by A. S. Patric
“Why are we here?” Jelka asks, already bored with the vast reading room, vaulting above them, four stories high. Slumping into the backrest. Swivelling left and right. Head dropping back, lolling. The imperial dome above exciting little interest.
“That might be the dumbest question I’ve heard you ask.” Suzana tells Jelka, feeling rigid and upright in comparison.
Jelka’s eyes pop open. “You can’t read anywhere else?” “Frankston library?” Suzana runs a palm across the page she was just reading, twice, as if to clean away dust. “A community centre for every degenerate in town. I can deal with the wafting aromas of sweat and piss. Don’t get me wrong. It’s the unconsidered, unconsulted books on those bleak metal shelves that make me choke.”
“A Belgrade snob. That’s what you are.” Jelka says it approvingly. Leans over and gives Suzana a kiss on the cheek. She reaches over to the book Suzana was reading when Jelka arrived—closes it on Suzana’s finger to see the cover. “Of course. You couldn’t be entertained by anyone less than Tolstoy.” Suzana doesn’t remove her finger. She flips the book open again as though she intends to keep reading.
“I’m not a bimbo. I’ve read Tolstoy,” says Jelka. “I can see you think that there’s a personal connection there—between you and the Count—but Tolstoy is like the newspaper. Even if you haven’t read him, you know the news.”
“Have you read a book since high school?”
“Don’t be a bitch.” Jelka tilts the book in Suzana’s hands to get a better look at it. “You’re not supposed to mark the fucken books, Suzana! Talk about high school.”
“It’s only pencil …”
“And there’s a librarian who has an official rubber and the duty to go through each page in the library. Is that what you think?”
Suzana shrugs and winces at the same time. “Alright. It’s wrong. I did a bad thing.”
Jelka snatches the book away from Suzana, reading from the marked page with the exasperated expression of a high-school teacher: “‘My life stopped. I could breathe, eat, drink, sleep, and could not help breathing, eating, drinking, sleeping; but there was no life, because there were no desires whose satisfactions seemed reasonable to me. I could not even desire to know the truth, because I guessed of what it consisted. The truth was that life was an absurdity.’ Even when you haven’t read it you feel as if you have read it. That’s what I mean about newspaper Tolstoy.”
“You look gorgeous today, by the way.” Suzana leans back in her chair. A smile on her face. Jelka glances at her friend and sees Suzana is both sarcastic and sincere.
“Make-up gives me time for meditation. It’s the space I give myself to reflect.” Jelka winks and casts a Marilyn Monroe smile.
“The Count was wrong.” Suzana takes the book back and closes it. “Life is not absurd. I’m not sure what it is, but ‘absurd’ is the easy way out. And what a terrible cliché.”
Jelka nods. Motes of dust drift around them and Jelka waves her hand before their faces, as if she were shooing away flies.
“Every now and again I have an hour where I look around and seem to understand,” Jelka says. “I notice something beautiful without dismissing it as instantly irrelevant. It’s worse afterwards because it makes me realise I live the rest of the time in some diminished state—barely thinking, barely feeling—as the Count says. Everything around me in shadow. And I blame Ante, who’s a normal guy, working hard every day of his life. You’ve got to respect that kind of man. And you can’t expect that he’s going to light up your life like in the television matinee romance of the week.”
Jelka has a few shopping bags arrayed around her, from expensive boutiques in the city. She complains about living so far south of the city all the time. It’s because she isn’t close enough to these stores she so cherishes, also because she can’t comfortably wear the clothes where she lives without feeling foolish. Fashion, and the art she means when using that word, doesn’t belong in the part of Melbourne they live in. Jelka’s wardrobes are full of clothes she wears on the weekend or when she can get dressed to go shopping. There’s a half-hidden world she finds on the streets of Melbourne city; discreet and delightful places where the air is perfumed by the many women coming and going and special lights make everything appear not simply new but eternally reborn as in a fairytale where no one gets old and nothing gets worn-out. There are wizard-made mirrors in which you can find the spells that work for the lost princess in the mirror.
“This has been going on for a while—the way you’re feeling. And I’m not sure what I can say but I’m sure there’s got to be a way to move forward,” Suzana says. A powder of concrete drifts through the air. Jelka plucks a flake of paint from Suzana’s hair.
“What’s going on?” Jelka asks, glancing upwards with a palm out, as though searching the skies and gauging the chance of rain.
“Renovations.” Suzana says.
Jelka dusts off her arms. “Sometimes I feel incapable of one fresh thought. And I realise that’s gone on for days on end. Maybe longer. That seems alright. Is it alright? I ask myself. I should want more than this. This is what I was born for? Cleaning people’s houses. Gathering bits and pieces for my nest. Have my little birds so that they can get big enough to fly away and do the same. And I’m alright with that, yet every now and again I have a moment that feels like an inspiration. I see a woman look up at the sky. I don’t know why. Nothing up there. No clouds. Not a bird. An empty sky. And then I notice how white her eyes are. The lustre of the white, and how beautiful that is. That clear, perfect white she has in her eyes. And then I’m looking out for it in other people’s eyes. It takes days, I finally catch it in another person. A particular luminous white with a hint of blue beneath it. I know it doesn’t mean anything. And I wonder, has anyone noticed that particular bit of beauty.”
Suzana says, “Maybe you should be a photographer. Or learn to paint. They have those classes.”
“How fucking pathetic would that be? Imagine me doing that? Fucken hell.” The last, Jelka says in English, with what she imagines to be an Aussie accent.
Raised heads around her make her lean closer to Suzana and ask again why they’re meeting in the Victorian State Library reading room. Jelka had been whispering. She’d gradually forgotten the need for quiet and by the end of what she’d been saying had offended five or six studious readers and note-takers with her first English words. Two of them have already left for parts more tranquil.
“We should have met in a cute little city café,” Suzana says. “Just another way I’ve been going wrong.”
“Back home, you can talk in a café for hours,” Jelka says. “Over here, a café lets you sit in one of their chairs as long as you’re drinking coffee or nibbling biscotti. Even if they’re not busy. I’d like to talk with you. And we can’t really speak with all these stickybeaks around us.” Another reader leaves their vicinity.
Jelka is a pretty woman. Naturally so when she was younger. Now it’s an earned beauty. Her hair is attended to by South Yarra hairdressers. She drives over forty-five minutes each way to see them every few weeks for touch-ups that cost a fortune. Her face is managed by expensive make-up. Nails and jewellery and shoes and handbags skilfully coordinated. Her breasts are her piece de resistance, almost always on display, especially when she comes to the city, Melbourne weather permitting. She got them a year ago and she’s still paying them off.
“If it’s important, we can go somewhere else. I’ve got some work I’m doing. I came here because this is the only library that has the particular book I needed to look at again. And I don’t have the whole afternoon to spare. Why don’t you tell me what you want to say? I’m listening.”
Suzana leans forward. Attentive. There is no confidante for Jelka other than Suzana. Back in what was once Yugoslavia both of them would have had extended circles of friends. For all occasions and all modes of companionship. Here in Australia, where everyone is locked into their suburban backyards and the biannual BBQ, Suzana and J
elka have to assume all of the kinds of friendship they still need.
“So …” Jelka leans forward and touches Suzana’s hand. Pulls back quickly. “So, okay. I know you said not to talk about it with anyone, but I told Ante about your plans to have a child, and he kind of went berserk. Why are they going to have children at their age when we should be having a child, and why haven’t we already had one?”
Suzana asks, “This is what you wanted to talk about?” She turns back to her books but closes them and returns to her friend. “This is the conversation, is it? It boggles the mind that people can eviscerate as easily as communicate. And then we’ll call it a pleasant chat.” The last word in English.
“What? Why be so dramatic?”
“It’s something we’re thinking about. Me and my husband. It’s not as if we can order a pizza. A baby doesn’t just show up. It’s not easy. None of it is that simple.”
“I know it’s not pizza. I’m talking about you and Jovan being together such a long time and then this sudden desire for a child. Is it that good old biological clock ticking away?” Jelka leans forward in her chair as well and they’re close enough now to talk in whispers. “I never know what you’re thinking. You always act as though no one could possibly understand your reasons, thoughts and feelings. And God, you do make me feel like I’m a bimbo some days.”
Suzana is sitting at the edge of her chair, looking at Jelka intently. “What can I say to you? This is what you want to talk about?”
Jelka says, “Yes. Because I’ll tell you the truth. I got angry after we talked on the phone the other day and you told me what you and Jovan had decided. That’s why I didn’t call you a whole week. Then when I spoke to Ante and he got angry at me for exactly the same thing I realised that I wasn’t angry with you for wanting a child. Honestly, I wish you the best with that. It’s because when I see Ante now, I think about how having a child guarantees another ten, fifteen, twenty years with this guy. Twenty, plus. Life. You have to plan for that long. Life. What would I be in twenty years after children? And there’s no way. No way. That’s what I’m thinking over and again in my head. No way. So it’s kind of obvious, but it’s the first time I’ve thought about it clearly. I’ve got to leave Ante. Don’t I?” Then she halts, still leaning forward with her feet firmly on the ground, on the edge of the library seat, searching Suzana’s eyes for an answer.
“You can’t be serious? Asking me that question.”
“I’m asking for your opinion. I know you’ve got one.”
“No. I don’t. I don’t know Ante. I’ve never even met him. All I have is your opinion.”
“I can see it in your eyes. You don’t think I see it in there? What are you, some kind of genius? Walking around with a head full of thoughts no one is entitled to ever see because they’d never understand? Tell me what you think for God’s sake!” Gradually their area in the library has emptied.
Suzana closes her teeth with a snapping sound and then opens them again. “I think you’re a drama queen. I think you don’t know how to be satisfied, let alone happy. I think in six months from now, you will have changed your mind, and will have decided that of course you’ll have Ante’s children. Because the resistance you feel isn’t about him. It’s about you and this perfect package you’ve got going on,” waving a hand at the Las Vegas Show that was Jelka Tomich, “beginning to bulge in the middle and those sculpted breasts beginning to leak. Pregnancy is simply too graphic for you. You prefer to contemplate the white of someone’s eyes. And all these beautiful fabrics you surround yourself with, this mask you apply every pitiful morning just to walk around your house, the whole song and dance of this life you want to live, will end soon enough. Then it’s down to the Frankston Target for Jelka. Then you’ll be buying durable, stretchable, boring old cotton for those babies to throw up on. That is when you come down and rejoin the rest of us, my darling little princess.” Suzana gives Jelka a stinging kiss on the cheek. Jelka is motionless. She’s never been slapped with a kiss before.
Jelka leans back into her chair, blinking. She collects herself. Stands up and gathers her many bags of treasure. Leans over and kisses the air near Suzana’s cheek. “Don’t worry about us. Friends have to give each other a bit of honesty every so often. Sometimes it’s sweet. Occasionally bitter.” And then in her Aussie accent, “It’s all good, mate.”
Suzana knows she’s offended her only friend, yet Suzana suspects that Jelka loves being talked about in this manner. Being the subject of serious contemplation thrills her. To be cast as someone worthy of consideration, even harshly, makes her feel real. What Jelka yearns for more than anything is some kind of proof of existence no one wants to give her. Instead, she’s surrounded by a reality that tells her she’s simply another woman, not remarkable in any way. No one sees she is the woman with the clear eyes gazing up into the empty blue sky, filled with her opening soul. The wondrous expansion of her unknown potential.
Suzana doesn’t think she is all that different to Jelka in her own pretensions. Isn’t the Victorian State Library her own special place, as the clothing, jewellery, perfume, make-up, shoe stores of Melbourne are for her best friend? All the ways she is deficient, remedied by the wizard-mirrors of books, making her feel she isn’t utterly alone, getting older, diminishing, more and more useless every day of her life. And these words she is trying to put down to paper, one last effort to prove to a world that is happy to go its way, with or without her. With or without Serbia and her history, with or without anything and everything that is dear to her. Trying to prove that her life is valuable, her soul worth its weight in paper, if not gold; and that the people she comes from deserve to be known—because she isn’t the one voice, the one woman. When ink is put to the page she is history and her children will speak again. If anything, Suzana thinks her own delusions are more foolish than Jelka’s Las Vegas daydreams.
A few more flakes of paint on the table. There’s also a mist of concrete so fine she’d think dust except for the taste in the back of her throat. Distant sounds of construction. The thump, thump of hammers. Bolts into walls. The metal clang of scaffolding going up. Thump, thump, thump. As sporadic as mortars. The real work was set to begin in the next week when the dome reading room will be closed, maybe for years. Suzana has seen signs giving notice that this room will not be open the next time she needs to use the State Library. There will be another place to read. She makes a pile of the books she was looking at before Jelka. One by Tolstoy. The rest are history books relating to the Ottoman Empire. She places her notebooks into her bag. Returns her special pens, black and blue, red and green, her array of pencils, into a leather case she has kept since her university days in Belgrade.
She wakes up coughing. Not sure when she wakes what the nightmare was about. Her ears are ringing. There had been a roar above her which had hurt it was so loud. Lungs full of concrete dust. Fighting for air. Surprised she can breathe easily now. Relieved it was a trick of sleep. Just a dream. What a wonderful thing—to be able to say that. Silence in the Best Western motel room. When she focuses on the sound of her breathing, the ringing in her ears doesn’t seem so loud. She looks at the digital display on the bedside clock. 3:35. About four hours sleep. She counts each hour every morning. Time crawls along as she tries to find a little more unconsciousness. The ocean outside her window shoosh-shooshes along in the black water of her thoughts. She’s too hot with the sheet and blanket and too cold with the sheet alone. Her arms and legs trickle with adrenalin. Suzana opens her eyes again. One of those clock-radios with a phone. She picks up the receiver and dials. She counts the times it rings. How many before it cuts out? She loses track and puts the phone back in its cradle when the line goes dead. Jovan is a sound sleeper. He’s not liable to wake even when there’s a car alarm going off on the street outside their bedroom window let alone the polite trills of the phone in the kitchen. She considers calling him again. It’s 3:45 in the morning. Suzana closes her eyes and a little while later finds an outgoin
g tide of sleep.
Suzana closes her eyes below the water when she is far from the surface. Her back almost touches the bottom. Exhaling a few more bubbles, she feels her shoulder blades make contact—balances on those two points. There’s a lovely interval here. A space between everything. Before and after. A dark smudge of now. As long as she can hold her breath. A minute. A minute and a half. Submerged, she is at ease and buoyant. Whole and complete. She becomes a perfect living balloon, with nothing to push or pierce her. It’s hard to stay under until all her air has been released. It leaves her with a few more seconds.
She bought a swimming outfit for the occasion. The teenager at the counter said Suzana would look good in pink with all her black hair. Black and pink is classic, the girl assured her. Suzana tried on the navy blue bikini and an olive one-piece and went for the bikini despite how pale grey her skin appeared in the mirror. The point was the feel of the water and a one-piece was too much fabric.
The girl told Suzana she looked good. A compliment she threw to anyone buying bathers. The teen saw the sceptical expression and said, ‘no, honestly, you have nice breasts. And a woman your age usually gets saggier and heavier by the year and you don’t have a bit of fat on you.’ Suzana grimaced as she thanked the blunt girl. Yes, a woman my age. That particular qualifier.
Clinging to the teen’s words as she walked from the counter to the change room and put on the navy-blue outfit so she could swim in the public pool. Even when she felt she was beyond puerile vanity, a stupid girl’s comments could obliterate every other thought for minutes, then laughing at the idea of wearing the suggested pink bikini.
Suzana holds her breath down at the bottom of the Frankston pool. She turns and begins to swim. A breaststroke across the tiles. Passing random bits and pieces. A Band-Aid. A hair clip. Some yellow sand swirling beneath her strokes. No bathtub white surfaces here. And then the arched spine and kicking for the surface. The graceful arc back. Almost impossible not to be graceful below water. Lungs screaming for oxygen and yet water burbles, a lazy stream across her ears, shoulders and face, swallowing every possible noise she might make. Above water, she’s splutters, heaving in air, and thinking too much again.