The Bridge (9 page)

At the first intersection the young man didn’t wait for the green light for pedestrians. He crossed the street, paying no attention to the sudden braking and angry honks. Miss Anita joined him without a moment’s hesitation. She liked to cross the street like that too. Here was another thing they had in common, although when she gave it some thought, as his mother she should scold him. He was still a child, after all, he might come to harm.

When he entered the first perfume shop on the other side of the street, he left his bike by the window again. This annoyed Miss Anita. He seemed to be telling her he didn’t want her to go inside.

As she stood with her hand resting on the bicycle basket, this time she managed a somewhat better look inside the shop. She saw a salesgirl put various boxes and tubes in front of the young man. Unlike in the shoe store, he seemed undecided here. The counter was soon covered with small objects.

If he’d been a woman she would have understood his quandary, but what need was there to pick and choose between men’s cosmetics? They were a simple matter. A good quarter of an hour passed, however, before he finally made up his mind. He was already on the way out, carrying a blue bag, when he suddenly went back to the counter as though he’d forgotten something. He spoke to the salesgirl once again, pointing with his thumb behind his back, towards the window.

Miss Anita was puzzled. Was he pointing at her? She felt like hightailing it the same instant, but she couldn’t leave the bike. It isn’t easy with children, she concluded. They put you in impossible positions. As she was pondering what to do, the salesgirl went up to the window and took a long red wig off one of the gray plastic busts.

What does he need that for? wondered Miss Anita, caught in a dilemma. She brightened at the thought that he might be buying it for her. How nice! He wants his mother to have hair like his. She had never worn a wig, and up until then red had never been her favorite color, but she would certainly accept the gift. How could she refuse it?

But no gift was presented to her when the young man left the perfume shop. Once again he took absolutely no notice of her standing by the bicycle. He just put the blue bag in the basket and continued down the street. Offended, she stared at his back for several moments, then headed after him. If it had been anyone else, she would have made a scene. But her son, of course, was an exception.

The next time he stopped was in front of another luxury boutique. As she watched him enter, pushing the bicycle, she wondered in confusion what he was doing in a fancy shop selling women’s lingerie.

Had she been on her own, she would never have set foot in there, but now it was clear she had to go in after him. She went quite unnoticed here too. Both salesgirls devoted their attention solely to the young man. There was no need to say anything. As though knowing what he’d come for, they hastened to a marble shelf and took down a thin box with a large gold crown embossed on it.

Miss Anita didn’t wear such lingerie; moreover, she despised it. Even so, the pink silk camisole with thin straps and lace trim that was taken out of the box filled her with admiration. She tried to imagine herself in it. Suddenly there was nothing objectionable about it.

The young man just nodded briefly. The camisole was folded and returned to the box, which was wrapped in turquoise paper and tied with a dark blue ribbon. There was no payment this time either. With another nod, the customer took the box, put it under his arm and went out.

On a square not far from the shop, the young man halted at a trolleybus stop. Miss Anita smiled. Bicycles were not allowed in trolleybuses, but she still took hers in from time to time. Once she’d caused a traffic jam because the driver refused to continue until she got off. She did in the end, but only after someone had called the police.

When they entered the trolleybus, there was none of the usual grumbling from the other passengers. On the contrary, they were kind enough to make room for the bike at the back of the bus. This exasperated Miss Anita to no end. How unfair! Had she been the one, she would have already received a torrent of disapproval and even insults, while here they were all looking kindly on her son. Although she was aware that this should actually please her, she felt a pang of jealousy.

After they had passed several stops, a much stronger wave of jealousy washed over her. Why hadn’t she thought of it before? Of course! Everything he’d bought in the perfumery and lingerie shop had been not for her, as she’d naively thought, but for some other woman. She barely suppressed the impulse to go up and give him a resounding slap in front of everyone.

Oh well, she must reconcile herself to the fact that one day he would leave her for someone else, he couldn’t stay with his mother forever. But it wasn’t time for that yet, why, she’d only just met him. Perhaps she was berating him unjustly. He couldn’t be the one to blame, of course, he was too young and inexperienced.

Someone must have turned his head. The type wasn’t hard to imagine. Certainly an older and unattractive woman. They liked to pounce on young men. But rich too. Of course! That’s why he had charge accounts in fancy shops.

Wonderful. Since he was clearly heading for a rendezvous with her, this was a chance to tell the old bag what she thought about this seduction of her son. Buying him, actually. When she got her hands on the woman feathers would fly.

But when they got off the trolleybus she saw they were not in the part of town with villas surrounded by tall hedges, as she’d supposed. The neighborhood was rather gloomy. Gray four-story buildings lined both sides of the street and there were no shops.

They went some fifty meters and then he stopped in front of a house without a single window. The only thing interrupting the uniform olive-green fa
ç
ade was a small black door. Next to it was a dusty brass plate with the inscription: “City Mental Institution”.

She did not enter immediately after her son. A rare feeling of guilt oppressed her. Accepting any woman he was attached to, old floozy or not, would be hard. But if he’d set his heart on someone from this place, that was another matter altogether. She felt kindly towards the poor souls locked up in there. People often said that she too was crazy just because she was unconventional.

She thought she’d find a guard behind the door, but no one was there when she entered. At the end of a long corridor she saw her son lean the bike against a wall, take the blue bag out of the basket and disappear off somewhere to the right. When she got there, she found stairs winding downwards.

Having descended after him, she found herself at the beginning of a new corridor, considerably shorter than the one above. There was a metal door to the left of the stairs and another with a reinforced glass window at the end of the corridor, which the young man had just closed behind him. When she got up close enough she managed to read the tiny inscription on the plate under the window: “Kitchen”.

She pressed down on the handle, but the door didn’t open. She tried once again, pushing with her shoulder, again with no result. Angered, she put her face against the window and looked inside.

A large table filled the middle of the room, while the walls were lined with shelves, cabinets, refrigerators and ovens. To either side of the table were three men wearing light-green pants, sleeveless undershirts and toques. They were rolling out dough with wide rolling pins and it covered almost the whole surface of the table.

Miss Anita put her face right up against the window so she could see the perimeter of the room, but her son was nowhere to be seen. He must have gone through the door on the right that probably led to the pantry. But why was he in there? Or rather, what on earth was he doing in the kitchen? Was he intending to treat his chosen one with something sweet? That would be nice. She liked to receive sweets, too.

Minutes passed and nothing happened. The cooks rolled their pins over the dough with harmonious movements, as though to a rhythm of music that couldn’t be heard in the corridor. Miss Anita couldn’t imagine what enormous thing they were preparing.

Finally they raised their rolling pins and looked towards the side door. Again she pressed her cheek against the metal edge of the window. A girl with long red hair stepped out of the pantry into the kitchen. She was wearing nothing but the pink camisole and was garishly made up in matching shades.

So that’s it, thought Miss Anita. This is where they have their secret rendezvous. Clever. She couldn’t see very well at such an angle through the reinforced glass, but the girl seemed attractive. She was almost as tall as her son, with regular facial features that seemed somehow familiar.

Head bowed, clearly feeling awkward, the girl headed around the table. When she was standing next to the cook in the middle, she started to go down and quickly disappeared from Miss Anita’s sight. Her first thought was that the girl had gone down through an opening in the floor, which must certainly be the beginning of a secret passage taking her back to her cell without being seen.

But then the three cooks from that side of the table disappeared as well. What did this mean? And where was her son? Why hadn’t he come out of the pantry? Nothing happened for a few moments, and then four figures came up from behind the table.

The three cooks had raised the girl horizontally, holding her under the shoulders, hips and calves. Even before Miss Anita caught sight of the black and white sneakers, she understood her initial misconception. Her eyes grew as round as saucers.

There had been no older woman or girl. What he’d bought in the last two stores was for him: the cosmetics, wig and camisole. She’d never imagined in her wildest dreams that her son would have such inclinations. How horrible! What was she to do? What position should she take? She couldn’t forsake him, could she? She would have to accept him as he was. She was his mother, after all. How could she turn her back on him?

But that wasn’t the most important thing at the moment. What did these strapping men want from him? Why, he was still a child, so to speak. She watched in bewilderment as they carried her son’s rigid body to the middle of the table. Putting aside their rolling pins, three new pairs of hands stretched out from the other side and held him under the back and feet.

He lay there briefly without moving, as though in a living net, and then the hands started to descend. They slipped out deftly right above the tabletop, lowering the young man into the middle of the dough. What did these perverts have in mind? Although still willing to accept the fact that her son wasn’t normal, she wasn’t about to watch any debauchery.

But what she vaguely anticipated did not happen. The cooks started to slip their fingers under the dough along the edge of the table. When their hands reached the young man’s body, they wrapped first one side of the sheet-like shroud over him and then the other.

Now he was lying in the middle of the table rolled up like an enormous sausage roll, his unmatched sneakers sticking out of one end and his tuft of red hair from the other. He’ll suffocate inside, thought his mother frantically. Are these monsters at all aware of the fact?

And then she discovered there are worse fates than suffocation. One of the cooks approached the left-hand wall. She noted with alarm that the rectangular door belonged to a large oven and not a white cabinet. The cook opened it, then stepped back from the intense heat.

Fused to the small window, Miss Anita watched in disbelief as the six cooks picked up what she’d thought was the tabletop, but was actually a large tin surface. The end with the red wig sticking out soon started to enter the glowing hot compartment.

Miss Anita banged her fists on the window hysterically and started to scream. But no one in the kitchen paid any attention. The baking tin with her son wrapped in dough was steadily disappearing into the oven. When the sneakers were inside too, they closed the door.

Their job finished, the six cooks headed for the other side of the kitchen. One by one they entered the room which the young man disguised as a girl had left just a few minutes before.

Completely beside herself, Miss Anita started to kick the door and tug at the handle. The small corridor was now echoing with noise. If there was no one here in the basement, she reasoned, finally managing a coherent thought, there must be someone upstairs. This was indeed a madhouse, but not all of them had to be crazy.

Just as she turned to go up, the door next to the stairs opened. She stopped in mid-step and stared at her son standing in the doorway. He looked quite normal, as though the travesties of a moment before, wrapping him in sticky dough and putting him in the oven, had been inflicted on someone else entirely. He ran up the steps.

Miss Anita saw red. Her helplessness and despair were instantly transformed into the quintessence of rage. Now he was in for it. Once she was through with him, he would never think of practicing his stupid circus tricks on her again. She could have died of panic. She hastened after him.

When she reached the top of the stairs, he was just going out of the black door into the street. As soon as she emerged into the falling dusk, she realized it wouldn’t be easy to get her hands on him. He was pedaling fast and furiously on the bike, disappearing down the street. She stamped her feet on the pavement in frustration, then headed off in hot pursuit.

She paid no attention to the occasional passers-by who scrambled out of her way. She only growled at one of them who made a remark. It wasn’t until they’d traveled three blocks that she realized her son wasn’t trying to get away from her. Had he wanted to, he could have easily gone beyond her reach. His cycling speed was just enough to maintain the distance between them. When she started to pant and slow down, he did the same.