Seven Terrors

by Selvedin Advic

  Yet it only took until the next evening for me to have had enough of everything. I hated the customers in the kafana, the staff, the posters on the walls, the ashtrays, the newspaper stand, the air refresher, the narrow cupboards, the choice of music, the shape of the glasses, the empty Complaints Book, the calendar, the lamps, the free postcards and the football club scarf displayed behind the bar, the tiles, the panelling, every crevice, the mirror. I apologize if I’ve forgotten something that I hated more than these things already mentioned. Like a gas bottle with a weak valve, I sat in the corner, drank, and watched people. They had completely filled up the little café-bar, the walls were bursting. Some strange anger, like I had never felt before, completely consumed me. My jaws were stiff with its force. I tried to discern where the anger came from, and I think I can even put it into percentages:

  50% alcohol

  +

  10% exposure to stress

  +

  10% physical and psychological weakness

  +

  10% fear of solitude

  +

  5% fear of the future

  +

  5% bad day for weather forecasters

  =

  Outbreak of senseless yet unstoppable anger.

  I shouted: ‘Fuck you all!’

  No-one noticed me, so I broke my glass on the floor and yelled again, so loudly this time that my eye sockets hurt;

  ‘Fuck you all!’

  At last they all looked at me. The waiter came up with a sympathetic smile, and I swung my unsteady arm at him. The slap threw his head right back. Someone turned the music off; strong arms took hold of me and conveyed me outside. I struggled, with no success. The bouncers were laughing and jokingly trying to calm me down as though I were an agitated boy. The short owner of the café-bar stood before me. His five minutes had arrived. I was his Oscar, his Grammy award, his Olympic gold; I was a substitute for the glances of love-sick girls, the cries of admiring men, ovations reverberating in the sport stadium, the chanting at rock concerts… I was the Grail for him; Nazi gold; a gold Diners Club card. Sensually, he closed his eyes while he gave me two smacks across my face: elegant, noisy and juicy. I saw the rapture in his eyes – clear, one hundred per cent, unclouded by anything: multivitamin-induced, absolutely natural, super adrenalin satisfaction. He was shining like a magnificent comet separating two epochs. It was an unforgettable experience to be a part of that. After the punches he wiped his little hands on his trousers, smoothed his hair and deeply sighed. For a moment I was afraid he would say: ‘These slaps hurt me more than you’, but he did not, he said something even worse:

  ‘This is for your own good. Go home and sober up, and we’ll forget everything that happened. You can come back here, but don’t let this happen again.’

  He knew how lonely I was! He knew that his café-bar was the only place where I could meet people! He had smelt my own fear of loneliness! The realisation of that hurt me much more than any blow. It hurt me that my fear was so conspicuous, that it could be read like an open book. I wanted to tell him he was wrong, that he didn’t know me at all, that I could easily be alone, totally and forever.

  Those three had gone back into the bar, and I had stayed where I was as further entertainment for the kafana public. An icy wind had taken over from the slapping, entered into my head and added to the displacement of my already perverse thoughts. I heard a car horn. Ekrem leant out of the window of his taxi and called loudly for me to get in. I don’t know how much of the performance he had seen, but he only remarked, ‘It seems, neighbour, that Ekrem’s famous sour soup would do you good.’

  As soon as I got into the car, the familiar surroundings helped me to feel a little calmer. I had often used Ekrem’s services, because I had never passed my driver’s test. I don’t remember ever seeing him worried; he seemed to be able to find an adequate solution to any problem. There was a time when the newspapers were full of stories of attacks on taxi drivers. All the drivers in town were anxious and had begun to arm themselves. At the taxi rank they would compare whose measures of protection were the most efficient, and then asked Ekrem what weapon he had obtained. Calmly, he answered that in the boot of the car he had the handle of a shovel. When one of them observed that the attackers would be able to kill him three times over before he had time to get to the boot, he replied

  ‘Maybe they can; but when Ekrem finally gets to the boot at last…’

  While we were eating the soup, he asked me, ‘Not easy without the missus, is it?’

  I made no answer; presuming he could see by the state of me that it was not much fun. He seemed to expect just such a response, because he immediately began expounding the advantages of a bachelor life. I shall try to reconstruct his theory.

  ‘I have been married three times and besides my wives I’ve had numerous lovers. I just decided one day not to tie myself down any more. There’s going to be no more love for me. I give to no-one, and ask nothing from anyone. And since that time, I am a new man, born again. I visit my former wives, I go to see the children, I have a lover, but I don’t allow any one of them to have coffee in my apartment, much less to sleep overnight. Understand?’

  His apartment seemed a cold place, bare like a furniture salon. He had two armchairs, a chair, a closet and carpet. And nothing else, not one object, newspaper, piece of paper. Nothing. I was freezing, my head was ringing with the smacks, and my forehead was burning, my ears ringing. But Ekrem did not expect an answer.

  ‘I wouldn’t change my single life for anything. I make all my own decisions, right or wrong. I do only what I want and only have to look after myself. If I have to satisfy my bodily needs, you know what I mean; there are heaps of women around. If a man is lazy, there are always whores, and every video shop has plenty of porn.’

  He imagined my questions and gave answers to them. While he spoke, he gesticulated wildly with his hands; probably not knowing what to do with them in the absence of the steering wheel.

  ‘I make sure I don’t fall in love. While my first wife was in the maternity ward, I brought my mistress home. I had to, understand? Not because of the sex, but because I had begun to realise how much I was afraid for her. A clever man doesn’t need that.’

  I remained silent, so he put his hand on my shoulder, waited patiently for me to lift up my head from the plate and then uttered the concluding remark:

  ‘The main rule is that you do not attempt to fill the emptiness that is left after one woman leaves. You have to turn away from your old life and make a completely new one. Just for you, like you want it! Understand?’

  At that moment I understood nothing. I only felt confused, as though everything in me had changed places. I clenched my jaw tightly, so that it wouldn’t start to shake from the cold that had come over me. It was as though I had stepped out into a storm, which had seeped into my head and mixed up every sensible thought. All sorts of things occurred to me; I even thought about suicide. Why not, I had enough reasons? The cook at the French court in the seventeenth century, François Vatel, had killed himself simply because he had not been able to secure fish from the North Sea for a feast. And I was lonely, desperate, humiliated: which are obviously much more serious reasons for suicide.

  * * *

  I chose an easier way – I decided not to leave my apartment any more. If I was destined to be alone, then I really shall be. Just as generals sacrifice the infantry, so I gave away the whole outside world in order to keep my honour. I shut myself in my room, because only there could I keep the remainder of my pride. The thin walls of the new building protected me from the remainder of the town. But, not for one moment did I consider going away.

  Quite simply, I didn’t have the strength for a new life. Besides which, I couldn’t imagine that it would be any better for me anywhere else. Why would some different town be kinder towards me?9 Fully convinced of that fact, I stayed for nine months and three days in bed.

  That was how it was… I hope it’s now somewhat clearer h
ow momentous, difficult and stressful my renewed encounter with the town was for me. There I was, walking bundled up in my coat and scarf through the dead of night. It was past midnight: infrequent voices echoed, footsteps crunched on the snow, a train in the distance murmured dully like a waterfall. I heard one young man saying confidingly to his friend, ‘And I was so happy I peeled like an orange’. I saw the night watchman dozing in his kiosk, under a calendar filled with pictures of penguins. I came across a girl with a white fur cap on her head who was talking to a Mercedes. I heard the homeless people in their manholes talking in their sleep. I walked quickly, so that no-one would think I was just out for a stroll. I wanted it to look like I was returning from work, from a night shift, that I was hurrying home where chicken soup and a warm family were waiting for me.10

  All at once I found myself in front of the Music School. I certainly hadn’t intended to end up there, I am sure of that, and it wasn’t a question of habit either, for I seldom walked that way. Without understanding how it happened, I suddenly found myself there, as though I had been teleported, put down in the school yard. The building at that time looked like the kind of House of Horrors Tim Burton would design. A damaged street light flashed every few seconds, throwing the shadows of a poplar tree across the façade, as if it was drawing the building’s blood. The wind was screaming like an over-full vacuum cleaner. By day, the school was tame, even merry, coloured blue, which harmonized nicely with the orange façade of the day-care centre across the road. On one window of the kindergarten a sun made of gold paper was shining. I imagined the guard watching from the entrance the children at play, smoking his cigarette and twirling his keys around his fingers while his colleagues in the basement beat up the prisoners. A very possible picture, and not at all exaggerated. I had seen many similar, desperately disproportionate and unpleasant contrasts during the war.11 I found them very hard to endure…

  I returned home, tired. Sitting on the chair, I thought about how I could help Mirna but failed to think of anything. I had no sort of influence in the town, and I didn’t even know anyone who had.12

  And then my headache arrived. It did not behave as it had led me to expect – with pressure in my eyes and the skin on my forehead stretching. The pain came like a blow and stayed like that, just as powerful. I turned on the light and tried to find some kind of tablet to lessen the pain. But without success; it had been a long time since my apartment contained anything capable of helping me.

  I lay awake all night. I can’t remember what I was doing in the morning when Mirna came; most probably drinking coffee and pretending to wake myself up.13

  From the door she said, ‘You have to help me.’ And then quickly added, ‘Please.’

  My thoughts incoherent from sleeplessness, I asked, ‘What happened?’

  ‘Today we have to go to the apartment.’

  She walked two steps ahead of me. She hadn’t wanted to wait for me to tie my shoelaces, so snow was leaking into my shoes. We moved along beside the wall of the big prison, situated almost in the centre of town. From the top of the square watch tower a guard was observing us. Presumably he should have been looking inside, and not outside. Who was he guarding? When Mirna stopped all at once in front of a building, I nearly walked into her. She lifted her head towards the windows. Like Mustafa.

  ‘That’s where you were living?’ I asked.

  ‘Aha, on the third floor.’

  ‘So, shall we?’

  ‘I can’t, you have to understand. It’s hard for me; I can’t bear the thought that strangers are living in my apartment. I had a nightmare like that in my childhood. I dreamt I woke up in the morning, and mum and dad weren’t there with me, instead there were some completely unknown people. After dreams like that, I used not to open my eyes because I was afraid it was still happening. You go by yourself, say you’re a cousin, whatever you like. But, please, see who is in there. I’ll wait for you here.’

  What could I do? She was persuasive, and I was confused. In front of the building, bundled up in big thick jumpers and crowned with even bigger woollen caps, two women were sitting on small wooden stools, knitting. During the war people had started to sit in front of their lobbies, either from fear or from necessity in order to keep one another under surveillance. I had thought that habit had ended after the peace accord, but obviously these two old women didn’t want to stop their companionship. I had to pass between them in order to go into the building. With one accord they lifted their heads from their knitting and looked me up and down, quickly but thoroughly.

  The lift was not working, I walked up to the third floor and found the door on which was written Aleksa Ranković. The once-white door was completely dirty, covered with a disgusting scum like a scab on a wound. I pressed the door bell, but it didn’t work. I decided to knock, clenched my teeth and quickly hit the wood twice with my fist. The sound was dull, as though the door was upholstered or even, if that is not too far-fetched a thought, as though I was hitting the back of some large animal. There was no answer. I went closer to the door, and pricked my ears. Silence. But this was not a normal silence. This was inhabited. Something was living in it. It had composed itself and was holding its breath. I cannot explain, but that is what I felt – something, full of anger, hatred. That it was alive, but also dead, at the same time. It seems difficult to understand, but that is truly what I felt. And I was certain I was not mistaken. I wanted to knock once more, made my fingers into a fist, lifted up my hand, came close to the door. But straight away I let my hand fall and hid it behind my back. I was afraid my fist would sink into the board and that that thing from the silence on the other side would grab it. The horror of this thought was magnified by a sudden darkness in the vestibule. That is not an unusual happening, and there was no magic involved, just the timing-out of the automatic light switch. Yet, this explanation did not calm me at all. The darkness was appalling. It pressed down on me like thousands of wet, plush curtains. It smelt of dampness, of some terrible illness, or the squat toilets at old railway stations. With my hands I searched the walls, slapped them with my palms, looking for that switch; but it was nowhere. I could take no more. I rushed down the stairs, slipped down the banisters, banged into the walls and came to a stop exactly in front of the two old women on their stools. From one of the woollen heaps a voice broke the silence:

  ‘What’s chasing you, dear child?’

  I murmured some kind of greeting in response, pulled my head between my shoulders and ran off around the corner of the building.

  Mirna was standing next to a perfectly executed snowman.

  ‘And?’ she asked with a lovely smile.

  ‘There’s nobody,’ I answered, trying to catch my breath.

  She cooled her forehead on the snowman’s cheek.

  ‘What do you mean nobody?’ The smile had disappeared completely, as though wiped away.

  ‘Fine and dandy. The doorbell doesn’t work, I knocked twice, and no-one appeared.’

  ‘Promise me you’ll try again tomorrow,’ she said, taking me by the hand.

  I hoped she wouldn’t notice the sweat on my palm.

  ‘I will, no worries,’ I promised.

  ‘Then I’ll see you again,’ she freed my hand and started off down the street.

  ‘Where?’ I shouted after her.

  ‘At the same time, next to the snowman.’

  Fuck the snowman. I hoped the sun would finally come out tomorrow and melt it. But there didn’t seem much chance of that, for the sky was a grey, metallic colour and it seemed completely impermeable, so that even the sun couldn’t get through it. An icy wind was drying the snow, turning it into dust, picking it up, twisting it around and throwing it into people’s eyes. Passers-by were walking quickly, heads lowered, to avoid the cold crystals. The town was depressing, sleepy and hung-over. At midday. I thought how I hadn’t actually missed much in nine months. And three days.

  At that point, I decided to start the search at the town radio station. A logica
l decision, you will agree. Aleksa spent a lot of time on the radio. And so did I, once upon a time…14

  Desolation met me at the radio station. At reception there was an empty coffee cup, in the office the only things moving were the screen savers on the computers, in the studio WinAmp was changing MP3s by itself. Like in those post-apocalyptic films. But I knew that Mirza would have managed to survive even the end of the world. I found him in his office, a little room full of old radios, tape recorders, gramophones, televisions, vacuum cleaners, irons and some very hard to recognise equipment which had been waiting decades to be repaired. Cables were hanging from the ceiling, and he was pushing his way through them in his white clogs. Mirza is the oldest worker at the radio station; he claims to be one of the founders, although he retracts that statement as soon as someone mentions pensions. Because of his time-honoured status he thought he had ownership rights to the firm. He is known by the quite serious claim that without him there would be no programme.

  ‘Until I lift up the regulator, nothing goes to air!’

  When technological advances finally arrived at the town radio station, Mirza was shocked at the introduction of a DJ show in which the young men controlled the programming and worked at the mixing desk at the same time. He never adopted digital technology, and management kept him at his job only because he disciplined the new technicians and reported everything, even the least little oversight, in an orderly manner. Because of his extraordinary stubbornness and equally impressive short temper, the journalists didn’t like to work with Mirza. However, Aleksa assembled all his reports with him and used to say that there was no greater master of the tape recorder than he was. In return, Aleksa was the only journalist Mirza respected.