What were the words for woman, man, love, freedom, fate?—in this strange land where the architecture and the countryside and the sea with its dark choppy waters and the very air itself seemed to Oliver totally foreign, unearthly? He must have fallen in love with the woman at once, after fifteen minutes’ conversation. Such perversity was unlike him. He had loved a woman twenty years before; had perhaps loved two or even three women in his lifetime; but had never fallen in love, had never been in love; such melodramatic passion was not his style. He had spoken with her only for fifteen minutes at the most, and not directly: through the translator assigned to him. He did not know her at all. Yet that night he dreamed of rescuing her.
“I am struck and impressed,” he said politely, addressing the young woman introduced to him as a music teacher at the high school and a musician—a violist—herself, “with the marvelous old buildings here . . . the church that is on the same street as my hotel . . . yes? . . . You know it? . . . And with the beauty of the parks, the trees and flowers, everything so well-tended, and the manner of the people I have encountered . . . they are friendly but not effusive, they appear so very . . . so very healthy,” he said, hearing his voice falter, realizing that he was being condescending—as if it surprised him, the fact that people in this legendary, long-suffering nation were not very different from people anywhere. But his translator translated the speech and the young woman appeared to agree, nodding, smiling as if to encourage him. Thank God he had not offended her. “I am very grateful to have been allowed a visa,” he said. “I have never visited a country that has struck me in such a way . . . an immediate sense of, of . . . how shall I put it? . . . of something like nostalgia . . . do you know the expression, the meaning? . . . nostalgia . . . emotion for something once possessed but now lost, perhaps not now even accessible through memory . . .”
If he was making a fool of himself with this speech, and by so urgently staring at the woman, Alisa, the others did not appear to notice; they listened intently, even greedily, as Oliver’s young translator repeated his words, hardly pausing for breath. He was a remarkable young man, probably in his early twenties, and Oliver had the idea that the translator’s presence and evident goodwill toward him were freeing his tongue, giving him a measure of happiness for the first time since he had left the United States. For the first time, really, in many years. It was marvelous, magical, to utter his thoughts aloud and to hear, then, their instantaneous translation into a foreign language—to sit with his translator at his left hand, watching the effect of his words upon his listeners’ faces as they were translated. An eerie, uncanny experience . . . unsettling and yet exciting, in a way Oliver could not have explained. He had not liked the idea of relying upon a translator; one of his failings, one of the disappointments of his life, had always been a certain shyness or coolness in his character, which it was evidently his fate not to alter, and he had supposed that travel in a country as foreign as this one, and as formally antagonistic to the United States, would be especially difficult since he knew nothing of the language. But in fact the translator was like a younger brother to him, like a son. There was an intimacy between them and a pleasurable freedom, even an unembarrassed lyricism in Oliver’s remarks, that he could not possibly have anticipated.
Of course his mood was partly attributable to the cognac, and to the close, crowded, overheated room in which the reception was being held, and to his immediate attraction for the dusky-haired, solemn young woman with the name he could not pronounce— Alisa was as close as he could come to it; he would have to ask the translator to write it out for him when they returned to the hotel. It would not last, his mood of gaiety. But for the present moment he was very happy merely to hear these people speak their language, a melodic play of explosive consonants and throaty vowels; it hardly mattered that his translator could manage to translate only a fraction of what was being said. He was happy, almost euphoric. He was intoxicated. He had to restrain himself from taking one of Alisa’s delicate hands in his own and squeezing it, to show how taken he was by her. I know you are suffering in this prison state of yours, he wanted to whisper to her, and I want, I want to do something for you . . . want to rescue you, save you, change your life . . .
The director of the Lexicographic Institute was asking him a courteous, convoluted question about the current state of culture in his own nation, and everyone listened, frowning, as if with anxiety, while, with one part of his mind, Oliver made several statements. His translator took them up at once, transformed them into those eerie, exquisite sounds; the director nodded gravely, emphatically; the others nodded; it seemed to be about what they had anticipated. One of the men, white-haired, diminutive, asked something in a quavering voice, and Oliver’s translator hesitated before repeating it. “Dr. Crlejevec is curious to know— is it true that your visual artists have become artists merely of the void—that is, of death—that they are exclusively morbid, that they have turned their backs on life?” The translator blushed, not quite meeting Oliver’s gaze, as if he were embarrassed by the question. But the question did not annoy Oliver. Not in the least. He disliked much of contemporary art anyway and welcomed the opportunity to express his feelings, warmly, knowing that what he said would endear him to these people. It pleased him most of all that Alisa listened so closely. Her long, nervous fingers toyed with a cameo brooch she wore at her throat; her gray eyes were fixed upon his face. “Art moves in a certain tendril-like manner . . . in many directions, though at a single point in history one direction is usually stressed and acclaimed . . . like the evolutionary gropings of nature to my way of thinking. Do you see? The contemporary pathway is but a tendril, a feeler, an experimental gesture . . . Because it is obsessed with death and the void and the annihilation of self, it will necessarily die . . . It pronounces its own death sentence.”
The words were translated; the effect was instantaneous; Oliver’s pronouncement seemed to meet with approval. The director, however, posed another question. He was a huge man in his fifties, with a ruddy, beefy face and rather coarse features, though his voice seemed to Oliver quite cultured. “. . . But in the meantime, does it not do damage? . . . to the unformed, that is, to the young, the susceptible . . . does it not do irreparable damage, such deathly art?”
Oliver’s high spirits could not be diminished. He only pretended to be thinking seriously before he answered, “Not at all! In my part of the world, serious art is ignored by the masses; the unformed, the young, the susceptible are not aware of its existence.”
He had expected his listeners to laugh. But they did not laugh. The young woman murmured something, shaking her head. Oliver’s translator said to him, “She says she is shocked . . . unless, of course, you are joking.”
The conversation shifted. Oliver was taken to other groups of people, was introduced by his translator, was made to feel important, honored. From time to time he glanced back at the young woman—when he saw her preparing to leave, he was stricken; he wanted to tell his translator to stop her, but of course that would have been indecorous. I want to do something for you. Anything. I want . . . But it would have been indecorous.
“SHE IS a fine person, very hard-working, very trustworthy,” Liebert was saying slowly. “Not my friend or even acquaintance, but my sister’s . . . my older sister, who was her classmate. She is a very accomplished violist, participated in a festival last spring in Moscow, but also a very fine teacher here, very hardworking, very serious.”
“Is she married?” Oliver asked.
They were being driven in a shiny black taxicab along an avenue of trees in blossom—acacia, lime—past buildings of all sizes, some very old, some disconcertingly new, of glass and poured concrete and steel, and from time to time the buildings fell back and a monument appeared, sudden, grandiose, rather pompous—not very old either, Oliver noted. Postwar.
“There is some difficulty, yes,” the translator said, “with the husband . . . and with the father as well. But I do not know, really. I am not an acquaintance of hers, as I said. She lives her life, I live mine. We meet a few times a year, at gatherings like the one last night . . . She too does translations, though not into English. Into Italian and German exclusively.”
“Then she is married? You mentioned a husband? . . .”
Liebert looked out the window, as if embarrassed by Oliver’s interest. He was not unwilling to talk about the young woman, but not willing either. For the first time in their three days’ acquaintance, Oliver felt the young man’s stubborn nature. “They have not been together in one place for many years, as I understand it,” he said. “The husband, not an acquaintance of my own, is some years older than she . . . a doctor, I believe . . . a research specialist in an area I know nothing of. He is in another city. He has been in another city, and Alisa in this city, for many years.”
“I’m sorry to hear that,” Oliver said sincerely. “She struck me as sweet, vulnerable . . . possibly a little lonely? I don’t like to think that she may be unhappy.”
Liebert shrugged his shoulders.
“Unhappy, so?” he murmured.
They drove through a square and Oliver’s attention was drawn to an immense portrait of a man’s face, a poster three stories high.
“Amazing!” he said without irony.
“It is not amazing, it is ordinary life,” Liebert said. “We live here.”
“. . . She isn’t unhappy, then? No more than most?”
“There is not the—what is the word?—the compulsion to analyze such things, such states of mind,” Liebert said with a vague air of reproach. “It is enough to complete the day—working hard, doing one’s obligations. You understand? Leisure would only result in morbid self-scrutiny and the void, the infatuation with the void, which is your fate.”
“My fate?” Oliver said. “Not mine. Don’t confuse me with anyone else.”
Liebert mumbled an apology.
They drove on in silence for a few minutes. They were approaching a hilly area north of the city; in the near distance were mountains of a peculiar magenta color, partly obscured by mist. Oliver felt, still, that uncharacteristic euphoria, as if he were in a dream, a kind of paradise, and on all sides miracles ringed him in. He had not been prepared for the physical beauty of this place, or for the liveliness of its people. And his translator, Liebert, was quite a surprise. He spoke English with very little accent, clear voiced, boyish, attentive to Oliver’s every hesitation or expression of curiosity, exactly as if he could read Oliver’s thoughts. He took it as his solemn duty, evidently, to make Oliver comfortable in every way. His manner was both shy and composed, childlike and remarkably mature. He had a sweet, melancholy, shadowed face with a head of thick, dark, curly hair and a widow’s peak above a narrow forehead; his cheekbones were Slavic; his complexion was pale but with a faint rosy cast to it, as if the blood hummed warmly close beneath the skin. Large brown eyes, a long nose, ears too large for his slender face . . . something about him put Oliver in mind of a nocturnal animal, quick, furtive, naturally given to silence. In general he had an ascetic appearance. No doubt he was very poor, in his ill-fitting tweed suit and scuffed brown shoes, his hair crudely cut, so short that it emphasized the thinness of his neck and the prominence of his Adam’s apple. Not handsome, perhaps, but attractive in his own way. Oliver liked him very much.
“If you would like, perhaps another meeting could be arranged,” he said softly. “That is, it would not be impossible.”
“Another meeting? With her?”
“If you would like,” Liebert said.
LOVE: loss of equilibrium. Imbalance. Something fundamental to one’s being, an almost physical certainty of self, is violated. Oliver had loved women in the past and he had felt, even, this distressing physical urgency, this anxiety before; but it had never blossomed so quickly, based on so little evidence. The night of the reception at the Institute he had slept poorly, rehearsing in his sleep certain phrases he would say to Alisa, pleading with her, begging her. For what? And why? She was a striking woman, perhaps not beautiful; it was natural that he might be attracted to her, though his experiences with women in recent years had been disappointing. But the intensity of his feeling worried him. It was exactly as if something foreign to his nature had infiltrated his system, had found him vulnerable, had shot his temperature up by several degrees. And he rejoiced in it, despite his worry and an obscure sense of shame. He really rejoiced in it. He woke, poured himself some of the sweet-tasting brandy he had left on his night table, lay back upon the goose-feather pillows, and thought of her. Was it possible he could see her again? Under what pretext? He was leaving in four days. Possibly he could extend his visit. Possibly not.
He recalled her bony, broad cheekbones, the severity of her gaze, her rather startled smile. A stranger. One of many strangers. In this phase of his life, Oliver thought, he met only strangers; he had no wish to see people he knew.
I love you. I want—what do I want? . . . I want to know more about you.
A mistake, but he could not resist pouring more brandy into the glass. It tasted like sweet, heavy syrup at first and then, after a few seconds, like pure alcohol, blistering, acidic. One wished to obliterate the strong taste with the sweet—the impulse was to sip a little more.
According to his clock in its small leather traveling case, it was three-fifteen.
“I want . . . what do I want?” he murmured aloud.
LIEBERT TRANSLATED for Oliver: “She says that the ‘extravagance’ you speak of in Androv’s chronicles . . . and in our literature generally . . . is understood here as exaggeration . . . Metaphors? . . . metaphors, yes, for interior states. But we ourselves, we are not extravagant in our living.”
“Of course I only know Androv’s work in translation,” Oliver said quickly. “It reads awkwardly, rather like Dreiser . . . do you know the name, the novelist? . . . One of our distinguished American novelists, no longer so popular as he once was . . . I was enormously impressed with the stubbornness, the resiliency, the audacity of Androv’s characters, and despite his technique of exaggeration they seemed to me very lifelike.” He paused, in order to give Liebert the opportunity to translate. He was breathing quickly, watching Alisa’s face. They were having a drink in the hotel lounge, a dim, quiet place where morose potted plants of a type Oliver did not recognize grew more than six feet high, drooping over the half-dozen marble tables. Oliver was able to see his own reflection in a mirror across the room; the mirror looked smoky, webbed as if with a spider’s web; his own face hovered there indistinct and pale. His constant, rather nervous smile was not visible.
In the subdued light of the hotel lounge, Alisa seemed to him more beautiful than before. Her dark hair was drawn back and fastened in an attractive French twist. It was not done carelessly into a bun or a knot, the way many local women wore their hair; it shone with good health. She wore a white blouse and, again, the old-fashioned cameo brooch, and a hip-length sweater of some coarse dark wool, and a nondescript skirt that fell well below her knees. Her eyes were slightly slanted, almond shaped, dark, glistening; her cheekbones, like Liebert’s, were prominent. Oliver guessed her to be about thirty-five, a little older than he had thought. But striking—very striking. Every movement of hers charmed him. Her mixture of shyness and composure, her quick contralto voice, her habit of glancing from Oliver to Liebert to Oliver again, almost flirtatiously—he knew he was staring rudely at her but he could not look away.
“She says: Of course we have a reputation for audacity; how else could we have survived? The blend of humor and morbidity . . . the bizarre tall tales . . . ‘deaths and weddings,’ if you are familiar with the allusion? . . . no? . . . she is referring to the third volume of The Peasants,” Liebert murmured. Oliver nodded as if he were following all this. In fact, he had lost track of the conversation; the woman fascinated him; he was vexed with the thought that he had seen her somewhere before, had in some way known her before . . . And he had read only the first two volumes of Androv’s massive work. “From the early fifteenth century, as you know, most of the country has been under foreign dominion . . . The most harsh, the Turks . . . centuries of oppression . . . Between 1941 and 1945 alone there were two million of us murdered . . . Without the ‘extravagance’ and even the mania of high spirits, how could we have survived?”
“I know, I understand, I am deeply sympathetic,” Oliver said at once.
He could not relax, though he had had two drinks that afternoon. Something was urgent, crucial—he must not fail—but he could not quite comprehend what he must do. An American traveler, not really a tourist, prominent enough in his own country to merit the designation of “cultural emissary”—the State Department’s term, not his own—he heard his own accent and his own predictable words with a kind of revulsion, as if here, in this strange, charming country, the personality he had created for himself over a forty-three-year period were simply inadequate: shallow, superficial, hypocritical. He had not suffered. He could pretend knowledge and sympathy, but of course he was an impostor; he had not suffered except in the most ordinary of ways—an early, failed marriage, a satisfactory but not very exciting profession, the stray, undefined disappointments of early middle age. He listened to the woman’s low, beautifully modulated voice and to his translator’s voice; he observed their perfect manners, their rather shabby clothing, and judged himself inferior. He hoped they would not notice. Liebert, who had spent so many patient hours with him, must sense by now his own natural superiority; must have some awareness of the irony of their relative positions. Oliver hoped the young man would not resent him, would not turn bitterly against him before the visit came to a conclusion. It seemed to him an ugly fact of life that he, Oliver, had money, had a certain measure of prestige, however lightly he valued it, and had, most of all, complete freedom to travel anywhere he wished. The vast earth was his—as much of it as he cared to explore. Other cultures, other ways of life were open to his investigation. Even the past was his, for he could visit places of antiquity, could assemble countless books and valuable objects, could pursue any interest to its culmination. As the editor and publisher of a distinguished magazine, which featured essays on international culture with as little emphasis as possible upon politics, Oliver was welcome nearly anywhere; he knew several languages—French, German, Italian, Spanish—and if he did not know a country’s language a skillful interpreter was assigned to him and there was rarely any difficulty. Though he was accustomed to think of himself as colorless, as a failure—he had wanted to be a poet and a playwright, as a young man—it was nevertheless true that he was a success and that he had a certain amount of power. Alisa and Liebert, however, were powerless; in a sense they were prisoners.
Of course they proclaimed their great satisfaction with postwar events. The Nazis had been driven back, another world power had come to their aid, the government under which they now lived was as close to perfection as one might wish. Compared to their tumultuous, miserable past, how sunny their present seemed!—of course they were happy. But they were prisoners just the same. They could not leave their country. It might even be the case that they could not leave this particular city without good cause. Oliver happened to know that nearly one third of the population was involved, on one level or another, in espionage—neighbors reporting on neighbors, relatives on relatives, students on teachers, teachers on supervisors, friends on friends. It was a way of life. As Liebert had said one day, it was nothing other than ordinary life for them.
Oliver knew. He knew. The two of them were fortunate just to have jobs that weren’t manual labor; they were fortunate to be as free as they were, talking with an American. He believed he could gauge their fate in the abstract, in the collective, no matter that the two of them were really strangers to him. He knew and he did sympathize and, in spite of his better judgment, he wished that he could help them.
At dusk they walked three abreast along the sparsely lit boulevard, the main street of the city. Oliver was to be taken to a workingman’s cafe; he was tired of the hotel food, the expensive dinners. They spoke now of the new buildings that were being erected south of the city, along the sea cliff; they told Oliver that he must take time to visit one of the excavations farther to the south—he would see Roman ornaments, coins, grave toys, statuary. “Alisa says the evidence of other centuries and other civilizations is so close to us,” Liebert murmured. “We are unable to place too much emphasis upon the individual, the ephemeral. Do you see? I have often thought along those lines myself.”
“Yes, I suppose so—I suppose that’s right,” Oliver said slowly.
Alisa said something to him, looking up at him. Liebert, on his right side, translated at once: “Future generations are as certain as the past—there is a continuity—there is a progress, an evolution. It is clear, it is scientifically demonstrable.”
“Is it?” Oliver said, for a moment wondering if it might be so. “Yes—that’s possible—I’m sure that’s possible.”
Liebert translated his words and Alisa laughed.
“Why is she laughing? What did you say?” Oliver asked, smiling.
“I said—only what you said. I translated your words faithfully,” Liebert said rather primly.
“She has such a ready, sweet laugh,” Oliver said. “She’s so charming, so unconscious of herself . . . Ask her, Liebert, where she’s from . . . where she went to school . . . where she lives . . . what her life is like.”
“All that?” Liebert asked. “So much!”
“But we have all evening, don’t we?” Oliver said plaintively. “. . . All night?”
THAT DAY he had been a guest at the district commissioner’s home for a two-hour luncheon. He had been driven to the village where the poet Hisjak had been born. Along with another guest of honor, an Italian novelist, he had been shown precious documents—the totally illegible manuscripts of an unknown writer, unknown at least to Oliver—kept in a safe in a museum. The first two evenings of his visit had been spent at endless dinners. He had witnessed a troupe of youthful dancers in rehearsal; he had admired the many statues of heroes placed about the city; he had marveled over the Byzantine domes, the towers and vaulting roofs and fountains. But his hours with Alisa and Liebert were by far the most enjoyable; he knew he would never forget them.
They ate a thick, greasy stew of coarse beef and vegetables, and many slices of whole-grain bread and butter, and drank two bottles of wine of a dry, tart nature, quite unfamiliar to Oliver. The three of them sat at a corner table in an utterly unimpressive restaurant; like a diner, it was, crude and brightly lit and noisy as an American diner. At first the other patrons took notice of them, but as time passed and the restaurant grew noisier, they were able to speak without being overheard. Oliver was very happy. He felt strangely free, like a child. The food was delicious; he kept complimenting them and asking Liebert to tell the waitress, and even to tell the cook; the bread, especially, seemed extraordinary—he insisted that he had never tasted bread so good. “How can I leave? Where can I go from here?” he said jokingly. They were served small, flaky tarts for dessert, and Oliver ate his in two or three bites, though he was no longer hungry and the oversweet taste, apricots and brandy and raw dark sugar, was not really to his liking.
“You are all so wonderful . . .” he said.
Alisa sat across from him, Liebert sat to his left. The table was too small for their many dishes and glasses and silverware. They laughed together like old friends, easily, intimately. Alisa showed her gums as she laughed—no self-consciousness about her—utterly natural, direct. Her eyes narrowed to slits and opened wide again, sparkling. The wine had brought a flush to her cheeks. Liebert too was expansive, robust. He no longer played the role of the impoverished, obsequious student. Sometimes he spoke to Oliver without feeling the necessity to translate his English for Alisa; sometimes he and Alisa exchanged remarks, and though Oliver did not know what they were saying, or why they laughed so merrily, he joined them in their laughter. Most of the time, however, Liebert translated back and forth from Oliver to Alisa, from Alisa to Oliver, rapidly, easily, always with genuine interest. Oliver liked the rhythm that was established: like a game, like a piece of music, like the bantering of love. Oliver’s words in English translated into Alisa’s language, Alisa’s words translated into Oliver’s language, magically. Surely it was magic. Oliver asked Alisa about her background, about the village she had grown up in; he asked her about her parents, about her work. It turned out that her father had been a teacher also, a music teacher at one of the colleges—“very distinguished and well loved”—but he had become ill, there was no treatment available, he had wanted to return to his home district to die. Oliver listened sympathetically. There was more to it, he supposed, there was something further about it . . . but he could not inquire. And what about the husband? But he could not inquire, he did not dare.
“You are all so remarkably free of bitterness,” he said.
Liebert translated. Alisa replied. Liebert hesitated before saying: “Why should we be bitter? We live with complexity. You wish simplicity in your life . . . good divided sharply from evil, love divided from hate . . . beauty from ugliness. We have always been different. We live with complexity; we would not recognize the world otherwise.”
Oliver was staring at Alisa. “Did you really say that?” he asked.
“Of course she said that. Those words exactly,” Liebert murmured.
“She’s so . . . she’s so very . . . I find her so very charming,” Oliver said weakly. “Please don’t translate! Please. Do you see? It’s just that I find her so . . . I admire her without reservation,” he said, squeezing Liebert’s arm. “I find it difficult to reply to her. Central Europe is baffling to me; I expected to be meeting quite different kinds of people; your closed border, your wartime consciousness that seems never to lift, your reputation for . . . for certain inexplicable . . .” Both Liebert and Alisa were watching him, expressionless. He fell silent. Absurdly, he had been about to speak of the innumerable arrests and imprisonments, even of the tortures reported in the West, but it seemed to him now that perhaps these reports were lies. He did not know what to believe.
“Freedom and constraint cannot be sharply divided, the one from the other,” Liebert said coldly. “Freedom is a relative thing. It is relative to the context, to the humanity it . . . serves? . . . shelters. For instance, your great American cities, they are so famed, they are ‘free,’ you would boast, citizens can come and go as they wish . . . each in his automobile, isn’t that so? But, in fact, we know that your people are terrified of being hurt by one another. They are terrified of being killed by their fellow citizens. In this way,” Liebert said, smiling, “in this way it must be judged that the nature of freedom is not so simple. But it is always political.”
“There’s a difference between self-imposed restrictions and . . . and the restrictions of a state like yours,” Oliver said, obscurely hurt, blinking. He had no interest in defending his nation. He did not care about it at all, not at the moment. “But perhaps you are correct; the issue is always political, even when it is baffling and obscure . . . In America we have too much freedom and the individual is free to hurt others, this is an excess of . . . am I speaking too quickly? . . . this is an excess rather than . . . But I don’t wish to talk of such things,” he said softly. “Not tonight. It is more important, our being together. Do you agree? Yes? Ask Alisa—does she agree?”
They agreed. They laughed together like old friends.
“Alisa says we must live our lives in the interstices of the political state,” Liebert said slyly, “like sparrows who make their nests on window ledges or street lamps. They are happy there until the happiness stops. We are happy until it stops. But perhaps it will not stop for many years—who can predict? Political oppression is no more a disaster than an accident on the highway or a fatal disease or being born crippled . . .”
“Disaster is disaster,” Oliver said thickly. “What do we care? There isn’t time. I must leave in a few days . . . I admire you both so very, very much. You’re noble, you’re brave, you’re attractive . . . she is beautiful, isn’t she? . . . beautiful! I’ve never met anyone so intelligent and beautiful at the same time, so vivacious, good-natured . . . Will you tell her that? Please?”
Liebert turned to her and spoke. She lowered her head, fussed with her hair, reddened slightly, frowned. A long moment passed. She glanced shyly at Oliver. Seeing the desperation in his eyes, she managed to smile.
“Thank you,” Oliver whispered. “Thank you both so very much.”
SOMETHING WAS stinging him.
Bedbugs?
His arms were curiously leaden; he could not move; he could not rake his nails against his sides, his abdomen, his buttocks, his back. He groaned but did not wake. The stinging became a single sweeping flame that covered his body, burned fiercely into his eyes.
“Alisa?” he said. “Are you here? Are you hiding?”
He was in the Old City, the City of Stone. Much of it had been leveled during the war, but there were ancient buildings—fortresses, inns, cathedrals. The weight of time. The weight of the spirit. On all sides, voices were chattering in that exquisite, teasing language he could not decipher. They were mocking him, jeering at him. They knew him very well. He was to be led to their shrine, where a miracle would be performed. The holy saint of Toskinjevec, patron saint of lepers, epileptics, the crippled and the insane and the fanatic . . . He was being hurried along the cobblestone streets. There were heavy oak doors with iron hinges; there were rusted latches and locks; walls slime-green with mold, beginning to crumble. Footsteps rang and echoed. Liebert held his hand, murmured words of comfort, stroked his head. He wanted only to obey. “Where is she? Is she already there?” he whispered. Liebert told him to be still—he must not speak! Someone was following them. Someone wished to hurt them. Oliver saw, in a panic, the greenish copper steeple of an old church; he could take refuge in its ruins; no one would find them there. The main part of the building had been reduced to rubble. A wall remained, and on this wall were posters of the great president—charmingly candid shots that showed the man with one of his children, and in a peasant’s costume, with a rifle raised to his shoulder and one eye squinted shut, and on the ledge above a waterfall, his arm raised in a salute to the crowd gathered below. Oliver hurried. Someone would stand guard for them—one of the men he had seen in the restaurant, had seen without really considering; a young black haired man who had been playing chess with a friend, and who had not glanced up a single time at Oliver and his friends. But now he would stand guard. Now he was to be trusted.
They descended into a cellar. Everywhere there were slabs of stone, broken plasterboard, broken glass. Weeds grew abundantly in the cracks. “Hurry,” Liebert urged, dragging him forward. Then Oliver was with her, clutching at her. By a miracle they were together. He kissed her desperately, recklessly. She pretended to resist.
“No, there isn’t time, there isn’t enough time,” he begged. “No, don’t stop me . . .” She went limp; she put her arms around his neck; they struggled together, panting, while the young translator urged them on, anxious, a little annoyed. Oliver’s entire body stung. Waves of heat swept over him and broke into tiny bits so that he groaned aloud. He wanted her so violently, he was so hungry for her, for her or for something . . . “How can I bring you with me?” he said. “I love you, I won’t surrender you.”
She spoke in short, melodic phrases. He could not understand. Now she too was anxious, clutching at him, pressing herself against him. Oliver could not bear it. He was going mad. Then, out of the corner of his eye, he happened to see someone watching them. The police! But no, it was a poorly dressed old man, a cripple, peering at them from behind a broken wall. He was deformed; his legs were mere stumps. Oliver stared in a panic. He could not believe what he saw. Behind the old man were two or three others, half crawling, pushing themselves along through the debris by the exertions of their arms, their legs cut off at the thigh. They were bearded, wide-eyed, gaping, moronic. He understood that they were moronic.
Oliver tried to lead Alisa away, but she resisted. Evidently the men were from a nearby hospital and were harmless. They had been arrested in an abortive uprising of some sort years before, and punished in ways fitting their audacity; but now they were harmless, harmless . . .
His sexual desire died at once. The dream died at once.
HE COULD not sleep. The dream had left him terrified and nauseated.
During the past few years, life had thinned out for Oliver. It had become insubstantial, unreal, too spontaneous to have much value. Mere details, pieces, ugly tiny bits. Nothing was connected and nothing made sense. Was this life? This idle, pointless flow? He had watched it, knowing that one must be attentive, one must be responsible. But he had not really believed in it. There was no internal necessity, no order, only that jarring spontaneity, a world of slivers and teasing fragments. Ugly and illusory.
Here, however, things seemed different. He could breathe here. There were travelers who could not accept the reality of the countries they visited and who yearned, homesick, for their own country, for their own language; but Oliver was not one of them. He would not have cared—not for a moment!—if the past were eradicated, his home country destroyed and erased from history.
He poured brandy into a glass, his fingers steady.
“Would I mourn? . . . Never.”
The dream had frightened him but it was fading now. It was not important. He had had too much to eat, too much to drink. His emotional state was unnatural. Love was an imbalance: he was temporarily out of control. But he would be all right. He had faith in himself.
The woman lived in a one-room apartment, Liebert had informed him. She shared it with another teacher at the high school, a woman. Should Oliver wish to visit her there—how could it be arranged? She could not come to the hotel. That was out of the question. Liebert had muttered something about the possibility of the other woman’s going to visit her family . . . though this would involve some expenses . . . She would need money. It would be awkward but it could be arranged. If so, then Alisa would be alone and Oliver would be welcome to visit her. There might be danger, still. Or was there no danger? Oliver really did not know.
“And what of her husband?” Oliver had asked hesitantly.
“Ah—there is no risk. The man is in a hospital at Kanleža, in the mountains . . . he is receiving treatment for emotional maladjustment . . . a very sad case. Very sad. It is tragic, but he is no risk; do not worry about him,” Liebert said softly.
They looked at each other for a moment. Oliver warmed, reddened. He did not know if he was terribly ashamed or simply excited.
“I love her,” he whispered. “I can’t help it.”
Liebert might not have heard, he had spoken so softly. But he did not ask Oliver to repeat his words.
“How much money would the woman need?” Oliver asked helplessly.
They had been here, in this room. The money had changed hands and Liebert had gone and Oliver had undressed at once, exhausted from the evening, from all the eating and drinking and talking. He had wanted only to sleep. His fate was decided: he would meet Alisa the following day, he would extend his visit for another week, perhaps, in order to see her every day. But now he must sleep, he was sick with exhaustion. And so he had slept. But dreams disturbed him; in them he was trying to speak, trying to make himself understood, while strangers mocked and jeered. The last dream, of Alisa and the deformed old men, was the most violent of all, a nightmare of the sort he had not had for years. When he woke he felt debased, poisoned. It was as if a poison of some sort had spread throughout his body.
He sat up, leafing through a guidebook in English, until dawn.
“BUT I don’t understand. Where is Mr. Liebert?”
His new translator was a stout, perspiring man in his fifties, no more than five feet four inches tall. He wore a shiny black suit with a vest and oversized buttons of black plastic. Baldness had enlarged his round face. His eyebrows were snarled and craggy, his lips pale, rubbery. With a shrug of shoulders he dismissed Liebert. “Who knows? There was important business. Back home, called away. Not your concern.”
He smiled. Oliver stared, thinking, He’s a nightmare, he’s from a nightmare. But the man was real, the bright chilly morning was real. Oliver’s dismay and alarm were real. He tried to protest, saying that he had liked Liebert very much, the two of them had understood each other very well; but the new translator merely smiled stupidly, as before. “I am your escort now and your translator,” he repeated.
Oliver made several telephone calls, but there was nothing to be done.
“I do not have the acquaintance of Mr. Liebert,” he said as they walked out together. One eyelid descended in a wink. “But there is no lack of sympathy. It is all the same. A nice day, isn’t it? That is acacia tree in blossom, is lovely, eh? Every spring.”
The man’s accent was guttural. Oliver could not believe his bad luck. He walked in a trance, thinking of Alisa, of Liebert—Liebert, who had been so charming, so quick. It did not seem possible that this had happened.
That day he saw the posters of his dream. He saw a tarnished coppery green steeple rising above a ruined church. He saw, in the distance, long, low, curiously narrow strips of cloud or mist rising from the sea, reaching into the lower part of the city. Beside him the squat, perspiring man chattered in babyish English, translated signs and menus, kept asking Oliver in his mechanical chirping voice, “It is nice, eh? Spring day. Good luck.” From time to time he winked at Oliver as if there were a joke between them.
Oliver shuddered.
The city looked different. There was too much traffic—buses, motorbikes, vans of one kind or another—and from the newer section of the city, where a number of one-story factories had been built, there came invisible clouds of poison. The sky was mottled; though it was May 15, it was really quite cold.
“Where is Liebert?” Oliver asked, more than once. “He and I were friends . . . we understood each other . . .”
They went to a folk museum where they joined another small group. Oliver tried to concentrate. He smiled, he was courteous as always, he made every effort to be civil. But the banalities—the idiotic lies! His translator repeated what was said in a thick, dull voice, not passing judgment as Liebert would have done, slyly—and Oliver was forced to reply, to say something. He stammered, he heard his voice proclaiming the most asinine things—bald, blunt compliments, flattery. Seven or eight men in a group for an endless luncheon, exchanging banalities, hypocritical praise, chatter about the weather and the blossoming trees and the National Ballet. The food was too rich, and when Oliver’s came to him it was already lukewarm. The butter was unsalted and tasteless. One of the men, a fat, pompous official, exactly like an official in a political cartoon, smoked a cigar and the smoke drifted into Oliver’s face. He tried to bring up the subject of his first translator but was met with uncomprehending stares.
Afterward he was taken, for some reason, to the offices of the Ministry of Agriculture; he was introduced to the editor of a series of agricultural pamphlets; it was difficult for him to make sense of what was being said. Some of these people spoke English as well as his translator did, and he had the idea that others merely pretended not to know English. There was a great deal of chatter. He thought of Alisa and felt suddenly exhausted. He would never get to her now—it was impossible. Beside him, the fat sweating man kept close watch. What was being said?—words. He leaned against a gritty windowsill, staring absently out at the innumerable rooftops, the ugly chimneys and water tanks, the banal towers. He remembered the poison of his dream and could taste it in the air now; the air of this city was remarkably polluted.
“You are tired now? Too much visit? You rest, eh?”
“Yes.”
“You leave soon, it was said? Day after tomorrow?”
“Yes. I think so.”
There were streetcars, and factory whistles. Automobile horns. In the street someone stared rudely at him. Oliver wondered what these people saw—a tall, sandy-haired man in his early forties, distracted, haggard, rather vain in his expensive clothes? They looked at his clothes, not at him. At his shoes. They did not see him at all; they had no use for him.
“You are maybe sick?”
“A little. I think. Yes.”
“Ah!” he said, in a parody of sympathy. “You go to room, rest. Afterward, perk up. Afterward there is plan for evening—yes? All set?”
“Evening? I thought this evening was free.”
The man winked. “She is friend—old friend. Sympathizes you.”
“I don’t understand,” Oliver stammered.
“All understand. All sympathize one another,” the man said cheerfully.
“IS WEALTHY? Own several automobiles? What about house—houses? Parents are living? How many brothers and sisters? Is married has children? How many? Names?”
The three of them sat together, not in Alisa’s room but in another cafe. Oliver was paying for their drinks. He was paying for everything. The woman’s curt, rude questions were being put to him in clusters and he managed to answer, as succinctly as possible, trying not to show his despair. When his translator repeated Oliver’s answers, Alisa nodded emphatically, always the same way, her eyes bright, deliberately widened. Wisps of hair had come loose about her forehead; it annoyed Oliver that she did not brush them away. She was a little drunk, her laughter was jarring, she showed her gums when she laughed—he could hardly bear to watch her.
“Say like our country very much? Good. New place going up— there is new company, Volkswagen—many new jobs. When you come back, another year, lots new things. You are friendly, always welcome. Very nice. Good to know . . .”
The conversation seemed to rattle on without Oliver’s intervention. He heard his voice, heard certain simpleminded replies. Alisa and the fat man laughed merrily. They were having a fine time. Oliver drank because he had nothing else to do; whenever he glanced at his watch, the other looked at it also, with childish, open avarice. Time did not pass. He dreaded any mention of the room, of the alleged roommate who had left town, but he had the idea that if he refused to mention it, the others would not mention it either. They were having too good a time, drinking . . . They murmured to each other in their own language and broke into peals of laughter, and other patrons, taking notice, grinned as if sharing their good spirits.
“Is nice place? All along here, this street. Yes? Close to hotel. All close. She says: Is wife of yours pretty? Young? Is not jealous, you on long trip, take airplane? Any picture of wife? Babies?”
“No wife,” Oliver said wearily. “No babies.”
“No—? Is not married?”
“Is not,” Oliver said.
“Not love? Not once?”
“Not,” he said.
The two of them exchanged incredulous looks. Then they laughed again and Oliver sat silent, while their laughter washed about him.
BEING DRIVEN to the airport he saw, on the street, a dark-haired cyclist pedaling energetically—a young long-nosed handsome boy in a pullover sweater—Liebert—his heart sang: Liebert. But of course it was not Liebert. It was a stranger, a boy of about seventeen, no one Oliver knew. Then again at the airport he saw him. Again it was Liebert. A mechanic in coveralls, glimpsed in a doorway, solemn, dark-eyed, with a pronounced widow’s peak and prominent cheekbones: Liebert. He wanted to push his way through the crowd to him. To his translator. He wanted to touch him again, wanted to squeeze his hands, his arm. But of course the young man was a stranger—his gaze was dull, his mouth slack. Oliver stared at him just the same. The plane was loading, it was time for him to leave, yet he stood there, paralyzed.
“What will I do for the rest of my life?” he called to the boy.