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Leeches Page 4

by David Albahari

], and read yet again what was written on the facing page: A dream uninterpreted is like a letter unread. I resisted the temptation to look again at the pages I'd dreamed of, so I flipped ahead to [>]. Enough about the soul, it said at the top, though it should be noted that the soul of a deceased Jew will not stop migrating until it fulfills all commands and gains insight into the many secrets hidden in the Torah. Those who know, it said, know that there are 613 commandments in the Torah, of which 248 are positive and 365 are negative, which, as it was once believed, correspond to the number of 248 bones and 365 sinews in the human body, and they will therefore know that a human body that fulfills all the commandments is like the Torah itself, or that he who achieves spiritual perfection creates and repeats God's form within himself. In other words, he who accomplishes this, whose body blazes with heavenly light, allows the Shekhinah to dwell within him. There will be more on the subject of the Shekhinah, it said, because one might assume that the way to her is easy, bearing the water carrier in mind, but this is a task measured not by hardship or complexity but by the way it is performed; a person carrying water may do so with more dedication than a teacher who pursues his high-minded job in a laggardly manner. It should also be added here that Rabbi Chaim Vital instructed how one, or two, or three, or four souls may enter into a single body, but never more than four. Here I stopped. The next section, judging by the opening sentence, was about lighting the Saturday candles, and that was not a skill I needed. I reread the passage at the top of the page. The connection between the migration of souls and the fulfilling of the commandments in the Torah was easy enough to see, though I couldn't figure out why that section ended in Chaim Vital's words. Four souls in one body—that concept had never crossed my mind. As it was, I wasn't doing too well with one; what would I do with several? However, I was most confused by the sentence referring to a fuller description of the Shekhinah and the water carrier who could have been none other than Volf Enoch. Perhaps Vital's reference is to him? It is also stated that he, the water carrier, found it easy to reach the Shekhinah, whatever that means, as the reader is cautioned that the path is not easy. How, then, did the water carrier accomplish this? Toting a yoke with pails, maneuvering a wheelbarrow with a barrel, lugging pitchers and gourds brimming with water? I turned to the preceding page and, of course, as I might have guessed, on that page, though it was marked as [>], there was nothing about the soul, the Shekhinah, or the water carrier; instead it was mostly about the building of the Sephardic synagogue in Zemun, the corner stone was laid in 1871 and built according to plans by a Josif Marks. The synagogue was damaged in the Allied bombing of 1944, it said in closing, and has not been restored; it was in fact razed to the ground, except for a few fragments near the Well, for those able to see them. I should put this manuscript aside, I thought, for if I come across one more ambiguous reference my difficulty sleeping will become chronic and I'll never shut my eyes again. Until that point I'd understood the title of the manuscript to be symbolic, the manuscript to be a well of sorts in which all of us dwell, the entire world, and now I had to forget that thought and accept that there really was a well somewhere from which that manuscript derived and to which it was heading. The pale morning light began slowly seeping through the window, as if to help me illuminate the words that were pulling me into the depths of the Well. Alas, there is light that obscures instead of illuminating. There was no longer any reason to stay in bed. I got up, made the bed, made coffee. I didn't feel like going down to get a paper because I knew what to expect: the regime newspaper would be trumpeting its referendum, the opposition newspaper would be mocking the referendum, which meant that, regardless of my political orientation, I would be reading the same story, only told from different angles. That is when I remembered that, more than thirty years ago, Filip David had published a collection of stories called The Well in the Dark Forest. His stories were full of Kabbalistic themes: perhaps he knew something about wells, I thought, could his well be the well I am after? Nonsense, I said aloud, I am beginning to behave like a paranoic obsessed with the idea of conspiracies. The words rang in the room, bounced off the walls and windows, dropped to the floor, as they do here when I stop writing and start talking to myself. Sometimes so many words are on the floor that I have to lift my feet high as I cross this sparsely furnished room from end to end. One of these days, it occurred to me, I might slip on a squashed word, fall, and lie there, buried under the detritus of language, and no one would find me until we started to decompose, the words and I, one corpse next to the others. I should have made stronger coffee, I said, my thoughts would be more upbeat, though words probably have nothing to do with it, nor does lack of sleep, it was simply Sunday, a day with no future, as Rasa Livada wrote many years ago. Did he write a poem about the Zemun synagogue, or about Rabbi Yehuda Alkalai, the forefather of Zionism, or maybe about the destiny of the Zemun Jews, or something along those lines? Now, according to the logic of paranoia, I should find him and ask about the well, or, better still, about the sounds and lights that emanate from the attic of the synagogue, or about the water carrier. Nonsense, nonsense, nonsense, I repeated, then sipped a little coffee, closed my eyes, and leaned my head on my hand. The day of the week didn't matter, I had to admit, Sunday or Tuesday, Wednesday or Saturday, the calendar was of no help, I had reached a dead end. The world, or so it seemed at the time, had an end. It seemed so then, and it seems so now, nothing in that regard has changed. I am far away from it all, yet from time to time it feels as if I have never been closer. In short, I think more and more about my childhood, about little moments of happiness, such as when I ate rice pudding with raspberries at a restaurant called Zdravljak, or something similar, at the entrance to the Zemun marketplace, or when I had ćevapačići at the Central, while music that I can no longer recall, probably old standards, blared from a small stage. I read somewhere, who knows where, that childhood recollections multiply as life draws to a close, and the closer it draws, the more numerous the memories, as if we were trying to slow down the passage of time and keep ourselves on this shore a little longer. On the other shore, after all, we'll be spending, I almost said, our whole life, when it's our whole death we'll be spending there. I'm tired, who knows what I'm saying and writing, but I myself noted the absurdity of the rapid transition from raspberries to heavenly perfection. None of this contributed to my ruminations about the Well, here I was at a standstill, until Marko, in a phone conversation later that afternoon, said that I should think about the Well as if it were my own body. Your body is a well, said Marko, if you toss a coin in, after a long silence you'll hear it plunk on the surface of the water, with the same sound you'd hear if you dropped a coin into a real well. You might even make the same wish, he continued, which won't come true any more than the wish you'd say over a real well would. Yes, I should have thought of that, I said to myself in an almost chiding tone. Margareta said something similar to me, I believe, though she didn't compare my body to a well, but rather to a cosmic tree full of Sephirot. It comes down to the same thing, because if our body corresponds to the entire system of the cosmos, why wouldn't it correspond to a well? This offered no answer to the question of where the Well was located, or to the question of how one finds one's way in. A leap from a great height would not do, and as far as I recall, there was no mention of ladders in the manuscript. Ladders, Marko said, are a system of exercises to achieve a goal in a given religious or mystical system, and I almost hung up on him. Of course ladders represent an upward or downward system, he couldn't have been thinking that I would load an honest-to-goodness ladder onto my shoulder and, like a chimney sweep, clamber up to the roof. That reminds me, yesterday I saw a chimney sweep here: he looked the way chimney sweeps looked there, sooty, with a jaunty black cap, and his teeth, as he spoke to my landlady, gleamed like polished ivory. I quickly reached for a button, then realized that on the clothes I was wearing I didn't have a single button: a long-sleeved T-shirt and a blue sweatshirt both pulled on over the head, a zipper on the jea
ns, and shoelaces on shoes don't count anyway. So I stood there by the window, feverishly patting my body, wondering if I had the time to take the sweatshirt off and pull on a button-up shirt, but by then the chimney sweep's conversation with my landlady was over and he walked away with a jocular salute. A red ribbon dangled from the top rung of his ladder, probably a warning to passersby and vehicles, and as I watched it leaving, I said to myself that my happiness too was leaving, never to return. But back to the Well. It was one of those things where, the closer we get to them, the farther they are from us. Luckily this was not a real thirst, because I'd never get a drink of fresh water at that Well, I kept seeing it in the distance, in the morning or evening haze, and no matter how far I walked, I got no closer. The sun would cross the sky, followed by the moon, the haze would be a golden net at one moment and a silver spiderweb the next, and I would continue to be just as far off, like the people who stride along on the moving strip at the fitness club, while always staying in the same place, Sisyphuses unaware that they are Sisyphuses. This is, perhaps, fine for the heart and physical fitness, which would be useful if one were to dig a real well, but I was interested in the Well within me, which was at once a reflection of the one outside me, and I doubted that a fitness club would take me in the right direction. The day was passing, I needed to write the piece for Minut, and all I could think of was that I was sinking into a swamp and that the only way I could extricate myself was the way Baron Münchhausen had done when he was in a similar predicament: grab my pigtail and wrench myself free of trouble, however, my hair was so short at the back that I had nothing to grab hold of, let alone to tug at and yank myself up into the heights. I might as well, I thought, admit that I was lost; admission of defeat is sometimes the greatest victory and may offer possibilities earlier hidden or inaccessible. I didn't know where all this was headed, which was probably the most appropriate feeling for that aimless Sunday morning, or afternoon, keeping in mind how fast the time was passing, in fact by then it was nearly evening, with night in tow, just as a mother or father drags along a child reluctant to go shopping or to visit people with no children of their own, where the child is painfully bored despite being plied with cookies or ice cream. At the thought of ice cream I licked my lips and thought of how with the first nice days of spring they started selling a variety of ice cream treats out in front of my building. Unlike the dreary newspapers, the ice cream had magical power, and I soon found myself, still in my slippers, on the sidewalk. The ice cream vendor, however, was not where she was supposed to be. The refrigerator was locked, the sunshade down, the chairs chained to a nearby tree. I looked to the left, I looked to the right, and next to the newspaper kiosk I saw a man in dark glasses. Unlike the earlier figures lurking in dark glasses, this one was not wearing a trench coat, though he was in a black suit. No, I said to myself, you will not add him to your list of plotters; this is Sunday, the man may be going to a wedding and has stopped to buy mints or chewing gum. The man looked at me. Suddenly I felt awkward being on the street in my slippers like some old curmudgeon, and I turned to go back in. The man kept staring at me, no, the man was fixed on me, that is how I'd describe it, and suddenly I desperately wanted to go up to him and pluck those glasses off his face, and just then he lifted his hand, removed the glasses, and smiled. I turned to check whether there was someone behind me. There wasn't. I looked again at the man, who was now approaching, still smiling. I can always take off my slippers, I thought, and if need be, sprint barefoot. I have never cared for being barefoot, even as a child, but if that was the only way for me to flee, being barefoot wouldn't bother me. Margareta and her bare feet flitted through my mind, and I wondered what a barefoot flight would mean to a Shekhinah, or more precisely, would the Shekhinah aid or obstruct the flight, and then I had to stop moving and thinking, because the man was in front of me. He had sky-blue eyes. What, he said, you don't recognize me? No, I said, and I truly had no idea who he was, though his voice began to take shape in my consciousness, and the longer he spoke, the more the oblivion waned, and finally, when he mentioned Paramedium, our gymnasium biology teacher, the name and nickname hit me: Steva the Horse. There was nothing horsey about him, and while he chattered on about old friends, and about how happy he was to see us, and about how much it meant to him when he returned to Canada, my only thought was the delicate question of his name's origin. Would I hurt his feelings if I reminded him of this nickname? He'd eagerly carved it into old and new school desks, and even, in some instances, into the blackboard and the lectern. One of the things he'd started appreciating more since he'd moved away, he said, was the marvelous informality of the people here. To come down in slippers like that, he said, went beyond anything he'd seen in Edmonton. I don't know where Edmonton is, but if I were there, I said, I would not so easily abandon my comfortable slippers. Steva chuckled, and then I remembered how he'd acquired the nickname Horse: he didn't laugh, he neighed, though by now it sounded more like a frog's croak. In any case his laugh was awful, much worse than my slippers. All the while I was inching toward the door to my building, but he followed me, never letting the distance between us grow. I don't know why I wanted to put space between us, maybe because of those sky-blue eyes whose translucence had always stirred distrust in me. The lighter someone's eyes, the greater my suspicion. A prejudice, naturally, though harmless, if that's any consolation. I nudged open the door to the building with my back, preparing to slip in, but just at that moment Steva started listing everybody he'd seen, and after a few women's names, which I didn't recognize, he mentioned Dragan Mišović, with whom he had spent a marvelous evening, he said, only yesterday. I stopped pressing against the door. A marvelous evening with Dragan Mišović? I asked. Was he sure it hadn't been someone else? No, Steva replied, he was sure, Dragan the mathematician from whom we always cribbed solutions in math and mechanical drawing tests. He asked after you, said Steva, and said something about parallel worlds, repeating patterns, that sort of thing. The door suddenly felt so heavy, I thought it might snap my spine. Had I made the wrong choice, perhaps, when I recently decided not to call Dragan Mišović? I can't remember when that was, but I do recall the alacrity with which I had made that decision. Now I dared admit that it was out of vanity, anger that he'd so casually blown me off two or three times, or sneered at me because I couldn't keep up with his mathematical reasoning. Are you sure? I asked Steva needlessly, that Dragan mentioned me? Actually I was trying to gain time, to figure out what to do, to evaluate everything from a new perspective. Steva didn't hesitate. Of course Dragan Mišović had told him all that, he even made a special point of saying, Steva added, that he was very pleased to be in touch with me again. He looked at me with those sky-blue eyes and blinked as if wind was blowing in his face. Was the blink a sign of insecurity, or was he not telling the truth? Who knows why Steva blinked? He realized, said Steva, that he'd run into me at an awkward moment, being in slippers on a Sunday was a sure sign of a wish for rest and relaxation, but would I be willing perhaps, he asked, to join a group of old school friends for dinner in a restaurant by the Danube? They had agreed to meet at the Harbormaster's at seven o'clock, then decide where to eat. And Dragan Mišović will be there too? I asked with a dose of incredulity, are you sure? He promised, answered Steva, and as far as he knew, and he was prepared to stand corrected, Dragan Mišović always kept his promises. I couldn't muster a single example, but all the same I nodded. So, said Steva, you'll join us? I consented, and he reached forward and patted me on the cheek. Leave those slippers at home, he said, and neighed again. Once a horse, I thought, always a horse. Little things are sometimes the most telling about the truth of people and the world, the tiny cracks signaling the advent of huge catastrophes. As I climbed the stairs to my apartment, questions were jostling in my mind about Dragan Mišović's unexpected willingness to appear in public, and to go, no less, to a restaurant. I remembered clearly how the person who had helped me find him several weeks before, and who had moved to Banovo Brdo, had cauti
oned me that he was odd and that he never, which I knew, attended group gatherings or alumni reunions. When I add to that the fact that Mišović had asked after me, it was a miracle that I had not instantly gone to the Harbormaster's. I managed to hold off until six o'clock, and at six-thirty I was out there in front of the gallery. My head swung left-right like a pendulum, and even so I missed seeing Steva the Horse arrive with a plump woman whose hair was tied in a bun. I could have sworn I'd never seen her before, but she claimed we kissed on New Year's Eve when we were fifteen. Steva neighed when she tweaked my ear and said it was never too late to pick up where we had left off. Pick what up, I asked, and Steva nearly fell on the floor. The woman with her hair in a bun giggled, hands on hips, her belly shoved in my direction. Who knows how long this torment would have lasted if two other women hadn't arrived and I recognized them as Zlata and Dragana, best friends and straight-A students. I had never kissed either of them, that I knew, though I wouldn't mind, I thought, kissing them now. There is nothing more beautiful than middle-aged women. Sure, the body no longer has the firmness and flexibility it had in youth, but there is that fullness instead, the stable hips, the generous bottom, and the air of well-being. Zlata and Dragana squealed when they saw us, and as we were hugging and kissing three times on the cheeks, Svetlana and Radomir arrived, frowning as ever. Though we knew that the frown was a mask of sorts, every time I saw them I thought that their identical frowns must have brought them together. They had been, one might say, the mascots of our class: they had started dating in our first year, married a week after graduation, and had stayed together ever since, judging by an email I received, don't ask how, from Zlata and Dragana. Over the past few years Zlata and Dragana have been tirelessly organizing annual reunions of our class, and several weeks before the gathering they send out bulletins with up-to-date information about the lives of our former schoolmates. By my name it says "gone," which means nothing, and suits my desire to lay low. "Gone" is certainly better than "deceased," which is what they wrote, regrettably, next to some of the names, including the name of the homeroom teacher, Milenko Stojević, whose heart, someone said at one of the earlier reunions, broke when the new war started in Yugoslavia. I don't know if that's true, though I believe that many hearts were broken when that happened, some forever, as was the case with Milo the Silo, as we called our homeroom teacher, some temporarily, though with a permanent scar, while some only pretended, feigning a despair that didn't leave a mark in their atria or ventricles. They said nothing about my heart, what matters is that it still beats evenly, and that, knock on wood, it shows no strain at maintaining a regular rhythm. To knock on wood I had to get up from the old armchair and go over to the windowsill, just as I rose at the restaurant back then, to go to the door, restless because Dragan Mišović was late. I looked to the left, I looked to the right, but there was no sign of him. I came back to the table, where the conversation was in full swing, and where the plump woman with her hair in a bun managed to maneuver Svetlana away and sit on the chair next to me. Until then I hadn't joined in the conversation, but when she began leaning her breasts against my left elbow, I completely shut off. No, it was not her breasts I was thinking of; what bothered me was that Dragan Mišović had changed his mind, assuming, of course, that what Steva had told me was true. He was sitting at the head of the table, ruddy with many glasses of red wine, and when he saw me looking at him, he winked. I don't need winks, I thought as the plump woman pressed against me, I already have more than enough of those, what I need is something clear, tangible, something authentic beyond any doubt. Was I prepared to interpret Dragan Mišović's arrival that way? I didn't know. The desperate, as the saying goes, grab at straws. The saying presumably refers to people who are drowning, but wouldn't anybody drowning be desperate, even somebody who had voluntarily gone into the deep water? Suicide may be a choice, but I'm convinced that no one walks calmly to death, there must be a moment at which the body sheds the raiment of consciousness and rebels against the inevitability of the end. Somebody might assume that I was suicidal because Dragan Mišović hadn't made an appearance, which, I assure you, never for a moment crossed my mind. Not then, and not now. Actually, during the years when I was growing up with the people who were now sitting around our table at the Sent Andreja restaurant, who were not heavy back then or balding, I chose as my mantra a line from Faulkner's The Wild Palms—given the choice between the experience of pain and nothing, the protagonist said he would choose pain, and I have stayed true to that mantra ever since. I would never lift a hand against myself, I thought, as the plump woman's bun tickled my nose, stirring in me a wish to flee as far away as possible. I probably would have done so too, had a hush not settled over the table. I turned and saw Dragan Mišović in an oversized greatcoat, buttoned to the chin, as if out there it was still winter. He was not wearing a cap, which surprised me, though I couldn't have said why, maybe because I had been convinced that he was never, even while sleeping, without a cap. Well, cap or no cap, the coat was so capacious that it looked as if it were walking on its own, as the person said, if I remember correctly, who had moved a while ago to Banovo Brdo, and who was the one to reunite me, if I can call it that, with Dragan Mišović. Judging by the silence around the table, he startled and confused everybody, not just me. Meanwhile, the waiter came over and helped him out of the coat. I knew he would be in a pristine, pressed shirt, but I didn't expect the tie, with an equally pristine knot. The tie was multicolored, with abstract designs, which, I was sure, he could express instantly in a cluster of equations or other mathematical concepts. Even more surprising was the fact that he grinned at all of us as he shrugged off his coat, joined us, greeted everybody, and finally sat down. After a few minutes of pained silence, the conversation picked up, coursing fast in many directions. I glanced at Steva, he winked back again, this time with a discreet nod to Dragan Mišović, who had taken the seat next to him, where Zlata had been sitting. Steva whispered something to her first, I saw it out of the corner of my eye, Zlata got up and asked the waiter to bring her another chair and placed it between the heavyset woman and me, despite the woman's half-joking protests. You've had your turn, said Zlata, now he is mine and only mine, and so a new pair of breasts now rested at my elbow. I suffered the rotund warmth patiently, or more precisely, the warmth of mashed flesh. Not that I fail to appreciate women's breasts, not at all, I could speak or write about them for hours on end, but there are moments when what we love the most bothers us the most, and if there was something far from my thoughts at that moment, then it was breasts, and their pressure on my arm turned into a sort of unpleasantness, a fire that failed to convince my penis to stir and offer to put out the fire, but threatened instead to leave burns all over me. I am exaggerating, of course, but some experiences can only be defined in hyperbolic terms—we speak of a mosquito that has been pestering us at night as if it were the size of an airplane or as big as an eagle, or we compare it to a rocket, because it's ridiculous that such a puny creature could torment you and not let you sleep for hours. Indeed fear has big eyes. My eyes too were big, or so they felt as I stared alternately at Dragan Mišović and at Steva the Horse. This was yet another unknown in an equation so vast it would not fit on the largest page, and the solution could evolve into a tapestry that, as in a certain novel, was an image of the world, or perhaps the world itself. Again, I am taking this too far. Doing something for the first time is always hardest, to tell a lie or go too far or exaggerate, then it gets easier. For instance, I take cold showers and I remember how I used to have to muster the courage to step under the icy jets, and now I do it without hesitation, I even let the water run for a while because that first burst of cold no longer satisfies me. Man is a strange beast, as Marko would say, and as I listened to Steva neighing, leaning his head on Dragan Mišović's shoulder, I thought how unfair I'd been to Marko, and that if I wasn't careful I might easily lose my only friend. I know that "only friend" sounds grim, but the truth is most people don't even have th
at one friend, while many declare mere acquaintances as friends, just as if I were to say now that Margareta is my friend, though I barely know anything about her life. I could describe her, I could say she's absorbed in some aspects of Jewish mysticism, I could talk about how I feel in her presence, but no one would be able to find her based on what I say. Even as I gave her description I would be stuttering, uncertain if she had pink cheeks, arched eyebrows, and fragile earlobes, or if all that was my imagination. It took no imagination, however, to conclude that between Steva the Horse and Dragan Mišović something was going on, and my only hope was that this new thread had nothing in common with all the other threads stretching my way. Zlata and Dragana called to each other across the table, Svetlana and Radomir frowned, Dragan Mišović explained something to the plump woman with the bun, Steva went to the men's room, and all I could do was gaze at the ceiling, that artificial sky that has given many unexpected inspiration. I hope, I thought, I don't feel the impulse to write a love song or an erotic poem, dedicated to the breasts that had so generously nuzzled up against me. I waited until my neck ached. Nothing happened, no line of verse sped through my mind, I could breathe a sigh of relief. I had long since given up writing poems; I didn't even attempt to write them anymore; short stories were good enough for me; novels, I felt, were beyond my ken. Here, at night, when total serenity reigns, I sometimes hear a voice from the silence that utters fragments that could only be parts of poems, but in the morning, as I splash my face, I try to rinse them off, especially "the leaden sky of hope" and "only the barest tender kiss for puckered lips," which stick to my wakefulness like burrs. Luckily, nothing like that engulfed me at the Sent Andreja restaurant, what I felt on my shoulder was the touch of Dragan Mišović's fingers. I hadn't noticed when he got up and came up behind me, and I nearly jumped at the sudden touch, but it all ended when I spun around and faced Dragan's smile. Everything's fine, he said, and patted me on the back, as if I were a baby whose sleep he didn't want to disturb. Then he bent down a little more and whispered that we had to talk. The triangles have started opening, added Dragan Mišović, then he squeezed my shoulder and went back to his seat just as Steva the Horse was coming back from the men's room. Was it my imagination, or did they exchange small gestures? Dragan touched the lobe of his left ear, Steva smoothed his right eyebrow with his index finger, they nodded to each other, sat down at the table, and almost simultaneously ordered another bottle of red wine. The waiter, of course, brought two, claiming that each had ordered one, and this quickly turned into one of those wearisome and unpleasant café tiffs that are remembered far longer than what led up to them, like the quarrel between Jack Nicholson and the waitress in Five Easy Pieces, which I remember, though I have forgotten what happens before or after. The waiter refused to take back the second bottle, Steva would not allow it to be put on the bill, and though we pretended not to notice, soon we were all taking part, and who knows how long it would have gone on, had Dragan Mišović not said that he would take the bottle, he had things to do, and the wine would come in handy. He looked at me as if I knew what he meant. I didn't. I was thinking feverishly about what the opening of the triangles might mean, but nothing came to mind. The one thing I could think of was that paper pinwheel attached to a stick that we toted around as children. They weren't triangles, of course, but when we ran, the pinwheel spun around, and, shrieking with joy, we imagined we were helicopters. This didn't include any opening, which, obviously, was the substance of Dragan's message, and judging by the look he sent my way as he raised the wine bottle victoriously in the air, I would learn the truth with wine, whether I wanted to or not. The quarrel with the waiter brought our party to a close; after all that had been said, there was no reason for us to stay there any longer. Steva tapped the rim of his glass with a knife, and once the conversation died down, he thanked us for easing, if only briefly, the pain of living abroad, and he hoped we'd get together again the next time he visited. He did live out in the middle of nowhere, behind God's back, but as long as God was there to be seen, things couldn't be so bad. Zlata started sniffling, real tears rolled from her eyes, her face contorted in an ugly grimace, and with a trembling voice she said to Steva that he shouldn't go back, that we needed him here, there were fewer and fewer of us with each passing day, and we were getting weaker. As she said this, choking back sobs, she kneaded my thigh with such ferocity that for days I had to nurse my bruises. There was no mark, however, on my lower arm from the three-hour nuzzle of the assorted breasts. Outside, in front of the restaurant, rain greeted us, so our goodbyes turned into a frantic exchange of hugs, kisses, handshakes, and waving. No one had an umbrella, so they all rushed to their cars, bus stops, houses, and apartments, including, to my great surprise, Dragan Mišović, who caught up with Steva the Horse at a gallop down Zmaj Jovina Street, the tails of his greatcoat flapping. I was left standing there alone. I hadn't expected this to happen and had no idea what to do with myself. I was convinced that Dragan Mišović would take me somewhere, maybe off to a sheltered bench on the quay or to another restaurant to explain the real meaning of the opening of the triangles, and when this did not happen, I almost felt paralyzed. It was raining harder and the drops pelted the pavement, turning into bubbles. I stuck my hands into my jacket pockets, and, in the left pocket, felt a slip of paper. I pulled it out and opened it. Judging by the initials at the bottom, it was a message from Dragan Mišović. He must have slipped it in when he whispered to me that the triangles were starting to open. The rain and gusting wind kept me from reading it, I folded it and put it back in the pocket. When I got home, soaked to the skin, I looked for it desperately—it must have dropped from my pocket as I hurried along the Danube, lashed by the rain and the wind. My thought was to go straight back to the quay, though it was highly unlikely, with the weather, that I would be able to retrieve the misplaced note, and even if I were to find it, snagged in a bush or under a bench, who knows whether the note would still be legible. I feared that now the writing was no more than a blot, but I was prepared to search for it nevertheless, because in the blot, as in a Rorschach test, there might be meaning, a message that could be a signpost for a traveler who had no idea where he was headed and why. Clearly, desperation had taken hold of me and threatened to turn into downright depression. Marko, if I had said that to him, would probably have just rolled his eyes. So what, he would have said, everybody is swallowing pills anyway, pills for sedation, pills for a better mood or against a bad mood, one more or less doesn't mean much, especially when the entire country is on one big psychiatrist's couch. And then he would pull out a joint, the cure for everything but fractures, as he often said, and he would offer to calm me down. I would have enjoyed the joint, no doubt, but first I had to face the elementary calamity, like a fireman in an American movie, and venture out to save the lost message, and then, as I put my jacket back on, I felt the paper under my fingertips. Dragan Mišović's message. Sometimes things know how to toy with us. I've no idea how the paper had vanished from my left pocket only to turn up there again; maybe I moved it unconsciously from pocket to pocket as I hurried along the quay, I'll never know. Secrets, after all, should remain secrets. I took off the jacket, hung it on the coat hook, went into the living room, sat down in the armchair, and started reading. Fifteen years ago, the message said, a Belgrade artist came up with a piece of conceptual art: he wrote the same sentence over and over again on adhesive stickers. The stickers too were identical, but the sentence on each sticker was written differently: in block letters, in cursive, typed, glued, colored, uneven lettering. The artist put the stickers up wherever he happened to be: in a bus, on the front door of a house he visited, on the sidewalk, on newspaper kiosks, shop windows, lampposts, park benches. The sentence, which he wrote out countless times, was WHERE is ALL THIS TAKING us? It never occurred to the artist that this might be construed as political provocation. It had come to him when he was sitting in the kitchen, drinking coffee, watching treetops sway in gusts of wind, thinking abou
t life. Where was all this taking us, humankind, the entire system, evolution, everything we know and don't know? Is there a goal, he wondered, and if there is, when will we reach it? He decided that there no goal, but then suddenly realized that everybody should be asked this question, so that once everybody was thinking about it, someone might come up with an answer. From there to the notion of stickers was a small step, and before long there was a trail behind him of stickers with this, as he saw it, pressing question on the essence of human existence and survival on earth. The only thing he did not anticipate was the possibility of a political reading and interpretation of his sentence, yet that is precisely what happened. The 1980s were on the way out and the foundations of the former country had already begun to wobble and crumble, the intelligence service soon developed an interest in this person who, in the opinion of those in the know, was cleverly stirring the population to doubt and unrest with the stickers, found in many places, including a public restroom at the bus station and a ticket counter at the train station. The artist was arrested, just as he was gluing stickers rendered in psychedelic colors to the glass wall of the swimming pool at the Sports Hall in Zemun during a Zagreb rock band concert. He didn't resist, he confessed to his activities, holding fast to his assertion that his intention was purely artistic. During the search of his apartment several more stickers turned up, as well as a large quantity of drawing supplies, a typewriter whose letters matched the letters on the posted stickers, and a map of Belgrade that included Zemun and New Belgrade indicating the locations on which the artist had left or planned to leave his mark. Of special interest, and we need to pay attention here, is that the artist's project, once finished, was meant to describe the shape of an equilateral triangle stretching from the old core of Zemun to Palilula and Košutnjak in Belgrade. The map was the main evidence of the artist's evil intentions, though no one could put a finger on what precisely these intentions were, but the district attorney understood that there was nothing behind it all, and the artist was quickly released from jail, packed up his belongings, and left for the Netherlands. However, the map, stickers, and drawing tools, including his portable typewriter, were never returned, and no one knows what happened to them. Before his departure the artist apparently said he found the inspiration for his work in a mysterious triangle with a point at its center that had appeared on the Belgrade streets and on public transportation in the late 1960s and early 1970s and about which to this day various theories and rumors were circulating. Here you should note, the letter said, switching to address me directly, in both cases these were triangles, which is key to understanding what came next. As most people do, you assume math to be a waste of time and you don't see the point of it, except in its more practical aspects, such as counting money or calculating interest rates, and I'd be glad to convince you otherwise, but this is not the moment. You have many other problems ahead of you, no point in my adding another. Back to the triangles. At the beginning of the last century, Helge von Koch, a mathematician, found a curve that was infinite in circumference, yet enclosed a finite area. This would mean, at least in theory, that you could pick it up and put it in your pocket, which would mean that the pocket would contain infinity. You could put it in an envelope and send it to someone who wanted infinity or who hadn't yet had a chance to see it. The Koch curve is made by dividing the given segment of line into three equal parts, and then replacing the middle part with the sides of a triangle in such a way that we get four segments, of which each one is equal to one third of the original segment. By repeating this procedure, one gets Koch's infinite curve, and if we start with an equilateral triangle and apply this procedure to all three sides, we will arrive at what is called the Koch snowflake, which some call the Koch star. What is of particular interest here is that the first shape formed in the opening of the triangle is a six-pointed star, and though the sides curl, if I can put it that way, they retain a recognizable six-pointed shape. At one moment it may assume the shape of a circle, which means that, in a reciprocal process, a circle can be turned into a six-pointed star. It is here somewhere that the explanation of the sign you showed me several weeks ago is hidden. So triangles can open, perhaps they have already started to do so, and the one thing that must not be forgotten is the point. I know there is no dot on the above-mentioned sign, but if you can't see it, it doesn't mean it isn't there. Apparently, with his curve Koch intended to demonstrate the limitations of classical mathematical analysis, which shows that sometimes a single snowflake can cause more trouble than an entire snowstorm, and that's the way to look for the apparently missing dot. In other words, the opening of the triangle leads to the rediscovery of a point that I would gladly call the Borges Aleph, but it is at the same time both more and less than that. So let's never forget that everything, even the infinity you have put in your pocket, must in the end come back to the point from which everything emerged. I put down the paper and took a deep breath. I'd never been good at math, I barely got by in secondary school, and now I had to recognize in a mathematical description a signpost for my destiny. I could feel a throbbing in my temples, after which, I knew, a nasty headache would follow if I didn't immediately take something to kill the pain. I staggered off to the bathroom, took two painkillers, staggered back, glanced out the window, sat again in the armchair, got up again, went into the kitchen and ate a square of chocolate, went back to the window, looked at the facing building, then flicked on the TV. If I'm lucky, I thought, I'll find a porn movie, and sure enough, after two or three clicks on the remote I caught sight of interlaced limbs and heard a woman's voice modulating the sounds of a, o, and u with such skill that Yma Sumac might have envied her. I know what people think of pornography, but I am not at all interested in what goes on in the movie, not even if the plot gets intricate or ends in a mass orgy. At first I used to feel a certain measure of excitement that soon turned to boredom, what with the endless repetition of the same movements; the pornographic movie then lost all its erotic power and turned into a medley of attractive geometric patterns, which helped me think calmly about other things. About a pocket full of infinity, for instance. I turned the sound down, and while the unsheathed members of two detectives penetrated simultaneously the vagina and anus of the female protagonist, I reread Dragan Mišović's message. So the triangles are opening, fine, but where? And what does infinity have to do with it? Or maybe, I thought, as the heroine gnawed the corner of the pillow, everything should be understood as a sign of transformation, as an introduction to change. The six-pointed star, of course, has a clear meaning; something, however, was eluding me here; I knew that individuals from the Jewish community were involved, but clearly there was an aspect to their involvement I had paid no attention to, or else had not realized was there. Perhaps there was more than one aspect? My eyes began to shut, though on the screen the rhythm of ins and outs with every possible orifice was growing overzealous. The camera slid almost tenderly over the female protagonist's face, and her gaping mouth and darting tongue, probably meant to suggest passion at its peak, are the last images I remember. I know it is not healthy to sleep in an armchair in front of the television, not only because of the radiation emitted by the television, but also because of the consequences to the anatomy, the twisting of the spine and the harmful pressure on the joints, but this is a habit I cannot shake. So I fell asleep, and when I opened my eyes, electronic snow was streaming across the screen. I struggled up, my body cramped, my mouth dry, and went over to the window. Across the street, in front of the pharmacy not a single car was parked. I looked to the left, I looked to the right, then up at the sky. Gray, black in some places, it offered no hope of clearing, and I nearly retreated again to the armchair. I had to write that piece for Minut, which was threatening to turn into a nightmare: I hated writing in bad weather. It sounds childish, I know, but creativity is a game, and some games can't be played unless certain conditions are met. In my case, the game of writing was tied to weather. Some people require a particular kind of pencil, some
absolute silence, others have to shut their eyes for a long time; I expect the sun's rays to fall on the paper and my hand, or on the keyboard and my fingers, and if the sun is not there, writing turns into torment, greater torment, because writing is a torment like no other in and of itself. I know what Marko would say: he would laugh and say with scorn that everybody wants to be a martyr: the writer, the baker, the postman, and the hatter. I'd like to know where Marko is now. The void I feel from his absence is as enormous as the mountain I stare at every day from my window. Absence is absence, he'd say, why measure it, and that, along with his lack of presence, is what disturbs my equilibrium. It was his commentaries, sometimes biting, sometimes searing, often on the mark, and seldom malicious, that held me back from plunging into all sorts of ventures, they forced me to question myself and tested my every fl ight of fancy. There are times when I think that if anyone were ever to come knocking at my door, this door here, it would be Marko. I am waiting in vain, of course, because if someone does knock, it will not be Marko, nor should I open the door but rather leave by the planned escape route. The details don't matter, let it suffice to say that it would begin with my pulling up the trapdoor in the kitchen floor. So I raged at the overcast sky, I raged at raging, I raged at admitting this and I raged because of something that was beyond my control, and who knows how much longer I would have gone on raging had the phone not rung. I didn't recognize the voice at first, but then caught on that it was Jaša Alkalaj. It would be good, he said, if you could come to the Jewish Historical Museum right away. He didn't say anything more. I scrambled to change my clothes, wash and shave, ate a piece of bread spread with margarine and honey, then hustled down the stairs and straight out into the street, where I flagged down a taxi. The taxi, a prehistoric Mercedes, was on the verge of falling apart, it looked as if only its own supernatural will was holding it together. The taxi driver, who tapped the ash off his cigarette into an ashtray above which there was a THANK YOU FOR NOT SMOKING sign, said not a word as we drove into Belgrade. He nodded when I opened the door; he nodded when I gave him the address; he nodded when we stopped at Kralja Petra Street; he nodded when I handed him the fare; he nodded when, saying goodbye, I left his vehicle. I thought that I ought to jot down his number; by my standards he was the perfect driver; however, as I patted my jacket pockets for a pen, the taxi dipped into the next street and the number soon evaporated from my memory. I nodded in parting and walked into the museum. At the entrance I was stopped by two young men. The museum is closed, they said, but when I gave Jaša Alkalaj's name, the shorter man of the two stepped into the glass booth and called someone. That's fine, he said, Jaša was expecting me, but up in the offices of the Jewish Community Center rather than in the museum. I called the elevator, one of those old-fashioned elevators in which the ride is always unpredictable, and slowly, as if I had several eternities before me, it took me to the third floor. The door opened, and I headed toward a room from which I could hear voices. I walked cautiously, as if afraid someone might jump on me through one of the many doors, until I made it to a large room where chaos beyond description reigned. No chaos lends itself to description, but how many instances of it had I witnessed in my life? Not counting the chaos in one's soul. No theories or mathematical explanations can describe that chaos, even if it can be simulated in a laboratory or in hospital and prison camp conditions. I stared in disbelief at this chaos, overturned tables and chairs, strewn papers, smashed glass, slashed paintings, and spilled paint. The words JEWS ARE VERMIN were scrawled on one of the walls, while on another wall was painted a yellow Star of David crossed with a black swastika. Not far from me, on the floor, I saw a painting by Jaša Alkalaj that had portrayed the figures of Slobodan and Mira Milošević; where the figures had been, there were yawning holes. Just beyond, on another painting full of Jewish symbolism was a yellow fluid, which, thanks to my experience with the doormats in front of my apartment, I recognized as urine. I saw Jaša Alkalaj and Isak Levi in the far corner with a group of people speaking in whispers, and I made my way toward them, carefully stepping over the rubble. Jaša saw me and came over. His face was part of the surrounding disarray: it looked as if it had come undone and then been slapped back together again. I extended my hand to convey my condolences, and he clutched it as though he was on the verge of an abyss. Meanwhile, the police arrived and generated even more chaos. In short, three or four days earlier, Jaša had brought the items to be exhibited to this room. The show, he said, was supposed to be set up on the floor below of course, in the museum, but since the space there was limited, it was agreed that over the First of May weekend they would leave everything in the room, and that on the Monday following, all the preparations for the opening would be made. That night, some people climbed up the courtyard side, no way of knowing how many, said Jaša, smashed the windows, broke in, and did this. He gestured around, even stepped aside so I could get a better view. But why? I asked, needlessly. They didn't destroy everything, he said, maybe because they didn't have the time or because they weren't interested in certain paintings. We'll wait, he continued, for the police to finish their investigation, then we'll have a look at what can still be shown. Wouldn't it be better, I asked, to cancel the show? Jaša gave me an angry look. Why cancel? he asked. Everything is ready, the invitations have been sent out, the catalog printed, people are curious; giving up now would mean admitting that those who did this accomplished what they set out to do. I looked around, scratched my head. His eyes less angry, he asked whether I thought that giving up meant admitting defeat. Yes, I said. Jaša looked at me again, this time without a trace of anger, and urged me to go home. This would take time, he said, and at home, he added, I had work to do. What? I protested, I have nothing going on. The piece for Minut, said Jaša, and he spun around and left. I left too. I took the stairs, sidestepping people and the police. The elevator was stuck between the first and second floors: I assume that they'd had to pull someone out of the cabin. I thought I heard the meowing of a cat but couldn't place the sound. In front of the building several policemen were milling around; a police car was parked by the hotel across the street; passersby paused and looked up at the roof, as if expecting someone to jump. I hate Mondays, I thought, and walked to Student Square Park where I had once got so stoned that I had tumbled off a bench. The bench was still there, though perhaps not the same one; two girls were sitting on it and when I passed them both crossed their legs, as if on command. That reminded me of the dazzling flash of Margareta's thigh. The flash was so emblazoned in my memory that I had to close my eyes and pause. When I opened them, the girls were no longer there, but I had already grown used to the vanishing, nothing could surprise me. That was also how I began the piece for Minut: I recently thought, I wrote, that nothing more could surprise me. We live in a time in which the absurd and the irrational have been expanded to ridiculous proportions, and in which the imitation of reality has become more real than reality itself. Not to speak of life. It's not an imitation, or a simulation, or an improvisation, it's nothing. We live in a country that does not exist, composed of refracted reflections in a game of light and dark, and so we do not exist, or rather we exist only as shadows on a wall, with no substance or duration. And the wall is so slippery, the shadows cannot cling to it for long. They slide down before they've climbed up. Yes, some might say, life with no support is no life, and many will agree, but what about those who slide down the wall? Should they be denied even a moment of desperate clinging to the slippery surface, should they be denied the hope of an uneven patch that might delay the inevitability of their plunge? No need to couch this piece in such abstract terms. Things have names, and these names should be said clearly and precisely, especially today, in a country in which clarity has become a negative category. From one day to the next we are witnessing, at all levels of society, especially in the government and church, an indifference to the flood of ethnic intolerance. Usually those who are indifferent are drawn to the opposite course of action: obstructing any attemp
t at ending the intolerance. Hordes of young people with similar haircuts on square heads are attacking Gypsies and Jews, taking to task all those who think differently, especially if those who think differently are themselves Serbs, claiming all the while that they are doing this for the good of the government, invoking the support of the church. The church is silent, the government is silent, we all are silent. Isn't silence a sign of consent, or have I got something wrong? Does the silence of the church imply that they acknowledge in their ranks an inflexible anti-Semitic current, ready to assume complete control in the new ecclesiastical hierarchy? Does the silence of the government imply that the surge in anti-Semitism has come in handy, as they assign guilt to the "worldwide Jewish conspiracy" for all that happens in this country, as a way of shrugging off responsibility for the insane political decisions and provocation of the world powers? Last night a hard-core detachment of fellow thinkers tried to destroy the works of a painter whose only sin is being born a Jew. Tomorrow, I assume, they will be burning the books of Danilo Kiš, Isak Samokovlija, and Stanislav Vinaver. The day after someone announces that all Jews are parasites who suck the blood of the Serbian people. By the end of the week, who knows, there may be calls to bring out the yellow armbands, and lists will begin to appear, there will be attacks on apartments, property confiscated ... Then, finally, a trembling voice will say that history is repeating itself and that we have reason to be concerned, but by then it will be too late, because history began repeating itself the moment none of us said a word. Here I stopped. It occurred to me that I ought to devote part of the article to the opening of the show. I submitted my pieces Wednesdays for the Minut column, which left me plenty of time. I already knew the end, all that was left was to write it. The last moment is near, would be the words at the start of the last paragraph, for us to understand that those who present themselves as the great caretakers of this country, invoking attacks based on ethnic minorities, have caused the greatest damage to the country. Regrettably the entire system of government has been corroded by moral and political corruption and no one feels called upon to comment or condemn the events of which I am writing. Perhaps, who knows, they are afraid to, because the connection between organized crime and the political hierarchies is an open secret. Everyone cares about his or her life, that much is clear, especially in a country where human life is cheap. If we all react, if the protest catches on, and hundreds of thousands of people join, there will be no more fear. And so on, in the same vein, with no shame. All that remained was for me to decide: should I name the names of the politicians, criminals, and waffling intellectuals? I wouldn't be saying anything new, but if the piece was not precise in attributing responsibility, then I ended up colluding with those against whom I inveighed. Vague allusions work in café arguments; in a text like this they are ballast that undermines every good intention. No surprise that I dreamed strange dreams that night, including an exhausting sexual adventure with a red-haired woman whose name was Hilda and a battle with a creature covered in leeches. I got up gingerly from bed, as if putting my feet into water teeming with the little bloodsuckers. The leeches, of course, put me in mind of Volf Enoch, and that instant something moved in me, came unstuck inside my skin, and I felt like one of those figures they carve in India, an identical smaller figure inside each successive figure, until the last one is so small that no one notices when it steps out into the world. I am making this up, of course, but had I not entertained myself this way, I would have stopped writing long ago. There is nothing more tiresome than a gloomy story that has nothing, aside from the story line, to steer us briefly in another direction, where it tricks us and shunts us onto a sidetrack, and then, just as we think we are forever lost, opens a door and leads us back to where we began. We may not have distanced ourselves from the gloom, but for a few moments at least we breathed fresh air. My day was not like that and it passed slowly. I had breakfast, bought the paper, and read it carefully—nothing on the Jewish Community Center burglary. Not a word. I didn't turn on the television; if the papers ignored it, the television stations would have nothing to say either, except for the rare independent programs that broadcast news outside the system, but I couldn't get them with my little indoor antenna. Marko had offered to set me up with an improvised antenna using a washbasin and an umbrella on the terrace, which, he maintained, would work perfectly. I stubbornly refused, and now I wonder why. Sometimes we reject the help of others because we think we are thereby protecting our integrity. I now know this is jealousy rather than a defense of i ntegrity; jealousy because someone knows how to do something we don't and because no matter what we think of him or her, that person reflects us more than we do ourselves. It sounds complicated, but why should anything be simple? No one promised us when we came into this world that our lives would be simple, the world comprehensible, dreams clear, death merciful. We get the starting point, that's all, no signposts to the next, the one where the path ends. All in all, living is groping in the dark, blindness despite the seeing eye, a tightrope walk, a slide down a bumpy banister. In the end all that's left is pain, which corresponds to that sentence of Faulkner's, or to the choice I made in relation to that sentence. Pain is the antidote for the void, is what I meant to say. For lunch I prepared chicken soup from a packet. I used less water than the instructions called for, because I wanted it to be stronger. I also ate a slice of Gouda, the cheese I like best. After lunch, having placed the dishes in the dishwasher, I felt drowsy, but I boldly defied the weakness of my body and set about organizing the papers on my desk. The last few weeks, pulled in all directions by unpredictable events, I'd neglected my papers, files, and notebooks, and now I tried to file away copies of articles I'd snipped out of the newspaper, the letters and notes. The only thing I didn't touch was the manuscript of The Well. There wasn't a folder large enough for it, and I was afraid that if I tried to move it, it would turn to dust or sand, like a genuine book of sand. That made me think of that magic corner in the yard of the building at Zmaj Jovina Street. Had I already been thinking about it before that day as a passage to another world? I can't remember. In any case, I was thinking of it then: there must be a way to move from there to another reality, I just needed to find it, provided I didn't forget how to get back. I wouldn't want to stay where I didn't belong, though I could imagine several worlds from which I wouldn't want to return. In one there would be a lot of scantily clad women, in another no one but me, and in the third only my spirit. I checked my watch. The afternoon was aging; soon I would have to leave for the opening of Jaša Alkalaj's show. I went into the bathroom, combed my hair, made sure I had no need to shave, slapped a little lotion on my cheeks, then washed my hands. I took my jacket down from the coat hook, locked the door, and walked to the bus stop. Two police cruisers were parked near the Jewish Community Center: one across the street, by the entrance to the hotel, the other a little farther along, partly up on the sidewalk in front of the grocery store. Police were also at the entrance and in the hallway that led to the courtyard building. Crowds of people were there, and after several steps I could no longer move. Pressed on all sides, all I could do was let the throng carry me, step by step, up the stairs. When I finally reached the museum, I was in a sweat. Inside, under the glare of the television spotlights, it was warmer still. I wouldn't have been surprised to see pools of sweat. Somehow I managed to maneuver myself to the back of the room, closer to where Jaša Alkalaj was standing. His face had undergone yet another transformation, and now looked more like the face I'd known. The man standing next to him had just finished a speech and the applause resounded through the room. He was followed by a critic: in a few sentences the man summarized Jaša Alkalaj's entire opus, gave his assessment of several new paintings, then lifted a piece of paper, for a moment I thought he was hanging out a white flag of surrender. This, said the critic, was the text he had prepared for the occasion, but the new circumstances left him no choice but to rip it up, which he did, tearing the page in half. I could see the shreds of paper f
loating through the air. When you take a look at the paintings hanging here, said the critic, you will notice that some have been vandalized, that the forces of darkness were trying to steal their light, believing it possible to crush creative spirit. In their shallowness, he continued, they believe fear to be the father of obedience, a misconception they would not be prone to if they knew anything about history. But this is no moment for lectures and sermons, said the critic, this is a moment when the paintings, both the untouched and the damaged, will speak for themselves. Conceived to demonstrate the power of defiance, he said, marked by this new assault, aimed at that spirit among us, they now send the same message, but louder and more assertively to all willing to listen. Often in history, said the critic, books have been burned and artwork destroyed, but each time art managed to rise from the flames, and so it would again. The opening of this exhibit, he said, will dilute the darkness that tried to engulf it, and along with it, all of us. There was more applause, and new beads of sweat erupted on my forehead. People began milling around, looking at the paintings, the cameramen besieged Jaša Alkalaj, a woman said she'd faint if she didn't get some air, the hubbub became louder, unfamiliar ruddy faces alternated with the ruddy faces of well-known public figures, actors and writers of Jewish background, politicians who had sniffed out an opportunity, bored newspapermen, then someone shouted that he had a number on his arm, a gaunt man who had rolled up his shirtsleeves, someone came over to him, gently tugged at his arm, and pulled down his sleeve, the man began sobbing, and as the visitors parted before him like a sea he staggered to the exit, his words breaking between sobs, until he fell silent, and that silence became loud. The television reporters also headed for the exit, the spotlights were turned off, space opened up, waiters appeared with trays, with glasses full of wine and apple juice, slender gusts of air coursed through, it was possible to move from painting to painting between the clusters of people fanning themselves with folded catalogs, the only crowd left was around Jaša Alkalaj, but I was patient, I could wait. That is when I saw Margareta. She was standing in front of a painting, craning her neck to examine a detail more closely, then stepped back and approached it from the other side. Access to Jaša Alkalaj opened just then, and though I would have liked to go over to Margareta, I walked the other way. His face, closer up, looked like the cracked bed of a dried-up river, his eyes were bloodshot, his lips blue, his eyelids wrinkled. His hair was plastered with sweat, he was breathing with effort, raggedly, as if fighting for each breath. I tried to congratulate him on the show, but he dismissed this with a wave of the hand. A Pyrrhic victory, he said, nothing more, no point in wasting words. I asked whether the police had come up with anything. Did I really believe, Jaša asked, that they would? I said nothing. To some questions there is no other way to respond. Two older women approached Jaša, so he just said that I should come to his studio later to celebrate the opening. Fine, I said, and with the tips of my fingers brushed off the sweat that had pooled above my upper lip. Now that I was used to the vanishing, I didn't believe I'd catch sight of Margareta again, but there she was, standing in front of the same painting, sipping juice. I went over and stood by her. The painting she was looking at was nearly all black; in the upper-right-hand corner was a window from which light shone like a beam from a lighthouse; the light illuminated a cloud in the sky, and on that very spot, partially hidden by a curly wisp, was a triangle in the center of which was an eye; the eye was blazing, the fire had already caught the eyelid, and the flickers rose from the lashes as they rose from the candles in the menorah pictured in the pupil of the eye. If God's eye burns, Margareta spoke up as if she had been waiting for me, then it's all over, what use is a blind God? God didn't have to see, he saw without eyes, from within, with the heart, I said, or with who knows what. No one's perfect, said Margareta, not even God. Her sentence had a vaguely sacrilegious ring. I didn't know the Kabbalah well enough to be able to say that the Kabbalists doubted God, but didn't the Zen Buddhists say that Buddha had to be shit, just as he had to be all other things? In other words, he who desires to be perfect must also be imperfect; he who desires to be in everything must be in things he doesn't want to be a part of. God is either all or nothing, there is no third possibility. I stood next to Margareta and stared at the burning eye, and all I could think of was that the pain must be excruciating. I would like to know, Margareta said, what the painter really had in mind. We can ask him, I said. We'll ask him later, said Margareta, no rush. She finished her juice and looked at me: You see him now and then, don't you? Yes, I said. And you? She nodded. I didn't know you two knew each other, I said. You never asked, said Margareta. So, I asked, how long? hoping the tinge of jealousy in my voice would not be audible. Forever, said Margareta. Jaša's my father. There are situations in which we suddenly catch on to a word or concept, the real meaning of which has been eluding us for years. There, in the Jewish Historical Museum, standing in front of the painting Jaša Alkalaj had titled Fire, as listed in the catalog that I brought with me here, though there were many more important things that should have found a place in my modest luggage, I understood the meaning of the phrase "out of the blue." For a moment I could no longer feel the lower part of my legs, as if I was standing on my knees, my lips trembled, I shook all over, electricity raced through my body and instantly drained from me. I raised my eyes to Margareta, and in her face I saw the lines of Jaša's face. I couldn't believe I hadn't noticed it before, though I know that no matter how much we look, we don't see what is most obvious until someone literally points a finger at it. From the moment she told me that Jaša Alkalaj was her father, I saw nothing but a growing resemblance. I noticed the same mild twitch of the left corner of her lips when she talked and a tiny quickening tremor in her anticipation of an answer. Who knows what Margareta was seeing in my face. She said she knew it would surprise me, though she hadn't expected it would surprise me so much. She emphasized the word as if it were a legitimate measure for surprise, a unit for calculating the extent of incredulity. My lips were dry, I thought of sandpaper. I asked Margareta to wait and went into a room where a woman wearing glasses with blue frames was pouring juice and sparkling water into glasses she had set out on a tray. I had some juice, then sparkling water, then rejoined Margareta, who was still there, confounding for a second time my expectation that she would not be. She suggested we leave, she wouldn't be able to breathe before long, she said, there was so little oxygen left that it wouldn't have surprised her if the fire on the eyelashes of her father's canvas went out. Her father's canvas: the words sounded strange to me, unreal, untrue. But they were true, I later ascertained with the help of people I knew, who checked in the records of births, never admitting to her that I held on to the suspicion for so long. Apparently I didn't even admit it to myself, nor do I understand why I resisted the simple fact that one person was another person's parent. One more question I can't answer. If everything comes down to questions, then is an answer a question? I am not thinking of the oft-repeated story of how Jews like to answer a question with a question; that doesn't mean that a second question is an answer to the first, though sometimes it may seem that way, and besides, I am not a Jew and cannot claim as my own something that is not mine. I can only assume that some people manage to tell their story in such a way that it is understood as an answer, or as an opening to an answer, while others, among whom I clearly belong, turn the story into a question, or as Marko said, into evading an answer, as if they want to say to the person listening to them, or reading them, that the question is here, but that all the rest is up to him. Or her, if the listener or reader is a woman, and more likely it will be a woman, judging by the latest statistical data, which unequivocally confirm that women dominate as readers and that the number of men who read is rapidly declining. Hence, say the experts, the growing number of books of family chronicles, culinary novels, full of recipes and stories about a search for existence based on diluted Eastern philosophies. Even if I wanted to introduce a recipe into this text I w
ouldn't be able to because I never learned how to cook, and I am in such awe of Eastern philosophical teachings, as of all others, that it would never occur to me to abuse them in a novel or a short story. I have long since acknowledged that it would be better for me to occupy myself with something other than writing. If your heart is not in what you do, give it up. I don't remember who said that, but there is truth in it. I know that it is now considered old-fashioned to talk of the human heart, as if modern man no longer needs the human heart for anything but heart attacks. Whenever I mention the heart, someone pushes under my nose a cross-section of the striated muscle and asks if I see anything other than ventricles, atria, veins, and arteries, and I tell them that this is precisely what I don't see, even if the image were so large that it covered the entire surface of the sky in the west. I also know that many feel the heart to be the concern of the cardiologists, not the writers, and there is some truth to that, so it would be wisest to say that both are concerned with the heart, each in their own way, because all of us must accept certain limitations in the job we do and take care not to step over into another's territory. This sounds as if I see myself as a writer, since I'm certainly no cardiologist, but I would never go that far. I don't know whether I'd be able to define what a true writer is. Wherever I start from, I get lost halfway. Yet again a moment when Marko's advice would have been useful, but Marko wasn't around. I called him repeatedly: no one picked up. I went to his apartment: no one came to the door. One morning it occurred to me he might have left the country, so many people were leaving, why wouldn't he, though it seemed incredible that he'd leave without saying goodbye after all the years we'd spent together. Who knows, maybe it's best to leave that way, without a word, without a farewell, at night, sneakily, like a criminal, even when there was nothing anyone could blame you for. That was the way Margareta and I left the exhibition, I mean a departure without goodbyes. The police car was still in front of the hotel; the other that had been parked in front of the grocery store was gone. Several police officers, one of them a woman, talked and smoked in the hallway. There were two guns on a small table by the entranceway, gleaming in the feeble light of the stairwell. We went into the street and set out uphill toward Student Square. The air was not cleaner outside than it had been in the museum, but it was fresher, and an explanation from Margareta didn't seem nearly as urgent. I'd been struck by lightning, I could wait. We were among the first to arrive at Jaša's studio; we were also among the first to leave. There weren't as many people there as had been at the opening, but the crowd was too large for my taste. The commotion made any serious conversation impossible, and all talk was reduced to shouting single words in someone's ear. Isak Levi somehow managed to convey to me that the police had arrested the people who'd broken into the building of the Jewish Community Center and vandalized Jaša's paintings; they'd apprehended three minors and a young man of about twenty, he shouted, spraying tiny droplets of saliva on the curves of my ear. Then I saw Jakov Švarc heading over to us, which spurred me to ask Margareta whether she was staying or leaving. I put my hand between us to stop the spray and leaned close to her small, finely shaped ear, with a dot on the lobe. The hair around her ear was moist, and between the slender locks you could see the fragile whiteness of her skin. I had to hold back from pressing my lips on that whiteness and running my tongue along the curving paths of her ear. She merely nodded and pushed her way toward the exit, while I was imagining leaning my ear to her lips. The pushing took time; many people wanted to say hello to her, shooting questioning glances my way, and I stood there, shifting from foot to foot and grinning foolishly. In the end we gave up trying to find Jaša and made it to the front door. Some people stood on the landing by the door, others sat on the stairs, and making our way to the elevator required additional hopping over legs and arms. I pressed the button and the elevator appeared obediently. We got in, shut the metal doors, and started down. When the elevator stopped, it was dark. The wan cabin light left the entrance to the building in shadow, and behind the glass door, we could make out a silhouette. I could feel Margareta tensing. We stepped out of the elevator and slammed the door. The dark grew denser, the silhouette clearer, Margareta's breathing slowed, my heart was pounding hard. If she heard it, Margareta didn't react. The silhouette didn't react either, it turned out to be an acquaintance of Jaša Alkalai's, waiting for a taxi, which, he said, was to take him to New Belgrade. He offered to give us a ride if that suited us, and so Margareta and I found ourselves on the back seat of the cab, while Jaša's acquaintance got in front and immediately struck up a conversation with the driver. We had only gone halfway, and the two had covered the entire political scene, criticizing the government and leading politicians, they had agreed that everything was wildly expensive, that it was a true miracle, the taxi driver said, that people had anything to eat, then moved on to sports, to the value of the American dollar, to the fact that half of Serbia had moved to Canada, and here I stopped listening and dedicated myself to the little finger of my left hand, with which I was lightly touching Margareta's thigh. I didn't move the finger, I didn't steer it, I simply let it follow the jostling of the motor and the darting of the taxi. The Belgrade streets are full of cracks and bumps, and the taxi was lurching in fits and starts, with sudden braking and accelerating, so my finger was shaking and shifting, sometimes resting fully on Margareta's thigh. Meanwhile Margareta was dozing or else meditating, her eyes were closed, and only when the taxi crossed the Sava and my hand crept under her thigh did her eyelids flutter, and she stretched out her right hand and dropped it into my lap. I looked up at the rearview mirror, hoping the taxi driver was too preoccupied with the conversation to notice. Margareta's hand didn't move. It lay in my lap, relaxed, resting gently on the belt buckle. And just as I was wondering whether I should slide my hand under her thigh, Margareta leaned against the backrest, raised her body, and my hand slid deftly into the warm dip. I managed to flip my hand over before her body flopped down on the seat, my eyes anxiously on the rearview mirror. The conversation in the front seat was still in full swing, and they were now discussing delays in the payment of pensions and the scandalously low social welfare disbursements to invalids and other beneficiaries. While the driver was citing examples, Margareta wriggled and squeezed my hand with her buttocks. I moved my fingers, she sat up and spread her thighs, my fingers slipped between her legs. We're almost there, announced the driver, as Margareta increased pressure on my arm. The taxi turned toward the Intercontinental Hotel, then on to the Hyatt, and then it dipped into the web of New Belgrade streets and passageways where I could never find my way. When I first saw a map of New Belgrade, I was impressed by the relatively simple urban layout, the geometric structures of blocks and streets that intersected at right angles. In reality, this simplicity was lost when, on foot or by car, one ventured into the interior of individual blocks or started searching for a house number. Here is fine, said Margareta. The taxi stopped, and after a brief round of thank-yous, Margareta and I got out. I looked to the left, I looked to the right: I had no idea where we were. Zemun is over there, said Margareta, and gestured as if Zemun were somewhere in the sky. I wasn't sure whether this was a hint that I should depart, or whether it was merely information, an orientation of sorts, like the North Star or moss growing on a stump. Once you know where Zemun is, you know where everything else is. Who said that? I couldn't put my finger on it, though there are times when I see, with my inner eye, of course, a shimmering page with those very words inscribed on it. A page, like any page, that could come from any one of a thousand books, and all that is left for me is to hope that at some point in my life a certain detail will turn up that will take me to whoever wrote it. That won't change anything, of course, but why would knowledge always be tied to change? For example, one person might learn the names of the ten Sephirot in order from the largest to the smallest, so: Keter, Binah, Hokhmah, Gevurah, Chesed, Tiferet, Hod, Nezah, Yesod, and Malkhut, and remember them merely as a fact, while someone else, lear
ning about the same ten Sephirot, might ascend higher and higher in his soul, and, ultimately, undergo the desired transformation. I was still standing next to Margareta, indecisive, as she ran her hand through her hair. Then I remembered that I hadn't finished the piece for Minut and it got easier. We agreed to meet after I handed in the piece, I wished Margareta a good night, kissed her lightly on the cheek, and set out for Zemun. The triangles are opening, I thought as I walked away, and, suddenly elated, I started whistling an old Beatles tune. The walk to Zemun was not strenuous, but for a body unaccustomed to walking several hundred meters, let alone a few kilometers, it is exhausting. At least, I consoled myself, nothing disgusting awaited me by the door to the apartment. That there might be people waiting never crossed my mind, a consequence of an enjoyable taxi ride and my fine mood, the whistling and occasional singing. I started with the Beatles, then I continued with hits by the Kinks, Manfred Mann, the Dave Clark Five, and Cream, then thought of the song "We Gotta Get Out of This Place" by the Animals. I didn't know all the words and I kept repeating the refrain, until suddenly I stopped and heard the Danube slapping the shore with crystal clarity, though I was still some distance from the promenade. The fear that someday I might flee "outta this place" and not hear the sound of the river didn't last long, and I reverted to whistling and singing, focusing on the songs of Marianne Faithfull, with whom, if anyone even cares, I had once been desperately in love. I went into my apartment, took off my shoes, drank two glasses of water, and attempted to rest in the armchair in front of the television, stared for a while at the dark screen, then went into my study and switched on the computer. I read the piece again, made minor changes, added a paragraph about the opening of the show and the symbolic gesture of the critic who felt it his obligation to join in solidarity with the threatened artist by committing an act of violence against his own text. Maybe we should all follow his example, I wrote, and in solidarity destroy something we have created before someone else destroys it for us. The Danes, the story goes, saved their Jews in World War II by wearing yellow armbands, so perhaps we could save our Jews and ourselves by joining them as victims of violence. That was it. Even if I had wanted to say something more, I wouldn't have been able to, the piece was already too long, and as I printed it, I braced myself for the battle with the editor the following day. At first, when he saw how long it was, he didn't even want to look at it. Cut it, he said, then we can talk. I thought of Feliks the cat but was reluctant to use him again as a means of persuasion. Instead, I urged the editor to read the piece and then decide, and I would abide by his decision. It turned out that I'd done the right thing: the editor's secretary told me that Feliks had disappeared, or was registered as having disappeared, because he hadn't come home for five days, and the editor, she claimed, was in distress, and who knows how he'd have reacted to my inquiries. I sat in her office, on the plastic chair by the coat rack, while behind closed doors the editor read my piece. Then the door opened and he summoned me in. I got up, looked at the secretary, she winked, and I slowly closed the door behind me, like someone saying farewell to the world. The editor didn't offer me a seat, so I stood by the door, my hand on the doorknob in case I had to depart in a hurry. Let me say right away, the editor said, the piece is good. I breathed a sigh of relief: I could let go of the doorknob, and even smile. But, said the editor, you should cut it so it fits the space designed for the column. The smile, of course, vanished from my face. So now what? I asked. Do I roll up my sleeves and cut it down to size? The editor scratched his chin and ran his fingers through his hair. Whether short or long, he said, it is equally dangerous, so dangerous that I am not sure you understand how dangerous it is. He looked at me without blinking. I didn't blink either. The overt naming of names, said the editor, no one likes that, the church especially. The hard line is in fashion these days, he said, which means that reactions are unpredictable. He asked me whether I had all these elements in mind when I wrote the piece. I'd thought of nothing, I said, except the truth. I felt, I confess, like one of the protagonists in the Watergate affair, though what I was doing exposed no political or ethnic plot, brought down no prominent politicians or public figures, revealed no intentions or secrets. It was simply drawing attention to a state of the collective spirit, which could be explained by the historical context and the long isolation of the country from the mainstream of the world, but which becomes a threat, like certain diseases that become chronic and therefore incurable and ultimately a potential source of something far worse. Hatred is a disease, and it occurs when the normal functioning of the individual and the collective spirit is disturbed. To hate another you first need to hate yourself, your own lack of power or ability, we don't seek the culprit in ourselves, where it truly lies, but in someone else, and not in just anyone else, but in a person visible enough and, most important, powerless enough that he can't hide or defend himself. In brief, my intention was not to encapsulate that surge of hatred, though hatred should, no doubt, be branded at all times; what I meant to do was warn of the dangers that threatened if the cracks in the collective spirit were not attended to and if individuals and groups who adeptly use those cracks for promoting their own aims were not stopped. Now I know that I was unsuccessful, or my insights came too late. The spiritual scale was overloaded, the needle was skewed, and this breakdown, if I can call it that, was beyond repair. Besides, who could have thought that only a year later, the country would be deliberately sacrificed, the collective spirit encouraged in its most depraved incarnation—blaming others with a paranoic fervor, denial of the guilt among those who were to blame. I was unaware of that while I stood there with my hand resting again on the doorknob, anticipating the editor's decision. He looked up at me. I felt a drop of sweat forming behind my ear and starting to trickle down my neck. This is a typical no-win situation, said the editor, if I publish this, I'll regret it, and if I don't publish it, I'll regret it. I didn't say a word. I raised my hand and with my index finger brushed away the drop of sweat that had trickled halfway down. We go with it, said the editor, and looked away, as if ashamed of his decision. We go with it, he repeated, come what may. Nothing will come, I said. If nothing comes of it, he glanced over at me, then why are we publishing it? Nothing bad, I answered, that's what I meant. And that was what I meant. Who could have foreseen the storm and everything that followed when the pace of events picked up, getting stronger like soup that has cooked for too long? But if we were to know everything in advance, would life have any meaning at all? Hence the prophecy system, such as that of the Chinese Book of Changes, doesn't speak of the future as a pattern that can be learned, rather, it lays the groundwork for the unpredictable things that will nevertheless crop up. Yin and yang alternate, whole lines break and broken lines heal, after the spring comes the summer and winter follows the autumn, but no one can say with certainty which days will bring rain. So during the rainy season the prudent person carries an umbrella, while the reckless person does not and, of course, gets wet when it rains. Prudence is not precise knowledge, but a willingness to adapt to circumstances in the shortest possible time. I go on and on; I am probably remembering the thrill I felt when the editor announced his decision, and the thrill was the kind that gets one talking, just as I had talked to the editor's secretary on my way out, then to two women and a fat man in the elevator. Don't worry, I told them, it's just that I'm happy. That was when they looked genuinely alarmed. Happy, in this day and age? said their looks. I stopped talking and started whistling. The fat man gaped at me, while the two women crossed their arms over their chests, which was probably meant to signify extreme disapproval. I turned my back on them, there was nothing more I could do, but I went right on whistling, though softer, and through my teeth, first "Yellow Submarine," then "I Want to Hold Your Hand." When the elevator stopped, the door slid open, the women hurried out, the fat man went panting after them, and I, still whistling, thought I should reward myself with a glass of boza and a cream puff, and slowly, through the center of town, I se
t out for the pastry shop on Makedonska Street; Marko called it the last oasis, one of the rare places in Belgrade that had held on to the spirit of the old days. Again I wondered what Marko was up to, why he had vanished, if indeed he had vanished, and then I stopped whistling. When you miss someone it's hard to whistle. Your mouth turns dry, your heart sinks, nothing comes out of your puckered lips. I drank the first glass standing by the counter, then ordered a second and another cream puff, and sat at a table. I saw a face in the mirror that was supposed to be mine, though I wasn't sure. I glanced at the newspaper that the owner was reading at the next table before he got up to serve me. My attention was not drawn to a headline or a photograph, but to a poem at the top of the right-hand column. I assume that the owner didn't read verse but had lingered on the page because of the left-hand column, in which were headlines about traffic accidents and a family tragedy in Zaječar. Though spring was in the air, the title was "Winter Poem." I later bought the paper, cut the poem out, and held on to it until it got lost in one of my moves, if you can use the word move to refer to traveling with a suitcase and a backpack in which I kept my most treasured possessions: documents, some photographs, my shaving kit, manuscripts, a small English-Serbian dictionary, pencils, and a fountain pen that I kept because I was convinced that nothing would happen to me until the pelican spread its wings. I used to know "Winter Poem" by heart because I'd convinced myself that armed with a poem, I would have no fear of winter and cold, wherever I might be. Then forgetfulness began to take its toll, and I only remembered the opening and closing lines of the poem, and since then I have no longer been able to find my way to warmer places. Once I forget the beginning and the end, I'll go so high up north that my entire world will become a curtain of frost. The poem began with the words "Good morning I wish to you, Winter and Cold, you who make ice of the water and the oil viscous," and ends with "the little blaze of wild truth that grows cheerfully" or something like that, "in this beggar who begs not out of need but for others to give." That ending completely undid me, and I nearly began to cry. Luckily, the pastry-shop owner took the paper, and I consoled myself with the drink, then left. I walked toward Terazije. The day was sunny and warm, with lightning speed women stripped down to their summer finery, which exposed more than it concealed. At Hotel Moskva I descended into the underground walkway, crossed over to the other side of the street, and headed for the building of the federal assembly, then across the park and into Palmotićeva Street. This was no random stroll, I was following a route Marko had often taken, and I peered into the small cafés he frequented. No sign of him. I went on to Takovska, where I waited for the bus, got to Zeleni Venac, and after elbowing my way through the teeming throngs of street vendors, got onto the bus to Zemun. Why didn't I go to Marko's apartment that day? Because something inside warned me, though perhaps that isn't quite true, but that is how my memory dictates it to me today, and it is a fact that memory is the greatest liar and that it takes it upon itself to change day by day. Hour by hour, to be more precise, just as it would be more precise to admit that I don't know why I didn't go looking for Marko. Perhaps he was on one of his romantic binges, I thought, which happened with every new girlfriend. For days he would not leave the house, actually his bed, but after two or three days, he'd call to say he was in seventh heaven. Once he called while they were making love, and when I picked up, he put the phone on the pillow and for the next ten minutes or so I listened to their panting, moist kissing, the creaking of the bed, and the slapping of their thighs like the clapping of damp hands. What do you say, he asked as he grabbed the phone again, how did we sound? I wasn't sure what I was supposed to say, how to answer, so I said that it was a catchy refrain. Marko laughed and I heard him repeating it to his girlfriend, she also laughed, said something, and the sounds started again, and gingerly, so as not to disturb them, I hung up. He never told me who the woman was. Memories are a lure for the gullible, how often do I have to say that to myself? At some point in life, however, what had happened becomes more important than what is about to happen, though it should be the other way around, and insignificant details, like the panting in the telephone receiver, begin to look like crucial factors in what life could be. By then I had reached my building, unlocked the front door, stepped into the stairwell awash in the stench of mildew, opened my mailbox, in which I found several fliers, mostly advertising apartments for sale. I crumpled them up and was about to toss them into a cardboard box, which someone had thoughtfully left under the mailboxes, when I noticed on one of the fliers a circle with an intertwined yin and yang. I retrieved it and smoothed it out. Beginner's class in tai chi, the flier announced, Tuesdays and Thursdays from six P.M. to eight P.M. Next was an address that meant nothing to me, which could mean that it was a street in the upper reaches of Zemun or that it was one of the many streets that had changed names over the past few years. Impossible, I thought, that this flier, most likely related to the poster I'd seen two months earlier on the gate at Zmaj Jovina Street, had no significance. Of course, Marko would have said mockingly, had he been standing there next to me, because we read meaning into things that, in and of themselves, mean nothing. I shut the box and went upstairs. Differences were what had drawn us to each other all those years, no reason for it to be otherwise now, though Marko was no longer a real presence. There was nothing nasty waiting outside the door to my apartment, nothing scribbled on the door, the doorbell had not been smeared with excrement, the wall by the door was clean: all in all, I could breathe a sigh of relief. I entered the apartment, full of greenish shadows from the lowered blinds, and tumbled into the armchair, where, eyes shut, I massaged my forehead and the base of my nose. I could have fallen asleep right then, I was so exhausted, and the sleep probably would have done me good, but I didn't dare relax because Margareta had told me the day before that she'd call me in the evening. Did I make it up or had she said that the triangles were starting to open? Pressing lightly with the tips of my fingers, I began to massage my eyes. When I opened them, it was not completely dark in the room, but the green shadows were denser. I looked at the clock: I'd slept for about forty minutes and probably had been snoring with my mouth open, because the left side of my face, part of the chin and cheek, were caked with dried saliva. I went to the bathroom. In the mirror, my face was crumpled like a discarded piece of paper—I splashed it, rubbed it with lotion, smoothed my hair. I thought of Margareta again and felt myself hardening. There was nothing I could do. That creature had a life of its own and the less I get involved, I said to my reflection, the better. I slipped my hand into my pants to free it of the constraints of the fabric, and just then the phone rang. I didn't pick up. It was too early for Margareta to be calling. I stood there holding my rigid penis and waited for the phone to stop jangling. I had not counted, however, on the persistence of the caller, because the ringing didn't stop, my penis went limp, and my legs ached, and a feeling spread through me that the person calling could see me, knew I was here, standing next to the phone, and that he was not calling for the same reason he had called at the start, but because he wanted to fling into my face, or my ear, what a nobody I was, what a horrible soulless man, that it was high time for me to forget that limp organ and reach for the smooth, hard curve of the receiver. Carefully moving through the apartment, crouching behind furniture, I hopped from window to window, watching from behind the curtains the buildings across the way in the hope that I might catch sight of the person who was after me. The roofs were empty, as were the balconies, the windows shut and so distant that I couldn't be sure whether anyone was peering out from behind the curtains or through the slats of the blinds. I cursed myself for not buying a new set of binoculars or a telescope or a camera with a telephoto lens, whatever would have allowed me to see into the distance, while the phone kept ringing furiously behind me. I occasionally turned around and glared at it, as if it would be shocked by my ferocity and stop the noise. Why didn't I instantly yank the cord out of the wall? When I finally did, the silence fell lik
e a balm on my ears. I made the rounds of the windows but spotted no changes. I remembered the man in the treetop by my building. Marko laughed at me at the time, but I myself had found no traces around the poplar later that day, though that didn't completely convince me to the contrary. I am one of those for whom any shred of suspicion, even the tiniest, leaves a permanent scar, and it is enough for me to touch that wrinkled trace with the tip of my finger for the suspicion to come back in full blaze, or in full darkness, which, when I think of it, is actually the more accurate. Suspicion leads to the dark, hope leads to the light, there is no simpler equation. Dragan Mišović would agree, though he might say that I should not associate light and dark with mathematical abstractions, which, despite everything, don't exist anywhere. Numbers are not fruits ripening on a slender or a knobbly tree, they are not berries sprouting on prickly bushes, they are not anything in fact, and just when you think you have numbers the most present, that is when they are the most absent. Now you see them, he'd say, raising two fingers, now you don't, and he'd fold his hand in. I can go on opening and shutting my hand as much as I like, but I have never managed to repeat the magic. I could conjure no magic at all, I should say, though I know that it was a mistake to call anything that happened during those nine weeks magical, for magic, as someone said, is tied to belief in the absolute power of language, and what was happening back then, no matter what language was involved, had to do with the other side of language, where the mystical realm of the ineffable exists in the serenity of silence and the music of the spheres, that which no measure of effort can express in words. Even what I am jotting down now with increasing interruptions, with longer intervals spent by the window, though there are no roofs or balconies here from which my actions or what I've written down in fine print with a ballpoint pen might be observed, wouldn't have changed anything, because all these words, all these tangled sentences, can do nothing more than crack open the narrow door leading to the room wherein dwells the truth, wherein reality is true reality and not a series of multiple reflections, including the one in which our face resides. I leaned over, reached for the cord, and plugged the phone back in. I picked up the receiver and put it to my ear. The line was free, I could breathe and wait for Margareta to call. I put the phone down and went into the bathroom. I almost never look at myself now in the mirror, except when I shave, because I can't bear to see what the years have done to my face, but back then, when all this was happening, I gazed at the mirror like any vain man, I rubbed lotion into my cheeks, slicked back my hair, squeezed the blackheads, snipped the whiskers, brushed my teeth. There was always one more distraction, one more attempt at sidestepping the sequence of events that is key to the story. So be it, but no one can convince me that real life is as orderly as a novel, and that in real life everything is tidy and purposeful, that people appear precisely when their arrival fits into the plot, not a moment too soon or a moment too late, and that everything leads to a climax and a resolution, after which there is nothing left unexplained. Life, to put it mildly, is chaos, a chaos that is not without an order of its own, I agree, but that order is so complex, so tangled, that even with the best of intentions we cannot divine it as order. I note that occasionally I write in the first-person plural, as if I were authorized to speak in the name of a group or a specific segment of the population. There is no one, I am alone, I can barely speak in my own name, and certainly not in the name of anyone else. But enough about me. I am not jotting this down to portray myself in a favorable light or to create an alibi. In fact, I don't know why I am doing it. It's easy to say "I don't know," Marko once said. Not true, was my response, "I don't know" was the hardest thing to say. We quarreled over that, foolishly, of course, but without consequences, as happens between friends. Who are not friends anymore, I must add immediately, a friendship that ended with no pointless words of accusation, like a fine-tuned divorce. Marko went off one way, I another, and we never looked back. I should be saying I never looked back, for how could I tell whether Marko turned around if I wasn't looking back? So I sensed that he didn't look back, just as I sensed that a tear welled in his eye, that he strained his ears to hear the echo of the footsteps receding irrevocably, that he clenched his fists and ground his teeth, and that he battled the inner voice urging him to act in the best possible way, though there were a few times when it seemed his shaking knees would betray him. It sounds like a farewell scene between Romeo and Juliet, I know, but friends are lovers, no quibbling about that here, at least. I hadn't been thinking about any of this, of course, that Wednesday, late in the afternoon, as I waited for Margareta to act on her promise. The only thought that obsessed me was how to continue what had gone on the night before, and this seemed more important than finding answers to the many questions that had been making my life a misery, though when Margareta finally did call I lied shamelessly, saying that I could hardly wait to continue our conversation and finally clear up a few matters. Margareta suggested we meet in her apartment, though not right away, as I'd been hoping, but later that evening. I had little choice: I agreed, and when we hung up, I sat at the desk and began leafing through the manuscript of The Well. I opened to the last page from my dream, and as had happened before, I was certain I'd never seen it. The part about Enoch did, admittedly, sound familiar, but the illustration, a square-shaped labyrinth in several colors, almost like a mandala, was entirely unfamiliar. The drawing was centered on the page with the text around it. Enoch, son of Jared, it said, walked one fi ne day by a stream, listening to the song of a bird, when suddenly the sky darkened, and from a great distance, like vast boats, black-and-white clouds piled in, and from them, with a rumble, appeared the hand of the Lord and a voice was heard mightier than a choir of trumpets, and this mighty voice said to Enoch that it had come for him and that it would raise him to heaven, where he would make Enoch a witness to all the shameful things people did on earth, which sullied God's majestic effort, so that he, Enoch, would comprehend the measure of God's anger and the righteousness of his wish to wipe humankind off the face of the earth, just as Enoch might wipe a tear from his cheek, and having spoken these words, without waiting for Enoch's answer, the hand coiled around him like a swirl of smoke and shot upward so fast that Enoch feared his shoes would come off his feet, but in the blink of an eye he found himself in a marvelous palace, surrounded by inquisitive angels, and here the Lord gradually transformed him into a superhuman being with seventy-two wings and an infinite number of eyes, as large as the whole world, which at the time was lost under the vast waters of the flood, and then he called that being by the name of Metatron, and proclaimed it a prince of divine presence, pure fire, fire that walks, fire that flows, fire that feeds the blaze of the heavens, and from which all springs, and into which all runs, with the condition of finding the right path. The path, I assume, was to be found in the square labyrinth, but for that I needed better lighting and a large magnifying glass. A lamp to bring closer I could find; a magnifying glass, however, I didn't have, just as I had no binoculars and who knows what else. Once and for all I should make a list of all the things I need, then I should go out and look for them and buy them, so that I wouldn't have to fume at wasted opportunities. I could already see the first part of the list: binoculars, magnifying glass, pencil sharpener. I leafed through several more pages of the manuscript, but neither Metatron nor Enoch was mentioned again. Two pages described the proper handling of leeches; one page provided the transcription of a letter in which there was a debate on the opening of a Jewish school in Zemun, which the Slavonian general command definitively denied in January 1814, invoking regulations from 1753, which allowed Jews the right to live only on property they already owned; that same regulation comes up later on, in a letter dated June 12, 1808, with a warning that the Jews in Zemun and Belgrade should be watched closely, as rumor had it that the French consul in Travnik was trying to influence the Serbian rebels through the Jews; on the last page there was a list of Jewish tradesmen in Zemun but with no indication of the
year, and below the list a petition of the association of Zemun tradesmen to the effect that the Jewish tradesmen were stealing the bread from their mouths, that without bread they would not last long, which the government should have known without being warned. This reminded me of the fact that, except for that cream puff, I'd had nothing to eat since breakfast. I went into the kitchen, scrambled some eggs, poured myself a glass of milk, spread apricot jam on a slice of bread, and ate it all in a split second. I could have eaten more, but my search around the kitchen turned up nothing; and just like those Zemun tradesmen of two centuries ago, I no longer had any bread, though, unlike them, I had no one to blame. Margareta said I shouldn't get there until after eleven but before midnight, and for some reason, while I waited, time passed more slowly and the second hand needed more than sixty seconds to circle around the entire face of the clock. I remembered Marko's explanation of what happens when cannabis enters our physical and mental system: time, Marko said, passes agonizingly slowly at breakneck speed. And every time I was high, I'd think about how precise that definition was, but now I wasn't high, which could only mean that something else, and it wasn't the eggs, had taken over my consciousness the same way the ingredients of hashish or marijuana do. I wondered whether Margareta smoked, and I couldn't decide. During the seventies and eighties of the last century it seemed as if all younger urban residents consumed cannabis, but this had changed in the early nineties. Drugs got more expensive and less accessible, and alcohol made a big comeback. Hard liquor fl owed like rivers, and the end of the century was filled with the consumption of sedatives. All of Belgrade was on valium, their eyes gleaming like car headlights. Margareta, however, didn't have that glassy stare, nor did she have the slightly out-of-focus look or the bloodshot eyes typical for people on hashish. These thoughts made me contemplate having a joint, and I started digging around for the papers, but then gave up. For my encounter with Margareta I needed a clear mind. I looked at my watch: it was time to go. Margareta opened the door, and we stood for a moment, looking at each other, waiting for her breathing to slow. No, she said, she hadn't been racing to the door, she'd been up on a ladder to get hold of some books, then lugged the whole pile, like an armload of firewood, to the table when the doorbell rang. Everything's fine, she said, but she hoped she hadn't pulled a muscle. She lifted both arms and examined them, then lowered them and walked into the apartment. I had only had the chance to catch sight of golden hairs on her lower arms, like those on her thigh, though now I was thinking that I had imagined the hairs on her thigh. Certainly, my vantage point then was better, I didn't need glasses the way I do now, but in that instant I wouldn't have noticed larger markings, such as a mole or a bruise, let alone minute golden hairs. There, I am writing about little hairs as if they were crucial to this story, though many other things, much more serious and full of meaning, wait in some cranny of my mind. This is one more distinction between the real and the recorded: in writing our choice is unlimited, whereas in reality it is a limited selection, and sometimes not even that. Some are disgusted by hairs as much as others are disgusted by leeches, and the fear of a hair in soup may be the same as the fear of a leech latching on to the warm hollow behind the knee. Whatever the case, Margareta was wearing black jeans that evening, so I couldn't expect any proof, at least not any time soon. The apartment looked as it had before, though I couldn't shake off the impression that this time it was in a state of disorder. There's tea in the kitchen, juice in the fridge, there may be a beer, said Margareta, and added that we didn't have much time, though she didn't say for what, and while I poured jasmine tea into a cup I sensed that there wouldn't be time for what I'd had in mind. I went back into the living room, one foot in front of the other, while the cup joggled on the saucer and the tea sloshed over the lip in thin streams. Margareta was sitting at the desk, sifting through papers. I looked around: there was nowhere to sit. I could sit on the floor, but then I wouldn't be able to see Margareta, or I would be looking at her from an odd angle, so I chose to stand. I put the teacup down on the nearest pile of books. Margareta didn't even glance at me, instead she kept flipping from one page of writing to the next, and I chided myself for my naivete in thinking her invitation implied a continuation of what had gone on the night before. I know what you're thinking, said Margareta, without raising her eyes from the page that was now consuming her attention. No, you don't, I said, trying to keep my voice from quavering. Margareta looked at me, and looking back, I realized her eyes had changed color again. Now they were greenish blue, but I could have sworn that they'd been a gray blue earlier, though at the same time I was certain they'd always been light brown. After what went on in the cab, Margareta continued, you're wondering why we're wasting our time on papers instead of picking up where we left off. I felt my ears burning. Don't feel awkward, said Margareta, and at that moment I thought my ears would grow with shame, the way Pinocchio's nose grew with greed. All in the fullness of time, said Margareta, which is an old turn of phrase but still a good one. She put down one page and took up another. Besides, she said, the Kabbalists thought that the night between Friday and Saturday was ideal for lovemaking, not just ideal, but obligatory, and it was even believed that the best time was Friday after midnight, but before dawn, because if a man and a woman were to do it early in the evening or at dawn they might hear the voices of people, which might encourage the man to think of other women, and that would be a sin. She looked at me, and I nodded, as if I had been expected to give my approval. By that act, Margareta said, consummated on Shabbat, which starts on Friday at sunset, a man and a woman help the Shekhinah unite again with God and so renew his divine substance and restore balance to the world. I had to confess I'd never accorded the act of love so much importance, but I liked the image of the lovers carrying the flagging world on their backs, then sinking into each other to return the exaltation to the world. This made the male sexual organ seem like the lever with which someone, I can't remember who, sought to move the entire planet earth. I couldn't understand, however, why Margareta was telling me all this. If she didn't want, as she put it, to pick up where we'd left off the night before, she could have said so without reciting all the stuff on the role of sexual intercourse in the Kabbalistic notion of the cosmos. In the Talmud, she said, it's written precisely how often men should make love with their wives. Workers should do so twice a week, donkey drivers once a week, camel drivers once a month, and sailors once every six months. More than that, she said, was permissible, but less than that would be grounds for the woman to call for dissolution of the marriage. And writers, I asked, what about them? Margareta shuffled through the papers and said that writers were not mentioned anywhere. Maybe there were no writers then, I said, or maybe they weren't expected to couple with their wives. I'm not sure, said Margareta, but it looks as if a man whose work is less strenuous and who spends no time away from home is supposed to make love with his wife more often. Then a writer, I said, is condemned to sex every night. If you consider that a condemnation, replied Margareta, the answer is affirmative. I laughed. Everything is relative, I said, even sex, so the night between Friday and Saturday is more important than the other nights in the week? Yes, confirmed Margareta. For a while we said nothing, then I spoke up again and asked whether that meant what I thought it meant. Yes, she said, it does. She didn't inquire as to what I had in mind, just as I didn't ask her for any further explanation, but the answer was clear: we would have to wait for Shabbat. The silence settled again between us, a little weightier and longer than before. Margareta went back to her papers while I looked aimlessly at the books on the floor and shelves. I went into the kitchen and poured myself another cup of tea. Why don't you sit down, Margareta advised me when I came over to the desk, because she meant, she said, to tell me a story that was not short. There is nothing I like so much as a long story, I said. The longer the better. I sat down on the floor by heaps of books on which I again set my cup of tea. Don't worry, Margareta smiled, the story won't last until Shabbat. S
he picked up a sheet of paper and glanced at me almost sternly, with eyes that I was certain were a feline green. This story, like so many others, said Margareta, begins with a death, in the mid-eighties, when Solomon Alfandari died in Belgrade. He was buried at the Jewish cemetery in Zemun, because, native of Zemun that he was, he was part of the local Jewish community there. Several months later, his widow brought three large boxes to the Jewish Historical Museum containing his books, letters, some documents and photographs, and manuscripts in Serbian and Hebrew. For the next two years the boxes gathered dust in a corner of the museum, then, no longer able to fend off the daily pestering of Alfandari's widow, members of the museum staff inventoried the entire contents of the boxes, and so it happened that a manuscript written in Hebrew finally saw the light of day, actually the neon light of the museum storage room where the inventory was being drawn up. The manuscript had no title page, but since it began with the words The Well, the museum staff members listed it under this title in the inventory that was later signed by Alfandari's widow and the director of the museum. But you should know, said Margareta, this is not the same manuscript you have, though it carries the same title as the Hebrew original. As it later transpired, when domestic and foreign Hebrew scholars analyzed the text, The Well in Hebrew turned out to be a Kabbalistic text, written some two hundred fifty years ago at the crossroads, as the manuscript said, between two empires, the Habsburg and the Ottoman, and between two worlds, this world here and the one beyond. There was nothing to suggest which worlds those were, said Margareta, and while it was possible that "this world here" refers to the world in which we live, that other world, "the one beyond," could be anywhere. Two years passed but the translation was not completed. The manuscript, the translators said, hadn't been completed either, there were several junctures at which it stopped abruptly and then would start again with sentences that had nothing to do with the passages preceding them. Besides, the manuscript was teeming with quotes from other Kabbalistic sources, sometimes with the source cited, much more often with no citation to indicate where they had been taken from. The same quotes are, for example, copied several times, and sometimes attributed to different editions and authors, which contributed to the theory that the author meant to obscure all traces of himself. The manuscript, one of the translators said, seemed alive, and, in a curious way, was itself dictating how they should proceed with it. During that time, in one of the realities, said Margareta, the war began, and after that the outbreak of hostilities in Slovenia and Croatia, then it was Bosnia's turn. Sensing that where there was the most talk of friendship the worst strife would erupt, the Sarajevo Jews began evacuating. Among the several hundred Jews who arrived in Belgrade was a fellow by the name of Pavle Salom, a distant relative of Solomon Alfandari's. In his suitcase, with a change of clothes, a warm sweater, and slippers, there was room for two more things: a family picture album, now at the museum, and a manuscript in Hebrew, which turned out to be an addendum to the manuscript that the translators had been unable to handle. It took several months for the various parts of the manuscript to be arranged in the proper order, though there were plenty of sentences that couldn't be placed, and which spun around the manuscript like planets. The Belgrade Hebrew scholar Eugen Verber first elaborated on the notion of the manuscript as a living organism, which, as I just said, said Margareta, the interpreters and translators had already ascertained. According to Verber, the author of the manuscript had based the text on the Kabbalistic technique of bringing to life nonliving matter, hence on the technique of creating a golem, which had been modified in such a way that the text itself came alive, was designed to be self-sustaining but not also physically mobile. In other words, the manuscript was not a bizarre ambulatory creature, but it did possess the capability of refashioning itself, as if it were searching for the most apt structure for its meaning. Verber was also the first to note that the manuscript can propel itself forward, Margareta said, like a sort of virus: if a complete fragment of the manuscript were to be introduced to any other text, in any other language, that text too would begin to behave in the same way, in other words, it too would be alive. This is the way the manuscript in my apartment had originated, she told me. Actually, fragments of The Well were introduced to the material about the Zemun Jews, and, as I had seen for myself, she said, the manuscript was still seeking its final form. As if made of sand, I said. It makes more sense to say, Margareta continued, that the original manuscript functions like the computer programs of today, and that inside the program is a core, the heart of the program, which can be copied and introduced to any other text, because every text, actually every language, is, in fact, a computer program, which, furnished with the right knowledge, can be programmed any way one wants. Verber, it seems, was well on the way to figuring how the core fragment functioned, but death caught up with him and left us with no answer. The translation of the manuscript, or of one of the versions of the manuscript that was forever in flux, was completed, and then, though this is never spoken of, it has been replaced by a skillfully executed copy, which is without the lifegiving powers, and that copy is being preserved at the Jewish Historical Museum, where they believe they have the complete and unaltered legacy of Solomon Alfandari and Pavle Salom. I stared at her. That explained why in my manuscript I could never find what I'd been reading earlier, and why the pages changed their content, or the content shifted pages, either way, and I understood something else, which I blurted out: You took it, I said. I prefer to say I borrowed it, replied Margareta, and I will certainly put it back when we no longer need it. We? I asked. Who are we? That's the next part of the story, answered Margareta, but there's no point in hurrying, there is a sequence that can't be abbreviated, a path that must be followed, even as it takes detours. I can be impatient, I confess, but I can also be obedient, and though all sorts of questions were seething inside me, I said nothing. If I must be silent, I said, silent I will be. In that case, Margareta told me, she'd read me a part of the translation of the text, which, as she had mentioned, began with the words The Well, words that, it bears saying, no matter what changes appeared in the text, always were first. It is not entirely clear to me what they mean, but perhaps, she said, the initial mechanism is concealed in those words, a given sequence of letters or sounds that set in motion what we have described as the program that changes the text. She looked me straight in the eyes, the way a teacher does who wants to be sure that the student is following what he's being told, and tries to catch in his eyes the spark of comprehension or the fog of confusion. Margareta apparently espied the spark because she lifted the page, angling it so that more light fell on it, cleared her throat, and began to read: The Well shines even in the darkest darkness as if it is the most exalted palace in the sky, and mine eyes have seen nothing more beautiful. The year is 5500, the month of Tammuz, and Belgrade is once again in Ottoman hands. Our brothers and our sisters have been crossing the river these last months, leaving behind what could have been carried, let alone what could not have been carried but was for honest resale, and though most of them made their way to Novi Sad or Osijek, there were some who thought that here, in Zemun, was the best possible place to settle, and meanwhile both Ottoman Jews and Habsburg Jews hoped to return to Belgrade, the former because that was where they were from, they were citizens of that empire and believed the troubles would blow over and they would return to their land and property, while the latter, who had spent no more than ten years there, longed to go back, for they had relished the charm of the place of which many said that its position, overlooking the joining of the two broad rivers, made it unique in all the world. Everyone has the right to feel as he wants, I will contest this with no one, but here, in Zemun, on the Danube shores, the serenity is the greater, and besides, as I said, the Well is here. There will be those who will want to know at once how to gain access to the Well, does one descend into it or ascend to it, and although I will elaborate on this later, I will now remark that the path to the Well is long and arduous, mu
ch like the Bosnian mountain passes along which it is better not to walk at night, not for fear of robbers, but because of the ravines that beckon with a dark silence or a slippery path. And no matter what the path is like, it is the one and the only path, and whoever sets foot upon it, alone or with others, will find the return difficult, in other words he must be ready for temptation and exertion, for the constant doubt that will assail him like the leeches in marsh water until he arrives at the dark forest and finds the path leading to the Well. Then everything will be returned to him a hundredfold, and both earthly and heavenly treasures will be his to a degree he could never have imagined, nor ever in his dreams could they have been his. I should hasten to add that I know some who will hold this against me, because there are always those who demand a secrecy greater than the one the Lord, may he be blessed, gave us as his legacy, but it seems to me that no secret must remain unuttered in a time of calamity, and so the secret of the Well must be disclosed when I see that once again, as so many times before, our brothers and our sisters trudge down the long dusty road of exile. Even if this exile will never end, the moment has come for us to ready ourselves for far worse things to come, things that even history will fall silent when faced with, and if history falls silent, imagine what people will do, hence we must have our defenses close at hand, and from whom better to learn the skill of defense than from our ancestors and teachers, those who themselves tasted the woes of exile and the insatiable appetites of the executioner. The Well is a marvelous thing, but only the select may penetrate it, a chosen few in each generation, especially those generations that have grown up in wartime and therefore scatter more quickly than in peacetime. This is why I feel it is important, though it will not be easy, to set forth the skills needed to take up arms of defense at times when our brothers and sisters have no hope of defense from any other quarter, and must act to save their own lives. I long studied this secret skill, I spent many hours both day and night poring over ancient texts, combining letters and numbers, I repeated the name of the Lord, may it be blessed, in a hundred ways, was joined and became separate, became light and became dark, and all with the purpose of leaving the future generations a mast on which they could unfurl the sail of defiance, even as the enemy gloats in the belief that our vessel is sinking. It will never sink, I assure you. I have seen the future, and perhaps it is better not to speak of it, but no matter how far I ventured forward in time, I always found evidence that our brothers and sisters were out there, that we no longer had to tremble in fear that the Lord, may he be blessed, would lose his people. And now, let me set forth the sequence of topics about which I desire to write. I say desire only because I am no longer of sound health, I may fall silent before I say and write it all, so first I will set it out in the most basic of outlines, in the most summary of forms, and afterward, should nothing prevent me from doing so, a detailed explanation will follow, which is in keeping with the instruction given to Rabbi Josef Tajtacak by his teacher, when the teacher told the rabbi that writing in brief, a subject swiftly plumbed, represents the pinnacle of writing, such as what the celestial beings practice, while writing in longer fragments is a trustworthy sign of a text's inferiority. By the way, said Margareta, this summary of his runs on for more than a hundred pages, and who knows, had he ever managed to write out the fuller explanation, how long that book would have been. Besides, she said, many pages in that part are given over to descriptions of the different methods for attaining higher knowledge, and there are all sorts of things here: meditations, exhaustion by fasting and lack of sleep, mathematical exercises, language games and riddles, and it is possible that the translation is not fully accurate, though the substance of it is unquestionably preserved. For instance, said Margareta, and lifted the next sheet of paper, this here describes how he meditated without interruption for several days and nights and practiced permutations of Hebrew letters, until combinations of God's name began to spring from him, entirely of their own accord, and then, he writes, the letters began to resemble strange, dark expanses, like ravines in vile mountains: and suddenly I found myself there among them, alone, and just when I thought that I was lost and that I would never again return to my world, I spied a light in the distance, flickering and mobile like a butterfly, and as a butterfly hovers over a flower, attracted by its sweetness, that was how that light attracted me and hovered over me, over my soul open to a sign of heavenly embrace. I felt as if the light were pouring into me, and when I looked at my body, I saw that it was radiant, and just as that meandering light of a moment before had illumined me, now I shone on all objects, while my hand kept writing out new combinations of the supreme name of its own volition, and my lips moved, enunciating words that appeared before me as in writing on the wall, each word more beautiful than the one before it, though they all possessed a certain terror, from which, later, when it all ended, my teeth chattered. All this showed that, as in any teaching, there must be a certain sequence, just as is written in The Gateway to Justice, where it stands that first the body must be purified of the sediment of filth, then the same must be done with the soul, from which all traces of anger and rage must be purged, which is of special importance, so the soul will be freed of all attachment, except to the Lord, may he be blessed, and all knowledge, no matter what learning it stems from, and then, when the body and soul are pure and empty, they should be isolated in an equally pure room, and pray and dedicate themselves to the moving of letters, in order to channel the thoughts in the right direction and to avoid any external interference that would divert them to a wrong path. Then, the Well will no longer be far off, but that does not mean that man dares to relax and neglect caution, for the path within is not the same as the path without, and he who wishes to leave, for whatever reason, must first prepare himself, because once he enters the Well, but is not prepared for the return, he will not be able to achieve that state. When coming back out of the Well a person returns to an impure world, among forces that will rend his garments woven of purity and draw him back into the struggle between good and evil, in which we all suffer for Adam's original sin, and he who comes back from the Well, no matter how long he stayed there, arrives weary and worn from the effort of concentration, and is therefore easy prey for all those demons who, leechlike, attach themselves to him and drain his blood until he collapses utterly and succumbs to their rule, though it is better not to write on that now, lest such horror dissuade those who are still unsure of the teachings and quake at the thought that they are slipping down a narrow path to an impassable gateway guarding the entrance to the Well. He is right, Margareta said, there is no greater obstacle than self-doubt. She looked at me as if she expected me to agree, but I said nothing. No matter how interesting the document that she was presenting to me might be, I could find no explanation in it for the many things I still didn't understand, and I was afraid, if she kept this up, that we'd never get there. Margareta leafed through a few more pages, took one in her left hand and one in her right, and then, after a moment of indecision, decided on the one in her right. The author, she said, used various methods to attain mystical insight, including weeping and fasting, and he noted down the many visions he had, and among them is one that we have taken to be the first and has served as the foundation for all we have built. I held my hand up to stop her and asked if she didn't think that it was high time she told me who the "they" or the "we" she kept invoking were, and could she not explain what this Well was all about. Soon, promised Margareta, although I didn't find this particularly convincing, as she continued to describe the vision. In short, it began with a description of waking up from "chaotic reality" with the help of a "slap with no hand," which, as at the time when I wrote the answer to the advertisement, reminded me of the Zen question about the sound of one hand clapping. I never mentioned this to Margareta, though I meant to, but I only thought of it now, when I can no longer reach her. During most of our lives we try to keep up with ourselves, but we are often no more than observers of what is happening to us, and t
hen, while we sit in the shade of an oak or a pear tree, we regret the chances we have frittered away. I don't know why this is. If someone had asked me, I would have definitely arranged the world we live in differently. It is all so complex, as complex as the vast fabric of conspiracy that slowly emerged from behind what Margareta had said. Perhaps conspiracy is not the most apt word, but none other occurs to me. Margareta seemed to be taking her time deliberately with her answers to my questions. We circled around the Well the way a cat, one might say, circles around a dish of milk, except that the cat starts lapping up the milk at some point, while access to the Well, for us, or at least for me, was still a stretch. But I should hold to some sort of sequence, though I'm no longer sure of how valid certain road signs are. After the slap came the story of the migration of souls, in which the author of the document, using complicated proofs and mathematical calculations, claimed that he knew the pathway along which the soul of a famous Kabbalist from Safed, probably Yitzhak Luria, though he never says so explicitly, moved across the centuries, and when the author was penning his text, this soul was dwelling in the body of an ordinary water carrier. Invoking his vision, the author of the document remarked that the soul can always be found, as needed, in someone who recognizes the meaning of the slap. And were it to come to pass that this was needed, Margareta went on reading, then the hour would have come for everything else too, and that would be the time to make use of the weapon to protect our brothers and sisters just as the magnificent golem would protect them, which also implied that the bodies of select people would replace the forms of the letters and become, themselves, language, that the system of the Sephirot coincides with a part of the city, and, most important, there would be a joining of the King and his Queen, actually the Crown would descend into the Kingdom, so that the Lord, may he be blessed, would unite again with the Shekhinah. Then, and only then, will ingress to the Well appear, and they who enter will not regret it. After all this, I thought, I am where I started. I looked to the left, I looked to the right, as if I were getting ready to leave, yet I didn't. Margareta stopped reading and said that now I certainly understood how all the elements were interconnected, and then, feeling my doubts, she enumerated them: he in whom the soul of the ancient Kabbalist now dwelled recognized the slap; that way, others recognize him, and they start preparing incantations for the defense shield in a process by which letters are written out with bodies; the last words are created on the eve of Shabbat, hence on Friday evening, then they mark the system of the Sephirot in the part of the city, which thereby becomes an emanation of divine holiness, making it possible for the celestial King and his Queen to unite; this act then raises the defense shield and opens the door of the Well, which is at the very center of the Sephirot, and as long as the shield remains up, invisible to the ordinary eye, the entrance to the Well, which leads to the other world, remains open. And they who wish to leave, I said, can do so safely? Yes, Margareta said. Even now I wonder whether she really believed in it or whether hers was the gesture of a person who had in fact lost all hope. I could understand that, although I didn't believe that the political and social situation in the country was extreme enough to force members of one ethnic group to such a desperate act. Of course what someone from outside might not feel at all may be horrifying for someone seeing it from within. The horror of identity is that it can't be sloughed off the way a snake sheds its skin, and there is no dungeon worse than an identity that one doubts or that others have proclaimed to be bad or evil. I experienced this myself many times in the years of ethnic strife, facing the prejudices about Serbian identity, and I could only assume how that must have seemed from the perspective of being Jewish or of an identity that had permanently been branded as negative. Even so, it seemed highly unconvincing to me to have faith in Kabbalistic documents at the close of the twentieth century, especially considering the popularity the Kabbalah had gained in fashionable circles. On the other hand, I had to feel respect for those who brought their whole beings to this, investing a vast effort to unite the disparate elements into a whole that made sense. They got the idea for it, Margareta said, in the spring of 1992, when the Jewish refugees from Sarajevo arrived in Belgrade. That was when the younger generations of Jews understood for the first time that exile was in their genes, which led them to speed up their preparations for departure, while at the same time the lack of understanding and overt hostile feelings for the Jewish community began growing. The first letter arrived at that time, warning Jews, in poisonous though surprisingly calm language, to watch what they were doing. There were too many of you among us before, the letter said in closing, and now, with the scum arrived from Bosnia, there are many too many, and this means you should reduce your numbers yourselves, because if you don't, we will do it for you, and anything that upsets Serbian harmony will itself be upset. The letter was signed by the Patriotic Army of Unity and Salvation. No one had ever heard of this organization, no one wanted to believe it existed. Margareta learned of the letter from her father, who was on boards and committees in the Jewish community, and that gave her the impetus to keep going. Meanwhile, the community redoubled its efforts to reduce the number of refugees in Belgrade, organizing their departure for Israel, Canada, and a number of European countries. The Patriotic Army of Unity and Salvation wrote a second letter, in which they hailed the news that Jews were leaving Serbia, promising that those who stayed behind would be allowed to live in an orderly ghetto in Kosovo. The first explicitly anti-Semitic graffiti was scrawled on the walls of Jewish buildings and cemeteries, tombstones were knocked over and desecrated, and soon thereafter the number of writings of that sort mushroomed in the press, as well as in books blaming the Jews for nearly all the evils of the world. She knew I knew most of this already, Margareta said, but she was giving me the full picture, because that way it would be easier to understand the details, even details that had not been mentioned, and I would definitely, she said, be able to understand how awkward this made everything, especially with what was going on: the war, inflation, political chaos, the isolation of the country, the plunge in the standard of living, the pervasive sense of insecurity. Of course I understood, I had no need to say so. Several concerned members of the Jewish community, she continued, were thinking about what the best solutions would be in such a situation, especially since they were disgruntled by the official position of the community, which did not support the current government, but were doing what they could to evade conflicts, believing this to be the best route to peaceful coexistence. The group of malcontents, including her, believed in a more aggressive handling of the issues, though she herself had been torn about choosing the most apt response, until she remembered the translated manuscript. She couldn't recall who it had been, though more likely she preferred not to disclose who was in her group, which was to her credit but a source of additional frustration for me. Margareta did not relent, she went right on talking about how someone, perhaps that same person, she said, or maybe someone else, noticed a series of similarities between one of the manuscript author's visions and the reality in which they found themselves. Seen in that light, the manuscript could suddenly be read as a concrete set of instructions about how to respond to the situation in which the community found itself, against its will. Meanwhile, as if they felt something was stirring, members of the Patriotic Army of Unity and Salvation ratcheted up their campaign: more letters came in, some were published in the press, and the number of incidents that could be described as anti-Semitic also rose, though chances were that the incidents didn't all stem from the same group, which had inspired imitators among the right-wing organizations. The number of crimes leveled against members of the Jewish community soared, said Margareta, and though it was difficult to be sure that all were planned, it was alarming that apartment break-ins, pickpocketing in public transportation, fires in cellars and attics, smashed windows, and threats made over the phone grew radically from one day to the next, especially as all pertained to community members. This was no time
for hesitation, said Margareta, and that was the position our group took, because we sensed that sooner or later we'd be facing an open clash. The Patriotic Army of Unity and Salvation split around that time into several factions, just as the political parties had done in Serbia, as the result of inner power struggles and their inability to cobble together broadly acceptable platforms of action. The main branch abbreviated its name to the Army of Unity and Salvation and soon stopped making itself heard; the peace-loving part, called Salvation for All, extended a conciliatory hand, but no one believed that this reconciliation, even if it had been formally embraced, would have prevented the two extreme factions, the Patriots and the Eagle Avengers, from proceeding with their plans. Worst of all, said Margareta, no one was sure what their plans were. They went underground, they made no public statements, but they were recruiting new members. What with the situation in the country, there were more malcontents than one could count, all of them waiting for someone to tell them who was to blame. About that time, continued Margareta, there were rifts in her group too because some felt that there was no longer any point in waiting and testing fate, that they should strike the first blow without further ado, but the feeling also prevailed that violence was unacceptable and that they should focus on defense. Work accelerated on a definitive translation of the manuscript and preparations for what they called their action plan, not without headaches, because now all elements, including the slap, the mathematical calculations, the linguistic-physical structures, the migration of souls, and the revival of the union of the heavenly King and his Queen, all had to be brought into a harmonious whole, or, most important, into an effective whole, because if the plan were to founder, there would surely be no other chance. And so the entire plan was laid out, to be set in motion by the recognition of the slap, which would reveal the person within whom dwelled the soul of the ancient Kabbalist. And all along, I said, I was thinking it was the soul of the water carrier. Same thing, said Margareta, the water carrier quenches the thirst of the body and the Kabbalist quenches the thirst of the soul, but thirst is thirst, one augments the other, and if both are not quenched, the body and soul will not be in harmony. I had to admit I liked the water carrier more, whatever his name was, but I was there to listen and not to bicker, so I went on following Margareta's story, leaving many questions for later. The only thing I couldn't let lie was the way it had all begun, the slap on the Danube riverbank, that had drawn me into the labyrinth of events from which I still saw no exit. Why me, I asked Margareta, and not someone else, someone Jewish? There are many Kabbalists, she said, who believe that the soul may wander off in different directions, as they believe in India, and dwell in the most varied bodies, and not necessarily human, so it was certainly not impossible that the soul of a Jewish man found shelter, for instance, in the body of a person who was not Jewish. The body, after all, is only a vessel, a transport service for the movement of a soul through time, and the only thing that mattered was that the soul be prevented from venturing into a body where an evil soul already dwelt, because then they would clash, which might destroy the body of the host. I hope, I said, this won't happen to me. Margareta looked at me gravely. She shared that hope, she said, at least until Shabbat was over, after that everything was up for grabs anyway. That set her off again on the right-wing factions of what had been the Patriotic Army of Unity and Salvation, factions that became magnets drawing those who disseminated Nazi and racist ideas, in lockstep with similar organizations in Europe and America. Several times, she said, they clashed, literally. They, said Margareta, meaning the Jewish community, had their own extremist faction, which openly called for physical resistance, even violence, and managed to ferret out the seat of the Eagle Avengers, where a fight broke out, shots were fired, people were injured on both sides. How could, I asked, the public not have noticed? The public was preoccupied with other things, said Margareta, and most people weren't able to absorb differing, especially contradictory, information. She reminded me of how the conflict in Yugoslavia was understood in the early 1990s. Everything was shown as black and white, a way of portraying reality in which one side was the culprit and the criminal, while the other, or several others, were the innocent victims, despite the fact that the Yugoslav reality was more of a color picture, with multiple levels of reality, or better, multiple levels of blame, so all were criminals and victims at once. I wasn't sure I agreed entirely with her interpretation, but I'd had trouble and misunderstandings enough with the current reality so there was no point in burdening myself with a question that too many books would be written about. The world in which we lived was coming to an end with the close of the century, and the apocalypse was, so to speak, around the corner, and perhaps all this was unnecessary. I didn't believe in the apocalypse at that point, and the stories about it sounded to me like the futile groaning of terrified humanity, though now that Serbia was bombed, the World Trade Center destroyed in New York, and Iraq was attacked, I am more inclined to doubt, more ready than I was before, should there be further proof in the offing, to repent and convert. Perhaps I should have expected this, having the reach of Europe in mind, America's self-infatuation, the self-confidence of Islam, Russia's instability, the unpredictability of China, the new nomadic tendencies, but to be frank, none of this interested me. When I think about it, I wouldn't have minded spending my whole life in blessed ignorance, far from the noise and fury of crowds, listening to the music of, say, Bach and Mozart, reading Chekhov's stories and an anthology of love poetry from around the world, with a little garden that I could plant and tend, and when the time came, harvest the fruits of my labor: ruddy tomatoes, sweet peas, potatoes, and carrots. Too late now. All I can do is lament like a failed prophet who bemoans his fate, convinced that it could have been different if only he could have forseen it. I was also a failed prophet when it came to the evening, or night, I spent with Margareta, and when I left the book-filled apartment on Thursday morning with a throbbing headache, I couldn't decide what to attribute it to: the story that had gone on too long and the overabundance of information, or erotic frustration. The news that the defense plan would unfold over Shabbat, in the course of the evening and night from Friday to Saturday, offered some consolation, but then it was supposed to be part of a ritual and not out of free choice, and, stripped of spontaneity, it all seemed pointless. There was no turning back for me, however, regardless of the fact that the role had been imposed and that I had chosen none of it. Had Marko been there, and had I told him everything, I know he would have first asked me how I could be so sure that everything Margareta said was true, he would have asked for evidence, substantiation, not castles in the air, and only then would he agree to continue. I can't say I had no doubts. I did have doubts. Everything was too tidy, all the elements dovetailed perfectly, led from one to the next, even the mistakes happened when there was the greatest likelihood they would happen, so it was all too much like a Hollywood movie, thick with paranoid plots, and who still believed Hollywood movies? I consoled myself that I wouldn't have long to wait: in a day and a half the whole truth would show its face, and everything would be clear. I wasn't counting on certain other components, on the unpredictable effect of the text that was being typeset and proofed for the next issue of Minut, on the power of rumor, on blind hatred, on simple human envy, if envy is as simple as it is human. I must lie down, I thought when I got home, and dropped, fully dressed, into bed. I fell asleep instantly and was woken by the doorbell. I opened my eyes, looked at my watch: I had been sleeping for twenty-five minutes. I had been dreaming, but couldn't remember what. The doorbell kept ringing, longer rings then shorter, and finally I had to relent. I would rather have stayed in bed, trying to remember the dream, but I got up, went to the door, and just as I reached for the key, the ringing stopped. I looked at the key as if it could give me an answer. The key was silent, the doorbell was silent, and, not breathing, I leaned my ear against the door and imagined someone on the other side, also not breathing, who had leaned his ear preci
sely where mine was, and the ear of that person was listening to the silence of my ear, while my ear carefully listened to the silence that came from that other ear, which reminded me of the dream, or one part of the dream, the part when, as I tried to get out of a large room in which someone had inadvertently locked me, I stopped and put my ear to an opening under a mirror, the function of which I didn't know, the function of the opening, that is, not the mirror, of course, because in my dream the mirror was an ordinary mirror, but the opening was mysterious and I couldn't decide whether it was part of the system of ventilation or of the heating system, or whether there might be a single system for both heating and cooling, it certainly couldn't have heated and cooled at the same time, and in my dream I leaned my ear against the opening in hopes of hearing somebody, because if I heard somebody, somebody could hear me, and I tried to come up with what I might say, and of all words the one I couldn't retrieve was the word for the thing one uses to unlock a door, just as I wasn't sure whether the same word was used for the thing for locking the door, because a locked door, I thought in the dream, is not the same as an unlocked door, and the door you lock is not the same as the door you unlock, which meant that the things that lock or unlock ought to be different too, and at that point a voice reached my ear through the opening under the mirror, an entirely ordinary voice that said, Turn the doorknob, damn it, turn that doorknob, and suddenly I asked myself whether I was dreaming what was happening to me or had the dream reminded me of something that had already happened, and I stretched out my hand, turned the doorknob, and the door opened. It hadn't been locked. Not once since the night I was beaten up in the nursery school yard had I forgotten to lock it. I broke out in a cold sweat, completely absurdly, of course, because it was the response of my body to the possibility that something might have happened, though nothing did happen, but that is the structure of the human soul, or at least the autonomic nervous system, that reacts equally to a real and an imagined threat, to what really occurred and to the prospect of what might have occurred. No matter how paradoxical it may sound, the nervous system is blind and believes itself, or its imaginings, just as much as it believes real stimuli from the outside world. Marko, of course, would have warned me that this could be proof that there was no difference between the outside and the inside worlds, and that the outside world was merely a projection of the inside world, and that we project our own existence in a movie, say, in which we play protagonists directed by insecure, waffling directors who are themselves protagonists. A little complicated, but that's Marko for you. Actually, when the buzzer started to ring, or when I started hearing it ring, my first thought was that Marko was finally back, and even when it stopped ringing and I pressed my ear to the door, I still wondered whether he was standing out there in the hallway, a little impatient, a little irritated, a little unhappy. When I opened the door, it was not Marko, but Dragan Mišović, which exceeded the power of any dream of mine, so I stood there and blinked until he asked if he might come in. I moved over to let him by, adding that I hoped he wasn't expecting me to solve any math problems. This early in the morning, he said, even I can't add two and two. I'd be surprised, said Dragan Mišović, how many people weren't able to do that much later on in the day, even after they'd had a cup of coffee. I brought him into the living room, waited for him to take a seat, then I went into the kitchen to make coffee. If there was someone I was not expecting to see that morning in my apartment it was Dragan Mišović. I wondered what the woman who had often run into him and later moved to Banovo Brdo would have said, or would she simply have refused to believe me? While I waited for the water to boil, I peeked into the living room. It was Dragan Mišović, there was no doubt. I brought in the tray with the coffeepot and two cups. I served the coffee and sat across from him. We said nothing, and it seemed as if we'd never say anything again. Dragan sipped the coffee, a little loudly for my taste but with gusto, so I took that as praise of my culinary talents. I'm not certain, to be frank, that making coffee counts as a culinary talent, but praise is praise, and no one could take that from me. He'd been passing by, he said, and he thought he might drop in. He saw my dubious expression, and laughed. Don't say, he said, you don't believe me. I won't, I said, though that doesn't prevent me from not believing you. Dragan Mišović sighed. It is time for us to take off our masks, he said, and touched his face with the tips of his fingers. For a moment I actually thought he'd peel some sort of mask off his face, but he only scratched himself on the cheek and chin. Margareta has already told you everything, he said, all that's left is the mathematical part, and she was never big on math. I couldn't believe my ears. I might, of course, have picked up something from that evening at the restaurant, when he slipped me the message about the triangles opening, however then, if I'm not mistaken, it seemed like yet another coincidence in the abundance of coincidences, and I realized that so many coincidences were indeed statistically feasible, but that in practice, just another word for life, the number of genuine coincidences is minimal, and that most of the other things could be neatly explained and tied to certain events. She didn't tell me anything, I said hoarsely, about mathematical calculations, and as you know, one could never say of me that I'm at home in that universe. Dragan Mišović undid three buttons on his shirt, slipped his hand inside, and pulled out a thick hardcover notebook. Don't worry, he said, you needn't learn all of this, but it will be useful for you to know at least some of the foundations of mathematical calculations that may come up. I stared, incredulous, at the notebook in his hands. What foundations? I finally asked. And who might bring them up? What I really wanted to ask was what sort of relationship he had with Margareta, I even felt a dagger of jealousy, which slowly, though implacably, pierced my heart. The problem with Margareta, said Dragan Mišović, is that she spreads herself too thin, and I've told her a thousand times to prepare her concept, and, more important, to follow through consistently, but she is never willing to accept this. He shrugged. There are things, he said, we'll never understand, no point in fussing about them. If he keeps on talking about Margareta like this, I thought, the dagger might fly in the opposite direction. I am still astonished today at the thought: Is it possible that I'd succumbed to jealousy like a hot-faced teenager? Why was I so jealous anyway? Because of what I'd imagined might happen, not because of anything real, but something unreal, nonexistent. On the other hand, isn't all jealousy like that? Isn't jealousy always something we're imagining might happen between a person we love and somebody else? So I stood there, or actually sat there facing Dragan Mišović;, and while he talked about calculating probabilities, permutations, combinations and variations, or whatever all those mathematical functions are called, I was mending my broken and pierced heart. You never know, Dragan Mišović was saying, how the descent will actually work, whether the guardians of the Well will step forward with questions, or whether they'll only watch, perhaps concealed, through a hole or from behind a corner. The question, therefore, he continued, is how to respond if you are told, for instance, that the person who is entering, or going down, or climbing up, should know all the alphabets, must be familiar with the combinations of all the letters, as well as with the two hundred thirty-one gates of the alphabets, which are inscribed in the ninth sphere and divided into sixty parts? I had no idea what he was saying. That is Abulafi's text on making the golem, said Dragan Mišović, and the bit that comes next is especially important. He cleared his throat as if getting ready to recite: Take pure powder, spin a wheel, start running the permutations until you have done all two hundred thirty-one gates, and then you will receive the influence of wisdom. Afterward take a cup full of pure water and a spoon, and fill the spoon with powder. Sprinkle the powder into the water, and in the process blow gently over the powder. In a breath say God's name until the breath is spent. Start with the head, until you have completed the first eight rows, in order to save the head. And so it goes, in sequence, said Dragan Mišović, bearing in mind that Abulafi warns that the point is not to teach a per
son to act as God does, but to understand the Lord better, and cleave unto him like a plant in the wind. That means, he said, that if someone asks you to calculate the combinations of God's name of seventy-two letters, you must know the number of combinable letters, and that this number is the same for every place in the name. Listen, I told him, don't you think you are expecting a bit much of me, not even Superman would be able to understand all of this in such a short time. The difficulties are only superficial, answered Dragan Mišović, but, of course, first you must shed your fear of mathematics. No one has ever prepared for a math exam in two days, I shouted, perhaps a little louder than I'd meant to. I was burning with a desire to ask what his role was in all this, which I didn't ask, allowing the number of unknowns I'd brought in with me to be nearly equal to the knowns, and that therefore, at least for me, this complex equation had become insoluble. Dragan Mišović didn't give up. He leafed through his notebook, quoted various sections, wrote out examples, underlined things, then started again at the beginning, so that I had to make yet another pot of coffee, stronger and more bitter than the last, and after Dragan left, I felt the acid rising to my throat, and, standing by the window, ate a crust of dry bread, hoping that, like a sponge, it would sop up the acid in my stomach. Each time, however, when I leafed through the papers on which Dragan had written out the calculations and instructions, the power of the acid revived, and when I had used up all the bread I stopped studying them. I was furious that my knowledge of math wasn't better, which was probably where the stomach pain came from, but what really got me was Dragan Mišović's passing remark that I should be ready to answer in case someone asked me a question. Whom did he have in mind? And did I dare believe this story about a plot within another larger plot, which was probably only part of an even larger plot? In any other situation I would have answered in the negative; I do not know why I hesitated at the time; perhaps because of the manuscript, which had demonstrated its supernatural power and kept reminding me that language, and therefore writing, is a living organism, a sort of benign virus that dwells in a person, and can survive on its own. I flipped the manuscript open the way I used to open the Chinese Book of Changes, without making an effort to cast the sticks or coins and work up the trigrams and hexagrams, leaving it instead to chance, which is just another word for destiny, to answer my question. I opened the manuscript to [>

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