Homunculus Read online

  ‘Diggers? I don’t get it...’

  ‘That’s right, diggers. The ones who travel in the vertical dimension – downwards and inwards.’

  They left The Balkan Egyptian Club. The parking lot was not the same. His father, the other passengers and the driver of the minibus were not there. The talkative woman with the pointy nose was gone, and they looked in vain for the minibus. There was just a strange little train in the clearing where the parking lot had been, with an engine and two little carriages.

  * * *

  The train puffed as it climbed the thickly forested slopes. We were passing a peaceful mountain range with rounded, wooded summits, as green and lush as if it was not almost Christmas but springtime, when the luxuriance of nature is most evident. No one had a camera, but the scenery was absolutely photogenic.

  ‘Just look at these mountains!’ Horatio exclaimed. ‘They need every bit of a million years to move, you know. And we people beside them – don’t we look like the fastest and flightiest of creatures? We’re constantly on the move, grab this – then let go of it, so the next thing doesn’t run away from you. And your whole life is like that,’ he said, ceremonially spreading his arms and raising his eyebrows, a gesture many would call novelettish or old-fashioned, but which suited his character perfectly: ‘Run, keep on running, until one day, one hour, one moment you stop, who knows why, perhaps because of the photo you wanted to take from the little train and which by complete chance will fall out of your album, and you’ll think, horrified: just look at that child. Why, that was me! So many years of my life have passed irretrievably, and there’s no going back.’

  The boy listened to Horatio, who now seemed to have become taller and fatter, and he realized he didn’t understand all he was saying.

  Inside, the carriage wasn’t divided into compartments but had rows of forward-facing wooden seats. Children were milling about between them. It was probably some primary-school excursion – fifth or sixth year – because the girls had outgrown the boys, who were bumping into each other and jostling around the girls like drones around queen bees.

  * * *

  Then they saw a group of men digging beside the track. They were wearing monotonous, faded, grey uniforms, and some of them had on dirty, torn gloves. The children were glued to the windows of the carriage as the little train edged slowly past the workers.

  ‘Who are these sad-looking men?’ the boy asked, slightly surprised at his high, childish voice.

  ‘Those are... how should I put it... those are men who have done something bad in their lives and now have to bear the consequences.’

  ‘And their punishment is having to dig like this?’

  ‘That’s right, my lad. See those other men at the side, with helmets, who aren’t digging but holding rifles and yelling?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Those are the guards. They make sure the convicts don’t run away.’

  ‘Do they give them a beating?’

  ‘They don’t just give them a beating, but beat them to death. Time ticks away very slowly here. The work is hellishly hard and onerous, and it goes on day after day, from morning till night. The pickaxe is as heavy as lead, the ground is stony, and you long to lie down for a rest, even just for one minute, but no: you have to keep your eyes propped open because the eagle-eyed guards will see you if you falter, and then they’ll rush at you with their rifle butts for a bit of sport.’

  One of the convicts, with sunken cheeks, raised his eyes towards the little train. The boy noticed the dark bags under his eyes and the sprig of Christmas fir in the breast pocket of his worn-out uniform. Why did that poor, tormented man look like his father?

  * * *

  ‘Human physiology is imperfect, laddy.’

  ‘What is physiology?’

  ‘Everything to do with your body. You wake up in the morning after a good night’s sleep – rested, fresh, and so on... And then something down below tells you: you need to pee! There’s nothing you can do about it. You jump out of bed on the left-hand side, not the right, and your left slipper is missing – pushed under the bed, you suppose – and when you kneel down to look for it you bang your head on the edge of the bed. The pain really wakes you up; you curse and swear, you go to pee, and nothing is left of the good mood from when you woke up. Ah, talking of sleep, I was complaining to one of my sweet girlfriends –,” Horatio made a short, dramatic pause to emphasize the plural, girlfriends, ‘that I’m finding it ever harder to get to sleep when I go to bed in the evening. And do you know what she told me?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘“You can’t get to sleep because your age is greater than your shoe size!” Just imagine, laddy, she said that as blunt as a bludgeon, but I didn’t let it get me down. The size of my pants is still greater than my age, ha, ha, ha!’

  That’s because you’re fat, he thought and immediately felt embarrassed for being so nasty, and only then, when he looked away from Horatio’s face, did he notice that they were no longer travel­ling in the little train, and the school kids and the convicts and the mountain range were gone.

  * * *

  One day he would probably say to him: ‘I remember you! We were once on a bus together; I remember it well, although it was many years ago. You’re an actor and I remember your name, it was something striking... Horatio... Horatio Jingle, that’s it! In fact, we met an even longer time ago when I was child, in a little train on a school excursion... Isn’t it funny for us to be meeting again like this; I’m a grandpa with three granddaughters, and my son’s wife – it’s his second marriage – is pregnant, so soon I’ll have another. But you... you’re still the same, unchanged, with the same moustache... you haven’t aged a day!’

  ‘Do you really think so?’

  ‘It’s incredible, even your voice is the same. Most characteristic. If you think back over all the times we’ve spoken, I’ve had three different voices – a child’s, a young man’s and now, how should I put it, a rather mature man’s. Your name’s Horatio Jingle, right?’

  ‘Yes.’

  At this muted response, he would probably feel the urge to scratch himself on the head as if he had dandruff, although he would only have a little patch of hair left on the back of his head. But Horatio’s face would melt into that familiar, broad smile, and he would say: ‘Cheer up, what’s there to be glum about? And if we’ve known each other for so long there’s no need to be awkward.’

  ‘I thought I’d made a mistake… it’s getting dark already... I can’t see all that well with these glasses, so perhaps I ought to be heading home.’

  ‘Don’t be afraid, lad, there are no terrorists or robbers here.’

  ‘But where are we exactly, Mr Horatio?’ he would ask, but by some strange twist of fate he would be gone again. ‘What’s happening to me? Just a moment ago, we were together, and now suddenly he vanishes. Everything can be so different to what I expect. It’s as if I’m living in an express dream. First the present, then the past, and next what? Going by my age, this must be some time in the future.’

  * * *

  There, in the future, he would meet face to face with his loneliness in a landscape like a Hollywood adaptation of a fairy tale, with elaborately staged artificial illumination from spotlights: the night would be arrested in its coming just enough to reveal the contours of the many-branched bushes of white and red roses, among which amber eyes (of black cats or werewolves?) flashed, and he would wander lost along the village path with a layer of thick, dry dust, so that clouds rose with his every step.

  ‘You st-u-u-upid old fart,’ he would hear a voice like a netherworldly whisper. He would see a shapeless spectre and immediately feel its deathly cold breath beneath a slate-grey, musty cloak cover­ing the spectre’s head and hazy body; only its outstretched right hand would beckon him to follow. And despite the terrible fear that made him freeze from head to toe, he would follow the spectre unwillingly, like a captive soul. The village path, half-visible in the pale, synthetic light of the moon, would lead to the cemetery, where tall silhouettes of crosses and monuments leaning in the sickly soil froze his petrified body even more. The spectre would slip silently through the half-open cemetery gate.

  He too would squeeze through, staggering as he went. The spectre would stop and, with its long, bony finger, point to the inscription on a derelict tombstone. He would read his own name there.

  ‘No, no!’ he would stammer, as an uncontrollable tremor began to seize his lower jaw.

  ‘You will rot in the grave,’ he would hear that chilling whisper again.

  But then, amidst that madness, a huge, shaggy creature would emerge from the darkness and come shambling towards him on its hind legs, growling and extending its gruesome claws. This would be too much for him. He would start to scream and break into a run, stumbling as he tried to get as far as possible from that terrible place. And when his squeals of fear were interrupted by an unseen hand (please not that of the spectre!) forcing him to turn round, he would see the ghostly bear strike the hideous spectre with its paw; the apparition would collapse from that single blow and vanish the next instant. He would turn again and continue to run, but the bear would call out: ‘Stop, my son, it’s me!’ He would recognize his voice, stop running and wait for him. The bear would come up to him, large and panting, but not as huge as he had first thought. The bearskin would fall away to reveal his father, who now stood before him, handsome and elegantly dressed as always. Hardly would they be reunited when a third figure would come bumbling along, and who could it be but Horatio, who would tell him in his charming bass voice: ‘You know what it says in the Bible – if you have faith, even as small as a mustard seed, you can move mountains.’

  He would feel a light as a feather, as happy as an angel, as exube­rant as a first-grader. And in that optimistic mood he would hear the ringing of the church bells.

  ‘What day is it today?’

  ‘Christmas!’ his father and Horatio would answer in unison.

  * * *

  While he was hugging his father, and crying and giggling at the same time, he woke up. For a while – quite a long while – he was completely disoriented and gaped at the ceiling (what day is it? where am I? how old am I?), and then he slowly looked around. The bed was his and the room was his. A fresh May breeze blew in through the open window. ‘What a mix-up! I never had a dream like that before,’ he thought as he went to the window to take in a few deep breaths. Still not quite awake, he stared at verdant Mount Vodno, which the clear air seemed to bring right up close to the city.

  All of a sudden, he realized he had to be at the bus station by noon. His bus was leaving at 12.15 pm. It was not a real bus, he remembered, but a minibus they would be travelling in, the friendly travel-agency lady had told him. A nice, modern European one.

  Minibus? He scratched his shaggy hair. That sounds strangely familiar, and scratching his head again, he started for the bathroom to have his morning wash.

  This fairy tale should not be told at Christmas

  Marko’s Little Sister

  Marko was three years old when his younger sister was born, on New Year’s Eve. While his father was taking his mother to hospital, Marko found some string and tied together the kitchen table and the chairs; he also tied the Christmas tree to the legs of his little bed. His parents found this hilarious, and whenever they told the story to friends they couldn’t stop laughing.

  Two years later, Marko’s mother had to go into hospital again, this time because of ‘problems down below’. By coincidence, it was exactly before the New Year’s break. So the children wouldn’t be unsettled, their mother made the traditional family roast turkey stuffed with liver, apple and prunes. The operation went well, thank God, and on 31st December their father, who went to see her every day, took her a nicely packaged piece of the turkey on her favourite plate with the yellow flower-pattern. The children stayed alone at home to play. When their father came back from the hospital, from the front door he heard Marko’s little sister crying fitfully. He rushed inside, and there was a sight to see: Marko was dragging his sister through the house with a cord around her neck.

  Later, his parents decided to get rid of all the string, cord and rope in the house – secretly, so as not to anger their son. And this they did, but Marko soon became anxious, started to search and to pick through all the drawers, and then openly to demand string from his parents. ‘If there isn’t any, buy some for me!’ he yelled at them. They made up an excuse: they hadn’t been able to buy any string or rope because the shops had run out. Marko threw a mighty tantrum lasting several days, and then he suddenly calmed down and stopped asking for string.

  The next New Year was drawing near. The family lived in a house with a garden, and although the father was no gardener, the unpruned bushes and straggly trees provided a welcome little refuge of calm when things inside got too noisy or hectic.

  The tallest of the trees was a pine, and the father decided to decorate it with little lanterns and other yuletide ornaments to please the children. He got up on a stool and had started hanging up the decorations, when a glance through the window of the children’s room showed Marko lying limp on the carpet, with a string around his neck fastened to the bars of his sister’s cot. Where did he get it from? the father managed to ask himself, although he immediately felt ashamed at the thought. He ran into the room, and there Marko lay stock-still on the floor with his eyes closed, although visibly still breathing. The father acted as if nothing had happened, tiptoed back out of the room and put his finger to his lips to tell the others to be quiet. Marko stayed lying on the carpet for some time longer, then grumpily got up, untied the rope and stuck it in a drawer.

  Many years later, Marko’s sister, now a young woman, dreamed that someone was in her flat. A shadow. She went out into the hall and in the darkness she brushed against a coarse woollen jumper that seemed to be made of string or some other rough fibre. Then, in her dream, she tried to call out: ‘Marko, I love you!’ and woke up screaming and covered in sweat. In the morning, her husband told her she had yelled: ‘Marko, cold and blue!’ Perhaps her tongue had got twisted, as sometimes happens in dreams.

  Her dream occurred at Christmas, just before her birthday and one year after the tragic death of her brother.

  This fairy tale should not be told while leafing through women’s magazines

  The Huntsman

  We know that the pain your own people inflict on you cannot be quieted unless you make strangers of them or yourself; it is not the despised, but the forgotten man who is miserable.

  Christa Wolf, Cassandra

  The smell of the forest – the smell of gunpowder – and the calm certainty of death. How exciting it is! You lie in wait for the animal and together with it you become part of nature, part of the One. You are connected inextricably by the shot. The animal itself then begins to understand you. A strong emotional bond, even a kind of love, is forged between you. The animal says: ‘I am imbued in the pupil of your eye and the sight of your rifle. I have come here for you to find me and free me.’ All is quiet, the sunrise illuminates the forest clearing and you can hear it breathing, as if you were at the border between two kingdoms, the earthly and the supernatural. You pull the trigger.

  Therein lies the beauty of the hunt, in that cycle of life and death. I have been given the role of the hunter, the deer is my prey, and when the chase begins it is as if we are alone in the expanse of the forest. Once you feel the might of the forest you never forget it. Many are scared to the marrow by it and find every encounter with it horrendous; they think there is a beast ready to pounce in every thicket, and every rustling is a werewolf. But there are also those who fall in love with the forest forever, with all its different trees and shadows, denizens and sounds. The forest is my domain. It sharpened my senses and allowed me to run fast for a long time if I have to, to skilfully climb high branches, to wade a river or swim across a mountain lake, however cold. For me there is no prey too fast or too strong – nothing is uncatchable – be it rabbit or bear, wild goose or boar. I have a solution for all of them so I can add them to my collection of trophies!

  My only regret is that I haven’t been able to hunt rhinoceroses; they say their horns can make you really rich, because they are ground up and used to make aphrodisiacs, which apparently fetch millions. But although Africa is rich in game, it is far away. I am a man of these climes and my quarry is here.

  I am a hunter by nature, just as I am naturally a loner. I am happy to be by myself in all weathers, fair and foul. Or at least that’s what thought until I met her. Even when I was with a woman, I never stayed in the relationship for long – a week or two at most – and that was mainly in the winter months, when the urge drives hunters, just as it does wolves and foxes, to seek a mate. I always found it ridiculous whenever I heard one of those summertime romances, because in July and August I’m too busy to scratch myself and chasing after women is furthest from my mind. If I chase anything, it’s animals: I’m constantly at their heels, and you need to save up your energy for that labour, not fritter it away!

  That’s how I was until I met her.

  Like I say, I’m not particularly fond of ceremonies, weddings and other mass events, but my position as ‘royal huntsman’ meant that I had to report to the court once a week. Back then, the country was ruled by a king. I entered his service when he was already a widower, forlorn and rather too absent-minded for a king. He preferred the fresh, cool air to the heated chambers of the palace, although it is one of the stateliest in this part of the world. Wearing dungarees and a faded XXL T-shirt which was tucked into his pants, over his pot belly and hanging out at the back, he spent all day in the gardens between the fruit trees and the tomatoes, and there he received me. He would distractedly listen to my report on the state of the royal forests and hunting grounds while pruning the roses, or digging, or sitting on a wooden stool. Occasionally he asked me to tell him a story from nature. He listened to me just as distractedly as when I delivered my report, and I even imagined he wasn’t there at all, but I was mistaken: ‘The bit about the hare is interesting,’ he said (I had told him that a hare twitches its nose all the time, both when it’s feeding and when it’s resting). ‘It wiggles its nose all the time, you say. Oh, consciousness... it’s still there even when our brain seems to be inactive,’ he would remark quietly, without looking at me. Although I naturally couldn’t agree with his opinion because my brain works all the time when I’m hunting, I was glad he took an interest in my stories, in his absent-minded way. Later, when I was seeing the queen, and especially after his death, I sometimes thought he had also been awkward and lost when dealing with her – his second, passionate and dangerous wife – and that therefore he must have been unhappy. But those were cursory thoughts because I myself was ‘gone with the wind’ when this woman held me clenched between her hot thighs and her arrogant, ambitious mind.