The sound of the footsteps – dragging and slow, like someone shuffling their heels across the floor – was driving him mad. Every time they came from above, he would change rooms: from the living room to the kitchen, then through the dreadfully creaky glazed door into the small bedroom – and back again, once the steps caught up with him, with that infallible predictability he had by now come to accept as part of his punishment.

If this were Berlin, he’d probably have made a scene long ago – picking constant fights with the Deutschen, rubbing their smug noses in it at every opportunity had, until a month ago, been one of the things that helped him survive the icy sterility of the German aquarium. But here, in the hideout he had chosen in defiance of everything, he had the distinct sense that such behaviour was no longer an option. Not in this provincial backwater where everyone knew everyone else. The last thing he needed was for people to discover that a stranger was living in the apartment.

At the very thought, his mind would fill with images of curious noses thrust deep into the crack of the half-open door, his ears would ring with the prying good-willed questions of neighbour-investigators, and his stomach would knot into a ball, lurching like a wounded animal.

No, thank you. Anything but people. Not now, not after… Yes, after the defeat.

The days dragged on like the blind men in Bruegel’s painting – slow, but unfailingly headed for the void, grinning spitefully and pointlessly into the darkness, part of it themselves. It had only been about a week here, in Lyubo’s hometown, but only the impassive perseverance of the calendar kept him from believing he had been caught in the grip of some silicon kind of timelessness – murky, dimensionless, shapeless, and without end.

That in itself did not surprise him. After all, he himself came from exactly such a place, and these sensations hadn’t caught him unprepared. What did surprise him was the intensity with which they haunted him, especially at night, in dreams.

Berlin – as hated as it was secretly yearned for – appeared to him in dozens of guises, from the cold geometry of Potsdamer Platz to the provocatively grinning ruin of Tacheles, side by side with the long-legged, sinfully expensive girls on Oranienburger Strasse.

Berlin, du bist so wunderbar, Berlin – the refrain of some dumb German schlager echoed in his ears to the point of delirium. Dumb, yes – but indelible. Like every schlager.

In the hope of escaping the emptiness, he tried working from morning till night, burying himself in the work until only his eyes and ears stuck out – like a hippo – but rarely did anything worthwhile come of it. A few lucky passages, maybe a page here or there that might later serve as stuffing for a future novel – but the sense of trying to outsmart himself was far too sharp to be fooled by such a clumsy trick.

One of the things you gain from defeat is a feel for reality.

Defeat – that’s two plus two equals four.

***

Mr Samsa rubbed two of his furry paws together, snickered discreetly into a third, and with the remaining ones waved about in what he presumably considered a highly artistic manner, began to recite:

Ich bin so verliebt in die Rehe,
wenn ich doch eins fände!
Ich nähm’s in die Zähne, in die Hände,
das ist das Schönste, was es gibt^[1].

“Stop it, Gregor,” said Milena, wearily. “We already did that yesterday. I’m tired today. I want to sleep. Leave me alone.”

The spider sulked a little but eventually stopped showing off and curled up in his corner, pretending to be very busy. Milena yawned once or twice, tried to fall asleep again, but the sleepiness had fled – and chased by boredom, she was left with no choice but to get up and look for something to do. She slipped on her crushed-down slippers, went to the kitchen, and made herself a coffee, following to the letter the instructions for using the gas hob that Mama had placed in full view, even though she had long since proved herself fully capable of handling kitchen equipment on her own. At first, the coffee was too hot, so she left it to cool – but then it became too cold and tasteless, so she poured it into the sink and repeated the process, this time setting the alarm clock to remind her when it was just the right temperature to drink. The method worked flawlessly, and Milena drank the bitter liquid with the deserved pride of a pioneer – unrecognised, but no less worthy for it.

Her calm, however, was soon disturbed by the usual clattering from below. The Woodpecker had evidently started work. She imagined Mr Samsa swooping down one day to fight this mad Woodpecker, beating him and forcing him to shut up – finally leaving her in peace. But being a sensible girl, one who didn’t like to waste her time on fantasies, she quickly chased the thought away and looked for a more reasonable way to pass the time. She went into the hallway where the library was and searched the shelves, hoping against hope to find a volume that had been misplaced – but no such luck. As always, the books were impeccably ordered: first by country, then by genre, then by author’s name. She gave up. Clearly, today was not a day for good magic.

Mr Samsa kept pretending to be offended and ignored her teasing. The TV had nothing but boring programmes, the radio wasn’t any better, and the book she’d found yesterday in her mother’s room was far too pink. That left her with no choice but to fall back on the daily routine. She tried to stretch out the preparation of the exact mix of water and soap as long as she could, but of course, one can’t outsmart oneself forever. Eventually the mixture was ready, and Milena set about cleaning the windows – even though she knew full well there wasn’t a trace of dust on them, since she’d washed them just two days earlier. The job went uncomfortably fast. Ever since Mama had bought that new window brush, washing the windows had gone from a serious task to child’s play – but Milena was used to that by now. After all, no one can resist progress.

Next came the toilet. She carefully examined the bowl for stains, found none, but gave it a thorough scrubbing anyway. Then she dusted all the rooms and finally got down to the most important job: cleaning the carpets. The vacuum cleaner, though almost as old as she was, still worked reasonably well – though only by unleashing a deafening howl. She had just finished the bedroom and was wondering whether to start on the living room when the front doorbell rang with a furious jolt.

Milena flinched in fright. For a few endless moments, she tried to ignore the threatening sound, but the person outside refused to give up and kept pressing the button with animal insistence. His fingernail must be turning blue by now, Milena thought as she tiptoed down the dark corridor – of course without turning on the light. Cautiously, she pressed her eye to the peephole, secretly hoping to find one of the neighbours on the other side – but no such luck. On the contrary: what greeted her was an unshaven man’s face, from which, under a bald crown and bushy eyebrows, a pair of menacing grey eyes stared back at her from point-blank range. She shrank as if struck.

Her heart began to pound idiotically, against all reason – loud enough, surely, to be heard outside the door. No panic, no panic, she repeated to herself several times, trying to regain control of her heartbeat, but the effort proved too much even for her trained will. After about a minute she gave up and settled for breathing steadily and counting to ten. A time-tested technique. The man outside had no idea who he was dealing with. An amateur, most likely. They almost always are.

“Well, are we just going to keep spying on each other through the door like this?” came his voice from outside – strangely high, almost boyish. “I know you’re in there, there’s no point in hiding. I just wanted to ask if you could turn off the siren for a few minutes, if that’s possible. I’m trying to work – one ceiling below.”

“I know who you are,” said Milena – to her horror – hearing her own voice, clearly up to one of its usual dirty tricks, not for the first time, by the way. “You’re the Woodpecker. And I’m trying to work too, if you must know.”

“What, what?” The man outside actually coughed from confusion, which gave Milena a brief but well-earned moment of satisfaction. “What kind of nonsense is this – tell me, how old are you?”

“And if you don’t stop bothering me,” said Milena, deploying her last-resort weapon, saved for emergencies only, “I’ll have to call Mr Gregor Samsa for help.”

For some reason, the man outside burst out laughing, and after a few unbearably drawn-out seconds of giggling, replied:

“You’d better call Mr Nilsson, if I’m not mistaken. What are you, some kind of child prodigy? Or does Mummy feed you Kafka early, so you don’t waste your precious years?”

His reaction was not entirely amateurish – and that threw her off, for a moment – but she quickly gathered herself and replied again, more calmly this time:

“Your assumption is completely wrong. I’ve been of legal age for three years now. Actually, much longer than that – but that’s none of your business.”

The smile vanished from his face, as if someone had drawn the blinds in an already darkened room. He looked around nervously, cleared his throat with awkward restraint, and said – now with noticeably more respect in his voice:

“All right, I didn’t mean to disturb you. I’m just asking if you could turn the vacuum cleaner off from time to time – that’s all.”

Still an amateur, thought Milena with relief. Thank God. Otherwise I might’ve had to prepare him something tasty. With mushrooms.

The man, meanwhile, had vanished from the peephole’s view, but Milena’s heart – for some reason – refused to calm down. It kept pounding wildly, getting in the way of everything. She tried all the techniques she knew, but for some reason, today, none of them worked. On the contrary – at one point, the Voice even appeared, and that, of course, was a very, very bad sign.

“Come here, sit on my lap. Do you hear me, you little idiot? I said sit on my lap!”

The Words rang in her ears, words that hadn’t visited for months.

Panic – a chicken with a red comb and wide, staring eyes – flapped once more in her chest, spread its wings, and strained to take flight. Desperately, she searched for some reasonable activity to anchor herself. She breathed slowly. Counted to a hundred. Even briefly considered calling Mum – but luckily, before doing anything truly reckless, she stumbled upon a saving idea.

With hands trembling from tension, yet still obedient to reason, she began feverishly rummaging through the large drawers under the bed in her bedroom. At one point, she nearly growled with fear – the thing she was looking for simply wouldn’t appear – but at last, drenched in cold sweat, she triumphantly raised above her head the small cloth doll: tattered and dirty, yes, but still her old, one and only, irreplaceable doll.

Wasting no time on unnecessary emotions, she dashed into Mum’s room, pulled out the large scissors from their hiding place – which, as always, was far too easy to find – then, so as not to damage the kitchen table’s surface, she laid a thick piece of cardboard across it. She placed the doll on top and began stabbing it with the heavy blade in slow, deliberate strokes, repeating after each blow:

“Bad girl! Bad girl! Bad girl!”

Relief didn’t come easily. It made her work for it – until sweat was pouring down her face – and even once it arrived, it refused to stay still. It circled her like the twitching tail of a kitten, making her dizzy, until at last, only after she had carefully hanged the doll by the neck from the braided chandelier did it agree to settle down and grant her a little peace.

Just until Mum came home. Just that much.

Hardly more than that.

***

“Well, didn’t I tell you there’s no problem? You can stay as long as you like. The flat’s been empty ever since my mother died anyway. What, is that the only reason you’re calling? Come on, speak faster, we’ve got a general council meeting in a bit.” Lyubo, as always, immediately sensed there was something behind the innocent call and hurried to grab the bull by the horns, in his usual style. Marin tried to keep the conversation general a little longer, but pushed by his friend’s curiosity, he finally spat it out.

“Oh, the neighbours? What, did you cause a scene or something? All right, all right, I believe you. Miserable people. I don’t know what to tell you. The father used to be some well-known mushroom forager, even wrote a couple of books on the subject, I think. Then, about seven or eight years ago, he unexpectedly poisoned himself with mushrooms. Stupid story. The mother and daughter live alone, as far as I know… But I can’t say for sure – never really taken much interest. But tell me seriously now: have you really decided to leave Germany? That I just can’t get my head around, honestly. Everyone’s doing their best to get into Germany, and you’re bolting the other way – back to our local paradise? You spent ten years there, everything was fine… what’s gotten into you now?”

Marin clenched his jaw, muttered some vague excuse and quickly hung up before Lyubo could press on with the questions. He tried to get back to work, but it didn’t take. His insides were gnawed by a guilty conscience, mixed with the nagging thought that by tomorrow, the whole block would probably know he was here – on their turf. He paced around for a while, wrestled with the temptation just long enough not to seem totally spineless, but in the end, he headed back upstairs – heart hammering foolishly, head swarming with excuses, each more ridiculous than the last.

The obituary on the door caught his attention for a moment. “Seven years without our beloved husband and father,” and beneath the words, the rounded, slightly plump face of a middle-aged man with kind – perhaps overly kind – eyes. Marin lingered uncertainly on the threshold, battling the absurd feeling that he was about to do something terribly childish, but the itch had already settled beneath his ribs and wouldn’t let go. Still, as always, the final step was the hardest: he spent another tense minute listening intently, watching for any sound from the stairwell, ready to flee at the faintest hint of someone nearby. But the building remained silent – slumbering in the afternoon heat like everything else in the little town, enduring the blaze in the eternal greyness and gloom.

Nothing happened for a long time after he rang the bell, and he was just about to head back down, torn between relief and disappointment, when the door suddenly flew open and in front of him stood a young girl – not quite a woman, but no longer a child either… Not that he had time for careful assessments. The expression on her face – a strange mix of fear and ice-cold threat – made his skin crawl for real. “Get out! Get out right now, before something bad happens!” she said. He stammered out a clumsy apology, then noticed the large pair of scissors clenched in her fist like a weapon. He felt a real jolt of fear – but whether from stubbornness or wounded pride, he forced himself to keep talking a few seconds longer. That was when she turned inward and began to shout: “Hold him, Gregor! Tear him apart, eat him, Gregor!”

Marin leapt back and hunched defensively, bracing for the attack of a dog or some other creature – but nothing emerged from the dark. He stared at her in confusion, secretly hoping this was all some kind of absurd prank, but in vain. She watched him with dead seriousness, as if trying to shove him away with her stare, until finally, perhaps pushed over the edge by his ox-like persistence, she swung and hurled something round and white at him. He cried out in fright, shielded himself instinctively with his arms, and went clattering down the stairs, taking them three at a time.

Only later, behind the safely locked door, did he realise he was still clutching the object she had thrown. It turned out to be a crumpled piece of paper – one more absurdity in a day that already threatened to become a full-blown fiasco, one of many in recent months. With trembling hands, Marin unrolled the ball, stepped to the window, and studied it carefully.

“Absurd. Completely absurd,” he muttered in disgust at the sight of the grotesque drawing.

On the sheet was a massive spider, its jaws buried somewhere under the belly of a young girl – a spider with a thick, hairy body and a human face. A face that looked strangely familiar. The rounded, slightly plump face of a middle-aged man with kind – perhaps overly kind – eyes.

^[1] I’m so in love with doe
if only I could find one!
I would take it in my teeth, in my hands,
that is the most beautiful thing there is.
(Hermann Hesse, Steppenwolf)