Crumbs Page 4

I couldn’t believe it.

  Everybody listened to him respectfully, with full attention. Even those who’d already dozed off, waiting for their turn. The head of the circle?

  ‘First, I have to say that this is an example of typically female poetry. Yes, typically female.’

  He looked around him.

  Into my eyes, too. Eyes that could kill.

  ‘And that, of course, is inferior poetry per se. It lacks something which is characteristic of all good male poets. Divine inspiration.’

  Another look around. Everybody was agreeing.

  I felt like a kettle, full of steam. I was boiling, bubbling with fury.

  And pure horror joined the anger.

  Where am I? Are they serious? Which day is it today? Which year, century?

  A sharp chord from an electric guitar cut through my head. A wave from the past.

  All the world cannot be wrong

  Must be me I don’t belong…

  The guy continued.

  ‘Yes, divine inspiration. Women write poetry while in emotional turmoil. When their boyfriend has walked out and so forth. A poet gets up. Early in the morning. He goes into the countryside. Lies on the grass under a tree. He has a pencil and a sheet of paper with him. In pure, unspoiled nature, in the bliss of a new morning, he experiences an inspiration, which I call divine inspiration. And only thus can true poetry be created, the essence of pure beauty.’

  I was looking at his face, and in my mind it began mingling with the face of an old man, an academic of high culture. Even their voices seemed to be alternating. First one face would talk with the voice of the other and then vice versa. Oh, these young poets.

  Hahahaha ha ha!!!

  I looked at her. She didn’t seem upset. She was calmly watching the speaker.

  He shut up.

  Everybody applauded.

  Him.

  She got up and left. She pushed the door open, gently. The speaker took his seat.

  I tapped him on the shoulder. He looked back into my sincerely enthusiastic face.

  ‘Congratulations! Congratulations! Well said.’

  I offered him my hand.

  He took it.

  ‘Really wonderful.’

  I squeezed his hand.

  ‘Divine inspiration! That’s what I really liked.’

  Slowly, with pleasure I started to squeeze my fingers together. Strongly.

  ‘Female poetry! That was good, too.’

  Even stronger.

  ‘Pure nature, yes.’

  With all my strength.

  ‘The essence of beauty, that was the best.’

  I was interested to see whether I’d have enough strength break a few of his bones. Probably not.

  He was getting taller and taller. His body jerked. He was wriggling in his chair. He didn’t want to scream with pain. Anything else but scream.

  Silently he looked around for help.

  Everybody was asleep again. A few insomniacs were listening to the whining at the table.

  He groaned. In a muffled, throaty sort of way.

  Tears poured from his eyes. Ran down his cheeks and gathered into half-moon shaped puddles at the bottom of his glasses.

  The man at the table finished reading his last poem.

  We clapped. Everyone, that is, apart from the head of the circle. He pressed his hands onto his balls and bent forward, maybe expecting to be hit as well. I let him nurse his wounded limb at the source of divine inspiration and stepped outside. I closed the door firmly behind me. If I’d had a hammer and some nails, I’d have permanently nailed the door shut.

  The poet was still there. She was slowly finishing her cigarette, looking out onto the lit-up street through the window.

  I approached her. Leaned on the left edge of the window. Lit a cigarette and gazed through the windowpane.

  Squashing that guy’s hand wasn’t the right thing to do. I know that you have to fight words with words, often without success. Force proves nothing. My only excuse was that the man had every chance of becoming a bigwig. In a few years he’d have worked his way up. He’d be protected by his status. He couldn’t be defeated by words or hands. There’s permanent peace up there. So it was necessary to beat him now while he was still young.

  I spoke, still turned towards the window.

  ‘Maybe he’s sorry now. When I was leaving he had tears in his eyes.’

  I got a cramp in my right hand, so I began stretching and massaging it.

  She turned towards me. Looked at my face, then at my hand and my face again, and said, ‘Really?’

  I turned towards her. Caught a smile in her eyes.

  ‘Really,’ I confirmed and put on the most innocent smile I could muster.

  ‘Is this your first time in this library?’

  ‘Yes, the first and last time. A friend talked me into coming here.’

  ‘Me, too.’

  She put her cigarette out on the windowsill, leaned back on the wall and turned the light off with her shoulder. She didn’t turn it back on.

  A police car drove past with its siren on. The blue light flickered over us. The siren moved off. We were silent, watching each other in the intervals of light and darkness caused by car headlights.

  ‘You are upset nevertheless.’’ I broke the silence. It didn’t sound like blasphemy. It wasn’t that kind of silence.

  ‘Well you know, these things are very personal. When you write you expose yourself.’

  ‘If you have anything to expose,’ I added, ‘And you have.’

  We fell silent again.

  Another police car.

  ‘Let’s forget this shit,’ I said, ‘Let’s kiss a little.’

  It seemed to me that I could see surprise in her eyes in the next beam of light. She said neither yes nor no. She didn’t move away when I came closer.

  I kissed her lightly on her slightly parted lips. Ran my hand through her hair. I liked her scent. I slid my fingers across her skin, and the response of her skin, the sensation under my fingertips gave me pleasure, too. I kissed her again. She opened her mouth. We teased each other with our tongues. With my left hand, I uncovered her shoulder and the light shone on it. I slid my fingers into the opening of her dress, caressed her breasts, slight bulges around pointy nipples. She was good at the tongue game. We got on very well. I pressed her against the wall, which was covered with books from floor to ceiling. And there, in one and the same place, were the two things I like the most.

  Books and women.

  Not necessarily in that order.

  While still kissing her I pulled up her thin skirt. My palms travelled right up the inside of her legs until I touched the hairs peeping out of her panties. I was considerably taller than she was, which necessitated some special manoeuvres on my part. I moved my palms back down and again slid them up her thighs. Faster and faster I circled towards the hairs but touched them only in passing, always quickly moving away again. My prick threatened to burst through my fly. My trousers rose into a bulge between my legs. We pressed against each other. She wasn’t passive anymore, she put her arms around me and bit into my neck.

  She moved her head away and said, ‘No, please.’

  While her body said yes.

  I grabbed her behind. It was small and firm. I lifted the poet up. We looked at each other. I asked, ‘Why not?’ And let her slide down my body. With her pelvis over the bump on my trousers.

  She sighed deeply. I repeated the manoeuvre. Looked in her eyes. They were cloudy.

  ‘No,’ she whispered. More with a shake of her head than her voice.

  I let her down the slide.

  Lifted her up again.

  ‘Why, don’t you like it?’

  Down again.

  ‘Please,’ she whispered so pleadingly that I stopped. Her body was definitely willing. I put my arms around her shoulders and we sat on the windowsill. She pressed herself against me.

  ‘I’d feel like a whore tomorrow morning, you know. At home there�
�s a man I love, with our child, waiting for me. It does feel good, but I’d have such a moral hangover tomorrow.’

  ‘I understand.’ I offered her a cigarette. She accepted it and we lit up.

  ‘But look, I see it all as a game. I like being here with you, kissing, fondling you. We don’t have to fuck, just be together. So…’

  ‘Yes, I know, but I can’t look at it like that. Maybe I take it all too seriously. Maybe all women are like that, I don’t know.’

  We slowly finished our cigarettes. A wave of applause came from inside the room.

  ‘I’ve earned it.’

  She smiled and agreed.

  ‘Really, thank you.’

  She put out her cigarette. She smoked faster than me.

  She paused a few inches from my face.

  ‘I’m going,’ she said softly and apologetically. If I’d reached for her and pulled her towards me, she’d have stayed.

  Our lips touched.

  Very, very gently.

  She stepped towards the door. Paused in the streetlight. We looked at each other. Again I caught a smile in her eyes. She said, ‘You really do kiss well.’

  ‘Yes, I regularly attend the literary evenings.’

  ‘And you read Raymond Chandler,’ she added over her shoulder and disappeared.

  Another round of applause.

  I liked her. Only now for real. I turned towards the window. With a single drag I finished the rest of my cigarette. Burned a bit of the filter. I couldn’t see her. She didn’t go down the street. She must live in the other direction.

  And again a bittersweet sadness. A quiet regret. When we meet next time, if there is a next time. It won’t be the same. It’d never be the same again. I’d tried it before. I put the cigarette out on the window and left.

  Fuck it, nothing but leaving all the time. I’d like to know how we ever find the time to arrive so often.

  The night was all car headlights colliding with passersby. I went towards the campus. Juggling with numbers of blocks of flats, floors, and rooms in my head, trying to visualise the faces of the girls I knew behind these combinations of numbers. I soon gave up. When I got there I’d rely on my sight and compare the pictures with the ones I remembered. I didn’t feel like going into any bars. I did, however, look through the windows into the well-lit rooms. Maybe I’d see another beer. A crowd of people had gathered in front of the cinema for the last performance. A little bit away from the crowd stood Selim, leaning on the wall. He had his left side turned towards me. His right hand was hidden behind his body.

  He greeted me.

  I gingerly returned the greeting and added, ‘Did you cut it badly?’

  The hand came out of its hiding place. The bandage shone in the light from an advertisement panel.

  He blushed like a tomato.

  I started to give him fatherly advice.

  ‘Hey, you don’t steal posters just like that. Smashing the glass with your bare hands. Couldn’t you have picked up a stone at least?’

  His embarrassment was subsiding, the blood was draining from his head.

  ‘I don’t know what came over me. I went past the cinema on the way to my room at the dormitory and I saw it there. I went nearer and looked at her. And then suddenly I was holding her in my hands. Only the broken glass under my feet woke me up. In my room I noticed the blood on my hand and then drops of blood in the corridor.’

  I asked a woman who was lighting up with her back towards us for a cigarette, and she gave me one.

  ‘Are you coming to the cinema with me?’ he asked.

  I looked in the direction of the campus, then back at Selim.

  I nodded. He went to buy a ticket for me. He’d been clutching his in his left hand all along.

  I finished my cigarette. A stream of people started moving towards the entrance. I joined in and met Selim half way. I stepped through the entrance sheltered by his wide shoulders. I noticed a look which the woman collecting tickets gave to her colleague opposite.

  They both found it hard to stop themselves from laughing.

  We sat down and made ourselves comfortable.

  I looked at Selim’s profile and wanted to colour it red.

  ‘Well, Selim, fourth time lucky, eh?’

  I succeeded. A wonderful colour. He was saved from my gloating look by the darkness, interrupted only by the ray of light running from the film projector towards the screen. He’d been to all three previous performances of this film. It was only when the opening sequence started rolling that I realised which movie I was watching. The title was Maria’s Lovers. It starred Nastassja Kinski. The same one as in Tess. During the performance, I kept looking sideways at Selim’s profile, which looked completely still as if it was carved out of stone. He was somewhere else, wherever that may be. When the lights came on he got up like a sleepwalker and went out. I followed him past the illuminated poster. I was half expecting him to smash the glass. It didn’t happen.

  We walked side by side to the bus station. I felt that any moment now he would say something, so I stayed. My presence didn’t seem to disturb him.

  From time to time I caught him opening his mouth and moving his tongue.

  Nothing but unrecognisable semivowels came out. And even those only occasionally and very quietly.

  We got on the bus. Sat down. Selim paid for my ticket as well as his. The radio was playing old Italian canzones, which were dusting the air with sugar.

  Halfway through one of the songs, the conductor announced a ten-minute break. The driver switched off the engine and got off with the conductor for a smoke. Three passengers followed them, ten were either asleep or too drunk, or simply didn’t have the will to move. Selim still wasn’t saying anything.

  I remembered a walk home. From school, when I was quite a few years younger, in the dusk, with a school friend. We both had images of our first loves constantly twinkling before our eyes, the girls for which you had to fall heroically. Silence, when each of us really wanted to talk about our own girl, but hesitated for fear of being teased by the other one. But you talk, sooner or later, all longing. You just can’t keep the words to yourself. Selim was staring in front of him as if the screen was still there.

  Somebody threw up. A sour stench spread through the bus.

  I looked at the driver and the conductor. They hadn’t heard anything. They were talking lazily, shuffling and swaying in the cold spring night. The old man didn’t show any sign of life.

  ‘Selim, give me your jacket.’ I tugged at his tatty denim jacket. He looked at me with surprise. Not so much because of my demand but because of the realisation that I was there, next to him. I repeated my request with an impatient, demanding voice.

  He did what I asked.

  I ran out. The driver looked at me with surprise. The conductor was pissing in the corner of a closed bar. I rushed down the street. The church bell struck midnight. I didn’t have a plan. One of those moments when I felt like an observer. From somewhere else, I was watching my body doing its own thing. Down the avenue of trees to a cinema. On the wall, a row of illuminated display cases proclaimed COMING SOON. I wrapped the jacket around my right hand, jumping along the row of posters. I came to the right one and smashed it. The sound of glass breaking followed me as I ran up the avenue with my trophy in my hands. The bus was waiting with its engine on. I jumped aboard. The door closed behind me.

  I felt like a bank robber.

  Selim was looking at me with surprise over the back of his seat. Out of breath, I sat next to him and shoved the poster onto his lap. He straightened it and looked at Nastassja fastening her stocking with her leg raised. He was over the moon. In heaven. I could already feel beer sliding down my throat.

  I unwrapped the jacket from my hand. Fragments of glass fell to the floor.

  I removed the bigger fragments embedded in the material and threw the jacket onto his lap.

  ‘Thank you,’ he said. An outburst of gratitude.

  ‘Any time,’ I nodded manful
ly. Leaned back as if it had nothing to do with me. I went to sleep for half an hour and left Selim on his own.

  We stood at the bus station, looking at the foundry buildings snaking in front of us. The bus disappeared into the night.

  He invited me in with him.

  The dormitory was in darkness. The warden was dozing by the turned-down radio in his hut. He had no fingers on his right hand and one leg missing.

  I waited outside.

  Selim greeted him politely. The warden muttered something unfriendly and looked at Selim’s jacket to see if any of the pockets held anything in the shape of a bottle.

  Selim deliberately walked up the stairs noisily. He unlocked his door and closed it. Then he tiptoed back down and opened a window in the corridor.

  He pulled me up. We crept to his room. Something stank. He switched on the light. There was a made-up bunk next to the wall on the right, obviously his. In the other bunk, under the window, Selim’s roommate slept, fully dressed but with no shoes.

  ‘I’m finding it hard to get used to him,’ he complained, looking at the socks sticking out from under the cover. The source of the stench. ‘I’ve been alone in the room for a year and a half.’

  I took a good look at the sleeping man. The light didn’t bother him, at least he didn’t move. He was thin and bony, quite a bit younger than Selim and me. Wearing what was probably his grandfather’s suit, or at least his father’s. New fodder for the foundry. I looked at Selim, who was still shaking his head, and immediately forgot the novice’s face. I took another good look at the sleeping man’s face, looked away, and again forgot it immediately. I repeated the whole procedure a few more times; the game was quite entertaining. His face was so forgettable.

  ‘When did he arrive?’ I asked.

  ‘I don’t know, he wasn’t here in the morning.’

  We sat down on the bed.

  ‘Wait,’ he said and crept out into the corridor. I heard him knocking next door. A sleepy, angry voice could be heard together with his. He came back with a bottle of schnapps.

  I was already holding one in my hands.

  He looked at me with surprise.

  ‘The novice had it in his bag.’ I pointed to the blue satchel, lying next to the bunk.

  We took a sip first from one then the other bottle. The one that Selim had brought was immediately put aside. It contained some mass-produced malodorous brew of the worst quality.