Diary of Interrupted Days

by Dragan Todorovic

  “Fuck you,” Boris whispered. “Fuck you all.”

  Old Macdonald had a camp, e-i-e-i-o. And in that camp he had exiles, e-i-e-i-o. One was wounded here, one was shattered there, here a shit, there a shit, everywhere is shit shit. Old Macdonald had a camp, e-i-e-i-o.

  Several groups of planes were now flying in different directions, at different heights. The bombs and missiles made a well-rounded thud, while the anti-aircraft guns produced cacophony. The fox had entered the barnyard, and the hens and turkeys responded with their staccato of fear. Tracers flew in all directions, although it was still daylight, and thick rolls of smoke rose in the distance. The city raised its roofs and church towers high, spiteful and angry, and there was the mighty, rolling river beneath his feet, two elegant arches above him, the old fortress on the hill above. Fury attacked peace with all its power, but peace stood proud. The General would have been happy to see this. Someone should be taping the scene—if there are enough blank tapes left after the previous wars.

  Johnny had erased Sara and him, like a tape that did not contain anything worth watching again. That’s all right, Johnny, I have a copy of that tape. That’s all I watch.

  Boris finished his cigarette and flipped the butt over his shoulder into the river. It will be less schön, less blau, but who cares. He turned his back to the city and started walking towards the fortress, his hands in his pockets. There was less smoke ahead than behind him. When this was over, he’d wait for his driver on the citadel side. He looked towards the clock tower on the hill above, and stopped for a moment, confused. Then he saw that it was close to four. It was perhaps the only clock in the world whose long arm pointed to the hours and the short one to the minutes. That was because minutes were not important when they had installed it.

  High above, a plane appeared from behind a cloud and almost immediately dove to the right, firing two missiles at the two-arched bridge.

  You have legs, so you have to learn to walk, and keep walking. And you have hands, so you have to keep touching. And you have love—must love. And eyes, must see it all. Smell, hear, lick, fuck, penetrate, inhale, exhale, inhale, exhale. The change, the trip, the meeting. We are energy, we don’t exist, nothing does. We are nothing but movement, just a vibration. Pain is irrelevant, pain is just energy gone astray.

  Birds: that’s why the birds have disappeared, they had a premonition about the bombs. You’re an artist, Boris, you’re supposed to see the details, you stupid shit.

  Four seconds later, two almost simultaneous explosions shook the bridge under Boris’s feet. He started running again.

  Another plane high above him dove towards the river.

  When a powerful explosive device detonates, the first thing that happens is the devastating shock wave, blowing everything away from the centre, torching and tearing apart. But the explosive burns the oxygen in the air, creating a strong vacuum that, for an indefinably short period, draws everything towards the centre of the explosion. The bomb kills and then hugs.

  When our senses become saturated with sensation, they send a hasty signal to the brain that they have encountered something white. White noise, white light, white ghost, the white of God. White is all colours, and we are not capable of dealing with anything “all” at one time. White is the colour of defeat for the senses as it is for warriors. It is the colour of the end, and the colour of birth.

  Most things in nature experience a moment of hesitation between their appearance and growth—revolution, eruption, flower, idea, child—but this glow immediately expanded to obscure the world around it. It came from a spot on the bridge in front of Boris, and at the very moment it appeared, it grew until it had devoured everything. It was white. Pure white. It was inevitable, inescapable, it was like the right word. He was still running when it had appeared. There was something majestic and horrible about it, like the declaration of war, like shards of metal tearing a body apart. The flash cast a long shadow of his body across the asphalt and metal bars behind him, a silhouette that—in the same breath—broke into thousands of little shadows. For a brief moment it seemed that all these particles wanted to join together again as they were sucked into white, and then they found their way between the bars and concrete and melted with the surface of water.

  In a little while, the sirens sounded the end of the air raid. When the smoke had cleared, the old bridge was still standing, though there was a wide fracture in the middle of the left arch and two smaller cracks in the right one. The small grey bus was leaning to one side. The sun shone on the river below, and a big fish—drawn by the light—made a full somersault right below the fracture. The clock on the tower on the Petrovaradin fortress was showing some time after four when the birds returned to the bridge.

  • SIX •

  THE NIGHT IS NARROW

  FARTHER. May 6, 1999

  “I had an abortion, Johnny, in March 1993. I was already married to Boris. I missed my period in December. I wasn’t sure I was pregnant, but I had missed it in November, too. I was a mess then. You had been gone since November, and there were problems everywhere, war and all, and my whole body went nuts. When the test was positive, I thought it was yours, Johnny. Then they told me the dates, I looked on the calendar, and realized it couldn’t have been, so I went to the hospital.”

  Sara was sitting on the chair by the window. Her voice was flat. It sounded like it was coming from a shortwave radio, with the occasional crackling and some words inaudible because of Johnny’s sporadic “Mm-hm.” He looked like he was sleeping. But Sara was not sure about that. There was almost nothing now to be sure about. Boris, Johnny’s future, her future—everything was in the air. She had no map in her head, no backup plan. All she knew was that she had to resolve this, here, she had to stay and hear the verdict, and that decision had to come from Johnny.

  She did not come to Amsterdam with that plan. When she had read Johnny’s letter, her first reaction was fury at what Boris had, and had not, done. Getting on the plane in Toronto was a gesture of revenge—one big swipe at erasing all the years of guilt. Mother, Father, Boris—this is my fucking life, watch me now. Even Johnny—he could have tried harder. Of course she wanted to help him, but she did not know then if there was any love left. So many things had happened. She looked different, sounded different, she thought in another language. She would come, and help, and see what happened.

  “Miki. You remember him? The war correspondent? I don’t know why it happened. It was only once. I felt bad the next day, I felt awful. I’m not saying this was because of you. I hated myself for doing it.”

  She paused. “Hmm. Interesting. A few years ago I would have said, ‘For allowing that to happen,’ but not anymore. Nothing just happens, Johnny. We do it all. It is all us. But you know that. You said that destiny was your lover. God, Johnny, what a song that was. Even if there were only that one song, you would still have to come back and sing it. You can’t just forget it. That tune is so true. So many others we grew up with were lies. ‘I hope I die before I grow old’? So why didn’t he? I thought a lot about it in Toronto. We got our citizenship a day before my thirtieth birthday. I didn’t know what to make of it. I mean—it’s good, you have a passport, you are free. But immigrants don’t really need passports—they travel mostly to their old countries, anyway. And then I realized it was a sign. It was not a passport for borders, it was a passport for the future. It said, ‘Thirty is good, don’t be afraid of it, it’s still you. Forty is good, sixty is good, life is good.’”

  She stood up and stretched.

  What had changed her plans was her visit to Johnny’s apartment. Inside were traces of the old Johnny, but there were also signs of another man. A man who was strong enough to cut off the links to his amazing past and start something completely different. A man who had so much art in him that it had to spill out, in any way possible. A man whose apartment had no signs of other women. A man she knew so intimately from somewhere so distant that it might have been a dream. That visit had changed
everything. She liked this new, old man. He seemed to like her. Let’s see what happens. But under one condition: we will erase the word “again.” Nothing will be again, nothing as it was. You have no memories of me? Fine, here I am—start making them now.

  She looked at him, and smiled.

  “I was thinking—maybe we could go to Toronto. Once you get out of here. It’s far enough. Toronto is good, you would like it. It’s strange when you see it at first. You expect it to jump at you, the way the big cities do, but it just sits there, waiting for a hug. You could play your music, write books, or record your soundtracks—whatever you want. I’ll get a job with a magazine. We could travel. I’ve always wanted to see Canada from coast to coast. I want to visit Alaska. And Japan. Let’s go far, Johnny. Nothing ties us to Belgrade anymore. We are strangers there, Johnny. We’re strangers everywhere. Isn’t that fantastic?”

  Out the window she watched as a solitary man walked towards a narrow canal holding both his hands crossed at the back of his head. Delight or despair? Sara sat down again.

  “And—don’t jump now—I think we should sit down and talk, Boris, you, and me. There are shards all over the floor. We won’t be able to step safely until we clean them up. There is nothing to be continued, that is impossible, and we can all go our separate ways after we meet, but we owe it to one another.”

  Johnny moved again and his cover went astray. She stood up and tiptoed to his bed. She leaned over to straighten his blanket. Just as she turned to go back to her chair, she felt his touch on her hand.

  “Stay,” he said.

  “How much did you hear?”

  He turned on his back. “Enough.”

  “The abortion?”

  He nodded.

  “There is something very important I want to tell you. Sometimes I know why you’re here, sometimes I don’t,” he said.

  She opened her mouth to say something, but he raised his hand.

  “I just wanted to make something clear: if this is about guilt, you can go.”

  Standing at the head of his bed, she looked into his eyes. She fought back the tears, and won.

  FIVE CELLS. May 7, 1999

  It was so unusual for a patient to receive a letter in the hospital that they misplaced it as soon as it had arrived. It was only after the hospital administrator came back from a short trip to Brussels that the envelope was discovered on his desk. People pretend that a stay in a hospital is just a temporary lapse in logic, something that passes in the blink of an eye. Or vanity lets them think that the only thing a patient needs is their personal visit, a bouquet of flowers, a box of chocolates. But isn’t an old-fashioned letter perfectly suited to patience, and the patient—that appropriate title that so efficiently displays the impotence of doctors? The administrator was pleased with his philosophical stance, and, with these thoughts in mind, he decided to personally deliver the letter. There was no room number on the envelope, just a foreign name and the name of the hospital. Come to think of it, it was surprising that the letter had even got here. He checked the date on the postmark: it had been sent from Canada on April 21, and it was now May 7. Oh well. He found the name in the database and headed to room 1013. The patient was sleeping when he quietly entered. He left the envelope on the nightstand and tiptoed out.

  Tomo drew the curtains aside. The man in bed moved his head a little but did not wake up.

  “Johnny?” Tomo said. “Johnny?”

  The man blinked, then opened his eyes. “What time is it?” he said. His voice was hoarse.

  “Time for lunch, Johnny. You’ve slept enough.”

  “They gave me those pills again.”

  “I told you, Johnny, they had to do it before today’s measurements. They needed to make sure no unnecessary worries inflicted your brain waves.”

  Tomo helped him sit up, and propped the pillows behind his back.

  “They’ve been keeping me here forever. I want to go.”

  “Soon, Johnny. Soon, I promise. Don’t argue with the doctors. By studying your case they can help others. That is good. The unit here that deals with brain injuries is world-renowned. You’ve talked Italian, and you’ve never been to Italy or studied the language. They have to make sure you’re not going to slip into that again, or something equally unpredictable.”

  “If it’s about the unpredictable, they’d have to keep me here forever.”

  Tomo smiled. He removed the tray from the trolley and helped Johnny position it in his lap. Then he sat on the chair.

  “I brought you something special today,” he said after Johnny started eating. He pulled a book from somewhere inside his hospital uniform and held it up. “Look.”

  He put the book on the bed in front of Johnny and returned to his seat. Johnny was still very sleepy and it took some time for him to take the book and look at its cover. He continued to chew, looking at the picture on the jacket.

  “Good photo, isn’t it?”

  “Not bad.”

  “It’s just been published. Your new biography, Johnny.”

  “Great,” Johnny said. “Then I don’t have to remember anything. I guess it’s all here.”

  “No, Johnny, you have to. You have to. I flipped through it. Some parts of it are bullshit—they don’t like some of your songs that are really beyond their comprehension—but they do go into detail about your eleven concerts in a row in Kulusic, and they have some really good photos from your work with Pankrti. I didn’t know anything existed from that period. Did you?”

  “I kind of remember that there was a photographer around. Some tall guy. Blond. Yeah, Canon.”

  “Very good. He had a Canon.”

  “No, it was his nickname. He actually had a Hasselblad and his name was Krstulovic. But they called him Canon because … I can’t remember why. Shit.”

  “No, no, that’s good, very good. See? It may be just a trickle now, but it’s coming. What else can you remember from that session? Were there any girls around?”

  “Was Sara in while I was asleep?”

  “I don’t know. I just got here.”

  “Wait, what day is it today? It must be Friday. You don’t work on Fridays.”

  Tomo remained silent. Johnny continued to eat, flipping through the book.

  “Sara is very pretty, man.”

  Johnny looked at him. “Yes, she is.”

  “What is the problem, Johnny? You can tell me.”

  Johnny sighed and let the book to close itself. “She loved someone that’s not me anymore. I don’t know who I am now. I don’t know who she is.”

  Tomo thought for a while. “Does that really matter, Johnny?”

  “Of course it does.”

  “But she’s here, every day. She’s by your bed even while you’re sleeping. She helps you shave, and wash, and eat. She loves you. Whoever you are now, she loves the new you.”

  Johnny did not say anything.

  “Don’t you like her?”

  “A lot.”

  “There. That’s all that matters. Is that a letter?”

  Johnny turned to the nightstand and took the envelope in his hand.

  “Why does Tomo want to refresh my memories? Why is it so important for him?”

  “He is fighting for his memories, Johnny,” Sara said. “If you don’t remember, so many things in his life will be lost. It would be as if he had lived an illusion. There’s been a war, people have been displaced. Some of them didn’t even bring pictures with them. Their friends are dead or far away. Your music is one of the few things that tie it all together.”

  “Isn’t that an overstatement?”

  “Do you have any idea how many people would be lost if someone erased the Stones or the Clash from our memories?”

  “Was I that important?”

  “In that space we used to call home—yes. You were that important.”

  He looked at her face. Sara was serious. She sat on the edge of his bed, touching the watch on her left wrist with the fingers of her right hand. He h
ad seen her every day for the past few months, enough to know that something was not right today.

  “Still, he can be strange.”

  “You have no reason not to trust him. He’s done so many wonderful things for you. Did you know that he actually bought it?” She pointed at the guitar propped up on the other side of his nightstand.

  “He said he had borrowed it. I asked him to take it back.”

  “He bought it. A nurse told me. And he doesn’t even play the guitar.”

  Johnny looked again at the instrument, and slowly nodded.

  “Listen, maybe you can learn how to play. You were good once, maybe you can do it again.”

  Johnny moved to sit up. She leaned forward to help him, but he stopped her.

  “Oh, god, I didn’t tell you the best news. They’re going to publish your book!”

  “What book?”

  “Your diary. I sent a copy of your notebook to one publisher only, because I knew someone working there. And they thanked me for that. They want to speed it up. They don’t want to wait until the war is over, they want to publish it now. Much more material is needed, so you have some work to do.”

  “Isn’t it funny?” he said. “My memoirs are being published while I’m trying to regain my memories.”

  She looked at him, pursing her lips approvingly.

  He sighed. “Did you know that there is no such thing as selective memory loss?”

  “Says who?”

  “Take a look.” He reached underneath his pillows and fetched an envelope.

  Sara opened it. She recognized the handwriting.

  Boris wrote:

  Apparently, some psychiatrists claim that the whole idea of selective memory loss was invented during the Romantic period, probably by a writer. That the brain could erase certain memories in order to better cope with trauma was a clever invention, don’t you think? For the arts, maybe, but not for reality: if that were true, wouldn’t we all be walking with hammers in our hands, hitting ourselves over the head all the time?