8 May 1992, Friday - Erased

Tania had not opened the side door to the maternity ward and Zala didn’t dare use the main entrance, so she had stood in the road until one of the nurses came out, holding a piece of paper and some money in her hand, probably on her way to buy something for someone. Zala enquired about Tania, described what she looked like. The woman frowned and then remembered she had not seen her today. Zala thanked her and waited again.

Finally, an older nurse told her with certainty, “She’s been transferred!”

‘Did I destroy her career?’ Guilt gnawed away at Zala. ‘I hope she lied and said this was the first time I had been for the baby, or that she was preventing me from leaving with him.’

‘Which she was!’ she thought and almost growled with anger. She touched her temples. ‘Am I going mad? Is my head finally going to explode?’

‘I mustn’t, I mustn’t, I should! I should for the child! For...’ but she didn’t dare say a name, none of the three finalists. She held her breath and counted to a hundred.

‘What am I doing?’ Nightmares smuggled themselves through into the day.

She didn’t have enough time to go back home, so she went into the coffee shop bathroom and extracted her milk in the toilets.

* * *

The TV presenter was hacking away at a piece of chocolate cake, dipping the pieces into the scoop of whipped cream that came with the portion, and licking his fork as if sucking on a tube of mayonnaise. The front parting of his hair shook in rhythm. He looked at Zala through the thick lenses of his pilot glasses and smiled. His mouth pursed into what was almost a triangle, leaving a dark trace of chocolate in the right corner.

Zala told her story briefly, without any real will or enthusiasm. She thought it wasn’t worth even taking off her jacket and putting her handbag onto the empty chair. Perhaps also because the man in front of her was wearing a tracksuit and, despite rolling up his sleeves, still managed to occasionally rake pieces of cake into his lap.

He finished off his dessert and gazed out of the coffee shop window toward Parliament. Zala did the same, and for the first time it dawned upon her that inside this building sat the people who...

“I work for a state-owned broadcasting corporation,” the presenter said.

Zala nodded and began to get up.

“I know,” she said, “good-bye.”

“No, no, no! That is not what I wanted to say... please, sit down!” He waved his fork about, as if conducting a marching band.

She didn’t know whether it was worth obeying him, but helplessness buckled her knees. She waited.

Despite his early morning cake, the presenter was more of the skinny type, with an elongated face and lumpy joints on his fingers.

“Don’t think that you can go to the commercial channels, because most companies are still state-owned and that’s how the State pays for the advertising. No ads, no commerce. Unfortunately. Are you sure you don’t want some cake?” he said, as the waitress brought him another slab.

“No, thanks.”

“When I chose what to study, I imagined offering the world huge stories. I see a story, it slips away, I pursue it, jump like a lion and seize it. Yes, I loved reading Tarzan when I was a child. Those thick, cloth-bound volumes. Do you know them?”

“No.”

“Not important. Girls never fell for Tarzan much, he kept more company with Cheeta than with Jane, perhaps that’s why. I went off track.”

Another forkful of cake returned him to his previous train of thought .

“And now... we all sit in offices and broadcast nonsense. Can you imagine us? Floors and floors of journalists, the best in the country. Old dogs, we have been through all sorts, from the iron hand of political commissars, to the softer approach of trying to sell socialism with a human face. So we sit there, you can imagine, and suddenly hear a huge story is approaching up the stairs. Bumpf – bumpf – bumpf, walking right in our direction. We all lower our heads, in the hope that it will go knocking on someone else’s door. That it will not befall us. And if it does choose our office, we pretend we are not in. This is called the wisdom born into our old age through experience.

We are a small nation. We all know each other! You must constantly be on the lookout not to offend anyone. In a small nation, you are not beaten by the stick, but by a club with a human face. You to me, me to you, my ancestors lived here, so did yours, my descendants will live here, so will yours, so let us be careful how we behave. Because we are stuck with each other forever. When we get the chance, we will continue butchering where our grandfathers or great-grandfathers stopped. And we will leave some of it for our grandchildren. Let them have some fun too.”

He stuck his fork into the cake and then dropped it, as if it had sent a current through him.

“Would you really come on the show?”

“Yes, of course,” she said, with surprise, still expecting that the presenter would dismiss her and believing he was indulging in his monologue simply because a ‘no’ would seem too short.

“This will fuck things up!” He shook his head. “Ooof! My wife will kill me. And it used to be this recklessness of mine that attracted her most to me, but that was before we got married. Now it’s the thing that annoys her most.”

He could not stop shaking his head.

“I’ll do it. Will you really come? Do you dare expose yourself? The Board wants this program to have a more light-hearted theme, bring in some artistes, we have someone who trains animals. I won’t cancel it, just in case you change your mind. If you have any documentation, please bring it along with you. So, tomorrow at 9:00 p.m, in the foyer so they can take you to make-up and everything before the start of the show. Come through the staff entrance.”

He began knocking on his forehead with his knuckles.

“Oh, what an idiot I am!”

Grabbing the fork once more, he dug into the remaining cake and stuffed it into his mouth.

“This will kill me!” he mumbled.

* * *

She sat on the sofa and stared straight ahead. Her hand still throbbed from squeezing the breast pump and this time she had thought she heard herself sing along to the rhythm of it, how all this was in vain. ‘It isn’t, it isn’t!’ she kept repeating to herself and somehow managed to complete her task. All she could do was sit there and flicker like a wasted fluorescent lamp – occasional flashes of awareness, fading into stupor. A piece of cheese had been left on the table and slowly sank into itself, as if weeping. Pain flowed through her entire body, sometimes as muscular spasms, other times as stinging tooth pain or giddiness. Missing him gnawed away at her and spread the pain. She began to think about the presenter, went over their conversation, tried to remember even the slightest meanings and facial expression. She would not allow her hopes to grow; the night before meeting the writer, she had even smiled. What if... Did a sweet tooth, especially for chocolate, not signify a weak will that would waiver at the first hurdle?

Her head drooped toward her left shoulder, she curled up and lay down.