lasts, gravity increases, everything gains weight, your voice gains character, and character means enjoyment.
Otherwise I guess I’ve become mean in Kuwait City – I’ve lost weight and developed dark circles under my eyes. Do you remember the first sirens? You think something’s going to happen up there, right at that moment, things will be resolved, you think it’ll soon be over and last no longer than a war film. But it turns out more like a boring TV serial: you dash down to the shelter, stand around until the episode’s over, later you run there a second time, and wait for it to happen... Here people rushed to the shelters three times today, nothing’s happened and they’re crazy already.
I read these emails on my black laptop and kept things to myself.
‘Uh-huh,’ Sanja said, concluding another conversation. She noted down the address on the edge of the newspaper. ‘We’ll call again tomorrow, thank you.’
She put down the receiver.
‘Attic flat, quiet street, 55 m2... Now he mentioned there are sloping walls. I don’t know, we’d have to see it.’
‘That sounds good,’ I said. ‘How about straight away?’
‘I told him we’d come tomorrow,’ she objected.
‘Tomorrow is your dress rehearsal,’ I reminded her.
‘But I’ll have a break, and it’ll do me good to get out and stretch my legs.’
‘OK,’ I said.
A chance passer-by
Guys who cook were coming into fashion in those days and I bought a book by an English cook who had his own programme on TV. I opened it on the worktop as if I was about to chop it up.
I read and leafed through the pages with knife in hand: there are so many different foods, you wouldn’t believe it.
I put down the knife because I’d decided to make spaghetti after all (sensible as I was).
But, all the same, I kept muttering in English while I spun hyperactively around the kitchen. I adopted a nasal twang to try and sound English and spoke in a series of short sentences: ‘Itts veri fasst. Veri fasst. Naw wee edd sum beens.’
The spoken instructions didn’t match the cooking of spaghetti carbonara but helped create atmosphere.
‘Itts not big filosofi. Poteitous, poteitou chipps... Itts simpl, itts fantastik.’
I left mess wherever I went.
She laughed.
‘It’s a disaster,’ I said.
She joined in a bit. She hovered around me and made light work where I’d been clumsy; then I hovered around her like an overeager apprentice.
Although she took over everything, I kept playing the part of the guy who was cooking.
Everyone needed the illusion of the domesticated male, and I was providing an example. I dangled around like Pinocchio on his strings.
‘It’s ready,’ she said.
Then we ate the spaghetti.
‘Hmm, not bad,’ she said. ‘Well done!’
I smiled. I liked it when we were a good team, when we supported each other, regardless of the reality.
* * *
I ate my plate clean.
‘Oh, I bumped into Ela today,’ I said.
She looked at me quizzically as she grabbed a strand of spaghetti hanging out of her mouth.
‘Nothing special,’ I continued, ‘she just asked how you are...’
That came out by itself because whenever I met someone she’d want to know: Did they ask about me? I know part of our conversations off by heart.
‘...and said to say hello,’ I added.
She swallowed and said: ‘I rang Ela today.’
‘Really?’ I wondered. ‘Why did you ask me then?’
‘I didn’t ask you anything.’
‘Didn’t you?’ I said, taking some more spag.
‘No, I didn’t.’
‘Want any more?’
‘No,’ she answered.
‘All right,’ I said, helping myself to the rest.
‘I invited her to the première. She was very happy.’
‘Sure, you have to invite your old friend,’ I said.
‘How does she look?’ Sanja continued. ‘I haven’t seen her since... I don’t know when.’
My mouth was full and I made a face which meant I didn’t know what to say. Ela had been through periods of depression in recent years, and Sanja told me after I swore secrecy that she’d also been having clinical treatment.
‘Was she fat?’ Sanja asked.
‘She hasn’t lost weight,’ I said.
‘It’s a disaster,’ Sanja sighed. ‘First she punishes herself with diets, then she screws someone and falls unhappily in love, then she bingeeats again and ends up getting depressed.’
Sanja used to tell me this often, wondering at the way things with Ela kept repeating themselves.
I don’t know why we became such experts on Ela. We weren’t actually in touch with her any more. But we often talked about people that way; we harmonised our opinions and felt we were an organised entity.
‘In fact, I don’t know if she did say to say hello,’ I admitted. ‘Maybe she didn’t.’
‘Who knows if you saw her at all,’ Sanja said and looked at the TV, which was on with the volume down low.
I looked too: it was an afternoon talk show with a whole battery of columnists from women’s magazines.
‘Look, look, turn it up!’ I said.
I thought I’d seen him before. Yeah, it was him, Icho Kamera! He was in the audience, holding the microphone and asking a question.
‘The remote’s over there somewhere,’ Sanja said.
I zipped over to the couch, got the remote and turned up the volume, but Icho was already gone.
The popular compère Ana blinked charmingly as if wondering whether she’d missed a joke. Icho, a real country bumpkin, had obviously asked something out of context.
‘I can’t say, hmm,’ said one of the guests.
