Arnon Grunberg

Michela

I first met Michela in New York in the winter of 2005. She was in her early twenties, she played violin and led, as that is called, an irregular life. More irregular than mine, in any case. Michela had the tendency to go to bed when other people were getting up. She was interested in coke. I was not. The madness of reality is best confronted in a state of relative sobriety.
Michela was Italian-American, her grandparents were first-generation Americans. Her parents still spoke Italian; Michela no longer did.
If I remember correctly I was infatuated with her, briefly, after all these years it is hard to say with certainty. I invited her to travel with me to Namibia, where I went in the early spring of 2005 to do some research for my novel Tirza. She would have to ask her parents’ permission, but it appealed to her, Africa, she’d never been there.
Right before I was to leave, I made an appointment with her for lunch at San Domenico, an Italian restaurant at Central Park South, a place I went to regularly. She didn’t show up. I called her a few times, but got her voicemail each time. After that I heard nothing.
I went to Namibia, thinking I would never hear from Michela again. The end of a brief and, even by my standards, rather bizarre affair.
One year later, in the spring of 2006, Michela showed up unexpectedly in my inbox. She was planning to write a book, and she asked me for help.
Curiosity is a powerful motivator. We met up, and then we met again, and again. By then it was clear to me that the book would never be written, but I enjoyed listening to her stories. Even though the lives of people at the edge of society are, of course, as repetitive as those of office workers.
When I wrote a blog entry, on the website of Words Without Borders, in which an important role was reserved for a memorable visit Michela had once paid me in Amsterdam, she was a bit incensed.
But we stayed in contact.
In the summer of 2007 we had dinner at Beppe’s, another Italian restaurant. She asked whether I would like to meet her boyfriend. He was a cook in a chic restaurant. I believe he was the one who sliced the tomatoes and the meat.
We bought some beer, because she said her fridge was bare, and drove to their apartment in Brooklyn to wait for her boyfriend. In the living room, furnished only with a coffee table, a couch and a gigantic television set.
When her boyfriend came home at last, he was carrying a baseball bat. Where he had found that, I have no idea.
He said: “Why is your zipper open?” “My zipper isn’t open,” I replied.
“Why is your zipper open?” he repeated. “There’s only one way you’re getting out here alive. That’s by jumping out the window. If you survive that, I’ll let you go.” The apartment was on the twelfth floor.
“I had diarrhea,” I said.
He went on to emphasize a few times that he would have no peace until I was dead.
How I escaped from the man with the baseball bat is not really relevant here. There is only one fact I care to mention: it was not until hours later that I felt the blows to my face. The baseball bat never touched me.
I can imagine the stories about wounded soldiers picking up their arm that has just been blown off and walking on. The pain comes much later.
Some people say that fear paralyzes you. But what I remember of fear is above all the extreme concentration, the numbness and lucidity; better a living dog than a dead lion. That was no theory; that, it turned out, was actual practice.