“But Kefir and I knew very well what was brewing: Geiger had decided to beat the cretin up; he just didn’t want to frighten him with a yell and have him run away before he got his thrashing. We saw it coming: the cretin fumbled around at our feet, muttering a paltry apology, trying in vain to clean the blotches off Geiger’s pants with a tissue. Kefir held onto Geiger while I urged the poor fellow to move before it was too late. But he didn’t listen and bent down to reach the patches on Geiger’s lower trouser legs—just in the right position for Geiger to deliver a mighty kick in the head. We heard the sickening thud of the shoe connecting with his face. He recoiled and fell down on the floor, and the waiter reached for the phone to call the police. None of the cretin’s buddies showed any inclination to stand up for him. Kefir went up to the bar, paid the bill, and impressed upon the waiter that he keep this to himself. Then we left the café.
“We loitered around town for a while and peeped into a few bars, but there were none that took our fancy. As glum and silent as Geiger had been earlier, he now chattered incessantly and laughed just for the sake of it. Kefir and I looked at him like he was loony at first, but soon we started laughing too, especially when he imitated the cretin bending down and fumbling with his tissue. All in all, it had been an eventful evening out.
“It was getting toward the wee hours and we were tired of walking and complaining that none of us had come into town by car. Just as we were about to go our separate ways, Geiger suggested we spend the rest of the evening at his place.
“‘But it’s late,’ Kefir objected.
“‘Come off it—you call this late?’ Geiger argued.
“‘Shall we?’ Kefir asked me, not wanting to decide.
“‘If the idiot wants to listen to our whinging and has a bottle of whiskey on offer—I’d say we go!’ I resolved.
“Every time I went to Geiger’s place I was surprised, as if I’d never seen it before. The space he lived in didn’t appeal to me at all. Back then I didn’t know why I felt so uncomfortable, and when I finally found out it was too late to do anything about it. Geiger had studied architecture and was one of the best students of his generation. People who understood the town’s needs predicted a successful career for him, but unfortunately nothing came of it. In the early nineties, every turd from Podgorica and Belgrade who’d made it rich had to have an apartment in Budva (it was a question of power!), yet the developers’ mafia didn’t find my friend a suitable associate. Once I asked him why, and he replied that their interests didn’t square with any serious definition of architecture. ‘Any silly bugger with a diploma can design those sterile holiday hovels,’ he spat, and added after a moment’s reflection: ‘I hate this town from the bottom of my heart, believe me, but I don’t hate it as much as they do!’
“After his father’s death, Geiger sold off several plots of land and used the money to build a four-story building in the center of town. He designed it himself, in fact I think it was his only building. He used every square meter rationally: the first floor was reserved for commercial use, and the floors above accommodated offices and luxurious rental apartments, where his skill found its fullest expression. But his apartment at the top of the block confirmed a side of his personality that was completely incomprehensible to me and that I long considered the capriciousness of a wealthy man. This penthouse was a single, huge space of over one hundred square meters, with walls seven meters high. The kitchen installed in one corner was fully equipped and always immaculately clean, as if never used. The bathroom and toilet were housed in a rectangular room of dark glass at the other end of the main space. On the northern wall there hung six large graphics on one and the same theme—they showed different stages of the birth of a monster. They were repulsive and painful to look at but you couldn’t take your eyes off them. On the opposite wall were shelves crammed full of books from various fields, mostly architecture as you’d expect. Beneath the shelves were several armchairs, a richly inlaid mahogany table, and a stereo. In the middle of the penthouse stood a table of hewn stone, which, to be exact, was more like an altar than a desk or table. Five pillars were arranged in a circle around it and supported a dome, also made of stone, with an oculus one meter in diameter in the middle, directly above the table. It all looked stupid and useless to me, nothing but an ostentatious waste of living space. But now I’m convinced that Geiger had the house built for the sole purpose of erecting that dome on top of it.
“Kefir and I slumped into the armchairs while Geiger pottered around at the fridge, trying to ferret a few ice cubes out of its innards. Presently he came up carrying a bottle of whiskey, a pot of ice, and three glasses. For an hour, or an hour and a half, we listened to music, Nick Cave and Swans, and smoked one joint after another. We talked about life, the universe, and everything to a constant flow of alcohol until one of the two idiots opened a Pandora’s box of questions—it must have been Kefir because he was browsing through the books in Geiger’s collection. One of the titles probably induced him to start a highly intellectual discussion on a metaphysical topic: Did evil exist in the world, and if so, what was its nature? Was it something fundamentally and substantially separate from good or just a paucity of good—when the quantity of good tends toward zero? If God was our guarantee for the existence of good (as the ancient books say), did evil also have an authorized representative on earth? If so, was this representative on a par with God? If not, if he was subordinate, was this because of his inability to create, given his limitedness, meaning he could only spoil what had already been created and turn things into their opposite? If that were the case, didn’t good ultimately have to give its prior consent for parts of creation to be unmade, which would clearly mean it was abandoning its prior nature? Or was that not necessarily so? So how much freedom of will was involved, and in what way?
“The discussion gradually began to turn into a battle and they engaged in polemics about whether good could change its scope and quality or whether it was eternally immutable, unlike evil, which possessed the power to grow and transform. Accordingly, if we note that evil has prevailed, that doesn’t mean good has diminished or disappeared—it remains constant—but only that evil has amplified its possibilities on an enormous scale and fully obscured good. But there’s another side to the coin: that which possesses the power to grow so quickly and completely conceal its real nature, without any visible trace to counter that impression, is, inevitably, quickly expended and vanishes. But the breaking down of demonic simulacra is a process that often lasts several human lives, so the ‘quickness’ of the process is no consolation.
“I knew that evil is fascinating, can charm people, and is absolutely entertaining; I also knew it’s much more interesting than good, which can be so bland and banal as to make you sick; but I’d never thought about good and evil as seriously and with the passion that my friends did that evening. The matter is much simpler for me: I do good when I can and bad when I have to, which I suppose is a weak excuse, but I have no other, so it’ll have to do. The discussion they were having therefore didn’t interest me, and soon I didn’t understand anything they were saying anymore. Only later—to be exact: after Geiger bequeathed me his manuscripts and books—did I develop an interest, and then every new realization acquired in the light of what had occurred that evening only added to my anxiety and fear.