Blam is plagued by this vague feeling whenever he waits for Janja, either at home after work or, as now, by arrangement, that is, in situations involving a deadline. He is not sure she is going to meet it, and his doubts — as his glance wanders from the Avala entrance to the windows of her restaurant — are perhaps fed by scenes of the past: Janja at the Matickis’ dances, flashing an unreserved smile at all partners; Janja at the gate to her house, neat and clean and every hair in place, about to let him know that she will walk with him or go to the pictures with him (or with someone else); Janja as an invisible presence in her kitchen, in the heart of her family, which is and is not she, both familiar and distant; Janja at the pump, hot and flushed; Janja in Popadić’s arms, observed from the tram, taking leave not of her lover but of him, Blam, as Blam looks on in mute admiration. All these scenes have been superseded by their life together over the years and dimmed by the years and by time’s various blows and disappointments; they have been blurred by thousands of later Janjas who did his bidding or made him wait, as now, Janjas in completely different circumstances, with different looks, at different jobs. Yet something basic, the uncertainty of the promised encounter, remains flowing just beneath the dingy, listless surface of reality.
Blam thinks that the reason for his anxiety today is that he agreed to wait for Janja not far from the restaurant. From here he can be seen not only by her but also by her colleagues. They will observe him standing here like a beggar, constantly looking for her, and they will draw what conclusions they like. Even though he suspects this is not happening (Janja is too sure of herself, too vain to let her colleagues look down on him), he cannot be positive, because he is here in the street, not there, and because the curtains covering the windows are transparent only if you press your face to them. Is anyone doing that? Can anyone do that in a restaurant full of customers? Blam recalls the picture he has of the place from his rare visits: a spacious but low-ceilinged rectangle with a dozen or so tables and a door at the far end for the white blouses and aprons — Janja, a small, dark woman, the plump, middle-aged head-waiter, and, less often, the chef, with floppy jowls and a white cap, and the chef’s smooth-cheeked assistant — the white blouses and aprons weighed down with plates of steaming food or congealed scraps, trays of clinking glasses or ashtrays brimming with black and white butts. “Menu, please!” “Here you are!” “Just a moment!” But he suspects that behind these orderly, almost military maneuvers a private, rebellious, pernicious life lies snakelike, barely discernible, a life of intrigues, disagreements, and thoughts never put into words yet obvious to all concerned. He suspects that behind the door that swings shut before the eyes of the customers there is a narrow passage where bodies slip by one another joking, tittering, touching hands, shoulders, and thighs, where one panting body can press against another and smell the onions and wine.
It is a life alien to him, the life of instinct, the life uncontemplated, dependent solely on the body — one’s own and others’—on its movements, excretions; an ordinary life, a life beginning in the mother’s womb and with mother’s milk and proceeding to the first stirrings of curiosity, the first misdeeds, curses, and spankings, and on to speech and its structure beyond the meaning of words, in spite of words almost; a life free of conventions, agreements, reason, a life opposing reason, conquering it with a giggle; a life of restaurants, pubs, city streets, waiting rooms, trains, buses, and trams, but going on outside such meeting places as well, and against them, serving the carnal vices, such as drunkenness, debauchery, and hate, with the shouting and brawling born of the violence and despair that circulates in the blood. Blam wants no part of a life run by a force that cannot be controlled, predicted, or even measured, the same force that set in motion the bodies at the dance school, that gathered up the young men from the streets and armed them with leaflets and guns, that made Janja hurry back to the house from the pump with the bucket of water and choose her most attractive dress for Sunday dates, the force that once carried him along too, but only once, when he felt strong, because he believed he had the courage to perish with the pack, with the others.
Now he feels completely cut off from that force, abandoned. It has dropped him, betrayed him because he betrayed it: he only pretended he belonged to it, he never really felt at one with the city, the street, the air, the soil. He still goes through the motions, mimicking people’s voices, accents, phrases, deeds, but the current that once flowed in him has long dried up: he stands alone. He stands alone in the street, surrounded by senseless commotion, shouting, signs, dazzling colors, letters, by the white of the curtains in the Borac Restaurant, curtains transparent to everyone but him and therefore concealing a secret from him, Janja’s. The secret of why she rushes off every morning to her restaurant without breakfast and eats with the other waiters and waitresses, with the chef and his assistant, with the bartender and the supplier. Perhaps it is for the warmth, pleasure, distraction, easy talk, easy money, an easy way to kill time. So banal, so shallow, the allure offered by the restaurant, and he often wonders how he might win her over to some other interest. But what? Wherever he turns, he sees work, order, and reason acting as fronts for the same old profligacy, the same old vanity, the same dull gusto, pointless passion, frenzy, fuss. It withstands all rules and regulations; it comes up out of the body, out of the earth, out of an all-pervading and all-powerful desire that distorts and deforms everything; it makes Janja peer through the curtains at him standing there waiting for her while with a smothered giggle she lets a bloated hand grab her breast or dive between her legs. Yes, it is perfectly possible that that is just what she is doing while he lifts his long-suffering face to the sky to avoid staring at the opaque, motionless curtains. And then she will appear, neat, cool, and collected, running her bright eyes over him like an object, judging how usable, how useful he is to her at the moment, the way she appraises things when they go shopping together. Or will she instead rush out of the restaurant unkempt and disheveled, her cheeks bright red, her mouth half open, her eyes wild, and run breathless in the opposite direction, away from him, to another appointment, promise, folly, with her hot blood and cool love for someone else? By now Blam is almost hoping for the latter. At least he would know where he stands. Two images come together: Janja doesn’t return from the pump to change for her date with him; she falls into someone else’s arms and never sees him again, thereby putting an end to his suffering and confusion amid all the loose, lustful, instinct-driven bodies. He turns and leaves, goes off on his own, but where? To death, most likely, to a peace beyond understanding and confusion, beyond acceptance and rejection, where everyone is equal, no one apart and lonely, where there is no wisdom or folly, no joy or suffering.
But when the restaurant door actually opens and Janja emerges in her fitted gray coat, gray hat, and sturdy shoes, she stands at the threshold on her sturdy straight legs surveying the square until her eyes light on Blam. Then she crosses the square, her freshly made-up lips opening in a quick, confident smile.