Dogs and Others

by Biljana Jovanović

  And so, I arrived, and that means from work – that’s the only clue as to the time of day: four or five in the afternoon – the precise time cannot be determined with any certainty; Danilo got up a little before that; Jaglika was still sleeping – on Svetosavska Street, everyone slept through the day and night, and both of them, the two of them (everyone) never failed to recount how they had not slept a wink all night, all day, and then for another whole night, and my God, in truth there is no worse fate than insomnia. At home naturally, there was nothing to eat; and Danilo, astonished, like always, to see me at all, and amazed as he was at so many other things, at all other things, rubbing his eyes with the insides of his fists, and asking at the same time: ‘But why are you wet, Lidia… my Goood but you are wet it’s pouring off you Lidia and Lidiaaa… why are you standing there… you’ll ruin Marina’s parquet floor… my Goood Lidia how’d you get that drenched?’ Rivulets of water were flowing off me; tremendous puddles of water were spreading across Marina’s all-important floor, which only Danilo spent serious time reflecting on, of course, and there was no reason for me to ask whether there was any lunch to be had; naturally, Lord knows and it goes without saying, there was no lunch; for days and days on end Jaglika ate nothing but apples, and quinces, and more apples and a litre of yogurt, Danilo didn’t eat anything at all; what would that puny creature, maybe just over five feet tall, do with even a crumb of food; when as a child he was pressed to eat everything on his plate, Danilo would with great difficulty swallow what he had already stuck in his mouth, as if it were nothing but shit – and he made such a face and in secret he would spit out the two remaining morsels (in his mouth) in the direction of the window and say, over and over again, he’d mumble: ‘and if I want to stay a runt, what’s wrong with that, it’s actually better…’ He actually turned out a bit better, 160 centimetres, 5 feet 2 inches, and of course it wasn’t on account of the food left on his plate, nor because of the morsels he discharged from his mouth through the window – in the direction of the washed and unwashed heads of the passers-by – in the morning – like morning Communion: what’s wrong with it, nothing’s wrong with it, it’s actually better; and what does food mean to him now, if in fact it was out of fear that he left food behind on his plate, all of Jaglika’s famous dishes, with caraway seeds – for one’s stomach, and with a bit of horseradish in them – against colds. And then, then there was something else here, with regard to this height of five-odd feet. I will truly never get why Danilo, for years, when he was little, would get up in the middle of the night, put his coat on over his pyjamas, and his shoes on his bare feet, and angry, every night try to go outside. He was actually angry about something; I know this wasn’t a matter of walking in his sleep; Danilo had insomnia – more precisely, up until the moment he went outside, he was awake. After the beating he’d get, regularly, for doing that, every night, I mean for years, Danilo would say something more or less like this: ‘Throw me into the well, if I’m so useless, if I’m just the worst thing ever. At least it will feel tight there and narrow, narrow, and I won’t have to look at your shitty faces. You make me vomit.’ After that he’d get another and more serious beating, and after neither the first, nor the second set of blows elicited even the tiniest tear in at least one of his eyes (stupid old Marina interpreted crying as repentance and humiliation, and she liked it), Marina would wrap up the entire incident (things almost always took this same turn, year after year) with a single sentence, with something at last sensible: ‘Fine. We’re going to throw you in the well.’

  ‘You could have bought something to eat!’ I say to Danilo, and don’t budge from Marina’s parquet floor.

  ‘What the hell, like, can’t you see that I just woke up a little bit ago? And why are you so hideously wet? I’ve never ever seen such a thing, geez, Lidiaaa!?’

  ‘It’s raining, you idiot.’

  ‘Really? Why didn’t I think of that!’

  ‘My boss hosed me down with his whole load of backed-up sperm, through his eyes, you know, he ejaculated right through his eyesss.’

  ‘Oooh! That means he’s cured of his Graves’ disease!’

  ‘He never had it, you dimwit.’

  ‘Lidia, you’ve told me that at least ten times. Lidia, stop making me crazy, for Pete’s sake. You’ve told me a million times or more how he’s got a baggy ass and short legs and blah blah blah you told me all sorts of other nonsense about that miserable guy … I can imagine what he thinks of you … not even a dog would—’

  ‘Shut it. I told you that he looks that way, do you understand, you cretin, that he looks like that. It just looks like that. I never said to you that he has it and anyway I couldn’t give a rat’s ass about Graves’ disease or about you or anything, d’you hear …!’

  All the water had obligingly drained off me; now I was dry; Marina’s poor parquet floor; poor Danilo; poor Jaglika, she’s going to slip and break her arm, or her leg; she’ll break both her arm and her leg, which is best of all, which would make you simply keel over with happiness; I ran down the stairs, the very thought of a broken Jaglika filled me with unbelievable vigour, taking the steps at a leap two by two, and suddenly three at a time, and at the bottom even four; when I returned with paper bags and food, Danilo was still standing there, next to those puddles, confused and, for all I know, determined to have the last word about my boss’s eyes, to wit:

  ‘Lidia, it amounts to the same thing. You know it’s the same; I was thinking about it, and it’s completely, like, totally, the same thing, you see, Lidia? Whether your boss has Graves’ disease or if it just seems like he does.’

  ‘Wanna eat, Danilo? Go ask Jaglika, if she’s awake …’

  ‘Lidia, come on and say it. It’s totally the same thing, eh,

  Lidia?’

  ‘All right; they’re the same. Get this water cleaned up, Danilo. For goodness’ sake. Get cracking.’

  ‘Well, first I have to go to the bathroom.’

  ‘Listen, Danilo, what did you do all day, Danilo, what do you do for such long stretches of time … ?’

  After a full half hour (precisely half an hour) Danilo came out of the bathroom; I’m a hundred per cent sure he was wanking off, because he let the water run the entire time.

  ‘Danilo, go see what Baba’s up to … she’s not making any noise … maybe she’s dead. Danilo, go see what Jaglika is doing and again – wipe up that water, okay, Danilo!’

  Another full half hour – no! It simply drives a person crazy! – and he’s flopping around, and he simply drags himself through the house loaded up with brightly coloured rags that look like remnants of Marina’s dresses and with a grin (this is in fact a bit of ‘mama’s little man, mama’s little sweetie’) on his face, and eyes clear and rinsed: ‘Lidia, I know you’re sorry to hear it, but Baba isn’t dead. Just so you know, she’s sleeping like a new-born baby.’

  ‘What did you do all day?’

  ‘You’re going to make fun of me if I tell you.’

  ‘I won’t. C’mon, Danilo. Tell me!’

  ‘But you’ll ridicule me, I know you. I know you, Lidia.’

  ‘You have my word. I won’t. Now come on …’

  ‘Oh, okay. But you’re sure you won’t make fun of me?’

  ‘Really, I won’t.’

  ‘When you left for work, I gave Jaglika her yogurt, etc., and then I sat right down to have me a nice little breakfast but Jaglika kept calling out, my glasses, my this, my that, imagine, Lidia. She was sitting on her glasses and they didn’t break.’

  ‘Well, they’re plastic.’

  ‘And as I told you, I was just sitting there, making a cup of tea and so forth, when a fly flies up. I chased it for two whole hours, but no … several hours … One moment it was here, right here, Lidia, and then there, and after that in the living room, and then in the foyer, and Lidia, once more imagine – it was several hours – once more it was right here, do you understand, just like this on the edge here, and my tea had gone all cold and so on, a
nd later it was like it’d vanished, and so on, I take a bit of my bread and butter, and it came back and stopped right there … do you see, right there, Lidia …’

  ‘You’re saying it landed? Where?’

  ‘Well, there, on the dishrag, and I was puking, d’you know, I couldn’t swallow a bite of anything else anymore, I flat-out had to throw up, the whole day, and just now, before you got there, I was vomiting constantly, every ten minutes, it was flat-out horrible, Lidia, it was like I was going to die, I didn’t eat anything, Lidia, but I swallowed that fly … Lidia … but Jaglika said to me this morning that no harm will come to me, and she also said I should imagine that it’s healthy, that it was healthy for me, Lidia …’

  ‘Well, okay, Danilo, did you vomit it up?’

  ‘How should I know? I didn’t check, Lidia, I couldn’t look at all that green and yellow, it would make me nauseous again, I haven’t stopped vomiting, the whole time, since this morning, Lidiaaa …’

  ‘Jesus, Danilo, why didn’t you check for it? Why didn’t you look?’

  ‘Lidia, it’s a terribly small fly, not the regular kind at all, and why are you shouting again, why? I vomited the whole day and you are screaming. What were you gaping at … What’s the matter with you … even now I’m feeling its little tiny legs here in my throat it can’t work itself free but everything went over it, that stuff from last night, the slop you cooked up last night … it had gone bad … not even a dog would’ve … and I didn’t see it, you know, it was already too late when I noticed I saw it only belatedly … what are you gawking at … why are you playing dumb here … like this could never happen to you … It’s when you see it but in fact you don’t know you’ve seen it and in fact you don’t remember, know what I mean, Lidia, afterwards I remembered, after I had seen it, and Jaglika was giggling … what is it, what are you staring at…?’

  ‘Danilo, how do you know you swallowed it?’

  ‘I swallowed it with my tea, how, how do I know? I know full well; I didn’t see it anywhere, I didn’t see it here in the house anywhere again, what’s wrong, why are you staring at me, what is it, Lidia?’

  ‘You fabricated all this. You didn’t swallow the fly, you idiot.’

  ‘I should think I’d know… I guess I know whether I swallowed it or not… I’d probably feel it… I do feel it, here… You drive me bonkers, Lidia… Not even a dog would… This is terrible. I’m going to write to Marina… Lidia, you drive me crazy…’

  ‘Oh, get over it. That’s enough hysteria for now. Go get Jaglika up. It’s eight o’clock already.’

  IX

  The next day, Danilo and I went to see Mira, Danilo’s girlfriend;we didn’t catch her at home; Danilo said she’d ‘left to go have it out with that cretin’. On our return journey, Danilo slapped the woman conductor; and then, when the people all around them started shrieking, screaming, baying: ‘Call the police… Call the police… Get that lunatic out of here… People like that should get hanged out on Terazije …’ and when even I could no longer protect him from the conductor who almost bit his head off, Danilo started crying. Maternally, the conductor opened the doors; we got out, followed by curses, blows, spit, and the rest of it. We walked the remainder of the way home on foot. Danilo never ceased crying, and he never, ever ceased repeating, quietly and monotonously, the same thing – through his tears: ‘It’s not like I robbed somebody or anything like that.’

  We witnessed this scene in Svetosavska: Milena, Milena in the flesh and, nothing but Milena whispering with Jaglika; actually, it was just Milena whispering and Jaglika nodding her head, as if someone had installed a battery in the vertebrae of her neck, in fact, like a mechanical Schweik, the good soldier, in a wheelchair. When Danilo sprang up to give her a kiss, she snapped rudely at him: ‘Danilo, you stink like a public toilet. Go brush your teeth first, and then come see me!’

  She pushed Jaglika, Jaglika and the wheelchair, into another part of the flat. She closed behind herself and behind Jaglika two, not three doors (and Jaglika blows her top and keeps moving her head like Schweik), and began to whisper incoherently: ‘Lidka listen Lidka sex in little steady doses that’s one thing, regular intervals, but you know this already … antibiotics … and such not … marriage … and you know … you’ve been married … it’s just that … injections of sex straight into your brain … everything in its time that’s one thing a little lunch a little sleep a little screwing everything in its time God forbid not at awkward times, and a little work and then some of that other, on Sundays a bit earlier, you know, it’s like … the next day you have to work … and you screw around at seven in the evening or even better a touch of wine after lunch and then you do it right after lunch so you don’t lose a day of rest … Isn’t that right Lidka you have to do it this way too … That other thing, Lida … you don’t have the imagination for it in fact, for you it’s just like you’re masturbating, it’s like your other hand is a little dick you simply don’t see it and it got smaller in marriage, didn’t it, but Lidka, tell me, isn’t it so, it was regular but you were still alone, and Lida, and wasn’t it like that for you, I’ll bet that you were, and that other stuff was boring, deadly boring, so boring that you cracked from boredom, all the orgasms were boring, always the same thing, but Lidia, there are always more orgasms than you can shake a stick at, but it makes you sick, your stomach always turns, Lida, come on and say it, Lida, that’s how it is, well, Lida, for God’s sake, admit it!’

  ‘Shut up, Milena; shut your trap!’ – I slammed the fourth door; after that you could hear a fifth – Milena had left; but just a few moments later, Milena returned. She’d forgotten to kiss Danilo (Danilo was being a complete and non-stop cry-baby). In the meantime he’d brushed his teeth thoroughly; I assume that over there in the corner Milena is still whispering, and that Jaglika, over there somewhere in her wheelchair, is continuing to nod her head, like Schweik, and both of them thinking the same damn thing in their illiterate brains about how orgasm is, obligatorily, a matter of imagination and not habit. Milena was in love; of course, I didn’t sense that at first; I needed a lot of time, like I always do, with everything; I underestimated Milena, I thought that her cluelessness on all fronts was incomprehensibly small; I thought that above all she was untrained in the conditioning of her own experiences, through another person (the other person was necessarily suffering), I had an informal notion of her: and by that I mean she was: indifferent, of unvarying comportment, a touch melancholic, completely balanced, and I liked that kind of Milena, no less than I like a good lunch or some sound, iron-clad sleep!

  X

  Marina, my mother, had two brothers; in addition to having hate-filled dreams about them, I also had real experiences with them when I was a child. In fact, those experiences form part of my ‘liberated’ memory.

  At the time, the two of them lived here; they used to come periodically to our place on Svetosavska Street, and their thousand and one pieces of junk would come with them – oh, screw it – they never brought anything; they came over and gossiped and ran off at the mouth, spitting, chomping, and, like everybody in the building on Svetosavska, shamelessly exploiting pathetic, beleaguered old Jaglika: she cooked for them, washed, cleaned, and, to top it all off, we took her pension for ourselves; she took care of all of us on Svetosavska Street, languished, day and night, and declined, inevitably declined. We bustled here and there and didn’t even take her on an outing, not to mention a summer vacation.

  First I dreamt about my maternal uncle, F. He was the older one, taller and skinnier than Uncle K. It was approximately a year ago, and the long and short of it was this: in his room – in his house in Ljubljana (both of them live there now) – I killed him, with a listless movement of hand and knife; there wasn’t terribly much blood; he was standing with his back turned to me and the patio and an important picture on the wall – everything simultaneously: picture, patio, me, and my uncle’s back; I couldn’t resist, and why would I? I stuck him with the short blade, planted it r
ight in the centre, between those shoulder blades of his that I thought were too close together (that’s how skinny he was), noiselessly and effortlessly: Uncle K didn’t make a sound; then, somehow – I’ve always known that I was as strong as a horse, and that there are things that I could handle that not even a horse could, and not even in a dream could a horse carry such things … I carried him onto the terrace, where a great cauldron was already set up over a fire (like in a fairy tale); I thrust him in and cooked him, until the water (his blood) turned completely white – now that was some wondrous alchemy! Afterwards his body grew stiff and shrank – the handle of the knife, however, was still jutting out, completely undisturbed, from the middle of his narrow, gaunt back, like from the centre of the cosmos. I removed him from the cauldron – he had been reduced in size so much that I only needed to use one hand – as if I were picking up a big loaf of black bread, let’s say – in the grocery store; I’ve known for ages that I’m actually as strong as, oh, a mouse – and I slung him up onto the railing and shoved; a hundred years after that, some people appear, let’s say they represent the ‘dream police’ – they’re all sweet, sympathetic, but also pretty shrewd, something that was very much in evidence after these one hundred new years: they asked if I had any ties to the doll made of rubber that was down there in the garden; by that I mean down there in the park; what connection did I have to this figure made of some odd composite that was so irresistibly reminiscent of Mr F? I betrayed my own secret to them, naturally enough: I said that the doll down there, of rubber, was the head of my former uncle F, of flesh and blood. Several of them smiled, and then off they went, all together. After three hundred more years, they returned; and now Marina was with them. She was the first, and this can be attributed to her innate pedantry, to see the great stain on the carpet in the bedroom – the room in which Uncle F had had a knife stabbed into the middle of his back. It was, I assume, my uncle’s blood – which must have been dripping, leaking out of the wound the whole time, until I transferred him, with the strength of a horse and a mouse simultaneously, from the room to the terrace – and into the cauldron.