Crumbs (13 page)

The three in the first row laughed loudly.

Selim went down the stairs, walked up to them, and smashed their faces in.

Then he went back on the stage.

There was a deadly silence in the auditorium.

He looked up to the projection room and shouted, ‘And if the film breaks once more, I'll smash your face in.'

Everything was quiet up there, too.

Selim returned to his seat and sat motionless.

The film didn't break anymore. We watched it in fear-induced silence right to the end.

When the lights came on again, I could hardly get up. Both my legs had gone to sleep. My arse was full of pins and needles. My back hurt.

I hadn't dared to move for two hours because the rickety rows of wooden chairs accompanied every little move with a sad creaking.

Selim went to see the next performance, too.

I was very glad to be rid of his company. His madness was growing by the minute. And I had no idea where, when, and how it would all stop.

I became scared.

I set off for Noodle's. He lived in an old bunker from the Second World War high above the town, in the middle of the woods. A few years ago the police used to amuse themselves by parking their cars in front of the entrance to the bar just before closing time and picking up all their old acquaintances who were sitting at the tables, me included. They drove us far up into the hills and let us out in the middle of the woods. They wished us a good journey and drove off. It was dawn the next day by the time we wandered back into the valley, scratched, bruised, frozen, and grubby. They repeated this throughout the summer, at least once a week. Occasionally they'd leave one of us
sitting at the table, but it was never Noodle. He always took part in the transportation until he got fed up and after one of the rides stayed in the hills. Didn't come back. The wisest one gives in.

Once every two months he'd call in the valley, come for a short visit. Sitting in the bar he cursed the world and did what he got his nickname for: he cut thin noodles of his skin from his arm or leg with a razor blade.

I was already across the river at the other side of the foundry. I cut through the rubble of the abandoned workroom, avoiding the sheets of corrugated iron that had fallen from the roofs.

The sky was full of stars. A gentle, warm breeze was peeling a thick blanket of red dust from the walls.

I stopped in a bar, an island of light and singing in the midst of the rubble. It must have been in the centre of the foundry once, but then the foundry moved and left it to the slow decay and the faithful customers. A few years ago, I used to like coming here for a beer. I was attracted by the magical and romantic interior. After three crumbling stairs you'd get to a dark corridor with creaking floorboards. The entrance was on the left. A brass door handle, very heavy under your hand. There were gaps between the door and the frame. Through a gap in the upper right corner a ray of light escaped. After it a thin wreath of cigarette smoke. You'd go in, and the first thing you'd notice was a bare, weak bulb at the end of the wires sticking out from the ceiling. The circle of light from it only reached a part of the bar on the left and a couple of tables. The rest was in darkness.

When your eyes got used to the dark, they met the eyes of the small, hunchbacked waitress, a very old woman. A tuft of hair grew out of a mole on her nose. She waited
for your order silently. You paid for your beer and sat down. The other customers, hidden by darkness, only then continued their conversations. Old drunks, in tatty clothes, usually without an arm or a leg. There were no accidental customers here. Only regulars. The bar was never mentioned in the crime reports of the newspaper anymore. A few times I'd witnessed a brawl. Knives shone. Nobody called the police. They took care of their own business among themselves. You drank your beer, inhaling your surroundings. Magical.

I felt like Oliver Twist.

I didn't know who or why anybody thought it worthwhile investing money in this ruin. Instead of the light bulb, a long neon light stretched across the ceiling. The wooden bar had

been replaced by a heap of glass and plastic. The peepholes were enlarged into windows. They'd fucked it all up. The charming waitress had turned into an ordinary old woman. She didn't even have a hunchback anymore, and she was only slightly bent. She blinked in the neon light along with the customers, whose appearance had changed from vicious crooks to ordinary workers. I never went there anymore.

I avoided it this time, too. Sad because of progress, which spoils every trace of homeliness.

I had already reached the ghetto. The place which officially wasn't there and which the majority of people on the right bank of the river didn't even know existed. Or so they claimed. Long rows of huts built of planks of wood, wooden beams, corrugated cardboard leaning on the slope. Full of workers from the south waiting to get a job at the foundry. If they got one a flat soon followed. They moved to the right bank into a more modern ghetto.

I walked right by the windows. I cut across the beams of light coming from them. Cassette players and children were screaming. The warm wind carried with it the smell of shit and old piss. I peered through a window. Somebody was trying to move a horse to the other end of the room by kicking it so that he could see the television.

Something has to be said here. Loudly and clearly. Here it goes:

THIS ISN'T POVERTY, THIS IS A WAY OF LIFE.

People can make their beds the way they happen to like them. At least within their means. If you've managed to build a hut, you could manage to build a stable, too. I knew quite a few who didn't want to move to the right bank at all. And others who did move but who kept pigs in their bathroom, ripped the parquet floor out of their bedrooms and grew tomatoes instead. Apparently they grew very well. On Sundays the fire brigade would drive around the town, putting out barbecues lit in the kitchens, on balconies, or in the cellars.

IT'S A WAY OF LIFE.

So there.

The ghetto was behind me, and I started going up the slope. A well-trodden path zigzagged among the bushes. All the holes and bumps were illuminated by the large, pale moon. I stopped and listened. In front of me I could distinguish a long, tall building. It probably used to be a military warehouse. Now it was fully inhabited. I squatted behind a bush and had a good look around. The hairs on my back stood up with fear. Maybe this time I'd manage to get past without it noticing me. I moved forward on the balls of my feet. I turned swiftly. There was nobody behind me. The shadows seemed impenetrably dense. Suddenly I felt like running. I managed to get a grip on myself. In
spite of the creature that appeared every time I went past there, my fear was completely groundless. And because of that, even stronger.

I turned off the path onto the grass.

Going right into the woods to avoid the building.

I stopped and looked back.

Nobody.

My neck was tingling like mad now.

I took a deep breath. I tried to get used to the creature's sound that would cut through the silence.

I had taken three steps when I heard it right behind me.

OOOOOOOOOOOooooooooOOOOOOOOOOOOO

I didn't have to turn around. I knew who was howling. I wanted to run up into the hills as usual but stopped and turned around. I don't know why. One of those nights maybe.

The creature stood two metres behind me.

It didn't stop howling.

I'd never heard anything like it before. It sounded like a dog howling at the moon but it was full of terror, sad and lonely.

And it came from a human throat.

I could hardly stop shaking. Another impulse to escape. To run away from the sound that was tearing my brain apart.

And it wasn't loud at all.

For the first time I looked at the howling figure for more than a second.

It seemed to be a woman of indeterminate age. You could hardly make out her eyes. Her nose and mouth were pushed to the left. They'd been forced sideways by a huge lump, which swelled up the right side of the face. It was red, soft, and porous with white spots, like mould. Eczema
maybe. The whole face was completely red. On top of her head was straight thin hair, cut in a straight line. Her bony little figure gave the impression of a young girl. I thought I could see two small breasts under the tatty turtleneck.

She howled again.

OOOOOOOOOOooooooooOOOOOOOOOOOOO

Everybody's got somebody who's a bigger victim than them. The lowest of the low. She was the scum of this pond. She walked around, accompanied by a flock of children, by cursing and stone throwing. A scene in slow motion floated in front of my eyes: I'm watching. She's standing on a concrete wall between the huts, howling. One of the children throws a stone. One that's almost too big for a child's hands. The stone flies towards her head. It hits the mark. In the middle of her lump.

I'm waiting for it to squash like a tomato. But it doesn't. She's bleeding. She's lying on the floor howling. The lump remains whole. It's probably harder than it looks.

OOOOOOOOOOooooooooOOOOOOOOOOOOO

I'd known about quite a few mentally ill women. The most-wanted were those who were mute as well. They'd get raped as soon they showed themselves in the street in the evenings.

Nobody touched this one probably. At least I couldn't imagine it. They even beat her with a stick to avoid touching her.

She howled again. Very quietly.

I spoke. Slowly, in a deep voice, articulating clearly.

‘Hey, calm down, I won't hurt you.'

I didn't even know if she was capable of understanding. It seemed to me that she liked it if somebody talked to her.

‘I won't hit you, you know.'

I shook my head.

‘No, I won't.'

She was watching me silently.

‘The night is for sleeping, you know.'

Below us a drunk shouted.

‘Go home, go to bed. I'll walk you there.'

I reached with my hand. I couldn't believe it. I watched the tips of the middle three fingers touching her shirt. No slime. The synthetic material under my fingers and the warmth of the body under it.

I took one step forward, towards the warehouse.

She followed.

We walked on the grass side by side. The dew sparkled on my shoes. All the way I was touching her with the balls of my fingers.

Repeating slowly as if I was lulling her to sleep, ‘Go to bed… everything's all right… go to bed…'

We came to the door.

She opened it and went in.

‘I'm going now… sleep well…'

I stepped back on the grass. She was looking at me.

I gestured her inside with a wave of my palm.

‘Go… everything's fine… sleep well.'

The door closed.

I ran. In the woods, I tripped over a tree root sticking out of the ground and bumped into the trunk. My right arm was still stretched out.

I rubbed the fingers that had touched her against the trunk of a pine tree until my skin started stinging.

The foundry looked like a shiny snake in the valley below.

I sat down and lit up.

After the cigarette, I started climbing the hill. I had to rest frequently. My lungs were letting me down. Too many
cigarettes.

At a certain height I again started tiptoeing. I was hoping that the wind wouldn't carry my scent to the hollow on the slope where they used to dig for gravel, and that the dog wouldn't smell me. A Gypsy family lived there. For many years they used to live in a ramshackle old bus, which somebody had left at the abandoned gravel pit, I don't know why or how. One evening I saw the glow of a fire as I walked past. I sat down next to the family as they stoically watched the bus burn. It burned fiercely, as if petrol had been poured on it. We lit up. I asked them why they didn't call the fire brigade. They looked at me as if I was an idiot. Slowly, as if to a child who hasn't quite grasped the finer points of life yet, they explained that it was the fire brigade who had set fire to the wreckage because it was illegal to live in an abandoned bus. Okay. From then on they lived in a tent next to the burnt frame. They tied their dog to the supporting pole of a small tent in the evenings. Whenever I went past, he smelled me and started barking and pulling at his chain. The tent collapsed.

It happened this time, too. The barking of the dog was joined by the cursing of the kicking inhabitants of the tent.

I ran past as fast as my lungs let me. The foundry was already considerably smaller behind me. The barking could hardly be heard. Then it changed to whimpering.

Somebody was beating him.

I carried on to Noodle's abode. It took me some time to find the entrance to the bunker, half buried in the ground, overgrown with ferns and bushes.

I went in.

In the middle of the round room, a candle shone. Noodle was lying on some cardboard with his back against the wall, staring in front of him.

I put the bag under my arse and sat next to the candle. I had to shift a few times before I could get my balance, sitting on the ribs.

I smoked a cigarette and started coughing. Thick phlegm came from my chest.

I stepped to the loophole and spat out.

Noodle noticed me at last.

‘Oh, look who's here. Hi.'

I threw the bag in front of him.

‘I brought you some food.'

He shook the contents onto the floor and looked at me gracefully.

I sat down on a piece of cardboard.

I was going to lean on my hands, but I changed my mind before I put them down. Everywhere there were small, black turds, dried out. Probably not Noodle's. They looked too old.

I went out to take a piss. When I got back, Noodle had already started gnawing the bones and tearing the bread.

‘Here, have some,' he offered.

I declined the meat. I slowly chewed a handful of bread.

Noodle filled his shrunken stomach as best he could. The leftovers he put on a heap of paper next to him. He fumbled through the cardboard. He rolled away a rusted helmet, with a hole in the side, and took out a thin book and offered me it.