5.
Be alone on the street
and I need a room
that will hold five thousand
with glasses raised,
glasses raised
now (fall 2010)
Nora walked out of the hotel, leaving behind the elegiac poet and the book he’d been foisting on her, which she left on the seat of the chair next to hers, tucked under the thick folds of the tablecloth. It was early afternoon, and she decided to stroll through the city—ghostly empty at this hour, abandoned, as if everyone who could go had already left; the city had had no mayor for several weeks now. The high school principal, Brigita Arsovska, out of an overabundance of concern for the public good and her profound belief in the mission of the city council, had provided the media with a recording a few weeks before, during the summer break, in which the mayor could be heard attempting to buy her vote. Urging her to swerve from the right side of the aisle to the left to guarantee the passage of the municipal budget, to give him four more years of his mandate, which would mean the privatization of the port and the stretch of land in the duty-free zone that the mayor was treating as if it were his own backyard. At a pivotal moment Brigita felt he was getting much too much in return for her cooperation, while she would have to make do with nothing but a seat on an advisory board and the occasional excursion to Brussels. She was probably also worried that the leadership of her own party and cohort would retaliate, and she was learning just how rotten politics were, how bribery and corruption were rampant on all sides, and she felt compelled to expose the widespread hypocrisy to the community at large. Not long after she publicized the recording, once its authenticity had been verified, both of them were stripped of their functions. The mayor was soon replaced, and she was named as her own acting principal. Inspectors were sent to the school—this much the mayor was still able to pull off with the support system he’d rigged and the incident of the unhinged teacher—and the inspection was slated to include an in-depth examination of her work. The inspectors arrived to investigate, observed a number of irregularities in the work of the principal and the way she’d risen to her position. Brigita was not particularly concerned; she knew that soon she would be in power. Her only worries were the occasional late-night telephone calls from the almost ousted mayor that had been going on for weeks. He, clearly, was not prepared to give up so easily, especially not like this. He insisted they get together, and she was determined to avoid meeting with him. Everyone is running from someone, or from their own past.
Nora headed off toward the arcades and spotted several bilingual signs on some buildings. This time they’d been mounted several feet above the standard height for signs and were fenced off with iron-mesh barriers. Not one of the rare passersby, most of them elderly, looked at the signs; as they walked they kept their gaze trained on the ground. A small, stooped woman hobbled by several feet in front of her, leaning on a cane. The coat she wore was so old-fashioned that it could almost have been fashionable, and she carried a small clutch purse. One more detail caught Nora’s eye: the hand holding the purse was clad in a beige lace glove. She had nothing better to do, and she was dreading the prospect of interviewing Kristina’s neighbors—statements from people like them were, to her mind, the dregs—so she turned to follow the woman. Just for a few minutes, a stroll. The woman turned toward the bridges at the confluence of the Vuka and the Danube, stopping every so often and gazing out over the wall into the water. She stopped by the back of Hotel Danube, looked across the river, and sat on the nearest bench. While Nora was passing her, they made eye contact. The old woman measured her and then, at the very last moment, said, in a raspy voice:
“Hello there.”
“Hi!” responded Nora readily, remembering that people still conversed with strangers in the smaller cities and towns. “Cold?” she asked the old woman.
“Oh, no, I’m used to this. It turns nasty only when the wind blows.”
“Yes, along the river the wind is different,” added Nora, still torn between continuing her wander and her desire to talk.
“Like a seat?” The old woman made room for her on the bench.
“Sure, thanks.”
“There aren’t as many young people in the city as there used to be. The evening promenade was teeming. You couldn’t even make your way across the bridge. The boys would stand to one side”—she waved to where the two rivers joined—“and up and down we’d parade, maybe ten times.” She laughed, her lips dry.
“Are you from here?”
“From there!” Her hand was still midair, but she flipped it so it pointed toward the Hotel Lav. “But now I’m in a studio apartment. Which they gave me.”
“They didn’t rebuild your house?” asked Nora.
“Ugh,” sighed the woman. “Rebuilt it and then took it.”
“Took it?”
“My late uncle, Viktor Schwartz, when he died, why the whole city came out for the funeral, they all wept, young and old.”
“You’re from the Schwartz family?”
“I am Melania Gmaz.” She nodded with dignity. “My mother, Hedvig, married into the Kirbaums, and my uncle ran a pharmacy, the finest one in the area. Jozefina Vraga worked there, and she’s still alive; she’s one hundred and six, you can
