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Andrea Tompa

• Herausgeber: Istros Books
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 632

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024

Beschreibung

Prompted by a class reunion, Home deals with the experience of homecoming after extended absence and engages with the archaeology of the self in the context of estrangement and belonging. Having taken the decision to emigrate decades earlier, Tompa's unnamed protagonist is caught between two worlds, navigating a journey from one homeland to another, and suddenly facing an upsurge of revelations that have a strong emotional impact.

Leseprobe

Andrea Tompa

Home

Translated from the Hungarian by

Jozefina Komporaly

Translator’s Note:

Words/lines in italics are in English in the Hungarian text. American spelling is preserved wherever this is the case in the original. Phrases in French and Russian are also retained, also in italics, in the translation.

Starting Out

The landscape appears out of focus, with no clear outlines and solid forms. Its edges are dissolving; parts are fading into one another. The view is fuzzy, blurred, details are impossible to make out, only vast unities are visible to the naked eye. A grey cube-­shaped building, myriads of parked cars in every colour, the sky smeared with clouds, on the horizon, an arc of trees or perhaps a forest.

Our protagonist is contemplating the landscape through the lense of reading glasses, from behind the steering wheel. The low, windowless cube is a shopping centre with a huge car park, while further away, there’s a bleak airport. The grimness is softened by being viewed through glasses. There is no vanishing point, no sharp lines, no perspective. Sky and land merge together on the horizon, without conveying a sense of depth. Even the light is more muted.

Heading into the sun has lost its charm.

This airport is the grimmest place our protagonist has ever seen, but the plus lenses in her glasses makes even concrete and metal appear somewhat softer. This time, it isn’t her turn to fly, only to wait for someone, which brings a sense of relief. Where’s that former self who was so keen on airports? When did this change? Is it possible to have seen enough, once and for all?

There was a time when just standing there, waiting, tied to a spot, would have seemed impossible – the very act of stopping would have been a sign of defeat. When did that former passion for travel vanish? Even this present journey was a torture. Where’s the person who used to grab every single opportunity to get going, keen to take possession of the whole wide world? Where’s that inner Hannibal who crosses the Alps in a snowstorm, just as Turner painted it, commemorating the dark stormy sky, menacing like a wave, and the cascading avalanche, rather than the minor historical hero: Turner knew how we must always struggle with landscape, and not with people and foreign tribes. In the distance, there’s sunshine and the promising warm lights of Rome, while at the forefront, Hannibal fights the elements by way of a snowstorm. These two contrasting weathers perhaps can’t even co-­exist in actual time and in such proximity, in a shared moment, that is to say in the so-­called ‘real’, but only in the painter’s dreams.

What has our protagonist gained or conquered while going round the world?

In the autumn, there’ll be another flight to undertake though. Wouldn’t it be somehow possible to just get there without embarking on an actual journey? When agreeing to this prospective travel to a small Northern town, barely traceable on the map, the unknown landscape and foreign climate had some mysterious lure. The invitation was to attend a conference called A guest in your country. They had discussed the meaning of the title at length, and what the person who formulated this phrase might have had in mind. ‘Does this mean that you invited immigrants?’ was the prospective speaker’s abrupt response. ‘Oh, no, not at all…’ the reassuring elderly man of letters who organised the event hastened to reply and then attended to all subsequent questions, such as ‘Why me?, Why me in particular?’, aimed at ensuring that it wasn’t some misunderstanding that led to our protagonist’s irrevocable presence as a non-­guest, a victim of an error, who had arrived at a new homeland and was now an eternal winner.

In their correspondence, that commenced the previous winter, the Finnish organiser kept to a slow pace, adopting a relaxed tempo despite the promise around this little low profile conference. Perhaps the Northern light could illuminate things anew. Besides, two editors had recommended our protagonist, a writer, for the guest in your country topic, so she too ended up responding at a slow pace, confirming that the term guest, or гость was indeed correct, in response to which the cheerful Finnish organiser immediately prided himself with speaking some Russian. Funny how the English as well as the Russian word is also used to refer to the host, she thought: wouldn’t that constitute a great conference topic for a linguist? How is it possible for both the guest and the host to be one and the same? However, after a bit of research, it emerged that the term hostis was in fact referring to the ‘enemy’. Does this mean that guests are enemies? This realisation made her give up on the unwarranted peeling back of words in correspondence, aware of her own deficit in the field. Perhaps it would be best not to get to the bottom of words because at the bottom of things there are unimaginable vortexes that can pull you in.

Still, as the imminent journey and the presentation for the Fin­nish event approached, it conjured up the memory of a talk she was invited to attend in which Anne Bogart, a tall and well-­built American director, suggested that one should either get really close to things or contemplate them from a distance. Perhaps Bogart meant that from close-­up, details, complex structures, unresolvable correlations and intricate systems are visible to the naked eye, while from a distance, one can sense the greater picture for a split second, akin to the moment when giant cyclops lift their heavy heads and take a look around. What’s in-­between? The medium view is basically nothing, grey death, where everything is reassuringly familiar and knowable.

Yet the Finns, or to be precise this easy-­going elderly gentleman by the name of Mikko, who calls himself a philosopher, tend to just go on holiday for two to three weeks. Mikko mentioned this in his latest letter, in which he also gave ample details about the various berries that were in season up North and the particular kinds he’d be harvesting in that distant forest where there were hardly any inhabitants left because they had all moved away to the nearby towns. The two of them continued to exchange long letters in which the little conference no longer got a mention. As the Finnish philosopher, literary scholar, translator and berry-­expert noted, he was spending a lot of time in the woods, being a regular guest of these forests. He even rounded off one of his letters by stating that although he wasn’t a writer as such, he could pen a book about berries and might actually proceed with this plan one day. He also shared his difficulties with translating the names of Finnish berries into English, and that he’d never agree to simply using the same English term, even as a compound, for the multiple words available in his mother tongue for the many different kinds of fruit ranging from black to red and blue varieties: ‘How could anyone translate anything in such circumstances? Berries don’t migrate, do they?’

As it happens, the Finnish gentleman wasn’t interested in a ‘tailored response’, not a personal perspective, and would leave it up to the panellists to decide what to say about the topic. ‘Well, we are all guests in this world, aren’t we?’ he brought his letter to a close reassuringly, continuing on this persuasive tone even though the invitation had long been accepted. ‘By the way, there won’t be a large audience in this small town for our little conference, so there’s no need to worry about too much publicity.’ This is as inviting as it gets, she concluded and purchased her flight tickets.

Still, the presentation needed preparing, with the trip and the menacing flight suddenly pressing two months ahead of schedule. The distant unknown place suddenly became attractive, but the topic still rather repelling and besides, there were no suitable words to describe it anyway. The presentation that needs writing for the conference, summed up by the organiser as ‘just a small comment you could give’, suddenly grips her on the left shoulder, like any other missed task, and turns into a stiff muscle-­knot, a nodule, a painful bundle that makes even her neck dead stiff.

Fortunately, the talk will be in English. It’s reassuring to avoid the traps of one’s mother tongue, with its exceedingly complicated twists and endless ramifications. Instead, there’s an opportunity to proceed in English, as if navigating a safer and less busy dual carriageway, where things can be named a lot easier because they already have names in foreign languages. No need to be afraid, foreignness is a safe shield. A major language is a particularly solid defence, great to lean against, and in the light of which it’s comforting to bask.

In summary, she bought the said plane ticket. Yet, while waiting in the vicinity of the airport and surveying the washed-­out building through reading glasses, this now feels like a mistake. To hell with flights.

To top it all, this time it’s her turn to take other passengers and do the driving in the wake of a successfully passed test. If only it could be over already, if only this class reunion were cancelled, and the world had come to an end…

She can’t really recall when this journey ended up resembling a frightful final separation, a small death, and hence needing to be avoided. Life, a writer’s life, doesn’t consist of shifts and turns but of periodic swerves rather than fateful steps, as mountaineers also slip out of their harnesses and ropes, they slip off their path because there is no actual demarcated path and, more specifically, there is no goal. Perhaps this is the biggest problem, the lack of a dedicated path, as there are only actions without any guidance or goal. Even though meaning is constantly being sought by a diligent gaze, one can only slip out of the old and into the new, moving from one event to the next, and all this is just as lifeless and ill-­defined as a sight viewed through the lens of reading glasses.

Each time she purchased a plane ticket this conjured up the long queues, the X-rays, the complicated routine of unpacking and re-­packing belongings, the endless wait and tense surveillance of time, avoiding slipping out of the as-­yet-unknown plan. It increasingly appeared a mistake to have even started, and she could only hope that it wasn’t a fatal error and that there was a way back, a return to the point of departure and of respite. And that there was a way to return home.

On this occasion, however, it was reassuring to simply wait in the stationary car for Ágó, even if the plane was delayed, as she had learned from the electronic display board when arriving on time for the early morning flight. We won’t be flying today, hallelujah, just waiting instead and then driving back home together.

Who’s this we, by the way? And how about this business with home?

She drove over to a nearby shopping centre because parking was cheaper there according to an inbuilt device in the car, a small bubble instantly popping up on the screen, with an invisible helper asking in a confidential voice: ‘Would you like to find cheaper par­king?’ Then, as if guiding a person with sight loss, it directed the driver, who wouldn’t have managed otherwise, through the complicated overpass-­system and there it was: half-­price parking indeed. Couldn’t this small device, capable of talking and of coming up with just about anything, also guide one towards a better life?

When checking the arrival time of Ágó’s flight on the phone, it emerged that they added another hour to the delay. How can a plane be delayed with further hours and hours once it had taken off from New York? Had anything happened? Always does. Ágó is coming, or to be precise, they are coming because both Ágó and Susan are on the same flight, just unaware of each other at present, for even our protagonist only learned about Susan last night.

For driving, it’s important to wear glasses to correct short-­sightedness. They are the same prescription as the ones recommended when she had come of age. As if time had stood still in the eyes and saw just as far as before. It’s only the frames that kept changing, getting more attractive, expensive and fashionable, where­as the focus stayed the same. Despite this, she keeps returning to the optician every year or so, explaining that perhaps these glasses are no longer good, they can’t facilitate a clear enough vision to see things properly from either a close-­up or afar. Then they prescribe the exact same lenses, and, for the last few years, reading glasses, too. She has never made a habit of using either of these, not feeling the need to see everything particularly sharply, doubting the possibility of it anyway, since things can never be seen entirely clearly. Besides, wholeness doesn’t emerge in this way, either. Of course, glasses will be needed for driving, but the car is still stationary and there are another sixty minutes until the arrival of the plane. At this point, she is looking into the distance while still wearing reading glasses and gazing up from a book, thus witnessing a fragmented and flat landscape where things are fragmented, incomprehensibly blurring into one another.

Still, what if she just went for it right now? It would be a great avenue for escape. Having every single justification. Always having had every single justification. To avoid what’s still lying ahead, to make herself explode if the world doesn’t want to explode by itself, and just vanish.

This thought lingers on for a while, and then retracts to where it has come from. Left shoulder, knot.

The view gets sharper as she puts on a new pair of light-­sensitivity glasses, which help with an even sharper and deeper vision while the car comes closer to the entrance of the shopping centre. The walls of the building with a flat roof have been decorated with soothing multicolour rectangles and squares. On the left-hand ­side, there is a fully paved parking area, with a row of evenly planted trees in the background, a concrete field of empty access roads. A transient landscape, that isn’t home to anyone. She spends two to three hours here before heading home. Mind you, can anything be found there of the entity called ‘home’, anything at all?

She stops in front of a stationery shop, having just remembered a favourite Russian expression: от нечего делать, meaning idleness. The reason for going into the shop is simply to use up excess time. The shop isn’t too large, it’s just the right size. Being a writer, she comes to a halt in front of some hardback notebooks: Strong white paper that can cope with ink without blotching. Hard and sturdy cover, without any labels or branding, capable of safeguarding any manner of serious stuff in the future. This is exactly what a serious author needs. This author would have needed such stuff once, too. A composition notebook, because the glued ones fall apart from being used year in, year out. This one has a ridiculous price, ‘pornographically expensive’, as an acquaintance had once referred to the price of tickets at the Bayreuth Opera House. Next, she chooses a pen to go with the notebook, one that is thick enough yet still light, so writing shouldn’t come as an effort. Shouldn’t come? If she were to sequence life as manically as her once favourite author Nabokov, who had broken everything down to twenty-­year cycles, then this would already be the third and final sequence. Final? What sort of knowledge could she possibly possess about finality?

In this final phase, she can afford to purchase anything but has everything already. First phase: ‘everything is out of reach’, wanting everything and unable to afford anything. Second phase: the phase of reachability, when still needing certain objects and carefully acquiring some. And then there is the present. Could this be the end? Dried out? Indifferent? Bored? Cynical? This is the phase of je suis un homme fini, I’m finished, in the words of Andrei Bolkonsky. A person whose journey is completed, concluded, who can only have questions that cannot be clarified and asked anymore. What could the French language have meant to Prince Andrei, seeing that he made this claim as a Russian in a Russian book, addressing this serious statement about himself to his closest friend, in French. Un homme fini, he declares about himself at a point when there are another 1,500 pages left of the book the protagonist of which he becomes. Я человек конченный, it can be read in the footnotes of the Russian edition, though it is unlikely that Tolstoy needed to translate these words as contemporary readers would have understood them. Я человек конченный places the accent on the first syllable. How much more exhilarating it is for anyone to declare about themselves that they are finished in French, English, even Russian, rather than their mother tongue. Because in one’s mother tongue it seems as if one was indeed truly finished. To Andrei’s comment, Pierre responds, also in French, that he is a child born out of wedlock: Je suis un bâtard! In our mother tongue, it would be offensive, perhaps even fatal, to label ourselves in this way. That said, is there another language available for telling the truth?

The longing for sturdy notebooks, pens and colours is nothing but the memory of longing. How could one manage to fill a notebook once again, fuelled by genuine excitement? How could one write one’s very first book? Perhaps, this wait, and fire, should be the start of a new beginning, or the end of everything for good, seeing that we are dealing with an homme fini.

Does the above also mean that humans are finite in French as well? I’m a finite man, the prince would say about himself. In a matter-­of-fact fashion, in the indicative. I. And everyone else.

But what does Prince Andrei, this homme fini, do here, after all, he will be given the chance to live on, with passion and sorrow and fire. And where does this desire stem from anyway, for none other than Andrei Bolkonsky to fill the arid gap between waiting, returning home, the first international driving spree and the oppressive obligation of a looming class reunion? Wouldn’t it be a great relief to just read War and Peace instead of attending a class reunion and spending three days at a rental accommodation with some obscure acquaintances, driving on dangerous roads, not to mention being responsible for other passengers in the car? Getting immersed in a book, where the protagonists love, suffer and live. Returning to the house, back home, locking herself away and just reading, reading, as in the summers of yesteryear, there, everywhere, in the garden, in the house, on the shores of lakes, with a book. Running away, into a book.

‘I’m sorry’, Brecht muses with a thick cigar between his teeth: ‘art is no compensation for a life not lived’. She’s standing in the stationery shop in front of a shelf laden with water colours, acrylic paints, brushes, needle-­sharp pencils and fine rubbers. Happy are those who are in no need of language. They receive colours and shapes in exchange, fight with them instead. She nearly forgets to pay for the insanely expensive sturdy notebook and the pen in the basket, nearly walks out of the shop and only realizes this in front of the alarmed gate. This isn’t absent-­mindedness, but the sense of entitlement of someone to whom everything the world can offer is at arm’s length and payment is a mere convention. It’s time to turn back from the door with a sense of surprise and pay. She will write words yet again into a notebook, and dream about a book, a story, the end of which is yet unknown.

This is what I do, an American author, indifferent to success, replied once dryly to the question as to why he was writing. There is no cause only effect. ‘This is what I do’, the author, a good one at that, concluded. She is also a good writer but not great. Perhaps not even good enough to deserve peace like the Master, that one who couldn’t obtain light only peace. This was the verdict in this regard, the most disquieting verdict in The Master and Margarita: the Master isn’t entitled to light, only peace. He literally hasn’t earned it, in other words, he hasn’t deserved it. Он не заслужил света, он заслужил покой. Matthew Levi then communicates the verdict: he didn’t deserve the light. But he did deserve peace. Only someone stupid would think that Light can be deserved. It can’t. Whoever makes a judgement and takes a decision about the Master is Light itself.

Peace, however, would be a really big deal.

As for her, she hasn’t yet deserved anything, certainly not peace, so can only be an average author at best, if that is considered to be a service at all. Standing on the verge of this so-­called homecoming, wedged into nothingness and waiting for the New York flight to land with the long-­awaited Ágó, who’s so tired and sleepy throughout the entire journey that all hopes connected to catching up vanish as soon as she gets into the car and places her travel pillow around her neck. Yet our writer was really hoping to ask Ágó a question impossible to articulate: what is returning home like for her? Like a cup of tea? Too sweet? Or too hot? A topic for the discussion of which language will turn out to be inadequate. How do you feel about this? She might ask in the language in which everything can be discussed by virtue of the fact that it isn’t one’s own. Instead, there’ll be this chattering Susan, a proper American, who doesn’t yet know that the person about to pick her up from the airport in lieu of her mother will be a stranger, on her first drive carrying a passenger after passing her test, and on her first stomach-­churning trip back home.

Susan has only been back home before as a little kid, while Ágó comes every three to four years, inasmuch as she still uses this word ‘home’. Our protagonist, however, goes more often. And now they are all equally wedged into nothingness, into this nearly three-­hour wait, and in this thirty-­year-long insertion, this intermediate state in which nothing is granted – neither returning, nor arriving without looking back, nor ultimately – this ultimately is the ultimate trash word – finding peace. Especially now when it has emerged that our protagonist is an homme fini, overwhelmed by the fear of death, for the articulation of which one’s mother tongue is entirely inadequate. Nonetheless, she does not and will not have the courage to give up on the supremacy of the mother tongue by way of a single radical shift and thus either prevent or fully accomplish linguistic suicide, like that Irish author with a creased face, by the name of Beckett. Who is to say that it’s impossible to break away? This entire linguistic narcissism could have been left behind, in the manner of Beckett, all these elaborate ornaments, literary friezes and tympans, which she has also juggled with as a writer and garnered admiration for, despite the fact that this circus-­style magic with one’s maternal tongue can only conceal dead bodies, the unnameable. In what language can one possibly articulate the truth?

Stuck between two worlds, no longer at home but not yet back home either, overwhelmed with fear because something has definitely come to an end, at least temporarily, while something else cannot yet commence. In other words, this place called home and obtained at the cost of tremendous effort, has to be left behind in order to depart from home to (another) home, the latter without loved ones or a house to call one’s own, only with some sort of a shared past, yet still experiencing the sensation that there must be something there for the articulation of which she is unsuitable.

At this point, the Son’s brief message pops up on the screen: ‘When are you coming home?’ Well, I haven’t even started off yet. To go home. She is dictating this to the machine – having settled for such a function because it’s not possible to write while driving. These words sound muffled and empty in the car’s inner space.

‘Shall I wait for you regarding Somlyó?’ The gadget pings again. ‘By all means’.

‘How’s it going?’, the next question follows. The Son has been driving for a lot longer, he’s more self-­confident and calmer, having obtained his licence before even turning eighteen. ‘Lamely’, is the reply, without mentioning that they are still loitering in the vicinity of the airport. Perhaps the Son is getting concerned and that’s why he’s asking these questions. Next to the bubble, a picture of the Son pops up – taken years ago, when he was still an awkward teenager, his hair hanging in his eyes, ashamed of his spots, large nose and slim, asymmetrical face.

‘Lamely’. This is repeated twice. Initially, as if just addressed to the Son, the first syllable can be barely heard, so the device fails to understand and turns it into letters. Then again, this time slowly and articulately. LAME-­LY. This is a conspiratorial word. A shared word. It was the Son who started to use it when he was small. For everything. To talk about himself, his mother, his father. Then she also began to make use of it, applying it ever so gently and forgivingly to oneself. This complicit word heats up the space.

One is only allowed to utter complicit words. Words that connect, and invigorate. As if we were locking eyes with words.

By this point, she’s no longer planning to flee, doesn’t want to commit suicide, is no longer an homme fini. It’s time to start the engine.

The fear that has moved into her is localised in the left shoulder. She casts a glance in that direction and a greeting. ‘Let’s get going. The plane is about to land.’ It’s much more manageable now that the bird of death is only perching on her left shoulder. This is what I do, she starts off on this journey, like someone who has come to terms with the fact that it is what it is: having promised two years ago to attend this class reunion, in other words, to go home. ‘You’ll come home, won’t you?’ – ‘Sure.’ Despite having just started to refrain from the use of this word. The device dictates where to go, without it she’d be lost in space while driving, seeing that all these overpasses, interconnected and exit roads that are impossible to make sense of. The Son doesn’t use any devices while driving, he just happens to know where he is and where is North and South. He seems to have an in-­built map in his head. He is familiar with space and can orientate in it. He’s come to take possession of it.

‘Have a safe journey’, another bubble pops up as she has just made a turn towards the airport. The following minute, the next bubble says ‘Map’. This is a compound of ‘mama’ and ‘papa’ that somehow stuck when the Son had suddenly started to speak with great enthusiasm and conjoined the names of his parents. Later, this turned into map, aka muppet, as in the Muppet Show’s two croaking oldies who are watching the proceedings from their box and keep offering a rolling commentary on a sour tone, disapproving of everything. According to the Son, our protagonist is just like these two croaking oldies, critical of everything and exasperated by the happiness of others.

She’s trying to start the car but finds it hard to get used to the immobilizer, so the engine stalls. Checking the screen, there are no new messages after the LAME, that shared and complicit word. ‘Your book is lame’, the Son claims as they walk past a bookshop and she proudly points out her latest publication. He was in the middle of a tantrum, walking ahead in anger, while she slowed down to stare at this foreign object. This was the first time she saw this pale green thick book in a bookshop: was it a touch too turquoise-­covered perhaps? She was ready to give the boy a hug now, which he repelled, ready now to give him those two scoops of ice cream or that extra topping or whatever, no matter the cost, only to put an end to the tantrum and the coldness. This coldness and foreignness were unbearable along with his recalcitrance, those eyes like daggers. From then on, she’d always make sure to ask: ‘Will you come to the launch of my lame book?’

She starts the car again and it finally works, the device urging ‘to turn left’ and then ‘head East’. Where’s East, you idiot? The dictation function is still on, so the machine transcribes this question and sends it. ‘Not you’, she adds quickly, and the Son must be laughing at this from afar, too, knowing that Map is struggling with orientation. In the end, the correct road is found though.

Destination: the airport.

Greenland

‘What… earth’? she asks, pausing for a second between the two words.

A huge spot of colour emerges in front of the plane’s right wing, breaking the monotonous steel grey shades of the water’s surface. It looks quite near when viewed from above, almost tangible. An almost floating green land. A piece of land or an island. It emerges from the nothingness of the ocean. Earth turns out to be an inadequate word, this has become obvious even before getting here, in fact, her linguistic incompetence has been apparent from the very start. Earth is the Planet one has never seen for real, a globe the astonishing rotundity of which can only be visible from up here at eight thousand metres, though from here this green spot seems to be within reach. So far, this roundness was taken for granted despite not being seen, and it was of no real concern. The Earth is positively huge, round and endless.

Earth – new language, new gods. Those who have left and continue to go away, who don’t even look back, who are scattered in the world, take up new languages and cling on to new gods.

What could that be in the near distance, what could that astonishing green be, she muses staring out of the window.

The question, awkwardly phrased and too soft, is addressed to a flight attendant leafing through a women’s magazine. People, it says on the cover. People?

What kind of land is this?

‘Sorry,’ she leans over to be noticed by the woman, ‘what earth?’ asking again a little louder, to break through the humming grey engine noise, even raising a hand and pointing at the window splashed with drops of water. ‘That,’ with an added emphasis, realising that earth turned out to be an inadequate term.

The woman looks tired. The passengers have only been travelling for about four to five hours, but the flight attendants appear to have been journeying for decades. What time zone can this be? In-­between time.

She addresses her question to the black flight attendant out of the two staff members sitting opposite each other, as she looks more approachable; aged around sixty, she seems uncomfortable in her worn-­out footwear and regulation fuchsia uniform. Right now, the two of them are strikingly different – the passenger is young and supple, and much too alert despite the long journey. This is her very first flight, at half the age of the flight attendant, and this word doesn’t yet mean anything unutterable or conceptually precarious.

Thirty years later, such a journey will be more problematic to undertake for her, based on the assumption that all journeys which have ever been in store have already been travelled, carrying restless work, unbridgeable time, jetlag, from here to there and back in a much heavier body. On the way back it takes longer to readjust, time falls apart and it takes ages to place it back together. There is even an explanation for why it’s harder to fight jetlag in the direction of the rising sun. This term is so alien that the mother tongue can’t even find an equivalent word for it, only four combined together: time-­zone-change-­syndrome. Homecoming is not the only explanation, yet while flying from West to East, the body is struggling and less obedient to time, as if it was something that no longer wants to adapt and go anywhere. It simply doesn’t want another time zone only one and the same for good. Just to be home somewhere. It is slower and harder to adjust to jetlag flying from West to East, she reads with interest thirty years later. When travelling West, one’s rhythm, body clock, the circadian circle ticking in the human body can be stretched and expanded, adding hours to the day. Yet strangely enough, time cannot be compressed, which is exactly what would need to happen when travelling towards the East. One’s own time cannot be shortened only expanded.

That said, learning about time is light years away. Now, it’s the turn of space. The first American trip.

She will end up reading the article about circadian circles three decades later, while navigating the dark waters of sleeplessness. Right now, time and the time within is of no interest. There is an infinite supply of this at the moment, seeing that she has only been alive for less than a quarter of a century. Space is the only source of excitement, that big round Globe. To indulge, acquire and conquer. Not even looking back but heading to battle. Odysseus comes to fight and to win. Not to return home. This is the start of craving-­for-miles, there is no tiredness only a thirsty and unappeasable drive to travel.

‘What earth?’

The flight attendant’s face betrays decades of sleep deprivation and exhaustion, akin to someone who’s never to be found in their own time but fluttering between different time zones. Two decades after this moment of being the passenger, our protagonist will also let out a sigh: ‘Good god, how I hate flying, I hate it and fear it, I’m afraid of death to be honest, afraid of what’s within arm’s reach.’ What arm, whose arm? The hugging arm of death. Three decades later, it will be a major effort to persuade herself to fly. ‘This isn’t the way I want to die’, she would like to prepare for it, asking for more time to acknowledge death, ‘grant me my own death, let’s neither compress nor expand time, just grant me what I’m due’.

‘What’s the time here, in what time and space are we?’ Another question could be, ‘What time zone is this right now?’, a phrase she has already prepared and polished like someone who may need it in that large country with so many simultaneous time zones. UTC. This is the one that begins at the start of the flight, Universal Time.

This is her first trip by air, the very first stage in transforming into a mile-­engulfing dragon, whose hunger, as in the fairy tales, just grows with every mile that it swallows. How many more decades are left of this insatiable craving?

The flight attendant looks up before parting her surprisingly red lips. She is the first black person our passenger on this transatlantic fight has ever spoken to. It was precisely this kind of foreignness that the latter wanted to connect with, this was fuelling her craving.

Nearly three decades later, when travelling home from home on a short and busy morning flight, two students are talking in a loud voice nearby. A sparkly young woman, without a single wrinkle or skin flaw, just the soft rosy skin of a twenty-­something girl. Our protagonist keeps staring at the girl’s hands while overhearing this incredible sentence: ‘I’m so enjoying this flight, why is it so short’, even replaying it in her head, to ensure that these were the actual words of the girl who may only be around twenty. The girl’s light summer skirt slips up a bit and reveals her smooth thighs. Her body is hot and new, of someone who is marvelling at the world, flying above the clouds in the glittering sun. Under her eyes, even the most revealing areas are still soft and well rested, as if she was still a child. Casting a glance at the girl, this image lingers in front of our protagonist’s eyes as the cruel beginning of irreversible time. This age-­ring is part of the latter’s make-­up, too, this enthusiasm for the journey, for flying. The other girl sitting in the middle, who occupies most of the narrow space with her bag kept on her lap, agrees at once: ‘Oh, yeah, me, too.’ They stop talking, and just look out of the window, soaring above the blanket of clouds in a silver glaze. Girls heading into battle that they are.

Every departure is a battle, and our passenger’s has already taken place.

Homer either omitted to write about this or didn’t think it important, or he had simply nothing to say about whether Odysseus had any desire to go on another journey after he had finally returned home the hard way after two decades. Whether he was interested in travel, relocation or displacement at all after he had returned to his grown-­up children he had abandoned for the sake of war. It is possible that the great sailor was longing to be on the move, but didn’t want to take another risk. Because after his endless journey that just kept promising the return home without fulfilling this promise, he eventually made it home, unrecognised, and had reasons to believe that he was the favourite of the gods and that the gods would always stay with him. Pallas Athene would always be right next to him disguised as an old man, a bird or a nymph and look after him and talk to him, as Odysseus would talk to her. But perhaps he had exploited this privilege already. Perhaps it would be best not to put the gods to the test, though this is exactly what a hero likes to do the most, or what their very task is: to put the gods to the test.

Should she, as our protagonist, even accept being named as the hero, this won’t lead to the confirmation of anything apart from sitting on a cliff, head held low, not even hearing the sound of the sea only that inner grey noise, the absence of silence. Where to go and where to be? Desire is no longer lifting her on its wings, only acting as a source of torment.

Now, it’s crystal clear for her that returning home is much, much more tiresome than going away. Going away is easy: the two of them, that is the hero and the god, or to be precise the goddess, have been chattering, whispering and talking to each other like any other happy individuals on their way to war: the god is gently relocating the wayfarer from one place to another, where yet another victory is in wait. The hero, who’s perhaps rattling with this very inexplicable desire, this desire for being underway, even after having arrived, and who’s struggling in the merger of these two states, impossible to be named because this can only have a story and not a name. There are no words, only stories. The hero will also hide behind the name ‘Nobody’ on the way home, saying Outis, oυτις to the cyclops. ‘Back home, I’m Nobody.’ Since then, outis is the moniker of the artist.

‘What earth?’ she asks therefore, arms held out, knowing that this language is inadequate because neither earth nor country are the right words to use up here, there is no language, or perhaps there is for others, elsewhere, but not in this time and space impossible to grasp in-­between languages and time zones.

‘Greenland,’ the woman replies, barely looking up. ‘Isn’t that splendid?’ she adds. ‘What lovely weather we’re having, so fortunately it can be seen, lucky you, yesterday it couldn’t…’, she continues at the pace of flight attendants, which is a touch slower and with clearer articulation, coupled with a part official part personal smile. ‘The top of the world.’ She then loses herself again in the colourful pages of People magazine.

What yesterday, which yesterday, what weather, she seems con­fused, translating the above to herself, just to make sense of them. This means that this distant bright green spot was also there yesterday, it existed a week ago, in their childhood as well as the childhood of their grandmothers, in all times, in fact. And yet, time seems to be just beginning, with this long-­awaited, much desired and well-­deserved overseas flight.

The flight attendant’s tone is gently didactic, indicative of some­one who had heard this question not only a thousand but ten thousand times, this stammering question of excitement on the tip of everyone’s tongue. For a moment, it’s quite difficult to identify the word she used because our protagonist, being a first-­time passenger on such a journey, had never heard it before; this word had never been uttered, a word which isn’t a country as such, like Germany or China or Canada. A word that is unrecognisable to the ear at first and needs translating, but as translation occurs, the word just falls apart because the woman wasn’t talking about Grönland, that ice-­cold nothingness and distant emptiness, that rocky unpopulated winter, dead space or the failure of nature. She was talking about Greenland: a green spot shining somewhere quite near to us, at arm’s length, it’s here and yet unreachably far but for real, a breathing, that is breath-­taking, untouchable beauty. Cape Verde? No, that’s not it, come on, where are the Cape Verde Islands actually? Wouldn’t it have been wise to study some more geography and physics, to learn about time and space so we can be at home in them since our language has made us homeless to such an extent? Is there a world in which Greenland is a real thing? If so, then this was Ithaca, I have seen it and now I know where the hero is longing to be, she looks back, delighted with this recognition, because within minutes they’ve left it behind under the plane’s right wing. The impossible set for a possible homecoming. What a trap one’s mother tongue can be! It conceals the world instead of opening it up. This here is Greenland.

Still, what are they doing above Greenland? She looks up to the large screen tracking the slow progress of the tiny plane above the huge globe of the world. What’s this curvature, where are they and why are they going this way? No idea. Is this really the way there? The top of the world. Could it be that they have really seen the top of the world?

The subject known as geography was taught until year eight at school, and then it was discontinued. For some reason, they stopped teaching anything about the unknown and unpromising planet named Earth, with the gradual approach of adulthood, know­ledge about Earth was deemed pointless, if not dangerous, seeing that a much larger world, voiced by the sirens, might tempt impressionable young souls. It’s much better to chain passengers to the ship, cover their ears with wax, and in the worst case, throw them into the sea. To be fair, she had often looked aside during geography lessons, staring out of the window and dreaming of clouds. Rummaging for memories beyond the mere name of this subject, she can only find emptiness without any visual connections. The only thing that has persisted of these lessons delivered without any passion is the smell of the classroom in the warm autumn sun, the scent of the floor polished with kerosene and the evaporation of the oil paint with which the benches had been coated. And that head, turned to one side and looking out of the grated ground floor window. This is the whole wide world. And it had never come to light, not even in lessons called ‘literature’ and grammar’, whether a hero called Abel1 had ever managed to make it to America. To America, from where he later returned, because there is such a thing as a comeback according to the author, who had also returned home, in death, albeit with a regrettable detour.

Odysseus also returns in the end, but first, he has to keep sitting on a rock for ages, sobbing and crying.

‘Howbeit if in thy heart thou knewest all the measure of woe

it is thy fate to fulfil before thou comest to thy native land…’2

A hero can never know how much sorrow they’ll have to endure. The journey home will be ever so long.

She glances back at this new and striking cinnabar green land, of which she had been previously unaware. The top of the world is at arm’s length. She can actually see the top of the world.

1 This is a reference to the peregrinations of Abel (Ábel), the protagonist of a trilogy by Transylvanian–Hungarian author Áron Tamási. The volumes include Ábel a rengetegben/Abel in the vast forest (1932), translated as Abel Alone by Mari Kuttna (Budapest: Corvina, 1966); Ábel az országban/Abel in the Country and Ábel Amerikában/Abel in America.

2 Homer: Odyssey, Book V, lines 207–208, trans. A.T. Murray. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann, Ltd. 1919. data.perseus.org/citations/urn:cts:greekLit:tlg0012.tlg002.perseus-eng1:5.192-5.227

Jamaica, NY

Local time at departure / Local time at destination – the various screens keep informing the passengers, yet they are still unable to capture the actual passage of time while moving from one time zone to another, no matter how hard they focus: wrist watches persist in showing something that hasn’t been accurate for at least four or five hours. When they arrive at their destination, it’s finally time for everyone to get off the plane, and it becomes obvious just how many objects everyone has brought along, including her, with her assortment of books, notebooks, small dictionary, water bottle, pen­cil case, tissues, eye mask, ear plugs (much better ear plugs than the ones distributed on the plane, thanks). In addition, there’s some hand cream, sweets, an elasticated folder with printouts of all the major destinations and hotel names, and at the bottom, an envelope with six green banknotes that haven’t made it into the main wallet because, as yet, they haven’t arrived at the place where these fairy tale banknotes are actual, legal tender. Soon enough, it will emerge that these banknotes are barely in use at the destination either, at least in such large denominations. A sea of objects, with which travellers cling on to their own existence on this long journey only manageable by plane, during which time stands on its head. As they get off the plane, with a tough day in their wake, she is left with the sensation of a lost night and the blurring of night and day, while departure and arrival times still chase one another.

It’s a mystery how the awaiting car finds her, or the other way round, following the collection of a medium-­sized suitcase labelled with a NYLGA tag. There is no signage or branding on this car, the black driver just silently grabs the suitcase: somehow, they recognise each other, and the driver is holding up a small hand-­written sheet with our protagonist’s misspelt and misgendered name.

‘Jamaica, yeah?’ he asks, seeking her approving nod in the rear-­view mirror. In the yellow car, the front and rear seats are separated by plexiglass, with only a small hole allowing a hand to fit through.

‘Just a second,’ comes her response, swiftly checking the first page in the folder. The first page is no good, that’s the arrival which has already happened in principle, they have landed, her body has landed at NYLGA airport. This means that the second page is needed, with the details of the first accommodation.

‘Hotel Old Castle,’ comes the self-­assured announcement.

The driver reaches back and takes the piece of paper from his passenger’s hand without a word, he doesn’t really pay attention to the journey, just keeps on driving. The passenger has been informed that there is no need to pay as the organiser has already settled the bill, but a certain anxiety is lingering on regardless whenever money matters tend to come up. It’s impossible to appreciate the value of these banknotes, the unavoidable expenses lying ahead, there’s an ongoing urge to think through, calculate, convert and assess each and every expense.

‘How far is it?’ she asks, awkwardly.

‘Don’t know. Nine miles maybe.’

Old Castle is a large new concrete building. She checks in, goes up to the room and throws the suitcase on the huge bed. It would be premature and dangerous to sit on the bed. The time: The local time at destination is 18:00, at home – well, that doesn’t really matter, now the body has to adjust to this: Hotel Old Castle, Jamaica, New York. Home has simply ceased to exist, home time has ceased to exist, everything that used to be, has come to an end. It is what it is now, but still, what is this actually? From now on, the body always adjusting, or at least the body has to adjust to local time at the destination.

Hungry, not hungry, she’s trying to probe time, when was the last meal, at home, this would be a good time to eat, needless to say, even this hypothesis is pointless, seeing that there was more than enough food during the journey, during the flight that is, a snack, then a main meal followed by another snack, with plenty of orange juice in-­between, yet another snack if one went to ask the flight attendant, she has gobbled up everything that was handed out, so can’t be hungry, or just a little perhaps, as always, after all it’s comforting to eat, eating is a great way of measuring time. Eating is a great way to calm babies, from then on, they’ll always want to eat when they grow up, she doesn’t want to calm down though, that’s not why she has come to the other side of the world. Calm wasn’t the reason why she has now travelled to this desperately desired place. Which isn’t Jamaica. How to express the fact that she’s been desperately longing to come here? Strongly? Deadly? This is the extent of her vocabulary, which is no treasure trove but a dusty antiquities shop, flea market, bric-a-brac shop, state-­owned department store, excavations around the dead languages of a low-­performing school. It would be great to eat something, eating is familiar while everything else is foreign. Still, it’s impossible to go to a restaurant or even buy something at a canteen, the whole thing is unmanageable – Sports Bar – what on earth can this be?

Having a couple of beers would help with calming down, but who wants to calm down, that’s not why she has come here, two beers would instantly knock her out like a right hook.

‘Stay organized’, the invitation stressed. No beer. It’s too risky to go into a shop, where are these shops anyway, what are they called, how can one tell a grocery store around here, what kind of shops are there, what do they sell, can one recognise anything at all? One would have to spend hours in front of the shelves to identify any­thing. Let’s leave this business with eating, comes the decision, and go to sleep on an empty stomach – but it’s not empty, she has gulfed down everything that was given to eat on the plane, comes the reminder, one should at least reclaim the body, so it’s open to perception and one can sense time within. Yet the body has fallen out between time zones, it’s tired and numb, feels like jelly and is unable to send messages.

She crosses out the first page in the folder, all that has already happened, and places it under the bunch of paper. The second page has also been completed, the arrival at Old Castle. Tomorrow, there’s a new airport because that’s closer to this hotel, a new pick up, a new destination, new pages. When organising the pages in chronological order and according to tasks, she has verified everything twice – double check things, the invitation advised – and even numbered the pages by hand, so she can see at a glance where she is at any point.

Her watch shows her eight minutes past six, this time is entirely unreliable.

‘You have to be very organized,’ Tom writes, that is Thomas, the American organiser and later friend, when all the details of the trip are finally put together, ‘Oh, that’s not a problem for me,’ she replies, ‘Well, it is for me,’ Tom indicates. He teaches at a prestigious university, this is surprising, ‘I thought that all Americans are organized. How do we say organised in our mother tongue?’ It’s the opposite of being scattered, scattering, drifting. Drifting is the greatest danger, she reads in an article on the plane, making use of a dictionary. The article ‘No Greater Danger than Drifting’ was appealing primarily because of the unknown word in its title, but the term drifting isn’t included in the dictionary, so its meaning has to be inferred from the context. She infers that the greatest danger is drifting, scattering about, and this appears to be a useful truth for the moment. At least regarding the first two decades of her personal drifting, the essence of which one cannot yet see on this flight and on the subsequent further flight to a university town, because during these twenty years it is essential to be always very organized. That is to say one has to organise time and keep it in hand, plan future trips, further prospective American visits, a presentation in Prague in a few months, a report on a theatre festival in the Baltics, one has to be very organized by way of letters to be answered on time and applications to be submitted, so all this can end up printed out and arranged in a navy blue folder made of fine-­grain paper in the shape of flight tickets, details of destinations, invitations and local currencies, awaiting the fulfilment of clearly established goals. The navy-­blue folder, bearing a university crest, hails from this first overseas trip and is a promising sight in its own right. It will be the place where the proof of potential grant applications and details of international contacts will be collected. The navy-­blue folder is a serious promise of worlds one can get to know. It’s only in the summer that time transforms into an expandable matter, the days don’t even follow one another in the absence of names and numbers but simply blend into an interconnected and boundless unity without a vanishing point, and all this doesn’t even look dangerous, on the contrary, it seems most desirable and the only thing that’s possible. By this point, the greatest danger has no name or graspable form. Danger, in case it vaguely exists, and it can be surmised from the traffic cumulated by the navy-­blue folder over the years that it does, cannot be cured, either with carefully structured diaries or so-­called observations and organisational strategies, such as the meticulous demarcation of aims tied in with highly determined goal-­orientation.

As for the Son, the Son to be, in fifteen years he will express a wish on the last evening of August, at a point when they have both lost their faith in sensible goals following endless arguments over bedtime, asking for the whole summer, including the holidays and uncountable time and sea, to start all over again. And he just looks at his parents, hopefully and desperately, as if they were magicians and would actually have it in their power to produce such incalculable time from thin air. After all, it is down to these two parents to conjure up, as of tomorrow, a fresh start for this expandable time. They are gods, no less.

What could possibly be the greatest danger?

That night, when the Son to be didn’t want to go to bed and they had already got past asking nicely, then blackmailing and shouting, even exhausted desperation, dark clouds suddenly started to gather on the sky and the swallows took to chasing one another on the streets, squeaking and flying much lower than usual. The imminent storm released all of them from the clutch of time. This will in fact be the very duty of the Son: to release them from the clutch of time. At first, only a distant flash of lightning lit up the child’s room, which made the Son run to the window, then the sky thundered with a majestic bang, as if those in heaven were slow at getting started. Silent raindrops landed on the roof, gradually getting stronger and denser, as if wanting to warn the world at first: go find a shelter! Next, the rain started to gush down, the storm continuing to flash with lightning, luminating the huge and dense black slabs of the sky. The Son announced that he’d be watching the storm, and this was exactly what they all did in front of the wide-­open window. This heavenly orchestra carried on blasting for ages before it slowed down and the monotonous rhythm of the rain sent the child to sleep.

At this point, during this evening in Jamaica, the seemingly useful yet dubiously light truth, namely that the greatest danger is drifting and being scattered about, seems like a good guide and a suitable line to follow. The ultimate danger, should that exist, is most probably nameless, that is to say, it has no name and no cure.

What would constitute ultimate danger for mankind? Even if taking into account that our protagonist would be unable to embody ‘Man’ fully, at least according to her theatre studies, which posits that a woman has to always embody a woman on stage, and a man embody a Man, as if it were out of the question for either of them to embody the same thing, something slightly more (or less?) than themselves.

During these two decades, she can only surmise that in order to gain any peace of mind one has to cover something much greater, and lean forwards rather than backwards, akin to those who tackle the wind or storm head-­on, she doesn’t yet know that right ahead there lies the entrance to a personal story with as yet unknown outcomes, a story none other than human adventure in a tailored form.

In this adventure, it is hard to know when storms are likely to break out and bring solace, as in the case of Pilate who has such a terrible headache that he could not think of anything else. Or the case of desperate parents.

Once the adventure is over and one has an overview of sorts, one can lean back and relax. Perhaps that’s when peace can be obtained or one becomes worthy of it, though one may not even be aware of this or at least not in the manner of the Jamaican evening.