Like blind people afraid of the dark who sing quietly to themselves. Like people who live alone in dark apartments and turn on the television first thing in the morning just to give the place some life.
Like a rapsodist who constantly tells the same stories over and over again. Stories that force themselves to be constantly told. Improved. So that they don’t lose their place. So they have something to bounce off of. So the thread isn’t broken.
Elza. Voices are so bewitching. They bore into the body. Gradually uncover all the paths. Some of them shut the gates forever, burn bridges. Close openings.
“What kind of fucked-up country is this?” yells the neighbor and laughs like a lunatic. I sit on the toilet and try to pee. The neighbor is laughing and yelling. His voice encircles me like a strap that’s too tight. Like a harness. It digs into my flesh. As long as I have to listen to him, I can’t pee.
The neighbor is an emphasized character.
You can’t hear the Petržalka muezzins in the city. The river stands in their path. It doesn’t carry their shouts. It swallows their calling with its own silence. Silence without competition.
The muezzins are powerless under the surface. The water swallows their words, stories, shouts. The earthly noise, meaning, and intensity. They back up from her. A few steps back— home—to Petržalka. Retreat like rats.
A city with a river running through it has an advantage over one without a river. It doesn’t have to be exterminated all at once. A city without a river has to be exterminated all in one day. So that the rats don’t get out of the poison zone into places that haven’t been treated yet. A city with a river running through it can be poisoned in two steps.
When Elza left the apartment in the morning, Ian was sitting naked in a chair, writing. In the evening when she returned, she opened the door to the living room and was surprised to see him still sitting there naked, writing, in the same position. When she points it out to him, he slaps his belly and thighs with joy as if he were seeing them for the first time. He likes the lively sound of it.
That spring Elza and Ian started living in their city as if on vacation. Like being abroad. Reading for hours at Café Hyena. They listened to and watched the people around them. Maintained a state of wakeful hunger. Spent lots of money. As always, on the edge of being broke. Pissing it away. Always writing something.
They met at the café twice a day and shared the table with another couple—Rebeka and Lukas Elfman. It was obvious that this was a Quartet of artists. Rebeka was Elza’s friend from childhood, and Elfman had married her just before it ended.
At the Hyena they were on a stipend. That’s when life slows down to the pace of a ship cruise.
II
Café Hyena
“Oh little fairy, if you only knew what I’ve been through…”
—Pinocchio
Elza. Rebeka and I always met just before lunch. We would go shopping together and then we took our time drinking a bottle of red wine. Meanwhile, Rebeka would cook because, unlike me, she didn’t like sandwiches, but preferred meat and sauces. All the honest, completely homemade meals, like Szegedin goulash or chicken and rice with compote moved her and reminded her of her family and eating with her mama, who had died.
Rebeka also liked to cook because wine went down well during cooking. “This is the way we live, Elza, cooking, cleaning, and drinking. Jeez, but sometimes I say to myself—we do it instead of working—but imagine those women who are at work till four and then they manage to do everything that’s taken us all day.” Rebeka lit another cigarette, took a deep drag, and for a moment quietly admired women who work. Rebeka was my best friend. We even looked like each other. There were days when people thought we were sisters. Rebeka didn’t mind it. She also had one real sister—a twin. Their relationship got sticky when the sister went around in public yelling that, in their mother’s womb, Rebeka had taken all the nourishment for herself.
Rebeka reproached her for not remembering anymore who saved her from being beaten up. “She was always baiting somebody, but didn’t know how to defend herself afterwards. We were strange twins: we won all the competitions. I was always faster at running, swimming, and climbing. My sister always won the other battles, like who could eat the most pancakes or swallow a whole muffin.”
Lately something had been bothering Rebeka. She was the only member of our Quartet who’d never worked. The ones with stipends met daily in the café so they could set the strategy. They had a system where one of them would always work and earn money while the others created. They sat around in the café, strolled around the city, studied, observed, fought for their lives.
The fourth, meanwhile, provided the stipend. Just as other artists get them from: the Santa Maddalena Foundation in Tuscany, the Instituto Calouste Gulbenkian in Lisbon, the Fulbright Foundation in the USA, or the Countess Thurn-Taxis in Duino.
The Trinity Foundation had its headquarters at the Café Hyena, which the patrons renamed Café Vienna. It was a spacious café patronized mostly by foreigners and rich people. Here they considered the Trinity to be students. They were always shivering with cold, not dressed heavily enough, warming their hands on the hot mugs, mixing all kinds of alcohol, and continually writing something or making notes in books or magazines. Sometimes they would close a book loudly, put their hand on its spine, and look off into the distance with a sigh. So the other guests knew that they had just gotten to an idea in the text that had suddenly completely changed their life. Sometimes they stood up and nervously walked around the café. Tapping their fingers impatiently on their lips. Creativity broadcast live.
Today at the Hyena, Elza is reading aloud from Seeing People Off. The first ten pages. The air grows tense from the vulgar words and a pair of older women and two families with children rise from a table covered with desserts and leave. At the end, no one applauds. A lady in violet comes over to Elza. “I don’t easily go up to people and give them my opinion, but I have to tell you that Petržalka isn’t like that. I don’t know where you live—there are weirdoes everywhere, but this? Not like that! And I guarantee you that if you leave the beginning like that no one will buy your book. I guarantee you. And I’m not even a teacher.”
When the Quartet discussed something, its members shouted over each other, rising out of their chairs with faces burning. Sometimes they celebrated here. On pay day, when the stipend came for the next month. Then they inordinately drank, ate, and argued. They filled the whole café with their yelling.
“Don’t talk shit to me!” shouted Rebeka at Elza. They were arguing about the character of Cowboy in the Lynch film Mulholland Drive. For Elza it was a negative character and for Rebeka positive. He reminded Elza of a secret police agent, Rebeka of an alchemist. During their argument, Elza’s friend’s face changed from its original Rebeka-the-little-sheep, Rebeka-the-lamb, from doe-eyed-dog-Rebeka to Rebeka-the-wolf, -lion, -tiger, -dragon, and finally it glowed pure, blinding, motionless gold. And golden-mouthed-Rebeka shouted: “So shut your trap for a second, for God’s sake, shut up, Elza!”
“You’re not arguing with me, you’re arguing with the wine,” Elza laughed.
“I think it’s time. She should start earning,” said Elfman.
“Her? She’s so frail,” doubted Elza.
“Oh please, don’t talk to me like some bisexual,” said Ian, annoyed.
Rebeka. Money—again we need money. We can’t live forever like this: with no money. Now it’s my turn—I’ll try to start earning. And we’ll see. I’ll find a job, start a business,