A Short Story in Five Parts
1
Tucked away in the corner of a forbidding tract of land on the edge of the prowling, sinuous, smoke-covered city of St Petri was a place where people came to shun existence. There was a perfunctory daubing of the establishment’s name in faded, peeling red letters, and small mullioned windows might be discerned under the patriotic posters that covered the walls. The lampposts endowed the establishment with a desultory glow come evening, with little to single it out from its neighbouring buildings – a rundown, neglected, forgotten husk of a place, denuded of its vitality, and filled only with the residue of a society that some of its more prosperous members would rather remain hidden.
It was in the bowels of the corner tavern that patrons found solace from the throes of a society in flux. Here they drank themselves into a satisfying stupor, corralling themselves into babbling clusters, protected from the relentless march of progress outside. An outsider might view this establishment as insalubrious with its oppressive fug, stench of sweat and sagging abandonment: a crepuscular environment where people ossified themselves, swaddled in fraying layers of abandoned dreams which barely held the fractured remnants of their broken lives.
The tavern regulars were like a subterranean tribe hemmed off together like bats in a hidden cave. What connected them was an inability to live their lives as normal. It was where the broken came to weep behind masks of drunken jocularity; where the clinking of glasses supressed silent, exhausted screams
2
“What do you want now? Don’t you think I have my own plans tonight, you little brat? Yes, l said I’d cook for you, but then that’s it, you can go to bed and give Mama a chance to live her own life for a change. You can mind your own business and keep your mouth shut and stop being a whiny little shit. Can’t you leave me alone for a few minutes so I can finish my drink? Will you please God allow me this one small thing?”
It was little Artus’s birthday today. He would be twenty-six, now. But Alba found herself thinking of one birthday when he was very small, when she just couldn’t cope with him – couldn’t cope with the pokey one-room flat where they lived, with that kitchen with the same three pans hanging from hooks on the wall with dust layers signalling years of underuse. Couldn’t see the bottom of her sink for all the piled-up food-encrusted plates and cutlery, couldn’t face the feeble stream of water that spat from the sink tap, couldn’t face the desiccated and shrivelled up plants which testified to her abysmal custodianship, couldn’t face the unblemished face of her son, which seemed ever more beautiful and pure the more she ruined her own body with drink. She couldn’t cope with the gut-wrenching knowledge that she was a terrible mother, woefully ill-equipped to raise her beautiful boy.
This awareness of her own crippling ineptitude as a parent only made things worse, especially on her son’s birthday. She SHOULD have been giving Artus a day of unfettered joy and love. Instead, she did what she always did when stirred up by her self-hatred: she lashed out at the boy, yelled at him, crushed him, reduced him to tears as she drank herself into oblivion at the bottle-strewn table in the kitchen.
“Where is he now? Where is my son?”
But that was all years ago. The memory bobbed into view like a sponge surfacing from the frothy, brackish water of a tub at the laundry. Artus was no longer a boy. His growth had taken forever yet passed by in a flash, with Alba a helpless, passive witness incapable of preventing the big-eyed mousy thing from becoming a gangly man like his father who, just like her husband, had left her on her own.
3
Resurfacing amidst the clusters of lost souls, Alba sat alone at the bar, taking in the scene. She had somehow got through another day, and now craved the familiar unravelling: the cheek-warming glow that would melt away the barriers between her and the world. And once she began to melt into the tavern, like soft wax setting into the grooves of the bar at which she sat, she would genially bob her head as she appraised the scene of babbling drunks, happy to soak in the atmosphere of relief – the intoxicating barrier between the clientele and the world outside. She was happy not to think of the empty routine of her existence and everything she had lost. She was happy to live, breathe, and reduce herself to a feeling of warmth and presence in a familiar environment. She was happy to wave benignly at familiar faces and listen to all the problems weighing down the drinkers around her. Like a benign frog, she hopped from leaf to leaf to croak words of support here and there before returning to her place at the bar, where she would share all manner of whims, fancies and trivia with Aditsan the bartender, who was comforted by the ceaseless babble from this ruddy-faced stalwart, like a fisherman satisfied by the sound of the wind caressing the waters around him more than fishing itself.
Today, though, Alba’s eyes settled repeatedly on the face of a newcomer in the corner of the room. She had never seen such a sad-looking face. But no, he wasn’t a newcomer. He’d been here yesterday, hadn’t he? Hadn’t he…. been here last week? Hadn’t he been coming here for God knows how long, sat there like a crumpled statue? He’d been in that corner for as long as Alba could remember, a silent stone-faced spectre away from the throng. And today his silence was oppressively loud. She shuffled over to him.
“Are you going to sit there all day, or are you going to tell me all about it?”
Her opening gambit didn’t rouse the slightest reaction from the hunched figure, who stared on at the wainscoting on the opposite wall. Unperturbed, she continued.
“There are a lot of people here with reasons for wanting to shut out the world. I guess you have one, too. Why not tell me what’s wrong? Talking helps, you know,” she said, with a vigorous nod of the head. The man blinked and stared on.
“Don’t worry about him,” called Aditsan from the bar. “He’s not a talker. I tried all that. He sits there until I close up, then he pays and leaves. Anyway, weren’t you trying to get him to speak last week?” Alba shrugged and hopped to the next table, silently chiding herself for her leaky memory. How on earth could she have forgotten approaching the man before? She must have been particularly sozzled.
4
Such is the mystery of life that on certain days we find ourselves numb to plague, war, death and social decay, but are roused on other by the most trivial of sights, unable to fathom why the most banal and quotidian of scenes cut through to our hearts and elicit our sympathies. The next evening at the tavern was one such occasion, where the man at the back of the room again drew Alba’s pity, his hangdog expression and doleful eyes perforating the inconsequential chatter of the assembled drinkers and winching her gaze. She tottered over to him once more.
“Remember me from yesterday? You forgot to invite me to sit down at your table. But I forgive you! Do you want to tell me what’s up?”
The man’s face was an unyielding tombstone of grief. The only signs of life he evinced were when he lackadaisically lifted his vodka glass to his lips, like a cow mechanically swishing its tail to ward off flies.
“You don’t want to talk to me, eh? Well why don’t you just tell me you want to be alone? You could at least tell me that, instead of staring at that wall over there. I honestly don’t understand why you’re looking at the wall! Is mould so interesting to you?
The man’s impassive grey eyes remained locked in their unseeing stare.
“Well, suit yourself”.
Alba plumped herself back onto her chair at the bar and got into a conversation with Schalit the haulier, who insisted to anyone who would listen that his woodcocks with bacon sauce were to die for. “You should come around duck, you’d love ‘em,” he grinned. “Yeah, cheers duck, sounds nice,” she said, smiling absently. But she narrowed her eyes as she looked back at the man in the corner.
5
Far from being deterred, Alba became yet more determined to get through to the miserable drinker. As autumn succumbed to winter and the tavern regulars became ever less animate on their prolonged visits, huddling together over candles for a simulacrum of warmth, shivering away the hours until spring, Alba was one of the few who seemed unperturbed by the encroaching cold as she pressed on in her quest to loosen the tongue of her mystery man. Every day she tried to get him to confide in her, but every day she was greeted with the same obstinate silence.
One Friday evening in the middle of December she pottered over to his seat in the corner, yet her jaunty salutations were again not reciprocated.
“Maybe you just ain’t his type, love,” screeched Inna, a scrawny old crone from her perennial perch in front of the paltry fireplace.
“Tryin’ ta talk to ‘im like yer some slinky young lady. Have yer no shame? Leave the courting to the young ‘uns and get me a drink, hah!”
A few drinkers crowed with glee at the exclamations from the old girl, and Alba clenched her teeth. She was under no illusions. She was a jowly cushion of a woman with rosacea. She had never been a looker, but she had had a certain feisty charm when she was younger and had garnered her fair share of admirers. But she wasn’t trying to romance this broken man. She just couldn’t bear the sight of his piteous, ghostly face. She wanted to make him feel better. But the derisive laughter from the drunks around her, combined with the oblivious silence of the drinker in the corner, caused her to snap as she turned back towards him.
“Fine, you clearly think I’m a nobody, and someone not worth your time. I’ll leave you to your staring and your bloody wall” she snarled, as she plumped herself back onto her stool at the bar to the amusement of the other drinkers. She felt slighted and ashamed.
“Don’t let it bother you, Alba” said Aditsan, as he shoved a glass of mead into her shaking hands. But she wasn’t going to be defeated, she was sure of that. She just needed to try a different tack. Oh, those wretches could laugh at her all they liked, but they just didn’t understand. She couldn’t explain to herself why it was so important to cheer the man up, let alone everyone else. There was so much misery in the world, what would it do to go all this way to perk up a single stranger, one of millions of miserable old strangers in rundown bars? She knew why, but she did not want to admit it. She wasn’t doing it for him. She was doing it for herself. She was making up for lost time.
6
“Mama, is it dinner time?”
She was slumped at the kitchen table, barricaded by a line of bottles in varying degrees of emptiness.
“Mama?”
She had started drinking as soon as she’d come home from the laundry. She had felt particularly lonely, useless, ugly, ruined, wretched and empty.
“Mama?”
Who was that? It was the boy again. But she couldn’t look after the boy. She couldn’t look after herself for God’s sake.
“Mama, have we got any food? Is it time for dinner?”
He was tugging on her sleeve. The boy was looking at her with tearful eyes. He must have just come home from school. No – It was night – he must have come home hours ago. She squinted at him through the gauntlet of wine bottles.
“I can’t, Artus, look in the cupboard and find something. I’m not well.”
“Mama, there’s nothing. Can we buy something?”
She swiped at the bottles and they smashed onto the floor, spraying the wall with ruby webs, the capillary lines forming a haphazard, violent roadmap of her desolate heart.
“Artus, I said I CAN’T, can you PLEASE LOOK AFTER YOURSELF? DID YOU HEAR WHAT I SAID?”
The boy stood there, shaking as he clutched the jamb of the door to his room, his knuckles white with fear, his eyes gleaming with terror.
“Yes, Mama.”
7
Alba woke up the next day with a clear head, buoyed up by a plan. So, the sad old chap wouldn’t open up to her at the tavern, eh? She would just have to follow him out of the tavern and goad him into a response. She was nothing if not tenacious. Once, an early boyfriend had left her for another girl. When she found out, she tracked him down to the abattoir where he worked and demanded he apologise, much to the jeering amusement of his workmates. The boy pretended that he had never seen Alba before, and she was made to leave. But rather than giving up, she waited for the rogue outside his workplace and followed him onto the tram back to his apartment where she continued to shout at him, to the annoyance of the other passengers, and roared expletives under his window until night fell, ceasing only when the knave came running down the stairs to admit his guilt and beg her to stop.
Although she hadn’t particularly liked the bonehead, she’d wanted to teach him a lesson. But the man in the tavern was different. He was not some philandering swine. She was sure there was a sensitive heart there waiting to open up. Someone needed to unlock those secrets. SHE would do this! SHE would get through to him! She just needed a little more persuasive. She would follow him when he left the tavern that evening and stop him from entering his home until he confided in her. She smiled through crinkly, rheumy eyes at the thought of barricading the man’s front door. It had been a long time since she’d had such determination to follow through on her wishes. Such persistence would have been alien to her former self – her ragged, ramshackle, oblivious former self. But something had been boiling in her for a long time. Ever since…she didn’t want to dwell on that. She rubbed her hands and chuckled at the thought of the evening ahead. Oh, it was probably all nothing, anyway. The man probably just had woman problems, and old Alba would be there, like the trusty heroin she was, to put the geezer right.
8
Rather than going straight to the tavern after work, which was fairly typical for Alba, she went home for a nap, so as to be able to stay out late and follow the mournful man home. She had never witnessed him leaving before her, and she knew that she would need to use all her resources to stay awake and follow him back to wherever he lived. She hoped he didn’t live far away. At her place at the bar, she sipped her mead at a slower pace than usual, and threw frequent glances over at her quarry to make sure he was still there. The locals began to thin out as the night wore on. “You’re out later than usual, Alba,” observed Aditsan thoughtfully. “Yeah,” said Alba, vaguely. “Don’t want to go home.”
“Look, Alba, don’t obsess over that fella. You’re taking this too far,” he said, stroking his bushy moustache and wagging his shiny bald head as he followed her gaze to the corner. “Look at yourself, you’re spent. You need to go home. I’m closing soon. Do you want a small something for the road?”
“I…don’t want…to go…home,” said Alba, sleepily, her face still planted on the impassive features of the man in the corner, now the only other person in the tavern. “There’s nothing. Nothing for me at home.” Her eyes glazed over with tears.
“There’s nothing for me here.” She wasn’t in the tavern anymore. She was back – back to that tortuous night that had brought her despair like no other. The night that had sealed a fate that had been written in bare cupboards, wine-spattered walls, dead houseplants, and the scared eyes of her son. The fate that had been sealed by the smashed crockery, her own mad, horrible voice, and the long, barren, squandered days.
“I’m leaving now, Mama. There’s nothing for me at home. Hello! Did you hear me? I’m LEAVING.” Her son was leaving her. She’d known this day would come. She’d known he’d leave her. How long had she been on the kitchen floor when he shook her awake to announce his departure? He was towering over her, that gangly man with his messy hair and thin moustache in his greatcoat and his battered travelling bag. His eyes had jolted her awake: eyes which brimmed with resolve and pity. Was there hatred there, too? Please, don’t let him hate me. She bellowed at him as he opened the front door to leave.
“Artus, come back!” But the door slammed shut and she bolted to the windows, thrusting them open and screaming “Artus”. She ran down into the street, her gown trailing in the smelt. He was nowhere to be seen and the wind lashed at her face. She fell to her knees on a heap of snow and was barked at by passersby for her disgraceful appearance. She carried herself back home and peered through the window into the opiating darkness, trying to stay awake, waiting for her son’s return. She slipped in and out of consciousness for many days, until she was rough handled by a couple of policemen, slapped awake and questioned for being the mother of Artus K, who was on trial for sedition.
“She doesn’t know a thing, she’s just an old drunk” they had said as they left her apartment, slamming the door, having ransacked her home for evidence against her son. Her son, the would-be assassin. Her son, exiled to a place from which he would never return. Her son, gone forever.
She snapped herself out of this excruciating memory. Her tear-strewn face had been in her hands, pressed to the bar. There was no one else in the tavern except Aditsan, who was looking at her with pity.
“Adi, where’s he gone?” She gesticulated at the corner of the tavern. “Where’s that crazy bastard gone? Oh….” She jerked into her coat and scuttled up the stairs. Aditsan sighed and shook his head sadly as he watched this unfathomable woman disappear into the darkness.
9
Alba heaved open the door of the tavern to be greeted by gushes of snow. She made out the faint outline of the man at the end of the road, and she waddled quickly after him. He zigzagged across the Ponski bridge and through the Bislang gardens, and then disappeared in the grey, dilapidated labyrinth of apartments on Rordot Boulevard.
“Why are you following me?”
She spun around to see the man staring at her fiercely, his eyes burning with fury, and his beard coated in frost. There was life in his face, and his black eyes smouldered with anger.
“So, you do speak, then?” asked Alba. “I stayed up all night to speak with you. You don’t want to speak with me at the tavern, maybe we can talk here! Nice weather for it,” she smiled, rubbing her cold, calloused hands together.
“You’ve been pestering me all these weeks. Have you not understood that I want to be alone?” he bristled.
“I only want to help you, man. I see you’re suffering. A problem shared is a problem halved.”
“The only PROBLEM I see before me is YOU. LEAVE me in PEACE!” snarled the man as his hand searched furiously for his apartment key.
“I hope you don’t talk to all women like this. You just turn on them and leave them standing on their own, do you? I’ve come all this way, away from my home, just to check you’re okay. And all you’ve done is call me a problem.”
The man had turned around and was in the process of unlocking the door, but the words from this bothersome woman stopped him. He turned back to her, his face softened and chastened.
“I…I…I am not a bad person. I do not talk to women like this. I…don’t talk to anyone at all. I am sorry, but I just want to be alone. No one can understand. You don’t need to worry about me. Just worry about yourself.”
“Good night,” he added, turning slowly into the darkness of his home and closing the door.
Tom Miodrag 