Danilo Kiš - The Attic

“ And how does Mr. Igor plan on accomplishing that ?” I asked, out of both curiosity and envy. “How does he intend to make a ‘prototype’ out of you, when you’re already what you are? Surely you’re not going to pose nude for him?”

She thought about this for a while, then she just shrugged her shoulders:

“I trust Mr. Igor,” she said. “He’s so sweet and so talented.”

The first thing that took me by surprise when I opened the door to my good old attic was the odor of dankness and urine. Igor’s black trousers swayed on their hook, and I flinched. It’s not easy to see one’s good friend hanging. Even if it is only symbolic.

Otherwise — at first glance — nothing had changed.

Yet the cranes had flown from the walls. And there wasn’t a trace at all of the wild doves; the mastodons and reptiles lorded over the place by themselves. Their teeth had grown alarmingly long.

“Well, now!” Igor said unexpectedly behind my back. “As you can see, old boy, nothing has changed.”

We embraced.

“Where is that stench coming from?” I inquired.

“From the rat poison,” he said. “Vermin and rats are rotting in the cracks.”

“How clever!” I said. “The things you keep coming up with!”

“There’s that derision again,” he said.

“I brought you something,” I said, to avoid a fight. “Hang on just a second.”

I proceeded to dump the shells into the middle of the room, and moonlight spilled out of them like crystals.

“What the hell is that supposed to be?”

“What the hell is what the hell supposed to mean?”

“But those are just ordinary shells!”

Then I picked up the loveliest conch, the one with the richest sound, which was about the size of a chamberpot, and tilted it up against his ear. “Listen,” I said. “Do you hear anything?”

Gradually his eyes filled with tears and shame. And possibly with remorse, too.

You birdbrain, I would’ve killed you if you’d remained consistent. But now what can I do? It’s utterly inconsistent of me , but I’ll tolerate your affable presence and your help.

I prized the shell away from his ear. “Here’s a handkerchief,” I said. “Wipe your snot. This is hypocrisy and Europeanness. You’ve grown a touch sentimental.”

“That’s because of the novel,” he said with a sniffle.

“What kind of novel?” I asked, feigning astonishment. “You don’t mean you’ve given up astronomy?”

He started stroking the conch shell disconcertedly.

“No,” he said. “You know, old man, it’s like this. . I’ve fallen in love.”

“Bravo,” I said. “That’s a good thing. It’s no reason to cry.”

“Her voice is like the moonlight from the Bay of the Dolphins.”

I winced. How did he know anything about my orgies in the Bay of the Dolphins? Then I saw the luggage tag from Tam-Tam’s native land on my backpack.

I let out a laugh.

“That’s the last thing I need,” I said. “For you to fall in love too. Then who will stay sober and track the phases of the moon, and the constellations? It’ll be pure hell.”

I was too tired and agitated to go out searching for Eurydice that same evening. By the way, our European custom of only receiving visitors until 8:00 p.m. is most irksome. It doesn’t even take into account whether the moon is full or in its last quarter.

I hung up my trousers on the peg next to Igor’s and dutifully brushed the sand out of my tattered tropical coat; then I shook out the stardust. Afterward I washed my feet and lay down to dream. I was fed up with prose.

“Knight errant!” she said.

“Eurydice! Eurydice!”

The rains of autumn started up again.

I carried her in my arms across dark streets. I held her high above the muck.

“You are still the same, sweetheart,” she said.

We were approaching the railroad embankment, toward which something was always drawing us. Memories. And piles of faded leaves in the ditch.

I placed her on a bed of foliage and began to recall her embraces. Her eyes. Her scents.

“Your hands have grown harder, sweetheart.”

“From the oars,” I said. “From the winds.”

No, I didn’t say anything. I inhaled her breasts, went blind.

The next day I cleaned up the attic a bit and reached once more for my lute. I spent the entire morning tuning its strings. It had fallen ill during my absence, grown deaf. It must have perceived my fingers on its slender neck as caresses.

Otherwise, why would it have lamented?

It took several hours of great patience for me to find its former resonance and tone. All at once — that is, completely by itself — it remembered its voice; from out of its dark insides poured a flood of pearls, as if from a colossal shell.

Then it seemed to me that someone was knocking, and I stopped playing for a moment.

“Would you knock it off already?” said the cleaning lady, rapping on the plywood door with her key.

“I’m done,” I said. “Excuse me.”

“As far as I’m concerned, you can strum on that thing as much as you like. But the tenants are complaining that they can’t enjoy their siestas after lunch because of your flute.”

“It’s a lute,” I said.

“Well, fine,” she said to appease me. “A flute.”

I drank bitter woodland tea and ate half a pack of zwieback with butter. Then I stretched out in the rocking chair to rest, since I couldn’t play. There I sat, with my eyes closed, for about half an hour, and then I stared at Venus’s thighs on the ceiling. Above one stately knee the dampness had drawn a dark blot that resembled a large wart. I shifted to my side and lit a cigarette.

That’s when Igor arrived.

“Sorry to wake you,” he said.

“Have a seat,” I said. “I was just napping a bit.”

“Okay,” he said, sitting down on the bed. “I need to ask something of you.”

“Say. . You haven’t gotten into a jam with her, have you?”

“How did you know? Did the cleaning lady tell you?”

I burst out laughing.

“I just had this presentiment,” I said. “You fell out of the stars and right onto her!”

“You’re in a joking mood,” Igor responded. “But this is a very pressing matter.”

“How many months along is she?” I asked.

“Two.”

“What do you intend to do now, Billy?”

He shrugged his shoulders and turned his eyes upward. That was how God looked when he surveyed the world on that seventh and final day of Creation.

“I don’t know,” he said. “That’s why I came to you.”

“Write a novel,” I said.

“Can I have a cigarette?” he said. “I’m nervous.”

“But of course.”

“I have to confess something to you,” he said, after we had lit up. “Only, please don’t misunderstand me.”

“I’m listening.”

“I started it,” he said. “The novel.”

“Well? Go on.”

“That’s not the issue,” he said. “The problem is that I don’t know how it is going to end. I don’t know how all these things are going to unfold. . And I’ve got no money for the abortion.”

All at once I grasped the seriousness of the situation.

The girl can die, I thought. Or she can give birth to a baby girl. Or she has the option of aborting.

My God — so many possibilities!

But she definitely has to have the abortion.

This is as urgent as it gets. Otherwise— voilà, a new character !

I am very much afraid, Billy, you dimwit, know-it-all, sonofabitch, Igor, devil— I am very much afraid that you might become a hero .

What will become of you if you don’t scrape together the money? You’ll get all kinds of notions that you are a hero, a martyr, a Don Juan, a man of sorrows, cavalier, victim of your passions, he-man, sensualist, seducer, daredevil, father, husband, citizen, debtor, spouse; you will become socially aggrieved, politically reactionary, sectarian, conspiratorial, humiliated and marginalized, insurgent, ostracized, oppressed; you will be a good-for-nothing, a gelding, an accursed poet, a defender of the poor and needy, patron, man of compassion — to sum it up in a single word, you will be something like a character in a novel, a hero , or even — a category .