Miriam Drev: In the Gilded City

MIRIAM DREV IN THE GILDED CITY (excerpt from the novel) In exchange for this apartment the rental agency offers us one that’s a third roomier but almost the same rent. We can look at it right away. They inform us of the address and the place we’re to meet with their representative, who will show it to us.

Is this a tragedy or a blessing? My heart jumps at the thought that moving out will let me avoid the bothersome, inevitable encounters with Kolczynski and his people. But no doubt there’s something irregular hiding in the fact that they’re offering more space for the same price.

“You always have to point out the downside,” says Luka, when I say this aloud.

“Do you have a counter-argument?”

“Let’s look at the map to see where the apartment actually is.”

The street’s in the middle of the 17th district. There’s no park or city attraction anywhere near it, just a maze made from an abstract pattern of roads and streets dotted with red circles indicating tram and bus lines. A junk-room or a desert in the Viennese metropolis? I catch myself starting to think in an either-or manner. Does the possibility of the bad preclude the good? Or will the opposite version win out, the preferred one?

We go to see it one clear, blue-skied afternoon when the wind, not yet poisonously pre-hibernal, is puffing away at the clouds. For the first time this season, Veronika is wearing a cap, and she walks between us, each of us holding one of her hands. The sort of family you give a second glance to.

Now in front of us, now parallel to us, walks the real estate agent. As we were introducing ourselves and shaking hands, she said, “You’re from Yugoslavia, right? There are plenty of Yugoslavs and other immigrants in © Miriam Drev © for translation Jason Blake

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this area.” She babbles encouragingly about some new block of apartments, including the modern infrastructure that will soon spring up around here. I look around, and the vague hope that we’ll find ourselves in a charming or at least friendly old neighbourhood gives way to a sense of non-existence.

The path to apartment building number 78, over grey streets without a single tree, without any clothing shops, drug stores, pharmacies, or a Kindergarten sign, without a cobbler or any sort of craftsman’s workshop you sometimes come across even in remoter areas of the city, is actually rather short, but for me it stretches beyond view. I notice there are no dog droppings on the sidewalk, none of those frequent, foul-smelling additions to what in many other respects is Austria’s flowery capital city. No trees, no bushes, no pet dogs. Is the local residents’ standard of living too low? We turn a corner, pass concrete basketball courts bounded by a high metal chain-link fence, walk another three hundred meters or so, and finally see, above the dreary brown entrance door, the number we’re seeking. Across the street a little sign hangs perpendicular to a small restaurant, inviting people to play billiards. Right next to a display with a scratched Sexshop sign.

“We’re going up to the third floor,” says the agent, pulling out a key.

In the lobby we’re ambushed by kitchen smells. Cabbage, beef, onions. It’s around five, is dinner already stewing in the pots? Trapped between the walls, the dense odours billow within the three-storey entrance hall in waves that seem almost coloured, mixed together in tones. My lungs contract out of protest. We climb the double-width staircase up to a hallway that has everything imaginable in front of the door – boxes, rubber boots and, under a half-open but nevertheless fogged-up window, a bucket with a broom next to it, the bottom wrapped in a rag.

It’s a one-bedroom apartment with high ceilings. Parquet floors, unfurnished, except for the kitchen, which is outfitted with plastic cupboards from the early sixties. I walk over to the living room window. It looks out over the street we came from and into the windows of the building opposite. From it, a door leads into a fairly spacious bedroom and office on the same side.

“Where’s the bathroom?” I ask.

The agent looks uncomfortable. “In the refurbished pantry,” she says and opens a simple door in the kitchen. In the metre-and-a-half pantry with rustically-patterned tiles stand a shower and a sink with a plastic cupboard 2

and mirror above it “And the toilet?”

The woman was waiting for this question. “The toilet’s in the hall. It’s communal. You share it with the other clients on this floor.”

I look at Luka. “No way,” I say in Slovenian. Luka hesitates. “No way,” I repeat.

“This is quite unacceptable,” I tell the agent. “We are not renting this apartment.”

She responds with astonishment: “Gnädige Frau, the rent is exceedingly inexpensive for a unit of this size. This is primarily, of course, because it was we who requested a change to the move-out date in your current contract.”

It all depends on how you look at it. But how should I actually explain things to her? Calmly and collectedly, I repeat: “This is quite unacceptable.”

She smiles sourly. “As you wish. At this time, our firm is unable to offer you anything else.”

“Then we’ll look for something on our own.” I take Veronika by the hand, and pull her along the hallway. Just seeing the exit is a relief. There’s the clattering sound of a tram leaving a station, probably from around the corner. Once outside I inhale deeply and breathe normally again.

The next day I buy a stack of newspapers for the classifieds. The flow-rate of people in a metropolis like Vienna is high. I’ll manage. I’ll find an apartment in an area we’ll like. Up to our standards. Obviously I’m ripe for a change.

With a yellow highlighter, I circle the offers that seem reasonable and affordable, and I start dialling numbers. In less than an hour I’ve arranged five viewings over the next few days.

Luka is in the next room restoring a devotional picture. Things are busy at the Pole’s, so his studio is once again full of hired workers, Katarzyna and three others. Although we’re caught up in the Austrian system and can hardly get by on what he earns, Luka’s rates are too high for a businessman © Miriam Drev © for translation Jason Blake

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of Zbigniew’s stamp, who wants to press as much as possible out of people for every bagatelle. The first phases of work are easier to learn and, at least in Zbigniew’s view, don’t require any particular expertise, so he’ll exploit the Polish immigrants for that.

Luka doesn’t agree with him and is once again singing the old song Kolczynski has no ear for: “You need a holistic process, not this stuccocombining. What the others botch up always ends up coming back to me eventually. Amateurism doesn’t pay.”

The sounds of a radio come to me through the thin walls. Announcements, then the main song from the Phantom of the Opera. Bald-headed Alexander Goebel is hypnotically singing the Phantom’s role. Hearing his high-pitched, almost coloratura, voice alternating between poisonous seduction and seductive suggestiveness, I perk up my ears. The Phantom and his singing, which has something in it that gives rise in me to a craving that borders on addiction, would pull me too, not just the lead woman, into his dangerous nocturnal labyrinth. The sequence of songs is mixed-up and the Phantom’s duet with Christina, which has been a hit for months already, is followed, who knows why, by “Denk an mich.” Just as she’s singing, “doch Gefühle sind unsterblich,” a hymn to undying emotions and loyalty, the door buzzer rings twice. It’s too late for the postman. Zbigniew? I slide off the chair I was sitting on with tucked-up legs to go answer but Luka beats me to it.

Katarzyna has come to pick something up. I recognize her voice as she heads into the studio with Luka. Behind the milky new glass door I can see the outline of another figure, a taller one, a man’s. They’re speaking in Polish, and the sibilants and fricatives follow them like the tail of a comet.

Luka is in the hall spreading out sheets of wrapping paper. They’re all crammed into a small space and only Katarzyna can be heard. I see the flame, then the match extinguishing. She can’t do without a smoke. The man is asking something, I can tell by the intonation. The song from the Phantom has ended, and it’s time for ads. Is pani home? He’s asking for me?

I press my thumb to my temples, and feel like I’m frozen. And hospitality? I look at myself the way another would. Am I maybe hiding or something? I smooth out my stretched sweater, open the door, say hello. As Katarzyna turns to me, her long hair, which is tied in a ponytail on top of her head, swings. She’s holding a cigarette in her hands. Will she flick the ashes onto the floor, or perhaps right over the base of one of the newly-gilded baroque 4

church candles that Luka, bent down to the floor and with the help of the immigrant in jeans, is protecting with PVC bubble wrap before additionally wrapping them in plain brown paper?

The black-haired man, whose bright eyes make me wonder whether this distinctive shade of blue is perhaps a special privilege of the Polish race, suddenly straightens up and looks at me, only a half-step away. “Henryk,” he introduces himself, offering his hand and saying something incomprehensible that finishes with the familiar dziękuję, and adding thank you just in case. He smiles right into my eyes. He looks at me as if he knows me from somewhere and doesn’t let go of my hand. I pull it back to me with a slight jerk. Katarzyna explains to me that he was the one who stayed with us during the summer. He would like to pay us back by inviting Luka and me out, and to thank me as the lady of the house. The lady of the house. What sort of an archaism is that? Maybe it’s just the result of an awkward translation.

“Would you like something to drink?” I offer.

“They’re in a hurry,” says Luka, unsociably rejecting the offer on their behalf. “Zbišek wants to deliver the candle-holders to the priest before the morning traffic jams.”

I don’t want to just stand by. I hold the door for them as the three of them, each with two packages in their hands, set off. The black-haired one catches me with a look. In it there’s much more than mere common courtesy.

Translated Translated by Jason Blake

© Miriam Drev © for translation Jason Blake

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