One of them should have fainted or at least said that he could not go on and just sat down.
But it seemed to Max that it would never happen. He could not say it himself because it would not be right considering his position, Samo was not a serious candidate, and as for Raf, Max felt he did not really know him well enough to be able to say. He did not look like a sporty type, but skinny and bony. Alfonz with his thick shirt and corduroy trousers seemed Max’s best bet. His face was red hot and he kept having to use his sleeve to wipe away the streams of sweat pouring from his forehead.
Not one of them wanted to admit defeat and there they were, carrying the drink — Samo and Alfonz a crate of beer, Raf and Max the other bottles — with rucksacks on their backs. The previously quite innocent sunshine was tormenting them whenever it reached at them between the branches of the pine trees through which the road led. Up to the top of the hill and down to the campsite the road really was worthy of that name but after that it turned into a neglected and overgrown cart-track lined with electricity poles.
They stopped at the junction without putting down the drink and had a look at the campsite in front of them. The last group of tourists had crowded into the reception, and the guy with the motorbike was already on the restaurant terrace with his bike gleaming near the fence.
“This is where we’ll come to eat for the next few days,” said Max. “Today we’ll just finish off the sandwiches, and anyway, we came here to drink not to eat. And while we’re here we’ll catch a bird or two which will make it a real holiday.”
He turned towards them:
“You know, the seaside isn’t just about food and drink, but about squeezing, sucking and licking too.”
He burst out laughing and the others nodded.
Before Raf joined in the nodding he thought:
“And love.”
He was afraid he had said it out loud. He would have died with embarrassment if the others had not killed him with their teasing first, that is.
They said goodbye to paradise with wistful looks and went on, without too much moaning, just the odd observation about the island being bigger than it first seemed from the ferry (wider, they should have said wider!), and how the summer had already started in earnest there. But not for long, soon the desire to talk was gone.
Alfonz was dripping with sweat, Max was nearly as bad, Samo kept his hard-as-stone image of bravery and only once did Raf manage to catch an expression of suffering on Samo’s face before he quickly hid it again. Lifting weights is one thing, but carrying them for over half an hour is something quite different.
The cart-track had recently been churned up by a vehicle, its tyre marks were visible all the way from the junction.
“The jeep,” said Max. “Before my old man bought the villa he came to look at it and then sent some builders to sort out the wiring.”
He looked at the electric wires and the rotten wooden poles. Some poles had gone altogether and the wires were supported by the taller pine trees.
“There’s no water in the villa?” asked Raf, who could not restrain himself, his desire for a long cool shower was too strong.
“What do we need water for?” grinned Max. “You’re by the sea. You can wash when you swim, and as for drinking — we’re bringing the booze!”
And he had only one small moan about their present situation:
“It really is heavy, but worth the bother. Just think how pissed we can get tonight!”
Ana was still secretly observing her uncle and beginning to hope that the two months just might be bearable. What she had worried about most was that he would be one of those people who never stopped talking, always asking questions and telling stupid stories. But even before they reached his house, dragging her heavy suitcase, she was able to stop worrying as he only asked her the usual pleasantries about the journey (Fine, thank you.) and then remained silent. He seemed a bit shy to her, even though he did look her in the eyes when he talked to her. She could not get rid of a feeling that he was only pretending to be insecure. Not pretending in a negative sort of way, but as if he had been given a role which he was now trying to act out to the best of his abilities, even though it was not best suited to his character. The role of a guardian, who had to play host to an underage relative for whole two months.
On the way, he had explained to her that the monument had been put there in memory of all those who had died in the Second World War. Ana expected him to start imitating a tourist guide, but he stopped. He had told her about the only unusual thing in the village about which he thought she might have some questions. Everything else was completely self-explanatory.
But that funny hairstyle of his! It somehow did not quite fit the stereotyped image of an elderly islander, with his dark brown skin which looked as if it was not just tanned but as if it had been that colour from the day he was born. He could have either cut his hair off completely or worn a cap — a fisherman’s cap would have quite suited him. And he could have worn a checked shirt or something similar, like all the other pensioners who were sitting on the bench. But as it was, he really stood out in his short-sleeved white linen shirt and wide trousers of the same material.
She wondered why he bothered with his appearance on an island, where there could not be more than a hundred inhabitants and where everybody had to know each other as well as if they shared the same house; where the campsite had only been opened that year — or so she had heard them saying back home; and where the passengers she saw on the ferry were probably among the first tourists ever. Was he doing it for her? She thought about the winter when the presently seductively sparkling blue sea must turn into a matt-grey surface and she felt cold at the thought of it. At least in the summer the ferry came once a day and provided an opportunity for everybody to gather for the event of the day. It all seemed very strange.
Her uncle carried the suitcase up the three stairs leading to his house by himself and she had another good look at him. He certainly was not a weak old man, even though he was completely grey and quite wrinkled.
The only trace of a woman in the house was a photograph in an honorary spot behind the glass of a cabinet. Ana was overcome by sadness. That overwhelming, all inclusive feeling that ends as a pressure on the left side of her chest. A man’s room with memories of a woman. A photograph, memories — enough for a moment of melancholy, from which she was aroused by that most basic of smells: the smell of good food.
Her uncle smiled:
“I’m making dinner. You must be hungry after your long journey.”
She had been eating sandwiches on the ferry and until now she had not been aware of the emptiness in her stomach. So much saliva filled her mouth that she found it impossible to speak and she just nodded.
“I got your room ready. Do you want to see it?”
“Thank you, Uncle.”
“Just call me Aco.”
After a few embarrassing smiles they agreed on Uncle Aco. But the agreement did not last long. Ana soon returned to calling him just Uncle and he did not correct her.
The room faced the sea and the window was wide open, covered with a green mosquito net. Her bed seemed too short at first glance because of the wooden frame. The open window did not have any effect on the stuffiness of the room, even though Ana was sure Uncle had been airing it ever since her visit was first arranged.
Ana’s mood was very fragile and it did not take much to tip the balance. The smell of the room carried her over to the dark side and she again started thinking about the longevity of the two months ahead.
A romantic image: caught on a small island, amongst natives who seem friendly enough but rather clumsy.
They sat down in the kitchen and she accepted tea which seemed a strange choice for a summer drink. It had a very full and sweet flavour. Her uncle explained without prompting that it came from the herbs he had made it with and that there was no sugar in it at all.
Ana looked into her cup while sipping the lukewarm liquid. She was expecting to find a hair-line crack running from the bottom up to a small chip on the edge of the china cup. But there wasn’t one. The cup was intact and very old looking. Wide and thick, a smaller version of the bedpans from silent comedies.
Uncle asked her how she had done at school and she gave him a brief rundown of her results. He praised her and then concentrated on his tea.
She finished the last sip and wondered what would happen next. Well, what happens next is that I am here and the two months begin, she answered herself. She should have been happy to be at the seaside on her own, for the first time without her parents. On her own! Up until then she had always gone away with her parents, who spent a part of every summer in the village where her mother had been born. There Ana’s only company were the village teenagers with their cruel pursuits — from tearing wings off flies to teasing the goat — which invariably made her stomach churn. She had voluntarily changed her holiday activities to babysitting, as there was nothing better to do.
But this time she was on her own. Probably the last one to achieve this privilege amongst all the girls in her class who had long ago lost their holiday virginity, both literally and metaphorically. Maybe her parents were aware of the fact that she was now grown up and that was the reason for suggesting this trip. To a deserted island, admittedly, but even that was more than she had dared ask for in her wildest dreams. But on the other hand, maybe… She remembered the boys on the ferry, especially the thin one. Maybe…
Her finger slid to the bottom of the cup and rubbed against something which felt different from the porcelain. She turned the cup and looked. There was a label stuck to the bottom, saying in faint handwriting:
A COFFEE CUP
ACO LENT IT ON
RETURNED TO ACO ON
The second date was unreadable whereas the first one referred to a day three years ago.
She looked at Uncle and he blushed.
“I lent the cup for the wedding of my neighbour’s granddaughter and afterwards I forgot about the label.”
He rose from his chair and reached for the cup and then remembered that it would be rude to just snatch the object of his guest’s interest from her hands and he sat down again.
Ana took another look at the label. Very neat writing with an obvious desire to make the letters look beautiful. Very old fashioned.
Uncle was still hesitating and she realised she was embarrassing him, so she put the cup back on the table and — almost too briskly — moved her hand away.
“There were quite a few tourists on the ferry,” she said and Uncle visibly relaxed when she showed no intention of asking him about this friend of his who put labels on borrowed things so as to remember who they belonged to.
“Yes, they opened a campsite this year,” said Uncle not very enthusiastically. “I suppose it was inevitable,” he added, more to himself.
“Is that the only place to stay on the island?”
“Yes, there’s nowhere else.”
“No bed and breakfast?”
Cheerfully:
“No.”
A pause.
With resignation:
“They’ll probably start up one day soon, just like on all the other islands.”
He got up and walked over to the cooker, opened the oven and let out a new wave of the wonderful smell. He bent over and with a fork gently and very carefully turned each fish on the roasting tray. The fish sizzled with submission when turned and Ana remained silent as she observed the operation which looked more like a ritual than cooking.
“It’ll soon be ready,” he said and smiled at her.
She returned the smile and asked:
“What’s on the other side of the island?”
A sudden seriousness, a very brief and sharp smile, which seemed like something her imagination projected onto her uncle’s face.
He stared at her.
“I…” she opened her mouth.
“Nothing. There’s nothing on the other side of the island.”
She closed her mouth and said nothing. And then… she herself did not know what came over her. She certainly was not used to answering back at home where she had been trained right from the moment she was born to swallow anything which might be interpreted by her parents as answering back. Maybe it was the sea, the feeling of freedom and independence, maybe it was the wind left behind by the ferry which still seemed to be blowing through her head.
“The boys were going to the villa,” she said.
The fork rattled onto the floor and neither of them followed it with their eyes. Her uncle’s eyes became strange, huge and perfectly circular; she couldn’t stop looking at him.
“H-h-h-h-h-h…”
He stammered. Her parents never mentioned that to her.
“H-how d-do you k-know?”
Then she saw the wave. It travelled across his hair, lifting it. It looked like a field of wheat, the memory of which suddenly filled her head but she was unable to put a date to it or any other proof of it ever having been real.
His hair lifted from the back towards the front and it stayed up. His eyes: she could swear they were looking at her but she could not see her reflection in them. Only something terrible, which she was to her horror nearly able to distinguish but did not want to see.
She did not scream. She let out her breath in a clear staccato of As, which at least halted if not removed the scene forming in her uncle’s eyes.
Maybe she was louder than she thought? The rattle of the glass in the cabinet confirmed her suspicion.
“We didn’t tell… we didn’t tell anybody…”
What was he saying? What was happening?
Oh, my God, suddenly she realised. Her first day on the island and her uncle would die. How old he was! She remembered all the heart attacks she had heard about which happened to people as young as forty. Or even younger. Any moment he could be struck and it looked as if it was happening right now. She would stay there alone with his body among strangers. With a tray of nearly-ready fish cooking in the oven, the smell of which drove away her fear.
“They told me,” she repeated very slowly and carefully, “today on the ferry.”
“On the ferry?” he asked almost immediately, comprehending what she had said much later. “On the ferry? Who told you?”
“The boys.”
His stiffness passed but he was still acting very strangely. He stared at her, moving at the same time in very slow motion as if he was moving through chewing gum.
Quickly and jerkily she told him about the group of boys on the ferry and their invitation to the old villa. When she had finished, she noticed his hair was not as upright anymore but she could not remember when it had changed.
Maybe she was not going to be stuck with a corpse after all?
Her uncle turned round, picked up the fork, took it over to the sink and put it in. Ana watched him move away and come back again, wondering what had changed. There was something different about him.
He was silent during dinner. She did not take her eyes off him, but it did not seem to bother him. She felt forgotten. He filled two plates with large portions of fish, put on the table a bottle of wine without a label, put a glass in front of himself, then for a moment noticing his guest, he went over for another glass and again lost himself in his thoughts, turning the glass in his hand as if not knowing what to do with it.
She said grace on her own whilst Uncle stared at his plate with his head bowed. During her prayer she remembered the thin boy from the ferry. Was he religious? She was cross with herself for not having looked at his neck; he might have been wearing a chain with a cross. Quite exciting: a secret sign from the times of the first Christians. Maybe he wore his money and documents round his neck as well, a secret sign of young tourists?
She took the first bite out of politeness, only to be straight away overcome by hunger. The first two fish she devoured in big forkfuls, each one catching the previous one still in her mouth, then her manners finally surfaced successfully. Ana looked at her uncle guiltily but he had not even noticed her. He was not eating; he was just staring at the fish in front of him.
“Wow,” said Samo, as usual impressed by anything big.
“Mama,” said Raf, immediately becoming aware of having said it. Nobody had heard him. They stood amongst the last few pine trees looking at the villa in the middle of a meadow, surrounded by the woods in a sharp semi-circle. On the left gleamed the sea and the sun had dropped down just above it. The building was closer to the sea than to the trees and from the veranda a path led to the beach, finishing in small pebbles mixed with sand. On the border between the grass and the sand stood square concrete platforms, probably the last remnants of beach huts.
From behind the house, peeped the wall of a small overgrown garden shed.
The longer side of the villa was turned towards the sea whilst the front door with a porch supported by two pillars faced the boys. The villa really did look big in comparison with the village houses. It was built of wood which seemed totally dried out. Some of the wooden planks had warped and there were gaps between them. Only the bottom part of the house was built of heavy pale stones. The two cellar windows, boarded with wood, were almost completely obscured by the tall grass.
These details did not escape Raf, even though he was busy thinking why he had uttered the word which was almost prohibited amongst the teenagers. Mama, he had said Mama. He tried to remember what had made him say it, but those few moments were swallowed by darkness and uncertainty. Yes, darkness! When they had been walking through the last trees he had thought: at last! His sigh of relief was overcome by a strange feeling, first of agreement, then loneliness and dense darkness as if a coat had been thrown over his head. He felt a restriction and pressure all over his body, which left him unable to move and he could only say the word in his mind.
Mama.
Whatever it was, had passed. A moment of weakness because of all the physical strain. Not surprising, after the long journey on a hot day. Luckily the others had not heard his foolishness.
“So this is what your old man bought?”
Samo could not conceal his admiration.
Neither could Max, for a change. Alfonz did not say anything and Raf wiped his forehead trying to tear himself away from thinking about his little outburst.
As they approached the house he watched it intently, especially the windows, but he could not see anything which would explain what had happened to him and the memory of it became more and more distant and pale.
The atmosphere in the kitchen was becoming increasingly unpleasant and Ana could not really blame it on her uncle. He was not doing anything, but that was what was wrong. He was just staring at the fish — which had by now gone completely cold — and was completely still. She used his absent-mindedness to do something very daring, something she could only do far away from home: she did not eat everything on her plate.
She left a bit of bread next to the plate, secretly looked at her uncle — he did not move — and then bravely took the leftovers to the rubbish bin and put them in. Food really was a gift from God, but she was on holiday, on her own. That little piece of bread was just a visible sign of her determination to follow her own free will rather than a result of her stomach being too full.
Ana had difficulty in remembering anything from when she was very young and sometimes — when she was talking to her schoolfriends — she got seriously worried that she was not normal. But it was interesting how one thing always remained fresh in her memory — the cult of the empty plate. Heavy verbal downpours under which she always gave in and ate up that one morsel. And then another one. And the one after. They became more and more difficult to swallow and her parents had to use more and more authoritative arguments to persuade her. The first morsel for mother, the next one for father and the last one for God.
She could not swear to it, but it seemed to her that right at the beginning of her memories the first morsel belonged to her sister, who later ran away from home and took not just her rucksack but Ana’s first morsel too.
“Uncle…, Uncle Aco…”
She reached out with her hand as if trying to wake him up but she changed her mind. Epilepsy? Maybe he was having a fit? No, he wasn’t screaming and rolling on the floor with foam around his mouth, which was what she had heard about those attacks. She resumed her contemplation of old age. She herself would be twenty in two years, which seemed like a serious age, but the age of thirty, she had always thought, meant a rapid decline into old age. One day you were young, then came your birthday and in a moment you became old. Just like her Uncle. He had looked quite normal, even cheerful, and then suddenly…
She cleared her throat a few times in succession until it hurt. No effect.
“Uncle,” she said as loudly as if she was trying to strike a conversation with someone who was nearly completely deaf, “Uncle, that monument to the war victims. How many villagers died in the war?”
She was not expecting an answer and it caught her unprepared.
“None,” he said.
None?
“Just one of my friends died a few years ago.”
He raised his head swiftly and looked at her. She was expecting a remote, foggy, far away look in his eyes, but all she could see was a weary sadness.
“I did everything a Christian could to make sure I did not live this long,” he said.
Max was like a tourist guide at a place he had never visited before, but who knew every last detail from having heard descriptions of it and was now sharing the excitement of the first visit with the tourists.
“Well, the villa was built by some diplomat who moved in when he retired. Soon after he had a stroke and the villa was deserted until my old man bought it.”
They were standing on the porch and Raf could not help wishing Max’s speech was shorter — he did not seem in any hurry to look for a key in his pockets.
“Oh,” thought Raf, “what if he forgot to bring it?”
Well, the door did not look too solid and if needs be they could smash a window.
Max got the key out of his pocket and put it in the lock. He stopped talking and they all held their breath. The lock clicked noisily and the door creaked.
“Those builders didn’t seem to have oiled anything,” said Max, “but it’ll be alright. Let’s go.”
They stepped into a hall covered with a thick layer of dust, full of footprints made by the builders’ heavy boots.
“I hope they sorted out the electricity,” added Max “not just trampled all over the house.”
Just enough light was coming through the dirty windows to create a stuffy semi-darkness. Raf was expecting it to smell musty but it was just hot and dry as if all the different smells had burnt away a long time ago.
Slowly, they went a few steps further and Samo looked through the half-closed door on the right. It was surprisingly dark and cool in there compared to the room they were standing in.
“What’s down here?” Samo asked.
They crowded round the door, blocking the light so that they could not see anything but the first part of a staircase.
“A cellar,” said Alfonz. “There’s no light switch anywhere. Somebody did go down though, look here, footsteps.”
He pointed.
“He hesitated or something on this stair and then came back up.”
“Well, what did you expect, did you think he would wait for us down there or something?” Max interrupted. “Sad Alfonz, the Scout. Let’s close the door and that’s that. Fuck it, we don’t have to go down there anyway.”
“I’ve got a torch in my rucksack,” said Alfonz, “we can go and have a look later.”
There was no real enthusiasm.
He lifted his rucksack, unfastened it quickly and took out the torch.
“What else have you got in there?” asked Max.
“Anything I thought we could use,” answered Alfonz with embarrassment.
“Oh, yeah, pliers, fuses and look! a handy camper’s axe. Are you going camping, Sad Alfonz?”
Alfonz blushed, searching for an excuse.
“Let’s look here and on the first floor to begin with,” said Max still with a grin on his face.
They decided to have their party in the dining room. It had the right sort of table: long and sturdy. They took off the dust sheet and almost suffocated in the cloud of dust which forced them to open the window. The sun had touched the surface of the sea and the sky was red.
The light switch worked and Max proudly remarked that his father had promised to cut the builders’ balls off if they did not sort it all out properly.
“Can you imagine,” he added, “if there were balls there instead of the light bulb?”
“Illuminated balls,” quipped Samo.
“Hot ones,” Alfonz joined in.
Raf missed his turn and this time they did all look at him. He tried to redeem himself with a smile, desperate to hide his embarrassment. He went back to looking around the room which was what he had been doing while the others were trying to be witty. He could not quite establish what it was that seemed so peculiar.
They examined the other rooms. In the kitchen, they were amused by the old fashioned water pump, the handle of which had to be pushed down a good few times before some smelly brown liquid came out. Max repeated his usual commentary. As for the toilet, they decided that they would go outside on the grass instead. On the first floor they walked around the bedroom and the study full of memorabilia belonging to the old diplomat — they established that the man had to have travelled all around the world and laughed at his portrait on a dried out old photograph which must have been taken in a desert, judging by the clothes he was wearing and the background.
Only the nursery shutters were so tightly closed that almost no light came in. Max tried to put the ceiling light on — like he did everywhere else. The successful cooperation of the lightbulb was accompanied by his mumble of approval. He thought how the only thing he respected in his father was his ability to bully anybody who worked for him. Max had never seen any of them do anything but their best. But maybe the secret was his father’s knack of recognising the right people in an instant. Just as he managed to choose his short-term female companions after a single glance.
The fluffy elephant on the bed under the nursery window looked very sorry for itself. The heat and the dust seemed to have got to it. None of them touched it. Max started going on about how filthy the place was. In the corner they noticed a baseball bat and agreed on a short game the next day. If any of them still felt like it.
Max was the first to notice the framed photograph of a young and extremely beautiful woman, the Indian woman, judging by her appearance and clothes. He started his predictable speech, which Raf found obscene, as it concerned a woman who had undoubtedly been dead for a long time, and Max talked about things which belong to the living only, the very things that make us alive.
Samo sneezed a few times and suggested they went outside otherwise they would suffocate in all that dust. Max agreed immediately:
“Let’s go and have a ciggie!”
“Something’s wrong,” a voice said inside Raf again when he was the last one to leave the nursery. He looked back at the fluffy toy. The elephant did not return his look, instead it kept stubbornly staring ahead as if the answer lay in its dark eyes almost completely obscured by dust.
Uncle Aco did not become any more talkative and made no effort to explain anything. He stood by the window looking at the sea. He turned round only once and he looked completely calm, just slightly remote. He started asking her very detailed questions about the boys, demanding a description of their appearance and anything else she could remember.
Ana did her best to please him and she noticed how she spent most of the time talking about the thin boy who had not spoken to her even though he had a chance.
Aco nodded from time to time and when she finished talking he turned away again. Ana pottered round the kitchen, put the rest of the fish in the bin, washed up, sat down, saw the red sky behind her uncle’s head and tried to gather courage.
She wanted to ask him for permission to go for a walk but she forced herself to change the question into a statement:
“I’m going for a walk.”
She had to say it again, before he mumbled something which she interpreted as his permission even though she suspected he had not really heard her at all.
They sat on the sand by the sea giving in to the sunset. Max and Alfonz were smoking with the ferocity typical of smokers who have been deprived of cigarettes for a whole hour because of the heat and the burden they have been carrying, but whose bodies had now calmed down and were demanding tobacco.
Alfonz had also brought a bottle of brandy and it travelled among them slowly.
“Yuck, it’s hot!” yelped Max.
“Yeah, we’ll have to cool it,” agreed Alfonz.
He took the bottle to the sea and spent a while trying to position it in the water by digging it in and surrounding it with stones so that the precious contents would not spill.
“That won’t work,” said Samo. “We can’t be coming here in the dark during the party. Besides, if the tide comes in, the sea-water will go into the bottle.”
“You’re right,” agreed Max.
“What if we took all the drink to the cellar?” suggested Alfonz.
“Yes, there was quite a cold draft when you opened that door. Alfonz, you sort it out! I leave it all to you. Samo, what do you think?”
“You’re right, Max. But it would be best to cool the beer a bit in the sea first, while it’s still light.”
Alfonz got up obediently and made his way to the veranda to get the crate. Raf accompanied him with his eyes, wishing he would rebel just once.
“What’s the matter Raf, why are you so quiet?” Max prodded him.
“Oh, nothing.”
Suddenly, Raf felt a strong desire to mention the girl from the ferry. Just like that, in passing, even though he knew what sort of comments about her he could expect from the others. But if she was not present at least in their conversation it seemed to him that she would become very remote, non-existent. He had to clench his teeth, so overwhelming was his desire for her presence. He had to talk about her, he had to!
“I’m still knackered from the journey,” he said.
“Yes, it was boring,” sighed Max. “It was too long".
“No interesting passengers,” added Raf, congratulating himself on his cunning.
“Yeah, except that babe who wasn’t too bad,” agreed Max.
“Well,” said Samo, “she could be a bit fitter, her hips were too small.”
“And her tits weren’t very big either,” grimaced Max.
In the background they could hear the clanking of the bottles as Alfonz arranged them on the veranda.
“I do like them to have big tits,” went on Max dreamily, “but they have to be nice and firm!”
“Yeah, right,” yawned Samo, stretching.
Every word cut into Raf’s heart. How nastily they spoke of her! But even that was better than the silence after they had exhausted the subject of all the relevant parts of the female anatomy.
Raf got up:
“I’m going to help Alfonz.”
He walked on the stones which slowly gave way to the thicker and thicker grass of the meadow. It was alright, he had been cunning enough, they did not suspect anything.
“Well, well, how excited our good friend Raf is about that chick,” said Max as he flicked his cigarette end into the sea.
“Yeah,” said Samo, “but I bet he’s still a virgin.”
“What else do you expect? He’s so clumsy that he wouldn’t be able to find his aim even if he found a woman stupid enough to let him try!”
They giggled quietly and turned towards the horizon, which was unbroken by ship or dry land.
Ana stopped in the harbour, which looked deserted. The sea there was greasy and dark, the bay itself was darkening, the lights in the houses were on, the hill behind the village had already obstructed the sun. There was no trace of the ferry and it seemed as if it would never return again.
She walked on the large paving stones and avoided stepping on the lines. She looked back at the shop which was now probably a bar and became aware of the pensioners on the bench. Because they were not talking and because of the twenty-metre distance she could not be sure whether they were looking at her.
Old men.
“I don’t want to get old,” she said to herself, “I want to stay as I am now,” she added and felt silly. And a bit sad.
She stood there in the middle of the old men’s horizon, the horizon which they had probably been staring at every evening for decades. She felt like a stranger and it was not a pleasant feeling. She went to the left side of the bay, stepping from the paving stones onto a concrete path, which after a few metres turned into the base of the monument.
The plaque said exactly what her uncle had told her: ‘Dedicated to the villagers who died in the war’. She could hear his voice again, telling her very casually and she was quite sure, honestly, the number of the victims worthy of the monument: zero. It really bothered her that that was exactly how much she understood about it all.
Her Mum and Dad had sent her to stay with an oddball. She believed he must have changed in the years since her Mum last saw him, so that his sister knew nothing about his illness, the strange attacks he was having. She hoped it was nothing dangerous or contagious. Her fear of the latter had nothing to do with reason. She remembered another detail from her childhood and she thought how strangely vivid her memories were that day. Maybe they were like that because she was far away from the flat where they all originated. Anyway, she used to think that being in plaster was contagious. No, that’s not quite right. She did know that you had to break (or at least badly twist) a limb before you got it put in plaster, but at same time meeting anybody with one always produced this strange fear in her that she would become like that too. It had taken her years to learn to control the fear to the extent where it stopped being obvious to other people, but the feeling never quite disappeared.
She looked at the large monstrosity, the back of which had already fused with the dark sky behind. There was a group of clouds in the east which did not seem to be moving at all. Behind one of them she could make out the outline of the moon, which was not too far from the ragged edge of the cloud. Maybe she would be able to finish her walk in the silver moonlight.
The tank. A terribly ugly machine, which did not belong there at all. She looked towards the pensioners and wondered how they must have felt when the army positioned that monstrosity right at the tip of their bay. The second most visible point on the island was probably chosen only because the first had already been occupied by a lighthouse.
The barrel was pointing towards the hill and the plug at the end had been soldered on very badly, half of it sticking out. A large five pointed star had been white until someone had hastily and carelessly painted over with red.
Why had they not removed this monument? Had the old men on the bench just got used to it as a part of their horizon or could they simply not be bothered? A heap of old rusting metal, a military reject, which…
In the middle of the turret she noticed a small white sheet of paper with writing on it. She was standing too far away to be able to read it. She tried to get nearer, touched the metal and immediately withdrew her hand.
It was pleasantly warm, as you would expect from metal which had been standing in the sun all day, but it was also greasy. There was nowhere she could wipe the grease off her hand. She decided to go down to the sea and she immersed her hand in the water but it just slid across her fingers without removing anything. She had to rub her skin on a rough stone.
She threw an accusing look at the metal and started walking towards the other side of the bay where the lighthouse flashed into the darkness.
“I think we should take the drinks down to the cellar while there’s still some daylight", said Alfonz.
They were still lying on the beach and the two cigarettes glowed in the dark. They had eaten the last sandwiches they had brought from home and had just had a good belch.
“Take it, take it,” said Max and Raf could feel Alfonz looking at him but he continued looking at the sea. He just did not feel like getting up. Alfonz would manage on his own.
Alfonz hesitated and when none of his friends took any notice of him he went to the house. He got the torch and started thinking how he would manage the torch as well as the crate of beer. He turned the torch on, put it on top of the beer bottles, lifted the crate and started walking towards the cellar entrance. He would manage.
Only when he reached the stairs did he realise that his solution was flawed — the side of the crate cut off the bottom part of the beam from the torch. The stairs went down and Alfonz’s light only shone on the ceiling. He tried to lean the crate forward but that made the torch slide so he had to just hope that after all those years all the stairs were still there and safe.
He tested each one first with the tip of his toes, then the rest of his foot and only then did he transfer the whole of his weight plus the load onto it. He counted each stair before standing on it, as if counting meant giving it a name, making contact, a request to be able to trust it.
One.
Two.
Three.
Four.
Alfonz was aware of his heart beating. Suddenly it contracted, pushing all the blood out into the rest of his body. “Fear, this is fear!” realised Alfonz and he could not believe it. He racked his memory to find a reason, a comparison with a similar situation in the past. The nearest feeling was the one of returning home in the middle of the night, walking through the woods when suddenly tiny lights appear in the distance and you are not sure whether you have walked so fast that this is already home or whether the lights are the eyes of wolves (or other beings?) waiting for you. On top of it all, fear was too mild a description of how he felt: he could not move or breath. He flexed his muscles trying to tear himself out of this state but it did not work. His only hope was to give his fear a name, to identify it. He thought of a woman. Not any particular woman and especially not the neighbour from his village. It was an unreal being, a conglomerate, the collective noun for women. He was afraid of women. It was that simple. On the fourth step of a strange house he was overcome by fear raised to the thousandth potency, which appeared in its milder form whenever he thought (dreamed about?) losing his virginity. How could that small fear grow into a wall pressing against him? Pushing him back, out of the cellar, away from the woman?
He tried once more to push himself forward and this time he broke the barrier. He had given his fear a name and thus overpowered it. He stepped onto the next stair without testing it. His fear was gone. The only trace of it was a very unreal memory, which already seemed unbelievable to him.
He pulled himself together and went on counting and testing the stairs until he successfully reached the bottom.
The cellar was surprisingly big, it stretched under the whole of the building and it was empty except for some wooden crates in the corner, which reached up to the first window. Here too, everything was covered in dust, proving nothing had been touched — there were no footsteps either. Alfonz put down the beer and picked up the torch. He shone it around the room, mostly onto the crates, made of oak planks roughly nailed together. He went closer and bent over them. BOMBAY was burnt on the side of one. God knows what was in them when they first came over on a ship.
And what was in there now?
He touched the wood. It was old and dry, without a trace of wood-worm even though it was not painted or varnished. He tried to move the lid and managed easily. It was not nailed down.
He lifted it a few inches and shone his light inside.
Old junk. Clothes.
He tried another crate.
Old newspapers and letters.
And then…
Plastic?
He lifted the lid off and leaned it against the wall. The dark surface was completely even and smooth.
Plastic?
Why would they keep something like that in a crate? And the stuff seemed as if it was a part of the crate itself. It stretched from one edge to the other without any gaps, it looked as if it was moulded into the wooden planks. So smooth.
He put his palm on the surface. It was warm compared to the temperature of the room.
He moved the source of light nearer and whatever it was acquired a yellowy glow around the edges while remaining dark in the middle. Wasn’t there something in there, something long? He moved the torch even closer but he still could not make anything out. He only managed to see that the material was not as smooth as he had first thought. Now he could see the inner composition of the mass, full of densely intertwined veins, which somehow kept escaping the light.
What if he turned the crate over and tipped out the contents? He pushed against the side and after a lot of effort the crate started to lift off the floor. He turned it almost completely over but the strange thing showed no sign of detaching itself from the wood. Alfonz performed the task with the determination of somebody used to working in mountain conditions. He has found a task he has to complete before the winter snow and cold sets in, when nothing else can be done except to sit inside by a burning stove. The plan in his head was growing bigger and more complex by the minute. He would turn the crate upside down, get some tools, pull the nails out of the wood, then bang on it here and there until… and then he stopped.
The house belonged to Max and he was just a guest. He remembered how he had feared that Max would leave him out! He had seen him conferring with Samo and he had known immediately that they were discussing holidays. Then Max spoke to Raf (just think!) and finally to him. Alfonz looked at him as if Max was an approaching angel and Alfonz was sure he would ask him something silly and not what he so much wanted to be asked. Even after he had heard the question, Alfonz hesitated. Not because he needed to think but because he was not sure he had heard right.
And there he was on his first evening — only hours after arrival — messing around with somebody else’s things, planning how to break and damage them.
He sighed with shame, looked around himself — darkness — and slowly released the crate into its previous position. Just before it touched the floor the over-burdened fingers let go, the crate slid and hit the floor so that clouds of dust came up at the sides looking like the steam from a locomotive which is just about to set off. The noise it made seemed so loud that he expected to see his friends rushing in, but nobody came.
Again he kneeled next to the monolith’s surface and put both hands on it. Warmth. He could not get rid of the memory of walking to school in the snow in the winter. The darkness surrounding him just like in that cellar. Only his fingers were in a warm place, like in the bed which he had had to leave at half past five in order to get to school on time.
What was he going to do after the holidays? His mother most definitely would not let him go to university. She already viewed him as no better then his father who spent his days just wandering around the place. He was just another parasite, wasting his time at school. He was the youngest son, there were three others above him — not counting the invalid brother — and they had let him stay on at school just to get him out of the way. But subsequently all his older brothers had left for the city one after another and each one of them had later sent a letter saying he was not coming back, restaurant or no restaurant. One of them then got killed by an electric cable after he had jumped off a train before it reached the platform.
Mother had probably already read the note he had left on the kitchen table written on a sheet of paper torn out of one of his notebooks. He had written in pencil that he was going to the seaside for a week and that he would definitely return. He promised to come back. He underlined the last sentence with such ferocity that the pencil end broke and he finished the line with just the leftovers of the graphite embedded in the wood.
Alfonz sighed and returned his attention to the crate. He had a feeling that he was trying to immerse his hand in water which was so thick that he could not break the surface. That shadow in the middle, the denser bit or… He strained his eyes… To no avail.
He heard steps above him. His friends were back. One set of steps lost their rhythm, crashed against the floor, then moved quickly again before returning to a steady pace. Raf had tripped again. How clumsy he was! Even though he was the one that Alfonz liked most. Max was all Alfonz was not and never would be. How he could talk to women! How he could seduce them! No, Max was no virgin, like Alfonz who would probably remain one for ever. And to top it all, Max always did and said the right thing. Raf was more like Alfonz and therefore Alfonz had nothing to learn from him.
How he had looked forward to this trip! He imagined that everything would be different after it. Like some sort of ordination. You went away as a boring and innocent youth and you returned as an experienced and confident man. At least that was how those from his village who had already done it, seemed to him. He used to look at them carefully, trying to guess from their faces what it was that had changed inside them, made them different.
And now he was there and there was no sign of anything changing inside him. On the ferry, he felt like he had been stabbed by hope when he saw that girl. But he immediately became aware of Max, Samo and even Raf and realised he did not stand a chance next to them. It was hopeless.
He was just wasting time with that old crate, like a lunatic. Max would never do anything like that. But why should he do just like Max, why should he look up to Max? He became embarrassed — yes, he was a real arselicker. He remembered the journey and nearly bit his lip. His birthday! He had moved his birth date by nearly a month, just to attract some attention and take part in the conversation. He had feared they would see he was lying but nobody did. Birthday indeed!
He got up swiftly and wiped his hands against the corduroy. Without thinking, as there was no need for it. He returned to the stairs and started walking up, examining each stair with his torch.
Raf really was brushing dust from his knees when Alfonz walked into the hall. Raf’s lips were still pursed after he had just, as always in such cases, exclaimed the name of the Saviour, even though he did not seem to be a believer. Alfonz went to church with his parents, but he did not believe. Neither could he remember ever believing a word said by the chaplain in the village lower down the hill where everybody walked for Sunday school. What he hated most about his own village was its position. Wherever you went you had to put on heavy boots and coats and then trudge through the snow, apart from in the short summer, when walking was easier but the distances stayed the same.
Max was commenting on Raf’s latest fall:
“Listen, Samo, listen! A nuclear bomb will fall and it’ll go BOOOM. The whole city will come down, ruins everywhere and from under them Raf’ll emerge looking confused and say ‘Jesus!’ Ha!”
They burst out laughing, which made Raf even more embarrassed. He turned to Alfonz.
“I’ll help you carry the brandy to the cellar.”
“No, the stairs are very steep, you’ll break a leg or something,” said Alfonz becoming both sad and happy. Happy because of another burst of laughter from the other two and sad because of the look on Raf’s face.
He grabbed the rucksack containing the bottles (he could not have got the wrong one — his was the only ancient canvas one, like hunters used to use, as opposed to the modern, brightly coloured nylon ones), put it on his shoulder, turned on the torch and set off downstairs again.
He put the rucksack on the floor and started taking out the bottles. He unwrapped each one and put it on the floor. Then he very vividly imagined Raf coming down to get the drink, tripping over the crate of beer, falling onto the bottles, breaking them all and injuring himself as well. He started moving them somewhere safer, near the wooden boxes and as they were already there he thought he would lean the bottles against the one with its top off. Nothing could happen to them there.
He picked up the rucksack and playfully threw it over his shoulder. He turned towards the stairs and noticed something strange above him. He shone the torch onto the ceiling and let the light slide across the thick wooden beams, which glowed in the light. Far too beautifully for wood. He raised his arm and stood on tiptoes to see better.
Drops.
Hard, solid drops.
He felt them. The same stuff as in the crate. This time he realised what it was. Earlier, he had been confused because of the large mass of it. But seeing it now, in small amounts, which were attached to the wood by their pointed end while their wider part faced him, there could be no mistake. Following the usual custom, his mother and father had gone on a honeymoon, their one and only trip, holiday or anything like that. They went to Russia. When looking at their photos from there Alfonz would always shake his head asking himself if there was anything at all he had in common with them. He could not even console himself with the thought that he might have been swapped in the maternity ward — his mother always gave birth at home. Anyway, his parents went to Russia. From a village where there was winter for most of the year, they chose to travel on their only trip ever to a country where there was winter for most of the year. Besides the Russian dolls and a plastic Lomonosov with a thermometer they brought back a piece of transparent golden stuff in a shape of a large drop, encapsulating an insect.
Amber.
As a child, he often looked at it but then forgot about it. It was probably still in his parents’ bedroom in the top drawer of the large cupboard.
It must be the same thing, he was almost certain. Unless it really was plastic — apparently they can fake anything these days.
But on the other hand, there was something encapsulated in the drops on the ceiling too. It did not look like insects. It definitely was not black and even though it was difficult to make out the exact colour because of the reflection, he was pretty sure it was red.
He pulled nearer one of the wooden crates containing old junk and stood on it. Now his head was touching the ceiling and he had to bend it. He moved nearer to one of the drops and tried to see what was in it.
Something was written in it.
Silly, really silly. There was a word in there. It did not seem to be written on anything, rather it looked as if somebody had written it on a sheet of paper, on both sides, and then cut the letters out with superhuman care. On top of that, the word was not flat, but looked as if it was waving, moving and fluttering like a flag, caught in the wind by an avalanche of amber, preserving it in that position for ever.
He concentrated on the drop next to the first one. He strained his eyes to read it. And then the next one and so on.
He read the amber. There were no sentences, just independent words, in which he started to recognise names. From everyday ones to foreign, strange sounding ones which he assumed were given to babies in far away countries. Some written in letters he recognised, others in letters whose origin he could only guess.
Name by name, each in its own drop, all over the ceiling.
Alfonz crossed the cellar diagonally. He became dizzy from reading all those names. He himself did not know when he had started reading them aloud, spelling some of them.
How did they do that? Was it at all possible?
Why?
“Hey! Who’re you talking to?” Max’s voice boomed down the stairs.
“Talking?” muttered Alfonz to himself and then shouted:
“No, I was just humming a tune to myself.”
“Come up! What are you doing down there for so long? Did you fall asleep? Wake up! The party is starting. And bring some bottles with you. Who needs all of them in the cellar? COME ON, WAKE UP!”