After this fruitful conversation he dialed the number of the Academy of Sciences, where he was recognized by voice and put through to the director, something that always used to flatter him and to which he was now indifferent. Levadski explained the matter: he urgently had to get to Vienna. He was ninety-six and didn’t have time to detain himself with paperwork. What he expected from the Academy was for them to call the embassy and speak to the director of the visa department and persuade them that he was a special case. He entreated them to do so. If informed that no exceptions could be made, they were immediately to go on the attack and make use of his membership in the Academy of Sciences and his doctorate and honorary degrees.
Levadski received his visa within two weeks. When he turned the key in the lock, a thin leather suitcase between his legs, it was as if the rumbling in his stomach was calling out to the silence in his apartment. “I am not coming back,” he said to the oval porcelain plaque with the number 107 on his door. With a bad conscience he got into the elevator. He was leaving his home like a wife he never had. He turned his back on his apartment, his apartment that welcomed him on a daily basis, warmed him, embraced him. True, he’d had to cook himself, but the apartment was there for him and surrounded him day and night, in silent selfless love. My God, Levadski thought, what has become of me? A traitor! An egotist! By the time he stepped out of the elevator Levadski couldn’t care less about his egotism.
In the taxi, he inspected the visa in his passport with a magnifying glass. It loomed even larger in size than the one he had been given in 2002. Security precautions, thought Levadski, are getting tighter.
“Traffic jam,” said the taxi driver. Levadski was happy that, as was his habit, he had set off far too early. He was happy about his hat and his walking stick, leaning against his thin leg like a gaunt grayhound. In order not to look out the taxi window, and to avoid becoming unnecessarily melancholy, Levadski opened his wallet. A beautiful credit card beamed at him like an oriental beauty through the slit of her veil. What a kerfuffle over such a small item! Levadski thought. Luckily, it had been sorted quickly. Levadski had only applied for the credit card the previous week. He received it shortly after the courier had arrived with his passport and visa. Let them say what they like about bureaucracy!
“We are on the move,” the taxi driver announced ceremoniously. “An accident with a few fatalities.”
“Wonderful,” Levadski said and started counting the knuckles on his hand with the handle of the drinking stick; he counted them clockwise and counter-clockwise. He continued to count them until they passed the spot of the accident.
At the airport the crowd took no notice of Levadski’s smart outward appearance or his considerable age. For the last time, he thought, and dived into the swathes of people who smelled of sweat, perfume and onions. Half an hour later, Levadski was washed up on the banks of passport and customs control. His drinking stick got through the checkpoint without causing a stir. Levadski followed suit. My God, he thought, sitting on one of the hard metal benches in front of the departure gate, One way, and no coming back! To calm himself he unscrewed his drinking stick, threw his head back and drank the contents of the glass tube: Cognac. Make: 3 Star Odessa Cognac. For the last time, Levadski thought, a native comestible.
“What’s that?” a child who’d appeared out of nowhere asked.
“A drinking stick, my dear boy,” Levadski replied.
“I am not a boy,” the child growled. “Where did you get the stick?”
“In a shop at 5 Victory Avenue. Do you like it?”
“No. But my father does,” said the child and pointed at one of the customs officers standing with his legs spread apart, who, so it seemed to Levadski, was winking at him in a friendly manner with the muzzle of his gun.
VIII
ON NOVEMBER 6, 2010, LEVADSKI LANDED IN VIENNA. It was a Saturday and shortly after four. “Hotel Imperial please,” he said in a cracked voice to the broad, cobra-like back of the taxi driver.
“Oh, Imperial,” said the taxi driver, his leather jacket squeaking. “You know it’s the best hotel in town?”
“I know,” Levadski said and felt his heart pounding at the portals of his brain.
“How long are you staying there?”
“I don’t know.”
“You can speak our language very well!” This praise coming from the mouth of a pitch-black man made Levadski laugh. “Where are you from?” he asked Levadski with a heavy accent.
“I’m from the East.” Levadski paused. “From Ukraine.” He noticed he was lying. He was lying, even though he was telling the truth. In the political sense Levadski really was from Ukraine, it was written in black and white in his passport, but from a historical perspective he was from two utopias: Austro-Hungary and the Soviet Union. The one and only thing that smacked of a lie was the realization that Levadski had survived two systems of government.
“I know Ukraine,” said the taxi driver, “I studied telecommunications in Germany, my roommate was from Kiev. His name was Petro and he always ate sour pickles in the morning to get his hangover under control. He liked to joke. For example, when I scratched my head, he would say: ‘Don’t scratch — wash!’” Levadski broke into a dirty laugh and immediately apologized. “Yes, Petro was funny …”
“Are you still in touch with him?”
The taxi driver shook his head. His black face had a purple sheen to it in the red of the traffic light. “He’s dead. Froze to death on a park bench in winter.”
“Oh,” said Levadski.
“Yes,” said the taxi driver. “That wouldn’t have happened to him in the Ivory Coast. That’s where I’m from.”
With every new traffic light, Levadski warmed a little more to the taxi driver. He would have liked to examine him by daylight. “What do you think of our language?” the taxi driver asked him.
“Which language?”
“The German language,” the taxi driver laughed. Beautiful. Levadski thought it was a very beautiful language, and romantic. The taxi driver cautiously turned round, his leather jacket scrunching madly. “You know, this is the first time I am hearing someone say that German is a beautiful language. I am pleased, because I think it is too.”
“I am pleased to hear it,” Levadski said. He would have liked to continue talking about the beauty of the German language but didn’t say anything. He remained silent and took pleasure in the rising bubbles of joy, savored the experience of sitting beneath the roof of a car with a special person, a black taxi driver, Ivorian by birth, someone who had studied telecommunications, who had borrowed the German language. Levadski smiled in the darkness of the taxi.
“What do you think of the EU?” the man from the Ivory Coast wanted to know.
“The EU is a blessing. Migratory birds, for example, have always been real Europeans.”
“That’s terrific,” said the taxi driver. “Terrific,” he repeated softly, as if a state secret had just been entrusted to him and he had understood its meaning.
Levadski’s drinking cane exited the taxi like a gentle hoof, followed by a slightly clumsier Levadski. A liveried bellhop disappeared through a side door with his suitcase. “Goodbye!” Levadski waved to the taxi driver. A chain of fireflies lit up the darkness of the car’s interior.
“Take care!” the taxi driver shouted, “Long live the birds!” Smiling, Levadski stepped from the revolving door into the hotel lobby.
“A reservation has been made for me. Levadski is my name. Luka Levadski.”
Shortly after the liveried bellhop deposited Levadski’s suitcase with a dull thud on the luggage rack and took his leave with the intimation of a bow, there was a soft and melodious ringing at the door. Before Levadski could even say “Come in,” a petite chambermaid wearing a white cap, whom Levadski guessed might have been Spanish or Portuguese, entered. She approached Levadski, whose attempt to get up out of the deep rococo armchair remained fruitless. When she noticed his arduous swinging back and forth, she hastened her step in an attempt to prevent Levadski from rising. She opened out her palms like headlights as she came towards him. She had only come to ask whether everything was to his satisfaction. Levadski nodded, perfectly content.