Alina Bronsky - Just Call Me Superhero

My empty stomach grumbled, and as I headed for the refrigerator the phone rang.

It wasn’t my cell but rather the landline, and I hoarsely stated my last name without thinking.

“Same name at this end,” Tamara’s voice answered angrily. “Have a nice sleep? How’d you do in German composition at school. Good? How good is good? Okay, then come help me.”

“In a taxi?” I pulled the towel up helplessly, as if somebody was watching me.

“On a bike,” said Tamara. “And bring a banana for Ferdi.”

I dressed as quickly as a fireman, pulling the clean clothes over my unwashed body, repeating over and over the address Tamara had given me since I couldn’t find a pen and had to just remember. “Next to the town hall, everyone knows it,” she’d mumbled when I asked how to get there.

Three of the bikes in the garage had flats. Only the last one, a rusty old girl’s bike, seemed to have any air in its tires. I hopped on and stepped into the pedals. I could pretty much picture where the town hall was. I would just have to ask if I had any trouble, and I sure was looking forward to that eventuality.

I passed a grocery store along the way and went in quickly and bought a kilo of bananas that I then had to balance with one hand as I rode. Fortunately it was really as simple to get there as Tamara had said. The same moment I saw the town hall I also saw the name of the local paper on a building a few doors down. I parked the rusty monster at the bike stand and, armed with the bananas, ran inside. Based on the sound of Tamara’s voice, it was something of an emergency.

She was sitting with two men at a round worn table and fighting with them about some pieces of paper over which they were all bent. Behind them stretched a large room full of people all talking on the phone. As I got closer I could see that lying in front of Tamara there were lots of designs in square black frames. Inside the thick frames were images of cut roses, lit candles, broken hearts, intertwined crosses, piles of stones. Photos of forests and lakes. And on each of these printouts I saw my last name, and then my eye fell on the first name of my father.

“What do you think, Marek, a photo?” asked Tamara as if we were continuing a previous conversation.

“Where’s Ferdi?” I asked because I was tired of holding the bananas.

Tamara pointed behind her. He was on the floor, also bent over a piece of paper. He was drawing. Great, I thought, almost like at a grief support group.

“A photo?” she repeated impatiently.

“For god’s sake, Tamara.”

“What? There are so many images in the catalogue. I can’t decide.”

“I’d do it with no image.”

“It doesn’t cost any more to have one, Marek.”

The two men in suits, one with glasses, one without, kept glancing back and forth between her and me.

“You could also use a photo of him, from when he was younger… ”

“Tamara!”

“A cross is always good, but then again he wasn’t religious… ”

“I’m begging you!”

“A rose is really something more for a woman, don’t you think? And candles are for old people?”

Come back, Claudia, I thought. Stop all the photos, crosses, and candles. Come up with some words for a death notice that nobody will have to be embarrassed about. Please!

But she was off in a hearse bringing home the body of her dead ex-husband. She couldn’t help with the decision as to whether boughs of oak or maple would better suit my father. I had to get through it alone.

“Tamara,” I said. “You’re a great woman. Can I ask you something?”

She looked at me skeptically. The two men exchanged looks.

“Could you please take a walk? I’ll take care of this.”

She looked into my eyes. I didn’t look away. “Please,” I said.

She made a “pfff” sound and then rushed out of the room like somebody was chasing her. On the faces of the two men you could see the realization that with all the trouble caused by death, the business it brought was sometimes just not worth it.

“Just a second, please,” I said.

I went over to Ferdi and handed him a banana. He took it without looking up and started to peel it. He held his pen in his teeth and then spat it out to take a bite. He had a lot of hidden talents, one of which was being able to eat a banana at warp speed. At least he was getting some vitamins and magnesium, I thought. Mourning over cream of wheat alone wasn’t enough.

I was a little reluctant to give him the third one.

“First you have to help me, Ferdi,” I said. “I can see that you draw really well. Can you make a picture of your papa? And my papa. Then you can have all of the bananas that are left.”

For dinner, Tamara had bought sausages and was roasting potatoes. She had me cut cucumber for the salad. I cut the slices too thick for her liking. So I had to try to saw my way through the slices to make thinner slices. She wore an apron and acted very businesslike. Ferdi sat on a child’s seat with his head resting on his arm.

“ Ne spi , Ferdi, chas budem kushat ,” said Tamara to Ferdi.

He didn’t react.

“Maybe he doesn’t speak Ukrainian,” I said.

“I can’t really speak it right either,” said Tamara.

“Why do you speak it then?”

“It’s Russian, genius. There are a lot of Russians in the Ukraine. The child should learn my native language.”

“Why?”

“Because.” She put down the wooden spoon she’d been using to turn the pieces of potato and sat down on a stool. “I can’t take it anymore,” she said, and big teardrops started rolling down her cheeks.

I looked at her. This wet face, the tears hanging from her eyelashes. She was a little girl, no matter how old she really was. Some women stayed little girls their entire lives, others were born old. She was younger than me, even younger than Janne. And my father had left her all alone in the dark forest.

“I can’t take it anymore,” she said again. “I want him to come back.”

“I’d get him back for you if I could.”

“Oh no.” She covered her face with her hands. “I’m such an idiot. I keep thinking that Claudia will come home and say they messed up in Switzerland, that it was someone else, and maybe it wasn’t so bad for this other guy, maybe at least he didn’t have such a young child… ”

“… or such a sweet wife,” I said awkwardly. I wiped the cucumber slices from the knife blade into the salad bowl, dried my fingers on my T-shirt, and put my hand on Tamara’s trembling shoulder.

“Just tell me what I can do for you, I’ll do anything I can.”

“You’re so nice.” She sniffled and ran the back of her hand across her smudged face. “You’re nice just like him. Can you carry Ferdi upstairs?”

Ferdi was heavy and smelled like bananas and milk. He hung in my arms like a sack, with his mouth open and his head lolling back. My heart raced. I was terribly afraid of dropping him. I wondered whether children were more unwieldy when they were asleep. I didn’t know how I could get him up the stairs without stumbling and falling.

“Should I take him?” asked Tamara.

“No,” I said, pressing the word out between my teeth. “Just turn the lights on in the staircase.”

Step by step I climbed, with Ferdi’s breath on my neck, the smell of his moist sweaty hair in my nose, a scent that reminded me of rye bread, the moist skin under his T-shirt that made me afraid he might slip out of my hands. I thought of my father: I’d never been hiking in the mountains. Maybe this was what it was like to scale the top of a mountain, and when you fell it was all over.

We made it, and Tamara had opened Ferdi’s door for me and switched on the night-light that bathed the room in red light.