“Yeah,” confirmed Alfonz.
“And what happened then?”
Max leant forward expectantly, suppressing laughter only because he was hoping to get even more first-rate fuel for it.
“He asked me what my name was.”
“And?”
“Then he thanked me.”
“HE ASKED YOU WHAT YOUR NAME WAS? IN THE CELLAR? A BRAT? AND HE THANKED YOU?”
Alfonz nodded.
Max burst out laughing so loud that the walls shook. He roared so much that he drowned Alfonz’s next sentence, which only Raf could hear because he was next to him. And he found it so odd and meaningless that he thought it must have been a mistake.
“He didn’t open his mouth.”
What was that supposed to mean?
He took a good look at Alfonz who fell silent, looking towards his thighs.
“He really is legless! HA HA HA HA! Sad Alfonz has become a comedian! HA HA HA HA!” roared Max and Samo joined him.
Raf’s confused eyes moved from one side of the table to the other. He remembered the nursery and the toy elephant on the bed. A child?
He shook his head and concentrated on his drink. Soon, he would be drunk enough to get Max to give him his first cigarette of the night. In the morning he would be more hung over from the tobacco than the alcohol. So what!
“How long should I wait?” Ana kept asking herself. Maybe her uncle often had a turn like this and the villagers then had to look for him all over the island. Maybe there really was some danger and those boys were in trouble. If only she knew what time her uncle had left and where he was. Should she go and see Luka?
She looked at her watch. Half-past eleven. What should she do?
The waiting was killing her. A few times she stopped herself at the last minute before putting her fingers in her mouth and biting into her nails. After all the trials and tribulations of getting rid of the habit!
She got up and went to her room. She took her clothes out of her suitcase and arranged them neatly, quite automatically and without thinking, her hands working while her mind was miles away.
The last thing she took out of her bag was the walkman. She put it on the bedside cabinet and arranged the cassettes next to it. Then she put her hand to her chest, just below her neck, but soon changed her mind. No, she was not going to take her purse off except when she was in bed. That was what she had promised her mother.
“Finished. And now?”
She would get changed into her jeans.
She closed the window shutters and took off the white linen trousers which had in some places — especially at the bottom, on the inside — acquired a greyish tinge. She thought she would have to wash them. She picked them up by the waist and held them straight.
A stain. Big and black. Why had she not sensed it?
She just could not remember. Had she leant on the tank? Maybe it was from earlier, from the ferry? Oh, no! Maybe he had seen it too. What must he think of her?
Alfonz could not remember his name. The one in front of him was Max, the one next to Max was Samo, Raf was the one on his side of the table and…
He looked at Raf. He was drinking brandy, the brandy he had stolen from his parents. He had talked about theft earlier; he distinctly remembered Raf talking about thieves and about all they had stolen. Raf! What sort of a name was that? A nickname, yes. Alfonz remembered how Raf had acquired it: he had been hanging, head down, from the rings, then still Peter. Suddenly, he had let go and crashed almost vertically onto the mat. He had picked himself up immediately and said a name. Jesus, yes, that was what he had said. Max had started teasing him that that was how the Royal Air Force planes took aim. The day before, they had been watching an English film about the Second World War and Peter became Raf. That bony earwig next to him had two names and he did not have even one. Nothing. How was that possible? Max had a name, the gym had a name, and the school, even the film and every person in the film. Everybody. Except the ones who just walked on and off the set and did not say anything. Just like him. He was not allowed to speak. He was nameless. Oh, how could Raf talk about theft. Theft? What did he know about theft?
Or maybe he did? Those bastards with names were capable of anything. Somehow, Raf could have found out how his nameless schoolfriend had been stealing money from his parent’s bar for years, hiding it in his sewn-on pocket and buying his classmates’ friendship. He could see it now: he had been trying to buy a name for himself.
A name! A name!
He got up and started walking towards the door.
“Alfonz!”
Raf was saying something, calling somebody?
“Alfonz!”
Who? One of his own again? Those with names.
“ALFONZ!”
He would not stop shouting.
“HEY!”
Raf pulled Alfonz’s sleeve.
“Where are you going?”
“Out.”
“Are you alright? You look a bit strange.”
“Yeah, yeah.”
You just go ahead calling that Alfonz and leave me alone, thought Alfonz. What could be wrong with me? Nothing, I just haven’t got a name, he thought and walked out. Apart from Raf, nobody noticed.
Alfonz stopped in the hall and looked around.
Earlier, there had been a boy around there, also without a name. Actually, he did have one now. But it was not his.
He put his hands on his head and took a deep breath.
His memory of the boy from the cellar was very faint and foggy. The only thing Alfonz knew for certain was that the boy did not open his mouth when he talked.
Alfonz went outside and looked at the moon. Another name. He walked across the meadow, reciting names. Everybody had one, everybody. And he, who had spent four years (four years!) stealing money from the drawer behind the bar, did not have one. The risks he had taken, the suffering! He had only been able to spend the money on drink or food or to give it away. Nothing that would last. There was no way he could have used the money to buy a pair of jeans, as his mother would start asking him what he had paid for them with. That was why he had been going around in those rags for the past four years in spite of having all that money. Oh, how he hated those corduroy trousers and that bloody shirt! Oh, that was the end, the end! Never again, never!
He took a knife out of his pocket and opened it. He dragged the blade along the stitches on his thigh and the first holes appeared. Blood started coming out of some of them.
Enough was enough! He wanted to be like all the others! First he wanted the right clothes and then a name! Yes!
Faster and faster, with longer and longer sweeps he kept cutting off his trousers. They fell off him piece by piece and each one of them hurt. No wonder, he had been wearing them for such a long time! They had become a part of his body, his skin and what he was doing was not undressing, it was sloughing off. More, an operation! He would cut out his brown corduroy trousers!
