Absolution. Aleš Šteger

I’m just an assistant. My colleague here would like to do a portrait of the city. Austrians are very interested in Maribor now that it’s the European Capital of Culture. We figured it would be best to start with a place that is well-known among the locals and can serve as a good departure point for our report. After all, it’s the restaurants that keep the history of this city alive, and I’m sure yours must be well-known among our Austrian listeners.’

      ‘Of course, of course,’ mumbles Gram. ‘Are you hungry? Would you like something to eat or drink? A glass of wine? Peter!’ Gram shouts before they can reply.

      ‘That is most kind of you, but we’re not hungry. Thank you,’ says Bely.

      At that moment Peter walks in with a plate of dinner and cutlery for one.

      ‘Please forgive me, I’ve been on my feet all day long and haven’t eaten yet. Please, let me offer you something. It’s on the house, of course,’ adds Gram.

      Peter sweeps his hand across the newspaper-strewn table and places the plate before Gram.

      ‘Thank you very much. We’re not hungry, but I’ll have a glass of mineral water if you insist,’ says Bely.

      ‘You can’t be from Maribor if all you drink is water, although your accent sounds like you could be,’ replies Gram. ‘Don’t you know that mineral water isn’t good for the teeth? And you, madam?’ He lays his eyes softly on Rosa and the dark orchids weaving diagonally up her crimson dress.

      ‘Ein Viertel Weisswein. Riesling, bitte,’ Rosa places an order, her voice surprisingly coarse, like that of a man.

      ‘You know, Ms Portero doesn’t speak Slovenian, only a few words, but she understands a lot,’ Bely explains.

      ‘Of course, of course,’ replies Gram, noticeably startled by her voice. He tucks a napkin into the cleft of his unbuttoned shirt, into the dense outgrowth of silver hair on his barrel chest.

      ‘Please, don’t let us disturb you. Bon appétit,’ adds Bely, and glances at his companion.

      ‘Guten appetit,’ adds Rosa in her deep voice.

      Gram looks at his grilled octopus, its legs hanging over the edge of the plate. Roasted potatoes surround the cephalopod’s body along with half a lemon.

      ‘I love octopus, don’t you?’ Gram asks and continues eating, as if his question wasn’t meant as a question. ‘Did you know they have three hearts? Three!’ Gram cries theatrically and wields his knife like a knight brandishing a lance before battle. ‘And that they’re incredibly agile? Even giant ones, like this one, can squeeze through crevices as small as my thumb.’

      Gram raises his right hand, gripping the fork and extending his thumb toward Rosa.

      ‘Not to mention how intelligent they are!’ he says.

      Peter comes in with mineral water and two glasses of wine, white and red.

      ‘Boss, you want anything else? If not …’

      ‘I’m fine. You finish up, and I’ll close,’ says Gram, relieving the waiter of his duties by waving him off with the knife.

      ‘So, where was I? Right. Octopi and their intelligence. Do you think that intelligence has anything to do with our brains? Think again! We believe that we wouldn’t be able to think if we had no brain, but just look at octopi. Their brain is tiny, and yet they’re intelligent as hell. Do you know why? Because they have intelligent bodies; their whole damn bodies are intelligent, not only their tiny brains. Now look at us, brainwashed by our blind faith in science, which sells us a skewed view of the way things really are.’

      Gram wipes the sweat off his forehead and leans back on his squeaking chair, visibly upset.

      ‘That is a rather interesting line of thought,’ says Bely peacefully and takes a sip of his mineral water.

      ‘Look, man created computers,’ Gram continues, ‘but, instead of taking the computers as a largely simplified approximation of human functionality, we take them as a model for us to look up to. We imagine the brain as some sort of a hard drive. Wrong, it’s all wrong!’ Gram cries out and lays down the knife and fork, which, just a moment before, he held pressed into one leg of a beautifully grilled octopus. ‘The chicken doesn’t come before the egg. Do you get me? The truth is, nothing is stored in the brain. Nothing! The brain functions only as a converter, a transformer, a switch, a current that flows, the current that doesn’t flow, that’s all. You don’t believe me? Just look at the octopus. It’ll tell you everything.’

      All three of them direct their attention to the plate. For a moment, they can hear the ticking of the wall clock next door.

      Gram grabs hold of his fork and knife again and picks up where he left off in a whispering, almost conspiratorial voice.

      ‘There’s something else for which octopi serve as an example of how things are in reality. Just look at how they die; they don’t die of old age, they always die after mating. Either they’re killed, or they die on their own because of fucking. Male octopi die a few months after they detach their penis tentacle; while females, meine liebe Dame – Portenyo, right? – female octopi starve themselves to death while guarding their eggs.’

      Gram finally makes a cut across the centre of the octopus. A big chunk of juicy meat perched on the fork drifts into his mouth. Chewing with delight, Gram nods to himself. The guests say nothing. Shamelessly he eyes Rosa Portero’s beautiful hair. Her black curls fall thickly across her right cheek. Seductively he smiles into her dark-brown left eye so that it softly and bashfully closes then immediately opens again, while her right eye remains hidden behind a cascade of thick black curls. Gram winks at her and takes a sip of his wine. Rosa smiles warmly. She is still wearing a pair of thin leather gloves. The left one clings to her glass of Riesling, which she drains in two infinitely long, deep gulps.

      Adam Bely pulls a fountain pen out of a buttonhole in his jacket and shifts it around on the newspaper.

      Rosa puts down the glass, a red crescent from her lipstick plastered on its rim. She fingers the corners of her mouth and brushes her hair out of her face.

      Is it only Gram’s imagination, or is there really a green glass eye glaring at him? He feels as if any moment it might strike, like a snake, and devour him. He feels as if he could fall right into the green eye, deeper and deeper, so deep he’ll never come back, never surface again. Bely picks up the fountain pen and slowly waves it back and forth; ticktock goes the clock in the next room, tick-tack goes the pen. The eye, there’s the eye, which is also a mouth, a glass voice within it. Mr G. can be as brave a little boy as he wants, running barefoot across the meadow going who knows where away from home – but he can’t escape. A sharp stabbing pain in his feet, the soft vertigo of fear and surprise at himself.

      Gram chokes. He coughs. Bely leans forward and hits him hard across his back. The chunk of octopus shoots out of his mouth back on to the plate and fuses with both halves of the cut octopus. Its limbs stir and curl up around the edge of the plate. The octopus on the plate suddenly comes back to life. Its tentacles tremble, begin to move, and a moment later it darts under the table. All that remains on the plate are a few potatoes and the damp meandering tracks of the octopus’s suckers on the newspaper.

      This can’t be happening, is Gram’s last thought as he tumbles deeper and deeper. That thought is the last crumbling stone he clings to as he falls through the green vitreous haze. The entire landscape falls deeper into greenness, tick-tack, the meadows keep getting brighter, the hayracks and the trees and the peaks of green mountains in the distance seem to be sucked into the vortex. No, now there is no way back, no home any more. Now Gram can no longer gaze at the grass that trembles and sways in the wind. As if it were alive, as if it were growing all around him, enveloping and submerging him deeper and deeper with no possibility of escape.

      ‘Listen to my instructions, and you’ll be fine,’ says Bely and removes the plate, the glasses and the cutlery from the table.

      Rosa stoops and clicks her tongue