Companions
Page 9
Bells probably referred to church bells. So neither church nor kitsch, no thank you. Moral graffiti. Lovely to see graffiti that encourages reading, the lecturer said.
‘Exactly,’ I answered and hoped he would offer to carry my bag. Because it was heavy. With books.
Now, halfway through my fourth decade, grown-up, to put it mildly, I stood near the ruin of a Turkish fort, high above the Sava (I had thought it was the Danube but that was on the other side of Belgrade). A long, black barge was floating past. Oh, the endlessly glittering river and now this long barge. Who doesn’t like river barges, who isn’t reminded of Huckleberry Finn or Venice at the sight and the sound of their gentle gliding. I ought to have been happy. Once upon a time people did not think they owed it to nature to enjoy it; it was simply an infernal nuisance; something that stung you when you stormed through like a savage; when you did not think of nature as a deficiency within yourself if it did not reveal itself to you – and trickled into your soul like sweet, white wheat.
Has my soul grown too fat?
Has it hibernated?
Or the exact opposite – suddenly nature is a music where everything flashes before our eyes before we drown, and faced with this denseness we have to close the shutters?
My friend Edward said to me one sultry summer: ‘At last I sat down on a chair in the garden. But the garden did not speak to me, it was as though my surroundings were dead – and then suddenly it came to nonetheless, and within ten minutes I was enjoying the birds and the wind in the trees.’
The mind as your own worst enemy. Furious monologues, scenarios where everything ends in disaster; catastrophes; attacks against imagined enemies; not to mention demonic fits of doubt, forsaking all that is good – as if you are truly possessed by a demon, and maybe in the midst of everything you think: If God were to look into my soul right now, the punishment would be horrific; but it is not a demon, nor a God, merely a carousel that you cannot get off; the giraffe, the fat pink pig with the blue trousers and the straight back and the team of horses in front of the revolving coach, it mists before the eyes. And you think: Now I am going to die of dizziness. I’ll never get off.
And yet suddenly, mercifully – it slows down, the mechanism groans faintly (something is stuck) but then it goes quiet, and the outside (nature, for example, an irresistible person, for example) is allowed to enter and fill the space.
I ought to have been happy, or at least not quite so lost, standing before the Sava; considering my age. (I find myself in a situation where I constantly have the chance to gauge the temperature of my soul; I have to get out and dig ditches.)
Why does the journey reinforce this existential loneliness – never am I closer to death and the abyss than when I am alone on a journey. I know the answer already. An unknown among unknown faces. And unknown, unmemorized stretches. Kingdom of the dead, glittering, indistinct features, averted eyes, withdrawal, fleeting shadows, bloodlessness. I was all but longing to return to the receptionist. Horrified I think that is how it will be for me one day back home – if I survive everyone I hold dear. You ought to be able to pop your clogs in time, let me keep time.
This city is incredibly ugly; it consists primarily of concrete buildings that are leaning forward or backward, some of the walls have stomachs, sagging in the middle and studded with criss-crossed supporting beams. And the windows are like eyes under too much pressure, bulging. But there are trees too, this rustling green complex, planted for the enlivenment of the citizens and the dogs of the city, and the rivers are likewise enlivening, old Sava, old Danube. Some buildings in the city have survived the many bombardments, first by the Germans, then by Nato, the first floor is wider than the ground floor, perhaps to save on precious land, that was something the lecturer also drew my attention to. The older houses are the ones with stomachs.
Every time I stood by the Sava, I considered taking the bridge across to Novi Beograd. Not to enjoy a glass of the local water, which contains uranium, leaching uranium from the bombing in the nineties, likely featuring on a list of the most polluted water supplies on the globe, but to visit the art museum there. In the end I did just that. I stepped out onto the bridge. There were no other pedestrians on that stretch, but plenty of traffic, so heavy it made the bridge groan. Belgrade has no ring roads. Every car has to drive through the centre. And below me was the blackish-green water. I would probably get hit by a lorry and be sent flying over the railing. Get run over first, then drown. I hurried along. In an attempt to get the trip over and done with.
No sooner was I across than I longed to return to the other side, which had apparently become a kind of home to me.
‘You’re hopeless,’ I told myself, ‘you finally make it across, only to long for a return.’
Even though I was not hungry, I felt like the starving protagonist in Hunger that day. I wonder whether my temperament can be compared to his; in a sense, he is more or less constantly in the dumps; there is something artificial and terrifying about his sudden euphoria. Luckily it seldom lasts long. The head quickly sinks between the shoulders again.
I clambered down a staircase, also concrete, and stood on a seemingly deserted quay. Below the bridge were traces of an abandoned Roma camp. You are always at risk of being robbed. My easily awoken uneasiness was awake. Then another pedestrian appeared. I asked for directions to the museum. The pedestrian pointed towards a public park with trees and said that she would dissuade me from walking through it. It was not safe. I should keep to the water instead. I stared at the desolate park and nodded. The river ran in front of this deserted park. And there were houseboats, and restaurants, also on boats.
Nothing happened. And the museum was under renovation. So I had to go back across the bridge. I sat for a while on a bench and stared at the opposite shore of the river. I am the offspring of Homesickness and Departure sickness, the descendent of Melancholia and the Great joy. Easy now, you’re not Bruno Schulz in the posthumous publication of Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass, which consists entirely of poetic extracts and for that reason is largely unreadable, every living creature needs to breathe, don’t go over the top, you have to move. I got up, in an attempt to walk off my thoughts. I left the hysterical poetry on the bench, bent over (fallen into a reverie, staring at a small great object down in the gravel), wearing purple, the messianic colour of the soul, with a soft, effeminate lower body, strong arms and a small but finely-formed head. A head like a thoroughbred with quivering nostrils.
I made it across the bridge in one piece, turned my back on the Sava and strolled towards the town centre. Suddenly something I recognized, I felt a pang in my heart. The art film cinema, Art Bioskop Museum, where the lecturer in 2005 or 2006 had seen a French film where the only other person in the cinema was the academic Mihailo Marković, the SPS ideologue, the party of Slobodan Milošević; there they sat in the darkness, and before the film began, Marković, who was in his eighties, asked the lecturer why, young as he was, he was not with a girl. In those years very few people visited the cinema in Belgrade, and sometimes the cinema staff crossed themselves when the lecturer arrived because he had strayed into the darkness. This expression, ‘strayed into the darkness’, as he described it, made me think of him as a werewolf. (Incidentally his eyebrows had also grown together, the sign of the werewolf par excellence.)
Shortly afterwards, I arrived at a street where the air was as fresh as an early morning. The street had just been hosed down. Trees grew on either side of it, their crowns full and leaning towards one another, so that the street was covered by a green, rustling roof, with the light drizzling down through it; I walked upon a living pavement, light and shadow fluttering about; it was dim beneath the trees. Outside of this oasis, the world was an oven. I turned around and walked back down the street and felt a gleam of pure adventurousness, which must be the opposite of loss. In my mind, there is a connection between adventure and early mornings. Or in any case there was in my childhood, and for that reason I made sure t
o get up early, and then wandered about, across the golf course, along the beach and through the woods. The sense of adventure was most present at dawn, it gradually wore off as it grew light and people appeared. In all likelihood, the sense of adventure was connected with being alone; alone in a world devoid of people. Because I don’t recall anything special ever happening. Or perhaps what was exceptional about it was that I began to notice myself; the absence of gazes gave me an incipient view of myself. Nobody to look at me with a gaze shaded by some preconceived notion of who I was. And for that reason I could arrive there on my own. In order to discover yourself, you have to be alone. In all probability the opposite also holds true: You do need the gazes of others (in order to discover yourself).
Back then I was never afraid of getting lost outside. And nobody worried about me. I could leave the house at four o’clock in the morning without any form of protest, without getting told off later. On the other hand I did get told off when I refused to go to school later in the morning; and I did that often. The time when I had the best conditions for wandering about as the merry daughter of Mother Nature, when I jostled with nature as soon as I opened the door, was in Year Three. We had moved to Helsingør for a year. We had a rather plain, very basic house in the midst of the great outdoors. The house had brown and ugly doors, like at a school. I had had to change schools, this time the school was yellow. My classmates and I did not have our own form room; we were a so-called wandering class. I never knew where to go when I arrived in the morning. Somewhere in the vast building there was a noticeboard displaying a message about where we were supposed to proceed to. The noticeboard did not change location. A number and possibly a letter indicated a room. But I did not want to (circle around for ages looking for an abstraction such as B29, I did not want to be contracted in that way).
‘If you don’t start attending school soon, I won’t like you any more,’ my mum said.
(‘I could have bit off my tongue,’ she said years later.)
But by and large I stayed home. And spent the day mixing fruit juice powder with a tiny amount of water and eating it with a spoon: pineapple powder, raspberry powder, pineapple powder again. Once in a while a young girl was hired to keep me entertained, she brought me buns and cocoa from another world. The kitchen was so small that we had to edge past each other.
Apparently, hidden in a corner somewhere inside of me is the child who, in the strange school and in the kitchen with the strange young girl, did not really feel like flesh and blood, but like bricks and mortar. A stubborn wall of silence, of enormous inconvenience. I now believe I have studied loss under a magnifying glass. Things (like this) take time, one might object. But I have long thought about this, because who wants to be a helpless idiot; this is obviously a condensed version of a longer, more zig-zagging thought process. I am back to where I started, with the dissolution of pineapple powder and young girls in a cramped kitchen. Facing the walls of Hotel City Code and the minibar with its sweet & salty temptations – like a bullet that has hit its target. More by accident than by design. That should wrap things up with Eliot.
And who was standing around waiting for his dear guest?
Alma has arrived. She could tell from my voice how I was doing. It has always been like that. Friendship is golden.
The last few days I have not really left the hotel, only to cut across the square to a small shop where I buy toasted bagels with tofu or salmon. I then devour them in bed, and afterwards do the same with large pieces of fruit pies while on my computer I watch Serbian films with English subtitles, bought on the cheap from street vendors. When watching Emir Kusturica’s Underground and Black Cat, White Cat (I watch them several times, I brought them with me), I turn down the Balkan music, which normally makes me feel like dancing and drinking, so that the receptionist does not come in and join my party (my opulent meal would send him directly to his grave) or attempt to drag the fox out of the den, for espresso & monologue in the reception. A couple of times I hear him stop outside my door. I recognize his small pointed footsteps. Incidentally, he wears a pedometer on his belt, at the behest of his doctor. Oh yes, and then the lecturer and I went for a melancholy afternoon stroll along the Danube where I reflected my frame of mind on the barges and was at a loss to keep death at bay, while the lecturer observed the mafia ladies.
‘I’m Camilla’s GPS,’ that was how Alma introduced herself at dinner last night, and everyone understood what she meant, as they have all taken turns shepherding me around, picking me up at the hotel reception and dropping me off again like I was a large package – with the string coming loose. Now Alma has taken charge of me for my final days in the city. She did not come exclusively for my sake, but also because she was a little confused with what was going on back home and with herself; but first and foremost she was here because her book has been translated into Serbian and she is taking part in the Belgrade book fair. The dinner took place at the embassy where Alma was the guest of honour, and the lecturer had forgotten to inform them that I do not eat meat. As soon as the individual portions of sliced fillet were brought in for starters, the receptionist’s voice echoed in my head: ‘Almonds, dark chocolate, red wine – every day. And no meat: But who can survive without meat? Nobody! Nobody can survive without meat,’ he yelled. As he yelled, he had cocked his head like an affectionate woman – an attempt to obtain agreement without a struggle. ‘I can,’ I objected, and reached for my room key, but he quickly placed his hand over it and continued talking. I politely swallowed the delicate fillet. The main course consisted of rare roast beef, also individually portioned, which I cut into pieces that were small enough to swallow, barely touching my teeth. All the while I thought of a film about the survivors of a plane that crashed in the Andes in 1972, where the dead ‘lent’ the living their muscles; in the film, the survivors file off infinitely thin slices from the frozen bodies. I had not eaten meat for twenty years, but the rigid ambassador was not the type to cock her head (otherwise she would never have made it that far, unlike the stranded receptionist with his cocked head working at his little brother’s hotel), I preferred not to be an inconvenience, and at long last I managed to clear enough of the red mountain away that the bottom of the plate was visible. Besides the ambassador, the cultural attaché, the lecturer, Alma’s translator, Alma and I, there was a dramatic Serbian poet present. She had brought a selection of her works with her, in English translations, as a gift to the host. I expressed an interest in her books, and the ambassador said that I could keep them, the poet could bring her some more on another occasion. The two were old friends – she could permit herself to speak on her behalf. ‘No, no,’ the Serbian poet and I exclaimed in chorus: they were for the host. When the Serbian poet said no, I hurried to repeat it a number of times, and I got up and put the books down in the middle of the table, demonstratively, out of my reach. Meat-free dessert. Thank you for a lovely dinner, leave the table, the others went into the adjoining room, I reached for the books and looked at them a little more – then I hurried to join the small gathering. I am a little careless in my conduct with my bag. I never zip it shut, meaning someone can just slip their hand in and pull out my wallet. Later, the next morning, I suddenly recalled how both the host and the poet had looked at my bag strangely. Well, instinct or the experience of moving in more exalted circles must have told Alma that since she was the guest of honour, she had to bring the evening to a conclusion. ‘Thank you so much for this evening,’ she said and put down her coffee cup, and as if by command, everyone got up and said their goodbyes. Two minutes later we stood outside. In the hotel room I put my bag down and gave it no more thought until the following morning when I went to find my lipstick. In the bag, oh horror, were the Serbian poet’s books. In a fit of absentmindedness, perhaps confused by all that meat in my stomach, I must have stuffed them into my bag instead of putting them back on the table.
‘Now they’re going to think I’m a kleptomaniac,’ I whimpered to Alma, ‘how did that happen?’
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‘The lecturer will sort it out,’ Alma said, ‘he’d be only too happy to help – seeing as you had to eat all that meat.’
And so the lecturer did sort it out. He returned the books personally.
A lot had gone awry in connection with this trip. I had not felt like travelling there in the first place. (Not least, as I mentioned, because I hate travelling alone.) I had convinced myself that my plane would crash, and for that reason I tidied up all my drawers and threw loads of things out before I left – so that Charles would not be left to deal with everything. I had also just about finished spring cleaning the entire place, in an attempt to force myself to calm down.
I had promised Edward to walk his dog the afternoon of my departure. He had told me I could easily take it off the lead, but I almost never got it back on again. I had chased it through all of Fælledparken and had ended up on the square in front of the post office. It was pouring down, the dog and I were the only living creatures outside that Sunday afternoon, and the dog had sought shelter under the roof of the post office. I perched on the statue in the middle of the square, staring at it impotently, drenched and furious. I tried to recall some of the condescending and funny things PH had said about the bombastic post office and its bulging pillars, or where I had read about it, but I could not remember. The dog looked small and lost next to the pillars, but make no mistake – as soon as I moved closer, it leapt down the steps with a crooked grin, nimbly striking them like it was practising the scales on the piano. When I returned to my position in the rain, it went back under cover and looked at me again. ‘Do you want to swap places, you filthy mutt,’ I shouted and considered letting it find its own way home, when a lady holding a massive umbrella fortuitously made contact with it, and it practically leapt into her arms. I sneaked up behind it and grabbed hold of its tail. At home I said my goodbyes to Charles, as though it were for ever, and with a heavy heart I went to Kastrup and with heavy steps I walked to my gate – apparently a group of Chinese tourists and I were the only ones flying to Belgrade that day, and nobody was in a hurry to get us on board. When, according to my ticket, it was time to depart, I asked a short Chinese man if he had heard about any delays to Belgrade. ‘Beijing, Beijing,’ he said. And I realized my mistake. I ran like a madman, and even though my gate (the right one) was already closed, I forced my way through and boarded the aeroplane. ‘Why didn’t you call me – over the loudspeaker?’ I piped up to a stewardess, she gave me the ‘Stick a pipe in it and sit down’ look, ‘but they always call passengers who don’t come to the gate,’ I said, ‘I’ve heard them do it before,’ and with a sense of being completely unwanted, I sat down in my seat.