The Stranger's Woes (77 page)

Two months of deep depression greatly reduced my daily needs and expenses, so I managed to save a fair amount of money. Some of it I planned to spend on a VCR so I could watch the movies in my collection again. Not out of the corner of my eye, in bits and pieces, like before, but very attentively. Every movie from beginning to end. I had to kill time somehow.

The collection was in a nearly inaccessible place, however, and I had to address that issue. One day I managed to bring myself to call Julia. I said I was going to come over to get my tapes. “Okay,” she said. I mustered my will, clenched my teeth, and went over to her place.

She greeted me in the doorway, saying firmly that it wasn’t very nice of me to take the presents back. I could hear her mother clearing her throat significantly from the living room. Julia must have invited her for moral support.

“What do you mean ‘presents’?” I said. “I bought the movies to watch with you, and—”

Her reply made it obvious that she was not going to give up the disputed property. “It’s only fair,” she said. “After all, you came over almost every day and ate my food. And food costs money. Probably even more than the tapes. Plus, I don’t understand why you need them. You don’t even have a VCR, and you’re never going to get one. You’re too frivolous. Granted, it’s not so bad. In fact, Max, it’s your best quality.”

So we thrashed it out.

It was ridiculous and unfair to call me a sponger. I had never come over to see her empty-handed. I always brought her something: aromatic teas in small paper bags, tiny cookies that melted in your mouth, fruit, or sugarcoated flowers. I loved giving her presents, and I couldn’t afford anything more extravagant than those little things.

Maybe she was right when she said I was living in a dream and had lost touch with reality. It had definitely never occurred to me that when I got up to make a sandwich in the middle of the night, a calculator began whirring inside the head of the woman I loved. That blow was the hardest. It was the ultimate and irreversible crash of my illusions. Who cared about a movie collection? I turned around and began walking downstairs, not bothering to wait for the elevator.

The last thing I heard was Julia’s almost inaudible sigh of relief. But of course. She’d managed to keep the property that she’d grown accustomed to considering her own. And as far as she was concerned, I could go to the nearest junkyard, where I belonged.

An invisible and impenetrable barrier grew up between me and the rest of the world. Reality bore no connection to me anymore. It remained somewhere far, far away. And it wasn’t really so bad. In any case, I finally stopped feeling bad. Or sad. Or anything at all.

Julia called a week later. She told me not to be angry and asked me if I wanted to see her. I said no. Then she called a few more times, saying she was sad that I hadn’t been coming over to see her. I said I was too busy, but maybe next week, or in a month . . . Her voice didn’t inspire any emotion in me anymore. I didn’t understand what this strange woman wanted from me. Why the hell was she calling?

I never got around to buying a VCR. Even thinking about it made me sick. Half a year later, on a cloudy November day, I saw Sir Juffin Hully in my dream. That was when my life here ended once and for all.

I finished my coffee in a single gulp and went to the bathroom to shave. I decided to drop in on Julia unexpectedly, like premature death, without bothering to call her first. Who knew what kinds of excuses she’d come up with? I just needed to get into her living room for a few minutes, and then . . . Surprise, surprise.

I must say I wasn’t feeling anything even remotely resembling vengeance. I was possessed by a cold curiosity and an uncontrollable, merciless happiness that scared even me a little bit. I was going to have fun, and my mysterious second heart was telling me I was doing the right thing. Go ahead and do it, it told me. I didn’t know what kinds of principles governed that cryptic muscle, but it sure didn’t have an ax to grind with Julia. When my affair with Julia was at its lowest point, I still made do with just one heart, like everybody else.

I dressed very carefully, eliminated the remains of the stubble on my chin, and gathered my hair into an elegant ponytail. Boy, did I look suave! All the eighth-grade girls would swoon.

Having finished admiring myself in the mirror I went outside. I wasn’t planning to return home again. I didn’t dare think that my search for the streetcar on Green Street might not pan out. Granted, I had grounds for optimism: if Mackie said I was going to be all right, there were no two ways about it.

I walked up the stairs to the sixth floor. I couldn’t trust elevators anymore. It was pretty odd, but I had already learned to respect my own oddities and premonitions. They didn’t just come out of the blue.

When I caught my breath again I rang the doorbell. I felt like laughing. It was too funny. Then again, I’ve always tended to go a little overboard with everything.

The door opened. Julia stood in the doorway fiddling with the collar of her checkered blouse, as if she couldn’t decide whether to button it up to be out of harm’s way or leave it as it was. She chose the latter. Attagirl.

I smiled a warm smile. It turned out I was darn happy to see her. The bad memories didn’t matter anymore. But I wasn’t going to change my mind. My whole collection—my favorite movies, which I had carefully selected; the junk that I had bought on a whim; and the movies I hadn’t gotten around to watching—all of them were going with me to Echo. That was the only thing that mattered to me now, and I knew it was
right
. That vague notion popped up in the midst of my uncertainty more and more often. A new soloist had emerged in the choir of voices that had been mumbling incoherently in the dark corners of my mind. Unlike the other voices, this one was strong and confident.

“You look different,” Julia said finally.

She seemed glad to see me, too, but something was stopping her from displaying it openly. But of course, it was Sir Max from Echo visiting her today, and Julia hadn’t had the pleasure of meeting him yet.

“Must be my hair,” I said. “Can I come in? I won’t be long. Really.”

“Yes, of course.”

She stepped aside, allowing me to pass. I produced a small parcel from the pocket of my coat.

“Got some tea for you. I don’t think we’ve had this kind before.”

“Right,” she said, fiddling absently with the parcel. “Let’s go to the kitchen and I’ll make it. You’re not mad at me anymore?”

“I dropped the whole getting-mad business long ago,” I said. And it was true. “To tell you the truth, I don’t even remember why I was supposed to be mad at you. So it’s all right.”

Julia went out to the kitchen, and I hesitated in the living room by a new rack with a TV, VCR, and a great number of videotapes. Not long before I had been expelled from this heaven, there had been more than a hundred. Now there must have been even more, but not by many. Julia wasn’t a spendthrift—she wouldn’t waste money on silly things.

I carefully pulled the power cord from the outlet and unplugged the other cables. Now the rack was ready to be placed between my left thumb and index finger. This could wait, though. First I was going to have a cup of tea in the company of a nice girl. Now Julia awoke in me a feeling of—no, not of passion but of genuine sympathy. As for the calculator in her head, well, what did I care about the problems of the inhabitants of this World, which had long ago become strange to me? It’s no bed of roses here, as I had come to understand. Tough for them, but life goes on.

“Come in here, Max. It’s cozier,” Julia said from the kitchen.

I obeyed. She had already put the kettle on and was busy opening the parcel with tea. A small white rat was sitting on the kitchen table.

“A new friend, huh?” I said.

Julia quickly grabbed the rodent and put it in the breast pocket of her checkered blouse, as though I were in the habit of snacking on little rats.

“This little girl is afraid of strangers,” Julia said.

“That’s very smart of her,” I said. “We strangers are a peculiar bunch. So, what’s new?”

Julia talked and I listened to her with half an ear. She seemed to be doing fine, although my lengthy absence hadn’t seemed to facilitate the creation of another family unit. Why had she wanted to break up with me, then? I thought.

The tea wasn’t very good, though maybe I had just forgotten the taste of hot tea. After I finished one cup, I realized that I had had enough. I was beginning to get bored. Also, I couldn’t believe that what was happening was real. We resembled characters from, say, episode one hundred eighty of some soap opera. And Julia was giving me strange looks. No wonder, though. She had known the Max I used to be very well. Of course she was a little suspicious of this new one.

“Well, I’d better be going, then,” I said.

“Sure.”

She frowned, and then said cautiously, “Why did you decide to drop by?”

“I don’t know,” I lied. Then I decided to say something that was a little closer to the truth. “I guess I just came to say goodbye.”

“Are you going out of town?”

“Something like that,” I said. “Yeah, I guess I’ll be going out of town.”

“Okay, then. Good luck. Thanks for dropping by.”

The tone of her voice implied that I was the one who had left her. And, scoundrel that I was, I had also pinched the silver spoons from the chest. It was amusing.

She got up and went through the living room. I followed behind. When I was walking past the rack with the TV I executed my best trick. One very subtle motion of my left hand, and the entire thing disappeared into my fist. The heist was so quick and soundless that Julia didn’t even turn around.

“Well, so long, honey,” I said, and walked out of the apartment.

The expression on my face must have been ominous because Julia looked away, scared, and took a step backward when she was letting me out. I did manage to turn around and give her a tender kiss on the nose, though. I had been dying to know what Mr. Judas Iscariot felt at the moment of his historic kiss. If he was anything like me, he enjoyed it immensely.

I walked down all the stairs again. Deep down in my heart I was hoping that Julia would dash out onto the landing to inform the world about her loss. Moreover, I was really counting on it. I anticipated a flood of accusations and imagined, not without pleasure, how I’d offer to turn my pockets inside out—maybe there would be a TV in one of them. Let’s see, where did I put it?