“What do you think?”
“Isn’t Hotel Silence just fine?”
There is a long pause.
“Yes, maybe we should stick to silence,” he says, slipping his headphones back over his ears.
With a shimmering sky on the eyelids
Twelve days have passed and the actress has returned.
I meet her on the stairs and I feel as if I’d stumbled on a slightly electrified fence.
I observe her. She seems depressed and serious.
“How was the trip?” I ask.
“Everything is in ruins,” she says. “The community’s entire infrastructure has been destroyed.”
I’ve got a swollen cheekbone, bloodshot eyes, and a white bandage over my eyebrow. She looks worried.
“I heard you were attacked,” she says.
“Yes, somebody doesn’t like me taking a vacation here.”
“Are you okay?”
And she raises her hand, slowly, as if she were about to touch the wound, but then just keeps it suspended in the air, close to my face, as if she were about to stroke my cheek, but then just as suddenly allows it to sink again.
“It’s nothing to be worried about,” I say. “The guy who attacked me used to sing in a choir,” I add.
She stares at me as if trying to solve a riddle.
“I also heard that you’ve been helping women. People talk.”
“Yes, I’m helping them fix up a house.”
She takes a deep breath.
“Every woman has lost someone, a husband, a father, a son, or brothers. Children have lost fathers or older brothers. Those who survived have lost arms, legs, or some other body parts.”
“Did you find the locations for the documentary?”
“The women are cautious and don’t want to talk about what they’ve been through. They don’t want to be interviewed. They’re tired. They’re trying to understand what happened.”
She pauses.
“Then a generation will grow up without any memory of it. Then there’ll be the danger of a new war.”
She falls silent.
“That won’t be for another ten years yet, though,” she adds, “because that’s how long it takes to create a new generation of men.”
Then she takes on a distant air and her voice changes, as if she were tired.
“Towards the end there were more mercenaries, some kind of private army working for security corporations. They directly participated in the attacks. People can’t win a war without the involvement of private security services. They pay huge sums. They’re the same companies that manufacture the weapons, produce the mercenaries, and work on the reconstruction after the war. Now these same entities are building drug companies and pharmacies everywhere. They ask if people have headaches and give them aspirin. They say that no one should have to feel pain.”
“But the script?”
She doesn’t answer the question, but says she’s finished doing what she intended to do.
“I’m leaving tomorrow,” she says, looking me straight in the eye. “So this is my last day.”
She smiles.
At me.
The last day also means the last night.
“I’ll come to you tonight,” I say without any preamble.
A coat of flesh
I quickly glance in the mirror and run my hand through my hair before closing the door behind me.
Her room is number eleven, at the very bottom of the corridor.
She stands opposite me and pulls the bedspread off the bed, but doesn’t fold it. Pigeons are cooing outside the window.
I unbutton the top button of my red shirt, peel back to the flesh. Under the shirt is a white water lily and under the water lily a heart still beats. Then I undo the next two buttons, while she handles her buttons and zippers. Once I’ve taken off my shirt and trousers, I remove my socks, it doesn’t take long. I take off my underpants and stand in front of her on the floor, stark naked. In the centre of the forest painting over the bed, between the black tree trunks, stands a hunter with a bow and arrow, who is looking a leopard in the eye. It is then that I notice that between the trees there is a winding path that seems to lead out of the painting. I stretch out my hand, grope towards her and take one step forward, there are still three floorboards between us. Then I take another step, a moment later skin touches skin. We press our palms against each other, lifeline against lifeline, artery against artery, I feel the pulsations through my entire body, my neck, knees, and arms, I feel the blood pumping between my organs. Then I touch her collarbone.
“Is that a flower?” she asks, placing her palm flat on my chest.
I take a breath. And then exhale.
STEEL LEGS LTD.
I phone Waterlily and get straight to the point, while Fifi fiddles with the computer.
“Doesn’t …” I try to remember my daughter’s ex-boyfriend’s name. “Is Frosti still working in that prosthetics firm?”
I explain to her on the phone that I’m in touch with a physiotherapist who works on the rehabilitation of land mine victims. The physiotherapist is one of the women in the house who May introduced me to.
“Most of the people who lose a limb do so after a war,” I say.
“I see.”
“The woman I’m in touch with says she gets limbless people in a very bad state, but that they leave her walking on artificial legs.”
I continue:
“I need prosthetic legs for fourteen people.”
“Yeah?”
“For a seven-year-old boy, an eleven-year-old girl, a fourteen-year-old teenager, a twenty-one-year-old woman, and for a thirty-three-year-old and a forty-four-year-old man.” I rattle off part of the list and tell her I’ll be taking the measurements and sending them to her.
I hesitate:
“And I need to get a loan from you for this.”
There is a silence at the other end of the line, then she says:
“Dad, aren’t you coming home soon?”
“Not straightaway. You’re visiting your granny, aren’t you?” She lowers her voice and I get the feeling she’s moving.
“I’m actually at granny’s right now.”
“Hang on,” she says and I hear her raising her voice to explain something to her granny.
In the meantime, I wait and worry about the phone bill.
“Granny wants to have a word with you, Dad.”
I hear her handing Mom the phone.
“Hello, this is
