Diary of Interrupted Days

by Dragan Todorovic

  Several nights later, he decided not to go to the demonstration. The world was crumbling, fast, but he felt he could face it better alone. He rented a cabin at a small hotel on a lake a few hours north of Toronto and drove there for the weekend. The lake was grey, the food was shameful, the town reeked of perversions and suicide. Or maybe it was him. He spent the first night reading, tried to find a prostitute on the second night, and drove back to Toronto on the Sunday, more tired than when he had arrived. At home, he unplugged his TV and at work he deleted the news bookmarks on his computer.

  In the second week of April, he decided to start a new artistic project. One Thursday evening, he sat with a coffee and a cigarette, opened his Moleskine notebook, and took up his favourite pen.

  He had seen a picture at the beginning of the bombing, of the night sky over Belgrade. The anti-aircraft artillery gave it everything they had when the first bombers approached. They fired thousands of grenades, rockets, and bullets towards the invisible enemy. The planes returned fire. The majority were tracers—red lights from NATO ammunition meeting green lights fired from the ground. The picture also caught the explosions on the outskirts, and, together, the lights created a festive atmosphere. It was the joyous beginning of slaughter.

  The light.

  Religions love light. What if we are only parasites in some unimaginably big being, which doesn’t care about us because it hasn’t had its regular checkup yet and does not know that we even exist? And even if it did, it would love to get rid of us and feel good again. Can we communicate with it in any other way except by sending it pain?

  Can we, humankind, be of any use in this universe? What is the cost of our existence? If energy is finite, than our devouring of it must mean that some other life form, somewhere, is dying, or perhaps has not even had the chance to be born. On the other hand, we ourselves die, and return our elements to the earth after borrowing them. After we die our ideas live for some time, then melt into the big stream of history. The palimpsests receive another layer. Perhaps, after a deafeningly long silence, and after travelling through space, our elements turn into another life form. Perhaps we are everything before we are born, and we will be everything forever—peaks on an electrocardiogram whose length is the sum of time. We are light itself. We are Pure.

  Why does almost everyone who has had a near-death experience talk about the white light at the end of the tunnel? The white of wisdom, of purity, of the divine, of all colours united. The white of surrender, of cowardice, of cold. Six thousand five hundred kelvins. The white of ghosts, of death, of weddings.

  White.

  He looked at three words on the sheet of paper before him, and it was obvious. A wall of pure white light. The cure for sadness. Diodes, then. What triggers them? And what happens when you pass the wall? No, that was too far. Okay: sensors can trigger a change of colours as a visitor approaches the wall, from something subdued to blinding white. And when he enters the portal in the wall, he finds … a new identity. A new language, a new name, a distortion of the old one, a new life in some distant country. New sounds, new smells. Exile. There will be a glass box on the other side. A heavenly cage. Visitors can come from the other side, too, and observe the person in the cage.

  Feverishly, he started jotting down plans, adding words here and there, arrows curving from the side towards the pentagram in the centre of the page. White noise, of course. On this side. On the other, silence.

  He was happy when he stopped working that night. At the office, he continued during the breaks, and then back at home, the next day and for the rest of the week. The excitement of a fresh idea. From the outside, he looked as if he were talking to someone sitting next to him. He paced the room, gesticulated with his hands, frequently combing his fingers through his hair. When he stopped, he felt hungry. Going to the kitchen to make something, he caught his reflection in the mirror. Greasy hair, dark circles under his eyes. He smiled. Every time he looked really ugly it was after creating something beautiful.

  White as in White City—Belgrade? Perhaps not.

  Over the weekend, he shaved his head and shaped his stubble into a goatee. Change it will be. It had been three and a half months. Sara was now coming to him only in short bursts of pain.

  WITHHELD. April 19, 1999

  Once, a long time ago, he had read somewhere that the ancient Slavs believed that Tuesday was the best day of the week to start something. They hated Mondays. Ignored them. Pretended they did not exist. Boris liked the idea so much that he chose to adhere to the principle.

  So, when Monday came, and he felt his Light project was unfolding well, he called in sick and took his Moleskine for a walk. In the Beaches, he bought a coffee in a plastic cup and went for a saunter by the lake. The air was cold, but there was no wind. He found a bench, zipped up his leather jacket and sat there. The lifeguard tower was to his left and the downtown skyscrapers in the distance to his right. He watched seagulls fight over some food. On the edge of the dog’s off-leash area, there were several stone totems. He had seen a guy making them once. A large rock balancing on top of a small one, another on top of it, another and another. It looked nice, but it wasn’t art. It was the guy’s personal cure, perhaps, but it meant nothing to anyone else, except as a curiosity.

  His cellphone rang. Boris pulled it out of his pocket carefully. He did not want to answer it by accidentally touching a key before seeing who was calling. The screen said “Withheld.” That usually meant an international call. He pressed the button and said, “Hello?”

  There was a short pause. “It’s me.”

  Boris’s body reacted before his brain did. He put his cup down and reached for his cigarettes. “How are you?”

  “I’m fine. You?”

  “Where are you?”

  “In Amsterdam.”

  “What … Where are you staying?”

  “I found a room in a house full of students from Belgrade. It was okay before the bombing started, but now it’s like Noah’s ark. Every day somebody else’s relatives arrive. How about you?”

  “Me? I’m in the Beaches. Didn’t feel like working today. I’ve begun a new project.”

  “That’s good. Something promising?”

  “We’ll see. For now, it helps the coffee go down. Any news from Belgrade? Is your mom okay?”

  “Yes. I talk to her every day. Did you hear that they killed dozens of Albanians by mistake?”

  “Yes. I can’t worry about them, though.”

  “No.”

  Pause. Two seagulls started to fight.

  “Boris?”

  “Yes, love?”

  “Don’t call me that. Please.”

  “Sorry.”

  “Take care of yourself. Seriously.”

  “How is he?”

  “I don’t know. He has memory loss. Selective. Otherwise, he’s fine.”

  “Selective?”

  She hesitated. “He can’t remember you and me, and he can’t recall what happened during his time at war.”

  “Shit. Shit. Can he play?”

  “No.”

  Pause.

  “I’ve shaved my head.”

  “Oh, god.”

  “No, it’s good actually.”

  “Okay then.”

  “Can I call you there?”

  “I’ll keep my Canadian cell number for another month.”

  He wanted to say “love” again, because that’s what he felt. She said goodbye and hung up somewhere in Amsterdam. He stared at the phone in his hand for a while, then put it back into his pocket. It was sad and good. Or would be good. They would all meet again, and it would be different, but they would talk again. It will be as it used to be. Love is nobody’s fault.

  He was unlocking the door to their apartment when the phone rang again. “Withheld.”

  “What did you forget?”

  “Boris, it’s me, your mother. Did you get my telegram?”

  “What happened?”

  “Your father, Boris. He’s
dead.”

  “Are you hurt?”

  “It wasn’t a bomb, Boris. He fell off a horse. Thank God, he didn’t die in bed. He went like a true soldier.”

  “When is the funeral?”

  “We’ll wait for you, but you have to hurry. Boris, I know it’s hard to come now, and be careful, but I won’t be able to get through it alone.”

  “I’ll come, Mom. I’ll check the flights right away, and I’ll let you know.”

  “Please, Boris.”

  “Don’t worry, Mom. I’m coming for sure.”

  SOMETHING ELSE. April 20, 1999

  He had a plane ticket for the evening of the next day. He called the bank to reserve enough cash to cover the unexpected and scheduled a pick-up for the next afternoon. He packed that night, throwing just the necessary stuff into his old brown bag. The next morning, he forced himself to sleep in, called work to tell them his father had died and that he was going back for the funeral, and then went to the bank. It was just past three when he had finished everything. He returned to the apartment and made a coffee. There were at least three hours to kill. He was surprised by how efficient he was, and how fast and clear his thoughts were. And then he had an idea. Something else that could be done, something that could not wait. He took several blank sheets of paper from the printer, and his pen, and lit a cigarette. He would send it from the airport, after he finished checking in.

  Note: The speed of thoughts

  Once, in Belgrade, I was in a car with my friend and thought that I was going to die. It was a very cold winter. The two of us needed to travel south to a small town where we were to meet with a gallery owner and talk about an exhibition. The roads were covered with ice. My friend thought of postponing the visit, and suggested we call the guy instead, but I needed to see the space before I could talk about the details. As a compromise, we agreed to leave around noon, and return the next day. The mid day temperatures should have been warm enough to melt the ice.

  For the first forty miles everything was okay, and then we stopped in the service lane so my friend could scrape the ice off the windshield. He opened the door, put one foot on the ground, and, as soon as he tried to stand, fell down beside the car. I realized later that this should have been a serious warning, that we should have turned back right away, but we were both laughing so hard we could barely catch our breath. We continued driving. On a bridge, a few miles later, a sudden crosswind caught the car. It swerved to the left and the right and then started to spin. Fast. The ice was so slippery that there was no traction at all, and the steering wheel was useless. The wind continued to push us as we spun, and at one point it became clear to me that the car was going to hit the railing on my side.

  Fortunately for us, our front right wheel hit a thick layer of dirt and salt and snow, and it slowed the car down so much that it came to rest, almost gently, against the railing. After the collision, a truck zoomed past. We sat there, trying to comprehend that nothing bad had happened. We turned on the engine again, and carefully drove off the bridge.

  Only when I was back home did I realize how fast my brain was working in those moments when I thought I was going to die. From the moment when I saw the railing approaching until the actual crash—it must have been only a second, two at the most. But in that blink of an eye, my train of thought went something like this: “Oh, we’re going to crash on my side. There is a big truck approaching. I hope we’ll be off the road by the time it gets here. Look at that railing—it’s probably made of steel and the side door will be crushed, which means that my ribs are going to be broken. Not too many of them, I hope. What if my right arm breaks? Am I going to die? Shit shit shit! Here we go.”

  Until then, I had considered all those stories about the movie of your life flashing in front of your eyes just before you die to be one of the legends related to death, but on that day, I started believing it. If only I could think like that all the time, or at least more frequently. That was a thousand times better than cocaine. If only I could think that I was dying more often.

  —T.O., April 17, 1999

  RETURN. April 22, 1999

  Strange, there were no birds at all.

  Miša must have fixed the engine in the meantime, because he started revving it. He should go back. Or maybe Miša would pick him up. The engine roared now—he will choke it like that. No, he will let the bus come to him. What is Miša doing? The roaring was going up and down, up and down, and it was very unpleasant, alarming. Perhaps Miša needed help.

  Boris turned around to see that Miša was still by his minibus, waving towards the city behind them, beckoning with his other hand.

  It took Boris several seconds to understand that what he had heard was not the engine of the small grey bus. It was an air-raid siren.

  For a minute or two nothing happened, except the wailing of the siren. His driver was waving dramatically with his hands. His gestures made no sense to Boris. He wanted to shout that there was an imminent air raid, that they should get off the bridge—they should run back.

  That’s what was wrong with his idea: running back. Back to what? Bombs could fall there, or here, or over there. Back there was the city, on the other side the old fortress. Would they bomb a monument?

  Boris looked towards the checkpoint at the entrance and didn’t see any police. They must have gone. The wind carried another noise with it, a heavy boom from afar. The way it spilled over onto everything suggested that it had come from the sky. The bombers. He looked up and saw only a few large clouds.

  A wave of fear swept over him. For an instant he felt like running, no matter where, just running. Then he made an effort to control his thoughts. If the enemy wanted to destroy the bridge, they had to hit it in the middle, where he stood. As long as he wasn’t in the middle, he should be okay. He started to walk quickly towards the fortress side. Behind him, he heard a barrage of anti-aircraft fire. He turned to look. The planes were now visible. They flew in formation at a very high altitude. Ominous birds moving south. For a moment he thought they would fly past to hit some other, less fortunate town. Then, as he watched, squinting, one by one the planes made a sharp turn to the right, increased the distance between them, and headed towards the city.

  Boris started running. There was no time to think of sides anymore. He just ran and it happened to be in the direction of the fortress. The first explosion, somewhere behind him and to the right, was so powerful that he expected to be blown off the bridge. He half turned as he ran to see if something had been hit, but there was nothing in his view that betrayed the target. It must have hit something far away, Boris thought, but then how come the sound was so murderous?

  Seconds later, another bomb hit, and a surge of thick smoke rose in front of him, from behind the citadel. Several more explosions sounded in the distance. Now under the second arch, Boris began to slow down and, after a few more steps, stopped. He leaned against the rail to catch his breath and looked all around. The minibus seemed deserted. There were pillars of smoke to the south, to the east, and one somewhere behind the city. The place where he stood was as good as any other.

  “I’m not thinking fast,” he said aloud. “I’m not dying.”

  This thought echoed in his head for a few seconds, then it made him stretch his lips in the beginning of a smile.

  From where he stood, he could see several vehicles on both sides of the river moving fast. Were they trying to escape being hit? How did the city look from a plane? Like a grid of virtual buildings, with depersonalized small dots running around? A hundred points for hitting that building, ten for that other one, minus fifty for hitting a hospital, and you get demoted if you hit an embassy. But if you hit fifty running targets, or three suspicious, fast-moving vans, you get a new life. With three new lives you enter God mode.

  Boris lit a cigarette and started coughing with the first drag. Coughing is good, nobody ever dies from coughing, or sneezing, or farting. Excretion is life. He spat over the rail.

  Mice. We are like fuckin
g mice.

  When the war started, in 1991, life was suddenly reduced to survival. Get food, get some money, stretch both to last as long as you can, fuck fast, don’t draw attention, keep the old medicine, oil your network, and run, run, run. That was because of Milosevic. Now you get these idiots with their humanitarian bombing. Stash food, keep it fresh, run into shelters, store water, batteries, medicine, and run, run, run. Don’t plan, don’t expect, just stay alive. Postpone everything. What was there between the wars? Another country, another continent. Peace, prosperity. But: you don’t know who you are, or were, you feel like a rough stone in the pocket of a silk suit, you fight for your language, you miss the old and crave the new, and you can’t imagine your future. The homeless on the sidewalks scare you, they are only one step away from you, and each step you take could be that step. Find a job in that virtual building—fifty points. Buy a house—a hundred points. A new car—thirty. Get married to a citizen—a new life. But in this game, merely living gets you minus points. You’re working against time, all the time. If you just stand there, your joystick still, your mouse sleeping, you lose a life in the end.

  And for what? Once replanted, will you have longer branches, greener leaves? Will the new worms be gentler to your roots? For what, all that effort? Do you live in Moscow now, dear sisters? Did he finally arrive, Vladimir and Estragon? Running to save your life, to save your soul? Define soul. Define your life. If your soul consists of your beliefs, your principles, your feelings and memories, is it not the same everywhere? Does your life not consist of your people, your private geography, your imagination? Then it is different every morning, no matter where you go. Your steering wheel is useless. You are what you run away from. Flick the switch on the lights that cure sadness and glue your ass to the chair.