Drazan Gunjaca - Good night my friends
Excerpts from the novel
Good
night my friends
- Excerpts from the novel
- Editor's
note
- About the novel
DEPRESSIONS
Depressions! A state of mind, first of all, but of body, too. I hate depressions. Especially with other people. My own do not bother me so much, I give myself up to them with some masochistic pleasure, triumphantly sneering at life and people around me whose problems and desires are of no concern to me, because I don't give a fuck for the whole world anyway, beginning with myself. If there were any signs of life in my tired body, I've killed them with the third antidepressant. Thus I've messed up my stomach, my heart and my nerves, of which the latter have been literally driving me crazy over the days, months, years. Then you finally get hold of that real, genuine depression where you no longer care that an inquisitive female creature in the pharmacy across the street disapprovingly watches you coming for the second time in few days to ask for a new dose of those small green pills. Yes, it's for me, I retort with gusto. Yes, I have managed to make a mess of myself, and beyond. Which wasn't easy at all. I worked so hard to reach this state of perfection, so perfect that I can't understand it myself, let alone others. Who one by one are giving you up, knowing, or rather guessing what's wrong with you, afraid that they'll be pulled away with you into the blissful nirvana of nothingness, where there are no priorities, no fixed dates, no appointments, no commitments… That illusion of security we are building with so much dedication until in a whim of life it collapses like a house of cards. But then nothing is changed with the disappearance of the illusion, except that the illusion is no more. All the rest is still there, all those carefully built and highly cherished vestiges of your yesterday's everyday continue to exist around you, but today you no longer care whether or not you'll get somewhere in time or whether you'll get anywhere anytime, and what others will say to that.
The only thing I hate in such a state is meeting one of my two remaining friends in the same state. For depressions are mutually intolerant. Each is entirely self-sufficient, doesn't need, in fact, can't stand the other. So we are both silent, I am having my third cup of coffee, he is having his n-glass of beer, our depressions are colliding across the table, almost like two material objects, each fighting for its place under the sun. We are aware of their mutual intolerance, so I suggest that we take turns by even and odd dates. He likes the idea, but can't decide which dates he hates more, the even or the odd ones. Then he is struck with a great idea: let's share depressions by weeks, one week his, one week mine. OK, I accept, provided that the first week is mine. That's where we get stuck. Neither of us can hold out a week without depression. And so we go on staring into the tabletop, trying to think up some sort of interim solution, incapable as we are for anything durable or at least seemingly durable.
This war of falling stars is taking place in the center of Pula, in a joint christened «Café Bar Exclusive» by its owner Hrvoje. It certainly is exclusive by its guests, everyone of whom is exhaling clouds of smoke, like a group of death candidates allowed to have their last cigarette before execution. Incidentally, Hrvoje is highly flexible when it comes to things like words, names, signs. For example, before 1991, when the war struck this country, he was a Serb with a typical Serb name of Jovan, and his coffee bar, too, had an entirely different name, I’ve forgotten which. Then one night in that year 1991 a gang of skinheads, a bit euphoric on the eve of going to the front-line, ransacked his place, shouting that they’d never be paying their drinks to any Jovan. And an awful lot of drinks they’d had, as confirmed by the witnesses. Having realized that an unfortunate name like his in an unfortunate time would ruin his business, Jovan took a typical Croatian name, Hrvoje, and simply declared himself a Croat, refurbished his bar, renamed it, too, along more Western lines, posted a huge Croatian flag covering half the opposite wall for everyone to see upon stepping inside, and, on top of all, hung out a couple of nicely framed awards of gratitude conferred by or somehow procured from some Croatian combat brigades for his generous contributions to the national cause. Then he went on with his business as if nothing had happened that night. Maybe it hadn’t, who knows. Maybe he’d been Hrvoje and Croat in some earlier life and he just returned to his real roots. Be that as it may, our Jovan turned Hrvoje became a greater patriot than the rest of us who took patriotism for granted by the very fact of our birth here in this life. Or we may have just kept a low profile to avoid paying for those awards that all kinds of military units were handing out right and left to anyone ready to spare some dough. As far as I know, nobody ever asked Hrvoje how much his awards had cost him, but, judging by his true and assumed origin, it may be fairly assumed that he must have been a bit more generous than the philanthropists with the right ethnic pedigree. Anyway, there is no single coffee bar, pub, tavern, bakery or similar public institution in this town which doesn’t visibly display such awards of gratitude, usually in gilt frames. The more obscure the owner’s name from the ethnic point of view, the more numerous such awards are. I know a baker Selim, an Albanian Muslim I think he is, who needed more than the gratitude of local warriors and had to get it from all over the country, so that his walls are all covered with awards and letters from various combat brigades praising and thanking him for feeding them with warm bread in those hard times of war and scarcity. But then, scarcity is quite a normal phenomenon in the history of these lands, especially during regularly recurring wars when warriors of all sorts need and always get benefactors, willing or unwilling. Of course, one can only guess about the true motives of these good generous people when they were parting company with their money, cars and other property, giving their best assurances that they could hardly wait to give them over to the homeland, regretfully unable for some pressing private reasons to take arms and defend it against the hated enemy. The real motives of these benefactors may have been rather dubious, but, to do them justice, they had to bear in mind the fact is that all the wars in the Balkans had been extremely unpredictable and allegedly defensive and had always resulted in new states combined with a radical change of regime. True, our national leaders strongly reject the notion of our being a part of the Balkans, arguing that we are just a little bit in it, geographically, not culturally or politically, and if anybody in our neighborhood argues to the contrary, we’ll settle it through some new war. And a new state arisen in the same territory, but with new power holders, needs a lot to grow up, demands a lot of sacrifice from its citizens to satisfy its enormous appetite. Once on its feet after a generation of sacrifice, a new generation tears it to pieces in some new war. So it all starts anew. Luckily, there is plenty of paper for the letters of gratitude, and plenty of good people anxious to invest their arduously acquired assets in some new state project.
Ah, I am digressing. Not intentionally. I promise, I’ll return to Jovan – sorry, Hrvoje. But nothing more about the awards. Besides, there is nothing more to add to it.
Yes, depressions. They must be perfectly normal if you are in the forties. True, the early forties, but still the forty is there and to be taken for its value, especially if you are living in a country which only recently went through a five-year war and is just beginning to recover a little. As things are, recovery will not be finished in my lifetime. Besides, my generation is up shit creek. For one thing, even in the rest of the world, once you step into the forties, you start doing some first stocktaking, and the first results of it are usually appalling. Most of us have one or two marriages on our record, destroyed or about to be destroyed, or, in the best case, in a deep, genuine crisis. Briefly, personal life – a mess. As for the business life, in a country where a «businessman» is in the position of being either a criminal or a bankrupt, it is a concept not worth the effort of analyzing, whether our economic geniuses admit it or not. Now, add to it as salt to the wound the war and its loooong-term aftereffects, and you get the whole shit, a generation which is – lost. As simple as that. Lost in time and space. Irreversibly.
With cards sorted on the table like this, your life has no chance in this battle lost in advance, a battle in which we are all nothing but cannon fodder of grand ideas which have devastated these lands in the past years. Losers, one way or the other. The only thing left is to endear yourself to your doctor below the lowest limit of your dignity in order to get a recipe for the biggest possible quantity of free antidepressants, which, if paid from your own pocket, are anything but cheap. If you can’t get cigarettes on recipe, I think to myself, then at least get this other drug for free. Speaking of cigarettes, I had a serious argument with my doctor. If treated drug addicts can get free amphetamine, a light drug, why can’t I get free cigarettes labeled «light» for treatment against cigarette addiction? But he wouldn’t listen, although he had once been a smoker himself, and I was indignant over such lack of understanding.
Oh, yes, there are antidepressants and antidepressants, some make you liven up a bit, spread your wings and fly, only to stumble over one of a series of invisible hurdles arrayed in this town every few steps. So what’s the use of these fucking antidepressants? To get yet another knockdown and just add up to your troubles. So accepting your depressions is the only right choice. Well, not the choice exactly, rather a lesser of two evils, but still. The final outcome is the same, isn’t it, regardless of the starting position. You have a soft, hazy tuck-in where you just let life pass by. You live without actually living. A unique phenomenon, indeed. True, one not at all unknown in the rest of the world. But our depressions here are special though, just as we are. Installed in our depressions, like those in the rest of the world, are failed love, business and other dreams, but ours are seasoned with the gravy of blood and sweat, the dead refusing to be buried, the living refusing to live, the boundaries of old and new states changing at least twice in the average lifetime of the people here, plus some values that even the Almighty abandoned ages ago… Indeed, the decadent West can’t hold a candle to us when it comes to depressions. Just like in many other things. Envious of our superiority in so many things, the Westerners resort to insults, describing us as undesirable, non-democratic, not to mention other attributes they keep throwing at us on a daily basis. Pure envy, that’s it. Or that’s what our authorities are telling us, at least those in my memory. Regardless of the current regime. Since the arrival of the Croats and other Slavs in these lands centuries ago, all our authorities, whichever in charge at a time, have all considered themselves democratic. Unlike the failed Western authorities, our authorities are always right. For those who think different they’ll always find a way of making them better believers than the Pope. So imaginative they are in every thinkable respect, all of them, the former and the present. And surely the future ones, too. So good indeed that they can’t fail even if they want to. So resourceful that you can never guess what next they’ll do to make the life of their subjects richer. Spiritually richer, of course. Our authorities don’t give a fuck for those prosaic, despicable materialistic values of prosperity that the West is obsessed with. In this respect, it must be admitted, they have been consistently principled, although in principle you don’t expect politicians to care much about principles. Absolutely consistent, all of them so far. Even ready, if need be, to invent a war, just to enrich the spiritual national values…
I am becoming tiresome, aren’t I? Just a little bit? Or too much? Well then, let’s hear what the folks in the Café Bar Exclusive are thinking aloud.
Hrvoje! – my friend Fabio shouted, the one with depression sitting across to me at a small table. – Hrvoje!
Why the hell are you shouting? – the host reacted with morose hospitality. – I am not deaf.
Then answer, if you’re not deaf – Fabio retorted.
I’ve answered, haven’t I? What do you want?
Another beer!
And that’s why you’re shouting – Hrvoje rebuked him.
What do you expect? – by now Fabio was quite angry. – From you I ask beer, not Baudelaire’s poems.
Damn your Baudelaire. Big or small beer?
Big – Fabio said and looked at me. – What the hell is wrong with this guy today? I always take big.
South wind – I muttered, just to say something. – When it comes, people get crazy, you know that.
Fabio – Ranko called from the adjacent table. – Do you know that the Dubrovnik Republic’s courts several centuries ago treated the south wind as a mitigating circumstance in murder trials?
In recent times we haven’t had any aggravating circumstances in murder cases – Fabio observed peevishly. – Except if you helped someone to survive. Especially someone with a wrong family tree.
Shit – Ranko concluded the exchange and returned his attention to the company gathered at his table.
That’s the kind of talk you can hear there in this bar. But, I must admit, sometimes, rarely, moments of lucidity sparkle up that may make your day less rotten.
Ranko’s wife Loredana entered the place, as she usually did in these twilight hours to have her glass of vodka and tonic, pick up her husband and take him home. As Ranko’s adjacent table was crowded, she chose our table. Ere she took off her overcoat, her drink was already served.
How come are you so expeditious with her? – Fabio asked querulously.
She is a pathologist – Hrvoje explained apologetically.
What the hell does it have to do with expeditious service? – Fabio insisted in the same tone.
Well, she’ll be the last on me – the host said. – I mean, she’ll be the last to see me stripped bare.
Why should you care, you’ll be dead – Fabio muttered, still bad-tempered.
Nevertheless, the thought makes me uncomfortable – Hrvoje replied. – Can’t help it.
Well, considering your Apollo-like physique, I am not surprised that you feel uncomfortable – Fabio agreed in a more conciliatory tone. – Hey, you – turning to Loredana – Always forget asking you. Why is it always you coming to pick your husband, why not vice versa?
For fear of not being mistaken for one of her corpses. – I suggested.
I heard you! – Ranko called out at me.
Will you be able to butcher your Ranko when he kicks the bucket? – Fabio went on unrelentingly.
No problem – she said, unperturbed. – He’s so full of life that I won’t notice any difference.
I heard you, too! – Ranko called out again.
My wife, if working as a pathologist, would first pluck out my heart and start jumping on it, for several hours to be on the safe side. – Hrvoje said.
Of course she would after you dumped her in the eighth month of pregnancy –Fabio commented.
It was only then that learned I was not the happy father – Hrvoje noted with a shrug.
Did she confess? Really? – Fabio was curious.
She had no choice, forced by sound arguments – Hrvoje replied.
What arguments?
Forcible.
I see! – Fabio said. – That I can understand. Do you miss her?
Miss her? – Hrvoje paused – No. But I terribly miss her comb.
Her…what? – Fabio asked, baffled.
Her comb – Hrvoje repeated. – You know those terribly long lady’s combs with spikes on the top, neither sharp nor blunt, just as need be. Whenever I returned home tired, slumped in the bathtub, I grabbed that toothed monster and started scratching myself on the back. Oh, how I enjoyed it! I miss it, I really do. Now every night I get frightful itches, much worse than before when the comb was there at hand. It’s maddening, I’m scratching myself as far down the back as I can, but never nearly close enough. No, I’ll never get over that comb, never!
Dammit! – Fabio commented sulkily.
Fabio – Loredana turned to him. – I understand you were celebrating something yesterday.
That’s right – he confirmed, happy to scrap the debate on Hrvoje’s comb. –Yes, after ten years of legal action I’ve finally managed to get a divorce. I filed the suit some time at the beginning of the war, there came the five-year anniversary of the end of the war, but there was still no end to my marriage. Everything seemed to have its end, everything except that. I was about to give it all up, and then, yesterday, finally, I received the verdict about the peaceful death of my marriage. Well, considering that your husband was my legal counsel – he added, motioning to Ranko – it could have been worse.
Hey, you muddled head, how could I get you divorced? Until recently you lived with her in the same flat – Ranko protested.
What difference does it make? – Fabio wondered.
No difference, except that she was saying that she loved you, that you were screwing her regularly, and that she had no idea why you wanted to divorce her. – Ranko retorted sarcastically. – And since we could not make arrangements for any candleholders to witness to the contrary, it was your words for hers. Besides, after three years of litigation you admitted at the court hearing that you’d spent on her the most part of the night before, don’t you remember?
True, I admitted, but I made a point of the fact that I’d been drunk that night and that I’d been used by her – Fabio wouldn’t give in.
And so it went at least several times every year, didn’t it – Ranko pressed on. – Often enough to keep the thing going for so many years. If your stepfather hadn’t dropped dead quite a short while ago, and you moved to live with your dear old mum, you’d never got your divorce, to the end of your days.
These lawyers are really a fucked-up bunch – Fabio said to Loredana and me in a subdued voice. – Is he treating you the same way?
He’s awful – Loredana answered in a cool voice. – Whenever things go wrong, he goes out of his way to prove that I am the cause of his inefficiency.
Hey, you, stop pounding at me – Ranko protested. – Today is my rotten day anyway.
Why? – Fabio asked.
I’ve been trying the whole day to collect a debt or two from my many debtors, but nobody answers the call, as if all of them had vanished without a trail. Unbelievable! Seems all of them know what I’m calling for and wouldn’t answer for the life of them. And only yesterday I could get their attention whenever I chose.
My buddy – I intervened – folks in these areas have developed a special sense which reacts to the presence of creditors only. You can get your dear debtors any time of day and night you choose, except when you want to get your money back. With that miraculous sense they can spot your intention at least a day in advance, so that you can only sit and cry over your ill fate.
I’ll have to change the strategy – Ranko observed moodily.
By forgetting about your debtors – Fabio put in.
Thanks for your suggestion – Ranko said, exasperated.
Fabio – Loredana cut the discussion short – will your new book see the light of the day at long last?
At present it’s doomed to flourish under the light of the 75 watt bulb in my closet – he replied.
Why? – she insisted.
Because, judging by my publisher’s opinion, it’s quite a good literary proposition, so should be published for the sake of literature.
So? Where’s the problem?
He is a commercial publisher, he says, he doesn’t care for literature. You know what he did? He gave me a sexy bestseller to read and see what’s selling best nowadays.
What are you going to do? – Loredana asked inquisitively.
Leave it all as it is, only inject a page or two of violent sex into each chapter.
But how will it fit in with what you’ve written so far? – I was also inquisitive.
Violently – he replied indifferently. – Violent sex, not normal sex, as I said.
I could do with any – Loredana commented.
I heard you – Ranko called out from the adjacent table.
Who says it should do anything with you – she retorted. – I’m talking about the living, not the dead.
In the last years of my conjugal life my spouse was complaining all the time about splitting headaches, so I wonder how to call the kind of sex we had –Fabio spoke up again, rising slowly to go to the toilet. – Not counting those several occasions when she was using me unscrupulously for legal purposes.
Better that way than no way – Loredana uttered stiffly, more to herself, and turned to her husband: – Well, Ranko, to stay with the current topic, how’s your health tonight?
Aches all the way down, not only the head – he replied quickly.
What about conjugal rights? – she teased him. – The right to…
…love – I replenished.
Fine – she agreed – you can put it that way. The exercise of this right should be made mandatory at least once a month. In the physical sense of the word, of course.
Hey, you, it’s not our bedroom – Ranko reprimanded her, now a bit ill at ease – it’s a café.
Café Bar Exclusive – Hrvoje corrected him, returning to his guests.
With the delightful French accent – Ranko commented sarcastically.
Fabio will cough himself to death – Hrvoje said, ignoring Ranko’s remark, listening to the sounds coming out of the toilet, a mixture of coughing and wheezing. – Fabio, are you alive? – he shouted at the door. – I need the place, too.
Wait! – a groaning voice was heard from the toilet. – Let me just recover my lungs.
Shit, he’s finished – Hrvoje muttered, hopping at the door. – Clear your throat in the morning the way other decent people do.
I’ve outgrown that phase – Fabio mumbled, reappearing yellowish-greenish in the face. – Now I can do it any time of day and night.
The Rovinj Tobacco Corporation should cover at least your burial costs when you croak one of these days – Hrvoje said, hurrying past Fabio to get inside.
They should certainly grant a discount to those who smoke more than two boxes a day – Fabio observed, returning to his table.
You’ll be soon my client, if you go on like this – Loredana said to him reproachfully.
Who the fuck cares – he reacted peevishly. – I’ll have the privilege of knowing why I’m dying, unlike Ivan, who about a month ago, although a staunch non-smoker, died of heart attack. Besides, he was a vegetarian, wasn’t he? – he asked me.
No idea – I said. – But wasn’t he killed in a traffic accident? Fell asleep while driving and went to hell. Wasn’t that the cause?
Exactly – Fabio confirmed. – However, had he smoked, he wouldn’t have fallen asleep while driving. You know that old saying: «With a cigarette you are not alone». So you see, smoking would have kept him awake, and he would go on living for twenty-odd years longer and die of heart failure or lung cancer like the rest of normal people.
Fabio – Ranko said – I know no one whose philosophy of life is more rotten than yours.
And I know no lawyer as rotten as you are – Fabio countered.
That’s how you thank me for the ten years of free legal representation in your divorce suit.
Don’t advertise it around, if your want to stay in business – Fabio advised him.
That’s the straw that breaks the camel’s back! – Ranko was getting angry. – After all I’ve done for you…
Come on, calm down – Fabio grinned good-naturedly, color beginning to return to his face. – You know what’s the problem with such straws? You don’t. With people like me they tend to multiply until they turn into a straw whirl threatening to suck me in. So please stop bothering about every stupid thing I say.
Fuck off – Ranko grumbled.
I’ve had enough of all of you – Loredana stepped in. – Ranko, get your ass moving, we are going home, I’m sick and tired of this goddam joint, the way it is I may have well stayed at my workplace.
But you don’t have vodka and tonic there – Hrvoje objected.
That’s what you think – she retorted. – Image yourself lying there on the table stiff as a stone. Can you? You can. Fine. Now imagine yourself being cut up alive.
Ugh! – Hrvoje reacted with a wince. – You’ve spoiled my day.
Mine, too – Loredana said, rising to leave.
Her husband waddled off after her. My tired eyes paused on Fabio’s sallow unshaven profile, more precisely, on his beard he was shaving twice a year as a matter of habit developed who knows why. I very much doubt that he’d himself be able to say why. Then he’d let it grow again, already well whitened, not conspicuously though, owing to the yellowish tinge from cigarette smoke. That was one of the reasons he wouldn’t stop smoking. Thanks to smoking, his beard was not exactly white, it had a sort of golden glint which he thought made him look much younger. For his part, his interest was focused feebly on the sports news from a television set fixed high in a corner, busy all the time from morning to late evening hours. One of those things that by the very fact of their existence get under your skin without you being able to say why. If removed, you’d have a feeling that a regular guest has disappeared, only you couldn’t remember which guest. Hardly any of the present guests had any idea of what was going on the TV screen, unless it was some slalom of the national ski star Janica Kosteliæ, whom, of course, everybody supported wholeheartedly. Maybe because of the way in which he had made herself a big success, through endless self-sacrifice and hard work. True, few people around here are inclined to consider taking up a challenge like this, but it’s good to know that you have a chance, just in case. Until then they are always free to identify themselves with Janica’s feats. Our Janica. So who says that the nation is of no use. You can always identify yourself with some of its successful members and thus please the little that is left of your ego. What difference does it make whether you wave the national flag in the audience or on the winner’s throne, the main thing is that an opportunity has been given to wave it. Toting a huge flag at one of the world renown ski runs, in full view of those worldly pretenders, showing that we, because Janica is we, that we, if we choose, can do better than all their frightfully competent, overpaid teams together, well, that’s a kind of pleasure for which a credible majority of the bipeds living in these wastelands would sell the little soul they’ve managed to preserve amidst all the misfortunes they are exposed to on a daily basis. Indeed, my compatriots prefer the spiritual national values to any material treasures of this world. To do them justice, however, they owe that enviable amount of spirituality to the wisdom of the political leadership which has done its best to dissuade their subjects from even thinking of the possibility to get down to work, to try and achieve something better than mere survival. As for the flag flowing, there are exceptions to the rules. I mean those who in recent years have made real fortunes by Western standards, in ways in which, by the same standards, they should have earned themselves long-term imprisonment. Before the last elections the present ruling coalition was making big promises about how it was going to punish them nicely for their doings, but soon after the elections realized that real power belongs to the rich and, just like the previous government, swooped on the poor people, the stupid masses which cannot understand that pre-election promises are nothing but mirage, so who cares for them? We care, millions of voices have been protesting throughout the country, millions of the members of the chosen people. The same type of nauseating protests the preceding rulers were faced with. A strange phenomenon, this relationship between the rulers and the people. So much love and understanding between them before the elections, after that as if they’d never heard about each other. Strange, indeed.
Janica has won again – Fabio broke the silence. – A great girl. We must drink to it. Hrvoje, one more glass. I should have selected sports rather than culture, maybe I’d have made something of myself. In sports you have precise parameters of success: the number of seconds it takes to reach the goal, no side games, no tricks. In culture nobody gives a damn whether or not you’ve reached the goal. In fact, there is no goal. Just hundreds and hundreds of meandering narrow footpaths where the wretches like me wander about aimlessly until they find themselves on a small hillock and start crying aloud, trying to be louder than the others crying from the surrounding hillocks. But in all that yelling noise no one can make out what the other is blabbering about.
Can you see or hear anything without comparing it directly with your precious self? – I asked him ironically.
I can, but comparisons keep coming by themselves, whether I like it or not – he muttered. – Unfavorable for me, of course.
Hey, man, get rid of your frustrations, or finally learn to live with them.
How should I get rid of them? – he raised his voice. – I didn’t seek them, they sought and found me to stay with me. They control my life, I don’t control them. I didn’t give them shape, others did. I just ran into them, because the field of my interests is situated within their field. In other words, I had no choice.
Things will get better – I assured him laconically.
When? – he took the set phrase rather seriously.
How can I know, in ten, fifteen years? Maybe!
What a damn optimist you are – he reacted agitatedly. – In ten or fifteen years, if I live that long, all I’ll need will be a ground floor flat not more than thirty yards away from the pharmacist’s, not across the road though, otherwise, when passing over, I may…
All right – I interrupted him – life and work are frustrating nowadays. Is that what you want to say? So it’s normal that they produce normal frustrations, I mean, normal by the existing, generally accepted, objective, or call them as you like, standards. Never mind how you call them. But, things being as they are, you are clever and realistic enough to accept this fact which cannot be changed, and somehow come to terms with it.
I see – now it was his turn to show his teeth. – You, clever and realistic as the Almighty created you, you’ve learned to live in harmony with all these objective circumstances of yours, haven’t you? Ample proof of it are the letters you were writing until quite recently. Or just trying to write, which is even worse.
Fuck the circumstances, the letters and this whole discussion – I snapped in impotent indignation.
OK – he was grinning smugly. – Hrvoje, will you bring that drink at long last. By the way, how are you coping with your objective circumstances?
With what? – Hrvoje asked, a bit baffled.
With the objective circumstances that limit the scope of your lofty profession – Fabio explained.
Smoothly – was the answer. – Subjectively, I send them to double hell first thing in the morning, the moment I get on my feet, objectively, they start bugging me the moment I step into this joint and go on doing it until I go to bed and get some sleep. Satisfied with the answer?
I say, I say – Fabio looked at Hrvoje appreciatively. – I’ll have to spend a little more time in your company.
Hardly possible – Hrvoje countered. – Unless you move to my place. But that’d be a kind of punishment no one deserves, not even a guy like me.
Thanks – Fabio muttered, suddenly losing his spirits again.
Pleasure – the other said curtly. – At your service.
Listen – Fabio turned to me – how about keeping our mouths shut for the rest of the evening?
Agreed – I said.
Shit – he hissed, blowing into the finger he’d just burnt with his cigarette.
You’ve honored the contract for a long time indeed – I immediately seized on the opportunity to reprimand him.
«Shit» constitutes no breach of contract. It’s like a sigh, a cry, the briefest definition of a shitty state of mind, it’s something like…
Shut up!
Good.____________________________________________
FIRST LETTER
Pula, December 24, 1991Dear…
My God! I don’t know how to call you! I don’t know with what name to address the woman with whom until yesterday I was waking in the morning, having the first coffee, planning the rest of the day and life… I can’t call you by your name, because that was never the name I called you, and I also can’t call you by the petty names, the kind of names we were using while still alive. Believe it or not, I am afraid to write anything, as if a single harmless word would determine tomorrow, the whole future… I am afraid of everything. I know you’ll keep this letter, I know some day our children will read it, so I am afraid I am actually writing in reply to unsaid accusations which some time in the distant future will become enforceable, demanding me to account for every word, even every comma… I can’t help feeling that I am trying to justify myself for something there is no justification for. Without knowing what the something is! Or who is the accused. If it is me, what are the charges about? What am I blamed for? And where you stand in all that story turned upside down? I fact, I don’t know what you are to me now. I know nothing any more. About myself, about you, about us. I don’t know if we ever existed, or it was all just a nice dream, short-lived, like anything else nice. Finally, I don’t know what to write about! But one thing I know. Whatever I happen to write down will be, must be true, no matter how painful the truth may be.
Well, for a start, I admit having received your picture postcard from Australia about a month ago, with the address of the flat where you and the kind have settled down. All this time I’ve been gathering strength to sit and write something to you. I could have resorted to those little lies, so often indispensable in life, by saying that I received the letter only yesterday, quite credible considering the insane times we are going through and the crippling effect it has on the postal service. But what’s the use of such little lies? They are no longer of any importance to anybody, they simply make no sense. But at least we can now afford infinite sincerity, now that they have deprived us of all the rest that makes lies worth.
To the end of my life I’ll never forget the afternoon when I peeped into the mailbox and saw something was in it. I unlocked it and found your picture postcard. Yes, I finally fixed the lock of that old mailbox, as you’d been urging me for years to do. You know why? For fear somebody would take the postcard, discard and tear it to pieces. I knew it was going to arrive sooner or later. You see, fear is the principal mover of things. In these lands we have learned to be cautious, haven’t we? Very quickly. In only few months.
Jesus, what a mess they’ve made of our lives! Only six months ago we had a life, and then, overnight, they stole it from us. I remember every moment of your departure with the children to your parents in Serbia. Temporary it should have been, one month at most, now see where we are. My son is going to school in a remote country, in a remote Australian town, the name of which I can hardly spell, unless I carefully follow character by character. My little daughter will start talking in a language unknown to me, she won’t even be able to address me properly. If we ever see each other again, that is. Please keep watch on these two innocent angels.
Today is Christmas Eve here, tomorrow is Christmas Day, my Catholic, not your Orthodox, but I have no Christmas, an occasion that the whole family is supposed to rejoice in… My Christmas has been taken away from me. I don’t know what they need my Christmas for, but let them have it. It’s all theirs. I am celebrating mine looking at our family photos, writing this, trying to finish this letter somehow without breaking down. Without bursting out crying. You know I can’t cry. A single tear suffices to cause me headache. But it’s a strain on my stomach. It’s burning. When it becomes unbearable, I go to the toilet and, double bent by the bathtub, wait until it disappears by itself. I can’t tell why in such moments I go there of all places, but anywhere else it’s still worse. I guess it’s because I feel that most things have remained in there. Still there on the toilet shelf are your knicks and knacks, your perfumery, cosmetics, hairpins, or what you call them… Since your departure I’ve stopped counting the daily number of cigarettes I smoke. No, I haven’t stopped smoking. How could I, that’s all left to me in sleepless nights. But I am no exception at all. Sleeplessness has invaded the whole town. And the rest of this miserable country.
I can hear the church bells tolling, inviting us to the Christmas Eve Mass. What would Hemingway say if sitting now with me, listening to their echoes penetrating through the walls, the bones, the brain… Now I can well understand the way he ended. By the way, I have never laughed since you left. What for? Sometimes I take the guitar, hold it, but I never play. Who for? And which song? Right now I am listening to our favorite song, The Satin Nights, wondering what color they’ve given to our nights. Surely no nice color, rather some ugly. Meaty red, bloody…
Some friends invited me for Christmas dinner, but I refused. I can no longer stand those pitiful looks, I don’t want anybody to pity me. They have no right to it. Gossip is spreading around about how you fled to Serbia with the children, that we have divorced. Some of them, beginning with my mother, are advising me to try and get the kids back somehow, so that they wouldn’t be reared by the Serb enemy… Luckily, she is far away from this town. Unbearable how they spare no word of abuse against you. Even your recent friends with whom you shared coffee parties so many times. Some of them I sent to hell, until I got tired and started shying any company. I spend most of the time in our flat or out there in the military barracks. My parents have gone mad, literally. Father is on my side, mother is raving or wailing, saying she is ashamed to appear in the street. To which I said that she’d better spend more time at home washing and cleaning. This infuriated her so much that she wouldn’t talk to me any more. Oh yes, I also told her that she had another son who married a Croat girl on a temporary basis. He divorced her a couple of months ago. You can well imagine how my mum feels down there in Dalmatia where the war euphoria is brought to a fever pitch. All of a sudden she’s lost control of all her four grandchildren, two for lack of the right nationality, two for lack of conjugal love. My brother is also supporting me, without reserve. Although I wonder why. I mean, what is my tomorrow’s cause worth anybody’s support?
I am talking nonsense, aren’t I? But what else can I do? I’ve never been much good at writing, that was your domain. These says, for who knows which time, I was reading those wonderful love verses you’ve been writing to me in those early days before marriage. Every time I cast a glance at your clothes so neatly sorted in the cupboard my eyes pause on the chair beside it, the one you always used to put on the clothes you’d been wearing that day. It’s the chair I’m aware of first thing in the morning, hoping I’ll see on it the skirt, the blouse you took off yesterday night. Hopeless. I moved it twice from the bedroom and took it back again. I can’t do without it, removing it would be like removing a part of you. Finally I’ve settled in the sitting room for night rest, on the settee. I just couldn’t take it any more.
I am staying away from the children’s room. I have no more strength to face it. I spent one night there and nearly went nuts. Next day at work I made a real havoc and came very close to being disgracefully dismissed from the army. Better not go into details. Briefly, they don’t understand a thing. Or rather refuse to understand. All day long they keep talking about the homeland and patriotic sacrifice. I asked my superior officer: do my children have the right to that same homeland? At least the half of it, the half belonging to me as their father? How would he regulate the status of people having only half the right? Whereupon he retorted with a sneer that had I thought twice before deciding whom to marry, my children wouldn’t be fifty-fifty. Blinded with rage, I fell upon him. If the others hadn’t stepped in, I’d have broken his neck. Somehow I got away with it.
So that’s how my days are passing by. Walking a tightrope, tilting now this side, now that side, each equally wrong, each pulling you down to the same abyss. I look at myself in the mirror and ask: Who am I? Earlier a Yugoslav Navy officer, now a Croatian Army officer, they would answer, not caring a damn what else I may be. Nobody cares that I am a father, that I have my wife and children, my personal life. No more of it, forget about anything personal. It’s a war which justifies all absurdities, above all the absurdity of inhumanity. Not to mention things like love, unless devoted to the homeland alone. That’s the only kind of love the war is ready to recognize.
I am reading your last sentence on the picture postcard, added in tiny, hardly visible letters: «Are you still mine?».
One of these days I’ll be on the front line. I am afraid. Afraid of killing and all that goes with it. Write to me, maybe I’ll come back alive. Write about the kids, how you’ve settled down, what my son is doing, if the little one has started talking, write about everything. Don’t let them forget me. For me that would be a punishment worse than any death waiting in store. I’ll answer as soon as I am back. Even if not back, I’ll answer, one way or the other. Write to me.
