You have not just been reading the latest novel by Italo Calvino. You slept like shit at the hostel last night and didn’t read anything. A couple above you had giggly, creaky sex for what felt like hours. At around four in the morning, you tried to get involved (in a way) but everything went quiet. Then you heard the girl whisper: that guy below is a fucking creep. You went outside, where a guy called Petru offered you a cigarette. I basically live here, he told you, I work in construction and do a bit of stuff on the side. When I’ve saved enough to buy my parents a flat, I’ll leave this shithole for good.
The lights are dimmed on the flight, even though you aren’t flying in the hours of darkness. In your backpack there’s a scuffed copy of The Box Man, a few sachets of Nescafé, receipts from McDonald’s, shampoo and body wash samples and your dirty clothes. Every now and again the little boy in sitting in front of you slides his hand back through the gap in the seats. He thinks he’s being cute but he’s doing your head in. You lean against the juddering window and doze off. When you wake up, you plan to listen to the BBC Global News podcast, maybe The Intelligence, but settle on Rio by Duran Duran. You consider treating yourself to a warm beer (six euros) from the drinks trolley. But the operation is in less than eight hours and you’re not supposed to eat or drink anything.
Your passport doesn’t work at the self-scan machine. The border guard peers at your face and you stare at her hands. You look different now, she says. (In the photo you look pretty good: the lighting makes you sinister and handsome.) She hands your passport back: this expires in a month, she says, remember to renew it before you come back.
Outside the sky is bright grey. You check your phone for your appointment letter, but you have no internet; you take a bus into the city centre anyway. On the journey you listen to The Dark Side of the Moon and then start the audiobook of Madame Bovary, but give up after two minutes because the narrator’s voice is too delicate and refined.
You get off at a square and walk down various cobbled and tarmacked streets. There’s a funicular, a river, a wedge of glass buildings. It’s like a city that’s been built inside itself, you think, or spliced together from other cities. A guy approaches you on the high street, holding out an armful of watches. When you shake your head, his voice gets lower and he says: anything else, my friend? You want weed, coke, girls? No thanks, you say, but he carries on following you, first down a sidestreet and then an alley. Eventually you turn around. What the fuck do you want, you say, can you fuck off and leave me alone? He’s a lot smaller than you and you like the idea of him attacking you. When he reaches into his pocket, it crosses your mind that he has a knife. He takes out his phone and laughs: relax, bro, I’m just trying to help.
You stop at a small cafe and finally get some Wi-Fi. The appointment letter isn’t much more than your name and a booking reference, with the title: your operation. The hospital is a thirty-minute walk away. You leave without buying anything and walk for a couple of hours, mainly through shopping streets busy with people wearing long coats. You listen to Low by David Bowie. When Warszawa comes on you leave it on repeat, mumbling the made-up words under your breath. In your head they come out as something like: sula vie milejo, sula vie milejo.
It’s as you pass an abandoned cinema that you think: doesn’t Frida live here? You don’t have her number or know her address, and even though your sense of direction is abysmal (without realising it you’ve mostly been walking in circles, and are only five minutes away from the square where you first arrived), you find your way easily to her apartment, which still looks the same after all these years: a splintered brown door, and a window on the fourth floor that rattles whenever the wind picks up. You take out your headphones and press the button on the intercom. Hello, a voice says after a pause, who’s this? It’s me, you say, I’m here for my operation, I’m finally going to get it done. Can I come inside? There’s no response, so you repeat yourself. You take a few steps back and look up at the window, but you can’t see anyone there. That’s great, the voice says after a while. But you can’t come in here, you need to leave.
Look, you start saying, I didn’t come to see you, but while I’m here – you feel a gloved hand on your shoulder. You’re J, right? a man says. I recognise you from the photos. Where’ve you been? I was waiting at the airport all afternoon. Before you can respond, the man shrugs and says: it doesn’t matter now, let’s go. He leads you to a car across the road. The engine is still running. You might as well have this now, he says, and you feel a sharp little twinge in your left wrist.
From the outside, the hospital looks like an old palatial residence. At the entrance you’re greeted by a man in a brown double-breasted suit. I’m George, he says. I’m sorry, I would have picked you up myself. But there’s a slot free now, and I’m sure you don’t want to sit around pretending to read magazines. He takes your backpack and holds out a tray for your headphones. Then he leads you down a yellow corridor lined with framed pictures of the outside of the hospital.
You arrive at a small room where a man dressed in medical scrubs is waiting. This is the operator, George says. The operator points you towards a curtain, which you pass through to change into a thin green gown. When you come out, he takes out a marker pen and begins speaking. Sula vie milejo. You watch his mouth move, but understand nothing.
As he talks, George translates, or at least speaks in the gaps between the operator’s pauses. The operator pinches your stomach, your chest, your shoulders, and then crouches down and begins drawing dotted lines that run from your ankles to your neck. When he presses the patch of skin between your collarbones, a chill runs through your body and along the dotted lines. That’s it, you hear George say, holding out a card machine. Any questions? You don’t have questions, but still, you say: will I remember everything? It’s anaesthesia, not amnesia, George laughs. Just tap here.
The operator leaves, and a nurse guides you to a metal bed. You think about Frida as you lie down, wondering if she watched from the window as you got into the car, or if she’ll come to the hospital with a thermos of vegetable soup. When the nurse takes off your gown and starts wiping you down (you’re filthy, he says, rubbing between your fingers), you suddenly want to have your picture taken. You ask George: do you have a camera? Of course, he says. I’ll just go and get it.
The moment he leaves, you regret asking. On the ceiling, there’s a bright light shining right in your eyes. This is the wrong lighting, you try to say, it’ll come out badly. On the other side of the wall, someone’s laughing over the stutter of an engine. You think: I have more questions, I need to buy a watch. The nurse wheels himself over on a metal stool and stops beside your head. You see a little hand reaching down towards you from the light, which is now blindingly bright. You can’t close your eyes. Sula vie milejo. There’s a series of rapid clicks and the ceiling begins to flash as the nurse runs his fingers over your collarbones and through your hair.
You know, you hear the nurse say, as your headphones are pressed back into your ears, I really shouldn’t be so familiar, but I was only nineteen when you came in for your operation, yours was my first, and ever since then I’ve been waiting to tell you –
*