Love Novel E-Book

Ivana Sajko

• Herausgeber: V&Q Books
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2022

Seitenzahl: 153

Beschreibung

Love in late capitalism: Ivana Sajko takes us into a war between kitchen and bedroom. He, an unemployed humanist, is trying to change the world and write a novel. She, a passable actress, has given up her safe job at the theatre to care for their child. He is delirious, she is on edge. With the rent overdue and violence looming on all sides, the two of them circle one another in a dizzying dance towards the abyss.

Leseprobe

Ivana Sajko, born in Zagreb in 1975, is a writer, theatre director and performer, working in the overlapping fields of literature, performance art and music. She is an author of four highly-praised novels and dozens of political theatre pieces, among which Woman-bomb gained international success. Her many awards include the Chevalier de l’ordre des Arts et Lettres and the HKW Internationaler Literaturpreis. She lives in Berlin.

Mima Simić is a Croatian writer, an award-winning film critic, translator and political activist. Her short stories have been included in numerous anthologies, and have been adapted for radio, TV and animated film. Her translations include works of fiction, non-fiction, literary theory, screenplays and films. She lives and works in Berlin.

LOVE NOVEL

Ivana Sajko

Translated from Croatian by Mima Simić

Co-funded by the Creative Europe programme of the European Union

V&Q Books, Berlin 2022

An imprint of Verlag Voland & Quist GmbH

First published in the Croatian language as Ljubavni roman by Ivana Sajko

© Meandarmedia, Zagreb 2015

Translation © Mima Simić

Editing: Katy Derbyshire

Copy editing: Angela Hirons

Cover photo: Unsplash

Cover design: Pingundpong*Gestaltungsbüro

Typesetting: Fred Uhde

ISBN: 978-3-86391-330-4

eISBN: 978-3-86391-331-1

www.vq-books.eu

This book was written in Graz, Pula and sometimes Zagreb, with the generous support of Kulturvermittlung Steiermark, and thanks to a Jean-Jacques Rousseau fellowship. I wish to thank Luise and the ghost of Cerrini, who watched over our temporary home, as well as Tomi and Ivana, who graciously let us use theirs. With the greatest tenderness, I dedicate this book to Yves, and to the loved ones around him.

Inhalt

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Translator’s Note

1

WORDS, WORDS, WORDS, he screamed at the top of his lungs; the first thing that came to his mind when he finally managed to cut through her breathless sentences – he didn’t even try to understand what she was actually saying; her hot breath against his ear had woken him up with the irritating persistence of an alarm clock, and he wanted to crush it with his fist, so he roared words, words, words, like a man who couldn’t bear the ringing any more, like a man who, to tell the truth, could no longer bear her nearness either, her mouth, the hot steam it oozed; he roared with the force of a scorched man, as if she’d burned him, and for a moment she thought the roar would bring the walls down, so she cowered, covered her head with her hands, dug her fingers in her hair and squeezed her eyes shut ’til it hurt, reacting like a typical female, typical by his standards, meaning excessive, hysterical and self-destructive, since she deliberately pulled her hair out, deliberately curled up in the pose of a crushed alarm clock and forced tears to her eyes as if to take revenge on him with this classic scene of domestic violence. She staged it in a second, lifting her weeping face towards him, towards the ceiling, towards the sky, and protecting herself with her fists full of tufts of pulled-out hair.

It didn’t impress him.

It didn’t suit her either.

She’s capable of coming up with something far more disgusting.

Just opening her mouth would do it. But he won’t let her.

He stirs like a volcano, lava boiling in his cheeks; he raises his hand in a frenzy, he raises his hand, he raises his hand and… he stops himself, because the blow would hurt her more if it were shaped into a word, a thunderous and meaningless word that thrashes in all directions and won’t be drowned out, and so again he hollers words, words, words, and indeed words are now thundering around the room, throughout the whole flat, or to be more precise, the cramped two-room apartment they’re renting at too high a price, so that most of their eruptions could be explained away by the fact they’re once again late with the rent. Demoralising, but true.

She’d imagined them in more relaxed circumstances, and with much more floor space.

He admitted that she’d drawn the shittiest straw.

But better not to revisit that topic.

Not now. Because the words are in the room.

Words comparable to quicksand. Crumbling between their teeth, getting crushed into slimy sand, slipping from their lips like muddy bubbles with no meaningful content. Dripping down their chins. They should both look in the mirror and commit the image to memory. To make them sick of it. But they won’t. They’d rather keep the mud gurgling until they run out of oxygen, until their last bubbles dribble down to the floorboards and they finally mop them up; they can’t live in a pigsty, after all. Only then will they glance at themselves in the mirror, wipe the secretions off their chins and the smudged mascara from their eyes, comb their hair, fix their clothes, inhale, exhale, and expire. You might indeed say: they’ll expire in yet another death, a tragic case of drowning in the bullshit they regularly step in, like true and passionate suicides. But she won’t be the one to reach for the mop first, no she won’t; she’ll let the mud form a crust on the floor for him to see what his words, words, words really look like, up close.

But surely he must be aware of how stupid it is to be repeating words, words, words, without actually saying anything; and just demonstrating that every word is meaningless, and too loud, besides? Isn’t he, in fact, trying to convey that they no longer have anything to say to each other and that there was no justifiable reason to wake him from a dream, a well-deserved dream, mind you, with which he’d been trying to cure his unyielding exhaustion, his cursed frantic life with its impending rents that make him age ten years in a month; and just look at him; he’s already a hundred, two hundred, three hundred, it’s been too much for way too long now, and if she really wants to know, he too had imagined more relaxed circumstances, quiet afternoons of digesting his dinner on the couch, dozing off with his feet resting on the coffee table and waking up during the evening news; he’d imagined things would take care of themselves, or at least that he wouldn’t feel guilty if they didn’t, and he really didn’t expect random acquaintances to be asking concerned questions about his health because he seems so exhausted, withered and fucked up, because he looks like he has a tumour and not just a woman, this woman who always fights back twice as hard, as if to say: man, you sure drew a shitty straw, too. The shittiest. And then she adds that no one would ever love him as much as she loves him. He’d better remember that.

Nobody.

Ever.

As much as me.

He can’t stand it any more. He can’t handle such a high concentration of contradictory sentences, without going crazy or getting plastered. He needs to get some sleep. He needs to crawl into the fold of the couch, urgently; disconnect, reset himself, and forget she’s nearly killed him with her love again. Indeed, he does this regularly; he falls asleep like a sick man, he curls up around an imaginary tumour and blankets himself with a grimace of ill humour. And she sees the silent pain pacing across his face, she saw it moments ago and felt sorry for him, he looked like he needed an ambulance so she decided to walk over to him, stroke his hair and whisper to him that, just below their window, a pair of sparrows were building a nest; she wanted to share this beautiful image of love, birds’ devotedness, nature’s balance, or something like that, and tell him it’s a sure sign that spring is coming and the heating bill might be lower from next month. She wanted to tell him one thing, but he heard something different, and he raised his hand and roared words, words, words, and she lifted her face to the sky with the same expression he’d had until a moment ago; she thought of the sparrows, frightened, flying out of a treetop, and then she stood up, shook the tufts of hair from her hands, ran to the other room and slammed the door as hard as she could.

She didn’t mean to do this, but now it’s too late. The child is already standing up in the cot, afraid. The baby thought it was all a dream, of an earthquake or a volcanic eruption, but then the room shook for real. The child looked at her as if seeing her for the first time, and she pulled the tiny body into her arms, whispering it was safe, that Mummy had come, Mummy’s here, and yet this still didn’t sound like particularly good news. But the child has no choice and huddles close to her, or rather, she huddles up to the child, rocking them both and repeating that everything is all right, it’s just a draught shaking the furniture and slamming the doors. Look out the window and you’ll see the wind bending the branches.

All this will pass, she tells the child.

Someday we’ll laugh at all this.

We’ll only remember the little things; the view from the window, the spring snow and other small wonders. The way an empty nest swayed in the bent cypress tree on the other side of the windowpane, and how the sparrows fluttered across the car park. They’ll remember the white image of that car park, and the slope with frosted fruit trees, and the kindergarten run by the nuns from the nearby convent. The nuns would come out, wrapped in scarves and long coats, with shovels to clear the snow from the garden paths, and then, like a funeral procession, one behind the other, they’d walk back towards the chapel.

Listen to them sing.

She explains to the child that the nuns also have a child, called Jesus. Every day they pray for his health, they decorate him with dog daisies, they wipe the dust off his pedestal, and coat him with marble polish, because Baby Jesus cares for those who serve him; he protects the poor, the sick and the downtrodden, and he teaches them to endure hardships with a smile and to keep believing that someday their troubles will disappear. Someday the kingdom will be ours.

Maybe when you’re grown up?

The child listens patiently as she talks about Jesus in the same way she talks about gravity, electricity, and dolphins. And it doesn’t matter that she knows nothing about either physics or electrics, that she’s never seen a dolphin, or that she doesn’t believe in Jesus – what matters is that it sounds like a fairy tale.

And then the bells ring out.

It’s time for Mass.

At the third stroke, he opens the door quietly. He doesn’t come in. He’s afraid he’ll step into some shit on the floor again. He watches them from behind and imagines walking over to them, stroking the child’s hair, putting a conciliatory hand on her shoulder, and she’ll tilt her head and run her cheek across his arm, like cats do, or women who don’t hold grudges; and then they’ll all stand together in front of the frosty window, thinking peaceful thoughts of snow and milk. At some point she’ll turn to him and tell him the little sparrows have returned to the nest after all. He’ll nod appreciatively, even though he has no idea what she’s talking about, but it doesn’t matter – what matters is that it will sound like a fairy tale.

2

PEOPLE SHOULD LIVE IN PEACE AND HARMONY; those were their neighbour’s first words. He didn’t even say hello, he just launched into his lecture as if afraid the door might be slammed in his face before he’d finished saying what he rang the bell to say. And he’d been ringing it for five minutes at least – which seemed like an hour to him. They’d even managed to start a fight, assuming the third-floor neighbour was there to scold them for not having paid their share for the staircase lighting, or for shirking their turn to clear the snow at the entrance. He hadn’t been too keen on freezing his arse off in the parking lot, and she’d forgotten to put the money in the neighbour’s letterbox. So she forgot, so what? They stood silently in the hallway, staring each other down.

The bell went quiet for a moment.

Maybe he’s gone?

Maybe he’s…

Then it buzzed again, and she just shrugged and disappeared into the kitchen, as if it was his job to make amends for her mistakes. He took another look through the peephole and mussed up his hair. He wanted to look like he’d just woken up.

So, he finally opens the door. The neighbour’s standing there in his slippers, skipping polite hellos and going straight for the line about peace and harmony. He mentions neither the snow at the entrance nor the unpaid bill but goes on to say how in these difficult times people should foster good intentions and take more responsibility for their actions. So that things don’t get even worse. He nods in agreement with everything the neighbour says, hoping to shut the door as soon as possible. But the neighbour is faster; he steps into the hallway with his slippered foot and gets into his face, warning him he’s not done yet. He doesn’t raise his voice; he just starts talking faster.

We should all be more responsible and conscientious, he says; not you personally, of course, not you, I mean in general, because you are, no doubt, already conscientious. The neighbour has noticed his habit of leaving deposit bottles near the waste containers. People have started loitering around the rubbish containers, understandably, since they find something by the bins every day. And now they come regularly to collect the stuff left there, and when they don’t find anything, they go searching inside the containers, digging and diving… you’ve got them used to it, the neighbour tells him. And undoubtedly, it’s very admirable for him to have in mind how much the deposit money might mean to some people, but the rubbish is right next to the kindergarten fence, and the children see what’s going on, all that human despair and deprivation.

Shouldn’t we be protecting them from it?

The neighbour repeats the question, almost rhetorically, so he naturally doesn’t answer it. He shields himself with sleepiness while thinking his own thoughts, completely uninterested in other people’s children and utterly unaffected by the sight of human despair and deprivation. These are everyday scenes. He’s seen worse on television. His only worry right now is this neighbour’s fucking slipper stuck in the door. He wants to tell him to back off, to get off his fucking case; he wants to remind him it’s 8 a.m. and to suggest he come back in an hour, or never, but he will refrain – he’s way too polite, even though she keeps claiming the opposite. He’s leaning on the door handle, rubbing his eyes.

This will pass.

Last night your wife left a bag with a coat in it out there, the neighbour continues, that red coat she wore when she was pregnant, and this morning, just a little while ago to be precise, two guys were at each other’s throats over it, you’d think they’d kill each other, while the children could see it all through the fence; the men cursed and yelled until one of them punched the other on the chin, kicked him in the gut and shoved him against the containers, and then dumped the stuff he was carrying in his bags on top of him. There’s now rubbish scattered all across the car park, and I wonder if it’s really worth it, exposing children to violence and misery for a few plastic bottles and an old maternity coat… you tell me.

Well?

Is it?

The neighbour should be thankful he’s not responding to any of this; he’s been trained to endure such crap in silence. He can handle vast amounts of stupid and tone-deaf sentences without a single twitch of a nerve, without actually hearing them. He can listen to one thing and think of another; for instance, he can imagine the neighbour having a cup of tea with bread and margarine, observing the fight outside the building, then resolutely wiping his mouth and heading off two floors down without even putting his shoes on, with the ferocity of a man who feels it’s his duty to do something. And the neighbour knows exactly which doorbell he’s going to be pummelling, it’s not his first time, no it isn’t, he’d come making demands at this doorstep before, and so he remembered he had to be persistent because, sooner or later, a bleary-eyed face would open the door, the same face that doesn’t obey the house rules, doesn’t clear the snow, doesn’t pay electricity bills or recycle bottles, and instead – as he plainly described it a moment ago – lays out his rubbish to fuel violence and misery, enough to spoil your breakfast. The neighbour keeps tabs on all the tenants, and he has undoubtedly already added up all this tenant’s thrown-away wine bottles, divided them into glasses and figured out he’s drinking too much. The neighbour could also tell from the label that he’d bought the wine on sale at a nearby discount store, a whole case for the price of a regular bottle, meaning it was either totally disgusting or toxic, and no one would drink it if they had a choice. And he didn’t. But he had no intention of justifying himself as to why. The neighbour has already made up his mind about his bad habits and his own noble intentions, and it’s way too late to try to make a good impression. He doesn’t even need to wash his face. Maybe he could rub his eyes a little more. Out of sheer defiance.

The neighbour already thinks sleepiness is an expression of laziness, rather than exhaustion.

The neighbour also thinks exhaustion is a sign of weakness, rather than a side-effect of honest work.