thought of the sea, Pompeii, and Lagrima Christi wine. She longed for big cities—Lisbon, Rome, Amsterdam, and London. She associated them with a feeling of freedom and abundance.
In a foreign city, she and Ian always made love twice. In the morning and before going to sleep. They formed a pair that had to continually affirm itself—convince itself of its own homogeneity. Its functionality. It grew two new heads with clean tongues. They used them to lick the new country.
No one understood them, their speech became secret and romantic. They thought it up just for themselves. No one ruined it for them or expanded the borders of their world with seeming comprehensibility.
World events ceased to exist. Holding their breath, they scanned the headlines of the local newspaper, which they didn’t understand. To Elza, foreign cities felt free because she had never worked there. She didn’t know the mayors, the city neighborhoods, the offices, the scandals. She didn’t have to chase anyone down in them, or call around. She had no contacts.
Elza. Bratislava. A city that grips you in its clutches. On the way from work to Ian and from Ian to work. Tied up in the rhythm of your own steps. The rhythm of the city. The rhythm of lovemaking, work, parties, earning and spending, gaining and losing. Are you making money? Combining ingredients? Time, men, and money? City, wine, song, and work? Friends, love, and idiots. Pancakes! The Bratislava alchemist.
Bratislava. A city that forces you to pounce on something, just as it has pounced on you.
In the newsroom. “What do you actually do, Elza, in reality? Are you writing a novel? Aha… You’re lucky, I would do the same. If I had the time. If only you knew what I’ve been through. What a book that would be!” The Editor-in-Chief sighed and poured himself some white wine. Oh, little fairy, if only you knew what I’ve been through… He sat down on her desk, put his hands on his hips, and looked into her eyes.
“How are you doing—have you found anything out?”
“You know, I really don’t know now, what’s going on. What’s true in this case. I don’t have a way to confirm, but I’m trying— I’m calling around, asking, waiting.”
Under her boss’s blue-eyed gaze, Elza was flooded with heat. A blue flame burned directly in her face. She thought she could hold on and kept talking. But at one point she felt that if she didn’t take off her turtleneck, she would burn up, explode, melt on the surface.
“At the beginning it seemed clear. But confusing information keeps coming in. We shouldn’t panic,” she continued, trying to pull her turtleneck over her head. She thought she could do it in one fell swoop. But her sweater got stuck just above her head and she was wedged inside it. “I’m not sure I’m going to make it by the deadline. But tomorrow it would already be old news. I have to find out somehow. I’m looking for contacts,” explained Elza with her head under her sweater. In the dark she felt like she wasn’t fighting with the sweater, but with her own skin. That by mistake, she’d pulled the skin off her back right over her head. “Sorry it’s like this now,” she said, thrashing around. Then her boss held her undershirt down with one hand and with the other ripped the turtleneck off her. He saved her life. And the skin on her back would grow back quickly anyway. Of that she was sure. She didn’t even have to call anyone.
Elza. I’ve had problems being wedged in since childhood. Whenever I washed my hair in the sink of a cheap hotel, I usually got my head caught between the faucet and the sink basin. The drain was plugged and the water still running and it rose up to my nose and mouth.
On the way to school, in the back of the tram by the window, I leaned against the railing, which followed the wall of the tram car at about a 10-centimeter distance. While I was talking, I stuck my arm in between. When I wanted to get off, I realized that I couldn’t pull my arm out. The elbow was too wide. I was wedged in.
“Don’t panic. Don’t panic, said a group of Polish tourists who were riding with me. The driver closed the door in people’s faces and laughed. The Polish people prayed quietly. With every movement, my elbow grew bigger.
The moment they sent Elza to write about the opening of the 3D cinema, she thought of Ian. A few years earlier, he would have been the first to go there, so that his eyes would be opened. A 3D cinema has a three-dimensional screen. The trick is based on shifting the vision of one eye in relation to the other. Since 1999, Ian has only seen out of his right eye. But Elza knew that even if he couldn’t be amongst the first viewers, he would surely catch the news in time that this cinema—useless for him—was opening. Because since childhood, Ian had been buying reams of newspapers and magazines. He looked forward to them with unbridled excitement and flipped through them endlessly. Columns and towers of them piled up in his room. He couldn’t part with them. In every old magazine it seemed to him there was something extremely interesting that warranted keeping, and he didn’t want to give or throw it away. “It’s all information,” he said to Elza. “I might need them one day.”
And Elza admits that Ian truly did always know a ton of interesting facts. While she roasted a chicken, he talked to her about the newest theory of the origin of the universe, about the problems cloned sheep suffer from, about the main character’s fate in the documentary film Nanook or about a quite new Irish band that had suddenly sold more albums at home than U2.
And while she’s taking the chicken out of the oven, Ian says: “And they’re opening a 3D cinema here tomorrow. But they definitely won’t show any high-quality films. Just some circus attractions, don’t you think?” Ian asked and answered himself.
Elza. Ian is mine. Ours. We kiss as if it were the first time. Like the first couple who ever kissed. We’re a being with one body, two tongues, and three eyes.
At the 3D cinema they were showing a film about dinosaurs. After it finished, Elza never went back to work. Observers considered it to be a stylish end to a career.
In two days she was surprised by a café full of colleagues.
They came to Café Hyena to say good-bye.
“Shoot,” Elza wanted to say, shocked.
“Shit,” she said instead, unconsciously.
1Láadan is a language created in 1982 by Suzette Haden Elgin intended to better express women, whose viewpoints were felt to be shortchanged in many Western languages compared with those of men.
2Jánošík is a character from a Slovak legend similar to Robin Hood.
III
KALISTO TANZI
Elza. Together we ate grapes and washed them down with rosé. The next day I discovered a moist grape stem in my pocket. It looked like an undecorated Christmas tree.
Kalisto Tanzi vanished from the city, which had been hit by a heat wave. The heat radiated from the houses and streets, burning people’s faces, and the scorching town seared its brand onto their foreheads.
I stopped in front of the theatre window so I could read Kalisto’s name on the posters and confirm to myself that he actually did exist. I enjoy pronouncing his name, which tormented him throughout childhood and puberty and only stopped annoying him after my arrival. I walk slowly to the other end of the city, the muscles in my legs shake slightly in the hot air. It’s noon. The only things on the planet that are really moving are drops of sweat. They run down to the base of the nose
