THE LUTE AND THE SCARS

by Adam Thirlwell

  “I am Varja Ivanovna Strahovska. I heard who you are. You were asking about Natalija Viktorovna Karajeva. She died two years ago, in this same bed. She was a friend of Marija Jermolajevna, who died four years ago. No, it was five. I knew Marija Nikolajevna Aleksinka too. And her children. They died in a fire. I’m glad to hear that she’s still alive. Her sister, Valerija Mihajlovna Ščukina, was the first one to die, about eight years ago. Well, now I’m dying in turn. I’ve told you everything I know, so please leave me in peace. I don’t feel up to remembering anymore, or talking either. I’m preparing to die. Meetings in this world mean nothing to me now.”

  “Forgive me, but I’d like to be able to tell Marija Nikolajevna a bit more about her sister. And all the others.”

  “What is there to tell you? There are lives that it turns out weren’t worth living. We lived as if we were dead. Farewell.”

  She closed her eyes, a sign that she was ending our conversation. At that point the door opened. “So, you found her alive after all,” said the woman with the bun in her hair. “Now go, before I call the cops.”

  For months following my return from the tour, I put off visiting my old landlord and landlady. But one day, walking past the Zvezda cinema, I looked them up. First I walked into Nikolaj Aleksinski’s room. He was reading Berdyaev. I shared my impressions from the tour and told him about the visit to the Novodevichy Cemetery and the Lenin Mausoleum. He served me kirsch.

  Then Marija Nikolajevna appeared in the doorway.

  “Pardon me,” she said. “I don’t want to disturb your carousing. I just wanted to check in with our traveler. Is he still unlucky at love?”

  “We’re talking about Moscow,” I said. “And Leningrad.”

  “Ahhh,” came the reply. “But then what can you see in two weeks? Nothing.”

  “I saw Dostoyevsky’s grave,” I countered. “And Blok’s.”

  “You see?” Marija Nikolajevna said, appealing to the old man with her hands. “I told you he would forget to look for my sister. He did nothing in Russia but drink vodka with the actresses. He’s a bohemian.”

  “I couldn’t get away from the group. That’s not easy to do in Russia.” (Then I translated it into our sign language.)

  “I knew it,” she said, leaving the room.

  “No matter,” Nikolaj Aleksinski commented. “It’s better for you to have gone drinking with the actresses than to have roamed about Moscow. It really is better this way. For her not to find out.”

  I realized it was obvious to him that I had carried out my assignment.

  “Let’s have another glass,” he said. “Then I have to put the bottle away. Marija Nikolajevna is very sick.”

  Postscript

  In this piece, under the influence of Truman Capote, I attempted to approximate, in my own way, the genre of the “nonfictional story,” in which the role of imagination is reduced to a minimum and the facts are everything. In my story “Jurij Golec” I didn’t succeed in carrying out this intention: when a story’s characters, even ones of secondary importance, are specific people who are still alive, the writer is sometimes compelled to make costly adjustments and concessions with regard to amour-propre, something that is as understandable as it is human.

  THE POET

  At dawn a notice had appeared near the power plant, on a wooden post.

  It was autumn, the end of a wet and dreary October. The wind plucked the foliage from the poplars, in gusts. Leaves blew up and all around, like leaflets tossed from an airplane, and then descended to the ground.

  The sign was hung on the pole with the rusty thumbtacks that someone had prized with his or her fingers from the death notice of one Slavoljub (Bate) Rapajić (1872–1945), a disabled pensioner, hanging below. The culprit did however show some respect for the dead: the new sheet of paper, no bigger than that on which the necrology had been printed, was only attached by means of two of the available thumbtacks; this meant that the death notice too was still hanging on the pole, fastened at both ends and still able to withstand the wind.

  The paper-stock was yellow, of wartime quality, and in the course of one night or one morning it had browned considerably, to the color of withered leaves; as if, in this environment of autumnal fading, surrounded and grazed by the poplar leaves, the paper had obeyed the laws of mimicry. Its tiny Cyrillic letters—very blue and quite pale—had already begun to wash out in the rain; in all honesty, however, the typewriter ribbon that had been used to type up this text hadn’t been in the best condition to begin with.

  The main thing to be cleared up was who, on that fall morning of October 25, 1945, had been the first to notice the sign—“in the immediate vicinity of the power plant, attached to a wooden pole with 2 (two) thumbtacks obviously removed from a notice of death on said pole.”

  This unimpressive scrap of yellowed paper (“half a sheet of typewriter paper of No. 3 quality, folded and cut with a sharp object”), the same size as a death notice, might indeed have gone unnoticed by the citizenry. “This is where the weather factor comes into play: it rained the entire morning, with only a few breaks, and a cold north wind was blowing. The majority of passersby were carrying umbrellas and for that reason did their passing by hunched over, fending off the gusts of wind and the showers of rain. Furthermore. it is necessary to take into consideration the fact that this portion of the street leading to the power plant is somewhat remote and is little used by pedestrians. Apart from some of the residents of the new public housing projects (two buildings) and some employees of the power plant, hardly anyone passes this way. The residents make use of the new road, the one that runs along the back of the plant, along the edge of a field. (The old street has been torn up by bombs and tank treads.)” And so on.

  But that it would have gone entirely unnoticed, even if it was raining cats and dogs out, right up to eleven o’clock—now that just can’t be.

  As such, Budišić took his investigation in the following direction: Who had walked by on that morning, the 28th of October, 1945? When? And why?

  First of all, let’s have a look at the residents of this New Town housing complex. (This housing project, incidentally, is not new; it was built before the war and has remained unfinished.)

  In Building Two (No. 1 has been destroyed) lives a certain Donka, Donka Bojačić, née Žunić, a retiree. Her son fell—on our side—during the war. She didn’t manage to get away—for “medical reasons.”

  Her subtenant Đorđina Prokeš studies at the teachers’ college, twenty-two years old, from a Partisan family: left her house about 7:30 on the day in question, toting a man’s umbrella; didn’t notice anything. (“You can trust her, seeing that she’s a Party member . . . ” etc.)

  Building Three: the Ivanovićes: father Stevan, sons Dane and Blažo. Daughters Darinka-Dara and Milena, mother Roksanda-Rosa. (Took the Chetniks’ side. Active for some time in the enemy’s employ. Under investigation. Dane carries an automatic pistol around in the city. They’ve been interrogated. I caught up with them when they were dead drunk. Alibi verified: the night before and right up till ten a.m. they had been celebrating the mother’s birthday: Rosa, whom they call Madame. Impudent behavior. “Arrogant.” Do not own a typewriter.)

  In the electric power plant there are four workers, all members of the Party. Supported our National Liberation Struggle. Alibis verified. Don’t own typewriters.

  A certain Pajkić had left for home about seven a.m., after the night shift. Near the plant he ran into Steva Ličina. Ličina lives at the other end of town (in the Zekić complex).

  Who else could be a suspect?

  The pupils of the elementary school named after “Pinki the War Hero.”

  And thus the circle closed. In the center of this circle, as in a mousetrap, was Mr. Ličina, Steva Ličina, pensioner.

  What moved the retiree Steva Ličina to write verses directed against the Party and government is hard to say. Their exact content isn’t even known, since Budišić, on the same morning that Ličina
was arrested, burned them in the “mother of all stoves.” Accordingly, we know only this much (or perhaps a bit more): the poem was typed on a (Cyrillic) typewriter and spoke in a deceitful and slanderous manner of the National Liberation Struggle, the Party, and Tito. Ličina was a quiet, diminutive, unprepossessing man. He wore a French cap (beret), and was always properly dressed and shaven even though he lived alone, a widower. Before the war he’d worked as an official of the provincial government. He was a clerk (“a pen-pusher”) under Bodnarov (who fled to America) in the Ministry of Schools and Education.

  As we said, the poem by Mr. Ličina was destined to have a short life, and no one knows (and we don’t believe anyone will ever learn) its exact content, either, especially not the offending lines. It’s true that Budišić had read the poem, yet he couldn’t recall a single line of it. I mean, nothing at all. That means that only the most important thing stuck with him: that the poem offended his (Budišić’s) sensibilities and “spoke disparagingly of the Party, the National Liberation Struggle, and Tito.”

  How many lines were in the poem?

  Budišić asserted: More’n thirty!

  Mr. Ličina: Fourteen. It was a sonnet. Renaissance style. Two quatrains and two tercets.

  Budišić: Don’t lecture. Just talk.

  Mr. Ličina: I’ve told you everything. Two quatrains and two tercets. Two times four makes eight, plus two times three, which is six. Together that makes fourteen. A sonnet.

  Budišić: Nope, there were at least thirty! Or more!

  Mr. Ličina: I tell you it was a sonnet. Dučić and Rakić wrote sonnets too.

  Budišić: They were traitors.

  Mr. Ličina: Perhaps Dučić was, I’ll grant you that . . . but Rakić was a patriot.

  Budišić: How come you wrote it? Who told you to do it? Who were you in cahoots with?

  Mr. Ličina: I sincerely regret it.

  Budišić: Too late, too late . . . You should have thought of that earlier.

  So they led him away into investigative detention. These were the days when the new regime had not yet consolidated its power, and the Chetniks, “bushfighters,” and other renegades were still hiding out in remote districts. Sometimes they would come down into the cities and—in the coffee houses, under napkins—leave behind messages such as: “Mile Kožurica ate here, Chetnik rebel. Long live King Petar!”

  Budišić, accordingly, had more serious matters to deal with than the case of Mr. Ličina. One day he was summoned to Kosovo, where the “bushfighters” were wandering around wreaking havoc, so Mr. Ličina remained in detention for two or three months. He was a model prisoner. He mingled little with the other inmates, and he barely ever spoke. Sometimes he recited, half to himself, this or that verse. Dučić and Rakić for the most part. (“Thus they say to us, children of this century . . .” and so on. Or: “Tonight, my lady, at the prince’s ball . . .”)

  In January the interrogations began. He was now being questioned by a certain Projević.

  “So, Ličina. You wrote a poem against Tito and the National Liberation Struggle. Do you know what we were doing with the likes of you less than six months ago? You know exactly what. You know. Remember that I’m not Budišić. Remember that. There’ll be no dilly-dallying with me. Go on, spill it. Who put you up to this? Who helped you write it? At whose behest? Who paid you? Answer each in turn.”

  Mr. Ličina: I have already answered everything forthrightly and freely.

  Projević: Leave your feelings of sincerity out of this, you miscreant. What do your feelings have to do with it?

  Mr. Ličina: Believe me, sir, I don’t remember anything else.

  Projević: Should I help your mem’ry along a bit?

  Mr. Ličina: I admit that the verses were inappropriate. Morally I bear full responsibility.

  Projević: And you say you don’t recall a single line?

  Mr. Ličina: No. I give you my word of honor. I wrote the verses at four in the morning. Composed them at the typewriter.

  Projević: Go on. Keep talking. We have a lot more important things to do than this.

  Mr. Ličina: Then I put on my coat and picked up my umbrella. Forgive me, but what’s become of my dog?

  Projević: Well, look at him go. He’s back on the dog kick again. I told you: we’re feeding him every day, three times a day, with sausages and Dalmatian prosciutto. We’re giving him milk, as if he weren’t a dog but a lamb. Now just go on.

  Mr. Ličina: I thank you for that . . . I’m relieved to hear it.

  Projević: You took your coat and umbrella and went out into the street. Did you show the poem to anyone?

  Mr. Ličina: Not to anyone.

  Projević: Whom did you run into along the way?

  Mr. Ličina: I cannot recall. Nobody.

  Projević: This is really rich. Just great. Doesn’t remember the poem, doesn’t remember the people. But don’t play naïve with me. You’re no fool if you know how to write poems against the Partisans and against the people. We’ll fix you right up. Oh, yes we will. Don’t you worry about that. Here’s a pencil for you, and paper, and now produce some poetry, my friend. To your heart’s content.

  Mr. Ličina: Thank you, sir.

  Projević: Don’t thank me, you worthless piece of . . . You act like this is a gift. Now get lost.

  Mr. Ličina: Thank you, sir.

  Projević: I don’t want to set eyes on you till this poem is finished.

  Mr. Ličina: I understand, sir.

  Projević: How much time will you need . . . Let’s say three months?

  Mr. Ličina: Three days would be quite enough.

  Projević: Nonsense! Three days? No way. Write it and revise it for three months. Till it looks like it was written by Zogović. Get it? Like Zogović? Or Mayakovsky . . . . Now get a move on!

  So Mr. Ličina passed three months in solitary confinement, working on his schoolboy composition. He wrote and rewrote exactly as Projević had told him to do. First he composed a sonnet with an abba rhyme scheme. Then he changed it (keeping the words) into abab, while leaving the tercets the same. Ultimately he modified the tercets and discarded both of the final rhymes (“Front” / “Piemont”), because they sounded old-fashioned to him. And then . . . his paper ran out. That meant he had tried all the variants. There was nothing for him to do but wait. After exactly seventy-four days, he was led before Projević.

  “Let’s see it, poet,” said Projević.

  Mr. Ličina handed the paper to him across the table.

  Projević: Sit down, sit down. Why are you looking at me like a deer in headlights? . . . Here, in the nice chair, you bastard. Riiiiiight. Let’s have a look-see.

  Mr. Ličina sat on the very edge of the armchair, holding his beret in his hand. (It was the only piece of civilian clothing he had on.) He smelled the aroma of coffee and closed his eyes, as if he were drowsy. (He was probably thinking of his dog. Who could tell, with senile old grandpas like this one?)

  Projević yanked him out of his reverie.

  “From the bottom of my heart—this is good. Congratulations!”

  Mr. Ličina: I tried hard.

  Projević: That’s plenty obvious. Bravo. So you see, you can do it when you want to.

  Mr. Ličina: As far as the rhyme goes, the poem is beyond reproach.

  Projević: Don’t exaggerate.

  Mr. Ličina: I gave my all.

  Projević: Your all, you say. All you had? . . . Well, ol’ Ličina, you don’t know what it means to give your all . . . Don’t you think, you shit, that a better rhyme might still be out there? Eh? Well, look for it. We have time, Comrade Ličina; we have tons of time. The future lies before us, the future in its entirety! So get rolling and don’t let me see your face again until the poem sounds like something Mayakovsky wrote. Do you understand? Children should recite your poem at school festivals, and soldiers should sing it from the ranks. Here’s some more paper for you . . . Think that’s enough? Now beat it . . . Take him away . . . Good luck, poet.


  Projević sipped at his cup of now cold coffee and started going through his stack of papers again.

  Then he looked up.

  Projević: Are you still here?

  Mr. Ličina: I just wanted to ask, sir . . .

  Projević (slapping his palm against his forehead): Aha, I had almost forgotten . . . Now we’re feeding him with American canned goods from the Ministry’s warehouse. He’s gotten twice as wide as he is long. I give you my word.

  Then he plunged back into his files.

  In the course of the next three months (the year was ’47), Mr. Ličina went through more paper than a rat. So much so that Projević sent this message via the guard: “The director is asking whether you are eating the paper, like a rat?” Meanwhile, a performance was held in the prison in which some actors from the city recited Mayakovsky and other poets. Mr. Ličina was aglow with the fever of creativity. He didn’t like the Mayakovsky. It was a long way from Dučić-Rakić. Quite a long way. And with no rhythm. Sloppy rhymes. His sonnet was better, much better. Objectively speaking. Without even considering his biography and background. If a Partisan or some younger poet had signed his name to it, this poem would have made him famous. But now . . .

  He placed a whole stack of papers on the desk in front of Projević.

  “O Ličina the Pathetic—what’s all this stuff?” Projević asked.

  “They are poems, sir.”

  “Ah, so they are. Poems. And you, Ličina, you think we’re playing school here. You think I have nothing more important to do than read your poems. Or to select them myself. Get cracking! I don’t want to see you for another three months. Not until (he glanced at the calendar on his desk), not until September. Have we understood each other?”

  Mr. Ličina was as silent and meek as a wet poodle. Disappointed, no doubt.

  “I’m asking you nicely: do we have an understanding?”

  “That’s fine, sir.”

  “Well now . . . Good. You can go. Oh yeah, I almost forgot. Your bitch had puppies. Six of them about yea big (shows him with his hands), like bear cubs.”