Mirna was standing in the doorway. She had an unusual expression on her face; a mixture of sadness and kind-heartedness. Obviously, I simply can’t describe it, and it seems as if there are more and more such discrepancies in this story. I did not let her come into the apartment. The walls were groaning. It would have been quite impolite to take a guest into such distress. I shut the door behind me. We stood on the stairs, in the silence of the dead apartment building. She took me by the hand. I darted furtive glances around me, as though I had found myself there accidentally.
‘I’m going back. I’ve had enough. I can’t stay here any longer. I don’t want to know what happened any longer, I don’t want the flat, I don’t want anything from this darkness. I want to go.’
She no longer needed to hear about my new information.
‘Come with me. You’d like it. We’ll watch films, play on the PlayStation, we can go to concerts… Hangout, maybe have fun… Then we’ll see what happens. Whatever happens, anything is better than this here.’
She could see that I was confused…
‘I need you…’
It was nice to listen to such an offer, but still I said, ‘I can’t; you know, I do have a life. I can’t just leave everything.’
It was a cynical response and I apologise for that.
She caught her breath.
‘As you wish. I have to go. I don’t know why, but ever since I came here, I’ve been afraid all the time. Of everything. All sorts of terrors have returned to me.’
‘How many are there?’
‘Is that important?’
Both you and I know that that is an extremely important detail.
She said she was sorry she had shouted at me, that she had been nervous, under terrible pressure, and she uttered more, similar excuses. I calmed her down, assured her I was not angry, that that it could happen to anyone… What was I supposed to say? Yes, she had disappointed me, I had put a lot of hope into her, even thought she could save my life. But since then, in a short time, everything had changed. Besides, I have my pride, even though I conceal it skilfully. I imagined that now we had explained everything nicely, at least we could say goodbye nicely. There was no reason for discussion. But, she wanted to talk…
She told me it had been terrible for her since her mother died and she had been left quite alone. She leant on the banister. We fell silent. In order to lessen the discomfort (I don’t know why I think I am always the one who has to do that), I asked her how she had found Aleksa’s notebook. She said it was waiting for her in the library on the island of Bornholm, on the shelf set aside for the new citizens from Bosnia-Herzegovina. It was peeping out from between Noel Malcolm’s Bosnia: A Short History and Živko M. Bojanić’s biography of Toma Zdravković. She asked me if I could imagine the shock she felt at finding it there? I could, of course. There is nothing I cannot imagine.
So we sat for a time in silence. It was embarrassing, but I didn’t know how to start a conversation again. There was nothing to say.
She kissed me when we said goodbye. She kept her lips on my cheek for a few seconds. Until there were goosebumps on my skin. And then she left. I knew, and believe me I know it now too, that I saw her then for the last time.27
I had been alone for so long, and then all at once, the same day or evening, I really don’t know any more, as soon as Mirna had gone, I had another visitor. Completely unwelcome.
I heard the door of the apartment opening, presumably I had not locked it, even though I think I did and…they were inside. In black suits and with fiery heads. The Pegases. Behind them they left clear imprints of muddy shoes. They paid no attention to me. Albin sat in the chair, turned the television on, turned up the sound and immediately concentrated on a programme about tantric sex. I heard a male voice from the television saying: ‘The most important thing of all is that I do not scatter my sperm.’ Aldin was examining the books on the shelf. He turned around, looked at me, then at his brother, and coughed. At this, Albin immediately lowered the sound.
‘You seem to be waiting for someone?’
I was furious; shaking on the chair.
‘Why do you do that? Why do you play with people?’
‘Some rule with kindness, your body and life; I shall rule with the chill of horror,’ Aldin recited, while Albin watched him lovingly.
‘What do you want with me? Leave me alone!’
Quite calmly he answered, ‘We’re philanthropists. There is no better way to be aware of the existence of other people than to get to know them completely. That is possible only if you insinuate yourself into their everyday life. Unnoticed… And such a thing, again, is not possible unless you have control over their lives.’
Again he examined me as though I were an interesting object, covered in dust.
‘I don’t understand why that worries you. That way you are never alone. Only religion can bring such solace.’
Albin added, ‘Of course, we need to add that all that has its financial side too. Modern economics seeks complete control of the market. We are, at the end of the day, businessmen after all. Above all else…’
Aldin nodded his head with approval.
‘And, in business, discretion is important.’
The last words were directed at me. That was not hard to conclude, because Aldin came right into my face, our noses almost touching.
Albin slipped between us and put his big arms around us.
‘Aren’t you going to offer us coffee?’
I wasn’t sure if I had any coffee in the house at all, but I turned towards the shelf.
‘Aren’t you going to ask us how we drink it?’
I asked.
‘Black as midnight in a night with no moon,’ Albin pronounced, and then they both laughed like two squeaking children’s toys.
‘That’s from the television, Agent Cooper, remember?’ Albin informed me when he saw that I was not taking part in their enthusiasm.
‘Let it go, it doesn’t matter, you can see we’re not welcome here. Let’s go, the taxi is waiting,’ said Aldin.
‘Is that the good Ekrem?’ his brother asked.
And Aldin, looking at me knowingly, confirmed it.
‘Who else? Our old war comrade, comrade in arms from the Music School.’
The eerie theatre dolls again threw back their heads in a hissing laugh.
I could take no more, I had to beg them…
‘Please, I won’t say anything to anyone, just don’t touch her,’ I squeaked.
‘Who?’ asked Aldin.
‘Romana,’ I whispered.
‘What’s this about Romana?’ Aldin asked again.
‘The one from the song,’ said Albin.
‘Ahh, that one,’ Aldin remembered.
And they both became momentarily quiet and nodded their heads at one another, as though remembering the verses and melody.
‘Do you know where she is?’ I asked, in the most polite and most humble tone of voice I could find within myself.
When they laughed, their spittle sprayed on the walls.
‘Come with us.’
* * *
On a school trip in primary school, I visited the concentration camp at Jasenovac. After bumping up and down all day in the bus, they showed us a documentary film. We stared at the screen; in the thick silence, no-one dared even to whisper. On the screen there were changing views of massacred bodies, a heap of teeth, a pile of hair, knives for slitting throats, hammers, pits full of bodies. We were about ten years old, maybe less. I was shaking when we came out of the theatre. Then we all stood in a field, in the sunshine; it was unbelievably green, like Teletubbyland. I walked carefully, afraid the ground would open under my trainers and that I would fall into a dark pit full of interwoven, grey, naked bodies, moving in a death rattle and tearing their throats with their nails.
I felt the same thing when I stood on the former open cut, which the town authorities had turned into a rubbish dump after the war.28 Everything was covered with sno
w, the rubbish dump was a white field, full of hills. The ground was moving underfoot. If then in Jasenovac I only suspected, now I could be certain, that the ground was indeed gently moving, that there was something alive beneath us… Under the white snow rottenness was seething, feeding the insects, vermin, worms, small creeping things… The whole town’s rubbish. Everything people believe they no longer need. What disturbs their lives. What suffocates them. What they can no longer use. Everything they cannot take with them. Everything that brings back bad memories. Something that once was beautiful and no longer is, for which there is no longer any use. Objects which could still be used, but are no longer in fashion. With time they had fermented, lost their shape, colour, original purpose.29 They had melted into a sludge and become one with the earth.30 On which the Pegasus brothers and I were standing.
‘Aleksa should be here somewhere,’ Aldin told me, smiling apologetically and shrugging his narrow shoulders.
‘You killed him.’
They laughed, and Aldin retorted in a quite merry voice, ‘Don’t be a fool. The two of us didn’t kill anyone in the whole war. There was no reason for it. There were plenty of people around us who wanted to finally try that out. Probably they thought it was senseless to live to see the war, and not to take anyone’s life. We didn’t have to tire ourselves, we didn’t kill anyone. We encouraged people just by being here. We didn’t have to put ourselves out very much. People showed an unbelievable wealth of imagination. They stole the humanitarian aid, and then in the flour and powdered milk they put plaster of Paris to make it heavier, and sold it all on the marketplace. We told you already, we were just the inspiration.’
Satisfied, they looked at one another, they liked that word.
‘So who did it?’
‘A misunderstanding, that’s who. I remember, I told people to take Aleksa and show him the mine, and they understood… Fuck, it was war, that’s how it was done.’
Then I realised. Horror… Some little, obedient killers had thought their masters had ordered them to take Aleksa to the mine and liquidate him there.
‘Do you like this explanation? Is it easier now for you to understand?’
Obligingly the Pegases asked, and looked at the tops of their shoes. Underneath which, somewhere in the darkness, lay Aleksandar Ranković, unneeded and forgotten, fused with the rubbish. Nausea formed in my stomach and rose to my head. I vomited in strong gushes and drilled orange holes in the snow. My legs were shaking when the gushing dried up. I sat down in the snow, in the vomit, in front of the legs of the awful brothers. Their red heads were burning in the darkness on the rubbish tip.
* * *
Darkness closed my eyes. It came in the guise of ribbons of curtains, which became thicker and thicker. Then everything became quiet. More exactly, some sort of low noise was surrounding me, like that from a tape recorder. I thought I was sitting on a small stone floating through space. Completely alone. Yet it was not unpleasant, I thought I had come like that to the very end, to the place where I did not have to explain myself to anyone any more, where no-one any longer expected anything from me.31
The calm lasted only a very short time. In one moment, it transformed into anguish, juicy and strong, probably the greatest anguish possible: suicidal. There was no way of lessening it, nothing that could soothe it… All that was left was the firm knowledge that in this world everything, absolutely everything, is completely meaningless.
The darkness around me could have been anything at all. It could have been an opening, a tunnel or a hole through which ancient beings come into this world.
The earth shook from the stamping of horses’ hooves. The darkness swayed. I heard neighing, air hissing through enlarged nostrils. The horses were getting closer, fast, very fast. There must have been a big herd of at least fifty large animals. Fear caused tension even in the smallest vein in my body. I didn’t even try to escape, but pulled my head into my shoulders and waited for them to trample me down. Then, all at once, the stamping ceased, as though a huge hand had shaken the horses off the planet.
A light shone through the darkness, lighting up the palms of my hands before anything else. On the far side of the rubbish tip, I saw a completely round circle of light, like a spotlight for cabaret. I was experiencing the same scene that Aleksa had seen, witnessing the same things, which I now I have to describe in the same way. Perkman was coming, the spirit of the pit, the djinn, the gnome, the apparition… A being from the depths of the earth, who appears only to the person who has touched the bottom of his soul. The ghost who saves and warns.
In the middle of the light stood a tall, lean man, dressed in a trailing green coat, with a big round collar and black buttons as big as a miner’s fist. He had short, stiff hair, completely white and shining like a neon light. A pale face, narrow nose, eyes without any whites. All exactly the way Aleksa had described, except that this one had a thick moustache. He bowed to me; his body broke in two at the height of his chest. Up until this point I could use Aleksa’s precise description, but from the end of this sentence the analogy became absurd. The spirit was known to me, very well known. I stared at him, nervously, slightly apprehensive that the feeling of having already seen him would slip away from me. He smiled and held out his right hand. Then I understood. This was the one thing that was perfectly clear to me… In the familiar, radio-host voice, which the whole town loved, Perkman said: ‘Gluck auf’. The greeting echoed across the entirety of the rubbish tip. Every living thing must have heard it. He looked curiously at me, leant his head on his shoulder and waited. It was my turn to speak, yet I didn’t know what to say. I couldn’t think of anything. I just looked at him and tried to memorize the scene before me. I wanted him to stay engraved in my memory, so I wouldn’t forget one detail: the movement, smell, the way the air moved, how the darkness behaved… I must have been completely numb. my face devoid of colour and my eyes wide open, for this is how we usually meet spirits. He studied me, somehow calmly, ready for anything I could say or do. I felt that he felt great empathy for me, an understanding like a pure ocean of pure goodness. That he was the only ally I had in my life. The only support in the darkness.
That darkness around us was not the usual lack of a light source, it was a special world, indescribably rich and full… Yet I felt that my body did not belong there, that my senses did not function there. Aleksa was perfectly integrated into the movements of darkness, he stood squarely on nothing. His presence calmed me; I slowly twisted, I caught the rhythm of breath, I made my own place in that world… Until I began to feel comfortable. Somehow I knew nothing bad could happen to me there. Despite the fact that I had so many things to tell him, I didn’t want to disrupt the moment; I wanted again, at least for a little while, to feel tranquillity.
I cannot tell how much time had passed, but it seemed that very quickly he nodded his head and gave me a Valium smile. He said nothing; but I was sure he wanted to tell me how we would meet again. Somewhere, where we could again get to know one another in peace. Now when I think about it, I should have been overcome by despair when I realised he was leaving me, yet I wasn’t… I was sure that I would see him again, just as I know that now.
His light filled with red colour, paled and disappeared. We parted. Darkness again took hold of me: normal darkness, earthly.
I had no idea when the Pegases had left the rubbish tip, or whether they saw Aleksa. Except for me, there was no other human presence on the tip. It was only then, left alone, that I realised I was shivering with the cold. Only then that I felt the chill wind chasing across the field.
There seemed no other place to go than back to the apartment, to the place where it had all begun; to the middle of loneliness, in the nursery-garden of fears. I asked myself if the apartment actually existed any more, or if the darkness hadn’t gobbled it up completely. Either way, a long walk was ahead of me. Everything would be easier when I stood on firm ground, I hoped.
Who stole from the night the blackest colour and pressed it
into your eyes and gave them lustre?
I have no idea how I got home. I dragged myself to the chair, sat down, and felt an unusual coldness. It came from the bedroom. I opened the door with difficulty, as it was resisting. A current of strong fear shook me when I saw that the crack had grown monstrously, devouring a third of the wall. It was impenetrably dark, with a strong wind which seemed to be rushing from an unreasonably large area. I quickly shut the door and pushed my shoe rack up against it.
I was afraid the crack would knock down my wretched barricade, break down the door and get out. Huge and hungry. Perhaps the Big Bang had unfolded into my apartment, but what could a man do with a problem like that? Inform the authorities? Alert Civil Defence that nothingness was threatening to swallow the town? Or maybe I should call Ušušur, the Protector Elf?32
When I see Aleksa again, I shall ask him if there is any way I could help him. Was it actually important to him to be buried with some kind of ritual? Perhaps that is an over-appreciated thing in this world? Perhaps our death ceremonies mean absolutely nothing to the departed, and even less to spirits? Perhaps it isn’t even that important to them that they have their own piece of land, with a fence, some flowers and a little bench? If there is life after death, what do we care what sort of hole they bury us in? Is it really important to us, while the worms are eating our hearts, whether there are flowers above us?
Do spirits want people to help them at all? I had never heard of somebody helping a spirit, mainly it is spirits who address people… Perhaps it’s better being a spirit than being human. Being a spirit has its advantages… You talk when you want to talk and in the way you want to. The people you decide to show yourself to, view you quite seriously, there is no fucking around. You’re dead, you’re not on this world, but you’re still connected to it, you have never really left it.
On the other hand, when you’re a spirit, you stay active, you’re deprived of the rest you deserve. You are denied the benefits of life after death which are written in the Holy Book.
Seven Terrors Page 13