Lovetown Page 12

  ‘Fucking hell, I’ll fucking annihilate that piece of shit.’

  Di is deliriously afraid of them. But there’s one agreeable Pole among them. She hears him telling someone else how he’s just returned from France, from Cannes, how he didn’t make a penny, and in fact was cleaned out, and if his friend hadn’t got lucky on a slot machine they’d have had no way to get back, would’ve got stuck in the old vicious circle there. Then he stops; there’s no need to explain to anyone in that pub what the vicious circle is.

  Now Di gets up and walks out of the bar, out of its heavy air thick with the smell of cigarettes, schnitzel, beer, and cologne… She walks to the little park next door, where others are stamping their feet on the ground to keep the cold at bay. They’re like her – so broke they can’t even afford to sit in a pub. Out on the street, it all looks just like it must have in the past. People standing; old, fat, and bald, the tricks walk between the parked cars along the street; sometimes someone beats someone else senseless, or else the filth comes round and everyone vanishes into thin air.

  And that’s when the lawyer turned up, who for the next three months would make her his domestic whore. In exchange for cleaning and sex, he tended to Di’s legs, which were chafed to the bone, and all of the illnesses she’d contracted during those five days of being homeless. When she’d had to sleep… no, in fact, she hadn’t slept anywhere. Because they shut the metro, pulling those grilles down from the ceiling, like they did in castles in the olden days. Everything was shut; drawbridges were raised; it was red lights everywhere for Di from Bratislava! The first night seemed as if it would never end. Milan stood in the freezing cold from midnight until daybreak. And nothing happened. Snowflakes fell against a backdrop of lit streetlamps. Was that all? Was that all that was going to happen? Sometimes an elegant, streamlined Mercedes would drive by; but Di no longer wanted a Mercedes – all she wanted was her own room, in her flat, in her tower block, in Bratislava; for her mother to make her tea; to be doing her homework. It’s just that her passport… Well, basically, she had no passport. So why did Milan leave? Because the soup was too salty. Di came here a year ago because she was having trouble in school, and she couldn’t stand the food at home, the smell of burned food in the kitchen… Things like that. Because they made her go to vocational school, and she was doing badly in it, that kind of thing. Because life was something that happened somewhere else; life meant dancing with millionaires and drinking champagne, not the smell of something burning all the time. The idea came to her suddenly. She started stealing this and that and selling it on, and as soon as she had enough she took off. Later, once she’d arrived in Vienna, she swore she’d arrived in paradise, that she’d never go back, and she chucked her passport down a manhole.

  Around five in the morning she started eating snow. From the lawns, because she thought it had to be cleaner than the snow in the street. She hobbled down one of the main roads, studied the shop windows, and had a taste of that unique and inimitable flavour that the West acquires when you don’t have a single penny to your name. She tried to sneak into an underground carpark, thinking that even the cars must have it better than she did, but she tripped the alarm and had to leg it. And so for five days and five nights she shambled all over that fucked-up city. When she went down the less frequented streets she would take off that awful shoe of hers, in the winter, in the snow. She wanted to freeze. She’d station herself on bridges and watch the Danube with its enormous, slow-moving ice floes. She inspected the kerbs, filled with a beggar’s certainty that she was bound to discover money there at any moment, that it was statistically impossible for her not to find anything. In the metro station there was a vending machine, and in that machine, behind the glass, chocolate bars and hot chicken wings. Everything. She just needed to find some money, and she spent every night searching for it. Every single bottle top looked like a coin, and every stone embedded in the tarmac was begging to be picked up. When she had only a few coins left… That was awful. Three days earlier she was just about to call home, her mum and dad, and ask them to bring their car and come and fetch her, to arrange for a provisional passport at the embassy, but the phone ate her money. She pounded it with her fist, but nothing came out. There was a sign with a toll-free number to call and report such incidents, but of course it didn’t work; all she got was an automatic message with some twat rattling off whatever. To get her revenge on those Austrian cunts, Di stuffed the payphone with sticks and matches (matches that would’ve come in handy about now).

  She came to despise all the people getting into their cars, driving off to their opera, reading the newspaper in their little Eduscho cafés, carrying their parcels, running through their snow, kissing under their statues, and giving each other gifts of chocolates embellished with the heads of their Great Composers. Di glared at the huge boxes of chocolate like a starving bitch. Whole window displays of chocolate, each one individually wrapped in gold paper, painted with the profile of some musical fuckwit in an enormous, grey wig. Open round boxes of chocolate the size of carriage wheels shimmered in the empty street’s nocturnal light. Di had crossed a boundary in her hunger and was feeling it less and less now. But she looked at those boxes of sweets and couldn’t tear her eyes away, so highly improbable and fascinating had the luxuries of that world become. A poor man dreams of work and enough money to get by; a beggar dreams of nothing less than millions! Bells were ringing in the distance; crimson garlands lit up, then went out; and Di had the feeling that at any moment a carriage drawn by a legion of reindeer would come for her, here in front of the shop, and whisk her off into some fairy tale or other. She wasn’t quite sure which one best suited her: the one about the little match girl, who froze in the snow? She’d stuffed her last matches into the payphone, and anyway, smoking was awful! It did nothing at all to make the hunger go away. Or maybe the story of Kai and Gerda was better? That must have been one of those Scandinavian fairy tales, because Milan remembered only that it was full of ice, whiteness, blue skies, and lucre. Just like Sweden. And just when it seemed things couldn’t get any kitschier… Hmm, how to explain? There were these lights set up everywhere, and Di reckoned, to her surprise, that they were rigged with photosensors, because whenever she went near them they would start playing this one especially inane American Christmas carol. And in that empty, bitterly cold night, little bells really were ringing, but instead of reindeer came a combination street cleaner and rubbish lorry, which in Austria all look like things from a science fiction war game. Di was feeling like rubbish herself, and couldn’t help thinking they must be coming on her account.

  Di eventually stopped walking, because every time she took a step her shoe would cut into her foot, practically to the bone. At least that’s how it felt. Those beautiful loafers – detested now – were a reminder of the life of prosperity (Ralf! Alex!) she’d had not long before, when instead of saving her money for times like now, she spent it all on heaps of new clothes. (Geld sparen, Geld sparen, Di! Du musst Geld sparen!*) But later, when she lost the flat she had rented from a Brazilian queen (Sierra Ferreira da Silva), she stashed them all in a locker at the train station, threw in a coin and… and they were still there, but in order to get them out she’d have to deposit fifty schillings or something, because the meter was still ticking! The blinking display kindly informed her that if she didn’t remove her things within twenty-four hours, she wouldn’t be able to get them out at all. Or something like that – she didn’t entirely understand what those Austrian pigs had written there.

  Di was no longer able to walk or stand up, nor could she put up with the sadness emanating from all the Christmas trees and lights and jingling, carolling bells everywhere. She was so done with that whole green-and-red festival of kitsch.

  But then: a miracle! Di, filthy and hungry though she was, found a trick in the metro. A fat, sweaty, unshaven Arab. Who smiled lasciviously at her nineteen years and fawn-coloured hair. Milan thought she might kiss the Arab for joy, right there in the subway
! She was already counting how many chops, chips, and sandwiches he’d be good for… How much could she get out of a bloke like that? Not much. But there was a shower at the Bahnhof; you just tossed in some coins and the doors parted. Only a few inches though, so that two people couldn’t make it through at once. You had a half hour entirely to yourself. Washing was wonderful, but being entirely by yourself for a whole half hour – that was pure bliss! To be off the street finally; finally, to be alone! She’d go and have a wash, and put on a pair of fresh socks, which she would buy. It would be a holiday.

  The Arab didn’t have a place. She asked him, ‘Have you got a place?’ As if to spite her, the Arab didn’t even have a place to go. But Di wanted to get the whole thing over and done with as soon as possible, so was about to drag him off to the bushes in the park or the toilet in the metro, when the Arab (Ahmed) insisted that he knew the perfect spot. He took Milan to an underground carpark that had some public toilets. They zigzagged between the variously coloured cars. It was dimly lit; the only bright thing was a green sign with the word ‘EXIT’. They shut the door, and Ahmed sat down on the toilet. It was enough to make you puke: he had breasts like a woman’s, except they were covered in hair, and he reeked of sour sweat. Every few minutes he would break into idiotic laughter and order Di to lick his corrupted body from head to toe. Or else he would fart and laugh as if it were the funniest joke he’d ever heard! Di did lick him, but all the while she fantasised about the cigarettes and chops, which allowed her to forget what she was doing. Suddenly someone started pounding on the door of the stall – it was the attendant! The carpark attendant! The guardian of all those underground carparks, one floor on top of the other, deeper and deeper, leading all the way down into hell! One of those attendants in fluorescent vests, yellow, maybe orange. He banged on the door and bellowed. Di didn’t understand a thing because he was yelling in German, and for her to understand he would have had to be yelling in Slovak, which he wasn’t. Instead he yelled in German, but Milan had no problem imagining what he meant. In a word, they needed to get the fuck out, because the Polizei was on its way.

  ‘Verdammte Schwule! Verdammte Schwule!* Open up!’

  Well, the Arab managed to make a dash for it (without paying!), but Di was seized by the even fatter and more repulsive-looking guard. Without so much as a how-do-you-do, he lands his fist in her face and blood begins to flow. She falls on the floor, on the tiles. The guard grabs her by the collar, screams something about the police, then throws her a bucket, a mop, a rag. Di tries to escape, but the fucker grabs her by the ear and holds her with all his might. He keeps holding her by her ear, like she was a schoolboy. She was afraid she’d never escape, our Diana – she’d end up as cheap labour washing the floors. The guard cries alternately ‘Polizei!’ and ‘Washrag!’ It’s her choice. Eizer you gonna putzen zis whole carpark for me zright now, or I call ze police! Fucking queer! Di chose the rag. Bawling to high heaven, hungry and filthy as she was, she had to clean the entire multi-storey carpark, and then she had to clean the toilet where she’d been caught, the cause of everything. Finally she simply walked out into the night, with nothing, knackered. That’s what they call it. She lifted her head and noticed an enormous luxury hotel in front of her. Hilton or Carlton. Snow was falling. Only one room showed a light. She’d seen her share of such hotels with clients, their laptop computers loading on their king-size beds, Chanel perfume in the bathroom, and room service bringing up champagne on silver trolleys. The light went out, and Di thought to herself in Slovak how unjust it was that so many rooms should go to waste, empty all night, while she was freezing and had nowhere to sleep.

  How many times had I told her:

  ‘Di, Dianka, calm down. This job is for people with the steel nerves. Who learn Deutsch, collect the geld, and fuck men from the Mercedes cars and the underground parkings! But not here – you must to go to München, to Zürich! No bleiben here! Nischt gut, here kein Geschäft,* Diana. You will be surprised if I say you the many clients I have! Because I know how it is done! I even make little CD mit photos of me! Ponimaesh?** You understand, little tart, Milan, ptishku?’***

  Now, at five in the morning, in front of the shop with the chocolate composers, my words must have been drifting through her head like snowflakes. That night Di realised that the West in its entirety was like an electric amusement park wired on high-voltage. The little lights kept on blinking whether or not you were having a wonderful time or dying in the metro, dear Milan, you lovely, you beautiful angel. Perfectly indifferent. Forever jolly. As long as the plug stays in its socket. And Di was a hair’s breadth from turning into a socialist that night.

  But the lawyer took pity on Milan. He locked him in at home for the whole day and went to work. Di had to do the kitchen, and all the other work, the computers… Bored, vacuuming, digging through wardrobes stuffed with boring suits on hangers wrapped in plastic. Eventually she started to regret that she’d ever run away from home and come to Vienna, where she thought she’d be quaffing champagne every night, where the streets were supposed to be full of hot lads and fast cars. In the meantime, there was Jürgen, that old, balding lawyer, who got upset over the slightest thing, shouting and everything – how normal is it for someone to wipe his arse with chamomile-scented cotton pads? Di looked suspiciously at all the unfamiliar contraptions. What, for instance, was that enormous toothbrush plugged into the socket for? It looked like it was for cleaning bottles, but it had some kind of setup on the handle, buttons, nerozumiem tomu.* What a laugh that ‘toothbrush’ caused when she turned it on! It was a vibrator, for heaven’s sake!

  Or once she washed her hair with some shampoo she found in the bathroom, and Jürgen threw a shit fit because it was a special shampoo for grey hair – his – and it was very, very expensive, and she must to stay avay from it. And once he beat her to a pulp, for no reason at all! That too! He’d told her countless times not to use the metal spatula when scrambling eggs in the Calphalon pan, she must to use a vooden spoon! So what, big deal… Because vherever ze coating gets scratched, ze pan vill burn! Di really got it in the neck for that scratched pan. That’s when she realised that the first commandment of the urban professional middle class was: ‘Thou shalt not use metal utensils on Calphalon, only wood!’ And these commandments had been revealed to the urban professional middle class by their yuppie god, scratched into the surface of two Calphalon frying pans…

  Well, eventually Di rebelled. She began doing things wrong on purpose just to spite him: she used his shampoo, put his underwear in the wrong drawers, and – although he’d expressly forbidden it – she rang up Edwin, her friend from the good old days, her American… And she told him that she was going to slip out and visit him that evening, told him to wait. And Edwin once again gave her directions on the U-Bahn, because Di didn’t really understand how it worked. She waited until evening. That’s when she had her daily stroll, when she was allowed to go out for an hour on her own. But if she didn’t come back at the agreed time, there’d be hell to pay. Edwin was a playboy of the first degree. Tall and slender, hair dyed blond, cowboy boots, jeans, chewing gum, and poppers, which were already illegal by then and you could only find in porn shops labeled as ‘CD washing fluid’. He waited for her near Hammergasse and took her back to his place; then, an hour later, he sent her on her way. Still dazed from the poppers, Di bounded down the stairs and bashed her head against a completely clear pane of glass. When she came to, she was in the vestibule. The glass doors to the stairs had snapped shut behind her automatically; in front of her was the exterior door, which turned out to be locked. She tried to open the glass doors, but needed to use an entryphone. What the hell was Edwin’s last name, what floor was he on? She hadn’t paid attention when they came in – how could she have known she might need to remember this later on? So there she was, trapped in a space just a few feet square, time ticking by. Jürgen was no doubt already home, cursing her in absentia. And probably no one would come through the lobby before morning, be
cause all the Austrian yuppies had gone to bed hours ago. She rang one of the buzzers for the first floor; a woman answered. But Di’s German wasn’t the best… She tried to explain her situation in the same language she spoke with me, a mix of Slovak, German, Russian, and Papiamentu, but the voice started shouting something about the police, so Di stopped. She made herself at home on the stone bench and thought about how everyone in Vienna, quite everyone in that rotten city, lived in old buildings…

  When she got home, Jürgen refused to let her in. He’d thrown all her clothes out the front door. In the end, though, Di whinged so much that he gave in and let her sleep that night; he was afraid of what the neighbours might think, and Milan kept sobbing louder and louder. But he wouldn’t let her sleep in his bed; he told her to sleep on the floor. That night Di slipped into the bathroom, took the blade out of his safety razor, and… that’s how she got those cuts on her wrists.

  The Team from Poznań

  They think of themselves in the masculine. They march for equal rights. They take pics of each other with their mobile phones, upload them via USB and Bluetooth to their laptops. They send each other SMS’s and MMS’s – from Wroc, from Waw… Sup? L8erz!

  They’re from the ‘emancipation phase’ (unlike us, hence the boundary running straight across the beach, up by the defunct radar and red flag). They agitate for their right to marry, to adopt. They’re constantly agitating, and agitated. They talk in the language of Polityka and Wprost. They came over, enthusiastic, with a volleyball and that sing-song Poznań accent of theirs. One butch lad with sideburns and designer stubble piped up: