The manifestations of her conservatism, Christomania and xenophobia, which she inherited but also furthered with her own gratuitous inspiration, could be seen with a little effort as folksy, witty adornments. The same applied, I guess, to her strong feelings against the Serbs: she still wholeheartedly defended our Croatian Fatherland from them years after they’d ceased to endanger it, with arms at least, even though her family had lost neither personnel nor matériel in the war of the nineties. I related with some sympathy to her improvisations on themes borrowed from her mother’s repertoire, such as the sanctity of the Family and the Fatherland, or the diabolicalness of divorce, abortion and atheism, which she elevated to expressions of outright loathing for other religions, nations and skin colours. But mine wasn’t all that dark, no no, and she had lucidity enough to pass over my Gypsy nickname and my dubious degree of religious and patriotic ardour.
But the next summer holiday, our relationship was as dead as the pebbles we turned over on the beach as if searching for something to add to our used-up words.
What they once meant had evidently evaporated. Both of us clearly felt it, though we tried hard to convince each other of the opposite through smiles and little gestures of endearment. Her beauty shone at me no less splendidly than before, but I found it ever harder to perceive. She hadn’t hurt, disappointed or betrayed me in any way, nor had she done anything wrong. It simply became inconceivable to repeat the same movements: the very thought of them wearied me. I didn’t want it to be like that, but I didn’t know how to prevent it.
Some inner resource was expended; it had dried up and flaked away with frightening speed. I had matured to an extent, no doubt, but I felt as if I hadn’t lived that maturity but only skidded through it into what lay beyond. Whatever others enjoy in sensible doses for decades, I’m just allowed to sample. Something always draws me straight to the toxic sludge of things.
Still, we kept seeing each other after the summer: going to the pictures, sitting in cafés and having tea with her mother. For months, without the courage to state the obvious. Until one day she met me with furrowed brow, her face awash with guilt, her insecure hands picking and fussing around at her clothes and things on the table in search of support; and gathering resolve like for a statement in the Church’s monthly magazine New World to obliterate the old, she announced that she’d met someone. However modest, that expression brought on an immense silence. The regret in her eyes was unbearable; I looked away to the clock which, full of self-assurance and with precisely measured steps, ticked towards the zenith of its secessionist circle. The final euphemism, the culmination of secession, the end of the session.
At the door, as she was feverishly searching me with a gaze to gauge the destructive effect of her admission, and certainly also fixing my countenance in her mind for brief reminiscences in her old age, her eyes briefly brimmed over. Don’t be too sad, she just said, and I promised I would try, grateful that she was releasing me without the torment of comforting words about fate and inevitability, without apologetics for all the effort we’d invested and our good comportment, for the unforgettable moments we’d shared, the even more unforgettable ones still ahead of me, etc.
That someone she’d met, I found out, was just a passing acquaintance, probably interested purely in carnal knowledge. After that I didn’t hear of her for years–not until a virus played around with her email address book and I, together with who knows how many others, received an extensive letter beginning with Dear Mustafa, which revealed details of her divorce proceedings and its pivotal content: the guardianship of fourteen-month-old Alija, whom Mustafa was evidently in no hurry to send back from Abu Dhabi.
Sorrow. That word was like an incantation. Spoken aloud, it invoked all my idle demons, and I opened the door wide for them and was an ideal host. For some time, the romantic tragedy functioned as a justification. I devotedly erected a monument to my grief, which in return shielded me from the world, like a cocoon of mist. But the vapours dissipated and I discovered that the melancholy came from its own source, indeterminably far away and much older than my individual existence. My rare receptive capabilities and my (to put it mildly!) below-average power of resistance made me vulnerable and I wished I’d been able to raise a dike before its long, patient waves which come rolling in, crash, and carry away all volition.
I was forced to discover the irrefutable fact that I scarcely had enough spark in me to maintain the prerogatives of a functional individual. On rare occasions, paradoxically, I would find a drop of true vigilance in myself–the comprehension that I was alive here and now in this particular body. But what use was this realisation? I spent the rest of my time trying out all the ways I had of obliterating time.
In the dimensions accessible to the eye, that didn’t significantly set me apart from the majority of people around me. But they were better at giving it other names.
The people around me, apart from Mother, were reduced to those I saw at the office. Each of them cultivated their own identity, trying as best they could to wrench themselves away from indistinguishability through mannerisms, political stances, and their choice of perfume, cigarette brand and radio station. A few even had extravagant hats to crown their swollen heads. Some ate lunch in the café across the street, others brought sandwiches from home. Some had children, others had a pet, and there were those who had both. The majority burn out at work, endeavouring with their whole being to rise another rung in the social perception of their libidino-economic achievements; then there are the others, frankly speaking more numerous, who constantly groan with their eyes set on the next public holiday–the moment when they’ll slump down in front of the TV and switch off, finally free of the scrutiny of others and able to spend a little while alone with their genitals.
Being among them didn’t traumatise me too much, nor did I feel substantially better or worse at home; but the trip in one direction or the other demanded ever more effort.
Sometimes, carried away by a moment of inspiration on the way back from work, I would turn left instead of right, or continue straight on, until the petrol or the road ran out, and then keep going on foot across fields and wastelands, through forests and tall-grass prairies, across tundras and moors, all the way to the mountain_crags; there on high I would brood and discharge the toxins in me. With my soul purged by the panoramic views, I would then go back down under the wing of humanity, maybe even with a message which I myself would only realise much later. Sometimes I would get out of the car at the traffic lights, start snapping the wipers off other cars and hurling them like javelins at the faces of the drivers, calling them all sorts of names and mounting heroic resistance, kicking, biting off ears, until the butcher came running up to finish me off with his axe. Sometimes I would sit blissfully smiling in front of my soup instead of eating it, and when Mother asked anxiously and then hysterically what was wrong I would reply with a verse of Goethe’s, or with psalms. Some evenings I would go to the neighbour’s for a game of chess, or to strangle his dog. Others I would spend writing Christmas cards and Easter greetings, wisely preparing them before the fever of the respective holidays, and joyful letters to friends expecting children. Or correspondence to government officials, present and future, banning them from making any decisions in my name. To Jesus Christ, requesting that he get down off the cross and stop dying for my sake. To my father, so he would cease to exist in theory as well, and to future generations so they would abolish the concept of fatherhood. Or I would decide to call someone, and the only acceptable person in my whole address book would be a girl I hadn’t seen or heard anything of since primary school.
She would be really happy that I’d rung and suggest we meet that same evening, although I seem to remember that we hardly exchanged more than a sentence in those years long past, and my memory, far from recording her face, was obviously deceiving me with a hastily slapped-together facial composite. I wondered if she was who I thought she was, but did it matter? A few hours would suffice for us to stir
up the love which had been smouldering in us since our pre-school days. Me and my old-new flame would leave the café holding hands and get married on the way home. Three months later the first of our six children was born. She produced them at regular intervals; number five became an accomplished bassoonist and UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador.
Unless the voice in the receiver happened to be masculine, and still heavy after being roused from sleep, and slurred from booze; he would recognise my name, and after exchanging all our news about classmates–who was killed in the war in the nineties, who became minister of foreign affairs and European integration, and who had a stand selling Thai jewellery in Rovinj–he would agree that we meet the next week or in one of the coming months, or that we should definitely call each other from time to time, and when we were saying goodbye he said I only just moved here recently. How did you find me? and it would turn out that we’d gone to school in totally different cities.
* * *
Yesterday I went to visit Ines. It was her eldest daughter’s birthday, and I couldn’t put off seeing Josip, her number three, any longer. A nasty business, all in all, starting with buying presents for the children: there were dolls which blink and sing, cyborg warriors with monstrous claws, board games to do with conquering territory and amassing riches, teddy bears in all colours and sizes with little bow ties, aprons, rattles and kitchen utensils. All right, if nothing else there are always books. But which should you choose ahead of others, and how can you subdue your apprehension when browsing through them? Stories of olden days full of malice, robbery, fratricide and rich with long-faded morals. Or contemporary ones by our own local authors. Take the story about the wizard who could do everything and perform any miracle, except get the others to let him join the wizards’ guild. And all because he wore funny pyjamas. That made him so sad that he left his castle and wandered the forests. One day he came across a little girl wearing exactly the same pyjamas; she was crying because her parents had been eaten by a dragon. Actually they hadn’t, as we learn at the end–the wizard had found the dragon just as it was about to roast them and, with a wave of his wand, turned it into a cell phone. They were all overjoyed about their new friendship and were constantly calling and texting each other on an attractive domestic price plan. And why not, after all? Buy Croatian! as the campaign says.
And then there was chocolate. It’s a safe investment. Lots of chocolate. If you just bring a book they’ll look at you with hungry eyes. For Josip, I got a mobile with little stars and moons which dangle around at head height just waiting to poke you in the eye. All parents love them.
On the way home, I stopped by Dolac open market. Hatred of the unmarried filled the air and it was like running the gauntlet. I tried in vain to buy two hundred grams of French beans for my lunch. She, a hard-working mother, had got up at five to feed the livestock, her husband and their small child before rushing to market laden with the fruits of her labours, in the hope of earning a few kunas for the family.
‘Two hundred grams?! That’s an insult to my work-worn hands.’
‘Here’s the money for a kilo then, but just give me two hundred grams.’
‘I can’t weigh such a tiny amount,’ she snapped, and a lust for revenge glinted in her eyes.
‘Never mind then, thank you. May your beans yield a bumper crop, envelop your house and sprout from your nose and ears.’
Luckily there are such things as surimi–crab-flavoured fish fingers. It’s a shame they’re not made in other flavours too, like watermelon, Sachertorte and stuffed toy. They’re bound to be riddled with carcinogens, but what’s that compared to the fact that they’re ready to be consumed without cooking? But no, this time I turned to a culinary friend true to me since childhood: the local dish of curd cheese with sour cream. That’s all I need for a meal.
A Gypsy boy was sitting at the bottom of the stairs holding out his hand with that grovelling look and his shirt open to bare his chest, as if to spite the cold.
‘A few coins for a pastry, lady? Mother sick, brothers and sisters also hungry…’ I took him by the hand and led him to the nearest bakery.
‘Here, choose what you like.’
‘Get fucked!’ he snorted.
The guy on the placards near the market soured my cheese with his dire prophecy that local produce would be gone from our markets if we didn’t stand up to the imperialist despoilers of our culture and values. Now that I’ve bought Croatian, every plate of curd cheese with sour cream I eat will involuntarily be seasoned with the endorsement of that cretin. You can sleep in peace when people like that are hounding you, but you’ve got a nasty problem if they’re suddenly on your side!
When my mood had recovered a little, I walked past the shops and watched people buying clothes: the fifty-year-old secretary, with a round body and a dying perm, in search of a blouse to match her eyes; the belle whose face reflects the martyrdom she’ll suffer if she denies herself that pair of shoes; the management virtuoso who’s already signing a new contract thanks to the brand name on that suit; the immeasurably patient father who has slumped into the armchair with his one hundred and fifty kilos and, smiling, winds a finger-thick gold chain around his finger while his daughter tries dozens of pairs of sunglasses on her bulldoggish face, not daring to say out loud that she actually wants the most expensive; each pair suits her better than the last, the shop-owner avidly emphasises, yelping with enthusiasm and kowtowing before his profit margin.
That child-centred event was on my nerves all day. No, I exaggerate; the thought flashed through my mind from time to time, and the next instant I sank back into my painting. It stares at me from the easel like the others, and I have that same feeling of not knowing how I did it. I just remember lighting and crushing out one cigarette after another, although the buzzing in my head intensified; and getting the curd cheese out of the fridge and pushing it aside after a few spoonfuls because it wouldn’t go down; and the bell ringing some time before that–it can only have been my mushroom lady–sorry, I’m not here.
A male body spread across the entire canvas. Naked, with disjointed limbs, caught up in a whirlpool which is already pulling them away, although his torso resists, every muscle is strained to bursting-point. But it has to yield, be torn away from its invisible hold somewhere in the air, which is stabbed by the wind, a gale-force gust right in the middle of his belly, his bowels explode and a polychromatic brightness bursts forth, and several objects shoot out like comets. But nothing falls, all the movement is horizontal and breaks the border of the painting, and the sucking, rending airstream seems to emanate from an all-mighty magnet hidden beyond the canvas. The body is, or rather was, that of a man of mature years, but the face has delicate, unblemished features, soft like a child’s; except for his eyes, which gape in anticipation of disaster. It draws me in too, and I almost don’t mind. I sit in front of it and ebb away; a soothing white comes from the inside, washing over me in waves, tenderly spreading a soft, muffling satisfaction, like being gently rocked to sleep.
The phone tore me away.
‘Is everything OK? We said around seven!’
‘Sorry, I…’
‘What time did you think it was? You could have called the Speaking Clock or something!’
Slip on something decent. The presents aren’t wrapped yet, blast! Why exactly do people wrap presents for children? No doubt, so the mother can encourage her child to admire the paper for a second before it gets torn to pieces.
The staircase up to their landing was densely populated with pot plants, some reaching boldly to the ceiling, others in the first fling of youth and visibly sustained with a lot of love. A smiling baby elephant on the doormat. Two surnames on the door in a calligraphic font, slanting and linked in an embrace over the peephole.
They’d wanted me to come and see out the Old Year with them. Oh, nothing pretentious, just two other couples, three at most. Hmm, couples. We’d have something to eat and then watch a film after the children had gone to bed. I lied th
at I’d love to but had already promised others. Around eleven on that maddest evening of the year, I stuck in wax earplugs and finished off the vodka; it worked pretty well. When the fireworks intensified, I liked to imagine good citizens gunning each other down in the streets and fighting to the last man.
She rang on the morning of the twenty-ninth of December. All these years, she’s never failed to call and wish me a happy birthday. Nor do I fail to reciprocate. That exchange of birthday wishes is like a tribute to a long-faded friendship, a tax incurred twice a year. Regardless of whether it’s time to give or take, we both approach the task with due respect: we wrap our words in a festive tone and do our hearty best to gloss over how hollow they are.
A Handful of Sand Page 8