Zagreb Noir

by Ivan Srsen

  Unsteadily, he made his way to the men’s room, locked the door behind him, and splashed water on his face for a long time, rubbing his temples and neck. The mirror was right there, straight in front of him, but Petar did not want to peer into that world, convinced he would see things he didn’t want to see.

  * * *

  It started more than half an hour later than it was supposed to and though that was nothing unusual—literary gatherings never begin on time—Petar didn’t like it. While he was in the bathroom the club had filled with people. Milat was leafing through his notes, and then he leaned toward a young woman perched on an Almodóvar-esque red two-seater to his left, and began explaining something to her in great depth. A very relaxed atmosphere reigned, which seemed obviously fake to Petar—didn’t anyone feel the tension, a sour mood, at the very least prickles on their skin, or heat? What a bunch of fucking posers.

  “Let’s start . . .” he said all of a sudden, not too loudly, but amid the buzz this one phrase echoed like an ugly curse.

  All heads turned toward him; they stared at him as if right before their eyes he had picked up a shotgun and blown the brains out of a baby panda.

  “Right, now we can begin,” Milat clapped his hands.

  Albahari was fine with that. Everyone, as if on command, turned from Petar to the guest. Understandably, Petar felt a certain taint of enmity or at least lack of understanding, but being familiar with herd philosophy and actions, he suffered stoically.

  Milat opened with a few introductory remarks from which it was immediately clear to everyone that he had fully mastered the matter at hand and was prepared to ask the author all sorts of questions, not only about the novel, but about a host of other things. Petar tried to follow the conversation attentively, he listened and heard the words, but he didn’t understand them—as if they were being spoken in some ancient, long-extinct language. The names Thomas Bernhard, Michel de Montaigne, and Jim Jarmusch cropped up, in just that order, but in what context, exactly—this eluded him. He felt a shortage of oxygen in the room. Breathe in, breathe out, you won’t faint, he repeated to himself. Salvos of laughter spread around him. Albahari was not the sort of writer to handle himself with great solemnity as if interpreting Christ’s agonies when he spoke publicly, so he would toss a little something humorous into the conversation, a joke, something lighthearted, not wanting to make a mystery of the literary gathering, writing, or himself. Unfortunately, Petar was still fighting for every molecule of oxygen. Because of the noise, traffic, and everything else, the front door to the club had to be shut. He knew he would have to step outside in the next few minutes to keep from fainting, and yet he really did not want to be the first to leave.

  With great effort Petar dropped his head and waited for someone to leave the room, to light up a cigarette or whatever. Second, he could leave; first—no way.

  He heard the door open. He turned and saw Katja. She was coming in, taking care so the door wouldn’t squeak. Something was different about her, he couldn’t tell what exactly. Someone came in behind her and the someone was holding her hand. An older guy, older than Petar and everyone else at the club, gray hair tied back in a pitiful ponytail. He stood by Katja, holding her hand. The fact that he was a whole head shorter than her brightened Petar’s mood. He grinned as he watched them. All the tension, the ugly presentiments and anxieties, vanished as if by a miracle; he could breathe, handle himself, he could follow the conversation between Milat and Albahari, but no longer cared to.

  Katja shot him a confused smile. She didn’t expect to run into me here, thought Petar, pleased. She didn’t expect she’d ever see me again, but here I am, ma’am, I am still here. He smiled at her in passing and left.

  The sidewalk rolled on into the distance; other people were also walking along it—there were dogs on long leashes, babies sleeping in strollers, and he strode along with them, the smile never leaving his face. He breathed in the warm summer air and the whole city smelled of burnt sugar.

  Slices of Night

  by ANDREA ŽIGIĆ-DOLENEC

  Borongaj

  Translated by Coral Petkovich

  If only it doesn’t rain today; just let it hold out for today, then it can fall for days on end without stopping, it can flood the whole town, it’s at liberty to turn into a torrent and sweep everything away. It can become a boundless lake or a deluge swallowing everything: all the trams and the red roofs, and everything else devised by the human mind, along with the greenery shaped by nature. It can all disappear, but only after this day has passed—so thought Roni when he got up and looked out the window, watching the clouds chase one another, join together into myriad shades of gray.

  He would sleep through all alarms and evacuations, hear nothing and see nothing, he would sleep deeply, dead drunk, in the end just dead, but he would die happy. He had a good feeling about it. He knew that what he had been anticipating for weeks and impatiently getting ready for would end the way he wanted, which was the only just and possible way. No doubt about that. He never left even the slightest possibility for the worm of doubt to creep into his thoughts. He did not allow it to sow seeds of weakness and uncertainty, to make him hesitate when making the most important decisions. He thought quickly and always knew what, when, and how he needed to do things; he knew what would happen too, and if he did not, he believed he knew. He believed in inevitability, in fate, and in God; he believed in himself, in his mother with whom he lived in one of the small, quiet streets in Borongaj; he believed in Marek and Gonzo because they had never let him down; and he did not believe in politicians, bankers, journalists, or lawyers. Until now he had never had the opportunity to punch even one of them in the face, but he was sure that he would have that chance now. Because he wanted it, and when Roni wanted something, he made it happen.

  For example, he could have become a successful soccer player, if he had wanted to. He had the talent; a ball was between his feet from the time he was small, and he could see the stadium from the window in his room. It was the first thing his eyes caught sight of in the morning and the last thing he saw at night before he closed them. One of his earliest memories was the sounds he heard during a match, when he was still too small to become a spectator because he did not have a father to take him to matches. And that was what he wanted more than anything, more than any of the toys that everyone had and that his mother could not afford to buy him. He imagined the ball rolling on the grass, the players seizing it from one another, how the grandstand would shake when the ball ended up in the net.

  Even as a child he was a rough but good player, always the best in the school yard. He joined his first club as an eight-year-old, but they never gave him a chance to show what he knew. With their discipline they had killed all his passion for playing the game and thus lost forever a top player who could have earned millions. So thought Roni. Nothing could kill his love for soccer. He was a regular visitor to the stadium, but more than that, he was a passionate fan, who measured time from match to match, experiencing every defeat and every victory as though it were his own, analyzing every move the players made as though he were their trainer, and cursing the referee scoundrels.

  Today Roni awoke close to eight o’clock. He could not remember the last time adrenaline had woken him so early. He twisted and turned in the bed, but from his first waking second, excitement was pumping through his veins. For years now he had not found it necessary to begin his day in the morning; in any case, the day was far too long. He did not have a job, and was not looking for one, so that there was no reason to go out in the daylight—except to the local café for his early-afternoon coffee, after eating his mother’s lunch. The night was his time, the time he felt the best, whether he walked in the empty and noiseless streets or spent the hours in some raucous bar using up the money he and the other guys scrounged from passersby.

  Sometimes Roni was a little on edge. From time to time he would feel a tension in the palms of his hands which would spread further and take over comple
tely; and when Roni was tense, it was not good. He was angry, he broke things around the house and destroyed the furniture. To feel at peace with himself, he needed a regular supply of fights. That was his medicine, which he happily swallowed together with alcohol. For this reason he liked to go to places where it was easy to find someone he could push accidentally, and then beat up; or someone who would stare at him a second too long, or someone who annoyed him with their loud laughter. Roni had a solution for all of them.

  He did not smile much, neither did he talk very much. Why waste words on useless conversation, when everything could be resolved simply and much more quickly? Even when it had to do with women. When he needed them, he found them without conversation, and his taciturnity did not bother them in the short encounters. Longer and more often did not happen, so they had no opportunity to get to know his confused and irritable character, for which only one woman had any understanding: his mother. Roni much preferred male company. He got along well with his buddies; women were always complicating matters. He never could understand what they really wanted.

  Now he put his supporters’ scarf around his neck and his knife in the right pocket of his pants. He never went out without his switchblade, because a clever man must always think ahead and be ready for whatever could befall him. All sorts of idiots moved around the town and you could never know what might happen. Roni knew he was smarter than them, and had faster reactions too. They would have no chance at all in an encounter with him. He left the house and went toward Branimir Street, where Marek and Gonzo were waiting for him; from there they slowly walked toward Jelačić Square and then by way of Vlaška and Maksimir to the stadium. They stopped at various bars on the way, drank beer and then cognac, then beer again, and conjured victory with much noise, along with those who shared the same passion for bars and soccer.

  He liked matches where there was a lot on the line, because of the energy rolling through the streets that filled him with quivering anticipation, that carried him along and threw him in the air, making him feel he was part of something big and important. Those were the days he remembered the best and the longest. He would have liked his life to be an unending chain of such days and nights, a huge derby which was never finished, during which he would again wake up with the same feeling of belonging.

  The rhythm, made up of many powerful male voices and the beating of drums, came from the crowd pressing in front of the entrance to the stadium and thundering in Roni’s inner self, not only in his head and his breast, but also deep in his stomach where tension roiled. He set off with Marek and Gonzo toward the middle of the crowd, pushing between the congested bodies, touching the sticky skin of those who had equally impatiently come to this place. And since two people cannot be in the same place at the same time, a problem had to occur. Even though he had not intended to start a fight in the crowd, it was unavoidable.

  Forcing his way through, he accidentally pushed some character wrapped up in the supporters’ flag. The man tripped, but succeeded in remaining upright, stumbling awkwardly into Roni’s face and showering upon him his stinking rage. He cursed Roni’s mother, and that he should never have done. Roni never forgave anyone for that, not even someone with the big heart of a fan beating in the same rhythm and keeping the same time as his own. His fist flew toward the face decorated with the team colors, but Marek and Gonzo anticipated his blow, catching hold of his arm and preventing the crowd from enjoying the opportunity of cheering before the match. He did not blame them, he relied on their assessment of the situation and concluded that they were behaving as necessary. Although he was sorry he had not satisfied that urge which brought him one of the few true pleasures in his life.

  Unexpected and completely unwanted, one of those promising young journalists with a microphone in hand suddenly appeared from nowhere, while a camera filmed from the side. The ruckus had now subsided. Roni felt pins and needles from his shoulders to the tips of his fingers, that same feeling which caused his well-known tension; which was impossible to stop. He looked into the face partly hidden by the microphone and wondered where it would be best to hit the man. Those sports journalists with their mumbo-jumbo commentaries destroyed the experience of the game he respected—and that could not be permitted. That had to be punished, and this was just the right moment to satisfy that long-held desire. He did not hesitate; his fist flew toward the nose, and since no one expected it, no one could prevent it. The young man cried out, and Roni felt relief, which flooded over him like serenity overtakes those who find it in quiet green places along the river, with a fishing rod.

  Somebody shouted, “Cops!” but there was no time to escape. Just a few more seconds, and no one could have caught Roni. He knew all the roads and alleyways to put them off his trail. But now they crammed him into the police van and took him to the police station. They shut him in a room with a tall man wearing a suit who sat on a chair staring in front of him. He looked briefly at Roni and continued staring at the floor. Luckily, he said nothing. If he had, Roni would have punched him in the face too. He felt only disgust toward these perfumed wearers of suits and ties. He never would have been able to wear a tie, tied firmly under a white-collared shirt, and speak importantly all those long and empty sentences, as though they were full of wisdom. Wisdom was in simplicity, there was no need to philosophize about that, Roni knew; though perhaps some might think he did not know, that he did not understand those important things of which life is put together. Besides, all that clever talk, nodding of heads, smiling, shoulder tapping, and shaking of sweaty hands annoyed him. All these types should be shut away so that normal people, like Roni, could have a rest from the fakery. It had gone much too far. Now he would have liked to say how much he despised this man and types like him, but he did not feel like talking. It would be best to just punch him, thought Roni, imagining the surprise on the man’s face at the moment he hit the mark. He seems somehow preoccupied, he’s acting like I’m not here, and that isn’t right. He would go crazy if he felt pain. And Roni knew very well how to inflict pain and where the skin broke the easiest. He liked to see blood coming to the surface like an underground stream. That excited him, but in a calming way, if such a thing can be said.

  Why is he even here? Roni asked himself. Must be some sort of embezzlement, probably big money. His type need brutal punishment, they don’t have the balls to attack and to take something by force. These guys do things nicely and wearing gloves, hypocritically sniggering from the TV screen at poor people. I’ll beat the crap out of him in the name of all those he has swindled and stolen from, so that he never thinks about doing such a thing again, Roni decided. And just when he stood up, ready to take justice into his own hands which were made for blows, the door opened and an official came in.

  “Mr. Mikić, we apologize for the inconvenience, there’s been a mistake. You can go.”

  Roni had meant to ask the result of the soccer match, but he did not have time. The door shut and he remained alone, and Mikić with his long feet stepped into the corridor.

  * * *

  In front of the building a party vehicle was waiting for Mikić. He recognized Lovrić’s shadow by the way he was standing and holding his cigarette, which glowed in the half-lit darkness. Lovrić had come for him in person. That undoubtedly meant something. But what? From the beginning, being led away had seemed like a setup to him. The police had been waiting for him in front of the house when he set off for work in the morning. He had spent almost the whole day in that stinking hole, except for when they were questioning him. Then he had been in a second stinking hole, where they had given no explanation as to why he was there. Actually, they had, but he had not understood, even though he could understand much more complicated things. And now, at the end of this terrible day, which he had spent hitting the walls of his own thoughts, one of the highest party functionaries had come for him.

  “We decided today, everyone agreed, no one had anything against you taking over the ministry. That what happened, did not ha
ppen. You were never in this place.”

  Mikić was silent, waiting for the rest. And he had not miscalculated.

  “But there’s a problem. That young girl you’ve been seeing . . . it would be good to stop that. The girl is a professional, it doesn’t make sense to spoil everything. After all, you have a wife and children. And even if you didn’t, you don’t need someone like that. Attend to this as soon as possible. I realize, I know she has gotten under your skin. She’s hot, and she probably knows her job very well, but . . .”

  “Alright, drive me to her.”

  “Are you sure you need to do this right now? I mean, it’s not quite so urgent, you can take care of it tomorrow.”

  “I don’t have time tomorrow, and I don’t know when I will have time.”

  Lovrić continued driving toward Vlaska Street in silence, without asking for the address. He knew it. He stopped a little past the entrance to the lobby, where Mikić disappeared into the darkness, then climbed up the winding staircase to the first floor and rang the bell.

  She opened the door in her dressing gown, small, with her hair down and the eyes of a doe. He would have liked to pick her up, take her to bed, and lie next to her. She caught him by the hand and led him into the apartment, and then she hugged him and encircled his mouth with her soft lips. He had never thought of her doing this with others for money. He had never paid her. Of course he had bought her presents and lent her money for the rent when she asked him. Of course he had never asked her to return it because it was nothing. Besides, gentlemen don’t do that.

  Now he was wondering how to tell her that which he did not want to say or do. But had to.

  He would miss this little forbidden place, where he had been his true self, and in which there had been nothing except tenderness and passion, which she had kept for him in that small perfumed body. It was not important now whether she had with equal sincerity or mendacity given these things to others as well, probably including Lovrić. He was angry with himself for his reluctance to tell her it was over, that he would no longer come, and not to call him anymore. After learning tonight about her relationships with other men, that should not have been any problem at all. But it was. He knew he would not forget her scent, nor her taste, nor the timbre of her sighs. It had been so different from everything he had previously known that it was impossible to forget. It had helped him to remain normal, and now it seemed to him that it was the reason he was beginning to go mad. He got up and went to the window, and finally told her. She said she did not accept it, and he told her that meant nothing since he would not be coming any longer. She said she knew this was because of his political career and he asked her who had told her this; and she said no one had to tell her because the media had spread the news.