Moving Parts by Magdelena Tulli Read Free Book Online Page B

and tries to wipe the blood from his face, as if unaware that the situation is serious and requires surgical intervention. Wads of bloodied tissue multiply. Mozhet doesn’t know what to do with them; they fall at his feet one by one. He has not looked back at Fmeier once. He gazes only at her, through one eye, because he can no longer see through the other. Half a look must now suffice for a farewell. He takes a step back, and his chair overturns behind him. He wants nothing, not even his leather traveling bag, it seems, which is standing on the floor in the guest room somewhere upstairs. From the first phone booth he finds, he’ll call a cab; evidently he has his wallet with him. He’s on his way to the gate when the woman pushes F-meier away from her, simply tears herself free; perhaps there is a shout, but it cannot be heard. She gets into the car abandoned on the driveway and burning with a metallic glare in the blinding sunlight; she picks up the man in the striped T-shirt and takes him to the hospital, and that’s all. Meanwhile the tightrope walker’s blood soils the light-colored leather upholstery of the car. And yet it is F-meier, her husband, who has gone mad and needs help. He sits motionless on the terrace, his forehead resting heavily on the edge ofthe table, not knowing how he will live through the next quarter of an hour. It would be better if the boy were not to wake up now. A soft breeze begins to rustle the newspapers scattered about the table. They include, let’s say, the German edition of the Financial Times and an illustrated weekly with a well-known title, also German. Or perhaps Austrian? The narrator does not know; he doesn’t read the German-language press, and in fact does not know German at all. Then what was the language of the spoken parts, which in any case could not be heard?
    It couldn’t have been German, of course. It’s easiest to imagine that all the dialogues are conducted in the language of the narrator, not that of the characters. This is a method familiar from the movies; it enables the audience to understand a plot taking place in exotic countries, whose very existence is not entirely beyond doubt. Like it or not, then, the characters speak a language with flexible word order, in which anything can be said at least ten different ways, with different nuances of meaning. A language that suffers from an insufficiency of past and future tenses and a lack of rigor in their sequencing, something that permits the verbs a considerable degree of license and can lead to unexpected turns of events. This tongue, living happily under the aegis of Latin letters modified in makeshift fashion, has occupied a blank space on the map and has marked it with geographical names that everyone has heard of. Yet the fact that they are widely known does not alter the conviction that in essence Germany borders with Russia and Russia withGermany – and that on one side of the frontier there lies dirty snow, while on the other colorful butterflies flit about. That’s right, on both sides Polish is spoken. There is no other possibility. And in the Balkans? Polish too. And in the ports of the Far East. And in the remotest corners of Africa. Only Polish. Everywhere.
    This still isn’t the end of this scene, which, as it happens, is of crucial importance, and which the narrator, finding no other way out, had to come upon one way or another. While he’s about it, he would gladly read the previously ignored name-plate by the gate, but he’s reluctant to cross the terrace while one of the characters remains at the table. It would be less awkward to find amid the floors and passages the right hallway leading to the empty house and the abandoned November garden. But why doesn’t F-meier call a cab and go where he is urgently needed and seriously late? Why has he still not found a babysitter for the child? The phone rings. A mouthful of orange juice from the