Ana returned quietly. She did not know what to expect.
She thanked God — there was nothing unusual. The only light which was still on was the one above the table and all the kitchen corners were in semi-darkness, which her eyes were still able to penetrate. There was nobody in the kitchen. She could not see the moon through the window, just its image on the sea.
She noticed a folded piece of paper on the table and immediately thought it had to be a message. It was. Not just one but two. The first sheet of paper was folded so that it had writing on the outside and the message started with her name.
ANA!
IF I’M NOT BACK BEFORE TWO IN THE MORNING GO TO THE VILLAGE, FIRST HOUSE NEXT TO THE BAR. WAKE LUKA. GIVE HIM THE OTHER MESSAGE ON THE TABLE.
YOUR UNCLE LOVES YOU.
ACO
Capital letters and pencil? The effort which he must have put into the writing was almost palpable. Why did he underline “two in the morning” so much?
She looked at the other sheet of paper, folded inwards, with the traces of the writing visible on the other side as a result of too much pressure on the pencil. There were even a few places where it had perforated the paper. The sheet was not sealed in any way, just one move and she could open…
…somebody else’s letter.
And become just like her mother. Ana never got any letters, only post which it seemed right her mother opened and read first: junk mail, advertising brochures, subscription invoices for various children’s magazines and such like. Once — with her schoolfriends — she gave in to what was then a fashionable thing to do and wrote to a girl who was looking for a pen-pal and whose address she got from a magazine. She soon got a reply. It had been opened and read.
And it was then she had her only real row with her mum. It ended just like all the other minor sins Ana committed, but only after a long fight. Ana had to repent in her heart. Sometimes she would wonder if this repenting in her heart ever had any effect. Maybe it did and that was the reason why she did not remember much from her childhood?
And she suddenly realised that repenting in her heart was not such a terrible punishment. What she had to do was to lean her head on her mother’s chest, her mother then embraced her with her left arm while putting her right hand on Ana’s forehead. So Ana repented in nearly complete darkness. During the last few years she had really used the time to think about this and that. Sometimes about her mother’s scent. It was a cleanly-washed scent, without any perfume. Her schoolfriends…
No, there was no point in thinking about her ex-schoolfriends. They were gone now, scents and all.
So, this repenting always seemed like a very small price to pay for her sins. God knew when you repented for real, when you were just faking it and when you did not bother at all, her mother would always say. But Ana often doubted that, secretly to herself. There was never any proof of Him really knowing.
Somebody else’s letter.
Your uncle loves you.
He must be out of his mind. People like that could not be responsible for their own actions. Therefore:
She opened the letter with a single move.
THE KIDS FROM THE FERRY WENT TO THE VILLA. I’M GOING AFTER THEM. I HAVE A FEELING IT DIDN’T ALL END THAT NIGHT.
ACO
That night?
I did everything a Christian could do to make sure I did not live this long.
She looked outside. Peace and quiet everywhere. When had he gone and why had they not bumped into each other? Should she go after him and try to find the villa, the existence of which he had so vehemently denied? Should she go and find this Luka and try to get him to give her the key to this puzzle?
The letter to her was from her uncle. In the absence of her parents he was her superior, so to speak. An older relative who gave her an order. All her life she had been taught to respect her superiors.
She would wait.
“Where is that Alfonz?” mumbled Max and lifted the empty bottle high above his head.
“ALFOOOOOOOOOONZ!”
He shouted louder than the music and the effort made him almost choke. He hit the cassette player angrily a few times until it stopped and expelled the cassette.
“ALFOOOOOOOOOONZ!”
Samo put down his bottle and both he and Raf looked towards the door.
“ALFOOOOOOOOOONZ!”
Samo joined in for the last few OOOOs, but quietly and only as a sign of solidarity.
Raf was beginning to get dizzy and his head had already fallen backwards a few times. So he had to concentrate in order to hold it still and turn towards the door, which was beginning to look double from time to time.
“Where is the peasant?” Max stopped shouting. “Somebody ought to go and get him.”
His friends did not move. Max looked at them with contempt and tried to get up.
“I’ll go, you paralysed fuckers!”
Getting up took some time and the other two shifted their concentration to Max’s attempts at lifting his legs off the table. He accompanied his efforts with ample swearing and guesswork.
“He must be throwing up somewhere, the fucking peasant, or he’s fallen asleep. Or he wants to keep all the brandy to himself! Fuck…”
Suddenly his face spread into a contented smile. He was looking at something behind Raf and Samo and said:
“There you are, Alfonz! Why didn’t you say something?”
Aco leant on a pine-tree and pressed his palm onto his heart. He had to wait and calm down. He would not be doing anybody any favours if he died in the middle of the woods. What he found worst was that it was not the physical effort which made his heart race, but the fear. He did not even try to pretend it was not there, he was far too busy just trying to control it.
Maybe he would not do anybody any good by dying there in the villa either, he thought and tried to concentrate on long slow breaths in through his nose and short breaths out through his mouth.
“Eh?” said Alfonz.
Max was suddenly in a very good mood.
“Alfonz, Serious Alfonz, smile! Where’s the booze, man?”
“Eh?”
“The booze, the booze!?”
“Here,” said Alfonz and put the two bottles on the table and then pulled the beer out of his pockets.
He’s so pissed, thought Raf. He’s completely gone. Or does he just seem like that to me?
“Alfonz, sit down,” Raf said to him.
He did not hear.
“Alfonz! ALFONZ!” repeated Raf, each time a bit louder but Alfonz took no notice.
Raf leant forward and tugged at his trousers:
“Hey!”
“What? What?”
“Sit down. Are you deaf?”
“No, no.”
Alfonz sat down and took hold of the bottle but did not have a sip.
“This one’s dead already,” Raf dismissed him and turned towards Max, who was pressing a new dose of alcohol to his heart with a blissful expression on his face. Samo had returned to his original position — looking at the bottle in his hands.
Suddenly Alfonz spoke.
“I saw somebody.”
Raf turned to him and said:
“What did you say?”
“I saw a strange…”
Max shouted from the other side:
“What’s he saying?”
“He saw somebody in the cellar,” replied Raf and woke Samo.
“Who did you see?”
“A strange…”
“A strange what?” prodded Raf.
Alfonz thought hard before answering.
“A brat. A strange one.”
“You saw a child? In the cellar?” jumped in Max, his mouth already widening.
Raf gave him a look of warning, but it had no effect; Max was far too drunk to notice anything so subtle.
“Yeah,” confirmed Alfonz.
“And what happened then?”
Max leant forward expectantly, suppressing laughter only because he was hoping to get even more first-rate fuel for it.
“He asked me what my name was.”
“And?”
“Then he thanked me.”
“HE ASKED YOU WHAT YOUR NAME WAS? IN THE CELLAR? A BRAT? AND HE THANKED YOU?”
Alfonz nodded.
Max burst out laughing so loud that the walls shook. He roared so much that he drowned Alfonz’s next sentence, which only Raf could hear because he was next to him. And he found it so odd and meaningless that he thought it must have been a mistake.
“He didn’t open his mouth.”
What was that supposed to mean?
He took a good look at Alfonz who fell silent, looking towards his thighs.
“He really is legless! HA HA HA HA! Sad Alfonz has become a comedian! HA HA HA HA!” roared Max and Samo joined him.
Raf’s confused eyes moved from one side of the table to the other. He remembered the nursery and the toy elephant on the bed. A child?
He shook his head and concentrated on his drink. Soon, he would be drunk enough to get Max to give him his first cigarette of the night. In the morning he would be more hung over from the tobacco than the alcohol. So what!
“How long should I wait?” Ana kept asking herself. Maybe her uncle often had a turn like this and the villagers then had to look for him all over the island. Maybe there really was some danger and those boys were in trouble. If only she knew what time her uncle had left and where he was. Should she go and see Luka? After two he had said and she could almost see his hand underlining those words.
She looked at her watch. Half-past eleven. What should she do?
The waiting was killing her. A few times she stopped herself at the last minute before putting her fingers in her mouth and biting into her nails. After all the trials and tribulations of getting rid of the habit!
She got up and went to her room. She took her clothes out of her suitcase and arranged them neatly, quite automatically and without thinking, her hands working while her mind was miles away.
The last thing she took out of her bag was the walkman. She put it on the bedside cabinet and arranged the cassettes next to it. Then she put her hand to her chest, just below her neck, but soon changed her mind. No, she was not going to take her purse off except when she was in bed. That was what she had promised her mother.
“Finished. And now?”
She would get changed into her jeans.
She closed the window shutters and took off the white linen trousers which had in some places — especially at the bottom, on the inside — acquired a greyish tinge. She thought she would have to wash them. She picked them up by the waist and held them straight.
A stain. Big and black. Why had she not sensed it?
She just could not remember. Had she leant on the tank? Maybe it was from earlier, from the ferry? Oh, no! Maybe he had seen it too. What must he think of her?
Alfonz could not remember his name. The one in front of him was Max, the one next to Max was Samo, Raf was the one on his side of the table and…
He looked at Raf. He was drinking brandy, the brandy he had stolen from his parents. He had talked about theft earlier; he distinctly remembered Raf talking about thieves and about all they had stolen. Raf! What sort of a name was that? A nickname, yes. Alfonz remembered how Raf had acquired it: he had been hanging, head down, from the rings, then still Peter. Suddenly, he had let go and crashed almost vertically onto the mat. He had picked himself up immediately and said a name. Jesus, yes, that was what he had said. Max had started teasing him that that was how the Royal Air Force planes took aim. The day before, they had been watching an English film about the Second World War and Peter became Raf. That bony earwig next to him had two names and he did not have even one. Nothing. How was that possible? Max had a name, the gym had a name, and the school, even the film and every person in the film. Everybody. Except the ones who just walked on and off the set and did not say anything. Just like him. He was not allowed to speak. He was nameless. Oh, how could Raf talk about theft. Theft? What did he know about theft?
Or maybe he did? Those bastards with names were capable of anything. Somehow, Raf could have found out how his nameless schoolfriend had been stealing money from his parent’s bar for years, hiding it in his sewn-on pocket and buying his classmates’ friendship. He could see it now: he had been trying to buy a name for himself.
A name! A name!
He got up and started walking towards the door.
“Alfonz!”
Raf was saying something, calling somebody?
“Alfonz!”
Who? One of his own again? Those with names.
“ALFONZ!”
He would not stop shouting.
“HEY!”
Raf pulled Alfonz’s sleeve.
“Where are you going?”
“Out.”
“Are you alright? You look a bit strange.”
“Yeah, yeah.”
You just go ahead calling that Alfonz and leave me alone, thought Alfonz. What could be wrong with me? Nothing, I just haven’t got a name, he thought and walked out. Apart from Raf, nobody noticed.
Alfonz stopped in the hall and looked around.
Earlier, there had been a boy around there, also without a name. Actually, he did have one now. But it was not his.
He put his hands on his head and took a deep breath.
His memory of the boy from the cellar was very faint and foggy. The only thing Alfonz knew for certain was that the boy did not open his mouth when he talked.
Alfonz went outside and looked at the moon. Another name. He walked across the meadow, reciting names. Everybody had one, everybody. And he, who had spent four years (four years!) stealing money from the drawer behind the bar, did not have one. The risks he had taken, the suffering! He had only been able to spend the money on drink or food or to give it away. Nothing that would last. There was no way he could have used the money to buy a pair of jeans, as his mother would start asking him what he had paid for them with. That was why he had been going around in those rags for the past four years in spite of having all that money. Oh, how he hated those corduroy trousers and that bloody shirt! Oh, that was the end, the end! Never again, never!
He took a knife out of his pocket and opened it. He dragged the blade along the stitches on his thigh and the first holes appeared. Blood started coming out of some of them.
Enough was enough! He wanted to be like all the others! First he wanted the right clothes and then a name! Yes!
Faster and faster, with longer and longer sweeps he kept cutting off his trousers. They fell off him piece by piece and each one of them hurt. No wonder, he had been wearing them for such a long time! They had become a part of his body, his skin and what he was doing was not undressing, it was sloughing off. More, an operation! He would cut out his brown corduroy trousers!
Yes! Yes! Yes!
Cut! Cut! Cut!
It had to bleed, that was nothing to worry about. Whenever an infected wound is being cleaned it bleeds, so why should he not be bleeding?
He would cut off his shirt, too!
And his y-fronts! He must not forget those! He had to cut off everything old!
Max was still in one of his rare good moods.
“Hey,” he said to Samo, “didn’t Alfonz say something about a birthday?”
“Yes, tomorrow.”
“It must be tomorrow now.”
“It is.”
“Let’s surprise him.”
Raf listened and made a firm decision to stop any practical joke the other two might come up with.
Surprisingly, it seemed as if Max was not up to one of his usual tricks.
“Let’s do what they do in American films,” he said. “Let’s turn off the light and wait for Sad Alfonz. When he comes in, we turn on the light and shout SURPRISE! What do you say?”
“Alright,” nodded Samo.
“Good, I think it’ll make him happy. He looked a bit sad earlier, before he went out,” agreed Raf. “Even more than usual.”
“We’re all agreed than?”
“Yeah.”
“Yeah.”
“Raf, you’re the nearest to the switch, move your chair and turn the light off. Did you understand? We wait and when you hear his steps you turn on the light and we all shout at the top of our voices. Is that clear? Go on, turn it off.”
Raf did as he was told. They sank into a complete, all embracing darkness.
“He’s not a bad guy, that Alfonz, even though he’s a bit of a peasant,” Max went on being nice in the dark and Raf thought he must be really pissed – he had never seen him like that before.
“Let’s call him,” added Max and started shouting.:
“SAD ALFOOOOOOOOOONZ!!!”
“SAD ALFOOOOOOOOOONZ!!!”
“SAD ALFOOOOOOOOOONZ!!!”
“SAD ALFOOOOOOOOOONZ!!!”
They’re calling somebody again, decided Alfonz, still waving his knife in the air while striding around the meadow in front of the house.
They are up to something again, those guys with names.
He stopped and became very sad.
That was how they had called him once, too. Sad, they used to say he was sad. What else could he be, what with his guilt because of the stolen money eating away at him all the time? During school lessons he would be wondering whether his parents had found him out yet. He imagined the reception he would get. He would be walking home, see the village — would he know immediately that he had been found out? Did everybody in the village already know about his sins? How could he be happy with all that on his mind?
And anyway, how could anybody without a name ever be happy?
That was what those shouting in the house were thinking. But what did they know about darkness, woods, fear and the pain of those who were different? What did they know! Nothing! Nothing!
Shouting, that was the only thing they could do.
He would show them that even the nameless could be happy. Those pushed away, the outsiders could enter with a smile. Break with the past and change. Start again!
With a never-ending smile.
He went over to the window of one of the rooms, which was in darkness, and had a look at his face in the glass. Whoever he was, he really did look sad. It was time for laughter, like the laughter Max, Samo and Raf were capable of. Mouth wide open in joyfulness.
He would laugh and join them. They would accept him as one of their own.
Those who laugh are always popular.
Looking at himself in the mirror, he took his bottom lip and pulled it with all his strength. Then he cut it off with one single sweep of his knife.
There, that was better.
He tried holding his top lip but it kept escaping from his fingers, slimy with blood. He tried a few more times,
- they were still shouting from time to time in the house; he said: I’m coming, I’m coming, but they probably did not hear him, just the glass in front of him got sprayed with tiny red droplets -
and then he realised that that was not the way to do it. He would swap hands. He was able to get a good grip on his lip with his right hand, but his left hand was not quite so adept with the knife and he had to create his smile in stages.
He tried to wipe the drops off the glass with the palm of his hand to see himself better, but all he did was make it even messier. He decided to bend over and look at himself in the corner of the window pane which had no blood on it yet.
Excellent.
“SAD ALFOOOOOOOOOONZ!!!”
“No more, no more,” he spat on his image again and added: “I’m coming, I’m coming.”
“He’s coming,” whispered Max, “get ready.”
Raf too could hear steps in the hall.
“I’m ready,” he said.
“Shhhhhh” came from the other side of the darkness through which a few shapes were just beginning to become visible.
The steps halted in front of the door. Raf had his finger on the switch, waiting. Outside the crickets sang, he could hear his heart beating in his ears and his own breathing sounded very loud.
Hey, he said to himself, this is a pleasant surprise, not an ambush. There is no need to feel worried.
The door opened a little.
Alfonz was surprised by the darkness. A ribbon of moonlight stole into the room.
Then Alfonz opened the door fully. Raf saw the outline of the shadow with a gentle light behind it and there was something strange about it.
He needed time to think, to take a good look.
“Come on,” hissed Max from the right.
Raf switched on the light.
All three shouted simultaneously from the bottom of their lungs just before the light came on fully:
“SURPRISE!!!!!!”
Aco was resting at the junction. Below him shone the lights in the campsite: a few lamps, in two rows with tents under them. The receptionist was reading the newspaper.
Peace and quiet. Normality. A glimpse into another world.
Maybe he would find something similar at the villa and the boys would call him a senile old lunatic. Let it be so, he said.