The first spool fal s from her fingers, unravels across the floor, long and shiny, catching light in places, as if her voice is going into the corners.
Swann was always so careful to hold the microphone close to her lips when they were out on the road. It had bothered her—not his closeness, she had liked that, it had livened things in her, sent a shiver through her—no, what truly bothered her was the idea that her songs were being taken and put back together again by a machine. When he had played the recording to her it did not sound a bit like her, as if some other Zoli had climbed inside. It captured other sounds too, the tapping of a stick on the ground, the high strike of a match, the creak of a doorframe: it seemed almost ghostly to her; things that she had never noticed in real time had suddenly acquired a weight. She had written one night, by the light of the candle, that smal rivers carted up drops as they were never seen before—it was one of her worst poems, even Swann had found it tame, he suggested that it bordered on the bourgeois.
To hel with him, she thinks, to hel , 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 mil and said he had done al he could do, to hel 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 smal 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 pul ing 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 wil strol 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 smal 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 recal s the feel of his hand against her hip, her back against the bark, the way he rol ed 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 bal ed-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 al 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 mil 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 yel ow 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 al 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-pul , 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 al eyway, and in one quick movement pul s 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 smal 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 sel my things. That is al .”
“You people wil 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 stil 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 smal 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.