7 May 1992, Thursday - Erased

“You must never ride it!”

“But why then...”

“A present! Something nice!”

“Thanks!” she said and checked the time. She would once more be too early for breastfeeding. In the evenings, she could wait by the side door, since there was nobody around, but when she went to breastfeed in the mornings, she walked around in the streets nearby, monitoring the seconds hand on her watch.

She did little else at home.

“I was once with a girl who...” Nikola began, with his mouth full, holding a thick piece of bread loaded with cheese and slices of salami right in front of his face. His eyes had lit up with delight when she placed breakfast in front of him. She was grateful for his presence, which at least distracted her a little from the waiting. She had only fallen asleep toward morning and then heard the bin collectors, the birds singing, and the entire apartment block beginning to wake up, water flushing through the sewage system, starting with the neighbour’s toilet above her, his waste gushing past her through the pipes in the wall. This had been the sound of morning in Rijeka, where her family had been stationed long ago. They had lived on the ground floor of an apartment block, on a hill above a sea that they never saw: their view, befitting Father’s rank, had been of the courtyard. The lower officers had to live in the lower apartments, so their superiors could start shitting on them before the day had even begun.

When the first pensioners began to appear outside, she got up and went to the local food store. She could finally buy food for someone, though she did not feel like eating herself and merely nibbled at it when she served it.

He continued once he’d swallowed most of the bite he had taken and wiped the crumbs off his chin with his other hand.

“...who wanted animalistic sex, as she called it, no need to go into details now, well, what was I going to say? Oh, yes, in the morning, all she put on the breakfast table was a few bits of some plant and a few grains, fuck it. I asked her, what about something more sustaining and she started on about animal suffering, without ever considering my own. Why did I start saying this? Oh, now I remember, you preach about stuff like that, if you don’t have serious problems of your own. Or you have serious problems of your own and just refuse to face them. Or... now I’ve made it all complicated.”

He blew on his coffee and took a sip.

“Wow, this is good! You know, as tragic as these Yugoslav wars are now, our grandchildren will find it difficult to believe that some called coffee kava and others kafa, and that then they began shooting each other, because these differences proved too great to allow them to live together.”

He talked as if he wanted to make up for the previous day of silence. Zala wondered whether he had forgotten about the apartment being appropriated or had just stored it deep in his memory, hoping it would slowly melt away and disappear. Would it hit him again in the evening when he set off home? Would he occupy himself with a new woman, or was he like one of those punching bags that kept springing back into an upright position?

“Thanks for the bike,” she said, “though it’s a rather large present for this apartment.”

“Hey, who wants small presents? Something you need to handle with your fingertips and then sit on because you’ve forgotten it was there? But the bike truly is only that, a present, not to be used, just a decoration. An expensive bike, certain to be reported to the police, never to leave the apartment. I saw it parked and remembered you. I can’t explain it... You power the bike on your own. You depend on yourself. You need no State! But a car... you need roads, you need fuel, you need stations... you need the whole works to drive around on dead dinosaurs or whatever oil is made of. But a bike... the bike doesn’t give a fuck about the State!”

“Thank you. Though I do feel a bit strange, stolen gear.”

“We have had everything stolen from us!”

“I know. But should we too start stealing now?”

“Urgh! Women! How you manage to complicate things! I was once with a girl who...”

“OK, OK!” she interrupted him.

“All right, forget it. I went and stood under the balcony of my apartment yesterday. My apartment. And there were already some flowers on it, get it? Carnations, ficus plants, cacti, goodness knows what! They steal and then pretend all is fine! I wanted to smash it all up, but then I saw myself on the war front down in the south of Yugoslavia, in uniform, and left.”

“You did right, please be careful.”

“I did throw a stone at the caretaker’s window, at least that.”

“I feel like that too, sometimes. Perhaps I should do it too. No, don’t worry, I won’t. One of the worst things about being erased is that you can’t fight with anyone. Even when I go to the shop and watch the girl at the checkout, I wonder what would happen if she was rude and I wasn’t able to keep quiet? What if I hissed back at her and, one thing led to the next, started an argument and she called the police? I walk around the shop holding my hands away from me like a princess, just in case someone might think I was stealing. They might report me for a single bar of chocolate, for chewing gum, call the police... I’m going crazy.”

“Have you got a suitcase ready?” Nikola asked, “so you don’t end up like me, with an airline bag?”

“What for?”

“In case you need to run. Come on, get a few things ready...”

“But...”

“Please.”

He seemed so worried she wanted to laugh.

“I will do,” she promised.

* * *

Zala had never seen the Headmistress of the nursery school with her shoulders drooping quite so low.

“I’m afraid it’s true,” she said. “They passed a law. My Slovenes! I seriously believed that with Independence we were entering paradise, we would become a second Switzerland, and now this. I knew nothing of it. Well, I heard on the news that the law on foreigners was being amended. Then you think, aha, foreigners, I don’t know many of them. The people who work for me are not foreigners, you have been here for years... I don’t even dare ask the cleaning ladies... Them too? I am sorry.”

“It’s not your fault.”

The Head sighed and continued, “I read the law. I can put in a request for your employment, temporarily as a foreigner, and it has to be renewed every six months. I will do that tomorrow. When your maternity leave is over, you can work.”

Zala wanted to mention that she had no maternity leave but thought it would just be like banging another nail into the Headmistress’s misery. The woman seemed genuinely depressed about the whole situation as it was, avoiding eye contact, intertwining her fingers nervously, as if about to pray.

“I went to the referendum,” she said. “I voted for them, and now this...”

* * *

“Today he smiled at me.” Zala was looking at Mark, trying to figure out whether her son had inherited his cheekbones. Would they protrude from his cheeks when he smiled? He looked back at her, as if expecting an additional explanation. She felt frustrated with herself for switching to lying-in-wait mode, on the lookout for his first mistake so she could explode. There was nothing she could do to cool down, everything within seethed, the explosive ticking away, without Mark sensing anything whatsoever.

The waitress had already removed the plates and cutlery, leaving only the folded table napkins. The restaurant belonged to the adjacent hotel and Zala had often walked past without ever really taking notice of it. It had probably, even at a brief glance, appeared too expensive, out of her reach, and her eyes simply deleted it from view. The portions were small and skilfully decorated, so she was not sure which parts were the food and which the garnish. Her stomach had shrunk so much, it was well-suited to sophisticated restaurants.

Mark pulled out a piece of paper from the inside pocket of his jacket and placed it on the table in front of her.

“This is the work address of that writer. He’s expecting you at three o’clock today. This seems like a good idea to me. He can certainly mount some publicity. I mentioned him in passing to my secretary and she said he was the moral light of the nation. Heavy stuff. I worked in France for a while; they have a similar attitude toward writers there. And the Russians, though they don’t seem to mind locking theirs up. In the States, writers are more of... an entertainment column.

“And then, I found a TV presenter with his own show. Saturday night discussions. Peak time viewing. The broadcasters are also state-owned, but he still expressed some interest. But I can’t guarantee it will work. One more thing...”

He began shuffling in his chair, wiggling his shoulders.

“What?”

“I had a lawyer get in touch with the Clinic. They say that all their papers are in order. Did you sign anything?”

“No. They’re lying.”

“The lawyer says that adoption in the event of you being tricked or it being false, can only be cancelled in court.”

“Then my child would no longer be mine,” she said.

Mark lowered his head and took a slow, deep breath.

“How is the baby?” he said.

“Whenever I see him... he drinks and sleeps.”

“I do hope that in twenty years, you won’t still be saying the same about him,” he smiled cautiously.

Zala laughed, but the sound came out heavy and cold, like an iceberg sinking into an ocean of sadness, and she stopped.

“I know,” he said, “so let us look at all our other options. What do we have...”

He extended his index finger. “First: the editor. Disaster.”

Extending his middle finger. “Second: the writer. Great chance, narrow audience. But, decision makers. Good.”

Ring finger. “Third: Talk show host, small chance, everyone sees you. Which... well, there you would get personal exposure, a whole hour in a seat next to him.”

Zala’s head resonated, as if a string had just snapped within.

“Exposure, eh? Let them see I exist! That I am not the only one! That I am without a state, but the State is not without me.”

The waitress came and whispered , “Any desserts?” and they both waved her off without even looking at her.

“Give me that big wallet of yours!” Zala extended her hand.

He reached into his briefcase with a quizzical look and handed her a leather wallet.

Zala stood it up on its end and opened it slightly. She moved her hands away and the wallet stood firmly on the table.

“This is you,” she said, “take a look at yourself.”

He frowned with interest.

“And now...” she went on, “the State takes away your citizenship.”

She opened the wallet, hovered above it with her finger, found his identity card, carefully removed it, took a brief look and threw it across her shoulder. Instinctively, Mark jumped and held out his hand.

“Which means,” she continued, “that you also no longer have any health insurance...”

She found the right card and in a single move flung it over her shoulder.

“Or a work permit...”

A new document went flying through the air.

Mark leaned back and observed her calmly.

“Which means the banks consider you suspicious...”

She began removing bank cards and throwing them out.

“And you are no longer credit-worthy...”

Credit cards followed them.

She came to a photograph and held it carefully by the edge.

“Your private life changes...”

She looked at the woman with smiling children and gently placed it in front of him.

Mark covered it with his hands and pulled it toward him.

“Companies no longer trust you...”

Then followed the removal of all kinds of business cards, from loyalty cards to calling cards.

“And then you are left with what you are without the State,” she said calmly, opened the wallet slightly and placed it between them. The leather swayed and curled in on itself. It fell onto the table and lay there, limp.

They sat there, staring at it.

From one side, they heard the worried voice of the waitress. “Did I understand correctly that you are paying in cash?”

* * *

The writer kept blinking and his puffy cheeks gave the impression that he was trying to swallow something. Occasionally, he rested his chin on the gap between his thumb and index finger, nodding heavily as if he were extremely weary. Every time he moistened his lips with his tongue, he held them in a suspended pout that exposed his false teeth. A streak of hair fell across his forehead, almost reaching his thick eyebrows. Grey hair covered his ears, and the bags under his eyes gave him a sleepless appearance. There was a name embroidered on the inside of his open cardigan, but Zala could not read it. He listened to her and breathed as if he felt the pain every time he inhaled. With each sentence, he seemed to want to butt in, but he held back until she fell silent.

His voice was surprisingly gentle for such a round, clumsy body, though he was not fat.

“You know, over the last twenty years we writers have, through our engagement...” he uttered his sentences with his right hand continuously rolling toward Zala, as if he needed to send each one off separately, “...deconstructed one state and built another. People wrote to us at the Writers’ Association, suggesting we take over companies, even banks, for they trusted only us. Writers are at the centre of events, because we are artists and thus nonconformist. It is thus inevitable we clash with society, particularly when it concerns a totalitarian regime or injustices. I am currently writing a novel about a young woman who simply wanted to live, but then came the Communists and tortured and killed her! The truth about 1942 needs to become known, and particularly about what happened after 1945! This nation needs the truth! We need to shed light on the darker side of our recent history!”

As he talked, he became animated, leaning backward and forward; at the more excited moments, he jumped up and down in his seat. Zala lost the thread of what he was saying, but didn’t dare take her eyes off the man she had finally met after spending so many evenings in his company. She had been so nervous before the meeting, that she’d had to use the toilet in the bar on the ground floor of the old town house three times before the arranged time. As she had made her way to the writer’s office, the cool of the stone staircase embraced her; the dampness, accumulated over centuries, lingered in her nostrils. The secretary did not stand up but pointed a finger toward a heavy oak door, which Zala had barely managed to push open. The writer sat at the far end of a large room, amidst mountains of books and sculptures, at a solid oak table by a window that offered him a beam of sunlight.

“Do come in, Madam, have a seat! You must have strong political connections to tear me away from my creative fervour,” were his first words. Zala obeyed but only dared sit on the red velvet of the cushioned chair with a third of her buttocks.

“...the previous regime condemned even very hermetic texts – faced with fear, eyes grow very large. Now is the time to realise the reconciliation of ideological divisions and build our development on normal foundations as other Central European countries managed to do in 1945.”

He didn’t stop talking, he swayed; the suffering during silences had disappeared but the sense of effort remained. His palms clenched the air tighter and tighter.

The next time he stopped to take a breath, Zala took advantage of the brief pause. “I understand, but...what does this have to do with my case?”

“Madam, symbolically, a writer should avoid the pragmatic everyday life and transpose the paradigm to a symbolic level. All our stories stem from reality, of course, but they feed a symbolic plane.”

Zala impatiently moved her hand and the writer twitched.

‘Is he afraid?’ she wondered. ‘Who is he afraid of?’

“You must understand, I must speak of the frailty of man in the face of war, of the system, of fate. About the forces of war, totalitarian forces that care little for the individual.”

A droplet of sweat glistened under his sideburns.

‘What is wrong with him?’ Zala could not stop wondering and ceased to follow the stream, meandering from one darkness to the next. ‘I am disturbing him during his creative moment,’ she thought, ‘that was what he said. But it’s three o’clock in the afternoon, this is his job, he works for the company. Does he not write in the afternoon? After work?’

She turned to the photographs on the wall and saw him shaking hands with politicians, the same faces she had seen on the wall in the newspaper editor’s office. In between were framed acknowledgements and awards, all with his name written on them. “Excuse me,” she said, “is this not a state job?”

“What?” He was distracted mid-sentence.

“Is this a state job?”

“Of course. But what...”

Zala stepped closer to the awards.

“All these are state-sponsored awards?”

“There are no others.” He had become defensive, his voice lined with offence.

She stroked the tip of her finger along a row of books.

“State-owned publishers?”

She looked at her finger, not a speck of dust.

She turned to the writer and stepped closer.

“Did the state give you an apartment? Perhaps even a weekend retreat?”

“Don’t be so impertinent! What are you playing at? What does this have to do... Whatever I got from the State, I paid for by holding up a mirror to it!”

“Not a mirror, a fifty-year-old image. I apologise for disturbing you at your work. Now I realise why you must write about old problems. We have nothing in common. In your case, the State gives you everything, in mine it takes everything away. Goodbye.”

She left without knowing whether the pounding sound that filled the silence was coming from the parquet floor or from her heart.

* * *

She moved her face away from the child to avoid her tears falling on him. She sometimes sobbed so loudly that the baby lost her teat and began to grumble. She cupped the palm of her hand, in which he was resting slightly, in order to better feel him through the layers of blankets and diapers. The tiny, warm body that should have been with her, on walks in the park, at home in his cot. She envied the mothers she kept meeting – there were never so many around before – and she felt sorry for herself. ‘No, no!’ she kept telling herself, ‘I must get up, and climb on!’ but after the disappointment with the editor and especially the writer, two climbing holds in the wall where she had hoped to finda secure grasp, the anticipated meeting with the TV presenter didn’t sound that promising. Yet another asshole who bit into the honeycomb of state jobs, only lifting his hands in order to grab more of the honey with which they showered themselves. Mark never showed off with his successes: undoubtedly he was capable, but he was still a stranger in a strange land. The hopes she had pinned on the meeting with the editor had helped her through one night, her expectations of the writer through the second, but how would she get through this night? She fell asleep quickly, her eyelids touching upon the bags beneath her eyes, her head succumbing. Half an hour later, she woke up, alert, full of energy, ready to run, fight for her son if necessary. Normally she would walk around the apartment, but since Nikola had been staying with her, she had not wanted to disturb him, so she merely tossed and turned in her bed. Thinking, looking for an exit, working on combinations. After a few hours, as the night tired, she felt sleepier, and thoughts opened like misty veils, releasing images and feelings that lay heavily within her chest, tautening her neck. Strange promises that all would be fine, as long as she didn’t give the child a name, as long as she didn’t choose a name from a list, as long as she counted to one hundred without taking a breath, as long as... ad infinitum. More terrifying thoughts followed, thoughts about how this was her own fault. She was being punished for her sins, she did not deserve a child, because...

...because!

All these thoughts and emotions would vanish, if only the tiny body were lying in the bed next to her. She wouldn’t dare have him in the bed with her in case she smothered him. What small hands he had, his fingers curling tenderly around her own. If only he were next to her, she would lie awake, listening to his breathing.

Tania opened the door .

“Are you done?”

“No,” she said. The baby was fast asleep in her arms.

“Zala, please!”

“Just a little longer, a little longer...”

“The Consultant has arrived, he will go and see the child. Please! You can come again in the morning!”

“I can’t do this anymore! I won’t give him back! I’m leaving!”

She stood up, jostling with and pushing at Tania.

“Zala, are you mad? It’s because of you I’ll never become a doctor! My parents will both have a heart attack!”

“I CAN’T! I CAN’T!” Zala cried and pushed her way into the corridor. Tania grabbed her round the waist.

The door to the doctors’ lounge opened and the Consultant stepped out into the corridor. Zala fled.

* * *

This time, Zala was sitting on the sofa and Nikola was on the chair facing her.

“Your body?” Zala said. “When does your body do its own thing? When you know what you should or what you shouldn’t do, but your mind and your body each take a different direction?”

Nikola lowered his head. Seemingly staring at his groin, he was about to say something but managed to refrain from doing so.

“Is God punishing me for not believing in him? How can... He said he would not leave his wife and I accepted that. In my head. He was too old for children, he said, and I accepted that. In my head. And then... I don’t want to tell you! Why am I telling you all this?”

Nikola remained silent.”

“Oh!” Zala slapped her forehead. “I almost forgot.” She ran to the bookshelf, grabbed all the writer’s books she owned and threw them in the rubbish. She paced around the room in circles, struck her foot against the sofa and began to limp without noticing .

“I’ve met up with my friends every Wednesday, for what must be the best part of ten years. Now, I observe them and suddenly I realise: they are total strangers to me. Their lives have not changed at all. But mine... someone pressed a button and it’s gone... all gone. It’s easier to talk about it with you – a stranger – than people I’ve known all my life! This is terrible. TERRIBLE!”

She ran into the bathroom. Nikola just sat there wide-eyed.