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Content
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RELATIONS
Literary Magazine
The Journal of Croatian Literature
3-4/2012
Editor’s Word
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Publisher
Croatian Writers Society
CONTEMPORARY CROATIAN LITERATURE IN ENGLISH TRANSLATION
Adriana Piteša
Editorial Board
Introduction
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[ Editor in chief ]
Roman Simić Bodrožić
[ Assistant editor ]
Jadranka Pintarić
Proofreading
ISTROS BOOKS
Tomislav Kuzmanović
Susan Curtis
Interview
Address
Croatian Writers Society
Basaričekova 24
Tel.: (+385 1) 48 76 463
Fax: (+385 1) 48 70 186
www.hdpisaca.org
[email protected]
Price 15 3
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Marinko Koščec
A Handful of Sand
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21
Robert Perišić
Our Man in Iraq
Matko Sršen
Odohohol and Lupe Mangupe
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Design and Layout
Crtaona, Zagreb
Prepress by
Krešo Turčinović
FRAKTURA
Seid Serdarević
Printed by
Interview
Grafocentar, Zagreb
Goran Ferčec
ISSN 1334-6768
There Would Not Be Any Miracles Here
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41
Ivana Šojat-Kuči
The journal is financially supported by
the Ministry of Culture of the Republic
of Croatia and by the Municipal Funds
of the City of Zagreb.
Unterstadt
Igor Štiks
Elijah’s Chair
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Content
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SANDORF
Ivan Sršen
Interview
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Ivica Đikić
Circus Columbia
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Stela Jelinčić
A Weed is Just a Plant Growing in the Wrong Place
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Damir Karakaš
Perfect Place for Misery
AUTUMN HILL BOOKS
Russell Scott Valentino
Interview
Zoran Ferić
The Death of the Little Match Girl
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99
Slobodan Novak
Gold, Frankincense and Myrrh
STORIES
Maja Hrgović
Back in Five Minutes
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Enver Krivac
The First Supper
Miroslav Mićanović
Bulgakov’s Black Dog
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Zoran Pilić
Babe, You’re No Longer Here
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Ivica Prtenjača
A Memory of a Dream
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Ivana Simić Bodrožić
Fairy Hair
Neven Ušumović
Chikungunya
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Igor Kuduz: Foto-žurnal / Photo-journal
[Pages: 4, 20, 28, 46, 59, 90, 108, 116]
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Editor’s Word
Dear reader,
For this issue of Relations we chose
the topic of translation and the position of contemporary Croatian literature in English speaking countries.
Susan Curtis, Seid Serdarević, Ivan
Sršen, and Russell Valentino speak on
the range of problems that stand before those who offer Croatian writers
to Anglophone publishers, distributors and editors. Excerpts from select
works we bring in this issue are a testimony that they firmly stand behind
their selections and writers they recommend to the readers worldwide.
For most of the so-called small literatures there is always an impression
that they are not read or read enough.
Even when we try to put things in
a realistic context (e.g. the ratio of
published and translated works with
regards to the number of inhabitants
of a particular country, the strength
of the publishing industry, government’s support to translations, etc.),
there remains a somewhat bitter taste
in the mouths of all those who work
in literature and publishing and a
feeling that more and better could
and can be done. After a huge interest of the West for our authors in the
period of war and immediately after
the war, we needed to face the fact
that we should offer to the foreign
readers a literature that is no longer
based on war, suffering and historical exoticism of this area, but a literature that speaks to them about
contemporary world in a universally recognizable way. A few authors
succeeded in this, while those who
gained reputation and established
their names during the 1990s still
hold their own niche with the western publishers and readers. However,
we who read contemporary Croatian
authors know that there are works
that do not ask from their readers
to be acquainted with the narrative’s
historical, social and political context, but that speak about the global
from the local setting.
Literature, among other things, takes
us to places we have never visited,
and thus take this issue and read what
we have to offer, we promise a completely different image of Croatia will
show itself before you.
Editors
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Igor Kuduz: Foto-žurnal / Photo-journal #06 – Paris
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5
Introduction
Adriana Piteša
S
everal years ago, former secretary
of the Swedish Academy, Horace
Engdahl, caused controversy when
he claimed that Americans are too
ignorant to compare themselves to
Europe when great literature is in
question. “The U.S. is too isolated, too insular. They don’t translate
enough and are too sensitive to trends
in their own mass culture,” Engdahl
was sharp in his criticism as he went
to explain why it is unlikely that
the Americans could win that year’s
Nobel. Engdahl’s across-the-board
criticism of a big literature such as
American soon turned him into an
object of mockery, but in one he was
right: Americans truly do not translate enough.
This fact is often criticized by US
intellectuals and it even led to the
foundation of “Three Percent”, a
University of Rochester based weblog dedicated to international literature whose goal is to help change
the poor statistics of only about 3%
of all books published in the United States in translation. The people
around Three Percent also started the
Best Translated Book Award as the
only prize of its kind to honor the
best original works of international
literature and poetry published in the
U.S. over the previous year. When
it comes to the number of books in
translation, the situation is not considerably better in the United Kingdom either.
Understandably, the number of books
by Croatian authors in English is very
small, and who, how and where gets
translated is an object of desire as
well as often very fiery discussions.
An English translation is, besides, a
sign of prestige, a final confirmation
of success for an author coming from
a small country.
The logic is clear, the rest of the world
looks at the Anglo Saxon world for
information just as we do. A literary
star in English is more often than not
a global star as well.
The order of Croatian authors in
this market is clear: the most represented Croatian authors in English
are Slavenka Drakulić and Dubravka Ugrešić, with Miljenko Jegrgović
and Pregrad Matvejević coming close
behind. In their bibliographies all of
them can boast a translation with
prestigious publishers such as Penguin or Random House as well as
several other larger and better known
houses.
Slavenka Drakulić, for example, has
seven books published by Penguin,
which is impressive for any author in
the world. Dubravka Ugrešić’s book
of essays Karaoke Culture was nominated for the National Book Award,
and Miljenko Jergović, as it was announced on Amazon, has two new
translations coming in the U.S.
However, translations and success of
these authors are not part of a story on how to improve the number
of Croatian authors in the “English quota” because all of them have
long been established abroad and the
new editions of their books happen
almost by inertia and are part of a
different story. Therefore, we spoke
with four people who have been actively working on introducing some
other authors abroad. They are: Seid
Serdarević, the editor at Fraktura,
Ivan Sršen, a literary agent and publisher, Susan Curtis, a writer and
the founder of London-based Istros
Books, which primarily publishes authors from southeastern Europe, and
Russell Valentino, the editorial director of Autumn Hill Books. Thanks to
their engagement and their faith in
the works of the authors they represent, a number of titles by Croatian
writers in English has increased, and
the translations now include, among
others, the books by Igor Štiks, Daša
Drndić, Robert Perišić, Zoran Ferić,
and soon they will be followed by the
new titles by Marinko Koščec, Olja
Savičević Ivančević... The published
works also received nice reception.
On the other hand, thanks to the
engagement of the author himself as
well as the work of his theatre and
literary workshop, a series of English translations of Miro Gavran’s
work is now available as e-books
from Amazon.
There are also different collections
and anthologies bringing prose excerpts or short stories and thus Croa-
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Introduction
tian authors also appear in the Best
European Fiction Anthology edited
by Aleksandar Hemon.
A praiseworthy initiative came from
V.B.Z., a Croatian publishing house
that this summer started their English edition meant for tourists and
foreigners living in Croatia. A very
important news is that in a couple
of months New York Times Review
of Books will publish Slavko Goldstein’s 1941 – The Year That Keeps
Returning with a foreword by Charles
Simic. Taking into consideration the
prestige of the publisher, a true authority not only when it comes to the
American written word, this is truly
a huge success.
The position and experience of Susan
Curtis, Seid Serdarević, Ivan Sršen,
and Russell Valentino are different,
but their diagnose of the problems
and the mechanisms that could be
employed to improve the situation
are very much in agreement. It is particularly interesting that all of them
dismiss the myth suggesting that only
a certain type of text is acceptable in
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the West. At the same time, all of
them put forward that the engagement around the translation of Croatian writers should not be left only
to individual efforts and the faith that
the best will eventually break through
anyhow. Croatian is too small a language that we could allow ourselves
the luxury of such attitude.
Translated by
Tomislav Kuzmanović
IGOR KUDUZ was born in Zagreb in 1967 and he graduated from the Printmaking Department of Zagreb’s Academy of
Visual Arts in 1995. His work was exhibited at shows and video festivals in Zagreb, Split, Ljubljana, Clermont-Ferrand,
Bonn, Budapest, Berlin, Aachen, Dessau, Tirana, Cairo, Trieste, New York... In his work he predominantly uses photography and video and develops series of fetish photographs. Since 2008 he has worked on a photo-spam project,
which comprises of emailing photographic contents under the title “Photo Journal” to numerous email addresses.
Since 1995 he runs a successful visual communications studio specialized in book and corporative design, which
won him numerous international awards and prizes. Kuduz worked on organizing exhibitions and designing press
materials and visual identities for different cultural institutions, galleries and museums including such institutions
as New York’s Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), Camera Austria, Vienna based journal of modern photography, Centre
Georges Pompidou from Paris, Ludwig Museum from Budapest, Goethe Institute, etc.
In 2007, he served as a curator of a conceptual show called “Do We Like Watching Other People?” and organized an
exhibition of contemporary Croatian photography in Zagreb’s Art Pavilion. In the same year he worked on a retrospective of Ante Kuduz’s work called “’50’60’70’80’90’00”, which was shown at the Croatian Academy Glyptotheque.
In 2011 he organized an exhibition of Ante Kuduz’s work called “A Conversation” at Osijek’s Gallery Waldinger and
Gallery Kazamat.
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Interview
Susan Curtis
• How long did it take you to start
Istros Book and what was your
inspiration?
I started Istros Books at the end
of 2010 and I had to do everything
very quickly as I realised that I had
a chance to gain important funding
from the EU Culture Fund 2011.
Luckily, the UK system makes it very
simple for new businesses to register
and I was able to arrange everything
in time, even though I was living in
Croatia at the time, so I had to do
everything over the Internet. My
inspiration came at the point when
I learnt that we would be moving
back to London and I had to decide
what I would do back home. My
background is in teaching and social
work, although I have been a writer
for some year and produced three
books. When two of my novels were
chosen for translation by Ljevak and
Profil, I began to get very interested
in publishing and to really notice how
neglected this part of the world was.
Speaking to publishers, authors and
those involved in the promotion of
literature in Croatia made me see that
there was a real gap in the market –
while foreign literature in translation
made up a huge proportion of fiction
published here, there was very little
exchange the other way. That’s why I
started Istros Books – to give writers
from the region of South-East Europe a voice in the English-speaking
world.
Quality has no borders – reads the slogan of Istros Books, a recently
founded independent publishing house from London. In their program
they focus on authors from South-East Europe, and the list of translated
writers includes Robert Perišić, Ognjen Spahić and Andrej Nikolaidis. The
founder of Istros Books is SUSAN CURTIS, a writer and editor who has lived
in this part of the world for a number of years and is thus familiar with the
Croatian literary scene.
• Does the fact that you are the only
London-based publisher that deals
with writers from Eastern Europe
make it more difficult or easier for
you? What are the advantages and
disadvantages?
When I was still living in Zagreb,
I concentrated on finding and signing good writers and preparing my
funding applications. It was a good
and necessary period of preparation.
However, once I arrived back in London, I had to start carving Istros a
name on the publishing scene, and
this is a hard job. Being a small, independent publisher in the highly
commercial book market of the UK
is a hard thing, but I was lucky to
sign with a good distributor who
recommended a good repping company. Before I signed up with them,
the only sales I had were ones that
came with the events I organised,
whereas now I have a team of people
who present my books to shops and
wholesalers across the country. I also
try to attend relevant meetings and
events, to enter my writers into all the
competitions that I can manage, to
send out review copies and get bloggers to mention us, all to help build
the profile on the UK market. These
are the kind of things that you cannot
do from a distance – you have to get
your face out there. And I still maintain a close connection to the region
and have participated in a number of
seminars and festivals, including the
Sozolpol Ficiton Seminars in Bulgaria and the Tanpinar Literary Festival
in Istanbul. In this way, I achieve a
balance.
• How do you choose writers that
you will publish? What are your
priorities?
My top priority is a good story and
authors who are prepared to invest in
the promotion of the book. Obviously, I also have to decide whether the
subject matter is going to be understandable and attractive for a British
reader. I like to make personal contact
with the writers, if possible, and to
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Istros Books
cultivate this relationship so that they
trust me and are part of what I am
doing. I focus on those writers who
are prize-winners back in their home
countries, but I also have a network of
trusted colleagues, whose opinion I
trust in terms of recommendations.
• This summer The Economist featured an article on the Istros Books
authors. How important are such
articles for you?
Naturally, it is always nice to have
your authors and your work recognised in the international press. The
Economist article was written by Tim
Judah, a journalist with a long history
of work in the region and someone
who is considered a Balkan expert. It
was not a direct review of the books,
but it still served to highlight the region and the literature, so it all helps
in building the profile. As I keep telling people – these countries are all
part of the EU or soon will be, so we
best start learning about them. And
what nicer way to learn about a new
country and its people than reading
the literature!
• In one interview you said: “Unfortunately, advertising and selling
these books from ‘Eastern Europe’ is
not an easy thing to do, and I still
have to work on reaching the booksellers and the general public.” What
can be done about that? What do
you do in order to promote your
authors?
As I mentioned before, I have
professional reps working to sell my
books on the market. I also organise promotions whenever an author
is over and try to publicise this as
much as possible through Social Media. On-line reviewers are also great
places to search for a review, because
they are so much more approachable
than the print reviewers. I believe it
is also a question of building up one’s
list – building a brand which people
have heard of and where they come
to for quality European literature. I
will just keep on going until I reach
critical mass...
• You also said that you didn’t want
to “push local literature into the box
of ‘ex-communist’ or ‘post-conflict’
stories, but as interesting, original
works of art which have grown out
of unfamiliar regions yet can be of
interest to people across borders.”
There is a widespread opinion that
the West, especially, the UK and
USA markets are interested only in
the writers that could be pushed in
such boxes? Is it true?
It is true that nowadays we like
to put people in boxes “Arab Spring
writers”, “refugee writers”, “literature in translation”. I think both
readers and bookshops need to be
more open-minded about how they
approach books. It used to be that a
good book was a good book, no matter where it came from. I suppose that
classification and catering for niche
markets is all part of the market economy, but actually it makes the market
far narrower than it once was.
• How difficult is it to find a good
translator?
Happily, I have always been lucky
with my translators. I found Will
Firth over the Internet, and I was
impressed by his resume. Luckily,
he agreed to take a chance on me
and we successfully won the Literary
Translation grant last year and this
year, for 8 books in total. I am also
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very pleased to be working with Celia Hawkesworth, perhaps the most
famous name in literature translated
from the region.
• What has been your biggest success
so far?
I am particularly satisfied when I
bring an author over to the UK and
can introduce them to a new audience. I think that is the greatest feeling – seeing them present themselves
and their work to a new public and
watching that audience open up to a
new world. As for financial successes,
they have more to do with successful
funding applications rather than sales
figures. I guess it was pretty nice to
receive the score of 100/100 on my
last EU Culture Fund application...
• Istros Books was awarded 100/100
by the EU Culture Fund for the
relevance and quality of its proposal
of five titles. Is it possible to survive
without these funds? Is it difficult
to get them?
To give the simple answer – no.
There is no way I could survive without the grants that exist.
• What are your plans for the future,
when books are in questions?
I will be publishing Marinko Koščec in January next year, but before
that I am proud to publish Istros’
first Bosnian title – Seven Terrors by
Selvedin Avdić. I also have a novel
from the Romanian novelist, Cecilia Stefanescu. But I am perhaps
most proud of the production I am
about to premiere in November this
year here in London – a children’s
opera based on the translation of
Ježeva kućica (Hedgehog’s Home) by
Branko Ćopić.
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A Handful of Sand
Marinko Koščec
The man had been absent
for so long that he finally ceased
to exist for the woman he had left.
The woman was so torn
by that thought that the man
finally really did cease to exist.
Jacques Sternberg, Absence
I
t’s snowing again; it must have
started in the time where the night
takes a break from its tormenting and
delivers me to uniform blackness.
You don’t hear it but you feel it behind the glass, and the noises from
the street are softer, as if through cotton wool. The first bus came whining by at exactly five fifteen, picked
up two frozen figures that maintained the uprightness of the alcohol
in them by embracing, snorted as if
in disdain at such a modest morsel
of humanity, and went grumbling
off up Victoria Street. The rubbish
containers were emptied at half past
five. A snowplough went past, pushing the powdery snow from the road
into piles which would later be taken
away on trucks. Cars began to trickle by until they filled all four lanes
heading for the CBD, like monstrous
bees swarming in to drink at a source
of poison; their humming will only
gradually die away around midnight,
together with the roar of the aeroplanes taking off and landing every
fifteen minutes; so close that you can
read the names of the airlines, one
more exotic than the next.
MARINKO KOŠČEC was born in 1967 in Zagreb. He graduated in English and
French language and literature from the University of Zagreb’s Faculty of
Philosophy where in 2005 he earned his PhD. At the same university he
teaches courses in French literature. Koščec is an editor at SysPrint and
he teaches creative writing at CeKaPe – Center for Creative Writing and at
Split based Creative Writing House. He published novels Otok pod morem
(1999), Netko drugi (2001, Meša Selimović Award), Wonderland (2003,
VBZ Award), To malo pijeska na dlanu (2005), Centimetar od sreće (2008),
and Četvrti čovjek (2011). His other writings include academic studies
of contemporary French literature Skice za portret suvremene francuske
proze (2003), Michel H. – mirakul, mučenik, manipulator (2007), and an
anthology Mrmor u mraku (2007).
It falls night and day. After an hour
or two’s break it starts floating down
again, calmly, thoroughly, only letting through enough sun to remind
you it still exists. People say they don’t
remember such a cold winter; when
the temperature goes up to minus fifteen you feel like going out in short
sleeves. I still haven’t seen the Canadian soil, that thin layer they conceive
maps on, beneath the crust of snow.
The lake is frozen up, too; last weekend I took a bus down Red River and
went for a walk alongside it, though
it could only be sensed beneath the
monotony of the white, white plain
thanks to the wild geese shifting from
one end to the other, riveted by memories or because they couldn’t think of
anywhere else to go. Smells, too, are
imprisoned in the ice, everything is
sterile, white and muted, like a cold
room in which we, both geese and
people, wait for our autopsy.
Every morning I wake up at five. A
jolt, the beating of my heart, and then
all I can do is stare into the same painful thoughts in the darkness; as soon
as my conscious mind switches on,
they’re there. For months they would
at best cede a little to the demands
of work, but never for an instant did
they stop trampling me, digging away
inside me and crushing me into ever
smaller pieces. But things have improved since I arrived in Canada. My
body has become hard and numb;
when I’m stabbed, I’m able to smile.
There’s nothing funny about it, but
why not, we laugh. Why shouldn’t we
have a beer and share a vulgar joke or
two, ride on the underground, grill
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Istros Books
sausages, go to a museum or a stripjoint. Sure, I said, when Jeremy suggested we celebrate my birthday after
I’d blabbed that I was born exactly
thirty-three years before, to the day.
He said that to please me, no doubt,
and I didn’t want to disappoint him.
Something told me he’d never seen a
woman’s naked body before, let alone
touched one. That just added to his
mystical aura.
While I sit writing at the kitchen
table, Jeremy lies in his room eternally immobile like a mummy, all
two metres of him lying lifelessly
on his back. He has fifteen minutes
more until his alarm clock rings. If
it was the weekend, he’d stay there
till noon. I don’t know exactly what
makes him a mystic, but I have no
other name for the harmony which
emanates from him, for the feeling
that he’s achieved absolute equilibrium, plenitude and well-roundedness within his own body in a way
known to him alone. At first glance
you’d feel sad at the sight of him lying paralysed – this giant of a man
made of nothing but muscle; basilical
frame and blond ponytail down to his
belt; the felling of a centennial oak is
more heart-wrenching than when an
ordinary plum tree hits the ground.
But there’s no need for sadness; he’s
completely at peace with himself,
smiles back at every glance, both at
home and at work. Never once have
I see him ruffled or heard him raise
his voice. As painstaking as he is contented, as if it were exactly the way
to attain nirvana, he demolishes walls
with a jackhammer; at breakfast he
stirs oatmeal in a pot until it turns to
porridge, then he meditates over every spoonful. He answers questions
gently and benignly and never asks
any himself. Nor do I; he could hardly have found a more compatible flatmate. I don’t bring home visitors, I’m
not loud, in fact I hardly make any
noise at all, but here I am, without
a doubt – at least physically. And he
lets me know in his discreet way that
he notices and appreciates that.
Saturday the twenty-ninth of December: frying-pan hamburgers and
pre-made chips with sachets of free
ketchup, then an odyssey into the
Winnipeg night in Jeremy’s rattly
Chevrolet through the cosmopolitan quarter which had grown up near
the airport, a labyrinth of at least
fifteen-storey buildings with subsidised rents. And on through the tunnel formed by the aluminium monsters lining the road, or rather their
outlines which faded away beneath
neon aureoles and columns of thick
smoke, and then through the icesheathed wasteland. And at the end
a low log cabin with the sign Nude
Inn, adorned outside and in with
long lines of little twinkling lights
bulbs for the New Year. Here Jeremy
and I celebrated my birthday and alternated in buying each other beers.
He got the first round, then me, and
then it was take turns once more.
Each time we said cheers, exchanged
significant glances, and in between
were mostly silent. He looked towards the stage, but the expression
on his face made you think of a rippling mountain stream and a fawn
deer drinking from it. The girls performed their acts, alone or in pairs,
wrapping themselves around metal
bars or one another and demonstrating ever greater gymnastic prowess.
In the break he said something in my
ear, but the music was too loud and
I was too tired. On the way back he
added that we’d had an excellent table, and I agreed.
The next day, and that was the only
time, he told me a few words about
himself, with the same softness in his
voice and the same impassive smile.
He’d recently moved here from a
small town fifty miles further north
after the firm he’d worked for went
bankrupt and the aunt he’d grown up
with died, as well as his twin brother.
His aunt never married; she’d devel-
TIONS
oped multiple sclerosis long ago and
been immobile for the last twelve
years of her life. His mother had been
taken away when he was five by the
hand of his father – or an axe, to be
precise. He’d never seen his father
sober. After prison, he saw his son
now and again in the house of the
widow with whom he started a new
life, but he soon lost it in a fire caused
by smoking drunk in bed. And his
brother had died just last year when a
hunting rifle blew up in his face. Jeremy liked it here in Winnipeg and was
completely happy with his job.
I went out before lunch, into the
flaying cold. After fifteen minutes of
rocking from foot to foot, the train
arrived empty. The doors opened
and closed pointlessly at the stations until the train dipped underground, signalling its approach to
the city centre. A handful of people
got in, muffled from head to toe, and
rushed to huddle up on one of the
heated seats. I got out at Yong Street.
There were still a few shops open in
Chinatown. Steam emerged from a
bakery, through cracks in the dilapidated windows. I went in and bought
a bag of crab and pineapple crackers,
from a shrimp of a man who didn’t
stop thanking me even after I’d left;
he waved to me once more through
the bedewed window pane. The only
thing I remember about that afternoon is that I spent some time leafing
through books in the subterranean
shopping mall which had sunk into
apathy after the fever of Christmas,
although neon promises were still
blinking that all our wishes would
come true in 2006.
The day dragged past until it was finally time for dinner. A handwritten board solicited us with Taiwanese delicacies at a special season’s
discount. The restaurant was at the
bottom of the court, squeezed in between a flower shop and an undertaker’s. A reception desk almost my
height rose up immediately inside the
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premises, with a hotel bell which you
had to ring for service. A frighteningly broad female face appeared and
observed me from below for several
seconds over the desk; for a moment
I thought it was a gimmick – a carnival mask they put on as a welcome.
Eat one person, she said with an intonation probably supposed to indicate a question, descended from her
throne and beckoned with her finger
for me to follow her into an empty
hall. Where exactly to seat me still
demanded some thought; she took
me to a table in one of the compartments for couples behind a sumptuous screen of plywood embellished
with a jungle of imitation carved tendrils of vibrant red, green and gold.
The whole place was smothered in
vivid opulence, gold paint and plastic. Every table was dominated by a
bouquet of artificial flowers. Imitation candlesticks and a plethora of
Oriental abstract art hung from the
pink-painted walls, while polychromatic paper dragons with protruding
tongues dangled from the ceiling, or
rather from the canopies hanging low
over my head. As a counterpoint to
that colourful exaltation, a bloodless
female voice oozed from the loudspeaker for the duration of my stay
in the establishment. It was so dirgeful
that even the carpet would have started to cry if it understood Taiwanese,
and was accompanied contrastingly
by a rather irritating piano, which at
times sounded like a French chanson,
at others like a salsa. A piercing hum
sporadically drowned out the music.
This went on and on, and my food
still hadn’t been served. But the smell
of frying issued from the kitchen,
heavy and abundant, and the hasty
rattle of utensils as if a whole large
family was rushing to serve a sudden
throng of guests, although not another soul turned up the whole time
I was eating. Still, the proprietress
finally brought me the clams I had
ordered and ceremoniously present-
ed them together with a bowl of rice
and a bottle of tap water. They tasted like pork. Not eat much she commented when returning the change,
as concerned as she was disappointed.
I replied with my best imitation of a
Taiwanese smile and bow.
For all the abundance of Winnipeg’s gastronomic attractions, there is
none I’ve visited a second time. Yesterday, at a Japanese restaurant, the
decor was exactly the opposite: rectangular and austere, with reproachfully clean lines and a minimum of
colour, pale yellow and black; the
lighting was subtle, attenuated by
rice-paper screens; no music. The
owner, his wife, and two boys, evidently their sons, stood in line at
the entrance. All of them, one after
another, called on me while I was
eating to ask Everything OK? or to
fill up my water glass. I ruminated
on their credo engraved in a little
plaque in the restroom: Who comes
as a friend, always comes too late and
leaves too early. I have always firmly
believed in a friendly attitude, and it
was with such that I went to see them;
yet this adage informed us that every
hope is futile – it’s always too late, if
not too early.
At the table next to me, two Japanese
businessmen were conversing quietly between mouthfuls. They understood each other perfectly, after
just a syllable or two; as soon as one
started to speak the other would nod,
and they filled in the pauses by both
nodding. The men were restrained,
their manners refined, and they fitted
flawlessly into the settings. But in the
course of dinner they gradually shed
their veneer; a second bottle saw their
jackets thrown over the back of the
chairs, their tie-knots loosened, and
the ties then rolled up and pocketed;
they talked ever more loudly, smiled
from ear to ear, laughed spasmodically and wiped their sweat-beaded
foreheads on the tablecloth. A group
of Asian girls turned up from some-
11
where – teenagers, probably on an excursion. They clustered around five
joined-together tables and immediately started chirping in a language
the waiters didn’t understand, full of
long ascending tones. Negotiations
were conducted in slow and painful
English: one of them interpreted for
the others, translating the name of
every dish on the menu, which led to
lively debates; finally a huge shared
platter arrived, noisily greeted with
shouts and clapping, and was immediately attacked with cameras. They
took snapshots of each other hugging
or fraternising with glasses of water.
Not one of them drank any alcohol,
but they were soon seized by rapture
and the premises were inundated
with a mood of collective inebriation.
The businessmen were joined by the
owner, pretty pickled himself, who
started an exchange with one of them
about something very funny; they
burst out laughing together, slapping
their thighs and showing all their
teeth. The other businessman tittered
with his head on the table as his eyes
wandering off and he hummed to
himself intermittently. All this proceeded quite naturally and anything
could have happened; we were just
a hair’s breadth away from all bursting into song together, dancing traditional dances on the tables, as we
welcomed fire-eaters and trapeze artists to enter with giraffes.
The flirtatious glances the girls were
casting my way, at first coy, became
very open and inquisitive, accompanied by whispers and giggles. The
atmosphere inspired me and I was
tempted to move to their table, almost convinced that I would swiftly
bridge the language barrier, racial
and age differences, perhaps some
distinctions in world view too, socialise freely with them all, and head off
home with them arm in arm, wherever they were from.
But in the end I went outside: into the
awful, crusty cold, amidst the snow-
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flakes which were dancing again, this
time in a horizontal danse macabre
borne on a marrow-biting northerly,
and I dragged my bag of bones slowly
through the graveyard of ghostily extinguished glass-and-steel giants.
It’s not masochism which draws me
to such restaurants. On the contrary,
there’s usually a beneficial, liberating turn of events: my accumulated
grief is stirred up, grows to unbearable satiety and bursts out in bouts of
hysterical laughter, before morphing
into a diabolical euphoria; this subsides into an ease which I take away
with me, almost floating. In the several hours that follow, everything is
rinsed out of me, everything is gone,
I’m damned wherever I am and whatever happens; I’d give my last piece of
clothing if someone asked, or calmly
watch my inner organs be excised.
And in the morning, on the dot of
five, it starts all over again.
***
Exactly three weeks later they started
jumping. There had only just been
time for me to acclimatise and for
the aggression of unfamiliar smells
to stop. Time for the spirits of the
former tenants to disperse – that residue of messy, broken lives; that concentrate of misery. And time for me
to attain at least a fragile peace with
this space, without any ambition to
feel it would ever be mine.
The living room became my studio;
there was a bathroom, a kitchen with
a dining corner, and a tiny closet of
a bedroom. And as much light as I
needed, thanks to the generous windows: fortunately with bars. Call it
paranoia if you like, but being alone
in the basement flat, I was glad they
were there. I soon learnt that dogs
raised their legs at the windows, even
those which were kept on a leash. I
had always wanted to have a dog, or
at least its bark. Like the yapping dog
the neighbour leaves to guard his flat,
three or so floors up. The windows
were also pissed on by beer-soaked
football fans after every match, since
the stadium was just one hundred
metres away. They always came in
groups and yowled their Dii-naamo or We are the champions, Croa-aatia! There was a cramped parking
area in front of the windows, and
in the middle some of the tenants
heroically maintained a little island
of greenery with signs like Don’t kill
the plants, God’s is watching you! Opposite there was a house which a religious community built for itself.
They had evening gatherings several
days a week, and also on weekends.
You didn’t see the people arrive, you
just heard strains of a song, barely
audible but borne by an ever greater
chorus, and ever more imbued with
His voice. When they really whooped
it up, I opened the windows and fired
back with industrial noise. Or with
the folk singer Sigfriede Skunk, from
her Satanistic phase which ended in
her being put away in the loony-bin.
That didn’t discourage the faithful
vis-à-vis, but at least it struck a kind
of balance in the sound waves. I also
heard my upstairs neighbours very
clearly whenever they had sex, or
when they argued and started smashing the furniture. Once I tried to signal to them that my ears didn’t want
anything to do with it by banging
the broomstick on the ceiling. They
took this as a wish to participate, as
if I was flirtatiously egging them on,
and replied with an identical tocktock-tock before going on to groan
even more heartily and fuck each
other with a vengeance.
And then a lady threw herself off
the twelfth floor. I was sitting on the
windowsill with my millionth cigarette; without a thought, except perhaps for the warmth of the autumn
night and the intensive quivering of
the stars as I sieved the sky in vain,
searching for the angel of sleep. All at
once, behind my back I heard a sound
like a breath of wind. I just managed
TIONS
to turn my head slightly, enough to
glimpse an unnaturally twisted lower
leg and a bare foot out of the corner
of my eye. A split second later there
came a thud, without an echo, as a
heap of dead limbs hit the pavement
and instantly pulped.
She’d been ill, they said: in the head
and elsewhere, and old and lonely to
boot. But why did I have to be part
of her relieving herself of her suffering? Why did she have to spill it all
five metres from my window?
Three months later it was the opening of my exhibition at the prestigious Gradec Gallery. On three levels, with TV coverage and the minister of culture in attendance, as well
as all significant acolytes of culture
– twelve long years after my first exhibit in a suburban library. And there
were flocks of tarted-up culture vulturettes, sighing and holding their
hand to their heart in front of the
pictures and only able to stammer:
It’s so... It’s so... Plus their strutting,
parvenu husbands, square-headed
and short-necked, who furtively noted the address with the intention of
surprising their darling; their aesthetic interest was limited to the
colours not clashing with the sofa.
And then there were the perverts who
merge with the crowd, unnoticed,
but when they catch you alone in the
studio there’s no getting rid of them.
First they inquire circuitously about
your techniques, about the meaning
of this or that, discover cosmogonic
connotations, make ever bolder allusions, and the whole time burn with
one and only desire: to unzip their
flies and show you their jewels. The
place was chock-full, but I spotted
two or three other female artists discreetly letting themselves drift closer
and closer to the curators and gallery
owners, while looking anywhere but
at the canvases. Quite indiscreetly,
two male artists were ogling them
with delight and a discerning thumb
and forefinger on the chin, whisper-
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ing into each other’s ears and bending double with laughter.
I trembled with fear, and also shame,
under the spotlights and the shower of eulogies. Being presented like
some kind of circus attraction, being photographed for people’s private albums, touched and felt, and
having a dictaphone thrust into my
mouth was OK, that was part of it
all. But my pictures – I felt as if I was
now seeing them for the first time.
The gallery walls bore the marks of
the mourning which I had painted
out on canvases day and night, for
months, unaware of what I was doing. It now screamed from the walls,
showing me strung up, in a hundred
copies. I felt that everyone there in
the hall must have noticed, that every last person saw me as I saw myself before them: not just naked but
flayed alive.
Yet the words praising my work gradually reached me and sank in, something about a “plunge into archetypical meanders” and “concatenated
metamorphoses of points of departure”, about the paintings’ “psychogrammatic texture” and the “intersecting of oneiric planes”, and it finally occurred to me how wrong I
had been. There was nothing to be
seen, either in me or the paintings.
Now they belonged to the buyers,
who could hang them wherever they
liked. They were never mine anyway,
but only passed through me. That
brought relief; a huge burden left me,
trickling away like sand through my
fingers. At the same time, I rose up
towards the ceiling and stayed there
floating, invisible. I set off home, or
towards what I had started to call
home, in a stupor, even giggling a little. The bubbles of champagne converged to carry me down Vlaška and
Maksimirska Streets like on a cushion of air – even after I had noticed
a commotion in front of the building, people wringing their hands and
others running up to me.
My reflexes always set in too late.
Anyone with the slightest instinct of
self-preservation would have interpreted the scene as a warning to turn
around and go back without delay.
But I kept walking, hypnotised, until I found myself eye-to-eye, literally, with what I had first taken to be a
football under one of the parked cars.
Only after staring for an eternity did I
realise that it was the most important
piece of the woman who had thrown
herself off the roof to land in front of
my window with more precision that
her precursor. As my new friend, the
caretaker of the building, explained
to me in detail, the woman’s head
had caught on a first-floor clothes
line, rolled away and been hidden
from the people who found the rest
of her. Until I arrived, they’d been
sure this was an unheard-of murder
by decapitation.
There was a curious watchfulness in
that pair of eyes, something which
long thereafter observed me timidly from the dark; now it’s with me
to stay.
When I finally turned and went back
the way I had come, back along Maksimirska and Vlaška, it was quite involuntary. Only at the intersection of
Medveščak Street did I realise where
I was going and comprehend that I
had to spend the night at Father’s. I
ended up staying three days. He was
attentive, cooked for me and brought
the food to my room. I only left it
to go to the bathroom and spent
the rest of the time curled up on the
bed. That at least enlivened him for
a while. After such a long time, he
noticed that I existed.
On the third day, the landlady located me. She was full of comforting
words but above all worried about
how to find another tenant under
these circumstances.
“The caretaker has looked after everything,” she assured me, “although
she didn’t need to take responsibility.
I paid her well.”
13
“How do you mean take responsibility?” I asked.
“Don’t you know that you left your
window open, so part of the unfortunate person, or rather what was
inside – ”.
At that point I hung up.
It took me a lot of effort to imagine
myself in that flat again. I could have
asked someone to collect my things
and store them somewhere for me;
anywhere would do. But perhaps out
of spite, or perhaps because it was
hard to resist an opportunity to harm
myself, I returned. The woman who
had taken on the unpleasant job had
done her very best. She’d washed the
curtains, polished the furniture and
even ordered the cutlery in the drawers. But she was getting on in years,
had a tremor, and the finger-thick
lenses over her eyes prevented her
from being particularly thorough.
For days, I was finding reminders of
the event between the fins of the radiator, on my paintbrushes and even
on the oil paintings I’d left to dry. I
must admit, after the initial shock
those stains and little relief-forming
chunks fitted in very well. The jumpers, who I’ll never know anything
about (not that I want to) are sure to
have had anything but that on their
minds when they climbed up to the
top of the building. But now they’ve
become part of my art in a special
way. That person deserves that their
last traces be preserved, and at least
they now hang in an ultra-swish dining room or the conference chamber of a big mobile-phone operator.
In any case, their remains will serve
to provide archetypes and oneiric
points of departure for the art critics just as well as any stroke of my
brush could.
That event therefore brought me together with the caretaker, who lived
on the second floor. In practice, our
rapport was formed around her almost daily visits, with mushrooms
picked on the slopes of Mount Slje-
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me. They were just about her only
food, a fact she tried to conceal along
with the other signs of abject poverty. She got up at dawn and walked
all the way there and back to keep
fit, she said. Her mushroom-picking
was actually risky given her shortsightedness because a toadstool or
two is sure to have ended up in her
bag along with the edible ones. I can’t
stand mushrooms: living off decay is
already too common in the human
kingdom. But the first time I accepted them in the name of friendship,
and so after that I communicated
with that one person in the building; she saw that as her good deed,
an opportunity to take care of someone. She’d let me make her coffee but
would never have anything else as she
sat for hours through to late lunchtime, telling me episodes from her life
– stories sadder than sad. True, she
repeated them all several times, with
considerable variation on each occasion. Her younger and only brother,
for example, drowned as a child while
trying to save a friend who couldn’t
swim, but the second time it was
a lamb he wanted to save, and the
third time round he was killed by
the Ustashe. That makes your ear a
little immune after a while. I didn’t
want to risk disposing of the mushrooms in our rubbish container, so I
wandered the neighbourhood with
bags of fungus. I hadn’t yet found her
rummaging through the bins, but the
prospects were all too likely.
The title of caretaker helped her little in preventing a practical jokester
from stealing the light bulbs on the
ground floor as soon she replaced
them. That, in conjunction with the
front door’s eternally broken lock,
turned my walk down the corridor
to my basement flat in the evenings
into fifteen seconds of panic. And it
would do even less to prevent people
in this part of Zagreb who wanted to
commit suicide from thronging to
our building – taller than the oth-
ers – now that a pioneer had demonstrated how well it worked. In a
flash of inspiration I stuck a note
on the front door: To whom it may
concern, the northern side is also good
for suicide jumping. The next morning my friend just gave me a strange,
mildly reproachful look. She was
right, it was childish, and so I took
it down again.
***
For as long as I can remember I’ve
been a magnet for weirdoes, both
for those who are kept at a safe distance with that label, as well as for
people who live among us peacefully
and pose no danger until something
in them erupts, for no apparent reason, and they need my proximity
when it starts. It’s as if they recognise
some kind of essential stimulus, like
kindling needs a lighter; then afterwards they stop seeking me out and
don’t approach me again for years,
if at all.
It began with Jelenko. I met him on
my first day at school and immediately realised, with an instinct for danger like that innate to small animals,
that it would be best to avoid him.
He stared in front of himself, as pale
as a ghost, almost transparent, obviously asking himself what he’d done
to deserve such terrible punishment,
as if he was carrying the world he’d
been thrust into on his shoulders.
Over time, this ceased to be dramatic
and diminished to a melancholic resignation, but his air of absence never
went away. He emanated it like a saint
wears a halo – an absence so real that
it was visible to the even slightly sensitive eye, as irrefutable as the body
of a normal person.
He did much better at school than
all the others, but you could tell how
little it mattered to him, and you
could forget about the earthly application of whatever brilliance he had.
Therefore he didn’t provoke any great
envy or disappoint his parents’ ambi-
TIONS
tions: everyone sensed he was useless
for any practical purposes and left
him in peace.
Jelenko’s lyrical dimension, the ethereality of his being, was where we differed; I’m rooted in the ground and
only achieved good marks with great
effort. But I am able to listen, and
from time to time he had to speak
his mind; by the end of the secondary school he started dropping in and
meditating about suicide. I would listen carefully, in trepidation, neither
agreeing nor attempting to dissuade
him, aware of how much his argumentation set him apart him from
the kind of teenagerish ravings which
make the enigma of death enticing,
of how far he was from those who
hang themselves because of a bad
report card, breaking up with their
girlfriend or being fat. Simply put,
it was as if he’d been born not into
this life but into an adjacent plane,
which by some freak of nature turned
out to be a dead end, and as such it
was all the same to him if he was to
cut his life short or wait for it to end
by itself; he always had one leg in the
other world.
He could discuss death endlessly.
These were actually dialogues with
himself, because I had nothing to
say on the topic. Death is something
certain and eternal, everywhere and
at all times; it’s damn hard to forget
that but even today I don’t have anything to add. Maybe he came to me
with his endless monologues because
no one else took him seriously; but
how can you dismiss someone when
they show so much passion, when
they only seem really alive when talking about death?
One year after the summer holidays
we had to write about an event we remembered fondly. Jelenko, in a solemn and moving voice, with a wealth
of poetic detail, described the burial
of his rabbit and the dignity and reverence with which his whole family
consigned the body of this beloved
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being to the earth. While he read,
and for some time afterwards, the
classroom was oppressed by heavy
silence, and the relief was almost palpable when the teacher stopping him
from reading on, without a word of
commentary.
Still, the next day she suggested that
he round off his composition with
a story about the rabbit – about the
feelings which had connected them
and those which the loss of the rabbit aroused in him, with the aim of
entering him in a national composition competition. Jelenko gave her
an anxious look, but she persevered,
thoroughly mistaking his reticence
for modesty, until he shrugged his
shoulders.
In the extended version, the rabbit
was an exceptionally sweet creature,
hungry for love and capable of returning it. It hopped freely around
the house, stood up on its hind legs
and held out its little paws wanting
to be picked up and scratched on the
tummy; it even ate from a dish at
the dining table. An albino with red
eyes, it seemed to be aware of its own
uniqueness and was only waiting for
the day when it would start speaking.
There was a special bond between
Jelenko and the rabbit: it would always wait for him at the door and
knew when he was coming; whenever
Jelenko was sad, even if he was out of
the house, it would curl up in its cage,
no longer caring to be stroked or given any attention, and would fill the
house with sadness. The composition
made no attempt to explain why the
boy decided to kill the rabbit, be it
as an experiment or because he was
deranged; it was simply presented as
a fact. But the description of the act
was exhaustive: when it proved too
much to do it with a knife, he took
a knitting needle and loosed it from
his slingshot. He had to do this several times, but the rabbit didn’t budge
or utter a sound. It waited patiently,
as if with relief, for its destiny. The
description of the funeral ceremony
which followed now appeared in a
different light and no longer had
much prospect in the composition
competition.
After secondary school, Jelenko surprised everyone by deciding to become a priest. I personally think that,
rather than “hearing the call”, he devised it as a way out – a ruse for avoiding both earth and heaven in a refuge
halfway. In any case, he never got in
touch with me after leaving for the
seminary, and his family later moved
away. I never saw him again.
Goran, by way of contrast, was every
parent’s dream: delightfully undemanding but not autistic enough for
the psychiatrists. The kind of child
you want to pat on the head, one
to be seen and not heard. You could
give him a lollipop and he wouldn’t
ask for anything else for hours. Disinclined to tantrums even in puberty, there wasn’t a shred of rebelliousness in him.
We didn’t have anything much to
do with each other until we were
sixteen. He called on me at home,
shyly at first, with various pretexts,
but soon he came every day and
stayed for hours. What connected
us was mainly that we didn’t have
any friends; each in our own way,
we both enjoyed the reputation of
a scarecrow. But our conversations
went into just about everything sixteen-year-olds can talk about, mostly
books, especially those which were
too complicated for us or where we
only knew the title. And about sex:
insights into the best ways to bring
a girl to orgasm, the most intriguing
places to do it, the most exciting positions, the comparative advantages of
a virgin or a mature woman, and the
secret inclinations of brunettes and
blondes; having exclusively theoretical knowledge of such matters was no
hindrance to us. In other things, too,
Goran liked to go into juicy details,
smacking his lips like a connoisseur
15
and pausing after spicy remarks to
leave space for my admiration. I was
well on the way to accepting him, if
not as a replacement for my father,
then at least as an elder brother – a
kind of spiritual leader.
And then, without any warning or any
subsequent explanation, he broke into the Chinese embassy. At that time,
I should emphasise, an ambassador
wasn’t someone you could just bump
into on any street corner like in our
Croatian metropolis today; you had
to go off to Belgrade. It already exceeded the comprehensible that he
got on the train one morning like he
otherwise got on the tram to school,
after one of the identical evenings we
spent together, and I don’t remember
us then or earlier having ever, even
obliquely, mentioned Confucius, Lao
Tzu, Mao Ze or feng shui, or travelling to the end of the night, or an
acte gratuit. According to the version which leaked through despite his
parents’ secrecy, he roamed the unfamiliar city until midnight, climbed
the iron fence and silently crawled in
through a window left slightly open,
as if just for him. Today, the media
would zero in on that act of pubescent stupidity and blow it up into an
incident between the two countries,
but back then one had to hide every
eccentricity and white out the decadent blemishes on the moth-eaten
garb of self-managed socialism. Besides, Goran hadn’t given rise to any
suspicions of spying; apparently he
didn’t touch a single document or try
to open any of the drawers. He just sat
on the floor and waited for the Chinese bureaucrats and then, without
resistance, let himself be taken away
by the police, who briefly and unsuccessfully questioned him before
returning him to his parents.
Time stood still for Goran after that.
He was briefly institutionalised and
then discharged for treatment at home,
which proved unnecessary; he never
ran away again or was a risk to any-
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one. He neither went back to school
nor engaged with the world any more,
although a few years later he started
leaving the house again. Today you
can still see him when he goes out on
his walks, twice a day, sometimes in
the middle of the night: he’s become
the walking landmark of the neighbourhood. His walks are different to
those where a person is with a dog,
or takes a trip into the countryside,
or has an issue to ruminate on. He’s
become a phantom with empty eyes
and mechanical movements, and he
stopped returning greetings long ago.
Sometimes children throw stones at
him. When he gets hit, he stops for
an instant and a spark of surprise
flickers in his eyes, a kind of smile,
but then they disappear around the
corner in a flash. The years have left
their mark on him in a ragged beard
which clings to his cheeks, and grimaces which distort his face, but
sometimes it seems you could catch
a glimpse of something enigmatic inside, perhaps truly Taoistic.
There were others similar to him,
thank God, and I may mention one
or two later. Them recognising me as
one of their own was largely thanks
to my mother. According to generally accepted opinion, she was one
of the loonies of the benign sort
whom people like to run into in the
street because they’re sure to come up
with something interesting you can
share with your family or flatmates
and therefore allow all of you to feel
better, more normal, and convinced
that the Almighty has had mercy on
you after all. You don’t let people
like that into the house, of course,
but they only turn up on your doorstep rarely anyway, for example with
the diabolical insinuation that you’ve
poisoned their cat, which they don’t
dare to speak openly but just shoot
at you with their crazy eyes. To shoo
them away you just need to reply in
a calm, ever so slightly raised voice:
Lady, just move along now. You don’t
hold it against them because you’re
compassionate and will soon forget
the incident; you’ll continue to greet
them on the street and inquire after their health, although you know
more than enough about them already.
I’ve never seen a more good-natured,
grateful creature in my life than the
cat. I found her in the meadow which
the neighbourhood children used as a
playground and the households as a
disposal site: a bristling black kitten
with clotted, scabby fur, which for
hunger and trembling couldn’t even
miaow. It opened its mouth in vain,
crying out with its frightened eyes.
Mother very nearly jumped out of her
skin when she discovered her beneath
my bed, but that was the first of only
two things where I didn’t give in to
her so often extravagant demands: I
wept and blubbered and rolled on the
floor until I won permission for the
cat to stay. Cat was her name because
Mother refused to call her anything
else, so in the end I accepted it. She
slept on my pillow and brought me
mice and little birds; I didn’t know
how to explain to her that I didn’t
want to share them with her. Periodically there was the problem of
her offspring to deal with. The first
time, while I was at school, Mother
incinerated them in the woodstove.
You can imagine what it must have
sounded like because disconcerted
neighbours called the police, and
the rest was written in Cat’s eyes. For
days she whined softly on the floor by
my bed and didn’t care for the food
I brought her. With the other litters,
Mother categorically refused any discussion: What am I to feed them with?
What?! she cried in such a desperate
voice that I fell silent. At least she
didn’t burn them any more. But she
took them away in a sack and I didn’t
dare to ask where.
It would have been an exaggeration
to say that Mother ever took a liking to Cat. But when she was poi-
TIONS
soned with something which made
her vomit yellow mucous for two
days before dying, she cried together
with me. Cat used to visit the neighbours’ houses, and she particularly
loved children. A week before the
event, our neighbour Mr Kruhek
gave Mother a telling off: the dirty
animal had given his daughters fleas,
he said.
On my first day at school, Mother made a name for herself by introducing herself to the teacher as
my father. Classical Freudism; those
aware of the situation might have
seen their theories confirmed. For
others it served as my first labelling,
an indication of what kind of family
I came from.
Father was a concept bound to rear
its head sooner or later, precisely because it was so painstakingly suppressed, swept out of everyday use
and pulverised – it was meant to
lose all meaning. With exemplary
obedience, I accepted Mother’s explanation that I was the fruit of momentary weakness, what she called
an “adventure”, with a Gypsy who
had only been in town for a few days
with his travelling orchestra. When
I started asking questions as a child,
that story seemed as convincing as
any other, but over time I felt there
was too much nebulousness in it to
want to correct it. The neighbours
also accepted it, although they knew
full well what I found out ten years
later: that my father wasn’t a Gypsy
at all but a man who led an orderly
life alongside them, had bought a
little plot nearby and was building a
house; but as soon as his wife’s belly
began to bulge he chickened out of
both projects overnight, never to be
seen again. Mother’s family – there
was never any mention of the other
side – had no ear for her version of
the truth and soon all contact was
severed; I didn’t meet a single relative from one side or the other until
my grandmother’s death.
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Contemporary Croatian Literature in English Translation
And so my mother’s romantic inspiration gave me the nickname “Gyp”.
It was underscored by my astonishingly dark complexion, bristly black
hair and deep, almost black eyes,
which tended to arouse unease in
people, the instinct to look away,
more than the desire to explore what
was inside. I was never ashamed of
that nickname, least of all in front of
those who used it to demean me and
exclude me from their games; for the
latter, in fact, I was grateful.
Mother’s Gypsy was not merely a
caprice, however, but also a form
of penance. For reasons which were
never elucidated, she blamed herself
for her husband’s disappearance and
intended to expiate it. The collateral
damage to me was of no concern to
her. In one of her hysterical states,
as frequent as they were arbitrary,
she uttered with blithe ignorance of
the consequences that I was a sorry
case; she’d never wanted to have children and everything could have been
different if she hadn’t got pregnant;
and me turning out the way I did –
the cross she had to bear – was God’s
way of punishing her. Oh, the curse
of my behaviour... That word embodied one of the root evils, which
no gestures or avowals to the contrary could dispel. However much I
tried to please her, and although my
extreme self-consciousness in early
childhood severed any inclination to
escapades, her use of the term your
behaviour designated my certain descent into a career of substance abuse
and my predetermined, inevitable
matricide.
God arrived in her life at the same
time as me; until then she’d been involved in purely worldly pursuits,
but thanks to my birth she found her
God. From that point on she never
missed Mass, worked tirelessly to
equip the house with little holy pictures, statuettes and olive branches.
She even lit candles and gave alms
at church as soon she had a few
coins to spare and our most pressing
needs had been satisfied. At work
she was rewarded for her spiritual
zeal with a demotion – the Yugoslav state frowned on any religious
fervour – although cause and effect
were not spelt out. She was replaced
as municipal cultural officer by the
typist, a woman who never finished
high school, and Mother was made
her assistant. She bore that blow heroically, not flinching from her beliefs, despite the objections of others. Her response was to opt out of
any effective activity and spend the
rest of her working life on go-slow,
practicing quiet sabotage, until this
was interrupted by the democratic
changes in the early nineties; and
her job was immediately terminated.
Aged fifty-three, in the middle of the
war, she found herself on the dole.
The only other thing she could do,
being a graduate accordion teacher,
was to try and make ends meet by
giving private lessons, but her skill
was anything but appealing at that
moment in history; in oh-so-refined
Croatia, few things were considered
as barbarously Balkan as playing the
accordion.
Mother didn’t even try to arouse my
musical talent, but God was number
one on the agenda. I went through
the complete torture of confession,
communion, confirmation, saying
the Lord’s Prayer before bed and going on pilgrimages to Marija Bistrica.
The merciless woman even managed
– undoubtedly through the magnitude of her sacrifice – to have me
accepted as an altar boy. But that
didn’t last long, thanks to the unavoidable difficulties caused by my
sooty black head jutting out of the
angelically white habit and my dark
hands wrapped around the candle –
it reeked of a Satanic diversion.
When I think back to my childhood,
my first association is with smoke,
not only from censers but also cigarettes. Mother smoked so much that
17
layers of haze constantly hung in the
house, around one metre from the
ceiling, which no airing could dispel;
she always had at least one cigarette
burning, frequently more. She would
forget them in the rooms and light
a new one as soon as she noticed she
had one hand too many. She got up
for a smoke at night, too, woken by
the lack of nicotine. Smoking merged
with her being to such an extent that
you no longer perceived a cigarette in
her hand as an object; it could only be seen as an absence in the rare
moments she wasn’t smoking – then
Mother lacked something.
Towards the end of her religious
phase, her devotion escalated at the
point when she toyed with the idea
of bequeathing the house to the Jehovah’s Witnesses. That was the second and last time I stood up to her,
threatening that I would go away and
that she would never see me again.
But soon afterwards she broke with
churches and all taints of religion;
it being a time when people started
pushing and shoving to get in the
front pews, when those who had
once persecuted the Lamb of God
now eagerly held their mouths up to
it at communion, and religious devotion shifted from being a reactionary
stigma to a guarantee of virtue and
patriotism. Ostensible piety inundated Croatia to such an extent that
even garments, massage chairs and
luxury yachts were renamed with a
Christian epithet. The Jesus figure on
the cross at the bottom of our street
repented for our sins day and night;
his fans soon had him gilted and put
up a little tin roof so he wouldn’t get
wet. Really, hardly anyone had taken
any notice of him before, and now
almost no one passed by without instinctively crossing themselves: not
even the drunkard who lived somewhere near the top of the street and
left his bicycle there every time his
heroism only sufficed to lug himself
up the hill, nor the other Jesus fan, a
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tea-totaller who beat his wife so badly
that she had to be rushed to hospital
on at least two occasions.
After the changes, new traffic regulations were introduced in our quarter
and a one-way sign was put up next
to the crucifix, not a metre away. It’s
at exactly the same height and has
an arrow showing which direction
to drive. I don’t know if the local authorities and their staff are aware of
how fraught that semiotic combination is. Coincidental or not, you
have to admit the message is powerful: passers-by are confronted with a
crucifixion – a drastic reminder that
the rules of the road are to be observed; and immediately next to it,
following the stick-and-carrot principle, is an upward-pointing arrow
showing what is in store as a reward
for obedience.
***
Christmas was designed as a punishment for those who don’t experience
an apotheosis of communal spirit
and uniting force of God’s love, or
of their own love. It’s supposed to
be the culmination of cheerfulness
and hope for an even more cheerful
afterlife which they’ve been beavering away for all year, a sentiment now
represented by baubles and angels
dangling from a dead conifer. I can’t
decide what makes Christmas more
unbearable: the warm putrefaction of
this year or the soppy snowflakes.
That evening I dropped in to see Father. I could see from the street that
it was dark in the kitchen, which was
enough to trigger the darkest forebodings. I rushed breathless up the
stairs. The TV set suffocated the living room as much as casting it in a
bluish light. It took a few seconds for
me to make him out on the couch:
one hand hanging to the floor, his
head thrown back, and his mouth
wide open. From up close it was clear
he wasn’t breathing. I was stunned
and my heart felt as if it would break.
I grabbed him by the collar, shook
him, and he opened his eyes. He
gazed through me for an instant and
then choked up, gasping for air. This
happened to him from time to time
– he would stop breathing when he
fell asleep. But never before had he
so staunchly, so pedantically, staged
the final shutdown.
I gave him his eye drops. His cataracts
were growing diligently. Sooner or
later he’d need an operation, but for
the time being he brushed the prospect aside. The good side of it was
that his impaired vision didn’t bring
any major disadvantages; there are
no longer any particularly precious
sights left for him in this world.
When I told him I was moving out,
exactly fifteen months ago, he didn’t
have any objections. Or if he did, he
didn’t dare to state them. If he had a
sliver of lucidity left, he would have
seen what his condition had done to
me. It had penetrated me to the core
and turned me into a black hole. But
he just kept on going, perhaps aware
of what he was doing to me but powerless to prevent it. Unable to help
himself nor accept my attempts to
help him. No one can help anyone.
That’s easily said, and I knew it all
those years; but still I let myself be
fettered, remaining in the embrace
of his sorrow. As we know, time
heals sorrow. His responded well to
the treatment, was tamed, and grew
over time into our own domestic
monster.
Mother died in the summer of ninety-one when I was eighteenth, less
than a month after Father’s appointment as minister in the Government of Democratic Unity. That came
about due to the Reconciliation: exCommunists and clerico-conservatives alike welcomed a Jew in cabinet so they could demonstrate their
inclusiveness. He himself didn’t give
a damn about reconciliation and the
blossoming of democracy. He was
already weary, preoccupied with his
TIONS
untimely ageing. But the offer flattered his vanity and he accepted the
position like a medal awarded at retirement for sufferings endured. It
would be a euphemism to say that no
one remembered him as a minister,
and the Jewish bit was a half-truth at
best. Religion was never mentioned
in our family, let alone practiced – his
“Jewishness” and my mother’s nominal Orthodox Christianity existed
purely on paper. That was almost the
only thing I ever agreed about with
my parents.
After all, I didn’t consider them capable of any sensible conversation, nor
did they show even the semblance of
a desire to comprehend where I was
at. We lived under the same roof but
on different planets. At least up until the day when Father, eavesdropping me on the phone, learnt that I
had lost my virginity. I was fourteen.
I heard that, he growled, dashed into
the room wild-eyed and laid into me
with fists and feet. Mother didn’t lift
a finger or say a word to stop him.
When the “lesson” was over, she took
my head in her lap and stroked it
until I had cried my very last tear.
Then she quietly closed the door
behind her.
Still, her death probably would have
well and truly crushed me if Father
hadn’t made it there first. It was already hot and sultry in the morning, that July Sunday. Around four
in the afternoon, I heard a smashing of crockery in the kitchen and
then a despairing Oooh, oooh. Father was kneeling on the tiled floor,
his face grotesquely twisted. Between
the palms of his hands he held my
mother’s face; unlike his, it was calm
and almost serene, more beautiful
than ever.
A face so different to mine that people viewed us innumerable times
in disbelief: her soft, fair hair, blue
eyes and milky complexion, and me
downright swarthy. Especially her
huge doe eyes. At forty-four, her
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Contemporary Croatian Literature in English Translation
beauty was fully intact and easily interrupted ministers’ conversations,
turned heads 180 degrees, and caused
nervous grimaces in other women.
Allegedly it was the cause of a broken marriage and a broken skull before she married Father. He, in turn,
was a striking man with austere features, of lean yet athletic build – an
esteemed architect, broad-minded
and cultured; although sixteen years
her senior, he probably had no trouble hunting her down to put in the
showcase among the other trophies
he’d won. He thought highly of competitions.
And then all at once she lay there
on the kitchen floor, and he above,
with horrible cries which couldn’t
bring anything back. By the time
the ambulance arrived, it was too
late. The clot had whisked her away.
Now she lay on their double bed,
and he didn’t stop hugging her, and
choking on his tears and cries for
help. The scene dried up my tears
within a few minutes. I shoved him
out and spent the evening with her
alone, then I showed in the coroner
and the woman we paid to do her up.
I spent the night there by her side,
following my father’s uneven breathing in the living room and wondering if it too would cease. My mother’s mouth hung slightly open. I was
obsessed by the ghastly thought that,
if my vigilance slackened for just an
instant, the flies circling up near the
ceiling would get inside her. In the
morning her mouth still looked completely alive, as if it was about to tell
me something important she’d been
thinking of all her life.
I had to make the arrangements with
the undertaker, choose the coffin,
look after the epitaph, the wording
on the wreath, the obituary notices
in the papers and the details of the
funeral protocol, and take care of
catering for the condolence bearers
all by myself. The very mention of
these things made Father’s eyes flow.
Still, he was only seized by hysteria
one more time: when they were carrying Mother out of the house, like a
log wrapped in a sheet; he fell to his
knees and clung to the coat of one of
the medics, a boy my age. I looked at
him in astonishment and wondered
how he could have chosen such an occupation. Over time, Father calmed
down and spent most of his time staring out the window. For him it was
like Jim Jarmush’s window drawn on
the prison wall, not one intended for
looking out of.
It hurt to watch him diminish like
that, mentally and physically. He
became bent and wrinkled, ridiculously small for the couch which was
to become his prison; he devotes his
days to the window and in the evenings hovers in the grey zone between
the TV chat show and drowsing off.
For several months they took him to
work, a bit like they cart away domestic rubbish. He resigned before the
end of his term of office and before
reaching retirement age, “for health
reasons”. But these were not just
of an emotional nature, because all
the ailments which had already been
gnawing at him now gained momentum. Diabetes, gout, high creatinine,
prostrate problems, painful joints,
cardiac arrhythmia, a duodenal ulcer, insomnia, corns and cataracts:
he was a gerontological showpiece.
But he contributed to all that himself
by intensive concentration, which he
could direct depending on the acuteness of the problems and above all by
groaning. With every step he took in
the flat, and also when he went out
to walk in the courtyard, he let out
the sound of his suffering, such that
until I moved out I was able to follow
his every step as if he were carrying a
beeper. Just recently he admitted that
he groaned on purpose, self-therapeutically, in the hope that things
would hurt less. Since pain cannot
be seen, it’s easier to live with suffering if you hear it. Whatever.
19
Apart from shuffling to the corner
shop, for years now he’s only been
leaving the house to go to the Health
Centre (is the sarcasm of that term
intentional?) and the cemetery. He
trudges back with his bags as if from
martyrdom, groaning three times
louder. When I cooked for him he
only stabbed listlessly at the food, and
the slightest criticism made him get
up from the table, offended: This is
the death of me, can’t you understand
that?! He’d never been of the jovial
kind. No frivolities interested him,
not even spending time with friends.
When Mother died, the rest of humanity passed away for him too. To
those who phoned with words of encouragement or just with a conventional enquiry as to his health, he
always replied with the same To be
honest, I’m not well and never asked
anything back. Oh, how many times
did that honesty make me want to get
up and strangle him and cure him of
his misconception that being honest
like that was the best he could do, in
fact the only thing he could do, for
himself and others.
I never stopped missing Mother, but
at the risk of sounding harsh I also
missed her when she was alive; a
mother with human blood in her
veins, who you wish to confide in.
Sometimes I feel the need to go to her
grave, light a candle and sit for ten
minutes. Not that I feel more of her
presence there, but it’s soothing.
I never let my sorrow break the surface – because of Father more than
myself. I felt that he hung from me
like a thread. Today I know that was
mistaken because he’s actually been
dead all this time. The fact that he
can still take a few steps, and groan,
doesn’t mean anything. I sought in
vain for something to at least reanimate him a little. No antidepressants
or psychotherapy, no pensioners’ excursions or stays at rheumatic clinics,
not even his favourite pastries mother
used to make or my quasi successes in
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life could evoke even a semblance of
liveliness in him. At the same time,
however dead he was, he cried out
from the depths of his unconscious
to share his suffering with me and for
me to be part of it. It didn’t overly
concern him that his need was also a
hand dragging me into the grave. But
I couldn’t muster enough self-respect
to decide that it wasn’t my problem
any more. And so, on the threshold
of my own life, I became a mother
for my all-but-deceased father. Yet I
couldn’t replace Mother or do anything for him. We’d lived alongside
each other for so many years, separated by a vast sea of silence. I had
pangs of conscience, but I gradually
gave up trying to contrive words. All
of them fell into a deep well anyway.
He didn’t even try and pretend that
what I said meant anything to him, to
wipe that nothing-matters-any-more
look off his face for at least a sec-
Igor Kuduz: Foto-žurnal / Photo-journal #20 – Baranja
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ond. We both knew very well how
much harder it would be for him if
I wasn’t around. Increasingly often,
when I left the study to check how
he was doing, I would just stand at
the door. He’d raise his eyes and we’d
look at each other in a silence which
no words could unlock.
Translated by
Will Firth
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Our Man in Iraq
Robert Perišić
I
watched him as he came up: his
gait took me back to when we
were teenagers and greeted each other loudly with a clap on the shoulder and a yell of Hey, old chum. We
learned a rakish swagger: walking
broad-legged with our hands in our
pockets as it if was cold. We put on
a show of enthusiasm when we met
in bars and clubs because we were relying on each other in the event of a
fight, I guess.
As I watched him now I saw he still
walked that way.
I got up: “Hey, old chum, how are
things?” and patted him on the shoulder. “Is it you?” he offered me a flabby
hand. He sat down.
He was wearing orange-tinted shades
and smiled like a mafioso pretending to be a Buddhist; De Niro wore
that “mask” in several films and since
then streetwise guys have taken to
using it.
Sinewy, with a longish face. We’d always been similar. He’s even got a
streak of colour in his hair, a yellowish stripe behind his ear. He looked
quite urbane, as they say. You could
tell he didn’t live in our village, which
incidentally has expanded quite a bit
but still isn’t a city, so we called it a
“town”... Could there be any notion
more non-committal than “town”? A
multi-purpose whatever, an amalgam
of dilapidated houses and holiday
flats strung out along the road...
But Boris lived in Split – cuz was
urbane, a city boy, good on him. I
ROBERT PERIŠIĆ was born in 1969 in Split. He is a freelance writer and a
journalist whose writings give an authentic view of society in transition and
the (anti)heroes who inhabit it. He is the author of two collections of short
stories, a poetry collection, a play and a screenplay; his first novel, Our Man
in Iraq (Istros Books, 2012), was the bestselling Croatian novel of 2008
and also received the most important Croatian literary award from the daily
newspaper Jutarnji list. Robert Perišić’s journalistic articles regularly appear
in the respected Croatian weekly Globus and his work has been translated
German, Italian, Macedonian, Slovenian, Czech and Bulgarian.
Prose and poetry: Dvorac Amerika (Castle America), poetry, 1995; Možeš
pljunuti onoga tko bude pitao za nas (You Can Spit The One Who Asks
About Us), short stories, 1999; Užas i veliki troškovi (Horror and Huge
Expenses), short stories, 2002; Naš čovjek na terenu (Our Man in Iraq,
Istros Books), novel, 2007, Jutarnji list Award, 2008; Uvod u smiješni ples/
(An Introduction to a Funny Dance), autobiographical prose, 2011. Plays
and screenplays: Kultura u predgrađu (Culture in the Suburbs), Gavella
Drama Theatre, Zagreb, 2000; 100 minuta Slave (100 Minutes of Glory),
dir: Dalibor Matanić, 2004.
wouldn’t need to feel embarrassed if
anyone I knew passed by.
He sat down at the table so sluggishly that I thought he was smacked
out. But he said he’d been clean for
a long time.
Now he told me he’d come to the big
smoke cos, like, there’s no perspective
back ’ome and grinned as if he wanted
to make fun of that hackneyed word
perspective.
He wore his underdoggery in a slightly high-handed way like victims of
the system do. Soon he took out some
sheets of paper and handed them to
me: “So ya can see ’ow I write.”
The pages were densely typed from
top to bottom with a worn ribbon
– you could hardly see the words,
but I tried... and read a little longer
than I wanted. He just stared straight
ahead, smiling at the fruit juice he’d
ordered, smoking Ronhill and blithely blowing rings. What he’d given me
were poems in prose on some intangible topic. Never mind, I thought,
he’s bound to be unrecognised in his
neighbourhood. I could see he was
literate, and that was something. His
filmstar smile which put me on edge
was simply a defensive stance in case
I told him his writing was crud.
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“You need to take this to a literary
magazine and let them have a look,”
I said.
“It doesn’t matter. I can do any kind
of writing.” He started tapping with
his leg. His smile faded.
“Look, this is literature of sorts, it’s
special in its own right,” I stated cautiously. “For newspapers you need to
write concisely and...”
“That’s even easier,” he interrupted.
I ought to have seen straight away
that this wasn’t a promising debut.
Well, actually, I did see.
“I really don’t know just now,” I told
him. “If there’s an opening, I’ll let
you know...”
“Fine,” he said in a descending tone as
if I was abandoning a little puppy.
I felt those pangs of conscience again.
Why? Was it guilt for me having become estranged? Fear of having become conceited? When he asked me
what my girlfriend did and I told him
she was an actress, I felt like I was
boasting. But what should I have said
– that she’s a toll-booth cashier?!
Whatever I said looked like bragging to a provincial audience, a milieu dominated by rough-and-ready
Gastarbeiter types. So I spoke in a
blasé voice as if none of it mattered,
which probably sounded like I was
weary of my own importance.
It’s strange when someone like that
comes to see you, someone allegedly
close who can’t understand you and
looks at you like a commercial on
T V. I saw that Boris couldn’t conceive of my life in any real terms.
I knew where he was coming from
and could imagine his life, but he
couldn’t imagine mine; that’s why he
looked at me like an apparition which
had been magically beamed from
the summertime shallows where we
played “keepy-uppy” in our swimming trunks, into the actors’ jet set,
and from there had skydived down
into a newspaper office overflowing
with cash that was occupied with
things arcane.
Once, long ago, we listened to the
same records and were so alike in
dress and behaviour that old grandmother Lucija could hardly tell us
apart; and now look at us... If I hadn’t
gone away I would’ve got stuck in a
rut like him, I thought. I recognised
myself in him like a parallel reality,
but he sized me up as if asking himself what made me better. It seemed
I reminded him of some form of injustice.
“I could write what no one else will,”
Boris said and laughed for no reason.
“It’s no sweat for me.”
“Hmm. Shall we have another drink?”
I asked, not knowing what else to
say.
“I’ve only got twenty kunas,” he
warned me.
“It’s OK, it’s on me,” I said so it
wouldn’t be awkward for him.
“All right,” he sighed, as if he’d needed persuading.
I ordered another beer and he – I
couldn’t believe it – another juice,
and I realised that the conversation
wasn’t going to get more fluid. I began to feel time pressure.
“Don’t you drink?” I asked.
“Now and then,” he said and fell silent.
Then I launched into a spiel about
when, how and how much I drink –
an inane, incoherent story that soon
got on my nerves, but I had to say
something so we wouldn’t sit there
like two logs; he obviously hadn’t developed a talent for small talk.
We sat there for a little longer and finally he mentioned his degree, which
he hadn’t been able to finish. I could
tell he’d planned to mention it and
had thought about how to present the
topic. He obviously thought I knew
what he’d studied.
We were supposed to behave like we
were really close, so I nodded. Still,
after things ground to a halt again
I said: “Sorry, what was it that you
studied again? I just remember it was
pretty exotic.”
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“Arabic,” he laughed and slapped his
hands on his knees. It seemed he was
laughing at himself. Probably because he had studied Arabic instead
of a more pedestrian subject.
Bingo! It suddenly dawned on me.
I was probably a bit sloshed already,
and I pointed a finger like Uncle Sam
and uttered: “Iraq!”
Rabar, the only true go-getter on the
staff, had defected to GEP a month
earlier, and there he was now reporting for the competitors in Kuwait,
so... Unbelievable but true: here was
a job in the offing!
Boris smiled sadly and said: “Morocco.”
“What about Morocco?”
“We were in Morocco, not Iraq.”
“Uh-huh” – I made the connection.
“I know.”
“Six years... You know how it was:
dad was chief engineer; we had servants and a pool. Then – wham! –
the old man had a heart attack. Right
there by the pool.”
“Yes. I know.”
Now he’d finally found his topic. He’d
gone to the international school, but
they also learnt Arabic. Later, when
they returned, he had “the language
in his head”. Every time he thought
of something in Arabic he’d remember his old man. But he had no one
to converse with and started to forget the language. He mentioned that
once he’d overheard two Arabs talking
in the street; he followed them to a
café, sat at the next table and listened
to them. “They noticed I was following them, and I had them guessing whether I was a spook or a poof.
I understood everything they said,”
he grinned. Afterwards he enrolled in
Arabic in Sarajevo but couldn’t finish
uni because the war began.
“OK, and now have a think about
this” – I said, “Would you go to
Iraq? The Yanks are going to attack
any day.”
“Sure!” came the answer as quick as
a shot.
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I’d thought he’d be interested in finding out more about the proposal. I
continued, watching his reaction:
“Now, our guy who went to war zones
had his ways of doing things. I don’t
know how, but he always coped. He
sent things by mail – the photos and
the texts. There are also these satellite phones...”
“No probs, I’ll get the hang of it.”
“Have a good think. It’s war.”
“No sweat.”
“Sure?”
“Peace has become a problem for
me.”
Hmm, right at the start I’d caught a
whiff of Vietnam syndrome. It was in
vogue after the war among demobbed
soldiers. That typical defensive shell:
taciturn, phlegmatic face, the occasional long look in the eyes.
I didn’t know where to stand on that.
Back at uni me and Markatović had
perfected that veteran habitus – here
around Zagreb I could have stood in
for Rambo if needed, but Boris knew
that my experience of war amounted
to hanging around up on a hill with
an anti-aircraft battery. Nothing ever came anywhere near us, and after
a month and a half my old man got
me out.
Maybe that was why Boris behaved
as if I owed him a favour: because he
didn’t have a dad to g et him out but
followed Arabs down the street.
“All right then. If peace is a problem
for you you’ll have a great time in
Iraq,” I said.
He glanced furtively at me. “I think
it’ll be great,” he answered. Everything should have been clear to me
then. But I felt I had to help him in
order to return some kind of irrational debt.
When he started to send me his psychedelics, I called him by satellite
phone. He acted as if he didn’t hear
me well. A bad connection, and pigs
can fly... Since then he hasn’t been in
touch by phone. He wrote that it’s
dangerous, they can be located, but
he continued to send mails every day
– he didn’t care that we were a weekly.
Then I wrote him a mail telling him
to come back, afterwards I warned
him politely that we expected him to
return, and in the end I thoroughly
insulted him. No result.
Now he’d been there for a month already, was probably having a great
time, and didn’t reply to any of my
mails.
I say all of this to an imaginary listener.
Sometimes that helps me plan what
I’m going to say, like a lawyer about
to defend himself.
***
I tried to occupy my thoughts with
something else. I was holding Jimi
Hendrix’s biography and trying to
read when Sanja entered the flat.
I probably looked dejected.
“Are you angry? Listen, I really couldn’t
go and see the flat,” she said straight
away. “I ran into a journalist – from
The Daily News.”
“You’re joking, from GEP? How long
did you talk for?”
“An hour maybe. Plus the photoshoot.”
“Hang on,” I looked at her. “That’s
more than a little statement. Was it
a proper interview?”
“We’ll see, we’ll see,” she said, as if she
didn’t believe it could be. That’d be
the first interview of her life.
I felt all this was happening to me. I
wanted to be involved too. I paused.
“Did they also ask you about, like,
personal things?”
“Don’t worry, I was careful not to let
any cats out of the bag,” she smiled.
She saw the remnants of the pizza
on the table.
“I’ve already eaten, I couldn’t wait,”
I said.
“No trouble, I’ve eaten too. We ordered a whole pile of kebabs.” She
came up to me.
“Do I stink?” she asked and assailed
me with a heavy onion breath.
23
“Ugh, get off me!” I said.
“I don’t caaare!” She imitated a naughty child. She was obviously trying to
cheer me up. I put on some theatrical revulsion: “Jeez, what a disgrace!
Bloody hell, I mean: she plays the
fancy actress, but here at home she
stinks like a skunk!”
“Your problem. I don’t caaare!” She
giggled and fumigated me with her
onion breath, trying to kiss me while
I kept trying to evade her.
In the end I let her kiss me, but then
it wasn’t fun for her any more. I wondered whether I should tell her about
Charly and Ela...
“Have Jerman and Doc been cramming their lines?” I asked to change
the topic.
She rolled her eyes: “Ingo has moved
the dress rehearsal to eleven in the
evening! He has to work with them
before that. But the craziest thing is:
he gives me more shit than he does
to any of the others. I mean, they
disrupt me too, of course. But then
he comes down on me to assert his
authority.”
“Well well, he’s supposed to be progressive but he vents his fury on the
girls?!”
“All he tells me is that I have to act like
a punk. His spiel is, like, I have to rebel
against how others see that role,” she
said, imitating the director’s speech
and his way of smoking while constantly looking up at the ceiling.
“Hmm, perhaps...”
Now she got edgy: “OK, I have to
be rebellious, but he shouts at me
all day.”
I didn’t know what to say: “Who’d
have thought.”
Then I added, cautiously: “He’s obviously panicking. I mean, you all are.”
I thought she knew what I meant. She
knew she was the one panicking. But
she wanted to let out her frustration:
“I know. But today I was about to tell
him where he could stick it. Like: if
punk’s what you want, punk’s what
you’ll get!”
24
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Sanja liked to be brave and to make a
stand. If she were male it’d all be different, but I adored it like this: her
pugnacity, her independence, her attitude... You’re my hero, I whispered
to her sometimes.
But now she sighed, looked away
sulkily, took a cigarette... She blew
out a drag, and another, and glanced
at me furtively to see if I’d noticed
that sense of crisis.
“Well, tell him where he can shove
it!” I said.
“What?”
“He should think twice, it’s too late
to throw you out now!”
I wanted her to feel my support. She
had to act with conviction and show
she was prepared to defend herself.
She wasn’t going to swear at the director, but she should at least feel that
she could. That’d put her back on her
feet and get her over the feeling that
everyone was taking it out on her.
She looked deep into my eyes, as if
she saw a beautiful sight there, and
kissed me.
“Ugh, you really do stink,” I said.
“Then I’ll go and brush my teeth!”
she yelled cheerily.
When she came back we sat on the
couch, she stroked my head, neck
and tummy as if she had hidden intentions, but I probably seemed too
wooden to her, so she asked me if it
was because of her. She reassured me
that I needn’t worry, that she’d see us
through it all. I took a deep breath.
This time it was my turn.
***
Sanja was against Boris going to Iraq,
against the war, against anyone writing about such a spectacle, against
infotainment, against various things,
and I had an inkling she wasn’t exactly enthusiastic about my relatives
either. OK, neither am I, but I always defended them whenever she
said anything, the devil knows why,
probably so it wouldn’t look like she
was genetically superior.
I remember how she rolled her eyes
when I told her Boris was going, and
I assured her that it wasn’t because he
was a relative of mine but because he
was the right person for the job – he
knew Arabic, he was literate, and war
wasn’t a problem for him. So now I
didn’t mention the problems to her,
but I had to share them with someone, dammit.
I just gave her a quick run-down and,
of course, it all sounded like a confirmation that she was right.
“Recommending him was a terrible
mistake,” I concluded.
“You wanted to help him,” Sanja said,
and added, almost maternally.
“You’re too sentimental. Your relatives are just using you.” I didn’t want
to talk about that again.
“Can we skip the topic?” I said.
“I had a kind of premonition,” she
continued, as if she herself was in the
mess. “But you were so enthusiastic
about him.”
“Who me? Enthusiastic?!”
“Don’t you remember? Your cousin knows Arabic. You said I had to
meet him.”
“I don’t remember.”
I had no intention of talking about
that. It’d even look as if I was losing
my memory.
“OK, don’t get angry,” she placated.
“You’re just a bit naive, you misjudge
people.”
Come off it, I wanted to say to her –
I saw straight away what was going
on. Then I realised this wasn’t exactly
the right time. I felt the gap between
those two poles.
She waited for me to say something.
I waited too.
Then I waved dismissively.
Sanja continued in a gentle tone of
voice: “I just wanted to say something about your relatives: you let
them walk all over you... They’re not
interested in you, but they keep dragging you down.”
“Yeah, Sanja, yours aren’t avant-garde
either,” I said.
TIONS
The wall and the garage
We’d been putting it off for a long
time and living in a fiction, as it were.
Not until our third summer together
did we set off on an official tour to
meet the in-laws: several days with
hers, several days with mine.
It looked a bit like an actor’s workshop: we watched each other finetune our performance, took care that
the other didn’t put their foot in their
mouth, sat at the table stiffly and respectably and exchanged trite phrases
in that regional slang. I didn’t exactly
know my lines... But I talked about
the high price of living, various ailments and car accidents, basically
from memory, a bit stilted I suppose,
like an amateur actor.
They asked us about our life in Zagreb in a well-intentioned, worried
tone and suspected we were living the
wrong way; we tried to stick to factual matters and somehow extricate
ourselves because we couldn’t openly
admit that we aimed to live a life diametrically opposed to theirs.
It was interesting that we weren’t
able to tell them anything about our
life as it really happened. When you
looked at it, there was hardly anything to say. Our life barely existed,
as if it had been left behind in some
secret argot, where I had also left
my real being, while this imposter
sat at the table, enumerated bland
facts, nattered about the car and introduced himself to her parents as
me... His gaze wandered around the
flat. At Sanja’s parents’ there was nowhere to look – there was no empty space. Her mother had a morbid
fear of open spaces and the flat was
so crammed full of “practical” little
tables that there was hardly any air
to breathe.
Then, just on our second morning
there, Sanja suggested to her mother that they knock down the wall
between the kitchen and the living
room to gain more space, and I made
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the mistake of seconding the idea.
Her mother glanced at me in consternation and I realised that she was
used to her daughter having strange
ideas but was disappointed that Sanja
had found the same sort of guy. She
immediately ridiculed the idea with
her Mediterranean temperament; she
spoke exclusively to Sanja – you could
tell that she couldn’t discuss such intimate topics as knocking down the
wall with me. Probably Sanja wanted to appear a mature adult in front
of me, so she kept contradicting her
mother all the time we there – and
not just about the wall. You couldn’t
really call it an argument, more a mutual show of disrespect which seemed
to keep them cheerful and create a
special closeness... In fact, I felt their
taunting and teasing actually showed
how much they were at home.
I couldn’t talk with her mother like
that – I respected her – so I was
condemned to silence. Also, my future mother-in-law kept her jabs and
wise-talk exclusively for Sanja, not
me – because she respected me.
Having fallen silent about the wall, I
found it hard to talk at all... Our people are like that, I meditated: they’d
always prefer to build a wall than
knock one down. They always liked
having two rooms rather than one.
They loved to count rooms. Now
why wasn’t I sensible like them?
I spoke very cautiously with Sanja’s
dad, of course. He had disappointment written on his brow. Politics
was his particular chagrin, all the
parties were a let-down. He watched
the news avidly, read the newspaper
and was disappointed time and time
again. That seemed to be his main occupation. He wanted to know if we
journalists were disappointed too.
“Oh yes!” I exclaimed and mentioned
a few practical examples. I felt a kind
of need to join him in disappointment, but maybe he thought I even
wanted to outdo him in that because
I was a journalist of sorts in Zagreb
and had the opportunity to get disappointed first-hand, so in a way
he didn’t want to listen; whenever I
opened my mouth he’d start explaining how much Zagreb was out of step
with the situation on the ground,
which was one of the things which
disappointed him most.
I sipped beer, relaxed and watched
the news. The mass of empty beer
cans grew, all rattling in the rubbish
bin until they were crushed down
into a smaller pile.
We frenetically waved goodbye from
the car. I thought of telling Sanja
that one actually didn’t look so lost
among all the “practical” little tables
at my parent’s place, after a drink or
two. “My folks have got a nice courtyard and a garden, you’ll see,” I said
cheerfully.
Then we arrived and I saw the garage.
They’d told me about the new garage
and were pleased with themselves
for fitting it perfectly into the courtyard. But I saw straight away that the
courtyard was gone. A small amount
of space remained but you could see
it was unused space.
They proudly opened up the garage
for us by remote control as if they
were officially opening a new production line, and I parked inside.
“Oh my God,” I said to Sanja.
Yep, my folks had become bourgeois,
so to speak, and we sat there like we
had at Sanja’s folks’. The new edifice
in the courtyard stuck out like a sore
thumb. And you couldn’t say anything against it. I was about to say
a word and they came down on me
like a ton of bricks: How dare I cruise
in from Zagreb and lecture them –
from Zagreb, mind you! Zagreb with
its holier-than-thouness was like a red
rag to a bull. They needed that new
addition: Our garage is our castle.
My mum whispered to Sanja on that
occasion, forging a female alliance,
that she didn’t need to listen to me
all the time because men were stupid:
25
let them have their whims. My father
generally followed her remarks with
a smile, and here and there heckled
his old lady just for fun, which Sanja was supposed to find amusing. I
tried to mediate these conversations
as far as possible by drawing attention to myself, but my parents only
had eyes for their daughter-in-law
because, seeing as I’d brought her, it
was clear to them that we were going
to get married.
Then there we were again, back in
our rented flat. Things had stopped
developing just by themselves and I
didn’t know exactly what we’d think
up, what lifestyle, we just had to avoid
repeating the same old patterns, I told
Sanja. We had to break through in a
new direction, bore a tunnel, build
a bold viaduct, whatever.
But then Boris had popped up, and
now he was a feature in the landscape
like my parents’ garage.
I simply couldn’t explain her the
whole depth of the problem, so I
turned the laptop towards her: “Read
some of his stuff and tell me what
you think.”
She looked at me quizzically.
“Open one of his mails, any one,”
I said.
***
I forgot to tell you the state of the war,
cannons roar, turn heroes to gore, flash
of steel in hand, crimson stains the sand,
the dusky Arab is cast down, resistance
is removed like a wart with a laser based
on plans and scenarios, I guess all this
looks like a film when you see it on TV,
the desert is just the right backdrop, as
if you were colonising Mars, you have no
idea if there’s any life there, you search
for it, move on, there has to be something, at least bacteria or remains, fossils, fossil fuels, who knows what, you
never know if the aliens have weapons
of mass destruction, what level of technology they’re at, here’s an embedded
journalist, a Bush, Tuđman or Milošević
man, someone’s fan, please circle the
26
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correct answer, and he asked me what I
thought about weapons of mass destruction, if were there any, and would they
be used in the Battle for Baghdad, and
he provoked me cos everyone realises
somehow that I’m an amateur, no idea
how those pros tick, but of course Saddam’s boys don’t have weapons of mass
destruction cos you definitely wouldn’t
attack them if they did, so never fear, we
can be calm, I said optimistically, and
we toasted with alcohol-free beer, the
people love me, what more can I say,
and I feel accepted, but then the storm
begins, a wind from the south brings
eddies of dust and fine, fine sand, it fills
your mouth, nose and eyes, so we fled
to the cars and sat in those closed cars
all day, sweating, you can’t see a thing,
you don’t dare to open a window, not in
your wildest dreams, not in your wildest
fuckin’ dreams, cos the sand will make its
way in, into your brain, inside it’s unbearably hot, brain waves, frequencies, bro, I
wanted to call you just now to see what
the weather’s like there, but they told us
to be careful with the Thuraya numbers
cos they could be located, rocketed, and
there’s no point me getting charcoaled
here just cos of the weather.
***
Sanja smiled and shook her head as
she read.
“You didn’t tell me,” she said. “He’s
just having fun.”
Hmm, I scratched my head: “I’m not
sure if that’s intentional. It’s a real
pot-pourri. I don’t know if he’s gone
crazy or not!”
“I think it’s tongue-in-cheek,” she
said.
“But why hasn’t he come back like I
told him?!”
“I don’t know. He’s probably just
playing the fool.”
“He’s messing me around, the dickhead!” I said. “If anyone’s the object
of that humour, it’s me.”
She tapped a fingernail on her teeth,
contemplating.
Then she had a liberating thought:
“Maybe he doesn’t know how to write
like a normal journalist.”
“Everyone does, more or less,” I contradicted.
She reflected: “I don’t find it all that
weird, you know. He has no training,
kind of, in your language. I think if
someone sent me to tag along behind
the Yanks as if I was reporting on a
sports event... I think I’d kind of want
to muck up too.”
“OK, I know you’re against the war,”
I said, but I wanted to let her know
that that wasn’t the point.
She looked at me hard: “And why
shouldn’t I be? At least this guy is
saying something; your paper doesn’t
have any position on the war.”
I looked at her. What did she think:
that I could change the world? A
man would never expect that from
a woman; sometimes she treated me
as if I was Superman.
I thought I should tell her that I’d already lost all my illusions during the
wars here. But that’s not the kind of
thing you tell a girl who’s planning
the future with you.
“So basically you mean he’s kinda being subversive?”
“Consciously or not.”
I didn’t want to show the fury that
was raging inside me. So they were
the subversive ones, and I represented
the system; they were on the side of
freedom, and I – of repression. Hang
on, Sanja was laughing: so he’s witty,
and I have no sense of humour? And
I have to rack away at the crud he’s
written to patch it up. I did that like
a domestic secret, tormenting myself and making myself paranoid,
while the young’uns could let it all
hang out...
I got up: “What sort of stupid game
does he think this is? I have to rewrite
everything...”
“Hey, don’t yell!” she interrupted.
“Have I done anything wrong?!”
I sat down again.
She cast another glance at the text.
“I’d publish it like that!” she said.
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Who am I talking to, I groaned inside. What pubescent crap.
“I can’t publish that! We’re a normal newspaper! Not a fanzine for
nutters!”
“Yes, you lay down what’s considered
“normal”, she said punkishly, just like
Ingo demanded of her, and added:
“You’re yelling again.”
What is going on? Is she practising
her role on me?!
“Tell that to Ingo,” I said. “I get the
impression you’re a bigger punk at
home than on the stage...”
Sanja snorted, offended.
“That was below the belt,” she said.
She was right. But it got on my
nerves that I had to defend the system against her and Boris, two brave
anti-globalists. How did I get into
this mess?
I spewed irony: “Oh yes, newspapers
dictate standards and the media standardise people! They lay down the
language and the “issues” to be served
to the masses – bland and boring
stuff, not psychedelics like this. They
determine what people are to get
worked up about and where they’re
to have an opinion. Every day a preprocessed opinion...”
“Hey, why am I getting the flak?” she
interrupted.
“C’mon, c’mon,” I stammered, “you’re
lecturing me as if I’d just started
thinking about all this today! I know
all that stuff! But that’s where I get
paid, and I’m having to take out that
fucking loan! I know what’s possible
and what’s not!”
“I’m lecturing you?! You keep talking... That is: yelling,” she said and
glanced furtively at me.
She sat on the couch, offended. And
I opposite, in the armchair. Each
breathing in our own rhythm.
The soundtrack of Buena Vista Social Club was spinning in the CD
player.
I’d seen the film and realised something was wrong with the Cubans.
They were so much better than us.
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“ What an absolute fucking mess!” I
spoke through clenched teeth, mostly
to myself.
“OK, that’s nothing new,” she said.
“What do you mean?”
“Nothing. Just what I said,” she
grouched.
She looked at the smoke coming out
of her mouth.
“What does just what I said mean?”
“Nothing.”
She really was fuming and smoking
like an environmental catastrophe.
“Just what I said...”
She didn’t say what.
So she didn’t say I was an incompetent? Or an idiot, good-for-nothing, misfit, flathead, bonehead or
no-brainer?
I felt she was saying some of those
things to me, or rather she wasn’t.
Boris, of course, wasn’t the only one.
I’d recommended people in the past,
too. Unlike Boris, the problem with
them was that they’d risen faster than
me. They were amazingly capable,
those people.
Young talents
I had a nose for talents and starlets,
relatively gifted individuals with their
hearts set on recognition and even
fame. Maybe the point was that for
years I’d spent too much time in bars
and knew every idiot. In a nutshell, I
volunteered as the corporation’s human resources agent because whenever they needed someone young and
enthusiastic they’d ask me: “Do you
know anyone?”
“I do, there’s this guy working as a
waiter in Limited...”
“A waiter?”
“Yes, but he’s been to uni and has a
way with words.”
“OK, you can send him.”
That’s how fresh blood arrived in
journalism, including even Pero the
Chief himself. It may sound strange,
but I picked him up too, straight
from a bar, back in the dawn of the
democratic changes, and led him by
the hand to the paper. The rest is history. Poetically put, his success was
faster than the wind. Because our
country has great social mobility. We
don’t have a stable elite. Socialism
destroyed the old elites – what little
bourgeoisie and provincial aristocracy we had; war and nationalism in the
nineties destroyed the socialist elite;
and then democracy happened and
the nationalist elite had to be done
away with.
Defeated elites can survive in nooks
and crannies. Oh yes, they can conduct their businesses and pull the
strings from the shadows; but out in
the light of day, in representative media like our Objective, which always
had to be a mirror of the new age –
no, the new moment – we constantly
needed new people! New columnists
and opinion-makers, new faces, new
photos. So, in the ten years of feverish change we’d gone through three
media paradigms: socialist, wartime
and democratic; several generations
of smart alecs had been expended in
the process, so now our media elite
was extremely young.
Uncompromised people were in short
supply. If until recently you’d listened
to Lou Reed, worked as a waiter or
studied viticulture, you now had the
opportunity to put forth those new
values. Democracy, pop culture, slow
food... Without questioning capitalism, of course – we’re not Reds! – so
there was nothing you could do about
the privatisation which was pushed
through in the nineties by the shocktroops of happiness and the nation’s
leader. The dough was safely stashed
away and young media cadres came
along to portray an idyll of Europeanisation and normalisation. After
all, what else is there to do after the
revolution has been carried out and
the dough tucked away? What we
needed now was harmony, security,
consumers and free individuals who
paid off their loans; we could promote a little hedonism too, let people
27
enjoy themselves, but within limits,
of course, so as not to displease the
Church.
There was something for everyone.
It was dynamic, without a doubt.
We were a new society, a society with
constantly changing backdrops and
new illusions. We were all new at
the game... There was no House of
Lords, landed gentry or old bourgeoisie, only the former socialist working
people who’d spruced themselves up
and now crowded forwards in a carnivalesque exertion, grasping for the
stars. Everyone jostled to be the one
to be launched: some fell on their
faces, but the Eastern European postcommunist version of the American
dream did exist. Success depended
on chance amidst the general turmoil and rapid repositioning. It was
all reminiscent of Big Brother. One of
the ordinaries would be shot into orbit, but who? The sky was the limit.
We all felt it couldn’t last long. The
sky would close. Society would stabilise, the “transition” phase would
pass, and then we’d know who made
it and who didn’t. One day we too
would have a House of Lords – a
sham one, of course – but never
mind. For now you had to jump on
the train. Pero the Chief had outdone
me, there was no doubt about that.
He became the great editor, while I
was still collecting losers by the roadside. And Pero, as we know, was no
longer the same person. I wanted to
stay the same the whole time, as if it
was an achievement to remain a rebel
and avoid all that junk.
Was this simply the “not wanting to
grow up” syndrome? Or was it all because of Sanja? She was still young
enough to think it natural that I
didn’t wear a tie like Pero; those were
her values, and she fell in love with
that sort of guy. But she too was progressing. God, she was progressing
damn fast.
I’ll never forget when Pero began to
progress; for a time he shunned my
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gaze, greeted me hurriedly, avoided
sitting at the same table as me. Had
he forgotten who it was who brought
him to the office in the first place?
I always made the same mistake: I inadvertently reminded people of what
they used to be.
Later I accepted him as a new person
who had nothing to do with the waiter from Limited. Then he, in turn,
accepted me again.
Logically thinking, I must have changed in some way too, despite my best
efforts. If Pero became my boss nothing could stay the same.
I sort of kept all this secret from Sanja. I mentioned these things, I think,
but always with a laugh and a joke,
as if I was wafting in a higher universe safe from so-called social values. Stuff from the world of careers
didn’t interest her anyway. She only
saw love. Our love and love in the
wider world. Ecology. Genuineness.
Originality and romantic defiance
from the fringe. She loved me just the
Igor Kuduz: Foto-žurnal / Photo-journal #24 – NYE / NG
TIONS
way I was. It was only recently that
she’d begun to follow the Career column of the horoscope.
And now, through nervous conversations, we’d begun to arrive at it, at
the context – like in Alien, when the
crew, after initial arrogance, begins
to grasp the magnitude of the problems lurking in the cave in that distant galaxy.
Translated by
Will Firth
RELA
TIONS
Odohohol
and Lupe Mangupe
Matko Sršen
K
nock, knock, knock! Lupe Mangupe heard the sound of knocking inside his head.
Knock, knock, knock, knock!
That was the first thing he heard after drinking down several bottles of
water and eating a lot of pills from
the packages carefully lined up next
to the cell’s walls. These were the first
foreign thoughts he was able to read,
in so much as this insistent knocking in the head can be understood
as thoughts.
Knock, knock, knock, knock!
Of course, he was immediately startled from the doze which he had
been indulging in for the last few
days, when he realised that the witch
wasn’t bothering to answer his challenges.
Knock, knock, knock, knock – and
the knocking just wouldn’t stop. A
witch? thought Lupe.
No, it couldn’t be! When you read
someone’s thoughts, you can see them
clearly at the same time, as long as you
have met them before. If you haven’t
met them, you can still manage to
see the person once he or she has entered into your thoughts, albeit only
vaguely. At least you get to see how
old that someone is; you can hear the
colour of the voice when thinking,
you know the gender, male or female,
and what you can tell most easily –
from the way the unknown intruder’s
thought sounds – you can tell if the
sender is human or robot.
MATKO SRŠEN is a director, playwright, and a poet born in 1947 in Dubrovnik.
As a director he worked on more than a hundred productions performed
on stage and the radio in Croatia as well as abroad. For his work, Matko
Sršen received numerous awards and prizes, including a recognition for
a lifetime devoted to theater and Best Director Award for his production
of Dostoyevsky’s Brothers Karamazov. For several years, he served as the
theater director of the Dubrovnik Summer Festival. In 1983, his interest
in Marin Držić, “the Croatian Shakespeare”, led to the first production
of Venus and Adonis in four hundred years. In 2003 Sršen worked on the
reconstruction of Držić’s lost plat Pomet, which was performed at the 2003
Dubrovnik Summer Festival with Sršen as its director. As a playwright,
Sršen has had more than twenty of his own works produced for theater
and radio. He has published four books of plays, essays, and poetry and
served as the Head of the Department of Theater Direction at Zagreb’s
Academy of Dramatic Art.
Published Works: Odohohol i Lupe Mangupe (Odohohol and Lupe Mangupe), Sandorf, Zagreb, 2009; Edip multiplex, grčke figure (Oedipus
Repeatedly Multiplied, Poems about Greek Figures), Znanje, Zagreb 2004;
Nagovor na filozofiju (Persuasion onto Philosophy), Jesenski & Turk, Zagreb
2002; Pomet Marina Drzica / Rekonstrukcija (Pomet by Marin Držić / A
Reconstruction), Jesenski & Turk, Zagreb 2000; Ifigenija – drame i maske
(Iphigenia, Plays and Masques), Izdavački centar Rijeka, 1989.
It’s a little girl! decided Lupe Mangupe. He didn’t know a lot about girls
because he never wanted to fight with
them. Once when he was still with
the Bullies, there was a fight with a
gang of girls in the suburbs. Lupe ran
way rather than face the little girl in
the short skirt and pigtails who came
after him. Afterwards, the other boys
teased him for being afraid of girls.
This was the very reason that he had a
fight with the chief for the first time,
and got beaten up badly.
Now it was if, after many years,
stopped in the middle of his escape,
Lupe turned back – What if you are a
girl? I’m not afraid! Wanna fight?
But there was no answer: only the
continual knocking in his head.
What if the wicked witch has changed
herself into a girl in order to trick
me? Lupe thought, and perked up.
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First, a deadly fear caught him from
inside, which is what makes a brave
heart come forward. The witch transformed into a little girl! Yes, that must
be it! Then he felt a dreadful anger
overcome him, and he let it take over
him completely, from head to toe.
OWWWW! barked Lupe Mangupe
like a mad dog. Ow, ow owww! he
snarled, sharpening his teeth before
biting. He growled in his head: Grrrr,
you witchlike frog! Grrr, where are
you? Show yourself if you dare!
The knocking in his head stopped.
Lupe barked, snarled and growled
for some time, provoking the horrid
witch, the filthy hag, the old crone
until he felt the anger leaving him
and his bristled up hair settling down.
It was only then that he noticed the
knocking had stopped. Quiet and
deep peace filled his thoughts. He
was satisfied because he was sure that
he no longer feared the evil witch.
He found himself thirsty after such
excitement and he reached for the
bottle. He must have grabbed it awkwardly or something. Because the
bottle fell from his hands. The water spilt as he grabbled aimlessly with
the bottle. He was completely wet
by the time he managed to grasp it
again, and by that time it was empty.
When he reached for another one, he
realized that it was empty too, and so
he realised that he had spilt the water from the last bottle as well. And
he was so thirsty. There was nothing
left to do than go down on all fours
and lap up the water from the floor
with his tongue.
That’s when the knocking started
again.
Knock, knock!
She’s clever, that witch! he thought to
himself, but this time he wasn’t afraid.
If you want to play – let’s play!
Knock, knock, repeated Lupe after
her in his thoughts.
Knock, knock, knock, it came again.
Knock, knock, knock, went Lupe.
Knock, knock, knock, knock!
Knock, knock, knock, knock! went
Lupe along with her.
Thank god! came the words into his
thoughts. I began to be afraid you
were a squib!
And what does that mean – a squib?
replied Lupe, happy that he finally
had some dealings with a girl and not
a witch transformed into a girl. Wicked witches never mentioned god; that
much he knew. Their tongue would
fall out!
Like you don’t know! I don’t know...
you tell me, thought Lupe.
You like to make fun of girls, do you,
came the answer.
I swear to god, I’m not like that! interjected Lupe. That was the first time
that he had formed the word god.
He had thought the phrase so that
the girl would believe he had good
intentions. Lupe didn’t know a lot
about faith, nor was he interested in
knowing. But he had remembered
the lessons of Old Sveznadar well:
when a white wizard meets another wizard, whether he is a believer
or not, he calls on god. If the other
then answers: god help you!, then
they show signs of friendship and
greet each other warmly by protruding their tongues. If the other doesn’t
protrude his tongue after the answer or if in answering he avoids the
name of god, then the white magician knows that there is a black wizard in front of him pretending to be
white in order to trick him and to
take his life away.
Alright, then. If you don’t know, you
don’t know! said the girl. A squib is
a wizard who doesn’t know how to
read another’s thoughts. One has
to be born with that gift in order to
learn it fully. Our Itchy-Withy is halfsquib. But she still runs the School
for Witches! Number Ten took me
from my parents, you should know,
when I was still very young, because
I had that gift. That’s how it is with
all the girls in my school. We come
from all over the world. You should
TIONS
meet my best friends: Gong-Tchi,
a pretty Chinese girl, and Jane Littlewood, a brave American girl. We
three all finished school first and
now we teach other girls very important subjects, ones which even ItchyWitchy can’t manage properly. Jane
teaches witch battles, she was always
the best student in Transformation
class and that’s why Itchy-Witchy
loves her best. Itchy-Witchy is a great
Transformer. I think she’s better in
that than even Number Ten! Such a
great witch but still a squib. Just think
how many paradoxes there are in the
witching world! Even so, I think it
would be best if you run far away
from her. With her skill at transformation, she knows how to make life
difficult even for great magicians! I
have to admit, I can never seem to
manage transformations well. I almost always have to ask someone to
help out. Maybe because in my heart
I still cherish my dear grandmother
who secretly told me a lot of beautiful, devout stories. Sorry, I always
get tears in my eyes when I remember grandmother.
Lupe Mangupe, on the other hand,
remembered Old Sveznadar and how
he had told him that white witches
like to exercise their tongue, but one
should let them do so lest they get
very angry.
Don’t interrupt me, I’m not finished!
Lupe read the girl’s thoughts as she
grew angry that his thoughts were
interfering with hers. He immediately suppressed even the smallest
thought, for at that moment he wanted to avoid upsetting anyone, most
of all this chatty little witch!
I am not a witch, I’m Petit Ragamuffin, an expert in codes and shields!
Lupe heard the girl getting angry in
her thoughts. I can read each of your
thoughts perfectly, so shame on you!
And where did you learn to interrupt
a person when they are talking? Had
I finished? Had I? No, I hadn’t! came
the conclusion in anger.
RELA
TIONS
Contemporary Croatian Literature in English Translation
Lupe had become nothing but a giant
ear! From the noise he could hear in
his head, he realised that Petit Ragamuffin, whether she was a girl-witch
or whatever, was crying out there.
Somehow, and he didn’t know why,
he felt sorry.
Did I ask you to feel sorry for me? the
girl got angry again. No, I didn’t!
Ragamuffin, you’re strange! Lupe
Mangupe took some courage. You
don’t simply read thoughts, but emotions, too. And my Old Sveznadar
used to say...
You interrupted me again! Did you or
didn’t you? Don’t do it again!
However thirsty he was, and he was
in fact very thirsty, Lupe smiled.
Ok, I know you think I’m funny, continued the girl, strangely, this time
without any anger. I am a witch, and
what a witch! Your Old Sveznadar
was right! While other witches and
wizards can read thoughts I’m the only one who can read emotions, too!
But be careful, that’s my secret, and
I never showed that to anyone until
now! Do you know why I’m telling
you this? Because I am in love with
you, my secret white knight!
What? How? Come again? stuttered
Lupe Mangupe in his thoughts.
Well, now you know! Whenever you
come out of that stupid cube, I will
know whether you fell in love with
Gong-Tchi, who teaches how to read
thoughts but can’t read emotions! But
how can I get out? I’m not a wizard!
Why are you lying? the girl got angry
again. Didn’t I tell you I could read
emotions! Did I tell you or didn’t I?
I told you my greatest secret because
I love you and you lie to me!
But I’m not lying, listen to me. I’m
just an ordinary boy. Not a wizard!
Petit seemed confused. He lies when
he doesn’t lie and doesn’t lie when he
lies! Lupe Mangupe read her thoughts.
A mysterious case! Let’s sort it out
quickly!
Knock, knock, knock, knock, knock,
knock, knock, knock, knock! Lupe
heard it again. With that the wall of
the magic cube opened, like it was
an ordinary tent with a rip, and in
came Petit Ragamuffin with a bucket
of water in her hands. When she had
entered, the wall closed automatically
behind her.
This is evil water, don’t you drink it!
Only black wizards and witches drink
it, but white ones can die from it.
Seeing how Lupe wagged his tail at
her, Petit added kindly: I brought it
just so that you can understand you
are lying!
Lupe leant over the bucket. Even
though he was dying of thirst he
didn’t think of drinking; not because
the water was evil but because of what
he saw there. Desperately, he shook
his head. On the water’s surface he
could clearly see the snout of a big
white dog moving from side to side.
To his left he saw the left paw against
the rim of the bucket, and on the
right side, the right paw. He had lifted
himself up onto his hind legs.
He squealed so loud that the whole
witch’s cube clanged like a dog’s collar. Two large dog teardrops fell in the
water, disturbing the image.
Calm down, sweet puppy, calm down!
twittered Petit. With her hand she
smoothed his bristled hair. Drink
up! This is good water! she said, and
with the other hand she poured the
contents of the water-bottle into his
muzzle.
As soon as he realised that his paw
was changing back into a hand, Lupe
grabbed the water bottle and greedily
began to drink. In a blink of an eye,
the dog in front of Petit transformed
into a boy.
Lupe Mangupe! he spoke.
Petit Ragamuffin! replied the girl.
I know! said Lupe.
And the two of them fell into a fit
of laughing.
That evil witch turned me into a
dog! realised Lupe. They were speaking in normal voices and that made
them both laugh. The witch’s cube
31
made ordinary speaking sound very
strange.
No she didn’t. You changed yourself when you thought I was the evil
witch!
Yeah! yelled Lupe. That would mean
that I became a wizard!
No, you were one before, insisted
Petit.
I wasn’t!
Yes, you were!
I tell you, I was not!
Don’t interrupt me! Had I finished
speaking? No, I had not! screamed
Petit Ragamuffin, but this time she
was smiling.
And so that’s how, from that moment backwards, they continued to
compete and laugh like it was all a
game, with Lupe Mangupe and Petit Ragamuffin telling each other
their life stories, And even if the life
of a little girl and the life of a little
boy weren’t very long, there were still
things to tell.
From the whole happy history we can
tell you only that Lupe learnt Number Ten left him locked in a cube on
a hill in the Witches’ School, ordering the headmistress Itchy-Witchy to
look after him. She had handed over
her obligations to the young teacher
of Codes and Shields, Petit Ragamuffin, who was the only one in school
who understood such complicated
things. Lupe also learnt that Number
Ten came herself a few times to see
whether anyone had taken the bait,
but had returned disappointed every time. Petit had easily broken the
witch’s code and from that day she
had come every day when the other students and teachers were asleep
(for here they slept during the day
and lived mostly during the night) to
watch the little prisoner. She had very
soon realised that he was an unusual
white wizard who transformed during his sleep but only moaned when
he was awake and didn’t even try to
get out of the cube. He often transformed into a big white dog, and one
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time in his sleep he had changed into
a White Knight with a shiny sword
hanging from his belt. He pulled
the sword from its case and swung
it around, but it was clear that he
was asleep and simply moving in his
dream. Whenever he got tired, he
would lie on the floor of the cube
and change back into a boy.
And you should know, Lupe, Petit
pointed out, I didn’t fall in love with
you but with that White Knight!
Lupe was sure he didn’t know how
to transform himself, but Petit convinced him that he did, that he must
know! It was this point that could
have easily led to another confrontation that could have ended with
the typical: Don’t interrupt me when
I’m talking. Have I finished yet? No I
haven’t! except that they had already
laughed about that, and everything
else, for too long. That wasn’t a surprise, for they had discovered a new
world – the world of the white wizards. Even if the students of School
for Witches were prepared to become black, Petit and her two friends
Gong-Tchi and Jane, became white
witches. They were, in fact, pretenders: white witches who pretended to
be black. They could get away with
it with Itchy-Witchy, who was only
half-squib and therefore couldn’t read
thoughts properly, but they were always afraid that some talented student would give them away or that,
worse still, Number Ten would uncover their lie on one of her inspections. Luckily, when the three of
them had finished school with the
graduation of new black witches, she
excused herself from the proceedings
because of commitments in the human world. That’s how they managed
to escape detection. Graduating from
the School for Witches meant going
on a hunt for little fairies who lived
in Fairytown on the nearby Fairy
Mountain beneath which the Old
Witch, that means our Number Ten,
had built the school. The graduates
would cook the captured little fairies
in the famous kettle of Itchy-Witchy,
and once they had eaten them they
would become black witches. Our
three friends spared the lives of the
captured little fairies which made
them become white fairies. Two innocent rabbits were victimized instead by being turned into alleged
little fairies after which the friends
cooked and ate them, and so in that
way gained their diploma as black
witches while in actual fact remaining white.
And that is how, as he told her about
his life on the Forgotten Track, and
about Odohohol and Old Sveznadar
and of the Bullies... At one point,
Petit leant forward admiringly and
kissed him on the cheek, then became very embarrassed, whereupon
Lupe, in order to encourage her cheer
her up, simply uttered, half seriously
and half as a joke: I want to be a great
white knight and you’ll be a grownup white witch, so that I can see for
myself what love is and what it means
to be in love with someone!
As soon as he said that, what a surprise, he turned into that same young
knight that Petit had watched through
the cube while he slept, on whom the
tunic shone with silver threads, and
at whose belt hung the sword of the
white knights.
With admiration, he observed Petit Ragamuffin in front of him, who
from a little girl became at once tall-
TIONS
er, growing into a white witch with
a beautiful fairy dress; it was a gift
from fairy queen Bohulka whom Petit, after she had caught her, let free.
Along the girl’s white veil unravelled
long hair; and her deep brown eyes
shone, replacing those blinking, lively eyes of the former girl, Petit Ragamuffin.
The knight felt something that he
had never felt before, and on her lips
he planted an ardent kiss.
Yet, although the ardency of the first
kiss conceals the childish shyness, the
maiden and the young fellow blushed
at that very moment turned back into
a boy and girl.
Don’t stop! Why did you stop? Did I
tell you to stop? Did I? No, I didn’t!
Petit Ragamuffin protested as usual
with all her fury.
Lupe put his hand suddenly across
her mouth.
They stood still and listened.
Number Ten and Itchy-Witchy! Petit
said under her breath. Let’s get out of
here! Knock, knock, knock, knock!
Knock, knock, knock, knock, Lupe
quietly repeated the code after her.
Climbing up the hill, Itchy-Witchy
and Number Ten noticed a bristledup white dog and a little black cat
that were chasing each other across
the slope. They didn’t quite fit with
the school surroundings and Number Ten wanted to check them out,
but as she was in a hurry to see if
anyone had been caught on the bait,
she thought she would leave that till
later.
Translated by
Susan Curtis
RELA
TIONS
Interview
Seid Serdarević
• How difficult is it to sell the rights
to the English-speaking countries?
Extremely, especially if we are
talking about bigger presses, those
that are influential in the media and
have good distribution. There are
several reasons and the main one is
that these are the countries that generally produce a small number of
translations; and that corpus, the infamous three percent in the U.S., has
to accommodate all translated texts
– from technical books to literature.
Within this percentage the number
of authors from Eastern or Southern Europe is incredibly small, and
we do not only compete against each
other, against other authors from this
region, but also against the whole
Eastern European literary production. In such context, each translation into English is a huge success.
What is good here is the fact that,
despite negative statistics, there is an
increasing number of smaller publishers who are open to publishing
literature in translation, including
the literature of the so-called minor
languages. But their problem, just as
with the university presses, is that all
of them have distribution problems
and limited presence in the media.
The number of middle or larger publishers, the ones that have the means
to push some book on a larger, world
scale, and that are at the same time
ready to publish authors from our
region is incredibly small.
SEID SERDAREVIĆ is the editor and founder of Fraktura, a publishing house
whose main focus is publishing classics that have not yet been translated
into Croatian, books of non-fiction, and new European authors. Fraktura regularly publishes Croatian authors and looks to find their foreign
publishers.
• What changes can be made in this
context?
The situation would somewhat
change if we had a real agency responsible for introducing our authors abroad. The Ministry of Culture started some initiatives, but all
of this is far from being an organized
effort that could help the placement
of Croatian authors abroad, not only in the English speaking market. A
huge problem is the nonexistence of
something similar to Dutch foundations for literature, for example.
Such foundations do not hold authors’ rights, which remain under
the domain of agents, presses or authors themselves, but their function
is to promote their literature. For instance, they support the production
of so-called sample translations into
English, and thus they have a database of translations for more or less all
important authors. We do not have
something like that, an agency or office that could provide permanent financial support for such project. On
the contrary, most often this is done
at one’s own expense.
An important, if not the main problem, is the fact that we do not have a
tradition of translating Croatian authors; as they cannot be placed in a
certain context, our authors remain
isolated and unrecognizable. This is
not a problem only with Great Britain, this is something present in a
whole number of countries. The German example from a couple of years
ago, when in the period of 12 months
about 50 or so Croatian authors got
translated into German, shows that
things can change. The number of
those translations enabled certain
authors to be singled out and break
through more easily. And that’s very
important. People should become
aware that Croatian literature are not
only Dubravka Ugrešić and Slavenka
Drakulić, if we are talking about the
English market specifically, but that
there is a wide range of other interesting authors. In order for this to
happen, we need much more translations. In recent years this has become
more difficult because the crisis factor is very much felt. And we have to
keep in mind that, regardless of the
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Fraktura
fact that support is available to more
serious publishers, it is not a crucial
element. No publisher in the West
is going to reject such kind of financial support, but none of them will
publish a book only because it gets
funded, especially if they are looking
for a wider distribution.
• Among Croatian editors, you are the
only one who is trying to bring your
authors to foreign markets. Does the
fact that you are primarily an editor
help or hinder the process?
It most certainly is not a disadvantage. This is, simply, a normal position, a principle that most European
publishing houses rely on. We have
to keep in mind that the concept of
an agent is first and foremost typical
of Anglo-Saxon culture. True, some
ten years ago or so agents appeared in
other countries in Europe. The same
was true for Eastern Europe, but the
number of so-called sub-agents is
still considerably larger and they sell
English foreign rights for this region.
However, foreign rights are still in the
domain of publishing houses, this is
part of the tradition that is still operable in Sweden, Germany, France,
Spain, etc. What helps in this situation is the fact that I am working with
the people with whom I otherwise
exchange ideas, with whom I often
talk about who and what gets published. Over the years, perhaps most
importantly, we developed mutual
understanding and trust, which helps
when you approach these, so to say,
bigger publishing houses. The logic
is simple, if they know how serious
we are when we are publishing an author in translation into Croatian and
what kind of authors we are interested in, then they can assume what
kind of authors we are able to offer
them when Croatian authors are in
question.
• Which authors you had most success
with and how true is the myth that
Western audiences accept only a
certain type of authors, the ones that
are writing in accordance with the
expectation of the so-called Western
reader?
With Daša Drndić, without a
doubt. Her novel Sonneschein, whose
English title is Trieste, was published
by Maclehose Press, a respectable
publishing house that is part of Quercus that won the best British publisher award for the past three years in a
row. Very positive reviews of the novel
appeared in some of the most important newspapers – from The Guardian to The Economist. This book refutes the myth that there is a specific
type of text expected from us, that a
book has to deal with the Balkans, recent wars, etc. There’s that, of course,
because that’s what interests the audience, but it is not crucial. The most
important factor, I am convinced, is
that this is good literature.
• What about non-fiction?
Our non-fiction can hardly pass
anywhere, except if we are not talking
about the essays written by Dubravka Ugrešić or Slavenka Drakulić; in
other words, the authors who created
the names for themselves by publishing their articles and essays in newspapers, thus creating their audience.
The problem with our non-fiction is
the fact that even when it is well written, it is written from the perspective
of a small country, a country that
cares a lot what others think about it.
All of this is perfectly normal, these
are the issues all small countries have,
but the problem is that such type of
text will hardly ever find the audience outside of its boundaries, unless
we are talking about geniuses such
as Kapuściński. So, having a translation of a book of non-fiction, not
academic writing, but popular nonfiction is an even greater success. But
it happens very rarely. No matter how
important and interesting we are to
TIONS
ourselves from historical perspective,
on the global scale we are actually unimportant.
• You mentioned certain translation
gaps. What should the emphasis be
put on: the classics or contemporary
authors?
Whether someone might like it or
not, our classics do not mean much
abroad. With the exception of Ivo
Andrić perhaps who was interesting
in the 1960s when he won the Nobel and then again at the beginning
of the 1990s. Still, it’s been twenty
years since then and those translations are not something American
or British critics, editors and readers
remember. In the amount of books
that enter those markets, a classic is
not much of bait. My opinion is that
we should employ an opposite principle. In other words, first we need
to create an interest for the contemporary literature, and, regardless of
how critical we are of our literature,
it is not so bad when compared with
other literatures from the Eastern
European context. If this happened,
then it would be natural to want
to see from which tradition these
authors come. I am not sure that
now there is much sense to promote
Krleža or Marinković because that
would be done for a very narrow circle, for the universities, experts and
not for the market, for the readers.
That’s not the way to go. We need
to reach the readers, arrive to a position in which English readers will
recognize their interest in Miljenko
Jergović, Mirko Kovač, Daša Drndić,
Igor Štiks, Zoran Ferić, or some other
author. After that they will become
interested in classics. The best and
the closest example for us is Hungary.
This already is a big literature, considerably bigger than Croatian, but,
regardless, first there was interest in
the excellent contemporary Hungarian literature. Many respectable publishers have published a huge number
RELA
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Contemporary Croatian Literature in English Translation
of translations of authors such as
Kertész, Esterházy, Nádas, Dragomán, etc. On that wave grew the
popularity of Antal Szerb and Sándor
Márai. These classics came later because the living, contemporary word
is what interests the reader.
• Why is the translation into English
so important; can it truly determine
the author’s future career or is it just
a validation of someone’s success?
It can because that’s the way literary markets work. It is logical that our
writers will be translated the most in
countries that are close to us: Macedonia, Slovenia, Hungary, Czech
Republic, Poland, in other words,
countries that share our literary sen-
sibility and, not unimportant, that
have strong Slavic departments. It
is perfectly understandable that the
greatest number of Croatian writers in translation will be published
in those countries. After that come
Germany, Italy and France – large
European cultures that translate a lot.
What English translation brings, and
what neither German nor French,
and then Spanish and Italian, can’t is
the possibility of new translations into other languages. The possibility of
getting translated into Scandinavian
languages, translations into Lithuanian, Estonian, Chinese, Japanese,
Portuguese, Greek or some other
languages that seem exotic to us. No
matter how important German is for
35
us, neither it nor French are the languages that are read so widely. English is the language everyone understands, lingua franca of the modern
world. That’s why translation into
English is so important, not just as
a confirmation of someone’s prestige. In all this, it is not unimportant
with which publisher the translation
is published. It would be fantastic if
translations of our authors appeared
with some of the cult presses such as
New Directions or Archipelago, in
other words, with the publishers that
are known for their discoveries of exciting contemporary literature.
Translated by
Tomislav Kuzmanović
36
There Would Not Be
Any Miracles Here
Goran Ferčec
From Chapter 3
B
ender turns to the protestors.
Nobody pays any attention to
him. The crowd is moving in slow
motion. It does not take a lot for a
careless passer-by to get sucked into
the line of men and women in red
shirts with banners and flags in their
hands. The crowd are opening their
mouths in rhythmic unison, but the
voices they produce dissipate without
meaning. The crowd is humming like
a swarm of bees. Passers-by are standing surprised against building walls,
waiting the storm out. He recognizes no faces. Someone from the line
raises an arm and waives to Bender
to join the crowd. Bender ignores the
invitation. The man elbows his way
to the edge of the line and comes up
quite close to Bender, motioning him
in a way that is impossible to ignore.
Bender gives a laugh. The man’s face
appears familiar to him. Before he
has time to think and make a decision, some passer-by pushes him
away from the wall and Bender steps
out among the protestors wrongfooted. The man who has invited
him vanishes. The crowd of people
sways him forward, and had he not
used his arm to prop himself against
a strange man, he would have been
thrown off balance and fallen down.
The man turns around and shoots
him an inquiring look. Bender shakes
his head and responds with a broth-
GORAN FERČEC was born in 1978 in Koprivnica. He studied Polish language
and literature, art history and drama in Zagreb. He writes prose and plays
and his writings have been translated into German, English and Slovene,
as well as published in journals and magazines in Croatia and abroad. He
has written as well as collaborated on a significant number of theatrical
projects and works from the area of contemporary performing arts. He
spent the year 2010 in Vienna on the Milo Dor Scholarship. Ovdje neće
biti čuda was written during the 2006-2011 period in Zagreb, Belgrade,
Koprivnica and Vienna.
erly smile, whose lack of conviction
he will ponder on his way home. Several shouts prompt a chain reaction
of voices. The mob starts bellowing. Bender tries to read the letters
printed on T-shirts, but the message
escapes him. The street that the line
is passing through is closed for traffic. Police officers are standing at the
curb, overseeing. He might be making a mistake if he keeps on moving
in the line. When the line stops for a
moment, Bender makes an attempt
to get out through a crack between
bodies. The moment he steps out of
the line, a police officer pops out in
front of him and pushes him back in.
Bender is thrown off balance again.
Lacking balance is equal to panic like
when a person loses documents, a
wallet or something that, once lost,
becomes lost forever. As it nears the
main town square, the line picks up
speed. Bender catches smell of some-
thing burning. His hands fly up and
down his body in fear of flames, and
then he sees a torch, which must have
been lit by one of the leaders at the
front. Smoke fills out the line at its
thinnest spot. A police officer crosses
over to the line and makes the man
with the torch snuff it out. Boos and
howling are heard. The police officer
disregards the swearing. The murmur
is soon replaced by whistles. A lighter
comes flying in from somewhere and
lands several feet away from Bender.
The lighter explosion is smothered
by a PA voice. It is only then that
Bender registers the voice that has
been following the line all along.
The PA voice unravels the illusion
of a quite afternoon. Bender discerns
the words right, need, take, hands.
After that the crowd starts clapping
hands and Bender loses the thread of
the sentence. The PA voice continues
the moment the applause goes down.
RELA
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Contemporary Croatian Literature in English Translation
Someone next to Bender mentions
death. Bender looks in the direction
from which the word came. He sees
a group of women. One of them has
a stocking over her face. She would
appear sinister if her round body did
not make her too sluggish to be a
threat. Bender stands tiptoe on one
foot in an effort to see what is going
on at the front. This is not the path
he intended to take. He will use the
line to get to the toy store at the end
of the street. He will step out of the
line on time and go his way. He walks
on. Someone nudges him to hurry
up. He strives not to break stride.
The pain in his foot causes Bender to start limping. He ignores the
pain. He focuses on the spot where
the line is weakest. He looks for a gap
in its formation through which he
will step out and go his way. A stone
thrown at the line nearly hits him in
the shoulder. He makes an effort to
hoist himself on tiptoe, but the pain
foils his intention. A commotion announces that something is going on
up ahead. Bender jumps up on one
foot. He repeats the jump as many
times at it takes him to see and realize
that the line is drawing near to a wall
of policemen that has no intention of
letting it through. Upon seeing the
policemen, the line bellows harder
and starts shooting out slogans like
rubber bullets. Ben-der realizes that
crashing into police is inevitable. The
clash between the feeling of injustice
on one end and an order on the other
might leave its scars on the tissue of
time. Bender tries to control his panic
in the face of an obvious but unclear
order that the line is approaching. He
is uncertain as to how to behave if he
ends up in the thick of it. When the
line comes up to the cordon, everything stops and for a moment not a
voice can be heard. Bender looks up
and on some distant window he sees
a small human figure standing motionless. Bender concludes that to the
window figure all of this must look
like a directed crowd scene where it is
of no importance what the people in
the line are actually rebelling against.
The window figure disappears and
then returns with a camera, pointing it to the empty field of tension
between the line and the policemen
wall. A dog happens to saunter by,
wagging its tail, looking first at one,
then at the other side. The murmur
starts up again from the back. Instead
of words, someone hurls a stone at
the police cordon. Nothing can stop
heads rushing ahead of bodies toward police shields any more. Their
arms are straining to carve a path for
them. The policemen are standing
absentmindedly. Seen from a window, the big body of the crowd must
seem tired and irrelevant. The man in
the window brings the camera up to
his eyes several more times and then
pulls back into the darkness of the
apartment, closing the window after him. The closed window makes
Bender feel like there is no way out.
He hears a fist thumping against
someone’s head. The front of the line
pours out into the police cordon. The
penetration causes the protestors to
fall silent. Then someone shouts out
a slogan that spreads like tear gas.
People’s eyes are drenched in tears. A
woman starts screaming. A man next
to Bender raises his arms as if he were
ready to take a bullet to heart. Bender
is moved by the man’s gesture.
From Chapter 9
In the year nineteen hundred eighty
five the number of victims in plane
crashes was the highest in the history of commercial air flight. The
flight one-eight-two of the Air India airline fell apart above the Atlantic Ocean, killing three hundred
and twenty nine people. The flight
one-nine-one of the Delta Airline
crashed on approaching the Dallas
airport and killed one hundred thirty four passengers and one person
on the ground. The flight one-two-
37
three of the Japan Airlines was on its
way to Osaka when it slammed into
a mountain one hundred kilometers
from Tokyo, killing five hundred and
twenty people. The only survivors
were four women who were sitting in
the back of the plane, which miraculously remained intact. The engine of
the Boeing seven-three-seven on the
flight two-eight-M of the British airline British Airtours caught fire during takeoff. Fire and smoke choked...
Bender closes the papers. The article’s text appeared where it should
not have purely by accident. Ben-der
starts shuffling around the victims
from the article and concludes that
the number of victims from plane
crashes in nine hundred eighty five
was still lower from the number of
victims in the civil war that would
take place ten years later in a country to which he was returning. In
the meantime twenty-five years have
passed since eighty-five and fifteen
years since the civil war. At the end
of the day Bender could not really
explain what had exactly happened,
except that there were enough dead to
form a union. Bender closes his eyes
to fall asleep. The engines of the Airbus 320 are producing a sound not
unlike a pig snorting, which makes
the back of the aircraft vibrate, transmitting the jitters from the abdomen
over the tightened chest into the panicked head. If he should survive, he
will testify to the flight being restless and dangerous. The experience
of a life-threatening situation meets
a listener’s expectations much more
tangibly than describing a situation
that harbors no mortal danger. The
experience resulting from the safety
of well-balanced expectations, wishes
and possibilities can seem boring to
someone who is listening. A threatened entity is a basic element to another entity’s interest. The man in
the seat next to Bender’s is reading
newspapers. He is carefully studying
a page filled with charts. Skyscrapers
38
RELA
Fraktura
shooting up between the axis x and
y mark a drop in value toward the
last quarter of the current year. Since
the year has still not ended, printed
charts illustrate an attempt to predict
the market development in the time
that is yet to come. The drop in value
is the only threat at the altitude of ten
kilometers. The drop in oxygen value. The drop in pressure value. The
drop in durability of materials. The
drop in the percentage of air traffic
safety. The drop in likelihood that
nothing would happen. The drop of
the Airbus 320. Panic over the drop
in value requires an explanation once
he gets his feet back on solid ground.
They will say there was no other danger except a windy troposphere that is
a danger in itself. To whom will they
say it? A question that could have
caused a new surge of panic has been
knocked out by strong turbulences.
An explanation. Turbulences on this
particular airline are more frequent
than on other lines. The reasons for
that are geodetic surface roughness,
sea proximity and frequent shifting
of air currents over this part of Europe. Apart from turbulences, this
has other con-sequences that include
civil unrests, intolerance among religions, ethnicities and nations as well
as suicidal tendencies. A renewed
impact of air currents dislodges the
image before Bender’s eyes and doubles it. Then the image slides back
into place. The vibration from the
engine is shifting from the wings
onto the fuselage and seats, making
Bender nauseous. Bender sits up in
his seat to get more comfortable and
takes the opportunity to get a better look at the suited man sitting to
his left. He could turn to the man
and look at him directly, but that
kind of gesture would reveal fear or
the need for solidarity in a catastrophe. One should be wary of gestures
that could be misinterpreted. On
the free seat between them the man
in a short-sleeved shirt has placed a
book with Heiner Müller’s face on
its cover. Bender reads the title “A
Heiner Müller Reader”, shoots the
man a look, but refrains from asking
any questions. Solidarity at the altitude of ten thousand meters makes
no more sense that it would make on
the ground. At ten thousand meters
a man is closest to a new beginning.
Through the minute airplane window, the Earth is revolving in a wrong
direction. Immobility surrendered to
endless repetition. Nothing changes
except the pressure in Bender’s ears.
Through a narrow isle a flight attendant is pushing a cart laden with
bottles. As she approaches him, the
smile on her face disarms any other
possible grimace. After less than a
minute, she is hovering above him
and laughs at him, carrying a neon
halo around the stiff head.
From Chapter 12
Father stirs, gets out of the garden
and starts running toward the house.
The dog gives another bark and runs
off down the street. Father runs into
the house and closes the door behind
him. Bender waives one more time
and then he lowers his arm and walks
on in the direction of the house. A
locked gate meets him. He throws
his arm over and turns the key from
the inside of the gate. He enters the
yard. When he gets close enough, he
sees that the northern wall is perforated with holes from Kalashnikov
bullets. The holes are expanding,
drenched with moisture, and the
front is falling off in big chunks, revealing mortar and bricks. The dog
that followed him is sitting in front
of the door, with his snout wide
open and his tongue out. Bender
approaches the door and rings the
bell, which makes no sound at all.
He rings again and then bangs on
the door. Bender says: I know you’re
in there, I’ve seen you. Father is not
answering. The dog barks instead.
Nothing happens. Bender turns the
TIONS
doorknob. The locked door offers resistance, but that is what he expected.
Any pleasant surprise has followed
people out of here. He gives the door
another bang. Father yells out something, but Bender cannot decipher
the sentence. The dog rears up and
barks again, Bender motions him to
sit down. The dog does not obey him
and starts going around the house instead. Through the milk glass at the
front entrance Bender notices some
kind of movement. A shadow first
spills out and then transforms into
a body that moves up to the door.
Father is standing on the other side,
saying nothing. The dog runs up and
barks at the shadow. Father shouts:
Chase the dog off! Bender says: He’s
not dangerous. Bender stamps his
foot with the intention to scare away
the dog and reassure father, but the
dog interprets this as a game and
starts wagging his tail. Bender says to
the dog: Get lost. The dog does not
realize what Bender is telling him and
starts jumping. Bender grabs a board
and hits the dog. The dog lets out a
squeal and makes a beeline through
the gate and into the street. The Sun
has still not set. Father asks: Has the
dog gone? Bender looks down the
repaved wet road whose blackness
devours all things, creatures and phenomena that are no longer needed, to
makes sure that the dog has left. He’s
gone, says Bender. Father takes a few
more moments and then opens the
door. At first father is silent, signaling
with this potential silence his stubbornness, and then asks: Do you have
a cigarette? Bender shakes his head.
Father looks down at Bender’s pants
pockets to verify his claim. Father’s
disappointment over the non-existing cigarette is accompanied with
bloating and pulling a face that indicates a gastrointestinal disorder,
a state of perpetual burping. Eight
years ago he was diagnosed with ulcerative colitis that has manifested itself in frequent and bloody stools. For
RELA
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Contemporary Croatian Literature in English Translation
the past six years he has been more
or less stable (no blood in his stool).
Father is not pulling a face because of
ulcerative colitis after all, but because
of a sphincter disorder located at the
stomach entrance, which in father’s
case is not closing. The sphincter is
open and father is leaking air like an
air balloon, inserting word by word
into a continuous discharge of air.
Father gnarls a sour statement about
something that is no longer there.
Father says: That is not my dog; I
don’t know whose dog it is, but it’s
not mine, he should be chased away.
It seems to Bender that father might
deflate if he does not stop him. You
called, says Bender. Father closes his
mouth, stopping the discharge of air,
and starts bobbing his head to and
fro, like a child melting a forbidden
sweet in their mouth. Father steps
out of the house, closing the door
behind him. He breathes in a larger
quantity of air and almost fills out the
front door frame. Bender gives up on
making an issue out of whether father
called or not. Discrepancy between
what he expected and what he has
found is obvious. Instead of shrinking, father got bigger. Father reminds
Bender of Julian Schnabel from a
photo he saw on the plane. Father’s
head is identical to Zeus’ and mocks
him with his strength. His arms as fat
as logs. His head that has swallowed
up the neck. His body impervious to
punches, pain and decomposition. It
is accidental, this moment in which
father is only an object colluding
with the insecurity of Bender’s wish.
Maybe it is Julian Schnabel that is
standing before Bender. It is possible
to replace a physical presence of one
man with a story of another. Bender
takes a few steps back to get a better
perspective of what he is looking at. Is
father bigger than the things around
him or have the things shrunk in
the meantime? Bender compares the
sizes. How should one justify the description of Julian Schnabel that has
jostled in between Bender and his father? Father raises his arms and rests
them on the doorframe. Rock Hudson was always photographed from a
low angle, so that he would fill out the
entire format of the picture and look
like a giant, says Bender. Father does
not reply, but holds the pose, wishing
to show that he has survived. The ruins around him look like the debris of
his wrath. Father is Zeus in a village
that everyone has abandoned. Everything belongs to him. He rules over
the remains of things. There is no one
to fight with because the others have
chosen escape over fighting. Father
seems big because the chaos has made
the world small. Father’s house is the
only one that has not turned into a
kennel. Or a doll house. The house
has stayed because I have stayed, says
father and punches the doorframe.
Several flakes of plaster and dirt fall
off and wind blows them into Bender’s eye. The grime in his eye makes
him bow his head in front of father in
an effort to help himself. Father says:
Keep blinking, it will find its way
out. Whatever goes in must go out.
Bender blinks at the blurry image of
his father while his eye is struggling to
cast out a foreign object. Wind keeps
changing direction. The eye and the
image are under constant threat of an
illusion. The Sun has postponed its
setting until the encounter everyone
is awaiting occurs. I’ve taken a train
to get here, says Bender. I’m not dying, says father and breathes in so as
to make himself larger. Extending
and enlarging body parts in the world
of animals indicates a threat, seduction or an invitation to fight. Bender
chooses a literal interpretation. One
must fight for the right to remain
standing among the ruins after the
chaos has passed. Bender moves away
from the front door and stands on
the trampled clearing in front of the
house. With the tip of his shoe he
draws a circle in the wet soil, steps
inside it and says: Here.
39
From Chapter 20
There should be rest on the seventh
day. Father has kept going all day. He
has been carrying things out from the
shed and piling them up on the lawn
by the house. It is impossible to figure
out the logic he uses to divide them.
Bender is keeping up with father’s
pace, helping him to transport pieces that are too large for one person.
Things piled up on the lawn resemble debris from some accident no one
remembers anymore. Except father.
Father is the only remaining witness
and knows where each item goes, although things have lost shape, purpose and meaning. Exposed to the
Sun, they give off an intolerable smell
of dampness and staleness. Father decides which thing belongs to which
heap. Father is saying, this goes here,
that goes there. The determination
of the gesture makes his decisions
convincing. Bender is certain father
does not know what he is doing. Father’s body is sweaty, threatening to
stop at any moment. The doors and
windows of the house are open, but
that does not make it any easier to be
outside. Father enters the shed. Father speaks out from the shed: I’ll do
what I have to. I’ll return the things to
the houses they had been taken from.
I know what belongs where. Bender
asks father in the shed: How do you
know what belongs to whom? Father
does not answer. The things have
short shadows. It seems as though
they are trying to crawl under the
things themselves. Without shadows
the things are unrecognizable. There
are no longer any things in the shed.
Bender does not understand what
father is doing in a shed where there
are no longer any things. In the place
where the things were only traces
have remained. Through the shed’s
door Bender can see father pacing
from one corner to the other, checking the emptiness that has emerged
in the place where there was none up
40
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Fraktura
until a minute ago. Father walks out
of the shed. Wooden beams are piled
up against the exterior wall of the
shed. Six-meter beams are the biggest
thing that must be returned. They
are so long that they cannot bear
their own weight, which has caused
their ends to curve up and start rotting. Father approaches the beams.
Measures their length with his steps.
Then does the same in the opposite
direction. Father says: The beams are
six meters long. They could be used
as rafters or joists, if someone was to
build something. Bender is standing
in the shadow that the house wall is
casting onto the lawn. The shadow
with its clean-cut edges is shifting as
fast as the Sun is moving. Father gets
into the shadow and walks back out
of it without paying any attention
to its edges. Bender is following father’s movements and his voice. Father clasps one end of the beam with
both hands and tries to move it, but
manages only to turn it around its
axis. The beam starts slipping across
other beams and stops only after it
touches the ground. Father gives it
a kick. Bender crosses over, picks up
the beam at the other and pulls it up.
Father bends down and does the same
on his end. While they are standing
with the beam in their hands, father
says: We are lucky because the beams
are dry, which makes it easier. Bender looks around, searching for a spot
where he could drop the beam. Father notices Bender’s wish to move,
get the job done, see the task through.
Father tries to justify the pointlessness of the situation and says: It’s best
to leave the beams where they are
or saw them up into smaller pieces.
Bender feels the pain radiating form
his shoulder blades into both arms.
The distance between father and son
will remain the same, regardless of
where they move to, as long as they
keep holding the beam in between.
They are going round in circles. Fa-
ther says: This could be perfectly useful lumber for someone who chooses
to build. There’s enough for an entire
roof frame. On a house with one or
two floors. There would even be some
left. Bender shifts the beam into his
right hand and brings the fingers on
the left one up to his nose. Resin, says
Bender. Father is looking at him, tilting his head right. A fir beam, says
Bender. A fir beam, father repeats.
Fir, says Bender. Impossible, says father, that must be chestnut. Bender
lowers his end to the ground. Father remains standing, holding the
beam. Bender moves over to father
and sticks his fingers under his nose.
Father takes a whiff. Fir, says father.
Bender goes back and picks up his
end. For a few moments father is silent and then he says: Fir is too heavy
for roofing. That requires a lighter
wood. What kind of lighter wood?
asks Bender. Chestnutbeechoak, says
father. What’s going to happen with
these then? asks Bender. Father does
not answer. Bender gets the impression that they are at the beginning of
a big re-novation. They must decide
where to start from. Father knows
what he is doing, but the world has
shrunk, leaving just enough space for
one minor dilemma. Father’s head is
turning left-right-up-down. Rightleft-up-down. Each point of view
is too short for a six-meter beam.
Father puts his body weight into
the beam and gives Bender a push.
Bender is caught off balance and
takes several steps back. Father nods
in his direction to let him know that
he has decided. We are going to pile
the beams around the things they’ve
taken out on the lawn, says father.
Bender fails to realize whom father
is talking about. Bender asks father:
Who has taken the things out on
the lawn? Father answers: We have
taken the things out on the lawn. It
sounded like you’ve said they, says
Bender. Who’s they? asks father. I
TIONS
don’t know, you’ve said they, Bender
answers. Father pushes Bender off to
the edge of the yard and nods over to
signal that this is the spot where they
will lower the beam. Both drop their
end at the same time. The beam falls
and thumps onto the ground. Father
eyes the beam and lines it up with his
foot. They go back for a new beam.
Father in the front, Bender behind
him. As they keep moving beams one
by one, each new beam seems lighter
to Bender. As if the final decision on
its purpose has reduced the weight
that had been piled on by years of
storage. The last beam is as light as
a match, making the two of them as
strong as ants. While they are carrying it over to the only free spot that
will mark the end of the afternoon
game, father is laughing. It has been
a long time since he did so much for
himself and the community. You cannot make everything out of nothing,
but you can make a little something.
Where there’s nothing, even a little
goes a long way, says father. The only
unfortunate thing is that where there
is nothing, there are also no witnesses who would corroborate that a little can be a lot. They put down the
beam, and on the lawn in front of the
house there is now another house.
Framed by beams, the things are lying
as if they were in small rooms. Two
diagonally placed beams at the bottom create a roof. The house is hanging upside down. The rendering is
neither authentic nor logical. Father
is confusing top view and front view,
up and down. This does not diminish the logic. To someone watching
from the air, this is a clear top view
of a house with four identical rooms
and a double-pitched roof, upside
down. Each room is full of things no
one needs.
Translated by
Sandra Mlađenović with support of
Croatian Ministry of Culture
RELA
TIONS
Unterstadt
Ivana Šojat-Kuči
I.
I
don’t know why on that Friday,
having returned home from work
around three p.m., I started to pack
hurriedly, throwing my clothes at
random into the suitcase on wheels,
which had been sitting in the dust
under the window sill since my last
visit to Vienna. I don’t know why I
finally decided to take that train from
Zagreb to Osijek, which leaves from
platform one at exactly five-oh-five,
according to the age-long timetable. Only an hour, an hour and half
earlier, I was attending to a plump,
doll-like baroque angel from a parish church in Zagorje, I was gluing
its fallen, thin skin which was peeling
on all sides and revealing the wooden base that irresistibly reminded
me of the dried muscles of mummies. While I was caressing its round,
plump buttocks, my Mum and Osijek didn’t even cross my mind, not for
a second. Really, I don’t know why
I finally did it. Just as I didn’t know
why, some ten years ago, I popped a
handful of sleeping pills down my
throat. I do, however, remember the
mild and calm, almost effeminate
doctor Risjak, who was leaning into
my face as if I were a small, irascible
child, and urging me repeatedly to
open up to him and tell him what
was wrong. “Nothing is wrong”, I
repeated, turning my head away. I
felt I had a bad breath; I didn’t want
to puff into his face. I was ashamed
IVANA ŠOJAT-KUČI was born in Osijek in 1971, where she completed her
basic education. She spent several years in Belgium, where she received
a university degree in French. In 2000 she published her first book of poetry, Hiperbole (Hyperboles, 2000), after winning an award for the best
unpublished manuscript at a poetry festival in Drenovci. Her novel Šamšiel
(Shamshiel, 2002) won an award at the Kozarčevi dani (Kozarčevi Days)
festival in Vinkovci. She has published two further collections of poetry,
Uznesenja (Ascensions, 2003) and Utvare (Phantoms, 2005) and Sofija
plaštevima mete samoću (Sofija sweeps up loneliness with her capes,
2009), a collections of short stories, Kao pas (Like a Dog, 2006), Mjesečari
(Sleepwalkers, 2008) and Ruke Azazelove (Azazel’s Hands, 2011), and a
collection of essays, I past će sve maske (And all the masks will fall, 2006).
In 2009 she published the award-winning novel Unterstadt. Excerpts from
her unpublished poetry collection written in French, Saint Espoir, were
published in the Belgian literary magazine, Le Fram. The collection was
nominated best manuscript by the Poetic and Literary Society of Kraainem,
Brussels, in 1999. She also works as a literary translator, and has translated
more than 20 books from English and French.
and I wanted to cry: “You haven’t
rinsed out my stomach properly!”
But he kept leaning into my face,
as if his huge nose were deprived of
the sense of smell, and he kept saying that “nothing” can make a man
leave forever and never come back.
In the end, I stared straight into his
eyes and said: “I was bored.”
But I was not bored on that Friday.
Instead of running to catch the train,
I could have sat at my drawing table
and spent the whole weekend scrawling, or I could have taken a book and
spent three days in horizontal position, I could have closed the windows, turned the fan on and not lis-
ten to the world, crawling into myself
like into a thick, cardboard box.
I don’t know why I took that train. I
don’t believe in paranormal, although
I used to be genuinely scared by
ghosts who were visiting my grandmother in her little room for almost
a whole year before she died. Still, I
don’t think I sensed anything, I don’t
think that an unearthly voice whispered in my ear that Mum would die
while I was sitting in the train, somewhere near Koprivnica, when ignorant passengers thought they were returning from where they had set off.
But Mum really died on that Friday
afternoon, while I was sitting in a
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stuffy compartment of the train clattering from Zagreb to Osijek for four
hours. I was sitting in the compartment and my bum was getting numb,
with a crossword puzzle lying in my
lap, and I was filling in the empty
fields with uneven letters. Because
of the train and its constant shaking.
Because of the summer which, in that
1999, decided to take spring by surprise and made my palms sweat and
the pen slip between my fingers. I was
casting occasional, furtive glances at
an old man who was dozing on the
seat opposite mine, with his head
against the dirty, yellowish curtain,
which was swaying, off and on covering his face. His mouth was open
and he was drooling. He was yellow
and bony, and his hair was combed
back, greasy and grizzled. I thought
of Breughel and the wretched souls
scattered on his paintings. He seemed
so miserable and stinking. That’s why
I was tucking my legs under my seat,
not wanting them to be touched by
the tips of his shabby, probably never
shined shoes. Next to me, a seat away,
was an old woman who constantly
contorted her mouth and ran her
tongue over the dentures, producing a clicking sound. I would occasionally look at her out of the corner
of my eye. I was dying to tell her:
“Lady, please, stop it! You’re annoying me! I’ll pluck your dentures and
throw them out of the window!” But
I didn’t say a word. I just felt my lower jaw contract and my lips set into a
straight, rigid line. At one moment,
our eyes met. My God! The faces of
old people crease with age like wax
paper, I thought. I stared at her blue
eyes. The old woman, who would
later introduce herself as grandma
Marica, smiled at me. And her eyes
sparkled; for a moment they looked
at least thirty years younger than the
rest of her stooped, wrinkled body.
In a single blink, the nonsense about
the ice-cold, calculatingly-intelligent
blue eyes crossed my mind. Both my
grandmother and my mother had
blue eyes, of almost the same shade,
but at the same time they differed as
day and night. You could read everything in Grandma’s eyes. The sorrow
would draw grey curtains upon them,
and the anger would light bright blue
bulbs. If the eyes are windows to our
soul, then Grandma’s soul, always
leaning on an elbow like a curious
woman, kept vigil above its always
wide-open windows. Unlike her, it
seemed that Mum had no soul at all.
Her eyes were always watery, dully
blue. As if that God of my Grandma
exaggerated with my mother’s eyes,
made their slits a bit too wide, thus
making them pop-eyed, blank, indifferent to everything. I briefly closed
my eyes and in my mind’s eye, in the
dark behind my closed lids, I saw the
indifferent, slightly dull gaze of my
mother, looking at everything and
everyone blankly, like somebody who
is checking from the window if he or
she should take an umbrella. Who
notices the world only if the water
is pouring down from the vault of
heaven.
Thinking that I wanted to strike a
conversation, grandma Marica introduced herself and started complaining about the weather which was
too hot, about the drought which
was raiding her garden in Retfala,
about her grandchildren in Zagreb
and her daughter who hadn’t come
back home after studies, but married
a man from Zagreb, from a nice family, of course.
I was getting more and more nervous, but not because of my Mum. I
didn’t know she was dying. I didn’t
feel anything at seven twenty-five
p.m. Anything at all. And that’s when
she died. Actually, I was annoyed by
that discreet thrusting in my face,
by the pointing at the fact that I had
come into the backwoods, that I was
returning to it. I was annoyed by
that damned, slow, four-hour-long
bumping in the train which stank
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badly, which stopped at “every white
house”, as our grandmothers used to
say, which seemed to want to show
me how far I was from everything.
I remembered myself at almost nineteen, getting off the train at the main
station in Zagreb, seeing in front
of myself the wide arm of Lenuci’s
horse-shoe and thinking, God, everybody here sees I’m a foreigner! I
was almost ashamed that I chewed
my words like chewing gums, that
I dragged myself down the streets,
as if crawling through the sticky,
plowed black soil. It passed. I forgot that first feeling, that impression
that the “backwoods” was screaming
from my forehead. But then, on that
train, I remembered it all again and
I got nervous. No, my Mum never
entered my mind.
I was convinced that Jozefina exaggerated in her old woman’s illiterate
letter, written in ornate handwriting. I say old woman’s illiterate letter
because it seems that with time old
people forget the punctuation marks,
and their sentences, deprived of all
full stops and commas, melt into one
another, become incomprehensible,
written higgedly-piggedly, just like
the old people’s thoughts. I know I
laughed at that letter of hers, at her
characters of uneven size, which resembled the young, rugged potatoes,
and I thought, Good Lord, I hope I
won’t become like her one day. Old
people exaggerate with courtesies, as
if incessantly apologizing, because
they already see themselves in coffins, because they don’t want anyone
to talk ill about them one day when
they are gone, when they would live
on only in the words the living utter
about them. Occasionally, when by
some miracle they cross their minds.
Unless they forget them.
I was imagining the stooped frau Jozefine with her aquiline nose, shriveled
and wrinkled old woman whose father had told her, some twenty years
ago, shortly before he died, that she
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Contemporary Croatian Literature in English Translation
would outlive us all. That she would
bury us all. He was joking. Though
he could no longer laugh, because
cancer was already devouring all air
from his lungs. I was picturing her
struggling with the pen, contorting
her lips, frowning, trying to summon
me with her letter, trying to soften
me, to lure me home, to Mum. I was
picturing her nodding her head with
satisfaction, like a plush dog on the
head rest of the back seat of a car, writing that ornate, in my opinion excessive words: “Your dear mother is dying my dear my little Katarinica my
little Keti”. Writing that avalanche
of words without a single comma,
without a single full stop. I was picturing her knobby fingers trying in
every possible way to grab the pen,
which was resisting, slipping, trembling on the paper and writing the
funny, uneven letters. Though tragic, the fact that on that train I never
even thought of my Mum is funny.
I was thinking about frau Jozefina,
frau Fine Lady, as my Dad used to
call her for fun.
When, after nine in the evening, with
my bum numb, I finally got off the
train, the sky was already black. There
were no stars. Everything above me
looked like thick black plush, which,
illuminated by the streetlights, glistened like the fur of a black Baskerville dog. I was flooded by the sickly
sweet smell of early May. I felt the
scent of hyacinths and I smiled. I
remembered my grandma and her
hyacinths, which looked like processions dotted along the brick path in
front of the main door to our house.
I smiled involuntarily, as if seeing
a dear, kind-hearted passer-by approaching me with a grin. And I did
not recognize the city, which for a
moment smiled at me with its hyacinths. Everything was somehow different, slightly changed, as if slightly shifted aside. Near the station,
there was no longer the supermarket
in which football fans and students
drowned their beers before leaving
for college or returning home, and
then staggered and vomited in the
trains. Although I had seen it burning on the TV, hit by multiple rocket
launcher I guess, I was still stunned
by the void, by the absence of something that used to be there. I stopped
for a moment, laid my suitcase down
on the cobble pavement made from
the yellow, smooth bricks and stared
at that void in the space. I think my
mouth was slightly opened, in wonder. I think I forgot to breathe for
a while. I took a pack of cigarettes
from my pocket and lit one. I was
wrapped by a bluish cloud that made
it impossible for me to smell the
city. I thought about my grandma,
grandma Klara, who would certainly
snatch the cigarette out of my mouth,
throw it away, crush it and say: “Nice
girls don’t smoke!” She would certainly blab something about Greta,
the black sheep in grandma’s fine
family, who started to wear trousers
and smoke cigarettes in a cigarette
holder just before the war broke out.
I smiled at the grandma, who forgot to breathe twenty years ago and
dreamt away into death. I’ll paint her
some day, on the plywood, in oil, I
thought. The painting must be solid
and reliable like grandma, who, even
in her white, laced nightgowns, always looked as if her Almighty had
carved her out of granite.
First I thought to walk down the
Radićeva Street to the tram stop and
then take the tram to the Lower
Town, but then it occurred to me
that Mum was in hospital, the house
was empty and I didn’t have the
key. I remembered that Mum was at
work when I went to Zagreb eighteen years ago, that I angrily left the
key under the mat. I pointedly wanted to show to my mother, who was
not there to see me going away, that
I had forever slammed the door of
that house, the house that remained
empty. Clean, but empty. So I headed
43
towards Divaltova Street, towards a
back, wretched house in which Jozefina wrote her uneven letters and sentences without punctuation marks.
I dragged myself down the dark, never properly illuminated street that
stretched along the railroad track all
the way to Klajnova Street. I thought:
nothing has changed, this street still
scares me. I thought how the war
had come and gone, how everything
had actually remained the same, how
the city had continued its own way
like a stubborn old man, how it had
returned to the old habits. But then
I noticed that some of the darkened
houses still had the poorly glued nylon instead of the window glass. I
stared at those war scars from the
point of view of the poor: some families have grown out of the war into
dynasties and empires, and some,
probably unresourceful, even after
eight years have no money to replace
the nylons with glass. I saw the starlike scars on the facades, penetrated
by the humidity of the sky, which is
merciless in autumn. Through the
broken basement panes, the houses
panted at me mouldily. I thought
that someone or something from
that deeper, mouldy darkness would
grab me by the legs, so I hurried up,
got winded. I almost ran all the way
to Divaltova Street.
Through the vehicular entrance, now
a slightly rotten, but once probably
proud wooden gate that could no
longer be closed due to the rot and
rusty hinges, I entered the brick-paved
courtyard which Jozefina shared with
four or five more families. The courtyard was the same – the eyesore of
cobbled-up houses, surrounded by
flower gardens, roses, hyacinths and
daisies, the colourful things with
which people try to hide the misery. Really, everything was the same,
the darkness and the sounds coming
from the houses, the creaking of the
furniture and clanking of the dishes
being washed in the basin. Just some
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more junk heaped up in the back
of that darkness in the meantime,
a whole mountain of cracked washbasins, toilet seats, battered cooking
pots, bent bicycles and old prams
which had long forgotten their purpose. I smiled at that heap of unnecessary, long-dead things from which
old people at the edge of life built
three-dimensional still lifes and repeated “It might come in handy”.
I stopped in front of Jozefina’s little
house, which was wrapped in darkness. I already thought that she had
gone someplace, roaming in the dark,
that she had lost her mind in her old
age and no longer behaved as befitted her, and then I remembered that
Jozefina always drew a thick, dark
green linen over her only window,
so that people wouldn’t stare into her
room, and that she never switched on
more than one bulb. For economy.
I remembered that her house was
dark because she had closed her one
eye, blurred by cataract. I knocked,
but nobody answered. I pressed the
knob and the door silently opened by
itself. As if pushed by draught. Or a
shoulder of someone I couldn’t see.
I quietly slipped through the foyer,
narrow as a cube, and entered the
only, tiny room, which served both
as Jozefina’s kitchen and her living
room. Next to the lamp resembling a
mushroom made of milky glass, Jozefina was bent in the armchair covered
by crocheted black blanket, staring at
the wall. At Grandma’s Virgin Mary,
which Mum had given to her against
my will after the death of grandma
Klara. As I was peering from the dark
of the little room first at Jozefina reduced to a question mark, and then
at the picture of Virgin Mary with
clasped hands staring at something
in the distance, I remembered how
angry I was at Mum because that picture had moved from our attic into
the dampness of Jozefina’s room. It
seemed to me then that Mum was
hastily trying to get rid of Grandma
forever, that she was trying to throw
her out of the house once and for all
like some shabby, worn-out piece of
furniture, to lock her into something
outside my reach, as she had done
with Grandma’s photographs, which
she had thrown into a cardboard box
and hidden somewhere.
I frowned and felt my cheeks burn,
my anger returning like a red-hot
wind, which lunges and withdraws
in tidal waves. The squeeze of my
hand on the brass knob abated and
the knob creaked. Jozefina jumped
in her armchair and looked at me.
Her face was damp, it glistened, illuminated by the light of that shining mushroom. She looked as if she
had run into the house fleeing from
the storm, which had caught her in
the back of the courtyard.
“Good evening, frau Jozefina”, I just
stuttered like a little child.
“Katarina”, slurred the toothless Jozefina. She sounded as if she were struggling with a huge semolina dumpling, which had stuck in her throat
and didn’t let her breathe.
“What’s up?” I blabbed stupidly in
one breath, putting my suitcase on
the floor.
Jozefina was sniffling. She took a
handkerchief out of the pocket of her
apron and started to wipe her nose. I
always wondered why frau Fine Lady,
whenever she cried, wiped her nose
instead of her eyes. That almost made
me laugh even then, almost made me
burst out laughing.
“Ma-ri-ja”, bitterly weeping, she broke
my mother’s name into syllables.
“Mum is... dead. Katarina, Mum
is gone!”
She threw the last sentences out of
herself like an avalanche, yelling. As if
she were freeing herself. I was watching her aghast. I know that my eyes
were big, huge. I thought of those stupid, pathetic hippie-movies in which
finally liberated protagonists ran naked towards the wild wind, spread
their arms and shouted. As if they
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were free. As if the nakedness and
the shouting have finally made them
free and happy. Jozefina was upset,
and I just asked: “When, when did
she die?”
***
Snježana’s parents were at “temporary work” in West Germany, so her
courtyard and her house were full of
bright toys from the “rotten capitalism”. She had a hula hoop, a tractor
with pedals, a plastic swing, a huge
pram for her dolls, an awful lot of
dolls, houses for the dolls, richly coloured notebooks, dresses and stockings in the colours I never dreamt
of. And she also had Tito, on the TV
set in the living room. A small plaster bust covered in bronze or something that looked like bronze. When
I first saw Tito, I genuinely thought
he was some saint. I remember correctly, we entered the courtyard, and
her “grampa”, that’s how she called
him, grampa Dragan, met us at the
house door. A big, potbellied man
with grey, but thick and bristly hair
and heavy beard. With his hands on
his hips, dressed in the greasy, darkblue working trousers and a white undershirt soiled by unidentified stains,
he was standing at the door staring
at us and then he laughed gutturally.
I was frightened by that big-voiced,
loud man who seemed to be winking incessantly with his right eye so
that I never ever knew if he actually
meant what he was saying, or was
just teasing me.
“You, girl, I bet you put stones in
your pockets”, he shouted towards
me and lifted his chin. His double
chin trembled like jelly. “Ha?”
“N-no!” I shook my head. I wanted
to run out of that courtyard which
always reeked of smoked meat and
freshly made plum brandy.
“Then your grandmother certainly ties a rope around your neck”,
he laughed and his belly trembled.
“Ha?”
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Contemporary Croatian Literature in English Translation
“N-no!” I bleated, my palms sweating. “Look how scrawny you are!
Trust me, you wouldn’t be like that
if you were with me! Oh no, you
wouldn’t!” he roared, and I had the
impression that those stunted black
cherries and the pear tree were bending from his voice, that the trees were
afraid of him so they couldn’t grow
properly.
“Are you from that Pavković family,
ha?” he was lifting his fat chin towards me again, and Snježana was
pulling me by the hand. We were
slowly approaching him. I just nodded. Yes, I am from “that” Pavković
family.
“Your grandmother is a dangerous
old hog, kid. Do you know that, ha?”
I wanted to say “I don’t know which
hog you mean!” but I didn’t, I just
stared at him without a word.
“Come inside, girls! Have a bite, I
don’t want this kid starve on me...”
he muttered. “Come on, what are
you waiting for, ha?”
I was just bleakly watching that fat
yellowish man in an undershirt, and
I was wondering how he wasn’t cold,
how it could occur to anyone to get
out of the house in February, dressed
only in an undershirt.
He took us into the living room and
seated us on the ottoman. On the
wall behind our backs, a mumbojumbo, grim tapestry was nailed,
with yellowish-brown deer and does
by the brook, with the forest, a silver moon and birds above them. A
bit of everything. A forest idyll. In
front of us, the glistening of the
greenish-grey, convex screen of the
turned-off TV, and on the TV: an
indoor antenna and Tito on a small,
crocheted doily.
“Who’s that?” I quietly asked Snježana
when the two of us remained alone.
Her grampa went to kitchen to fetch
some blood sausages, cracklings and
bread.
Snježana popped her eyes and started to laugh hysterically, gutturally.
At that moment, grampa entered
the room. He stopped at the door
with a soup plate in his hand and
stared at us.
“Grampa, grampa, listen, Katarina
doesn’t know who Tito is!” she cried.
My ears were buzzing. I wanted to
vanish and cry. I was ashamed, although I didn’t know why I should
be ashamed.
“Why are you surprised, ha?!” grampa waved his hand. “But we are here,
we’ll explain everything to her, ha!”
And for the following half an hour,
or an hour, Snježana’s grampa talked
about partisans, about Tito on a white
horse, about the Fifth Lika Division,
about Kordun, from which he moved
to Slavonian mud, about the forests
and the mountains, the occupiers
and the fifth-columnists. I didn’t understand almost anything. Snježana
was gnawing sausages and cracklings,
she was just munching noisily and
nodding her head in approval. Then
grampa fell silent, looked at the plate,
then at me and said: “Go ahead, have
a bite, kid!”
“Thank you, but I can’t, I’m not hungry “ I put my hand on my belly.
“What’s wrong, the blood sausage is
not good enough for you? You Pavkovićs eat finer shit, ha?” he laughed,
and I didn’t know what he meant by
that. Whether he was joking or painfully serious.
Snježana and I went out into the
courtyard. We drove the dolls down
the bumpy brick path in the prams
I could only dream of. It was already
getting dark when my grandmother
appeared at the gate. Quietly, but
strictly, she said through the clenched
teeth: “Katarina, home!”
Just then, grampa showed up at the
door.
“Come inside, old hag, you might
eat something as well. See how skinny you are, ha!?” he laughed like
crazy and his eyes sparkled. I could
clearly see the sparks spurting from
his eyes.
45
Grandma stopped as if struck by
lightning, but just for a moment.
Then she waved her hand dismissively and walked away.
I quickly dashed out of the courtyard
after my grandma, who was almost
running. Although she always complained about her knees. I didn’t understand what it was all about.
Grandma was terribly angry, I think
I’ve never seen her angry like that.
When we entered our courtyard, she
just muttered in a bleating, subdued
voice: “Don’t you ever go into that
house again!”
I was shocked, so I just nodded obediently. I was so appalled by Grandma’s cold behaviour and her anger
ringing like a stainless steel, that it
was only the following day I dared
to ask: “Why don’t we have Tito in
our house?”
It was Sunday and we were all sitting
at the table when I asked that utterly
shocking question which shrouded
the kitchen in silence. Dad choked
on his coffee and spat the damned sip,
which got “stuck” in his gullet into
his cup, not to suffocate. Mum’s cup
remained in mid-air, and Grandma
first turned white, and then red, as
if with a sunstroke.
“Why don’t we have that... that...
Tito?” It was the first and the last
time that my grandmother pierced
me with her gaze. I was cold, I felt a
chill down my spine. “Because, because of...” Grandma was spelling
the words louder and louder, as if
she were going to burst, like a pressure-cooker...
But she didn’t finish the sentence
and I never found out what she had
wanted to say, since Mum jumped up
as if on a spring. She noisily placed
her cup on the table, widened her
eyes and stared at Grandma. Slightly stammering (I thought then that
she was stammering because she was
embarrassed we didn’t have Tito in
the house...), she finished Grandma’s
sentence, and Dad looked at her flab-
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bergasted, holding the cup of coffee
with the floating foamy spit.
“Because, because they don’t sell Tito
in any of the stores here”, she sighed.
“We would certainly buy him, if we
could find a store selling Tito.”
They didn’t even ask me if I knew who
Tito was and how I knew it. They
all tried to act normal. Dad started
to talk about trimming and grafting of fruit-trees, about the gate he
needed to oil, about various things.
And I believed them. I bought the
nonsense about the store. I found it
so convincing that three years later I
brought a small Tito’s bust back from
the school-trip to Kumrovec. Grandma didn’t even want to take it in her
hands. Of course, with the excuse
that her hands were muddy and wet
from the fresh field-lettuce that she
was rinsing in the sink when I entered
Igor Kuduz: Foto-žurnal / Photo-journal #98 – Van upotrebe / Superannuated
TIONS
the house. Later, my Mum (she was
carrying that bust between her fingertips, as if carrying a piece of shit)
laid Tito away in the china cabinet,
among crystal, into the dark in which
he was barely discernible.
Translated by
Mirna Čubranić
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TIONS
Elijah’s Chair
Igor Štiks
In the Same Cage
1.
mong the things I brought back
from Sarajevo not one attests to
my brief and extraordinarily strange
friendship with Simon. Wise and
unpredictable Simon; the time has
come to write about him. Especially
because both he and his story have
to some extent become entwined
with my own, and they played a
role in pushing me down the path
which, unwittingly, I have been following. Nevertheless, I’m still not
crazy enough to imagine that everything that happened to me from the
sixth of April, 1992 to the present was
fated to have a particular place in a
chain of events whose sole purpose
was to bring me to the anteroom of
death, a kitschy hotel room on Vienna’s Naschmarkt.
It’s impossible to forget the day I met
him. For me, first of all, it was the day
of the premiere of Alma’s Homo Faber; for the newspapers and international television media it was the day
that French president François Mitterand visited the besieged Bosnian
capital: a curious coincidence, a series
of accidental events that resulted in
the confirmation of Alma’s gloomy
predictions. That day marked the
opening of an air bridge over which
sufficient quantities of humanitarian
aid to keep the city from collapsing
could arrive. But the external referees
of this conflict did not wish to stop
A
IGOR ŠTIKS was born in 1977 in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina. His fiction, literary criticism, and essays have appeared widely in journals and
reviews in the former Yugoslavia. His novel Dvorac u Romagni (A Castle in
Romagna, 2000) received the “Slavic” prize for Best First Book in 2000.
The American edition of this novel was nominated for the prestigious International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award (2006). His second novel Elijahova
stolica (Elijah’s Chair, 2006), received the “Gjalski” Award for Best Fiction
Book of the Year in Croatia. Other works of short fiction and essays have
appeared in English, French, German, Greek, Bulgarian, Turkish, Macedonian, and Slovene editions. He made his Ph. D. in political philosophy at
the Institut d’Etudes Politiques de Paris and at Northwestern University,
and currently lives and works in Edinburgh.
the blows that were already knocking
the city to the ground – this was rather a leveling gesture on the part of a
concerned outside world, one carefully calibrated not to change anything,
a gesture thanks to which I would be
able to get out of Sarajevo when I decided to run away one July dawn.
My conversation with Alma had
strongly influenced my mood. Her
words had thrust me back to my personal problems. Her innocent game
with the meaning of my surname
had been like a trigger that began
to push everything I’d succeeded in
holding back for the past few weeks
to the surface. Richard Judge! In a
sense it turned me back onto myself,
the question of fatherhood that we’d
brought up (actually, I did it, awkwardly), a question that was actually about me, the rebus of my own
birth which I had tried, unsuccess-
fully, to sublimate – ah, is sublimation ever successful, has anyone ever
succeeded!? – and that, thanks to my
sudden decision, had naturally now
returned even more forcefully, like a
piece of wood that simply will not
sink into the water of everyday life;
the accursed splinter continually rises
to the surface!
So what am I still doing here, at the
ends of the earth? My “secret” mission
has been abandoned and I don’t know
how to get back to it, but my work
has not been carried out. An old Viennese mystery from which I was
born, and beyond that something
unattainable, insoluble, impossible
to disentangle perhaps... And beyond
that I know only that my name isn’t
Richter, and that unlike you, Alma, I
never knew my father, and that even
before I saw the light of day I sent
my parents to their death in a man-
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ner which I wish to confirm and in
the end, ma chère, that surnames really are accidental...
I spent a restless night feeling ashamed
because as opposed to the inhabitants of this city, who are being kept
awake by explosions, machine-gun
fire, and battles on the front lines, I
couldn’t close my eyes due to something that happened more than fifty
years ago. Could I really forget all this
and continue to live my former life? I
didn’t believe this would be possible
because that former life now seemed
to me like the dream of a somnambulist who has just been rudely awakened. Like him, I’m still in shock and
don’t know what to do with the life
I’d been dreaming. All those lies and
deceptions, like my writing, which
so often revolved around history and
identity, the specificity of our generation, around the fact that we are
chained by the sins of our fathers,
accusing them of Nazism, about our
attempts to find a new way in the
full knowledge of what those who
created us did, about the unavoidable Judenfrage in the end, about the
drama of the German century, the
famous German Sonderweg and similar absurdities, and then engagement,
communism, the promise of an entire generation that this would never
happen again... So much of this was
inextricably linked to the fundamental question of fatherhood, our hatred
of those who made us the oppressors
and not the oppressed... Alma’s stinging words were mixed up with these
agitated thoughts that kept me awake
during that Sarajevo night. She had
unwittingly hit a nerve and that was
the hidden reason I had given her a
low blow, which, truth be told, did
not make me proud. I couldn’t stop
thinking about that afternoon in her
apartment, the slammed door, and
her eye that had disappeared quickly
from the spyhole...
Each time I got up from bed to get
a glass of water I would ask myself
whether I was really in my right
mind, how I managed to get myself into a crazy quarrel with a completely unknown person, a mere passerby. I rejected the idea that she was
somehow attractive to me with loud
laughter and in conversation with the
serious K. und K. portraits of Ivor’s
ancestors – among them his youthful grandfather in the uniform of a
Hungarian soldier on this way to the
Eastern front – that stared at me from
the walls. I owed them an apology for
making them put up with a disturbance from a guest who was beginning to go mad.
Nothing helped me to calm down
and eventually go to sleep, so just before dawn I turned on the light and
reread the letter from Paula to Jakob
Schneider. I though about my cruelty to Ingrid, whom I hadn’t contacted for weeks, about how I would
never forgive her for having hidden
the secret all those years; she had
been motivated by selfishness, and
had calmly and obdurately watched
me build my life and work on a pile
of lies; I though about the vow I had
given myself, the postman’s role I had
taken on when I set out for Sarajevo,
about the entire circus I had made
of my life, about Kitty and all our
years together, about the abyss that
had opened between us, inside of
us, without our noticing, about Ivor
and our friendship that was just beginning, about the joy of comradeship, about this city that I had chosen
as my personal prison, about Alma
Filipović, about poor blind mister
Walter Faber...
I don’t remember when I finally fell
asleep but I am absolutely sure I did
not sleep for more than three or four
hours. As soon as I got up I went over
to the left bank of the Miljacka River
to visit the Austrian-era Ashkenazi
Temple, now the Jewish Community Center. Some of the community
leaders met me and I introduced myself officially, as a television and radio
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reporter, and told them I wanted to
write about Sarajevo’s Jews, their role
in the history of the city and their position today. They weren’t surprised,
perhaps because given the need to
justify their high salaries all the uninspired foreign reporters keeps this
thematic card up their sleeves to use
on a day when there isn’t enough bad
news. I had only one desire that I was
capable of sieving from my slough of
despair and that could perhaps serve
as a partial solution while I tried to
figure out what to do with myself. I
wanted to visit the old Sephardic synagogue in Baščaršija. I had thought
of this earlier and Ivor and I had already been over there, but we found
the place locked up and discovered
that you could get in only with the
permission of the Jewish community. At that point we didn’t have time.
And I hadn’t wanted to mix Ivor up
with what was an overly private affair.
Fortunately, everything was organized quickly. Early in the afternoon I
met a guide who took me over to the
old part of town. He opened the old
iron gates to the courtyard, then the
doors of the synagogue, which had,
if I understood my guide’s words correctly, been converted into a Jewish
Museum years before the war. The
man said he would leave me there
alone, that he had other business,
but that in any case he would lock
the courtyard gates. He gave me the
spare keys, showed me how to lock
up again, and reminded me that we’d
meet at the Community Center in a
few hours.
That is how I found myself completely alone in the synagogue, a stone
structure dating to the 16th century. It was truly a strange synagogue,
where all the ritual objects served only as museum exhibits, as reminders
of a time when the Torah had been
read here, when Spanish had been
whispered in the galleries. In the afternoon sun a gilded Star of David
shone in windows practically cov-
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Contemporary Croatian Literature in English Translation
ered in sandbags. Right next door to
the synagogue is a medresseh whose
roof is covered with points that look
like upturned bullets, and the Beg’s
Mosque is a bit farther away. Only the
absence of bells ringing in Sarajevo’s
churches prevented my eyes and ears
from experiencing the historical reality of the city – a little Balkan Jerusalem! – that Sarajevans mentioned
so proudly as if to console themselves
while that image was being broken to
bits on a daily basis, for the destruction that is taking place here every
day has been consciously designed
to have long-term affects, to alter the
city’s profile forever. What will become of Sarajevo, I asked out loud.
My God, what will become of me?
The empty synagogue provided no
answer.
After I walked around the first floor I
ascended to the upper gallery, drawn
by an unusual item. Standing down
below and looking up into the gallery I saw a large object in the form
of a book hanging from the ceiling of
the building. It slowly rotated in an
imperceptible air current that flowed
through the temple. As soon as I got
up to the gallery I saw what the thing
was. It was a book whose large-format pages were covered with first and
last names. It was the book of martyred Sarajevan Jews! The names of
the victims of World War Two were
listed alphabetically, Spanish ones
mixed with German and the occasional Slavic name. At first I was astonished by the uniqueness of this
book of memories, but then, hands
shaking, I began to examine this
list of disappeared Sarajevans. I immediately understood how valuable
this object could be for me, for my
investigation, and I began, ever more
quickly and clumsily, to rifle through
this unusual book:
Alkalaj,
Altarac,
Bararon,
Berg,
Finci,
Gaon,
Goldberg,
Goldstein,
Isaković,
Kamhi,
Kojen,
Levi,
Najman,
Papo,
Pardo,
Pinto,
There was even a Richter, but that
wasn’t the name that I was searching
for, the name I needed today.
Rihtman,
Rot,
Salomon,
Samokovlija,
Silberstein,
And then finally! –
Schneider:
Abraham,
Amnon,
Aron,
Baruh,
In the seconds I needed to take in the
names with a quick glance and process them in my brain I had the feeling
that I could hear my heart begin to
beat faster and faster with each syllable of a new name, as if it was trying to jump out of my chest, pulsing
hard enough to burst.
Benjamin,
Daniel,
David,
Ester,
Isak,
Judita,
Josef,
Lea,
Max,
Moritz,
Natan,
Rifka,
Sara,
Zakarija...
And then the next surname
Schönberg...
49
That was the end. I checked the list
of dead Schneiders one more time. I
closed the book. No, there was not
a single Jakob in the list of the dead.
My father was not among them!
I sat down on the dusty bench that
had probably been put there for tired
perusers of the unfortunate reading
matter that continued to float above
my head. And then I felt better,
even a moment of unusual happiness, which was followed by horror.
I asked, who here could have been
my grandfather, my uncle, my relative... and then, finally, fear. It was
as if I suddenly saw myself from the
outside, and I dropped my head into
my hands and truly began to fear for
myself. I thought I would go crazy if
I kept going and I thought I would
go crazy if I didn’t keep going, if I
didn’t discover what had happened
to Jakob, if I didn’t find him, dead
at least. The joy of not finding him
in the book was now supplanted by
disappointment. Everything would
have been over. I would have been
free. I would have found my truth,
his death would have been as fixed as
my mother’s grave and I could have
left this hell. I could have cried over
my fate somewhere else or, like that
accursed priest, I could have wrapped
myself up in the problems of my recently discovered Jewishness. Get out
of here, damn it.
When I finally eased my head out of
my hands and looked up, the synagogue was bathed in afternoon tranquility. The panic had passed. The
book hung peacefully, as if no one
had touched it recently, as if no one
had really disturbed the dead, and
the air current that had whistled
through the walls of the old building seemed to have stopped. I hoped
that goddamned Mitterand had already left Sarajevo and that he had at
least left something good behind. I
had celebrated his election as French
president in 1981 on the Boulevard
Saint-Germain, but my admiration
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for the man had disappeared long
ago, ground down by time. Still, I
hoped he could do something to get
Sarajevo out of its dead end. Soon
we would recognize the real meaning of his visit, the shelling that very
evening would bring us back to reality, show us who had really been
the victor here, and disappointment
would replace euphoria. But at that
point, in the synagogue, I can honestly say I didn’t worry about all this. I
was far away, in the lost world of Paula
Müller and Jakob Schneider, in the
underground of our lives, hanging on
to reality, to the surface, only with the
help of a thread that I did not let out
of my hands: that is, I needed to get
to Alma’s premiere that evening.
I went back down to the first floor of
the synagogue. I looked at the clock.
I had only about half an hour before I
needed to return the keys to the Jewish Community Center and hurry
to the theatre. The angle of the sun’s
afternoon rays had transformed the
synagogue. The section they illuminated shined brightly and, standing
within it, I could barely make out the
objects in the deep shadows. Having
decided to watch the light show, I sat
down on an uncomfortable wooden chair with some kind of writing
carved on its side. There was a war on
outside but in here was the deep past.
And silence. Divine silence.
I sat for perhaps ten minutes, collapsed on the chair and into myself,
not thinking about anything in particular for perhaps the first time since
the previous night and day, watching
the play of the afternoon light on
the Israelite temple. The tranquility was shattered by nothing other
than my own panicked scream. A
deep, incomprehensible, demonic
voice which suddenly became audible in the midst of this silence and
which emanated from the shadowy
part of the synagogue –from right
near me more precisely – affected me
so strongly that I jumped as if cata-
pulted from the chair, and in the time
it took for the echo of my scream to
die out in the galleries I found myself behind a pillar yelling in German,
French and English simultaneously,
having run past an immobile apparition that I made out in the darkness. It took me ten seconds or so
to realize that the intruder had been
speaking in Bosnian, that for some
reason of his own the unexpected
visitor behind my back had asked me
something, and that his tone was not
threatening even if it had momentarily turned the blood in my veins to
ice. Eventually I stopped yelling and
then the apparition began to laugh
out loud. I must have looked pretty
funny to that unexpected visitor, but
I was rather upset. Even through the
play of light and shadow that bathed
the synagogue I could tell that this
was an old man with a long beard. He
was now trying to say something in a
macaronic language, obviously hoping I would somehow understand
through this Esperanto: Keine Angst,
mon ami... pas de panique, ha, ha,
ha... muy bien, ha, ha” – he couldn’t
stop laughing – “moi, je ne te ferai aucun mal, ha, ha... dobro, dobro, alles
gut, heh, heh, nema problema...”
He came out into the light, hands
raised in a sign of peace and welcome.
I approached him cautiously. Had it
not been for his joyous and disarming laughter I would truly have been
afraid of him, even in the light. He
was a really old man, over eighty it
seemed to me, with a deeply lined
face, a long white beard and high
forehead. He looked like a prophet,
dressed in a worn monk’s habit. Only
his eyes, which shone like a twelveyear-old’s, did not fit with his Methuselan image. I was no longer afraid
of him. Now I was only angry, and
I questioned him in English into
which he slipped quickly, making up
for lacunae in his knowledge with the
help of French and sometimes German or Spanish words.
TIONS
“What are you doing here, man?! You
really scared me.”
“Heh, heh, it strikes me that I should
be asking you that question, n’est-ce
pas?!” he replied, dropping his hand
to his side.
“I have the permission of the Jewish
Community. I have a key, I believe.
I am a journalist.”
“Bueno, bueno. A journalist? OK...
But how was I supposed to know
who you were and what you were
doing slumped in the circumcision
chair! And then what was I to think
when you jumped up like some kind
of maniac, as if the devil himself had
spoken to you in this holy place, heh,
heh...”
“Excuse me, what chair?”
“For circumcision,” and with his index and middle fingers he made some
scissor-like motions. “Chop, chop,
heh, heh... That’s what’s written here,
see. Even I was circumcised on this
chair.”
I looked once again at the uncomfortable wooden chair and the carving on it. Maybe it really said what
he claimed it did.
“See, here,” he pointed once again
at the writing, as if I could understand any of it, and then he pointed
it out syllable by syllable, “Cir-cumci-sion. See.”
This turned out also to be one of the
exhibits. I looked at it in amazement
and couldn’t believe that right here,
where I had been sitting so nicely,
was where the rite of circumcision
had been performed. The old man
came closer and again extended his
hand.
“Hey,” he cried out, “I don’t have all
day to wait. Now that we’ve met so
pleasantly we might as well get to
know each other.”
“Richter. Richard Richter,” I said as
I took his hand.
“Enchanté. My name is... Simon, my
dear judge.”
That is how I met my new Sarajevo
friend, bathed in the afternoon sun in
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Contemporary Croatian Literature in English Translation
the old Sephardic synagogue on the
28th of June, just before Alma’s premiere, while President Mitterand’s
airplane was flying blissfully toward
Paris.
After this unusual mode of acquaintance the two of us stood silently. I
hesitated to ask him what he was really doing here. As far as I could recall, all the doors had been locked
when we arrived, the man from the
Community and myself. I figured
that my guide had simply forgotten
to lock the gates and the old man had
just wandered in. Still, I didn’t say
anything but merely lifted my gaze
and looked at the synagogue’s twostory gallery, amazed at its simple and
pleasing form.
“I’ve heard that this synagogue is supposed to be a replica of the former
synagogue in Toledo,” I said, trying
to break the silence with some art historical tidbit provided by the guide.
“This is a copy of lots of synagogues
from places the Sephardim passed
through,” Simon continued in English. “I’m not sure but who knows,
perhaps it really is possible that after
decades of wandering some former
inhabitant of Toledo got to Sarajevo
and from the deepest recesses of his
nostalgia built this synagogue on
precisely the model he had carried
throughout his exile, though perhaps
things got mixed up a bit in these new
parts. Who knows, heh, heh...”
Simon’s English was peculiar. It was
difficult to follow. He was an educated man who could deal easily with a
number of foreign languages though
he didn’t know any of them perfectly
and he combined them through unbelievable linguistic maneuvers, trying to ensure you would understand
him, creating a flood of words whose
meaning would wash over you.
“Yes, yes,” said Simon, “just the way
that memories of old Toledo are filtered through El Greco’s painting, so
for the local Sephardim the image of
the temple of Toledo became equated
with their new Sarajevo synagogue in
their nostalgia for those far-away and
exotic climes. Perhaps I am mistaken
but it seems that the memory of an
exile plays some strange tricks.”
“You’re also a Jew, I suppose?”
“Heh, heh, I’m some weird čifut, cher
camarade,” this was the first time I
heard that Turkish word for a Jew, a
word that is a pejorative in everyday
parlance here.
“Among the last in Sarajevo, as it is
bruited about town.”
“All sorts of things are bruited about
town,” Simon walked around the
synagogue, glancing at its interior
which he obviously knew like the
back of his hand, and his face betrayed a look of intense interest as
if in the course of our conversation
he had discovered some new detail.
“Der letzte Jude? Non... il y a toujours
des juifs dans cette ville. Although it is
true that when I was born, which was
truly a long time ago, mon vieux, this
town was filled with Sephardim and
some Ashkenazim as well and that today the number has fallen so that just
a few are left and we will soon be carried off by death. And as our numbers
decrease, so Sarajevo becomes less of
a microcosm that preserves the state
of affairs as it was in the Ottoman period, then in the Austrian and finally
in the Yugoslav kingdom. What can
you say, Sarajevo is the last in a series
of accursed...”
“What do you mean accursed?” I
asked, amazed at Simon’s train of
thought. “Do you think this siege is
some kind of curse? A curse of history or something like that?”
“Listen, buddy, I don’t know anything, but the longer I live the more
it seems to me that some kind of
devilish logic, some kind of ancient
curse of unknown origin is slowly
destroying all cities where various
faiths, nations, languages, tones and
paths have been mixed up like items
on a menu.”
“You said ‘the last in a series’...”
51
“Yes, the last, or one of the last of
such cities which are all on death’s
door.” Simon was now looking upwards and he pointed at the Star of
David on the big window. “What I’m
talking about is that if you try hard
and you look through that star from
every corner of the synagogue, from
the gallery to the first floor, you can
see through its points the roof of a
medresseh, or some minaret, or the
Orthodox church behind you, or the
Catholics just at hand over there,
we’re not talking about some kind of
coexistence but rather about a mixing of all that into some kind of new
thing, into Sarajevans. That’s disappearing. The people are disappearing
and only empty buildings remain,
like this synagogue, museums...”
“But still, it isn’t all over yet. All my
friends here...”
“Not the end,” he interrupted, “let’s
hope it’s not, but the end is slowly
coming. That’s why I say that Sarajevo is the last or among the last and
you can’t stop the dominoes from falling. It was in the city’s nature to be accepting, from the time it was founded
we were together, Muslims, Catholics, Orthodox, and Jews. Slavs,
Turks, Armenians, Arabs, Albanians
and tutti quanti mixed here. K. und
K. brought in Austrians, Hungarians,
Czechs, Ashkenazim, Poles... The
Kingdom of Yugoslavia left everything that was wandering around inside its borders alone, but then, with
World War II the decimation began,
the curse began to work. Still, the city
recovered, continuing to live without its Jews, or with a much smaller
number of us, enough only to keep
the memories alive. And once again
the city began to accept and fold in
outsiders, making Sarajevans out of
those who were born here and those
who came from outside. In this war,
in this siege the city is locked in a
vise from which everyone wants to
escape, no matter who they are. Because it’s not just Serbs, and Jews, and
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Muslims, and Croatians, and Yugoslavs (for we shouldn’t forget that they
existed) who are running away, it’s
Sarajevans, and they are taking with
them something of the city. Because
those who are raining bombs down
on us from the hills are only fulfilling
the curse whose origins are unknown
to us, but it seems to me that this only serves to further rip the fabric of
cities like this one, like some sort of
modern-day disease, as it were.”
“What do you think,” Simon’s theory intrigued me. “A disease, or is it
merely history.”
“Ecoutez,” he continued, stroking his
long beard. “Let’s start from the history of this century which destroyed,
at various tempos but nevertheless
quite thoroughly, world-cities, contemporary Babylons, sites of asylum
for peoples where even the morons
were born with a knowledge of several languages, cities which have remained in name while their souls, excuse me for using such a cliché but
there isn’t a better word, have disappeared, gone with the people into
exile or the grave. Let’s start with
Alexandria shorn of Greeks, Jews,
or Europeans, through divided and
tormented Jerusalem, to the split
city of Nicosia, Damascus and Aleppo, from Beirut at war within itself,
to Istanbul without Greeks and Armenians, to Salonika without Turks
and Sephardim, only to tot up the
most obvious cases... But this disease has not affected the former Ottoman cities exclusively, for what
would you say about Trieste, Vilnius,
Königsberg, Warsaw, Lviv, Odessa,
Czernovtsy... Sarajevo, I’m afraid, is
at the end of that list. Cities disappear
and only memories, empty houses
and the occasional eyewitness, like
me, remain.”
“But the city will survive somehow,
its citizens are defending it all together...” I said, trying to resist Simon’s dark predictions. “Sorry, I am
just a foreigner, but it seems to me
that despite what’s being said by the
warmongers, politicians, and leaders of various peoples here, at least
in Sarajevo the war is not ‘between
Serbs and Muslims,’ this is no ‘ethnic conflict’ but rather a conflict between those who are defending the
Sarajevo you’ve described and those
who wish the city to suffer the fate
you’ve predicted for it. And it seems
to me that they’ve chosen a good
strategy because this criminal siege,
this dirty war is the best way to rip,
as you put it, the fabric of the city,
its spirit, its soul or some other thing
that it holds within itself and that
all its people together hold onto or
at least the ones who have chosen to
stay do. I don’t know, perhaps I am
overly naïve. I am a foreigner here,
un étranger parmi vous...”
Simon listened to me carefully, nodding his head and looking up towards
the positions of Karadžić’s irregulars
every time he heard a questionable
sound.
“...and I think the aggressor will have
won on the day that the defenders of
the city turn it into a single national
or religious denomination. Then the
battle for the city will be lost, regardless of the military outcome.”
“Donc, vous êtes d’accord avec moi!” Simon cried out. “It really is some kind
of curse. Those ‘up there’ are simply
its agents and those ‘down here’ who
believe they’re defending the city as it
really is, all together, cosmopolitan,
Sarajevan in the end... they are simply
naïvely fighting against what fate has
prepared for them. Because how can
you defend yourself against a curse
when you have to fight, on the one
hand, an enemy with a clear plan to
alter the city even at the cost of destroying it completely, and, on the
other, behind your back is that curse,
that fratricidal disease which is simultaneously setting a trap, weakening
the defense of the city from within.
For the attackers are more and more
successful insofar as they can spread
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the virus among the defenders, the
virus that will eat up the city. Then
Sarajevo as such will disappear, join
that roster of dead cities that I totted
up even if some few who remember
the old times remain.”
“I have to admit that I believe naively
in this city, because if it should disappear as it is, what will the future of
other cities look like? Forgive my naiveté, but this curse or disease you’ve
talked about won’t burn itself out
and stop here... It could get stronger
and then...”
“And then let God help those who
sleep peacefully today...”
After that ominous prognosis Simon
stopped talking, lowered his eyes
and, continuing to walk around, he
stroked his beard and frowned. I shot
a quick glance at the clock. I had to
leave right away if I wanted to get to
the premiere on time. The occasional sounds of gunfire did not promise
anything very pleasant. But, just as I
had decided to say goodbye to my new
acquaintance, Simon suddenly turned
toward me and asked: “What are you
really doing here Mr. Richter?”
“That’s what I wanted to ask you.”
“Really? Well, you see, I come here
from time to time to meditate about
the past. This is one of the few places
where you can truly be alone in this
city, heh, heh... as long as no curious
visitors come by. And you?”
“I’m a journalist. I got permission to
visit the synagogue. A man from the
Jewish Community opened the door
and left me to look at the building
and thus...”
“That isn’t what I asked you,” Simon
interrupted suddenly. “I asked what
you were really doing here. In the
synagogue.”
“I told you. I’m a journalist. Un journaliste étranger, c’est tout.”
“You’re not a complete étranger, Herr
Richter, because a person who comes
into the synagogue in the middle
of the death and suffering that surrounds us, that person is perhaps un
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Contemporary Croatian Literature in English Translation
journaliste quelconque or whatever
you are, Mr. Richter, but he isn’t here
by accident.”
“What are you thinking? What’s so
strange about it?” I felt uncomfortable, even nervous, as if Simon was
reading my mind.
“This person...” Simon turned toward me and raised his voice as if
passing sentence on me. “This person
is looking for something.”
“I’m not looking for anything. What
are you...”
“This person did not come just to
sightsee,” Simon said, coming toward
me and looking me straight in the
eye, “this person came here to find
something, or perhaps someone...”
“No! It’s not true, I’m a...” I didn’t recognize that I had begun to retreat and
defend myself from the accusations
of this unknown person like a child
before an all-knowing father.
“Why were you looking through
the book? Hmm?!” He yelled loud
enough to make me shake. His deep
voice echoed through the synagogue.
His eyes seemed to drop into the
deep wrinkles that lined his whole
face. I felt my shoulders touch up
against the cold pillar of the gallery.
“Pourquoi?!”
Now I realize that fate was laughing at me, that the edge of her wings
passed close to my face and grazed
me lightly, that I was vouchsafed a
miracle, that I was being given an opportunity. Now I know that Simon
could have helped me had I answered
his question truthfully. And today I
would not be sitting here, the pistol
would not be bouncing around the
drawer every time I bang the typewriter keys as if smashing the letters
down on the paper on which I am
writing my story will make it easier
to take. Alma would never have happened. Everything would be better.
But fate’s wing brushed by and instead of telling the old man everything something else came into my
head, the moment passed, and in
front of me I saw nothing but an old
man I didn’t know who was trying to
read my mind, his almost invisible
eyes, and that strange apparition that
pulled me in and looked me over, that
slowly guessed at and bored into the
depths of the locked safe of my intimate thoughts, and that now stood
before me waiting for an answer I
wouldn’t provide.
“You’ve guessed well, cher monsieur,”
I said, nodding my head as if in admission. “I’m not really here to write
an article.”
Simon seemed surprised at my admission, and then, as if disarmed
by my confession, he looked at me
with curiosity. His eyes came to the
surface again, through the deep lines
that were almost like scars.
“The story might seem a bit bizarre
to you, but this is how it is. I didn’t
lie when I told you that I’m a journalist. I really am. I’m a journalist and television reporter. But that
doesn’t explain why I’m in the synagogue. What happened is that a
couple of days ago a friend of mine
from Vienna contacted me and told
me a strange story accompanied by
an even stranger request. It sounds
unbelievable but he’s really a very
close friend, you understand. Having
lived in Paris for 20 years he recently
returned to Vienna and guess what
happened to him there...While renovating his apartment he found a sort
of niche, or, better, a hole in a wall
that had been covered by a book shelf
for decades. And in there he found
a box containing a blue notebook.
And now, listen, in that notebook...
can you imagine what he found in
that notebook? In that notebook he
found a letter his mother had written
to some unknown person, someone
about whom my friend had never
heard anything, who was, judging
by the words in that letter, his real
father. So, you can imagine how this
discovery affected him. Not only to
discover that his father was not re-
53
ally his father, which is something,
I must admit, that could shake the
strongest of us, but to find out that
his father, his real father I mean, had
disappeared before he was born. The
Gestapo had arrested him as a Communist in 1941 under a false name.
Nevertheless, from his mother’s letter my friend was able to figure out
what his father’s real name was along
with some other details and that led
straight to this synagogue. Because
it turns out that his real father was
a Jew. And a Jew from Sarajevo, can
you believe it?! And now the poor guy
wants to find something out about
him. It’s easy to guess that his real
father died long ago, but my friend
doesn’t care about that, he wants to
find out what happened to him. He
wanted to come to Sarajevo straightaway but then he realized there was
a war on here and that stopped his
investigation in its tracks. He was in
despair and had no idea what to do.
But then, through the media, he discovered that I – his old friend – was
here in Sarajevo and he asked me
to help. I decided to help him. So I
did come here today for professional reasons, journalistic ones in fact,
but I realized that these dovetailed
with my detective work or, to put it
better, with my decision to help my
friend out. I’d been trying to find
something out about that person
for a long time but couldn’t, so you
can imagine my joy, my excitement,
when I saw that book in the gallery.
An amazing story, no?”
A half truth was better than a lie anyway. Simon looked at me searchingly,
showing real interest, and the severity that had really scared me melted
away. It seemed he was still under the
spell of the story he’d just heard.
“Tiens, tiens...This business with your
friend. Very interesting, hmm...”
“And I think that perhaps you could
help me. If you want to, of course,” I
couldn’t believe I was daring to suggest this.
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Fraktura
“Yes, yes, volontiers, if of course I can
help your friend. Sorry about what
happened earlier, I didn’t know. You
surprised me, that is, the way you
were looking at that book surprised
me. I said to myself, that guy is looking for something...”
“And you were right,” I interrupted.
“I know that what I was doing could
create the wrong impression.”
But still I was tense and I wanted to
end this encounter without mentioning the name of Jakob Schneider. It
was as if after the previous night and
everything that had happened to me
on this overly packed day I was not
ready to hear anything that some
practically unknown person might
know about him.
“Listen,” I said nervously, “I really
have to go now. I think it would be
better if I wrote down the name of
the person I’m looking for and you
could then think about whether you
can help me. My friend would be
truly grateful.”
With this I completed the role. I
wrote the name down quickly on a
little piece of paper and pushed it into
Simon’s hand before he could ask me
anything. He put the paper in some
invisible pocket of his coat without
even looking at it.
“It’s dark in here. There isn’t much
light left, and my eyes, you know...
Very interesting story... But...”
“I’ll give you my address,” I interrupted again, hurrying to get out of
there as quickly as possible, “or you
can give me yours and we could get
together again in some convenient
spot. I’d like to continue this fascinating conversation.”
“Addresses are unnecessary, believe
me we’ll meet again...”
“What...? You don’t have an address,
nothing...”
“Don’t worry about it, “ said Simon
as he tapped me on the shoulder.
“I guess I can lock the door, “ I said to
him as I headed to the exit, “and that
you’ll find your own way out.”
“You’ve got that right, stranger,”
I locked the synagogue door and ran
across the courtyard. The gate was
locked, just as my guide had promised. How had Simon gotten in?
Truly weird, I thought. I bolted the
courtyard gate behind me, hoping
that Simon knew what he was talking
about. I headed toward the Community Center. The sun was setting over
the besieged city, accompanied as so
many times before by the sound of
detonations in the distance.
Quel beau dimanche!
Adieu, Monsieur le Président.
But, at that moment I didn’t want
to think about this. The premiere
awaited me.
At the Markale Market
She took me to the Markale Market.
Alma said that you could appreciate
the true soul of Sarajevo here. And
she wasn’t talking about black market
food or the other quotidian products
that were becoming more inaccessible to normal citizens by the day,
but rather about things that had until recently filled the apartments and
houses of Sarajevans. And indeed,
here we found people trying to sell
their precious possessions, or at least
those with which they were ready
to part. For now they’re still selling
books – I thought as I walked with
Alma through the crowd, listened to
her talk to people, greet them, ask
questions, and continue on – paintings of little value, majolica, beautiful but unnecessary knick-knacks,
dominoes, pipes, antiques. But tomorrow they’ll be bringing silver,
gold, diamonds and other rare items
to this market, they’ll sell collections
amassed over many years, expensive china, the finest Persian rugs or
family heirlooms and they’ll come
to measure the value of these relics
of their past lives in sacks of rice,
kilos of wheat, a couple of eggs or
spoonfuls of oil. Simon is right, the
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noose is tightening. Soon they’ll understand this, and then despair will
set in. Maybe the bandits who profit from anarchy to take things from
abandoned apartments already sense
or know this. Wouldn’t the owners,
refugees somewhere outside Bosnia
or on the enemy side, be shocked see
what low prices their stuff commands
in today’s wartime market place.
Alma told me that at first she had
bought some rare books or little
household objects and even some
antique jewelry but now she had
come to understand how crazy she
had been to think that this would all
be over soon and now she came here
only to allow herself to be amazed
at all the stuff the city had previously hidden. She said she wouldn’t be
surprised to find the most incredible
things here, great works of art that
had disappeared or been stolen might
come to light from formerly sealed
up cellars, from underground sewer
tunnels (some of which might empty
outside the ring of encirclement, far
from the siege, who knows?) or from
old safes and chests, or that one day
someone might wrap a kilo of precious meat in a worthless Rembrandt
self-portrait.
Why not, I said. Cities inscribe their
history on walls and in objects, not in
the unreliable and corrupt memories
of their citizens. That’s the only way.
Don’t we ourselves write our lives
into those objects, diaries, jewelry,
painstakingly dried flowers that illustrate best of all the fragility of our
memories and sensations and in this
way link our existence to the existence of the city and to other similar
attempts to fix our passage over this
earth? That’s how people and cities
inscribe themselves, too, wherever
they can, both the things they want us
to know and think about them as well
as their deepest secrets. It’s possible
that we wouldn’t like what we’d find
in those opened cellars, rusty safes,
or the hidden pockets of grandpa’s
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Contemporary Croatian Literature in English Translation
clothes. Maybe there are thousands
of enormous rats in those sewer tunnels that will be quite happy to attack
us if we disturb them, to cut off that
opening and thus make their contribution to the siege of the city.
Then we examined the books on offer. People were selling their personal
libraries, especially retirees who were
no longer receiving their pensions.
Most of the books were printed in
Cyrillic or concerned Communism.
Regarding the latter category, no one
imagines that such books could possibly be useful to anyone anymore.
Some sellers try to hold the line on
prices. It’s hard to part with what are
clearly the most beloved books from
their shelves. They aren’t sure they’re
willing to sell the book to you anyway. But these types are rare. In general, the market is pretty merciless.
Some are selling books they found
in other people’s apartments. One
person has pioneered a peculiar approach – all books cost one Deutschmark. I am not sure how long
he’ll be able to keep this up. To buy
books instead of, say, noodles borders on the insane. Nevertheless, a
lot of people have gathered round
and they’re looking, flipping through
pages, putting them back, reaching for their wallets but then holding back... There’s a pile of books in
front of him, stacked haphazardly,
clearly from all over. Here and there
I recognize the name of an author,
sometimes a title. Spinoza, Hegel,
Plato, Hobbes, Homer, Dostoevsky,
Cervantes, Stendhal, Nietzsche, Babel, Musil, Joyce... all my old friends
are here. Now they’re nothing but
paper, stuff that has to be disposed
of for at least something because
soon it’ll be totally superfluous, except perhaps as fuel for fires. One
mark! I have the feeling, I tell Alma,
that the Deutschmark has never been
worth more.
We find some youngsters, fifteen or
sixteen year-olds, who are selling re-
ally old books. Perhaps they’d burgled
a used bookstore or gathered up the
books from an apartment that had
been blown up together with someone’s precious library. They have no
idea what they’re offering. I’m beginning to believe Alma’s claim that we
will be amazed by what the city is hiding. Quickly I pull out a dusty and
moth-eaten volume of Diderot and
D’Alembert’s Encyclopédie générale...
there are also dog-eared anthologies
of classics for use in turn-of-the-century schools of the long-buried monarchy; in the same pile I find and flip
through a technical-statistical study
Das Bauwesen in Bosnien und der
Hercegovina vom Beginn der Occupation durch die österr, ung. Monarchie
bis in das Jahr 1887...edited by one
Mr. Edmund Stix; then the first Gallimard edition of Malraux’s La Condition humaine from April 1933; I
skip over a couple of local titles; I see
Enzo Strecci’s songbook, here is the
first number of Das Fackel, a velvetjacketed edition of de Sade’s Justine;
last of all I dig out a German translation of Shakespeare’s Merchant of
Venice from 1935, in Gothic script
and lacking Shylock’s famous monologue from act three. I recite it to
myself from memory: Hath not a Jew
eyes? Hath not a Jew hands...If you
prick us do we not bleed? If you tickle
us, do we not laugh? If you poison us,
do we not die? And if you wrong us,
shall we not revenge?
I ask one of them where the books
came from and he merely shrugs his
shoulders. He asks whether they’re
worth a lot. Depends to whom, I
respond.
Alma calls me over. She’s found something interesting at an antique seller’s.
She shows me a pocket watch on a
chain. On the lid is an engraved picture of a girl next to a man in some
bucolic spot, her head resting on his
outstretched arm. She’s wrapped in
a diaphanous shawl and looks seductively at some faraway sight. Across
55
from her is a soldier, his rifle on his
lap; he looks with deep melancholy
from his guard post toward a distant
field, somewhere near his beloved.
Alma opens the watch. Surprisingly,
it still works. On the inside of the lid
it says in German “Dear Rudi, with
every second the war comes closer to
its end, and we to each other. Your
Teresa, Prague, 1914.”
We asked ourselves what happened to
those star-crossed lovers from Prague
and how the watch had ended up
in Sarajevo. The seller had no idea.
Her prediction about when the war
ended had certainly turned out to be
overoptimistic. We wondered whether Teresa had really waited for him
through the entire war. Cold Prague
nights beg for hugs, I figured, and
military longing needs an outlet, so
one shouldn’t have been surprised if
Rudi had assuaged it in some mobile wartime brothel. Alma didn’t
like that version. But she was not so
sentimental as to imagine that the
lovers came together again after the
war, married, and lived happily until, say, 1939. Had that been the case
it would be hard to explain how the
watch had ended up in Sarajevo. Alma surmised that in this admittedly unlikely scenario some Bosnian
regimental comrade had swiped the
watch from the gawky Rudi. No. Alma was sure that after having endured
all sorts of wartime horrors Rudi decided to spend a leave in Sarajevo in
the summer of 1918 at the invitation
of a regimental pal, and met his sister
there. Love flared up and – despite
the initial opposition of the Bosnian
friend, who did not want to see his
sister marry his best wartime buddy
(with whom he had hung around
the previously mentioned brothels),
and who was well aware of the precarious mental state of a battle-tested
K. und K. soldier after almost four
years of fighting, about whom at the
very least one could say that he was
somewhat überspannt! – it all ended
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Fraktura
with a wedding. Rudi sold off Teresa’s present the day after his wedding,
deserted, and awaited the entrance of
the royal Serbian army into Sarajevo
hidden in the attic of his cute little
bride’s house.
Just to put up a little resistance I insisted that things had happened a bit
differently. Rudi, it seems, hid the
gift because he frequently recalled the
good times he had shared with Teresa
in the cellar of her father’s tavern and
remained sentimentally attached to
his former life in Prague. And today
it had gotten here just like most of
the other stuff at the Markale Market
in the summer of 1992. And Teresa?
Alma asked. What happened to her?
Teresa quit working in the tavern
and, as early as 1915, headed off with
the first officer ranked higher than a
corporal to show up in her life, having
decided to live a nomadic existence
with a regiment whose movements
were dictated by fragile wartime luck.
It goes without saying that her father
was hopelessly sad.
We laughed at the fates we had
stitched together in our imaginations. In any case we had allowed
our heroes to remain alive. That was
a cause for celebration. We were in an
excellent mood. I asked if she wanted
the watch.
“Then you’d have to change the inscription,” she said. “If you really did
give me the watch what would you
write on the inside?”
“Dear Alma. I’m not sure I can wait
for the end of the war. Your R, Sarajevo, summer 1992,” I said quickly, as
if I’d been waiting for the chance.
I stared at her, waiting for her answer. Surprised, she tried to guess
from my expression just how much I
had wanted those words to come out.
Then she turned her head and continued on as if she hadn’t heard me at
all, as if the end of our conversation
hadn’t happened. She looked left and
right, truly absorbed by the things
on offer, began short conversations
with the sellers, asked about prices,
and slowly moved away from me. I’ll
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never forget how she walked through
that crowded wartime market. There
was no sign that she’d grasped what
I’d said. I stood like a statue with the
watch in my hand. Finally she turned
around and waved me on. Nothing
had happened. Our walk could continue. I understood the game. But
somehow in the meantime the price
of the watch had mysteriously shot
from ten to twenty marks. Clearly the
seller had been following our conversation. To my surprise he answered
only with a shrug of his shoulders:
wartime market, you shouldn’t imbue things with emotions. I didn’t
buy it. In the end, only Teresa and
Rudi could have understood that
story about seconds, about coming
close and moving apart, in short everything that love should be in time
of war.
Translated by
Andrew Wachtel
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Interview
Ivan Sršen
• Your agency was founded five years
ago, how many writers do you represent at the moment?
We are actively representing about
a dozen authors, even though our
web page lists considerably bigger
number of writers, among which
some with whom we stopped working or did not succeed to do much
for them. Nonetheless, we agreed to
keep their info there so that if a publisher shows interest in their writing
we can put them in contact.
• Are you satisfied with what you
have achieved so far?
The number of contracts signed
in the past five years is about fifty,
which is not such a small number.
In other words, without our efforts
those fifty translations most likely
would not have happened. I am generally satisfied with what we have
achieved, especially because when I
started this job I was aware that in
the first couple of years I would have
to be patient because, in its essence,
publishing is a very conservative industry and the emphasis is always put
on personal contacts. Until you know
each other, people simply do not trust
you. I am certain that all publishing
scenes operate on a similar principle
and it this respect there is no much
difference between Croatia and the
U.S. In Croatia five or six publishers who know each other decide on
everything. In the U.S. it’s 50 or 60
For the past ten years, the writer and publisher IVAN SRŠEN has worked in
the publishing industry. He is a co-owner and editor at Sandorf Publishing, but also the first literary agency that represents authors from Croatia,
Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina and other countries from the region.
people, but they also know each other. That’s why it was important to get
the contacts.
• What was your approach to foreign
editors and publishers?
My approach was that I represent
a good, quality literature from the region because this space is perceived
as unique, which does not carry any
political connotations. There is a very
small number of foreign editors, especially American or British, that
have some political pre-convictions,
and even with them those pre-convictions are mostly connected to the
study of Slavic languages, in other
words, the emotional link is established through literature. This is why
it is completely pointless to draw
lines, to discuss, for example, whose
Andrić is, Krleža or Kiš. In short,
there is no point in defending one’s
national colors at the place where this
issue solves nothing.
• You have signed a number of contracts for the English-speaking countries. What are your experiences with
this notoriously “difficult terrain”?
The main problem is that in the
English-speaking countries there has
never been any institutional or similar orientation towards Eastern Europe or the Balkans. Accordingly,
there are no publishers specialized
in the region. All of this resulted in
the fact that Slavic literature, with
the exception of Russian, most certainly is the least represented in the
translation quota. The reason for this
perhaps hides in the geographical distance, but it is also very noticeable
that out of all great Eastern European
writers only dissidents are available
in English. In other words, these are
the writers that either very quickly
began writing in English themselves
or the authors such as Kafka i.e. the
ones that never wrote in a Slavic language. An interesting case is that of
Poland, a great culture that boasts a
large number of translations from
the field of philosophy and the humanities, but I seriously doubt that
a well-educated individual from the
U.S. or U.K. would be able to name
five Polish writers from the top of
his head. Of course, there are some
specific problems: Slavic identity was
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Sandorf
not successful in establishing itself
in cultural circles in the West, so it
is pointless to expect that this would
happen to a particular culture, and
we also have to know that the Slavic
world is still somewhat exotic. We
should also keep in mind the specific
position of the academy in the Western world: the collaboration between
Slavic departments and publishing industry is not very strong, which automatically means that there are statistically fewer people from those departments entering the world of publishing. This is not the case, for example,
with Germany, which is traditionally
interested in the East, with France,
whose interest could be explained
through some kind of obscure fascination, even cultural snobbism that
surpasses geographical criteria, but in
case a writer or a critic comes across
an interesting author, that one will be
translated. We always seem to forget
Italy, although this is a country in
which our novels, at least that’s what
is seems to me, get translated perhaps
more than in Germany. Naturally,
the advantages of the translation into German are extremely professional
standards, better royalties, mandatory
promotions, participation in festivals,
the possibility of writing for journals
and magazines, but also the fact that,
at least when Europe is in question,
you have reached the peak of what can
be achieved in Europe, especially if
your book leaves a mark behind it.
• In the total number of books published in the U.S. only three percent
are in translation. What is the situation like in other countries?
Not much better. Germany holds
the highest percentage – about 11
percent; I think Italy is around that
number, if not more, then there’s
France with 7-8 percent. The percentages in other countries are considerably smaller, especially in the
countries where English is the official
language.
• You mentioned that Slavic cultures
are considered “exotic”, what does
this mean in practice?
It’s very simple, these are the countries that are not traditionally attached to these regions and their
editors generally have little or no
knowledge of the historical and political context. We shouldn’t automatically perceive this as a negative
aspect and it is not true that they are
looking only at the novels that deal
with the wars in this region. Perhaps
this was happening in the 1990s, but
until now I haven’t run across a single American or British author who
would ask me to list several authors
or books that deal with that topic. In
short, mostly these are people with no
ideological pre-convictions or particular requests, and, when their knowledge of the region is in question, they
could be considered complete tabulae rasae. We have no history of relations, no books that they may have
read, and this is why it is difficult to
talk someone into including a work
by a Croatian writer into this quota,
as small as it already is. It sometimes
seems it would be easier if they were
prejudiced because then we would at
least have a starting point to begin
our negotiations. This doesn’t mean
they are arrogant, self-important or
that they treat us like some faraway
land.
• How can this situation improve?
By starting from zero. We should
under no condition feel frustrated because someone doesn’t know something about us. Instead, we should
try to find some common points,
some places all contemporary literatures share: pop-culture, global history, current events. Then it would
be considerably easier to show what
kind of an author this is, what profile of literature. For example, postcolonial literature has entered mainstream and the American or British publishers like to publish novels
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written by Indians, South Africans,
even Africans, because their readers
are simply interested in the present
moment and the changes that are reflected in those literatures. While the
Germans will show more interest in
some kind of comfort and taste, the
Americans are interested in the current events.
• In what respect?
Now it is interesting to see how
the Third World depicts the changes
and turbulences that are happening
in the world. Literature is a vast field
that cannot be constrained, there are
few people who expect that something revolutionary and new will
happen, but they are interested to
see how quality literature deals with
those changes. For example, if you
asked me what I thought was the
most difficult type of literature to sell,
I would say that’s a historical novel
about Croatian kings. But, should
that novel be somehow connected
to the present moment, the situation
would be much easier.
• What kind of publishers have you
worked with and what are your
experiences?
It is only natural that you want the
best for your authors and it would be
ideal if you could land them a contract with a major publishing house,
but that is not always possible. In my
case it was always a combination of
happy circumstances and acquaintances. For example, I’ve known Robert Perišić’s American publisher for
years, back from the time when he
worked as an editor for a publishing house that focused on so-called
graphic novels in no way connected
to Slavic texts. However, this year he
went to work for a different publishing house dedicated to translating
world literature. A happy circumstance is that, when he expressed his
interest in Perišić, I could send him
the whole translation because the
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Contemporary Croatian Literature in English Translation
British edition was already finished
and he liked the novel. And even
though the novel will not come out
until May 2013, they have already
prepared a campaign for it. Gerald
Martin, who wrote Gabriel Garcia
Marquez’s biography that we published at Sandorf, introduced me
to Bloomsbury’s editor-in-chief who
was responsible for Harry Potter series. I am convinced that something
will happen here as well.
We were very successful with Slavoj
Žižek’s and Boris Gunjević’s book
God in Pain that was published by
Seven Stories Press, a well-known
American publisher, and which is being translated into Spanish, French,
Turkish and Chinese. There are, of
course, people at different university presses, editors with the best of
intentions, but they can afford to
publish only two or so translations
from Slavic languages a year, so it often happens that they have a program
with translations scheduled to be
published in the next ten years. This
is why I am particularly pleased that
the publishers such as Istros Books
emerged and that they published
Igor Kuduz: Foto-žurnal / Photo-journal #102 – Predigra / Foreplay
59
Perišić, Koščec, Nikolaidis, and now
we are negotiating the publication of
Olja Savičević Ivančević’s book. You
can choose between classics and contemporary writers. Yes, the printing
runs are not large, perhaps a couple
thousand copies, but I have no doubt
in my mind that a book by a Croatian
writer will emerge with time and that
it will sell well in English.
Translated by
Tomislav Kuzmanović
60
Circus Columbia
Ivica Đikić
Bonny
1.
t’s scorching this summer in this
small town and people do nothing but talk about the heat, when the
drought might end, and when the
soil might get sprinkled by a little
rainfall. A day goes by quickly with
this gentle banter narrated in shady
gardens, banter habitually accompanied by homemade brandy and
strong coffee, a piece of cheese or
a slice of watermelon. Then comes
the evening, not meant for work, as
it is, so people relocate from their
gardens to taverns, or find a place
on some wall along the main street
to sit down and scrutinize people
passing by. They inspect and examine and pass remarks, make hushed
comments and gossip...
Apart from that, evenings are meant
for the cinema. In the front row
of the cinema there is always Junuz
Bećin, his buddies in the seats all
around him. When a movie is on,
they pass loud remarks, fart, curse,
drink beer, and eat. When they’re full,
they start throwing leftover chevapis,
chicken breasts, and bureks. After the
show, Junuz and his bunch go out in
the town and walk around from the
church to the police station until midnight, sometimes going down towards
the primary school as well, looking for
someone to pick a fight with, but not
finding regular customers very often.
In the evenings, Andrija Jukić and
I
IVICA ĐIKIĆ (1977) began working at Slobodna Dalmacija when he was only
sixteen, and then went on to work at Feral Tribune, Novi List, while now he
serves as the editor-in-chief of the weekly magazine Novosti. In addition
to his journalistic work, he is the author and co-author of forthcoming
biographies of the former Croatian president Stipe Mesić and general
Ante Gotovina. He is the author of three books: a collection of stories
Ništa sljezove boje (2007) and two novels: Cirkus Columbia (2003), which
won the Meša Selimović Award, one of the most important literary prizes
in the region, and Sanjao sam slonove (2011), which was awarded the Tportal Award, the biggest literary prize for the best novel given in Croatia.
He lives in Zagreb.
Afan Šišić get smashed with brandy
and it takes them two hours to cross
the three-hundred-and-something
meters of Đuro Pucar Stari Street.
And while they’re doing it, they’re always singing the same song – “L’jepi
li su mostarski dućani” (Oh, How
Beautiful The Mostar Stores Are). And
there’s no one in the Đuro Pucar Stari
Street – tots to cripples – who doesn’t
know the song by heart, and only a
few who aren’t sick and tired of both
Mostar and its stores.
The only refreshment comes with
the winds that sometimes blow down
from the surrounding mountains.
The winds, when they’re good, blow
away the stillness the city chokes in.
For a few hours a little life that sleeps
in a shadow near some creek during
the day flows through the neighborhoods – from the church to the police station, from the Moslem to the
Catholic cemetery.
2.
It was July 14, 1991, dusk, and a little
mountain wind had just blown when
a big white Mercedes with German
plates solemnly rolled up into Đuro
Pucar Stari Street. The first out of
the vehicle was an elderly man, with
a straw hat on his head. Elderly means
that he was sixty-five or so. Except
the straw hat, he also had a dappled
short-sleeved shirt and white shorts.
After the man, a woman followed,
who could have been around forty
years old. She had a big white hat with
a curved brim, her torso was strapped
in a white shirt, and a white skirt was
flapping around her butt. After the
man and the woman, a fat black cat
lazily strolled out from the Mercedes.
The man’s name was Divko, surname
Buntić, the woman’s name was Azra,
and the fat black tomcat’s name was
Bonny. That is to say, that’s what its
massive silver collar read. When the
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Contemporary Croatian Literature in English Translation
news of the arrival spread around, the
residents of Đuro Pucar Stari Street
established the following facts: Divko finally returned home and has a
new wife, and the two of them have
a black cat as big as a smallish lamb.
Furthermore, some of the residents
noticed that Divko’s latest wife was
– a Moslem.
3.
Everybody in town knew who Dinko
Buntić was. He had been digging
ditches across Germany, saved up
some money, built two houses in the
town, bought a big white Mercedes,
and now came home to enjoy the
fruits of his labor. With a nice pension in hand, Divko planned to rest
his soul until the end of his days. The
very same soul that had once loved
Lucija, his ex-wife and a woman of
extraordinary beauty in her days. She
was fifteen years younger than Divko
and also lived in Đuro Pucar Stari
Street. She lived in a house he had
left her, and their only son Martin,
who turned twenty-five that summer, shared the household with her;
he had recently graduated our language and literature in Sarajevo and
decided to come back and wait for a
job in one of local schools. Principally for Martin’s sake did Divko leave
the house to Lucija, and it should
be mentioned that he did it against
the grain.
The town hated Lucija, and she hated
the town. For years she would come
out to her window every morning
and shout: “Fuck you all!” In the
beginning people would stop and
start endless quarrels with Lucija,
but soon they got used to her peculiar welcoming of a new day and the
town, which categorized her as one
of those people you should laugh at
from time to time, but never take seriously. Divko and Lucija divorced in
the early eighties, and the reason for
their divorce were the rumors Divko had been receiving in Frankfurt:
wicked people, who take more pleas-
ure in harming others than benefiting themselves, were saying that Lucija slept with a different guy every
night, and after a while he couldn’t
bare to cope with these rumors, so one
Christmas he came home and told her
that she wasn’t his wife anymore.
“Have you gone out of your wits, you
poor soul?” she told him.
“No I ain’t, it’s just like I told you.
Just like that, no other way.”
“Whatta you mean, you dumb fool?”
He didn’t answer, but forced his fist
into her teeth. When she fell on the
floor, he kept on kicking her, left,
right, left, right, resembling a wading robot from some science-fiction
movie. The entire street heard Lucija’s screaming and yelling, but nobody even considered taking any action. A man has the right to pummel his wife, the town thought, and
if he pummeled her, she must have
deserved it, because nobody is crazy
enough to kick the shit out of his
own wife for no reason. And even if
he were that crazy, it would be best
not to get involved.
“Look what this son of a bitch did to
me,” blood-spattered Lucija shouted
a few moments later, walking down
the street. “He beat me black and
blue for no reason, broke my ribs,
knocked out my teeth, oh, cursed
be his bones, let crows peck out his
dead eyes, let flesh fall off his bones,
let mangy ducks eat him alive...”
But the people closed their windows,
pulled their curtains, and waited until Lucija got fed up with crying and
cursing. Tears she ran out of, but
curses and profanities she didn’t. She
hasn’t run out of those to this day
and she never will, because there is
no heart and emotions in cursing, it’s
all become a ritual without which Lucija or the town would never be what
they are. If it weren’t for her, mothers
would never be able to say to their
foolish daughters “you sit down now,
for the life of me, you ain’t gonna turn
Lucija Divkova.”
61
4.
You might do what you will, you
might achieve god knows what, but
it’s all worthless until the town sees
it. There are people who left town
a long time ago, went to, say, Germany, worked hard, married, built
castles and palaces, but they never
felt at ease. Because the town never
saw these castles and palaces. Many
of them would have given it all up
just to be able to move their villas
from Munich or Zagreb to a village
or small town of their birth. All the
riches of this world don’t mean squat
until the person you shared your poverty with sees it! The point of getting
rich must be that someone might witness it, notice it, so that people talk
about it and feel envy. And to praise
it. So that the neighborhood says:
“Christ Almighty, Divko made it,
and nobody can’t deny. Look at them
two houses in the town, look at that
Mercedes, look at all that money in the
bank, look at that lady of his...” That’s
precisely what the neighborhood was
saying, but not for long. The town
can only admire someone’s success
for so long; our people can’t praise for
long and can’t find someone attractive for too long. After a short-lived
praise and admiration a time will
come when they’ll be horrendously
jealous, and then – one should never
doubt it – someone will spread a rumor and everyone will believe it, and
the one whose success they praised
until yesterday will become a thief,
an outlaw, a whoremaster, a miser,
a punk, not seen from here to Mostar, and maybe even farther. Only a
stroke of bad luck might save such a
man from this destiny, when people
would take false pity; or he could be
saved by life itself, void of anything
someone might envy.
5.
“Boy, how will you sleep under the
same roof with that fool who beat me
up like that? Even today, I can feel my
62
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bones hurt when I remember how he
kicked my ribs... How will you, you
poor soul, sleep under the same roof
with that whore and her cat...” Lucija
was telling her son Martin when he
told her he was going to sleep a few
nights over at his dad’s.
“Ma, let it go... He’s my dad. Why
wouldn’t I sleep at his house? It ain’t
much of a thing! He’s my dad, what
can I do...”
“Dog, not dad! Dog! Dog!”
“Ma, don’t piss me off! What’s gotten
into you? Uh? What would the town
say if word got out that I wouldn’t
sleep two nights over at my dad’s?
Ain’t no devil, ma, and I don’t want
the town to talk!”
“Let’em talk, let’em talk what they
will, a mother wept to the one who
cared what the town talked...”
“Ain’t no devil! I know it all, but ain’t
no devil... Come on, brother... I’ll
go there for two nights and I’ll be
right back.”
“Tell him that Lucija Slavina fucked
his mother hundredfold...”
6.
The fifth evening after Divko’s arrival into town, Martin, Azra and
Divko were sitting at a table. They
were eating. Divko was quiet. He
didn’t know what to say to his son,
so – from time to time – he would
just put on a dull smile. Azra was
refrained, but very nice to Martin.
But, it wasn’t up to her to strike up
a conversation. Bonny was apathetically lying on a chair.
“You got a girl?” father asked him just
to make conversation.
“No...”
“Oh... How come, boy!?”
“Just like that, I don’t!”
“There’s no reason to get pissed. For
Christ’s sake... Fuck!”
“I’m not gettin’ pissed. It’s just that it’s
none of your fuckin’ business. How
old is he?” Martin asked Azra, turning his eyes at Bonny. He asked just
to change the subject.
“Six,” Azra answered, briefly and
cordially.
“You like him?” Divko interfered.
“He ain’t bad, what do I know... I
don’t know much about cats.”
“Well, you see, I know all about them,
and I can tell you that you can’t find
a finer-looking cat than my Bonny
for miles around. I swear, there’s no a
better-looking cat from here to Frankfurt! And even if it were, I would’ve
found it and poisoned it, so Bonny
would be the best-looking again.”
“Come on, Divko, quit yappin’!”
Azra was a little embarrassed, but
Divko paid no heed. He went on to
say he wouldn’t have given up Bonny even if someone gave him ten
thousand Deutsch marks, and people had offered, too. He and ‘his kid’
spoke to each other like real people
and nobody ever proved to be a better companion than his cat; no one
could understand a man better than
an animal; and he would have gone
crazy in Germany if it weren’t for
Bonny...
Azra knew the story was meant for
her and she knew she shouldn’t say
anything. If she’d learned anything in
these seven or eight years with Divko,
she learned how to keep her mouth
shut. Many a night she thought about
her silence, and this one was such a
night: Martin left to his room, Divko fell asleep quickly, and she kept
her eyes open, listening to locusts,
dogs barking, and Andrija Jukić’s
and Afan Šišić’s drunken song. She
thought of her destiny, which led her
to a man who gave her peace only
when he was asleep, and he couldn’t
sleep much. If she spent another three
hundred years lying in this bed, she
wouldn’t grasp the idea why she had
decided to live with this bitter man
of rough appearance, a man averse to
other people and joking. Since she
met him and soon thereafter started
to live with him, she’s been fending
off all kinds of companies, because
who would want to sit with Divko:
TIONS
he had the ability to drag any story
into a black hole with a hopeless, rotten bottom, and our man (no matter where in the world he lived) loves
those conversations led only for the
purpose of talking hot air. That’s how
Divko scared people away and how
Azra spent her days, silent most of
the time, and after ten silent years
she wished for some laughter and
those long picnics that didn’t make
you any smarter, but soothed the
burden on your soul that was given
to you at birth in these parts where
a bit of luck is as precious as a nugget of gold.
7.
In the morning the news spread
around town with incredible speed,
compared only to spreading the news
of someone’s death: Divko’s Bonny went missing! Along with the
breaking news, the town also quickly
learned the details: Divko has a habit
to let his cat wander around the house
all night, and Martin has a habit to
get up and go piss at some time every night; that’s just what happened
last night, and since Martin didn’t
close the door behind him when he
used the bathroom, Bonny entered
his room, saw the window was open,
and set off into the darkness. Divko
figured all of that out after a speedy
investigation, immediately upon realization that his pet was not in the
house.
“Fuck you and the Virgin Mary,” he
roared at his freshly awakened son,
“and fuck you and your kidneys, and
fuck you and your pissing in the middle of the night. Why didn’t you go
before you went to bed?”
“I did, but I had to go again...”
“Go get a treatment if you have to piss
every ten minutes. It’s not normal!”
“What’s not normal?”
“It’s not normal to piss so much!
Boy, you’re a sick man and go get a
treatment,” Divko kept yelling, “but
I don’t know where to find treat-
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Contemporary Croatian Literature in English Translation
ment for people who never learned
to control themselves and who never learned to close the door behind
them when they leave the room. And
who keeps his window open when he
sleeps? If you’re hot, go and take your
pillow out on the balcony and sleep
there, but don’t keep my window
open during the night, you get it?”
“Well, dad, it’ summer, the heat...”
“I told you what to do when you’re
hot... What will I do now? Poor me,
what will I do without my Bonny?”
“Well, he’ll be back, Divko, he’ll be
back for sure,” Azra tried to calm the
situation, but it aggravated Divko
even more. As if he was waiting for
her to say something...
“How will he be back, Jesus’ blood on
you!? Tell me – how? Is Bonny here
for the first time? Yes, he is! Does he
know anything about this town? No,
he doesn’t! Just like you don’t know
nothin’, and how would you, you
came here five days ago! Just like I
didn’t know anything when I first
came to Frankfurt, and I would’ve
starved to death if it hadn’t been for
my cousin Stipe, God bless his soul.
Does Bonny know how to stop someone in the street and ask for directions
to Divko Buntić’s house? No! Does
he know how to get to the police and
report that he’s lost? No! Well, tell me
then, how will he be back for sure?
Come on, tell me!”
“Well, someone will see him and
bring him back. There’s only one
such cat in the town,” Martin said,
and Divko blew up again, “Ain’t nobody gonna bring him, you’re gonna go and look for him. Right now!
And you’re gonna go with him,” he
ordered Azra. There was no objection, nor could there be one.
8.
It’s been six days since Bonny went
missing. Six tough days for Azra and
Martin: they searched each and every
bush in the woods above the town,
they looked behind each and eve-
ry corner, they inspected dozens of
abandoned basements, they turned
each and every garbage container,
they checked hundreds of pieces of information rumored in the town about
Bonny’s movements, they walked
around other people’s orchards, calling the cat’s name until late in the
night, but to no avail. However, together with Divko, they did manage
to become the laughing stock of the
entire town. Of course, it wasn’t an
especially tough thing to do since the
town had been taking it slowly for
months, resting in the shade, getting
bored and keeping quiet, just waiting
for someone to disturb this stillness
so that the poison accumulated in the
long months of monotony could be
unleashed.
“Divko, any news about the cat?”
asked Antiša Franjić, the owner of the
local tavern where Divko – since his
return, and especially after Bonny’s
disappearance – was always the first
guest to order a shot of brandy, pretending to be deeply concerned.
“No, Ante... These six days seem like
six long years. The whole day I think
about nothing but my Bonny, has
he got got something to eat, something to drink, has some fool kicked
him on his ribs, or hit him with a
stone... There you go, Ante, that’s
my life... No matter the money, no
matter anything!” Divko answered,
showing himself in the light no one
had seen before. As never before, he
was as feeble as autumn in Frankfurt,
and he never hid his despair. He was
trying to make everyone see the sorrow that had filled every moment of
the past six days. However, expecting
these people to understand the sorrow caused by the loss of a cat was
equal to expecting guardian father
Ljubo Ančić to exempt the poor from
paying priest charges forcing them to
loan money every winter and take
down that one smoked ham from the
attic so that the god’s servants would
be rewarded.
63
“Divko, man, let that cat go. The
whole town is laughing at you, and
especially at your wife and son for
walking around the whole time, meowing and meowing, as if they were
real cats.”
“For the life of me, they’re gonna be
meowing until Bonny meows back
at them! And let the people laugh as
much as they want, let them mock,
let them say whatever they want...
And I’m telling you Antiša, it’s not
gonna be long until you see the whole
town meowing, people looking behind corners, going to the fields,
checking behind every stone and
bush, and meowing, my friend, meowing like a thousand cats being
skinned alive,” Divko’s answer was
as keen as it was serious.
It didn’t take long and the town’s electricity poles were covered in posters,
or more precisely, white sheets of paper with the following notice in large,
uneven letters: LET IT BE KNOWN
TO EVERYONE!!! A BIG BLACK CAT
BY THE NAME OF BONNY WAS
LOST AND CANNOT BE FOUND.
WHOEVER FINDS HIM DEAD OR
ALIVE AND BRINGS HIM BACK TO
HIS MASTER WILL GET 2000 DM
IN CASH AND A PRESENT. DIVKO
BUNTIĆ.
9.
The town went crazy for Divko’s
Bonny, and the craziest was Andrija
Lukač also known as Bili. He had a
really dark complexion, but he got his
nickname because he would always
start telling something by saying: “Bi
li... or Would you...” Truth be told,
Andrija was crazy even before Bonny
went missing: some say it happened
exactly fifty-two years ago, when he
exited his mother’s womb. Others say
it happened about a year and a half
before Divko’s cat was lost, in January of 1990 to be exact.
In those days, a little after the New
Year’s celebration, a rumor spread
around the town that the bolt and
64
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spring factory was acquiring some
weird machine, and that a special
room for this machine was being
built with concrete walls two and a
half meters thick. No one had any
idea what the machine was for or
what it would do, but – indeed, with
a lot of effort – they all soon learned
how to pronounce its name: accelerator. The story about the accelerator was passed from person to person
and pretty soon the town spoke about
nothing else but this device that had
in the meantime become dangerous,
deadly and lethal. That’s how it often goes with things and phenomena
people know nothing about, so they
believe those who successfully pretend to know something.
On Sunday, a little after the 11 o’clock
service, a line of people formed on
the main street – then still carrying
the name of Josip Broz Tito – carrying banners and chanting. “We
don’t want Chernobyl!” – people
were shouting, “We won’t let you
poison us” – the banners said, “Away
with killers of our children!” – some
individual chants were heard, after
which the mass responded with approval. You could hear “away”, “no
more”, “we won’t let”, “long live” echoing the streets, and leading the line,
just like Comrade Tito, was Andrija
Lukač Bili, not caring about his vocal
chords. Bili finally had his moment,
as his face lit up with pride, because,
for the first time in his life, he seemed
important and serious to himself.
(That’s what usually happens in these
parts of the world: when a town is
triggered out of its monotony, which
doesn’t happen often, someone from
the fringes elbows his way to the
front; someone who’s been ignored
by the town, or even better, laughed
at; when a town is triggered out of its
monotony those who stand out because of their wit and reputation retreat into the peace and quiet of their
homes and make every effort to avoid
attention in the streets, they stop go-
ing to taverns, they don’t share their
thoughts with anyone, they just for
the turmoil to settle and for their lives
to return back to everyday boredom
so they can repossess their positions
they consider natural to them; when
a town livens up, the marginal people
who made their way to the forefront
of protesting files become important,
but it lasts for a short period after
which they typically refuse to make
peace with the fact they must return
to the positions they had had before
the riots and melees.)
Andrija Lukač held a speech in front
of the hotel where the whole town
quickly assembled. This is what he
said: “Yesterday we were at the bolt
factory and we saw what they’re building. Brothers, they are building some
bunker with three-meter thick walls.
Now we ask: why does a factory need
a bunker with three-meter walls?
Well, they need it because they want
to bring the devil from hell to these
parts so that he could poison us all
and take us straight to hell!”
“Away with the devil from hell!”
shouted someone from the crowd
and the crowd responded “away!” No
one asked why someone would build
a three-meter wall in order to kill people: probably the opposite should be
the case, but there in front of the hotel there was no room for some serious thought.
“I, too, say away with him, but the
question is who brings the devil from
hell here to choke us all to death and
poison our children? Huh? Who?”
People quietly looked at each other
in confusion, and Bili went on: “The
municipality, brothers, those from
the government, that’s who!”
“Away with the municipality and
its people!” someone cried from the
crowd gathered in front of the hotel,
and when the noise settled, Andrija continued his speech: “And why,
brothers, do the municipality people
want to bring us the devil from hell
to kill us all? Huh? Why?”
TIONS
Again people became silent and exchanged each other dull looks until
Bili spoke again: “Because, brothers, they want to exterminate all the
Croats, they want to kill and choke
to death all of us and to root out our
seed. You are all well aware who the
director of the post office is. A Serb.
And who is the manager up there at
the department store? A Serb. And
who is the police chief? A Serb. And
do you know who coaches the soccer team? A Serb. Croats, my brothers, are nowhere to be seen, and we’re
the majority here. Communists and
municipality people are to blame for
this, they all want us Croats to disappear from this area and the Serbs
to settle instead. So that all of this is
theirs. But, but, but... If, if, if... If
they want to do that, we’ll be ready,
they’d better watch out.”
Then some unknown person started singing “Rise, Banus!” and very
soon everybody joined in. Someone
else then started singing “Heavy Fogs
Above Kupres”, after that someone
shouted “This is Croatia!” and in the
end Bili ordered people to march towards the town hall also instructing
them to buy fifty eggs each, and everyone bought eggs and threw them
on the façade of the shabby building
which soon thereafter changed its
color and became kind of shitty. After that a helicopter started buzzing
above the gathered people’s heads,
full of cops from Sarajevo, which the
people soon realized. Some said that
the cops had come to arrest Andrija
Lukač and everyone started chanting, “We won’t let you take Bili, we
won’t let you take Bili!”, and the
crowd moved towards the post office and shouted “Thief, thief!” for
another hour, as well as “Milan, you
Serb, where’s the money from the
post office!?” When they were done,
they proceeded to the police building, which by now was protected by
a special police squadron from Sarajevo, wearing helmets and shields,
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Contemporary Croatian Literature in English Translation
and the people started shouting “Red
gang...” Everything was transpiring
quickly, as if someone had pressed
fast forward button on the remote,
so you couldn’t really grasp what was
happening, who was shouting, why,
as if the town lost control and spread
from the high school to the primary school, flooding the main street,
made its way into the side streets
and somehow came to life, went
crazy, gone wild, broke away from
apathy and monotony, broke away
from all reason... And it all came to
a stop latter that evening when the
TV sets were turned on as an example of “dangerous nationalist beliefs
in our society”.
In a day or two the people settled
down, and the municipality president Leon Dilber issued a declaration
promising that the bolt and spring
factory would suspend installing the
accelerator (as if the accelerator ever
mattered in this incident), everyone
returned to their boredom, everyday
life and retelling stories of tumultuous events, except for Andrija Lukač
who could not make peace with himself. Even the persuasions of Father
Ljubo Ančić and bartender Ranko
Ivanda, who told him that he played
his role well, that he gave his best, that
it was time to let it go and go back to
his old life, didn’t help. No, no... Bili
wouldn’t budge, wearing his Sunday
suit and a tie every day, going up on
the snow-covered hotel terrace and
preaching to people who the communists were and how they wanted to
exterminate all the Croats. The police
chief Salko Isak and the municipality president Dilber couldn’t decide
whether to arrest him or not, just for
a day or so, to cool down. Finally they
gave up on the idea, realizing that
it would have brought them more
damage than profit, even though the
Sarajevo people asked for his arrest.
As the rumor in the town has it, Dilber told them, “I can deal with the
crazy Andrija, but that fat guardian
priest and that Ivanda can produce as
many Andrijas as you like, and who
will arrest them all then.”
It’s been exactly a year and a half since
then and there comes Andrija Lukač,
wearing that same suit, there he goes
on his way to Divko Bunić’s house,
carrying a black cat which everyone
recognizes as some other cat and not
Bonny, but that doesn’t bother him,
he knocks on the door, waits for Divko to open so that Bili can tell him,
as every morning for the past few
days, “we were there at the partisan
cemetery and here he is, if this is not
Bonny I’ll be darn...” Buntić then
takes a glance at the black scruffy
thing in his hands, sighs, shakes his
head, takes a bill out of his pocket
and gives it to Bili, for his effort and
some brandy. Bili then says, “I’ll find
him, I’ll find him, I swear to God”,
and goes to spend all the money
he got from Divko on brandy. And
the same procedure happens every
morning...
Other people are looking for Bonny
too, but no one displays it as publicly as Andrija. Other people sneak
out of their beds at night, check their
basements before dawn, meow quietly, look at tree tops, remove the
trussed sewer manhole covers and
use flashlights to check the narrow
tunnels where the town shit travels
who knows where, they go through
garbage containers and bins, they
use long rods to feel the unreachable groves, they make their way into bushes, with blood on their forearms, searching all three cemeteries,
but the cat is nowhere to be found,
as if he disappeared from the face of
the Earth. People trespass each other’s
yards at night, ashamed but still doing it, refusing to quit, refusing or not
being able to, who knows... Elderly
Jozo Šarac meows in the cemetery at
night and if his long-gone ancestors
lying under the tombstones here at
Dubrava saw him, they would go
right back into their graves agreeing
65
that it’s better to die than go insane
at an old age. But Jozo doesn’t think
about that, as he keeps meowing and
calling for Divko’s Bonny as if he were
one of his own blood. Also looking
for Bonny is Father Ante Gudelj who
sneaks from the monastery at night,
humbly praying to the Holy Virgin and Saint Anthony that Guardian Father Ljubo doesn’t find out
about his nightly endeavors, because
at the Sunday service the Guardian
condemned everyone who wasted
their time to search for an animal,
above all condemning Divko Buntić
for bringing disorder among people,
adding that everyone who yearns
for money would burn in the pits of
hell, and they would be burnt at the
stake of sinners, in particular little
Janko Ivanda, for spreading stories
around the town that some priests
have joined this devil’s quest as well.
However, the people have turned
a deaf ear at Father Ljubo Ančić’s
threats and continued to look for the
cat with the same enthusiasm, and
little Ivanda still tells stories around
the town who is walking the streets
at night looking for Bonny. He says
that he saw the only shoemaker in
the town Ismet Mulić Jetra crawling on his knees on the grass of the
mosque yard, talking to himself, and
he says that he saw Stevo Važić, conductor on the Mostar-Sarajevo Express, meowing while walking along
the stream by the cattle market and
carrying a bag with a little bread and
salami and two bottles of beer in it.
He also says many other things, and
everything he says is the whole truth
because the town – and the people
in it – broke free from everyday life.
The elderly sinisterly predict that everyday life wouldn’t return any time
soon and that all this won’t turn to
anything good.
In the meantime, Divko Buntić is exhibiting his grief in public, but when
he’s alone – he’s glad. He’s glad that
he can even make fools out of smart
66
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people, he’s glad everyone has gone
crazy for his two thousand marks,
he’s jubilant because the people have
stopped laughing at him and his obsession with the black cat and instead
started secretly laughing at each other, gossiping and mocking one another, thinking about nothing else.
Divko is glad, but he must be very
careful not to show it, because people
could turn against him again and he
would yet again become the laughing stock that he used to be until he
offered the reward for the cat after
which the town went crazy.
“Damn you all, can’t you see how that
human piece of shit is playing with
you!?” Lucija Buntić would say to the
town people from her window, but
the town – as usual – paid no heed
to her words, even though everyone
knew deep inside that this time Lucija was right. Well, but who would
be brave enough to admit that Lucija
was right for once in her life...
10.
One night Janko Ivanda witnessed
something else, which he didn’t share
with the rest of the town, not even
his best friends – Hamzo and Daco.
Those pictures stayed in his head and
he would look at them often alone
in his room.
It was twenty or twenty-one days after Bonny jumped through an open
window and went missing, it was
dark and the wind was gently breezing through the poplar treetops near
the wellspring named Vrilo. There
were Azra and Martin (who went
back to his mother’s house immediately after Bonny’s disappearance)
and there was Janko, but the former
two were unaware that they were being watched by the ever-present fifteen-year-old. And he watched and
he listened... Listened to their whispers as they were lying next to each
other behind a tree, he heard their
breathing, quiet and frequent, “I can’t
get you out of my head” – he heard
Martin say, “Me too”, “C’mon, kiss
me, c’mon, no one’s watching,” – he
heard Azra’s hushed whisper, he saw
his hand on her face, her trembling
lips, “C’mon, do it”, then he heard
a dog bark, the two of them suddenly froze and paid attention for a
moment, looked at each other and
soon sighed with relief. A little later
he could hear their burning bodies
touch, their lips rubbing, “Touch
me” – he heard Azra’s yearning voice,
“You’re beautiful” – he heard Martin reply, “You’re so handsome and
young...” He watched him undress
her orange shirt and caress her breasts,
he saw her hand reaching for his blue
Adidas shorts, stopping on his chest
and stomach. Then she pushed him
away and put her hands on her back,
freeing her tits from her bra, letting
the gleam of the creek and the whole
forest in moonlight shine on them,
he heard him munch as he licked
her small, gleaming nipples, and he
watched him nibble the top of her
tits. Martin kept both of his hands
on his stomach as if he wanted to restrain the twitches jerking his body...
“You’re all warm and smooth”, Janko
heard Martin say, and she replied,
“You’re so handsome and young” and
“Take’em off, you can take’em off...”
They were frenzied with passion,
paying no attention to the surrounding sounds, forgetting that someone
may come across them while searching for Bonny, because people looking for the cat weren’t exactly polite
and their nocturnal movement had
entered the phase of absolute unpredictability. One should – Janko
thought to himself – start meowing and shouting the cat’s name and
then look how Martin and Azra react, but he couldn’t bring himself to
do it and he also didn’t want to end
this exciting show, a show that made
him sweat profusely as his tender
teenage penis grew hard. “Oh, it’s so
nice, you’re so handsome,” he heard,
seeing their bodies move, then hear-
TIONS
ing her groans and short laughter.
Janko guessed that the end was near
and that the show would stop, and
he also guessed that he had witnessed
something he shouldn’t have seen and
something that no one should know
about, something that would be so
sweet to spread around, even if no
one believed him. He thought about
that as he was watching them wobble
like two joint twigs on the waves, going somewhere far, far away.
11.
August was almost at its end. The
times of great jamborees and heat
passed. Clouds in the sky and colder
nights were messengers of the upcoming fall. Little by little people
started coming to, sobering up and
gathering their pieces, there was no
euphoria in people’s voices anymore,
everything settled down. Only Divko’s Bonny was still missing and the
town accepted that, as he was given
to them, he was also taken from them
by the devil. The only person who
couldn’t make peace with Bonny’s
disappearance was Divko, so every
now and then he would raise his reward offer by a hundred marks. And
Andrija Lukač Bili also didn’t rest, as
he persisted to bring just any black
cat to Divko each morning and each
time Divko would raise his reward,
Andrija would ask if he could also get
a raise for bringing any black cat.
Martin, on the other hand, came to
peace with the fact that his father
would never forgive him for leaving that window open, no matter
if Bonny was ever found. However,
that didn’t bother him much. He had
long realized that his father was narrow-minded and stubborn and that
there was no point in trying to persuade him to think otherwise nor to
apologize to him about anything. On
the other hand, it was pointless to let
your father know you thought he was
a fool: it was inhumane, and people
would mind, too. That is to say, back
RELA
TIONS
Contemporary Croatian Literature in English Translation
then Martin still cared what the street
said, he was glad that the neighborhood regarded him a smart and honest fellow, he liked to hear – as funny
as it was to him – how mothers spoke
highly of him to their daughters, affection of the town he never really
thought well of somewhat appealed
to him, and as time went by his opinion of the town and its people had
even gotten worse...
However, the town was quickly changing. In fifty years it hadn’t changed
as much as it had in the year and a
half from the accelerator incident to
Bonny: some new faces appeared,
those from the villages – who, according to an unwritten rule, shouldn’t
hang around the town after eight
o’clock when the buses full of high
school kids from the nearby areas left
– stayed in the taverns and streets,
nobody was afraid of anyone anymore, nobody respected anyone, everybody was allowed to say anything
to anyone, and all of a sudden noisy
foolish people multiplied, spat and
threatened, and in that way became
most noticeable. As a result the town
seemed foolish. But foolish in a raw
way, rough and primitive, because
everything was based on paranoid
and senseless patriotism.
There were stories circling around
the taverns about those who practiced their patriotism in a somewhat
more concrete way than most. They
talked about Luka Livaja, and how
he drove trucks full of dinars and exchanged them for marks, they talked
about Marko Perić who sold weapons
and if someone refused to buy them,
he threatened them from the altar,
they talked about Janja Marinčić who
joined a party in Zagreb and has now
returned to raise money for our and
her cause... And Luka, Marko and
Janja strolled freely around the town,
as they had never strolled before, they
walked around as liberators and people looked up to them with admiration, respect and adoration, almost
as if they were bishops whose hands
they would kiss.
There were many who found what
the town had turned into appalling, but the times were such that it
wa better to keep your mouth shut.
“Fuck it, who knows how it’ll end”,
said Fahro Jarić, the janitor in the
local primary school, and his best
friend Ivo Pačar, the stoker in the
high school, replied, “You bet, bro!”
And their dialogue was the same
night after night. Many dialogues in
the town seemed to be the same those
nights, only the Mayor Leon Dilber’s monologue appeared to break
this routine every now and then. He
publicly spoke in the taverns that he
was ashamed of the town which he
ran, that he was ashamed of the stupid human brood walking the town
streets without really knowing how
to walk, he said that he wasn’t afraid
of their primitivism and arrogance,
he cursed that they should be fucked
by Zagreb, that they liked shit from
Zagreb better than pies from Sarajevo, he said a lot of things and they
listened to his passionate lectures taken aback, like children in a primary
school when a usually nice and lenient teacher suddenly goes mad. But
he wasn’t a teacher, and they weren’t
children: he was Leon Dilber, a partisan of an undisputed authority, he
wasn’t just anybody. And now the
whole town was secretly laughing
at him, they listened to his speeches
silently and started talking when he
left. The time came that the lowest
of the low could say to one Leon Dilber, “Look at that piece of shit!” in
the middle of the street.
In theory, and therefore objectively
to an extent, it wasn’t bad that the
time had come when anybody could
say anything to anyone. But it seems
that the application of this civilizational achievement had devastating
ramifications in this location and
on the people we are talking about.
And even wider than that. Because
67
the few reasonable people were now
silent more than ever. The freedom
of speech had an adverse effect on
them. More than just an adverse effect: it instilled fear in them. Fear of
the town that collectively turned into
Andrija Lukač Bili and the fear of the
town where a person like Bili wasn’t
even considered odd.
Leon Dilber, the Mayor who openly
hated his town and who was likewise
not esteemed by the town, seemed hilarious in his attempts to make people come to their senses.
“Boy, what do you reckon, how will
this end up?” Leon would ask Martin
Buntić when met in the tavern once
a week to discuss about everything,
and they would sit in a tavern because
Leon held Martin in high regard and
thought of him as a well-read young
man he could talk to as his equal. Besides that, he loved Martin as a son he
never had. On the other hand, Martin found Dilber’s affection pleasing
and he tried hard not to lose it by
making some reckless gesture.
“What do I know... I should be asking you the same thing...” Martin
defense was to play stupid.
“Yeah, right, like you wouldn’t know!
How do you not know, did you not
take a look around!?” Leon got a little
agitated by Martin’s indifference.
“Well, to tell you the truth, I don’t
look around much...”
“What do you look at then, you poor
fellow?”
“Oh well, I’m not like you... You always look around, you listen, you
care to know what people think, you
want the town to know what you
think, and you’ve been doing it your
whole life... Sometimes I think to
myself that you don’t have any other
life but this one, which somehow isn’t
just yours, but everyone else’s as well.
And my mother Lucija says poor be
he who cares what people say.”
“Seems that you and your mother
know about everything... But you
poor people don’t know that here
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you can never have a life that is only
yours, and that it has to be everyone
else’s. It has to! In your narrow minds
you may think that your life belongs
to you alone and that it shouldn’t or
mustn’t concern anyone, but what
you think, you can just stick it to your
dad’s cat. Because that’s what people
are, it’s in their nature, and because of
that the more you want your life to be
secret the more public it gets. That’s
what you don’t know and when you
figure it out it will be too late...”
Then he stood up from the table,
patted Martin’s on the shoulder, and
slowly walked out of the tavern. As he
left, he seemed a little tired.
12.
It’s been a long time since it last happened to her. Twenty-one years exactly. His name was Klaus, he was
blonde like some German deity, he
was lean and burly, he had gentle
hands and animals listened to him.
He arrived to Prozor, her hometown,
one summer just like this one and
Azra went to the soccer field every
day to watch him. After only a few
days he noticed she was watching
him, and he started watching her
back. Then one day he approached
her and touched her hand... And the
following day he caressed her cheek
with his palm... And she kept coming. Every day. And people immediately started a gossip that doctor Hamid Begić’s daughter was getting cozy
with a Kraut from the circus.
But she wasn’t just getting cozy, she
fell in love. She really fell in love.
And when the circus was leaving Prozor she just sat in a truck and wept,
and Klaus put his arm around her,
poker-face expression on his face,
and she wept because she was afraid
of her love, and she was afraid of the
great world, and she feared her father because he had told her to forget
about him and never come back to
his house... Later she would find out
that Klaus was a mistake, and when
she met Divko Buntić, somehow she
immediately knew that he wasn’t the
right man for her. But, the wrong
things in life usually seem easier to
achieve. She only knew there was no
going back to doctor Hamid Begić’s
house in Prozor.
And now the history repeats itself.
But she cannot do it again, it’s been
twenty-one years and her heart fell
asleep, her hands got tired, her eyes
got numb, her forehead got wrinkled. She knows she mustn’t and she
shouldn’t, but it’s pulling her in: she’s
being pulled in by his youth, his lips
and hands, his passion, his turbulent
blood and exciting hot thought. She
can’t not come to the place that he
finds for them to touch, she cannot
simply not show up, even though
she sticks to her decision that starting tonight she wouldn’t have anything to do with him until the very
last moment. And when she realizes
that she is running out of time, she
nervously runs out of the house telling Divko she’s going to look for Bonny for a while. And she keeps doing
it all the time because, for a woman
who has yearned a little tenderness
and warmth her whole life, it’s easy
to get accustomed to Martin’s kisses
and caresses.
Well, that’s the story of the secret
love affair between Azra Buntić and
Martin Buntić, and only little Janko
Ivanda knows the secret. He knows
it and keeps it to himself.
13.
It was the fifty-first day of Bonny’s
disappearance. It was raining, the
smell of rot was in the air and it was
very usual that on a day like this – a
Sunday, on top of everything – no
one in the town even thought of any
excitement: people only focus on
how to get through the day, they’re
grumpy and like to get into arguments, and of course, they’re not
strangers to getting drunk either.
There is nothing more depressing
TIONS
than a rainy fall Sunday in a Bosnian
small town, that’s for sure.
However, from time to time, some
piece of news breaks the sorrow of
a rainy Sunday: it’s usually the news
of someone’s death, but paradoxically, even such news chases off the
sadness and livens up the town. But
sometimes the news could be somewhat more cheerful. Like for example the news that spread around the
town on the afore-mentioned fiftyfirst day of Bonny’s disappearance:
“Bonny’s been found!” as well as “Little Janko Ivanda found him!” “The
kid’s getting three and a half thousand marks!” “What will the kid do
with all that money!” In fact, it was
true, Janko did manage to find him.
This is what he told people who
promptly gathered in front of the
department store to see Bonny, as
he was squeezing the cat to his chest:
“This morning I get out of the house.
No reason, I just get out. And I see
this rain and I want to come back inside, but what would I do if I went
back inside. So as I ponder what to
do, I see a black cat on that tree in
front of our house, that plum tree of
ours. I stare for a moment and notice something shiny around the cat’s
neck. And I realize: it’s Bonny! But
what’s the use in knowing it’s Bonny
when he’s on the plum tree and I’m
on the ground. Worried someone
might come across I start climbing
the tree. I’ve never climbed a tree before and I don’t know what I’m doing, but I scratch and hug the tree
and slowly get nearer and nearer to
Bonny. And I sweet-talk him all the
time: my beautiful Bonny, just be
still, don’t you move, here I come...
He keeps watching me, not moving,
as if he understands what I’m saying.
And I actually come to him as near
as possible and I raise my hand so
that I can grab underneath his neck,
and he is still a rock. I grab him, put
him under my arm and here we are.
Easy as that.”
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Contemporary Croatian Literature in English Translation
The people walk around Janko and
Bonny, they look, get closer as if making sure it was really Divko’s cat, and
there is no doubt because it says so on
his neck, but it’s not the same cat they
knew from a little more than a month
and a half ago. It’s not the same dignified cat, cat-aristocrat, nurtured and
well-fed gentleman with a heavy, but
gracious walk. There is no trace of
his stylishness, classiness, elegance,
and neatness. “Look how scabby he’s
become! What’s become of him!”
Andrija Lukač Bili said in wonder,
saying out loud what everyone else
thought. Bonny was only a half of
his former self, his eyes sunk and lost
their shine, his fur hardened and became thinner at some spots, one of
his legs was visibly shaking... It was
as if he truly deteriorated to a typical
resident of this town.
After everyone had seen enough of
the cat, Janko stood up and headed
towards Divko’s house. The crowd
followed him because the most important act of this play was about
to ensue: the payment to an honest finder. Of course, Buntić immediately found out that Bonny had
been found and he was ready for the
whole town to come knocking on his
door. He was serious and audacious.
When he heard the racket in front
of the house, he took a deep breath,
checked his pocket to make sure the
money was where it was supposed to
be, and finally opened the door. Suddenly it was quiet. Nobody moved.
It seemed it lasted for a long while.
Then Buntić reached for his pocket,
took out a wad of cash, and gave it
to Janko. He hesitated a little, then
reached out, and took the money.
“Count it if you want!” Divko uttered.
“No!” Janko readily replied still holding the cat in his arms. Divko then
disappeared behind the door for a
moment, and when he became visible
again he was holding a small package
in his hands.
“Take this too!” he said giving the
package to Janko who now didn’t
know what to do with Bonny. The
situation was solved when Buntić
took the cat upon which Janko was
able to take the package with a camera in it. If little Ivanda, for example,
had used Buntić’s present and taken
a picture of the cat and his master,
you would clearly be able to see the
69
way Divko was holding Bonny, indifferently and absently, with only
one hand, looking somewhere in
the distance; holding the cat as if he
was ashamed that it was his cat, and
as if he was cursing himself for ever
considering getting an animal and
taking care of it. On that imaginary
photograph you wouldn’t be able to
see how a few moments later Divko
Buntić turned his back to the crowd
and quietly closed the door. The people started to disperse, quietly for the
most part. Janko Ivanda was now at
the back of the column, proud of his
three and a half thousand marks and
a new camera, but nobody paid attention to him anymore.
The rain poured down intensely for
a long time.
14.
“You can tell me: did ya want to let
him loose, huh?” Lucija asked her
son Martin, and he – as rarely as he
did – laughed loudly. He had a lot
of reasons to laugh about at his disposal.
Translated by
Neven Cvitaš
70
A Weed is Just a Plant
Growing in the Wrong Place
Stela Jelinčić
A
few days after Berlin, at some
party, I was drinking...
A lot. Nothing’s any fun anymore,
not if there’s no drink.
And Kosta says, “Easy babe, can’t you
see I’m driving.”
He’s driving and me, I’m supposed to
stay sober. Like I should quit drinking because he’s not drinking... Because he’s driving... It drives me crazy, the way we end up paired all the
time. Couples. I’m no lobster, I’m
no parrot, I’m no salmon tied to a
salmon for life.
I’m half-drunk, seductive, smiling,
winking...
So how do I go about seducing some
sucker? I don’t need to do a thing, it
just happens. I start dancing or I just
lean up against the doorjamb and...
maybe, I wink. At everyone. The
whole lot. At no one, and whoever it
is, he thinks he’s the guy. Like when
everyone in a group photo points and
says “See, this guy here, that’s me”,
like when everyone thinks that the
woman on the billboard has got her
eyeball on him and no one else.
He comes up to me again, he’s all
antsy, I know I’m getting on his
nerves.
“I’m gonna get going. It’s boring. The
music is total crap... I’m fucking tired
of this Zagreb new-wave shit...”
He’s right, it sucks... ‘Specially if
you’re sober and you’re driving.
“I’m gonna stick around,” I say, pretending I’m angry because he’s leav-
STELA JELINČIĆ was born in Zagreb in 1977. She worked as an editor in a
Croatian pop-art magazine, as well the editor for Konzor Publishing from
Zagreb. Korov je samo biljka na krivom mjestu is her first book, which
launched her as a young author of a peculiar style. In her writings she describes the subjective reality of a generation brought up in the dawn of post
communist transition, followed by war and social double standards.
ing me all alone, though I can’t wait
for him to hit the road.
Poof, disappear! – I imagine and press
my finger into his chest.
Then I start seducing.
My bubble bursts when some guy
invites me to lunch at his grandma’s
tomorrow because he kind of thinks
she might like me. Just when he’s
wrapping up his story, I get sick...
maybe it’s the booze...
I get to the front of my building, the
day is about to break. I rummage
through my bag, swear at this huge,
now fashionable, useless bag... Some
say you know all whatever you need
to know about a woman once you
look into her bag. My knees buckle, I press my hot forehead against
the door and blow. I write S+K on
the foggy glass... No keys. I press
the buzzer. He doesn’t open. I press.
And press. I buzz someone else. “Excuse me...”
The door to the building opens.
Of course he is not gonna open. He
is pissed. I press the doorbell on his
apartment’s door, long, then lots of
shorts, press it like an idiot. Nothing.
No one answers. I hear the phone
ringing inside. I bang the door and
scream, totally furious. I rip the name
off the door. It’s been five fucking
years and my name’s not on the door.
Only his.
“Well, it’s not your place,” he said
once and laughed. I knew he was
only fucking around with me so I
didn’t press.
But now it pisses me off. I haul our
doormat up to the third floor, I throw
the neighbour’s down the stairs... I go
down to the first floor and attack the
mailbox. My name’s not on it either.
I’m fucking furious. I shove my fingers into the mailbox opening and
pull, yank, bang at it with my fist,
make my finger bleed... I go back
to the elevator and with this bloody
finger write in capital letters: FUCK
YOU, and then in lower letters: asshole. I rip a piece out of my fishnet nylon stocking and tie it to the
destroyed mailbox, like it’s some serial killer’s signature, like he’s gonna
come back for more.
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Contemporary Croatian Literature in English Translation
I go get a cup of coffee, at a coffee
shop in the building. It just opened.
I got no money for the coffee... I got
no credit on my cell either... The
waiter looks at me, my nylons are
fucked-up, my finger’s all bloody. He
buys me a coffee. What’s he gonna
do with me? He also lends me his
cell... I call Mirna, my guardian angel. She’d never say no to me. It is
just not done, loyalty is not restricted to families. When Mirna stops
being loyal, when she’s got no time
to comfort me, to pay for my coffee
and such-like, I’ll tell her to fuck off.
That’s what girlfriends are for. Crap
situations like this and stakeouts,
like when you like someone so you
spy on him.
“And bring seven kunas for coffee...
I owe it to some guy...” I say.
And Mirna gets here, still in her pyjamas. You don’t keep your fucked-up
friend waiting too long. And you say
nothing. Mirna knows how to play
the game and that’s why she’s gonna
keep quiet until we get to her apartment. I suck on my bloody finger and
cry. I’m going crazy.
“He left me outside, with no keys,
drunk, I’ve been waiting for him for
hours, I hate him, he makes me sick,
I should’ve told him to fuck off long
ago. So what if he wants to go home,
that doesn’t mean I have to go with
him... And then he won’t open the
door... Like I don’t live there, son
of a bitch. He makes me sick... I’m
fucking sick of this fucking bondage,
this coupling everywhere around,
whatever...”
I’m screaming.
Mirna keeps driving. She agrees, of
course. She gets everything, my dear,
dear Mirna. The whole deal.
“I shouldn’t have moved in with him...
If the door was open now, if I had a
key, I’d move out right away.”
There’s tears streaming down my
cheeks, I lick them.
We get to her place. She lives alone,
she owns her own place. That’s what I
should’ve done. She makes me coffee,
comforts me, understands me.
“What a bastard!” she says. “How
could he leave you like that,” she
says and points at my stocking, kisses my finger.
I keep calling him all the time. His
cell is off. I call him a hundred times.
I try to get the network to send him
a message: a hundred missed calls. I
wanna hurt myself, I make my finger bleed again. I want it to bleed.
I don’t wash my hands. I want it to
get infected. I’m a big-time drama
queen. I wanna end up in hospital...
So he’ll feel sorry... So he’ll have to
visit me... Get down on his knees...
Beg and plead... I want my finger to
fall off...
We call our friends to come over for
coffee and I tell them what happened.
We laugh. I tell them how I broke
open the mailbox, I show them how
I tore my stocking. They’re happy.
Guys should be put to the torture. In
every possible way. We’re like a pack,
bonded. They totally go along with
me: whatever I decide is good.
And I decide what I’m gonna do: I’ll
move out. When he calls me, I’ll tell
him, “I’m moving out, l don’t need
you.” In my mind I’m already packing my stuff, I know what’s in what
box. The packing wears me out. Why
do you always have to pack to go
somewhere? If I had less stuff, things
would be simpler. Then I decide not
to buy anything any more. And I’ll
write everything down. What’s mine,
what’s his. And what, like, belongs
to both of us, I’ll throw it all down
the stairs. I’ll heave the TV through
the window.
Like that guy from Umag. The neighbour. He threw his TV through the
window because his wife pissed him
off... He first opened the window, we
found this funny, then he tossed the
TV. That’s what I’ll do.
And the chicks around me, my dear
gossipy pals, they’re laughing like crazy.
I entertain them, me the revolution-
71
ary... They’ll go home and raise hell,
and when all is said and done, all my
girlfriends’ boyfriends are gonna get
fucked over.
“And do you know what Denis did to
me?” lva’s furious. “But I gave as good
as I got, I fucking did. For three days
l didn’t say a word. He was at some
wedding, l couldn’t go with him. And
so I ask him who was there. He gives
me a couple of names, like, no one
in particular, you know?! And then,
a while later we go visit the couple
that got married, to watch the wedding video. And there, you wouldn’t
fucking believe it, there he is, Denis
dancing with some blonde the whole
evening, he’s pouring her wine, then
dancing again... I went fucking nuts.
‘Why didn’t you tell me about her?’
I ask him on the way home. I barely managed to stop from screaming
at him while we were still with this
couple of newlyweds. But you know;
they just got married, it’s all idyllic
and shit, so I waited till we got out.
And he, Mister wiseass, says, ‘What
was I going to say since you don’t even
know her.’ I almost killed him right
there. The next day I cut up his shirt
into tiny, little pieces.”
Finally, my cell goes off.
“Quick, look, is it him?” Mima asks.
“It’s him,” I say.
“Let it ring...” says Mirna.
“Let it ring a while, let it ring,” my
chicks keep repeating like an echo.
And then, I answer the cell, so that he
doesn’t give up. Screw it, I’m beginning to cool down. I’m sleepy. Tired.
How’m I gonna pack up now on top
of all this. And where am l gonna go
on such short notice?
“A hundred missed calls ... Baby,
where are you? I just got home... Are
you okay?” he asks all worried.
He’s worried... He cares about me,
I think... Sorry, irony is abandoning me. Then I cry, sigh, spit tears
into the cell: “You’ve left me alone...
And where were you? Without keys,
miserable, I was cold, alone... I al-
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most froze... I don’t have the keys,
that’s my home too... I hate you...
I’m bleeding...”
He comforts me... He’s sorry and he
says all those sweet words. That cools
me down...
“It’s all all right. Good that you broke
the mailbox... But he didn’t do it on
purpose, see,” says Mirna. Of course,
she’s my friend. A real friend. Because friends always tell you that you
are right.
And then we make up. I don’t move
out. I don’t even make a list of who
owns what. I feel ashamed because I
badmouthed him, because I said I’d
be brave, stubborn, because I said I
would stand firm and then, after all, I
changed my mind. Because I sobered
up... I’m never gonna talk about him
like that again, I think. We got to
stick together, close, like a couple of
dolphins, like mob guys...
Am I a coward, am I a cuckoo? Will
I be able to tell Mirna next time,
“Oh, he’s so brilliant, I simply adore
him...” She’ll spit it right back in my
face, “And what about that time he
left you alone, outside in the cold?” I
mean, am I that fucking cuckoo from
Animal Planet, which is my favourite
TV show... The cuckoo laid an egg
in some other bird’s nest while the
bird wasn’t looking. So little cuckoo
hatched and kicked all the other eggs
out of the nest. And this one bird
feeds the little cuckoo who grows and
grows and opens its beak wider and
wider. It grows so much that the nest
is soon too small... And then, it flutters away without even looking back.
It even, like a real smart ass, takes a
dump in mid-air.
“See, what is the instinct!” says Mirna, “the world is very simple.”
***
And then somehow, after all that, I
calmed down, got cozy and all with
Kosta. For a good two weeks everything was peaches and cream, but
there was also some tension... On
the inside... And then in three days
two fights.
First I forgot our fifth-year anniversary. I wake up, I’ve got a present with
a little bow on the table from him.
But I got him nothing, I’m not even
in the mood for a quickie...
“Do you know what’s today?” Kosta asks.
“Of course I know, but...”
“Ah, ok... It doesn’t matter, it’s all
good,” he says, but then, quick as a
flash, he changes his mind. “You’re
really selfish, I can’t believe you, it’s
not that I’m pissed because you’re not
thinking about these things, but I’m
just sad... This is our day. The only
day of the year...”
“Right. I like spontaneity more than
holidays. You know that, you know I
don’t like even Valentine’s Day. I celebrate when I feel like it, not when
the calendar says I should...” I try to
get myself out of it.
“Ok, it doesn’t matter, you don’t get it
and... you just don’t get it,” he says.
He takes long pauses. Stops dead in
a sentence. He’s like suffering and
stuff...
I go out. I’m as hard-up as the newsie
at this newsstand where I dump my
coins and cuss.
“And what are you getting for your
boyfriend?” peroxide newsie wants
to know.
“I’m not shopping for pleasantries,”
I mumble, and the mumble is left
hanging in the air.
I buy an I Love You pendant, put it in
this small box, and take it home.
“It’s not a ring,” I’m, like, joking. “So
don’t get any ideas,” but, actually, this
is my insurance so that he really won’t
get any ideas, take advantage of my
guilt, because when I’m tripping on
guilt, I’m weak.
That’s where we cut it short, but
two days later our little vaudeville
act is up and running again. There’
s a game on TV, England-Croatia...
I’m watching the game and Kosta is
next to me, sewing. He’s darning his
TIONS
damn socks. “So, you’re doing the
sewing, huh?” I’m up and fucking
with his mind. “And look at me, eh!
the game’s on, a humdinger.”
And that pisses him off. Why? What’s
there to piss him off, I think. Everything’s just the way it should be.
Hidden tension weasels it’s way out
of him... From deep inside, as if we
are walking a thin line.
So now what, why can’t I just stare at
the TV, like, it’s not normal to watch
the game? OK, it was me who started to fuck around with him, so now,
instead of being happy because we
won, I’m about to launch this war
on home field.
“Let’s talk...” I say. “I mean, I want
to solve this.”
“You wanna fight, right?!”
“No, I don’t wanna fight, I just wanna talk.”
And then, just like chicks go on about
their emotions and guys pull apart
the engines in their cars, we start taking it all apart...
“You’re always hiding something.
You’re so full of yourself,” he says.
He lists his stuff, I list mine, like we’re
still hitting above the belt, not below,
but everything’s getting pretty loud.
“Hold on, time-out,” I say. I’m fucking crying crocodile tears, I hate the
way I tear-up. The moment my ear
canal gets overloaded, waterfalls start
gushing from my eyes. “I have to
think about what I want to tell you, I
need to digest everything you’ve said
and then we’ll continue, in peace and
quiet, like normal people.”
“No, we go on right now,” he says,
swings his mug at me, burns his hand,
and drops the mug on the floor.
I now expect hysteria, I wait for him
to start screaming. Everything leads
up to that. Typically. If he gets going, I’ll tell him, “Get out. If you’re
so wired you don’t know how to deal
with it, get out, man, and freak out in
the hallway...” What if he says, “No!
That’s not gonna happen,” and then
closes the doors and windows so that
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Contemporary Croatian Literature in English Translation
no one hears us and starts screaming
all over the apartment?
I know, he’s like a delicate pussy. But
is he gonna kick-start his hysteria? Is
he gonna get down and bottom-feed?
That’s what I need to know. Has he
hit bottom, what’s down there and
how much is there? Do I know him
well enough, what’s he like inside, is
he hiding something? Now he has a
motive, wanting to be strong, he’s got
me for a witness, he’s’ even got that
fucking alpha-male thing going, all
the excuses, even if, after all this shit,
he says: “It’s all my fault,” or, after an
hour, two, three, he wants to get out
of it all and say he’s sorry, it was all
his fault because, like, he told me a
million times, and blah, blah, blah...
Will he slam the door when, beside
himself with anger and frustration,
he leaves the house? There’s some
stupid song about slammed doors.
How the fuck is this going on in my
head now?
I feel strong on the inside – it’s the
rat’s strength. While I imagine him
taking out his frustrations on me, I
feel this strength, like I could destroy
him with my eyes. If he slams the
door on me, I’ll ignore him when he
comes back. I’ll be as quiet as a catfish, I’ve made up my mind... I won’t
scare myself shitless and cuddle up
in his lap... Dance around him some
Iamalittlegirl-Ineedyoutotakecareofme dance. Because I know I don’t
need anybody, I can do it all on my
own, a fucking sewer rat is fucking zero compared to me. I’m a witch, I’ve
always hung out with the boys, everyone knows I can wolf down seven
cabbage rolls, I can chug half a litter
of worst brandy, crash traffic lights
and get away with it with the cops
and no points on my record.
Kosta heads over to pick up the mug.
“Good it didn’t break, I love that
mug.”
He says this as calm as calm can be.
He catches me by surprise, shames
me, leaves me speechless.
But, I pretend I haven’t noticed what
he’s up to because I don’t want to
make myself admit that this can be
anything but a quick retreat that’s
got all the smell of victory about it,
and it’s his. I still want to make some
things clear.
“Perhaps we don’t get each other,”
I say.
I say it the way you say something
when you have nothing to say, the
words sounding like an empty pot
sounds.
“Sure, so it is this bit now: we don’t
get each other, why’re we together
after all. You know I’m fucking tired
of your total all-day downers...” he
snaps back at me.
“I’m not feeling down, not at all.”
And I’m really not. But somewhere
in the back of my mind I realize he’s
the one who’s not so fine and that’s
all because I am, it really bothers
him that I can keep a part of me to
myself alone, but I’ve also got this
little bit of me that I can’t share with
anyone because I’m not in control
of it myself, because that’s the challenge, the riddle I can’t solve. Fuck
it, people change, they dream, their
dreams come true, or don’t. I hardly
know who the fuck I am so how can
I explain myself to him? How can
I share with him something I don’t
have? How do I know why I’m like I
am in the morning and like I am in
the afternoon. And I also like to talk
to myself. And it’s ok with me when
he doesn’t feel like talking. Then I
brood, fantasize. How to make him
realize this, how to turn this into
words, so it lights up in his head like
an “oooho.”
“Why the fuck are you always so
lost... Always thinking something...
C’mon, let’s watch a movie,” he says.
So he’s pissed, I see.
“You go, watch a movie, we don’t
have to do everything together, can’t
you see I’m thinking...”
“Thinking! Thinking! Thinking! Now
you’re gonna start up with that bullshit
73
again: You’re busting the air out my
lungs! Every fucking thing is sucking
the air out of your lungs.”
How am I supposed to be me and
free-floating among the free when he
doesn’t let me be, anchored, where
we watch and don’t’ see, everything
is leaking, passing, where we watch
and not see, I mustn’t start thinking of escape, who knows where to
or from what, how can I quit, disappear...
But... how do you disappear? How
do you disappear?
Should I ask the cat? I brought that
big ass cat home, I barely managed
to talk him into it. I found it on
the street and, like, saved it. Now it
lives in our small apartment downtown. It’s fat, we feed it too much. I
watch her climb up the window and
meow.”
“Biska wants out. Who knows if it’s
a good thing that, like, I saved it,” I
whisper.
“She’s got love now. Love isn’t freedom,” Kosta says quietly.
Yes, that’s exactly what he said. Wise,
like it was a verdict... like he’d won
some kinda victory. He said that to
me, distressed, like someone digging
her own grave, walking around with
a mask that tells you far more than
it hides...
When I look back, these have been
two hopelessly hairy, prickly, bristling months...
And then, in the end, there was that
masked party.
When I woke up that morning, all
rested and ready to lay this surprise
idea of mine on Kosta, this plan I’ve
got for a masked party, I foolheartedly praised the day. And that you don’t
do to the day not yet done.
I wanted to go as this just screwed
farm girl so I bought myself a wig...
Nice, blonde, shiny. I looked like a
transvestite in it. I just needed a skirt,
socks up to my knees or just above
them, I hadn’t figured that one out
yet, and a pair of sandals – and the
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combo would at the end be great. I
hadn’t had breakfast yet, but already
everything is gone sour...
Kosta came into the kitchen totally
upset.
“What’s this?” he asks.
Blonde hairs in his hand.
And it really hits me. I can’t remember right away.
“I don’t know,” I say.
“You don’t know? I found blonde
hairs in the sink.”
His hand is shaking.
“That’s from the wig, you idiot,” I
remember.
“But that was in the tub.”
“So, I combed it...”
He stands there for a whole minute,
angry. He is loosing balance, like he
is experiencing a knock-down right
there on his feet and my triumphal
silence is like referee’s count down...
He is speechless.
“... and why the fuck do I have to explain myself to you?” I scream.
“You don’t have to do anything, I’m
just asking.”
“And didn’t Mima, who is also blonde,
shower here?” I knock him down
again.
“C’mon, don’t drag her into this. So
tell me, what is this?” he says through
his teeth.
In his other hand, a postcard.
“A postcard,” I say simply.
“Don’t play smart... I know it’s a postcard... But what’s this on it, and how
long do you figure on keeping it next
to your pillow? That’s what I’m asking... What kind of a postcard?”
“You know I got it from Gotz. Why
are you treating me like I’m some
kind of idiot? So now I’m not allowed
to get a postcard from someone?”
“Out of all the possible postcards you
get this one?”
“Which?”
“This one, with this fucking picture.
An unmade bed. The best known picture of a bed in history...”
“You’re nuts! So what if there’s a bed
in the picture?”
“C’mon, cut the crap. A guy sends
you a postcard with the unmade bed
in it, and you even keep it next to
your pillow.”
“Man, what’s your problem?! An email, postcard, text message, same
shit. This is not your thing. Gotz
doesn’t write e-mails, so he sent me
a postcard.”
“Gotz this, Gotz that... For two fucking weeks I hear nothing but Gotz.”
“Fuck off with your jealousy! What’s
your problem?”
“So now you will say I’m not letting
you get your postcards? I’m just asking why this picture? Are you really
so naive? You really think he sends
unmade beds to everyone?”
It’s true, the picture is sexy. So what?
Is this it now? Do I have to be careful about what gets into my mailbox? Forever?
I go completely crazy.
In a moment of weakness, I’d let Gotz
get to me and my sincerity just like
Inga gets her money. And now, with
me being so insecure, Kosta’s brutally
on my case.
Both Inga and Gotz have got this
big time need to put a seal on emotion. I know it. And Gotz, with this
big-time need of his, he’s gone and
put his seal of approval on emotion.
Like lovers who leave their mark on
you by giving you a neck hickey, like
it’s their blue seal of approval. Like
robbing a bank and then opening a
personal savings account at the same
bank with all that money you’ve just
stolen and even sending them a letter saying that the marked bills have
just today entered into circulation...
In the end, you lick the envelope, let
them get your DNA, because you
know you’re not in the database and
there is nothing they have on you...
That you are a NoName Gotz. And
you are letting this NoName Gotz rip
you off of your emotions because you
are ripping him too, except that he
doesn’t know it. A thief doing a thief,
fucking fabulous... You keep his post-
TIONS
card, like the signature of his dick, on
your nightstand, and, in fact, you are
the one charging interest on his income. In this three thieves threesome
with two dicks and a beaver guys
fuck each other in the ass. Forever...
And to NoName Gotz I’ll still stick
the principal amount of money into
his ass after I go down on his dearest
girlfriend pink pussy.
Agreeing to exchange of intimacies
means exposing yourself to filthy interest, liable not only for your own,
since it belongs to you and you are
the boss of what’s yours, but also
for someone else’s as if though they
were yours.
And here’s where we’ll get down and
dirty, real mean... Whoever wants it
mean, will get mean.
Gotz, Gotz, the filth, lucre’s piling
up, the lucre is piling up.
***
Then I went to Belgrade after all. To
see Daca. To have some fun, to get
away, forget, make a decision. I raised
my hand, the taxi pulled over. I said,
“Novi Beograd.”
“You look kinda interesting,” the
driver said.
“Oh, thank you.”
He wanted to talk. He told me he
knew Željko Malnar, the well-known
television personality, and that he
could read people’s palms.
He looked at my palm carefully. His
hands were warm. I told him everything I knew about my horoscope.
“The men in your life will fuck you
over more than just once” he said.
“They already did, but they’ll fuck
you over even more. You had some
guy who had a girl child, he fucked
you up.”
He was right on the money. I had a
guy who had a daughter. He got her
when he was a kid, in high school.
But so what, fuck... What am I supposed to do? What if he’s telling the
truth? What if he’s just guessing?
“You know Željko Malnar?” he asked.
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Contemporary Croatian Literature in English Translation
“Yeah, I do...
“I read Malnar’s palm too. I could
read his future and everything, but he
wanted to keep it in his palm.”
I let him keep on guessing about me,
curiosity kept my trap shut.
“There’ll be some kinda problems
with your bro. Steer clear of him,
he’ll bust your eye open,” he said,
and looked into my green eyes like
he was already feeling sorry for my
busted eye.
He didn’t charge me for the ride,
probably felt sorry about my fucked
up life... He told me a bunch of times
to be sure to say hi to Željko... He
gave me his card, said I should call
him if I’ve got any questions. I kept it
in my purse for a long time, and then,
when it was all worn out, I rolled it
in a ball and threw it away.
And now I’m having a drink at Pif,
the taxi driver in my head, and look-
ing at Malnar... Should I say hi? I’m
looking at Malnar and thinking...
My bro will bust my eye open by the
time I turn forty. My palm doesn’t
say why. There will be a reason. Future is always cloudy. The year that
this happens is still a long way off, I
comfort myself. But it’s also too close,
I’m afraid.
I don’t care why, so long as it’ s not
because of the family. As long as it’s
not the same old corny family story. As long as he doesn’t find some
weak, sweet little woman, someone
who will look at him like he’s god.
Someone he’ll sweet-talk into marrying. Especially if she’s a virgin. As
long as he doesn’t get any kids, yelling
at them, grounding them. As long as
he doesn’t hit them. And doesn’t treat
girls differently then boys.
So his kids don’t come knocking on
my door, so I don’t have to fight,
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call 911, the women’s distress line...
I don’t fucking want it to be because
of that.
And then he’ll bust my eye open.
When I’m forty.
I’ll let my hair grow down over it,
I comfort myself. Or, even better, a
patch, round and black, a blot, crucified with two black ribbons around
my head. Like in Kill Bill. Like Moshe
Dayan.
I’ll be sitting at Pif, just like now, rubbing my palm like it was Aladdin’s
lamp... And when I finish my drink,
I’ll take my glass eye out of its socket
and wipe it clean with my shirt tail.
That will be funny.
But I’ll be surrounded by happy people... They won’t find me strange...
Translated by
Tomislav Kuzmanović
76
Perfect Place for Misery
Damir Karakaš
PART ONE
1
M
adame!” I display a caricature of Woody Allen above
my head.
“A caricature!”
That is my ad caricature. At first I
didn’t have it, then I saw almost all of
the caricaturists in front of the Pompidou had one. Most of them cunningly use photocopied caricatures
from magazines; I drew my own. First
I bought a movie magazine, read it
carefully, looking for a suitable photo
of someone famous.
I couldn’t decide between Gerard
Depardieu and Woody Allen, their
prominent noses. However, Woody’s
photo in the magazine was a lot clearer, more expressive, so I ended up
choosing him.
“Excusez-moi!” I shout at the couple
with huge red backpacks. They are
studying a map as they walk. “Vous
voulez un souvenir de Paris?”
They don’t even look at me. They
keep pointing at the map, it looks like
they are rapping. I look around, and
the other caricaturists aren’t doing all
too well either; I try a few more times,
and still nobody turns around.
Then I see a woman, a man, and a
boy arriving from Rue Rambuteau.
I walk up to them, point at the boy,
start drawing in the air with my finger. I point to Woody.
The man stops, looks at the boy, then
asks, “How much?”
“
DAMIR KARAKAŠ was born on December 21, 1967 in the village of Plašćica in
Lika, the mountainous region of Croatia, known for cold winters and wolves,
but also for Nikola Tesla, a brilliant inventor. After studying agronomy, law,
and journalism in Zagreb, he worked as a journalist for Večernji list daily,
later becoming a reporter from war-fronts in Croatia, Bosnia, and Kosovo. In
2001, he moved to Bordeaux, and a year later to Paris, where he stayed for
the next five years, making his living by playing accordion in the streets. In
Paris he began studying French language at the New Sorbonne University.
He was putting up performances and exhibitions of conceptual art. Since
his teenage years he publishes caricatures and drawings for some of the
most important newspapers and news magazines in former Yugoslavia,
winning several important awards for his work. In 1999, he published a
book of travel prose Bosnians are Good Folks, followed by his first novel
Kombetars (2000), and a short story collection Lika Movie Theater (2001).
This last book enjoys a cult status on the Croatian literary scene. In 2004,
he published a documentary novel called How I Entered Europe and in 2007
another short story collection called Eskimos. His latest novel Perfect Place
for Misery was published in 2009. His stories were selected for the short
story anthology featuring writers from former Yugoslavia and published
in Ljubljana. In 2008, his collection of short stories, Lika Movie Theatre
was turned into a film directed by Dalibor Matanić, winning a number of
awards in Croatia and abroad. His other works, most notably, How I Entered
Europe and Eskimos, served as an inspiration for several radio and theater
plays. Some of his stories were published in French as well as in English.
His theater peace We Almost Never Lock Up was directed by Paolo Magelli
as a part of Zagreb Pentagram, the most awarded play in Croatia in 2009.
His latest novel Perfect Place for Misery was staged at the National Theater
in Rijeka in 2011. Perfect Place for Misery was sold to Czech Republic (Doplnek), Serbia (B92), Macedonia (Makedonska rec) and Germany (Dittrich
Verlag). His short stories Kino Lika were published in Slovenia and Czech
Republic. He lives between Paris and Zagreb.
“We’ll settle it later,” I offer a chair
to the boy.
“Where are you from?” I ask while
drawing the boy’s profile.
The man says, “Canberra.”
“Ooh, Australia’s a lovely country,” I
say. I stop, ask the boy what he wants
to be when he grows up: he’s silent.
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I draw him a cowboy hat, two guns;
in the background I draw the Eiffel Tower, sign my name, write the
month, year and PARIS in big letters
underneath. The caricature is a complete success so I show it off to them.
Normally, like most caricaturists, I
quickly roll it into a tube, so the customer doesn’t change his mind. The
man asks, “How much?”
Some guy is also looking at the drawing from the side.
“Here,” I point to the chair, “You’re
next in line.”
The guy just looks at me and walks
away. I turn to the Australian. “Thirty euro.”
The wife gives me a vicious glare. The
man gives me the sum right away.
I take the money, shove it into my
back pocket, acting like money is
something I don’t care about, then
I ask, Would you like a caricature as
well?, simultaneously point to the free
chiar, press the tip of the charcoal
stick to the paper, strain my body. I
act as if they have said: yes.
“No!” the woman categorically says.
I look at her, slowly get up and put
on a polite smile.
“Have a pleasant stay in Paris,” I say.
2
At the bridge in front of the Notre
Dame I’m drawing a caricature for a
redheaded bodybuilder from California.
He’s got that cropped haircut that reminds me of an airfield, so I draw a
little plane on his head. A girl from
the audience, in a tight black skirt
that shows off her lean body, starts to
laugh. A few days ago I was drawing
some guy when two little Gypsy boys
behind my back started laughing at
him, he began to sweat and fidget in
his chair, thinking probably that I
was making fun of him, so I shooed
the Gypsies away.
The bodybuilder from America isn’t
bothered by the laughter. Not at all.
On the contrary, he thinks the laugh-
ter is a sure sign that the caricature is
good: because what kind of a caricature isn’t funny?
When the guy left, satisfied, I ask
the girl in all seriousness if she would
like a caricature as well: she starts to
laugh. After she finally stops laughing,
we talk, standing: she says her name
was Maud. She says she works at her
father’s design bureau; I tell her I am
a famous writer from Croatia. I try
to speak French slowly, without mistakes, but it is hard to pull it off.
I add that I am waiting for my novel
to be published in Paris and that I
am drawing caricatures only temporarily, which it true. But, she looks
at me suspiciously, with a smile, so I
pull out that novel of mine, “Perfect
Place for Misery,” and give it to her.
She takes the novel, browses through
it quickly, then laughs again, as if she
understands Croatian and has just
read something real funny.
***
The night is lovely, clear, the stars shine
brightly. We’re leaning on the steel
fence of Charles de Gaulle Bridge,
stargazing, you might say it’s a romantic scene. Maud starts dancing
with her hands in the air, then lies
down slowly at the deserted road,
melding with her shadow, and says, “I
feel so happy, I could kill myself.”
Fascinated, I still stare at the stars,
which are shining like they’ve never
shone before, then my eyebrows connect. I slowly rewind my thoughts. “I
feel so happy, I could kill myself...” I
keep repeating in my mind.
No, no sense there, that sentence has
no sense at all.
Cars. The headlights are multiplying.
Panicked, I jump and pull Maud off
the road. She’s still doubled over with
laughter, her hands covering her belly
like armor.
***
Maud lives next to the Les Volontaires
metro station. We climb the shallow
77
steps. The apartment is on the sixth
floor, the carpets red, soft, pleasant to walk on. But... that damned
sentence... it’s in my head again. I
can barely get rid of it by the fifth
floor. Maud unlocks the door, gets
in, spreads her arms wide.
At that moment, animals start to
run towards her from all sides. Dogs,
cats... Some of the animals I’ve never even seen before: some sort of
running fish. I stand petrified and
count five dogs, ten cats, two iguanas, which I initially thought were
running fish.
Then two rabbits and a hamster, the
only one in cage. One of the dogs, a
furball she called Samson, is huge and
hostile. I turn around, look through
the window: the Eiffel Tower is lit up.
I really want to pull it up and shove
it straight up Samson’s ass, that’s
kind of how I feel. Still, my mood is
somewhat improved by the obedience of the animals. When Maud’s
finally fed them all, she ordersthem
to move away. Only the iguanas are
still walking over her. Soon, they too
move to a piece of wood, growing out
of the wall.
I think this whole animal thing isn’t
much of an issue, the apartment is
huge, there’s enough room for everyone. Besides, this country’s the
cradle of democracy, we’ll get used
to each other. See? Samson’s already
approached me, peacefully wagging
his tail. I go up to Maud, kiss her,
only the nightlight is on, so I ask her,
“Where do you turn on the light?”
“Next to the door,” she says. “But you
have to buy lightbulbs.”
“If you want to use the toilet,” she
says, “There’s a flashlight in the living room.”
I take the flashlight, go to the toilet,
shine a light on the bowl, take a piss.
Meanwhile, Maud has rolled a joint.
We smoke, sip some wine, kiss. I take
off her shirt, start licking her breasts.
Her nipples are pierced and red, as
if they have been bleeding just now.
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The taste of her pert nipples, cold
metal, and her skin, which smells enticingly of chamomile, has me dangerously horny.
When I put my hand between her
thighs, she says softly, “Don’t, I’m
not much in the mood.”
I take an imperceptible breath, hiding my anger, and keep gently kissing
her neck and cheeks. A little later she
reaches over me and puts on a CD.
It was some jazz.
I think of Morana. We listened to jazz
a couple of times in those cramped
clubs on Chatelet. As always, things
went fine with the jazz until the musicians on the stage started enjoying
themselves more than I did, going
delirious. That always annoys me with
jazz. I take out the money, pay for the
ticket, and as the concert goes on, fuck
it, they start enjoying it more than I
am. You feel tricked, somehow.
“How do you like this?” she asks.
“Okay.”
“You like jazz?”
“Occasionally,” I say. “I think it’s better to play it than listen to it.”
“My father hates jazz,” she says. “He
says it’s a sport.”
“What’s he into?”
“Nothing.”
I shrug. My father also didn’t like
music. Whenever he came into the
house, he’d turn the radio down.
I never understood those people.
Once, on my tenth birthday, he gave
me his bike and told me it was still
his bike. My father? I feel sick when
I remember him.
Shortly after, Maud rolls a new joint.
When we’ve finished it off, we lie
embracing each other under warm
blankets, listening to jazz. Maud falls
asleep, I can’t, probably because of the
animals. Their eyes glow in the dark.
I’m afraid they might crawl into bed.
Cats and dogs, fine. But iguanas? I
don’t know what I can expect from
them in bed.
I get up and move around the apartment. The animals are asleep, only
Samson is looking at me, lying down
in the center of the apartment, wagging his tail. I pet him between the
ears, don’t know what to do, so I go to
one of the rooms. It’s terribly stuffy,
I barely manage to pry open a closed
window and slump into the red armchair. On the wooden shelf near my
head there’s three rows of books. I tilt
my head and look at the spines: Voltaire, Rousseau, T. S. Eliot, Rimbaud,
Edgar Allan Poe, Virginia Woolf, a
couple of books on film, something
about medieval painting. On the wall
there is a poster of Virginia Woolf.
I don’t know why people keep posters of people who’ve offed themselves
on their walls. I could never do that,
it scares me. Then I pull out a couple of Nina Berberova novels, just to
keep my mind off Virginia Woolf. I
browse through them, try to imagine
I’m holding my own novel, still hot
and just published by some prestigious French publisher. I try to imagine the title in French. It’ll say: “UN
FORMIDABLE ENDROIT POUR LE
MALHEUR.”
I get up, go back to Maud who’s fast
asleep, only to find Samson lying
where I was just a few minutes ago.
I haven’t planned on going back to
bed, I haven’t had any idea where to
go, so at one moment I am trying to
move in three different directions.
Finally, I go to the bathroom.
I sit on the lid, waiting for Maud
to wake up. I wonder if I could live
here, with all these animals? Still, better here than at Hristo’s apartment,
which doesn’t even have a bathroom,
so we’re forced to shit in nylon bags
and surreptitiously throw them into
garbage cans on the street.
I remember the unpleasant days immediately after I broke up with Morana, when she threw me out of her
apartment; I had no place to stay,
but that was easy because winter
hadn’t arrived yet. Hristo told me
how thousands of the homeless die
on the streets of Paris every winter.
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He told me about those subway gratings on the sidewalks above the stations through which warm air flows.
Whole teams of hobos descend upon them, but it’s tough to find a free
spot. I’ve dozed off on the toilet seat,
woke up after a while, pissed into the
bowl and missed a little. I find a rag,
crouch down and start wiping. Then
I hear Maud, she’s laughing.
I am wiping the floor with the rag,
listening to her laugh. Maybe she
can see me and is laughing, maybe she’s a witch, maybe she can see
through walls. I listen carefully. I get
up, walk slowly to the door. Yes...
that’s no more laughter. She’s crying, I’ve heard it right. She’s sobbing
loudly. I get out and sit next to her,
confused, carefully nudging Samson away.
I ask quietly, “What happened?”
“Maud... what’s wrong?”
“Crazy,” she sobs. “I’m going crazy.”
She buries her face in her palms, starts
crying louder.
“I’m crazy!” she cries. “I’m crazy!”
she shouts.
“Maud,” I say, hug her and swallow
some saliva. I whisper, “Calm down.
It’ll be okay. Calm down.”
After a while she finally calms down.
She looks at me, her face crumpled
and wet.
“I’m sorry,” she says. “I’ve been feeling kinda bad all day yesterday.”
“It’s the weather,” I say. “Same with
me. When it rains, I feel lousy too.”
Then I remember it was sunny yesterday. I look outside, the sun is shining again.
“Calm down. It’s fine,” I whisper.
She holds me tighter. We’re lying
like that, hugging, in silence. Animals observe us with curiosity from
all sides.
“Want to have something for breakfast?” I say. “I could bring croissants.”
“Sure,” she says, barely audibly.
“Merci.”
I get out of the hug, put on my shoes,
go to the baker’s shop. I never return.
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3
Transparent plexiglass tubes with escalators full of tourists, red, vertical
tubes with elevators full of tourists,
blue tubes, tubes of all colors; the
sunlight reflects on the glass cube,
central part of the Georges Pompidou Center: like looking into a kaleidoscope.
Tourists keep coming, mostly from
the direction of Les Halles, pouring
down towards the tilted square of the
Pompidou. It’s the only place in Paris
where you can freely draw, play, juggle, eat razorblades in front of tourists, perform all sorts of tomfoolery...
I stand next to two folding chairs,
trying to catch one of the tourists
and draw him a caricature. My eyes
constantly dart, at one point I shrug
in helpless frustration.
The problem is that a whole bunch of
caricaturists has already tried to work
them before me; this shitty location
of mine is the problem. I’m luring
them at the center of the square, and
all around it is occupied, swarming
with greedy caricaturists.
“Hey, sir!” I run after a sprightly old
man. “Would you like a caricature?”
He stops, changes his glasses and
like an experienced collector observes
monsieur Allen.
“Not bad,” he says. “Not bad at all.”
By his accent I assume he’s French.
“Would you like me to draw one of
you?” I ask.
“I’m in a hurry,” he says with a polite smile.
“I can do it standing up, it won’t take
long. Just a couple of minutes,” I walk
beside him and draw.
He looks at me, takes a deep breath
and waits for me to finish the drawing. He puts on those glasses through
which he looked at Woody again
and smiles. He asks, “You work with
color, too?”
I touch a packet of wooden color
pencils in my pocket. I don’t work in
color, it takes a long time, especially
when you do the face, eyes, hands,
which is pretty complicated... But,
if someone insists, I can color in his
coat, shoes, hat and tie a bit, and
charge it all extra.
“Yes,” I say. “But it’ll cost more.”
“How much for the black and white
one?” he asks.
“Fifteen euros,” I say.
“No, thank you,” he says and gives
the caricature back.
“Alright,” I run after him. “How
much would you give?”
“Don’t, I said I don’t want to.”
“How about ten? Seven?”
He stops, pulls out ten euros, gives
me the money, and takes the caricature.
Then he says, “This is only because
I am a caricaturist too.”
I’ve never seen him before, neither
here nor at the Notre Dame. I know
a couple of French guys who draw
portraits and caricatures at the Place
du tertre on Montmartre, but there
you need a licence, and it’s not cheap.
“Where do you draw?” I ask.
“Au revoir,” he says a bit angrily and
walks away.
In the next two hours I’ve drawn just
one more caricature, made ten euros.
Sometimes I give it away for five euros, sometimes I don’t out of principle. If someone’s arrogant, cheap, I’d
rather tear it up in front of him than
give it to him for a few euros. Sometimes, the tourists won’t take the caricature, they aren’t happy with it. That
always makes me feel bad; when you
draw, you’re already counting on the
money ending up in your pocket, and
then it all goes sour. Last week I got
a hundred and seventy euros in one
day, at this very spot. It all depends
on the day, on luck, but somehow the
most important thing is the position.
Even when I get a hundred euros in
one day at a bad spot, I could earn
twice as much in a good one.
As for drawing, here you don’t really
need to draw very well, and I – even as
a kid I did a lot of drawing, painting,
carving wooden statues. Grandpa al-
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ways told me not to use up the pencil, because a pencil is for writing; father on the other hand ordered me to
paint drains and fences, at least make
myself useful somehow. It especially
annoyed him that I rather took up
a pencil than a farm tool. My father
always said, “He’s never gonna turn
to anything!”
For a while I hanged my paintings on
trees in the woods. Those were my
first exhibitions. Then I started drawing caricatures. Even in high school,
I published them in newspapers. In
the first one I published in the sports
newspaper I drew a couple of runners at a race track: the fourth one
was running, thinking about money,
the third one was running, thinking
about women, the second one was
running, thinking about gold medals, the first one, who got away far
and was at the finish line, was thinking about getting to the toilet as soon
as possible.
***
A guy is persistently buzzing around
the main entrance to the Pompidou,
like a fly: in a suit and tie, he’s got a
long scar on his neck. Some people
say that someone in his country (no
one knows where he’s from) tried to
slit his throat: others say that a long
time ago, back in his home country,
he escaped from the gallows, and
that’s where the dark red scar comes
from. Whatever is the case, the guy
with the scar is standing by two folding chairs: he’s holding drawing tools,
puffing on a pipe.
But he can’t draw at all, and the position isn’t great either; when tourists get out of the Pompidou, where
they’ve just seen some world-class exhibition, they want to be drawn by
Kokoschka or Klimt personally.
Oddly enough, the guy in front of the
Pompidou is successful. He knows
English, French, German, Italian,
Spanish, Portuguese. Calls himself
Coca-Cola. When he grabs a custom-
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er, he quickly calls an available artist,
and afterwards they split the cash.
“Hey, Croat!” he calls me.
“In a minute!” I shout back while trying to persuade a black guy wearing
a panama hat. The guy’s suspicious,
he’s having second thoughts.
He asks, “How much?”
“Have a seat,” I point to the chair.
“Croat!” Coca-Cola’s yelling impatiently.
“I’d like to go shopping around town
and come back later,” says the Black
guy. I grab Woody from his hand,
run off to Coca-Cola; I drew for him
once already.
“Great artist,” Coca-Cola points to
me, sets up the chair. He’s clasped
his hands, stood aside with a dead
serious look on his face, like he’s
awaiting a great work of art that will
change the world. Seated opposite is
a freckle-faced English woman, she
has a huge nose.
When women have large noses, you
draw them en face, so the nose doesn’t
stand out too much. With women,
you must always watch out for wrinkles, cunningly smooth them out, always and everywhere, make the eyes
bigger; tourists love it when you draw
their eyes big. While drawing it’s desirable to communicate with the client, try to achieve as much closeness
as possible in those five to ten minutes. If there’s family standing nearby: “You’ve got a lovely family.” If
there’s a child in the chair: “You can
already tell the child’ll grow up to be a
good person.” Sometimes it’s good to
crack a little joke. “When you show
the caricature to your wife, she’ll
think it’s Mick Jagger, ha ha ha.”
With women it’s not recommended
to make jokes or laugh while you’re
drawing; men are sensitive about
their penis, women about everything.
Coca-Cola is, when a woman’s caricature is being drawn, always dead
serious. Sometimes he’ll comment
to some ugly broad: “Oh, la, la, what
an interesting face!” Besides, wom-
en don’t like caricatures, they mostly
want portraits. This English woman
is pleased. Coca-Cola manages to persuade her friend, showing her the chair
in some classy way that doesn’t suit
him at all; every word is followed with
a profound arching of eyebrows.
“The next Picasso,” Coca-Cola praises me again.
I take out some new charcoal and
start, because the old one has shrunk
so much I can’t grasp it with my hand
anymore. I manage to get that other
English girl right too, I fix both of
them up like a plastic surgeon.
Coca-Cola pats me on the shoulder,
gives me half the money. The only
people making more money than
Coca-Cola, here on the Pompidou,
are the Pakistanis, but they have by
far the best position: down by the
huge white ventilation pipe. That’s
the mouth of the square, that’s where
the frontline is. But, not everyone is
allowed to draw at that spot; you have
to be Pakistani, and you have to give
half of your money to the boss who
gave them the spot. If an intruder
shows up, he can easily get a dagger in the back. When the sun rises
in Paris, right behind the Pakistanis,
the artists from Russia, Ukraine, etc.
set up camp. They took or inherited
those spots from someone back in
the October Revolution, and are now
holding on to them for dear life. It’s
well known who sits where, where
are the footprints of someone’s chair,
everything is known down to the
last inch. If someone tries to butt in,
the Pakistanis’ll help them out too,
they’re the ones who least want the
rules of the game to change. Third
line and onwards, that’s a mix of Chinese and all other caricaturists and
portrait artists.
I’m lying under a tree that grows
from concrete. I put my hands under my head, listening to Shota the
Georgian playing “Moscow Nights”
on the accordion. He has unbelievably long arms.
TIONS
He can play the accordion on his
back, a special attraction for tourists. Now he’s also playing it on his
back, the tourists are listening in
awe, watching, taking pictures. Shota
makes the most money from those
photos.
When he’s done playing, he sits next
to me, his face all sweaty.
“Found an apartment yet?” he asks
in English and puts aside a checkered
suitcase in which coins are cheerfully
rattling.
“Yeah...” I say. “At Hristo’s.”
“I asked that old lady, but it’s rented
out,” Shota says.
“I’m staying at Hristo’s for now,” I
say. “Then I’ll see.”
Shota’s sleeping free at the home of
his cousin, who plays rugby in the
Second French Division.
“Some people still toss in francs,” he
says, examining a coin held above
his head.
He reaches into the suitcase, coins
clinking, then he sifts the money
through his fingers. He counts the
earnings: fifty seven euros in coins,
fifteen euros in bills, a make-up removal and five cigarettes.
“You want this cream?” he asks.
“What will I do with it?”
He left it by the garbage can.
Then he asks me, “Want some cigarettes?”
I take a cigarette, put it behind my
ear, maybe someone’ll need it.
“Imagine that,” Shota says, “this morning some Dutch guy dropped a bag
of weed into the suitcase, all factory
packed and everything. Imagine the
cops came by and found that in the
suitcase, I’d be in trouble.”
“And where’d you put it?”
“Threw it away. Ran to the first garbage can and threw it away.”
“Hmm.”
Although I only rarely smoke, I feel
sorry for the trashed bag of weed, it’s
probably good.
“A pity,” I say.
He looks at me.
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Contemporary Croatian Literature in English Translation
“Never mind,” he says. “I could have
been screwed.”
Then he pulls out his wallet, puts the
paper euros inside. For a moment he
takes out a color photo of a girl with
long, straight black hair. Her name
is Kathaven. Last month, Shota wandered the streets of Paris, asking everyone to write “I love you, Kathaven”
in their own language. I wrote it for
him in Croatian. He collected “I love
you, Kathaven” in thirty-seven world
languages and sent it to her, back to
Tbilisi.
She was thrilled, he says.
“Give these twenty euro to Hristo,”
he says. “I owe him, and you’ll see
him sooner than I will.”
I put the coins into my pocket.
“I’m off to play a bit on Saint Germain,” Shota says.
He says goodbye with a pat on my
shoulder, my left shoulder.
You might say Shota is kind of a
friend of mine, we don’t hang out except when we occasionally see each
other on the street, we don’t have
much in common, but it’s always
good to meet him. But, if I were in
Croatia, I wouldn’t say a word to
most of the people I’ve been associating in Paris, let alone be friends
with them. Although, I don’t have a
lot of friends in Croatia either, just
for the record.
It’s getting dark, only a couple of Chinese artists are left, withdrawn into
the circle of light coming through the
gigantic glass panes of the Pompidou
building. I get up, go inside to the
men’s room. A businessman in a suit
and tie, with a laptop, is standing in
front of the mirror, slapping himself
and crying softly. I’m pissing, looking at him: he’s buried his face in his
hands, started choking back tears.
I shake off my dick, wash my hands
and say. “Sir, can I help you?”
He flinches, like he’s woken up
from a bad dream, looks at me and
says, “Mind your own business, you
hobo!”
He quickly washes his face, grabs
his laptop, gives me another look of
contempt.
“Blow me!” I tell him in Croatian as
he leaves.
I stand in front of the mirror, take
a good look at myself. I admit, the
“hobo” thing hurt me. Why did he
call me a hobo? I’m clean-shaven, my
clothes are clean. I sniff my sleeve,
armpit, to check if, perhaps, I smell.
I don’t. Maybe the idiot saw me outside running after tourists, to him all
those people are obviously hobos.
Maybe I ran after him, who knows.
I get back in front of the entrance
to the Pompidou Center. Pong, the
longhaired Chinese guy, is just finishing up a caricature of a young American under a cone of bright light, the
boy’s father is standing at his side.
Pong, however, can’t draw at all.
At the moment when the father begins
to ponder taking the boy’s hand and
grabbing him off the chair, something
that looks like a caricature of the boy
is finally finished. Then Pong, while
the American is still thinking, pulls
out an ace from his sleeve: above the
caricature of the boy’s head he makes
a comic book speech bubble and
writes: “I LOVE YOU, DADDY.”
10.
I’m wandering around Montparnasse,
the streets are crowded. Saturday,
everyone’s out shopping in the Rue
de Rennes. Then I hear “Mr. Writer!” behind my back. I turn around
instinctively and see Joe Balestra at
the door of a bar called “Francois
Coppe”. Now I instinctively turn my
back on him, close my eyes, and draw
a deep breath through my nose.
“Mr. Writer!” he doesn’t give up.
I turn to him again, it seems like he
has not intention to provoke me.
He stands at the door, inviting me
over. He waves his hand in a wide
arc, like he is trying to hug me from
a distance. Next to him is a girl in a
miniskirt: they look alike, it cross-
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es my mind they might be brother
and sister.
“Come grab a beer!” he calls me over.
When I approach him, he gently slaps
me on the shoulder, as if we’ve known
each other for years. He introduces
me to his girlfriend. “Shelly,” she says
gracefully. We take a seat at the table
by the window, from where Joe must
have spotted me. Their stuff is strewn
on the table: a bottle of red wine, two
tall glasses, cigarettes, matches and Le
Magazine Littéraire with an illustration by Roland Topor on the cover.
Joe asks me what I’ll have, I point
my chin at the wine. He stretches
his neck, orders another wine bottle
and a glass.
“Sorry about that,” he says, “I was
really fucked up.”
It’s as if it isn’t the same man anymore.
I even doubt it for a moment. Then
I see his straight-brimmed hat lying
on the chair, and I am sure.
“It’s okay,” I say.
He kisses the girl.
“We’re re-celebrating our relationship,” he says. “We broke up, but as of
yesterday we’re back together again.
I nod. “That’s nice.”
“I’ve been digging around on the Internet a bit,” he says. “I didn’t know
you were so famous in your country,”
he says. “Didn’t manage to read it,
but I saw you gave a bunch of interviews and that they’re writing a lot
about you.”
“It’s easy to be a fish in a pond,” I
feign modesty. “You have to be one
in an ocean.”
“Well said,” he nods.
“Man...” he smiles and grabs his
neck. “You almost strangled me that
night...”
Now the girl smiles too. “I told her
about it,” he says. He takes a cigarette
off the table and shoves the pack towards me. I tell him I don’t smoke.
Then, little by little, we’re talking
about books. He published a novel
in the US last year, which will soon
be published in French. Now he’s try-
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ing to write a second novel and, he
admits, it’s not going well. He asks
when he’ll be able to read some of
my books.
“When you learn Croatian,” I say.
He laughs.
Then we start talking about translations. Joe shrugs.
“It’s hard for everyone if you’re not really famous,” he says. “My publisher
in the States is good with this smaller
publisher in Paris...”
Joe orders another bottle. The more
we drink, the more Joe turns to his
old self again. He’s provoking me,
but he wants to throw a glass at the
waiter who, he says, is looking at him
funny. His girlfriend barely manages to snatch the glass from his hand.
Shortly after he calls over some other
waiter and tells him to turn off the
ceiling fan over our heads.
“Reminds me of a helicopter,” he
tells the waiter. “I feel like I’m in Vietnam.”
The waiter just moves on.
It feels like Joe is a frequent guest
here, that the waiters are used to it.
Then he spills the wine onto the table
and observes the red liquid slithering
its way across the table with a pensive look. A few minutes later Shelly
suggests we move to her apartment
nearby, in Cherche-Midi.
Joe says, “Our place.”
Shelly laughs. “Our place.”
It is an atelier of about a thousand
square feet, with a raised wooden
floor, like a stage, on which there
is a bed. I also notice a fridge with
an installed stereo, then a sink full
of unwashed glasses with red wine
stains, and several works by Steven
Shrenk on the farthest wall. I know
that blonde Texan and the erotic reliefs he makes out of cardboard. On
weekends he arrives on a scooter and
sets himself up on Saint-Germain
Boulevard.
“Our friend,” says Joe.
“Steven,” I nod.
“You know him?”
I nod again, and remember I owe the
guy ten euros.
“Steven’s alright,” I say.
Joe says Steven had a real nasty crescendo on Saint-Germain the other
day.
“Some asshole came and tried to steal
his paintings,” he says. “And then he
also sicced a huge dog on him.”
“Man, Steven really hit him good
with the scooter,” he laughs. “Him
and that fucking mutt of his.”
He offers me a seat. An American flag
is draped across the table. I can’t figure out that bit: is the flag on the table
because Shelly’s some kind of turbopatriot, or is it some sort of joke.
But, when Joe says about Bush during the evening, “I’d roast him like a
lamb on the electric chair,” and she
laughs, the detail doesn’t bother me
anymore.
As there is soon nothing left to drink
in the apartment, and no Arab openall-night shop nearby, Joe goes down
and asks the owner of the restaurant
under the apartment to loan him two
bottles of red. We drink the wine and
keep yammering about literature. Joe
spends the whole time dissing some
American writers I don’t know.
“Their Mommies comb their hair in
the morning,” he says. He says the recipe for a young writer is very simple.
“You should never run away from
new experiences,” he says. “You have
to live life raw, grab it with courage,
pounce on it with your bare hands,”
he shouts and reaches towards me, as
if he wants to strangle me now. He
gets up and brings his original novel.
It’s called “A Night In Los Angeles”.
“Unfortunately,” he says, “I’ve only
got one copy, but you’ll be able to
read it in French soon.”
“Okay,” I say and browse through the
novel. I ask what he wrote about. He
says the novel is based on true events,
which he personally experienced one
night in LA, but he doesn’t want to
talk about the content. I understand,
I don’t like talking about the content
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of my books either. A while later he
hugs Shelly. He kisses her neck.
He says, “What do you have to do to
make this love last forever?”
He smiles and runs his fingers through
her hair.
“Love,” I say. “That’s a mystery.”
“Yeah...” he takes a deep breath, and
his gaze wanders off over the girl’s
head. “Love’s a mystery, and what a
mystery...”
“But we in the Balkans,” I say, “have
solved that mystery a long time ago.”
He flinched and looks at me, with
some weird glint in his eyes.
“Ha, ha,” he laughs. “Let’s hear it...”
I say, “Imagine love was a barrel...”
“Yeees...” his eyes narrow as he licks
the back of a cigarette.
“Imagine the barrel was half-filled
with honey, and below it is shit.”
“The quicker you lick,” I say, “the
sooner you’ll get to the shit.”
“Ha, ha, ha,” he laughs. “Great,” he
says, “Great.”
He laughs and hugs Shelly tight.
I look at them and start thinking
about Morana. Around midnight
both bottles are empty. Joe gets up
and says he’s going down to that same
restaurant for two new bottles. He
gets down the stairs, disheveled. Ten
minutes pass and he still hasn’t come
back. While we wait, I talk to the girl.
She says she’s from California, an architect, and that here in Paris she is
specialising in toilets. I freeze and
take a good look at her face. At first
I think she’s fucking with me, that
she knows I am shitting into plastic
bags, that Joe knows, that the whole
world knows, but by the puzzled look
on her face I realise that she, fortunately, has no clue about that.
“So, what’s better? Flush or squat
toilet?”
“Squat,” she says and lays her hands
on the table. “Definitely.”
“It’s the most natural position for
defecation,” she says. “When you
squat, the ass opens up a lot better,”
she says seriously.
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Contemporary Croatian Literature in English Translation
She looks at her watch, already half
an hour has passed.
“I’ll call him on his cellphone,” she
says. She dialls the number.
We wait. It rings from inside the coat
on the chair.
Another hour goes by and he still
isn’t here.
“Could something have happened
to him?” I say.
“No,” she says. “He always does this.”
She gets up, goes to the window that
looks out on to a deserted street.
“Always some trouble with him,” she
mutters.
I say, “Let’s go look for him.”
We go out, wander round the Montparnasse, I even call out for him at
one point. He’s gone. After a while I
decide to go back to Hristo’s.
“You go back and wait,” I say.
“If he doesn’t show up in an hour, call
the cops,” I suggest.
She nods.
“I’ll call you in the morning to see
what happened” I say.
I go back on foot towards the thirteenth arrondissement. It’s dawning, before I go into the apartment I
phone Shelly from a payphone.
“It’s okay,” she says. “He’s at the police station.”
She says he tried to steal a chair from
some restaurant.
“Now he’s waiting for me to bring
him his passport and they’ll let him
go.”
“Say hi to him,” I say.
“I will,” she says.
15.
I bought four new manila envelopes,
stuffed a copy of the novel in each
one, and threw in a couple of connected sheets of paper into them, to
serve as a book. Alongside the biography and bibliography, there were also a few translated rave reviews from
Croatian newspapers. I didn’t put
them into the first ones I sent out,
but now I decided I would. When it
was all assembled, I licked the edges
of the envelopes, sealed them tight,
wrote the addresses of the publishers.
They were smaller publishing houses, I more or less went through all
the medium and bigger ones. Some
responded, some didn’t, most never
will, although I didn’t want to believe
it just yet. Those that did respond
had completely similar responses, the
longest of which was: “We are very
pleased that you have chosen our publishing company, but at the moment we
are not able to publish your manuscript.
We hope you will submit your work to
us again. Good luck.”
I hoped that in the smaller houses at
least I would be able to talk to some
boss, try to persuade him that my appearance in his office was the literary event of the season. In the larger
publishing houses, and also in most
of the medium-sized ones, it was impossible to get to the editor.
The phone is answered by the porter,
he switches you over to the secretary,
she after half an hour of waiting directs you to some assistant who tells
you you should leave your manuscript at the porter’s.
When on one occasion I intended to
get to the head of a publishing company and deliver the manuscript personally, the porter calmly explained:
“Take it easy, Sir... I’ve written two
novels, now I’m writing a third one
and waiting patiently for years to get
something published, my son wrote
five novels and he still hasn’t published anything... Give me the manuscript and be patient,” he said.
***
To save money and possibly talk to
an editor, owner, or boss, I decided
to deliver the envelopes personally to
the addresses of several smaller publishing houses. I put them under my
arm and headed first for Montparnasse. I looked at the address on the
envelope, got inside, a counter, behind it a clerk.
I asked, “Publishing house?”
83
The man said, “What do you need?”
“I have a novel.”
He said, “Give it to me.”
I slipped the envelope through the
opening.
“Merci,” he said. “We’ll be in touch.”
“Is any of the editors here, perhaps?”
I asked.
“You give me the manuscript,” he
said. “I take it. That’s the procedure.”
I couldn’t find another publisher on
Saint Germain. Actually, I found the
building, but there was no sign of it
being a publishing house.
“They moved,” a guy who painting
something said through the window.
“I don’t know the new address.”
In the third publishing house I finally
found an editor, he was sitting and
talking on his cell. He was dressed
in a black, tight suit, was about fifty,
had longish gray hair.
“Just a moment,” he told someone
and moved the cellphone away from
his ear.
“I’m a writer from Croatia,” I said.
“I’ve got a novel.”
He nodded towards the desk and resumed talking.
“It’s an already published novel,” I
said, doing my best not to sound
pushy.
The guy put down his cellphone
again.
“Is all this information in the envelope?” he said, feigning politeness.
I nodded. “It is,” I said.
“That’s enough,” he said and put the
cellphone next to his ear again.
He looked at me. “We’ll let you
know.”
He kept talking, making plans for
lunch with someone. I went out,
didn’t want to annoy him and lessen
my chances that way. The fourth publisher took me in and told me they only published Nordic literature.
On my way back I went to visit Stefan. Georgi told me the other day that
Stefan was under the Pont Sully. A
few derelicts sat around a fire under
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the bridge. One of them was holding a frying pan over the fire, the bacon in it sizzled and smelled good. I
saw Stefan’s chestnut cart, called for
him, waited for him to peek out from
somewhere.
The guy next to the fire said, “He’s
not here.”
He was eating something hot from a
bowl, his breath steamy.
“Does he sleep here?” I asked.
“He bought a car,” some other voice
said from below the bridge.
“Peugeot,” said the first guy. “He delivers stuff for people.”
“When is he here?”
“Dunno,” the guy said and tipped the
bowl to grab more with his spoon.
I continued to my flat on foot, dropped
by the Pompidou along the way.
It was cold, only a few artists drew,
wrapped in their coats: although
the Pakistanis weren’t there, nobody
wanted to take their spot. When
they’re gone, then the second line
becomes the first line, so in a way it
doesn’t matter, but it’s too cold. CocaCola marched in front of the entrance
to the Pompidou building, his snotnose peeking under his fur hat.
“Bad,” he said. “Nobody wants to
stop.”
I got inside, kept myself warm next to
the radiator for a while, then stepped
into the library on the ground floor.
There I met Shelly, she was browsing through a luxurious book on architecture.
“Hey,” she lifted her head and greeted me.
“Where’s Joe?” I asked.
“He’ll be here soon. He went to buy
a ticket for the Yves Klein exhibition.”
Joe showed up, hugged me and looked
at me like he hadn’t seen me in a hundred years. He was wearing a white
suit, and a white hat.
“We’re going to the Yves Klein exhibition,” he said. “Wanna come?”
I didn’t feel like going to any exhibition.
“Already saw it,” I lied.
“So, what’s it like?” Shelly asked.
“Great,” I said.
“Come on, when are we going to see
each other?” Joe asked. “Come over
to our place.”
Shelly nodded. “Drop by.”
“I will,” I said.
“You have a cell?” He pulled his out.
“No,” I said.
He pulled out a piece of paper, wrote
down the number and gave it to me.
“Call me and we’ll arrange something,” he said.
“Fine,” I said.
I thought about how drunken Joe
had nothing in common with the
sober Joe. When he got drunk, some
unbelievable viciousness came out
of him. That kept me from hanging
out with him. I said goodbye and
left for my apartment. While I was
climbing the wooden staircase, which
squeaked as if I were walking over live
mice, I heard Hristo’s voice. It seemed
he was seriously shouting at someone. I found him pacing the apartment and swearing, all flushed.
“Disaster!” he flailed about. “Disaster!”
“What’s wrong?” I said. “What happened?”
“A fox!” he said.
Then he slumped into the armchair,
buried his face into his palms.
“Went into sister’s chicken coop,
thirty chickens slaughtered. Sister
from shock in hospital.”
“Thirty chickens slaughtered,” he
waved his arms around in disbelief.
“Thirty chickens slaughtered.”
***
I dreamt about shit, vast piles of shit,
pools of quickshit. I felt happy when
I woke up alive. Later, I was sitting on
the floor, listening to the rattle of the
rain. Hristo and Georgi kept gazing
out the damp window. In the late afternoon, when it finally stopped raining, Hristo suggested we go out and
grab a bite. On Picipus, on the road,
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they were handing out free meals; in
an era of scrimping and saving, this
was the best option, maybe we could
get by without an ID? At the soup
kitchen on Saint-Germain you also
needed an ID, but there was always
a bunch of derelicts there.
Hristo suggested we go to the soup
kitchen on Chatelet. You paid for
lunch there, it cost two euros, you
didn’t need an ID, and you couldn’t
eat something with a spoon for that
amount of money anywhere in Paris. We agreed it was the best option,
walked along the Seine.
At one moment Hristo said, “We are
still working on a plan.”
I nodded, unconsciously. Don’t know
why I nodded. I wasn’t interested in
that robbery, I wasn’t interested in
any robbery. Besides, I was a writer,
not a fucking criminal, I wasn’t interested in any criminal activity.
“I don’t know...” I said, “if I can go
through with it?”
He looked at me. “What?”
“This thing with you guys,” I took a
step forward.
“I’m claustrophobic,” I lied to him
on the next step.
“What is that?” he asked me.
“Fear of confined spaces... If I ended up in prison, I don’t know how
I’d manage.”
“That’s stupid. Forget about that,”
he said, furrowing. “Think a little
about euros.”
“Prisons aren’t that tough,” he said.
“It’s worst when you are inside and
innocent.”
Then we saw Bora Kikinda. Actually, he saw us; Bora’d been here for
years. In the former country he was
the manager of Ekaterina Velika, or
at least he said he was. They were big
back there. He married a Frenchwoman, got his papers through her.
No one knew what he did here. Hristo said he was registered on several addresses, that he lived off welfare.
“Not a word about the robbery in
front of him,” he whispered. “He’s a
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Contemporary Croatian Literature in English Translation
bigger idiot and a liar than Stefan.”
“Where are you going?” Bora asked,
watching us from behind his sunglasses.
“Lunch at Chatelet,” said Hristo.
“Well, I could go for that,” Bora said.
He told us how he’d been duck hunting the other day.
“It’s hard,” he said, shooting from an
invisible rifle. “They fly fast. You hunt
all day, bang, bang, and nothing.”
On the way to Chatelet, Gypsy girls
circled us, carrying pieces of paper
saying they were from Bosnia. Bora
asked them something; if they were
from Bosnia they’d understand.
“Admit that you’re not from Bosnia,”
said Bora, “And you’ll get some.”
“Our father wrote that for us,” one of
them admitted in bad French. “Father say, there was war, life in Bosnia
very hard,” she said and extended
her hand.
Bora reached deep into his pocket,
pulled out thirty centimes, gave it
to her.
The girl angrily turned her head away,
“What do I do with that change?”
Bora wanted to kick her in the ass,
she dodged him. She showed Bora
the middle finger and ran off with
the other Gypsy girls.
Then we met two unshaven transvestites in red skirts. Georgi loudly
spat after them. In the Rue Rivoli
a businessman walked by, in a suit,
carrying a laptop. He had horns implanted into his shaven head; I saw
that guy a couple of times already, he
had to be working somewhere near
here. Hristo saw him too, but every
time he saw him he turned around
and crossed himself twice.
Georgi said, “I’d slaughter him like
pig and shear him...”
Bora sneered at them. “Fashion,” he
said. “What do you Bulgarians know
about fashion?”
In front of the Pompidou we spot Srebro from Montenegro. He was gone
for a while, now he was back again.
Hristo said Srebro was insane even
before he came to Paris. He noticed
us, he waved happily.
“I’ll wait for you in front of restaurant,” Hristo said and left. “Don’t
want to be with that crazy.”
When Srebro arrived, I was solo. Srebro shook my hand immediately, he
just loved shaking hands, he’d do it
all the time. But, he hasn’t washed his
hands for at least twenty years: they’re
covered with a thick, greenish-yellow
crust of filth. When I first met him,
he asked me if I believed in God.
“Not really,” I said. “And you?”
He said, “I only believe in birds.”
“Did you wash your hands?” Hristo
said as we descended into that soup
kitchen, located in a stuffy basement,
with walls of naked brick. I nodded
and showed him my palms.
“At least there enough free soap and
water in Paris,” he said. “Why doesn’t
he wash those hands?”
“I wouldn’t take a nut from his hand,”
Bora spat, disgusted.
I stood in a small line, Hristo paid for
three, Bora had to pay for himself. A
chubby black woman with a black eye
finally moved away from the counter and gave us the grub: ravioli with
sauce. Inside were two connected rows
of white plastic tables, one row was
occupied by bums, half of the other
line by old hippies with long white
hair and beards. We sat next to them,
there were ten of them and one woman, also a hippie. I’d seen her around
before, she sometimes made cheap
jewelry at the Pompidou. They were
talking in English, eating slowly, somehow dignified. Bora laughed.
“Woodstock leftovers.”
Then he fried a couple of lice on the
table with the tip of his cigarette. I
looked away, kept eating, it didn’t
taste bad. Hristo took the salt in front
of a hippie, left it in front of his plate.
The hippie took it and put it back in
front of his plate. Hristo took the saltshaker again, hippie grabbed it back.
Bora was grinning, eating and saying:
“Peace, brothers, peace.”
85
Hristo took the saltshaker again.
When the hippie angrily retrieved it,
Hristo spat into his plate. The hippie took the plate, slammed it into
Hristo’s face; everyone jumped up,
Hristo first. He hit the guy with that
devastating stereo punch of his, broke
the chair under him. Soon four or
five aging hippies moved on Hristo:
he hit one of them with both hands
on the side, headbutted another and
then sent him to the floor with a
kick. Georgi grabbed the woman,
who was screaming hysterically and
trying to stab Hristo in the back
with a fork, by the hair and tossed
her into the corner. Bora pulled out
brass knuckles, stuck them onto his
fingers, I tried to separate them and
then simeone from behind hit me on
the ear. I fell under the table, groaning and holding my ear in pain. I
yelled, “Aaaah.”
The black woman at the counter, her
hands crossed over her gigantic tits,
was observing quietly. Part of the
bums fled, part of them withdrew
to the corner. Hristo was knocking
down hippies like bowling pins; they
were old, but incredibly wiry, they
kept getting up and attacking. Georgi was kicking one, and three hippies
snatched away Bora’s brass knuckles
and were strangling him on the floor.
I lay under the table and dragged myself to the steps; the three of them also withdrew towards the exit. Hristo
was lunging and flailing like a windmill, Georgi was behind him kicking
away. Behind him, Bora was holding
his neck, all red in the face.
“Run! See you in apartament!” Hristo
shouted halfway up the stairs.
We switched to reverse gear and started running, the angry hippies fortunately didn’t pursue us.
35.
REPUBLIQUE FRANCAISE
Liberte Egalite Fraternite
PREFECTURE DE POLICE
9, Boulevard du Palais – 75004 Paris
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I walk, from wall to wall, but the cell
is so small I’m actually going in circles. I’m a little scared by the thickness of the walls, when I look outside, it feels like I’m looking through
a tunnel. Occasionally, I look out
through the barred opening. Then I
see the tips of the Notre Dame. It’s
comforting that there’s no bucket,
no bed, nothing, just bare walls. It
means people don’t stay here long.
My passport checks out, I figure,
they’ll be here any minute now, set
me free. I have the right to be in the
EU for three months, and since I was
in Zagreb a month ago, I’ve got two
months left to go. Therefore, they’ll
even have to apologise to me.
I stand, leaning on a wall. For hours.
Waiting for something to happen.
Nothing happens. I try to catch some
sound, any sound. Nothing. The silence buzzes. All you can hear are
the bells of the Notre Dame. I listen to these bells intently, as if I’m
trying to learn something about my
fate in this cell. Occasionally I feel
my wrists, bloodied from handcuffs.
When they removed the handcuffs in
front of the cell, I breathed a sigh of
relief. Not because they were cutting
deep into my flesh, but because of the
feeling of suffocation that overcame
me when they slapped them on. I
started screaming uncontrollably for
them to untie me in the paddywagon.
When they hit me on the back with
a nightstick, I calmed down. I never
thought a nightstick blow to the back
could be so salutary.
When I was once again on the verge of
panicky screaming, I held back with
extreme effort. Knowing that I could
always count on another blow from
the nightstick that comforted me.
The pain from those carved handcuffs also helped; the more it hurt,
the less suffocating it felt. I even cut
my hands on the cuffs to feel better.
Then I hear foorsteps, someone’s
coming.
Click, the door opens.
Two policemen, CRS. I never liked
those arrogant cops, trained to suppress protests. Tight, dark-blue uniforms accentuate their bulky bodies.
One of them has a pair of handcuffs.
“I want an attorney!” I yell.
I hide my hands behind my back. “I
want an attorney!”
They, as if they could hardly wait
for me to hide my hands behind my
back, pounce and slap the cuffs on
me. Before I had handcuffs in front
of me, now they’re in the back: I feel
I’m going to be sick. Spit starts congealing in my mouth, the feeling of
suffocation is about to come as well.
I start kicking, acting wild, a heavy
slap knocks me down to the floor. I
also hit my head on the concrete, it
stuns me. The two of them grab me
roughly by the arms and legs. It’s as if
they’ll rip my arms off when they carry me down the hall. They say nothing, only their boots squeak. They
take me to the yard, toss me into the
paddywagon, drive me to a nearby
building, five minutes of walk.
I am brought into an admissions and
releases office, lowered onto the floor
and delivered to three new cops in
uniforms of different color. Before
they leave, the CRS men remove
my handcuffs. I get up, standing on
my feet with difficulty. The room is
pretty big, bright light beats down
to my face from the ceiling, my arms
hurt terribly. Two prison cops stand
behind me, one of them, bald, at the
table in front of me.
The bald guy says quietly, “Take your
clothes off.”
“What? Why?”
He gets up and leans on the table with
his heavy fists.
“Because I say so,” he says, lifting his
chin with superiority.
I start to undress slowly, with some
unfinished moves.
“Everything,” he says when I get out
of my pants and remain only in my
underwear. I slowly remove my underpants.
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Then he says, “Now put your hands
on the table, bend over and put your
ass out.”
“I beg your pardon?!”
Have I heard him correctly?
“Put your hands on the table and put
your ass out,” he says.
I take a frightened step backwards.
“I want an attorney!”
I want to shout, scream, cry, hit
around. Two cops approach from behind with lightning speed, crack my
back. I try to break free, they twist my
arms stronger, I cry out in pain. One
of them decks me in the kidney, so I
bend over further. My head is pressed
roughly on the table, nose twisted to
the side, ass forced outwards. That
bald cop slowly steps around the table, stands behind me. He stands in
silence: I can feel his gaze on my asshole. I lose my breath out of fear.
He says, “Now cough.”
I said, confused, “Sorry?”
“Cough!” he yells, “Or I’ll jam a
nightstick up your ass!”
“Akhh,” I cough. “Akhh...”
He says, “You think I enjoy watching
what one of you hid in their asshole
all day long?”
After the other two let me go and
search through my clothes, he orders me to get dressed. He opens that
bag with Hadama’s clothes, pulls out
dresses, stretches them.
“Oh la la,” he laughsd. “You’ve got
an interesting wardrobe.”
Then he pulls out two sheets, a pillow case, a blanket, soap, toothpaste,
a toothbrush, a bottle of shampoo
and a box of condoms.
“Have a pleasant stay,” he says with
a sneer.
***
A barred gate, steps again, another
barred gate. The guard skillfully unlocks and locks. We’re already deep
below the ground. At the end of the
hallway the light of a dim lightbulb,
there’s the third barred gate. An underground prison: they open and
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toss me inside a cell without a word.
The stench of rot, the stench of shit.
An empire of stench. I scan the area, voices like from a well. I look
around, with those things under my
arm; the space is huge and sprawling.
There aren’t any doors on the sleeping
chambers; people hop around, I don’t
notice them, because of the weak
light they look like shadows. One
of them lies motionless by the wall,
maybe he’s dead? A couple of rats run
by and disappear in the dark.
I look inside one chamber, look for a
free bed, look into another, no room
there either. Six tattooed blacks look
at me, each from his own bunk. You
can only see the white of their eyes.
I walk on, circle this labirynth, look
into a room in which everyone is
Chinese. I spot a free bunk, ask in
French if it’s free, one of them tells
me in French that it’s occupied. Then
I hear someone’s muffled sobs. I don’t
even want to look there, I just go
by. I stand disoriented, two guys in
white undershirts walk by, check me
out from head to heel, laugh. The
laughter scares me half to death. I
think about how anything can happen in here.
I drag my feet, stop, alternate between fear and anger, then I reach
a massive room. It’s the one with
the most light, about ten people are
watching TV, locked in a cage, set
high on the wall. Then I hear a voice,
“I can’t believe this?!”
My eyes bulge. Goran from Belgrade,
the guy who once slept over at Hristo’s. He leaps from his chair, we hug
each other amiably, like we are brothers who haven’t seen each other in
years. Although, actually, we know
each other superficially. My things
fall out of my hands because of this
encounter, but I don’t care.
“Well, where did you come from?” he
says, his arms still spread wide.
“Don’t ask,” I huff loudly.
“You know who often mentioned you
here?” he says, pulling up his pants.
“Who?” I gather the stuff from the
floor and go to fetch the shampoo
bottle that has rolled away.
“Shota the Georgian,” he says.
I flinch. “Is he here?”
“No,” he says. “They deported him
to Georgia a month ago.”
Then Goran takes me to his room.
Two rats zigzagg by, Goran tries to
kick the closer one. He misses and
curses the rat’s mother. He leads me
into the room, where four of his roommates lie on worn out mattresses.
“Here’s another one of ours,” Goran
tells them. “He’s a famous writer
from Croatia,” he introduces me.
Then he introduces me to the rest,
we shake hands. Anatol from Moldavia, Željko from Zemun, and a
skinny young man he referrs to as
the Uzbekistani.
I briefly tell them how I got here.
Goran says he was busted in the bar
in which he worked illegally as a waiter. Goran’s nervous, while he talks he
keeps changing his spot and pulling
up his greasy jeans.
“I’ve been here for a month, waiting
for them to get my papers fixed so I
can stand trial, then I’ll see,” he says.
Željko is here because he tried to kill
his father. His father’s been living in
Paris for a while, Željko is his son
from his first marriage. He invited
Željko to come to Paris and live and
work with him. Željko doesn’t feel
like talking, he just gazes into the
floor, Goran talks for him.
“His old man set him up to be deported, Željko just hit him a couple
of times because he couldn’t stand his
old man fucking some young boys
anymore,” says Goran.
Anatol tells how he’s been in Paris
for nine years straight, working as a
bricklayer for all this time.
“I needed just one year to get my
papers and they caught me,” he says
in French.
The Uzbek speaks English, he’s been
arrested at the Gare d’Austerlitz, in
a routine control. They announced
87
that in a few days he should stand
trial, then deportation is certain. But,
he doesn’t want to go back to Uzbekistan under any circumstances.
“When they take me back, the Uzbek police will first put my fingers in
the door, then close them suddenly,
break all my fingers and say it was
an accident,” he says. “They’re worse
than Stalin’s police,” he adds.
“I have to get to hospital before deportation,” he says. “Then try to run.”
There’s a scuttle outside, Goran goes
out, then returns.
“Kuli Bali’s making problems,” he says.
“Wanted to fuck someone again.”
He says Kuli Bali is a huge Black guy
who keeps waiting for an opportunity to rape someone. He’s already
raped a couple of young men who arrived, but can’t find a group to stick
around with. He explains e that these
catacombs are filled with murderers,
rapists, psychos, criminals.
“Some of them have been here for
years,” he says. “They don’t know
who they are, no papers, no identity,
nowhere to send them back.”
He tells me how he learned from
some scholarly guy the other day that
back in the time of the French Revolution these catacombs were a holding place for the people about to be
guillotined.
“If you ever meet a man with no
head here,” he laughs, “don’t be surprised, man.”
I press my head into the pillow; it’s
just before dawn. I try to imagine
how things will turn out here and I
fail. I try to imagine something nice,
and I fail. Bad thoughts start coming
to me: I’ll be stuck here for a year or
two, maybe more. I shake off the bad
thoughts like a dog shaking off fleas,
close my eyes. I toss and turn on the
bed for a long time.
I am woken up: LUUNCH! The speaker blares.
We get chicken soup, chicken and
rice, which is too hard, it crackles
under your teeth like sand. All of
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us from the room are sitting, slurping the soup. At the next table sits
Kuli Bali, his crew is all Blacks. All
the groups stick together. The Chinese, the Blacks, the Indians... After
lunch I go to take a shower. When I
get into the bathroom, a guy inside
is wrapped in a blanket, eating a rat.
He keeps it in his hand, still alive,
and tears off the flesh from it, eats it
like an apple.
I run back to my room, panicked.
A couple of days later, we got another
member in the room. A doctor from
Podgorica, actually a shrink. Goran
brought him in. He was supposed to
hold a lecture at the Sorbonne, but
they arrested him at the Paris airport thinking he was a war criminal
wanted by The Hague; he shared the
name with that war criminal. Until
he checked out, they stuck him here,
he was bitter.
“This is an international scandal,” he
said smoothing his gray, slicked hair.
He showed us a pen they forgot to
take from his coat; Anatol was out of
himself about it.
Anatol said, “That’s strictly forbidden.”
The doctor shrugged. “So, what do
I do?”
“You can give it to me,” he said. “If
they find it, I’ll say it’s mine.”
“Take it,” the doctor said.
I called him the Doctor, the others also called him the Doctor. Only Goran sometimes jokingly called
him: mind doctor. The next day Anatol drew a chessboard on the table
with the pen. Then in the following
couple of days he made chess figures
from chewed-up bread, he did it brilliantly. When the figures were done,
he invited the doctor to a game. He
also called me, I said no, I can’t play
chess, I can barely put the figures together. Still, it was interesting while
the two of them played. The doctor beat him, twice in a row. Goran
could play well, he almost beat the
doctor once.
Željko said, “I hate chess.”
Anatol then played a game with me.
As I was pondering the next move, he
told me about the situation in Moldavia. He said in the last few years a
million Moldavians fled to the West.
There were only four million of them
left; no perspective in Moldavia.
“The Mafia rules,” he said, “and the
chief export are prostitutes.”
He beat me too easily twice, so I
gave up. The doctor avenged me, he
smoothly beat Anatol. Željko mostly
lay there and kept quiet. The Uzbek
spent the whole time sitting on the
bunk above mine, a pensive look on
his face.
“I have to get to the hospital as soon as
possible,” he mumbled. “I have to.”
Goran was nervously pacing in and
out of the room.
“I can’t take this anymore.” He pulled
up his pants. “If only I had those papers, so I can go to court, but that
sluggish embassy of mine isn’t sending anything yet.”
The doctor said, “This is all simply
incredible.”
He asked me what I do.
I said, “A writer.”
“A writer?” he asked. “Well, how did
you get in here?”
“Same as you,” I said. “It was a mistake.”
He crossed his legs, ponderously
leaned his head on his palm.
“At least you’ll be able to write about
this some day,” he said.
That same evening the Uzbek took
Anatol’s pen from his pocket and
stabbed himself twice through the
mouth, all the way to his eyes. He
did it when everyone was asleep. He
was moaning loudly. Goran leapt
up, turned the lights on. The doctor
was staring, terrified, his hair raised
as if he’d just stuck his finger into
an electricity socket, so everything
looked even scarier, only Željko was
fast asleep. Blood spurting out of
the Uzbek’s nose and mouth, Anatol yelling, calling the guards. When
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they arrived, the Uzbek’s head was incredibly swollen, it looked as if it was
grafted onto that scrawny body. His
eyes looked like they’d burst out of
their sockets any moment now.
One, two, three days had passed, from
the speakers it echoed: “Croate!” I
get up, I was certain I was the only Croat in these catacombs. I adjusted my clothes, checked myself
out: everything on me looked like it
was chewed over a hundred times.
I reported at the bars, the policeman took me to the admissions and
dismissals office, showed me in. A
girl with cropped hair was waiting
there, wearing eyeglasses with colorless frames. We shook hands.
She said, “I am Delphine, I’m with
an association protecting the rights
of foreigners.”
She got up and adjusted the glasses
on her nose. “We help with administrative and court procedures. Your
girlfriend informed us. We’ve also
contacted your embassy.”
My case begun to unravel, that’s what
mattered most. Hadami helped me
again, I started thinking about her,
wondering if I felt anything towards
her in this disgusting shithole, here
the emotions should be intensified,
but from day one in this dog pound
I felt nothing for her, nor have I
thought about her until now, I almost forgot her.
In a few days I was called again to
the admissions and dismissals office.
Now the bald guy that had taken me
in greeted me with a nod. Delphine
sat at the table, holding a phone, her
brows constantly furrowed.
“The Croatian embassy,” she offered
me the receiver. I got up, took the
receiver.
“Ivana Perčin from the Croatian embassy... What on Earth happened?”
I huffed.
“They arrested me.”
“For what?”
“Nothing.”
She says, “That’s impossible.”
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Contemporary Croatian Literature in English Translation
“It’s possible,” I said. “I don’t know
any other reason.”
“Well, did you perhaps steal something?”
At that point I got really angry.
“Are you insane?” I shouted. “I’m a
writer, not a criminal.”
The woman was silent, a few long
seconds passed.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “And the passport, where is it?”
“They took it when they arrested me,
I don’ know where it is.”
“Well, does your passport check out?”
“Of course it does?”
“Could you give me your personal
info?”
I gave her the info, waited, tried to
make my breathing more even.
“Yes,” I heard from the receiver. “Your
passport is in order.”
“What do I do?”
She said, “What I can do is get you a
speedy trial, then I hope you’ll be released. I know a gentleman who can
help, I’ll call him right away.”
I told Delphine what I talked about.
“Croatian embassy, that’s a paid vacation,” I said. “They work 10 to
12, they have an hour-long break,
and they’re closed on weekends and
holidays. All they care about is eating and drinking all over Paris, having
their kids go to school here. Not taking care of their citizens. If a French
writer were arrested in Croatia, it’d
be an international scandal.”
The bald guy who had inspected my
asshole looked at me funny.
He asked, “You’re a writer?”
“Yes,” said Delphine. “Very famous
in his country.”
The guy kept looking at me funny, it
seemed like he was a bit embarassed.
Delphine slowly got up, grabbed a
folder full of papers: “I was just working on the case of an arrested Romanian, their embassy is openly working against its own citizens.”
She told me she’d wait a few days
to see if the woman from our embasyy would speed up the process. “If
there’s a trial,” she said. “You’ll get a
lawyer from our association.”
“I’ll ask the Croatian embassy for a
copy of your passport, to show your
papers were in order, if your passport
happens to have gotten lost somewhere.”
When we got out into the hallway,
Delphine said, “This kicking out foreigners, that’s part of French policy.
Sarkozy needs statistics, so he can talk
more about solving the problem of
illegals and migration. Besides, every policeman gets points for each arrested illegal, and money as well, of
course,” she said.
A few days passed since my first meeting with Delphine. It felt like a hundred years.
Meanwhile, in the catacombs, in
the room, nothing special happened.
Željko was sleeping, Goran was pacing angrily, and the doctor and Anatol spent hours playing chess. I mostly
slept, I no longer had the strength to
think, or do anything. I awaited that
trial. Tomorrow it finally came.
I arrived in front of the Tribunal Administratif on the Marais; two CRS
officers followed me at all times. They
kept their eyes on me, Delphine was
already there. She introduced me to
the association’s lawyer.
“We have all the papers, it’ll be fine,”
the gray-haired lawyer said, constantly checking his watch.
“Do not worry,” Delphine said.
“Let them set me free, deport me,
anything, just don’t let me go back
to that hell,” I said.
“I hope they’ll set you free,” said
Delphine.
We are invited into the courthouse;
there are a few more cases. Before
me they take a tired-looking Indian,
who is living with his brother and
his brother’s wife. No papers, he’s
got asthma. I see nothing but black
holes in his eyes. His lawyer takes out
the medical history, says sick people
can’t be thrown out. The judge says
the situation with his illness is pretty
89
unclear, they throw him out. Next, a
Morroccan who has a statement confirming he lives with a French woman, he’s also thrown out, without
much explanation. Next is a twenty-year-old girl, she was arrested because she used her friend’s passport.
She’s Algerian, for the past ten years
she’s been living in France, as a minor she didn’t need any papers and
afterwards she couldn’t get them. Her
lawyer tells her story: “When she was
sixteen, her father raped her.”
She sued him, the lawyer says, and
the father fled back to Algeria.
The girl says, “If you send me back to
Algeria, my father will kill me.”
They don’tthrow her out, now it’s
my turn.
The police lawyer first argues I was
arrested as an illegal, with no papers.
When the association’s lawyer submitted a copy of a valid passport, he
quickly switched to something else.
“How much money did you have
with you at the moment of arrest?”
he asks.
“20 euros,” I reply.
“There you go,” he says, “You were
arrested because you couldn’t afford
to get back to your country.”
“Yes,” the association’s lawyer said,
“but he was living with his French
girlfriend, there he had a thousand
euros, he could go back, therefore he
was mistakenly arrested.”
Then my lawyer, like in the movies,
asks me, “Did they allow you to phone
your girlfriend, did you tel them that
you have money, that you were living
with a girl who’s French?”
I say, like in the movies, “I tried, but
they wouldn’t listen.”
The police lawyer says, “You have no
evidence for that.”
The judge, as if he’s just waiting for
this, bangs the gavel on the desk. He
does it without superfluous moves.
“Deportation,” he says.
I accept the verdict nonchalantly. “At
least I’ll go home for free,” it crosses
my mind.
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In the hallway Delphine said disappointedly, “Unfortunately, the judge
is also a part of Sarkozy’s politics.”
Then she said, “We’ll prepare an appeal. When you get back, we’ll ask
for a retrial.”
I wanted to go back to Croatia as soon
as possible, I had no strength left.
***
I’m sitting at the Charles de Gaulle
airport.
I feel like a sapped tree. I don’t know
how a tree feels when it’s sapped,
probably something like me now.
The plane leaves at 11:20. Four cops,
armed to their teeth, are sitting next
to me the whole time. They’re arrogant, one of them has my passport. Passengers from all corners of
the world stay clear from me. They
probably think I’m a mass murderer
or something.
Then Hadami shows up, looking
like she’ll burst into tears any second
now. She’s holding Ronaldinho in her
arms, I lift my head, get up, feel like
crying. I don’t know if it’s because of
her, the cat, the fact I am leaving, I
don’t know if these are tears of joy or
sorrow, but I feel like crying and I can
barely hold it in. Hadami wants to
approach, the cops don’t let her.
She stands there, starts crying, I motion to her that she shouldn’t, that
way I stop myself from crying. Luckily, it’s time to check in, a cop checked
my ticket.
Suddenly, Hadami runs towards me,
hugs me, she won’t separate: her
Igor Kuduz: Foto-žurnal / Photo-journal #135 – Među nama / Among us
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bloodshot eyes are filled with tears.
She’s dropped the cat, holds desperately onto me. The cops are trying
to separate us, the cat is meowing,
but somehow differently than usual.
When they finally manage to pry
her away, Hadami shouts, “Will you
come back?!”
My voice is breaking. “I don’t know!
I’ll be in touch.”
Now she’s started crying even more,
as if she understands I’ll never call her
again. The last sound I hear on the
airport is her crying and the cat’s meowing. The cops see me to the plane;
one of them gives me my passport. I
settle down into a seat and wait for
the take-off.
Translated by
Marino Buble
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Interview
Russell Scott Valentino
• Autumn Hill Books is an independent, non-for profit press dedicated to
publishing literature in translation.
Your slogan reads: “World literature
from the heart of America.” What
was the motivation behind starting
your press and, given the situation in the publishing world in the
U.S. (even though the same is true
elsewhere in the world) when it, in
most cases, only pays to publish bestsellers i.e. books that generally meet
the demands of the mass culture,
what drives you on to continue publishing foreign writers and books
that you are almost certain will not
bring much profit if any at all?
Our main motivation was in fact
the situation that we saw in the English-language publishing world, especially the relative absence of translated contemporary literature in it. This
has improved slightly in the approximately seven years since we started,
but it’s still the case that large publishers shy away from contemporary literary works in translation, especially
by authors who aren’t already known,
so we see that mission as continuing
to be especially important.
• What are the major challenges for
you as a publisher when it comes to
publishing a book in translation by
a foreign writer and from a culture
an average American most likely
has very limited knowledge of? How
do you deal with these issues? Does
RUSSELL SCOTT VALENTINO is editor-in-chief at Autumn Hill Books and at
The Iowa Review. His translations include Fulvio Tomizza’s Materada,
Predrag Matvejevic’s The Other Venice, and Carlo Michelstaedter’s Persuasion and Rhetoric. He is also the author of two scholarly monographs,
numerous essays and articles, and various short fiction, non-fiction, and
poetry translations from Italian, Croatian, and Russian. He teaches in the
University of Iowa’s Translation Workshop.
the fact that you are an independent
press help or hinder tackling these
issues?
The biggest challenges are distribution and publicity. You can “publish” anything and put it up on a
website, but actually getting it into peoples’ hands takes a lot more
work, at least as much after the book
is published as before. The major
way that books tend to be marketed in the English-language world is
by authorial image. Translated authors, like translated books, have to
jump through an additional hoop
toward reaching their audience. I’m
reminded of a comment that Eliot
Weinberger once made about accompanying Octavio Paz on a reading tour, when a newspaper commented that “Paz was accompanied
by his translator, an unfortunate necessity.” Translators and translations,
especially when they are pointed out,
tend to be seen by readers as “unfortunate necessities,” rather than really
helpful cultural intermediaries.
I think it’s important to create stories alongside and in addition to the
translated works we publish. This
might mean the story of how the
book came to us, how it was discovered, how the translator worked
with the author (or avoided him),
or something having to do with the
history or politics of a place. These
can all be part of an overall publishing plan. Being a small publisher in
that case does not really help, since
we don’t have a lot of people to call
upon. What does help is not being
so large and impersonal that we can’t
work on a personal level with our
translators and authors. The translators in particular become essential,
as they are the people with knowledge of both cultures. We ask them
to help in all sorts of aspects of our
work, from looking at potential cover
designs to making contacts with potential reviewers.
• So far Autumn Hill Books has published three books by Croatian authors while you as a translator have
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Autumn Hill Books
translated a couple more books from
the region. What led you to include
these authors (Štiks, Ferić, Novak)
in your catalogue or to choose them
(Matvejević, Tomizza) for your own
translation projects? And, do you
believe these translations were successful in terms of what you as a
publisher/translator but also the
authors (as well as Croatian literature in general) got in return?
The first answer – about what led
us to these works – is easy: I studied
South Slavic literature in graduate
school (in UCLA in the 1980s and
early 90s), traveled to Yugoslavia and
later Serbia and Croatia, and fell in
love with the place. I’ve been back
many times and hope to do more
titles from the region in the future.
Success is harder to measure. The
works exist in English, and that was
part of the goal. Making them as
widely available as possible to readers
who might want to read them – yes,
there too, I’d say we’ve been successful.
But you can always get your books
into more peoples’ hands, do better
for your authors and translators in
that way, and there we haven’t been
able to do as much as I would have
liked. Getting peoples’ attention is always a challenge. We’ll keep trying.
• Why are there so few Croatian writers available in English? And, given
that you have an insight into the
contemporary Croatian literary scene,
do you think that what is available
is representative of the scene? Also, is
this issue of representativeness at all
relevant or does it seem to you that
the potential success of this or that
author (as well as literature) is more
or less arbitrary and dependent of
other factors?
International literature is not really
representative of any country or region, as far as I can see. Even with
the U.S., which accounts for a huge
percentage of the translated literature
in the world today, what you gener-
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ally find are just the works that have
sold especially well, which means
commercial successes, genre fiction,
and so on. Highly innovative, locally inflected works, which are usually published by small, independent
presses, don’t usually make it onto
that list. Then there is the hugely
vibrant world of literary magazines,
where you find all sorts of new, exciting work by writers who may or may
not have books to their names. That
rarely gets translated.
Croatia is no different in this regard,
it seems to me. What’s available is not
representative, no. Why there are so
few is a different question. My own
view is that with a relatively small
country like Croatia, what’s necessary isn’t much – it’s a matter of getting a few presses to publish translations regularly. It doesn’t have to be a
big operation, especially today when
there are a variety of publishing options available (both print and digital). Government subsidies can help,
but those too don’t have to be large.
Everyone’s expectations need to be
scaled appropriately.
government involvement could turn
off potential partners abroad. It’s important to let those who have expertise make decisions about what they
know. My sense is that contemporary
works, rather than classics, are more
likely to find readers in English these
days, but they need to be the right
kinds of books, marketed appropriately. The market for classics that are
not already known, by which I mean
included in school curricula and likely to be purchased by libraries, is not
at all good. Breaking into it with
another unknown name, especially
someone from a century or more
back, is likely to be very hard. There
are always exceptions, of course, but
this is my opinion. If some official
Croatian entity, either governmental
or not, wanted to spearhead something, I think it could easily identify
some likely potential partner publishers to work with in the U.S. and
U.K. and say, look, here is what we
would like to do. Would you like to
work with us to try and make this
happen? That would get some interest, I suspect.
• Following on the previous question,
• How do you comment on the fact
in your opinion, what could be
done to improve the visibility (and
consequently increase the number
of books in translation) of Croatian
literature in the U.S. literary market? Is there a specific strategy that
should be employed: such as translating classics first or starting with
the more contemporary writers?
Should there be an effort (from the
institutions in the home country, for
example) to start an edition of Croatian literature with a certain number
of volumes and anthologies that
could serve as a basis for future
translations and that would, so to
say, “prepare the ground” for the
writers to come?
that for most foreign writers a translation into English is necessary to
come near(er) to become part of
what is generally considered world
literature? What are some of the
preconditions (literary as well as
extra-literary) a book has to meet in
order to become successful in those
terms, especially, with regards to
the common myth that only a specific type of literature is chosen for
translation? Are there some topics
and themes, approaches or messages
that get more easily accepted and
thus more easily translated into
English?
A multi-platform approach seems
the best to me. The Croatian government could be involved, but a lot of
This is a hard question, and I already
know that my answer won’t be satisfying. There are always things that
appear to be current, but they change
very quickly. Trying to predict what
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Contemporary Croatian Literature in English Translation
will be popular is what some marketing professionals spend their lives
at, often with frustratingly low success rates. Also, what is successful
in the publishing world today varies enormously from one context to
another. A Penguin title that doesn’t
sell 50,000 copies is not much of
a success, but most books in the
English publishing world don’t even
sell 5,000. Even with genre fiction,
which seems like it ought to be at least
relatively predictable, no one ever really knows what will sell, what combination of factors – politics and current events, the colors on the outside
of the book, the easily pronounceable
name of the author that also happens
to sound like new car made by Pontiac – will make the difference and
spark people’s interest.
• Finally, when it comes to your efforts to promote Croatian authors
in the U.S. how would you rate the
level of support given by various
institutions in Croatia? Do you see
room for improvement; are there
any changes that should/must be
made in order to ensure a better
promotion of Croatian authors and
better backing of the publishers that
are willing to publish Croatian
authors?
We’ve had good support for our
books in the past from the Ministry
of Culture, and I hope we can get
their backing for future projects as
well. But in terms of Croatian literature as a whole, perhaps some
additional things would help. The
Ministry’s funding priorities seem to
emphasize books, which is a lot like
other government programs, but I
think literary magazines shouldn’t be
forgotten in this process; otherwise,
you’re basically trying to go from
scratch into books, without what is
often the intermediary stage of first-
93
serial publication for U.S. and U.K.
authors, especially those that haven’t
yet made a name for themselves.
So one option would be to organize some hands-on translation workshops between U.K./U.S. translators
and Croatian authors and translators.
Once these working groups had materials ready, then they could be sent
out either as samples or whole short
texts to English language magazines.
And once two or three shorter pieces
by a given author had been published
in those venues, whole books would
have much more likelihood of getting
picked up by publishers large and
small. Again, it’s a question of slow
accumulation of quality work over
time. Actually, some publishers might
want to be involved in this kind of
thing from the start, helping to shape
the introduction of a new author’s
work into English. That could actually be an exciting prospect.
94
Photo by: Martina Kenji
The Death
of the Little Match Girl
Zoran Ferić
PART TWO
The game
L
ately Jesus had been coming to
Earth only in profanities. Soccer made the point. Tomo, Maskarin,
Mungos and I were playing the first
match of the 1st County League’s Fall
Championship against the Vultures
from Cres, when Tomo suddenly
yelled, “You fucking Jesus dick!”
Only half an hour before, at the
Church of St. Euphemia, he’d melted a Franciscan wafer in his pious
mouth, after Friar Marijan, now at
goalie, had carefully placed it on his
tongue. It was Sunday, 11 a.m., the
sun was already scorching, and a
light breeze was the only thing that
cooled our sweaty faces. At the mention of Jesus’ genitals, the friar, who
had replaced his brown habit with a
black goalkeeper’s jersey, just crossed
himself and rolled his eyes. He knew
Tomo didn’t think that seriously,
and Jesus in a soccer game and Jesus
in church were two completely different divine persons. As if a third
of our Lord had suddenly turned
schizophrenic. Besides, Tomo had
two good reasons for swearing: first,
it wasn’t his daughter who’d died,
and second, they’d just scored another goal in our lower left corner.
That was three to one for the Vultures from Cres, whose team was in
part sponsored by the Griffon Vulture Preservation Association. All this
ZORAN FERIĆ was born in 1961 in Zagreb. He is among the most widely read
of contemporary Croatian writers. His work has received numerous prizes,
including the Ksaver Šandor Gjalski Prize in 2000 and the Jutarnji List Award
for the best work of prose fiction in 2001. Ferić is the author of three collections of short stories, a collection of newspaper columns, and three novels:
Mišolovka Walta Disneya, Quattro stagioni (with M. Kiš, R. Mlinarec and B.
Perić), Anđeo u ofsajdu, Otpusno pismo, Smrt Djevojčice sa žigicama, Djeca
Patrasa and Kalendar Maja. His books were translated into English (Autumn
Hill Books), German (Folio Verlag), Slovenian, Polish, and Hungarian. He
lives in Zagreb where he teaches Croatian literature at a high school.
was on our home field, which for the
occasion had been cleared of the few
remaining cars – it served as a parking lot during the tourist season. The
field usually passed through two unequal seasons: the tourist, boring and
long, and the soccer, important but
short. This match marked the beginning of the short season.
Unfortunately, we were two down
because we were incomplete: Globus, whose daughter had been buried three days before, was missing.
And he was our best striker. Nobody of course expected him to show
up at the field that day because his
house was still full of people expressing their condolences. They’d come,
have a shot of brandy, sit silently on
the patio and just once in a while
say something like “It’s God’s will”
or “Be strong.”
Renata and his mother only cleared
away the glasses for Lozovača, washed
them automatically like two machines
with arms and legs, and then lined
them upside down on the edge of the
table covered with a colorful, fruity
plastic tablecloth. On the first day
Globus had said when the mourners came he’d just stare into the tablecloth, into the colors, because he
couldn’t look at the black of those ties
and scarves anymore. Renata, on the
other hand, gazed somewhere into
the distance, far away from this island
and its shore, somewhere beyond the
sea where she used to go shopping for
summer jeans and sandals as a little
girl. Their eyes had not met since the
kid had been buried.
The referee whistled the end of the
first half, and we went dispirited to
our bench. Mungos, a former classmate, now captain at the island police
station, said, “Did I ever tell you my
father played against the Russians in
Hungary during the war?”
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Contemporary Croatian Literature in English Translation
We all knew he’d said it just to break
the depressing silence in which we
dragged our tired bodies toward the
bench, where a disappointed coach
awaited us. But we hadn’t heard the
story. And he went on and on about
how his father had been mobilized
by the Partisans while he was in high
school in Mitrovica and how they’d
sent him together with some other
units to Hungary to prepare for a
breakthrough on the Srijem Front
with the Russians. He was completely
immersed in the story, as if we weren’t
two goals down. He said one Sunday
morning they’d played in some demolished Hungarian village against
the Russians with a ball made of old
army coats. It was the end of February
1944. Early morning. The ground
was frozen, and they put a press on
the Russians, who still hadn’t sobered
up from the night before. They were
playing for a case of horse dung brandy. Up to the end of the first half,
when the first Russian flew into the
air, they hadn’t realized they were
playing in a mine field. But at half
time, while the poor guy was taken
away to have his leg amputated and
arteries tied off, they began boozing
it up on that shit-brandy along with
the Russians, and they got so drunk
that when some Russian captain blew
his whistle they all ran onto the field
again. Every last one of them. Besides, it was war. They were used to
it. It warmed up, the ground softened, it could have exploded under
one of them any second. Mungos’ old
man supposedly felt as if it was all a
dream, something surreal. Never in
his life had he dribbled like he did
that day. He’d passed through the
Russian defense like they were made
of wax. The end result was six to one.
None of them had flown into the air.
It seemed it had been some forgotten
mine, or else God had been so impressed by their play he’d decided to
spare their legs. It was magnificent.
Every member of that Russian unit
had perished in the spring, at Batina
Skela, trying to break through on the
Srijem front.
After Mungos finished there was silence. All of us stared at him suspiciously, trying to decide if he’d made
it all up. Then he said, “What are you
looking at! The message is clear. We
have to play like it’s a matter of life
and death!”
With those words in our heads, we ran
onto the field. The Vultures grouped
in front of their goal, it was obvious
they were going to defend themselves,
save the score. So we’d be attacking in
waves, like in that mine field. We ran
all over, passing, dribbling, shooting.
No one was selfish. All of us suddenly
felt united, as if anti-infantry mines
were under us, or those anti-tank
mines that only explode when you
jump on them, not with just a tap. It
was 1992. In nice weather, when the
wind blew from the coast, the rumbling of the heavy artillery from the
Velebit Mountains could be heard in
the morning silence.
But despite our unity, the ball just
didn’t want to go into the Vultures’
net. It hit the posts or deflected off the
goalkeepers’ hands, like in a pinball
game. Clearly luck was not on our
side. At the very moment I thought
this the game somehow came to a
standstill. I saw our players stop and
stare at something by our bench. Even
Tomo, who had the ball, stopped at
the edge of their penalty box. As if
the anthem had sounded suddenly
in the middle of our attack.
In front of the bench, completely
alone, in Adidas shorts and a T-shirt
with the earth printed on it, Globus
was standing. Ready to come onto
the field. He hopped a little, warming up, and the rest of us stood there.
The Cres team didn’t move either,
everybody at ten hut, like an honor
guard. After three days the bereaved
had been resurrected, though not the
deceased. He’d chosen the most important match for his rebirth. A sharp
95
whistle sounded, and Globus ran
onto the field. Slowly, with dignity.
As he ran by me he said, “I couldn’t
look at that fruit anymore!”
We played on with unearthly optimism. Suddenly, we could do whatever we wanted. In the first ten minutes we scored two goals. And luck
suddenly came our way. The score
was tied, Globus organized our attacks. All of us looked for signs of
grief in his play, but there were none.
He handled and stopped the ball
like in the old days. Perhaps someone could have detected a little sadness in his headshots. I don’t know,
but when he ran bent forward with
his head down, I thought I made out
something like grief in his strides.
Otherwise, he stopped the ball on
his chest, passed it to the tip of his
foot with enviable skill, transforming
the stop into a deadly shot within a
tenth of a second.
That morning Globus demonstrated his true human greatness, like
some ancient king or general. He led
the island team across the imaginary
minefield to a magnificent 4-3 victory. As we went toward the locker
room, we heard shots coming from
town. Somebody was firing a heckler in honor of our victory. Just then
a thunderous boom responded like
an echo from the Velebit.
In the locker room, while we took our
showers, all of us finally realized we
couldn’t escape the sadness. Standing
in the showers, dripping wet and naked, Globus began to cry. All of a sudden we all got quiet, the murmur of
conversation stopped. Only the hum
of the showers could be heard. We all
pretended to be doing something. We
soaped ourselves, plucked hair, gathered our clothes. We didn’t want to
look at the huge man with the shaved
head whining like a little baby.
Mungos suddenly whispered to me,
“Look! No hair.”
Globus was completely shaved down
there. It was weird looking at the gen-
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itals of a crying man, even weirder
that he hadn’t a single hair in his private parts, as if he’d been exposed to
radiation. Even his legs were shaved.
Clean shaven above and below, with a
crying face somewhere in the middle.
He had no hair on his chest either.
Why did a man whose daughter had
died a few days before scrape himself
so thoroughly? I couldn’t decide if it
was sad or just bizarre.
Animals
The town with four church towers
has as many noons as sides of the
world: the bells are not synchronized.
St. Andrew always begins first in
the dignified baritone of the massive
Venetian bronze, which even through
five wars was never melted down into
cannon balls. A minute later a second
noon is sounded by the apple-shaped
tower of St. Justine, and later still
the third and fourth noons are heard
from the cathedral and St. John the
Evangelist’s. If you were to set up a
duel in this town, you wouldn’t even
get killed on time.
Right after that fourth noon we climbed the shady stairs to the terrace of
the Hotel Imperijal, the victors just
out from their shower, our sports
bags on our shoulders. In the hotel
bar window our eyes landed on the
posters that, as in the old days, announced the visits of traveling entertainers. One advertised a performance by Marcus the magician. There
was also a photograph of a woman in
a long wooden box being cut in two
by a man in a tuxedo. The woman
was smiling, but she had already been
split, which created a shocking effect.
At the bottom of the poster, under
the photograph, there was a sign,
I cut women in two pieces
belly, legs and white tights,
I cut bodies with a sharp saw,
in the end they come out nice.
The atmosphere around the Tanzplatz
and in the shade of the century-old
pines was solemn, as if we’d just come
down from a funeral, not up from an
important victory. In silence the guys
took a table next to a white stone balustrade that was a perfect fit for this
old Habsburg hotel built under Empress Maria Theresa.
“And the dead people’s doctor will sit
here!” Muki said patting my shoulder
energetically. Somebody had set up a
chair there – at the corner of the imperial table – and it seemed it’d been
waiting for me for years.
“Pathologist,” I said. “That’s pathologist!” I tried even though I knew there
was no point.
I saw that Maskarin, who seated himself next to me, was trying to tell me
something. He leaned conspiratorially toward me and was just waiting
for the server who’d come to get our
orders to leave before beginning his
confession. He ordered cold wine
with water for himself and me, and
said, “You know, Fero, I think my
wife pees on my food!”
He went on, answering the unstated
question in my eyes. “Every lunch
smacks of pee: the kale and chard
and the chicken stew. It all smells of
pee. Not a lot. As if she went in some
bigger pot and then just took two or
three teaspoons of it out.”
Mungos indicated Maskarin with his
head and said, “Fero, is he bothering
you with his pee stories?”
“I’m not bothering him,” said Maskarin nervously, as if Mungos had interrupted a plan. “I thought Fero
might take what’s left of that potato
salad I had for lunch today and have
it analyzed.”
“Piranha on his mind, not pee,” said
Tomo. “He’s screwing that kid from
the store, so he’s waiting on his wife’s
revenge.”
“We should console him,” said the
coach, an expert at soccer and a layman in psychology. “That one would
spill a pot of boiling water on you
while you’re sleeping before she’d pee
in your soup.”
TIONS
“So Fero,” said Mungos, adding wine
to the mix in my glass to strengthen
it, “How long has it been?”
I counted on my fingers but couldn’t
come up with the number. One hand
wasn’t enough, two were probably
too many. Loud laughter suddenly
came over from the small group at
the next table, unseasonable tourists
in heated discussion.
“Journalists,” said Tomo, noticing
the surprise on my face. “They write
about the war in Lika. And they come
here because of that bastard.”
“Fero doesn’t know,” said Maskarin.
“We’re getting famous. An unidentified animal was seen in Dundo. Some
kind of a big lizard. There’s even a
picture in the Bild Zeitung.”
“I really want to know, why the photos of those bastards are always blurry?” Tomo said suspiciously.
“Because they’re not real,” said Maskarin. “Flying saucers either.”
But Mungos was quiet and you could
tell that something about the animal
bothered him. Muki mentioned his
grandma, who’d supposedly seen the
huge bastard swallow a lamb. Even I
remembered those stories about the
biggest island forest and sheep disappearing mysteriously.
Meanwhile, one by one the soccer
players left, making way for the tourists who took their places at the tables on the terrace. I was surprised
to see they were mostly quite fat. I
couldn’t remember ever seeing such
a concentration of fat in one place.
A fat symposium. I blurted it out in
front of the waiter, who brought me
another glass of Babić. This one was
free, on the house, for little Mirna in
the heavenly soccer fields.
“It’s health tourism, sir,” said the
waiter, indicating the fat people.
“Their diet is proscribed, but everything comes down to the fact that we
don’t give them much.”
“Whatcha gonna do, Fero buddy,
these last few years, we’ve sunk low
indeed,” said Maskarin. “No more
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Contemporary Croatian Literature in English Translation
normal tourists, just faggots or fatties.
If they’re neither, they’re Czechs.”
“They drink mineral water,” added
Tomo angrily, “and eat French fries,
and I throw the fish away, back into
the sea, and look at this prick, this
magician.” Tomo pointed at the poster with a woman cut in half angrily
and went on. “Kićo and Tereza used
to sing here before, and now this jerk
is cutting a chick on the terrace, and
he cuts the same chick every evening
and she’s so drunk she hardly makes
it into the box.”
“Not even the lizard can help us,”
added the coach, resigned.
“I need you!” whispered Mungos suddenly. He was serious, which was unexpected. “I want you too see something.”
He stood up just then and gave my
shoulder a discrete tap, which I guess
meant I was supposed to follow. We
said goodbye to the soccer players and
tourist analysts, who would soon be
moving on to politics and the detonations audible from the Velebit.
On the stairs Mungos hugged me like
an old friend, and we started toward
town, his arm around my shoulder.
His behavior was rather mysterious.
The ornaments on the tiles we walked
on resembled some children’s drawings from Auschwitz that I’d had
the opportunity of seeing in one
of the synagogues in Prague. They
were completely new and bright, like
hard snow. And they screeched under our feet.
“This is new, isn’t it?” I said.
“Yes,” said Mungos. “It’s from Goli
Otok. Old stock. When they closed
down the penitentiary, they found
this in the warehouses. They forced
the inmates to break stone and make
tiles.”
“That’s why they cry!” I said. As if
that explained anything.
When we reached the Hotel Istria, we
turned right toward the old wine cellar. In the lobby, which used to be a
tourist agency, the reception desk was
torn down and everything smelled of
urine. The parquet tiles had been removed from the concrete floor and
placed in the corner next to sacks of
sand. It was obvious that work had
stopped suddenly, in the middle of
remodeling. An obese rat ran in front
of us and disappeared somewhere behind the piled up construction material. It was the size of a small cat. I
tried to figure how many times you
would have to spit on meeting such a
big ass rat to keep bad luck away.
We made our way downstairs. I felt
cold air coming from somewhere. We
descended for quite a while down the
semicircular metal stairs, at the bottom of which stretched the largest
wine cellar on the island – a couple
of large underground rooms. Only
the first room we entered was lit by
a weak lamp hanging down from
the ceiling.
The brick arches and sour, heavy air
reminded me of when I used to buy
wine here as a kid, before Christmas
and Easter, and then take the heavy
demijohns home tied on my scooter.
All around were shelves with dusty
bottles without labels. The puffs of
air that came from the dark rooms
made the cobwebs on the half-vaulted ceiling quiver.
Mungos stopped, listening, and then
yelled into the dark, “Thief! You’re
drinking again!”
First we heard the sound of rubber
soles on the old ceramic floor, like
the squeaking of the door in a horror movie. Then a man in a police
uniform appeared carrying an open
bottle in his hand.
“The glasses are there,” he said, pointing at a barrel that was tipped flat.
Mungos introduced me, and I shook
hands with the policeman. “Fero’s
one of the Pipici family.” His hand
was cold and moist. We each had a
glass of Rizvanac, swirling it in our
mouths like experts.
Then Mungos said, “Bring her in
now! For Fero to see!”
97
The policeman disappeared into one
of the dark rooms. When he came
back he was pushing a gurney with
a body covered with a white sheet in
front of him. There was blood on the
fabric around the head in irregular
stains that reminded me of modern
art. At that moment the policeman’s
Motorola crackled and his hand went
to his waist. Somebody needed to talk
to Mungos, and they retreated into
the next room. The conversation was
obviously confidential and about the
corpse on the gurney. I watched the
gurney and the dead body on it in the
semi-darkness, aware that it would
need to be pushed right under the
lamp for me to really see anything.
But then the thing on the stretcher
moved. I saw the sheet rising around
the stomach and then slowly lower.
I had a very bad feeling about this.
I was used to dead bodies from my
job, but I wasn’t too pleased about
corpses that moved.
“Your body’s moving,” I muttered
when the policeman and Mungos
came back. Something in my throat
prevented me from saying it more
distinctly.
“Eh! Bullshit,” said Mungos, writing
down something he had evidently
been told over the radio. “You’d better take a look.”
The policeman removed the sheet at
last. He did it routinely and theatrically like magicians when they take
sheets from the women they’ve just
sawed in half or stabbed with their
swords. The movement made a small
rat, which had been crawling over the
body under the sheet, run away. The
body, I had to admit, wasn’t moving. It showed clear signs of stiffness. It was naked and female, with
huge breasts that had sagged down
and moved apart and then stiffened.
There was a nasty open wound on
her neck, full of deep bruises and curdled blood, but it was clear she’d been
pretty and quite young. The problem
appeared lower, below the stomach.
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It was a medium sized male penis and
testicles along with it.
“Dick’s bigger than Muki’s,” said the
policeman. “And she’s a woman?”
“Let me introduce you,” said Mungos. “This is the Little Match Girl.
They called her that because she’d
been spreading the drip around. The
sting must have reminded them of
that. Matches.”
I confess it was the most beautiful
specimen of a transsexual I’d ever met
on the autopsy table. Or rather, on a
facsimile of an autopsy table.
“Why here,” I asked, “when you have
a mortuary and fridges up there? I remember when it was built, from the
referendum.”
Mungos looked at me as if the question surprised him. “You know the
people around here and still ask that?
Rumors started spreading right off
when we found her. People collected
in front of the mortuary and refused
to let the girl with the dick be put in
with their dead. Probably afraid she
might contaminate them.”
“The council president told us to
put her somewhere cool, just not in
the mortuary,” added the policeman,
the whole time looking with disgust
at that prick.
“Her name’s Marillena,” said Mungos. “She worked at the strip club on
Palit. At Stipe’s. I wanted to show you
before we send her on to Rijeka for
the autopsy.”
“Where did you find her? Or him?” I
felt compelled to make the point.
“Near the campground,” said the
policeman. “This morning around
nine.”
Her neck was literally all chewed up.
“What could have caused such a
wound?”
“I don’t know,” I said and stared at
the roll of flesh and curdled blood. At
first sight, the wound was strange –
deep tooth cuts in combination with
relatively shallow bites.
TIONS
“I’ve never seen anything like it,” I
said. “The tissue needs to be analyzed,
and everything else.”
“That’s what I was afraid of,” said Mungos. “Could a saw have done this?”
“Theoretically, yes, but not likely. It
looks like teeth to me.”
“There’s no animal around here that
could do that,” the policeman said.
“Except for a shark, but that’s in water.”
“We’re fucked,” said Mungos.
After we’d put the corpse away, Mungos and I went to the town quay. A
breeze was gently rocking the boats.
Some twenty years before we’d used
to meet here, in front of the Hotel
Istria, as soon as the town had been
plunged into dark. Then Mungos
would say, “Hey, guys! Let’s go beat
up some faggots!”
What a pleasant memory to have.
Translated by
Tomislav Kuzmanović
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Photo by: Javor Novak
Gold, Frankincense
and Myrrh
Slobodan Novak
CHAPTER ONE
T
hrough the window I have sent
out into the night that whole
heavy stench seeping through the
cracks round the thin double door
of the bedroom and gathering in a
suffocating cloud of foul sepulchral
odor. From the next room I can still
hear the thick porcelain wash-basin ringing with the deepest notes
of percussion instruments, and in
that ancient chime I make out the
squeezing and squirting of the sponge
with which my wife’s unhappy hands
are washing Madonna’s abdomen. I
shudder in the damp south wind and
do not yet dare breathe with even half
my lungs. Even the tea is poisoned:
I just steam my face and eyes in the
rum evaporating from the warm cup.
From the bedroom Madonna croaks:
“Me romperà the cups, quel wretch in
there! He’ll smash everything!”
The thin door shakes like cardboard
as it opens.
“Hold that nose!” Cara smiles at me.
Cara smiles, oh yes, yes, she smiles,
and smiles... When she carries the
pot out like that, her smile is no
more than a dim circle round her
lips, it spreads concentrically over
her chin and nose and shades her
eyes. My wife, her eyes blind, dead,
bears the heavy earthenware pot before her like an urn to the courtyard
wall. There she climbs onto a stone,
onto the pinkish marble stump of
SLOBODAN NOVAK, Croatian novelist, poet and play-write – born in Split
in 1924. After his secondary school graduation Novak joined the partisan
movement. At the end of the WW 2 he read Croatian language and Yugoslav
literatures at the Zagreb University. He worked as a language supervisor,
proof-reader and dramaturge, as well as journalist and editor in numerous
publishing houses. Slobodan Novak has been a member of Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts since 1983. He started his literary career with a
book of poems (Glasnice u oluji) but soon switched to prose writing. Short
autobiographical prose Izgubljeni zavičaj earned him real recognition with
a book of long short stories Tvrdi grad to follow. But the real fame came with
the publication of his novels Mirisi, zlato i tamjan and Izvanbrodski dnevnik.
Novak’s prose is of a high quality with long short stories like Badessa madre
Antonia and Južne misli being considered the summits of Croatian modern
prose writing. For his work Novak received numerous prestigious awards,
among them “The City of Zagreb Award”, “Miroslav Krleža Award”, “August
Šenoa Award” and “Vladimir Nazor Award”. Slobodan Novak also received
two orders of merit: Red Danice hrvatske s likom Marka Marulića and Red
kneza Trpimira s ogrlicom i Danicom.
an ancient column, and tips the vessel over towards the sea. The ashes
of our Madonna are borne away by
the holy rivers.
The Ganges will wash away the generations, and this Madonna will continue to send her remains every eighteen days over the wall into the shallow Adriatic. She is indestructible,
dying lengthily as she watches my
wife and me age by her side.
The Doctor crosses himself before
her and says: “Well, Signorina Madonna! How long shall we go on like
this, dear lady?” She replies that he
should be patient a few more days
“until I recover! Pazienzza!” The Doctor then goes on crossing himself, in
our room, angrily. Under his breath.
For him she is a Great Riddle of Nature. Humane reasons prevent one,
of course, there’s no question of that
but how humane they are is another
matter... although it would be just
and merciful for us, who are still
relatively young, to devote ourselves
to our children. In God’s name... so,
her hearing’s good and her eyesight!
And, really, every eighteen days...
like clockwork! There’s, quite simply,
nothing like it in the medical literature. Nothing. And how old is she?
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Why, she’s old, really old... almost
incalculably! And we aren’t even relations... Incredible, impossible, completely unrelated! He taps his pockets, crosses himself at the door, and
in the courtyard; he probably crosses
himself again, round the corner, for
his own sake. That’s how it is every
time. He is the first to greet me in the
morning at the fish market, compassionately; he asks me nicely, rhetorically, just to tell him how in God’s
name it’s possible. And why on earth
should I tell him anything! I’m not
surprised at the dead continuing to
live and keep us in their service, submissive. I’m surprised by the living,
at how they come by such strength
in their frailty and helplessness, I’m
surprised at myself and wonder how
we can go on like this. And that is
not a rhetorical question, my dear
Doctor, it’s a question beyond hope
that I keep asking myself, and nothing is impossible for her, nor for
us, we are all kith and kin, tied by
blood to the dead, in faecal kinship
with the dying, with the blueadriatic, with this polluted oxygen we are
breathing... But we’ll buy these few
fish that have been fattened beneath
Madonna’s courtyard wall, Doctor,
and all go about our own business
in brotherly and kindred peace. We
shall be united by grey mullet. Enjoy your meal!
My own business is worse than the
Doctor’s, but I’ve almost learned to
enjoy my food. “You make a start,” I
say to Cara, “start frying the mullet
so I can’t hear the old woman ranting.” She has washed out the pot and
turned it upside down on the terrace
to drain. “Start frying those mullet,”
I say, “they’re clean.” My wife goes on
washing her hands for a long, long
time, poor thing, I’ll have to fetch
water tomorrow.
“Child!” calls Madonna.
“What is it, Madonna?” I ask from
the doorway. “What the devil is it
now? Tell me!”
It is dark in her room. She moans as
she breathes from the depths of the
room. She’s hardly there. She’s crumpled up in the hollow of the bed,
as in a rocking cradle. But she fills
the empty, acoustic room with her
wheezing, and it seems as though she
has squeezed all this murk and gloom
out of her body like a cuttlefish.
“Child! Are you deaf, eh?”
Cara pushes me away from the door.
“We did everything beautifully just
now, did our business and washed; so
what is it now?” asks my wife, stepping into the darkness of Madonna’s
room. She doesn’t find it difficult to
enter this mausoleum; she spends
days and nights here, poor creature.
“If you aren’t quiet, I’ll sleep right
through the night and I shan’t come
at all, all right?”
“She would too, she would, si. If
there were no Hell. Criminals! But
then I’ll cry at the top of my voice,
my dear, and shout. Tutta la notte. I
will, you know!”
“What’s wrong?” asks blackmailed
Cara. “What’s wrong now?”
“I can’t hear the Hail Mary being
said, that’s what’s wrong. A Christian
soul needs...”
And what can I do, I quickly start
mumbling anything that comes into my head, withdrawing into our
kitchen-living room, and Cara has
come with me, she has started rolling the fish in flour and praying under her breath: “Give them eternal
rest and eternal light for our souls
you’ll have to bring some water there’s
none left and I must wash before the
journey souls in Purgatory and then
you can rest as long as you like rest
in peace. Amen...”
The nuns have been ringing the
evening Angelus from their little belltower for nearly a thousand years
now without ceasing. Since the eleventh century mesdamesetmessieurs.
A model of architectural achievement. More precisely, St. Andrew’s,
as you see...
TIONS
I took the zinc bucket as one takes
a child by the hand and carried it
through the back yard into the garden, I rang it, ringing out a response
to the thousand year-old ditty of
St Andrew’s by the Southern Sea,
drumming my knee on the bucket.
The bell hopped two or three more
times on one leg, shocked by my
shameless zincogram and then fell
silent as though it had dropped into
the sea, not leaving even so much as
a romantic hum in the air over the
warm evening furrows.
There is none of that at St. Andrew’s.
Its bells are tin. Once they’ve done
their clanging, it’s all over, and you
can’t any longer tell where it ended.
And one day no one will be able to tell
exactly where my one and only life
ended either. Here – so many years
ago, when I took up my watch over
the dying Madonna – or in freedom,
if I survive the captivity.
I had not yet left the back yard – on
the edge of the verandah behind me
I made out the clatter of my wife’s
overshoes. I thought I heard “for the
priest”. I stopped, and then I almost
ran to her. Out of the darkness she
held out the rag ring for my head. I
had forgotten it when I set off with
my bucket. But still I asked:
“What... has anything happened?”
“Lord no, don’t be daft!” sighed my
wife.
“Piero! Little Piero!” came a call from
the other room. Madonna was now
calling my wife by the name of her
brother, who, they tell me, died while
still in his cradle. Cara called back
crossly and then whispered to me:
“We can always change our minds. I’ll
stay. But please don’t act the fool!”
The bucket suddenly seemed full of
wet clothes; it had grown heavy in a
gust of the south wind and was pulling me through the garden. I’m not
clever enough to know how to act
the fool. The south wind was blowing. There were eighteen days ahead
of me in this huge house. Solitude.
RELA
TIONS
Contemporary Croatian Literature in English Translation
The vestibule of the grave. Life with
a corpse.
The fresh air was stifling me, with its
sticky damp and the smell of decay
from the gardens. And there are no
warm furrows here or any of that romance, of either dusk or dawn. The
little bit of earth that has collected in
the gardens among these rocks is not
even earth. The houses, walls, streets,
courtyards – everything is rock on
rock, and the gardens are dunghills
and rubbish heaps and graves, rotted bones, skin, where something
clammy is fermenting, left behind
by the passing generations, like sediment in a quarry. Where else would
the black humus in these great stone
bowls of walled courtyards have come
from? Anything that could not rot
in this compost heap is still scattered through the gardens, lurking
in the wings: cement heads with
buns, capitals, tiles, glass, earthenware vases and chips of majolica. In
the viscous, greasy, amorphous gravy
of decay which is earth for us, where
magnolias, pittosporum, laurel and
evergreens are planted.
I knocked at a neighboring groundfloor window, holding the rag ring
like a halo over the balding top of
my head. Then I raised the halo,
as though removing a mighty tiara,
and, as though paying my respects to
Christ’s grave, I greeted the terrible
face of my neighbor on the other side
of the pane. What I bowed to was in
fact the image of fear, disfigured by
natural ugliness and unnatural boniness, blueness and whiskeredness.
The most attractive thing about her
is her name, which seems neither attractive nor hers. Our friend is called
Hermione. Not Erinye. Hermione.
And for some years now, ever since
we began neglecting our well, several
times a week she has been frightened
all over again, because I am eccentric
and wicked and her nerves are bad
in any case, bad fro fromher mother
swomb!
“I said didn’t I that this was sanpietro come forforfor water, motherofGod! With a ha-lo!” “And my
wife has invited you to come over
this evening for a while.” “Alright,
for goodness’sake, the poor woman’s
go go going away... oh, but you gave
me a start!! I know, I know she has to
go. I’ll go with you. Why shouldshe
shouldshe worry, just let her go!”
We drew the water from the well,
poured it into my bucket and some
of it over the bucket; the wind ruffled
the water and sprayed it over the top
of the well, which Hermione does not
like, for the old folk always taught us
that water that comes out of a cistern
is no longer healthy if it fallsba fallsba
ckagain inside, indrento.
She took one of the bucket’s handles,
and I the other, and I did not need
the ring, so I waved it about to keep
my balance, because it is heavy. It is
stuffed with stitched up remnants
of old-fashioned homespun waistcoats, bits of felt slippers, hats, wool
and silk in whip-shaped shreds, ribbons from old ladies’ gowns, motheaten plush collars and the sediment
of centuries-old lye, and this heavy,
tightly filled pie wafts from my hand
an acrid smell of slops and boiled vegetables, which, when combined with
the sweaty fumes emitted in waves by
my breathless neighbor, lost its individuality and merged into one single
bitter taste of amaranthus and these
courtyards, this south wind and this
destiny.
When we reached Madonna’s garden, Hermione put the bucket down
in the dark dangerously suddenly,
just in front of my toes, and said solemnly: “She’s going to die, you know!
Didn’t I ss sayso before? Well, she
will, the old lady will die soon now
while you’re on your own. I swear.
Before Christmas, before. Any anyday now.”
I lit a cigarette so as to turn away from
her face, and silently blew the smoke
off to the side. If she had spoken the
101
truth, maybe I would have lit a candle
to St. Andrew instead of a cigarette.
But then, again...
“She’s a devotee of the Co... Community of Worshippers of the Mo...
st Precious Blood of Christ. She is.
Perhaps you know that, but you don’t
know that they all died before Christmas, all of those... them. If not exactly on the Eve, then a day before
or after. This one and that one, and
all. I know them all, on my honor (I
am untouched!), not all the women, I
didn’t say that, but those dev... otee...
dammit, you follow? Not one of
the worshipful sis sisterssur survived
Christmas Eve! paroladonor!”
“Oh come now, Hermione! At least
seventy, each one of them.”
“No, no, lovey, they haven’t, not
that that last... most important one.
That’s what I’m saying. No, really.
They didn’t when I sayso! Now you
know.”
We couldn’t reach an agreement. I
bent to pick up the bucket, she bent
down quickly as well and we set off
like two dumb fools through the dark
garden into the courtyard, lashed by
the south wind. No one should ever dare think that he might not one
night find himself in this windswept
universe humping the same stupid
load with a person he does not understand, who has wandered off somewhere onto the other side of reason
and settled there in some dry bloodless little bed forever.
“We won’t say anything to Cara, remember, will we. Hold your tongue
like this... as though you didn’t have
one. Why, it’s as clear as clear! Because
poor Cara will be al... armed, because
then she’d stay. And that would be
some Chris... tmas and Newyear,
honesttogod!”
We soon reached the terrace, put
the bucket down and plunged into
a cloud of smoke from the frying
oil. My wife was blinking over the
spitting pan the way she blinks over
the crater of the chamber pot, and
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Hermione hurried into Madonna’s
room to savor another’s inferiority. I
stretched out on my couch and heard
the same conversation I have heard
goodness knows how often. First, the
identification process takes a while,
although Hermione spends as much
time in our house as in her own. But
Madonna often meets Cara and myself all over again, so it’s only to be
expected with Hermione. And when
she has finally established that she
is neither this nor that late relative
but little Hermione, her late father...
bel campione!... and that late hussy’s
daughter, then Madonna concludes
that she does not know her, for she
has not seen her since she was in
nappies.
“You are... that is... young. Little. It’s
alright for you, Godknows,” Hermione laughed jerkily: “why, Hermione
isn’t in nappies any more, goodheavens! She’ll soon be restin... restinpeace,
too! How... how old are you?”
“A hundred,” says Madonna firmly and
proudly. “A hundred inpunto.” “Ah
now, it can’tbe... can’tbe... beso much,
signora Madonna!” “How much then,
exactly?” asks Madonna inquisitively and provocatively. “In your opinion.” “Well, roughly, oh how should
I know. Lotslotsless. Plenty.”
There was a short silence. Suddenly
Madonna screamed:
“Aiuto, my little one!”
“Oh just leave her,” said Cara, “she
frets the whole day whenever there’s
a south wind.”
But Madonna was roaring hysterically by now: “Give me back my
Kampor you thieves! Criminals and
farabutti! This is my house, all of it’s
mine, from top to bottom!”
Cara was draining the last mullet on a
fork. She flung the whole thing onto
a plate and went in.
“Dunque?”
“My guardian angel, drive this witch
and Beelzebub out of my house!”
With elaborate gestures, Cara drove
Hermione out of the room.
“Shoo, maledetta Communist witch!
Shoo! There, sit down, while the fish
is hot, have some with us. I’ll close
your door, Madonna, so the smoke
doesn’t hurt your eyes.”
“Close the gates of Hell, the committees have taken everything away from
me! Kampor, the woods, the Sheepfold, Pidoka, the Kopun vineyards,
the Castle, everything I owned, Barbat and Supetarska, Kalifront... all
those villages and relics... and now
they send witches to steal my years!
Ladri! Assassini! Which I came by honestly... accumulated. Cento anni precisi! I am, I am! A hundred! Esatto!”
Her tears reminded her of her losses,
and their memory provoked more
tears. That is all she’s still living for:
to mourn her possessions, which she
exaggerates hugely. And that is all
she still remembers from the time
of her more lucid old age: that confiscation of twenty years ago, which
completely unsettled her. Since then
her spirit just staggers through the
wrongly disconnected regions of her
younger days, among so many dead
and in the timeless gloom of the nonexistent.
We ate slowly, and my wife prepared
a fish for Madonna, arranging flakes
of pure flesh along the edge of the
plate. Crunching little bits of fried
skin and licking the bones clean as
she went, she told Hermione to be
sure and keep an eye on me and
Madonna. Hermione just repeated
from time to time: “Forgoodnesssake, I know, I know! He doesn’t need
comp... company and letsay... let’s say
friend-ship from me. Just look in and
lend a hand.”
She always talks rapidly, breaking up
her words crossly and chewing her
thin whiskers as she stretches her skin
and lips into grimaces of inexpressible contempt and disgust, and her
eyebrows leap and collide above her
nose as though they were artificial,
stuck onto the face of a melancholy
clown, while beneath them two little
TIONS
bulbs spark in turn, as though each
eye belonged to a separate head.
Then she went, saying goodbye to
my wife: “You don’t have to tell me
morethanonce, farrò quello... quelloche potrò! Don’t you worry about anything. ‘Bye!”
For a long time after we were left
alone, we could hear Madonna crushing her soggy little supper greedily
and eagerly with her gums. Cara prepared the tub and heated the water
for her bath, and I put on my pensioner’s cape and stepped out into
the somber Lane of the December
Sacrifices. I’m not saying that is actually what the street is called, but it
is December and my real sacrifices
are just beginning. And anyway, it
doesn’t matter what these streets are
called. Everyone calls them by the
name of people they know who live
in them in any case, or the arcade, or
the tavern, or the well. They all display new stone plates with presumptuously huge historical names fit only
for the devil. They all bluster with
heroisms or boast of army divisions,
and even the most bare-handed and
blustering division would have to file
through them endlessly one by one,
from daylight to daylight, on dry rations, suffocating from each other’s
foot-cloths in the narrow passage.
The ancient, bashful past of these
little streets is disfigured here by the
arrogant history of the new world,
so that old Kekina’s courtyard is actually called Thomas Woodrow Wilson Square, and not Kekina’s Manse
or The Green as it has been from
time immemorial. Each of these signs
takes up half the street, for porches
are Squares here; little broken flights
of steps are Streets. And it would all
warm a local heart if Madonna would
only be done with her stools once
and for all.
Translated by
Celia Hawkesworth
RELA
TIONS
Photo by: Martina Kenji
Back in Five Minutes
Maja Hrgović
W
hen you’re earning your pocket money by working as a receptionist at Pavilion 3 – that’s mostly brought down to watching music
videos on MTV and helping disabled students who live on the ground
floor, in large single rooms, so-called
“solitaries”, with large bathrooms.
All the disabled look the same to
me: their thick lenses set in oversized
government frames, “bowl-cuts” on
their heads, strong arms from pushing around the pavilion’s lobby and
paved yard. Those with cerebral paralysis have modern wheelchairs with
electric engines, they stick together and race down the ramp to the
management’s office. All of them,
or almost all of them, study something connected to religion: religious
studies at Jesuit College or theology
at Catholic University. The paralytics seem older and their mouths go
out of shape cramping suddenly, grotesquely.
When a red light goes off by the
number of one of those ground floor
rooms on a board above the reception desk, I close my eyes in anguish.
Reluctantly I get up, put a piece of
cardboard on the counter with a note
saying “Back in five minutes”, I lock
the booth, and go to the room I was
buzzed from. For a moment I stand at
the door, then take a deep breath and
knock. I put on a servile smile. The
door opens to a musty space saturated
with male stench, the smell of socks,
moldy armpits and genitals.
MAJA HRGOVIĆ (CROATIA) was born in Split in 1980. She studied theatrology
and women studies. Since 2003 she has worked as a journalist in the culture section of the Novi List Daily, and from 2005 to 2008 she was a member of the editorial board at Zarez, where she publishes literary reviews.
In 2009 she was awarded first prize for journalistic excellence organized
by the Balkan Investigative Reporting Network (BIRN). Her work has also
been published in magazines and news portals such as Nulačetvorka,
Cunterview, Kulturpunkt, Op.a, Grazia, and Libela. She regularly writes for
the portal ZaMirZINE, concentrating on women rights and their treatment
in the media. Her first collection of short stories Pobjeđuje onaj kojem
je manje stalo was published in 2010 and her story Zlatka, from this collection, was published in Granta and included in Dalkey Archive’s Best
European Fiction Anthology.
When I still worked there, at Pavilion 3, one student buzzed me more
often than others. His name was Teo.
I would help him set up the bedpan,
reach the New Testament from the
high shelf, help him put on his jacket.
There was something uneasy in his
eyes, some dread of dying swam in
his pupils – or was it just bitterness?
Unlike others who tried really hard
to prove to themselves and to others
that they can do everything by themselves, and refused every attempt to
help them with a nervous twitch of
a determined teenager, Teo practically demanded help. All agitated,
he would ask me to help him button
his shirt, as if I were his maid, as if
he had the right to take satisfaction
from me for his misery. I think that
at the same time he loathed himself
for it; I sensed his accusation directed
against the world, his contempt because of his own inability, because
of his legs, thin and immobile like
a crushed bug’s, because of his rigid
fingers that couldn’t push the key into the lock and turn it. With Christian humility I did what he needed,
holding my breath because of the
stench, and then, my mood crushed,
returned to the reception, hoping
that the red light would not go off
again during my shift. I’d turn on
MTV or reach for one of the books
that lay scattered around; I was trying to decontaminate myself from
the encounter.
I asked other female receptionists
how often Teo rang them. Almost
never, they said.
“He’s in love with you,” said Ivona,
my roommate, who from time to
time brought her books to the recep-
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tion so we could study together, but
instead we would lock the door and
share a joint and then laugh at the
international exchange students who
wandered around the dorm completely lost and confused and who
engaged in conversation with each
other in the funniest language they
themselves invented, adding a word
or two from their own languages,
whenever they needed one.
I asked for transfer into another pavilion because of Teo.
“Any which one, it doesn’t matter,”
I told resolutely to my supervisor, a
head guard who worked at a small prefabricated booth and raised and lowered the ramp at the car entrance.
I was transferred to Pavilion 8. For a
while it was good there, at weekends
I would work nightshifts, put on
my make up in the toilet, place that
cardboard note on the counter saying I’d be back in five minutes, and
then go to “The Mast” with Ivona.
I risked getting fired, I wasn’t there
all night; the head guard controlled
us pavilion receptionists by making
unannounced rounds, stalking those
who fell asleep at their counter –
their hours would get reduced, and
their pay. When at dawn, tired from
dancing and alcohol, wobbling in my
high heels, I snuck my way back to
the reception, I always did that with
a cramp in my stomach, fearing that
my trick had been discovered.
Oh, that excitement! We combined
sneakers with beautiful, extravagant
dresses we’d bought at a flea market
for next to nothing and warmed up
for our night out by drinking Jagermeister from an army thermos,
which we had also bought at a flea
market. During the rest of the week,
I filled it with coffee and carried it
around everywhere, to my lectures,
to the library, to movie nights at the
student theatre. Later, at “The Mast”,
we drank and danced as if our life de-
pended on whether our lungs would
fill up with enough elation before
dawn, so that at one moment, on a
crammed dance floor, with glasses in
our hands, screams filled with ravenous love for the world that was so
beautiful would burst from us and
make our eyes glassy and our smiles
so wide that under the spotlights we
looked like those Russian rag dolls
with their mouths agape in delight.
At least that’s what Ivona looked like.
Her laughter was the concentrate of
happiness: her head thrown back,
mouth open wide, fillings on her
lower molars, the twitchy aaaAAAhhh swelling up from her throat, from
her esophagus, vocal cords trembling
and murmuring like water lilies in a
swift stream.
That was last semester. But then Ivona got a stipend and went to Lviv,
and even though she regularly sends
me long emails with detailed descriptions of silly hairdos at the Slavic Department, somehow I know that our
wild parties at “The Mast” are over
and never to repeat again. Last semester seems like a distant past, I think
about Ivona with some numb sense
of sorrow, like a retired woman remembering her co-workers from the
factory plant where she’d worked her
whole life. Something like that.
That disabled guy, Teo, found out
that I’d asked for a transfer so he
started coming to the reception at
Pavilion 8, he would wheel his wheelchair and park it in front of the counter and talk to me through the hole
wanting me to read him his Bible.
He had a list of his favorite quotes
from the Epistle to the Corinthians,
which, or so he thought, somehow
pertained to me.
It was hard to avoid him all the time,
I’d see him at the dorm’s restaurant,
at breakfast, as he stuffed his mouth
with polenta and as milk dribbled
down his chin and onto his chests.
TIONS
After that I could not eat anymore,
regardless of how hungry I were.
Last week, on the Disabled Club’s notice board I read that Teo had died.
The dorm’s management organized a
free bus to take us to the funeral that
would take place in his village, not far
from Zagreb. There was a pen on the
string hanging from the board; those
who wanted to go had to sign their
name on the list. I stood in front of
the board with that pen in my hand.
I stood there for a while. Then I put
it back to its place.
Here at the reception the passing of
time is a capricious as drunkedness:
sometimes hours just rumble down
on you, sometimes the shift trickles
down like rain on the window, limpily and without end. I watch the automatic door open to new gusts of
cold air and reddened cyclists who
lock their rusty bicycles against the
rail next to the steps. I put the postcard Ivona had sent me from Lviv to
my reception booth’s window, it is
the only decoration here except for
a crucifix, with a dry and dusty olive
branch attached to it. Some previous pious shepherd must have put it
here. Under this crucifix, this reception booth in which I toil my days
in solitude seems like a cemetery
chapel: the desk I’m leaning against
is in fact an open casket with me in
it, I’m lying there, my eyes closed, my
face pale, made up and dressed in a
beautiful flea market dress, exposed
to the eyes and snivels of the beraved
family and friends.
I know I’ve said this many times, but
tomorrow, I swear, I swear, tomorrow
I’ll put the note “Back in five minutes” on the counter and then go to
the car entrance and tell the head
guard that I quit. When he asks me
why, I’ll say it’s a matter of life and
death. And it is.
Translated by
Tomislav Kuzmanović
RELA
TIONS
The First Supper
Enver Krivac
T
he house Adam and Eve lived
in was the first and the last in
the only street, so Jehovah had no
trouble finding it. He knocked and
Eve opened the door. Good evening,
woman, Jehovah said. A good couple
from this neighborhood invited me
for supper, am I at a right address? Eve
smiled and showed him the sign at
the door which said: Firsty-Ony.
In the house, Adam welcomed him
with his arms wide open and shook
his hand firmly. After they’d downed
a glass or two, all three of them sat
down on the floor of the only room
in the house. Why don’t you build
yourself a dining room to entertain
your guests? Jehovah asked. I have no
guests to entertain, Adam answered.
The other day, when we were coming
back after naming all the plants and
animals, we thought we saw two pairs
of footprints, but then it turned out
that we’d left them before and then
once before that. Is there a chance
that these were not our footsteps after
all and that you have created someone
else, but you forgot to tell us? asked
Adam jokingly, but he was serious.
Jehovah shook his head several times
and shrugged his shoulders.
Soon the supper was over. Eve invited them to sit at the table filled
with all kinds of foods. Three, four...
Five courses, woman, said Jehovah
amazed. Ah, I just made some, so that
it’s there, better there’s too much than
that there’s not enough, and Adam
too, well, he loves his plate full to the
ENVER KRIVAC (CROATIA), born in 1976, is one of the founders of Katapult,
a Rijeka-based organization for literature, radio host, comic book artist,
screenwriter, musician, illustrator and literary editor. He published novels
Piknik (1999) and Smeće (2005; together with Alen Kapidžić and Mišo
Novaković). His short stories and poems were published in various magazines and journals. In 2010 his short story Rainbowing won the second
award at the short story competition organized by Ulaznica, a journal for
literature from Zrenjanin. Last year, his manuscript for Portret otoka Pitcairn
tehnikom snijega na travi won the “Prozak” Prize awarded by Zarez – a
magazine for literature and culture and Algoritam Publishing.
brim and more, and we we’re having
guests... Eve answered. Compliments
then to the cook, said Jehovah. Man,
you have a good woman. She got
everything she knows about cooking from me, Adam said, tapped
his ribs and asked, So, how is it? Jehovah answered, his mouth full, Excellent, I’d only add a little salt, but,
woman, don’t be angry, I put salt in
manna too. The seraphim always reproach me for it, they say I should be
careful about the three white killers:
sugar, salt and flour. Salt, Eva asked
confused. Forgive me, my lord, but
what is salt? That thing you collect
from rocks by the shore, what you
put in soup and casseroles, the white
lumps, Jehovah said. Didn’t we agree
to call it salt? Ahhh, the cock, Adam
shouted and turned to Eve. The lord
means cock! What did you say, salt?
All right, from now on we too will call
it salt. Whatever our lord wishes, Eve
adds. You don’t exactly have to call it
salt, ok, Jehovah said, just don’t call it
cock anymore. Didn’t we agree that
that’s the word for the little rooster?
Yes, we did, Eve answered. But, Adam and I sometimes change the name
for something three times in a week.
For fun, so that we don’t get bored.
And we prefer to call the little rooster the little rooster. This thing that
something or someone can have two
words in a name, that’s our last great
discovery. But if we had someone else
in the garden with us, we wouldn’t
change the names so often. Jehovah
answered with his mouth full, I understand you, woman, but I have a
feeling that you called me to this dinner to lobby, to talk me into things.
And I told you nicely a couple of years
ago when first time you asked me.
Adam dropped the wooden spoon
from his hand and pinched the root
of his nose: You don’t understand,
my lord. You have a whole choir up
there, so many messengers work for
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your that you have the luxury of firing those who oppose you, so many
messengers, my lord, and for whom
when they have only my swift Eve
and me to bring us messages from
you? And we’re here alone like that
tree in the center down there.
Man and woman, I didn’t come here
to argue, my word is the law, my
word was in the beginning. Where
was your word in the beginning? For
now the two of you are enough for
me. You are so impatient, and you’re
my favorite creations! The salt of the
Earth! The cock of the Earth, said
Eve, and Jehovah just glared at her.
Again, my lord, you don’t understand, said Adam. Before it meant
salt, the cock was our name for the
deer. Before that, for the wheat, and
even before that we used it for that
thing when it clears up after rain,
and the quequette gets really clean.
Quequette, that’s what we used to call
pliquette once, but now we call it air,
Eve explained. Jehovah nodded. Yes,
but before we called that thing when
it clears up after rain, Adam went on,
the cock was the word for the two of
us. We agreed that you’d call your-
selves people, Jehovah said. Yes, we
did, Eve said, but when we’re alone,
we’re a cock.
Listen, said Jehovah and got to his
feet. First of all, from now on I ask
you to stick to the names of all things
living or dead as we agreed and to
leave them the way you first reported them at the Eden’s cherub notary
office. Second, learn to live alone.
And third, has the good wife perhaps made some desert? Adam and
Eve glanced at each other. What was
that? Jehovah asked. Nothing, said
Eve and got up from the table. She
came back right away with a huge
plate of pie. We each get a piece,
Eve said, and our lord gets the biggest one. When he finished the piece,
Jehovah thanked them for treating
him so well and asked what the pie
was made of since it was so tasty. Apple, said Adam. Apple, great, which
kind did you use, the Golden Delicious from Halilah, Jehovah asked,
or the Jonathan from the Land of
Cush? I don’t know, woman, if you
saw what Granny Smiths I planted on
the banks of Euphrates? No, Eve replied. We used the local sort. Jehovah
TIONS
went pale in a second. He got up from
the table and coughed loudly which
made the whole house shake. No, you
didn’t, he yelled appalled and disturbingly pale. When you don’t want to
hear us, my lord, said Adam. You listen, but don’t hear. Perhaps now, after
you’ve eaten from the tree you yourself had banned, perhaps now you’ll
hear. Jehovah doubled over, fell to
his knees, vomited his heart out and
screamed – Traitors! – so loud that
the walls cracked. Then two cherubs with flaming swords burst into
the house at Firsty-Ony and, in an
impressive display of aggression and
magnificence, dragged Jehovah out
of the house.
You can’t do this to me! What are you
doing?! Stop! I order you! I set the
rules here, he shouted as they took
him east. I’ll never survive outside
the garden! Bastards! His screams
did not make it to the ears of the angels that kept on dragging him faster
and faster.
Translated by
Tomislav Kuzmanović
RELA
TIONS
Bulgakov’s Black Dog
Miroslav Mićanović
W
alking out of a bakery, where,
from time to time, I buy black
bread, I notice a large black dog
that starts running towards me, its
mouth wide open. Its cheery owner yells from the other side of the
street, while this four-legged calf,
his pet, gallops towards me like crazy, he comforts me with his selfless
love he’s not gonna hurt you, he just
wants to play. I raise my hand and
the beast stops dead in its tracks
right in front of me. The place and
time of my surprising power is fall,
Varićakova Street, Sloboština, Zagreb, cyber-world. And now what,
what do you say to a stopped dog and
a curious dark-tanned baker smiling
at you from the door?
Like in every neighborhood of Novi
Zagreb in the fall, the moments like
this stand somewhere between roughness and tenderness, the way I look,
bristly, with a huge head, funny, but if
you give me a space of two sentences,
I’ll spin in a little story around your
eyes, or arms, or harmless silence and
clumsiness with which I would surprise you in bed... The wasteland in
that dog’s jaw and in those eyes is cold
and distant winter, jet-black dog escaped from Bulgakov’s novel. It wants
to lick me, lick me, which is, nevertheless, too much. I give up from the
game and run over the square, slightly
bent, happy, out of breath – I am a
man bringing bread to his family.
“And I told him I see no point in it
licking me, I too have someone at
MIROSLAV MIĆANOVIĆ (CROATIA) was born in 1960 in Brčko. He graduated
from the Faculty of Philosophy, University of Zagreb. Writes poems, stories,
criticism and essays. Edited and co-edited several selections of the contemporary Croatian poetry (Les jeunes Croates, Paris, 1989; Strast razlike,
tamni zvuk praznine, Zagreb, 1995; Nova hrvatska lirika, Ljubljana, 2000;
Utjeha kaosa, Zagreb, 2006). His texts have been included in various anthologies, selections and reviews and have been translated into French,
Slovenian, Ukrainian, Polish, Hungarian, Spanish, German, and English.
The collection of his short stories entitled Trajekt won the Fran Galović
Prize in 2004, while in 2012 he published his most recent collection of
short stories called Dani. He runs a short story workshop and works at
Education and Teacher Training Agency.
home who loves me with a different
kind of tenderness.”
I don’t understand, I can’t grasp why
my wife doesn’t like that sentence,
now I’m that dog from Bulgakov’s
novel and it’s as if my wife’s raised
hand stopped me dead in the middle of the room. I can’t believe how
quickly the roles have changed. Now
it is I who waits anxiously for the
whiff of “sharp cold” from her direction, from her eyes to seep over
me and pass.
“All I wanted to say was that I noticed that my taste and my idea of a
beautiful women have changed since
I’m with you.”
I wonder where my need for this
statement comes from. Who says this
unwanted sentence, what do I need
it for? As if I entered the library in
my neighborhood, where I often go
and caress the books no one reads,
and started a story about how I love
chanson and how it gives me the
right to lose love in the city, there, I
already repeat the fake refrains that
open my door to every sensitive soul
and say come in...
But here I am still in the middle of the
room, frozen in the hurried morning
space for brushing our teeth, washing our face, taking off our clothes,
changing, dressing – as if this sentence I pronounced took away my
right to move and I opt for delay, I
open the refrigerator and abandon
myself to its hidden half-frozen secrets?
Everything has quieted down, everyone has left and I have left, I get in
the car, I drive the car, the left turn,
the sign for right turn, straight, radio, cassette, always the same voice
and the same music from Radio III.
Scraping down the asphalt, INA’s
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building, stop / go / stop / go, the
bridge, the monument-a man walking towards us who advance, in Comrade J. B. T.’s trench coat – in a frame
that could be the gallows on the road
into good intentions, stop / go / stop
/ go, the National Library, its iron and
glass sky (in winter in smoke drizzled
with rain it looks like a shut-down
crematorium) stop / go / stop / go,
a pyramid smaller than anything in
front of Lisinski Hall, a toothpick –
a friend would say, a wife to this and
that friend of mine.
An approach and an entrance into the
city, peeking into people, passers-by,
male, female, stop / go / stop / go –
why didn’t I say yes to a dog, why did
Igor Kuduz: Foto-žurnal / Photo-journal #141 – Oglašavanje / Advertising
TIONS
I hurry back to my wife, the names
are somewhere else, the persistence of
writing is for something else, where
have I lost all those abilities, where
have I gotten lost.
Translated by
Tomislav Kuzmanović
RELA
TIONS
Babe, You’re No Longer Here
Zoran Pilić
Introductory Note
T
his isn’t just your ordinary story
about love, jealousy, and stuff like
that. Obviously, all of this is present
in the story, but there are other more
important things at hand here.
Book One
All this happened a long time ago,
way before Angelina Jolie and Jonathan Franzen, one after another, blessed
us with their pastoral visit, bringing
with them a hint of pure American
magic and embroidered red carpets,
after which we all walked around like
sleepwalkers for months on end, our
heads in the clouds.
Žak Stanić was surprised and hurt,
and still a little out of it, so no one was
surprised when he said that he loved
her much like some people love Metallica or chicken gravy. It wasn’t exactly
that kind of love, but everyone understood what he was trying to say.
He didn’t expect to get dumped. So, it
came as a surprise. It happened right
at the end of the summer when people have other things on their minds.
The break-up created a snowball effect of very bizarre events that no
normal person could even dream of,
much less predict. Žak himself had
very little to do with any of it, despite the fact that the list of things
that dumped men are found guilty
of seems to be rather long.
Ana left and went off with Alan. There
are tons of men like Alan in every
ZORAN PILIĆ (CROATIA), Zagreb, 1966, is a member of one of the largest
subcultural groups in the country – LKCW (“less known Croatian writers”);
a grouch, yet as harmless and as timid as a three-month old puppy; his
favorite band – Motörhead; his unfulfilled wish – meeting Mary-Louise
Parker. Pilić published a collection of short stories Doggiestyle (2007), and
two novels Kriskrams (2009) and Đavli od papira (2011), all three books
attracted no attention, and he personally knows all of his male and female
readers. He cried three times in his life, once from happiness – when on
that legendary Monday in 2001 Goran Ivanišević won the Wimbledon.
city. This one came from Varaždin.
Žak had heard rumors that Alan was a
huge nature lover, and the events that
follow show how all this is connected.
All that we do, all that we are or all
that we are going to be is connected to
the ancient endeavors of the universe
that attempt to show us just how insignificant we are as we confidently
stroll under the ancient stars.
Unlike Alan, who would go to the forest out of the blue and talk to the tress,
the birds, or even to the voles, Žak, to
put it mildly, avoided nature. Especially after The Blair Witch Project.
There were numerous differences between these two men, and although
this is of no relevance to the story, here
are three more differences: Alan had
thin, blonde hair, he always smiled
gently at everyone, and he had never
watched a football game in his life.
Žak was the complete opposite: black
hair, always cranky and grim, and as
far as football went, he hadn’t missed a
single World Cup or Euro Cup game
since 1976. One could conclude that
Ana has purposely searched for a man
who was the complete opposite of
Žak. But, this wasn’t the case. Ana
isn’t a detail-oriented gal and the
majority of things in her life happen
accidentally, elementally. That’s what
happened with Alan – one day the
guy just appeared out of nowhere.
Three days after the break-up, Žak
still wasn’t feeling any better, and
what annoyed him the most was
that the new couple was also going
to Nikolina’s cottage for the weekend. Ana had purposely mentioned
this in front of Kojo, because she
knew that he would tell Žak. She also managed to add that life goes on,
that there’s no use crying over spilt
milk and that she had no problem
with Žak coming.
Žak couldn’t believe his ears. Unbelievable. She was inviting him to his
friends’ cottage, to the place where
he had taken her for the first time.
Nikolina was his close friend, as were
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the others, and the traditional parties
that took place at her cottage at the
end of every summer were precisely
his idea – Žak’s idea. Not Jacques
Brel’s, Jacques Cousteau’s or Jacques
Houdek’s, but his – Žak Stanić’s!
Even if he didn’t want to go to the
party, now he knew that he had to,
because if he didn’t show up everyone
would think he was a coward.
Book Two
While Nikolina, Arijana, Kojo, Aladin, and Lili were unloading the van
and doing their thing, Žak snuck off
onto the balcony wanting to take a
little nap in the midday sun. He heard
the sound of ravens in the distance,
some cracking and snapping from the
forest, and then, right at the threshold of the balcony door, Lemmy
Kilmister suddenly appeared.
Žak couldn’t believe his eyes, but it was
actually him – the legendary godfather
of heavy metal stood there wearing a
black hat, his friendly mutton-chops,
boots, and his ace of spades tattoo.
Lemmy tipped his hat and got straight
to the point. “Listen,” he said, “stop
thinking about her, women come
and go, it’s their nature. Look at that
redhead down there – I think you
may have a chance with her.”
“Arijana?” Žak heard himself say her
name out loud and he still couldn’t
believe that he was sitting there talking to the front man of Motörhead.
“Si, señor, her.” “Do you really think
Ana’s going to show up with that guy
from Varaždin?”
“It doesn’t matter, that asshole probably listens to reggae. The real question is would you take that chick back
after everything?”
“Not a chance in hell,” replied Žak
after a short pause. “Obviously. You
wouldn’t be able to get over the fact
that she had been with him. That’s
over with now. Let them live their lives
and you focus on the redhead.”
“You’re right.”
“Of course I’m fucking right. I’m
Lemmy fucking Kilmister.”
“Respect,” said Žak, as he pounded
his chest twice with his fist.
“Respect, brother, and remember –
it’s all rock ‘n’ roll,” replied Lemmy
Kilmister, as he tipped his hat and vanished into the darkness of the room.
Žak didn’t follow him. He knew
Lemmy was long-gone.
Book Three
Purposely or not, Ana came to the
party an hour after everyone had arrived. Alan followed her with a large,
blue camping backpack on his back.
“Guys,” yelled Alan after he had been
introduced to everyone, “it’s so beautiful here, Mother Nature has shown
herself in all her glory!”
“Good-bye, sunshine!” he said and
waved to the orange ball in the sky
that was slowly beginning to set behind the tall spruce trees.
Alan’s bullshit made Žak want to hurt
himself with a blunt object. Instead
of doing this, however, he went into the kitchen and poured himself a
glass of red wine. Aladin entered the
kitchen shortly after him, stopped at
the door, wiped some invisible crap
from the doorway, playfully punched
Žak in the shoulder, and walked out
of the kitchen. Arijana came in next.
They stood by the window, she gave
Žak a friendly hug, and said that this
entire scene – them standing next to
the window watching their friends
outside in the yard – reminded her of
the Woody Allen movie in which Julia Louis-Dreyfus and Richard Benjamin also stand by the window like
this, she plays his wife’s sister in the
movie, yet she gives him a blowjob
and then they fuck until the old blind
lady walks in.
“But I’m not going to give you head,
you know that, right buddy?” she
said as she winked at him and gave
him a more-than-friendly kiss on
the cheek.
Book Four
In the meantime, Alan went to investigate the surrounding area, like any
TIONS
normal boy scout would, and found a
bunch of logs behind the cottage.
He ran into the yard and shrieked,
“Guys, let’s make a campfire!!!”
And so it was – while everyone else
brought over the wood, Alan skillfully made a bonfire. Žak, against his
will, also helped carry the wood over,
since he figured he should.
“Put this here, put that there, toss
that, it’s rotten,” Alan instructed the
others like some happy maniac.
The highlight of this part of the
evening was when Žak, who was preoccupied with his thoughts, grabbed
a log that had some freakish-looking
reddish bugs on it that looked like
centipedes.
“Stop, buddy!” yelled Alan, as he
started picking off the bugs from
Žak’s shirt.
“Earwigs!!!” yelled Žak, as he started hopping around, frantically trying to get the bugs off, which made
everyone die of laughter. How embarrassing!
Holding one of the bugs in his hand,
Alan explained to everyone exactly
what kind of insect this was. He even
knew the formal, Latin term for it,
which made Žak want to throw the
pompous asshole into the fire.
By midnight, everyone was either
tipsy, high, or both. Marilyn Manson’s version of Personal Jesus came
on the stereo. Žak sat there staring
at the fire. Arijana sat next to him
and poked at the coals with a stick.
Someone noticed that Ana and Alan
were nowhere to be seen. However,
they decided not to call Ana’s cell.
They probably just went to a nearby
motel. An owl hooted nearby.
Book Five
At five to eight the next morning, the
cottage was dead silent. Everyone,
apart from Žak, was asleep like a herd
of black angels. Sipping on his coffee on the patio, he vaguely recalled
kissing Arijana for a little while, after which they must’ve fallen asleep.
Around 8:15, Arijana joined him,
RELA
TIONS
Contemporary Croatian Literature in English Translation
and Kojo followed shortly after. He
put on the first CD he could find.
The famous lines came on: The morning has just dawned, it gently touches
my face, I wake up and realize you’re
no longer here...
Someone’s hand appeared on the
windowsill and pushed the STOP
button.
“Let’s go to the lookout spot,” said
Arijana, jumping up and pulling Žak
by the arm.
He didn’t feel like going, but he finally gave in. The entire way, Kojo
had a stick that he used to clear the
vegetation with from their path. Arijana and Žak walked behind him,
not discussing anything important.
Žak couldn’t get the chorus of the
song they had just listened to by The
Electric Orgasm out of his head, and
he kept singing it over and over in
his head – Babe, babe, babe, you’re
no longer here...
They reached the lookout, a place from
which the entire surrounding area
could be seen. Zagreb could be seen
on the horizon, and it seemed even
further away than it actually was.
“Look, a snake,” said Kojo, as though
he had just seen an old friend.
“Jesus!” yelled Arijana, jumping to
one side.
The snake was napping beneath a
rock, most likely waiting to heat up
in the midday sun. Kojo tipped over
the rock with the stick, and the snake
curled up even more.
“Leave it alone!” cried Arijana, on the
verge of hysteria.
“Leave it the fuck alone, let it sleep,”
said Žak.
But Kojo wouldn’t listen. He started
poking the snake with the stick and
saying, “Wake up, snake, do you hear
me? Wake up, it’s morning.”
Žak stared off into the distance. He
decided to ignore him. An old, white
Volkswagen Beetle drove up the hill.
The sun had turned a sickly pink
color. “Leave it alone, you’re so stupid, leave it alone!” yelled Arijana
from the side.
Then, suddenly, Kojo tossed his stick,
grabbed the snake by the tail and
started spinning it above his head
like a helicopter propeller, shouting, “I’m going to stun it, I’m going
to stun it!”
Suddenly, the snake slipped out of
his hand and flew over the slope.
Arijana, Žak, and Kojo stared at this
completely surreal scene – a snake
flying through the air.
Book Six
Like every morning, Đani left for
work. It took him 12 minutes to
get to the motel, and in seven years
working there he had never once
been late.
The Beetle made a strange sound going up the hill, but nothing to worry
about. Like every morning, Đani was
listening to the traffic report on the
radio, for some reason. Radio interference came on in the second to last
road turn. Đani turned the tuner a
tiny bit to the left and the interference went away.
At that exact moment, the snake hit
the windshield, bounced off, and
landed in the grass next to the road.
Đani, who had never seen anything
like this before, lost control of the
wheel, the Beetle went off the side
of the road and over the slope, hit
a large rock, did a spin in the air,
flew through the thicket, and hit a
blue tent.
Đani would later explain that in that
split second he realized he wasn’t going to die because his whole life hadn’t
flashed before his eyes, as it is usually
the case before someone dies.
He walked away with a few scratches
and a bruised right shoulder.
Book Seven
A snake that is thrown into the air
travels at a speed of such-and-such
meters per second. A Beetle is driving down the road at such-and-such
speed. Is it possible for the snake to
land on the windshield of the car?
111
This depends on whom the snake is
thrown by. If Kojo throws the snake,
the correct answer is: yes, of course
this is bound to happen.
The three of them stare in shock as
the driver loses control of the car and
flies off the road, performs a stunt
show, flies through the bushes and
comes to a stop. They can no longer
see the Beetle due to the vegetation
and the slope, but everything goes silent. The driver appears by the side
of the road holding his shoulder and
yells something to them.
Arijana, Žak, and Kojo, the snake
thrower, run down the slope.
“I hit a tent, I killed someone...” they
can now clearly hear him saying.
An epilogue
with no rational explanation
We’ve reached the end of this bizarre
story. Everything’s clear.
Hard to believe, but true. Ana and
Alan pitched their tent and spent
the night at that exact spot. At that
exact moment when the Beetle with
the distraught Đani in it fell on top
of them, they were still sound asleep.
They didn’t suffer – they died in their
sleep. After a lengthy interrogation,
Arijan, Žak, and Kojo, no matter
how hard they tried, couldn’t provide
any rational explanation.
Sometimes, things just happen. If
Ana hadn’t dumped Žak and run off
with Alan, if they hadn’t gone to the
cottage, if they hadn’t pitched their
tent at that exact spot, if Kojo hadn’t
played Babe, You’re No Longer Here...
P.S.
What happened to the poor snake
in the end?
It got out unharmed, but, as was to be
expected, in great shock. It wasn’t its
old self the following spring and the
other snakes watched in surprise as it
twitched whenever a car passed by. It,
nonetheless, lived a long life.
Translated by
Petra Pintarić
112
Photo by: Martina Kenji
A Memory of a Dream
Ivica Prtenjača
W
hat has the child dreamed of?
I wonder sitting in my Zagreb
skyscraper, floating together with the
frantic pre-Christmas snowflakes, with
a glass of red wine in my hand, the
wine from the only vines that had
survived the war, from Poprikača,
where my grandfather, every time he
went to that vineyard, killed a horned
viper. They nested in the porous
sandy soil framed by drywall, raspberries and weeds, glistened in the
sun, flicked their tongues in the heat
of the summer morning, and then my
grandfather would raise his sickle,
the bees and bumblebees would fly
up, the weasel would escape into the
rocky mouth of fear. And then everything would be over, we the children would get a headless, scary and
innocent toy for yet another afternoon no different from any other. In
my apartment, like in a spaceship, far
from any signal, from any message or
call, from any need or desire, I finally
remember that dream.
It was just another one of those surreally beautiful afternoons in late
August, when orange light descends
on things and people like gold dust
of any which blessing. The summer
has gone quiet and is now leaving,
the heat has stopped, the sun is getting weaker, but its color is more and
more like a spread out skin of an orange that melts the scorched grass,
the hard, worn stone, and the dry
ground all over which the stubble is
already burning and the tractors plow
IVICA PRTENJAČA (CROATIA) was born in 1969 in Rijeka where he studied
Yugoslav Studies at the School of Education. He has been working since
the age of fifteen: as a water-meter reader, gas bill collector, ice cream
deliveryman, warehouse worker, construction worker, gallery operator,
fire extinguisher serviceman, shop assistant, publisher, head of marketing
services, and a spokesperson. He writes poetry, fiction, plays, columns for
daily newspapers, and he often hosts promotions, fairs of literature and
literary festivals (he has some experience with this festival as well). At the
Croatian Radio 3 he hosts a show called Moj izbor (My Selection). Prtenjača
has published five books of poetry, a novel, a play, a book of stories with
culinary recipes, and won a number of awards for his work. Some of his poems, cycles or books have been translated into some twenty languages. His
work has been included in a number of anthologies, selections, panoramas
and histories of Croatian literature. He is the president of the Goranovo
proljeće selection committee. He lives and works in Zagreb.
while the fiery tongues dance spurred
by the westerly that every day picks
up at exactly quarter to five and quiets
down sometime around eight.
My grandfather and grandmother are
in the field, I don’t know why they
haven’t taken me with them, strange, I
think. It was usually me who drove the
tractor from one pile of hay to another,
the hay they went to gather and load
on the wagon with their pitchforks.
Should I only say that below one of
those haystacks, in its sweet-smelling
moisture, there was a viper sleeping
and then it, startled, lazily sunk into
one of the cracks in the ground, into
the deep and forever? But now I’m
here, I sit on a stone under the mulberry tree, I sit and smear one of its
black fruits on the stone slab with my
sandal. I want to write the letter A,
some number, let’s say, my grandfather’s year of birth, anything. Almost
at the very moment as I finish the last
nine, I hear some racket, screaming,
someone slamming against the metal door down there at the bottom of
the yard. And the horse neighs. And
a man yells: Get him, get him!
I had no time to even turn, I didn’t
manage to say a word, and I was already
thrown to the ground, I slammed my
head and the dark blood mixed with
the dark nine, they held my arms and
legs, screamed, children, only just
younger than myself, they walked
all over my belly, poked their fingers
into my eyes, spat at me.
A gypsy caravan stopped at our house,
now they’d take what they wanted. In
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one of the wagons, in a rusty cage, I
saw a bear, its back all bloody, the
horses that dragged that wagon were
unbelievable nags, I knew it, such
skeletons run in hell too, from one
torture chamber to another.
The loudest and the strongest, mustachioed, toothless man, obviously
the caravan’s leader, took a short knife
and started cutting. He cut open my
belly, got rid of everything that got in
his way, then he sliced me vertically,
my arms and legs, at that moment I
lost my voice completely, now I could
only watch. They shrieked with happiness while the four of them, holding me by my arms and legs, my face
against the good and gentle sun, carried me to the wagon. I had no more
heart to cry from.
They laid me down on a dry straw
and started wiping me with colorful rags they had taken down from
somewhere and that smelled of the
worst of tobacco, sweat and horsehair. Several women brought wooden cases from which they methodically and carefully took out different
valuables: chalices, pendants, golden
daggers, crowns topped with emeralds, topazes and bracelets, rings,
visors of silver, long amber necklaces that shone in the August sun
like gigantic drops of honey. All of
that, one by one, they pushed into
my belly, into cuts in my arms and
legs, all of it fitted into me, dead, but
alive, astonished and terrified, yet
somehow joyous and by then completely calm. In the end, I was lying
on that wagon, on that damn straw
like some sack of skin with alive eyes
and pretty hair, with boyish freckles
and bitten fingernails, stuffed with
sparkly treasure that I could not even
dream about and that had come from
some other reality, from some world
I knew nothing about. Only the sun
spilling over it all was the same. The
sun that shined both for their golden trinkets and for myself who was
no longer, but who experienced the
most beautiful of all deaths, a death
only I child could imagine. A treasure
chest. That sees everything. And that,
like every man and every woman, can
die only once.
The horses, lashed over with a whip,
started and I clinked, the shadows
jumped, now we’d move on, to another village, to another child. Goodbye
grandpa, goodbye grandma, so long.
I sit in my Zagreb apartment as if
in a spaceship, I drink wine while
the snow outside picks up, bells toll
announcing Christmas, silence like
cotton whirls about the rooms. I remembered my dream, the gypsies
kidnapped me again, they did what
they did and I thank them for that.
While I sit like this, somehow I feel
most sorry for that bear, it was the
only thing in that dream that seemed
real. And that sun, that soft, melted
orange veil. I could fall asleep, and
dream of nothing.
A long, sharp bell at the door wakes
me; someone’s ringing, ringing like
crazy. I jump and run to the door.
I open; an accordion, the three of
them, hopping, dancing, singing,
Boss, spare a buck or two, c’mon, give
us something, may you have a merry
Christmas, c’mon, pick a song...
The three of them, beautiful, small
and brown, with just a little more
clothes than in my sleep. C’mon,
you wanna hear some Nina, yells
the little accordion player. But I can’t
move. But I can’t even blink. Now my
grandpa and grandma drink wine in
that field, suspecting nothing, and I
am now falling down on that slab of
stone, slamming my head back in the
year 1919, now the nags are neighing
from hunger and despair.
Just a second, just a second... I say
and wipe my sweaty palms against
my trousers, rummage through the
drawers, look for loose change, take
the oranges from the fridge, I have
some chocolate, just a second, I have
a bottle of wine too, I’ll give them
that as well, I’ll give them all I have,
113
I’ll cram their arms so full they won’t
be able to walk, just a second, here,
boys, c’mon play that one by Gibonni (I don’t know that one, want some
Halid), play whatever, just a second,
I’ll give you all I have.
I put things into their open arms,
they’ve already stuffed the money
in their pockets, the accordion is on
their backs, they’re happy, and so am
I. No more music for you, boss, you
know. It’s your fault, you gave us all
these things!
True, no music, but so much joy.
Thank you, boys, merry Christmas
to you too, hats on your heads, be
careful not to freeze. They leave and I
close the door, my hands are shaking
with delight, knees buckling. Something’s missing, this story is missing
something! Like a strike of lightning,
I decide in a moment. I just need
to find that old shoe box I keep my
sneakers in, Adidas Handball Special,
that’s where all my handball medals
are, my trophies won at tournaments
and championships for children and
youth. The merry trio must still be in
the building, I need to catch them, I
walk out into the hall and run in my
slippers several stories up, then down
to the lobby, frantically, beside myself, with an old shoe box under my
arm. There they are, in the park, by
the bench. I run over a deep snow
in which I lose my slippers, I come
to them out of breath, they’re a little
scared, but still they smile.
I catch my breath, while my fingers
go numb from cold, I take out my
gold medals and put them around
their necks, I give a little trophy to
each, their eyes shining just like in
my dream, about that boy ripped
open, gentle and warm sun was shining. What had that child dreamed of
that it makes an adult do something
as crazy as this?
Now he’s even got a heart from which
he cries from happiness.
Translated by
Tomislav Kuzmanović
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Photo by: Vladimira Spindle
Fairy Hair
Ivana Simić Bodrožić
T
he bus stop shelter does not have
a roof. The wind whips you,
the sun scorches you, the rain pours
down your neck when the only bus
is late. The sky is so dark, so low, it
is December, and if the shelter had
two metal poles they would make at
least you feel like you don’t have to
lower your head even more.
When that happens, I turn my head
to the left and look at the frostbitten corn and think how no one
would know if I took a few, in the
autumn, while I’m waiting, and took
them home and cooked them, so soft,
young, succulent. I don’t know how
the hair is called, fairy hair I used
to call it, because she told me: “We
didn’t have dolls, we used to make
them out of corn husks, and that was
their hair.”
A bare orchard is on the right side of
the road, and I look at it when the
wind blows from the corn field and
I wonder why have I never bought a
crate of apples. Maybe this autumn,
if she is still alive, if I am still passing this way.
I have thought of that many times.
Occasionaly I visit this old people’s
home. This is where my granny lives.
It is far away from town, as it should
be. Stone swans filled with dirt glide
through the yard, a fat, blind cat sits
in front of the entrance. I stomp my
foot next to it as I reach for the doorknob and then turn my head away to
take a deep breath. I fill my lungs with
cold air, the stink is horrible.
IVANA SIMIĆ BODROŽIĆ (CROATIA) was born in 1982 in Vukovar. She published two books of poetry: Prvi korak u tamu (2005), which won “Goran”
and “Kvirin” awards and which was translated into Spanish (Primer paso a
la oscuridad, 2011), and Prijelaz za divlje životinje (2012). Her poems were
translated into several European languages and included in a number of
poetry anthologies. Her novel Hotel Zagorje (2010) won the “Kiklop” award
for the best work of fiction, the “Josip and Ivan Kozarac” prize and “Kočićevo
pero” award. Hotel Zagorje was translated into Slovenian, German and
French, and will be turned into a film for which the author, together with
the director Jasmina Žbanić, is writing a screenplay.
The ground floor is for immobile
and half-mobile. My granny is halfmobile. They are in diapers, which
explains the smell. I have a candle
in my bag, a scented candle, it says
Scent of Christmas on it, whatever
that means. My granny has always
been keen on candles, she used to
pray endlessly, but after she had almost set her room on fire, we didn’t
allow her to light candles anymore.
This one will just stand on her nightstand.
She used to love all religious holidays,
she tought me to pray in Hungarian,
and she pulled my ear only once. It
happened when I was five, it was All
Saints’ Day and I farted and said:
“This one’s for the dead.”
So, there are a few rooms downstairs,
it takes exactly three steps from the
entrance and sticking my neck out,
carefully, like a turtle, the doors are
open, and I can see her bed. I always
do this slowly as I am not always
ready to handle the sight that awaits
me. Sometimes she sleeps with her
mouth wide open, sometimes she
just stares into thin air, and once I
came exactly when they were changing her diaper, she looked like some
scary baby. That was when she was
seeing spiders and snakes climbing
down the walls to get to her, I think
the staff didn’t take that too seriously,
they called us only after she had cut
up her sheets with an apple peeler to
get rid of them once and for all. Now
she’s on good pills. The only thing she
fights with is her past.
“Hi, granny...”
I say this not too loudly, I don’t
want to disturb her roomates, they
are not always on friendly terms, as
it often goes with people you have
to live with. And I don’t want to get
involved, don’t know how much of
that has to do with the reality I am a
part of. Once she pointed with head
at the woman in the bed opposite of
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Contemporary Croatian Literature in English Translation
hers and told me, “You see this old
woman?”
“Yes, what about her?”
“She’s given me two thousand dinars,” my granny says all self-important and confuses me properly.
“And why has she done that?”
I don’t realize the question is inappropriate.
“And why wouldn’t she?!” she cuts me
off and dismisses my poor logic.
Last time they were quarreling, but
now there is a new woman here who
apparently told her, “Go to hell.” It
was because she shouts at night. It’s
not easy, becoming a part of someone’s life. All of them lived somewhere else before. Before, someone
cared about what they thought and
what they said, and I am wondering
now what is the truth.
“Ooooh, my child...” my granny says
and her thin, chapped lips fall even
deeper into the abyss. She puts her
upper false teeth in only for lunch,
but when she rests, she takes them
out.
“When will you start looking like a
woman?” she asks.
When she asks this, I know it’s good,
she is all here today, she is conscious,
I prefer that over her asking me where
her Mum is. And then, all of a sudden, her hand shoots out very quickly, like a tentacle, and stops a few centimeters in front of my eyes.
“D’you see?” she asks.
I look and see a purple flower with
a cannula in its centre spreading between the wide veins and covering
almost all of her hand.
“Does it hurt?” I ask.
“No, not that, what are you looking
at?” she tells me off.
And I am staring, all eyes, but cannot
see anything but that underground
hematoma tunnel on a child-sized
hand. Time passes.
“Can’t you see the nails?” she finally
guides me in the right direction.
The nails. The moment I become
aware, tender, mother-of-pearl pink
grabs me by the throat so hard that
my eyes fill with tears.
“Looks good on you,” I say.
“It’s Christmas in two days,” she says
happily, but then waves her hand and
adds, “But, by the time Father comes,
they will become chipped.”
I cannot figure out from her tone of
voice if that’s a good thing or bad,
should Father see the nail polish on
an old woman? We are talking about
a priest here, but the granny wouldn’t
change her ways and keeps refering to
him as Father and we gave up pressuring her to use the proper word
after she started overcompensating
and pronouncing the words wrongly thinking this makes them sound
properly Croatian.
She has told me a thousand times
how grandpa and she built a house
with next to nothing, but the house
was always clean so the clergyman
that was visiting them once said,
“Your house is like a church.”
Well, when an official tells you something like that then you can start your
journey in peace, when your time
comes. Until then, you live a decent
life. In a country with no Christmas you don’t put a Christmas tree
in the window on the 25th, but you
will decorate it with sweets, walnuts
wrapped in tinfoil, and tie a small
flag around the wheat, and put it
underneath the tree, deep under the
fragrant branches. The cakes will be
stored in an unheated room days earlier, you will run around cooking and
serving like a lunatic, you will give
your husband numerous small tasks
so he doesn’t have time to get drunk,
or, as my granny used to say, stuff his
face after he finished them. Granny
was Christmas. She was Christmas
all year round.
Until the next therapy. Now she’s
preoccupied with turning her nails
towards the light from the window
and the longevity of the nail polish
I can swear I see on her for the first
time.
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“What did you have for lunch, granny?”
I always ask that when I don’t know
what else to ask. I think I’m kind,
I come for visits and all that, but
now she gazes at me like she despises me.
Fuck lunch, I can see in it her eyes, I
want to tell you something, listen to
me. Afterwards, I could never figure
it out, did we really communicate
telepathically at that moment, or
was it some kind of Christmas miracle, but I doubt it, I could swear I
heard those words coming from her.
And then she continued, talking out
loud. To me, I think, but possibly, to
life in general.
“And what am I waiting for? I am
waiting to die. And when I die, they
will bury me in that grave. Together
with him (she means Grandpa). And
then, then we’ll stay there buried forever, and the only thing I ever did was
putting up with him. And I knew
everything. I won’t even mention the
women. The only good thing: he never took anything from the house, only brought stuff. That woman from
Miklauševac had a garden, so he always brought peppers and tomatoes.
And he didn’t beat me. He didn’t. But
you only cook and wash and clean
and they come, leave, eat, take, and
then, all of a sudden you’re old, ill,
crazy, in a diaper.”
We are silent. I can’t, I would like to,
but I can’t, I am not strong enough to
take in this truth about life she wants
to impart on me. The biggest truth
of all, that comes from her toothless
mouth, from the realisation what it
is that you are waiting for, and that
it is not Christmas, that you have to
put up with all these fools around you
that reduced you to an old crone.
We are connected right now, connected by wires whose light bulbs
are glowing stronger than those on
Maddison Square Garden at this time
of year. But I don’t want it, I don’t
want to know anything anymore,
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because I am at the beginning. I only have foundations, and honestly, I
am afraid they are shaky, honestly, I
don’t even know who I am, honestly,
I don’t think anyone knows that, because honestly, that’s why one Christmas is on 25th, and the other on 7th
of January. Honestly, this is suffocating me, and granny sees that I
am preparing to leave, she grabs my
hand with supernatural strength and
pulls me towards her and whispers in
a hoarse voice.
The secret of all secrets.
“Never iron the curtains. And ask
him where he’s been, always.”
I nod and run out. I am pushing
against the doors but the fat cat lies on
the floor in the cold and won’t let me
open them. An old man appears behind me, pushes his cane through the
crack and shouts, “Get the hell away,
you bastard!” and then he smiles and
winks at me.
I run all the way to the bus stop.
Sharp, dry snow lashes at my eyes, I
am practically blind. I can hear the
drone of the bus in the distance and
start waving to the driver like a lunatic, like he doesn’t know there is a
bus stop here. I’m the only passenger,
I would be grateful if there was any
face to look at, no matter how misshapen. I look around, spot newspa-
Igor Kuduz: Foto-žurnal / Photo-journal #147 – Izlaz u slučaju nužde / Emergency exit
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pers on one of the seats, afternoon
edition, and sit down there. I want
to occupy my mind, I want to last if
only a minute between eternity and
finality in those three beds. And this
is what I read: Special offer! Tomorrow’s edition only! Holy Family! Second part of the Christmas DVD edition! Discover how Mary and Joseph
met, how they raised Jesus and how
their faith in God helped them overcome all obstacles that were put in
front of them.
That’s what I’m interested in!.
Translated by
Željka Černok
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Chikungunya
Neven Ušumović
O
f course he didn’t take him all
the way to the Croatian border. He left him near Parecag, at a
bus station. This driver didn’t say
a word, he drove all to Koper in silence; all right, true, it was Monday,
no one felt like talking. He only said
srečno, wished him good luck, and
motioned him to get out. He crossed
the road and after only a few steps
found the place where he could wait
for another car.
Only after the first sting did he notice a pile of worn car tires. The sun
was not yet burning properly so the
tires did not give that stifling smell
he loved so much. The drops of last
night’s rain glistened on them. He approached them with anger. He knew
it well, by the sting, tiger mosquitoes,
they nested here and formed their little clouds of pleasure.
Relentless mosquitoes were part of
everyday life around here. Ever since
the 1980s, they’d been coming her
together with imported goods from
Asia, and now these little tigers were
biting non-stop, regardless of the
time of day and without much buzzing. The only thing was that these
years there’d been more of them,
too many.
The sun shined on the exact spot
where he was standing. After a couple
of minutes it became unbearable and
he had to turn his back to the road.
In front of him there was a patch of
feeble clover and then reeds through
which a path for joggers and hikers
NEVEN UŠUMOVIĆ (CROATIA) was born in 1972 in Zagreb and grew up in Subotica. He graduated in philosophy, comparative literature and Hungarian
studies from the University of Zagreb. His publications include collections
of short stories 7 mladih (1997), Makovo zrno (2009), and Rajske ptice
(2012), and a “short-lived novel” Ekskurzija (2001). In 2009, his short
story Vereš was included in Dalkey Archive’s Best European Fiction Anthology edited by Aleksandar Hemon. Ušumović translated the works of Béla
Hamvas, Ferenc Molnár, Péter Esterházy, and Ádám Bodor. Together with
Stjepan Lukač and Jolán Mann, he edited an anthology of contemporary
Hungarian short story Zastrašivanje strašila (2001). He works as a librarian in Umag.
passed, where bicycles were ridden
through. Behind that were soline,
muddy fields of salt, their swampy
stench slowly rising as the day grew
older. For a while he couldn’t take his
eyes of a bicycle whose frame blazed
unbearably under the sunrays. For
a moment it seemed the frame had
freed itself from its wheels and floated
in the air like a giant letter.
He turned towards the road and soon
a car with Pula license plates stopped.
This driver was very chatty, but unfortunately he went only as far as Buje. He didn’t want to tell him what
was business in Oprtalj; still, he gave
him the basics about his illness and
tiger mosquitoes.
Refik lived his life of a retiree in one
of the blocks at Markovec, just above
Koper. He had a terrace, which he
used as a dump yard for his bicycle
tires. Patching, fixing tires was his
passion for the days in retirement,
he did it for his own pleasure. To
kill time, he charged people just for
the sake of it, because the Slovenians
loved it. The problem was the rainy
season: he’d dry, arrange and rearrange all of them, but in some tires,
in that tangle, the water remained for
months, and the mosquitoes thanked
him wholeheartedly by laying their
eggs, breeding relentlessly. Still, even
after everything that had happened
to him, Refik did not lose his sense
of humor: “So the word of my generosity,” he said to his curious driver, “spread among the mosquitoes
and one day one of them treated me
to some nasty virus. For two days I
lay in Izola Hospital with a fever, a
headache, I couldn’t even glance at
the sun, and the worst of all, and I
feel it to this day, and it will stay with
me until I die, my joints had swollen and it hurt as if a dog bit me and
wanted to tear off my leg. Ni zdravi-
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la za čikungunju, that’s what he told
me, the doctor, there’s no cure for
Chikunguyna. Hang in there, Refik,
don’t give up... That’s how I won over
the disease.”
Buje were already in sight, up high;
it seemed this had somehow quieted
Refik down. The driver’s eyes kept
falling on his jittery hands, hands of a
craftsman: a web of black lines over his
fingers. Those fingers could not calm
down, they were breaking from emptiness, straining with nothing to do.
As a mason, Refik also worked in this
part of the country, especially in and
around Grožnjan. Now he was supposed to go towards Oprtalj, luckily
not all the way, but a bit closer, to
Makovci. In any case, he no longer
felt like hitchhiking: he took the road
over Triban.
The sun shined on each step he made,
he climbed uncaringly, not noticing things around him. Again he
engaged in his deaf-and-dumb discussion with the Slovenian nurses in
Izola; they showed no respect for the
old Refik. At least not as much as he
expected. He gloated that now, at this
very moment, he was doing exactly
what got him in quarrel with them in
the first place; izogibajte se gibanju na
prostem, that’s what he caught on to,
he didn’t even listen to what else they
had to say: he not to move, but that’s
like they forced him to sign his own
death sentence! It might be that they
got angry with him too because to
their question, Kje vas je pičil komar,
he answered with approval: “Bah,
pinched me, yes – hell, yes, it pinched
me like a motherfucker!”
He stopped for a second in the shadow of a rundown stone house, however, the swallows were so loud that
his thoughts got completely tangled.
Eh, if I pinch you...
Finally, he turned around to look
where he was, clear shadows of trees
danced on the edge of the road ahead
of him. First grains of sweat appeared
on his temples, he wiped them away
with his palm. This reminded him
that he was on the way to get urine.
The urine of a woman he’d never
seen before, only talked to her over
the phone. His neighbor Maja –
when, over a cup of coffee, he told
her how he suffered and read his
half-wrinkled diagnosis to her, because that he didn’t know by heart,
that Chikungunya, which sounded
like an insult to him – gave him the
number. She could barely wait, don’t
you listen to them doctors, that was
her favorite sentence, she always had
all kinds of honey and tea, and now
she came into her own; she knew of
a woman who had a urine that not
only healed your skin, but no mosquito would even smell you – and you
don’t smell – she added immediately.
But this was precisely what interested
Refik the most, how come you don’t
smell, she pees on you, yet you don’t
smell, how do you get that? First,
she doesn’t pee on you, you get the
bottle, you pay for it, and then you
rub it in yourself, second, this urine
is left to rest for a couple of days, it’s
not like if you peed right now! – she
snapped right back at him.
But, even now, when he was already
on his way to Makovci, Refik could
not get the image out of his mind: he’s
lying on his back, some young woman above him – she’s peeing, urinating on him. That’s what pulled him
on, until he freed himself of that image, until he got the urine, he would
not be able to calm down, he realized
one night. Nevertheless, it took him
a few days, until he made a decision.
Wherever he saw a woman, an attractive one, he imagined himself under
her legs, soaked in urine, that image
was stronger than him, he simply had
to go see her. “Eh, damn you”, he
said to Maja, who stuck some money
and a list of medicines she’d ordered
from that same woman, Blanka, into
his hands.
I’d already forgotten all about women, Refik thought in anguish, as Trib-
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an grew smaller behind his back. And
now this urine! The more he imagined the scene, the wilder Blanka
became, she took different positions
and tortured him.
He closed his eyes, as if this would
chase the images out of his mind, and
picked up his pace. When he glanced
at the road in front of him again, he
realized there were only trees around
him, no man in sight, no house. That
always troubled him. He picked up
his pace even more to set himself
free from that inner fatigue – bah,
he can’t go back now, not after he’s
gone this far!
Church towers had already sounded the noon, hunger started to bore
around his stomach. He didn’t like to
eat. When there was light, he would
spend time on his terrace among the
tires, perhaps he would light a cigarette, but now not even that. He even
avoided drinking water! He was only
worried that he wouldn’t be able to
find Blanka’s house, he’d hardly seen
anyone along the way, and he’d have
to ask around, people just had to
know of her, if not by her pee, then
by her herbs and tea.
He was all sticky with sweat and dust.
His strength was giving up on him.
He made his way through some bushes, entered some way among the trees
and found a clearing where he could
lie down. Oak branches above him
coiled like hungry snakes. An absolute quiet all around. He smiled. To
travel such a distance by the end of
your days because of a woman! And
what for?! To have her pee on you.
Finally, after two hours or more, he
reached Blanka’s house. He knew it
was hers: there was some sorcerer’s
thingy with feathers swinging on
the door. He knocked. A little girl
opened for him and quickly disappeared in the darkness.
In a huge, empty, quite dark room
there was a woman, she was sitting,
pealing something, peas or something like that.
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“You’re Blanka?” said Refik and coughed, his mouth was completely dry.
“Do you need some water?” she asked,
as if she hadn’t heard the question.
“No,” replied Refik, all confused. “I
need the medicine... the urine. Maja,
my neighbor, said you healed...”
“Uh-huh. Maja. She ordered something for herself, didn’t she?”
“Yes, here’s the list.”
Blanka slowly approached the window so she could read the message.
She was an elderly woman: sharp features, a ponytail, pale, light hair.
She entered the adjacent room – the
little girl ran in after her – and left
Refik alone. He was uncomfortable:
furtively, or naskrivaj, as they would
say in Koper, he glanced around. In
the room there was nothing but a
wooden table, a few chairs, and an
old woodstove. The walls were empty, all except one, there was a giant
drawing, a chessboard of some kind,
with many decorations. He was most
surprised by the fact that there was
no lamp in the house, he could feel
the smell of candles, like in a church.
Holding the little girl by the hand,
Blanka appeared with some jars.
“Here, this is for Maja. That’s 150
kuna.”
Refik gave her the money.
“And you, you need my urine.”
“Yes...” was all Refik managed to say.
He was ashamed.
“You want to drink it or you need it
for massage?”
“Drink it! God forbid! Maja told
me...”
“Why so surprised?” It seemed Blanka
was angered by his shock. “It’s best to
drink it, if you can. That’s Shivambu
Shastra, if you haven’t heard of it.”
“Listen, lady, there’s no reason to get
offended. Maja told me it’s against
mosquitoes. I mean, your pee keeps
the mosquitoes away.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Me neither.”
“What happened to you? You were
sick?”
“Here you go, read, that’s some mosquito illness, like this Shastra of yours
or whatever it is.”
Blanka took the paper, but instead of
reading it, she just stared at it.
“You want me to kick you out!? Huh,
do you?!”
“Woman, leave me alone. I’ve told
you what I’ve got.”
Blanka just kept watching him. Then
she finally read his diagnosis. The
little girl kept staring at Refik, as
if taunting him. And then both of
them disappeared in the adjacent
room again.
Refik strained to hear what was going
on, but after the echo of their feet got
lost in the distance, he couldn’t hear
anything. He observed the drawing
on the wall. His eyes caught on a
line and started following it; it was
interesting, he was surprised the line
didn’t break, it meandered here and
there. Hadn’t he lost his temper because of Blanka, he would’ve probably played with it a bit more. But
this way he didn’t feel like it. Through
the window, he saw them finally
come back.
“There,” Blanka said and offered him
a glass bottle with Jamnica label on it.
Only a date on it. “This urine is five
days old, it should help you.”
“What do I owe you?”
“Nothing, just go now.”
Refik was shocked. She charged Maja
so much, and him nothing? He felt
sorry for being so impolite.
“And you live here alone?”
“What? Why? You wanna merry me
or something?”
Refik realized all conversation was
over.
“Okay, thank you. I’ll go now.
Thanks.”
Blanka and the little girl let him
through the door without a word.
Still he stopped and turned around
once again.
“I’m sorry... that thing on the wall...
you did it? What is that?”
“That’s a mandala, what’s it to you?”
119
“Okay, okay. Goodbye.”
“Bye.”
Refik quickly walked out of the yard,
he was sick and tired of everything
and he just wanted to get away as
soon as possible. He never looked
back again.
***
After an hour he realized he’d made
a mistake, he was stupid, it was already getting dark. He should have
asked her to stay the night. And then
he shivered at the idea. He picked up
his pace.
But he couldn’t go far. Old bones! He
lost his strength, had to stop. That
bottle in his hand. There was not a
soul around him, only acacias. Some
of them still had some flowers left, he
took a lungful of their scent.
He decided to lie down in a ditch
under the trees nearby the road. Cars
barely passed through here, there
wouldn’t be any problems. He curled,
blew into his chin a couple of times
and soon fell asleep.
He woke up in the middle of the
night because of the buzzing. Mosquitoes! Luckily, it occurred to him
immediately, there were no those
damn tiger bastards around here. He
slapped himself a couple of times on
his cheeks, ankles. And then he remembered, he had Blanka’s urine,
that’s why he’d bought it.
He opened the bottle carefully, disgusted. First he smelled it. Like hell
it doesn’t stink, stupid bitch. Still he
slowly rubbed it into his skin, wherever he was not covered and wherever
it itched. The very procedure calmed
him down, and the liquid was cool,
wasn’t it?
It works, he had to admit as he sunk
into a blissful sleep, holding the bottle in his arms as if it were a girl.
He woke up, once again, to the chirping of swallows at dawn. Now he was
terribly thirsty.
Translated by
Tomislav Kuzmanović