Jela Krecic

by None Like Her (retail) (epub)

  They chatted casually most of the way. As they walked past Maximarket he asked, ‘How’s your fashion police force coming along?’

  ‘Ah, we’re still in the ideas phase; we’ve got a list of offences, and every day we see huge numbers of people who need locking up, but somehow we don’t have the authority yet.’

  ‘I’ll give you all the authority. I hope you’ve put a few fashion designers on the list of offenders, too.’

  ‘Sometimes I’d just like to lock up fashion itself. What shorts have done to the appearance of public spaces is unforgivable – but then shorts still reign supreme in every who-knows-which season in every H&M and Zara.’

  ‘But I have to confess, they wouldn’t be the first trend I’d send the fashion police after. Those raggy-rag things seem much more offensive to me.’

  ‘Raggy rag things? Nicely put,’ she teased.

  ‘You know the ones I mean – those pieces of clothing that pretend to have an edgy design, but they’re actually just raggy rags.’

  ‘I’ll remember that one and add it to our list.’

  Slowly they wandered up towards Žmavc, which at six in the evening actually looked tidy and calm. Just a few people with their Aperol spritzers, their wine and sodas, and their obligatory iPads or smartphones. They knew that no one was going to bother them here.

  Over the second beer they asked after each other’s families. They were pleased to hear that everyone was well. Matjaž expressed his particular pleasure that his parents still kept a fair distance and didn’t expect an excessive amount of attention – although he did acknowledge that things had taken a turn for the worst with Uncle Miha, who had been fairly insane even in his reasonably youthful fifties. Miha’s decline was taking its toll mainly on his wife, whom the family felt had already been dealt her fair share just by marrying him in the first place.

  Sara was restrained when she started talking about her niece and nephew. She still got on quite well with little Anton, but hanging out with little Marta now left her feeling uneasy. ‘I don’t know, more and more I see this cold callousness in her; I worry it’s what you’d find in some kind of serial killer.’

  ‘My Marta has degenerated like that?’ Matjaž said, shaking his head. ‘And you can already tell at the age of nine, or however old she is.’

  ‘Ten. Yeah, sorry to have to tell you, Mat, but that child is not normal, to put it mildly.’

  ‘I was an unusual kid, too, but just look at how I turned out,’ he grinned.

  ‘Well, exactly, that’s what worries me,’ she smiled back.

  ‘What does the proud father Izidor have to say about it?’

  ‘Well, I’m not exactly close to my brother, as you know, and the kids are his weak spot. I think he’s completely blind to them, and especially to Marta.’

  ‘I can sympathize with him, though. It can’t be easy with those little people,’ replied Matjaž in a pacifying tone.

  ‘It’s really not easy, no, but I think Lara brings up the little humans a lot more sensibly than my brother does. Maybe because he’s still a child himself,’ said Sara critically.

  ‘Poor Lara – all alone with three children,’ Matjaž joked again.

  She looked at him, smiling. ‘I thought of you, actually, when I was staying in this hotel in Vienna. People under the age of eighteen were banned there.’

  ‘Oh, the most civilized place on this earth!’ Matjaž sighed in reverie.

  By eight-thirty Žmavc had become too loud. It was time to leave. They decided to go for a walk along the river and take a seat at whichever place took their fancy. The place that happened to call out to them was Le Petit Café. ‘Ah, days of studying at NUK, so many days, so many coffees!’ sighed Sara.

  ‘You make it sound as if decades have gone by since then!’

  ‘Well they have! More than decades! It won’t be long until I’m an old crone!’

  ‘Old, young, you’re still a crone!’ Matjaž said, winding her up, for which she clipped him round the head.

  By the third beer they were talking about holidays. ‘This year we went to Hvar. Hvar is still beautiful, you know. You can let go of all cynicism and irony over there,’ Sara explained.

  ‘Ah, I always knew there was a completely ordinary romantic beneath all that political incorrectness and dark humour,’ Matjaž said, trying to sting her again.

  ‘Don’t insult me. Would you still be saying the same if I told you that I committed my first Hvar-crime while I was there?’

  ‘What, did you go swimming at midday?’

  ‘No, not that. You know I’d rather die than be in the sun at that time.’

  ‘So what then?’

  ‘I trod on a snail and destroyed his little house, and well, him, too,’ she admitted remorsefully.

  ‘You clearly did it because you were jealous that he had a house on Hvar and you didn’t.’

  Sara’s face cheered up again. ‘How about you? When are you going, where are you going, and, well, who are you going with?’

  ‘Somebody’s curious! I’m not exactly sure yet. Some guy’s asked me if I’ll take photos of his big Croatian wedding. I’ve been thinking that I’ll go there in September, get the horror out of the way and then merge work into a holiday.’

  ‘Hvar is at its most beautiful in September,’ she sighed softly.

  They sat quietly for a moment. Both were thinking the same thing: that it was September when they first went to Hvar together. They’d already set off on this topic now, and the temperature had cooled somewhat.

  ‘Will you go on your own?’ she enquired cautiously.

  ‘It’s looking that way …’ he replied, without any discernible emotion.

  ‘Maybe you’ll meet the woman of your dreams there,’ she said.

  Matjaž thought he could sense bitterness in her voice. He wanted to say that he’d already met the woman of his dreams and that she left him over a year ago, but he held back. He just said, ‘Without a doubt. I’ll probably fall in love with the bridesmaid.’

  ‘You never know,’ she smiled again melancholically. ‘I reckon weddings only exist so that the single guests get the chance to meet their future lovers.’

  ‘I’ll let you know how that goes when I get back. Based on current experiences I’d say that weddings are there to make you appreciate by comparison queues at the post office, the filling out of official forms and recycling.’

  When they finished their drink they decided to persevere with finding a different bar. They drank their fourth beer at Bar Dvor on the end of Židovska Street, agreeing that at this time, Bikofe was too lively for the intimacy that they had recovered and reshaped that day.

  ‘You know, I still remember when the City Library was on this spot,’ she said.

  ‘I know what you’re trying to say. You’ve inhabited this planet for so long that you, too, have become one of the city’s artefacts!’ he remarked sarcastically.

  ‘That wasn’t my point. My point was that I love libraries, and I once swore to myself that I’d never sit around in this place because, to me, it will always be a sacred place of books.’

  ‘Fine, well then we’ll just pretend that we’re in the reading room,’ said Matjaž, trying to be resourceful. She raised her eyebrows, so he went on, ‘In Mark Zuckerberg’s library perhaps.’

  ‘Mark Zuckerberg?’ she raised her voice. ‘Do you seriously think that guy reads, that he has books, that he has a library?’

  ‘He probably has a library as some sort of antique shop.’

  ‘Where they drink hundred-year-old whisky,’ she remarked, scowling.

  ‘Nah, he doesn’t drink whisky. He drinks Coca-Cola Zero.’

  This clearly put her in better spirits, as they then ordered a whisky from the waiter. Not exactly a hundred years old, but not bad.

  Now the conversation slipped more easily towards intimate details. Matjaž mentioned a few of his triumphs from his season of love. He thought it important to pick out Stela, and Brigita too, but Sara was m
ost amused by the fact that Suzana managed to fall asleep during sex.

  ‘Some of us are just masters,’ Matjaž remarked sourly, while her eyes sparkled with mischief.

  ‘But do you see a future for you two?’ she asked, seriously.

  ‘No,’ Matjaž replied, seriously. ‘I think Suzana has absolutely no recollection of that episode and I’m very thankful. She has a brand new boyfriend, actually.’

  ‘Does she?’

  ‘No, I’m just guessing. She’s at the seaside now and she always finds some exotic chap there.’

  Over the next whisky Sara admitted that Jaka was getting on her nerves and she didn’t know if she could stay with him. Matjaž didn’t want to pore over the details; at the end of the day, if someone gets on your nerves, they get on your nerves, and there’s nothing you can do – sort it out yourself. He had to admit, though, that this information left him feeling smug. He decided to quash that feeling. Sara also quickly wrapped up the topic of her beloved with the clichéd statement that only time would tell. Matjaž protested, saying that time was a very slippery concept that immediately passed by before a new time could begin. She had to agree, but in this state, she said, pointing at the whisky, she was not capable of thinking about her relationship. She didn’t feel like it, either, she added. Matjaž knew the smile that followed that sentence was forced, which was why he gently stroked her on the shoulder.

  She took hold of his hand and said that she’d like to go home with him. They downed the last of their drinks, left the money on the table and on the walk back to Matjaž’s flat only exchanged the briefest of observations. The bridge that Sara and God-knows-which-friend had named as their favourite was no longer there – another sign of getting old. He offered up the fact that a bridge in Lyon had collapsed under the weight of so many lovers’ padlocks, something that surely wouldn’t have happened if they only counted the padlocks of those who had stayed together. She liked Wolfova Street because it still had a bookshop. He noticed that there was a patisserie at the top of Petkovšek Embankment and that people were eating ice cream there. He’d never been one for ice cream – ice cream was one of life’s great mysteries to him. Having lifted the veil on this secret, she didn’t know how to help him; she only ate sweet things from time to time, and ordered chocolate soufflé on special occasions.

  When they arrived at his, they kissed for a long time. After the kiss their bodies converged into the familiar grip of lovemaking; familiar as it was, it also felt like the conquering of completely new territory. The words and voices felt like home, the scents were known and alluring, but the two bodies cautiously uncovered contours once so known and inhabited, now surprisingly unknown and almost foreign.

  When it was over, Matjaž lit a cigarette, lost in his thoughts, and poured them both a whisky. Like familiar lovers they sat side by side on the balcony, where things were already used to the impression of their bodies.

  ‘It’s really nice here, Mat,’ she said softly.

  ‘Thanks,’ he replied.

  ‘It’s as if I’d decorated it,’ she smiled.

  ‘Seriously, thanks,’ he replied, this time with cynical undertones.

  ‘Well, I would never have put those pictures on that wall, of course,’ she said, pointing towards his black-and-white photography above the sofa. She meant it as a joke, but nevertheless it hurt a little. They sat silently and sipped their whisky. It was a quiet night; no voices on the street, no noise coming from the neighbours, the odd light in the distance. It was as if even the night was nervously eavesdropping to see what was happening on the second floor of the block of flats on Poljanski Embankment.

  ‘Mat?’ she eventually said beseechingly, almost in distress. She confused him, and he didn’t know how to show what she wanted.

  ‘What is it, Sara?’ he asked in the same patient voice that he’d always had.

  ‘Mat, doesn’t this seem so right, so natural to you?’ she began. Her words stung him somewhere deep inside. He had dreamed of those words, longed for them thousands of times, but now when they were finally spoken, when she placed them so directly in front of him and they reverberated into the silence of that summer’s night, they seemed utterly foreign, utterly misplaced. And so, unconvincingly, he managed to squeeze out, ‘Mmm.’

  ‘Don’t you think?’ she asked with a tenderness in her voice, and she didn’t wait for him to reply. ‘Maybe we had to be apart in order to arrive here once more. You know, like Hollywood – a Comedy of Remarriage, as Stanley Cavell calls it. Only the second time is love a true love and a comedy,’ she laughed somewhat forcibly.

  He looked at her seriously. Everything about her was so familiar and loveable to him, but he couldn’t shake off the alienating effect that was clouding her image as a result of all this talk.

  ‘Maybe we did exactly what was right,’ he said seriously.

  ‘You’re joking?’ She looked at him fearfully.

  ‘A joke is exactly what I need right now. But that aside, I don’t think I am,’ he replied again, almost coldly.

  ‘But isn’t this what you wanted?’ she pursued, and only a very attentive listener could have recognized the panic in her controlled tone of voice. Immediately afterwards she lit herself a cigarette, a little more hastily than usual.

  ‘For so long this was the only thing I wanted!’ he said decidedly, as he could be certain about that; the rest, not so much.

  ‘And not any more?’ She looked at him searchingly. Yet again, only an accomplished connoisseur of Sara could have uncovered the carefully concealed fear and pain.

  ‘No, I think it’s more complicated now,’ he replied, searching through feelings that were still shrouded in mystery even for him.

  ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘That’s just it, I don’t know what it means. I admit, this is what I wanted, I wanted it like crazy, and now that it’s happening I no longer see myself in this situation, as a recipient of your words, or as a part of you and I.’

  ‘Do you not love me any more?’ she began again, this time her voice showing signs of shaking. He looked at her but she turned her head to one side to hide the tears that were gathering in the corners of her bright eyes.

  ‘Sara, you stupid cow! I can’t not love you. I’ve never been able to stop loving you, and I probably never will. But where’s all this coming from? Where’s your desperation come from? Why do you want to make feel guilty by confronting me with some fact that has totally thrown me – and all this after it was you who ended everything a long, long time ago!’ He raised his voice slightly, but realized just in time to calm down.

  Without looking at him she said, ‘I don’t want you to feel guilty at all. It’s not that. I don’t know … For a while now I’ve been … So unstable and with Jaka I feel like, well, like everything’s dying a death. And when we bumped into each other today it all just seemed as natural and normal as ever between us, like it always was.’

  ‘Well, not exactly always, if memory serves,’ Matjaž said, being firm again.

  ‘Fine, call it a moment of confusion, of madness, whatever you like. But now it seems like it was all a mistake. And that you and I were, and always have been, the best possible match.’ It erupted from her, tears streaming down her cheeks. Matjaž fell silent and smoked his cigarette. He looked to the sky, which was dark, and thought to himself that if he were by the sea he’d be able to see the stars right now, countless stars that hinted at an infinity, an openness up there, at other worlds about which we know so little and which make us all so small, stupid and …

  ‘What I’m trying to say’, she interrupted his escape into his thoughts, ‘is that I’m sorry. What I’m trying to say is that you were right. You were always right and for that reason I love you even more.’

  Matjaž was shocked to hear those words, and now the only thing he felt was unease and his racing heart, for which he could find neither cause nor remedy. They sat in silence for a long time. He began, holding himself back, ‘Sara, I really wasn’t
expecting this, and if I’d know that you were going to –’

  She interrupted him, ‘Mat, now I know that you’re the best man in the world!’

  ‘And you’re going to be content with the best?’ His barb made her smile sourly.

  This was Sara in desperation, like he’d never seen her before. He could remember her being sad, in a dilemma, in a quandary, worn out, overtired, gloomy, melancholic, even depressive. He’d seen her cry and sit up all night, he’d seen her angry, euphoric and he’d seen her being mean, and sometimes bitter. But such a fragile, such an entirely broken Sara, such an entirely lost Sara at his mercy, who surrendered unreservedly, he had never seen in his life. He felt sorry for her. But not enough, he thought, as he hugged her.

  She then gathered herself, moving her sprightly curls away from her face. ‘And you really don’t know what’s changed? With you, I mean? A year isn’t that long, and like you said yourself, you haven’t met anyone serious …’ She said this in the voice of someone who no longer had any hope, but who was pretending that the slightest explanation could be of comfort and preserve a degree of the dignity slipping through their fingers.

  ‘I don’t think anything really has changed, Sara. Not you, not me, not the world … I’ve just learned how to live without you,’ he said, mustering all the honesty he could bear.

  ‘And you couldn’t be without me, with me?’ she said, with a desperate smile and tears in her eyes once more.

  ‘No, it’s just me now,’ he said softly, but decisively.

  She hugged him tightly. They promised each other that they’d go for a beer together some time. Then she left. When the door had closed behind her, with an ambiguous smile Matjaž sighed, ‘There’s none like her!’

  ‘I don’t believe it!’ Aleksander said furiously, after his friend had recounted the story of the previous evening to him several times. ‘You said no to the love of your life? Jesus, you are not normal!’ They were talking on the phone; Aleksander had called him on the way to his nearby seaside shop.