Save the Pedestals

165 he dreams: the empty pedestal is made of glass and resting in it like bones in a reliquary are the names of the statue’s children. comrade a had the habit of rapping on the toes of his boots with his cane as he walked. They were safety boots of a kind you can’t buy any more, with heat-resistant soles and steel toecaps from which the rubber tip of the cane rebounded. This drumbeat irritated Ma Z, but she had known Comrade A long enough to hold her tongue. He was touchy about the boots, which he’d been wearing since his days as a shop steward in the Metalworkers’ Union. He didn’t care that they were down at the heel and looked odd with Save the Pedestals Ivan Vladislavić fiction S for graham riach René Magritte, The Future of Statues, ca. 1937. SAVE THE PEDESTALS | 167 a suit, and he would give anyone who dared to comment a lecture on the hazards of the shop floor. These boots had saved his feet more than once when a metal bar slipped o≠ the rollers in the factory . You could still see the dents. He was touchy about the walking stick too, although he had come by that more recently. It was pension day. The two old friends had taken the train to the station, as they did every month, and then a bus to the city center . It was their routine to stop for lunch before they walked over to collect their pensions. You don’t want to face the pension o∞ce on an empty stomach, Ma Z said. In fact, this o∞ce was no more than a desk in Fidelity House where veterans like them picked up their checks, by special arrangement, but they liked to joke about the endless queues and the grumpy clerks, just as if they were ordinary old-timers. If pension day fell on a Tuesday, when the supermarkets o≠ered pensioners a special discount, along with a free blood-pressure test and a cup of tea, Ma Z brought her shopping basket, and she was towing that behind her as they went along Company Lane. A gastropub, she said when they spotted the signboard. I didn’t expect it to be so fancy. The Swannery was a new restaurant she’d seen advertised on a bus shelter. There was a menu on a music stand outside, in a handwritten script as full of curly tendrils as a bean plant, and they paged through it. I could write like that once, she said. They had a calligraphy class at the Academy in Sofia. All it takes is a bit of practice. Penmanship? I thought you specialized in military strategy. My field was strategic communications, but we had our leisure time, our hobbies. It wasn’t all work and no play. Comrade A struck the music stand with his cane. Pretentious simplicity, he said bitterly. Artisanal bread. Which is to say: left in the oven too long, misshapen and black as a pot on the bottom. How did artisanal come to mean made by an amateur? Some other time then. When he was in a mood like this she knew not to insist. 168 | IVAN VLADISLAVIĆ They walked on to the Great Leader noodle bar at the end of the block. Comrade A liked to sit there at the sticky counter, under the ironic portrait of Chairman Mao, and discuss the lessons of the Cultural Revolution. Ma Z had the chicken chow mein, declining the chopsticks in favor of a plastic fork. If God meant us to eat with sticks, he wouldn’t have given us fingers, she said, or forks, which are a sensible improvement. Comrade A lifted a water chestnut expertly with the chopsticks and let the hot sauce drip o≠ into his bowl. He had a theory that chopsticks were good for the waistline. Look how skinny the Chinese are, he said. When you eat slowly, you appreciate every morsel, you chew properly, you savor the tastes and textures of each ingredient. He shattered the water chestnut between his teeth and picked up a slant-cut green...