Dry Season Read online

  GABRIELA BABNIK

  DRY SEASON

  Translated from the Slovene by Rawley Grau

  An idea hungers for your body.

  An alert, hot to dissemble and share.

  Les Murray ‘Life Cycle of Ideas’, from Subhuman Redneck Poems

  For my girls, who are asleep as I write this.

  First published in 2015 by

  Istros Books (in collaboration with Beletrina Academic Press)

  London, United Kingdom

  www.istrosbooks.com

  Originally published in Slovene as Sušna doba by Beletrina Academic Press

  © Gabriela Babnik, 2015

  The right of Gabriela Babnik to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988. The italicized passages in the text indicate borrowings from such writers as Ben Okri, Salman Rushdie, Ken Bugul, Chris Abani, Wole Soyinka, Helon Habila, and Reinaldo Arenas, among others.

  Translation © Rawley Grau, 2015

  Edited by Stephen Watts

  Cover design and typesetting: Davor Pukljak | www.frontispis.hr

  ISBN: 978-1-908236-265 (printed edition)

  ISBN: 978-1-908236-760 (eBook edition)

  This Book is part of the EU co-funded project “Stories that can Change the World” in partnership with Beletrina Academic Press | www.beletrina.si

  The European Commission support for the production of this publication does not constitute an endorsement of the contents which reflects the views only of the authors, and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein.

  Chapter 1

  You cannot know how much a chicken weighs until you pick it up and shake it.

  (African proverb)

  We were lying on the bed and had not let the sun into the room, but even if we had turned on a light, I don’t know if anything would have changed – if I’d have become what I was or he what he was. I moved nearer to him. I moved as near to him as possible. To his raspy breathing and warm skin. He was unusually warm. He had said in total seriousness, which gave his words added charm, that he had the heart of a buffalo. I had harnessed him, this buffalo, and now it would be hard to ever let him go. My bones wouldn’t let me. I know I write as if from the previous century, but I am from the previous century. I was born not long after the Second World War. I read somewhere that’s not the way to start a novel. I mean saying ‘I was born in such-and-such a place’, but let me do it anyway. Let me be forgiven for lying in bed without the light on next to this young man whose face looked like it had been drawn on. Eyes, forehead, nose – as if cut out of cardboard and pasted there.

  He slept with his lids half-open and I found myself wanting to close them. There were also things about him I just knew, from a distance. I could have predicted them. Like when we were going to the hotel. While I was bent over my bag searching for my wallet, he looked away. Or on the avenue in the middle of the day, when I wanted to take his arm, it was better not to, even though I had done it just a little while before. It was better that he just walk beside me, with his slim, slender car mechanic’s body – although... although he must have already done many things in his life; you could see it in his veins, not only the veins on his arms but especially at his temples, big powerful veins, veins like electrical cables, veins like steel, like salt, like water, invincible veins, and I, next to him, was carrying my yellow bag printed with garden flowers, which later, somewhere halfway along the way, I let out of my hands. In the hotel, when we had leaned back on the plastic chairs, when our bodies had rested, he said the bag was what made him notice me. From across the avenue. Rivers were flowing between us – cars, people, street vendors, women with and without bundles on their heads, children with old and less old faces, but even so he spotted me on his retina. He was squinting his eyes, as he did now, except now they were almost completely open. Though now he was no longer looking anywhere, at least not in my direction. I imagine him looking inwards, at that buffalo heart of his and the hot blood flowing in waves through his body.

  That’s probably why he was rasping in his sleep like that. In total seriousness. As if he hadn’t slept for an eternity, as if he could barely wait for someone to invite him into bed. I suppose I sensed that even from across the avenue. And when we were finally standing face to face, he said, ‘You were looking at me.’

  I remember it clearly, him using the formal vous with me. Then I said the same thing, only with the familiar tu: ‘I noticed you were looking at me.’

  ‘So what do we do now?’ he laughed. I said nothing, with that yellow printed bag of mine, since it would have been too stupid to say something and look away. That’s also when I realized it would be hard to bear not looking. At that tall, slender body. But I suppose I’ve already said that, so now I need to say something else, to lay my cards on the table. When I looked away from him, I imagined him slipping his big dark hand, which reflected the sun and everything else too, beneath my sweat-soaked T-shirt and lifting those breasts that for a century had been sagging to either side. ‘I will help you carry your bag,’ he added, as I slowly turned my eyes back to him.

  I laughed back. After I barely escaped death crossing the street, you wanted to carry my bag for me? Only that and nothing else? No, not that I didn’t know how such things are done on this continent – no kissing on the street, no holding hands, least of all between two people of the opposite sex, no intimacy at all in public – but to carry my bag, when what I had in mind was a finger in the mouth, a hand on the belly, was simply too much. I shook my head – what else could I do? Even as I child, whenever I really wanted something, I shook my head. ‘No need. I’ll manage.’ Of course the subtitles said the direct opposite and I think he even deciphered that. From across the street, beneath the sun. Later, as we walked side by side, slowly, lightly, like two cotton flowers in swirls of dust, he took my bag all the same.

  We went to a nearby hotel. Where else should we have gone? A wo­man like me and a man like him. Standing up, he was two heads taller than me. But I’m used to tall men from home. For me that’s not a problem. Maybe it bothered other people. That a sixty-two-year-old woman and a twenty-seven-year-old man were strolling along side by side. Maybe it bothered the receptionist at the hotel. That when I put my hand in my bag our elbows accidentally touched, and then our shoulders. I saw it; it was written on her face. Here’s another woman who’s come for a safari. Except that here, in this faded hotel, I don’t see any clouds, let alone grass or lions in the grass. Just a dark, narrow hallway and stairs that lead to a room. When you open the door, on the left is a bed and, next to the bed, a night table with a tawdry shine; a little to the side, a fridge with a vase of plastic flowers on top. Also, let’s say, two chairs, on which we sat down timidly, maybe me a little more than him. I bent my legs a little, a pose I’d later assume more than once in Africa; he, meanwhile, went to the fridge and took out a bottle of water. I was pretending to look at the window, the curtains on the window, heavy curtains that reached to the floor and somehow jarred with what was happening outside, all that sunlight and those exaggerated gestures and inviting smiles from the street vendors, and trying not to think about the things that might happen between us. I suppose I was afraid, yes, afraid of the words from his mouth. That he would suddenly turn away from the fridge, the bottle of cold water still in his hands, and say, ‘Lie down and spread your legs’ or ‘C’mon, let me fuck you, ’cause that’s why you brought me to this hotel, isn’t it?’ Words like that I wouldn’t know how to respond to.

  ‘Are you cold?’ My shoulders flinched, but I would have probably flinched no matter what
he said. And because the question was followed by silence, I looked over at my bag and only then realized I had put it on the floor by the bed when I entered the room. As if he understood the quick turn of my head, as if he understood more than I ever would, he walked back toward the bed, and I thought he was going to sit on it and thus summon me to finally do what we’d come there to do, but he just bent down, picked up the bag from the floor and, as if it was nothing, as if those plastic flowers and that somewhat shabby rug and that silk bedspread were nothing, handed it to me. I held it to my breast as if holding a child. ‘If you are cold, can I give you my shirt?’

  I shook my head. I don’t know if he understood me, since the very next moment, in a quick yank, he pulled the thin fabric over his head and stood there like that before me. All I remember is his fur, that thick dark fur, spreading up from his genitals to his belly and almost to his neck. It had never really occurred to me that black men could be hairy, at least not this much.

  In this scene, this mute, timid, almost palpitating scene of expectation, in which anything could happen and anything be denied, a third person would have been helpful. But since none was around and since the moment was lasting too long, I leaned over to him and accepted the sweaty T-shirt with two fingers.

  ‘Please don’t use vous with me.’

  ‘No?’

  Again I shook my head. Surely by now he understood what I meant. My son used to break out laughing. Especially when he was little. Years later he told me that all through his childhood he thought his mother had a mane. A lion’s mane, if you can imagine. And maybe this mane was also why the young black man was stroking my face with his hand. His big warm hand, checking to see if that forehead, those hollows for the eyes, and that nose weren’t just pasted on me. Cut out of cardboard and pasted there. I wanted to tell him that my son was the same age he was so it would be better if he used tu with me, but I found myself, when he turned away from my face, went over to the window and closed the heavy velvet curtains, preferring to stare at his backside. I suppose Madonna needed fifty years to get buttocks like that; I probably won’t manage that even in the next life.

  ‘The hotel’s not too bad,’ I said, to finally say something. ‘Only the way the receptionist was looking at us...’

  He waved his arm as if to say, stop right there, it’s not worth conti­nuing. And when he moved nearer the bed, when his shadow was again thickening over mine, I realized he reminded me of someone. Someone who was no more, but who through him, through those jeans hanging off his backside, through his long fingers, was again inhabiting me. Ever since I left home, scrubbed the floor, fluffed the pillows, pushed the chairs in around the table, and locked the garden door, he had been with me. So this encounter, or rather, this looking at each other in the street, did not happen because I was carrying a yellow bag and he was wearing his warm, too warm, skin and his inside-out buffalo heart, but because we had in fact been pasted together all this time. It was only here, in this landscape without clouds, without tall grass or lions in the grass, that we could unpaste ourselves and stand on opposite sides of the street. Maybe I’m crazy but I believe in such things. But if I am crazy, then the face of this man who carried my bag for me to a nearby hotel, who, after drinking water from the fridge, took off his T-shirt, and then closed the curtains and fell asleep, does not exist at all, and so neither do I.

  * * *

  Malik wanted us to rob the woman. He pointed her out to me at the market; I mean her yellow bag. When it came to this sort of thing we did not need to talk. Eye contact and a gesture or two were enough. Then like polecats we followed the silhouette, which stopped a little here, a little there, until we came to an open area and all became clear. Malik was always the one in front; I, more often than not, was watching his back. If things were going wrong, I would make somebody trip or try to draw attention to myself. But with this woman, I mean her yellow bag, I knew it would not be easy. She seemed like she was made of cotton and if Malik bumped into her with that heavy body of his, she would just collapse. I did not have the feeling she’d scream or anything like that. But I could imagine her just dropping on the sidewalk and starting to cry. And I hate stuff like that. Malik once told me I was a pussy. He pounded his chest and called me names. ‘You must to be bastard. If you are no bastard, dey will crush you. Dis here is Ouagadougou, dude. Dis here is no your bush.’

  Malik’s blather was a lot of nonsense. I had been living in this city long enough to feel like I was born here. Other people my age on the street, I would tell them it happened under a bridge; what bridge I don’t remember exactly, but it was definitely here, in the city. So Malik was more of a bushman than me. But back in the market it was not about that.

  Then, I wanted to tell him I really did not feel so much like nicking that woman’s bag, and besides, I thought she was a little too white, a little too soft, like those pillows you see on TV in some white lady’s fucking bedroom or living room – men and women sit on them like they’re dreaming, like that is all they know, all they can think of, and of course they think all us other people also live like them; meanwhile, we other people are only dreaming their dreams – and I was still tired from the night before. I really did not feel so much like running two to four miles in the hot sun, which is what the usual robbery required. Last night, for example, it did not make any sense. And we lost the motorbike too. Malik got stoned before it all started so I doubt he could even see where he was going. Otherwise he probably would not have tried it with that white woman. Her hands were shaking, her eyes went all marbly, like she was going to kick it any minute. I think what scared her most were Malik’s pink lips and the pink blotches on his face, like a star had exploded there. Maybe I’ll talk about his skin disease some other time, but not now; now I have to say something else too: that the white woman – an American, Belgian, Flemish woman, how should I know? – wasn’t there by herself; a black dude was standing next to her. And because of him, that fucker, I told Malik, do not stop the bike, but that is exactly what he did. He rammed it into the dirt, got off and walked over to them, like it was nothing. Like he just wanted to ask for a light. And before they could count to three they had knives at their bellies. We took the dude’s trousers off and frisked his arse, but he didn’t have anything there, not even a thousand francs.

  The people walking by looked away like it was none of their business­ – when the same thing happens to them, no one will give a shit either – and bam, that’s when I got the feeling things would not turn out good for us, that something smelled funny. But last night I let Malik go through with it all the same. And the way he went through it was we ended up with no motorbike and no dough; all we got off the dude was his passport, which we really could not do anything with. All we could do was wait two or three days and then put it into circulation.

  And now the same thing could happen here. There’s nothing in that woman’s yellow bag but tissues, a bottle of warm water, and a credit card. And somewhere in the background waits Dude No. 2. A little scrawnier and with his thing dangling, but still a black dude who can run, who wants to run, even with his trousers undone. Because last night, when people were strolling past, the dude with the passport and no dough decided to risk it. The Flemish woman almost passed away, and I can just see her laying into him back at the hotel. Saying what a bastard he is, the biggest arsehole alive. The point being that when he was running off to get help with his trousers undone, I could have sunk my knife into her belly. I did feel her up a little, I admit. Beneath her top, behind her bra, to see if she was hiding anything. But she wasn’t. And the one from the market, too, who is right now in front of us, she has probably done it too. Stuck fifteen, twenty thousand francs behind her bra, but those things of hers are in their last days – kaput is what Malik would call them. His old man once told him, a woman goes through two periods of life: a phase of growth and a phase of decline. But I think he must have read that somewhere; he didn’t come up with it himself
. His old man was not an albino and even read things. Sometimes at night he would sit on the terrace and if he wasn’t reading he would listen to jazz. ‘Kind of Blue’ and that sort of bollocks. However you look at it, Malik’s old man was not so stupid. I think he even knew what Malik and I were up to, but he never said anything. Well, once he said we were going through that sort of phase and should make the most of life.

  Make the most, man. I would rather make the most of that old lady from the market. I tell you, she should have stayed in her hotel and this would not be happening to us. I wouldn’t have to run in the hot sun and Malik wouldn’t be giving me signals to make a move already or he will rip my head off.

  I turned to look at her one more time across the avenue. She may have been in the decline phase but she still had decent calves, nicely shaped, somewhat muscular thighs, and her arse did not sag. She was showing it off in a pair of dark three-quarter trousers. White ladies, from what I have been able to see of them, are always doing things like that. Wearing something that knocks you sideways. A low-cut top with a dark-red lacy bra underneath, or a little chain around the ankle. Because of the yellow bag it was not erect yet, which would really have been too much, to have to sneak into some filthy toilet and wank off over somebody like that, but in the end I could not rob her anyway. All the time it was going through my head that after we grabbed that thing off her she would just sit on the ground and start crying. And I hate crying women, like I hate marbles in the eyes and shaky hands. With all their gold rings and credit cards, the only thing they have left is fear. That alone is sometimes enough to make me want to put holes in them. They go out, leave everything at the hotel, take some black dude with them just in case, a local if possible, who just happens to stuff his passport in his pocket, although not necessarily by chance since only Allah knows how much he went through to get that document, which I don’t blame him for at all, and then they watch to see which corner somebody’s going to jump out of. But it was noon and the market was crowded, like it only gets at noon, and that changed everything. So I shook my head one more time to Malik. Yesterday we lost the motorbike and now it’s going to be our heads. And when I get a feeling, or should I say a jab, near a chamber of my heart, that is another sure sign. But Malik did not understand. Like he never understood what ‘Kind of Blue’ was all about. Night after night he would sit with his old man on the terrace but all he would think about was naked chicks and how he was going to stop doing small jobs and start doing big ones.