Barbie Read online

  Barbie

  By Stefano Paolocci

  Translated by John J O’Donnell

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Barbie

  THE END

  Then cherish pity,

  lest you drive an angel from your door.

  William Blake

  Chapter 1..............................................................................................................5

  Chapter 3...........................................................................................................13

  Chapter 4...........................................................................................................15

  Chapter 5...........................................................................................................17

  Chapter 6...........................................................................................................20

  Chapter 7...........................................................................................................23

  Chapter 8...........................................................................................................25

  Chapter 9...........................................................................................................26

  Chapter 10.........................................................................................................28

  Chapter 11.........................................................................................................29

  Chapter 12.........................................................................................................30

  Chapter 13.........................................................................................................32

  Chapter 14.........................................................................................................34

  Chapter 15.........................................................................................................37

  Chapter 16.........................................................................................................39

  Chapter 17.........................................................................................................42

  Chapter 18.........................................................................................................43

  Chapter 19.........................................................................................................45

  Chapter 20.........................................................................................................48

  Chapter 21.........................................................................................................50

  Chapter 22.........................................................................................................52

  Chapter 23.........................................................................................................55

  Chapter 24.........................................................................................................57

  Chapter 25.........................................................................................................58

  Chapter 26.........................................................................................................60

  Chapter 27.........................................................................................................62

  Chapter 28.........................................................................................................63

  Chapter 29.........................................................................................................64

  Chapter 30.........................................................................................................66

  Chapter 31.........................................................................................................68

  Chapter 32.........................................................................................................69

  Chapter 1

  When my armchair, with its sticky synthetic leather embrace, welcomes me into its kingdom, the world outside can fade away: the school, the students, even Miss Corina with that apple green lace of hers that she believes makes her attractive.

  Adrian says I'm a slacker and that the country doesn’t need people like me, then he laughs and imitates our President while he swears allegiance to the state and to the Romanian people.

  He kills me, especially when he moves his right arm from the fake microphone to the fake Mrs. Elena: zap, a small leap to the side and Adrian/Nicolae transforms into Mrs. Lenuta Petrescu.[1]

  Once Mr. Ciobotariu the principal came into the staff room just as Adrian was finishing his performance with the inevitable final raspberry. All the chairs scraped on the floor and knees, like jack knives, straightened out to have everyone standing up in one single instantaneous, lightninglike movement.

  Mr. Lupu come with me and the rest of you return to your sacred duty of teaching, but will someone tell me why I have to put up with these spineless anarchists, and tomorrow you're all invited to the People’s House to meet with Mr. Manteliu.

  That was all we needed - Manteliu and that bald-head of his, now I'll have to endure his lecture on the country, teaching and his majesty the great Nicolae.

  When they left the room I saw Adrian unequivocally send his comrade the principal to “that place” where we would have all liked to send him.

  I wonder if today the principal and Adrian are going to meet each other.

  Why don’t you come too, Nicu?

  Come on, Adrian, you know I'm not like you.

  And what does that have to do with it: there’s a revolution in your country and you aren’t allowed to choose the mold of that horrible brown armchair!

  But it isn’t brown and he knows it, he says that just to hurt me, but he knows that with me it doesn’t work.

  And anyway they report the whole thing on TV and it’s cold outside and I don’t want to be around people.

  Adrian and the principal will never be able to meet, I'm sure of that.

  A few days ago, when in fact Bucharest and Timisoara were bound together by a green camouflaged cordon of armored cars and the leather belts of the army, I saw them arguing in the courtyard. Their words were incomprehensible streams of vapour and their hands only eddies of gestures that would never reveal the sense of what they were discussing. So I opened the window just as the north wind from Moscow, which had been waiting for nothing other than this mistake, gobbled up my ear and, satisfied, handed it back to me shortly thereafter, frozen. Still, I managed to hear them and in the end I understood: I realized I wasn’t capable, that I would have been sucked into my chair with my students saying teacher, teacher, you didn’t finish the sentence, the sentence, you didn’t finish it and the chalk moved and the blackboard was covered with my handwriting explaining: "Elision: elimination of the final vowel or syllable of a word when there follows a word beginning with ...".

  Now I’m going to pour myself a bit of vodka and I arch my back to reach radio dial. Around this time they have a selection of classical music from a Hungarian station. You can’t hear it very well, but when the President has something important to say, he doesn’t care about us poor teachers incased in leather armchairs: radio, television or newspapers, everything becomes his, everything is less important, and therefore there is nothing else for me to do except to grin and bear it.

  Piata Republica appears like a mirage in the square border of the TV, an impressionist painting seen up close, the grooves of the brush strokes astigmatically confused in inconclusive lines, a hodgepodge overview of marred colors.

/>   With a standardized cadence, the voice of the commentator becomes part of the buzz, a kind of sentence among the pauses, phoney like the tape recordings that pronounce the name of the Conducător:[2] this is just preparing the front of the stage, soon he’ll be entering the scene.

  What a clown, doesn’t he realize that I’m still too young to believe it's all true and yet too old to be absolutely certain. I turn up the music and Mozart invades my kitchen, the vodka isn’t any good and I'll let Vladimir know next time, he who believes he’s fooling me with the story that his brothers still live in Russia and who even own a distillery.

  Doresc de asemenea sà adresez mulţumiri iniţiatorilor şi organizatorilor acestei mare manifestari populare din Bucureşti considerànd aceasta ca o... [3]

  Mr. President, look down there

  What are you doing behind the curtain, why don’t you shut up, you fat bastard, let me talk, I'll take care of this flock of sheep, tell your friends to be ready.

  But look at this! With what kind of bearskin hat is Ceausescu going to speak, since he hurriedly returned from Iran in a panic, he hasn’t even had time to unpack.

  The violins aren’t playing with same zest as those I heard the last time and maybe Vladimir has even used some trick to raise the alcohol content of this acid, my head is spinning and the curtain behind the President is fluttering in such a way that it seems possessed.

  Adrian, now is the time, go, tell the others, now let’s shout, ready, go, Ti-mi-soa-ra, Ti-mi-soa-ra ...

  What are those criminals saying, how dare they, what are they saying? You fat bastard, make them stop! Send in the soldiers, you're useless, why are you just standing there and looking at me, do it!

  President, we need to go, come on, let’s go.

  I’m not coming.

  Come.

  Upon awakening I thought it was all an alcoholic dream, the fault of that damn Russian with the pointed mustache. There was a comedy on television and the Hungarian radio was spewing gibberish. Never mind, I was able to eliminate in one fell swoop Adrian, the principal, the pupils and the rest of the universe. I was a happy man. The following morning I would have taken my coffee-colored briefcase, my register, my green hat and I would have gone back again to the intersection between Calea Mosilor and Bulevardul Carol I. The blue plaque of "Scoala nr.71" would still have been hanging over the entrance, Miss Corina would have smiled at me, showing me her golden molars, I would have tipped my hat, smiled back and I would have walked toward the staffroom, where Adrian would have greeted me with a cordial Nicu, too much screwing last night, right?

  Instead, my country was falling apart and I was thinking of nothing other than brushing the dust from the shoulders of my jacket.

  It was December, 1989 was ending.

  Adrian was killed in the clashes that some days after would have drowned Bucharest in blood.

  Ceausescu and his wife Elena were executed on Christmas Day, and their bodies shown on the same television on which I had left them a short time before.

  Romania was finally free.

  Sometime later, with the radiant news of the democracy put in plain view in the shop windows of the country, Mr. Ciobotariu told me that he no longer needed me and sent me away with a pat on the back.

  I spread out a sheet from the Gardianul, I fill it with the leftovers of my lunch and I leave, I don’t want to be late.

  Mr. Nicu, how’s everything? How you’ve aged ... you need to eat more, you certainly do.

  Yes Mrs. Dancu, thanks. I must look terrible, she looked at me as though she were ready to throw up, who cares, that’s her problem.

  Chapter 2

  Tin, tin, tin ... spare change??

  Tin, tin, tin ... spare change for food?

  Everyone’s in a hurry today, everyone’s running after trains they’ll never catch. Look over there, even the police have spotted me, now I’ll have to run away and those few Leu[4] I have in my cup will all fall on the ground.

  You see? Here they come.

  Red pole, yellow trashcan. Yellow trashcan, red pole. I look like a slalom skier, turning right and then left, left and then right again.

  They’re running, however, fatso and his buddy, I've never seen them before, perhaps they’re new. The regular cops eventually get used to people like us and let us hang out in the station lobby. The two thousand Leu entrance fee, they leave them simply written on the plastic signs that cite the relevant law ... two thousand, as if one of us would have them.

  Yeah, yeah, keep running because soon you’ll keel over, already I can see that fatso is changing color.

  My heart is ready to burst, how does that son of a bitch run so fast. Look at him, dry and wrinkled like a popsicle stick in the sun, turning around in order to mock us, stop! Stop that boy!

  What the hell, is fatso an idiot? Does he really think there's anybody in the whole station who would risk getting lice or worse, rabies, just to stop me and hand me over to the cops? These guys are new, no doubt about it. A boskettaro[5] like me creates a vacuum when he passes through places that are so crowded: someone with a blurred and expressionless face because of Aurolac[6] generates more fear than a tank with a rotating cannon.

  Let that little bastard go, let him go, may God strike him dead, let him go, otherwise I’ll have a heart attack, let him go.

  I made it!

  What kind of shitty town is it that welcomes you with freezing rain and the tar of exhaust pipes?

  That was a close call, though, if they had kept going, they might have caught me . . . sure, why not?

  Jesus, if every time I laugh I start coughing like this, my chest will eventually explode like a firecracker.

  Whew, now what? I’m hungry as well, let me have a look because it’s usually about this time that McDonalds throws out the leftovers from the day before.

  If I’m lucky I might even find some bag with some toys inside. Once there was one, a kind of spyglass, one of those that stretch and that in the comics you always see placed against the open eye of an eye-patched pirate: a child was putting his little blue eye at the hole and on the other side there was an island with a lot of palm trees and smiling faces. We also tried to see something inside, then Florin took it and filled it with glue, putting one end into one of his nostrils. After taking a hit, he started laughing like a crazy man and we had to call the people from the nearby dog shelter because all of a sudden he stopped and was no longer responsive, even after we poured a bucket of water over him.

  Why are those guys staring at me, haven’t you ever seen a kid before? They look like foreigners: when they arrive they either look at you to offer you a ride in their car, or they stare at you and stupidly remain there, immortalized with a vacant expression.

  Oh my God! How could all this have happened? Eveline? Eveline? Stop staring at that kid, what’s wrong with you? But don’t you see Philippe, I mean, don’t you see? Why did you bring me to Bucharest, what am I doing here? But dear, I thought you would be happy to go with me this weekend. Philippe, take me home, I want to go back to Paris, Philippe, take me home, please.

  The lady even starts crying, now I'm going there to ask her for money, but that bastard fatso made me drop my paper cup. So much the better, this way she’ll see my hands.

  Lady, money, for food?

  My God, Philippe, did you see his hands? What did they do to him? Why are they all cut up? For God's sake, take me away, take me away. Take this, now go away.

  Wow, she gave me the whole change purse!

  What’s the matter, lady, do my little hands scare you?

  Wait a minute, now, wait until I take off my little hat.

  Eveline! Eveline! Lord God, what does he have in his hair, what is it, rabies?

  But of course, go back home, leave Bucharest to those who live here.

  Let’s see what that little couple gave me: two used subway tickets, an address, hmmm ... let me see, I only know Bucharest, and the rest is just a messy bunch of pieces of paper, then there’s a used hand
kerchief, but money, there's no money? What is this currency, why isn’t the Royal Palace on it, who is this girl with clothes blown by the wind and messy hair ... damn it, only waste paper! Now how am I going to eat! At Andrej’s they will only take Leu, so now I have to go to that usurer Sergej and ask him if he can give me anything for this.

  For sure, they were smart to go back to their country.

  Look there, damn you all anyway, there’s already a crowd at Mc Donald's. That means that I’ll have to look around near the bus stop, maybe, just maybe, someone hasn’t had time to finish their lovely sandwich and has thrown half of it in the trash, ham and cheese.

  Mmmmm ... delicious.

  Chapter 3

  The weariness of some days resembles the artificial narcosis of anesthesia. When I went to the hospital and they told me that my arm was broken and that they were going to operate, the only pleasant memory was the nurse who kept staring at me and was counting and Mr. Nicu look at me and count to ten, one, two three, four ... and then nothing only my mom who was clapping for me while I was standing on the chair singing "Steaua sus rasare."[7] What then remains of the magic potion that they shoot into your veins is the absolute lack of strength, a total drying up of energy and the sneering face of the head nurse that heard you while you screamed in the night lower, lower, yes, like that, good, good, then you broke out crying like a baby.

  Well, today my body seems dried out, an invisible draining pump decided to resolve my daily doubt of whether to stay in bed or go out. I’m sleeping. But then I wake up and my physiological indecision takes over again and I amuse myself by looking out the window at Ms. Dancu’s frozen washing and at the increasingly worn wall of the opposite building.

  The lady is greeting me.

  Look who’s behind that window it’s Mr. Nicu, the oval framed by the condensation almost seems like one of those ceramic photos they put on tombstones, if he could hear me, poor thing, I feel sorry for him, now I’ll give him a sign to come out, but maybe not, it’s better to leave him alone, damn this cold and this land that knows how to give us only frost and humidity, yes, hello Mr. Nicu.