ΔT (x,y) + k2 T (x,y) = 0
where
is the Laplace differential operator, and the function T (x,y) satisfies a Dirichlet boundary condition: T (x,y) = o along the legs of the triangle. Lamé's solution to this problem, the letter went on, was based on a very broad discourse on the geometries that lead to characteristic functions expressed with the help of sines and cosines. The most incredible, and for me the most intriguing aspect of this figure, the letter continued, is that characteristic functions expressed using combinations of sines and cosines ordinarily appear in rectangular geometries, and not in the triangle. In fact Lamé, and here I'll finish, didn't prove his formula. Pinsky did, using the technique of functional analysis, and there still is no final proof, though it's a matter of days now. And that was it, no signature, no real explanation, at least not for someone who, like me, understands little of mathematics. I read it through once more just in case. I still didn't understand a thing, and I doubt that anything would have changed even if Lamé had been investigating acoustic tunnels with hard walls. I can't believe the letter is serious, I said to the person who had run into Dragan Mišović from time to time, because if it were serious, he would've at least made a stab at articulating things in a manner accessible to ordinary mortals. That's what he's like, the person said, adding that she was certain he was sincere in his response. He simply sees the world his own way and doesn't understand that no one else sees it as he does. In other words, I said, he genuinely believes what he wrote. Just that, said the person, just that. That was how he was, she added, before I moved up to Banovo Brdo and lost touch with him, though there is no reason to assume that anything has changed in his life. We're often inclined, she said, to assume, when we feel like changing, that everybody else is changing too, just as she was convinced, because she had moved to Banovo Brdo, that Dragan Mišović was no longer taking his regular walks near the former underpass, where she had run into him from time to time, or that her neighbor from the building where she used to live had stopped emptying ashtrays out the window, which was, of course, a delusion, because even when we have left a place, nothing changes there, the cigarette butts continue to fly from the fifth floor, the ashes waft through the air, and Dragan Mišović cautiously paces the streets, skirting the puddles, the litter, the cracks in the pavement. So what now, I thought when the conversation ended, what path should I take? The question was, in fact, the wrong one, because I saw no path ahead. I could have gone back and walked along the pathways I had abandoned, but that looked like a futile ritual with no value other than the very act of repetition. So I decided to stay at home for a few days. I got up early, had coffee and read the paper, worked on the translation of a Pinter play in the morning, wrote or at least tried to write stories in the afternoon, and in the evening I sat in the armchair, in the dark, and listened to recordings of John Martin, Tom Waits, and the bands Weather Report and Steely Dan. I smoked hashish and watched it get dark outside. The lights flicked on in apartments, in some places you could see people sitting at tables or in front of television sets, the streets emptied, there was a longer interval between buses coming and going. On Sunday I wrote a new piece for my Minut column. There was nothing specific in the text, it was more a description of a condition than of any one event: I started with gloomy sentences about our helplessness to grasp fully the horror of the times we were living in, and went on in even gloomier terms about the helplessness that swamps us when we can't find a way out of the nasty situation we're in, and finally in terse sentences I invoked the void that awaits us. The last word, which stood alone, was "nothing." The editor was doubtful. When spirits are low, he said, people need encouragement, and you're pouring salt on their wounds. Exactly, I replied, but sometimes flagging spirits and a total absence of will become the most alluring alternative, and a new shock, no matter how jarring, can jolt people into shedding the snakeskin of helplessness. The editor thought about this for a minute, then looked again at the text, nodded, and sent me off to Payments. As I left the building it was raining, one of those irritating light rains that you can't protect yourself from. I walked across the square, past the statue of Prince Mihajlo, and all the way to the Café Majestic. I sat at a table by the window and ordered tea. When the waiter brought the tea, I ordered a slice of fruit tart, and when he brought the tart, I ordered a double espresso. The rain picked up and at one point there was no one left on the street; people were huddled in entranceways. The tea tasted terrible, as if brewed from reused mint tea bags; the coffee was better. I turned to look for the waiter, so I didn't see who opened the door to the Graphics Collective Gallery across the street from the Majestic, but when, after vainly twisting and gesticulating, I turned to the window again, I caught sight in the gallery of a woman who, from a distance, looked a lot like the woman who had been slapped on the Danube riverbank and had staggered into the mud. The doors of the gallery swung shut and the reflections on the glass surfaces made it impossible to see what was happening inside. I got up, grabbed my jacket, found the waiter, and paid. The raindrops were ricocheting off the pavement, brimming rivulets coursed down the curbs, and the few steps required to cross the street were enough to get my feet completely wet. I pulled open the gallery door and went in. There was no one inside. Wet footprints led into the back, to a staircase leading to the next level of the gallery, which served as an office and portfolio storage. I studied the art, feigning a lively interest, but perked up my ears to hear if anything was happening upstairs. Only one voice was audible, a woman's, and she must have been on the phone, because she repeated patiently, several times, information about the price of paper, the cost of making calling cards and catalogs, and the stores where you could still buy good-quality pigments. I walked to the other part of the gallery to see who was up there, who was talking, but no matter how I stretched or stood on my toes I could not see over the edge of the railing. Finally I opened the door and started up the wooden staircase. When I reached the top, the woman sitting at the desk moved the receiver from her ear and asked what I wanted. A friend of mine, I said, came into the gallery not long ago, I spotted her from the Majestic, and now I can't find her anywhere. The woman covered the receiver with her hand as if she was about to tell me a secret. No one had come into the gallery, she said, for the past forty-five minutes, which surprised her, she went on, because the gallery was usually thronged with people when it rained, no matter what art was on display, but this time, though it really had been pouring, there was no one there, and even her sister wasn't there, the woman added, though she was supposed to be there an hour ago, way before the downpour. She waited for me to say something, but I said nothing, so she brought the receiver back to her ear. Sorry, she said, though I couldn't tell for whom this was intended. I turned and went down the stairs. I considered pointing out the wet footprints to her, but when I stepped into the gallery, I saw they had been overlaid by my own prints. I left and looked across the street at the illuminated window of the Majestic. Where I had sat, another man was sitting now. He was reading a newspaper, and as though he had felt I was looking at him, he lifted his head and turned toward me. If I couldn't see his eyes from where I was standing, how could I have been sure whom I had seen going into the gallery, provided somebody had gone in? Whatever I try, I said that evening to Marko, winds up being a dead end. I'm getting nowhere, I'm stuck, I added. Listen to this, said Marko, Miles Davis was never finer than in this recording. He didn't say which record he was referring to, and to be perfectly frank, at that moment I didn't care: I inhaled from the pipe he passed and hoped that by the time I opened my eyes I would have forgotten it all. I didn't, of course, forget a thing, and the next day I set out again for Zmaj Jovina Street, but no matter how hard I looked, I couldn't find a single sign. First I thought the rain might have washed them away, then I was alarmed by the idea that it was not the rain, but that someone was regularly, carefully wiping them away, removing any trace. Someone was drawing the signs, I thought, to warn someone of something or to alert someone to an event, and once the event had occurred, the signs are destroyed or concealed, thereby reducing the likelihood they would be misused. It is possible, I thought as I stood at one end of the Zemun market, that the same person was doing both, but more likely two different persons were involved, or perhaps more, and a third was coordinating, scheduling the time for the new signs to appear and to disappear. The air was humming with the bustle of the marketplace while my head spun with images of mystical gatherings of a secret society, where everyone wore masks or, at the very least, dark glasses, and conversed through the deft movement of their fingers. These visions, of course, were silly, but I could think of nothing else. I went through the section of the marketplace where dairy products were sold, and I tasted the farmer's cheese and sour cream at three or four stalls, then went back to Zmaj Jovina and bought a crescent roll at a bakery. The poster for the beginner's class in tai chi was still hanging on the old wooden gate, but now there was no symbol on it. I ate the roll, pushed open the heavy gate, walked through the passageway and into the courtyard. Everything was just as it had been before: the bench, the flowerpots with the barberry bushes, the water pump with the curved handle, and when I sat down and shut my eyes, the silence enveloped me again. This time, however, I heard no music, but someone, a man or a boy, singing. He sang in a soft voice, in a language I didn't know, and the voice faltered, as if at any moment he might sob. The song was not sad, but not happy either, and it spoke, I was sure, of some terrible event, an immeasurable loss, but one over which there was no point in grieving. I could have stayed there forever, eyes shut, given over to that voice, but someone coughed, the voice was gone, and when I opened my eyes I saw the woman from the riverbank. I saw her; she apparently had not seen me. She walked across the courtyard as if moving through some other space, separate from the space I inhabited. This fact, if someone's invisibility can be called a fact, struck me dumb, though everything in me was straining to speak. In several strides the woman crossed the paved courtyard and faded into the twilight of the passageway toward Zmaj Jovina Street, and when I finally pulled myself together and hurried after her, she had disappeared among the people on their way to the marketplace or returning with their arms laden. I went back to the stone courtyard. She probably came out of the building facing the courtyard, I later told Marko, though the roster of tenants listing ages and professions showed that pensioners or couples with small children lived in all the apartments. Marko took a drag on the joint and handed it to me. What would have happened if she had seen you, he said. I don't know, I said, and passed the joint back, maybe we would have talked, and maybe I would have finally learned her name. A name means nothing, said Marko. As far as that goes, call her what you like. No, I said, because it's one thing if her name is Violeta, and something quite different if her name is Marta. Her name cannot be Marta, Marko protested, who is called Marta these days? You would be surprised, I said, this spring I actually met three women called Marta. Marko stared at me, burst out laughing, then turned very serious. Life is short, he said, you know? I shook my head. We will live forever, I said, but I could see he didn't believe me. I didn't, in fact, believe myself. What had been happening around us the past few years convinced me that my life was, for all intents and purposes, over, that I was now living at a later time, in a life with no life. The war, inflation, poverty, political terror, hatred, all of that confirmed the berserk nature of the world that was supposed to be my home. Marko was right: you couldn't imagine living like that forever. Forever dead, possibly, but at its best life was an accumulation of fragments, a makeshift raft barely afloat. Am I sinking, I asked Marko, or does it just feel that way? Marko didn't answer. He closed his eyes, leaned his head against the wall, crossed his hands in his lap. With the tip of his tongue he touched his upper lip. All I want, I said, is to understand what's going on. Not the war, I hurried to add when I saw Marko's raised eyebrows, not the war, I will never be able to understand that, I gave up trying long ago, but the thing on the Danube, the reality or absurdity of the slap, the meaning of the circle around the triangle, the song I heard in the courtyard on Zmaj Jovina Street. Marko sat there, silent. Nothing exists alone, I said, everything is interconnected, everything is part of a larger or smaller web, which in turn is part of ever larger webs, and so it goes, until the whole world is woven together, and the one who weaves that last web knows the structure of all the others, but the ones who are creating the smaller webs know nothing about them and get snared in them, not realizing what they mean and where they are leading. In its own web, Marko said, a spider is a spider, but in someone else's web that same spider is just another fly. True, I said, except that I am not keen on being a fly or a spider, and the sticky web of our reality from which no one seems able to break loose is all I can handle. I'm with you totally, said Marko, and shut his eyes again. I wondered where the joint had gone to: had Marko swallowed it? The door opens for one who knocks, said Marko, and one who rends the webs will pass between them. He straightened up, turned toward me, and I saw the joint: stubbed out, squashed, slightly matted in hair, tucked behind Marko's right ear. Maybe, I said, just maybe it's wrong to say she went by