Danilo Kiš - Psalm 44

Only then did she grasp why she hadn’t seen Jakob’s face when he said “That’s Maks” and that thing about a short-circuit: the light had already been extinguished before he locked the door, for otherwise she would have been able to see Jakob’s face; yet she remembered clearly that he hadn’t put out the lamp with the shade, and that his tall silhouette had still been visible before her, blocking her light with his back, and then visible too when he turned and bent down and stretched his hand out toward her to cover her mouth and lift her up and deposit her in the cabinet. Now it became clear to her that the light had still been burning when he picked her up and carried her in essentially one swoop, because she remembered seeing a broad swath of wide, dark cracks along the open doors of the cabinet and she understood that he would have to use his foot to fully open those doors that were already ajar. The last thing she saw then was the elongated white stain like some kind of unfleeced animal hanging on a hook, but then right away it struck her that it had to be Jakob’s white hospital coat because she could smell the heavy, thick odor of iodoform and ether. So the darkness must have begun at the moment that Jakob’s head appeared and touched her face to tell her not to be afraid and to tell her about Maks and the blown circuits, since the cabinet door must have still been open but she nonetheless wasn’t able to see him, only to perceive his low, low whisper and his breath on her face.

She stood motionless in the gloom, straining her eyes to pick out some light through the crack along the cabinet’s door, and she thought she felt the cabinet vibrating from her suppressed trembling, which the plywood transmitted in every direction, the cabinet shaking and creaking as if it contained a monstrous heart, or else some useless mechanism like a wall clock with no face and no arms with which to carry its weapons: only the frantic, invisible, and pointless click-clack-click-clack of a tremendous pendulum. Her head was at an impossible angle, lying nearly horizontally across the top of her shoulder, but she didn’t dare to feel about with her hands in the dark (lest she send an empty clothes hanger flying) or even push that coat farther away, with its sickly sweet hospital smell permeating her eyes and leaving her insides cramped and ready to heave up bile.

But then all she could do was regret that she hadn’t taken care of the coat a bit earlier, and she was regretting it all the more when Dr. Nietzsche flipped the switch outside the door to no effect and when, right after that, she caught his voice: “This smells like sabotage to me”; she should have done something before that point, at least. Firstly, to move the coat away from her nose (she imagined this movement: sliding the hanger gently along the wooden bar suspended between the two sides of the cabinet, then stopping it with the soft thump of linen on wood, both of these materials springing from plant life, like twins from the same womb, and then her hand making its way back and dropping across her belly and landing on it with no noise as if it were just returning sound-lessly through the air and not touching anything at all, and she imagined her clean, unencumbered breathing and she inhaled the scent of dry fir planks that radiated the smell of resin); then she got into a more comfortable position, sitting diagonally or at least freeing herself from the bar pressing down on her neck. And so it was as if she were in a coffin: a living corpse; and she thought of Anijela. She would always remember: the elliptical tin sign on a flaking red facade, COFFINS MADE HERE — THROUGH THE ARCH, LEFT — hidden in the summer by the leaves of the wild chestnuts and with the gnarled, clumsily painted finger pointing like the hand of fate in the direction of the graves; THROUGH THE ARCH, LEFT under the blooming boughs of the wild chestnut; and she thought back to the heavy aromatic smell of chestnut blossoms and to that cul-de-sac straying off of Grobljanska Street and then going left. Now she could also remember the ice-flowers on the window between which appeared the head of the gray-haired old man inside like the head of some faun among the ferns, and she recalled his mouth of crooked and missing teeth below his big mustache, and when their round faces filled the opaque flowers of his window he exhaled on it to melt the ice. Then, under his reeking breath, the fern withered, and Aunt Lela pulled the scarf away from her face so that he would recognize her: “It’s us, Čika Martin”; then a flickering yellow light came on in the window and after that one could hear the key turning in the lock and she saw the faun’s disheveled head and mustache and immediately she regretted coming, even before the man said: “This one’s not coming to me for a place to stay, is she?” But Aunt Lela said:

“No. She’s not. She just came by to see Anijela. How is Anijela?”

They stood in the corner of his darkened workshop and warmed up by the low fire smoldering in a round sawdust-fed stove. Two or three times the man lifted the lid and peered in at the embers, each time spitting into the fire and then sticking his pipe back in his mouth. But she had still not seen Anijela. They were waiting until they had warmed up a bit, but Marija had already firmly decided that she would not be staying, whatever happened. It wasn’t precisely on account of the old man but much more because of the low ceiling, smoky and peeling, and due to the sense that death had permeated everything here; she almost couldn’t look at that black gilt-edged coffin lid standing upright by the door.

“She sleeps all the time,” the old man said. He took the pipe out of his mouth. Then with his middle finger he tamped down the bowl and she saw that the stunted index finger on his right hand was fastened to his middle finger like some sort of parasite. “I tell her it would be better for her to get some exercise,” he said. “It’s impossible for anybody to come in here without my hearing them first. But she doesn’t want to get up until it passes , as she says. All this must pass .”

Marija saw Anijela right after that, as they were moving between the workshop and the warehouse. She remembered: the old man latched the door of the workshop, then he took a candle and set off in front of them. She had to walk on for a bit before she grew accustomed to the half-darkness (the man was shielding his candle) and was able to orient herself: coffins, for the most part unpainted, lay diagonally on the shelves like beds on some kind of ship of the dead. She took in the dense, heavy smell of glue, fresh logs, and planks of fir, oil paints, and turpentine.

Then the man repeated:

“You see? I told you. She’s sleeping again,” and he raised the lid from one of the caskets in the corner of the room. “All she does is sleep. In the evenings she comes out, but only to go to one place — you know what I mean. Then she comes right back.” Then he told her: “She has feathers in there. And the chimney runs along beside her there. She’s not cold, she says.”

Just then Marija caught sight of Anijela, who slowly raised her eyelids, and then only the whites of her eyes showed, and these words came dragging out of her mouth:

“I’m always sleepy,” Anijela said. “As soon as I let the lid down, I fall asleep.” Her eyes were twitching as if the meager illumination of the candle were blinding her.

At that point, the man said, “That’s from the dust. It would be better for her if she took a shot of rakija. That’d invigorate her, as I say. And give her some courage.”

“No,” Anijela responded. “The dust helps me sleep”; then she looked at Marija, as if speaking only to her: “I have the same dream over and over: someone is after me and I can’t run away. Then I wake up and see that I’m in a coffin. So I calm down a little. Do you ever dream anything like this, Marija? Someone is chasing you, and you. .”