Danilo Kiš - The Attic

“Where?”

“Very far away.”

“To Daghestan?”

“ Tu n’est pas mal instruit. Peut-être, pour le moment. . ”

“ Soit. . Laisse-moi rêver de nouveau après m’avoir réveillé si cruellement par cette cloche d’alarme de ton départ. Sept mois sous tes yeux. . Et à présent, où en réalité j’ai fait ta connaissance, tu me parles de départ! ”

“ Je te répète que nous aurions pu causer plus tôt .”

“So you would have liked that?”

“ Moi? Tu ne m’échapperas pas, mon petit. Il s’agit de tes intêrets à toi. Est-ce que tu étais trop timide pour t’approcher d’une femme à qui tu parles en rêve maintenant, ou est-ce qu’il y avait quelqu’un qui t’en a empêché ?

“ Je te l’ai dit! Je ne voulais pas te dire vous .” Then, wearily, I extinguished the candle. The book fell with a bang onto the straw. A solemn stillness enveloped my thoughts, my sleep.

Adieu, mon prince Carnaval!

Igor, I created Eurydice. I sang her form into existence!

I was able to follow from day to day the metamorphosis of her breasts, growing round under my hands until they became as fragile and delicate as the finest Chinese porcelain.

I made her hips dance, made them bloom, made her waist unfold like a lily.

I seasoned her tongue with chamomile and hyacinth; I sharpened it with kisses, unbridled it.

Igor, my friend, I transformed her fingers into endearments, into caresses, into a lute.

Her arms I ennobled, transformed into a bolster for my head, into a dream.

I turned her into my own selfishness, my friend Igor, into a sigh, into breath.

And what is left for me to do now, Capricorn, other than pull my own hair out, or poke out my eyes?

Brother Igor, she wrested away my selfishness, my masterpiece!

“Get up!” said Igor.

I didn’t open my eyes. I just listened to him plucking the straw and ripping the paper from the window. Then two or three small pieces of glass hit the floor through the fine straw, and a draft of air struck me.

“Get up!” Igor repeated. “You cannot take refuge in sleep. I brought you a little beef broth and a shot of cognac. That’ll bring you back to life.”

“Close the window, Igor. Please. You can see that I’m shivering all over, that my teeth are chattering. And I can’t even open my eyes in this burst of light.”

“Will you eat then?” he asked.

“Let me have a sip of the cognac. My tongue is rotting.”

He brought over his little flask and poured a few drops into the lid.

“Don’t act preachy,” I snapped. “Just hand me the flask.”

“Okay, okay,” he said. “Kill yourself with it for all I care. You haven’t eaten anything for days and you won’t come to your senses. You’re going to go nuts like this.”

“So what if I go nuts? At least I won’t be conscious of anything.”

“Just a little soup,” Igor said, guiding the spoon to my mouth. “And enough of these dark thoughts. . So, what really happened?”

“Nothing happened,” I said. “Everything is perfectly fine.”

“Eurydice. .”

“Shut up!”

“Well, well, look at that,” he said. “You’ve gotten as mean as a junkyard dog. But I’m simply asking as your friend: What’s going on with you two? Something’s obviously not right.”

“Everything is fine. (Sorry, but I’m really irritated.) Why shouldn’t it be? She loves me, I love her, and. . so there.”

“Nonetheless,” he said. “Something happened during your absence. Surely she didn’t. .”

“You are a vulgarian, Igor. She’s not that Marija from the ground floor. .”

“Still, something happened. That’s clear enough. Ultimately, even your Eurydice is no angel. Even she. .”

“Igor! If you say anything obscene, I swear I’ll kill you. I don’t know with what, but I’ll kill you.”

“All right!” said Igor. “This means that your old egoism is back. You’re cured. You’ve recovered.”

“Give me a cigarette,” I said, “so I can thaw out.”

We smoked for ten minutes without a word. The soup gave off steam and, together with the aroma of the tobacco smoke, the vapor gave the attic a new odor.

I only drank one more little glass of cognac.

Afterward I spent several months in the attic, neither receiving visitors nor going out. I grew a beard like a hermit. Serpents hatched under my nails.

I had ripped the lute’s hair out so it wouldn’t provoke me. I plugged up its mouth with dirty rags so that it couldn’t sigh and couldn’t hear.

Day and night I reclined in the rocking chair, staring at the ceiling. I listened to the gurgling of the rain, the grieving of the winds.

From time to time Igor brought me unsweetened tea with toast and cigarettes. I was choking on my own stench, in the smoke. I had forgotten how to see and how to speak.

I was a coward for not killing myself then. Or wise.

Freshly shaven, and in my sumptuous black tie, I was seated before a succulent leg of chicken in a café. I had a white napkin across my knees and the sleeves of my coat were rolled up so they wouldn’t get worn out. I was no longer drinking either dark, flavorsome wine or scorching absinthe. I had only mineral water and a soft drink. Voraciously, with my nose in the foam, I gulped down a beer.

“I barely recognized you,” said Billy Wiseass.

I offered him my hand in greeting without getting up.

“Well. . filtered cigarettes, uh-huh, and real mineral water, and. .”

“Cut it out!” I said. “This is not some roadside dive.”

I saw the malice in his eyes. He was getting ready to say something unpleasant to me. Maybe to remind me of the attic. To rub my nose in it and stain my sleeves. I waited, nibbling away at the drumstick. A bone had gotten caught in my throat.

“You’re not even going to offer me a seat,” he said. “Look, even if you’re angry at the whole world, that’s still no reason. . ”

“Sit down,” I said.

I saw that he had something to tell me.

“Do you want a beer? Waiter!”

“A cognac,” he said. “A double shot, please.”

“How’s your Urania?” I asked. “I haven’t seen you two for a long while.”

“Fine, thanks,” he said. “Oh, yeah — I almost forgot. Perhaps this will interest you. .”

“Out with it already!” I said. “You’re cooking up something malicious, aren’t you, you dirty rat.”

“Eurydice!” he said.

I plunged my nose into my plate.

He repeated: “Eurydice. I said ‘Eurydice.’”

“So what?”

He grabbed me by the arm. “She’s waiting for you in the attic, you moron.”

“Very nice,” I said. “But first I have to pick this bone clean. I’m not going to leave this chicken to the cooks out of sheer charity!”

“I haven’t seen you for ages,” the cleaning lady said when I came running up.

“I’ve been sick,” I said.

I expected her to ask me for the rent.

“Sick? And I didn’t even know. Otherwise I would’ve paid you a visit. So what was wrong with you?”

“Influenza,” I said.

“And just what is that?”

“Bloody diarrhea,” I said and then rushed up the stairs.

I had already raced up two floors when I heard her voice: “A girl was waiting for you.”

“Are you talking to me?” I asked, panting as I leaned over the wobbly wooden banister.

“To you. . Who else? She left less than five minutes ago. If you hadn’t been licking your plate, you would’ve caught her.”

There was still a warm indentation on the bed where she had been sitting. The window was wide open and the wind reverberated in the lute. She had taken the rags and paper out of it. The ashtrays were gleaming, and the books, which previously had been lying strewn about in the corners everywhere you looked, had been piled up into a burial mound.