Best European Fiction 2012 Read online

  And in addition to the booze and provisions, kept until then in secret cellars, the most assiduous soldiers brought back a certain Hilda Hänchen, a teacher at the school on Merhaut Street. They carried rather than led her because she did everything in her power to resist them—like Marie Antoinette on the tumbrel, she knew what fate had in store for her. Please excuse my persistence in placing before you the seeds of my meager learning, which I owe to those late afternoons and evenings under Dmitri’s pear tree, where we would wind together strands from history, paleontology, archaeology, entomology, and etymology, to say nothing of Darwinism and behaviorism. There’s no doubt too that my stay in Dmitri’s library contributed much to my understanding. Of course, no other loshaď will ever acquire such encyclopedic knowledge: I am one of a kind, if you like. Those who view me with favor perhaps consider me an equine Socrates or Spinoza. And I’m happy to raise my proverbial hat and nod in acknowledgement of such accolades; but make no mistake, what I am telling you now is just a screen intended to block your view of what the dear soldiers were engaged in with the German teacher on the cork linoleum. So all you will learn is that while my equine colleagues looked on with disinterest, I, as much an initiate in human delights and woes as Meister Eckhart in Neo-Platonist emanationism—no, no, I take that back, it was a foolish comparison, more like a Scandinavian fisherman in the sorrows of the Greenland whale; anyway, I, the initiate, watched what the dear soldiers were doing with Hilda Hänchen—there was no screen to keep it from me—with loathing and disgust and, regrettably, a little curiosity and a trace of something to which I’d rather not give a name. But you should know when at last I turned away, it was too late, and I bore away with me a feeling of guilt. Did I really have to take the same journey as every Russian intellectual, struggling through the most sophisticated philosophies only to fall face-first into the most squalid shit?

  Once the unspeakable act on the cork linoleum had been played out, the dear soldiers lifted the lady teacher and carried rather than led her to the floor above, where they intended to transfer their attentions to their hip flasks and the large glass demijohns in woven baskets. But here their politruk raised his hands and clapped for quiet. He made haste to remind them of the Cossacks’ first commandment: provide for the horses before taking care of one’s own stomach and throat.

  The matter was subjected to brief discussion before the decision was taken to lead the horses out to the dandelion-filled meadow. Soon all the horses were outside—two tethered to a nearby weeping willow, the rest to trees that shielded the meadow around both its open sides. I stood on my own, the only one of our society whose rider was not present. This rider, as we know, was a Cossack commander, whom I now imagined keeping company with Marshal Malinovsky in a hotel down in the city. This hotel was hit in an air raid; a wall has fallen away to reveal a lounge with a shattered table and armchairs with charred upholstery. But just beyond another wall, one that is still standing, is another lounge, and here Malinovsky is placing on a table a splendid shagreen valise; this he opens with a click before pulling out a framed picture and nodding to General Pliyev. Pliyev, who has pushed a stool against the wall, now hammers in a hook. Then the marshal hands him the picture and two of them stand back to admire the effect. They salute Generalissimo Stalin and propose a toast. To the family! To Stalin! A pretty scene for a horse to think up, don’t you think? But anyway, back to me.

  As we know, I did not have my own rider. After the malchiska assigned to me was ripped to pieces by a shell, my care became the responsibility of all the grooms. In the garden they would first tether their own horses, but before they took them their pails of water they would hurry to attend to my needs. As they approached me that day I could hear them discussing whether or not it would be better to leave me where I was: I might be better protected inside (there was still the occasional gunshot, and it could come from any side), and, after all, wasn’t being there just like being outside? The great room was like an extension of the garden, the garden an extension of the room, so fluidly did the interior merge with the exterior. They brought me an armful of fragrant hay and a pail of fresh water, and they stroked my silken coat. (Perhaps I haven’t mentioned yet that I am a fine, well-proportioned bay whose neck and high, broad crest are in perfect harmony.) When tethered by a long rein to a chromium-plated column, I could move freely about the room, and, should I wish, put my front hooves down in the garden.

  It was the late morning of a beautiful April day. The dear soldiers were lying in the grass with their hip flasks, and there was birdsong. It was as though the war had really ended, despite the burning house I could still see, somewhere in the city center. Nevertheless, this was probably what the human world calls an idyll. In the distance (and no great distance at that) people were still dying, but at the same time here was pastoral birdsong and a sun rising slowly to its zenith; and the dear soldiers in the garden were falling asleep. The only ones moving around the meadow were two men with machine guns, guarding the villa. By their gait it was obvious that they, too, had been drinking. Then one of them got an idea. I turned my ears in their direction—it’s always a pleasure for me to listen to people talking, particularly as I’m safe in the knowledge that they have no inkling I can understand their every word.

  Hang on. What would the general say? the second of the men asked. But the first—the one who had had the idea—just snapped his fingers and laughed. It was apparent immediately that he had the devil in him.

  He’d like it. Compliment us on the idea.

  You think so?

  Whatever pleases the general’s stallion, pleases the general. Then he’ll please us.

  They gave each other a wink; then they got to work.

  One of them untethered me from the column while the other ran his hand along my bump before putting it to my mane, which he tousled tenderly. They led me upstairs. I was perfectly calm—not only did I know that the “invisible hand” of General Pliyev was watching over me, I knew, too, that these two were among the best grooms, that they loved horses more than anything else in the world, that the scale of values by which true grooms live their lives places horses above wife and children, and, with some of them, even a bottle of vodka. Of course, I didn’t know what their plan was—they were using the crudest military slang (as I could tell from their gesticulations)—but what these boys had thought up was a source of curiosity to me, not dread.

  But I was taken aback when they opened a door and led me into the room beyond, in which I saw again the lady German teacher. I presume this room was once the bedroom of one of the villa’s original residents. The teacher was naked and bound in chains, and thus always prepared for coupling. Only now did it dawn on me what the boys had been talking about, what the gift was that they were offering me. By the expressions they wore as they departed the room, I knew they were thinking of themselves as Santa Claus. I would have plenty of time to play with my present.

  The door clicked shut behind them, and I was left alone with the teacher. I knew above all that she was an extremely proud creature. When they did it to her on the cork linoleum, she didn’t let out a single cry, not even a groan. Even now she wasn’t letting on that she was afraid of what was to follow. In this she reminded me of Dmitri Ivanovich when the two men came to arrest him, and he knew, of course, that he would end up in Siberia; all he said to them was: I’ve been waiting for you all my life. What kept you, for goodness’s sake?

  The teacher did no more than close her eyes. German does not come as easily to me as Russian, or even French, in which Dmitri Ivanovich gave me a thorough grounding. So I did my best in my halting German, although my labials rebelled against my attempts to articulate. Ich habe viel auf dem Herzen und ich versuche Ihnen das langsam sagen, I managed to say. And I knew that once I’d warmed up a little, I would produce the German with much less trouble. She opened her eyes in surprise. There was no trace of fear in them, just amazement, which was understandable.
Anyone else confronted by a horse jabbering in German would be horrified, but what she had experienced was far more horrific than this; I was for her something in the nature of a fairy-tale apparition. And she was quick to realize that I did not have aggressive designs upon her. I am the kindest among the Arabian thoroughbreds, noble in body and soul—this is something else Dmitri Ivanovich gave me to understand. On top of everything, I was still suffering from the guilt of having stood by and watched as they were doing what they did to her. Let us consider as well that this was an extraordinarily proud creature who, in a very unpleasant situation—several times raped, now bound in chains, practically crucified—had succeeded in retaining her dignity and even developed a remarkable analytical intelligence that enabled her to see straight through to my soul, to what remained there of love and peace. I asked her to close her eyes again for a moment. And then I caught in my linguistic labia, if you’ll pardon the expression, a headscarf that was lying over the back of an armchair; I laid this carefully, like a fig leaf on eto krokhotnoye mesto, diese winzigkleine Stelle if you will, thus sparing us both further embarrassment. She opened her eyes and smiled at me. We realized quickly we were going to be good friends. I gave some thought to how I might rid her of her chains, but they were held in great steel locks; I might have risked kicking these away, but I decided not to try, because I couldn’t be sure I wouldn’t injure her in the process.

  The situation was less than ideal for a sociable conversation, but soon we found a topic by which we had both long been excited. Once, I’d touched on this topic with Dmitri Ivanovich, but he viewed our relationship in terms of patron and protégé; he would initiate me in the deeper reaches of knowledge and secrets of existence so that I was always aware of his superiority—as debates go, this is not a desirable state of affairs. Besides, his interests tended to literature rather than philosophy, and an appreciation of common ground and interdisciplinarity did not come naturally to him. Of course, I am somewhat ashamed to be speaking now so openly and disrespectfully of my beloved teacher, but, after all, it was Dmitri who taught me that the truth must always be supreme. Anyway, it was with the lady German teacher that I first had the opportunity to discuss Immanuel Kant in depth.

  The first time I read Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason, Hilda Hänchen told me, his expositions and system of categories left me very confused.

  Yes, indeed, I said, delighted: I, too, had known this confusion. But today I understand pretty well that from the category of quantity is derived the principle of opinion: all phenomena are extensive properties in space and in time.

  Exactly! the lady teacher rejoiced. And the principle derives from the category of quality that phenomena are intensive properties too.

  And let us not forget, I rejoined, that analogies of experience are derived from the category of relation, which is to say that with every change there remains an immutable substance.

  How glorious! Hilda moaned with delight. What pleases me most is that the exigencies of empirical knowledge are derived from the category of modality, because only then can the object of our experience be called real.

  For, as we know, I said, thus closing this particular chapter, objects adapt themselves to categories!

  And here we moved on from Kant’s categories to his bringing together of inner and outer experience.

  Two things! Hilda exclaimed as she rattled her chains. Two things have for a long time filled my mind persistently with a growing sense of wonder and respect—

  —and they are, I cried, my exhausted lips smacking together, and they are the starry heavens above and the moral code within!

  That’s right! she continued. The coming together of inner and outer experience, and not only of the starry sky and human ethics! What is deepest inside man, the sensations and phenomena man attains, in Kant merge smoothly with an apparition of universal law. Is Kant not the founder of modern cosmology, convinced that man by his very substance is compelled to abandon himself to knowledge and step outside and above himself?

  Not only man, I said, unable to restrain myself. In certain rare cases, horse too. But I wanted to say how fortunate we are to find ourselves in a villa that provides a model of Kant’s philosophy, a clear demonstration of this coming together, this fusion of the inner and the outer. The living room is an example of an open architectural space that radiates beyond the borders of architectural composition and connects it with its surroundings. Although regrettably, I thought it apt to add, these relations have for the time being been somewhat obliterated . . .

  But here I fell silent. I heard footsteps on the staircase, and then those who had brought me here were back inside the room. And they were in a dreadful hurry. They didn’t even look around, just asked me if I’d poked the chuvikh yet. Of course, I didn’t reply, even though there were all kinds of things I might have said. They took hold of my bridle and led me rapidly away. I didn’t even have time for a backward glance.

  Twenty minutes later our cavalry was mobilized. The dream of our Cossack commander was realized: Marshal Malinovsky sent us to the very heart of Hitler’s Reich. As we were leaving, I saw them lead Hilda Hänchen out on to the pavement in front of the villa. I called out, but I don’t believe she so much as noticed me. Standing between us was Starshiy Leytenant Andrei Tolstoy, writing in whitewash on the Tugendhat Villa: Kvartal proveren min nyet! And with that we left for Berlin.

  The Arabian thoroughbred—named Orlando by Dmitri Ivanovich—was shot near Leipzig, and used as “live bully.” The German teacher was forcibly removed from her home during the “wild evacuation” and murdered. But Orlando and Hilda were among the final victims of the war. At last the country has awoken to a life of freedom and happiness, in which noble horses will never again serve as “live bully,” and in which no proud, brave women will ever again be executed.

  TRANSLATED FROM CZECH BY ANDREW OAKLAND

  [ESTONIA]

  ARMIN KÕOMÄGI

  Logisticians Anonymous

  It began four years ago, when I suddenly found myself taking a basic course in logistics. The job I had at the time was driving me crazy, and hoping to make some sense out of my life, I was signing up for all sorts of courses. I remember my excitement when the straight-backed lecturer, with a calculating look, glided diagonally across the room and said:

  “Hello.”

  Impossible to think of a simpler greeting, more precise, more brilliant. “Hello.” Ten out of ten. The previous course, where I had spent just a week before Logistics, began with some aimless twaddle from a shaggy chap in a cardigan about how whether it was now morning or daytime or night was, in a sense, of no importance, and therefore he wasn’t going to greet us with any reference to a particular time of day, and taking an even wider view, why use greetings at all—do such formalities make anyone happier, or, for that matter, unhappier? Oh, I remember that from that first sentence alone I got such a headache that it made concentration on the subject at hand impossible. A basic course in philosophy. What’s the use of a class whose only benefits are complete confusion plus a two-hour headache? I left as soon as I politely could.

  But I’ll never forget the lecturer in basic logistics. The way he took the shortest route from the door to his desk; the very rational movements with which he organized his class materials on its left-hand corner, whence it would later be convenient to lift them up to the lectern; the skilled gesture with which he opened the two buttons of his jacket, whereupon it landed most dynamically on the back of his chair without even crumpling . . . Then, when he stepped up to the dais, he would charm us with a half-second long chuckle, and begin. I remember feeling a wet drop of spit land on the back of my hand. Only then did I remember to shut my mouth, which had been open in awe throughout his well-argued introduction.

  Today, four years later, I myself could of course give that lecturer dozens of suggestions as to how to improve his life. That’s how fa
r I’ve gotten. And I have to admit that, in a sense, it’s a problem.

  Now that I’ve had enough time to think it over, I realize that it all actually began much earlier than when I started that class. I remember my summer in that youth camp. It was my second stint there. A crazy, funny group: cool, resourceful guys; cheerful, beautiful girls. By the second half of the summer, when all our friendships had developed far enough, we boys were in the habit of going over in the evenings to kiss the girls goodnight. Then, one night, when we trooped into the girls’ room in our underpants, and, in the excitement of the full moon of a late July night, we hungrily eyed the girls and worked out who would be fondling whom, I found myself heading for the nearest bed. Since the girls in our group were all just about equally pretty, it didn’t matter who you kissed. So I chose the shortest route. From that night on, the nearest girl always got a kiss from me. It wasn’t always one and the same girl. No. They switched beds from time to time. I don’t know why. The reason for all this moving around didn’t occur to me. And if some girl by the campfire showed an interest in my night-time geographical tactics, then I would explain that it was simply the shortest way to a kiss. Everyone would guffaw, and I became well liked. But for me it was no joke.

  I can’t remember the last time I was kissed. I have no time for such absurdities. I deal only in the necessary: I move only the necessary parts of the body, I exercise only the necessary muscles, I think only necessary thoughts. At the right time, in the right place, in the right amount. Always. But one thing troubles me. I don’t understand my own feelings. Sometimes I find myself getting irritated, annoyed, angry, desperate. If it were in my power I would do away with the genes that make all that possible. Emotions are a waste of time. And I’m not just talking about negative emotions. For example, what’s the use of a sense of triumph? Hurrah! Why hurrah? What for? What does it give us? What is a victory, exactly, that people want to crow about it so much? There’s an outcome, a result, a score, a provisional summary of accounts. These are the ordinary parts of any process. So what is there to crow about?