Read Online Before the Feast by Sasa Stanisic - Free Book Online Page A

other, I think it was between Chile and Argentina, because he found out the border and told them, look, this is the border between you, stop quarreling. Think of that! A guy from here! A geographer! Went on real expeditions of discovery in the jungle. He’s so famous in Chile, they gave him a Chilean name of his own: Juan Steffen!”
    â€œJuan,” says Lada. “Cool!”
    â€œYup. Suppose you do so much for some country, let’s say France, that they call you Roe-Bare Zieschke!” he said, pronouncing Lada’s real first name of Robert as if it were French.
    â€œNo, La-Da,” Lada puts him right. And a moment later, after thinking it over, he adds, “I don’t want to do anything for France.”
    Ulli nods.
    â€œBut this guy you were talking about did?”
    â€œNope, but I wouldn’t have minded if he had.”
    â€œMhm.” Lada leans against the left-hand side of the erratic block, Ulli leans against its right-hand side. They look at theclouds, they look up and down Thälmann-Strasse, they see a fox, bloody foxes.
    The vixen picks up the malty aroma of the two human males, keeps her distance, makes for the water.
    â€œWas it you and your lot did that about Hitler?” asks Ulli.
    Lada shakes his head and fishes the cigarette end out of the hole in the erratic block.
    â€œWho was it?”
    â€œNo one.” Lada spits.
    â€œYeah, well. . .” Ulli raises his beer bottle enquiringly. “Another?”
    â€œNo, I’m okay. Got to get up early tomorrow.”
    â€œSince when was that a problem?”
    Lada looks the erratic block in the eye. “Suzi and me are clearing out Eddie’s place tonight,” he says slowly, deep in thought.
    â€œOur Eddie? Wow, oh wow.”
    Lada is thinking. When Lada thinks, he blinks a lot.
    â€œIf you’re through by nine,” says Ulli, “come to Netto with us.”
    â€œNetto is shit. Go to Kaiser’s. For the Feast, get it? I have a kind of a feeling.” Now Lada is grinning as if he’d been cooking something up. He puts his hand on the place on the stone where the commemorative plaque must have been. “All at once I kind of have a good feeling. And that about cold cuts for the men, yes, do that. I think tomorrow’s going to be good.”
    Lada spits by way of saying goodbye, waves and wanders down Thälmann-Strasse in the rain as it gets heavier. Ulli and the erratic block watch him go.
    There’s a stone on the sports field between the clubhouse and the bowling alley. We put our names there and pinned our hopes to it. Nothing came of that.
    The commemorative erratic block doesn’t commemorate anyone any more. But it’s still there.
    IN THE YEAR OF OUR LORD 1587 IT CAME TO PASS that the Miller’s Sow brought forth a Young Pig here, beside the Pillory on the banks of the Deep Lake, and that was a Sign and a Portent, it being in all other points of Form and Feature like a Pig, but having the Head of a Man.
    The people came down to the Lake to see this Curiosity and take Counsel concerning what were best to be done. The young Pig lay there for all to see, and even the Sow had join’d the Men and Women, as if she herself did not believe what had befallen her.
    So the People examined that monstrous Pig at close Quarters, some even kneeling down to inspect it gravely Eye to Eye. The Conduct of others was such that it might seem as if they knew the little Monster’s Face. Perchance it was the way the Pig turn’d up the Corners of its Mouth, as if it were Smiling impudently, or perchance it was the Birthmark that it bore, or the Voice in which it squealed like a Starving Babe for its Mother, but it caus’d the Men to talk Noisily and Wrathfully. Mayhap all would have been well, had not Semmel the Blacksmith foolishly cried out: Good folk, my own Reasoning can make Naught of it, and therefore I make so bold as to ask, does not that Monster remind