David Albahari - Leeches

surprise is just another word for uniqueness, since we invariably think that what is new to us, or what we don't recognize, is unique, though the truth may be quite different and what we think is unique may be only one of many iterations, which is what I meant to say when I started this sentence, but which broke off and went its own way, not waiting, as I had expected, perhaps incautiously, for Marko and me to continue our walk along Knez Mihailova, and instead, like a disobedient household pet that has been let out for the first time in ages, now scampered along, one minute in front of us, and the next, far behind, so we had to turn now and then to check whether it was still there and had not gone wandering off or over to someone's beckoning hand. Once when I turned to look back, I saw Margareta. I didn't recognize her at first: she'd changed her hairdo, she was wearing high heels, a light trench coat belted at the waist, a shawl carefully arranged over her shoulders. When I turned a second time I could no longer see her among the passersby. I looked a third time and saw her leaving a book or stationery store, pausing to drop a wrapped packet into her handbag, and turning to head in the opposite direction. I tugged at Marko's sleeve and said that I had forgotten to check on something at the bookstore. He should keep going, I told him, and I would catch up in a minute, if not before, then certainly by the entrance to Kalemegdan. He was not pleased, I could see, but on he went. I waited for him to disappear among the passersby, then went chasing after Margareta. I caught up with her by the bookstore at the other end of the street; she had stopped by the store window and was looking at the books on display. I didn't approach her but paused instead at a street vendor's counter and poked among the costume jewelry. Margareta didn't move. She stood by the window, staring in as if trying to read a closed book. Then a tall man with a mustache joined her by the window and also stared in. People passing by interfered with my view of Margareta and the man with the mustache, but I was almost certain I saw his lips moving. To be almost certain means to be uncertain, this I realize, but I can't be more precise. A moment later, I am almost sure of that as well, their hands touched briefly, the man's left and Margareta's right, and it is entirely possible that something changed hands. The street vendor asked impatiently whether I was going to buy anything or just wanted to poke around among his merchandise, so I had to put down the chains and charms I had been running through my fingers, and when I looked over at the bookstore window again I could see that the man was leaving in the direction I had just come from, toward the Academy and Kalemegdan. Margareta stood there for a few more minutes, then tossed back her hair, turned, and walked off the other way. I felt like howling, like invoking a band of angels, because again I had to choose between her and a man, but this time, cautioned by the earlier experience and against my better judgment, I went after the man with the mustache. Before I dove into the dense mass of pedestrians, I saw Margareta once more as she moved off toward Terazije, while the shawl over her shoulders swayed cheerfully as if in greeting. Following the man with the mustache was no joke. He moved swiftly, skillfully sidestepping passersby, which forced me several times to elbow my way through the crowd. I assumed that because he was tall he could see what was ahead and adjust his stride accordingly while I was scampering along, and since I could not see what was ahead, I kept bumping into people who were stopping and talking and walking in the opposite direction. When we got closer to the Academy, the man with the mustache suddenly turned to the right, toward the Faculty of Philosophy, which forced me to stop. If I turn and follow him, I said to myself, I will anger Marko, who must already be waiting for me in front of the Belgrade City Library, but if I don't follow him, I thought, then what? Who was that man anyway, and why was I following him? Maybe I really had seen too many thrillers, maybe I was a victim of my own mistaken convictions and delusions? How could I be sure that something had gone on between that man and Margareta, and why, suddenly, wherever I looked, did I see indications of secrecy, the language of signs, fugitives and pursuers, plotters and madmen? I looked back and, just as I'd thought I would, I saw the two men with the crewcuts in a lively conversation, jabbing each other and doubling over with laughter. I wouldn't have been surprised, I thought, if it turned out that the man with the mustache was also being followed, nor would it have surprised me if someone were following the men with the crewcuts, which thought made me give up on the tall man with the mustache, whom I could still see at the far end of the philosophy building, and hurry toward Kalemegdan, where I told Marko the whole story. I started talking while still a few steps away from him, but he cautioned me with a raised index finger. Then he whispered that I should take a look down the other side of the street, and there at the entrance to Kalemegdan I caught sight of a man in a black trench coat and dark glasses. I wasn't sure whether it was the same man I had seen on the quay in Zemun. It was a coincidence, I said, not everyone was being followed, and I told him about what had just happened, avoiding, of course, any mention of Margareta. At that moment, the man in the black trench coat and dark glasses turned and strolled slowly into Kalemegdan. What is this, I said, shouldn't he be behind us? He is luring us, answered Marko, and if we follow him, somehow he will disappear. And that is precisely what happened. Marko claimed that we had outsmarted him, though he couldn't say how, and that we had not lost sight of him, he had lost sight of us. And now, said Marko, who knows where he is off to, wandering around the fortress? Maybe he has gone into the dungeons, he mused, from which he will never emerge to the light of day or the dark of night. I wasn't so sure myself, though I stopped looking back. We came out on the terrace that offered a view of the Sava and the Danube, New Belgrade and Zemun on the facing riverbank. I thought of Feliks, my editor's tomcat, not meowing anymore after the editor's wife had left. Was Feliks quiet because he was happy or because he was unhappy? The editor seemed happy enough, but the cat might have felt differently. Perhaps, I thought, the editor should have gone off and left his wife with the cat, maybe they would have found a way to get along, and the fear and anxiety would have turned into respect and esteem? I glanced out of the corner of my eye at Marko. What was he thinking about? Certainly not the editor's tomcat, just as it would never have occurred to him that I was thinking about a hairy creature at a time when I should have been obsessed with thoughts of conspiracy. I was tired of everything else, of the stories that fed on themselves, that never moved forward, just as the colored point on a spiral always appears to stay in the same spot, though it is constantly spinning. Every time I thought I was getting close to something or somebody, I would discover that the distance between us hadn't changed a bit, and if it were to change, it would grow rather than shrink. This is too much, I thought, for someone who until recently was dreaming of being a writer, nothing more. I could hear Marko breathing deeply and regularly, as if he'd fallen asleep, though his eyes were open wide. The sky drew back over Zemun and New Belgrade like the curtain in a theater in which the two of us were the only audience, concerned that the night would descend before the last act and frightened by the possibility that this might be one of those plays in which the audience participates, reluctant actors whom fate had dealt the role of losers. The sun slid across the sky as if it were oiled, and it looked as if it might collide at any moment with the horizon, though the day was still young. The afternoon, I said, has hardly begun and it's already over. Marko turned slowly to face me. What was that? he asked. The first line of a new poem? I wrote a few poems several years ago, and Marko had never forgiven me. At the time he had a girlfriend who was a real poet and she published a collection of poems in the First Book edition of the Matica Srpska publishing house, and his intolerance for poetic voices and forms followed after a sudden and extremely unpleasant breakup, when she hit him on the head with a Benson English-Serbo-Croatian dictionary, until streams of blood were coursing down his forehead and neck. Worst of all, this happened during a performance of a play by Miroslav Mandić, so that at first no one found it disturbing, convinced it was part of the performance. Even Miroslav Mandic stood by, unsure of what to do. Not until the blood began dripping down Marko's head did he wrench the Benson dictionary from the hands of the enraged woman, yet she kept lunging at Marko. After that, no doubt, I too would have lost my taste for poetry, though I would never deny the power of the poet to express the essence of the world and our existence most succinctly. Right now I could use that kind of artist, a master at expressing essence, someone who, in one sentence or possibly two, could summarize what had happened to me over the last few weeks. Marko was staring at me, expecting an answer. No, I said in the end, this is not the first line of a poem, but a summation of my despair, time is passing, faster and faster, yet I can't seem to move an inch. Despair is not going to help you there, said Marko, especially if you bear in mind that no one has swindled, cheated, or mastered time. Some have too, I shot back, but when Marko looked at me inquiringly, I could think of no one. Perhaps those, Marko added, who made a pact with the devil, which as far as I know you would never do. Forget the devil, I said, these are far more serious matters. How can you say that the devil's not a serious matter? Marko shouted. Over his shoulder I saw an elderly woman who, at the mention of the devil, froze in her tracks and turned to stare at us. No need to shout, I said, we are attracting way too much attention as it is. The elderly woman took a step toward us, then crossed herself and went on her way. I will shout if I want to, said Marko more softly. He turned his back on me like a pouting child. I looked at my hands: my ten fingers probably would not suffice to number the calamities in my life, and now I had to include Marko's unreasonable behavior. Or was it my behavior, perhaps, that had become impossible to understand? Maybe I attribute to others what I should be ascribing to myself? How many unanswered questions can a person absorb and still not change? There must be an upper limit, and after that a collapse. I looked to the left, I looked to the right, I looked down, I looked up. I saw no answer. I assumed the same was true behind me. I checked, just in case, and sure enough. No trace of an answer, just as there was no trace of the man in the black trench coat. Marko's back was still turned, the sky was taking on a darker shade, the clouds were scudding away with no promises, and down below, on the Sava, two boats moved slowly under the bridge. I touched Marko's shoulder. He would stay a little longer, he said, and held out his hand. I couldn't remember when we had last shaken hands. I gave him mine and our hands joined, limply, only for a moment. Enough, however, for me to feel that his palm was stone cold, as if he had been holding ice. So now, how can I write the next sentence and not sound ridiculous to anyone, myself included? When I touched Marko's icy palm, what occurred to me was that he was so bitterly prepared to defend the devil because he, Marko, was one of the devil's acolytes. As I walked away from him, I saw that phrase clear as day in the realm of my consciousness: it shone like a vast neon sign, in different colored letters, blinking on and off in slow rhythm. If the man in the black trench coat and dark glasses had appeared before me at that moment, I would have waved at him cheerfully; compared to the devil, he was nothing; he did not, however, appear, and I soon found myself on Knez Mihailova Street, which was even more crowded than when we started out. I thought it might be good to go to the synagogue courtyard, but I also thought I should shake off the thoughts of the devil, so I changed direction by the Academy of Science and Art and walked to the park at Topličin Venac. There is nothing so soothing as sitting on a park bench, surrounded by cooing pigeons on the lookout for bread crumbs. I would close my eyes here and try to calm my breathing, focusing on an emptiness that purifies. These were simple meditation exercises, but they always helped, so that within ten minutes I'd feel as if I had sloughed off the dingy skin of the polluted spirit and breathed a pure breath, first through one nostril, then through the other. By that time the pigeons had given up on me and were gravitating to an old woman seated on a nearby bench, tossing them seeds. She looked like the old woman who earlier on, in Kalemegdan, had turned when I invoked the devil, but all old women looked the same to me, whether it was a matter of the devil or a flock of hungry pigeons. Pigeons, pigeons, pigeons, I could think of nothing else, and so, with pigeons on the brain, I entered the courtyard of the synagogue. It may have been a Friday, or perhaps one of the Jewish holidays, I can no longer recall, but several men were seated at a table under a tree in leaf, among them Jaša Alkalaj, Isak Levi, and Dača. Jaša waved, and when I came over, he made room for me next to him on the bench. I had come at just the right moment, he said, because they were talking about how to protect the cemetery from incursions by the barbarians. Why barbarians? asked a man who was sitting on Jaša's other side. They are just plain scum. Barbarians, scum, makes no difference, interrupted a man from across the table, doesn't matter who they are, but what we can do against them, and I'm afraid, he said, that we don't have much of a choice. In any case we can't scrawl graffiti on their gravestones, said the man next to Jaša, the police aren't interested in helping, and what options do we have left, nighttime guard duty? Not a bad idea, said a man wearing a yarmulke, fight poison with poison. Nonsense, said Dača, putting on his hat, then taking it off again, no point in biting off more than we can chew. And who, he said, would be doing the guard duty, us? And what would we do, he asked, take them on? Look at yourselves, for God's sake, he said, and tell me what you see? We all looked at ourselves and, as if by agreement, we all looked down at the tabletop. We are a handful of misery, said Dacca, and anyone who can't understand that, or doesn't want to, will have to ask himself if he's in his right mind. Then he pointed at me. Only he, he said, can think differently, but that's something he'll have to decide for himself. I asked whether I should leave, perhaps it would be easier, I said, for them to talk about such delicate matters without the presence of outsiders. That doesn't apply, said Jaša Alkalaj, to the people sitting on my right side and on my left side, does it? Everyone clamored in confirmation, so Dacca had to pound on the table to quiet them. We can hope to receive help from only one place, he said. He straightened his finger and pointed up. We all looked up, into the tree. Not there, shouted Dača, up there, above us! He stretched out his arm and we all stared at his trembling index finger. A tiny beam of light, barely visible, shot from the tip of his finger, passed through the spring leaves, and flashed to the sky. I blinked, the beam was gone. I looked around, but no one else seemed to have noticed a thing. What will the rabbi say, said the man wearing the yarmulke at last, when he hears of this? How will he hear, asked Dača, if we don't tell him? The rabbi is the least of our worries, said Jaša Alkalaj, it's deciding what we should be doing. By then evening had nestled into the sky and was spreading, changing gradually into night. Dacca launched into a story, sounding like a local town-hall bureaucrat in the office for community defense, describing in detail the advantages of guerrilla warfare and the importance of surprise, only to say in the end that we should forget all that and focus on living tradition. If for centuries the Kabbalists and mystics had managed to create beings of earthen dust and breathe life into them, he said, then there must be a way for us to fight against these hoodlums. Don't tell me, said Jaša Alkalaj, that you propose we make a golem? I'm not proposing anything, he answered, but if that is the only way, then why not? Again silence reigned at the table. The dark was descending on our faces, pressing down our eye-lids, and for a moment I was afraid I might fall asleep, right there, in front of everybody, with my forehead on the table. Dacca's voice reached me from a great distance, as if he were shouting from the deck of a ship sailing away. As I recall, he was talking about how in ancient Kabbalistic writings there were recipes, that is what he said: recipes, for different forms of resistance or concealment, or for simply outwitting the enemy, all we had to do was find what suited us, then adapt it to our times and technology, because it was important not to forget, he repeated in a soft voice, that these documents date from the Middle Ages, and some from even earlier, and that nothing can be simply grafted from one historical period to another, but that, he whispered, everything would be fine as long as we knew what we were doing. Do we know, said Jaša Alkalaj suddenly, aloud, straight into my ear, or do we think we know? I started. Even today I don't know what was happening: I'm certain I had not been asleep, yet at that moment there was no one at the table but the two of us. I looked to the left, I looked to the right. They are gone, said Jaša, no point in looking for them. And the golem, I asked, what happened to the golem? He's not here yet, laughed Jaša, and neither is Godot. Then he grew serious: You don't believe in what Dača was saying, do you? He seemed pretty convincing, I said, I have to admit. It's easy to be convincing, said Jaša, anyone can be convincing, especially someone as eloquent as Dacca. The dark had grown so thick I could barely discern the features of Jaša's face. I don't believe he would lie, I said. Of course not, replied Jaša, no one is talking about lying, everything he said is the pure truth, from the first to the last letter. And those recipes, I asked, for the different weapons, do they exist? Let's say, said Jaša, that this is a kind of poetic license, but the fact is that there are very precise instructions for making a golem, and if an obedient golem were made, such a creature could easily throw the ranks of the enemy into a panic, and panic is the first stage of defeat. Generally, I said. Always, said Jaša. All that was left of his face was a pale egg-shaped stain, and I felt that I was conversing with a ghost on the verge of vanishing. The most interesting thing about the golem, said Jaša's mouth, is that despite his origins in language and the recitation of magic formulas, he cannot speak, which is patently absurd, because you'd expect language to fi st make language, with all else coming later; however, Jaša's mouth went on, if the golem were able to speak, then he'd be a perfect being, which would be a direct challenge to God, who alone can create perfect, complete beings. That's why, Jaša's voice came out of the darkness, the golem must be imperfect, and if he doesn't speak, then he doesn't have the most essential component of a real being, in other words, he cannot be a creator and create the world by uttering it, which is to say in the same way that the Lord created his world, our world, this world. I could no longer see him. I stretched out my hand but reached nothing. Then I heard the iron gate creaking, and slowly, stumbling, I moved toward the sound. Even today, six years later, I still don't understand what was happening in the courtyard of the Belgrade synagogue that evening; I only know that the dark thinned as I passed through the iron gate and stepped out into the street. When I tried to go back into the synagogue courtyard, I couldn't open the gate. That gate is always getting jammed, said a man who was passing by, high time they fixed it. I was about to ask how I might get back inside, if he knew that the gate jammed then he might know how to unjam it, but he had already moved on down the sidewalk and I didn't try to catch up with him. I crossed over to the other side of the street and started up the steps that led to Obilićev Venac. It occurred to me that there must be some connection between the synagogue and the sign I had seen at the café by the Graphics Collective Gallery, in the same way that there was a link among the signs left around the Zemun marketplace. In other words, I was convinced that all I had to do was keep an eye out and I would discover an abundance of new signs, but I didn't have it in me to start yet another investigation. PerhapsЧитать дальше