The silence after our happiness felt as if the furniture had broken out in goose bumps. We fell flat on our faces, right back into our hopelessness, especially Paul. He was always afraid we might grow used to happiness. While I kept laughing, he had cut the snagged hairs, the scissors were again hanging on the wall, beside the keys, the huge borrowed trousers lay in the corner. Still in just his underpants, Paul stepped from the room into the hall and stood in the sunlight, in a long rectangular patch that crossed the floor and part of the wall. The sunlight sliced through the shadow cast by his legs right above the knees.
Why do you always go on laughing until you gloat, he asked.
That sounded like Nelu saying:
There you go again, happy in your own filthy, ass-backward way.
Nelu had something there, I was happy because I needed to be. When it came to hurting people, Nelu was the expert. But my tongue was quicker than his, and my hands were more adroit. He would miss whiskers on his chin while shaving, and
when he made coffee the heating element would fall out of the mug. When it came to tying his shoelaces he was all thumbs, it took forever, and they were never properly tied. He had a great deal to say on the subject of buttons, but he was incapable of sewing one on.
Bungled again, I’d say to him, when he messed something up.
Every few days he’d bang his head against the cabinet door. Or else he’d drop his freshly sharpened pencil, bend to pick it up, and forget that the drawer above his head was still open. He’d have a fresh bruise, and I would say:
Another violet coming into bloom.
And laugh until he left me with my contempt and skipped out to the factory yard, where he still counted as somebody in the eyes of others. No matter how long he stayed away, I’d still be laughing when he came back, or else I’d start up again. He would massage his fresh bruise, next to the greenish-blue ones from before.
It’s possible that my laughing fits over Nelu were similar to those with Paul. But the contempt I felt for Nelu was important, my laughter was sheer schadenfreude. As far as I was concerned, Nelu deserved whatever happened to him. And whatever happened was nowhere near enough. Fine with me if Nelu couldn’t stand my ass-backward happiness. But mine wasn’t filthy—his was. He maneuvered me into a corner until I wound up getting the sack. Because being able to shave smoothly or tie your shoelaces or sew on a button doesn’t mean much in the factory. The abilities that count there are completely different . . .
Of course I enjoyed my ass-backward happiness all the more after Nelu had done his worst. After the first notes, my laughter
sounded as though I couldn’t care less about his denunciation. Even so, I was powerless to ward off the harm he inflicted.
When we had finished dancing, Paul drove into town on his Java to buy two pairs of shoes: one to put on now and a spare to stash in the tool cabinet. I watched him take off, the red Java down on the street looked as beautiful as the red enamel coffee tin on the kitchen table. I stepped through the patch of sunlight in the hall, at a loss for what to do with myself. Inside the storage closet I came across my first pair of wedding shoes, they were white. My second pair were brown. They were lying underneath Paul’s sandals with the worn-out soles, the ones from last summer. Autumn had come overnight, a low sky, rain pressing the rotting leaves down into the earth. And overnight we stopped wearing our summer things and needed what money we had for buying winter clothes rather than spending it on expensive new half-soles for the sandals. The weather alone was reason enough not to take summer sandals to the shoemaker’s. They’d have to wait a while before it was their turn. We could scarcely manage the barest necessities.
The patch of sunlight was now entirely on the floor, but it still refused to touch the borrowed trousers. I didn’t touch them, either. The silence in our apartment was the kind that makes you feel you’re filling the whole space, from the floor all the way to the ceiling, which isn’t possible. Even a plate falling off the table or a picture falling off the wall—as if my father were dying all over again—would have been better. I crossed the patch of sunlight into the room and with wary hands I shut the window, although not without first looking out: there on the sidewalk, where no ordinary person is allowed to park, two people were sitting in a red car. One was gesticulating, the other was smoking. I walked out of the room into the hall, into the kitchen, back into
the hall. I know what it’s like when you’re pacing back and forth, unable to remember what it was you had just set out to do—until it finally occurs to you. Back and forth on the floor, shuffling or stepping too deliberately, just getting away from wherever you happen to be. I tossed the wedding shoes into the storage closet and closed the door. But I kept Paul’s sandals and wiped off the cobwebs. A squashed blackberry was stuck to the right sole. Either that or the red car suddenly brought everything back: last summer at the river, Paul naked after showering at the factory, dancing together in the hall, the rough way Paul had grabbed the scissors from my hand.
Instead of these thoughts we’re constantly mulling over, it would be better to have the actual things inside your head, so you could reach in and touch them. People you want, or people you want to be rid of. Objects you’ve held on to or lost. There would be an order to things in my head: in the center would be Paul, but not my clutching at him and running away from him and loving him all at the same time. The sidewalks would run along my temples, as far as they like, and under my cheeks might be the shops with their glass display cases, though not my pointless destinations in the city. Of course there’s no escaping Albu’s lackey, who’s probably sitting out there in the red car, waiting to ring our doorbell and give me my summons—not deliver, it’s never in writing, so that I’m always left to worry whether Paul or I might have misheard the date. Albu’s lackey would be lurking somewhere in the back of my head—and I’d prefer to have him there in person instead of his soft voice that eats right into me and is still stuck somewhere inside from the last time, and which pops right up the minute he’s back at my door. The bridge over the river and my first husband with his suitcase would be in the back of my head, but not my suggestion that he go ahead and jump. And in my cerebellum,
where we supposedly keep our sense of balance, would be a fly resting on a table, instead of an evening meal chewed and swallowed with no appetite. Surfaces and contours would be divided into friends and foes, easy to tell apart. And in between there’d still be some space for happiness.
I took some newspaper and wrapped up the sandals, but then changed my mind and put them in a plastic bag, since I didn’t want to walk past the red car carrying a bundle of papers. I wanted to do something special for Paul, because I had laughed too long. And I wanted to know what the two faces in the car looked like. In the end I couldn’t say whether it was the faces or Paul’s sandals that drew me out into the street.
There are people who distinguish not only between objects and thoughts, but also between thoughts and feelings. I wonder how. It’s inconceivable that the swallows strung out among the clouds above the beanfield should have exactly the same wingtips as Nelu’s mustache, but that’s only a misperception. As with all misperceptions, I can’t tell whether it’s the objects themselves or the thoughts about them that account for the error. But since that’s the way it is, the mind has to share in the burden and take on as many misperceptions as the earth has trees. I folded two fifty-leu notes into small squares, and picked them up in one hand along with the plastic bag. The elevator door opened, my face bounced into the mirror before I followed with my feet. The floor clanked as the elevator started down.
I walked right up to the red car, I wanted both of them to see that the world is full of misperceptions and that I could come down to them instead of their coming up. Through the open window of the car I asked:
Have you got a light.
I wanted to add: That’s okay, I don’t really smoke, I just wanted to know if you had a light. I had imagined they would
both give me a light right away, in order to get rid of me, but I was wrong. Everything turned out differently. The man shook his head, and the woman snapped at me:
Can’t you see we’re not smoking.
He pounded the steering wheel and laughed as if she’d scored a big hit. The letters
A
and
N
flashed on his signet ring, and the woman’s hair gleamed crow-black in the sun while she whispered something in his ear. Her face was an oily tan from sunbathing, and around her neck hung a speckled seashell necklace. I said:
You could have been smoking before, and you might light up again after I’m gone. Or perhaps I should say you might go on necking.
Hey, miss, she said, in case you haven’t gotten fucked today because your husband’s banging whores after work, why don’t you go to the bar and get yourself one of those guys with a big cock. He’ll knock those fancy ideas out of you.
You must be joking, I said, I’d rather wait until my man comes home, he’s got a cock the size of a telephone pole that hoists me right up to heaven.
Of course they hadn’t been necking: they did that someplace else. She turned spiteful so fast she must have felt as if I’d caught her in the act. And he must have felt the same way, or else he wouldn’t have sat there small and dumb as a turd. He was probably on duty, and she was helping him pass the time. Before she rolled up the window, I said:
From what I hear, the ones who aren’t getting any are all wearing seashell necklaces this summer, or is that just dried pigeon shit.
Her seashell necklace really did look exactly like that. Walking away, I could hear my own footsteps; I felt a little nauseous. The door to the bar was open, instead of looking
inside I looked at the linden trees, which I knew weren’t drunk. But I couldn’t help hearing the drunken voices. The smell of brandy, coffee, smoke, disinfectant, and the dust of summer followed close behind me.
For the first time there was no music playing at the shoemaker’s. The cassette recorder with the batteries held in place by a piece of elastic was not in its usual place on the table. A young man sat behind the workbench, his teeth protruding so that his lips never fully closed over his mouth. Since he wasn’t wearing an apron I supposed he was the shoemaker’s son-in-law, the accordion player. I asked after the old shoemaker. The young man crossed himself four times and said:
Dead.
Where is he buried, I asked.
He fished about in a drawer, I assumed for a piece of paper, but he pulled out a cigarette.
Are you here to look for graves or to have your shoes fixed.
I unwrapped the shoes from the newspaper, he blew the smoke straight out and watched my fingers, as if the shoes might explode at any moment.
Had he been sick, I asked.
He nodded.
What did he have.
No money, said the young man.
Did he kill himself.
How do you get that.
I don’t know, I’m asking you.
He shook his head.
A young man can’t be blamed for an old man’s dying, I thought, but he could at least have some sympathy. All that matters to this wry-face is that a place became available in a row of shops where customers pass by from morning till night.
He stubbed out the cigarette in a tin can and said:
The grave’s on Mulberry Street, is that good enough, or am I supposed to know which row it’s in.
That’s good enough for more than you think.
My feelings exactly, he said. Ever since I came here in March I’ve had to talk about the old shoemaker.
I thought you were his son-in-law, I said.
God forbid. My first day here this guy shows up with so many black and yellow bruises he looked like a canary, and starts clearing out the workshop right under my nose. All the leather, hammers, pegs and lasts, buckles and nails, he took the whole works, even the emery paper and polishes and brushes. These things don’t come with the workshop, he told me. What do you mean, I said: I didn’t bring anything with me, I left everything to the person who took over my place in Josefstadt district. He said he could sell the stuff to me if I wanted. You know, at home they were waiting for me to start earning something, they didn’t have enough money in the house to buy a loaf of bread. But I’m not so crazy as to pay for what’s already mine.
The old man had a lot of customers, I said, that means he must have had some money, too.
His daughter drank her way through the money, the young man said, and she beat up on the son-in-law, which is why he looked the way he did. When he was clearing out the place, I asked him if he was also a shoemaker. He spread out his pitiful white fingers and said: Are you kidding, do I look like you. So I asked the man what he wanted the stuff for. To play the accordion, he said. Oh, I said, so that’s how you got the bruises. No, he said, my wife gave me those. I wondered whether I should go to the bar and get the two policemen who are always sitting there. But the locals still don’t know me, so that would have
only caused trouble. The accordion player might have said it was me who had turned him into a canary. On second thought I really should have given him another black eye, he deserved it.
The only trees on Mulberry Street are acacias. There’s an alcoholic who lives at one end of the street. At the other end lies Lilli. And now the shoemaker as well. The old man was short and skinny, but he had big hands and rounded fingernails that the leather had discolored a beautiful brown so they looked like ten roasted pumpkin seeds. Whenever I went to his shop he would run his hand over his head as if he still had his hair. The sweat would bead up on his bald spot while the cassette recorder played folk music at low volume, and his head shone like the glass balls people place in the flower beds around their houses. It looked like it might shatter the instant he banged into something.
So, you’ve danced those shoes to pieces again, he joked. Actually I don’t know if he was joking. All I know is that just before I went and met the new shoemaker, I had danced, really for the first time in my life, to a song in which death comes like a special prize following a life that’s been paid for dearly. After that evening in the restaurant I had never again danced with my first husband, and before that song I had never danced with Paul. I shouldn’t have gone to the shoemaker’s after dancing with Paul, I should have at least waited one more day, then the old man would still have been alive. It was my fault that he was dead.