The Book of Blam Read online

  BLAM WAKES UP.

  In the final throes of his dream he is standing in front of a thick glass wall watching several figures twisting, writhing. Since the light is poor, he sees them as a blur of simplified forms, a skein of snakes crawling about with no direction or purpose. Yet he can somehow tell that they are people rather than snakes, and he senses that something terrible is going on there—pain, convulsions, death. Though horrified, he is also irresistibly drawn to the wall. He moves toward it with leaden steps, and the closer he gets, the clearer it becomes that there is in fact a tangled mass of human bodies on the floor behind it. Suddenly a figure detaches itself from the pile, rises to its knees, then to its feet, and reaches the wall at the same time as Blam. Blam stops, and the figure on the other side leans against the wall, pressing its hands and face to it. The hands squeeze out a blood-red color and gradually turn yellow; the face squashes flat, the nose broadening like a ripe fig, the mouth dividing into two leeches, the chin twisting into a pear, and finally the eyes meet the glass, two large goggle eyes whose eyeballs the pressure of the glass enlarges like water rings. The face, deformed as it is, looks familiar to Blam. He strains to connect its twisted features and faded complexion to something in his memory. His mind runs through the circle of his acquaintances and narrows until it comes to a point in the center and Blam realizes with amazement that the face is his own.

  He awakes bathed in sweat, his heart pounding.

  He is in his bed, which is near the window and criss-crossed by thin strips of light passing through the venetian blind to the wall, where Janja is dressing in their shimmer. He is struck simultaneously by three sensations. First, he fights the idea of waking yet welcomes it. He experiences waking as a lie, yet the dream that waking releases him from is also a lie. He is offended by the idea that one excludes the other. He still feels the horror of the dream’s image: the bodies intertwined, deformed by their suffering, with his among them. The suffering is real; he feels it inside him, in his short breath, his pounding heart, his cold sweat, and he senses, he knows that this is only the after-math of a whole dreamed life of suffering, which he no longer remembers and whose vestiges are fading, disappearing. He does not want them to disappear. If it is his life, he wants to keep it. On the other hand, his life also consists of waking in a cold sweat and watching a woman washed in light pull on her clothes and invite him into the shelter of the day.

  Second, resolved as he is to take the inevitable step, Blam realizes how ill prepared he is. His heartbeat is fast and fitful, reverberating in his rib cage as in a barrel, and after every fifth or sixth beat a needlelike pain shoots through his chest. He assumes it is an echo of the fear he felt in the dream, though he has had similar pains lately even without such stimuli, walking along the street, sitting at his desk, or simply relaxing, lying on his back. Something inside him grinds to a halt or, just the opposite, starts up, an imperfection somewhere, a defect, a faulty cog on the body’s wheel designed to keep things running smoothly, to maintain the balance between effort and strength. Once the balance is gone, the heart holds back, then speeds needlessly forward, leaving him either racing after it frantically or waiting, petrified, for it to catch up with him. He is convinced that his arteries are obstructed and that the fitful, uneven beating may send him into convulsions or a stroke, that he will cry out and gasp for air, but there will be no air, and he will suffocate, flailing like a cat thrown into the water with a stone around its neck. Will it happen here, now? Blam pricks up his ears, as if death might announce its arrival with a special cry or alarm. He is paralyzed by the effort to forestall it. But how? Perhaps the thing to do is ignore its presence and devote himself entirely to life, perhaps it will spare him as long as he does that. So he fills his lungs and tries to breathe evenly; he trains his eyes and ears on life, on the far end of the kitchen, and the stitch in his chest does in fact ease gradually, his heartbeat grows slower, calmer, more regular.

  But what he sees against the wall across the room only brings him new anxiety. The body bending over and straightening again, tall and supple—supple after all these years—the pink, sleek, supple body is the same as the one he saw from the tram, though then it was dressed in blue, with a bony, swarthy male arm around it. A hallucination? Perhaps, but so realistic, so like the image he had of her, that the vision instantly redefined and forever sealed their relationship. Like a symbol. Or a dream. Yes, like a dream more real than reality, deeper, sharper, since it is free of the intrusions of chance in the waking state. Like the dream he has just had. He is moving among dreams, from dream to dream, and everything not a dream is an illusion.

  THE BLAMS’ HOUSE in Vojvoda Šupljikac Square was a modest, one-story building, a brick building, true, but with moisture stains on the walls, narrow windows that let in too little light, low, vaulted ceilings in the cellar, and a courtyard that miserly instincts had truncated to make room for a separate backyard apartment. The trapdoor leading to the cellar bent and groaned every time it was stepped on, the sun appeared over the black roof at noon only, and the privy, which stood between the front and back building, was without water.

  The house had satisfied the Blams’ needs as newlyweds. They decided that rather than rent uncomfortable and costly rooms they would “put their own roof over their heads,” so they willingly invested the inheritance Blanka Blam had received upon the death of her mother, the widowed shopkeeper. Then, with the rise of the Novi Sad bourgeoisie—in which the Jews, with their worldwide family connections, played a leading part—the gap between what the house was and what it could be became more and more of an issue, and eventually a number of improvements were made. Vilim Blam, who assumed the role of designer, had a passion for the latest in everything, which came with his profession as journalist and with the long hours he spent at coffee houses. Blanka Blam, lacking in imagination and social contacts but hard-headed and determined, did her best to overcome all difficulties and put his ideas into practice. Blam liked nothing better of an evening than to have a cup of black coffee and a glass of red wine served in the dining room, to take out his pencil and sketch the plan of the house on the white pages of the notepad he carried in his pocket during the day for professional purposes. He would designate doors and windows with double perpendicular strokes, eliminate existing walls and draw in others, divide up or enlarge rooms, combine or separate hallways, and then, glowing with pleasure, call his wife away from the sink to have a look at his handiwork, annoyed if she, a dripping dish still in hand, failed to grasp the plan or show the proper enthusiasm. By the next morning he would forget the vision inspired by the wine and the evening hour, but she, who had only stood by with wrinkled brow, would remind him days or even weeks later of a detail that had in the meantime taken root in her mind, and ask him to call in workmen and set aside funds. Blam would put off the necessary negotiations and either forget to collect fees due him or spend them on the way home on gifts. Eventually, however, her repeated requests would bear fruit: the windows were replaced with new, larger, square ones, a glassed-in veranda sprang up in the courtyard, running water was installed to supplement the well, and—the pinnacle of modernization—a part of the unfashionably oversized pantry was turned into a bathroom.

  In the back house, where tenants, the widow Erzsébet Csokonay and her crippled daughter, lived, no such changes took place, except that every summer Erzsébet Csokonay would fasten a brush to a long pole and whitewash the walls around the tiny green windows and the glass door that gave access to her kitchen and from there to the apartment’s only real room. This door had once faced the back wall of her landlords’ house, which had nothing but the pantry’s ventilation window high under the eaves, but now it looked out on a large, modern, wider-than-high bathroom window. And from that window, every evening, the newly pubescent Miroslav Blam watched the widow at her bath.

  It might be said that this festival of nudity came about quite by chance, when one night Blam went into the bathroom without turning on the light and, noticing
a hazy glow coming from the courtyard, placed the bathroom stool on the toilet, climbed up on the stool, and beheld the widow bathing. But had he not been led by a vague inkling? Erzsébet Csokonay was a pale brunette who kept a kerchief tied tightly around her hair and always walked quickly and slightly bent, as if burdened by her widowed state, her poverty, and the responsibility of caring for the child she had brought into the world with a dislocated hip. Her mute resignation was visible to the growing Blam not only as she went daily through the courtyard to work (that is, to the houses of the well-to-do when extra help was needed) and back (to feed her daughter, whom she had to leave by herself) but also in the Blams’ house itself, where she sometimes did the washing, helped with spring cleanings, and so on. She worked quickly and silently, almost angrily, constantly flexing her ample body, her old skirt billowing around her like a ship’s sail in a tropical wind. But Blam did not focus on her female qualities until Lajos Kocsis began paying her regular visits.

  Kocsis was married, and although he lived with his wife and children at the house and at the expense of his butcher father-in-law (he was unemployed), he enjoyed the luxury of having a mistress. As he made no sacrifice for his pleasure—no material sacrifice, at least, for he lacked the resources—Erzsébet Csokonay not only had to keep working, she had to work harder, because he expected her to receive him in a clean, well-heated, well-stocked home. In her landlords’ house, the front house, the new situation met with unconditional condemnation. The Blams, peering out from the glassed-in veranda, where they enjoyed sitting after noonday meals or in the evenings, and seeing the short but solid, straight-backed figure of the middle-aged man in his threadbare but neatly brushed suit making his way through the courtyard to the back house, would exchange angry, ironic looks and mumble, “There he goes again!” then launch into a long discussion about the injustice of the relationship between the vain, hollow man and the helpless, lonely widow. They would never have admitted to anyone, not even to themselves, that part of their indignation stemmed from the disloyalty of their occasional servant, whom love and the sacrifices it entailed had delivered from the bonds of slavery, for Erzsébet would leave a task at the Blams’ undone whenever her idle lover showed up unexpectedly at her door.

  The sixteen-year-old Miroslav, however, was instinctively aware of the self-interest involved in his parents’ condemnation, and in his adolescent rebellion he took the side of the lovers. He was just coming to grips with his sexuality, as yet vague and undefined, and his parents’ rejection of Kocsis as a moral degenerate only served to weaken his own moral reserves. Whenever he saw Kocsis stride through the courtyard—freshly shaven, his gray-flecked hair combed back smoothly, a frayed tie forced into a knot around his ruddy bull neck—and disappear into Erzsébet Csokonay’s house, Blam’s mind and thoughts would fly from the textbook he so detested into the tiny, sealed-off room where everything he longed for was actually taking place. He would spend hours imagining their kissing, hugging, panting, their naked bodies arching and convulsing in shameless lust, after which the flesh-and-blood Kocsis would emerge into the courtyard—back straight, every hair in place, face and neck even ruddier than before—to be followed a few minutes later by the widow, off to pick up her crippled daughter from school or do some housework for a neighbor, a kerchief thrown over her bent head. Blam would follow her longingly with his eyes, picturing the vibrant body under the coarse fabric of her dress, and if he happened to catch her narrow-eyed glance, he felt singed.

  The night he discovered the observation point at the bathroom window, his eye went straight to the window-panes in Erzsébet Csokonay’s door, which, though hung with a gathered muslin curtain, left enough room uncovered at the top to afford him an unobstructed view of the kitchen from his post on the toilet. The widow was moving about the kitchen under a light he could not see, and Blam could tell from the intense concentration behind her otherwise fitful movements that she had something specific in mind. She piled the dishes from the table on the stove, folded the tablecloth, opened and closed the sideboard, and moved the table and chairs to one side. Then she placed a large white basin in the space she had created, went over to the stove, took the lid off a pot, picked up the pot, and poured water into the basin through billowing steam. The steam rose, spread, and for a few moments the woman was invisible, but it soon dispersed, and there she was without the kerchief, her long chestnut hair pinned behind her neck. She unbuttoned her blouse, took it off, almost sloughed it off, pulled down her skirt, stepped out of it, lifted her shift over her head, and shook off her slippers. She now stood in the middle of the kitchen totally naked. Blam nearly moaned: for all his prurient conjectures he had never dreamed that the body under the coarse dress would be so tender, so beautifully put together. The widow’s skin was smooth across the long milky thighs and almost transparent on the disproportionately small, quivery breasts, where it seemed to have been gathered prudishly by the two blood-red seals of the flat, finely wrinkled nipples.

  Then the scene lost its titillation: the widow began to wash. She bent over, so low that her shoulders concealed her breasts, dipped a bar of soap in the basin, rubbed it in her hands, and spread the suds over her arms and shoulders, under the arms, across the chest, and all the way back to the spinal column. Then she carefully rinsed off the soap, straddled the basin, squatted, and lathered her private parts, belly, behind, and thighs. Still squatting—her breasts resting on her knees like flattened cones and her belly and private parts hidden in the shadow between her thighs, except for a tuft of short dark hair—she poured more water over herself. Then she stood up, stepped back into the basin, and lathered and rinsed her legs. She was completely visible now, glittering from the drops of water, rosy from the rubbing. She reached for a towel and wrapped it around her body, holding it at the breasts. Then she stepped into her slippers, walked through the door, and disappeared into the dark of the back room.

  Frightened, Blam jerked his head away from the window and stood trembling for a few moments, wondering whether she had seen him, listening for the door to the back house to open, for the patter of slippers, for a complaint about the intruder. Nothing happened. Cautiously, still enthralled, he took another peek. It was nearly as dark outside as it was in the bathroom, and he sensed more than saw that the narrow gullet of the kitchen was now empty, the white blotch of the basin the only trace of the recent scene. Erzsébet Csokonay had most likely gone to bed.

  From then on, Blam’s days ended in an eagerly awaited climax. After supper, while Vilim Blam listened to the news on the radio, Blanka Blam tidied up in the dining room and kitchen, and Estera helped her mother or immersed herself in a schoolbook, he would impatiently follow the advance of the minute hand, go into the bathroom, lock the door, position the stool on the toilet, and peer out to see whether the scene of his passion and bliss had begun. There were times when Erzsébet Csokonay was so busy with housework that she started late, or when some other member of the family occupied the bathroom after supper, but Blam took all obstacles in stride, finding ever new excuses to go back to the bathroom. He could not imagine an evening without the drama of her naked body, and, although he felt frustrated, thwarted the moment the scene was over, he longed for the next.

  He started missing performances when Lili appeared, filling his evenings with walks, talks, travel plans, flattering remarks about his mind and body, and in the end with the transformation of their mutual desire into physical union in the Dositej Street apartment. True, the new situation was less than perfect—there was the burden of responsibility, and there was even disappointment in some respects—but compared with the scene in Erzsébet Csokonay’s kitchen it had the attraction of being tangible and fulfilling. When he stood again at the bathroom window on a free evening, he no longer felt the earlier surge of excitement. Now that he knew the secrets of a woman’s body, he required more of it than the power to arouse; he required ecstasy. Then Lili left, pleading tearfully with him to follow, but war came, and the Occupation, tea
ring Blam away from his nebulous broodings and hurling him into the raw world of violence, mortal fear, and sudden twists of fate.

  One of those twists, minor as it may have been, was that Kocsis moved in with the widow Csokonay. By then the Blams were second-class citizens and, not daring to protest, could only look on helplessly when late every morning the graying dandy, freshly combed and shaven, left the back house as if it were his own, bowing with new dignity in the direction of the veranda, where his greetings were returned with reluctant, nervous smiles. Before long he started carrying a new leather briefcase under his arm, a sign of gainful employment, which—to make matters even more humiliating—bore a certain resemblance to Vilim Blam’s means of gainful employment: in tune with the upsurge in Hungarian nationalism Kocsis had been hired as a door-to-door salesman for a luxuriously appointed volume celebrating the return of Novi Sad and the entire Bačka region to the land of Saint Stephen. Only Erzsébet Csokonay was untouched by the events: she went on running from house to house to clean and waiting for her crippled child and ne’er-do-well lover to return home. Kocsis’s commissions must have come in slowly, or else he used them as pocket money—in this way too coming offensively close to Vilim Blam—because Erzsébet Csokonay continued to wear the shabby dresses that concealed the splendor of her flesh.

  One evening, driven almost mad by the news of executions throughout the city, Blam came home earlier than usual and, suddenly recalling her body, climbed to the bathroom window and peered into the lighted kitchen. He found it changed: there was a white bed behind the sideboard, and the widow’s crippled daughter was sitting at the table, now closer to the stove, dipping her long, red pen into a square inkpot and doing her homework. Blam waited patiently but saw the widow only once, when she came into the room to turn down the sheets and help her daughter undress. Clearly she and Kocsis had the large room to themselves. Where and when did she bathe now? Blam had no idea; nor did he try to find out. The spell of those nocturnal scenes had been broken, and the new reality deprived him of the will to bring them back.