Crumbs Page 2

  This bottle, too, was empty. It was time to talk to the UCLA guy. I moved seats. He immediately waved to the waitress and held up two fingers.

  That, of course, meant two more beers. I started to like him. His appearance was different from the other immigrant workers at the foundry. He was wearing tennis shoes, not the winkle-pickers with raised heels everyone else was wearing. His jeans were the right length and not turned up on the inside. His hair was closely cropped and he had a few days growth of stubble. He even had the kind of nose and lips you’d expect. There was something in his eyes which confused me for a moment. As if I had already seen them somewhere before. Not the eyes themselves, probably just the look. I couldn’t remember where and when.

  He said, ‘I’m Selim.’

  He hesitated a moment before offering me his hand.

  ‘Egon.’

  He nodded as if he already knew my name.

  ‘I liked the film, too.’

  I was surprised at his pronunciation. He couldn’t have been in this town long. I’d been seeing him in the bar for only about two years. He spoke almost without an accent.

  ‘Yeah, yeah.’ I nodded and decided not to tell him that I hadn’t seen the film at all. I’d only read Hardy’s novel.

  The waitress brought the two beers.

  I stared at the table, which was scratched and carved by knives. We avoided familiarities, such as toasts and knocking glass against glass. He didn’t try anything like that.

  I took a gulp. Selim was talking about the film. I couldn’t follow. Drunkenness hit me on the back of the skull with its full power. Images split into four and scattered. I was trying to catch hold of the space, to patch it together. Gave up in the end. I was looking at the face in front of me, which was distorted and mangled as in a fairground hall of mirrors.

  ‘The film was beautiful.’

  He breathed the word ‘beautiful’ so gently.

  The waitress started turning chairs upside down and putting them on the tables.

  ‘TIME TO GOOOOOOO!’ I heard just behind my ear.

  And we went. The last two. We stopped in the street. He looked at me questioningly, as if to say, ‘Let’s go to another bar.’ I stumbled. In the foundry, which was filling all of my field of vision, they opened a furnace and the night became red.

  I was interested to see whether a goodbye or vomit would come out if I opened my mouth.

  I managed to speak.

  ‘See you around. Cheers!’

  ‘Cheers.’

  I ran into the narrow passage behind the bar. Leaned my head against the wall and left my signature on it. Took a few steps away from the sour liquid. Sat down and had a nap. I was woken by repeated stomach spasms, which pushed the rest of the drink out into the open and choked me for a while longer. It passed. Leaning on the wall, I took pleasure in the view, which became crystal clear. I was observing a thin trickle of saliva dangling from my lip, lit by the flames leaping from the top of the chimney.

  I took a few trial steps and, happy with the result, went off to Karla’s.

  The road by the foundry was completely empty. The well-behaved workers went to bed with the cows. The less well-behaved took to singing maudlin love songs in the bar. The howling voices of the singers accompanied me as I walked.

  Karla lived on the third floor. I listened tactfully with my ear to the door. All I could hear was the radio. A woman’s voice was reading the news from around the world, wherever that may be.

  No fuck-inducing record on the stereo. Okay. I rang the bell. Karla opened the door wrapped in a man’s orange bathrobe. She’d just had a bath. Fresh. Sweet smelling.

  I peeked inside the flat, just in case. She shook her head and asked, ‘Hungry?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  I received her most beautiful smile, which always drove me wild. An uncovered row of upper teeth. One tooth always slightly biting the bottom lip.

  ‘Come in, I’ve got some soup left over from lunch.’

  I took off my shoes. My toes peeped out of my socks to greet Karla. I put on the slippers that she offered me and followed her to the kitchen.

  She turned off the radio. Somewhere in the building a man and a woman were arguing. A child was screaming. The usual urban silence. Karla had her washed hair wrapped in a white towel, turban-like. She lit the gas with a match and put on the pan. She leaned on the kitchen counter and watched me sit at the table. Above me a light, not too strong, with a paper shade.

  ‘Another study attack?’

  I shrugged my shoulders. I admitted. What else could I do.

  ‘Whose turn was it this time?’

  ‘Thomas Aquinas.’

  She laughed.

  ‘And how long did it last?’

  ‘Three days and two nights.’

  ‘Then you really do need a bowl of hot soup.’

  I wasn’t in the habit of coming to Karla for food. Only after my occasional attacks of studiousness as she called them, I showed up at her place to eat. Ate the leftovers from lunch, or an egg.

  ‘You won’t believe me, but I can just picture you. Bent over a book for three days and two nights. Your only movement the turning of a page. When is it enough for you? When you faint?’

  ‘Yeah, that’s about right.’

  She poured the contents of the pan into a china bowl. Usually we would drink tea out of it. She set the table for me, gave me a spoon, and sat down opposite me.

  The light shone on the little creases which had developed at the corners of her mouth and eyes.

  ‘Egon, you’re not getting religious, are you? Weren’t you studying De Civitate Dei last time?’

  Her voice had a throaty, velvety quality. I always thought of it when somebody mentioned Berlin in the thirties. A whore’s voice.

  ‘No, that was the one before.’

  ‘And the last one?’

  ‘The phone book.’

  Laughter.

  ‘That’s exactly what I like about you most. Your unpredictability is so predictable. Like the time when you had that punk group, what were you, The Young Komsomols, or something like that?’

  She shut up. We had a quiet, gentlemanly agreement that we did not talk about each other’s pasts, in any shape or form. Sometimes one of us slipped. She more often than me. She was getting old. I had seven years’ advantage.

  She immediately changed subjects.

  ‘Do you want some more?’

  She pointed to the empty bowl.

  ‘No.’

  I stretched my hand and caught her earlobe between my second and middle fingers. She leaned her head on my palm and rubbed against my hand like a cat. I stroked her with my fingers from her temples to her chin. Gently, only barely touching her with my fingertips. Just a warming-up touch. The skin of every woman is different to the touch and has a different scent. You can sense the scent unique to each woman in spite of perfumes or deodorants.

  I moved to the chair next to her.

  I traced the path of the fingers with my slightly open lips. I filled my nostrils with Karla’s scent. With my tongue wandering around her face, I found her tongue and started to tease it.

  She moved away and said, ‘You’re always in need of some thing. When you’re no longer hungry, you get horny.’

  There was a trace of mockery in her eyes.

  With my left hand I slowly, slowly slid into the opening of her robe. Pulled it open a bit further. A small, nicely formed breast peeped out. I circled it with my fingers. My index finger traced where her breast joined her body. I bent over and repeated the movement with my tongue. I found the nipple and licked it slowly, teased it out into the open. I kissed the erect nipple and moved to the other one. Karla pressed herself against me, ruffling my hair. Her tongue drilled into my ear.

  An alarm clock went off.

  For the second time that day, I managed to put on a really moronic look.

  And an upward one at that, which doesn’t happen very often because of my height.

  ‘It’s
time for you to leave.’ She whispered, breathing deeply, she was sorry. This, too, was a part of our agreement.

  I got up. Went to the door. She arranged her robe and saw me to the front door. In the doorway to the corridor, I turned around. We embraced and kissed. Nothing refined, just pure lust. Our bodies nearly crushed.

  Gently, but decisively, she pushed me away.

  A look into my eyes.

  I nodded.

  I bent over for my shoes when she said, ‘You can leave your socks here, before they fall completely apart, and the jacket, too. The collar is in shreds.’

  Blows always come from above. A third idiotic look. I surpassed my yearly norm. If there’s anything unimaginable in this world, it’s Karla darning socks.

  She laughed.

  ‘No, not me. I’m expecting a visit from on older, respectable gentleman, who very much likes doing a few chores. It relaxes him, he says.’

  ‘Okay.’

  If that’s the case, that’s all right. I took off my socks, put the tennis shoes on my bare feet, and gave her my jacket. I checked the pockets first and divided the small objects I always have on me between the pockets in my trousers.

  ‘You can get them tomorrow morning. But don’t wake me up. I’ll leave them in a bag in the cupboard in the corridor.’

  She opened the door to show me where.

  I hesitated. Tried to hug her once more. She moved away, and suddenly I found myself outside the door. Every woman should master the basic toreador skills.

  ‘Karla…’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Bye.’

  There was no point.

  She said goodbye and her eyes sadly followed me. Or maybe I just imagined it. The wood was like all wood on doors. A ray of light was shining through the peephole, which wasn’t darkened by an eye. I felt my way through the dark to the light switch, turned on the light, and left.

  My stomach, full of soup, helped me nicely to stay upright.

  I stopped at the fence that separates the foundry from the workers’ dormitories.

  The furnaces were humming, and somewhere gas was hissing. From the foundry’s darkness, three workers in blue overalls came running out and climbed over the fence about three metres away from me. When the last one reached the ground I shouted, ‘Hey, you!’

  He practically shat himself. Security! A guard! He’d been caught! Panic!

  The other two had already disappeared into the dark.

  ‘Give me a cig.’

  He turned, full of pure relief. He pushed a half-full cigarette packet into my hand and ran after his friends.

  You have to pick the right psychological moment for bumming.

  I smoked a cigarette, leaning on the fence. Taking pleasure in the dizziness smoking causes after abstinence.

  I started to feel cold. Early spring isn’t the most suitable time to take a walk wearing just a T-shirt. A guard dressed in a grey uniform appeared inside the fence. He approached me quietly, thinking I was one of his flock that had gone astray. I turned around and grinned at him. He looked away and continued walking along the fence, suspiciously looking back over the chip on his shoulder every few steps. Workers who had lost an arm or a leg – accident survivors – become guards and wait for retirement. There’s never a shortage of them. Every day new ones become qualified. God knows how many bones there are inside this fence. I spat at the wire mesh and went on.

  I felt a terrible weariness. A quiet sadness. The only thing I really liked in this fucked-up settlement was walking in the middle of the night through the deserted streets covered with reddish foundry dust that sticks to the soles of your shoes.

  In front of the cinema the woman ticket-seller was changing the poster and the photographs in the display case before she went home. She needed to talk so much that she could barely wait for me to come near enough. The glass on the front of the case was broken. I had to avoid the fragments scattered on the ground.

  ‘Vandals, they’re just vandals,’ she said. The neon light was still intact and it was on. The woman’s face was shining like wax in the pale glow. The last film she’d watched was probably from the time when Esther Williams appeared in Bathing Beauty. After that, she couldn’t watch any others because she had to sell tickets to the latecomers and for later performances. She was old, with backcombed hair. The sort of hairstyle you don’t often see now. Her brightly coloured lips were shining at me. The lipstick had been applied so thickly it levelled the wrinkles around her mouth and the lips appeared stuck on. Mistakenly brought from somewhere else, from another woman. From another time.

  ‘Why do they have to break the glass if they want a poster? They should just come to me and I’d give them one for free. Have you any idea how much such a large pane of glass costs?’

  I didn’t make any effort to reply. She’d tell me eventually. The case was empty. The green cover on the back was full of holes from the tacks.

  The woman told me the price. The amount hit me on the back as I was leaving. It really was quite high.

  I locked the door behind me, sat on the only chair, and lit a cigarette. I smoked slowly in the dark room. From time to time the light of the flame from the chimney lit up the walls, but it still couldn’t remove Karla from my eyes.

  I threw the cigarette butt into the empty beer can and sighed. I undid my trousers, took my prick in my hand, and slowly, sadly jerked myself off, thinking of Karla. I sighed once more, had a shower, and went to bed.

  I think Bukowski would have been very pleased with these last few sentences.

  2

  The block of flats where Karla lived was unusually quiet at this time. Everybody was at work. Children at nurseries. Karla was asleep. I put my ear to the door, but I couldn’t hear anything.

  In the cupboard, there was a white plastic bag with my socks and jacket, both mended. I kept turning the socks over in my hand, admiring the precise and perfect handiwork. The collar on the jacket was sewn on and hemmed with a special kind of seam that would stop it from coming undone again. I couldn’t make out where the thread went. I’d never seen anything like it. I was roused from my admiration by sudden darkness. I didn’t try to feel for the light switch. Putting one foot in front of the other, feeling for the stairs, I made it to the exit just inside the main entrance, I put on the socks by the light coming through the pane of thick, reinforced glass in the middle of the door.

  I set off past the foundry with a purpose.

  A group of workers hanging about inside came running up to the fence.

  ‘Hey you, come here.’

  They were gesturing with their hands, inviting me over. I went.

  ‘What do you want?’

  ‘A litre of whisky,’ said the first one and pushed a bank note through the mesh of the fence. I took the money and went to the next one.

  ‘A litre of wine.’

  ‘Schnapps.’

  ‘Brandy.’

  ‘A litre of red.’

  I took the money and quietly repeated the orders.

  There was a whole line of them by the fence now. They were all pushing their hands through the fence. Like a field of wheat, all waving notes.

  The money, crumpled, dirty, rolled into little balls, filled both my hands. My memory capacity was full, too.

  ‘That’s enough,’ I said to the next one.

  ‘Don’t be a cunt, get mine, too.’

  ‘And how do you think I’ll carry it all? I’ve only got two hands.’

  ‘Go on, just mine.’

  I turned around and marched to the shop.

  I was followed by a hail of curses.

  I bought what I could remember. I snuck two bottles of wine in the bag while the sales assistant went to the back store room for the schnapps. I paid and returned to the fence. There was nobody to be seen. A guard was disappearing behind a building.

  As soon as I put the bags down, the men appeared from behind the containers, the rolls of wire, and the scrap metal, and rushed towards me.

&nb
sp; We removed pieces of turf from under the fence. I slid the bottles down a small tunnel, dug some time ago and just large enough for a bottle. Hands on the other side grabbed the booze. The men disappeared in a flash. I leaned on the fence post and counted the profits. The agreed ten percent, plus the two stolen bottles, plus some change from the ones who hadn’t given me the exact amount – I have a policy of not giving change – not bad at all. I could sense the guard creeping up on me from behind. This time it was somebody with a wooden leg. I looked back at him and grinned, showing all my teeth.

  While I can still move, you can’t get to me.

  I put the money in my pocket. The guard carried on with his eternal round.

  Out of sheer bloody-mindedness I shouted as loud as I could, ‘See you tomorrow, lads!’

  Before I went I grinned at the guard again, who was staring at me furiously.

  My stomach rumbled, and I set off for Magda’s.

  I’d recently been going to her just to fuck and eat, to be honest. And even then not in a relaxed, happily parasitic mood, but with a feeling of guilt and uneasiness because I thought she really loved me. It wasn’t really fair to her, and I’d stopped ringing at her door a few months ago. She later found me at the bar and started crying. There has to be a right time even for a kick in the ass.

  Magda was a college schoolgirl. After school she’d cook lunch for her parents, who didn’t return from the foundry until late afternoon.

  She opened the door wearing jeans and a linen shirt which bulged with her large pear-shaped breasts.

  We kissed.

  ‘Did you run out of your aftershave?’

  We went into the kitchen with our arms around each other.

  ‘That’s right, there’s no more Cartier.’

  ‘Are you ever going to tell me where you get the money for a new bottle? It can’t be that cheap.’

  A glance at the stove and a sniff told me that nothing at all was cooking today. There was no sign that there would be either.

  ‘Let’s just say I have my sources. You know all great men have their little secrets.’