Seven Terrors

by Selvedin Advic

  Mirna waited patiently for me to finish my preparations. I went back to the table and all at once we began to talk, as though we had accidentally tuned into the right frequency. She talked about Sweden, their big wide libraries where the books are arranged like sculptures, she boasted how she too could walk around in winter weather with wet hair and not catch cold, and she told me a story about the most nervous animal in the world – the Yarva, which cannot tolerate another Yarva within a hundred square kilometres. I didn’t say much; mainly I just threw in comments between her sentences about how different it was here now, compared to before the war, and at the same time, somehow the same; and yet, of course, very different from Sweden.

  We talked for a long time like that, maybe two whole hours, and all the while I was waiting for the moment when she would finally mention the reason for her visit. It seemed to me that she consciously procrastinated and kept quickly trying to invent a new theme, just to fill up every last piece of silence. She told me how in Sweden she avoided people from our country, that they were divided into national clubs where they hugged one another to the sounds of turbo-folk, and fought against a background of nationalist patriotic songs.

  Suddenly she asked me, ‘Do you remember my father?’

  Of course I remembered Aleksa, we were friends. I knew him much better than I knew her.

  I nodded my head, and she asked me a new question, ‘Did he drink a lot?’

  Of course I remembered that Aleksa drank a lot more than he should have. Just before the war, when the disaster could already be foreseen, his thirst suddenly began to grow. In the beginning he tried to hide it. He would go to the kafana, hurriedly, in a business-like manner, greeting the guests with a small inclination of his head, and he would order a double brandy. As soon as the waitress put the glass on the table, as soon as it clinked on the wood, Aleksa would grab it, swallow the alcohol down his throat in one gulp, put the glass down on the bar with a ringing sound, and depart. This time without any greeting. All that in a few seconds: tick-tock-tack and outside. Afterwards we learned that he repeated the same ritual in a whole series of different kafanas.

  As soon as he left the first, he went across the road to the next one, and then he went down the boulevard, went into the kafanas he found there, called in at the deserted hotel bar, and from there went over to the kafana at the bus station, then the little grill place where taxi drivers warmed themselves; from there to a few more cafes where at night techno music was buzzing, then to the Lovers of Small Animals Club, then the theatre bar, the pizza place, and the billiard club; he went down the main street, drank one more at the kiosk on the marketplace, and in the express-restaurant. After two hours, and having made a complete circle, he returned to the first kafana. He stood in the doorway, blowing on his hands to warm them, as though he wanted to give the impression that he had endured a hard working day. He greeted the waiters loudly and heartily ordered a double brandy, then sipped it slowly, already completely drunk. We quickly discovered what he was doing, but no-one let on. His manoeuvring to quench his monstrous thirst we called ‘Aleksa’s Brandy Circuit’. I didn’t see him often during the war, but I doubt he was able to break such a strong habit.

  I didn’t tell her all that. I only mentioned that during the war there had not been enough alcohol for anyone to ‘drink a lot’.

  ‘Aleksa just drank a bit, on occasion, like all of us…’

  That is exactly what I said to her. I thought an answer like that would please her, but it did not. Her nostrils quivered. I asked her why that interested her.

  ‘I am interested in everything to do with my father. That’s why I came here.’

  She inhaled deeply. Quickly pulling herself together, she let the shine come back to her eyes and the smile to her face, and found some theme that was, for her, agreeable. I think she was saying something about how she had seen a Monet exhibition in Stockholm and how he had been, from that time on, her favourite painter. She loved to see how light can change appearances, she said. I did not join in the conversation, and I don’t I think she expected me to.

  I was thinking about Aleksa; making a quick inventory of my memories. He was a good man. That is, of course, the main thing. His name was Aleksandar Ranković and he did not like it. He did not like being connected to the notorious chief of police who dared to eavesdrop even on Tito, so that immediately after being introduced as Aleksa Ranković, he quickly added: ‘Aleksa, as in Šantić, the famous writer’. He wore a moustache which he trimmed every three years, on the very first day of spring. He liked to drink good homemade brandy, and since a person only comes across that very rarely in his life, he was forced to drink ordinary grape brandy; never beer – for it provoked depression in him. When alcohol put him in a good mood he would whisper the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam or hum the old pop song, ‘You Mean So Much in My Life, Dear’. With a glass in his hand he liked to talk about the erotic episodes in the books of Skender Kulenović and Hamza Humo, and to explain why blondes with long legs and knees slightly turned in on each other have the most erotic walk. And that was it…as much as I could remember… While Mirna was explaining her recently-acquired passion, I was thinking how many things I did not know about Aleksa – the name of his wife, whether he had brothers or sisters, what he was afraid of, whether his parents were alive, what he was like when he became angry and what it was that could most easily make him furious… I had never visited him; I did not even know where he lived. I had never seen him cry, he had never sought help from me, nor did I know which people he liked or did not like in the editorial office… Oh yes, I did know that…

  He was a much-appreciated radio reporter. His reports won prizes at the radio festivals and the listeners liked his simple anecdotes about life. Aleksa found interesting characters in factories, in remote villages, suburbs, town settlements: model-makers who fashioned Renaissance buildings from matches, people who made biplanes out of rubbish, collectors of rare butterflies, married couples with ten children who lived in ten square metres of living space, gatherers of myths, former beauties, parapsychologists, transformed criminals, professional miracle-workers, incomprehensible gluttons, fanatical verse-mongers, renowned lovers, pickpockets… You must know this sort of report; many journalists try their hand at it. Yet Aleksa’s were different from the rest because he truly liked his characters. He did not fawn upon them, or, God forbid, ridicule them, he talked to them as though he was really interested in their lives, as though he was introducing his friends. The listeners called him ‘Our dear Aleksa’, they wrote poems to him, sent birthday and New Year felicitations, made enquiries about his health. I think they also liked the way he spoke in the Ekavian dialect; his Serbian accent probably reminded them of the popular television series A Better Life and The Hot Wind. He revelled in their attention and he repaid them with the same enthusiasm. When the war came, he stopped filming reports. A wartime schedule was created, refugees came into the town, only reports from the front were broadcast; testimonials about crimes, notifications of restrictions on electricity and water reductions. There were not even any weather reports. There was no place any more for stories about ordinary people. There were no longer any ordinary people.

  I remembered that at the very beginning of the war Aleksa talked a lot, but no longer in a measured way. Once upon a time he had used words carefully, weighed them on his tongue, tried to find the most favourable, even when he was engaged in an incidental conversation; something which I used to like very much. But, during the war, he began to speak quickly, as though he was afraid someone would stop him before he could finish his train of thought. He cursed the national political parties, unfailingly emphasized how those in the leftist party were the worst, that Karadžić and Mladić had ruined his life. At that time, everyone wanted to speak about their own opinions and didn’t have any patience for anyone else’s. But that talkativeness did not last very long, all at once he shut up, and mostly just listened to others and nodded his head.

  And then
Mirna was talking…with no trace of Aleksa’s accent, again about Sweden, about the cold wind and the cold people, the drunk boats which sailed at the weekend, about tunnels for frogs, lakes and forests. While she was talking she didn’t look me in the eye, but instead at a spot between my eyebrows, which made me feel awkward. All at once she stopped, in the middle of a sentence, and said she had to go. While she was tying her trainers in the hallway, I saw that the hair on the back of her head was wet with sweat.3 She pulled the bow of her shoelaces tight, straightened her trouser legs and said,

  ‘My father was looking for ghosts.’

  Then she looked up and asked me, ‘Do you believe in ghosts?’

  Naturally, I was confused, not expecting such a question on a winter’s morning. It seemed to me to be the kind of question to be asked around midnight. But she did not wait for an answer; she already had a new question: ‘Can I come tomorrow?’

  Again she didn’t wait for an answer, as she descended the steps.

  Only afterwards, I realised I should have told her that I do believe, not only in ghosts, but also in vampires, werewolves, apparitions, fairies, witches, giants, magicians, astrologers, djinns, dwarfs, meleke and angels, azdaje and dragons, Satan, Lucifer, Iblis, Behemoth, Beelzebub, Astaroth, Gabriel, Azrael, Asmodai, Dzibril, the Holy Grail, sirens, satyrs, unicorns, centaurs, minotaurs, the whole of Borges’s fantastic zoo, the Bogeyman, the Golem, Puss in Boots, Baba Yaga… I should have added that I believe in life after death, Džennet and Paradise, Džehennem and Hell, the Seven Aztec Heavens, Valhalla, Ragnarok, the Eternal Hunting Ground, Hades, Bosch’s paintings…and that I have no doubt about the usefulness of Dervish rituals, exorcism, spiritualism, alchemy, the Hodža’s notes, cabals, atonements, spell casting, reading tea leaves and coffee grains and animals’ intestines, palmistry… That I believe in all magic tricks, levitation, sawing a woman in half, the materialisation of a litter of rabbits from a hat, mass hypnotism, suggestion… And especially, with all my heart, my soul and the remainder of my reason, I believe in reincarnation! For if I didn’t believe in reincarnation, in a second chance, I think that depression would suffocate me. As I’ve already mentioned, it hasn’t been easy for me since I started to live alone. It has been hard for me ever since I realised that life will never be beautiful again, as it was before. That no psychology, advice, temptation, folk dancing, or black magic exists which would allow me to once again be happy with my wife. But enough of that for now, for I am in no condition to explain this all to you. But I promise, before the end of this story, I shall relate everything in detail. I just have to be better prepared.

  * * *

  She did indeed come back the next morning. In a plastic bag she carried a bottle of red wine and a note book with a black leather cover.

  ‘I’ve come to drink and talk with you. Of course, if I succeed in getting you to start talking. It’s easier when there is conversation.’

  That frightened me. At that time I didn’t like to talk about myself. If I opened my heart to someone, I thought, it would be like officially announcing my condition, as though it will never change. Of course, I was ashamed as well (and you will find out why – the time for that will come too).

  ‘Do you remember why I called you?’

  I nodded my head. I was lying, but I was ashamed to admit I had forgotten.

  ‘Help me to find out what happened to my father.’

  Like everyone else, I thought that Aleksa had gone to Germany, to meet her and her mother.

  ‘Isn’t Aleksa in Germany?’

  ‘No, I haven’t seen him since the beginning of ‘92, when my mother and I left. In March ‘93, we received a short message from him. He wrote that he was well, that we were not to worry about him and that there were still good people in the world. Everything else was questions: how were we, did we have enough money, had I succeeded in enrolling in school, whether Mama was taking her medicine. That was the last we heard from him.’

  ‘I thought Aleksa had been able to get to Germany. Don’t you know what happened to him?’

  ‘I don’t know, no-one could say anything about it. Not one little bit of information, until I received this.’

  From her bag, she pulled out the notebook and put it on the table.

  ‘You know, father had many notebooks like this, but he would not let me open them. But I still did it, secretly, because I was curious. I never found anything particularly interesting in them, just notes to do with work, written quickly, in abbreviations, often in a completely deformed handwriting. He recorded in a hurry, like journalists often do. But this notebook is completely different.’

  I put my hand out for the notebook, but she didn’t relax her hold on it. Her palms were shaking on the covers, and she was looking at the centre of the table, like playing a children’s game intended to invoke ghosts.

  ‘I remember how he helped us to pack our things. You know, he was never a particularly neat man. But that day, he came into my room and began to fold up a shirt. He worked with special care, slowly doing up the buttons, smoothing out the wrinkles from the material, and then lightly folding it, as though following some plan. Several times he began again from the beginning, until he had finally made a truly perfect square. He reached out for another shirt, but I told him it wasn’t necessary, that he would mix up my things, that I could do it myself… I kept on working and I thought he had left the room. But he was standing by the bed and watching every move I made. I held out a T-shirt to him and he took it, quickly, thankfully.’

  When she stopped speaking I too had a chance to say something.

  I could have told her how my wife came one morning for her things. With her was a man. It was uncomfortable for him too, and as he stood in the hallway, he pushed his hands into his pockets then took them out again straight away, making sure not to look at either me or her. For that reason, I looked at both of them. She was more beautiful than ever, and he was manly and strong, with wide shoulders and a strong chin – just as I had always wanted to look. I liked this sort of man, and she used to say she didn’t like them. Now it seemed she was not telling me the truth; or maybe, simply, after everything, she was looking for someone completely different from me. I would have done the same thing. I went into the room and waited for her to finish. I heard them whispering in the hallway, then the lock clicking.

  Slowly I came out of the room, locked the door after them and hurried to the bedroom to see for myself that her side of the wardrobe was empty. But inside the flat there were still a lot of things which could remind me of her. For instance, there was the pair of panties that I had most liked to see her wearing. I had hidden them, because I expected that she would come for the rest of her things one day. I didn’t think of it as stealing; I bought them for her and had to persuade her to wear them, while she tried to resist, claiming that thongs were extremely uncomfortable. And so I imagined that she wouldn’t mind if I kept them with me. Yes, I know, I am calculating, pathetic, egoistic, cowardly…a true modern hero. Maybe this, too, will interest you. At that time I suspected I was becoming impotent, because I looked at all women, no matter how beautiful, only in the eyes. Yet the fact that I constantly imagined my wife’s body consoled me. I tried to remember every one of our acts of love, so that every movement, sigh, grimace, even the slightest little curve and bend, were imprinted deeply into my memories. But no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t bring back many memories, only a few short sequences; one wrinkled nostril, two ways of pushing her hair from her forehead, three sighs, one exceptionally beautiful groan…

  I did not, of course, relate all this to Mirna, I only said, ‘Aleksa was a good man,’ and immediately thought I should not have used the past tense.

  Quickly I added, ‘Shall we drink some wine? It must be room temperature by now.’

  She shook her head.

  ‘We don’t have time. I have to go, and you have to read.’

  She took her hands away from the notebook. On the cover, the imprint of her damp palm
s was still visible. She got up from the chair to put on her jacket and I jumped up from mine, like a recruit when an officer comes into the room.

  While she was tying her laces she said to me, ‘I’ll come again tomorrow. Please, read the notebook. There’s not much… Then we shall talk.’

  When I returned to the room, the CD had reached the end. I had the sudden desire to lie down on the bed and to sleep for at least two months, but the notebook was lying on the table. It seemed to me as though it was the centre of the whole flat and that you could see it from every angle. I opened it slowly, as though I was expecting a Jack-in-the box to be pressed between the covers. Yet when I opened it, I realised it wasn’t a journalist’s notebook at all: neat rows of sentences awaited me, spaced with regular right angles and letters, slightly inclined forward and almost written in a scholastic manner. You can see for yourself…when I got the notebook the first page was blank. The second began with the date…