Crumbs (12 page)

I left. I thought I could hear his voice behind me repeating, ‘Nothing and nobody…'

I looked back. I couldn't see him anymore, he was hidden by the pipes. A white cloud of steam whooshed out of a valve.

I jumped over the fence and ran across the road.
Magda came from the opposite direction, holding hands with some guy. I'd never seen him before.

I couldn't decide whether to say hello or not. Maybe I shouldn't show that we knew each other.

I waited. She smiled and waved to me. We said hello. Went our separate ways.

I took a shower and went to sleep. I hung the plastic bag with the ribs on the window handle.

I got up, had another shower, put the working clothes in the wardrobe, and left for Karla's.

I rang the bell once. Twice. Nothing could be heard in the flat. I was just about to go when a shadow appeared in the peephole. The door opened. I'd woke her up. Wrapped in a dressing gown, she looked at me sleepily, as if she was seeing me for the first time.

Finally she smiled.

‘Come in.'

She moved away to make room for me.

I went in, took off my jacket and my shoes.

‘Are you happy with the sewing work?' she asked. I wasn't quite sure whether there wasn't a hint of ridicule in her voice.

‘Yes, beautiful work. Is he a tailor?'

‘Something like that.' Ridicule again.

I wanted to put my arms around her.

Gently but firmly she pushed me away.

‘Wait till I've had a shower and woken up a bit. Would you make me some coffee?'

I lit the gas ring and put on some water. I could hear the splashing of the shower from the bathroom.

I made the coffee and filled her cup. The rest was for me. I diluted it with milk and sat down. Pulled a piece of bread from my pocket and ate it.

The cup of coffee opposite was slowly getting cold.

The shower went quiet.

I took the cup and, balancing it so that the black liquid didn't spill, went to the bathroom.

Karla was standing naked in front of the mirror, combing her wet shoulder-length hair.

‘I brought your coffee before it gets completely cold,' I explained my entry standing in the door.

She turned around and said firmly, ‘No, I don't want it.'

We started laughing simultaneously.

I quickly put the cup on the washing machine so as not to spill it.

We were looking at each other relishing the laughter.

She took a long sip of coffee and went back to combing her hair.

I leaned on the wall, watching her. When she put down the brush and walked past me, I reached out with my right hand and caught her. She didn't resist.

‘When's the alarm going off today?' I asked.

A deadly invention. It must have destroyed more lives than the machine gun.

‘At seven. I've been invited out for dinner.'

‘With a fine gentleman in the prime of his years?'

She nodded.

She took the empty cups and saucers to the sink. I followed her and put my arms around her. She turned around in my arms and kissed me.

‘And what happened to your trademark?' she asked.

‘Yeah, Cartier is gone. I'm working hard to get a new one.'

‘Of course, you'll succeed,' she added ironically.

I didn't think it was worth nodding. I pulled the belt that held her robe together and put my palm on her skin,
hot from the water.

‘Do you want me?'

‘No.'

She looked at me with surprise.

My finger was playing with her nipple.

‘What do you want then?' she asked.

‘Don't know. I'm tired. Fed up. Depressed by the pointlessness of it all.'

She nodded.

‘I know the feeling. Very well…'

‘I know.'

We stopped talking. It seemed to me that the silence was pushing us down.

Karla probably felt uneasy, too. She started talking with an unusually cheerful voice, which sounded grotesque, artificial, and affected. But then I realised that she always talked like that, I just hadn't noticed it until now.

‘What's the matter,' she said, ‘you big lover? Are you going to tell me one of your little stories in which you're always the main hero and the winner?'

‘I won't. Don't worry, But as for these stories, we're all always winners. A pensioner tells her friends in great detail how she told off the butcher who was just about to give her some meat full of gristle. At the same moment the butcher is telling everybody how he'd foisted meat soaked in water to make it heavier on some old bat. That's the way it goes.'

‘I know.'

We went quiet again. Deep in thought, I ran my thumb around the base of her breast.

‘Okay,' she said. ‘Tell me what's bothering you. Every day I hear at least one sad story, usually in the evening. Let's say I'm working overtime without getting paid. Everybody says that psychiatrists have replaced priests
and confessionals, but nobody mentions whores, who work a lot harder than any of them.'

I grinned.

‘Tell me now. Is it a woman?'

‘No, not at all. This time I really haven't got any problems with women.'

‘Haven't there been any women fainting in the street at the sight of you walking towards them?'

Her cynicism didn't bother me. Most of my own utterances came from the same domain.

‘You know very well I'm not one of those men who girls sigh over when they're coming towards them in the street.'

She lifted her eyebrow questioningly without opening her mouth.

I continued, ‘They sigh over me when I'm walking away from them.'

She laughed.

‘I didn't know that detectives from black-and-white movies were still riding around.'

I shrugged my shoulders.

‘Fuck it, watching films helped me experience the world, wherever that may be.'

‘But you won't tell me a sad story?'

‘You won't get away without it, don't worry. Tactically speaking, strategic operations are in process, which will get me a new bottle of aftershave. I won't tell you the names of the victims, but one Selim happened to come by—'

She interrupted me. ‘A hero of labour?'

‘Yes, but somehow not through his own fault… Anyway, this Selim is heading for ruin. He doesn't mean anything to me, you understand, but his cracking and breaking reverberates in me like a distant memory. He's going through the same shit that I went through. It's clear
how it'll end. I don't want to be there…'

‘Go away.'

‘I've already told you I'm just finishing the Cartier project. I can't go anywhere yet, at least for a while.'

‘Oh you young businessmen. Meetings and business are all that you think about.'

‘Young, urban, professional,' I mumbled.

‘Exactly,' she announced ceremoniously.

I moved away to the window to look at the foundry and then through the bedroom door. I reached out and stroked the spines of the books on the bookcase.

Karla was watching me from the door.

The atmosphere was still heavy, pregnant with sadness.

‘You have studied many things,' I said, ‘and finished a degree or two in the process.'

‘And all that while I was working as well.'

‘While you were fucking,' I corrected her immediately, as always concerned about the clarity of expression.

She nodded smilingly.

‘I searched for it first in books then in men. Now I'm not searching anymore.'

‘Try travelling. That's the essence of everything.'

‘I'll think about it. Even though this advice failed with you.'

‘Yes, but it was wonderful nonetheless.'

I turned to the books again.

‘Stop looking,' she said. ‘You've already taken everything that could interest you.'

‘I only borrowed them. Indefinitely. And there weren't that many books to make it worth getting worked up about. Two or three.'

‘Sixteen.'

‘Well, maybe. But the only one I'm using is
Summa
Theologica
.'

‘I've never quite understood your fascination with Thomas Aquinas.'

‘Listen now. I'm going to use one of those insipid, meaningless phrases they use in encyclopaedias for nearly every famous person. Are you ready?'

‘Say it.'

‘He was seven centuries ahead of his time.'

She looked at me questioningly.

‘I'll tell you a story.'

‘You're always telling those.'

‘At least you're used to them. Anyway, Aquinas was a real Dominican, a soldier of God. He travelled to all the colleges and universities of Europe, which was the world then, lecturing, writing, and thinking. Heresies blossomed so quickly they couldn't even count them. But Aquinas immediately fought each one of them with his logic. They invited him to lecture in Italy. They went to Mass one Sunday. While singing “Don't leave us when we lose the strength to carry on”, he sat down and stopped. Everything. He stopped writing, he stopped lecturing, he stopped eating. Nothing. His secretary asked him how he could just leave his work unfinished and he answered, “I can't go on anymore. Everything I have written is meaningless.” There.'

‘A nice story better than usual. But I still don't get why Thomas was seven centuries ahead of his time.'

‘Faith was still strong then. In those days they believed in God, later on in reason, and finally in changing the world. Revolution. A paradise on earth. The Party. Now faith is dead. If you've got any sense at all you can't believe in anything anymore, least of all in reason. Everything people have been fighting for all these centuries is rubbish.
Nothing. Everything's been spoiled. Even I've started to philosophise instead of chasing young girls, which goes to prove that you can't rely on anything and anybody anymore.'

We were silent.

‘Karla, you make me talk nonsense sometimes. It's best if I leave. I'll go and work on that aftershave, seduce a few girls. Anything is better than sitting waiting for death. I'm not Niempsch.'

‘Who?'

‘Another story. Next time.'

I went to the kitchen.

‘Stay a bit longer,' she said.

I looked at her. She suddenly seemed fragile and vulnerable. We used to live together years ago. It lasted a few months. The cynical, unattainable Karla changed from a femme fatale to a vulnerable person without any support. She wanted to lean on the cynical and unattainable Egon, as if she hadn't noticed that he was no longer a macho man but a dangling man. We were too alike. We could act for a few hours a week but not for twenty-four hours a day. We brought each other down. I packed and went away, and when I called in again after a month, we'd both managed to mend our masks. But we never discussed trying to live together again. Not a word.

‘I'm going,' I said.

She was probably thinking similar thoughts and chewing over the same memories.

‘All right,' she said. ‘I wasn't thinking when I invited you. A moment of weakness.'

Why flog a dead horse?

I stepped through the door and firmly decided not to look back.

I was at the end of the corridor. I still hadn't heard the sound of the door closing.

‘Egon.'

She called me. With a sad and lonely undertone.

I turned around.

‘Come back for another kiss,' she said.

I did as asked.

It lasted a long time and as usual, it was I who stopped it.

‘I'm going, Karla.' I stroked her cheek with the knuckles of my fist.

She nodded.

‘Bye, Egon.'

‘Bye,' I repeated.

I couldn't get rid of the feeling that I was really saying goodbye.

I ran to the stairs, pressed my feet together, and slid down the solid concrete edge like it was a playground slide. It's possible if your feet are big enough. I looked back once. Karla was looking after me.

The alarm behind her back went off.

I stood in front of the main entrance wondering where to go. I scratched my cheeks and decided to have a shave. I went to the flat and changed my mind. I wasn't in the right mood for that. If I hadn't shaved for a fortnight I could last another week or so.

I took the bag with the ribs and the bread and went to the bar.

The pensioners were sitting at a table. ‘A red hot poker up their arse,' one of them was just saying.

It was too early to go to Noodle's. It had only just gotten dark.

I went wandering around the town.

Selim stood in front of the cinema. Clean shaven, in a white velvet suit, a white shirt, a black bow tie, and a carnation in his buttonhole. A few metres away from him stood a group of his comrades from the dormitory. They were sniggering. He paid no attention to them.

I strode over to him and said hello.

‘Do you have a date?'

‘Yes, I'm going to the cinema,' he said.

I didn't have to ask which film was showing. Nastassja was looking at me from the display case with her catlike eyes.

‘Are you coming?' he invited.

I went.

We sat in the back row. There were about twenty other people in the auditorium besides us. The lights went off. Selim went completely still. I swung my legs over the back of the seats in front of me and cradled the bag of ribs.

The audience was split into three groups, like little islands in the auditorium. They were rustling sweet wrappers. They were shouting comments. Competing with witticisms.

After less than five minutes the film broke. The auditorium was full of whistling. The lights came on.

Selim got up and walked through the whole auditorium to the platform in front of the screen.

He stood silently in the middle of the stage.

Slowly they all went quiet, asking themselves what he was up to and expecting some juicy jokes.

He spoke.

‘If anybody opens their mouth or makes any noise whatsoever during the rest of this film, I'll smash their face in.'