To hell with him, she thinks, to hell, with his hands held in the air, his apology, his sharp face when I slapped him, as if he should have been surprised, his stuttering when we stood in the mill and said he had done all he could do, to hell and high rivers with him.
The tape spins out and she slices it with a kitchen knife, doubling the tape over and cutting it with one quick motion, like gutting a small animal.
Fifteen spools.
Outside, the sky grows steadily darker, winter lying down upon it. Zoli takes the last spool to the window and watches the tape unfurl from her fingers, to the ground, spinning and twisting in the wind and rain. A tail of it catches on the upcurrent and floats on the air.
There go my songs. Good riddance.
She flings the last spool and the disc sails across the courtyard, smacking into the building opposite. From the street below comes a shout and then the delighted shriek of a child. Zoli leans out the window to see a young girl pulling the tape behind her.
Just then, footsteps along the corridor. A tapping on the floor-a truncheon perhaps, or a cane. She looks around, spots the pile of overcoats, steps across the buckled floorboards, and covers herself. How ridiculous. Absurd. I should stand up and walk out, past him, without a word, without recognition. Fuck you, Swann. I will stroll down the stairs and disappear in front of your eyes. Look backwards and curse you. She shifts under the weight of the coats, but then there is the sudden thought of Swann not long ago, out on the road, when they found a children's piano, fixed the pedals with bands of steel, replaced the keys with maple wood. They hung it from the ceiling of her wagon with a giant hook, and Swann had walked behind while the piano played the road, every bump and curve, the microphone held out in front of him.
A turn of the door handle. Shoe studs on the nailheads, the hissing of the radiator valve, the strange clop of his feet. A cane, she thinks. He must be walking on a cane.
A small broken sound comes from his throat as he rummages through the room. A wooden lid is lifted and banged down hard again. Cupboard doors open and close. The mattress flops sadly to the floor. Swann says something in English, a hard guttural noise. She is gripped with a nausea, her fingers clenched, neck rigid. She recalls the feel of his hand against her hip, her back against the bark, the way he rolled her hair around his forefinger, the hard taste of him at the neck, the sweat, the ink. He closes the door with a firm snap.
At the window, she catches sight of Swann rounding the streetcorner, his sandy-haired form disappearing, one of his crutches thrown aside. A long string of tape catches his ankle as he goes, dragging it through the rain.
They were my poems. They belonged to me. They were never yours.
She turns, finds a photo of herself in the corner of his shaving mirror. She tears it into pieces. On the bed she notices an open rosewood box with a silver clasp. Around it, scattered documents, and a balled-up handkerchief. Zoli waits a moment, leans down, and lifts the wooden lid, finds a panel kiltered sideways: a false bottom. Underneath that, a gold watch.
Things, he said, cannot wait. They have to be made. What Swann foresaw was a world raised up in an immense arc and everyone beneath it, looking up in admiration. He wanted to take hold of all that was vague and equal and give it form. He constantly rubbed his hands over his scalp so that when he was in the printing mill his hair became the color of whatever poster he was printing. In the cafe he would sit unaware of people looking at him, streaks of yellow and blue and red under his cap, his hands almost entirely black. He was afraid that he didn't sound Slovak enough, but he gave everything to it, listened to the workers, developed the same accent, strode out with them under their banners. After a while his arguments grew more defined, with stronger edges. It was like watching a piece of wood being carved right in front of her eyes, and she had liked the surprise of it. Certain men in the kumpanija could sculpt a spoon, or a bowl, or a bear at their fingertips-with Swann, he would sometimes create an idea and then hold it out as if it were something she could touch.
He suggested once that she always carry a book around to defeat their notion of her. Even if she did not read it, the others would see it. That was enough, he said. Just let them see you. Astound them by writing it all down.
As if books could stop the massacres. As if they could be somehow more than harps or violins.
From the arch of the doorway hangs a red velvet rope-pull, the tasseled end cold to the touch. A woman in an embroidered dress answers, her feet in slippers, hair in a blue string net. She leans out the door, looks down the length of the alleyway, and in one quick movement pulls Zoli inside.
“Yes?”
“I have some things.”
“I do not trade,” says the woman.
A single shaft of light shines through the dark of the small house, onto a cupboard lined with large china plates.
“My grandfather was here many times,” says Zoli. “Stanislaus. You knew him by that name.”
“I've no idea who you're talking about.”
“It was a different place then, but you knew him by that name.”
The woman takes Zoli by the shoulders, turns her around, stares down at her feet.
“I have good horse teeth too.”
“What did you say?”
“I am here to sell my things. That is all.”
“You people will be the death of me.”
“Not before you have everything we own.”
“You've an errant mouth for a Gypsy.”
“I've nothing to lose.”
“Then leave.”
Zoli measures her steps back to the doorway. The rattle of the doorknob. Silence from the street outside. The woman's voice behind her, once, twice, higher now but still measured: “And if I was interested what might you have?”
“I have told you already, the best.”
“I've heard that so often even my ears tire me.”
Zoli snaps the door shut and opens the giant bundle made of Swann's bedsheets. The woman feigns nonchalance, blows air from her cheeks. “I see,” she says. She shakes the keys and leads Zoli through a series of dark-paneled rooms to a rear parlor where a bearded man sits on a high stool with what looks like a small jar dangling at his neck. In front of him sits a solitary game of tarock. He adjusts his stomach in his waistcoat. With an exaggerated sweep, he takes out his handkerchief and blows his nose, then tucks the cloth back in his pocket. She watches with a shiver of disgust.
“Yes?”
Zoli places Swann's wireless radio on the nicked wooden counter. The jeweler lowers his head, pushes the buttons, fingers the dial.
“Useless,” he says.
He examines the underside of a picture frame, purses his lower lip: “You're wasting my time.”
“And this?”
She lays Swann's gold watch upon the counter, stretching out either end of the strap.
The jeweler takes the monocle from around his neck and examines the watch, looking up twice at Zoli. On the table lies a switchblade knife with a black onyx handle. He flips open the back clasp of the watch and looks at the inner workings, a small universe of dials and cogs. He clips it back, laces his fingers, stretches his hands wide on the table. They are, she notices, ancient and liver-spotted.
“It isn't worth much.”
“I'm not one who bargains,” says Zoli.
“These things are English.”
“I will take two hundred.”
“I cannot sell them, they are foreign.”
“Two hundred,” she says. “No less.”
The jeweler huffs: “One hundred and fifty.”
He unlocks his desk drawer, takes a long leather pouch, and slowly counts the bills out, making a show of sliding the beads across a wooden abacus. He counts another ten and says with a grin: “You look as if you need it.”
“It's a bad price.”
“Go elsewhere, woman.”