Seven Terrors

by Selvedin Advic

  The women who have been buying Vogue for years support her tyranny. Maybe they believe that only cruelty like hers can maintain a powerful empire. And the survival of Vogue must not be compromised, because only it can offer its followers the hope that with the help of careful combinations of objects of clothing can they find in themselves the strength to feel superior to others.

  23 ‘The consonant “aleph” begins the Old Testament in the Hebrew text of the Bible. In Hebrew it is simply the position of the throat before a sound is made, when a word begins with a vowel. Aleph is, therefore, in some ways the element from which every articulated sound begins, and the Cabalists understood it as the spiritual root of all the other letters, including in its essence the whole alphabet and, with that, all the elements of human speech. To hear aleph, actually, means less than nothing, because it represents the transition towards all possible languages…’ (Gershom Sholem, The Kabbala and its Symbolism)

  24 For her sake, not mine, I shall avoid details. I know she would be horrified if someone were to read our greatest secrets. I have gone a bit too far already with what I have written. Maybe later, when I have more time, I shall wipe from the text those details which are not essential for understanding the story. Right now, I have neither the time nor the strength for that.

  25 If the sun was extinguished, the Earth would only live for another eight minutes. I read a story about a young man who carefully thought about what he would do with every particle of every second of those eight minutes. One of the steps to be taken during his preparations was the creation of a list of eight wishes which he must fulfil, at all cost, before the sun went out.

  26 Borges wrote about the monster Aheron in his Book of Imaginary Beings. He explains that Aheron is the conception of Hell – an animal residing in animals, and described thus:

  That thing is bigger than a mountain. His eyes spark and his mouth is so big that nine thousand people could stand inside it. Two lost souls hold it open just like in Atlantis; one of them is standing on his legs, the other on his head.

  Emanuel Swedenborg wrote:

  It is not given to me to observe the general shape of Hell, but I have been told that, just like the sky has the shape of a man, in the same way Hell has the shape of the Devil.

  27 I am sorry I feel like this. It would be nice if I could count on Mirna as my ‘golden reserve’. Because something tells me I could get used to life in Sweden. There are many lonely people there. Yet they do not kill themselves because of that. They go to social clubs, drink on boats, make theme parties. Alcohol is expensive, that’s true, but anyway I believe there is something seriously wrong with countries in which alcohol is cheap.

  28 Danilo Kiš put it nicely:

  A rubbish bin, like a cemetery, is like a big warehouse of the world, the essence. Placing objects one next to another mixes the unusual and the miraculous.

  29 And everything that loneliness makes of reality.

  30 Nature knows not extermination; it knows only transformation. Everything that science taught me, and still teaches me, strengthens my belief in our spiritual existence after death.

  Wernher von Braun, Hitler’s scientist and inventor of the V-2 rocket, concluded this at the end of his life. After the fall of Berlin, American soldiers took him prisoner and conveyed him to the USA. During the Nixon administration, he worked at NASA. He was a member of the team of scientists who took the first people to the moon.

  Braun’s conclusion was used by Thomas Pynchon as the motto for his book Gravity’s Rainbow.

  31 In my most pathetic moments I thought it would be good to be an invalid, not too badly mutilated, let’s say with one leg missing… Invalids are treated like people from whom no-one expects anything very important. No-one expects them to be a support, to take care of someone or something. They have complete freedom and can comfortably dedicate their time only to themselves, without anyone accusing them of egoism.

  I don’t think about this all the time, only when I feel especially unhappy…

  32 Ušušur, the green elf, is the protector of the tongue-tied, the melancholy and the mad. An old Slavonian legend says that this elf fell in love with a beautiful girl. When she married, Ušušur put a spell on her and the unfortunate girl drowned herself in the river. The elf was remorseful and jumped into the water after her. To punish himself, he chained his leg to the bottom of the river. In autumn, when the river swells because of rain, he swims up from the bottom and calls out three times: Ušur, Ušur, Ušur! Whoever hears him will die that same autumn. It is believed that Ušušur sits at the bottom of a river in Bosanska Posavina.

  33 The worse terror, greater even than the fear of death, is the fear of the future. In our town it is so great that people would rather stay in the same day forever.

  NOTES

  written on pieces of paper with differing original purposes, some on pieces of cardboard biscuit boxes, glued on, affixed with paper clips or just thrown between pages

  Cynicism, irony and sarcasm: What are they in aid of? Who needs them? What use are they? Who invents them?

  Answer: Nothing; no-one; none; fuck him!

  Those who use cynicism, sarcasm and irony think that just because of that they are smarter than their victims. Cynicism, sarcasm and irony are a necessity to liars, smart-arses, fraudsters, perverts, egoists, columnists, humorists, and similar evil people.

  How to imprison a spirit:

  The magicians of the old Orient could imprison a spirit in a bottle. In a bottle made of brass they put a cat’s tail and a few drops of a blue colour. After a certain time, they took the tail out of the bottle and then they repeated 33times the sentence: In the name of Solomon, son of David, prince of magicians, I order the spirit (and they say his name) to go into this bottle. The spirit then appeared and begged the magician to let him go home. But, the reprobate relentlessly uttered: Peace be with you and know, spirit, that your home is now in this bottle and that I am your Master and everything I say to you or do to you will be in your interests and with the aim of helping you. The poor spirit was then transformed into a white cloud and obediently went into the bottle. The magician then put a lead stopper in the neck of the bottle and over it poured hot tar mixed with the sap of the cedar tree.

  ‘The Gift’

  (Czeslaw Milosz)

  A day so happy.

  Fog lifted early. I worked in the garden.

  Hummingbirds were stopping over the honeysuckle flowers.

  There was no thing on earth I wanted to possess.

  I knew no one worth my envying him.

  Whatever evil I had suffered, I forgot.

  To think that once I was the same man did not embarrass me.

  In my body I felt no pain.

  When straightening up, I saw blue sea and sails.

  The poet called this poem ‘The Gift’. With good reason. It helped me for years. No longer. I write it down so that someone else may find it useful.

  Recipe:

  If water were to be poured on the paper on which this poem is written, it would be a fragrant and healing tea.

  Calculation:

  +6

  +9

  +200

  +0

  +6

  How metals are formed:

  Mircea Eliade researched the beliefs by which springs, mines and caves are identified with the womb of Mother Earth. According to this belief, all the minerals in the bowels of the earth are embryos which mature to become flawless metals. If minerals were left in the earth to grow undisturbed, after maturing for hundreds of centuries, each one would become gold. The alchemists thought that Nature desires to create only one metal; and that only gold is the child of her wishes, her legal heir, because only the creation of gold represents true creation. A certain G. Bachelard said that we must regard the emergence of imperfect metals just as we would look on the emergence of freaks and monsters which come about only when Nature is disturbed in her actions, when she comes across an obstacle which ties her hands, or int
erference which stops her behaving in the usual way.

  THE SEVEN TERRORS

  1. Fear of mirrors

  When the world is finally silenced, in the cleft stick between night and morning, while darkness slowly mixes with the light, I am afraid to go up to a mirror. I am not sure what I might then see in it. Now, when I think about it, I think I am most afraid of the possibility that I remain completely the same in my reflection, while the things around me become different.

  2. Fear of lonely houses

  I am afraid that houses in isolation have succeeded in building their own world, which violates all boundaries and rules.

  3. Fear of shameful death

  I am not sure if I can properly explain this fear, because the boundaries of shame are written differently for each person. But, let’s say, it would indeed be shameful if a big fish ate me and took me to the furthest bay to digest me in peace. Or if I died of explosive diarrhoea at a theatre premiere.

  Of course, it would also be terrible to die alone. If my neighbours noticed my disappearance only when worms from my body began to invade their apartments.

  4. Fear of enormous things

  I once visited a factory where there was a press which weighed several tonnes. I stood beside it, terrified by its dreadful strength. I feel the same type of fear near an open space, in front of the high seas, or a soulless plain… I am frightened, too, by assertions about the infinity of the universe, the theory that before the Big Bang there was neither time nor space, and that the whole world is made up of one-dimensional cords which have only length.

  5. Fear of large forests

  In deep forests, which have succeeded in avoiding the touch of man, ancient secrets still live, because nature has developed there of its own will. And what hero can know Nature’s will?

  6. Fear of madness

  Although, I try to console myself, when a man goes mad, then he is not conscious that he is behaving differently from other people. In my town, during the war a young woman used to walk about, completely unaccountable for her actions and quite naked. While she slowly walked she looked like a film clip from a nightmare. People called her by the nickname Lepa Brena, ‘Beautiful Brena’.

  7. Fear of loneliness and darkness

  Better to write and describe it like this – fear of loneliness or darkness. It’s all the same, they both devour.

  THE SPIRITS ARE LONELY

  Spirits are solitary. It is very rare to see them in a pair. Because of that they have no descendants. They seldom smile, and when they do, the smile is gruesome and unpleasant. They are interested in art, and because of that they help painters, musicians and writers, and sometimes they approach builders. They are not interested in sport. They don’t wear watches or carry umbrellas, but still they are never late and never get wet. Sometimes they seek favours from people. Usually this is to do with revenge, a debt which needs to be paid in blood. They pay for a favour with another favour. Their tracks can be caught in sprinkled flour, and their appearance in a black mirror. Horses can smell them out. (Unclean Forces, by Nagib Kurjak. Obrazovanje, Vareš, 1969)

  FACTS RELATING TO THE PEGASUS BROTHERS

  The Pegasus brothers organised an evacuation from the town during the war.

  The Pegasus brothers organised a whole string of unexplained murders.

  The Pegasus brothers made a graveyard out of the old, open-cut mine.

  The Pegasus brothers oversaw torture at the Music School.

  The Pegasus brothers are to blame for the death of Aleksandar Ranković, the radio journalist.

  The Pegasus brothers control criminal activity in the town.

  The Pegasus brothers control the life of the town.

  The Pegasus brothers have polluted the town.

  The Pegasus brothers have brought evil into people.

  The Pegasus brothers can stop the sun from rising.

  The Pegasus brothers are to blame for fulfilling the minor omens of Judgement Day

  The Pegasus brothers have neither souls nor eyelashes.

  The Pegasus brothers like cynicism, sarcasm and irony.

  THE MAGICAL HORSE ČAL-KUJRUK

  The Kyrgyz people esteem the magical horse Čal-Kujruk which runs through both worlds. In one epic poem, it says: I can walk in deep water.

  In the same poem the rider is warned thus:

  ‘Your shoulders are wide, but your soul is narrow: you don’t think. What I see, you cannot see, what I know, you do not know, you are brave but thoughtless.

  Čal-Kujruk endures terrible agony in order to cross the borders of two worlds. To strengthen his power, essential for the crossing of the abyss between the dead and the living, he demands his rider cut off with his whip a piece of meat as big as a sheep.

  ADVICE

  Loneliness is that performer which makes reality ferment, which brings a loss of shape, outline, image and colour

  Bruno Schulz

  Like dark water lives this man

  Nâzim Hikmet

  Like a tone started by the press of a key, in me there is more death then life

  Witold Gombrowicz

  A man is human approximately as much as a hen can fly

  Louis-Ferdinand Céline

  Adults who enter the world of fairy tales cannot leave it. Did you know that?

  Gold Mouth to Corto Maltese

  And this also, said Marlow suddenly, has been one of the dark places of the earth

  Joseph Conrad

  I found the notebook buried in a corner of the library, a place I accidently visited for the first time in my life, even though I go to the library nearly every day. I have nothing better to do. It was not hard to find, a few little movements were enough: changing my usual comings and goings, taking my gaze away from a row of German novels, a movement of my shoulders, half a step backward, just two feet from the corner of the shelf, and I found myself in that neglected part of the library, where the texts about mining and metallurgy had been placed, along with exercise books, mimeographed notes, anthologies of superseded works, disproven scientific theses, monographs of factories long ago destroyed, biographies of humanists from the era of socialism, encyclopaedias of out-of-date technology… Forgotten books such as these, books no-one needed. I don’t know how I managed to pull out the little bit of book cover that was sticking out. I also don’t know why I took it, hid it under my shirt and carried it out, all sweaty with fear that the librarian would stop me. That notebook is the only thing I have ever stolen in my life. It was an exciting experience.

  I read it all in one night. I have never been so excited by any reading material. Have you ever experienced that strange feeling when someone shows you an unknown photograph of yourself? It feels as though you are looking at a stranger; of course, you know that it is you, but you don’t feel as though it is.

  When I lay down after reading, I think I fell asleep in a few minutes. No more than that. But even that was enough for one small nightmare. I dreamt of a small girl, standing alone in the dark, her blue eyes full of tears. She was constantly turning around, as if she were waiting for someone. And that someone was already very late, so the girl thought the person would never come. Because of that she was afraid and her fear was growing every second.

  There has been too much fear. Enough for a hundred lifetimes. In life, everything is somehow reduced to love and fear. There is nothing outside that. All evil comes from fear, wars wake up out of fear, the evil of war from humiliation, and humiliation is what people who are afraid do to others. I no longer have any reason to be afraid. When a man reaches the bottom, as you may already know, having read about it just as I have, there is no other way than to go back.

  Seven empty pages were left at the end of the notebook. That will be enough room for the story which I wish to relate as best I can.

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