scar. She’d never told him from what. From kneeling before some unknown deity, before a strict father, before a cruel lover… Or just an abrasion of the soul, engraved into the place you hide when you worship. Her knees were just touching. He couldn’t look between them.

  He threw his shirt on the bed. When he loosened his belt, his trousers fell. He took his shoes off and extracted his ankles from the pile of rags. He went to the bathroom in his underwear. He felt her eyes on his back. The years had dried out his skin. It was congested with freckles that looked like drops of ink on weathered parchment. Furrows of muscles. Wrinkles that could no longer be ironed out.

  As the water poured over him, he noticed he was shaking. The cold softened his rage. He was old and paltry due to the seismic shifts in the body’s demands. He’d felt something lacking in his life, but he’d always been able to pull through; to gain through brute force what he needed, or to quell desire. It was different now. He was sure that he deserved it. If paperwork and bureaucracy were going to deprive him of satisfaction even now, then he’d spent his whole life in search of traps. He would never be complete. The conspiracy of the world turned every expectation into abuse of tranquillity.

  She joined him. Naked. A jet of water flattened her hair onto her scalp. He held his arms to his side. When she pressed closer he could feel her pubic hair against his waist.

  ‘Will you go?’ she asked.

  ‘Where?’ His voice was weak.

  ‘I saw it on the table.’

  He said nothing.

  ‘Don’t leave.’

  He felt her lips grazing his shoulders.

  ‘I’m not going anywhere.’ He could no longer decide when he was telling the truth. Had he ever been able to?

  She dropped down. The back of his hand brushed against one of her nipples. She withdrew. When she took him in her mouth, he could no longer remember who she was, he didn’t know what he was after, what he wanted to do, what he even could do – torn between what had been and what was still to come, he began to concentrate on the pulsing heat in his groin, the awakening, the rising, that tongue, slowly, between her fingers, saliva, the whispering, those lips, more

  ABRAHAM!

  All families, all happy and unhappy families, strong or poor families, forgotten, exalted, belittled families, shameless and desperate and greedy and fabulous families, real families, unreal families, mighty, worthless, wealthy, godless and coarse, voracious and even the most hysterical families are, whichever way you look at it, first and foremost a dreary pack of wounded people.

  These people are bound by tiny information codes stored somewhere deep within their bodies. They are bound by memories forged over long years of continuous peripeteias. They are bound by blood and water and tears and sometimes by a house or a flat or some hollow they can creep into when the storms are howling outside. They are bound up like bundles of wood. They are inseparable. And that is why they suffer.

  Take, for instance, the Wolfs, so lovingly gathered together on a fine summer evening somewhere beneath the Alps in the Soča valley, among ancient woods of pine and oak, in a splendid rented log cabin that simmered the whole day long in the fragrances of sausages, corn and old offences. They have gathered to celebrate the birthday of the Wolf patriarch. It’s a nice round birthday, his fiftieth, his ‘Abraham’, and although the patriarch’s father is still alive, still present, he has behaved so scandalously that long ago the baton of the pater-familias had been passed to his son, to the birthday boy Kras, who had until recently, when his party lost the election, been Minister for War, and whom everyone utterly respects, even if many remain tacitly convinced that he is a misanthrope at heart.

  Throughout the day they kept mostly to themselves. The children were playing with a ball, or with the dogs, rummaging and romping through the bushes, the men were nipping at chicken wings, sports and war, and the women were – also busy with chicken wings – spouting gossip about countless others. Over the years, two camps have formed among the adults: on the one side, the allies of Kras’s father Bojan, whom not even his new, young wife Stoja (too young, some would say, most loudly of them Bojan’s ex) and his religious delusions (a few years ago he found his way into neo-Celtic druidism, grew a beard and began conversing with trees) have discouraged from valuing the old man’s bared soul and his unbearably naive view of the world; and on the other side, the allies of Kras’s mother, Olga, the dishonoured, dignified, lady-like woman who chains people to herself by dint of justified rebukes and accusations, on account of which many, in these times of unclear values, take her to be an anchor or at least a beacon. The walls between the camps are almost impervious. They are transgressed only by Kras and his wife, as well as by a few children who are too young to know any better.

  For as long as the sun persisted on the horizon and the nearby river cooled the clearing in which they were scattered, the atmosphere was almost placid, but now that evening has fallen and they have all respectfully – proper behaviour being the order of the day – headed inside, the air is filled with an electricity that threatens to char the undergrowth right up to the tri-border area, should the birthday boy Kras fail to perform a convincing lightning-conductor act.

  Just seating them at the table was a medal-worthy task. Kras’s wife Katarina spent almost a whole month juggling the guests’ backsides. She hung on the telephone for hours and hours, listening to all the grievances and gossip cloaked in false modesty that increased in size as it journeyed from mouth to mouth, was distorted through the filters of envy and malice into barely credible half-truths, not to mention that mass of praise for people who had gained general favour within the family merely by stubbornly and steadily suffering under the yoke of their utterly ordinary fates. The Wolfs are a proud old Slovenian family, a microcosm reflecting the wider community. They’ve had their disputes, as we have already heard, although Katarina wasn’t convinced that the point of contention really was just Kras’s parents’ divorce, that their differences didn’t in fact reach deeper, into politics, religion, personal philosophy, that is, into worldviews and convictions, and that they weren’t just using that scandalous divorce to buttress their views against rational confrontation with views of other varieties. They willingly shut themselves off in an echo chamber and peeped through the blinds only when an argument was looming. When Katarina entrusted Kras with her observation, he laconically replied that conflict was healthy and necessary (let’s not forget that he ministered to war) and that she shouldn’t get all worked up about it.

  Now they are walking in a straight line over to the table, seeking out their names on the place cards and taking their seats. Katarina follows them anxiously, trying to read unconscious responses through their wrinkled noses, frowning eyebrows, sighs of relief and nods of agreement. So far, so good, it seems. She and Kras are, of course, seated in the middle, Mila, their eldest daughter and a future lawyer, is beside her father, Mira and Mina, the ten-year-old twins, are next to her. Sitting beside Mila is Edgar, Kras’s half-brother, whom his father, soon after the divorce and long before he remarried, had dragged in from somewhere and claimed to have fathered, even though Edgar looks nothing like him (he was swarthy, small and smiley, the Wolfs pale, tall and sullen), and when Olga (‘How insulting!’) had left off thoughts of murder or at least a staged accident, she started a rumour in the family that Bojan had kidnapped the boy from a travelling gypsy caravan. When Edgar was growing up and getting to know his father a little better, he had heard that rumour from Andreja, who had heard it from the priest Meslier to whom it was confessed, in juicy variants, almost ever
y other month, and simply believed it. Due to his carefree nature and his extraordinary understanding of his fellow man, Edgar is probably the only one in the family who enjoys Kras’s unconditional trust.

  Next to Edgar sits Bojan, his ‘father’, who has already had quite a bit to drink. You can see him drooling at the thought of all the inconvenience, awkwardness and discomfort his behaviour will cause over the coming hours. The closer he gets to death, the more he enjoys taking the piss out of the world. Because she has never regarded him as evil, Katarina grins as she looks forward to his contributions to the evening, though she takes pains not to let it show. To Bojan’s left sits his wife Stoja, a red-headed Russian beauty. They say Bojan simply bought her, and that, surprisingly, is true. What is never said, however, is that he bought her from Russian human traffickers and thus saved her from a cruel life of addiction and prostitution in the Baltic underworld. What Bojan was doing up there is never spoken of, but on account of the goodwill he showed we will remain tactfully silent on this point. In gratitude, Stoja gave birth to two of his children, Alan and Po, and then, quite selfishly and all by herself, raised them right. Now they are sitting, well-behaved, beside her.

  Next to little Po sits her sister (‘not half-sister, don’t you dare call me “half-sister,” you’re my sister and I’m your sister, we are sisters’), also Kras’s sister, Grace, born Andreja, Bojan and Olga’s youngest daughter. Because she was passionately attached to her mother, she kept her sexuality a secret for a long time, banging on about nunneries and hell and repentance, going to church every day, now and then flagellating herself until the blood flowed and guilt and doubt and despair almost drove her to suicide, until one day Kras, after a confidential conversation with Edgar, who made a few things clear to Kras, clumsily told her, not knowing any better, that ‘Dad doesn’t give a shit anyway, Mum will survive, so stop the circus, stop the whining, find some chick, do with her what you will, for fuck’s sake, you’re old enough to listen to your pussy instead of Mummy and the priest.’ During the years in which Kras was winding his way upwards in the political milieu and cleaning up his tongue, Andreja, thanks to this secular blessing, changed her name to Grace Wolf, exuberantly scooted all around Europe and then, in Denmark, in Christiania, married Olive, the hairy Hebrew nurse with whom she is now seated hand in hand, both serenely smiling and still in love.