chapter six

THERE are all sorts of people in the Complex, including peasants who’ve been driven off their farms because of land requisitions, laborers who’ve lost their jobs, old people who’ve gone soft in the head, sailors without ships, women without husbands, deserters, a meditating monk, and Miss Talia, who used to sing at the opera. There is also Abdelmalik, a tall black teenager.

Abdelmalik lives right next to Emil, in the garbage shed near the Complex. No one dumps garbage there now, but the stench is embedded in the walls. And no matter how hard Abdelmalik washes and scrubs his skin, he stinks like rancid butter and putrefied peelings.

“Sorry,” he says each time he goes to someone’s apartment.

At first you hold your nose; after a while you get used to it.

According to Emil, Abdelmalik is nineteen years old and escaped from jail. It’s in jail that he learned to fight.

“He had to!” Emil explains to me. “In jail, if you don’t fight, you’re dead!”

To entertain us, Abdelmalik shows us his moves in the courtyard or on the roof of the Complex when it’s not too windy. We make a circle around him, and he bounces from one foot to the other, his fists at face level. Whoosh! He punches the air. He bends down to skirt his imaginary adversary’s counterattack and thwack! A kick! He turns, he twirls. His arms smash invisible jaws, his legs cut and whip. We clap our hands in rhythm. It looks like a dance.

“Uugh,” Emil sighs. “It’s too easy! I’d like to see a real fight with a real opponent.”

“We should ask Sergei,” I say.

We all agree. Sergei is the only one who would know how to fight against Abdelmalik. But we’re too afraid to ask him.

On some days old Mrs. Hanska gives us lessons. She boasts that she was once headmistress of a school for young girls. We don’t really know what that means, but the way she swells her chest when she says it makes her look important. According to her, this qualifies her to teach us the essentials.

No one grumbles because school is a good distraction from our chores and roughhousing in the stairs. We squeeze into Mrs. Hanska’s tiny apartment: The first to arrive plop on the couch, the chairs, and the floor. The last ones to get there have to stand, their backs against the front door. It’s fine in winter because we keep each other warm. But in summer Mrs. Hanska’s apartment is crowded with wet foreheads and dripping temples.

Mrs. Hanska teaches us to read. She picks random subjects for her lessons from the pages of a worn-out book and makes us repeat a lot of things that we don’t understand—like proverbs; the list of the Seven Wonders of the World; the Richter scale, used to measure earthquakes; the twelve feats of Hercules; and the planets of the solar system. But she also makes us learn recipes, songs, the capitals of the world, and the names of flowers.

My knowledge is vast and varied. At almost eight, I can hardly write my name, but I can recite from one to ten the mineral hardness scale without any mistakes: talc, gypsum, calcite, fluorite, apatite, feldspar, quartz, topaz, corundum, diamond.

One day when Mrs. Hanska is teaching us a Christmas song, Miss Talia rushes into the apartment. “That’s enough!” she shouts, her face all red.

She steps over those of us who are seated on the floor and plants herself in front of the group. Then she opens her mouth and lets out a continuous, single-note sound. With her right hand she suddenly makes a gesture as if she’s zipping her mouth shut. Total silence follows. She smiles.

“Your turn!” she says.

Timidly we open our mouths. Thirty different sounds clash against each other. Miss Talia frowns and zips her mouth again. Silence. She scratches her chin, looking puzzled, then lets out the same single note, which she repeats over and over until we’re all able to produce the same sound as her.

“Phew!” she sighs. “I can’t promise you that we’ll sing La Traviata someday, but we might be able to celebrate Christmas without bursting our eardrums.”

News that Miss Talia, former singer at the national opera, is teaching music to the children spreads in the Complex. This gives other people ideas! One by one, grown-ups knock on Mrs. Hanska’s door to offer their services, which is how we learn

Before long we have school every day, and the Complex becomes, as Gloria puts it, “the university for the poor.” I store all the information in my head, not caring whether I’ll ever need to use it. The knowledge piles up in my brain and keeps me company.

When spring comes, we ask Abdelmalik to teach us the art of fighting. He agrees, and so we find ourselves in the courtyard bare-chested, dancing from one foot to the other. With fists raised to face level—whoosh!—we punch the air. We bend down to avoid the counterattack and thwack! A kick! Our hands smash jaws, our thin legs cut and whip; we are dancing with Abdelmalik.

All of a sudden creepy Sergei appears in the courtyard. He’s holding not his razor but his old pair of boxing gloves. He comes near Abdelmalik.

“You stink!” he provokes him.

“Sorry,” the other says.

“Wimp!” Sergei shouts. “What did they teach you in jail?”

Sergei puts his gloves on. He shakes a little because he drinks too much, but he’s scary anyway.

“So? What did they teach you? Come on! Show me!”

Abdelmalik turns around to give us a look of apology. Bam! Sergei takes advantage of this and sends him a right hook to the nose! A murmur of fear and excitement ripples through our group.

Emil is the first one to react. “Defend yourself, Abdelmalik!” he shouts.

Right then Abdelmalik becomes our champion. Thirty voices chant his name and echo against the Complex’s walls. Soon inquisitive faces appear at the windows. I notice Gloria’s in our second-floor window. She frowns.

The fight begins.

Galvanized, Abdelmalik stretches his muscles. Our attention is riveted on his strength and his insolent youth. He dodges, he jumps, he lets blows fly in Sergei’s face, and the drunk loses his balance several times, but without falling. The old man takes the blows and finds his legs again. Abdelmalik’s eyebrow is split. A veil of blood comes down over his left eye.

“Watch out!” Emil shouts at him hoarsely. “Stay on your guard! Bend down! Lay into him!”

Sergei’s good eye burns with hatred. He spits on the ground, and the deep rancor he’s bottled up against the Armenian who nearly killed him years ago floods out now.

“I’m going to pound you to a pulp, you African scumbag,” he says, boiling with rage.

Insults start to fly in the crowd.

“Straighten his nose, so he won’t be as ugly!” Emil yells to our hero. “Go ahead, hit him!”

Abdelmalik pounds on Sergei, following the advice. With three well-landed blows he sends the old man down and two of his teeth fly away. A last blow and creepy Sergei collapses on the wet cobblestones, his body broken.

A silence as dense as a cloud of fog hangs over the courtyard. Abdelmalik stands up, proud and magnificent, ready to fight some more. But it’s over. The drunk crawls toward the canopy. He drools, he groans in shame.

That very evening rumor spreads that Sergei is gone, that he packed his belongings and that we won’t ever see him again.

Gloria shakes her head. “Good Lord, I don’t like this,” she says. “Not at all.”

I notice that she looks at our gear on the shelf.

A few days later Emil and Baksa come to get me, and we go to the garbage shed where Abdelmalik lives. We pinch our noses because it stinks so much.

We knock on the door. No response. I turn the knob. The door opens, letting out a flow of pestilence that makes us want to throw up.

Old Max appears. “It smells like a slaughterhouse,” he says. “Move away!”

We stay behind him as he enters the shed.

“It’s darker in here than in a chicken’s backside!” he grumbles. “Wait a second.”

Old Max finds the light switch and turns it on. We see Abdelmalik’s body propped up against the wall. His throat has been slit. With a razor.