e I got the idea, but once it had occurred to me, I couldn't shake it, and I took cautious steps toward the courtyard, slightly hunched, as if fearful of what I would see. Very slowly I approached the end of the passageway, leaned against the wall, and inhaled and exhaled deeply. Out of my eye, my left, I could still see the silvery pump, its long handle, the decorated basin into which the water flowed, the foundation with partially chipped paint. I took another deep breath, but I didn't release it, and instead stepped abruptly out of the passageway, eyes open wide, prepared to surprise the person sitting on the bench. The bench was empty. Something rustled in the dark behind the barberries, and when I spun around the pump was no longer aglow. The moonlight, if it was moonlight, had disappeared and all that was visible on the pump were patches of old paint and layers of rust. I went over to the bench, sat down, lay my hands on my thighs, and shut my eyes. Nothing happened, no silence settled on me, no music struck up, no one's voice could be heard. I opened my eyes and looked at the walls around me. Nothing had changed, as if reality this time had decided to stay the same. I stood up, then sat down again. I shut and opened my eyes several times, even squinted once through my lashes and tried to hold my breath as long as possible, but nothing helped. It occurred to me then that I'd always sat on the bench in daytime, and that things might be different at night, which was a comforting thought, though inadequate to bring back the fine mood I'd felt as I had turned into Zmaj Jovina Street. I stood up, ready to go, and that is when I heard the music. It sounded different from the ethereal music I'd heard earlier, and when I strained to hear better, I realized it was the echo of music from a café nearby, or perhaps from the barges along the river. There was no point, what with the pounding rhythm and the rumble of bass and drums, to staying in the courtyard. The bench was sinking into a darkness so dense that it was as if the darkness meant to hide the bench. Then that same darkness seemed to be taking the shape of a body, of someone's presence, but when I moved and shifted my angle, I realized this was just the interplay of thick and thin shadows. I went down the passageway, headed for the entrance, and paused: the gate was shut and there was not a trace of light from the street. I was certain I had not shut the gate when I came in. More precisely, I had not even touched it, doing my best to slip through unobtrusively. I was also certain that no one had come into the courtyard after me, because I would definitely have spotted that someone; neither the pump nor the bench so held my attention that I could have lost touch with what was going on around me. But then if no one came in, did someone go out? Maybe the person was waiting in the dark of the passageway, maybe he'd been standing behind the gate or was crouching in a corner, and when I got far enough, or when I went over to sit on the bench, he sneaked out, pulling the heavy gate shut behind him? I took hold of the big latch with one hand, and with the other I pushed the gate open and stepped into the street. I looked to the left, I looked to the right. There was no one. But I still felt, I said to Marko on the phone, that someone was watching. I expected his mocking commentary, but all that came across the telephone receiver was the sound of crunching. I had called him at about midnight and our conversation went on for nearly two hours, so that at one point, just as I was wrapping up the account of my most recent escapades, Marko said he had to eat an apple. I didn't see a soul, I repeated, but the feeling that someone was watching closely was so real. And offensive, I added. You too, Marko announced, should eat more apples, and he went on to talk about the beneficial qualities of the apple, and then, without a pause, remarked that he was still thinking of a newspaper article he had read about a man who had killed himself, and for no reason, it said, in a car parked in front of a clinic, and it wasn't even his own car but a car borrowed from a friend, allegedly to cart his old television set to his mother-in-law's. It's not clear, said Marko, why he stopped in front of the clinic, which is not near his mother-in-law's apartment but in a whole different part of town, and besides, where did he get the gun, sometimes it seems easier to get ahold of a gun than of household appliances. But it's clear, Marko continued, the times we live in killed him, what else could have? By the way, he said, no one knew the man in the clinic, which didn't stop the employees from making all sorts of pronouncements, and the mother-in-law from stating that she would cherish that television set as a memento of her son-in-law, though she had to go to great lengths to wash all traces of the blood off the screen and the buttons. I was supposed to laugh at that point, but there was no time, because Marko kept talking about wiping off the blood and removing traces, and then from the story about the suicide and the mother-in-law moved on to advising on the direction the talks should be taking between the authorities in Belgrade and the Albanian leaders in Kosovo. The newspapers at that point were forever running reports on the efforts of the government to establish a dialogue with the Albanians, thereby painting a more favorable picture of themselves for world opinion, and if there was a subject about which I had absolutely no desire to talk, Marko had found it. Now I realize that I was actually evading talk of reality and that everything that happened to me during those spring months six years ago — plunging into the shadowy world of mystical phenomena — was a form of self-deception, a form of solace or, more precisely, escapism from our reality at the time. The encounters with the unbridled nationalists were so surreal that I didn't even feel them to be a part of that reality. I was wrong, of course, because they, the violent young men, were just as real as the blows they dealt me, and just as real today, perhaps not quite so numerous, but certainly louder and more bold. Furthermore they are still where they were then, in a place they feel to be theirs alone, while I am somewhere else, it doesn't matter where, and words are all I have left, and this attempt at fashioning from them something that will have at least a semblance of permanence. Eleazar, if he were here, might have cast off words, though I am not altogether sure of that because the Kabbalah, like the entire Jewish tradition, is based on words, and silence is a realm into which Kabbalists have not been eager to venture. But what do I really know about the Kabbalah? What I learned from Jaša Alkalaj and heard from Dača, when I managed to wrest myself free of the hypnotic movement of his hat, and which, in terms of real knowledge, was barely a drop in the sea. Sometimes one drop, Jaša would say, is greater than a whole sea, a grain of sand more impassable than a desert, a snowflake more threatening than an avalanche. At those words Dacca would take off his hat and add that the ignorance of an ignoramus is greater than the knowledge of a connoisseur, and a connoisseur will never know as much as the ignoramus doesn't know. Then he would put on the hat, maybe even tilt it, you would barely see his eyes under the lowered brim. My eyes were also barely visible, but in my case the reason was exhaustion, as well as Marko's endless, monotonous, boring monologue. At first I attempted to get a word in edgewise, then I only voiced my assent or disagreement gutturally, and finally I fell silent altogether, and waited for it to end, doing what I could to fend off sleep. All in all, said Marko finally, only madmen can't see that the solution to the crisis lies in partitioning Kosovo. Sure, I said, easy to say that to me, but go and say it out loud on Terazije and they'll skin you alive. I looked at the clock, it was almost two, I nearly ended the conversation, which I didn't do, because I felt I ought to show Marko some sign of devotion so that I could repair what I had damaged with the unintended misunderstanding at the high-rise. I turned away from the clock and pressed the receiver more firmly to my ear. You think I won't? Marko went on, and not only on Terazije but anywhere else for that matter. All right, I said. My mouth was dry. You know how all this will end? he asked. No, I answered, I don't. Those idiots will bomb us, he said, and maybe none of us will survive. What idiots? I asked. The Europeans or the Americans? Both, answered Marko. I said nothing. He said nothing. I tried to think what bombing would be like, I managed to summon images from archival footage on the bombing of Belgrade in April 1941—t he wing of an airplane and bombs dropping like logs, then the pilot turning and grinning a big grin. He had nice teeth. I could hear Marko breathing, breathing deeply and evenly, as if he were sleeping. It's sad, he said suddenly, when nobody loves you. I didn't know what he was talking about, how love came into it after the bombs. We are now the bowels of the world, he said, and I fear we are going to stay that way for a long time. The image was challenging, though I didn't try to picture it. I had had enough, what with the stench of excrement and urine that I continued to find, at irregular intervals, before my apartment door. The bucket and broom were now permanently stationed in my front hall. I had rubber gloves and a pile of old newspapers, and still needed to buy disinfectant. Your future is assured, said Marko when he happened upon me once with all my cleaning supplies, you'll always be able to find work scrubbing toilets. I pressed the receiver against my ear again: there was no sound. Marko, I called, where are you? You know what, Marko finally said, I'd like to be in another galaxy, but fuck it, I live in Belgrade and there's nothing I can do about that. I didn't know what to say, whether to console or reassure him, so I breathed a sigh of relief when he wished me a good night and hung up. I hung up at my end, then as I turned I snagged with my elbow the address book and pad that stood by the phone. They dropped to the floor, and when I bent down to pick them up, I saw that the pad had opened to the page where I'd jotted down Dragan Mišovićs phone number several weeks before. That meant I should call him, I had no doubt. Maybe I should write about this, I thought. My next piece for