Sunday
- So…are you ever gonna not sleep with me, little girl?
Sasha was smiling as he turned and changed the record, caressing the case softly with his bony fingertips.
She placed her head on her right shoulder, looking at his thin hands and long fingers with interest.
- Nah. - she paused slightly and tilted her head a bit more. I don’t think I will..... You know I never could.... Really.... It would be like… too much and very wrong. ...And I could never fuck an intellectual.... I want to have a great first time, you know..... And it’s not like it’s the end of the world …being an almost eighteen year old virgin .
– The way you take no interest in boys you might want to watch out becoming a virgin twice that old, hun. You know how good men are scarce to find during times of war.
The silence that followed was there to remind them of the world outside, a world of blood and hunger and lunacy creeping itself back into their safe haven. He shook the feeling off and put the needle gently down.
As the vinyl turned and the warm sounds played, she felt safe again, protected and well taken care of, sitting in her neighbor's rooftop apartment, looking out across the narrow yard, admiring the beauty of the round yellow brick tower against the purple beginning of the sunset in the sky.
- Who built it ?- she was pointing, with an open palm, through the terrace door, at the building situated right opposite and spread out underneath them.
- What? SKC? He pronounced in the manner of a true Belgrader, as an explosive Slavic cluster of three consonants impossible to understand to any foreigner.
- And what was it built for ?..I mean.... it’s not like this was built to be the castle of r'n'r , the last stronghold of the urban culture, the place where we dig our trenches to defend who we are against those rural vampires?... Men built this ...and they wanted it to be exactly here in this spot for a reason…I cannot imagine what kind of a person would want to create such a rigid form…-she never could keep her mouth shut once the questions started.
Being eighteen in a week from today, she most certainly did have a lot of questions to ask.
He ignored her for better part of the tirade and stretched himself across the bed, supporting his head with almost fleshless arms, staring straight at the ceiling and its maze of tiny cracks.
- Here we go…history of the metropolis for beginners footnote xxiii - he smiled and made a pause to announce the lecture he was about to give, one of many both of them have gotten so used to enjoying, ever since they became neighbors and friends and a promise of a lot more to come almost two years ago.
Sasha knew everything about his city…and he knew it in detail she grew so fond of, trying to memorize each word as he spoke continuously, adjusting the level and the tone of his voice like those Athenian orators he admired so much would have .
- It was built a couple of years short of a hundred years ago, in 1895. The main architect was Jovan Ilkic and the original purpose was to house officers of the army and attend to their social needs. It was known as The Officer’s Club in those days, so the rigid outlay and the tower were a nice touch, I’d say.
- After the student’s protests in 1968, which were part of the global freedom movement, the building was handed over to the Belgrade University, as a part of the deal between the communist authorities and the student leaders.
- Since then, it has been the temple of progressive youth and alternative culture, housing the most avanguard artists and intellectuals of recent times. The Student’s Cultural Center is even today the place where authentic and critical thought flourishes.
-It is best known as one of the holy shrines of the local music scene of the eighties, with the list of names that played in its beautifully ornamented ballroom-styled main hall that I could quote for days, this band - he pointed towards the black circle that was like a spinning universe on its own - amongst others as well. They had their first ever concert down there …a decade or a lifetime ago.
- Wow.
He knew that she was having raving mad visions in that pretty head of hers and gave her time to come back to the reality of his room before he spoke again:
- You know I got the draft letter this morning?- he was almost whispering . Mom freaked out -he went on without giving her time to respond or the meaning of the words to sink in - she said they took away her colleague’s son the other day in the street. Two policemen asked him for an ID card and when they saw that he was old enough they just crammed him into a van and took him to the army barracks to check in…he is a high school kid like yourself, you know? Dad says I’ll have to go and stay with grandma for a while…it’s not safe here anymore…armed patrols kidnap people from their beds in the middle of the night and ship them out to the first line of fire in those cattle trucks … Imagine that…the dawn of the 21st century and I live in a country that reduces you to an animal…I would rather shoot myself than shoot anyone else.
- You are too much of a whiner to shoot yourself even in the foot successfully…I imagine Van Gogh would still be around painting if he were anything like you - she tried to joke away the fear she could feel peeping through his careless lazy front into the sound of his voice and making her scared.
He said nothing.
- When are you leaving? – she realized how she was already missing him as the words materialized in the air.
- In a couple of days…I. ..I have to turn in my graduation thesis the day after tomorrow…officially, you know.
- Funny. You history people, – she said that with the usual contempt for his profession in her voice, - writing on the past and pretending like there’s actually some point in dissecting it…as if our country had benefited from it and learned a worthy lesson to prevent horrors from being recycled into the present. As if it really matters who actually won the Kosovo battle six fuckin’ hundred years ago? It never really matters who yielded the firs axe or who got to raise the flag of victory after the ground beneath the battle became a carpet of crying carcasses, sucking in all the blood and all of the future together with it.
- It may help some day…once the madness stops, - Sasha tried to refute her outburst.
- Yeah right.
She was angry now, angry at him for leaving her to fight the world alone and angry at the world for making her fight .
- And when is that gonna happen?
They were both silent, still, listening to the voice coming from the speakers singing of the hopelessness they shared on the subject.
Let the water carry all of this away
Into oblivion
The shores are empty
Deserted...
Our eyes are empty
Empty like a desert…
You know that
Water carries everything.
***
That past winter the water carried dead dismembered bodies from upstream down into the heart of the Balkans.
The ghosts of the past were having their bloody feast feeding on the flesh and bones of their generation.
***
The madness had only gotten worse. Her family came to this city trying to escape it. Father was one of the first army officers who was discharged from the army that was preparing itself for the war by clearing its ranks.
A Serbian Orthodox officer, whose father was a Bosnian Muslim, and he himself was married to a Croatian Catholic, was a potential traitor to all sides. So the army swiftly retired him four years ago in one of the many far bloodier ’ethnic’ sweeps that followed.
Having no job, and due to their constant previous moving, no firm piece of land to call his family’s home, he eventually decided to bring them here, to the capitol.
Belgrade, the White city. Ha ha.
On the morning that they arrived she thought that someone with a typically twisted Balkan sense of humor had given the place its name. The city was dirty gray, lifeless, and the heavy stench of buildings, houses and people inside of them falling apart hanging in the air was almost palpable.
She felt desperate thinking that she was somewhat like an ancient Slav, picked up by the Celts along their path through the voluptuous Balkan peninsula, who was suddenly standing at the end of his journey, somewhere on the doom-like west coast of Ireland, staring into the darkness of the Atlantic ocean that was the end of the world as his world knew it.
That poor guy fifteen centuries ago must have sensed an existence as empty and as soulless as this town was on the morning when she stood in the streets of Belgrade for the first time in her life. It was the end of the world as she knew it, and it was a long way from feeling fine.
She could still remember that horrible, empty despair that drove tears to her eyes . Four of them dragged their many suitcases up and down the streets, for hours it seemed, without encountering a living soul. She was hungry, still dizzy from the long train ride and wondering how could any city look so dead. A city, a place where humans live.
She knew now that this city was the city of the living dead. Of those really dead and those pretending not to be dead inside. Of those who continued breathing and walking and talking regardless of the fact that there was no life left flowing through their veins.
When hope leaves, the soul dies. And the soul was dead here and all hope had left them to rot alive. This was the moment of darkness that had captured the inhabitants of the cursed city, damned in the foreverness of no escape.
The civilization was again having its revenge on the offspring of the forefathers that ignored the advice of gods and insisted on building their home right in the middle of one of history’s busiest intersections.
She hated this city. She loved this city. And for her those two emotions intertwined made perfect sense. And watching her right now and right here in his room grabbing a book to read made perfect sense to Sasha.
The conversation was over.
***
Her friend Sasha was what you might call a real rare living example of original Belgrader - tall, smart, and obnoxiously full of himself. A professional loudmouth. He could talk for hours , barraging sophisms like someone else would shout profanities in a traffic jam.
She had witnessed his sleek city charm work its way through the defenses of countless girls at parties they went to together. He would quote Herodotus as if he were reciting Shakespeare’s sonnets, making his way upwards under a hypnotized girl’s shirt.
She was somehow immune to him though.
Maybe it’s for her own good, he thought , wondering if she would ever understand how he felt about her. All the fun he made of her harsh highlander accent was there to hide how much he enjoyed listening to the rhythm of real, rich life that was weaved into it.
She was alive and made no excuses about it and waited on no one.
The world was black and white to her, and it was a world in which you survive first and think later how. She filled her lungs with a full length of air every time she took a breath.
He was amazed by the fact how she managed to be so superiorly alive.
Like, for instance, yesterday, he had spent the entire afternoon contemplating whether he wanted to go out or not, when she stormed into his room in the evening, dialing down through the endless list of telephone numbers, setting the coordinates of people and places in order and arranging them into a timetable in her head.
She dragged him out of bed when she was almost finished, picking up clothes from his own closet for him to wear and leaving him no time to think about it properly. Although almost a decade younger and a girl, she acted as if she was in charge.
And she was.
She only listened to him because she had cast him for that particular role in her life. A city tour guide. An intellectual mentor. Someone to cross-reference her thoughts. To borrow books from and never return them. Someone to play her the records and ask her to dig deep for the meaning of a single comma in a poem. Someone to play with, he thought.
And play along he did.
Careful never to reveal himself, he watched over her with mounting fear as she was growing up into a woman before his eyes and the city boys were starting to take notice.
***
She was reading, sitting with her legs crossed and not minding his stare as usual. He could watch her for hours sitting there on his floor like this, reading like now, doing her Latin homework or English trivia crosswords, doing whatever she was doing with the same intense devotion she so gave away to everything she did.
He fed for months off of the images of that one night, when, after hours passed and midnight had settled quietly in, she realized she was too sleepy all of a sudden and simply said to him: ”make me a bed here I want to sleep now.”
He had a spare mattress that he clumsily unfolded from under his bed and before he was able to turn and look for some extra sheets she had already undressed her jeans and snatched his blanket as she was getting into bed. She closed her eyes without even giving him a glance and fell asleep while he was still standing beside the bed, shaking with fear and desire and panic.
He undressed in the corner after he managed to regain control of his body, and lay silent, uncovered next to her. He felt the warmth of her breath on his cheek and listened to her breathe through the half open mouth, like she always did. He watched her forever before he managed to fall asleep, envious of the ease with which she lay on her stomach, hugging the pillow with one hand and stretching the other one high above her head.
She slept like she lived, free and on her own, she slept the dreamless sleep of a soul pure and consciousness that had no need to cleanse itself REMing.
So she did sleep together with him that night. And they joked how she was probably the only girl in town that he actually did ’sleep’ with.
-I’m gonna…
-... borrow that book, yes you may.-he finished her sentence. She was already at the door and a blink of an eye later he could hear her running down the stairs…
***
Mom was tidying up the kitchen.
- You shouldn’t stay up late tonight, it’s school in the morning .
-Yes, I know. I won’t stay up long, mom. Good night.
Hope headed straight for the shower deliberately avoiding more conversation, knowing that her mother will have retired to the bedroom by the time she finished the evening bathroom routines.
***
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