Zbornik Mednarodnega literarnega srečanja Vilenica 2004 - Ljudmila

Happy Birthday to You
Short story
Szilárd Podmaniczky
I had yet to open my eyes. The eiderdown was sweltering and light; weights
were chasing each other around in my head, as if I were picking up the
pulses of my blood circulation. A dull ache had settled on the nape of my
neck. If I opened my eyes, I knew I would feel dizzy. I tried to go back to
sleep: an hour or two can be a bonus, sparing the first, most horrendous
stage of sobering-up, when nothing is where it should be, when even the
faintest spark of strength has gone, when every movement takes five times
as much energy and concentration, and it’d be no surprise at all if, one of
these days, at a time like this, the world were to split in two.
With the first move I made, to drink a glass of water perhaps and down
an aspirin, a blast of cold air slipped under the bedclothes. I shuddered
and shivered. Then a wave of heat surged through me, and I was drenched
in sweat. I lifted the bedclothes a few times with my legs, the better to
shiver and perspire, to sweat out the toxins. With each fresh wave of heat,
I imagined the crumminess seeping out of me into the eiderdown, and
when the bulk of that had made the transfer I would jump out from under
the eiderdown.
I caught a whiff of a peculiar odour, a smell of musty whitewash and
clothes; the floor radiated coldness.
We had been three days into celebrating my birthday; that’s how it’s
been for years now, and if I can last this out, it really is like being born
again.
I had left my apartment along with others on the first night; we were
all wide awake, bar the odd lapse, and traipsing from one place on to the
next. After the third day, the very idea of the smell of fish-soup that had
been left in my kitchen was scary. Eventually I’d pull myself together somewhere,
maybe here, and go back home. I couldn’t take any more; last night
in the rain I was already starting to see tiny, iridescent pixies in the light
of the street lamps.
After a while I felt a bit better and opened my eyes a fraction. It was
still dark in the room; I could hear the sound of a car, the headlights sweeping
stripes of brightness around the room through the gaps in the blinds.
I did not budge. More and more cars came by: must be getting on for
dawn, I thought to myself. I was lying a couple of yards from the window.
My eyes were rheumy and stung; the stripes from the cars swam, as if
there were a herd of zebra clattering around the walls. I’m used to living
in a multistorey house, and you don’t often see that kind of thing there, I
thought to myself, then right after that I thought where on earth I could
be, another fine mess.
I was bracing myself to sit up and drink a glass of water when something
flicked the back of my neck. As if I had dreamed it. I didn’t move a
muscle. The slight weight of the something lingered on my neck. It was as
330