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kept climbing. One floor, the next, and I was in front of the door to his apartment, breathing with difficulty, as if I'd climbed to the top of the Avala television tower. I leaned on the handrail and waited for my breathing to become inaudible. The cat clearly had nothing better to do, I felt it between my legs. I leaned over to pat it and heard the sound of steps in Marko's apartment. I grabbed the cat, and, leaping up two steps at a time, went to the floor above. The cat was purring as if it had an electric motor in its rib cage, and as the minute vibrations of its body were transmitted to my heart, we seemed to be rumbling in unison. There was the sound of a key in the lock, the door opened, someone stepped into the hallway, took a step or two, stopped as if listening, then flicked on the stairwell lights. The cat and I exchanged glances, it meowed, pushed away with its paws, sprang from my embrace, and scampered down the stairs. I inched over to the wooden banister and peered cautiously over it, and right below me saw someone looking up at the cat that had left the stairwell and was winding in and out of the iron balusters supporting the stairwell railing. I stepped back and the voice beneath me said, There's no one out here, it's only the cat. The door closed, the key turned twice in the lock, the chain rattled, and everything went quiet. I waited for the light to go off and walked slowly down the stairs. The cat was not in front of Marko's door or on the lower floors, it must have gone into Marko's apartment, though when it comes to cats, one can never be certain, and I wouldn't be surprised if it were to turn up here, after all these years, as if nothing had happened, as if we were still on the stairs, which to some extent is true, since all the unresolved moments in our lives contain a tiny segment of our being in the constant replay of each, and the more such unresolved moments, the greater the fragmentation of our being, or the less of us left in the reality in which we dwell. Each time the light goes out in the stairwell of Marko's building in my memory, a part of my being disappears, and considering how often I think about it there is not much of me left, just as there isn't much ink left in my pen. I noticed a while ago that I had written out some letters only partially, two vowels and a consonant, which is the most serious warning I have had that the end is inevitable, even as I try every trick to postpone it. Now, for example, I am wondering why I didn't knock at the door of Marko's apartment. What did I have to lose? Nothing I hadn't already lost, or at least had begun losing, though that evening a hope may have still lingered that all of it might yet change and that the loss wouldn't be total, so I slid once more through the front door of his building, this time going out, and found myself in the street. I took a full breath of air into my lungs, looked to the left, looked to the right, and tried to decide where to spend the rest of the night. I didn't come up with anything, or everything I came up with sounded unsafe, especially the thought of spending the night at the home of an acquaintance, which might have exposed them to danger if someone was following me, so I spent the night wandering aimlessly, which wasn't so much aimless as it was a deliberately evasive approach to my apartment. I don't know how far I walked that night, ducking into entranceways and behind shrubs and into the dense shadows whenever I came upon something potentially dangerous, but I know I was staggering by the time I walked into my apartment on Tuesday morning, with the latest editions of the papers under my arm. As before, I was a little disappointed at finding nothing nasty in front of the door and for a moment felt like someone who, against his will, has seen his importance diminished. Vanity is a strange thing, I said that already, it needs no repeating. I fell into my armchair. The soles of my feet were burning, my hands shook, my eyes teared as if my eyelids were lined with sand. The papers were packed with op-ed pieces, rebuttals, and polemics, including an official statement by the Jewish community, condemning every form of hatred and denying, along the way, any tie to me, which was true enough. A letter to the editor signed by fifteen prominent individuals of Jewish background demanded in much harsher terms an investigation to ascertain under whose orders I was working to corrupt the traditionally good relations between Serbian and Jewish people, and expressed unwavering support of the government, which, and I am quoting based on dim recollection, was doing all in its power to secure a dignified place for our country in the merciless ghettoization of the new world order. As a rule, I avoided reading such sycophantic praise, but now my own skin was at stake and it was expedient to offer me in exchange for a promise of peace, therefore I needed to get as detailed a picture as I could about those involved as the only way to ready my defense. Of course anything that would have provided me with evidence — information about the slogans, attacks, the vandalizing of monuments, and the public accusations — was not cited by the newspapers, claiming that this, to quote a television commentator, would have interfered with the investigation. At that point I didn't know everything there was to know, so all I could do was observe with horror the quantity of the attacks and the support they received from certain politicians, church dignitaries, and ordinary citizens. A year later, when Serbia was bombed, the business of forgiving themselves completely overwhelmed all else, allowing the resistance to be focused on the international enemy who in turn could be blamed for everything, for everything that happened and what was going to happen, whatever that was. By then I was somewhere else, not where I am now, but once you leave, all other places are the same, so in a sense it made no difference where I was, and I remember thinking I should write about it, about the magnificent and grandiose yet failed attempt to revive the supernatural in the construct of the world, as well as a deliberate move by a government to play the difference card, to encourage a rift along subtle, often intricate, ethnic and religious lines in an act of self-preservation. Unlike the failed Kabbalistic experiment, this other policy still prevails, but in a reduced form, and was additional inspiration for my resolve, which has meanwhile evolved into desire, then to a feeling of obligation, then to a pledge, and that is where I came to a stop, here by this window, rolled up my sleeves, and got down to work. Yes, writing is work, I repeat that for all those who think of writing as pleasure, and when sometimes, like now, I look up and out the window into the night, I see the face of a tired man. And worried, also, because the ink tube inside the pen is nearly empty. Who knows where all these letters come from, how all the words are born? I asked myself the same question as I leafed through the newspaper, while the soles of my feet burned, my thighs ached, and the phone rang insanely. At one moment I got up, limped to the side table, and picked up the receiver. The voice at the other end delivered a hysterical sequence of curses, threats, and burps. I went into the kitchen, put the kettle on for tea, spread some honey on a slice of bread. If the explanation I got from Jaša Alkalaj was right, and we were all caught up in a double game of sorts, then none of us was what we seemed, which seemed clear enough in the cases of Margareta or Dragan Mišović, but it did nothing to explain Marko. Yet perhaps it does, I thought, except that I don't see it. I should have rung his doorbell, I chided myself, to see who was there, instead of deciding that Marko wasn't there and that the entrance to his apartment was a passage into a trap. After talking with Jaša Alkalaj, at whose studio I was expected again later that evening, I would return, I told myself, to Marko's apartment, nothing would hold me back. I waited for the phone to stop ringing for a moment and called Jaša Alkalaj. I left a message on his answering machine that I would be there around nine o'clock that evening, and then, though the phone kept ringing, I lay down to rest. I woke up late in the afternoon in an apartment where silence reigned. I felt a terrible fatigue, I am one of those for whom sleep during the day brings no rest, and I knew I'd be walking around for the next hour or two with a veil over my eyes and gauze bandages wrapped around my mind. I walked gingerly over to the window, as if I feared sniper fire, and saw rain clouds. Everything else seemed ordinary enough: the passersby were hurrying along, cars and buses moved intermittently across the square, two women stood talking by the door to the pharmacy and gestured as if warding off mosquitoes, a boy was staring at a balcony on which another boy stood throwing paper airplanes, three dogs nosed around the garbage bins, the traffic lights blinked on and off. I could have stood there forever, with my nose pressed against the windowpane, outside the world and yet in it, an observer but not a participant, visible yet unseen. Such a blissful state, however, could not last long and I was jolted by a knock on the door. I pulled away from the window and asked who was there. No one answered, but the knocking repeated. I started toward the door and peered through the spy hole: I couldn't see a thing. Someone was holding a hand over it, and there was nothing to do but step back and hurry to the phone. Kabbalah, magic, Sons of the Revolutionary Light or reactionary dark, it didn't matter which, it was time to call the police. I picked up the receiver, dialed the number, and stood there for a while, not realizing that the phone wasn't working. The line was dead; there was no sound coming from it; I punched the buttons in vain. The knocking, which came again, was now more alarming, though at the same time it made me wonder about the person or the people knocking, because I was certain that a whole horde was crouching in front of my door, so why didn't they just break down the door and do it. I felt like a mouse in a trap, or, more accurately, like a dog the dogcatcher has chased down a dead end, and while the knocking kept up at irregular intervals, I went into the kitchen and out onto the little terrace. The neighbor's terrace, to which I had jumped from the edge of my terrace when I was much younger, now seemed farther away. I would never make a jump like that now, I realized, though a part of my consciousness, still wrapped in gauze, suggested it was better to take the risk, because I would give myself a chance, whereas in my apartment I would meet a certain fate, a certain end. Nonetheless I went back into the apartment. The knocking picked up again as I tiptoed over to the door, and again I asked loudly who it was. No one answered. The knocking stopped. I went to the door and, as I had done so many times, leaned my ear against it. I thought I could hear someone mumbling, the sound of paper being torn, and soft footsteps going down the stairs, but when I leaned my ear to a different spot on the door, everything sounded different: the paper wasn't being torn but crumpled, the footsteps were going up the stairs, and instead of the mumbling I could hear a muffled giggle, and all the while heavy breathing. I no longer recall how much time passed before I realized that it was my own breathing I was hearing. I straightened up and looked through the spy hole. The hallway was empty. I unlocked the door and opened it as far as the chain allowed. I didn't see anybody, I didn't hear anybody, so I unhooked the chain and opened the door cautiously until I could see the entire hallway. No one leaped out at me, no one shoved me, no one brandished a knife, no one pointed a gun. A swastika spread vividly across the door, and under it, in uneven letters: DEATH TO THE TRAITOR. The paint was still fresh, and dribbles of black dripped from the tips of the swastika, hurrying toward the bottom, where they belonged. I thought it was just as well I had not opened the door earlier, because if I'd seen the writing, I'd have wanted to confront the offenders verbally. I could see myself shouting theatrically: How can I be a traitor? Whom have I betrayed? Instead of taking on the scum, you come here to puff out your chests before someone who is trying to rid you of a burden you have been bearing on your shoulders for years! I looked to myself like Lenin speaking from a podium, leaning forward to look more assertive. Nonsense, of course, and I am not thinking of Lenin but of myself, because they would not have waited for me to end, or even to begin, they would have assaulted me straightaway. It was ridiculous to hope for anything else. Death to the traitor, that's the only thing that interested them, and sooner or later, they would do what they had set out to do. I could switch day and night, I could change my hiding places, I could shave my head and grow a mustache, I could wear black-framed glasses, nothing would help. The punishment of a person who thinks differently is always welcome, no matter which side the person doing the punishing is on. The death of one traitor is a lure for hundreds of others, eager to ferret out new traitors and administer new punishments. I should have taken up the bucket, rag, and brush, and washed the swastika off the door, but for the first time I felt I had no strength left: I could no longer wash away as much as they could defile. I also regretted at that point that the Kabbalistic experiment had failed, even if it hadn't been designed as a realistic undertaking, because if it had worked, the forces of darkness would have had to retreat before the forces of light and nothing would have been the same. Now it was too late, and the feeling of being driven into a trap flared before me as if fanned by doom. Everything was coming apart at the seams, and it would only get worse. Somewhere it must have been recorded how long all of this would last; fate, in any case, is unchanging. You are rambling on like some washed-up old sage, Marko would have said, and that made me think of going to his apartment again. Although I couldn't prevent general disintegration, perhaps I could prevent my own further disintegration, preserve some of what was still precious to me. If I didn't do that, I thought, there'd be nothing left of me, and no one, not even I, will be able to look myself in the eye. The evening was fast approaching, dragging night along with it, and who knew what it had in store and whom it would bring in tow, so it would be best, while there was still daylight, for me to head to Jaša Alkalaj's. The swastika, I thought, would have to wait. It may still be there for all I know, on the door where I left it, slightly abstracted by the streams of paint that had dribbled every which way, though recognizable enough. The rain started as I stepped out into the street, and I didn't have time to look to the left or to the right, or up or down, instead I sprinted over to the bus stop where I leaped onto a bus that was just pulling away. By the time we reached the bridge over the Sava, the rain was pelting with such ferocity that the bus driver had to slow down. Water was coursing in every direction at the Zeleni Venac bus stop, and crowds were huddling in the underground walkway to get out of the downpour, the people waiting for the Zemun and Novi Beograd buses, policemen, peddlers, vendors, shoppers still out and about, even though it was late. I somehow managed to push my way through the crowd, then went on, from doorway to doorway, to Terazije, where I waited for the trolley bus. The trolley bus was a wreck, its windows were smashed, its doors had trouble closing, then suddenly sprang open mid-drive, it stank of damp and vomit. We hadn't got far from the Slavija roundabout when I decided to get off at the first stop, certain that a man was staring at me. I got off, but the man stayed on, so I was left alone at the stop, in the rain, which was coming down in gusts. The next trolley bus arrived after fifteen minutes. Although it was too early for me to go to Jaša Alkalaj's, the persistent rain forced me to head to his studio; even if he wasn't there, I knew where the key was, I could let myself in and wait. He'd given me permission to do so on my first visit, and I certainly wouldn't paint, which was the one thing that was forbidden, he had said. How much time had passed since then? On the calendar, a little more than two months; in terms of experience, a lifetime; it was difficult for me to reconcile these two measure