II
A famous Yugoslav poet, a woman, well known in those days, in my house, in my room, while Danilo and Jaglika were sleeping; she had hung her polyester panties on the highest hook on my clothes-tree; she lifted her skirt part-way up (exposing her huge flabby thighs) and headed off to the bathroom; her lover lay on my bed, a man twenty years younger than she was, and hence a little older than me, with a low brow, a conspicuously low brow, and with long, bowed legs (that’s all I was able to see since the rest of his serviceable body remained under the blanket); the poet hadn’t shut the door, neither the one to the bedroom nor the one to the bathroom, and thus Danilo, who, judging from everything, hadn’t slept a wink since the two of them had entered the house, found her bent over the sink, with her legs spread (maybe under the sink!). There he stood, thunderstruck, and then he sprinted into his room, embarrassed, frightened; he stared at me, goggle-eyed (I was seated on the floor) and at the poet’s lover on the bed, and then back at me, and slamming his door shut, he ran into his room without uttering a word, not even one letter of a word, not even a sound, without anything really (God, it was as if he’d been struck dumb by horror). In a little while the poet came by with her hitched-up skirt, asking for a towel.
That night I slept in Jaglika’s room, on a mattress; on the floor; right up till morning I listened to Jaglika’s diligent snoring, whimpering, and the grinding of her teeth. I was convinced that all this wasn’t coming out of her toothless mouth. Instead, the noises were souls, the souls of her Montenegrin-Hungarian ancestors, which, like all species of Hymenoptera, obdurately, annoyingly, the whole blessed night (the lamp on the table near the head of her bed was turned on – Jaglika was afraid to dream in the dark, and incidentally so am I) flew circles around her head, and from time to time around mine, probably remembering that I am Jaglika’s descendant. In view of the fact that my grandmother, with her Hymenoptera, the lamp she left on, the quinces beneath the radiator, the sputum in the old newspapers four thick under her bed, was in the other part of the apartment, I couldn’t hear Danilo’s creeping about or his pacing, clearing his throat occasionally (like the kind in movies about fear and terror) in front of the door to the room in which the poet and her lover were sleeping. They were going to tell me all that the next day. Among other things, that Danilo at least ten times during the night (so the poetess said, but poets, male and female, love to exaggerate of course) opened their door all the way and just stood there, every time, in the door-frame, immobile, for several minutes (that’s what the poet said: several minutes) and, she said, for that reason the two of them couldn’t sleep a wink. At first they called out to him to come in, they turned on the light; the poet said she had not seen such a beautiful and spectral boy for ages; I told her that he would be twenty-nine this fall and that he wasn’t a boy, but she reiterated: ‘The little guy stared with those enormous eyes of his and he stood there, just stood there so awkwardly!’ Danilo does have bulging eyes, but otherwise, cross my heart, and cross something lower if I have to, there were a lot of things about this that mattered to her, but that doesn’t matter.
That day they left at noon; the lover rubbed his watery eyes, offering me at the same instant his other hand, small and perspiring, but warm; the poet was visibly angry, and she didn’t say goodbye, but Danilo said, from the doorway when the two of them were in the lift, happily, serenely, like he was hitting a ping-pong ball their way: ‘Why didn’t you go to a hotel? It definitely would have been more to your liking there!’
But then, in the very next minute, I hear the poet’s voice from the street: ‘Lidiaaa! Lidiaaa!’ I ran down the stairs (I could have broken both of my legs). There was Danilo, dear God he was down there, how’d that happen so fast, just a moment ago he…
He was standing there clinging to her chubby upper arm like a little child as he said over and over, stuttering, with spittle on his lips and an incomprehensible plea in his bulging eyes: ‘Why don’t you come by for a visit… Why don’t you drop in…’ and then, catching sight of me: ‘Lida, tell them, tell her, Lida…’ The poet smiled, a touch maliciously and a little bit like a bad actress; the lover stared at Danilo like at a rabid (dangerous) but pathetic dog.
All that day Danilo kept on asking me, at short intervals, ‘Why didn’t you tell them? Why didn’t you say it, Lida?’ Not completely certain of myself, and pretty much exhausted, I replied that the poet and her lover had just left, a moment ago, or two hours ago, but for Christ’s sake really recently, and what could he want now, anyway, he had walked them out, he had seen them off all nice and proper, the poet and the lover with the officer’s cap pulled all the way down over his low forehead, and now they’ve probably gone to a hotel, or on to another city; ‘For God’s sake, Danilo, you told them to do that yourself!’
That’s when Danilo’s feelings of abandonment started to grow: he ran after unknown people in the street, he turned people back as they left our building, he called out to them from the window, beseeching them, making them swear, acting like a cry-baby to get them to return, to drop in on us; and all of them save Marko (Danilo’s friend from senior and primary school) shook their heads (as if they were sages), swaggered about and thought and stared the same way the poet and her lover did: this boy is ill (pathetic dog), this boy is dangerous (mad dog), and they stopped coming by. He asked the taxi driver who drove us to Mira’s place (she was Danilo’s pretend girlfriend) whether he loved him, to which the taxi driver wisely replied that he basically didn’t have any reason to hate him, and that for him Danilo was a customer just like any other customer. Danilo insisted that the man come up with an answer about loving him or not, which was for heaven’s sake nothing if not appropriate, since the question had been whether he loved him or not, and not whether he had a reason to hate him. Later, when we had arrived (after a few minutes), as I was rummaging about in my purse looking for money, Danilo said to the taxi driver: ‘I should introduce you two. This is my sister Lidia.’
He locked himself in his room for days and nights on end. He didn’t go out, at least during the time I was at home. Jaglika, near the end of her days and on the verge of dying, with thoughts and memories that were twenty years old, or fifty, and then twenty again, asked: ‘Where has my Dankitsa gotten to? I haven’t seen him since he was only this big, you know?’
And then came a switch: for the whole day, when I was off at the library, he sat with Jaglika; and when I came home he didn’t budge from my side, until late in the evening – he’d fall asleep in my bed with his head squeezed up against my back. In the morning he’d be awake before me, and a long while before Jaglika would start to shout from the other side of the house: ‘Lidiaaa!’
As if he hadn’t slept at all, his eyes were opaque and yet again, too big, prominent.
‘In which bedroom can I take cover?’
‘Huh? Danilo, you’re in a bedroom.’
‘You don’t get it at all … Anyway. What room do I go to? Don’t play the fool here.’
‘Danilo, I’m in a rush to get to work. Go to sleep.’
‘But really, Lidiaaa… I’m asking you. What’s wrong with that fat old bag-lady in there?’
‘What are you ranting about? What fat lady?’
‘Don’t even pretend like you don’t know, Lidia!’
‘Listen, Danilo, I’m gonna be late for work.’
‘You’re always urging me to love people but I can’t love them and that fat woman can’t do it either, just so you know. Not even grandma can stand it anymore, in case you were wondering.’
‘I’m in a hurry, Danilo. Good grief. I’ve got no time.’
‘Why are you shouting, why are you always shouting, Lidia?’
‘Put a sock in it, you idiot. Go see what Jaglika’s doing! Off you go now.’
‘Hold on, Lidia. I told you, and Baba will tell you, that she’s not going to put up with that naked fool any more, just so you know. You’re always dragging them into the house and nobody can stand it any more. And by the way
that woman’s a whore.’
‘Stop it you jerk that’s enough!’
‘Why are you screaming…Why are you screaming?!’
‘Go check on what grandma’s up to…’ and with that I slammed the door behind me; Danilo’s yells followed me to the front door of the building, and as I was running across the street, I could hear him, probably from the balcony now (I didn’t turn around) as he roared and cursed.
III
‘There will never exist a person who possesses definite knowledge of the gods and of the matters I am talking about. And even if this person were in a position to tell the whole truth, he or she would know that this wasn’t the case. But all people get to have their own imagination.’
– (R.P. Lo4 [X of K.] J.B.)
‘Hey listen, Lidia, last night I had another dream about that riot of colours; first they ran, and then they jostled each other, golden yellow, purplish green and stale wine-red, and dark red, too, and that beige like Mira’s skirt, and a blue, a thin blue colour, you know the one, Lida, it always whizzes by like lightning, my head starts aching from it, it’s like a whistle, Lida, it whizzes and flashes and then goes boom – that’s all she wrote – Lida, are you listening to me?’
I nod my head and think to myself how dead certain I am that Danilo is devouring at least two bars of chocolate at the same time when he chomps and spits so unbearably like this, with saliva running from the corners of his mouth. I go on picking up the newspapers strewn about and say to him: ‘I’m listening to you. Go on!’ And he says: ‘I dreamt that Mira came, with an enormous towel around her head, as if she’d been washing her hair, and all at once everything on her started to drip, like an ice cream cone, just like that, Lidia… Then, behind her, there appeared that guy from a few days ago, the guy with the three sweaters on, d’you hear, Lidia, the guy who slept with that naked fat creature, the one that Grandma said she couldn’t stand to see any more, and she came, too, only I didn’t see her right away; it was only after Mira and the guy got undressed and lay down on that towel from her head; it was like they were cadavers, Lidia, they just lay there and didn’t move any more; and Mira, she was hideously thin… then I saw that fat, naked lady; actually, she came up to me from behind and plugged my ears with some pinkish plugs, terribly hard, and she started rubbing me here, behind my earlobes and then eventually my eyelids, Lida, just imagine that. She was so rude, Lidia! Lidia, is she always so rude? When she started to undress me, it was so unbalanced, by that I mean all from her side, as if she’d gone bonkers, she was shaking all over – she broke the belt loop on my pants and Lidia the moment she touched my zip I went half-crazy and when she unbuttoned me down there I came like a rifle, all over her, Lida, I splattered her everywhere, and she just seemed lost in thought, she pretended that she didn’t see. Afterwards that beige colour spread over us, beige darkness, you understand? Nothing was visible for a while, like looking through watery sand, right up until the pent-up colour came hissing out of Mira’s eyes, with interruptions, like when you pee and have an irregular stream, very similar… Afterwards I saw that you were standing off to one side and you were, like this, look, Lida, on your middle finger like this you were spinning a pair of nail scissors and behind you Jaglika was hopping around, whispering something to you, and then came the worst part with the colours, Lida, are you listening to me… and Lida, stop that now, stop it, Lida, sit down…’
Danilo wasn’t actually munching on any chocolate, but he did, however, have something in his mouth, and that’s why he was talking so slowly; and an enormous lie was rolling around on his palate, between his teeth, and burst forth from under his tongue, Danilo’s speech was unintelligible, Danilo was lying, sizzlingly, spraying on all sides like Jaglika – who ever since that day was no longer able to walk, as if her legs had been hit by a thunderbolt (Jaglika, sweet Jaglika, she knows that the devil himself had sent some invisible boulders rolling down, and that’s why she couldn’t move), or perhaps that blue colour that Danilo never ceases dreaming about, the blue thin one, flashes, goes bang and that’s all she wrote… But all of it together, a phantasmagoria in Svetosavska Street. Danilo and Jaglika, the heroes of a cartoon in fiery blue, with a devil who bombards people with stones, and with Mira’s ice-cream tan skirt.
‘Danilo, it looks like you’ve become unhinged.’ He was looking at me with a crooked smile, like a crook (am I imagining this?), but the very next moment, with his eyes half-closed from fear (I could see quite well the tiny white particles of rheum in between his eyelashes) and with his head turned aside just a touch – out of fright – it was as if I was holding a whip in my hands, and not his moist smelly shirt. I yelled: ‘You told my dream… my dream – and you distorted it completely, you idiot. Idiiiot… You made up half of it… My dream, you animaaal!’ But Danilo wasn’t scared any more (that was also my imagination) but rather dejected and embarrassed, Danilo the five-year-old boy, Jaglika’s most beloved little grandson, using this for a moment to garner all the security he could – from the very fact that everybody else loved him more than me, and that all of them (all of whom?) at that moment were standing at his back and with composure, and a taunt of sorts, he says, ‘But Lida, calm down! Everybody all around can hear. I had that dream, I dreamt it last night, Lida, calm down, I beg you… Just drop it… Lida, really, I…’
I’d had enough: I ripped his shirt; once more he gave me such a weird look that I didn’t know what was going on… that thing with his eyes (he’s cross-eyed) or something else connected with the ripped shirt, or with my wrath, or because he knew… he was looking at me like that because he knew that I had related that dream recently, but of course Danilo also knew that I’d told that dream only to him.
After the torn shirt, it was his leg’s turn, and his head’s and shoulder’s, anything, I wanted to hit him… But all I did was kick him, not all that hard, no, definitely not hard enough to make him scream and call out for Jaglika; then I pulled him by his hair and when I truly was about to hit him (no, I did want to kill him: in my hand was a heavy, sharp object, one without a blade), he turned around so contorted, and twisted (scoliosis?), pulled away, and ran off to Jaglika – in the direction of her omnipotent lap – as if she could help him!
Anyway, Jaglika couldn’t see how the dreams meant anything to her, dreams were just omens, indicators of the events of future days; at night she dreamt and in the daytime it came true, at least a little bit, at least in part – and that was sufficient – that was enough for her; all the rest was frightful stupidity that only silly people messed with: Danilo and I. Poor Jaglika wasn’t going to get it even after she was dead; she was never going to get this dream thing. Even if a hundred of her Hymenopterae started work on convincing her, whispering into her bulbous ears – covered in little curly grey locks of her already faded hair, even if I do say so, one hundred souls of her ancestors would gather and like one terribly complicated tribe – forgetting the quarrels and discord that belong to time – for they are hymenopterous timeless beings (Jaglika did not allow an insect of any kind to be killed in her room, in fact, not even a flying one) and started enthusiastically to persuade her to put dreams aside – someplace where there’s room for them so that she does not touch them, or interpret them, so that she doesn’t conceive of them by any means (not for anything in the world) as theirs or anyone else’s and especially not divine messages; Jaglika would make fun of them, dismiss us with a wave of her hand, laugh at them again, rub her right eye and her left eye (the lid) and again, my God, again she’d laugh at them … and then it could happen that she would say: ‘I know more about dreams than all of you over there from that gang that gets together and dreams about everything and does nothing else, and afterwards you hold court and talk and then go and dream some more and on and on, again and again… I know more, more about dreams.’
‘Jaglika, when you’re dreaming, do you know it’s a dream; do you know while you’re asleep that you are dreaming?’ – I asked her, very much anticipating that she would
betray some secret to me, or something very much like a secret. But Jaglika gave me a look like the Devil himself (her power over me was the certainty of an animal, the neighbour’s dog, let’s say, when it is squatting to piss – the way Jaglika does, by the way – the dog is a female, and for me, as for all wretches, there’s nothing left to do but amass and harbour hatred towards dogs and Jaglika) and she said, ‘Oh, you miserable girl, and I thought you were smarter than that.’
If I didn’t know that I was dreaming when I’m dreaming, I could with total presence of mind state that dreams were definite, in the way that reality is; that they are a parallel world and how it’s in point of fact my personal dichotomy (in the back, by the occipital bone); I could even rejoice at the lack of necessity of subsequent connection, of the subordination of dreams to reality or of reality to dreams, which is actually what Jaglika and the whole world do, or the whole world and Jaglika: what harmony! The whole difficulty, however, lies in the fact that, when I dream, that’s when I have some half-retarded control that constantly warns me that I’m dreaming, I’m only dreaming, and then, thank God, all the knives, the awls, the daggers with their sundry grips and all their various blades sticking in my neck and my fingers and face, and more often in strangers’ faces and in everybody’s backs and everyone’s eyes – they look like plastic children’s toys, bendable and soft and harmless; but they aren’t, they are not that at all; and at any rate I have no control like that (no distance from my own self) when I’m not dreaming; and so, thanks to the terrible disproportionality between sleep and so-called wakefulness (or whatever other names that marvel goes by) and a little indirect mediation here and a little direct intervention there, I am in a double trap, and that worries Jaglika, my mother Madame Marina, and Marina’s husband: they would all say, flat out and one after the other, and rightly so, with complete rectitude and perfect indifference: ‘It’s all your own fault,’ like that time twenty-five years ago or more when for the first time I ruined a pair of newly purchased shoes (Marina maintained that I’d deliberately spent the entire morning standing in a puddle: ‘This is all your fault. You’re not getting any new ones.’ I wore wet shoes that whole semester – I absolutely could not get them to dry out. But no – I wore an old pair, all ripped up.
Dogs and Others Page 2