She stirred the green coolness in her glass distractedly and rejoined the others’ conversation, Spartacus had kept his promise to grill Krustev about music and the two of them radiated infantile satisfaction while discussing the solo in “Stargazer”; in all of her musical conversations with Spartacus, with which their friendship had, in fact, begun, Maya had never managed to talk like that and she began to suspect that there was something typically male going on here which was foreign to her and which seemed slightly pointless, the ability to listen to the instruments separately, to articulate and compare them, she simply liked certain songs and never felt any need to analyze them, still it was good that Spartacus couldn’t actually play an instrument, because then his conversations with Krustev surely would have turned into complete musician-speak, she had once found herself in the middle of a drummers’ rap session and her ears rang with downbeats and off-beats, double-bass, high-hats and asymmetrical meters, and she had decided that playing music was far more boring than listening to it. Krustev had suddenly become confident and calm, with the satisfaction of a dedicated teacher who has found himself an alert and responsive student. Maya liked such teachers, even if they weren’t artistic like Krustev, but most of all she liked the old-fashioned, balding professors who wore suits, spoke slowly and clearly, and carefully wiped their fragile glasses with a little cloth from time to time; she also liked the smell of dust and wood in the lecture halls, the turbid yellowish light in the high, vaulted corridors and all the rituality of the university; yet it lacked something which even the crappiest high school possessed: life together, the aggregate of all the students, divided into class periods and breaks, that reassuringly shared gossip mill, where everyone knew everyone else and there was no need to make plans by phone, since they would meet thanks to a necessity that had fused with habit to such an extent that it looked like the natural state of things. And, of course, when they went to college, they all already had their established friendships, their networks of people and places, and they weren’t particularly interested in forming new ones, and even when that nevertheless happened, it never happened in that spontaneous, imperceptible way devoid of purpose and intention in whcih relationships in high school had sprouted up. If she hadn’t met Spartacus and Sirma in high school, back in the days when she was a fake, it would never have been possible to meet them later and in some other place. She slurped the last drops of the mojito noisily through the straw and her nostrils took in the next scent wafting from the dive at the edge of the campgrounds, the smell of fish, the salty and sizzling scent of simple wooden tables with paper tablecloths and of a noisy twilight in which silverware and laughter jangled. She looked at Sirma, who bared her teeth in a smile, I know what you’re thinking, she said, I’m hungry, too.
[7]
Everyone was drowning here, he was surrounded by drowned fruit flies and other little bugs, and he was swimming, swimming away, so as not to drown, but at a certain point he reached the clear wall of the glass and could go no further, he couldn’t hang on to it, because he didn’t have vacuum feet like the flies, which, by the way, also weren’t able to hang on to the glass, wet and disheveled, they could only go back to the center or wander the outlying districts, along the periphery of the glass wall, but the important thing was not to stop swimming in the strange liquid with its undefined color and smell, flat beer or cold tea, from time to time new gnats would arrive from outside and would sink into the liquid with an inexplicable urge towards self-sacrifice, kicking their little legs, trying to flap their stuck-together wings, but they would soon drop lifelessly into the glass. Spartacus wondered how he had ended up here and what would happen if someone decided to drink the liquid, he already felt a traitorous exhaustion in his muscles, he couldn’t keep swimming forever, even if only in some glass, and completely businesslike, without fear, he thought to himself that in the end he, too, would surely drown like all the other bugs, but suddenly it hit him that he could float on his back and relax, he tried it and wouldn’t you know, it worked, his body submissively went slack in the liquid and for some time there was nothing.
But then a brrrm-zhhhush-zoop started up, obviously some fly, not a fruit fly, but some bigger one had slipped out of the glass with him and was now ramming the netted corners of the tent, let’s have a brrrm now for Mom, a zhhhush for Dad, a zoop for Grandma and Grandpa, okay, the fly obediently carried out the instructions, keeping up the rhythm and, as annoying as it was, Spartacus was thankful for it because they were moving after all, cutting a trail through the forest together, he carefully pushed aside the branches, brrrm-zhhhush-zoop and at one point, so late that he felt ashamed of his own foolishness, he realized that this was no fly, but the writer with the Caucasian Ford, the humming and buzzing were coming from the engine, and there was no forest anywhere nearby, nor any glass of cold tea, the old, decrepit car puttered along the rural route, I’ve written two novels and thrrrrreee! collections of poetry, the fly said and Spartacus suddenly realized that he had read one of those two novels, he now remembered it perfectly clearly, it was called Ascension Day and in it one of his classmates axe-murdered the girl he was in love with, until now, however, Spartacus had thought that the novel was by Leo Tolstoy, but now he realized that, in fact, it was by the windbag with the Caucasian Ford, he was impressed, then confused, so how did he know it was his book, since the guy hadn’t said anything about his novel, not even the title, but still he knew it, he knew it instinctively, the way he knew not to touch a hot stove, so, he asked, you know my classmates? I don’t know them, the guy replied, buuut! art moves in mysterious ways, and I mean mysterious with a capital M! Now Spartacus was holding the novel itself on his lap, paging through it and instead of letters he saw scenes from it before his eyes as if he were present at the events, at the same time he also saw the windbag writing the novel and wanted to shout at him, what are you doing, keep your hands on the wheel, but the guy had fallen into some kind of blissful, artistic trance, his hand raced over the pages that Spartacus was simultaneously reading, the windbag turned to him and asked should I tell you how it ends, no, Spartacus replied indignantly, why would you tell me, well, because, the windbag replied, if I don’t tell you, we’ll crash. But Spartacus stubbornly refused, he didn’t want him to give away the ending, he wanted to find out for himself, to see the final scene projected like a hologram from the book on his lap, the windbag shrugged, let go of the wheel and they really did crash instantly.
Now the important thing is to fall asleep, Spartacus told himself, if I fall asleep the car will start moving again. But he never figured out whether he managed to fall asleep or not, in any case the car was no longer there and he was completely convinced that he was in his tent, to make sure he even flipped through some of what had happened that day, yes, exactly, Elena’s dad had picked them up, they had taken the ferryboat to Thasos, they had gone swimming, drunk beer, eaten dinner, afterwards they all had felt really tired and had gone to bed, now he was furious that he couldn’t fall asleep properly, this night was his chance, they had gone to bed so early, when would he have a chance to sleep the following nights, some pachanga would start up, Sirma topless with a lei of Hawaiian flowers around her neck, now the petals of the flowers covered her nipples, but the more he looked at her, the more he realized that the flowers were, in fact, growing, multiplying and taking over an ever-larger part of her body, this was happening slowly and she didn’t seem to notice it, she kept dancing some strange dance, look, Maya told him and squeezed his hand, look, the flowers will erase her, he again tried to shout to warn her, but he only heard some mooing in his ears, while the fly stirred again, brrrm-zhhhush-zoop, and besides the fly he heard very clearly someone walking around outside his tent, sniffing and wheezing, was that a dog, could somebody steal his backpack, somebody walking around his tent with a dog? Zoop, said the fly. It wasn’t a fly, it was the zipper of his tent. Spartacus struggled to get up, but his body was terribly heavy, he couldn’t even move his arm. Zoop, and a little later zoop again, and female laughter. That was Sirma’s sister, he was absolutely convinced of this, true, Sirma had never mentioned having a sister, but now it was as clear as day to him that this was Sirma’s sister, they looked alike, but this girl was somehow softer and smiling, she was kneeling in the sand in front of his tent and quickly pulling the zipper up and down, now showing her face, now hiding it, she was playing with the zipper and laughing, Sirma’s sister. Suddenly the whirr of the zipper stopped and for a long time there was nothing again.