inserted a scrap of paper from Dimm’s university notes and typed 69. The digits looked like two tadpoles. It wasn’t worth the effort to struggle with the heavy typewriter that, in a way, was so similar to the piano; the metal and glass keys, the hammers producing letters and sounds, the two rolls of inked tape, the lever to pull after each line. The word Remington was written in Latin letters on the front. I was getting familiar with Latin letters, and could also read the name on the radio, Koerting. Dimm showed me how it was sealed inside by the authorities so we couldn’t listen to BBC but only to Radio Sofia and Radio Moscow.
*
Numberless masterpieces must have been written on Remington typewriters, I mull dreamily walking down a narrow Basel street, this time away from the hypnotic swell of the Rhine. It escapes me how exactly I have turned up at the small shop the size of a horse float, facing the dark-skinned woman in the same bright, colourful cotton wrap who looks immune to the local climate. She attends vigilantly to the two fires and must have noticed me before I approach, because when I stop in front of her she is ready with my coffee. I take it and smile. She smiles back with the corners of her eyes and the grit of fine wrinkles tells me she is not young.
Then I see him.
The same black trench coat (almost like mine), the collar up, a fragile fence against the cold breeze. I drink my coffee in silence under his watchful gaze and suddenly know that by coming here I have passed a test that is important to him.
An Italian couple stops by and I have to move aside and make room for them to order. By doing this, I brush involuntarily against Bruno because he doesn’t step back. The effect of the touch is like a high voltage electricity discharge. I can’t think properly. I don’t even remember whether Ethiopia was once an Italian colony. Maybe it was then when the Italians sucked in the raw power and understanding of coffee.
I finish the cup which remains pleasantly warm from the drink. We still haven’t exchanged a word but Bruno takes my hand and I follow him.
We walk side-by-side with my heart in the fast lane. Anticipation, greed, insecurities, love scenes from the previous night, aggressiveness, all melt in one. The consuming desire for him makes my sluggish blood boil; I take off the scarf I wear half-hidden under my jumper.
When we reach his place — a modern refurbished apartment on the last, third floor of a 19th century building — I finally talk. I ask for water.
He brings a glass and remains silent.
Soon the clothes peel off me like coffee husks.
He lets me lie down on my stomach and pours oil — the fragrance is a mixture of patchouli, ylang-ylang, wild rose, and mandarin — on my back. He encroaches me, his hands sliding up and down, creating a decadent orgy of senses. Rubbing up and down my spine, between my ribs, exerting pressure on spots so sore each could be the dwelling of my soul. His hands are gaining power over me like the hands of the young bath attendants who took care of my dirty heels and ears when the hot water was scarce and Nadya was sick of washing my bottom and scrubbing my face with the cold mountain water that ran from the taps on Tolbuhin Boulevard.
Unoticeably I slip away to another corner of the world, to another time, a place inhabited by people I loved and love.
*
For half the year, a big coal stove in the kitchen heated the boiler in the bathroom, starting from the first cool autumn days and finishing towards the end of April when spring permitted sleeveless attire. The rest of the year, we heated water in huge pots and filled the bathtub and containers for a rinse, or Nadya took me by the hand and, after a short ride on tram number two, we arrived at the mineral water bathhouse.
Nadya was adamant when it came to bath attendants, and they were all her friends. She tipped them generously because they put enormous effort into scrubbing her and, to my terror, also into scrubbing me.
While they were working on her, chafing her plum and white skin until it turned red under the coarse, fingerless gloves, and scouring her heels and elbows down to a bruise with pumice stone, I would disappear into the mineral water pool, causing turbulence and unnerving the women who were soaking peacefully, until a representative of the order, dressed in a white coat, would ask me to stop playing.
The bathhouse was a source of strange words, which served to enrich my vocabulary. There was tass, a metal bowl to scoop hot water from the kurna, which was a floor-level tiled sink with seats on both sides, and kir, the grime coming off my skin in rolls and flakes.
For a better result, first we had to soak in the pool, or stay in the steamy, sulphurous, tiled place full of naked women of different dimensions. Dimm used to say that being a bath attendant was the only other profession where one had to perform naked.
“What’s the first?” I was eager to learn about life.
“I am not supposed to tell you everything, am I?” he winked at me teasingly, but I knew it had something to do with Mimi, the Brazilian.
As for the bath attendants, I was curious about them, especially Rosa, the youngest, who was beautiful. She had velvet, milky skin, dark stormy eyes, chestnut hair pulled up into a rich, fluffy bun, and an hourglass figure that was suave and feminine, while her legs, which were on the shorter side, were well-shaped and smooth. When we happened to be with her, it wasn’t necessary for Nadya to drag me out of the pool and deliver me into Rosa’s hands. I didn’t stray then, but waited, because those hands not only took care of whatever dirt there was on my body but also released all the inner tension that I was starting to accumulate, despite my tender age. A particular feeling would overwhelm me whenever Rosa would sit on a small, low wooden chair in front of me and take my leg over her thigh, so she could rub the skin. Holding my ankle with one hand, the other hand, inside the coarse black cloth, would start to move from my toes up towards my thigh, her little apple-like breast resting snugly against my sole. Sometimes, my big toe would jerk and touch the dark, curly haired spot with an almost invisible slit, which she held exposed in a trusting, child-like way.
My perception was very different when, instead of Rosa, the skinny, wrinkled Nevena took a seat on the little chair and brandished her washrag. In her hands, I felt like an elephant being scrubbed with a coconut husk by an Indian carer, removing my dead skin in the Ganges River. Nevena used the crook of her elbow to hold me in place, and it hurt, but I had to put up with it. I got goosebumps and turned my head to watch the other women until, by the end, I started to think that it wasn’t natural that there should be so much ugliness under one roof. These women were nothing like Margherita or Dimm’s fellow students. Here, it was all sagging tits, draped buttocks, orange-skinned bellies, ganglia of varicose veins, bald tired-of-life pussies, hairy armpits, and faces that looked attractive only when compared with the large tap handles. The steam didn’t help to disguise the grotesque abundance of loose flesh and the smell of half-boiled decaying bodies, flopping around on wooden platform sandals called nalymi. Chlop, chlop, tack, tack. That was the ridiculous song of those wooden platforms, turned into shoes with the help of a rubber strap held in place by four nails, two on each side. Often, the nails worked loose and a woman would lose a nalym or two, or slip and strike a dangerous tile edge, metal railing, or shower skeleton. The showers were only for a rinse, or for those who were in a hurry or didn’t have money for a proper bath, where the attendants were paid generously.
Because they worked naked, Rosa and Nevena had found different ways to tuck away the tips given to them by grateful customers. Nevena had a plastic bag fastened around her neck, like a third sagging tit, but differing in size depending on whether it was the beginning or the end of her shift. Rosa also used a plastic bag, but would hang it behind her in a shower cabin from which the tap handles had been removed. The amount of the tip
