while the feminine nature, designated as the Shekhinah, is threatened and forced into exile, and when it is exiled, we become one-sided, stripped of the balance of oppositions, and we become easy prey for surging evil. The entire system of Sephirot is threatened, said Margareta, from the Crown to the Foundation, in other words, from the top of the head to the genitals the world goes awry. And to keep that from happening, she added, the Shekhinah must become a part again of the system of divine meaning, so the feminine presence of reality has a role equal to the masculine presence. She turned and looked at the sky, now bright. Even to herself she was sounding like Scheherezade, she said, but her story had to end as morning came. If we were going to spend another night awake, I said as I stood up with effort, she might as well be Scheherezade, because I was not the kind likely to lop off heads, the kind that had to be distracted from the sword. Margareta didn't answer. Morning, apparently, contributed to her change: she was no longer talkative, the smile vanished, and as she hastily rinsed out the cups and spoons, it was as if her whole body went stiff, she became formal. A little later, as I kept talking, she put on white socks. When I saw that my attempts to keep our conversation going were floundering, I too fell silent, and the brief ride in the elevator was extremely awkward. There is nothing more unnatural than two people standing next to each other, nearly touching, saying nothing and looking for something to stare at. How many places to stare at could there be in a filthy, close, graffiticovered elevator cabin? I could not understand Margareta's unexpected transformation, though I decided immediately, as both of us, were staring fixedly at the same upper corner of the elevator cabin, that I would pay it no mind. The fact of the matter is that the number of unknowns in my equation was no smaller than it had been, but that didn't mean that I should allow it to grow. So, showing nothing, I said goodbye to Margareta, though I couldn't resist turning to see the direction she took as she walked away from the quay. It occurred to me to follow her, it wouldn't have been difficult to do, and following her might have helped to resolve the dilemma that Margareta hadn't wished to speak of, meaning the question of what all these events had to do with me; but after she had opened up to me that night, it seemed dishonorable to follow her. If I had made it this far, I thought, I could last a little longer, so I went home. If I had known just how far off I was in my estimate of how long this would go on, I probably would have set off after her, regardless. Now, of course, it's too late, as I've said, or written, I'm not sure because several times I noticed I've been talking to myself, even as I sit at the table bent over the paper. Somewhere I read that this is called mixing the real and imaginary levels, and that movement between what is real and what is imaginary is most common in children, not counting mentally disturbed people. If that's true, I hope it's a child I'm becoming, and not a person with a dislocated consciousness, though it is the same either way, because no change can alter the past that preceded it. I used to think about that a great deal more, especially at a time when I dedicated myself to studying the Chinese Book of Changes, and I did what I could to find an arrangement of the hexagrams that would prepare me for the arrival of future changes, so that when they occurred I would not experience them as changes but as continuity. I do not remember whether I found the best arrangement of hexagrams; most probably not, because I never really understood the system of broken and unbroken lines, just as I do not now fully understand the system of the Sephirot. If the Chinese hexagrams represent a picture of the world, and if the Kabbalist Sephirot also represent the world, do the hexagrams and the Sephirot reflect the same world, or are these worlds so different that one could say with certainty that each of us has our own, unique world, which is not repeated anywhere? I know that in the end everything comes down to moral purity, and that between the Jewish tza dik and the Chinese superior man one could place an equal sign, but what about all of us who do not attain these pinnacles of virtue? I never had a chance to discuss this with Margareta; when I went off to see Jaša Alkalaj with the same question, I learned he was preparing for an art show. These were the paintings, he told me at his studio, he had been working on for the past few months, and most of them were dedicated, he remarked, to the theme of racial misunderstanding and prejudice. Until that moment I'd paid no particular attention to his work, because what I'd seen earlier had little appeal for me, and he was still convinced that, belonging as we did to different generations, guided by different poetics, we had nothing to offer each other. He invariably dismissed postmodernism with a shrug, while I was prepared at any moment to swear by that same postmodernism, and with the same intolerance I heard his positions on the political and social engagement of the artist. Our discussions, therefore, about the Kabbalah and mysticism had not strayed into the realms of art and politics. The art show was something very different, just as the paintings he showed me were altogether different from my simple-minded impressions and ill-conceived notions. Unlike the earlier paintings, many of which were abstract, not including the Kabbalistic canvases I had seen on my first visit, the new pieces, which Jaša showed me one by one, embraced the most varied influences and styles; they included direct references to other works, ranging from impressionism to pop art. Instead of a connection through stylistic expression, the paintings were linked by an openly political theme. Two or three paintings were references to famous canvases by the painter Mica Popović, while Slobodan and Mira Milošević appeared in a direct quote from Warhol's works portraying Mao and Marilyn Monroe. The most interesting, at least for me, were paintings using hyperrealism techniques, I wasn't sure of the source, to respond to the recent upsurge in anti-Semitism. I assume these were based on photographs, though I'd never seen the original photos, except one. A group of paramilitaries poses next to vandalized Jewish tombstones, for instance, one of them holding a severed human head. The damaged tombstones, I sensed, were photographed at the Zemun Jewish cemetery; I don't know where the paramilitaries were from because they wore no insignia on their clothing or uniforms, but regardless of who they were in the original photograph, the accusation of racism and intolerance referred to the many irregular troops that had gone into the war from our regions. One of the other paintings depicted a fragment of a slogan scrawled across the wall of the Belgrade Jewish cemetery, and in front of it a group of young men with closely cropped hair; some were sneering with hatred, others had their hands raised in quasi-Nazi salutes, yet others brandished a banner, painted as a reverse pirate flag: a black skull and crossed thigh bones on a white ground. The photograph looked familiar: they were soccer club fans before a match in the cup finals or perhaps qualifying matches for the World Cup. In these paintings, as in the others, there were Kabbalistic symbols here and there, Hebrew letters, illuminations from ancient books, six-pointed stars, menorahs, and mezuzahs. Meanwhile, Jaša poured brandy into two glasses, we clinked our glasses, raising them to the paintings, which, as he said, through the art show were becoming a part of the world, we drank to the show, and to him, and, he added, with each of his paintings a piece of himself was subtracted and hence he was becoming an ever smaller part of the world. When he put together all he had done, he said, a few crumbs were all that was left of him, a handful of bits. They shouldn't even be calling him Jaša anymore, he said, but Little Jaša, there was so little of him left. I laughed, he was serious. What's going on, I asked, with the show coming up, shouldn't you be in high spirits? Jaša went over to the table, brushed the papers and newspapers aside, and handed me a folded envelope. Inside, on a sheet of red paper, in letters cut out of newsprint, was a brief message: You haven't got much longer, Judas!!! I noticed that each of the three exclamation points was different, the one in the middle was thicker and the one on the right-hand side was longer. It's no picnic finding the right-sized punctuation marks in newspapers, as anyone would agree, except in the gossip rags with those bombastic headlines, a gold mine of question marks and exclamation points. And besides, the size of the lettering in messages like that isn't coordinated anyway. I turned over the paper, there was nothing on the back, only several uneven blobs of glue. First I said, This is ridiculous; then I said, We should go to the police. Nonsense, said Jaša, what can they do? I said nothing. I could hardly praise a police force that was interested only in propping up the regime in power, motivated solely by their own survival, because if I did, I'd be flying in the face of my own actions. After all, I hadn't turned to the police when I was beaten up, nor did I call them to take a look at my shit-covered, pissed-on doormat, and I made a point of dissuading my well-intentioned neighbor from calling them for me. In return, sometimes I would wash the entire stairwell. Cleanliness is always calming. I asked Jaša whether any of his acquaintances had received similar threats, had Isak or Jakov, or maybe old Dacca? But Jaša shook his head and said, If I was keeping silent about it, why would they say anything? And what happens next? I wanted to know. Jaša shrugged. One death threat, he said, is not the end of the world. The preparations for the art show are coming along, the catalog is at the printer's, the invitations too, life goes on and there is no point in paying this any mind, which has always been the case and always will be. Isak Levi wrote the text for the catalog, said Jaša, and the art show was planned for the following Tuesday at the Jewish Historical Museum. Perhaps that space, he said, wasn't the best possible, but I would surely agree that there was no more fitting place for such a show. I agreed, and then we washed that down with our topped-off glasses of brandy, drinking to the prosperity of the museum, the success of the show, and good reviews, for peace on earth and a speedy change of government in our country. For this last wish Jaša filled our glasses yet a third time, so from that moment on my recollections fade, and no matter what I do, I can't bring them back into focus. I remember, and only with great effort, the moment when I left his building to wait for a cab: I looked to the left, I looked to the right, and though I'd done this slowly, looking to the side made my head spin. I had to sit down, and I sat on the highest step. I kept thinking I was hearing leaves rustling, though when I looked at the treetops, they were still. Is that, I later asked the cab driver, the sound of alcohol in my bloodstream? The cab driver glanced at me sullenly in the rearview mirror. He was probably afraid I'd throw up on the seat next to me, which was not out of the question, so, just in case, I opened the window and took a deep breath. There is another bit that has since vanished from my memory, because all I remember is how I suddenly opened my eyes, how I stared at the cab driver's hand on my knee, shaking me, and how, little by little, his words reached me. I paid for the ride, tried to kiss his hand, which he had extended to take the money, got out of the cab, and then I emptied the contents of my stomach by a newspaper kiosk. As the last droplets were spewing from my mouth, I thought I should get my cleaning equipment and restore everything to order. I mustn't forget my plastic gloves, I kept repeating to myself. Of course, as soon as I stepped into the apartment, all such thoughts vanished. I flopped into the armchair, and I was still there when I opened my eyes the next morning, stiff, with a disgusting taste in my mouth, pain in my stomach, tacky fingers, and a headache that threatened to blast my skull to pieces. I'd been wakened by the reflection of the sun's rays, which had found their way to me from the windows of the facing buildings. I squinted at the sunshine, belched and groaned, hoping that by some miracle I might start to feel well again. I was hoping in vain. Some people don't even know what a hangover is, but I am of the kind for whom every hangover is a disease, and when I finally managed to get on my feet, I filled a hot-water bottle, got undressed, and crawled into bed. The next day, Marko gave me a lecture, his favorite lecture on the theme of how impossible it is to reconcile cannabis and alcohol, and how my hangover and headache, which caused me to open the door to him with my eyes nearly shut, was one more proof that he was right. According to him, the earth was divided into regions of unequal size in which various means for altering consciousness dominated: the Near East, for instance, was a hashish region; the Far East an opium region; in South America it was coca; alcohol ruled in Europe; the native populations in North America had tobacco. However, he maintained, one's background does not necessarily oblige one to embrace the preference of a particular geographic region, rather, each of us was born with a predisposition, and if that predisposition were to connect one to, say, cannabis, then the other substances would hold no interest. In a search for the right substance, Marko explained, you try different mind-altering substances, and when you find the right one, all others become unappealing or damage you, as my poor reaction to Jaša's brandy demonstrated. He offered me his cure for a hangover, a plump joint of marijuana, but I waved him away: the very thought of smoke made my gorge rise, and I was in no mood to test what real smoke would do to me. The headache settled like a veil over my eyes, and I felt I was looking at Marko through my lashes, eyelids half closed, from a great distance. All right, said Marko, if you won't, I will. He lit the joint and for a moment his head disappeared in a cloud of smoke. I closed my eyes and pinched my nose, which was the only way I could shield my stomach from temptation. I even turned my head to the side and tried to point my mouth as far away from him as possible. In the end, fearing I might succumb, I went to the kitchen to make some mint tea, but once I'd made it, I stared into the cup, unable to bring myself to lift it to my lips. Meanwhile, Marko had smoked his joint and had joined me at the kitchen table. He had clearly read the papers that morning, he showered me with minute details on what was happening locally and in the world. The members of the Atlantic Pact had yet again threatened to bomb Serbia if there wasn't an acceptable resolution to the Kosovo crisis; the German mark was still worth six dinars, which was what a liter of gasoline cost; stray dogs were a growing problem; in an apartment frequented by the homeless, in the heart of Belgrade, the dead body of an unknown male was found; the preparations for the referendum were underway; the weather showed no sign of stabilizing; Chinese merchants were flocking to the Belgrade markets; the taxi drivers were calling for higher rates and were threatening a strike that would paralyze the city, as if the city, Marko said, was not already paralyzed. Depressing news sometimes has a bracing effect, if for no other reason than because you realize how paltry your troubles are compared with all those tragedies and cataclysms, so I perked up, sipped some tea, and finally was able to see Marko clearly. Marko, naturally, offered to roll another joint, but my insistence in turning him down surprised even me. All right, said Marko, he had come to show me something, or take me to where he'd show me something, something he felt I had to see, as it was directly related, or at least that was how he perceived it, to stuff that had been going on with me recently, and even if he'd read it wrong, which was not impossible, he said, anyone can make a mistake, I'd be interested in what he had to show me, and we should get going as soon as possible, so he was getting up, which was a good thing because tangled sentences like this were terribly draining for him. All right, I said, went into the bathroom, washed, confirmed that I looked haggard, bru