If I Only Had Time

By Evald Flisar

Lost in the imaginary landscapes of novels and films, 22-year-old Simon Bebler learns that he is terminally ill and has at best a year to live. Now the young student wants to cram everything life has to offer into this radically reduced lifespan. Inclined to see himself in the roles of fictional heroes, he begins to live out all the stories he has read or seen on film and experience every mental and physical state a man can experience – good and bad, moral and immoral. He refuses to die feeling he has been robbed of life, so he decides to enact it with real dramatic suspense.

But once the drama is set up, it quickly escapes his control and he is faced with the question of whether he can remain the hero of his adventures or sooner or later become their victim. He finds himself amidst unusual happenings in New York where he meets extraordinary people, among them Al Pacino, Woody Allen, Uma Thurman...

Are they real or simply doppelgängers? The narrative merry-go-round of this philosophical thriller poses questions faster than Flisar’s characters can handle, let alone answer...

• Language: English
• Publisher: Sodobnost
• Release date: Dec 16, 2019
• ISBN: 9789617047455

Evald Flisar

EVALD FLISAR is a novelist, playwright, essayist, editor and seasoned traveller. Flisar was president of the Slovene Writers’ Association from 1995 – 2002, and since 1998 is the editor of the oldest Slovenian literary journal Sodobnost (Contemporary Review). He is the author of eleven novels, two collections of short stories, three travelogues, two books for children and fifteen stage plays. Winner of the Prešeren Foundation Prize, the highest state award for prose and drama, the prestigious Župančič Award for lifetime achievement, three awards for Best Radio Play, and many more. His previous novels, ‘My Father’s Dreams and Three Loves, One Death were published with Istros in 2015 and 2016 respectively.

Book preview

1.

What the dramatist said to the actress

Barton Fink, in a black jacket and with a scarlet rose in his hand, stands in the wings watching the stage. The play will soon end and the curtain will fall. Barton Fink is young, let us say twenty-two, pale and thin, although at first sight quite healthy, with frameless glasses that give him a studentish air. The glasses are clear glass; he sometimes puts them on to emphasize his intellectual nature, but they are not always convincing. Behind him, a stagehand leans against the wall with a cigarette between his crooked teeth. He is holding the end of a thick rope. He also knows that the curtain will soon fall; he is trying to remember after which sentence.

The actors’ words can be heard from the stage.

‘I’ll be blown away,’ says the Actor in a sing-song voice, ‘really, blown away forever. I’ve never been superstitious but precisely today, the thirteenth, I found out that I only have a year to live. I shall take my leave of this world at the age of twenty, like some tubercular nineteenth-century poet!’

‘Oh, Barton, how romantic!’ The Actress sighs. ‘I must say, you’re remarkably calm considering.’

‘There’s no point making a big fuss about it. Others will simply live instead of me: there are more than enough twenty-year-olds with a guaranteed future.’

‘But Barton!’ cries the Actress. ‘That means…’

‘Yes, it means I shall never become what I could have become. Never do all that I dreamed of – make the world a friendlier place, not just for me but for everyone. None of that.’

In the wings, Barton Fink shifts his weight uneasily. He is feeling both hot and cold. The words sound different than when they were written. He is not yet willing to admit that he is beginning to feel embarrassed, but the sense that he is going to make a fool of himself with his new piece grows stronger.

‘In other words, Nothing,’ says the Actress grimly.

‘Far from it, Audrey,’ replies the Actor. ‘In the year I have left, there must happen at least as much as if I had lived to be a hundred. Fate can get lost. I won’t allow it to rob me of my life.’

‘So, you’ll need to live pretty fast. In your place I would simply curl up and die.’

‘First, life. Take off your clothes.’

‘Why?’ asks the Actress, surprised.

‘You’re right,’ says the Actor after a long silence. ‘Why anything?’

These last words are spoken by Barton Fink along with the Actor. As the performance ends, the stagehand lights another cigarette. Barton jogs him with his elbow. The man throws the cigarette on the floor and steps on it. Then he grabs the thick rope with both hands and pulls. The curtain falls slowly over the stage – to Barton it seems an eternity. Feeble applause, some whistling and jeering is heard from the auditorium.

The Actress comes offstage and heads toward the dressing room. Barton offers her the scarlet rose.

‘I’ll wait for you in the café across the street,’ he says with a wink.

The Actress looks at the rose as if she had no idea what to do with it. Then she grabs it and hurries on. She is followed from the stage by seven other actors – five men, two women, none of them older than thirty. With heads bowed they scurry past Barton, avoiding his gaze. Except for a small redhead, who sticks her tongue out at him. Barton sags with a mixture of discomfort and unease. From the wings a young man with short hair and an earring approaches.

‘You ignored my advice, now you’re paying the price.’

‘So what?’ replies Barton.

‘It could at least have been dignified. Fewer lines, simpler language, a tad less melodrama, and they would still be standing on stage enjoying applause.’

‘From whom? An amateur public come to see an amateur performance by an amateur director? You will never direct my plays again.’

‘I couldn’t agree more.’

The young man with the earring turns and walks into the offstage darkness.

Five seconds later, the stagehand who lowered the curtain appears. ‘We’re closing.’

The Actress sits in the corner of the small café, looking at the rose beside her cup of coffee. She is also young, roughly the same age as the author of the play in which she played the main role. She is not particularly beautiful but is not without an erotic charge (which, with the lack of classical beauty, is much more distinct), with sensuous lips which could be mistaken for those of Angelina Jolie in the semi-darkness, with legs of which Uma Thurman would not be ashamed, with chestnut hair tied back but twisted over her shoulder to rest on her generously rounded breast. At first glance her posture looks hostile, but examined more closely it reveals despondency.

The café is empty apart from the waiter and the Actress. In the doorway, the thin figure of Barton Fink appears. He approaches the counter and orders a Malibu, a Cointreau and a Tia Maria. He also asks for a large, empty glass. Then he goes to the Actress’s table, moves one of the four armchairs and sinks into it.

‘I can’t forgive you for dragging me into such a mess,’ the Actress says immediately. ‘Do you know how many people are sneering at me this moment? All my friends, and tomorrow the whole town.’

‘Don’t exaggerate,’ replies Barton soothingly.

‘You know only too well that I’m not an actress. And you will never be a playwright.’

The waiter brings three full glasses plus a larger, empty one and puts them on the table. As he walks back to the counter he unexpectedly turns to see what Barton Fink will do with the drinks. He notices that the Actress is following him with her eyes, as if evaluating a potential sexual partner. Barton Fink also notices this; he blushes slightly and sinks lower as if the thought disturbs him. The Actress notices that Barton is upset, so she flashes the waiter a smile. The waiter returns the smile, but notices that Barton Fink is watching and immediately looks serious, even frowns, and goes back behind the counter. From there he watches how Barton pours the three glasses of liqueur, one at a time, into the larger glass. He shakes the mixture and drinks it down at one go.

‘Have you forgotten what we did with those liqueurs?’

‘We?’ The Actress looks at him. ‘You weren’t even there!’

‘Of course I was! Although we were using a stranger as an instrument of passion, I experienced the event a lot more intensely than you. And don’t pretend you suffered. Not the first time, nor the second, nor the third. And when we do it for a fourth time you’ll enjoy it even more. It is a characteristic of addiction that it intensifies.’

‘Look for someone who takes more pleasure in being abused.’

‘Have you forgotten what energy flowed between us? Each time, just before you came, you reached out to me as if you needed help. I squeezed your hand and you gripped mine tightly until your last tremor of passion faded. And the whole time we were looking at each other, you never once looked at him.’

‘And what would you call that?’ The Actress looks into his eyes. ‘Love?’

Barton gazes through the window at the empty street. The drizzle has become rain, which the occasional gust of wind throws against the dilapidated wall of the house opposite or against the café window, the drops sliding down the pane like small transparent spiders.

‘Do you think it’ll stop?’ He turns back to the Actress.

‘What are you thinking of?’

‘I’ll be blown away, Audrey, really, blown away forever. I’ve never been superstitious but precisely today, the thirteenth, I found out that I only have a year to live. I’ll take my leave of the world at the age of twenty, like some tubercular nineteenth-century poet!’

The Actress presses herself against the back of the armchair as if trying to put the greatest possible distance between her and Barton.

‘You obviously don’t care.’

‘What, Barton, what don’t I care about?’ she almost barks. ‘That you are repeating stupid lines from your stupid play?’

‘That I’m fatally ill. I got the diagnosis today.’

‘And what illness do you have that can’t be cured?’

‘Cancer of the spleen.’

‘Like the hero of your play?’

‘I know it’s hard to believe. But I wouldn’t joke about such a thing. I’m not naïve.’

‘I’m the naïve one, believing everything you say. This time I’ll make an exception.’

Barton looks at the floor, he seems crushed. ‘I never lied to you.’

‘Lies I would understand. But you fantasize. You take a crumb of reality, maybe three or four crumbs, and combine them into something else altogether. You watch too many films, you read too many novels. You have left this world and live in an imaginary one. I’m sure it’s more interesting, but I can’t allow you to drag me into it.’

‘You’re exaggerating again.’

‘We are always in some film or other, some novel. You change our names. I was Ana Karenina, you were Vronsky. And then we destroyed it, that beautiful love story. One time you are Indiana Jones, another the Terminator. Every time I am one of your women. Why you have been Barton Fink for quite some time and I Audrey Taylor is not completely clear to me. It’s even less clear to me why I go along with it every time.’

‘Because you enjoy the game?’

‘Maybe I did once. But that’s over. Don’t forget that you’re not Barton Fink, but Simon. And I’m Violeta.’

As is appropriate for tense moments, these words are followed by silence. Time is needed to gather one’s thoughts and come up with a strategy for the next move. Barton (let him remain Barton for a while) turns and calls to the waiter, ‘The same again! And a coffee.’

The waiter gets right down to it.

‘He seems very obliging,’ says Barton. ‘Do you think he’d be suitable?’

‘I’m not saying a word.’

‘Listen, Violeta. We never live only in reality, but also in the illusions that are part of that reality. Whatever we read, whatever we see on TV or at the movies is like building material that automatically gets included in the structure of the illusion that we refer to as the self. We are made up of the present and the past, the personal and the collective.’

‘Spare me.’

‘I have simply pushed that natural process of shedding reality a step further, to where I can imagine that I am, alongside everything else that I am, the hero of every novel, every film.’

‘Studying literature has ruined you.’

‘You’ve proved so often that you know how to be original. Why this regression, this sinking into mediocrity?’

It seems to Barton that the Actress blushes. He realizes he should have spoken somewhat more gently. But it is too late.

‘Thanks, Simon, I find mediocrity quite pleasing…’

‘Not Simon, Barton.’

‘Not Barton, Simon. I have quit the game. And don’t try to drag me back, because I might decide without regret never to see you again. Maybe I’d be interested if you were at least generous enough to let me choose once in a while. Then I’d have the feeling that I was participating. That I was alive, not just your plaything.’

‘But you always decide. And only when you feel like it.’

‘This time I don’t. This blackmail of yours has gone too far. You’re going to die, etcetera, etcetera.’

‘Do this for me for the same reasons you did it the first, second and third times, not out of pity.’

The Actress leans forward and rests her elbows on her knees. She looks agitated and not at all at a loss for an answer. Nevertheless, she decides to wait, for the waiter is heading toward them between the tables and armchairs holding a tray. He has already heard too much, anyway. She couldn’t help notice him straining to hear as he stood behind the counter and unconvincingly pretended to rinse glasses.

He places three liqueur glasses on the table, lining them up in front of Barton. He puts the large empty glass to Barton’s left, evidently so that pouring the liqueurs into it will be as simple as possible. Then he places a cup of coffee in front of the Actress, carefully pushing aside the scarlet rose – extremely carefully, so as not to damage it. Barton gets the impression that the waiter has a feeling for gentle, measured gestures and that the rhythm of his movements bears witness to their mutual dependency and disposition. If he knows how to make use of these virtues in bed he would certainly be an ideal candidate for Mr Four.

Spontaneously Barton reaches for the rose and offers it to the waiter, who accepts it without knowing why. Perhaps to get it out of the way, perhaps the guest wants him to throw it away.

‘My girlfriend gives you this rose as a sign of her admiration.’

The recipient reacts with astonishment. ‘Me? Why?’

‘Do you know the significance of the three liqueurs you brought me?’

‘I’ve been trying to guess.’

‘You must rub the Malibu into her clitoris and suck it until she starts to scream. She will massage the head of your penis with Cointreau until even the semen that you spurt into her mouth smells of it. She will swallow it with an expression of bliss. Then she will take a sip of Tia Maria to rinse her mouth. When you kiss, the Tia Maria will flow from her mouth to yours and then back again. It will burn with sweetness from beginning to end. And then again. And again. And again. Until dawn. It will be best if you take three bottles with you. I will pour. And only then shall we sleep. When they bury us.’

The waiter looks in confusion from one to the other. Evidently he has never been more embarrassed.

The Actress takes advantage of the moment.

‘My friend has drunk too much and is talking nonsense. This mixture is incredibly potent. If he drinks one more he’ll be under the table. Then we shall have to carry him out into the rain to sober up. He could catch cold and die, which would be a tragedy at his age. You agree, don’t you? Because I am here to do him a favour, I’ll do him one more. But this is really the last time.’

She reaches for the empty glass and places it in front of her. She looks at the waiter. ‘Can you pour the three liqueurs into this glass and give them a good mix?’

The waiter does so, dreamily. Barton watches him with a bland smile. He is convinced that the Actress, with a flash of wit in line with his, has triggered a sequence of events that can lead nowhere other than to a night of debauchery in her room. He looks at her, seeking confirmation in her enigmatic expression. He finds it in the alluring smile she gives the waiter. Then the Actress grabs the glass and gulps it down. Her eyes bulge but she sits immobile. With a deep breath out, she relaxes and hands the empty glass to the waiter. In doing so she makes sure that her finger touches his hand.

‘So, that was the foreplay,’ says Barton, ‘now the rest.’

All three hear the door creak. They look toward the entrance and see a new customer enter; it seems like an interruption when they have been alone for so long. The newcomer is a corpulent figure of around fifty, with the upright posture of a military officer, a firm, confident step, with no sign of impending baldness – on the contrary, he has a mane of brown hair with grey streaks that give him a particular charm. His dark suit and tie, classic three-quarter-length coat and black briefcase give him the air of a businessman or public employee. Certainly someone who has a relatively comfortable income guaranteed until retirement and beyond. He turns toward the trio and with a commanding, almost booming voice says, ‘Good evening.’ The waiter, the Actress and Barton Fink nod. They are all a little taken aback and do not hide it: what is such a respectable-looking gentleman, who looks as if he belongs in a café on the main street, doing in such a shabby part of town? Surprisingly, the newcomer acts at home here: he moves to the nearest table and casually tosses his briefcase onto one of the armchairs, carefully lays his coat over the back of another and comfortably sinks into a third. He looks at the fourth as if with the intention of taking it, too. A glance at the modest number of guests tells him that there is no danger of anyone occupying that seat.

Then he looks at the waiter and, in a deep voice, asks for a glass of merlot.

‘Large or small?’

‘Large,’ replies the man. He looks at his watch as if suddenly remembering something and gives a slight grimace like someone weighing the pros and cons. Just when the trio is convinced he will change his mind, he repeats, ‘Large.’

The waiter, visibly relieved that he has been offered a way out, puts the rose back on the table, collects the glasses on his tray and heads for the counter. Barton, who has his back to the man, loses his excuse for looking toward him and so he turns to the Actress. And notices that she has just exchanged with the man what could be called a meaningful look over his shoulder. This does not bother him: she has always been flirtatious, which both warms and excites him.

In spite of this, he gets the impression that there is something more than flirtation in her eyes: a thoughtful, almost genuine interest. He decides to go to the bathroom and take a closer look at the man.

But just as he walks by, the man half conceals his face with a mobile. Barton is not able to look at him as closely as he would like. He only notices the man’s chiselled features, deep dark eyes, prominent eyebrows and dimpled chin. Barton could easily imagine him as a sheriff in a Western. He is talking on his mobile to someone who is dear to him, perhaps his wife.

‘I’m sorry, but something has come up,’ he says. ‘No, I don’t know when I’ll be coming. You know how it is. I’ll call you.’

Although he has not drunk much, Barton is in the bathroom longer than he intended and expels a greater volume of urine than he would have thought possible for his bladder to hold without bursting. Then he lingers in front of the mirror examining his features. Not exactly good-looking. He is reminded of the actor who played Barton Fink in the film of the same name. He tries to smooth down the unruly hair that is sticking out in all directions. Then he washes his hands.

When he returns to the café, at first he thinks he has entered the wrong place. Are there two cafés at the same location that share a bathroom? Two similar ones with the same tables and chairs, even with the same view of the street? But this is the wrong one, since there is not a living soul. Barton is just about to turn round when he sees the waiter behind the counter. Even the waiters in the two cafés look the same.

Barton is confused. The waiter looks at him and says, ‘The check is already taken care of.’

Barton automatically turns to see if someone is standing behind him, since these words cannot be directed at him. His confusion becomes fear. He steps back through the swaying door into the hallway; he looks left and right for the doorway into the right café. But on the right is a wall with a washbasin and a cracked mirror and to the left is an emergency exit, locked. In front of him are two doors labelled Men and Women.

He goes to the washbasin, opens the faucet and splashes some cold water on his face. Has some connection in his brain stopped working? He takes a deep breath and once more opens the door into the café.

Everything is as it was before, not a soul, and even the waiter is no longer behind the counter.

Then a padded grey windbreaker lying on one of the armchairs draws his attention. It is very similar to his. In fact, it could be his. He goes up the few steps and moves toward it. Now he notices something else: on the table lies the scarlet rose he gave the Actress after the performance. As if he had passed through some kind of membrane and returned to the real world. But where is the Actress? And the man?

The waiter appears behind the counter.

Barton goes up to him. ‘What’s going on?’

‘The gentleman and young lady paid and left. In fact, the gentleman paid. For all three.’

‘But I was only gone a minute, maybe two!’

‘I’d say five.’

‘But they don’t even know each other!’

‘It’s true they didn’t exchange a word. They just got up at the same time, put their coats on, the gentleman paid and they were already at the door.’

Barton looks out onto the lit street, where the wind has strengthened and the rain is still falling.

‘He didn’t have an umbrella.’

‘She did. Not a big one, but she raised it high and he joined her beneath it. Squeezed together, almost embracing, they disappeared as if fleeing something.’

With a heaviness in his legs that he has not felt for a long time, Barton sinks back into the armchair. The feeling that he has lost control of events paralyzes him.

Not for long. Half an hour later, he is climbing the stairs of the building where the Actress has a studio apartment on the fifth floor. The stairs are cold and narrow, the walls have not been painted for years and there is a damp smell. In spite of this, the Actress is delighted not to have to share with anyone; privacy seems a great luxury to her. When the couch is pulled out into a bed, there is hardly room to move, but this does not bother her. She often says she likes to live in a den; the smaller the space, the safer she feels.

Just as Barton raises his hand to ring the bell, the sound of a key is heard in the lock. Did she hear his steps and looked through the spyhole? Neither: when the door opens she does not even see him. She is in the hallway, naked under her blue bathrobe, kissing the bulky sheriff, who is saying goodbye. Already dressed in his coat and with his briefcase in hand, he has to bend from the waist to reach her mouth, which is a head lower than his. Her tongue flicks out to lick him like a grateful dog.

Barton resists the sudden urge to throw up right there on the threshold. When they catch sight of him, they instinctively move apart; the shock on their faces is so exaggerated that it seems staged.

Before they can gather their wits, Barton smiles and says, ‘I missed the first round. Do you have time for another?’

The man is the first to decide that it is not the end of the world. He is evidently used to delicate situations and, at his age, has probably been in quite a few. Embarrassing, but what can you do? That’s life.

Barton moves back as the man takes a vigorous step forward, prepared to knock him over as he leaves the apartment. With enviable dignity he goes down the stairs, disappearing behind the first turn; the sound of his footsteps on the cold concrete slowly fades until down below the entrance door opens and closes with a snap. The Actress waits defiantly for Barton to start reproaching her.

‘Can I come in?’

‘Hurry up, I’m cold.’

‘No surprise, if you’re naked beneath your robe – the one I bought you, if you recall, as a twenty-first birthday present. Naked and aroused from what you were doing behind my back, you promised me you would never have sex with anyone without me watching.’

‘You’re sick, Simon.’

‘I’m still Barton. As Simon I would perhaps already have gone crazy and throttled you, but as Barton I can afford the blunt indifference of my namesake.’

He goes in and the Actress locks the door. Barton stops on the threshold of the living room-cum-bedroom and looks at the extended couch on which the light blue sheet is creased and damp with sweat, while the flower patterned cover is in a heap on the other side and the pillow is squashed into the corner between the side and head of the couch. The havoc caused by unrestrained physical activity. And behind it, in front of the computer table in the corner, the office chair on which Barton has always sat when he has watched the Actress in the throes and postures of uncontrollable passion, in the arms of strangers. Only three, in fact, but with each it was repeated at least twenty times, with the third perhaps even more. And every time the Actress called him because she wanted to have some fun, he would call the performer, since he was the only one who had the phone numbers of all three.

And now this.

Barton pushes past the couch, rotates the office chair and sits down. The Actress stays leaning on the doorframe.

‘Why did you do it?’

‘You’ve no right to ask me questions, I don’t owe you anything.’

‘Why did you go behind my back, break our agreement?’

The Actress takes a step toward the couch, sits on the edge and rolls on her back. She stretches out and puts her hands behind her head. Her bathrobe slips off to reveal her thigh. She does not try to cover it: in fact, she bends her leg and uncovers her thigh as far as her hip.

‘Come and take what has long been yours. Only then can you ask why. And only then will I be obliged to answer.’

Barton shifts uneasily on the rotating chair. He had expected excuses, abuse, lies, explanations, perhaps an apology – why not? He had not expected such a provocative, inappropriate offer. A shameful, shaming offer which, because of the circumstances surrounding it, he could never accept, not even if he ignored all the other reasons why he could not accept.

‘You’ve barely just got out from under one and you want to crawl under another?’

The Actress raises herself on her elbow. ‘What about all the times I tried out all the Kama Sutra positions you demanded of me – with the guys you brought to this bed – and you just sat there and watched? Wasn’t I dirty then?’

‘The body goes under the shower and is clean, but dirt sticks to the soul and can never be scrubbed off. What is done by agreement, for the pleasure of both, is clean – irrespective of how much it breaks social norms. What is done through a lie, through cheating is dirty – even small things, let alone something as fundamental as what you have done.’

The Actress gets up and sits on the bed, her legs crossed.

‘Do you know why I did it? Because you act as if I’m not allowed to have desires and thoughts independent of what you want. Life is not literature, in which you can feel at ease because you don’t have to play a supporting character in the life of others. In reality, Simon, you are a supporting character in the life of other people. And from now on you will be in mine. Nothing that you dream up, even if you only have a year to live, will make me change my mind. From now on, if you want, you can be an actor in my scenario.’

‘That’s not possible.’

‘No, because you are impotent. Otherwise you would have touched me by now.’

Barton gets up and pushes past the bed to the door. The Actress watches him. She is still feeling rebellious but, as Barton knows, that does not mean she is also self-confident. Perhaps with the right manoeuvre he could return things to their previous state. But that is not feasible: the Actress has made some new rules.

‘Did you agree to meet in that café?’

‘No, Simon. It was a flash of… let’s call it self-defence. I went up to him and asked if he’d like to come home with me. Without a word he put on his coat, settled the check and we left.’

‘Was it okay?’

‘Very okay, Simon. It’s a pity you weren’t here. You would’ve enjoyed it a great deal.’

2.

What the homeless man said to Barton Fink

Barton hurries along the rain-wet streets toward home, to reflect in the refuge of his room why the checkmate he has experienced in his latest round with the Actress has left him feeling great relief. Where are the feelings of defeat, of being outplayed, of loss, of depression? Never has he felt so unburdened because someone other than him ended a game. Before, everything had to turn out how he wanted it, and in order to achieve that he always used his talent for manipulating people. Whenever things turned out unexpectedly he suffered. Even more: he was afraid that Fate, his prime enemy, had finally managed to gather its forces and strike back, and that he would henceforth experience only defeats.

But this time,