Marek Hlasko - Killing the Second Dog

“This is blackmail.”

“It sure is.”

The bouncer finished packing my suitcase. Standing in front of us, he took off his shirt and wiped the sweat off his body with it, while I watched his rippling muscles. His arm was as thick as a boa constrictor. I burst out laughing, and they both stared at me.

“What are you laughing at?” Robert asked.

“At you, Bobby. Because if this whole deal falls through, it’s you who’ll have to come here and explain to this guy why he won’t be getting his money back. God, won’t that be funny!” I got up and moved to the door. “Bring the suitcase to the hotel. I’m going to get a haircut. See you around, Constrictor!” I added, turning to the bouncer. “If this whole deal, God forbid, falls through, remember it was his idea, not mine. So don’t go chasing after me with that gun of yours. And Bobby, remember to feed the dog. It hasn’t eaten yet. I’ll show up at two. Try to get us a room looking out at the sea, okay? I’d enjoy that.”

As I was leaving, they started to argue again; the bouncer wanted to give Robert the picture of his mother without the silver frame it was displayed in. Robert insisted the frame was indispensable as additional proof of my filial devotion. He drew a vivid picture of me as a penniless beggar who nonetheless refuses to part with the thin silver frame his mother’s picture is set in.

“He could have sold that frame a hundred times,” Robert said, “when he was hungry or ill. But he didn’t! God, you don’t understand the simplest things!”

I SMOKED A CIGARETTE NEXT TO A STACK OF DECK CHAIRS guarded by a small boy and watched the woman from a distance. Our rooms were on the same floor, but she didn’t know that yet; she had gone down to the beach right after lunch and was sitting there with a pile of magazines scattered around her, while her kid, a boy of ten at most, was running around like a little devil, making a nuisance of himself. She didn’t look too bad; she was one of those women who got a late start in life, and her face was still young and bright. I like women with bright, innocent-looking faces like that, faces that have a nun-like air about them. These are the only faces that provide the emotions and the element of surprise that make life bearable. And that was exactly her appeal. When you wake up in the middle of the night and the cogs of your brain start turning and throttling your heart, and it’s almost dawn and you know you won’t be able to fall asleep again, you can screen yourself from sadness and anger with the image of a face like that. I could use her face the way a child brings up his hand to shut out the view of something he’s afraid of. The boy tending the deck chairs asked me for the third time if I’d like to rent a chair. I did and strolled down to the beach with it.

I walked right up to her and set my deck chair next to hers.

“This spot vacant?” I asked. I picked up one of her magazines and studied the face of some jerk and then put it back on the sand. “I’d like to know if this spot is vacant or not,” I repeated.

She looked at me and gestured at the beach, empty except for the two of us. “The whole beach is vacant,” she said.

“I don’t care about the whole beach. I’m asking you about this spot.”

“It’s not vacant now,” she said. “Unfortunately.”

“No need to insult me. It’s standard practice when people go to dinner, they ask someone to keep their spot for them. A simple courtesy. That’s why I asked. If you don’t want to be disturbed, put up a sign that says so. Or bring a policeman and make him stand in the sun, protecting you.”

“Have you finished?”

“No. Not yet. I’ll let you know when that happens.”

I placed my chair on the sand and took out a book and opened the pages at random. I wasn’t reading, or, if I was, the text wasn’t registering in my mind; I was wondering whether Robert would have been satisfied with my act. I felt he would. He wanted me to be aggressive. Even more than that: to be violent with a fury aimed at everything and everybody. Women didn’t trust men who sat down next to them and tried to charm them right off; all the sweet talk would come later, unexpectedly, at some point when Robert gave me the cue; but first I had to display the bitterness and fury of a poor soul whom the heavens had spared no misery. It was only then that women, each and every one of them, took upon themselves the role of playing go-between in the conflict between Fate and the man they had chosen for their own, the one they would follow through fire and water, to hear the peals of golden trumpets. But nothing could be hurried, the fury couldn’t disappear right away; it had to dissolve gradually, slowly quiet down, and finally die out like a fire in the tormented soul of someone who’s found the ladder to heaven in a woman’s gentle touch. That man was myself!

I flipped an unread page and looked over my shoulder. Robert was walking in our direction with a deck chair under his arm, his face twisted from the effort though the chair weighed no more than seven pounds. Poor Robert; he always looked like an insect emerging into light for the first time from under an overturned stone. He was pale beyond belief, and I thought of the bouncer with his brown, dry skin. Robert opened his deck chair and settled into it, breathing heavily through his mouth; then he pulled out a pack of cigarettes and handed it to me. He had scrawled on it: “An American?” I gave him a light and nodded my head. So did he; this meant that we would speak English only.

“It’s a hot day,” Robert said.

“Yes,” I said. “How clever of you to have noticed.”

“How long have you been here?”

“I went to the consulate and then came straight back. There was a goddamn crowd there.”

“So you did go?”

“Didn’t I say I would?”

“If you had asked me for advice …” he began.

“But I didn’t,” I said, interrupting him.

For a while we smoked in silence. Some old fart and his wife had gone into the water together and were splashing at each other like a couple of kids.

“Quite a sight, huh?”

“Somebody should shave that bastard’s balls and send him back to kindergarten.”

“For Christ’s sake,” Robert said. “They’re just an old couple having some fun.”

“No,” I said. “What they really are are mirrors you can’t break. You can never break all the mirrors.”

“I don’t like it when you say something you don’t really mean,” he said. “What you just said about mirrors was very nasty. It reminds me of someone. He wasn’t such a great writer as you think. And he knew it. Someone who goes hunting for forty-five years doesn’t shoot himself accidentally while cleaning a rifle.”

“Okay, but at least he knew the menus of all the restaurants in the world. And the prices of all the drinks. That counts for something. You probably don’t even know how much a Gold Star beer costs if you drink it standing by the bar!”

“Hey, take it easy. I know you’ve had a hard day.”

“Can I try your patience some more and ask you for a favor?”

“Yep,” he said. He had always liked Gary Cooper and it came as a heavy blow to him when that handsome old fellow died. I remember the day; we went to a movie theater on Ben Yehudah Street, and it seemed hard to believe that all the life had gone out of that face brightening up the screen. The whole audience was sad and unusually quiet. I expected any moment someone would come up to me and say: “It’s not true. Some goddamn drunken reporter made it up.”

“What’s the favor?” he asked.

“Can you help me brush up on my English, old buddy?” I said. “I’ve landed a job.”