Incidentally, it’s nice here. This “little bit of Serbia” is extraordinarily good for my nerves, and it seems to me that, although there aren’t many of them, the Serbs here live quite differently from those there. Or perhaps I should say “you there”?
Tomorrow we’ll be getting money from Stockholm: a relative is sending us German marks to buy supplies for the coming three months, which I believe is as long as it will take for us to get Swedish immigrant visas for my family and myself. Refika brought me your collection of stories and one dreadfully bad volume of poems, translated into Serbian, by one of his countrymen, which I intend to throw in the trash. He laughs, the bum, and says, pointing at the book of poems: “Read one every night, before you go to sleep.” “All right,” I say, putting it aside. And he falls onto the bed, roaring with laughter. He told me I was a “Serbian cultural racist.” Once in a while, I do feel better. We were right to leave Serbia, because of the children, because of my wife, because of my mother. That’s how it is in a foreign land, my friend. Here, my hand writes of its own accord: “Waging war, shedding blood for a foreign master…”
marriage
[SLOVENIA]
MIRANA LIKAR BAJŽELJ
Nada’s Tablecloth
Fucking complicated, you think to yourself, as you walk along the smooth, slippery, shining surface and beneath your thin leather soles feel every joint between the paving stones. You’re afraid that you will get tangled up in this dress, to which you are not accustomed. If you do, that will be a sign, and if you do not, likewise; the whole street is somehow bulging, because of fear, rainwater, or time, certainly because of something. A few months ago you would have described this moment with the word paradoxical; now that word, along with several others, is stuck somewhere behind you, somewhere in time. Tell me which words you use and I’ll tell you with whom you spend time and what you are. You can still change your mind, in spite of the fact that the world has been speeding up from month to month, from week to week, from day to day; today it’s speeding up from hour to hour, and that’s all you can think of, that there’s no time left, and of how everything is so fucking complicated.
In front of you is the red, white, and blue flag with the checkerboard, probably there’s also one somewhere at the back, not to mention those left behind in the parked cars; around the flag are hired musicians who sing of the beauties of our homeland and about the beautiful Dalmatia that they will defend with their last drop of blood; everyone is singing along, Goran is walking beside you and behind you are a whole lot of people. All your folk from back home are here and you know exactly what they’re thinking, that this isn’t our kind of climate, it’s too hot. They’re mixed in with Goran’s people, brown, green, and washed-out pastel shades among black, blue, and colorful modern; your folk aren’t used to being away from home, the most elegant colors for them are brown and moss green, they’re not made for these hot white stones on this hot Saturday afternoon, but for you they’d do anything and what our Nuša does is always right. You don’t even know that at the pub your father is known as OurNuša because he begins every sentence with your name. OurNuša, he says, adjusting his glasses. Goran’s people are also dressed up. The men in elegant suits, on their feet sharp Italian shoes but no socks. This is another reason for that pain in your diaphragm. What kind of world is it where men dressed for a special occasion are not wearing socks? What’s wrong with them?
You go along the seafront, there’s a smell of salt in the air, mixed with a smell of oil and, come on, let’s admit it, a smell of sewage. On your right yachts are moored, flags hang in the still air like limp rags: the foreigners on deck watch and size you up. A small man on an Italian yacht stretches to take a picture of the men. You are somehow floating but you notice all this, your eyes take in all this confusion. You see yourself walking on the centuries-old stones, you know you’re hot, you’re afraid that something isn’t quite right, you also see the camera in the Italian’s small brown hand. It’s possible that as early as the autumn some male models with icy, imbecilic looks will be stalking down the catwalk without socks, a nice trick, skin against skin, he’ll be dreaming about these tall Dalmatian men, flags, this scene. In memory of this summer day he’ll dress the models in shorts and raincoats, he’ll put a flag in their hands, your wedding will be frozen in the bizarre images of an upside-down world. Damn queers, Goran will say one day sitting in front of the television, and change the channel. But where will you be then?
Even last year you yourself would also have said they were good looking, these Dalmatian men, and they sing nationalist marches at weddings, interesting, and they have flags with them, which isn’t all that strange when you think how those madmen from the hills bombarded them… But last year is last year, while this year is this year and this is no longer just a bit of exotica for you to photograph and keep for a rainy day. Now those flags are above and below you, and the questions have only increased, they’re multiplying and getting under your feet, and it’s not the best time for questions to which you don’t have answers, although in reality you do, otherwise you wouldn’t feel so bad. Over a couple of days a whole arsenal of images has appeared, each bad in its own way, while the moment is approaching when all the questions will be combined into one and there will be only one answer.
Suddenly, for instance, you noticed Nada’s tablecloth, Nada and the kind of things she said… Goran wasn’t at home. Two days before the wedding and he hadn’t been home all night. He had said he was just popping out, that he’d be right back, and that right back had stretched until morning. His mobile phone stayed at home, you see, that’s what life with him is really like, and you sat with Nada in the kitchen waiting for him, quiet more than anything, strangers. You noticed that her tablecloth was plastic and worn and, come on, admit it, also dirty. It wasn’t as if you had never seen a plastic tablecloth before, it wasn’t that. It was that you would be living with Nada, Goran has already told you. And will you rip the tablecloth that has suited her all these years right off the table? That’s what your home will be like. Will such a home help make you a new homeland?