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10 July 1993
Every time I went with the miners down into the pit, I imagined what would happen if the lift broke loose. The miners felt my fear. Once, one of them put his hand on my shoulder. He wanted to console me. There are wonderful people among them. Much more than in any other profession, it seems to me.
Yesterday, the anxiety was stronger than ever. My hands were shaking, and my mouth was completely dry. Inside my cheeks, big furrows had opened which I could not wet with saliva. The lift set off with a metallic sound, like the clicking of the old-fashioned M48 rifle. The miners around me were breathing noisily down their nostrils.
It began as soon as we left the lift. First, it was the sound that frightened us. From the end of the corridor came little hisses. I looked at the miners; Ragib had red spots on his cheeks, Ibrahim caught himself by the throat, Keli’s eyes were wide and he bit his bottom lip. We listened – the hisses turned into squawks, and then we heard blows in the dust, as though heavy raindrops were falling. I thought that from the darkness a narrow carpet of grey plush had been spread with numerous vibrating humps. I was wrong: they were rats! Thousands of them. From the walls of the corridor, between the beams, from the ceiling, it seemed to me from every opening; new ones were jumping out, joining the multitude knocking against our legs. Their claws were scratching on our rubber boots; their tails were whipping our legs. It was horrendous, believe me. One miner, maybe Ragib, called on Allah to help him, and Keli, if you will excuse me, swore out loud: ‘We are all going to hell!’ I am writing it as it happened, in the raw, so that it can be better imagined.
The wooden frames of the windows were crackling as though in a fire. There was scratching, there was swaying. The ground was escaping under our feet, and deep below us, deep, deep, something inside the earth was raging. Everything was shaking in a terrible fury. It seemed to me that a huge hand had grasped the corridor and was shaking it like a matchbox. It was dreadful. An appalling roar cut through the earth and all the lamps went out. Everything was crashing down around us. Something heavy fell on my shoulders and knocked me to the ground. I heard someone screaming. Another voice, completely changed by fear or pain, screamed: ‘Mother dearest!’ People were calling for help, it was terrifying. What can a man do in an extremity which is so much greater than he is, than to call for help like a child? Then, all at once, the noise coming from under the earth stopped. The world became calm again. I was lying in the dust, in the dark. But, luckily, I was not alone; I could hear people around me. They were praying. They said their prayers quickly, as though afraid they would not have time to finish them. They wanted to put as many words as possible into one breath; then they breathed in deeply and began again. I thought I would join them, but I didn’t know one word of their Muslim prayers. For that matter, I don’t know any others either, and I only managed to remember ‘God, help me’. But I did not want to cry out loud for help, for I was afraid of destroying the harmony of their prayers, of stopping the magic they were trying to create. I have always been an atheist, but in that darkness and horror and despair, I thought: what if God really exists, what if He can really help? At the same I imagined that, if He does exist, and if He created me, then He would know why I was doing this. He would know that I was doing it solely because of fear of death, and not because of respect and gratitude. If He exists, then He would find me repulsive. Maybe precisely because of that, He would want to crush me underfoot. That is exactly what I thought, I was not myself, you must understand.
And then I heard the stamping of horses’ hooves coming from the darkness. I heard neighing too, while the stamping became louder and louder, and they came faster, galloping. I had the impression that at least ten huge horses were coming towards me. I didn’t know what to do, I couldn’t move, rocks were falling all around me, and a heavy beam was pressing down on me. I think I screamed, very loudly. And then, all at once, the same as when the tape of the recording breaks during a radio broadcast, the galloping stopped. Light came through the darkness. It brightened the palms of my hands first, which I was holding in front of me, as though I were holding a child in them. At the end of the corridor I saw a completely symmetrical circle of light, like you see in the theatre. At first I could make out only shadows, and then the scene became clear. Amazing! In the middle of the light stood a tall, thin man in a long green coat, with a large round collar and black buttons as big as a miner’s fist. He had thick, black hair, shining like coal. His face was white, like in a pantomime, his nose narrow, and his eyes did not have any whites, I saw that very well, for they were just little black balls. He bowed to me, and I screamed, because his body broke in half at the height of his chest. He tried to calm me with a smile and by gently nodding his head; he could see I was shaking with fear and some sort of chill which had overcome me. He extended his hand, his right hand, towards me without the possibility of reaching me, as he was nearly ten metres away. Yet even so, I felt his palm on my forehead. It was pleasant, warm; and I immediately stopped shaking, as agreeable tingles spread across my body, seemingly following the same paths through which the blood flows. I looked at him, with gratitude I believe, and his smile changed to a pursing of the lips, then he frowned and let out the sound: ‘Gluck auf!’ I heard it clearly, and I can say he had a pleasant voice. I didn’t know what to say, and the green man leant his head on his left shoulder and looked at me curiously. Children gaze like that: sweetly, as though he was waiting for something, and I did not know what. He smiled again, inclined his head again; while the white light around him became red. He became a black silhouette, like the knight on a chessboard, and then he disappeared. Just like that. As though he had never been there on this earth. Again prayers could be heard. I cannot remember if I heard them while the apparition stood there before me or only afterwards. I began to speak, I said ‘People,’ but no-one heard me, and only the prayers became louder. Again I spoke and again without any success at all. Just when I had given up trying to call out, a light appeared. Such happiness that was! The light was coming from the pile of stones and earth. We heard the voices of our rescuers. I could see comrades around me. Ragib lifted his head, tears were shining in his eyes. They screamed with happiness, kissed one another, cried. Of course they did: such great happiness it was. Rescue! I asked them if they had seen the green man. I repeated the question, and they just hugged me and kissed me. They were celebrating.
We came through it well; I had a bruise on my shoulder, Keli had broken his arm, and the others had only suffered shock. It was not much.
‘You saw Perkman,’ Ragib Esrefa Zukić, the oldest worker in the mine, said to me in the clinic. When he saw that I was surprised, Ragib explained to me that I had seen a djinn. And, when I asked him what a djinn was, he answered that it was a supernatural being and again he uttered that word: Perkman. Ragib told me that his father, his grandpa, had told him that Perkman does two things: he can lead you to gold or announce some sort of accident. He asked me when I had seen Perkman, and as soon as I answered him, said that that was strange behaviour for a djinn. Because, he said, Perkman had been late; the misfortune had already happened.
Finally he told me to take care, and when I asked him what to take care about, he replied, an accident, because Perkman must have been warning me about an accident. Good man, Ragib. Poor chap, a true miner. People who live by their own hands are always better than the rest.
11 July 1993
All my life I have avoided writing a diary. I’m not capable of it. Besides, I was afraid that in my old age the pages would sadden me. It would have seemed to me that I had wasted my life. Because of that it was better, I thought, to remember the days I had used up in the way I wanted to, for my nostalgia to make them seem better. But now, for the first time in my life, something completely strange had happened to me. Something worth writing down.
I had to record this experience. It was my first meeting with the supernatural. So it was right to put it down on paper, and then to take my time
thinking about it. I had once read about how witches looked after the volumes which they called ‘spirit books’, which had to have black covers and be written by the author’s own hand. My notebook certainly fulfils these requirements.
There are not many people left in the town to whom I can relate my unusual encounter. I cannot tell just anyone about Perkman. Maybe they would think I had gone mad; as it is, they already look at me strangely. I can tell Ahmed, because he believes in such things.
My Anđela would believe me; maybe she could even explain some of it to me. She knew how to calm me down. Mirna would, for sure, listen to me and absorb every word. Even though such a long time has passed, it seems to me that they are still here. That at any moment the door will open. I often think like this. I have to, because it’s so hard to think about solitude. Am I really alone?
Today a new editor was appointed at the radio station. I don’t know the young man, but it seems to me he is honourable. He gave me ten days off, to free myself from the stress of the accident. While he was talking, through the open window the thunder of cannons was coming from the distance.
12 July 1993
Ahmed understood everything. We sat in his office, in the town library which he has been managing for twenty years. For the same number of years, at the same table, we have been playing chess and sipping our drinks. We still often play now, although without any drinks, because of the war, and the destitution. But, because of this, we play with greater passion than ever! We play in order to escape from this world. The safe logic of chess calms us. It seems to me that I have started to understand the game just as it should be understood. I no longer look at the figures separately; I can look at the board as though it were the world, like an infinite series of possibilities. Ever since I understood that, I have regularly beaten Ahmed.
When I told him about the happenings in the mine, he didn’t even ask one question. He only told me not to be afraid, that it was true that Perkman predicted misfortune, but that it was possible to avoid the misfortune if you took his warning and advice seriously.
Ahmed also told me that I would meet Perkman again. When that happened, it would be enough just to return his greeting and to put to him any question I wished.
From the wardrobe, where he keeps his private books, he took out a fat pile of mimeographed notes with the title ‘Papers from the Symposium on the Mining and Metallurgy of Bosnia and Herzegovina from Prehistoric Times until the Beginning of the XXth Century’ and said to me ‘I think you will find some answers there.’ That is what he advised me, before calmly beginning to set up the chess pieces.
I have known Ahmed for a long time, a whole eternity, but he always succeeds in surprising me.
13 July 1993
I read Ahmed’s mimeographed notes. In the chapter ‘On the Origins of the Belief in the Spirit of the Pit, Perkman, in Our Country’, Vlajko Palavestra writes that in the villages around the Bosnian mines there exists a specific belief in a wild man, a pit-giant, ‘bergmajstor’, most often known as ‘Perkman’.
Dr Palavestra chronicled the testimony of several miners. In Kreševo, an old man had related that Perkman originated from the soul of a good man, ‘that’s the soul of a miner who was killed, who comes to work, to help us and make the ore softer’.
The miner Jure Glavočević testified to his experience in 1909. I shall copy it down exactly as it is written:
‘One night we went outside, we had a rest hour. And there where we had been working, we forgot something, and as I was the youngest I had to go and get it. I went into the pit and I heard something banging. I run away outside, and an old miner says to me: It was the same with me. I go down into the pit, and a man in a green uniform is standing there in the middle of the tracks, and puts out his hand to take my lamp. But I had heard from the old people that if I meet someone, I must not give him anything from my hand. I put the lamp down on the tracks, he takes it, but I cannot go. He climbs up into the framework of the pit; he looks round at everything, puts the lamp down on the tracks and disappears. He just waved his hand at me, when he left. Later the directors said: The pit will be closed! The next day, everything was destroyed, the whole pit. That man is called the Earth Man, but we call him Perkman.’
14 July 1993
Today, in passing, I heard something I could have easily missed: I heard that in the Music School they are torturing people. I find that hard to believe. At the beginning of the war they were saying that in the football stadium a prison camp for Serbian prisoners had been built, but that was soon shown to be a lie. There are a lot of lies; it is hard to separate the truth from them.
Close to the Music School is the library, next to it is the theatre, and across the road from it is the town cafe. I used to sit there often with Anđela, while we were still talking about getting married. One night, I was hoping that the orchestra would play the song ‘You mean so much in my life, dear’ by The Red Corals. I wanted this so much that I had already formed the whole scene in my head. I almost convinced myself that it had really happened. But I was disillusioned by the kitsch in that imaginary scene. In it I am dancing dressed in an elegant black suit, like a nobleman from a television series, Anđela is wearing a beautiful white dress, and the orchestra is made up of musicians smiling with all their teeth showing. A completely false picture, because I remember very well, at that time, we were all dressed the same way – in grey or brown suits. Not to mention the teeth of the musicians. That’s how it was at that time. Privation. Then again, there was beauty too.
Maybe the comparison is exaggerated, but for similar reasons I can’t bring myself to believe in the story about tortured people in the Music School either. Scenes of violent abuse in the practice rooms; next to the instruments, under the portraits of the composers; while the tormentors stamp all over the music books – such scenes make the spectacle exaggerated, even false.
In the mimeographed notes, I found mention of the belief of Serbian miners in the ‘Silver Emperor’ who sits at the bottom of the mine. One legend says that, when the Turks wanted to take all the silver from the mine, the spirit called upon the rivers Danube and Sava to help. The rivers flooded the valley and so saved the treasure. According to the belief, the ‘Silver Emperor’ has two helpers, Manul and Dagudin.
15 July 1993
A strange man with blood-shot eyes came to see me. He knocked so gently that I hardly heard him. When I opened the door, he was standing right in the doorway, tightly squeezing the collar of the black coat around his thin neck. I was frightened when I saw that yellow face with huge, blood-shot eyes which stopped me from seeing whether he had a nose, mouth or hair. The direct gaze that he directed straight into my eyes made me afraid that gaze might suck them out. Blood flooded my face and my throat contracted. He looked at me and said that I would never be happy here. As soon as he uttered these words, he turned on his heel and went off down the stairs. Not wanting to watch him go, I quickly shut the door. I thought I would find it hard to forget him, but strangely, last night I slept well.
Ahmed was sad when I related this to him.
I ask myself what he wanted to tell me. Here? Where?
16 July 1993
Karl Gustav Jung noted that a spirit is an active, rapid, agile being who revives, stimulates, animates, inflames with passion and inspires. A spirit, Jung wrote, is a dynamic principle which creates an antithesis to inactivity and movement of matter. It is the contrast between life and death.
Martin Ebon in his small book ‘Exorcism’ states that, from childhood onwards, Jung met spirits every day. He was closest to a spirit named Philemon, whom he described as a being with the form of an old person, the horns of a bull and wings of a kingfisher.
‘Philemon, like the other characters in my visions, clearly let me feel that in my psyche there are things which I do not create, things which appear by themselves and which have their own life. Philemon represents a force which is not me. In my visions I talked to him and he told me things of which I was not aw
are. I understood very well that he was the one who was talking, and not I.’
I have written it here exactly as Jung noted it down.
17 July 1993
Preparations for the opening of the mine took a long time in our town. A report on the amount of coal in this region was made by the Austrian spy Božić, standard-bearer of the marine regiment. In 1841 the mine administrator, D. Wolf, investigated the presence of coal in the ground, but returned to Vienna after arguing with the other members of his group. To this day, the reason for the disagreement has not been explored. After him, in 1846, Baron Ransonet ascertained that the whole of the central Bosnian basin had an abundance of large coal reserves. In 1879, a group of geologists, among them E. Mojsilowich, E. Tietze, A. Bittner and Professor Hoernes, made the first geological map of this area.
Finally, the mine was opened on the fifth of May, 1880, registered to the Viennese firm ‘Kohlen Industria Verein’. By 1895, 295 miners and six machines of 200 horsepower were working in the coal mine, extracting 620 thousand tonnes of coal.
Right next to the mine a settlement, or colony, was established, which in 1905 contained 40 workers’ houses, seven homes for supervisors, two pretty houses for office workers, a small hospital and a group bathing-place. For a long time the Germans remained in control of the business, and the names of the first directors have been recorded: Richter, Karbon and Poech.
Now a new column of refugees has come into town. Trucks, buses, horses and carts and muddy automobiles passed slowly through the streets. The people in the vehicles did not speak to one another, I noticed instantly; for they were looking intently at the town. I think they want to take in every street, window, passer-by, and to compare them with all that they have left behind. In return, the passers-by hid their glances.
Seven Terrors Page 3