Crumbs (25 page)

‘I registered a door opening on my right. I didn't even look there. Just pointed at it with my right hand and shot. Went on. A group of children escaped on my left. I didn't turn around. What was behind me was safe. A man in a blue coat jumped at me. He impaled himself on the barrel. I counted how many times I pulled the trigger. Once, twice, three times. On top of a locker there was a pair of small boots. Donald Duck was winking at me. I shot
both the boots. Left and right. I registered a door closing. Pointed the gun at the wood. Pressed the trigger. It didn't do anything. I changed the cartridge. Walked at the same time. Dropped the empty one. Kicked it. Shot at it and missed. The window was half-covered with a curtain. A pair of shoes peeped out from under it. I pointed the gun about half a metre higher. Shot. Controlled the gun. The curtain waved. I looked at the hole in it. I noticed a small body falling through the glass and down. I stopped at the end of the corridor. I thought I could see a shadow through the frosted glass on the bathroom door. Two bullets. I didn't go to see whether I'd hit the target. I opened the door in front of me and went in. On the teacher's desk there was a model of the heart made of plaster and painted red. It burst. With another two bullets I shattered the skull on the skeleton in the display case. I went to the window and looked down. Waited.

‘A police car drove up. An ambulance behind it. Three large blue vans. Their lights were flashing in silence. The feeling that this wasn't what I wanted was growing stronger. My body escaped. I had done something against my will that couldn't be undone. I couldn't go back anymore. Policemen in helmets and bulletproof vests were running into the school. I raised the gun and looked into the barrel. At first it was just a dark spot against the background of the members of the special unit, who were surrounding the building. I focused on the barrel and everything around it became foggy.

‘No, this wasn't what I wanted. My body continued doing its own thing. My trigger finger bent. I wasn't there anymore. Didn't exist. NOTHING.

‘NOTHING.

‘NOTHING.

‘Me NOTHING. An indescribable terror I'd never experienced before pulled me out of it. I found myself in the middle of the road. I was turned towards the school. Children were bumping into me. I was still holding the pistol in my pocket. The children weren't running away. They were playing catch. I tried to understand where I was. It was all just a dream. A vision. And suddenly I was filled with joy that I existed. It didn't matter where and how, what was important was that I was there at all. For as long as I can be. It's better to live, however shitty you life may be, than to have no life at all. The experience of nothingness is still pressing somewhere at the back of my head.'

He stopped talking.

Those eyes were my eyes. Then in the mirror. Years ago. I wanted to put my hand on his shoulder and squeeze it. We had gone the same way. Selim, too, had finally and painfully arrived at what everybody knows.

Some of us just find it more difficult to grasp it than others.

He went.

Past me, down the road. Following the last of the line of workers.

I'd never noticed that he was hunchbacked. Or maybe he just held himself like that now.

He caught up with the workers and joined them. Became part of the crowd.

Disappeared.

I reached in my pocket for cigarettes. I felt the metal and moved my hand away as if I'd touched something slimy.

I ran.

Past the foundry between the blocks of flats. The air
smelled of food.

I crossed the tip, the rubble of deserted factory buildings. Through the ghetto, past the Gypsy settlement, I ran up by the river.

A forest came down the slope and let me into it. I tripped over a root and rolled down onto a narrow stretch of sand by the water. I picked myself up and sat down. Small waves were splashing against the soles of my tennis shoes.

I watched the weeping willows on the opposite bank. The branches reached down into the water that tried to carry them with it.

But they never went.

I put the pistol on my palm and looked at it. Something in its ugliness attracted me. It was cold.

With a swing of my arm I threw it in the water. The barrel stood up just across the middle of the river for a second. And then it was carried away by the current.

I took the cartridges. Swung my arm once more and created a few small splashes on the surface of the water. They disappeared even before I could count them.

I lit a cigarette.

From behind the treetops, which framed the sky, floated a dark cloud of red dust.

I didn't move until darkness came.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

PART THREE

Now there comes a time to every man

When he must turn his back on the crowd

When the glare of the lights gets much too bright

And the music plays too loud

When a man must run from the deeds he has done

Recalling those days with a sigh
.

– M. Heron, 1968

 

 

 

12

The driver dropped me off in front of the foundry. It had changed in the fortnight since I'd last seen it.

I stood in front of the fence and watched. They were shooing a film.

They'd erected a wooden machine gun tower. Workers dressed in concentration camp uniforms were wandering around among the heaps of scrap metal.

The camera whirred.

An SS officer shot a sick woman in the head.

A guard walked past me dressed in a German uniform, with a helmet and a gun. He looked good.

I grinned at him.

He looked back at me with poisonous hatred and marched off onto the set. It must have made a good shot. He'd make a career in his old age. I noticed Sheriff in a row of prisoners. He'd replaced the Stetson with a striped cap. He was pretending he hadn't seen me. I waited for a break and called him over. He fiddled with the cap in front of his groin and hesitated. Without his boots and the cowboy suit, he felt naked and powerless. I understood that. I had been without my Cartier for a while, too. I didn't mean to torture him, just to inquire after Selim.

He hadn't seen him. He'd not been seen either at work or the dormitory for two weeks. Ibro was getting out of the hospital that day.

I said goodbye and left. He got back in line.

The bar was half empty. Ibro and Selim were sitting in the corner. Having a friendly chat. There really was nothing that Ibro would begrudge anybody.

He waved to me cheerfully. I nodded. I didn't sit down at their table.

Selim lowered his eyes. He was eager to get back to chatting about women and football.

I took my beer to the shelf along the wall. Above it there was a mirror that ran the length of the wall.

I watched their reflection. I couldn't tell them apart. They looked alike.

Just like everybody else in there.

I raised my glass and poured a drop into my mouth. Saw myself in the mirror. There was nothing different about me either. I could easily have joined them.

But I didn't go to sit with them. We all need to deceive ourselves, as well as others, if we want to survive. We all need a pose, a mask to hide behind. Without one, is it worth going on at all?

I left half the beer in the bottle. I turned towards the exit. In the middle of my move, Selim's and my eyes met for a moment. I opened my mouth, immediately changed my mind, and gave up.

If there is any emotional or physical state you're unable to express in three simple sentences it's better to give up. To leave it. To fuck off.

I went. After my legs, as they happen to grow out of my ass.

I stopped in front of the dormitory.

I slid the top off the skip. It stank.

I jumped onto the edge and dropped in. The real summer heat that had been around for just over a week had turned everything into a stinking, shapeless mess.

It squelched under the soles of my shoes.

There wasn't much rubbish there. Just a few rotting bits of this and that.

I bent over and rummaged through old empty tins. Pieces of streaky bacon and onion peels between sheets of paper used in shops for wrapping slices of salami.

When my eyes got used to the dark, I saw it.

It was leaning on the back wall as if somebody had gently put it there.

A large photo of Nastassja's face.

I flicked a piece of rancid yellow bacon off her chin.

The other photographs were there, too. Both the posters. There was still a drop of Selim's blood on Tess.

They all went back to where I'd brought them from. They had done their work. I asked myself what was the matter with me, why didn't I just leave them there.

I didn't see any point in awakening the dead, but I still too the large photo with me.

Out.

I stayed sitting on the edge of the container with my legs dangling down.

My ankles and calves were splashed with the smelly muck. When I knocked my heels on the metal the onion fell off. Only two beans stayed on.

Long Legs came past in Bermuda shorts and a colourful T-shirt, holding hands with some hunk.

He looked like a model from an aftershave ad.

The aftershave I use.

He talked loudly, laughing at his own jokes. Long Legs
was looking through him, watching me with a mixture of surprise and sadness, for which I couldn't find a reason.

They went past and at the end of the street, just before they turned the corner, she looked over her boyfriend's shoulder. I felt like running after her. But I just stayed sitting.

Without looking down, I straightened the photograph between my thighs. A warm breeze whirled the thin red dust around the deserted dormitories and rocked the plastic bags hanging from the windows. The foundry was wheezing, roaring, and whistling down the empty street.

I opened my palm, still staring in front of me.

I could feel the paper moving more and more strongly. The wind grabbed Nastassja and carried her with it, dragging her across the tarmac.

The photo was turning and folding. Dancing in the whirlwind.

Playfully it disappeared around the corner.

I sat there, and I didn't even feel like smoking.

I became painfully aware of the fact that the air around me was full of words and deeds, which had got trapped between the hills and which ruled and suffocated the people, who were too weak to lead their own lives. The decency, morality, and conformity that make you normal.

I grinned and looked up.

The sun blinded me.

I raised my legs.

I rolled over and fell into the container.

I was already laughing while I fell. A loud but hollow laugh.

I lay there, letting the laughter echo around my skull.

When it finally disappeared, I thought it fitting to have at least a small moan. But I couldn't force myself that far.

I needed a moment to be away from it all and alone.

I didn't moan.

I didn't even think.

I just watched the rectangle of blue sky above me until it started to fade and grow darker.

It was within my reach but I still didn't strike and smash it with my fist.

Everybody must have something unattainable.