by Evald Flisar
Convincing himself that he could move. And yet now somewhere everything was final … And complete … No more need for excuses.
Or self-deceit.
The moment when the rules of the game demand consequences.
A victim.
A sense.
Because that must be the point of the game. That it handcuffs you the moment you want to escape.
And then …
When the need for excuses vanishes … Is it then still necessary to think? Is it necessary to wade through the murky rivers of memory? It becomes nauseating. A person grows weary. The rock shackles him. He cannot lift his arm.
And the greatest nausea is caused by clean things …
Snow.
Damp. Crystalline. Soft. Fluffy. The wind …
Nothing evokes fear anymore. Nothing evokes memory. Everything is exhausting. Everything is a burden.
Everything awakens nausea.
Is this what is left of a person at the end of the game?
Everything ground up? A rag?
A rag turned to stone. For the wind collides with it and cannot move it.
The wind whistles around corners.
The wind dusts the wide, empty streets with snow. And on towards the north.
There prevails in life a basic tone that leaks through all the added layers. A basic colour. Live particles of dust. That may be the right … that may be it …
Obscure.
It’s impossible to find the words …
It’s a smell. A smell of the sun, grass, the closeness of evening, the wind. And the water moving lazily in the stream. And the waves of spruce forests … The shrieks of dirty children from the valley … The smoke from a settlement … A dog barks …
That’s the smell … The gypsy smell.
Mother’s.
That’s all that is left.
Mother’s.
Everything else has gone.
No feelings. No thoughts. No restlessness.
No goal.
And so no restlessness …
A person is restless only when he thinks about the future … Of possible outcomes … Of a changed past he presents to himself.
Then comes the dead point. Immobility.
Death.
Then that long path …
First a wide road. Hollow and white. Far. At its end, through the falling veil of snow, shine the pale street lights. Struggling along the old trails are solitary black birds. Bent over, worn out.
Not one of them stops, not one opens its beak.
Macabre. Exhausted.
Evening birds.
Then the plain.
Endless.
And white.
The wind raises white dust, carries it through the air, deposits it elsewhere, creates drifts. Then spits it in your face, whistling.
Gusting.
Sombre.
Dying down in the unseen expanse.
And arising again. The path is long. It lasts long into the night. Legs numb. Then when there is nothing left inside, only nature, but not even that, only its shadow … far, from a great distance … Then all words are extremely old, unimportant …
There are no new names. Only floating pictures, a floating expanse.
Floating indifference.
Somewhere, deep down, drowned long ago … Fury … Seeking … And will …
And horror.
And flight.
Return home. There, where it all happened. Began and ended.
Escaping from jail is not difficult.
Escaping your fate? Impossible.
The stars are finally shining. And the sky is bluish. Where does that bluish tinge come from … And the pines rustle … There’s a slight wind. And far off, the plain. And it is white like a painted surface …
Cold splashes from the sky.
Sharp …
And here’s a settlement.
Here are houses. Here’s a wooded slope. Here a valley. And a stream.
And silence.
This is that world.
There the Baranjas sleep. There the Horvats. There the Šarkezis.
Packed together.
They warm each other with their bodies. Brothers and sisters play secret night games. And it’s warm.
But outside it’s cold. And mother …
In that house sleeps mother.
And higher up, Geder’s empty house. And even further … The church … . The presbytery.
The priest by the stove, reading a book. He walks about the room …
Peace …
No dog …
That’s it. The past. Absence. Death.
That you no longer have. That you no longer have anything to think about.
That you have no future. And cannot seek for more.
A worthless word. Seek …
Twenty years there? Or twenty years here?
It’s now just a question of effort! To cause twenty years of effort.
In this world, certainly! Outside …
Outside, you must keep seeking freedom. Space. And those are fruitless urges.
A pointless exercise.
A vicious circle.
And here you must keep trying again to see yourself. To make sense.
To be.
And you do not reach the end.
But there, behind the walls, it is determined!
There, the whole pointlessness is clear. So you try nothing and do not really live. And it is less demanding there. It is pleasant in the end to lie down inside the great jaws and fall asleep …
Safe … and warm.
And forsake yourself, drain your blood.
Because outside … outside it is cold …
And outside, what you wish for isn’t there.
Twenty years of death is more certain than a year of life.
And so back … Back to prison.
When summer came, the desire for free movement reappeared. It became ever stronger. Escaping once more was no more difficult than the first time.
But this time, he did not go home, he went to the seaside. Even sinners deserve a summer holiday. Each day he went along the rocky path into the hills, where he sat and looked at the bay beneath him. A feeling began to sneak into him that he was unfamiliar with: something comfortable, pleasant, a kind of satisfaction. He could clearly feel the dullness inside him crumbling away, and a strange restlessness was flowing into him, causing him to become agitated by the waves below him. The waves seemed to flow from the distant mountains, across the bay, towards the coast and stopped at the white cliffs. At moments it seemed as if the island to his right was also covered with lines of waves, that the island was also moving somewhere. He felt the wind blow around him, catching in his hair; he tried to see the waves in the air, for it seemed as if the wind was moving through the air in the same way. Then the wind retreated, the island became calm, reflecting the blinding white sun from white rocks. Then the sea became smooth, for there was always a calm period around midday, and the sun began to burn. When his head had almost sunk to his chest from tiredness, he gathered up his last ounce of strength, got to his feet and staggered down the hill.
And he returned to his room.
He stood at the open window. Outside lay the sea in the hot afternoon sun. From the beach could be heard the shouts of children and the gentle splash of the waves, which had begun to beat against the rocks below the hostel. On the terrace below him, a waiter moving tables, shaking tablecloths and smoothing them out. Then another appeared with a sweeping brush. The mountains on the other side of the bay disappeared in the afternoon haze. It seemed as if the sea arose from the thin horizon and was slowly travelling towards the shore. A boat slipped by below him. Two women with big straw hats were sitting at the shoreline, their feet in the water. The bald patch of the man rowing shone in the sun. The leafy trees in front of the hostel threw large shadows on the terrace and the immediate surroundings seemed cold, separated from the world outside with its bright sunshine and the shouts
of children in the sea. Here, everything was torpid, even the waiters below moved stiffly, their faces blank, moving here and there like robots. From somewhere, he wasn’t sure exactly where, behind the hostel or down on the road, came the weary sound of cicadas, but they immediately fell silent again. Yet perhaps they had not fallen silent, perhaps his attention had focused on something else and he no longer heard them.
He did not know how long he stood like that. The world flowed into him, wave after wave splashed across his eyes, he was breathing in all this material matter that floated in his retina, he felt how the sea flooded his lungs and then receded, steadily, in lines of waves; on the back of his neck he felt something cold – probably the wind, because the treetops were restless. Then he left the window, went out through the door, down the stairs and across the terrace, past the two waiters. He stepped over a heap of dust that they had swept to the edge, went down the steps and onto the dusty road. Dust rose beneath his steps and rose around him, quite high, almost forcing its way into his eyes and mouth. He came to the first street and turned left. Here there was no longer any dust. On the tightly-laid paving stones he headed towards the church on the hill.
The higher he went, the clearer were the cries of the children on the beach. Then the noise faded, became ever more distant. The sound of the sea, somewhere far below his feet, kept splashing against his ears, and the cicadas sprang into song right next to the path and then fell silent again. The silence went with him until his footsteps disturbed it. Then, in the distance, once more came children’s voices from the beach. He was nearing the church, the path zigzagging its way up. One moment the sea was behind him, the next he could see it below him, each time further away. The red roofs of the houses clustered together and the people on the pier crawled like black ants. Just before the church he stopped and looked towards the island on the right. It seemed more sandy than usual. Grey layers of some kind of dust covered its slopes. Now that he was high up, he saw that the sea behind the island stretched to the misty horizon. Here and there on the water floated white foam. The boats in the bay were moving at snail’s pace, their engines almost inaudible, quietly humming. He went on, turning left at the church, leaving behind him the stone-walled graveyard and heading towards the blueberry bushes growing on the hilltop. As he got closer, he breathed deeply. The climb had taken it out of him, but he wasn’t clearly aware of this. He came to the point where the path slowly began to drop down, for the hill now sloped gently towards the other side. Here he stopped and looked around.
First there swam from his eyes the tall grass whose seed heads hung in the air before him, then the bushes that grew slightly further away disappeared, then the band of sea behind the hill tore and the air was extinguished, the world floated away from his senses and he could no longer hear. First there was a drumming in his ears as if the air was rent asunder, then silence like the grave. When it moved away, he felt as if his being was growing again, that his substance was filling all the space around him. It was as if he was becoming naked substance that felt only itself. He resisted this submergence … he wanted to cling to the wall, but he slipped back; he saw Daria holding out her hand, knew that she wanted to help him, he took hold of the hand, squeezed it, and then, when he was at the top of the wall, he was carried to the other side, and he grabbed Daria by the throat so as not to fall, he held on.
Gradually he calmed down, he returned from his body, the world began to flow into him once more, he saw the bushes in front of him, he saw the band of grey sea.
Further on should have been the sky.
But he saw nothing.
He rose and went slowly, as he had come, among the sparse bushes back to the path, then to the place where the hill peaked. He began to go back down towards the church. Once again, the bay lay beneath him. He saw the long white beach, where the choppy afternoon waves were breaking; he saw the ant-like people moving lazily on the pier. The boats were still gliding noiselessly across the water. On the island to the right lay the shadow of some kind of dust. He went back towards the sea. The church was behind him, his ears were once more assailed by children’s shouts. He took a few more long steps.
Then he crumpled.
He lay on the sharp rocks. Through his mind swam the excruciating thought that he should get up and carry on, to the water, but it flapped its fragile wings ever more weakly and was lost. He saw the long beach full of bathers. It suddenly seemed to him as if it was packed with people, crawling all over each other. They transformed into dust and the dust was swarming; he looked at the pier and there, too, he saw a swarm of dust. The sea changed into blackish dust that swarmed like billions of tiny creatures. It was flowing towards the shore in straight lines. It flooded the town and crept up the hill. He still had a clear awareness, he was still trying to rise and flee back up the hill, for the flood of dust was coming closer. It reached his face, his lips. The specks of dust swarmed across him. They were neither warm nor cold.
He felt that he would again have to return to the safety of prison.
And remain there.
THE AUTHOR
Evald Flisar is a novelist, playwright, essayist, editor and globe-trotter. He worked as an underground train driver in Sydney, an editor of an encyclopaedia of science and invention in London, an author of short stories and radio plays for the BBC, and was president of the Slovene Writers’ Association (1995–2002). Since 1998 he has been the chief editor of the oldest Slovenian literary journal Sodobnost (Contemporary Review). He is the author of fifteen novels (ten of them short-listed for the ‘Kresnik’ prize, the Slovenian ‘Booker’), two collections of short stories, three travelogues, two books for children, and fifteen stage plays (eight nominated for Best Play of the Year Award, three winners). He is also the recipient of the Prešeren Foundation Prize, the highest state award for prose and drama and the prestigious Župančič Award for lifetime achievement. His various works have been translated into forty-one languages, among them Bengali, Malay, Nepalese, Indonesian, Turkish, Greek, Japanese, Chinese, Arabic, Czech, Albanian, Lithuanian, Icelandic, Romanian, Amharic, Russian, English, German, Italian and Spanish. His stage plays are regularly performed all over the world, most recently in Austria, Russia, USA, India, Indonesia, Japan, Taiwan, Serbia, Bosnia and Belarus. Throughout his career he has attended more than fifty literary readings and festivals on all continents. After a long period of life abroad (three years in Australia, seventeen years in London), Flisar has been resident in Ljubljana, Slovenia, since 1990. In 2014, his novel ‘On the Gold Coast’ (published in English by Sampark, Kolkata, India) was nominated for one of the most prestigious European literary prizes, the Dublin International Literary Award. Eileen Battersby of The Irish Times included it in her list of thirteen best novels about Africa written by Europeans; alongside Joseph Conrad and Graham Greene.
THE TRANSLATOR
David Limon translates literature for children and adults from Slovene into English. His translations include five novels by the internationally recognised author Evald Flisar. He has also translated short stories or other works by a range of writers including Fran Levstik, Ivan Cankar, Janez Trdina, Vitomil Zupan, Mirana Likar Bajželj, Tadej Golob, Lenart Zajc, Jani Virk, Nina Kokelj, Jana Bauer, Janja Vidmar and Desa Muck. He is Associate Professor at the Department of Translation at the University of Ljubljana.