"The Curious Case Of Benjamin Zec" - BEST EUROPEAN FICTION 2014

Once upon a time, not long ago, in the mountainous Balkans, lived a boy. His name was Benjamin Zec, and some would say he was just an ordinary boy.

There was no tree around his little town that Benjamin had not climbed, like Tarzan. He was the best marble shooter on his street and an excellent second in the school’s kilometer dash. The other boys in class respected him, as he was the best goal scorer on the soccer field, and the girls kept their eyes on him, giggling, because Benjamin did not hesitate to pinch bottoms or stick out his hand, as if yawning, to grab a barely formed breast. Perhaps, therefore, he often wore proud bruises under his big green eyes. 

Benjamin, the little devil, used to return from recess, cradling a T-shirt full of early cherries to his chest. Then he would eat them during class and throw pits at the teacher’s pets sitting up front. Benjamin loved the smell of the woods and the earthy primrose buds more than any science lesson. Once, he even challenged the physics teacher with the insulting and bold statement that Newton had, in fact, been defecating under that famous tree and that no apple had fallen on his head, but that he, Newton, was inspired by seeing his poop succumb to the force of gravity! He picked up this thesis in some humorous novel and was convinced that the legend about the apple tree was a blatant fabrication. The best ideas always come from relieving oneself in nature, he said to the teacher. The whole class laughed, and Benjamin, of course, got a D in physics. 

Yet he would spend hours lying in tall grass or hiding in the tree canopy. The covers and the smell of books always fascinated him. Classrooms were suffocating walls, but in the countryside, surrounded by the thick shade of spruce and pine, he was free to turn into a hero of every adventure he read. His favorite book was "The Picture of Dorian Gray." The story was about a young man who sold his soul to remain forever young. Benjamin would never sell his soul. Or would he? Benjamin wondered. Either way, he had checked out a paperback edition from the library and did not intend to return it. Yes, indeed, some would say that Benjamin Zec was just an ordinary boy. But then, he decided to become a ladybug.

One time, you see, as he fell off the branch of a cherry tree, he lay spread out, one freckled cheek on the wet ground. His eyes were caught by the frosted grass through which a ladybug was slowly pacing. A ladybug is marvelous, he thought; it’s never in a hurry, scrambling nonchalantly from one blade of grass to another as if surprised that its tiny weight is still sufficient to bend the tip of a blade of grass. Strange, he thought, how ladybugs seem to make their decisions at the spur of the moment and suddenly spread out their wings from under their black-spotted armor and fly off who knows where, taking your good luck with them. He opened the palm of his hand, and the ladybug jumped onto his lifeline.

Benjamin Zec had always wanted to become a Hollywood actor. But now, it seemed to him that becoming a ladybug would suffice. To be able to turn into one of these insects, like this one here, which was so delightfully walking over his palm, to grow wings and disappear, well, that would be something... Ladybug, ladybug, show me the way, he whispered the children’s wish song.

A bang burst through the back of his head at that very moment. The cosmos buzzed in his ears, pouring a cold silence down his forehead.

And Benjamin Zec was gone. 

Only a dull thud was left behind, brash and piercing, bouncing off the trees in the forest. The sound wandered through the neighboring villages and then was reduced to a faint echo, only noticed by birds, until it got lost forever. 

That hot summer day was the last anyone heard from the boy.

Some kids from the neighborhood alleged that Benjamin had grown wings and that he did turn into a ladybug, for real, and had flown away. Others, however, kept faith in the prospect of his eventual return, believing that he would come back one day and organize the most spectacular soccer tournament! 

Maybe Benjamin just got a little lost, wandering the surface of our planet. People had bigger problems to worry about, so no one troubled themselves about Benjamin Zec for long. He couldn’t play along. No great loss, that one. 

Years have passed, but did anyone still care about the mystery of Benjamin Zec? Only his swaybacked mother, poor soul, kept seeing him in the canopy of wild chestnut tree. And she was not angry that he had climbed so high. She cherished the moment when she was going to hug him and kiss him on the forehead. But Benjamin, the little devil, did not want to come down from the tree.

So she waited and waited.

Time was dripping into the gutters of oblivion. Tick-tock, tick-tock, tick-tock. Drop by drop, Benjamin’s mother drank rainwater from the gutters and sadly chewed cherries every July.

The curious case of Benjamin Zec eventually became folklore, a fairy tale. And even though most people had forgotten the real boy behind the story, there were those to whom the question did occur now and again. They would conjure up their memories of him; a freckled boy with green eyes who used to pinch the girls and holler like Tarzan while climbing trees. So, he became the ghost of the town, a myth recounted around shifting candlelight, a legend that was flying around on the black spots of ladybugs, a fathomless public secret that no line of inquiry could penetrate; a surreal remnant of a forgotten past.

The only evidence of the boy’s existence was a black and white photograph: He, Benjamin Zec, in pants torn at the knees and a threadbare sweatshirt, squinting at the sun from underneath an unkempt head of hair, with marbles in his hand. His mother kept that photo close to her heart, wandering the wide world to pull this memento out of her brassiere from time to time and shove into the face of oblivion a disheveled boy. 

Some said that they recognized Benjamin Zec in America; he hadn’t become a fairy tale but a religious fanatic, had let his beard grow and had married a woman with dark and mysterious eyes. Others said, no, he was in a loony bin now! Another theory was that he had joined the US Marines in penance and was working as a landmine clearer in Iraq.

Everybody knew something, but no one knew anything. Still, there was one grain of truth to the whole story: Benjamin Zec did end up in America. But, to complicate matters, Benjamin had no idea how or when he had ended up there! He didn’t remember a thing. All he knew was this: he’d appeared one day, on a stage, in a theater, in the middle of a Shakespeare play, wondering:

“To be or not to be?”

And he was.

He was on stage, on Broadway, and the audience was on its feet. They applauded Mr. Benjamin Zec for so long that he thought he would die of old age standing there, adored by his audience.

“Bravo! Bravooo!” the amazed masses shouted, throwing flowers at him.

No one knew that Benjamin didn’t know how he had come to be there, and he didn’t even know who or what he had been before his arrival. But he was ready as ever, simply accepting his role.

While enthusiastic crowds continued to cheer his name, Benjamin ushered toward a dressing room. On the way, he signed three autographs and absentmindedly nodded at a pushy pitch for a movie role as a Serbian war criminal. How they learned his name, he wondered. Benjamin said nothing but glided through the crowd. There, in the wardrobe mirror, he stared at his freckled face. He stripped himself of Hamlet and rediscovered Benjamin Zec. He wondered how old this familiar, yet unknown figure, could be. Not more than twenty-five, he thought, pleased. Twenty-five! Oh, Benjamin Zec was delighted with the body of which he found himself in possession.

Proud of his manly facial fea­tures, strong chin, and piercing green eyes, whoever he was, he certainly deserved this new life of his. No question about that. It felt good to be grown-up and successful. He decided to go along with this adventure, to ignore the past he didn’t remember any­way, to be whoever he had to be, for the situation was already whatever it was.

After the show, a limo driver called out to him familiarly, and Benjamin understood that this was his chauffeur. He treated Benjamin like an old friend, politely inquiring whether the opening was as successful as the year before. He drove Benjamin to a beautiful house, majestic with its Greek pillars and Gothic arches, facing the Atlantic Ocean.

Inside, the servants had already kindled a fire in the fireplace. They referred to him as “Mister Benjamin.” He replied in perfect English, though something told him that it wasn’t his first language. He could feel his tongue twisting and straining and words tumbling around in his mouth in a strange accent.

Benjamin decided to go through his house, looking through his stuff and hopefully finding clues about his past life. It was out of the question for him to ask his servants where he had come from and how long he had lived here! He didn’t want them to think he had lost his mind somewhere between slipping into and out of Mr. Hamlet’s skin. Benjamin felt they must have known him well, as they treated him with respect and a subtle touch of intimacy. 

The house was his; of course, he knew where everything was, but he didn’t have conscious memory of any of these familiar objects. Any emotional understanding of the things around him was distant and unfathomable. Even his portraits and photos were of no help: All of them showed a recent Benjamin, in the here and now, with the same dark hair, the exact spots around the eyes, and the matchless youth of his face. It seemed that he had never been younger than he was now. As if he had been born just like this, a twenty-five-year-old, and now was meeting himself for the first time. But how was it possible that he didn’t remember anything? How was it possible that there was nothing from his past of which he could grab hold? How did it come to be that he was playing Hamlet on Broadway just like that? Did he have any friends or family? A father? Mother? Where was he born? Benjamin knew nothing. It was as though someone had just made him up, whole cloth. 

He looked at the photographs on the walls. The pictures were unflattering, he thought—they showed an arrogant man struggling to smile. Cold eyes followed his every move. And why did he have so many photographs hung around the house anyway? And they all seemed as if he took them yesterday. Even his painted portraits appeared completed just the day before as if the oils had barely managed to dry overnight.

Was he trying to tell himself something?

Well, yes, he realized almost immediately: 

I do not age!

Oh, how confused Mr. Benjamin Zec was just then... he had the face of eternal youth, like that Dorian Gray fellow! And that was another thing: The same way he had known Hamlet by heart, every line of this Dorian Gray had somehow been etched into his gestures, racing into his consciousness, equally inexplicable.

And that was nothing compared to the next miracle. 

Remembering Dorian Gray, Benjamin ran into the bedroom. The room was upstairs, the first on the left, and in the night-table drawer was a book, he knew it. So, he opened the drawer. The book he found had a cracked, fragile cover and yellowing pages. And it wasn’t in English. But Benjamin knew how to read it, and the cover said: 

Oscar Wilde

The Picture of Dorian Gray

Benjamin quickly opened the first page and began to read uncontrollably. He un­derstood every word; they rushed rapidly through him, first ingratiatingly, warm, pleasant, and familiar, but then painfully, as though this strange language was piercing deeply into his soul. Benjamin felt like something was sawing his lungs in half, as though his ribs were closing in on his innards. He was going to faint. Pictures of his well-mannered smiles spun around him, and his pupils rolled under his fluttering eyelids. A deafening bang forced its way into the back of his head and hit his forehead.

Benjamin lost his balance and fell to the ground.

Bright light soon swallowed the darkness, and he found himself on stage.

“To be or not to be?” The audience applauded, and he bowed. He saw his face in the dressing room mirror. He wondered who he was and why he was there. His limo driver knocked on the door, identified himself as Benjamin’s chauffeur, and asked if he was ready to go home. Benjamin had a beautiful house with Greek pillars and Gothic arches. His portraits and photos hang from the walls. Benjamin looked at himself in the mir­ror and realized he wasn’t aging. Just like Dorian Gray! In the bedroom, he found a book by Oscar Wilde, opened it to the first page, and fainted.

He again found himself under the glaring spotlight when he opened his eyes. Again, To be or not to be! Oblivious to the nature of his predicament.

Another standing ovation.

He became reacquainted with his face in the dressing room. The figure in the mirror was somewhat familiar. His chauffeur drove him home to a splendid house overlooking the Atlantic Ocean. Benjamin looked at his reflection and realized that he didn’t age, just like the main character in the book. The Picture of Dorian Gray! He ran to his bedroom. Panting, he opened his night-table drawer and found a book by Oscar Wilde. He opened to the first page and was quickly comatose. 

When he recovered again, he saw the spotlight, the stage; he spoke Shakespeare’s famous words, the crowd was shouting his name, and it all happened as it did the first time, and the second, and who knows how many other times... it always started with him waking up on the stage and ended when he opened the first page of The Picture of Dorian Gray. Then, unconsciousness, and then from the beginning again and again.

Benjamin Zec felt like he was skipping transience, trapped in one point of the moment while staring helplessly at the vicious cycle of time. And he would have stayed there, in this parallel world, forever, if there hadn’t finally been one slight variation in his routine: hurrying upstairs, he stumbled, and something fell out of his pocket—a marble. Next time, when Benjamin Zec ran through his usual loop and dashed upstairs to seek out Dorian Gray, he slipped on that marble and fell.

And time skipped ahead, just like a stuck record player would skip the chorus and jump right into the third verse. Benjamin fell into his usual oblivion, but the light that welcomed him when he awoke this time wasn’t from a spotlight but from a summer sun.

He saw a vast green meadow with a single cherry tree in it. The fruit of the tree had a dark red color of blood, and its sweet flesh hung heavily with juice.

“Cherries that have no worms are no good,” Benjamin thought. The tree was bursting with life, and its fragile branches swayed easily in the wind. Hints of cherry scent played across Benjamin’s lips, and he licked them to carry off even the slightest trace of sugary stimulus.

Some people were digging close by a lone tree.

Benjamin wanted to pick some cherries.

He extended his hand, but just at that moment, his fingers plucked a fruit from its branch, and the ground beneath his bare feet went as dry and loose as the interior of an hourglass. He fell. The soil pulled him down, devouring him in a single bite. He tried to hold on to the cherry tree, but, to his shock, he dragged it into the abyss. The terror of being buried alive shut his eyes fast.

When his consciousness got hold of a bit of light, Benjamin found himself on a pile of bones and grinning skulls. Disfigured and broken skeletons hugged each other in a heap.

Benjamin held firmly to the cherry tree, which was now just a root attached to a tiny skeleton in the fetal position, like an umbilical cord.

“These are bones of a boy,” he concluded. The skeleton’s skull had a hole in the back and an even bigger one in the front, and between its teeth was gripped the seed from which the roots of the wild cherry tree sprang. 

And then, only then, did Benjamin Zec realized: it was HIS skull! 

HIS teeth. 

HIS bones. 

HIS life.

HIS death.

Oh yes, dear reader, his restless soul wandered around like a gypsy song. 

Benjamin looked around and found that he wasn’t alone.

Many other souls were down there, looking for their bones.

He recognized some of the kids from school. There were also people from the neighboring village. And his physics teacher. And Benjamin’s father, too! And one of the neigh­bors. And then another. And many, many others. Quietly, obediently, they searched through this shrine abyss filled with shrunken skeletons. 

The dead came for their bones while the living above them exhumed a mass grave.

The skeletons were assembled from bone-fragment puzzles and placed sideways, with numbers. Benjamin Zec was number 25.

His tagged bones were reconstructed by speechless people, gently, like the remains of a rare dinosaur. Soon, they were laid on the white sheet on the ground, showing a pale construction of a little Benjamin Zec. 

There he was, a little boy again. 

He was eating cherries and reading The picture of Dorian Gray when one of the soldiers violently yanked him down off the lowest branch of the cherry tree. As he fell to the ground, he felt a marble slipping out of his pocket; it got lost in the deep grass. The smell of grass wafted around him, and the soil was still wet. It calmed him down. He didn’t want to think about his fear; he ignored the moment’s agony. He watched the carefree ladybug whose tiny feet crossed his lifeline. 

As the Kalashnikov barrel rested at the back of boy’s head, he thought of Dorian Gray and his never-ending youth. He wanted to be an actor on Broadway, to have a personal driver and a house with great Greek pillars, Gothic arches, and a view of the ocean. Or if he could at least... if he could at least transform into this beautiful insect... and fly away... “Ladybug, ladybug, show me the way,” he hummed. 

At that moment, the ladybug spread its transparent wings and flew out of his open palm to fulfill the wish of Benjamin Zec. 

 

 

 

  To the victims of Srebrenica massacre...

 First published in ̓’Best European fiction 2014”

by Dalkey Archive Press

    

All rights reserved by Elvis Hadzic