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What Was Inside

4/23/2014

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When I wrote "What Was Inside" four years ago, I was inspired by many things: a mysterious discovery made in a Chinese grocery store, some childhood possessions, a story by Guy de Maupassant. But above all, I was inspired by the experiences of a number of real people, people whom I know. For that reason, I feel I should offer a disclaimer of a kind. 

I consider it very bad manners when writers base their characters closely on real acquaintances. Sometimes, however, something a little different happens: numerous people, reaching a certain age and situation in life, undergo very similar experiences, variations of the same story. When fragments of these various people are forged, according to the unfathomable dictates of the writer's subconscious, into composite fictional characters … then I think it is permissible to write, and to publish, a version of their collective story.

That is the case here.





Picture
WHAT WAS INSIDE

I


The Mexican is small, less than a foot in height, and colored a dark mahogany. His wooden exterior is almost perfectly smooth--despite which there is an unmistakable impression that he is crudely made. The stool upon which he sits does resemble a stool, even if the scratched-up area where it emerges from the sculpture's base suggests either carelessness or haste on the part of its creator. And his face is expressive enough: his wooden cheeks are flat and fierce, his deep-etched eyes long and narrow. (The sculptor may have looked the same way--the thing was a gift from Sarah’s anthropologist uncle, acquired in some remote corner of Chiapas.) But his stomach barely looks like a stomach, his guitar barely like a guitar. Both are fat, shapeless, and the point where one begins and the other ends is all but indistinguishable.

Sarah's brother used to tease her when they were children: "It's not a man, it's a woman. And he's pregnant. I mean … she’s pregnant … with a little guitar-headed baby." 

Sarah always assumed he said this just to annoy her, since she never thought the Mexican looked at all womanly. But recently, she saw several paintings by the artist Kirchner, each featuring a woman whose face resembled the little guitar player's. This did nothing to actually change her mind about the sculpture; but it did make her reconsider her brother's motives.

In any case, the sculpture still looks just as it did when she was little, when her brother used to tease her--only a bump or two added, and a slight crack, from the many falls it's taken from her dresser (her various dressers) over the years. And a layer of dust.

*

(Though she once did tell me that the Mexican always looked to her like something other than what he was. Just not a pregnant woman.)

*

It's night. Outside, rain is falling, a late autumn storm. Sarah wakes up.

Was it thunder that woke her? She seems to remember the sound of thunder, though all she hears now is the rain's soft hiss. She opens her eyes.

She's lying on her side, facing away from the wall by her bed, toward the door. She can make out the door's bottom edge, and after a second, other shapes, which seem monstrous and vague. They have the same formlessness that was in her dreams a moment before. Also, the same unease. As if, just as she opened her eyes, the formlessness and unease had jumped out of her head, and onto the cluttered dresser-top, the clothes-draped chair, the overflowing bookcase.

Her cello is lying on the floor (she was practicing earlier, and as usual failed to put it away.) Like her, it's on its side. From where she is lying, she can make out its rounded bottom, rising and narrowing into two corners, and then, emerging from the shadow that hides the rest of the body, the long neck. What it looks like to her, right now, in the confusion of darkness and night, is an anchor. An anchor, lying on its side.

An anchor? She rolls over, closes her eyes again. Stupid.

She falls back to sleep, and for the rest of the night, forgets all about it.


*

The next morning is the kind that often follows a night of bad sleep: Sarah's mind, her whole being, resemble--to use the image that always occurs to her--an old, threadbare couch, with ripped-up upholstery, through which discombobulated springs show, escaping in every direction, like the hair of a medusa, or of Sideshow Bob, or like a collection of snakes-in-a-can. In other words, the messy parts of life have lost the covering that usually makes them tolerable. Her advancing age (she's thirty-four), her singleness, her childlessness, her hatred for her gigs, they all threaten to take over the room, leave her running in circles, to try and round them back up.

Walking past her apartment door, she spots a scrap of paper. Someone must have slipped it under the crack. Apprehensive (is somebody finally complaining about her practicing?) she picks it up.

Hi, she reads, I’m one of your neighbors. You don’t know me, but I just wanted you to know that whenever I walk by your door, no matter what kind of day I’ve had, I always hear your beautiful playing, and after that, everything feels okay.

Thanks, 

Joe

She's overwhelmed. She wonders, what was she practicing when Joe heard her? Lately, she's been going over all the old favorites. Was it Dvorak? Rococo? Or Elgar? Bach? Did it really sound good? Would she have thought it sounded good--or did it only sound good because it was being heard by a non-musician (presumably), and because it was filtered by the door, which everybody knows always makes everything sound good?

She puts the note carefully in a drawer, and gets ready for work.


*

Now she's heaving herself and her huge white hard-case into a subway car, on the way to play the show she occasionally subs on. Uh-oh. One of the usual over-friendly types catches her eye, then looks at her big, heavy case. "Heh heh," he says, and she already knows how it'll finish: "I bet you wish you played the flute."

Her second-most-hated comment, after: "It must be great, doing what you love for a living. Eh?"


*

The show is called Loompaty-do! ("the untold story of Willy Wonka's oompa-loompas.") Although Sarah recognizes it's a good show, and the money is great (when she gets to play), and she should be really grateful for the work, still, basically, she hates it. It just … isn't anything like those old favorites that Joe might have heard her practicing. At least she's learned, like she always does, to shut it out, think about other things, while she's on the job.

Today, for some reason, maybe because of the note, her thoughts are all of the cello, past times playing it, childhood, college--and also of the sculpture.

I said before that the Mexican always looked to her like something other than what he was. What he looked like was a man playing the cello--because the guitar in the sculpture is held almost vertically, almost like a cello, and the man is almost sitting the way a cellist sits. 

He’s not holding a bow. But cellists do sometimes pluck. Her first few lessons as a kid, she didn't hold a bow either. And the strings, which are really just notches in the guitar's fingerboard, number four (or at least, they do lower down, where the Mexican's right hand touches them. At the high end, there are only three--one disappears somewhere on the way up, in a most sculpturish way.) 

All in all, a cello. Which makes him a cellist. And a cellist who, at a certain point, around the stomach, is indistinguishable from his cello.

There's a similarity that's never been lost on Sarah between the little man and herself. Because there was a time, or there were times, when she too felt indistinguishable, or at least semi-indistinguishable, at least momentarily, from her cello. It's definitely possible that somewhere back in the sweet and safe reaches of childhood, screeching on her little quarter-size cello, she looked up at her dresser, spotted the Mexican, and thought, I’m like him!

So now she's playing the show, and thinking of nights from years ago, and she thinks of college, music school: of walking through the quiet campus, she and her big white case moving through the dark, gliding along. Then the interior of the music building, bright lights for a moment, a free room, lights off … and now she remembers herself, draping herself lovingly over the cello's smooth, round shoulders.

Eyes closed, door shut tight against other sounds and other people, she feels the sound (which is dark like the night) begin to fill the small space, emanating--isn't it?--from her stomach, her breast, vibrating through and around her--thighs, wood, strings, floor, feet. She forgets momentarily--or momentarily lets the fact slip away--that it isn’t herself she's playing on, not some appendage extending out of her, not a second torso or second almost-person existing inside a bigger her, but only an instrument.

*

Or, as it seems more lately to have turned out, an anchor.

*

She decides to try a therapist.

"I feel empty," she tells the therapist. "Hollow."

"Like your cello," the therapist observes. The therapist was immediately fascinated by Sarah’s connection with her instrument. Now she's making way too big a deal out of it.

"I don’t feel like my cello," Sarah protests. "My cello is shiny. It’s a fiery orange-brown." (This is how she's always expressed it to herself, although she's never said it out loud before.) "It's got a proud chest, sticking out. None of those things are like me."

"You feel weaker."

"I feel like I'm allowed to be … not weak … vulnerable, when I'm sitting behind it."

"It protects you."

Another time: 

"Everything I really want--a baby, a better standard of living, satisfaction with my job, it all seems at odds with being a musician. But I feel like--not playing the cello? That would be like losing a leg. Or an organ."

"Surely there are women who play the cello and have babies."

"I know, but …"

"Hopefully, sooner or later, the choice will become clear. Either the cello will feel more important, or everything else will. Then you'll know what to do."

Sarah quickly decides the therapy is useless.


*

Three afternoons a week, a few little boys and girls arrive at Sarah's apartment carrying small cello cases, to take lessons with her. Her favorite is a five-year old named Raphael, with beautiful blonde curls, who usually comes at five o'clock on Thursday. He's deposited by his mother at the apartment along with his three-year-old brother Gabriel, whom Sarah reluctantly agrees to keep an eye on (what do they think she is, a babysitter, at her age?) for the sake of his cherubic brother. Gabriel has improbably black hair, also curly, and behaves like a little demon.

One Thursday, Sarah is showing little Raphael the rudiments of vibrato--he's very advanced for his age. She's speaking enthusiastically in her talking-to-little-kids voice, Raphael is looking up at her, eyes wide and attentive, when--suddenly--a vicious, shocking noise, a woody, aggressively percussive noise, makes her spin around. Gabriel is standing next to her dresser, crying--Raphael has started to bawl, too--and on the floor next to him, fallen from the top of the dresser, is the beloved sculpture. Split in two.

She bends down, first picks up a little ball that has rolled toward her--it's shiny and brown, looks like some combination of an acorn and a hazelnut and a chestnut, it seems for lack of a better explanation to have come out of the sculpture--which is strange because she's never had any idea that there was any space in there, or that the sculpture was even made from more than one piece of wood--but quickly stops thinking about that because now she's picking up the two broken halves of the sculpture, all jagged edges and splinters. And amidst the bawling of the two boys, and the remaining echo of the vicious, wooden noise, she begins to cry, too.



II

It didn't take long, after I left Sarah the note about how much her playing affected me, for her to find out which apartment I was in, further down the hall. She invited me over, played for me a few times, just for me. We started to have a coffee together sometimes, in my apartment or hers. Sometimes a drink at the end of the day.

She was thirty-five when we met, beautiful, with delicate features that seemed to achieve their ideal state when she looked particularly sad, and long hair (like every other female cellist I've ever heard of, though of course, I’m not a music type), which in her case was dark. Meeting her in person, I developed a pretty big crush (though I was probably already half in love just from hearing her play--even though I'm not a music type, music has always had a big effect on me.) But romantically, nothing ever really worked out. 

Still, we got pretty close. She told me all about everything, those experiences, the sculpture, her cello, her doubts, her conflicted urge to give up music, her therapy sessions. I listened, made sympathetic noises, occasionally said something helpful--though she wasn't always too receptive--and reiterated how much the sound of her cello affected me.

One time I had the idea of telling her about, or more really summarizing, a short story I loved, and which seemed relevant. The story, by Guy de Maupassant, is about an older guy who teaches Latin, loves Latin, is devoted to it, and doesn't have much of a life besides teaching it. One day, one of his students, as a practical joke, decides to convince him that a young laundress who works across from their school is in love with him. At the same time, the student convinces the young laundress that the Latin teacher is in love with her, and wants to marry her. Next thing you know, never mind the practical joke, both the teacher and the laundress, convinced that the other one is in love, fall in love, too. They get married, open a grocery store, and the Latin teacher finds that, with his new life, he doesn't miss his beloved old vocation at all. "Latin," he says, "does not keep the pot boiling."


Her response? "Well, Latin isn't exactly like music, is it?"

*

I suppose I ought to explain why nothing ever worked out on the romantic front: That was my doing. Although, even if I had acted differently (that is, if I had acted at all) I'm not sure how interested she might have been. I could never quite tell. 

Of course, in this day and age, she could have done something about it, too. A few times, I even thought she was about to.

But regardless, the truth is, something about her scared me. Or else--actually, this is closer to the real truth--what scared me was just how big a crush I had on her. I guess I couldn't really separate her from the music that she made, that had already been seeping into me for so long. And I also--or maybe this is the same thing--I couldn't separate her from that long-haired cellist image I had of her, before we ever met. (It never even occurred to me, walking by her apartment, that she might have been a guy. I probably would never have written to her if it had.) 

The bottom line, I guess, is that I felt like if I opened the valve and let those feelings wash over me (to use one image) I might end up getting drowned. Maybe, if I'd been a musician too, it would have been different ... I don’t know.

*

Well, finally, she did leave the city. One night--it was the last time we were going to see each other for a while--we were in her apartment, which was almost empty, we had opened a kind of special bottle of wine, a really nice Pinot I had picked up on a vineyard trip in Oregon, which I actually went on with this other woman who I then didn’t turn out to be interested enough in to keep seeing … But anyway, we opened that bottle, but then, because it was really hot (it was August) we ended up drinking beer instead. 

She was preoccupied with her impending move. I was feeling particularly attracted to her, particularly sad that I wouldn't be seeing her for such a long time, and wondering if it had been a mistake, never having acted. Neither of us was very talkative. 

It seemed to me that she'd been less talkative in general, since deciding to go away. Colder, even. That night, I even wondered if there was something she was angry about. And, unconnected with that, there was the question about whether it had been a mistake to never try anything with her, popping into my head from time to time.

The evening dragged along, punctuated by a lot of sighing. Then, around eleven, after we'd been silent for a pretty long time, she said, "Anyway ... I have something for you." 

She leaned down, reached in her bag, and pulled out a crumpled-up paper towel, from which she extracted something very small, brown, shiny, and round, but with a sort of little horn sticking out of one side.

"Is that … ?" I asked. She nodded. It was the acorn-hazelnut-chestnut, the thing that had fallen out when the Mexican broke in two. "You didn’t say there was a horn," I said.

"You mean that … wing thing?" She seemed surprised herself. "You know, I really don't remember it being there."

"Huh."

"How weird."

"Yeah …"

"Anyway ... I decided I want you to have it, Joe. To remember me by."

I immediately thought, you mean you don’t want to have it yourself anymore. 

But what I said was, "That's amazing. I'm really touched." Which was true, too. 


*

It was two days after that that she went away to law school. She had chosen a school very far away, all the way across the country. I kept up with her, more on Facebook than in any real way. We never talked on the phone or anything, which felt strange, after how close we'd become. I missed her. But what I missed most was hearing her play. 

Then, after three years, she came back to town for a week. I asked her if she wanted to get a drink, and she said, "Well … we'll see." Which was a little strange, because immediately afterward, she suggested a time and a place.

We met, I ordered a drink and she didn't, I told her a little bit about myself, and then asked her to tell me all about her. Which she did. 

School had been a complete success, she said, which I pretty much knew already. She was finished, had a job lined up, which she wasn't starting quite yet, because--first of all, she'd met a guy at school, almost right off the bat, his name was David (which I also already knew), pronounced da-VEED because he was Catalan (which I didn't know--he wasn't on Facebook, as far as I could tell.) The rest of what she said was all new to me.

She told me that, even though school had been such a success, and even though David was great, fundamentally, she had spent a miserable few years. First of all, she hadn't had any time to touch her cello, with all her coursework, internships, etc. And she missed it, missed it terribly. Sometimes, she missed it so much she would cry. She even had pains inside, like some wild animal was scratching at her from in there, trying to get out. 

She thought it might help to at least go to some concerts, stay in touch with music, somehow. But every time she went, she’d start to cry. She couldn't stand being in the audience, not on stage.

And that wasn't even the worst part. Within about six months of meeting, she and David had decided to get married, at least at some point. And right away, even though they were still in school, they decided to have a baby. She was scared to let any more time go by, to get too old. And he loved the idea.

But it hadn't worked. They tried and tried, which might sound fun, she said, but stopped being fun pretty fast, made her feel awful, about herself, about him, she felt mad at him all the time, and he felt the same way about himself and about her, from what she could tell. It almost didn't even feel like they were in love anymore.

Predictably enough, all her friends chose that exact moment, a space of maybe three months, to get pregnant, all at the same time, all across the country, state by state, like little stars lighting up on a map. Now, when she wasn't crying about the cello, she was crying about babies. And herself. And that awful something inside her, that was hurting her, scratching at her, tormenting her.

As it turned out--she learned on a visit to the doctor--there really was something bad inside her, in a way. But now--and this she reported with a huge smile, which meant that I could finally stop nodding sadly at this unremitting string of bad news, which was a relief, because I'd run out of sympathetic things to say--that was a thing of the past. She'd had a surgery. It had worked. She and David had tried again. Et cetera.

Which was why she wasn't having a drink with me, even though we were out at a bar together. After she told me that, she couldn't stop smiling.


*

I swear this last part is true:

Later, walking home by myself through the warm October night, yellow leaves crunching underfoot, a sweet, faded autumn perfume in the air--after all that talk about crying--it was me that was a mess. My springs were sticking out a little.

The point was, the part of my life that had really included Sarah was over. She belonged to one more layer of discarded experience, like a fossil in a layer of rock. The "sarazoic" layer, or something like that. I'm not a big fan of getting older. These things depress me.

It had gotten cold out. I walked fast, hurried inside and then, perhaps inevitably, went hunting for the acorn-hazelnut-chestnut thing she'd given me. It reminded me of her. I hadn't seen it in ages. I wanted to give it a look. 

I found it in a drawer, took it out, held it on my open palm. It was still shiny, still brown. But it was different than before, bigger for one thing. And the sort-of horned thing stuck out further now than the last time I'd seen it. But the really strange thing was that there was another horn, on the other side. 

I held it a while, felt its smoothness, wondered how in the world it could have changed its shape. Then, I set it down on top of the TV, and walked off into the bedroom.

A minute later, when I came back in the room, I did a double-take, seeing it there, atop the TV set.

What did it look like?

Was it a devil, a tiny little devil, that she had left to me? 

Or was it a bird, a little bird ready to take off, wings outstretched ... flapping ... flying away … ? 

*

I nearly rushed over to grab it and shove it back in the drawer.

But then I didn't.











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Split

4/9/2014

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A close friend of mine who grew up in a war-torn country has, over the years, told me some extraordinary stories of her time there, the time she spent before her family left for America. In other conversations, she has shared details of her sister's biography, which naturally coincides in certain respects with hers, while diverging in others. I've been lucky enough, too, to meet the sister, a scientist. When we talked, she told me a little bit about her research and her career, a career which has by now taken her to several countries, on two continents.

My story "Split" owes its existence entirely to these various conversations with these two sisters--even if the fate of the story's protagonist turns out to be entirely different from theirs. And not only his fate: although his life and theirs overlap when it comes to certain external details, no resemblance of any other kind exists between him and that wonderful pair.



Picture
SPLIT

I

He had to leave. 

He had an apartment, a job. A life, of a sort. 

Nothing was missing. Nothing obvious. 

But he had to leave. 

Every day, his studio seemed smaller. His bed, his kitchen, which he never used, his paycheck--everything was shrinking. 
New York was (impossibly) shrinking. He had to leave--if for no other reason than the key, the key that hung from a silver chain around his neck.

Luka lived on the East Side, high up in the nineties. He worked in a lab at the university, investigating--it always embarrassed him, it sounded like such a cliché--rat brains. Injecting inhibitors, modifying memory. Wondering what, in rats, might be human, and what in humans could be predicted from rats. 

Sometimes, on the weekend, he went to see his parents in New Jersey. Other weekends, he went out with girls whom he met through friends at the lab. Or colleagues, at least. He wasn't sure whether he really felt that they were friends. He wasn't sure that he wanted them to be friends.

He just wanted to leave. He had to leave. He had to split.

Luka had been living in New York for fourteen years. In Queens. In Manhattan. For a year, after college, in Jersey. He’d come over with his parents, when things had gotten difficult back home, across the Atlantic. At first, expecting to go back. Then getting used to things, forgetting about going back, becoming someone else. Someone who, mostly, belonged here. 

Almost half his life, he'd been a New Yorker. Gone to high school, college, had his second, his third, girlfriend. His first, his second job. 

Every bit of clothing he wore, every pair of jeans and colored tee, was American, down to the last, Taiwanese stitch. And underneath his shirts, he always wore that very un-American, that heavy, awkward key, around his neck, on its silver chain.

How he'd ended up with it, he wasn’t sure. He didn’t know why his father didn’t have it, or his mother. He didn’t know why he was the only one who wanted to carry it around, the key that used to open that ancient, absurdly thick door, to the apartment in Dubrovnik. Before the apartment was destroyed, a week after they left.

The key made him think of his old bedroom, that he shared with his brother, made him think of the window in the living room, that looked out on the port, and of the roof, where he used to go with his first girlfriend, where he used to kiss her. The way fifteen-year-old boys kiss.

When he took it off, pulled it over his head on its chain, tossed it on top of the colored tee he'd just taken off, when he was about to make love to a woman … it made him feel guilty. 

Almost as guilty as if he'd kept it on.


II

It was a year later, when he’d been in Split for eight months, that Luka ran into Jágoda.

Split is a city of nearly 200,000, metropolitan area 400,000, on the Adriatic coast of Croatia. It is four hours north of the smaller Dubrovnik, where Luka had tried and failed to find a position. In Split, he found a job running a lab, doing very much the kind of work he'd done in New York, but for better pay, thanks to a government grant. He found an apartment, fell into the rhythm of the city, grew acclimated, re-acclimated, to the European lifestyle. When he left the sterile lab, he was greeted by the sound of children playing by the water, by scents of sea and pine and citrus. At night, crickets chirped at him through his shutters.

Sometimes, on the weekend, he travelled down the coast to Dubrovnik. His whole family had once lived there, until the war. His grandmother still did, in an apartment just on the water, with salt-specked shutters. But she wasn't the only reason he went. A month before handing in his resignation in New York, he had met a Dubrovnik girl. She was in America visiting relatives. She had a ready laugh, a lively nasal voice. She was pretty, blonde, and in less than half an hour she had won him over. She was not the least of the reasons he had handed in his resignation.

Every weekend, Luka travelled to see Jasna. Unless Jasna travelled to see Luka. Every other month, Jasna also took a week off from work, and stayed in Split, at Luka's place. They passed their time together sailing, walking, going to the movies, watching T.V. On Sundays, they ate lunch at Luka’s grandmother’s, or with Jasna’s family. They didn't talk about Luka's work, or Jasna's work. They didn't talk about why he had left New York. 

It was on a Saturday morning, a sunny spring morning, just after Luka had arrived in Dubrovnik by bus to visit Jasna, that he saw Jágoda. They were coming in opposite directions down a busy sidewalk near the station. They caught eyes. They stopped, both of them, in surprise. Said hello. 

For a minute, two minutes, they talked, as if in a capsule. As if they were alone on the sidewalk. While people struggled to go around them them, busy, annoyed, hurrying to and from the station. After two minutes, Luka asked Jágoda if she'd like to talk for longer. Jágoda said she would.

In Croatian, Jágoda means Strawberry. Fifteen years ago, when Luka used to go out with her, when he used to kiss her, up on the roof of his apartment building, it had been an apt name. Her hair was red then, her complexion pinkish. There was a softness about her--a softness in her voice, in her manner. And a sweetness. Strawberry.

Now, her hair was darker, her skin duskier. There was a ring on her finger, Luka noticed, as they turned toward a café they both knew. He had already heard that she had gotten married.

When they arrived at the café, there was only one open table that had room for her wheelchair. It was outside, next to a stone wall covered in pink flowers that grew from a vine. Luka and Jágoda sat in the spring morning air, drinking coffee, talking about old times, about other people, themselves. Each other.

What struck him was how strong she was. Beautifully strong. That was what struck him. She was nothing like a strawberry, anymore. He found himself searching in her words for a meaning beyond anything that could reasonably be expected to have been found there.
 

Then they exchanged phone numbers, and parted.

III

When Luka got to Jasna's place, she asked why he was so late. He shrugged. Then he gave her a kiss, and wrapped her in his arms. He lifted her, lowered her so that her feet were on top of his feet, walked forward into the apartment, moving her in front of him.

But why was he so late? 

He shrugged a second time.

She had asked him three or four times, when he told her. Which led to the next question: Who was this Jágoda?

Again, he shrugged.

Who? 

An old girlfriend. 

How old? 

Old. And married. Shall we go out? His turn to ask a question.

No.

Come on.

No.

Seeing how things stood, Luka turned the T.V. on to a soccer match, and waited. After an hour, Jasna came over, blocked the T.V. set., smiled. "Luka, why don't you call up that girl and her husband, and see if they want to go out?"

He made a face.

"But why not?"

He shrugged.

She had asked him three or four times, when he picked up the phone. "Hello, Jágoda? Luka here …"

Still, the rest of the weekend, Jasna was difficult. On the phone all week, too, she was difficult. And up until Saturday night, when the two couples went out. Then she was in fine spirits. At the restaurant, the women did most of the talking, getting along perfectly, which made Luka nervous. He and the husband stayed quiet.

On the way home, he and Jasna walked along the harbor. The air smelled of fish. The crickets, together with the surf, made it sound as if the city was snoring. Jasna’s spirits were finer than ever. Just before they got back, she laughed.

"What?" asked Luka.

"Oh, nothing."

"Hmm."

They walked a few steps.

"So why is she in a wheelchair?"

He stopped walking. "Schrapnel." 

"Oh." She took his hand, bit playfully on his knuckle.

They walked a little further.

"Listen, Jasna," Luka said. "I have to go back a little earlier tomorrow."

When he returned the next afternoon to his apartment in Split, Luka found himself at loose ends. He made an omelette, watched T.V. He went and sat by the large window in his bedroom. An unfriendly row of agave cactus stretched along the sidewalk below.

As he sat, his hand found the back of his neck. He pulled at the chain there, once, twice. Then he lifted it, with its key, around, in front of his face, off of his neck. 

He held it in his hands for a long time. 

Then he put it back on.


IV

Summer was hot. The four-hour bus ride, which Luka had never minded, became irritating. Then intolerable. Sun beat in. For some reason, the drivers refused to turn on their air conditioning. Luka bought a car.

The first Saturday after he bought it, he drove to Dubrovnik, enjoying the twists and turns of the road, the clear view of the sea. When he arrived, he called Jasna, who came down from her apartment.

"Now that you own something big, like a car, you're really back for good," she said, happily. Luka grunted.

He wasn't sure he had the money for a car. He might not even have a job. In a few weeks, the year-long grant funding his lab in Split would run out. He hadn’t heard yet whether it would be renewed.

Which might be a good thing. Work in Croatia hadn't turned out to be much different from what it had been in New York. He didn't much like his coworkers at the lab. They didn't listen to him, though he was the one who went to school in America, and was supposed to be the one in charge. Meanwhile, every time he talked to his parents, they asked when he was returning to New York. His brother, too.

At the same time, Jasna was beginning to get on his nerves. She wanted to talk about the future all the time now.  She kept asking when he was moving to Dubrovnik.

That was when he got an offer from a company in Germany to run one of their labs. 

Hearing the offer on the phone, he pumped his fist in the air. 

It was just … the whole country seemed so … provincial now, after he’d been back for a whole year. His coworkers. Jasna. This idiotic superstition about unhealthy drafts, that kept people from using their air conditioners. If it weren't for his grandmother …

Then, as quickly, he became confused. He asked the Germans to give him some time to make his decision. He felt ... 

When they called a second time, he couldn't talk. He was in Dubrovnik, with Jasna. She was annoying him, complaining of feeling sick all through his visit. 

He hadn't told her about the offer from Germany.

He had told Jágoda though. He’d talked to her again, more than once, on the phone. He’d tried to see her, too, without Jasna, without her husband. 

The first time he asked, she said she was busy. 

The second time, she hesitated, then said the same thing.

Finally, the fifth time, when she heard his voice over the phone, she just said, "Look, why don't you stop calling?"

But he didn't want to stop. He wanted to talk to her again. And again.

It was funny. It wasn't that he had thought of her that often, when he was living in New York. Maybe just … somewhere, in the back of his mind.

They had never said goodbye properly, that was the problem. Unless it was just that he had never apologized properly. He had never really apologized at all. He hadn't had a chance.

Poor Jágoda was smarter than he was. She hadn't wanted to go up on the roof that night. She'd begged him not to go. Everybody said it was dangerous, being in a place like that.

He didn't care. He wanted to go. He wanted to kiss her, up there, in the middle of all the danger. It would be too perfect. He didn't believe anything could hurt them. He didn't believe it.

And he hadn't meant, after that first, faraway explosion happened, to be so much quicker than her. It was just that the view from the neighboring roof was so much better. And the view from the next building on, better still. He was meters ahead of her, when the second explosion occurred.

The next day, when his father decided that, if the building next to theirs had been hit, they'd better leave at once, she was still in the hospital. Still in the hospital, still unconscious. 

And he was fine.

V

The third time the Germans called, Luka had just been trying to reach the grant people. Today was decision day for the renewal of his lab, or was supposed to be. But he hadn't heard a thing. 

He asked the Germans if he could call them back in an hour. Tried the grant people again, without success. Left a second message. Started jingling the key and its chain, which he now found in his hand.

It was simple, really. 

Either he put the chain away in a drawer now, and didn't take it out. Left it behind. Or he called Jágoda again. Simple.

Jingle.

It was stupid. She had told him not to call. 

And what if she hadn't told him? Even then, wasn't it just something … empty, and dead?

Jingle.

But it could be something new, and alive. It could be. If--  

The phone rang. 

"Luka?" 

It was Jasna.

"What's up?" he answered.  "You sound--"

"I thought you would be wondering, because I was wondering, you know, since I was nauseated."

"Hmm?"

"So I decided to take a pregnancy test--"

"What?"

"Yeah, and so I took it just now, and--"

“And?”

"And--"


VI

He couldn't reach the end. The numbers wouldn't work. 

His chest itched, too. It itched on that spot where it always itched. And he was tired. He'd been working all day. 

He was working again now, after rushing through dinner. It was something extra, something he’d brought home from the lab. As always, the Germans were pushing him, pushing him. 

He squinted at the screen, turned to look over his shoulder at the rest of the apartment. The boy was playing a video game, loudly, on the T.V. The girl was crying, Jasna was shouting at both of them to keep it down. He put his fingers in his ears, to help him concentrate. 

He was relieved when the phone rang. “Hello?” 

But he couldn't hear any reply.

“Wait a minute, all right?” 

Something incomprehensible came back at him.

Luka walked through the apartment. He walked past the children, past all the noise. He held up the phone toward Jasna in explanation, opened the door, went outside, into the winter air.

“All right, sorry. Hello?” 

Snow was falling.

“Luka? Jágoda.”

“Jágoda!”

The wind blew into Luka’s face.

“Jágoda. How in the world are you?”

“I'm … all right. And you?”

“I’m fine.”

“Good,” said Jágoda. “I'm fine, too.”

“Good.”

There was a pause. Or at least, Luka didn’t hear anything. The falling snow seemed to muffle the connection to wherever Jágoda was calling from. Just as it muffled the sounds outside, and blurred the lights of the cold, northern city. 

Then the sound returned: “Luka, are you there?”

“Yes.”

“Listen,” she said. “I’ve just gotten divorced--”








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The Fallen Cone

4/1/2014

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The "Fallen Cone," like "The Pencils," is a short story I wrote a few years ago. I was inspired to write it by two quite unexceptional experiences: a conversation with a neighbor on an airplane trip, and a visit to a beach near where I grew up. As I wrote, it seemed that two distinct styles were called for, each appropriate to a particular emotional environment. These styles, if they are indeed distinguishable, will be found in succession.

After writing the story, I entered it in the 2009 Sean O'Faolain International Short Story Competition. There, in the wilds of Ireland, it fought past its competitor-stories with sufficient bravery and determination to earn a commendation. Since then, it has been enjoying a well-earned retirement. I have disturbed it now in the hope that you will enjoy becoming acquainted with it.

Picture


The Fallen Cone

When she was young, she lived near the shore of a very beautiful lake.

It was an almond-shaped lake, longer than the eye could measure, and so wide across that the far shore was barely visible--like a slight thickening or heightening of the horizon. The bottom lay not far down, which made the lake's surface turbulent, a mass of waves which, in the winter, and even into the spring, were a steely grey--to the girl's young eye, a cruel grey. 

She felt this cruelty for the first time one cold Saturday or Sunday, when her family went out driving and, as on other drives, stopped for a short spell by the shore. Leaving the warm car, they watched, shuddering and shivering, as the waves pounded the shoreline’s coarse sand and rocks. Their vantage point stood at the edge of a municipal park, some way above the water and sand; while her older siblings pressed their faces over the cold metal railing marking the edge of the higher ground, she, not yet tall enough to do the same, held on from below with her mittened hands, gazing through her frosty glasses, her fair hair blowing in the wind.

To the left, a long wooden stairway led down from the high ground to the beach, its steps sheathed in ice. On milder days, as spring began to peek around corners, and the water turned from grey to green, the family would descend to pick up shells, examine the small, sharp stones and driftwood deposited by yesterday's wilder tides, step over tiny carcasses of dead fish. Always, on these days, on the way down the stairs and again on the way back up, the girl would turn for a moment--all of them would turn, her brother and her sister, too--and look down toward the park’s far end. There, a building stood, tiny, no more than a hut, and for now, shuttered and lifeless.

Then summer came. The parking lot by the park filled up with cars. Teenagers covered the sandy parts of the beach with towels and blankets, and tanned bodies, and played with balls, and frisbees … boys climbed on the rocks till they were halfway out into the lake … genteel older ladies strolled beneath umbrellas. In the middle of the park up above, a magnificent rose garden bloomed, in orange and pink and red, and combinations of these and other colors which resembled stripes-of-tiger and spots-of-leopard and who-knows-what-else. And at the park’s end, the windows of the little hut would one day, after interminable other days, open up, to reveal, and to serve forth unto the world, what had, it stood to reason, lain and languished all through the winter and spring imprisoned within: ice cream cones, and cups of ice cream, and ice cream sandwiches, and even ice cream bars. 

Later, in her memory, the light on those days--the summer days--was always glistening brilliantly upon the lake’s waters, transforming the shapes lying on the beach, and those walking along it, changing their consistency, into something more transparent, composed only partly of matter, but partly of light; so that they seemed to move more slowly, and more gradually, or to move only those discontinuous parts of themselves that were matter, which would then mix with the next rays of light along their path; or, in the case of those things that were not moving, to lie unmoving with greater tranquility, and less reality; while the sounds too, of radios and surf and gulls and laughter, were altered, flying quickly away into the air or over the water, and becoming a part of the glittering stillness. 

Amidst this stillness, in the foreground of her memories, walked her sister and brother--and sometimes her mother or father, or both--but especially she, herself. On those Saturdays or Sundays, or Tuesdays or Fridays or Mondays--because in the summer each day is the same--she walked along the shore, surrounded by her family, carrying in her two hands, like a crown or like a nightingale's egg, an ice cream cone, or bar or sandwich … some treasure which lent to that day, and to the whole summer, its final perfection.


And now? 

Now, she is no longer young. Now, she is closer to fifty than to forty, and it is many years since she lived near the lake.

First, there was the suburb she and her husband moved to, further away. And then the city, more than an hour’s plane ride away, where they moved two years ago. For two years, she has not been back to her childhood home. 

A week ago, however, she flew there. She got a week off from work, spent it with her father. Now, she is returning. She is at the airport. The airport's sliding doors have opened to her, she's outside, her cell phone rings, it's her husband, he's almost there. She hurries to the curb, pulling her bag behind her, looking down the line of cars for him. 

The light glares into her eyes. The day is oppressive, hot, with a whitish sky. Her glasses have already fogged up, it happened the moment she came through the sliding doors. The fog catches the glare, dazzling her. Her permed blonde hair, limp from the dry airplane, droops, damp, against her neck.

And here is her husband, shutting off the car, popping the trunk, opening the door, walking over. Gingerly, in the heat, he half-hugs her. She feels her blouse where his hand touches, her skin there is almost moist. He kisses her cheek, then stands back, wipes his own forehead. "Hot one …" 

He's wearing an orange golf shirt, one she bought for him. Even washed out by the white light, it looks garishly bright against the colorless asphalt and concrete. He bends to pick up her bag. She sees a sweat stain down his back. He stands back up. His shirt's front seems to stick out further than it did a week ago. 

She wipes her glasses against her sleeve, puts them on again. He is definitely fatter. "Been eating out?" Her voice is deliberately casual.

His pink face breaks into a grin as he lowers his eyes to his stomach. He looks guilty, and slightly foolish. "Every night."

She regrets buying him a shirt that color.


They get into the car, ramble up a ramp to the highway, speed away. Ugly, uninhabited swaths of city, separating the airport from the neighborhood where they live, spread out before them. The quiet noise of the car’s engine is drowned out by the blasting of the air conditioner.

"Good flight?" he asks.

"It was fine," she sighs. The air blasts, but the car is still hot.

"Trip good?"

"I don't know," she says. She sits quiet a moment. "I'm feeling guilty."

At first he seems not to hear her. Then he repeats, "Guilty?"

She frowns, though he can't see it. Of course she's feeling guilty. "For leaving," she explains the obvious.

He puts a hand on her thigh. "It's all right, honey. I can get by for a--"

"No, for leaving dad."

"Oh." His hand feels stiff on her leg.

"He didn't look good, and I don't think Bob and Jean check in on him enough."

"Sorry …" he pats her thigh. "I'm sure he'll be fine, though."

He removes his hand to steer the car around a bend in the highway. 


The air inside the car is impossibly wet, it's as if the air blowing from the vents can't penetrate this other, heavier, wetter air. Her eye drifts to the clock. Five o'clock.

"What's left in the fridge?" she asks.

He clears his throat. "I don’t really know," he says. "I didn't really check, I guess."

"Well, is there anything left for dinner?"

"Oh yeah," he says brightly. "I'm pretty sure there is."


They're halfway home now, driving through an industrial area. Looked at with a fresh eye, she thinks, the city, the part of it they're driving through anyway, really is ugly. Factories, warehouses … not a human in sight. No sign of life.

"It's so hot," she says.

"Yup," he replies. "Been like this every day. Brutal." He tries to turn up the air conditioner. It's already at its highest setting.

"Let's stop for an ice cream," she suddenly exclaims. 

He replies just as quickly: "Really?" 

"Yeah." She smiles. "We can stop at the place around the corner from the Chinese place."

"Okay." He puts his hand back on her thigh. "Let's do it."


He orders an orange sherbet, two scoops, exactly the color of his shirt. She gets mint chocolate chip. The first taste is perfect, wonderfully refreshing. It's her favorite. 

Her father's, too. 

They half-lean against the hot car, standing in the little parking lot of the little ice cream shack, about a mile from home.

"I don't think he’s going to be fine," she says.

"Your dad?" He licks his sherbet. "Sure he will."

"I don’t think so." She looks down. "I don't think …"

"What?"

"I'm worried he's not going to--"

"No … come on , honey, why do you--"

"I wish we still lived closer. Why can't we live closer?"

"Well," he says, "… maybe one of these days." 

She looks up. "Really?"

"You know, it just ... depends on the company."

Some teenagers drive into the parking lot, too fast, coming within a few feet of where she is standing. She turns to glare after them, when she hears her husband say, "Oops!" She turns back. There’s a dark orange spot on the stomach of his shirt. He’s spilled his sherbet.

"What did you do?" she clicks her tongue.

"Surprised me," he whines.

She hurries up to the window of the ice cream shack, where the teenagers are standing, taking their time ordering. Now you slow down? she fumes. 

When they are done, she gets a cup of water, and dips a napkin into it, walking back to the car. She dabs at the spot on her husband’s shirt. "Cold feels good," he says. He laughs, and squirms.

"Hold still." 

She hears herself. It sounds as if she’s talking to a child. Which, practically, she is. What kind of  grown man gets a big orange stain on the big stomach of his stupid … ice-cream colored shirt? She rubs furiously. 

"Ow," he says. Then he laughs again. "Oops." 

She looks down. Somehow, she has dropped her own ice cream. She looks accusingly at her open fingers--how could they have let the cone slip?--and then back to the ground. The cone is lying on the asphalt, still intact. A few inches away lies the green ball of ice cream. 

Forward springs her husband. He retrieves ice cream and cone from where they lie, not far away from a cigarette butt and a crushed red-and-white Coke cup. In a few seconds, he has shoved the one into the other, stood back up, offered them to her. "Five-second rule," he smiles. "No harm done."

She looks at the ice cream, shakes her head. "I'm done with it."

"Aw, come on."

"I'm done with it," she turns away. Little tears have come to the corners of her eyes.

"Geez," he says, behind her. "You’re welcome." 

She takes a few wobbling steps away from the car, puts her open hand over her mouth. She bites down on the skin of one finger. Silently, she is crying.

Why is she crying? 

Can you cry from disgust?

But why would he even offer that to her? She doesn’t want any ice cream that's fallen onto the asphalt next to some nasty old cigarette. 

She doesn't want to be eating ice cream on the asphalt, period. He really ought to understand that. 

Why can't he understand that?

When she lived by the lake, they ate ice cream by the lake. That's where you eat ice cream. Not in a parking lot. 

Not like this.


A moment later, she turns back. Her husband is leaning against the car again, licking his lips, a cone in each hand. On his face is a slightly guilty, but entirely happy, expression.




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    Author

    Sasha Margolis is author of The Tsimbalist (the novel and the blog) and violinist, singer, and storyteller for the band Big Galut(e)
    He can be found on twitter as @SashaMargolis

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