Over the years, my wife developed peculiar habits. The strangest, my favorite, is the way she will, on occasion, scrunch up her face and give birth to fruit. The first time she did it we were at the zoo. We’d spent the day wandering along the gravel paths, pointing at elephants and tigers and spitting camels, sharing an ice cream cone. We were standing by the perching birds exhibit, peeking through the iron cage, when it happened. Abel began heavy breathing. I hardly noticed— she simply exhaled a small oh, reached into her pants, and pulled them from her: a handful of little red buds. They were coated in a thin layer of mucus and glinted, ravishingly, in the sun.

“I wonder?” Abel said, holding the slick red things in her palm.

“Strawberries!” I said, amazed. She was a woman of wonders.

We fed the berries to the birds. One, blue-faced with a long tweezer beak, nudged himself between bars. Abel pinched a wet berry between the tips of her fingers and offered it to him. He blinked his beady eyes once before snatching it up with a long, bristled tongue. He blinked again, snapped his beak, and flitted away. 

We stayed some time at the zoo, learning about birds, reading the signs. She’d brought her sketchbook and we sat together on an aluminum bench, her scratching charcoal against the page, trying to trace the shape of a particular bird. I watched her progress, watched my watch, watched some children play games on a green patch of grace. Abel kept putting down lines, erasing them, adding more. “A pretty good ibis,” I said. That’s what it looked like at least, with its crude neck and rough beak.

“It’s a spoonbill,” she said, not looking up from the page. And there, another habit, not-so wonderful. Her urge to correct me. 

 

I’d found it charming when we’d first met, the way she’d lean on her elbows, talk with her hands, argue with fervor. On our first date, she’d worn a red pantsuit with a red matching lip and we argued for hours over hors d’oeuvres about elections, art. She was loud, aggressive, radiated a heat, and I remember watching her silver earrings swing to and fro as she asserted her points. She spat and squabbled. The energy between us was that of childhood rivals: familiar, feverish. Completely unlike the awkward bumbling I’d come to expect from first dates.

And then—what made the night memorable—some wasted street bum broke through a window. Abel and I were on dessert when we heard it: a scream, a crash, a cracking sound. We turned to see the front window splitting into spider web lines. I remember the glass held that way, finely webbed, for a moment. Of course, the commotion had thrown a hush over the room. Diners held their breath, the glass held together—and then, before anyone had the chance to exhale, the window came clattering down, shards raining to the restaurant floor. A frenzy erupted: everyone talking at once about the mess, costly and sharp, the scare it had caused, the surprise. With all the chaos, the bum managed to stumble away. He brushed himself off and disappeared into the night, disgraced.

I remember feeling disgust. Abel, though, was delighted. She thought the whole thing was poetic; it reminded her of some historical scene. I remember watching a waiter sweep up the shards while she blathered on about an old war, kings and queens and magistrates. To be honest, sometimes I can’t follow her spiraling tirades, but I do enjoy watching the pretty glimmer of her mouth. I fell in love with her that night, watching her red lips open and close with such fervor. I’d disagree here and there just to stoke coals. Her face would redden, her volume would rise, and her eyes would glisten and glimmer. A beautiful woman.

I thought it was her way of flirting. In time, things would be ironed out. There would be a certain kind of aquiescing. That’s what marriage was, I thought. But I was wrong. An ibis, a spoonbill, it was a pointless distinction. And it wasn’t a good sketch, to be honest. The lines were clumsy. I watched her thin wrist flick as she scratched and sketched. She clamped her tongue between her teeth, lips slightly parted. Her beautiful eyes narrowed, focused. She approached her little hobby with such serious airs. 

 

The sun had tucked itself behind clouds by the time I managed to pull her away. On the drive home, we didn’t talk about strawberries or birds. I turned the radio dial one way, she turned it the other. When I took the wrong exit, she harped on it. Of course, I could have flipped it on her, could have mentioned that maybe I wouldn’t have been distracted if someone’s sketching hadn’t consumed my whole afternoon. I could have mentioned that I, unlike some people, have work to do. But I let her have this. Sometimes, it’s better to let her go off. Dig her own hole. I kept my foot on the gas, rolled down the windows. Air rushed in while she squealed and squawked, her loose hair whipping around in the wind. Briefly, I turned towards her. Her mouth takes a beautiful shape when she’s angry; I love the way her brows furrow. She was hot now, enraged. Eventually, she’d tire out. 

 

A month later, there was another incident. We were out shopping, picking up cheese. The refrigerated air gave Abel gooseflesh, and she held herself to keep warm. I asked how she was feeling: savory, sweet? Havarti, gruyere? She didn’t respond, just blinked tight, muttered oh. Again the reaching, fingers slipping into her panties to collect the blue pellets.

“Blueberries,” she said plainly, a matter of fact, and showed them to me.

“Wonderful!” I exclaimed in the aisle, among the rows of canned, packaged food, thinking that yes, I had married a miracle woman. The dark blue beads glistened magnificently under the fluorescent store lights. I thought it marvelous, a sign. She looked at them, rolled them around in her palms like marbles, staring, saying nothing. I checked out, put our groceries onto the conveyor belt, handed over my card. Abel stood behind me, silent, the berries staining her hands a sweet purple-pink.

When we got home, we left the berries out on our porch, a gift for the deer. 

 

The habit continued unpredictably. One Sunday in the park, we were splayed on a blanket, staring up at the Maple leaves. I was telling a story—a faint childhood memory, something about a swimming pool—when she grunted. Her face contorted into a confused kind of pain. “Go on,” she said, rubbing her side. So I went on, describing the chlorine smell, fat old men in tight trunks, the whistle shrill and piercing… Suddenly, Able let out a moan, interrupting me, and the memory drifted from reach. I couldn’t remember what it was I’d been trying to say. I stopped and looked at her: brow furrowed, eyes closed, jaw clenched. She grabbed her side. Near us, in the grass, kids were running in circles, shrieking. Not it, not it. Abel grimaced. 

Somewhere, on the other side of the field, there was a birthday party. Over there, under the trees, I could make out a few colored hats. The sound of horns. My wife groaned again, loudly, and scrunched up her face. I asked how she was feeling but she just closed her eyes, exhaled, and out came a handful of grapes, light green and plump. They plopped right onto the picnic blanket. She picked them up by the stem, holding the globular cluster up to the light. They glimmered in the sun: green and round and dripping goo. 

“Fabulous,” I exclaimed, and took them from her. I held the viscid cluster in my palm, amazed.
Abel kicked off her shoes and leaned into the grass. All around us, kids were running and shrieking, making circles and circles.

 

There was a time before, before the fruit, when I wasn’t quite sure about Abel. We’d been dating a few months when she invited me to a gallery opening. It wasn’t exactly my thing, but I showed up, and wound up spending most of my time by the refreshments, sipping a plastic cup of wine. Strung up on the plain white walls were canvases, bold prints, vulgar colors. All amorphous, shapeless, ugly. Abel floated through the crowd, greeting people. The room was filled with young men, boys in baggy shirts, shaggy hair, thin wire glasses. Art students. I sipped my Malbec and watched Abel across the room, laughing, grabbing one of those skinny art boys by the arms. I didn’t know what she saw in them; didn’t know what she saw in those ghastly paintings, either. I almost left then, almost deleted her number. But something compelled me to stay. The bartender kept refilling my cup; I kept sipping that awful wine, glaring at those awful boys, their ragged beards and sloppy attire. Was it in? Was it chic, looking homeless?

Of course, we’d argued later. Volleyed insults back and forth. “I’m dating you,” she eventually said. “I’m with you.” Jealousy, she’d said, wasn’t cute. I told her fine, alright, but I just was uncomfortable. I didn’t like the gallery scene. I didn’t trust those boys.

 

Now, when I come home from work, she’s there. Quietly folding clothes, chopping peppers. Speaking less and less. Sometimes, I’ll find a tray of apples on the table. Unsure of where they came from.

 

Married life, lately, had been straining us both. A proper date was just what we needed. A night in the city, a chance to re-set. I’d overheard coworkers rave about some chic gastro-pub, a new hot spot, always booked up. Abel would be impressed. With a few phone calls, I finagled our way into a table for two. I took care of everything: checked their wine list for affordable bottles, scoured the menu, mapped out our walk from the train. I even bought her a new dress, a flowing bohemian thing. The night of, I laid it out on the bed. I could feel myself blush when she stepped into it. The white cloth rolled over her body like water. She was ethereal: my fairy woman. I watched her while she primped and preened. In the mirror, she dusted blush on her cheeks, tapped a wand to her lips. I watched in the glass as her lips closed, puckered, open. You, I said, are my miracle wife.

Her heels clicked on the concrete as we walked to the L. I pointed out the moon, plump and hanging in the late afternoon sky. It was beautiful, pale and gleaming against cloudless, robin’s egg blue. She glanced at it, the round, full thing, but said nothing. The whole night, she hardly spoke. But her warmth, her cheeks, her gown in the wind: love’s a slippery thing. 

 

On the way back, on the train, returning from our languorous meal, it happened again. Abel and I sat next to each other on scratchy blue seats and watched the city flit by. We were alone in the car, apart from one man. He sat directly across from us and kept smacking his lips. A horrible stench filled the air, no doubt coming from him. I would have switched cars, or even just seats, but Able refused. She was full, she said, and tired. Too tired to move. So I was forced to look at him, this bum, his thick neck and tattered shirt and mud-caked pants, for the length of our ride. I couldn’t hide my disgust. I didn’t understand how Abel could be so oblivious. The stench alone was repulsive. Sideburns coiled out from his grease-stained face, as if they were trying to leap away. His yellow teeth, his smacking lips. Worse— his bulbous, bloodshot eyes were fixed on Abel’s legs. Her ankles, exposed. He looked at them and licked his teeth. But Abel didn’t seem to notice. Her eyelids drooped. I made a mental note: she shouldn’t be riding these late trains alone. I glared at him and pulled Abel’s hand into mine, clamping my knuckles down, clenching tight. The bum smacked his lips and kept trying, I’m sure, to look up her skirt. 

A mechanical voice announced  each stop. There were only four or five to go, but I contemplated pulling Abel off, thought about transferring trains, just to get away from this perverted, lip-smacking bum. She seemed so sleepy though, her torso swaying with each jerk of the train. Occasionally, our shoulders would bump. I decided to let her rest; I could keep watch. My chest swelled: her protector.

The L continued whipping its way between buildings and alleys and it was there in the shaking train car that she grabbed my forearm, closed her eyes, and I knew. From her dress tumbled a slew of cranberries. They rolled on the brown vinyl floor. 

Across from us the man stared, eyes wide, incredulous.

 

As the months went on, the incidents became more frequent. Oranges would spring from her without warning. Slick and gleaming, they’d roll to the floor. Suddenly, pomegranates. Kiwis. Starfruit. She stopped wearing pants altogether, neglected her underpants, favoring the easy release of dresses and skirts. I’d come home from work to find a stack of viscous fruit on the table. Strawberries, blackberries, grapes. Our house soon became filled, corner to corner, with fruit. Bookshelves brimming with bowls of berries and limes; stacks of peaches, apples, and pears cloying every available space. 

At first, we’d leave them outside, let whatever animal come have a feast. But then the birthings came more quickly, one after the next. At night she would groan, roll on her side. It appeared she was in pain. Our white comforter became a Pollock of fruit-stains.

 

We got in with the gynecologist. The waiting room was full of sounds: coughing women, the scratching of pens. A pair of needles clinked. My wife’s fingers danced on her knees, as if there was a piano. I flipped mindlessly through a magazine, fingering each glossy page, focusing on the feel, the motion. Somewhere, from deep in the building, came screams. “Abel?” A voice like bells called. “Abel Lautrec?”

In the examination room, I counted off-white tiles. Guitar music drifted in from a speaker. It sounded Spanish.

“Do you think it’s going to rain?” my wife asked. 

I didn’t know. I held her hand. 

The doctor burst in, hurried, frazzled, a pen tucked in her bush of hair. She put my wife’s legs in stirrups, pointing them up into a V, and leaned in, fascinated.

“Very interesting,” she kept saying. “Very interesting.”

She prescribed pills and asked us to come back in a month.

 

I find her in the bedroom now, often. Cocooned in our off-white comforter. I offer her soup, sandwiches, toast. She gently shakes her head, turns away, slips further into the shell of our bed. 

 

I came home from a haircut to find her hunched over the dining room table, studying an array of old photos. She held one close to her face, like a detective. 

“What’ve you got there?” I asked.

“I’ve been wondering if it runs in the family.” 

“If what does?”

“The thing,” she said. “The thing I’ve been doing.”

I went behind her, put my hands on her shoulder, and looked at what she’d been studying. A photograph of her grandmother. Young, lipstick done, hair shaped into a slick beehive. Looking, as always, smart and proper. In front of her coy, teasing smile: a full bowl of fruit. Peaches, pineapples, plums. A bright yellow bunch of bananas. Something about her grandmother’s grin was unsettling. I quickly shut down Abel’s imagination.

“You would have known if your grandma was doing that.”

“I don’t know,” Abel said, and pinned the picture to the fridge.

 

I woke one night and the whole house smelled like sugar. I found her in the kitchen, on the floor, gazing into the oven.

“Pie,” she said, not moving her eyes. “Want some?”

I took a slice, cut into it, but when the crust hit my tongue I heard crying. Sharp, piercing cries filled my mouth, filled my head. 

I spat it out, into a napkin.

“What’s wrong?” she asked. “Too much salt?”

 

After that, I couldn’t sleep. I listened to the walls creak and groan. I felt sweat collect on the small of my back. Tossing, grunting. Beside me, Abel slept. Her lips slightly parted. Eyelids fluttering.

I thought about her after our wedding. How her skin was like dew and the way her hair fell. Tracing her spine. Honeymoon eyes. 

Sleepless, I snuck into the sheets, up her legs. To smell that! Aggressively sweet. Not like before. I wrapped my hands around her thighs, kissed my way up. Fruit-taste on my tongue. Not like before. This was a new taste. She gasped, twitched in her sleep, and I let her know: I think you’re amazing. A miracle woman. 

With her legs wrapped around me, clutching me; she gasped, she kicked— I kept going. From somewhere within her a moan made its way out, crawled up her throat, smashed through her small teeth, hit the air with a symphonic crash. And when her body rippled, out came a handful of blackberries, popping into my mouth.

I spat. They splattered and burst on the hardwood floors. Together, we stared at the stains.

 

She stopped coming to bed. Instead, she worked the kitchen all night, slicing, mixing, shoving things into the oven. Circles forming around her eyes. Cheeks growing hollow. 

I’d wake to a corpse wife, purple bags and paper skin, offering a pie.

 

One night I woke to a crashing sound. I rushed to the kitchen to find her wielding a hammer, smashing berries in a plastic bag.

“I thought I’d make jam,” she said, and brought the hammer down.

“Honey,” I said, eyeing the splattering of blue-purple-black. “We have a blender.” She didn’t acknowledge that. Just brought the hammer down again and flattened the fruit into mush.

I went back to bed and fell asleep to the crashing and smashing. When I woke, there were several flavors of jam, all lined up in the fridge.

 

Another night I woke, desperately having to pee. Groggily, I slumped towards the bathroom. I didn’t flip on the lights, didn’t notice at first, but after I flushed I could hear it. Wet sounds: a smacking, a gnawing. I turned and there she was, in the dark bluish light of our bathroom. Crouched on the white tile floor, guarding a pile of plums. Juice trickled from her chin in sticky rivulets, purple dripped from her thighs. She didn’t see me, didn’t notice me at all. She looked only at the fruit. The whites of her eyes were glowing, effulgent in the dark.  

I watched carefully as she squatted there, next to our porcelain tub, over the pile of plums. Watched as she reached beneath her and pulled them, one by one, up and into her mouth. White teeth flashed as she widened her jaw, bit down, pierced the skin. Juice squirted and splattered. She ate like an animal woman: devouring. 

 

In the gynecologist’s office, I put my hand to her back. Her paper gown rustled. No guitar music this time. I looked to my feet, wiggled my toes.

“Nothing has changed,” I told the doctor. My wife looked anemic. Graying. Thin.

“Very odd,” the doctor said. Above us, electric lights hummed. 

The doctor poked and prodded. My wife stared up, eyes wide, and watched the fluorescent ceiling light. Inside the humming plastic dome, a black speck erratically flew, trapped in a pool of white. Abel looked intently as the fly buzzed around that plastic light, crashing into walls.

“Hmm,” the doctor said. After a small deliberation, she pulled a pen from her bushy hair. “Here’s what I’ll do,” she said. She wrote a prescription for another pill and tore it from her pad. 

 

We stopped having sex. Each time I tried, she’d grab my index finger and wrap it in her fist, shaking her head. I’d pull her in, kiss the top of her head, and we’d fall asleep like that, with her fist around my finger.

I’d go down on her, sometimes, and she wouldn’t protest. I’d taste her until she’d kick and fill my mouth with fruit.

She’d become a skeleton, small, but still: she was stunning. My wife. Our house filled with the smell of fresh and rotting fruit.

 

At the aquarium in winter, we don’t hold hands. We look at the Amazon Tanks. The thick, full-bodied pythons. The deadly blue frogs. 

We walked through each room, stopping at random intervals to witness wet, slithering things. Their world, their lives: four walls and a lamp. I made eye contact with one, a lizard, and tapped on his glass. His blinking eyes took note. He seemed rather happy. He thrust out his tongue.  

My wife did not like my tapping. She swatted my hand. How’d you like that, she said. Being tapped at like that. 

When we left the Shedd, she practically tripped down the white marble steps. She was looking thin, hollow, a stack of bones inside that big blue coat. I held onto her and she asked, softly, and she asked if we could walk by the lake. It was cold, colder by the shore, but I tightened my scarf and indulged her. Out there, ice-slabs drifted on the surface. She looked out over the water. Out where she was looking, the horizon blurred, lake melting to sky. I still have not gotten used to these gray Chicago winters. But that day, the sun was doing her job, making the air a lighter, breathable blue. Enjoyable, even.

“I’d like gills,” she said. She unwrapped her scarf, exposing her neck. “It’d be nice. To breathe under there.”

“Sure,” I said. “I can get those for you.”

The lakeshore was empty; the concrete pathway was coated with ice, random patches of salt sprinkled about. Abel kept her eyes out on the water. I looked around at the muddy snow banks, the barren trees. A lunatic in a windbreaker and shorts jogged past, face pink, eyes watering. I nodded to him. He nodded back. My wife kept her eyes on the lake.

I tried to take her hand. “What next? Daley Ribbon? Art Institute?” We’re not in this part of the city often. I wanted to take advantage. And, truthfully, I wanted to tire her out. I wanted her to give in. To see her glimmer. My miracle woman.

“There’s a Magritte exhibit,” I told her, wrapping my arms around her puffy down coat. Together, we watched the ice slabs crash into each other, creaking and groaning and cracking.

“Magritte’s mother killed herself,” she said, after a while. “Drowned herself in a river. Like Ophelia. And Virginia Woolf.” 

I didn’t know what to say. She must have seen my face, because she laughed. A warm, airy laugh. I searched it for signs. She turned to kiss me, her lips cold and blue. “Don’t worry,” she said. “Ce n’est pas un présage.” 

I didn’t ask for translation. I kissed her on the mouth. Tried to breathe into her lungs.

 

“That’s why the lovers have masks,” she said later, in the dim room with the canvas hanging, the neatly spread oil paint, the cool tones. Red, blue. 

“When he found his mother in the river, her face was covered by a thin white dress.” She pointed to the canvas. “That’s why the masks.”

I stared into the painting, right where I imagined the masked lovers’ eyes. 

“Amazing,” I said.

I followed her through the dim rooms. She pulled me from painting to painting. With each canvas she became animated, gesturing. She seemed almost herself again, warm, like her coals were relit. I wondered, briefly, if she missed her own art. I hadn’t seen her touch a canvas in months. Before I’d moved in she’d paint all the time: her hands always stained by oils and color. Now, she hardly picked up a pen. Her brushes, pastels, and paints buried beneath layers of fruit.

“Look,” she said, pointing her thin finger towards another indecipherable piece. It was redundant, a painting of a painting. In it, an artist studies his model, an egg, and paints on his canvas a fully born bird. In the one next to it, a white dove obstructs a man’s face. The images are aggressively odd, not my kind of thing. But Abel seemed to get a kick out of them. And when paired with her voice, they became almost tolerable. I squinted, tried to see what she saw. 

We got to another with a man’s face obscured.  “Why doesn’t he want us to see what’s there?” I was upset. It’s just that I was tired and hungry and annoyed with all the obstruction.

        My wife, my miracle wife, tried to explain it to me. But my stomach growled. I was tired and hungry. I did not pay attention. She spoke, but all I heard were the humming gallery lights, the yawning of a security guard, my own growling hunger. Abel kept pressing on, spending an interminable amount of time with each piece. People filtered out of the exhibit, trickling away, until suddenly, we were the only ones left. Abel didn’t seem to notice. Or maybe she just didn’t care. I took her by the wrist and pulled her away, back through impressionists, down the shining marble stairs. I dragged her past cases of Chinese jade, pottery, glass, and we stepped outside, into the crisp biting air.

Night had fallen while we were inside, turning everything a cold, buttery yellow. The winter city was lit up by office buildings, street lamps, swooping holiday lights. I caught my breath and looked out. At the top of the Art Institute steps you can see the shining, gleaming traffic, the messy colonies of people, bustling into and out of Millenium Park.

We stayed a while at the top of the steps. On either side of us, the iconic lions stood, eager to pounce. Their wild bronze manes and fur coated with a green patina. Around their necks hung Christmas wreaths like collars, and tourists huddled in groups beneath them, taking pictures. LED camera lights flashed. 

“They never get a break,” said my wife. “Always on duty.”

I liked the lions. They were symmetrical, secure. They did their job. I remember climbing their back as a kid. Somewhere there’s a picture of me, straddling the thick body, roaring. I’d started to tell Abel this half-memory when I heard a groan. By then, I’d gotten used to her habits and sounds. I rubbed her back. Told her to breathe. And there, in the blinking night, on those stone steps in winter, she gave birth, for the first time, to a slick, wriggling salamander. He writhed in her hands, wagged his tail, coated in transparent ooze. The street glow flashed on his body, shining iridescent and blue. Abel collapsed, gaunt and grey, onto the Institute steps. 

“Beautiful!” I announced proudly. She was breathing heavily, one hand on her side. The salamander hissed when I took him, flashed his teeth, tried to slip out of my hands. He sunk his teeth into the pink flesh of my palm. I said it again. “Beautiful!”

 

Aiden Baker is a writer based out of Berkeley, California. Her work can be found in the Ninth Letter, Sonora Review, Orca, and elsewhere. She spends her free time crying, cooking, and tweeting (@wake__n_baker). 

I wanted to go home to Sarita Vihar and I walked up to the scooter-rickshaw on the side of the road.  I asked the driver to take me there.

“No,” he said.

“No?” I said.

“I am not going in that direction.  I am going Jumna-paar (across the Jumna River).”

“I will give you five rupees extra,” I said.

“No,” he said.

“Ten,” I said.

He relented but he made a face as he did so.  “It is a long journey,” he said.  “And on the way back I come empty—there is no customer.”

“You will find a customer,” I said.

He was not convinced.  But he had already stepped on the pedal of the vehicle with his foot.  The engine roared; he lowered himself to his seat and we were on our way. 

It was not a pleasant journey.  The road was filled with bumps and the vehicle jumped up and down as it went over them.  It was late twilight and the visibility was poor.  The vendors on the sidewalks had lit fires and the air was filled with smoke.

“Slow down, Baba,” I said.  “There is no rush.”

He ignored my words.

We came to a bridge and we were to make a major turn there.  But somehow he missed the turn.  I tapped him on the back and told him so.  He was clearly confused but just wagged his head.  “Do not worry,” the gesture seemed to say.  “I will take care of it.”

We rode for some time, looking for a place to turn back and reverse our direction.  But no turn was there.  I asked him to pull over and ask one of the street vendors for directions.

At last he pulled over.  There was a cigarette stand of some kind—a man who sold cigarettes and betel leaves.  The driver leaned out of the scooter-rickshaw and addressed the man.  “Brother,” he said.

“Yes?” 

“Can you tell us how to get back to the bridge?”

“The bridge is in the other direction.”

“Yes, yes, we know.  But can you tell us how to get there?”

“You have missed the bridge.  It is a long way.  There is no turning back.”

A long way.  No turning back.  What kind of words were these?  I told the driver to ignore the words.  These people were fatalists—or just mad.  They had given up on hope a long time ago.  I was not a fatalist and I would never give up.

 

We drove forward again.  We knew that at last we would find a place where we could turn back.

But it was not so easy.  We drove for minutes—and then for minutes more.  The driver hummed a tune and then he cursed.  We came to a traffic light (it was red) and he began to cry.

“We will find it,” I reassured him.  “We will find the bridge.”

But he was not encouraged.  “We will be late,” he said.  “I will never get home.  My wife is a cruel woman—you do not know her.  She will take off her slippers and she will hit me.  She will chase me around the courtyard, call me names.  The neighbors will hear and come running—but do you think she will care?  She will take her slippers and hit me—she will hit me again and again.”

“Do not think of your wife,” I said.

“I cannot help it.”

“You are a man,” I said.  “Fight back.”

“You do not know her.  She will throw glass at me, she will throw pots and pans.  She will make me bleed.”

He was panicking now—he was actually panicking.  Was he really so afraid of his wife?

The traffic light changed and the driver released his foot from the brake.  We continued in the smoke-filled evening.  Traffic, traffic all around.  And still no sign of the turn.

“Find the turn,” he pleaded.  This time he was pleading with me.  “I need to get home.  I must.”

I tried to calm him down but he would not be calmed.  “My wife!” he whimpered again.  “My wife!”

I again tried to calm him down; he would not be calmed.  I needed to get home as well—did he ever think of that?  But I controlled myself.  The man was in tears.  This was not the time and place for my feelings.

At last, yes, we did come to a turn.  An end really, a dead-end.  The traffic grew less and less—and then it just ended.  The road just ended.

There was no traffic there, no median in the road.  There was just a dirt path.  If we got out and pushed the vehicle manually, perhaps we could turn around.  

And this is just what we did.

It was now completely dark.  The smoke still filled the air.  Here and there, people on the sidewalk were selling things:  pulses, grams, balloons and knick-knacks.  But, yes, we got out of the vehicle.  We stood at its back and we pushed it—and then we pushed some more.  We turned the vehicle around.

 

We made our way back in the opposite direction.  But it was not the same road on which we had come.  The original road had been congested, full.  This road—a dirt road—was deserted and quiet.  

The road narrowed and then, suddenly, it wound along the river.  The Jumna River.  We could hear the river to the right.

But the Jumna River is a long and wide river.  Which part of the river we were near, I cannot say.  The road narrowed some more and at some places it came within five to ten feet of the water.  In the monsoons the river overflowed.  What happened then to this strange road, what then came to pass?

We saw some women on the side of the road.  Yes, even at this hour we saw them.  They appeared to be in their late teens.  Maybe they were schoolgirls and maybe they were villagers.

“They are pretty women,” said the driver.

I did not answer him.

“Very pretty,” he said.

I did not answer him.

“I have slept with some of them.”

“What is this?” I said.

“I am a man, Bauji.  I have needs.”

His spirits seemed to have returned.  His confidence seemed to have returned as well.  “Jumna-paar,” he had said to me initially when I had met him.  “Across the Jumna River.”  This is where he lived, this is where he was planning to go.  Did his new behavior, his new confidence, all have to do with the Jumna River?  With being close to it?

But I was not impressed with his words.  “Watch your tongue,” I said.  “These are respectable women.  Is this any way to speak?”

But he did not seem to hear me—or if he did hear me, he was indifferent to my words.  “They are virgins, sir, some of them.  But not the others.  I have slept with them (did I tell you?).  Or at least I have dreamed of it.”

I was still troubled by his words.  “The road,” I said.  “Keep your mind on the road.”

But his mind was on other things now.  It was far, far away.

 

The minutes passed.  We were still on the dark road.  We were looking for the bridge—the place where we had missed our turn.

It was so terribly dark.  Even more fires had been lit on the sidewalks and the smoke burned in the air.  It entered your throat and it burned your eyes.

More minutes passed.  We drove, we drove.  The driver of the scooter-rickshaw was wearing pajamas and an old striped shirt.  He also wore a towel wrapped around his head.  It had begun to grow cold and he took the towel from his head and threw it instead around his neck.  Perhaps it was more important to protect the neck than the head.  

We saw some lights in the distance.  As we came closer, we saw a sign suspended from a tall metal pole.  “Bharat Petroleum,” the sign said.

“Petrol,” the driver said to me over his shoulder.  “I need petrol.”

“What is this?”

“The petrol is running low.  I need petrol.”

I did not argue with him.

The driver pulled into the petrol station.  He got out of the vehicle and lifted the cover of the front seat—the seat where he had been sitting.  Then he took the hose from the nearby pump and put it into some opening under the seat.

A man from the station—an attendant of some kind—walked up to the driver.  “Sixty rupees,” he said.

The driver took out a thick roll of bills from his shirt pocket.  He counted the money and handed it to the attendant.

The work was done—or at least the immediate work—and it was time for us to go on.

“The bridge,” I said.  “We must find the bridge.”

“Yes,” he said.

“I need to get home,” I said.

“And me?” said the driver.  “I have a wife, a terrible wife waiting for me.  Do I not need to get home as well?”

*

We drove for some time.  We desperately wanted to find the bridge.  But life is not always easy.  It had all begun as a simple journey—a journey from Connaught Place to my home.  And now this.  But these things happen.  There are missed chances, detours.  Bad things happen.

We had driven for some fifteen minutes and the driver was now whistling a tune.  We seemed to be approaching a small colony of some kind.  Mostly huts, made of mud and straw, and here and there a shack made of wood or plaster.

“Where are we?” I said to the driver.

“Just a minute more,” he said.  “Then you will see.”

A minute more and we stood in front of a small shack made of wood.  The driver stopped—he actually stopped—and he turned off the engine.

“What is this?” I said.

“My home,” he said.

“Your home?  But I want to go to my home.  Sarita Vihar.”

“Please, Bauji, do not speak so loudly.  We are so late as it is.  My wife will be cross.”

So late.  My wife will be cross.  He was indeed afraid of his wife.  We got out of the scooter-rickshaw (I did not feel that I had a choice).  I heard the sounds of screaming children.  His or those of his neighbors, I do not know.  I heard the sounds of pots and pans.

“Ram Pyaree,” the driver called out.  It must have been the name of his wife.

We came to an old door—dark and falling off the hinges.  We lowered our heads and walked under the lintel.

“Who is it?  Who is it?” I heard a woman’s voice from inside.

A boy and a girl, their noses running, came rushing to the front door.  “Papa! Papa!” they said.  And then:  “Toffees, Papa.  Did you bring us any toffees?  Balloons, Papa, did you bring us any balloons?”

The scooter-rickshaw driver looked to me for support.  A man works all day, he works, he works.  He drives, he drives.  He gets lost in the night and he looks for a bridge.  And this is what waits for him at home.  

The driver apologized to the children.  “It was late, children, it was getting very late.  I did not have time to stop and buy.  But tomorrow, I promise—tomorrow I will definitely bring.”

The children were not appeased.

I stood there, watching the children.  They seemed to see me—to notice me—for the first time.  Who is this tall man, they must have said—this strange and respectable man?  Clearly I was a respectable man.  Clearly they noticed that—the dress, the demeanor.  The difference in class.

As I stood there, a woman emerged from the back in a cheap green sari.  She saw me and suddenly stopped, covering her head with the sari—a sign of respect.  She had emerged from the back chattering loudly and the chattering suddenly stopped.  After all, a man was there, a respectable man.  Who was this respectable man?

*

It is a long story, why drag it out?  My presence clearly seemed to have confused the wife.  A man was standing in her house, a respectable man.  When was the last time—was there ever a time—that such a scene had taken place?

The couple went to the back room and I heard some whispers.  Loud whispers.  “Not here.”  “Not now.”  “How can you do such a thing?”

The two came out again.  They offered me food; I declined.  I was polite, of course, but how could I eat their food?  I did not want to get sick.  They offered me tea.  I declined again but they insisted.  At last I accepted.  After all, the water would be boiled and perhaps I would be safe.

We sat in the outside room.  The best that I could tell, there were only two rooms in the house:  this room and the kitchen in the back.  There were two string cots in the room and the children sat at the edge of one of them.  The scooter-rickshaw driver stood at the edge of the other.

When I accepted the invitation for tea, the man was clearly excited.  There was one chair in the room—at the far corner—and he hurried to get it for me.  The chair was old, the white cane sagging badly, but what did that matter?  It was an actual chair.

The children still sat at the edge of the bed, looking at me with curiosity.

“Uncle,” they said at last.

“Yes?” I said.

“Our Papa did not bring any toffees or balloons.  Do you have any toffees or balloons?”

It was a strange question and I did not know what to say.

“Not today,” I said.  I was surprised at the deference in my voice.

“Come again tomorrow, Uncle.  Be sure to bring toffees and balloons.”

I was intrigued by their words.  Amused as well.  How forward they were, how assuming.  But then again, children are children.  One should not take their words too much to heart.

The children looked at me—they looked, they looked.  And then:  “Are you married, Uncle?”

“What is this?” I said.

“Do you have a wife, Uncle?  Do you have children?  How many children do you have?”

They were personal questions.  I was not married, no, but what business was it of theirs?

By this time the wife had made the tea and brought it in a tray—two cups on top—to the room.

“Sugar, Bauji, how much sugar?” she said.

“One teaspoonful is fine,” I said.

“One teaspoonful!” she said, almost in alarm.  Poor people like a lot of sugar in their tea.  Two teaspoonfuls, even two-and-a-half, even three.  Sugar is expensive but this is one thing in which they indulge.  Perhaps it is a sign of prestige.

“One teaspoonful,” I said again.  “Yes, yes, that would be fine.”

The driver looked at me in amazement.  His wife, standing—or was it towering?—above us, her head still covered with the end of her sari, looked on in amazement as well.

The husband and I began to sip slowly.  The tea was hot and he made slurping sounds as he drank.  Then, albeit delicately, he raised the same question that the children had raised.

“You are not married, sir?”

“No, I am not married,” I said.

“Not married,” he said quietly, and he clucked his tongue softly.  His wife, standing just a few feet away, looked on in sadness (or was it alarm?).

They both looked at me with pity.  The children looked at me with pity.  I was clearly their superior in class, and yet this.

There was silence in the room.  I felt my face grow red.  I felt myself turn angry.  Here I was—an important man, a superior man—and yet this.

But this is life.  It has a way of teaching you, of humbling you.  Who knows when that teaching and humbling may come?

*

The minutes passed, the night grew deeper.  I needed to get home.  And here I was stuck in a poor man’s home.  A low-class place.

The husband sat on the cement floor eating his dinner.  I sat a few feet away in my cane chair and watched him eat in silence.  His meal was so simple—a chapatti, lentils, some onions and a mango pickle—and yet how eagerly he ate his meal.

The children sat on the floor and ate their meal as well.  With what relish they ate it.  The wife hurried in and out, bringing hot chapattis from the kitchen.

More than once I looked at my watch.  It was 8:30 at night.  Then 9:00, then 9:15. My home was far away, I needed to get there.  When would that be?

“A few more minutes, Bauji,” the scooter-rickshaw driver reassured me.  He seemed to be pleading with me.  “I will go to the back room and rinse my mouth.  And then we can leave.”

The meal was over and the driver was indeed true to his promise.  He went to the back and then returned, wiping his wet hands with a thin, dirty towel.

He went to the two children and ran his hand through their hair.  “I will be back soon,” he said.

“We are sleepy, Papa,” they said.  “We are sleepy.”

“I will be back soon.”

“Will you bring us toffees?  Will you bring us balloons?”

It was late at night, all the shops were closed.  Even the vendors on the footpath would have long ago packed their goods and gone home.  But the father knew that the children must be appeased.

“Of course, of course,” he said.  “Tinu and Tipu are my favorite children.  Do the children not need to be satisfied?”

The children were pleased by their father’s words.  “Thank you Papa,” they said.  “We have a good Papa,” they said.

The driver again ran his hand through their hair.  Then he gestured to me and we began our way outside.  I saw the wife standing at the edge of the room, her back to the wall of the adjoining kitchen.  I thanked her for the tea.

She blushed, saying that I embarrassed her.  “We are poor people, sir.  You are the one who does us honor.  An important man—such an important man—and he comes to our house.”

An important man.  Ha.  I was not married, but so what?  Was I still not better—much better—than all those around me?

*

The driver and I stepped outside.  The night had turned even colder and the driver closed the two buttons to his cheap jacket.  Then he threw an old scarf tightly around his neck.  I zipped up my jacket—the one from abroad—and removed the leather gloves from my pocket.  I covered my hands.

“Home!” I said to the driver.  “Sarita Vihar.”

“Home, Bauji, I understand.”  

We made our way again in the cold, dark night.  The traffic was less now, much less, but how far out of the way we had come.  First the missed turn on the bridge and then the detour to the poor one’s home.

We felt the stiff air all around us.  Stars in the sky—thousands and thousands of stars.  A crescent moon.  The world was inside resting, sleeping, but we were not so lucky.

We made our way.  Thirty minutes, thirty-five, almost forty.  At last we approached my flat:  a grey stucco building three stories high.  A balcony in the front of the flat, a balcony on the side.  The home of a successful man.

The driver pulled up to the building and stopped.  He got out, lit a match and looked at the meter (the one directly in front of my back seat):  “Rs. 38.50,” it said.  

Rupees 38.50.   But that was from his home to mine.  What about the ten extra rupees I had promised him?  What about all the time—and all the petrol—spent missing the turn and getting lost?

I reached into my pocket and took out three 20-rupee bills.  I reached in, took out another bill.  Eighty rupees, that should be more than enough.

I handed the four bills to the driver.

He looked at me in surprise.

“Is anything wrong?” I said.

“I wasted Bauji’s time,” he said.

“It is alright,” I said.

“I missed the bridge and I took Bauji to a poor man’s home.”

“It is alright,” I said.

The scooter-rickshaw driver looked at the dark sky and then at the ground.  At the dark sky and then at the ground.

I suddenly realized that, after he left me, the driver still had a long journey ahead of him.  That he would not find a customer and would indeed spend—waste—all this money on petrol.  Was that fair?

I reached into my pocket, took out another 20-rupee bill.  And another.  And another.  I handed him the bills.  I reached again into my pockets and began turning them inside-out.

“What is Bauji doing?” he said, almost in alarm.

“Oh ho, it is nothing,” I said.  “I have reached home.  Take, please take this small token.  It is nothing.”

The poor man looked at me.  Again he looked.  Perhaps he thought that I was unwell.  Perhaps he thought that I was mad.  Or perhaps he thought that I was just a rich, guilty man with all this money to spend.

“Thank you Bauji,” he said at last, accepting the bills.  Then he bent down and touched my feet.  “Bauji will have a long life,” he said.  “Bauji is a great man.”

A long life.  A great man.  His words pleased me.  Whether I believed them or not—that was a matter for another day.

He got into the vehicle and turned on the engine.  He stepped on the pedal.  And he was on his way.

I saw the steps to my building and I began my walk towards them.  I walked slowly, very slowly.  I was home:  a good thing.  I was a successful man:  a good thing.  I reached the steps and began to climb them.  One step and then the next.  One step and then the next.  I arrived at my landing and paused, but only for a second.  I took out my key and turned the lock to the door.

I stepped inside and turned on the light.  I paused again, but only for a second.  I lived alone—but so what?  It was late at night, but no matter.  I was a successful man.

I had just come from a poor man’s home—I would go to the bathroom and wash my hands.  I would wash my face as well.  I would pour myself a glass of whisky:  the glass would settle me.  I would heat some food:  the heated food would taste good.  I had some samosas in the fridge, some tandoori chicken—even some vanilla ice cream.  There was no reason to pause in the cold, dark night.  No no, there was no reason to pause and be afraid.

They say that people sometimes have bad thoughts when they pause.  Superstition, all superstition.  I was a grown man, a happy man.  There was no reason to have these thoughts.  No no, there was no reason to pause and be afraid. 

 

 

 

Bipin Aurora has worked as an economist, an energy analyst, and a systems analyst. A collection of his stories, “Notes of a Mediocre Man: Stories of India and America,” was published by Guernica Editions (Canada). His fiction has appeared in “Glimmer Train,” “Michigan Quarterly Review,” “Southwest Review,” “Witness” (Spring 2014), “Boulevard,” “AGNI,” “The Fiddlehead,” “The Literary Review,” “New Orleans Review,” “Prairie Schooner,” “Confrontation,” and numerous other publications.

Mateo, it is very late. Let me try once more.

A few years after the war, I left Hrvatska without a word and started my life again in Norway. Even as I stepped onto the plane, I knew you would be unaware for some time of the circumstances surrounding my abrupt departure. At that moment, in the summer of 1999, I was fully ready to disappear into the blur of the new millennium. Yet it did not turn out like that: I was only a month away from meeting my future wife. Hanne was an administrator at the University of Bergen. She had a solid if unremarkable job, and our beige courtship seemed to satisfy her. Of course, during our first year together, it became clear she was ill-prepared to have a relationship with someone like me.

At that time, I had quit my teaching job in Zagreb, quit drinking, and, for a while at least, quit you. I am sorry I did not bring you with me to Oslo. In my brief period of enforced sobriety, I often considered our affair and your vulnerable state. The fact that I had never been with another man before and that you were half my age.

My favorite of our conversations was our first one in the café, when you changed out of your uniform in the restroom and returned in blue jeans and a striped wool sweater. Cologne glossed your neck. We sat at an outside table, our knees almost touching, my shoe tip abutting your sneaker. You drank espresso while I nursed a bottle of pilsner. You asked me to enlighten you about the books we were forbidden to teach in school.

“Mateo,” I said. “You needn’t call me Mr. Vitezić. It’s Toma.”

You blushed. Still, you listened as I reeled off a list of writers. I enjoyed showing off for you. I taught you about the French poet Rimbaud, his short writing career, his affairs with older men, especially Verlaine.

Our weekly meetings intensified to after-school flirtations in the classroom, then in my quarters on the school grounds. I sneaked you in, I remember, under the cover of night. You would not stub out your cigarette; you were hopeful the head of the school would spot you, force our relationship out in the open.

You kissed me first. Your lips were rough, the hair around your lips and chin soft and dark. You felt good, experienced. I suspected you had been with another man, or one of the other boys. Perhaps Roko, Tomislav, or Petar. In my bedroom, I confessed all this was new to me.

“Never?” you said.

“In the HV there was someone.”

You pressed me on the soldier’s name. I told you nothing physical had happened and laughed and pulled away. I went to the galley kitchen and made us both a drink. I handed you a glass of rakija and we sat quietly for a moment. We drank for courage and to see where it would take us. We had clumsy sex in the dark, over too quickly, and you slipped away in the early hours. Our relationship continued via these fleeting encounters in my quarters. I often asked you to stay the night, but you never did. I wondered if you were seeing someone else; I questioned you once directly. You rolled out of bed, threw on your shirt and jeans, and finally said no. At the end of the spring semester, when you graduated, I feared you would forget me. You had a scholarship to the University of Zagreb. A covey of young and old men alike would be around. You always said my jealousy would end us.

Before the faculty left for the summer, I received a summons from the head of the school for a disciplinary meeting. I knew this was the end for me. Sitting in his office, I half-listened to his lecture on the gulf between Catholic values and homosexuality. I barely cared now that you were gone. Within a few days I cleared out my quarters. In a dirty hotel room, I wrote you a goodbye note in a copy of Verlaine’s Sagesse. But I did not know what address to mail it to, and I had little time to find it.

My brother had secured me a junior position at his advertising firm in Oslo, and I caught a flight, leaving you behind. It was clear, then and now, that the life of a literature teacher is ample preparation for the profitable misuse of our language. Croatian has little value in the rest of Europe. My near-fluent English and German were the reasons that I had any cultural or financial worth outside of the former Yugoslavia.

This was my first time out of the country, and I was unsure of how men treated other men there, especially ones who vacillated between men and women. Around the bars of Oslo, I drank and flirted with a handful of girls. But I could never take them back to my brother’s flat. His wife already put up with so many of my bad habits. She demanded that I quit drinking and treating work like a joke. I tried to. A couple of weeks into my job, I traveled to Bergen on assignment from my brother. His brief noted something about reviving the blåskjell market, developing a campaign to get younger people into eating blue mussels. The company director, Herr Johannessen, was a stout silver-haired man of German descent. He wore an unbuttoned suit jacket, a checkered waistcoat underneath, a mismatched pair of trousers. He gave me a tour of the processing plant, then took me to his office where a spread of blåskjell sat in a chafing dish packed with ice. With a cocktail stick, I speared one of the slimy lumps of sea-meat and chewed it vigorously, almost choking on the brine. I offered Herr Johannessen my thoughts on pairing the delicacy with some type of strong alcohol, and he grinned and whisked me off to a cocktail bar in Nygårdshøyden, near the university. We drank several glasses of akvavit and looked through his book of ideas for publicity and his set of design drawings. I complimented Herr Johannessen on his sketches. “Please, Toma,” he said. “Call me Lars.” He admitted he didn’t like the taste of shellfish, but what was he to do? His father had entrusted the plant to him, and it provided a good living. “I can meet many men this way,” he said. He grazed my knee and though I was tempted to relive my experiences with you, I told him he had made a mistake.

Lars coughed a little, then removed two-hundred kroner from his wallet and paid the bill. After he left, I ordered an orange juice and took from my briefcase a copy of Kundera’s The Unbearable Lightness of Being. I read the opening page several times, unable to concentrate on the abstract philosophical language. I considered going after Lars. But I had caused him enough embarrassment. I closed the novel and rested my glass on top. I surveyed the room. A group of women were seated in the corner. I smiled at the tallest one; her hair was cut in a bob, her face moonlike, boyish. She wore a dark blazer and white pants, and a chunky tortoiseshell pendant hung around her neck. When she came to the bar for a round of drinks, the bartender acknowledged her, revealed her name was Hanne. She glanced my way and quizzed me about my book.

I answered in my pidgin Norwegian. She cupped her ear, so I switched to English. “It’s a slow read but I like it.”

“I wish I had more time for books.”

“I can read for you and offer pithy summaries.”

She laughed. I removed my glass and slid the book along the counter. She examined the author’s biography. “Are you Czech?” she asked.

“Close,” I said. “Croatian.”

My nationality silenced her for a moment. I could tell she had an urge to ask about the war, how it had affected me. What could I tell her about the rifle I’d never fired? Or the soldier I’d thought I loved? That part of my life was behind me. She straightened the beer mat in front of her and began to talk about her family, far north in Trondheim; she let slip that she had never left Norway, save one childhood trip to Sweden.

“This is a beautiful country,” I said. “Why leave?”

“The cold. I’d like to feel the warmth of the South of France, perhaps visit the Italian coast.”

“Italians vacation on the Croatian side of the Adriatic. We have the islands, the boats that sail down to Greece.”

“That sounds wonderful.”

“Perhaps I am overselling it,” I said. “My homeland is a place of contradiction.”

The bartender slid a trio of wineglasses across the counter. She glanced back at her friends. They waved for her to return to her seat. She scribbled her number on the beer mat. I took out my wallet; I pressed my brother’s business card on Hanne. “You can reach me here,” I said. “My name is Toma.”

 

It was Herr Johannessen who telephoned my brother first. Lars complained about my unprofessional conduct, my brusque Slavic manners. He said he would not use the company’s services again. I convinced my brother I would apologize to Lars and re-secure the contract. In truth, I wanted a second trip to Bergen to track down Hanne and discover why she had not called. I had an idea she sensed something different about me, beyond my foreignness, a dangerous, closed-off quality. I wasn’t sure I liked that.

At the train station, I dialed Hanne’s office and left a message with her colleague. “Tell her I’ll be at the same bar tonight.”

I caught a cab to the processing plant. Inside the lobby, the secretary said I should wait. An antique blueprint was tacked to the wall. The series of interlocking rectangles appeared to depict the plant.

Lars entered the lobby, smoking a cigarette. He beckoned me to follow him into his office. As I went in, he stayed near the door. He exhaled a long stream of smoke and watched me stand awkwardly by his desk. He came over and sat down, gesturing for me to do the same. He stubbed out his cigarette in a large glass ashtray. “I would like you to apologize,” he said.

“There was a misunderstanding,” I said. “For that I’m sorry.”

“That’s not enough.” He gathered the papers on his desk and began to flip through them, reading some words under his breath.

“My brother appreciates your business,” I said.

“Do you?”

“Of course.”

“Then you must have a drink.” He opened a drawer next to him and brought out a paper sack. He said it was a special drink, and he uncorked the bottle and took a long swig. Then he offered me the sacked bottle, and I took it and peeled down the brown paper. A black label bore the word Mjød in white script and a crude drawing of a Viking. I lifted the mead to my lips, a glob of his spittle hung on the lip. I closed my eyes and knocked back a large shot. The honeyed wine coated the back of my throat.

“Are you ready?” he asked.

“For?”

Of course, I knew. I was curious about this older man, the shape of his cock, whether he was cut. I came around to his side of the desk. I got to my knees and unbuttoned his fly. He spoke a few words of Norwegian, a phrase I could not work out. To my surprise, he was circumcised, yet his length of grayish skin looked sickly. I leaned in but he asked me to wait. He dipped his finger in the bottle and dabbed a few drops of mead on his tip. He winced a little, then he ran his fingers through my hair for me to begin. I shut my eyes and worked Lars for a while, and he apologized several times for his periods of limpness. When he finished, he stood and pulled up his trousers. “Send my best to your brother,” he said.

I exited his office and took a taxi to the bar near the university. I ordered a glass of akvavit and carried it to the bathroom. I stood in front of the mirror and threw the drink back, swilling the spirit around my mouth, finally spitting it into the basin. I went back to the counter and asked for a second. The bartender inquired whether I was sick. “Yes,” I replied, “but get me another.”

I thought of you as I waited for Hanne. I had introduced you to rakija, to the pleasures of the fifth and sixth drink, that slow warmth that overtakes your body, makes you feel desired and attuned to the desires of your fellow man.

I had reached a perfect balance between these two states when Hanne came into the bar.

“I almost didn’t come,” she said.

“Because of your friends?”

“No. I don’t know anything about you.”

“You know I like books.”

“True,” she said.

I ordered two glasses of Bordeaux blanc. I tried to impress her with what I knew of the Sémillon grape, the type of soil it must grow in. She confessed she would just ask for white wine. I offered up some jargon—viticulture, terroir—and held my wineglass up to the light. She smiled and asked me to tell her something about my life. I told her I worked for my brother in Oslo, that I came to Bergen regularly for business. Hanne remained quiet, polite in the Norwegian way of doing things. She fooled with the top button of her blouse. I noticed she avoided eye contact; she directed her gaze at the liquor bottles on the backbar. “Sorry,” she said. “I had a long day. I’m not good company.” She brought out her credit card from her bag.

“I have this,” I said.

“You don’t have to. But thank you.”

I sipped my wine and considered how to lighten Hanne’s mood. The cobblestones on the dark street outside shimmered in the glare of the white streetlight. “We should go for a walk.”

“I don’t do one-night stands,” she said.

“That’s not what I’m after.”

“Good,” she said. “Then we can go.”

Hanne and I strolled around the city center, making our way toward the harbor. We paused in front of a line of moored fishing smacks. A chill wind blew in from the North Sea. We backtracked and huddled in the doorway of a Kaffebrenneriet, sipping mugs of steaming cocoa; we watched a fine mist settle over the town. I stayed at Hanne’s place that night. We kissed a little on the sofa, then she said we should wait, and she retired to her bedroom. I waved her goodnight but her door was already closed. I lay back on the sofa. I tried to forget about what had happened with Lars and instead picture Hanne naked, her narrow hips, her tangle of pubic hair, but my mental image of her would not materialize. I saw only you.

 

Though I was still living with my brother and his Norwegian wife in Oslo, I asked Hanne to visit me. I told her over the telephone she would have my room. She countered that she would stay in a hotel. “Fine,” I said. “I just prefer to see you here.”

Late Friday afternoon, after browsing several book stalls, I picked up Hanne from the train station and escorted her to a grand hotel one street over. She wore a sleeveless dress and had a cardigan folded over her arm. She said she was glad it was warm. She had me stay outside her room while she dropped off her bag. When she came out, she had on her cardigan, which flattered her more than I’d expected. A fresh, light pink gloss shone on her lips.

We walked to a local bistro and ate bowls of fårikål. I managed to shield much of my old life in Croatia, telling her little beyond a few details of my upbringing in a Communist-era tower block. Instead I steered the conversation to the work I did with my brother: the long hours of paperwork interspersed with spurts of developing creative slogans for food companies. Hanne smiled, seemingly impressed by my rise in social class. She drank a little more wine and probed how I spent my Sundays, then after my obfuscation, asked directly about my spiritual life. I sidelined her with a story about my first attempt at yoga, a sprained ankle after falling from the Trikonasana pose.

While we waited for dessert, I gave her a first edition of Kundera’s novel. She clutched the book and examined the front of the dust jacket. The silver-gray cover bore a three-dimensional typeface. “Is he famous back home?”

“Yes,” I said. “Sadly, the rest of Europe has barely heard of our famous writers, Danilo Kiš or Borislav Pekić.”

Hanne laughed. “Sorry, I’m one of those people.”

“You could borrow my copies, but they’re in Zagreb.”

“How long has it been since you’ve gone back?”

“A while.”

“Why?” she said.

“My brother is here, my job.”

“Advertising doesn’t seem like your passion.”

“Well, there’s no money in reading.”

That evening, I dropped Hanne back at her hotel and walked to my brother’s in the gray of dusk. The next day I asked if she would like to drink at a hip cocktail lounge I had heard of, but she said she preferred to tour the cathedral. I knew little about the Lutheran denomination. Hanne told me about High Mass and the order of the liturgy, about the vital Confession of Sin. As we stood outside, we heard the striking up of organ music; I pulled her away from the entrance. She resisted at first, then relished her hand in mine. We enjoyed a glass of red wine back at her hotel; I teased her over her skittishness and quizzed her about the last man she had dated.

Hanne fell silent. She had wanted to tell me, she said, about Espen, her failed engagement, the life she had almost led. He was gentle, unlike a soldier, had a mindset quite different from those of the Eastern Europeans. In anyone else’s voice, I would have taken offense to those words. Hanne was earnest, painfully so, even when she said that she and Espen had broken up on poor terms. “It was my fault it didn’t work out,” she said. “I expected too much.” She lifted her wineglass, holding it in midair. “Who did you leave behind in Croatia?”

“My students. I used to be a teacher.”

“I thought you had that way about you. But there must have been someone.”

“People come and go.”

“That’s a callous thing to say,” she said.

“Perhaps I felt that way back then.”

“And now?”

“And now I feel we should go to your room.”

She replaced her wineglass on the coaster. “I don’t want to do that.”

“Hanne, did I say something wrong?”

“I understand you’ve been through a lot, but we still don’t know each other. And you haven’t told me much about yourself.”

“I’d like to change that.”

“Perhaps next time we can talk more,” she said. “I have to catch my train.”

“I’ll walk you back to the station.”

“No. I know the way.” Hanne picked up her bag, studied my face for a moment, then disappeared through the archway.

I stayed and finished the rest of the bottle. I thought over my suggestion to go to Hanne’s room; I knew she would not have said yes, that she might take offense, but something in me had to ask. Perhaps, in that moment, I was close to confessing my encounters with Lars, and the soldier, and you.

The bar eventually whittled down to a pair of businessmen in the corner. I watched them consume a great deal of Scotch and speak of the problems of the Vålerenga football team. I considered joining them, as I knew a little about the Eliteserien, but when I stood, they eyed me, as certain men do, then looked away, uninterested. On my night-walk home, I remembered how easy my love affair with you had been, the execution and escalation of our physical attraction. Things should have been simple in this open, embracing country, but for me they were not.

My brother’s wife caught me entering the flat very late. I brushed past her, went to the kitchen, and extricated a bottle of pilsner from the refrigerator. She stood in the doorway in her thick robe.

“You’ve already had enough.”

“Just a nightcap,” I said. “Do you or Goran want one?”

“He’s asleep. I’m glad he doesn’t see this.”

“He knows me.”

“We don’t want you here anymore.”

I uncapped the bottle and took a long swig. She turned around, skulked back to her bedroom.

 

I avoided my brother’s wife as best I could for the next week. My brother never uttered a desire to see me find new lodgings, and I did not bring up the subject either. At work, he deluged me with administrative tasks, mostly checking on the accounts of former clients, some of which went back ten years. I tackled my new clerical duties with superficial gusto, glad for the break from visiting Lars and Hanne.

In the evenings, I sat around in bars and drank heavily, then trolled a series of disreputable alleys for someone unknown to me, a man or woman ignorant of my past. These encounters always ended with the demand for kroner and my backing off, realizing what I was doing, the low I had come to. The final time I ventured out, two men jumped me, kicked me in the ribs and head, threatened to stab me if I didn’t hand over my wallet. I saw no blade, but I gave them what money I had.

My time at work felt lengthened by my nighttime follies. My brother had noted my late returns to his flat, my decreased productivity on the accounts. At the end of the week, he marched into my office, a file in his hands.

“Linnea heard you last night,” he said.

“Oh?”

“She said you were making a lot of noise.”

“I was looking for a book.”

My brother studied me, acutely aware of the way I was rubbing my forehead. “You look in pain.”

“Just a headache.”

My brother cupped his hand under my chin and lifted my head. He studied the bruise on my cheek. “I can see why.”

“It’s nothing.”

“Just apologize to Linnea tonight.” He placed the file in front of me. “Herr Johannessen wants to talk about the ad campaign.”

“Again?” I said.

He tapped the telephone on my desk. “Just call him.”

“I’ll find some time later.”

“I mean it.” He handed me the receiver and left my office. I knew my brother was holding in most of his anger. Of the two of us, he had always been the quiet one, the diligent worker, a man later devoted to the selling of ideas. I could not hold it against him. I owed a debt to him and his wife.

I busied myself for the rest of the day. I flipped through the file a few minutes before five; I could taste the muscular coarseness of the blåskjell, and I pushed each number slowly, hoping the call would not connect. Lars answered almost instantaneously. “I’d like to run a new idea past you,” he said.

“All right,” I said. “Go ahead.”

“No, in person. You need to look at my sketches.”

His desperation felt transparent, and I imagined him in his office, a mass of nerves and back sweat, a thunderous erection under his desk.

 

My visit to Bergen surprised Hanne. She flitted around her living room, gathering up her clothes and a stack of magazines. When she had tidied the place to her satisfaction, she joined me on the sofa. Her face had reddened, her eyes wet. I asked if she was all right, and she leaned forward and kissed me, her aggression taking me by surprise. Then she lay back and drew up her skirt. She remained quiet during sex, her body limp, as though she had changed her mind. I whispered into her ear, asking if she wanted to stop. She said nothing. After it was over, she started to cry. She explained that she should not have slept with me. I held her. I told her she ought to move to Oslo, and that we could move in together. As she broke away and left me on the sofa, she said I should ask her again in the morning.

In the late rush of us leaving her flat the next day, I pretended I had forgotten to ask. Hanne kissed me on the cheek as we parted ways at the intersection. I watched her catch the tram. I felt unsure whether she had really wanted me to bring up Oslo again. She was shy, rarely said what she desired, what she sought from me. She had not even mentioned the faded bruises on my body.

Before I left Bergen, I paid a visit to the processing plant. Lars was in the wash-up room scrubbing his nails. He wore a white lab coat and a hairnet. He stepped over to the roll of paper towels and dried his hands. Beneath the harsh light he seemed old, his face gray and wrinkled.

“It’s been some time,” he said.

“Goran has me working with some new clients.”

“You moved on.”

“That’s one way to put it.”

Lars approached, and I could smell on his clothes and in his hair the remains of iced salty fish. “Are you clean?” he said.

“I spent the day traveling.”

“That isn’t what I meant,” he said. “I know you’ve been with women.”

“So?”

“I want you to appreciate me.”

“My brother and I do.”

“There are no sketches.”

“I know.”

“Then why did you come?”

I felt unable to answer Lars; we both knew why I was there: my attraction to men was something I could not repress in the right company. He kneeled before me and unzipped my trousers. I did not try to stop him; he unwrapped a condom and slid it on me. Then he took me in his mouth. I watched his bobbing hairnet. I could see his slick silver hair below the white net, the sweat gathering at the top of his scalp. When I had finished, he skinned off the condom, inspected the contents, then swaddled it in a paper towel and threw it away.

On my subsequent visits to see Hanne, I sought Lars out before I left Bergen. We would meet in his office; he would perform his mead ritual, say Jeg ønsker å ha sex med deg, which meant he wanted to have sex, though we never did. We would take turns satisfying each other; twenty minutes at most and that would be it. My departures rarely provoked anything more than a few words, but Lars promised he would write me. I always turned away. Our encounters elicited little emotion from me, and I did not want to hear about his love for me or the sadness of his marriage; I was sure he was hiding a wife. After our last dalliance, he tried to kiss me, and I tasted the sourness of his breath. He asked if I would like to stay the night at his house. The flash of anguish in his voice struck me as dangerous. My future lay with Hanne. I decided I would not see him again.

A few months later, Hanne and I moved into a turn-of-the-century building in Grünerløkka, a gentrified district of Oslo. The main window of our flat faced the Akerselva River and an art gallery, once an old textile factory. Hanne sat in the little nook by the window and watched the visitors, the faux art trinkets they carted out. When she got tired of this, she took a job teaching ESL at a folkuniversitet. She rarely complained about the low pay or the difficult adult students. After work, I would meet her outside of the cathedral and we would walk the streets, look at the façades of the museums and galleries, continue on to the reptile park, stopping some days to listen to the roar from the feeding show. The cheers and claps of the crowd drowned out the alligators breaking bone and ripping flesh. We usually didn’t stay for long but went for a coffee. She labeled our flâneuring her daily exercise, but I knew she was re-creating our first walk in Bergen. I asked her once and she looked at me strangely. “You seemed like a different person back then,” she said.

That same day, we caught the tram home. There was only one seat and Hanne took it, while I stood, clutching the handrail. Outside, buildings flitted by. Cars whipped past. The window of sky empty, just a pale patch of blue. As we approached the Tinghuset stop, I pointed across the road to an octagonal-shaped church. I told Hanne the central dome looked odd.

“What is that supposed to mean?”

“Not much. Just that it looks odd.”

Hanne offered her seat to another man. She stood behind me. “How would you know? You’re not from here.”

I considered letting the matter lie. But something in her tone irritated me. “Maybe I should go back to Croatia.”

I felt her hand at my back, pulling me around. “No,” she said.

“But I’m a different person.” I did not say anything more. The tram rumbled over the bridge across the Akerselva River and pulled into Heimdalsgata. By this time, Hanne and I had turned away from each other; what I had said was hurtful and had upset our relationship’s delicate equilibrium, but it was not in me to apologize. Once the tram juddered into motion, we began to argue again, this time over where to get married. She wanted it in the Lutheran cathedral, but I did not; I told her I was a lapsed Catholic, for a host of reasons, and I could not abide any type of religious ceremony. She slipped her hand into my jacket pocket—a gesture, I thought, of acceptance—and I interlaced my fingers with hers. As we alighted from the tram, she reluctantly agreed to a civil ceremony. A few months later we married at City Hall. Her parents were in attendance, and a handful of her Bergen friends, and my brother and his wife. Leaving the room, walking past the colorful murals, Hanne told me she was happy.

Sometime later, Lars rang me at work. I said nothing about Hanne. “It’s over,” I said. He begged me to take one more trip to Bergen. I told Lars he was too old and hung up. For a long time afterward, it felt as though I had taken out my frustration with you on Lars. I tried very hard to forget about my past life. Hanne and I talked about children. We had a close call once, but lost her. I joked a Slavic-Nordic child would be an odd combination, and Hanne refused to talk to me for a week. We recovered mostly after that; we talked about other things: our careers, our holiday plans, a trip to Bergen to see her friends. I pretended to be sick the day of the trip and she went without me, and I drank all evening with my brother.

 

Hanne ended our relationship the other day. She discovered a cache of letters from Lars. The silly old man had sent one every few weeks to my brother’s flat, and his wife hadn’t had the wherewithal to burn them. Perhaps in an act of longstanding resentment, she had sent them on in a brown paper package. That morning, Hanne had been sorting through some of my clothes in my suitcase for a trip we were planning together, a sort of delayed honeymoon. When I returned home, she fanned the letters on the kitchen table, asked me to explain. I resisted at first, said the letters were a prank. Then an old man’s fantasy. Finally, I admitted what the letters said was true.

Hanne screamed that I had betrayed her and demanded that I leave. I slipped away without saying anything else. I walked into town; I felt half there, a spectral presence in the midst of so many people. I stepped around the crowds and headed into an ornamental park; I studied the empty base of the ice rink and sat on the edge, feet dangling above a bed of red and brown leaves. A group of teenagers on the other side laughed at me, and I retraced my steps and bought a half-liter of brandy and drank it in the toilet of the Vinmonopolet. In the last hour of daylight, I stumbled back to my brother’s flat. I slept in my old bedroom for several hours. In the morning, my body felt wretchedly cold. I told my brother that Hanne and I had had a fight and I was letting her cool off. My brother barely flinched. He must have sensed my lies and the depth of my hangover. He said, “Don’t be late for work.”

But I am late, many hours now. I am on a train to the airport. I do not know where you live, all these years later. I hope I will still find you, Mateo. I have thought about what to say and if you would even listen. Before I left my brother’s flat, I looked again for the book I meant to give you years ago. Though that copy of Verlaine’s Sagesse is lost, left behind in a hotel room in Zagreb, I remember reading one of his poems to you, explaining that it was a confession. You pressed a finger to my lips and said no, it was an admission he had to return home.

 

Christopher Linforth is the author of three story collections, The Distortions (Orison Books, 2022), winner of the 2020 Orison Books Fiction Prize, Directory (Otis Books/Seismicity Editions, 2020), and When You Find Us We Will Be Gone (Lamar University Press, 2014).

 

 

Her scales are the size of silver dollars. Her green hair mystically covers her breasts. Water drips from her fin and turns into pearls that she strings with the thread of her hair. Her pinky nail is the needle. She sits on a rock in the middle of the night, waiting for the boats full of men. 

Her neck and arms are strung with jewelry. The men come with their pockets full of gold. They want her pearls for their wives because the pearls make them glow. 

“It’s almost as if my wife were young again,” one sailor tells her. 

One by one the men come to her rock, and she gives them a bracelet, a necklace, or a small ring. 

“Love me,” she tells them. 

They always kiss her first, right on her peach lips. Their rough hands run over her shoulders, then part her hair. 

“Your breasts feel like down pillows,” one says while he squeezes. “I want to sleep on them.” 

Most of the men stop above the waist, because there is nothing to touch below but a slimy tail. They take her pearls to their wives and make love to them instead. 

She listens to the ocean’s shhhhh sound. She watches the waves hit the shore and wonders what it’s like to have legs. What does sand feel like on toes? But mostly she wonders about the ice cream stand near the pier and the man who runs it. 

He is dressed all in white, smiling when he hands customers a cone. His teeth probably don’t have holes in them like the sailors do—no gold caps or large spaces in between. She wonders what his mouth tastes like, if it is different from the sailors’ rotten fish scent. She likes the man because his belly pokes out from his shirt and his arms remind her of jelly fish when he thrusts the scoop into the bucket of ice cream. 

He seems soft, she thinks.

She leaves her rock and splashes back into the ocean, her mind on the ice cream man, her mind on legs. Instead of going home, near her sisters, near her father, she goes to the sea witch’s cave. 

The sea witch’s arms are twisted like dead coral. Her hair fans out like black kelp. 

“I’ll need nine of your scales,” the sea witch hisses. “Magick has a price.”

The mermaid agrees. She flinches with each pluck and hands nine scales to the sea witch who then plops the scales into a glass bottle and mixes them with the blood of her finger. A small ring from the missing scales is now visible on the hip of the mermaid’s tail, branded forever by the sea witch and her magick.

The little mermaid drinks the potion. 

She swims up to the surface, to an empty part of the beach, and lies in the sand. The hot sun dries her hair, her skin, her tail. Her scales flake and fall, leaving raw flesh. A sharp pain as her tail rips into two. She screams while her split fin turns into feet with toes. It feels like someone is carving them with a knife. 

She stands and wobbles, nude. Her torso and arms are a deep tan while her legs are pale and blotchy-red. She looks towards the pier, sees the man near the ice cream cart and walks towards him. Everyone is staring at her. Parents put their hands over their children’s eyes; fathers stare and mothers, too. All look at the limping naked woman with green hair. 

The ice cream man in mid-scoop stops to take her in. He sucks in his breath and holds out one strawberry cone. She has only ever eaten seaweed and fish; she wants to try the ball of pink that sparkles in the sun. 

“Give me that,” she says. And she snatches it away. 

She winces from the cold as she bites into it. The ice cream man, whose nametag says Gary, takes off his work shirt and drapes it around her small frame. 

He brings her behind the cart, behind the bushes into a secluded grassy area with a dome roof of leaves. She chews the cone until it’s gone; she licks her sticky fingers while he unbuckles his belt and drops his pants. 

“Please lie down,” he says. 

“Why?” she asks. 

“Because I love you,” he says. 

He starts poking inside of her. The sweat drips from his face and into her eyes and from her eyes fall pearls and she is surprised by how much of her is still mermaid. His gut presses into her and she can’t breathe. She wants him to stop—she doesn’t like love after all—but his eyes are closed and she can sense that his mind is in a different world, a floating world; he’s floating inside of her. 

When he finishes, she screeches so loud that Gary’s ears bleed. She walks him home afterwards. 

She asks him for his ice cream cart and his uniform and his nametag and he gives it all to her. His thoughts unconsciously project to her how he messed things up so badly and he’s scared she’ll scream again. He even gives her enough money to stay at a hotel for the week until she can find a place. 

She works the ice cream cart and finds a one-room house nearby. Her white uniform has strawberry, chocolate, and mint-chip stains. She wears Gary’s nametag and eats ice cream at least three times a day. Her belly swells up with a child who constantly kicks her while she eats. Her butt and thighs have thickened so much that no one looks at her anymore, and she likes it. She has given up on men loving her and instead loves her ice cream cart, the ice cream itself, and reading the minds of her customers before they can even order. Vanilla, she will hear, from the little human girl’s thoughts. Chocolate for the woman with the blood collecting between her legs. Strawberry, the men always get strawberry, and lick it like they are licking their wife when they used to love each other.

She gazes out onto the ocean and briefly wonders where the sailors are. Her thoughts drift to how life is in the sea without her, her family, her home.

Suddenly, her sisters’ heads pop up from the water. The little mermaid walks as fast as she can down to the beach to meet them there. As she nears them, she notices her youngest sister’s eyes have been plucked. 

“The sea witch,” they tell her. “We went to her.” 

“What for?” the little mermaid asks. 

Her oldest sister holds up a conch with purple blood. 

“We killed the sea witch,” the second eldest sister says. 

“After she took my eyes,” the youngest says.

“We took her blood,” says the oldest. 

“You can have your tail back, your mermaid life back,” the second eldest says. 

“Come home,” they say.

The conch rests in the crevice of a rock, the water swishing around it. The little mermaid looks up to a flock of birds circling in the sky and how their wings flap, mimicking the shimmer of fish scales in the sunlight.

She picks up the conch. It is heavy in her plump hands. She holds the sharp point of the shell to her lips and lets the thick blood pour into her mouth. The blood burns her tongue like hot soup, sears its way down her throat, and when she glances down at the boiling in her belly, her stomach is flat as if her child had never existed. 

Her clothing disintegrates in the air. The fat in her arms shrinks, leaving two slender limbs. Her hair springs into its loose curls; the pale green hue is now a bright teal. Her breasts are perky again. The silhouette of her legs from a distance becomes the sleek tail and full bottom that she once had before coming to the sea witch’s cave. The bare ring of missing scales on her hip, the sea witch’s mark, is gone.

The little mermaid, with the blood still on her lips kisses her youngest sister’s wounds. Her sister opens her emerald eyes once more. One by one the three sisters screech in joy and return back to the ocean.

The little mermaid hovers from a rock overlooking the water. The waves are small and calm. She takes one last glance at the sun setting over the horizon. The pink, orange, and yellow hues remind her of the sorbet that she ate every morning when she was nauseous from her pregnancy. 

She sings from her rock as the sun sets and the moon rises looking like a white pupil in the night sky. On the white dome she imagines the thin skin of a mermaid’s purse. The shadow of a yoke being sucked on by a wiggling merchild with a perfect split fin tail. The ocean waves slap the rock she sings from. 

The little mermaid dives back into the ocean, back home. Tomorrow, she will sing again.

 

Jennifer Lorene Ritenour is from San Pedro, California and has lived in Las Vegas, Nevada. Her writing is informed by place. Her style has been described as dirty fabulism. Her work has appeared in the Santa Monica Review, Waxwing, and Writing Disorder among other places. For more information visit: jenniferloreneritenour.com