David Albahari - Leeches

košava wind was blowing at the time, as it was blowing several days later when he was buried, and I remember the voice of a woman saying in muffled tones, If this curse doesn't end, I too will kill myself. It was around then that someone told me how important rituals were in sustaining a certain level of normalcy and keeping one from sinking into despondency and despair. I don't remember who said it, but I know we were talking about the ordinary activities, such as taking walks, visiting museums and galleries, reading classics, listening to music, or, and why not, the routine dusting of the apartment. That is when I began my ritual Saturday stroll, which, unlike my other walks, did not take me to the quay. Every other day belonged to the Danube; Saturdays I explored the less well-known parts of Zemun and Belgrade, sometimes walking quite far afield, nearly out to the edge of town. I walked like an old man, a pensioner, one foot in front of the other, hands crossed behind my back, and those walks had a remarkably calming effect, like, I'm guessing, the practiced moves of the Eastern martial arts. I don't believe my walks could be described as a part of the Samurai codex, but in the course of those walks my senses became purer, and at the end I felt as serene as Buddha. That particular Saturday I decided to walk along Kosančićev Venac and through the neighboring streets. Something about walking on cobblestones is different from walking on sidewalks; a person who walks on cobblestones is more mindful of his body, keeping it in balance and coordinating the movements of all his limbs. Many people slump as they walk on paved surfaces, their spine is curved, their legs unstable, so they easily fall, and sink into a bad mood. On cobblestones a person is always spry, poised to adjust his step, his spirit is alert and attentive, the eye sharp, the ear attuned, the nostrils flared. On cobblestones, I once said to Marko, I am a hunter, on the pavement I am merely the prey. Ah, how Marko laughed. We were younger then, of course, and the young find it easy to laugh; as the years pass, laughter often cloaks itself in sneers, disdain, caution, sarcasm, cynicism, and other garments. When you are young it is nicest to be naked; later taking your clothes off is agony because it's not easy to face the creature staring at you from the mirror. I don't know why I am thinking of this now. I have definitely never walked around naked on cobblestones: a swaying penis, no matter how large, will more likely provoke a snigger than an erotic response. So I walked down to Kosančićv Venac, walked to its far end, came back, having passed the Faculty of Theology twice, went down Zadarska Street, then down Srebrenička, and down the stairs to the bus stop at the foot of the bridge. I hated the jostling buses and the crowds, but I didn't have much choice, or actually it was money I didn't have, so taking a taxi was out of the question, as was walking all the way to Zemun. It was time, I thought, to write a new piece for Minut. I couldn't have known it would be my last. What I am writing now, of course, doesn't count because this is not a piece like other pieces, this is a whisper into the dark from my window, a dark so dense that no light can penetrate it. So I stand by an open window, I utter the words and watch them burrow their way molelike through the dark. I bit my tongue before I'd even finished that sentence, not because I dislike the notion that my words are blind, but because I remembered that years ago I helped a neighbor, who had a weekend house just outside of Belgrade, get rid of moles. He poured water into one end of their underground tunnel, and I waited at the other end, shovel in hand, and bashed each mole that emerged until it was a bloody rag. And we were laughing as we did this, we even took pictures of ourselves with all those mashed little bodies, first he took a picture of me, then I took a picture of him, and no doubt those photographs still exist somewhere. Someone is sure to hold on to what we'd most prefer not have saved. One day I'll open a newspaper and on the front page I'll see those photographs, I'll see my face triumphantly grinning above the mangled moles, and I will know that the entire world, along with me, will be horrified at my heartlessness, despite the fact that moles are the most ordinary of pests. Fine, I'll use a different comparison then, and say that my words were twisting their way through the dark like corkscrews through cork, though it sounds as if the words are tied by threads to whoever is saying them, as if that person can easily, whenever he'd like to, yank them out and return them to his embrace. Nothing is further from the truth, because words, once they venture into the dark, even when the light is the brightest possible, never return. I don't know precisely where they go. Maybe there is a cemetery for words somewhere, I wouldn't be surprised. I have no more time for surprise. I have no more time. Being alive is being constantly amazed at life itself, and once the amazement is gone, so is life. A text isn't life, is it? No point in cocking my ear to listen: no one here will tell me anything, and the dark never has any answers anyway. I can sit again at the table and hold on to a glass of water, as if it will keep me floating. That night, the night after the encounter with Dača and the stroll along Kosančićev Venac, I couldn't fall asleep. This had happened to me before, there was no cause for alarm, I could explain it by restlessness, insecurity, uncertainty, ignorance, and I could lie there hoping to fall asleep at some point. I lay on my back, my hands crossed behind my head, breathed deeply, and stared at the ceiling, barely visible in the dark. I did what I could yet again to pull myself together and find an answer to what had gone on in my life over the past few weeks, but I kept coming back to the questions. Had someone truly tried to make a golem in Belgrade, and was this intention somehow'related to the group on the ridiculous artificial hill by Hotel Yugoslavia? And what sort of role was Volf Enoch playing in all this, if indeed he was involved? The thought of Enoch unnerved me, as if someone were stretching inside me, straightening up to see who was summoning him. This time I reacted far more calmly to the possibility that I might have become Volf Enoch, my breathing may have quickened for a few minutes, but that's all. Margareta I couldn't forget, never would. I sensed the diagonal whiteness of her thigh, then her bare foot, but had to make an effort to recall her face. Then again I saw her thigh and felt my penis stiffening, until like a bar it reached across my belly. I should have called her, I thought. I didn't move. I trembled, stared into the darkness, and waited for the blood to seep back out of the spongy tissue. That was the first time I thought that Margareta might actually be the Shekhinah, the female presence of the divine, tied to the tenth Sephirot, Kingdom, situated on the map of the human body in the soles of the feet. Wasn't Margareta barefoot during our conversation at the apartment in the Zemun high-rise? But even if she was, does that really mean anything? People go barefoot, after all, because they like to and not because they mean to carve the shards of a secret message into someone's consciousness. The times we were living in required a haven from reality, which could be found only by living everyday life in a fantasy or by reading meanings into reality. If I go on this way, I thought, I will never fall asleep. My penis had wrinkled and curled up by then like a pup weary of chasing cats. I touched it with my fingertips; it raised its head sleepily, then flopped right back onto my crossed hands. Good, I said, at least you're asleep. My voice sounded hollow in the dark, like any voice that knows it can expect no answer. My eyelids were starting to droop, my head lolled on the pillow, my limbs grew heavier, and I could tell myself that finally I was on the verge of sleep, and, of course, the minute that thought occurred to me my eyes snapped open, the ceiling stared me in the face, and I knew beyond a doubt that I'd greet the morning. Now when I think about it, I am amazed that anyone slept at all in those days, or rather, those nights. Reality had reached a mind-boggling degree of ugliness: we were living under a dictatorship pretending to be a democracy, which was closing in ever more tightly around anyone who dared voice a divergent opinion. The divide between the cynical government, obsessed with material possessions, and the population pushed into gloom and poverty was deeper than the Grand Canyon, and the feeling of powerlessness to change anything ate at people like a stomach ulcer. You couldn't see all of it in Belgrade yet, but in the heartland of Serbia a true darkness reigned, both spiritual and otherwise. Such thoughts unsettled me all the more, so I got up and started pacing around the apartment. I didn't turn on the light; I shuffled around, though not barefoot like Margareta, but in soft slippers, until I got to the desk and the manuscript, which, it occurred to me, I hadn't looked at for a long time, so long, in fact, that I felt I'd never read it at all. I got back into bed, switched on the light, opened to [>], and read yet again what was written on the facing page: A dream uninterpreted is like a letter unread. I resisted the temptation to look again at the pages I'd dreamed of, so I flipped ahead to [>]. Enough about the soul, it said at the top, though it should be noted that the soul of a deceased Jew will not stop migrating until it fulfills all commands and gains insight into the many secrets hidden in the Torah. Those who know, it said, know that there are 613 commandments in the Torah, of which 248 are positive and 365 are negative, which, as it was once believed, correspond to the number of 248 bones and 365 sinews in the human body, and they will therefore know that a human body that fulfills all the commandments is like the Torah itself, or that he who achieves spiritual perfection creates and repeats God's form within himself. In other words, he who accomplishes this, whose body blazes with heavenly light, allows the Shekhinah to dwell within him. There will be more on the subject of the Shekhinah, it said, because one might assume that the way to her is easy, bearing the water carrier in mind, but this is a task measured not by hardship or complexity but by the way it is performed; a person carrying water may do so with more dedication than a teacher who pursues his high-minded job in a laggardly manner. It should also be added here that Rabbi Chaim Vital instructed how one, or two, or three, or four souls may enter into a single body, but never more than four. Here I stopped. The next section, judging by the opening sentence, was about lighting the Saturday candles, and that was not a skill I needed. I reread the passage at the top of the page. The connection between the migration of souls and the fulfilling of the commandments in the Torah was easy enough to see, though I couldn't figure out why that section ended in Chaim Vital's words. Four souls in one body — that concept had never crossed my mind. As it was, I wasn't doing too well with one; what would I do with several? However, I was most confused by the sentence referring to a fuller description of the Shekhinah and the water carrier who could have been none other than Volf Enoch. Perhaps Vital's reference is to him? It is also stated that he, the water carrier, found it easy to reach the Shekhinah, whatever that means, as the reader is cautioned that the path is not easy. How, then, did the water carrier accomplish this? Toting a yoke with pails, maneuvering a wheelbarrow with a barrel, lugging pitchers and gourds brimming with water? I turned to the preceding page and, of course, as I might have guessed, on that page, though it was marked as [>], there was nothing about the soul, the Shekhinah, or the water carrier; instead it was mostly about the building of the Sephardic synagogue in Zemun, the corner stone was laid in 1871 and built according to plans by a Josif Marks. The synagogue was damaged in the Allied bombing of 1944, it said in closing, and has not been restored; it was in fact razed to the ground, except for a few fragments near the Well, for those able to see them. I should put this manuscript aside, I thought, for if I come across one more ambiguous reference my difficulty sleeping will become chronic and I'll never shut my eyes again. Until that point I'd understood the title of the manuscript to be symbolic, the manuscript to be a well of sorts in which all of us dwell, the entire world, and now I had to forget that thought and accept that there really was a well somewhere from which that manuscript derived and to which it was heading. The pale morning light began slowly seeping through the window, as if to help me illuminate the words that were pulling me into the depths of the Well. Alas, there is light that obscures instead of illuminating. There was no longer any reason to stay in bed. I got up, made the bed, made coffee. I didn't feel like going down to get a paper because I knew what to expect: the regime newspaper would be trumpeting its referendum, the opposition newspaper would be mocking the referendum, which meant that, regardless of my political orientation, I would be reading the same story, only told from different angles. That is when I remembered that, more than thirty years ago, Filip David had published a collection of stories called The Well in the Dark Forest. His stories were full of Kabbalistic themes: perhaps he knew something about wells, I thought, could his well be the well I am after? Nonsense, I said aloud, I am beginning to behave like a paranoic obsessed with the idea of conspiracies. The words rang in the room, bounced off the walls and windows, dropped to the floor, as they do here when I stop writing and start talking to myself. Sometimes so many words are on the floor that I have to lift my feet high as I cross this sparsely furnished room from end to end. One of these days, it occurred to me, I might slip on a squashed word, fall, and lie there, buried under the detritus of language, and no one would find me until we started to decompose, the words and I, one corpse next to the others. I should have made stronger coffee, I said, my thoughts would be more upbeat, though words probably have nothing to do with it, nor does lack of sleep, it was simply Sunday, a day with no future, as Rasa Livada wrote many years ago. Did he write a poem about the Zemun synagogue, or about Rabbi Yehuda Alkalai, the forefather of Zionism, or maybe about the destiny of the Zemun Jews, or something along those lines? Now, according to the logic of paranoia, I should find him and ask about the well, or, better still, about the sounds and lights that emanate from the attic of the synagogue, or about the water carrier. Nonsense, nonsense, nonsense, I repeated, then sipped a little coffee, closed my eyes, and leaned my head on my hand. The day of the week didn't matter, I had to admit, Sunday or Tuesday, Wednesday or Saturday, the calendar was of no help, I had reached a dead end. The world, or so it seemed at the time, had an end. It seemed so then, and it seems so now, nothing in that regard has changed. I am far away from it all, yet from time to time it feels as if I have never been closer. In short, I think more and more about my childhood, about little moments of happiness, such as when I ate rice pudding with raspberries at a restaurant called Zdravljak, or something similar, at the entrance to the Zemun marketplace, or when I had ćevapačići at the Central, while music that I can no longer recall, probably old standards, blared from a small stage. I read somewhere, who knows where, that childhood recollections multiply as life draws to a close, and the closer it draws, the more numerous the memories, as if we were trying to slow down the passage of time and keep ourselves on this shore a little longer. On the other shore, after all, we'll be spending, I almost said, our whole life, when it's our whole death we'll be spending there. I'm tired, who knows what I'm saying and writing, but I myself noted the absurdity of the rapid transition from raspberries to heavenly perfection. None of this contributed to my ruminations about the Well, here I was at a standstill, until Marko, in a phone conversation later that afternoon, said that I should think about the Well as if it were my own body. Your body is a well, said Marko, if you toss a coin in, after a long silence you'll hear it plunk on the surface of the water, with the same sound you'd hear if you dropped a coin into a real well. You might even make the same wish, he continued, which won't come true any more than the wish you'd say over a real well would. Yes, I should have thought of that, I said to myself in an almost chiding tone. Margareta said something similar to me, I believe, though she didn't compare my body to a well, but rather to a cosmic tree full of Sephirot. It comes down to the same thing, because if our body corresponds to the entire system of the cosmos, why wouldn't it correspond to a well? This offered no answer to the question of where the Well was located, or to the question of how one finds one's way in. A leap from a great height would not do, and as far as I recall, there was no mention of ladders in the manuscript. Ladders, Marko said, are a system of exercises to achieve a goal in a given religious or mystical system, and I almost hung up on him. Of course ladders represent an upward or downward system, he couldn't have been thinking that I would load an honest-to-goodness ladder onto my shoulder and, like a chimney sweep, clamber up to the roof. That reminds me, yesterday I saw a chimney sweep here: he looked the way chimney sweeps looked there, sooty, with a jaunty black cap, and his teeth, as he spoke to my landlady, gleamed like polished ivory. I quickly reached for a button, then realized that on the clothes I was wearing I didn't have a single button: a long-sleeved T-shirt and a blue sweatshirt both pulled on over the head, a zipper on the jeans, and shoelaces on shoes don't count anyway. So I stood there by the window, feverishly patting my body, wondering if I had the time to take the sweatshirt off and pull on a button-up shirt, but by then the chimney sweep's conversation with my landlady was over and he walked away with a jocular salute. A red ribbon dangled from the top rung of his ladder, probably a warning to passersby and vehicles, and as I watched it leaving, I said to myself that my happiness too was leaving, never to return. But back to the Well. It was one of those things where, the closer we get to them, the farther they are from us. Luckily this was not a real thirst, because I'd never get a drink of fresh water at that Well, I kept seeing it in the distance, in the morning or evening haze, and no matter how far I walked, I got no closer. The sun would cross the sky, followed by the moon, the haze would be a golden net at one moment and a silver spiderweb the next, and I would continue to be just as far off, like the people who stride along on the moving strip at the fitness club, while always staying in the same place, Sisyphuses unaware that they are Sisyphuses. This is, perhaps, fine for the heart and physical fitness, which would be useful if one were to dig a real well, but I was interested in the Well within me, which was at once a reflection of the one outside me, and I doubted that a fitness club would take me in the right direction. The day was passing, I needed to write the piece for Minut, and all I could think of was that I was sinking into a swamp and that the only way I could extricate myself was the way Baron Münchhausen had done when he was in a similar predicament: grab my pigtail and wrench myself free of trouble, however, my hair was so short at the back that I had nothing to grab hold of, let alone to tug at and yank myself up into the heights. I might as well, I thought, admit that I was lost; admission of defeat is sometimes the greatest victory and may offer possibilities earlier hidden or inaccessible. I didn't know where all this was headed, which was probably the most appropriate feeling for that aimless Sunday morning, or afternoon, keeping in mind how fast the time was passing, in fact by then it was nearly evening, with night in tow, just as a mother or father drags along a child reluctant to go shopping or to visit people with no children of their own, where the child is painfully bored despite being plied with cookies or ice cream. At the thought of ice cream I licked my lips and thought of how with the first nice days of spring they started selling a variety of ice cream treats out in front of my building. Unlike the dreary newspapers, the ice cream had magical power, and I soon found myself, still in my slippers, on the sidewalk. The ice cream vendor, however, was not where she was supposed to be. The refrigerator was locked, the sunshade down, the chairs chained to a nearby tree. I looked to the left, I looked to the right, and next to the newspaper kiosk I saw a man in dark glasses. Unlike the earlier figures lurking in dark glasses, this one was not wearing a trench coat, though he was in a black suit. No, I said to myself, you will not add him to your list of plotters; this is Sunday, the man may be going to a wedding and has stopped to buy mints or chewing gum. The man looked at me. Suddenly I felt awkward being on the street in my slippers like some old curmudgeon, and I turned to go back in. The man kept staring at me, no, the man was fixed on me, that is how I'd describe it, and suddenly I desperately wanted to go up to him and pluck those glasses off his face, and just then he lifted his hand, removed the glasses, and smiled. I turned to check whether there was someone behind me. There wasn't. I looked again at the man, who was now approaching, still smiling. I can always take off my slippers, I thought, and if need be, sprint barefoot. I have never cared for being barefoot, even as a child, but if that was the only way for me to flee, being barefoot wouldn't bother me. Margareta and her bare feet flitted through my mind, and I wondered what a barefoot flight would mean to a Shekhinah, or more precisely, would the Shekhinah aid or obstruct the flight, and then I had to stop moving and thinking, because the man was in front of me. He had sky-blue eyes. What, he said, you don't recognize me? No, I said, and I truly had no idea who he was, though his voice began to take shape in my consciousness, and the longer he spoke, the more the oblivion waned, and finally, when he mentioned Paramedium, our gymnasium biology teacher, the name and nickname hit me: Steva the Horse. There was nothing horsey about him, and while he chattered on about old friends, and about how happy he was to see us, and about how much it meant to him when he returned to Canada, my only thought was the delicate question of his name's origin. Would I hurt his feelings if I reminded him of this nickname? He'd eagerly carved it into old and new school desks, and even, in some instances, into the blackboard and the lectern. One of the things he'd started appreciating more since he'd moved away, he said, was the marvelous informality of the people here. To come down in slippers like that, he said, went beyond anything he'd seen in Edmonton. I don't know where Edmonton is, but if I were there, I said, I would not so easily abandon my comfortable slippers. Steva chuckled, and then I remembered how he'd acquired the nickname Horse: he didn't laugh, he neighed, though by now it sounded more like a frog's croak. In any case his laugh was awful, much worse than my slippers. All the while I was inching toward the door to my building, but he followed me, never letting the distance between us grow. I don't know why I wanted to put space between us, maybe because of those sky-blue eyes whose translucence had always stirred distrust in me. The lighter someone's eyes, the greater my suspicion. A prejudice, naturally, though harmless, if that's any consolation. I nudged open the door to the building with my back, preparing to slip in, but just at that moment Steva started listing everybody he'd seen, and after a few women's names, which I didn't recognize, he mentioned Dragan Mišović, with whom he had spent a marvelous evening, he said, only yesterday. I stopped pressing against the door. A marvelous evening with Dragan Mišović? I asked. Was he sure it hadn't been someone else? No, Steva replied, he was sure, Dragan the mathematician from whom we always cribbed solutions in math and mechanical drawing tests. He asked after you, said Steva, and said something about parallel worlds, repeating patterns, that sort of thing. The door suddenly felt so heavy, I thought it might snap my spine. Had I made the wrong choice, perhaps, when I recently decided not to call Dragan Mišović? I can't remember when that was, but I do recall the alacrity with which I had made that decision. Now I dared admit that it was out of vanity, anger that he'd so casually blown me off two or three times, or sneered at me because I couldn't keep up with his mathematical reasoning. Are you sure? I asked Steva needlessly, that Dragan mentioned me? Actually I was trying to gain time, to figure out what to do, to evaluate everything from a new perspective. Steva didn't hesitate. Of course Dragan Mišović had told him all that, he even made a special point of saying, Steva added, that he was very pleased to be in touch with me again. He looked at me with those sky-blue eyes and blinked as if wind was blowing in his face. Was the blink a sign of insecurity, or was he not telling the truth? Who knows why Steva blinked? He realized, said Steva, that he'd run into me at an awkward moment, being in slippers on a Sunday was a sure sign of a wish for rest and relaxation, but would I be willing perhaps, he asked, to join a group of old school friends for dinner in a restaurant by the Danube? They had agreed to meet at the Harbormaster's at seven o'clock, then decide where to eat. And Dragan Mišović will be there too? I asked with a dose of incredulity, are you sure? He promised, answered Steva, and as far as he knew, and he was prepared to stand corrected, Dragan Mišović always kept his promises. I couldn't muster a single example, but all the same I nodded. So, said Steva, you'll join us? I consented, and he reached forward and patted me on the cheek. Leave those slippers at home, he said, and neighed again. Once a horse, I thought, always a horse. Little things are sometimes the most telling about the truth of people and the world, the tiny cracks signaling the advent of huge catastrophes. As I climbed the stairs to my apartment, questions were jostling in my mind about Dragan Mišović's unexpected willingness to appear in public, and to go, no less, to a restaurant. I remembered clearly how the person who had helped me find him several weeks before, and who had moved to Banovo Brdo, had cautioned me that he was odd and that he never, which I knew, attended group gatherings or alumni reunions. When I add to that the fact that Mišović had asked after me, it was a miracle that I had not instantly gone to the Harbormaster's. I managed to hold off until six o'clock, and at six-thirty I was out there in front of the gallery. My head swung left-right like a pendulum, and even so I missed seeing Steva the Horse arrive with a plump woman whose hair was tied in a bun. I could have sworn I'd never seen her before, but she claimed we kissed on New Year's Eve when we were fifteen. Steva neighed when she tweaked my ear and said it was never too late to pick up where we had left off. Pick what up, I asked, and Steva nearly fell on the floor. The woman with her hair in a bun giggled, hands on hips, her belly shoved in my direction. Who knows how long this torment would have lasted if two other women hadn't arrived and I recognized them as Zlata and Dragana, best friends and straight-A students. I had never kissed either of them, that I knew, though I wouldn't mind, I thought, kissing them now. There is nothing more beautiful than middle-aged women. Sure, the body no longer has the firmness and flexibility it had in youth, but there is that fullness instead, the stable hips, the generous bottom, and the air of well-being. Zlata and Dragana squealed when they saw us, and as we were hugging and kissing three times on the cheeks, Svetlana and Radomir arrived, frowning as ever. Though we knew that the frown was a mask of sorts, every time I saw them I thought that their identical frowns must have brought them together. They had been, one might say, the mascots of our class: they had started dating in our first year, married a week after graduation, and had stayed together ever since, judging by an email I received, don't ask how, from Zlata and Dragana. Over the past few years Zlata and Dragana have been tirelessly organizing annual reunions of our class, and several weeks before the gathering they send out bulletins with up-to-date information about the lives of our former schoolmates. By my name it says "gone," which means nothing, and suits my desire to lay low. "Gone" is certainly better than "deceased," which is what they wrote, regrettably, next to some of the names, including the name of the homeroom teacher, Milenko Stojević, whose heart, someone said at one of the earlier reunions, broke when the new war started in Yugoslavia. I don't know if that's true, though I believe that many hearts were broken when that happened, some forever, as was the case with Milo the Silo, as we called our homeroom teacher, some temporarily, though with a permanent scar, while some only pretended, feigning a despair that didn't leave a mark in their atria or ventricles. They said nothing about my heart, what matters is that it still beats evenly, and that, knock on wood, it shows no strain at maintaining a regular rhythm. To knock on wood I had to get up from the old armchair and go over to the windowsill, just as I rose at the restaurant back then, to go to the door, restless because Dragan Mišović was late. I looked to the left, I looked to the right, but there was no sign of him. I came back to the table, where the conversation was in full swing, and where the plump woman with her hair in a bun managed to maneuver Svetlana away and sit on the chair next to me. Until then I hadn't joined in the conversation, but when she began leaning her breasts against my left elbow, I completely shut off. No, it was not her breasts I was thinking of; what bothered me was that Dragan Mišović had changed his mind, assuming, of course, that what Steva had told me was true. He was sitting at the head of the table, ruddy with many glasses of red wine, and when he saw me looking at him, he winked. I don't need winks, I thought as the plump woman pressed against me, I already have more than enough of those, what I need is something clear, tangible, something authentic beyond any doubt. Was I prepared to interpret Dragan Mišović's arrival that way? I didn't know. The desperate, as the saying goes, grab at straws. The saying presumably refers to people who are drowning, but wouldn't anybody drowning be desperate, even somebody who had voluntarily gone into the deep water? Suicide may be a choice, but I'm convinced that no one walks calmly to death, there must be a moment at which the body sheds the raiment of consciousness and rebels against the inevitability of the end. Somebody might assume that I was suicidal because Dragan Mišović hadn't made an appearance, which, I assure you, never for a moment crossed my mind. Not then, and not now. Actually, during the years when I was growing up with the people who were now sitting around our table at the Sent Andreja restaurant, who were not heavy back then or balding, I chose as my mantra a line from Faulkner's The Wild Palms —given the choice between the experience of pain and nothing, the protagonist said he would choose pain, and I have stayed true to that mantra ever since. I would never lift a hand against myself, I thought, as the plump woman's bun tickled my nose, stirring in me a wish to flee as far away as possible. I probably would have done so too, had a hush not settled over the table. I turned and saw Dragan Mišović in an oversized greatcoat, buttoned to the chin, as if out there it was still winter. He was not wearing a cap, which surprised me, though I couldn't have said why, maybe because I had been convinced that he was never, even while sleeping, without a cap. Well, cap or no cap, the coat was so capacious that it looked as if it were walking on its own, as the person said, if I remember correctly, who had moved a while ago to Banovo Brdo, and who was the one to reunite me, if I can call it that, with Dragan Mišović. Judging by the silence around the table, he startled and confused everybody, not just me. Meanwhile, the waiter came over and helped him out of the coat. I knew he would be in a pristine, pressed shirt, but I didn't expect the tie, with an equally pristine knot. The tie was multicolored, with abstract designs, which, I was sure, he could express instantly in a cluster of equations or other mathematical concepts. Even more surprising was the fact that he grinned at all of us as he shrugged off his coat, joined us, greeted everybody, and finally sat down. After a few minutes of pained silence, the conversation picked up, coursing fast in many directions. I glanced at Steva, he winked back again, this time with a discreet nod to Dragan Mišović, who had taken the seat next to him, where Zlata had been sitting. Steva whispered something to her first, I saw it out of the corner of my eye, Zlata got up and asked the waiter to bring her another chair and placed it between the heavyset woman and me, despite the woman's half-joking protests. You've had your turn, said Zlata, now he is mine and only mine, and so a new pair of breasts now rested at my elbow. I suffered the rotund warmth patiently, or more precisely, the warmth of mashed flesh. Not that I fail to appreciate women's breasts, not at all, I could speak or write about them for hours on end, but there are moments when what we love the most bothers us the most, and if there was something far from my thoughts at that moment, then it was breasts, and their pressure on my arm turned into a sort of unpleasantness, a fire that failed to convince my penis to stir and offer to put out the fire, but threatened instead to leave burns all over me. I am exaggerating, of course, but some experiences can only be defined in hyperbolic terms — we speak of a mosquito that has been pestering us at night as if it were the size of an airplane or as big as an eagle, or we compare it to a rocket, because it's ridiculous that such a puny creature could torment you and not let you sleep for hours. Indeed fear has big eyes. My eyes too were big, or so they felt as I stared alternately at Dragan Mišović and at Steva the Horse. This was yet another unknown in an equation so vast it would not fit on the largest page, and the solution could evolve into a tapestry that, as in a certain novel, was an image of the world, or perhaps the world itself. Again, I am taking this too far. Doing something for the first time is always hardest, to tell a lie or go too far or exaggerate, then it gets easier. For instance, I take cold showers and I remember how I used to have to muster the courage to step under the icy jets, and now I do it without hesitation, I even let the water run for a while because that first burst of cold no longer satisfies me. Man is a strange beast, as Marko would say, and as I listened to Steva neighing, leaning his head on Dragan Mišović's shoulder, I thought how unfair I'd been to Marko, and that if I wasn't careful I might easily lose my only friend. I know that "only friend" sounds grim, but the truth is most people don't even have that one friend, while many declare mere acquaintances as friends, just as if I were to say now that Margareta is my friend, though I barely know anything about her life. I could describe her, I could say she's absorbed in some aspects of Jewish mysticism, I could talk about how I feel in her presence, but no one would be able to find her based on what I say. Even as I gave her description I would be stuttering, uncertain if she had pink cheeks, arched eyebrows, and fragile earlobes, or if all that was my imagination. It took no imagination, however, to conclude that between Steva the Horse and Dragan Mišović something was going on, and my only hope was that this new thread had nothing in common with all the other threads stretching my way. Zlata and Dragana called to each other across the table, Svetlana and Radomir frowned, Dragan Mišović explained something to the plump woman with the bun, Steva went to the men's room, and all I could do was gaze at the ceiling, that artificial sky that has given many unexpected inspiration. I hope, I thought, I don't feel the impulse to write a love song or an erotic poem, dedicated to the breasts that had so generously nuzzled up against me. I waited until my neck ached. Nothing happened, no line of verse sped through my mind, I could breathe a sigh of relief. I had long since given up writing poems; I didn't even attempt to write them anymore; short stories were good enough for me; novels, I felt, were beyond my ken. Here, at night, when total serenity reigns, I sometimes hear a voice from the silence that utters fragments that could only be parts of poems, but in the morning, as I splash my face, I try to rinse them off, especially "the leaden sky of hope" and "only the barest tender kiss for puckered lips," which stick to my wakefulness like burrs. Luckily, nothing like that engulfed me at the Sent Andreja restaurant, what I felt on my shoulder was the touch of Dragan Mišović's fingers. I hadn't noticed when he got up and came up behind me, and I nearly jumped at the sudden touch, but it all ended when I spun around and faced Dragan's smile. Everything's fine, he said, and patted me on the back, as if I were a baby whose sleep he didn't want to disturb. Then he bent down a little more and whispered that we had to talk. The triangles have started opening, added Dragan Mišović, then he squeezed my shoulder and went back to his seat just as Steva the Horse was coming back from the men's room. Was it my imagination, or did they exchange small gestures? Dragan touched the lobe of his left ear, Steva smoothed his right eyebrow with his index finger, they nodded to each other, sat down at the table, and almost simultaneously ordered another bottle of red wine. The waiter, of course, brought two, claiming that each had ordered one, and this quickly turned into one of those wearisome and unpleasant café tiffs that are remembered far longer than what led up to them, like the quarrel between Jack Nicholson and the waitress in Five Easy Pieces, which I remember, though I have forgotten what happens before or after. The waiter refused to take back the second bottle, Steva would not allow it to be put on the bill, and though we pretended not to notice, soon we were all taking part, and who knows how long it would have gone on, had Dragan Mišović not said that he would take the bottle, he had things to do, and the wine would come in handy. He looked at me as if I knew what he meant. I didn't. I was thinking feverishly about what the opening of the triangles might mean, but nothing came to mind. The one thing I could think of was that paper pinwheel attached to a stick that we toted around as children. They weren't triangles, of course, but when we ran, the pinwheel spun around, and, shrieking with joy, we imagined we were helicopters. This didn't include any opening, which, obviously, was the substance of Dragan's message, and judging by the look he sent my way as he raised the wine bottle victoriously in the air, I would learn the truth with wine, whether I wanted to or not. The quarrel with the waiter brought our party to a close; after all that had been said, there was no reason for us to stay there any longer. Steva tapped the rim of his glass with a knife, and once the conversation died down, he thanked us for easing, if only briefly, the pain of living abroad, and he hoped we'd get together again the next time he visited. He did live out in the middle of nowhere, behind God's back, but as long as God was there to be seen, things couldn't be so bad. Zlata started sniffling, real tears rolled from her eyes, her face contorted in an ugly grimace, and with a trembling voice she said to Steva that he shouldn't go back, that we needed him here, there were fewer and fewer of us with each passing day, and we were getting weaker. As she said this, choking back sobs, she kneaded my thigh with such ferocity that for days I had to nurse my bruises. There was no mark, however, on my lower arm from the three-hour nuzzle of the assorted breasts. Outside, in front of the restaurant, rain greeted us, so our goodbyes turned into a frantic exchange of hugs, kisses, handshakes, and waving. No one had an umbrella, so they all rushed to their cars, bus stops, houses, and apartments, including, to my great surprise, Dragan Mišović, who caught up with Steva the Horse at a gallop down Zmaj Jovina Street, the tails of his greatcoat flapping. I was left standing there alone. I hadn't expected this to happen and had no idea what to do with myself. I was convinced that Dragan Mišović would take me somewhere, maybe off to a sheltered bench on the quay or to another restaurant to explain the real meaning of the opening of the triangles, and when this did not happen, I almost felt paralyzed. It was raining harder and the drops pelted the pavement, turning into bubbles. I stuck my hands into my jacket pockets, and, in the left pocket, felt a slip of paper. I pulled it out and opened it. Judging by the initials at the bottom, it was a message from Dragan Mišović. He must have slipped it in when he whispered to me that the triangles were starting to open. The rain and gusting wind kept me from reading it, I folded it and put it back in the pocket. When I got home, soaked to the skin, I looked for it desperately — it must have dropped from my pocket as I hurried along the Danube, lashed by the rain and the wind. My thought was to go straight back to the quay, though it was highly unlikely, with the weather, that I would be able to retrieve the misplaced note, and even if I were to find it, snagged in a bush or under a bench, who knows whether the note would still be legible. I feared that now the writing was no more than a blot, but I was prepared to search for it nevertheless, because in the blot, as in a Rorschach test, there might be meaning, a message that could be a signpost for a traveler who had no idea where he was headed and why. Clearly, desperation had taken hold of me and threatened to turn into downright depression. Marko, if I had said that to him, would probably have just rolled his eyes. So what, he would have said, everybody is swallowing pills anyway, pills for sedation, pills for a better mood or against a bad mood, one more or less doesn't mean much, especially when the entire country is on one big psychiatrist's couch. And then he would pull out a joint, the cure for everything but fractures, as he often said, and he would offer to calm me down. I would have enjoyed the joint, no doubt, but first I had to face the elementary calamity, like a fireman in an American movie, and venture out to save the lost message, and then, as I put my jacket back on, I felt the paper under my fingertips. Dragan Mišović's message. Sometimes things know how to toy with us. I've no idea how the paper had vanished from my left pocket only to turn up there again; maybe I moved it unconsciously from pocket to pocket as I hurried along the quay, I'll never know. Secrets, after all, should remain secrets. I took off the jacket, hung it on the coat hook, went into the living room, sat down in the armchair, and started reading. Fifteen years ago, the message said, a Belgrade artist came up with a piece of conceptual art: he wrote the same sentence over and over again on adhesive stickers. The stickers too were identical, but the sentence on each sticker was written differently: in block letters, in cursive, typed, glued, colored, uneven lettering. The artist put the stickers up wherever he happened to be: in a bus, on the front door of a house he visited, on the sidewalk, on newspaper kiosks, shop windows, lampposts, park benches. The sentence, which he wrote out countless times, was WHERE is ALL THIS TAKING us? It never occurred to the artist that this might be construed as political provocation. It had come to him when he was sitting in the kitchen, drinking coffee, watching treetops sway in gusts of wind, thinking about life. Where was all this taking us, humankind, the entire system, evolution, everything we know and don't know? Is there a goal, he wondered, and if there is, when will we reach it? He decided that there no goal, but then suddenly realized that everybody should be asked this question, so that once everybody was thinking about it, someone might come up with an answer. From there to the notion of stickers was a small step, and before long there was a trail behind him of stickers with this, as he saw it, pressing question on the essence of human existence and survival on earth. The only thing he did not anticipate was the possibility of a political reading and interpretation of his sentence, yet that is precisely what happened. The 1980s were on the way out and the foundations of the former country had already begun to wobble and crumble, the intelligence service soon developed an interest in this person who, in the opinion of those in the know, was cleverly stirring the population to doubt and unrest with the stickers, found in many places, including a public restroom at the bus station and a ticket counter at the train station. The artist was arrested, just as he was gluing stickers rendered in psychedelic colors to the glass wall of the swimming pool at the Sports Hall in Zemun during a Zagreb rock band concert. He didn't resist, he confessed to his activities, holding fast to his assertion that his intention was purely artistic. During the search of his apartment several more stickers turned up, as well as a large quantity of drawing supplies, a typewriter whose letters matched the letters on the posted stickers, and a map of Belgrade that included Zemun and New Belgrade indicating the locations on which the artist had left or planned to leave his mark. Of special interest, and we need to pay attention here, is that the artist's project, once finished, was meant to describe the shape of an equilateral triangle stretching from the old core of Zemun to Palilula and Košutnjak in Belgrade. The map was the main evidence of the artist's evil intentions, though no one could put a finger on what precisely these intentions were, but the district attorney understood that there was nothing behind it all, and the artist was quickly released from jail, packed up his belongings, and left for the Netherlands. However, the map, stickers, and drawing tools, including his portable typewriter, were never returned, and no one knows what happened to them. Before his departure the artist apparently said he found the inspiration for his work in a mysterious triangle with a point at its center that had appeared on the Belgrade streets and on public transportation in the late 1960s and early 1970s and about which to this day various theories and rumors were circulating. Here you should note, the letter said, switching to address me directly, in both cases these were triangles, which is key to understanding what came next. As most people do, you assume math to be a waste of time and you don't see the point of it, except in its more practical aspects, such as counting money or calculating interest rates, and I'd be glad to convince you otherwise, but this is not the moment. You have many other problems ahead of you, no point in my adding another. Back to the triangles. At the beginning of the last century, Helge von Koch, a mathematician, found a curve that was infinite in circumference, yet enclosed a finite area. This would mean, at least in theory, that you could pick it up and put it in your pocket, which would mean that the pocket would contain infinity. You could put it in an envelope and send it to someone who wanted infinity or who hadn't yet had a chance to see it. The Koch curve is made by dividing the given segment of line into three equal parts, and then replacing the middle part with the sides of a triangle in such a way that we get four segments, of which each one is equal to one third of the original segment. By repeating this procedure, one gets Koch's infinite curve, and if we start with an equilateral triangle and apply this procedure to all three sides, we will arrive at what is called the Koch snowflake, which some call the Koch star. What is of particular interest here is that the first shape formed in the opening of the triangle is a six-pointed star, and though the sides curl, if I can put it that way, they retain a recognizable six-pointed shape. At one moment it may assume the shape of a circle, which means that, in a reciprocal process, a circle can be turned into a six-pointed star. It is here somewhere that the explanation of the sign you showed me several weeks ago is hidden. So triangles can open, perhaps they have already started to do so, and the one thing that must not be forgotten is the point. I know there is no dot on the above-mentioned sign, but if you can't see it, it doesn't mean it isn't there. Apparently, with his curve Koch intended to demonstrate the limitations of classical mathematical analysis, which shows that sometimes a single snowflake can cause more trouble than an entire snowstorm, and that's the way to look for the apparently missing dot. In other words, the opening of the triangle leads to the rediscovery of a point that I would gladly call the Borges Aleph, but it is at the same time both more and less than that. So let's never forget that everything, even the infinity you have put in your pocket, must in the end come back to the point from which everything emerged. I put down the paper and took a deep breath. I'd never been good at math, I barely got by in secondary school, and now I had to recognize in a mathematical description a signpost for my destiny. I could feel a throbbing in my temples, after which, I knew, a nasty headache would follow if I didn't immediately take something to kill the pain. I staggered off to the bathroom, took two painkillers, staggered back, glanced out the window, sat again in the armchair, got up again, went into the kitchen and ate a square of chocolate, went back to the window, looked at the facing building, then flicked on the TV. If I'm lucky, I thought, I'll find a porn movie, and sure enough, after two or three clicks on the remote I caught sight of interlaced limbs and heard a woman's voice modulating the sounds of a, o, and u with such skill that Yma Sumac might have envied her. I know what people think of pornography, but I am not at all interested in what goes on in the movie, not even if the plot gets intricate or ends in a mass orgy. At first I used to feel a certain measure of excitement that soon turned to boredom, what with the endless repetition of the same movements; the pornographic movie then lost all its erotic power and turned into a medley of attractive geometric patterns, which helped me think calmly about other things. About a pocket full of infinity, for instance. I turned the sound down, and while the unsheathed members of two detectives penetrated simultaneously the vagina and anus of the female protagonist, I reread Dragan Mišović's message. So the triangles are opening, fine, but where? And what does infinity have to do with it? Or maybe, I thought, as the heroine gnawed the corner of the pillow, everything should be understood as a sign of transformation, as an introduction to change. The six-pointed star, of course, has a clear meaning; something, however, was eluding me here; I knew that individuals from the Jewish community were involved, but clearly there was an aspect to their involvement I had paid no attention to, or else had not realized was there. Perhaps there was more than one aspect? My eyes began to shut, though on the screen the rhythm of ins and outs with every possible orifice was growing overzealous. The camera slid almost tenderly over the female protagonist's face, and her gaping mouth and darting tongue, probably meant to suggest passion at its peak, are the last images I remember. I know it is not healthy to sleep in an armchair in front of the television, not only because of the radiation emitted by the television, but also because of the consequences to the anatomy, the twisting of the spine and the harmful pressure on the joints, but this is a habit I cannot shake. So I fell asleep, and when I opened my eyes, electronic snow was streaming across the screen. I struggled up, my body cramped, my mouth dry, and went over to the window. Across the street, in front of the pharmacy not a single car was parked. I looked to the left, I looked to the right, then up at the sky. Gray, black in some places, it offered no hope of clearing, and I nearly retreated again to the armchair. I had to write that piece for Minut, which was threatening to turn into a nightmare: I hated writing in bad weather. It sounds childish, I know, but creativity is a game, and some games can't be played unless certain conditions are met. In my case, the game of writing was tied to weather. Some people require a particular kind of pencil, some absolute silence, others have to shut their eyes for a long time; I expect the sun's rays to fall on the paper and my hand, or on the keyboard and my fingers, and if the sun is not there, writing turns into torment, greater torment, because writing is a torment like no other in and of itself. I know what Marko would say: he would laugh and say with scorn that everybody wants to be a martyr: the writer, the baker, the postman, and the hatter. I'd like to know where Marko is now. The void I feel from his absence is as enormous as the mountain I stare at every day from my window. Absence is absence, he'd say, why measure it, and that, along with his lack of presence, is what disturbs my equilibrium. It was his commentaries, sometimes biting, sometimes searing, often on the mark, and seldom malicious, that held me back from plunging into all sorts of ventures, they forced me to question myself and tested my every fl ight of fancy. There are times when I think that if anyone were ever to come knocking at my door, this door here, it would be Marko. I am waiting in vain, of course, because if someone does knock, it will not be Marko, nor should I open the door but rather leave by the planned escape route. The details don't matter, let it suffice to say that it would begin with my pulling up the trapdoor in the kitchen floor. So I raged at the overcast sky, I raged at raging, I raged at admitting this and I raged because of something that was beyond my control, and who knows how much longer I would have gone on raging had the phone not rung. I didn't recognize the voice at first, but then caught on that it was Jaša Alkalaj. It would be good, he said, if you could come to the Jewish Historical Museum right away. He didn't say anything more. I scrambled to change my clothes, wash and shave, ate a piece of bread spread with margarine and honey, then hustled down the stairs and straight out into the street, where I flagged down a taxi. The taxi, a prehistoric Mercedes, was on the verge of falling apart, it looked as if only its own supernatural will was holding it together. The taxi driver, who tapped the ash off his cigarette into an ashtray above which there was a THANK YOU FOR NOT SMOKING sign, said not a word as we drove into Belgrade. He nodded when I opened the door; he nodded when I gave him the address; he nodded when we stopped at Kralja Petra Street; he nodded when I handed him the fare; he nodded when, saying goodbye, I left his vehicle. I thought that I ought to jot down his number; by my standards he was the perfect driver; however, as I patted my jacket pockets for a pen, the taxi dipped into the next street and the number soon evaporated from my memory. I nodded in parting and walked into the museum. At the entrance I was stopped by two young men. The museum is closed, they said, but when I gave Jaša Alkalaj's name, the shorter man of the two stepped into the glass booth and called someone. That's fine, he said, Jaša was expecting me, but up in the offices of the Jewish Community Center rather than in the museum. I called the elevator, one of those old-fashioned elevators in which the ride is always unpredictable, and slowly, as if I had several eternities before me, it took me to the third floor. The door opened, and I headed toward a room from which I could hear voices. I walked cautiously, as if afraid someone might jump on me through one of the many doors, until I made it to a large room where chaos beyond description reigned. No chaos lends itself to description, but how many instances of it had I witnessed in my life? Not counting the chaos in one's soul. No theories or mathematical explanations can describe that chaos, even if it can be simulated in a laboratory or in hospital and prison camp conditions. I stared in disbelief at this chaos, overturned tables and chairs, strewn papers, smashed glass, slashed paintings, and spilled paint. The words JEWS ARE VERMIN were scrawled on one of the walls, while on another wall was painted a yellow Star of David crossed with a black swastika. Not far from me, on the floor, I saw a painting by Jaša Alkalaj that had portrayed the figures of Slobodan and Mira Milošević; where the figures had been, there were yawning holes. Just beyond, on another painting full of Jewish symbolism was a yellow fluid, which, thanks to my experience with the doormats in front of my apartment, I recognized as urine. I saw Jaša Alkalaj and Isak Levi in the far corner with a group of people speaking in whispers, and I made my way toward them, carefully stepping over the rubble. Jaša saw me and came over. His face was part of the surrounding disarray: it looked as if it had come undone and then been slapped back together again. I extended my hand to convey my condolences, and he clutched it as though he was on the verge of an abyss. Meanwhile, the police arrived and generated even more chaos. In short, three or four days earlier, Jaša had brought the items to be exhibited to this room. The show, he said, was supposed to be set up on the floor below of course, in the museum, but since the space there was limited, it was agreed that over the First of May weekend they would leave everything in the room, and that on the Monday following, all the preparations for the opening would be made. That night, some people climbed up the courtyard side, no way of knowing how many, said Jaša, smashed the windows, broke in, and did this. He gestured around, even stepped aside so I could get a better view. But why? I asked, needlessly. They didn't destroy everything, he said, maybe because they didn't have the time or because they weren't interested in certain paintings. We'll wait, he continued, for the police to finish their investigation, then we'll have a look at what can still be shown. Wouldn't it be better, I asked, to cancel the show? Jaša gave me an angry look. Why cancel? he asked. Everything is ready, the invitations have been sent out, the catalog printed, people are curious; giving up now would mean admitting that those who did this accomplished what they set out to do. I looked around, scratched my head. His eyes less angry, he asked whether I thought that giving up meant admitting defeat. Yes, I said. Jaša looked at me again, this time without a trace of anger, and urged me to go home. This would take time, he said, and at home, he added, I had work to do. What? I protested, I have nothing going on. The piece for Minut, said Jaša, and he spun around and left. I left too. I took the stairs, sidestepping people and the police. The elevator was stuck between the first and second floors: I assume that they'd had to pull someone out of the cabin. I thought I heard the meowing of a cat but couldn't place the sound. In front of the building several policemen were milling around; a police car was parked by the hotel across the street; passersby paused and looked up at the roof, as if expecting someone to jump. I hate Mondays, I thought, and walked to Student Square Park where I had once got so stoned that I had tumbled off a bench. The bench was still there, though perhaps not the same one; two girls were sitting on it and when I passed them both crossed their legs, as if on command. That reminded me of the dazzling flash of Margareta's thigh. The flash was so emblazoned in my memory that I had to close my eyes and pause. When I opened them, the girls were no longer there, but I had already grown used to the vanishing, nothing could surprise me. That was also how I began the piece for Minut: I recently thought, I wrote, that nothing more could surprise me. We live in a time in which the absurd and the irrational have been expanded to ridiculous proportions, and in which the imitation of reality has become more real than reality itself. Not to speak of life. It's not an imitation, or a simulation, or an improvisation, it's nothing. We live in a country that does not exist, composed of refracted reflections in a game of light and dark, and so we do not exist, or rather we exist only as shadows on a wall, with no substance or duration. And the wall is so slippery, the shadows cannot cling to it for long. They slide down before they've climbed up. Yes, some might say, life with no support is no life, and many will agree, but what about those who slide down the wall? Should they be denied even a moment of desperate clinging to the slippery surface, should they be denied the hope of an uneven patch that might delay the inevitability of their plunge? No need to couch this piece in such abstract terms. Things have names, and these names should be said clearly and precisely, especially today, in a country in which clarity has become a negative category. From one day to the next we are witnessing, at all levels of society, especially in the government and church, an indifference to the flood of ethnic intolerance. Usually those who are indifferent are drawn to the opposite course of action: obstructing any attempt at ending the intolerance. Hordes of young people with similar haircuts on square heads are attacking Gypsies and Jews, taking to task all those who think differently, especially if those who think differently are themselves Serbs, claiming all the while that they are doing this for the good of the government, invoking the support of the church. The church is silent, the government is silent, we all are silent. Isn't silence a sign of consent, or have I got something wrong? Does the silence of the church imply that they acknowledge in their ranks an inflexible anti-Semitic current, ready to assume complete control in the new ecclesiastical hierarchy? Does the silence of the government imply that the surge in anti-Semitism has come in handy, as they assign guilt to the "worldwide Jewish conspiracy" for all that happens in this country, as a way of shrugging off responsibility for the insane political decisions and provocation of the world powers? Last night a hard-core detachment of fellow thinkers tried to destroy the works of a painter whose only sin is being born a Jew. Tomorrow, I assume, they will be burning the books of Danilo Kiš, Isak Samokovlija, and Stanislav Vinaver. The day after someone announces that all Jews are parasites who suck the blood of the Serbian people. By the end of the week, who knows, there may be calls to bring out the yellow armbands, and lists will begin to appear, there will be attacks on apartments, property confiscated… Then, finally, a trembling voice will say that history is repeating itself and that we have reason to be concerned, but by then it will be too late, because history began repeating itself the moment none of us said a word. Here I stopped. It occurred to me that I ought to devote part of the article to the opening of the show. I submitted my pieces Wednesdays for the Minut column, which left me plenty of time. I already knew the end, all that was left was to write it. The last moment is near, would be the words at the start of the last paragraph, for us to understand that those who present themselves as the great caretakers of this country, invoking attacks based on ethnic minorities, have caused the greatest damage to the country. Regrettably the entire system of government has been corroded by moral and political corruption and no one feels called upon to comment or condemn the events of which I am writing. Perhaps, who knows, they are afraid to, because the connection between organized crime and the political hierarchies is an open secret. Everyone cares about his or her life, that much is clear, especially in a country where human life is cheap. If we all react, if the protest catches on, and hundreds of thousands of people join, there will be no more fear. And so on, in the same vein, with no shame. All that remained was for me to decide: should I name the names of the politicians, criminals, and waffling intellectuals? I wouldn't be saying anything new, but if the piece was not precise in attributing responsibility, then I ended up colluding with those against whom I inveighed. Vague allusions work in café arguments; in a text like this they are ballast that undermines every good intention. No surprise that I dreamed strange dreams that night, including an exhausting sexual adventure with a red-haired woman whose name was Hilda and a battle with a creature covered in leeches. I got up gingerly from bed, as if putting my feet into water teeming with the little bloodsuckers. The leeches, of course, put me in mind of Volf Enoch, and that instant something moved in me, came unstuck inside my skin, and I felt like one of those figures they carve in India, an identical smaller figure inside each successive figure, until the last one is so small that no one notices when it steps out into the world. I am making this up, of course, but had I not entertained myself this way, I would have stopped writing long ago. There is nothing more tiresome than a gloomy story that has nothing, aside from the story line, to steer us briefly in another direction, where it tricks us and shunts us onto a sidetrack, and then, just as we think we are forever lost, opens a door and leads us back to where we began. We may not have distanced ourselves from the gloom, but for a few moments at least we breathed fresh air. My day was not like that and it passed slowly. I had breakfast, bought the paper, and read it carefully — nothing on the Jewish Community Center burglary. Not a word. I didn't turn on the television; if the papers ignored it, the television stations would have nothing to say either, except for the rare independent programs that broadcast news outside the system, but I couldn't get them with my little indoor antenna. Marko had offered to set me up with an improvised antenna using a washbasin and an umbrella on the terrace, which, he maintained, would work perfectly. I stubbornly refused, and now I wonder why. Sometimes we reject the help of others because we think we are thereby protecting our integrity. I now know this is jealousy rather than a defense of i ntegrity; jealousy because someone knows how to do something we don't and because no matter what we think of him or her, that person reflects us more than we do ourselves. It sounds complicated, but why should anything be simple? No one promised us when we came into this world that our lives would be simple, the world comprehensible, dreams clear, death merciful. We get the starting point, that's all, no signposts to the next, the one where the path ends. All in all, living is groping in the dark, blindness despite the seeing eye, a tightrope walk, a slide down a bumpy banister. In the end all that's left is pain, which corresponds to that sentence of Faulkner's, or to the choice I made in relation to that sentence. Pain is the antidote for the void, is what I meant to say. For lunch I prepared chicken soup from a packet. I used less water than the instructions called for, because I wanted it to be stronger. I also ate a slice of Gouda, the cheese I like best. After lunch, having placed the dishes in the dishwasher, I felt drowsy, but I boldly defied the weakness of my body and set about organizing the papers on my desk. The last few weeks, pulled in all directions by unpredictable events, I'd neglected my papers, files, and notebooks, and now I tried to file away copies of articles I'd snipped out of the newspaper, the letters and notes. The only thing I didn't touch was the manuscript of The Well. There wasn't a folder large enough for it, and I was afraid that if I tried to move it, it would turn to dust or sand, like a genuine book of sand. That made me think of that magic corner in the yard of the building at Zmaj Jovina Street. Had I already been thinking about it before that day as a passage to another world? I can't remember. In any case, I was thinking of it then: there must be a way to move from there to another reality, I just needed to find it, provided I didn't forget how to get back. I wouldn't want to stay where I didn't belong, though I could imagine several worlds from which I wouldn't want to return. In one there would be a lot of scantily clad women, in another no one but me, and in the third only my spirit. I checked my watch. The afternoon was aging; soon I would have to leave for the opening of Jaša Alkalaj's show. I went into the bathroom, combed my hair, made sure I had no need to shave, slapped a little lotion on my cheeks, then washed my hands. I took my jacket down from the coat hook, locked the door, and walked to the bus stop. Two police cruisers were parked near the Jewish Community Center: one across the street, by the entrance to the hotel, the other a little farther along, partly up on the sidewalk in front of the grocery store. Police were also at the entrance and in the hallway that led to the courtyard building. Crowds of people were there, and after several steps I could no longer move. Pressed on all sides, all I could do was let the throng carry me, step by step, up the stairs. When I finally reached the museum, I was in a sweat. Inside, under the glare of the television spotlights, it was warmer still. I wouldn't have been surprised to see pools of sweat. Somehow I managed to maneuver myself to the back of the room, closer to where Jaša Alkalaj was standing. His face had undergone yet another transformation, and now looked more like the face I'd known. The man standing next to him had just finished a speech and the applause resounded through the room. He was followed by a critic: in a few sentences the man summarized Jaša Alkalaj's entire opus, gave his assessment of several new paintings, then lifted a piece of paper, for a moment I thought he was hanging out a white flag of surrender. This, said the critic, was the text he had prepared for the occasion, but the new circumstances left him no choice but to rip it up, which he did, tearing the page in half. I could see the shreds of paper floating through the air. When you take a look at the paintings hanging here, said the critic, you will notice that some have been vandalized, that the forces of darkness were trying to steal their light, believing it possible to crush creative spirit. In their shallowness, he continued, they believe fear to be the father of obedience, a misconception they would not be prone to if they knew anything about history. But this is no moment for lectures and sermons, said the critic, this is a moment when the paintings, both the untouched and the damaged, will speak for themselves. Conceived to demonstrate the power of defiance, he said, marked by this new assault, aimed at that spirit among us, they now send the same message, but louder and more assertively to all willing to listen. Often in history, said the critic, books have been burned and artwork destroyed, but each time art managed to rise from the flames, and so it would again. The opening of this exhibit, he said, will dilute the darkness that tried to engulf it, and along with it, all of us. There was more applause, and new beads of sweat erupted on my forehead. People began milling around, looking at the paintings, the cameramen besieged Jaša Alkalaj, a woman said she'd faint if she didn't get some air, the hubbub became louder, unfamiliar ruddy faces alternated with the ruddy faces of well-known public figures, actors and writers of Jewish background, politicians who had sniffed out an opportunity, bored newspapermen, then someone shouted that he had a number on his arm, a gaunt man who had rolled up his shirtsleeves, someone came over to him, gently tugged at his arm, and pulled down his sleeve, the man began sobbing, and as the visitors parted before him like a sea he staggered to the exit, his words breaking between sobs, until he fell silent, and that silence became loud. The television reporters also headed for the exit, the spotlights were turned off, space opened up, waiters appeared with trays, with glasses full of wine and apple juice, slender gusts of air coursed through, it was possible to move from painting to painting between the clusters of people fanning themselves with folded catalogs, the only crowd left was around Jaša Alkalaj, but I was patient, I could wait. That is when I saw Margareta. She was standing in front of a painting, craning her neck to examine a detail more closely, then stepped back and approached it from the other side. Access to Jaša Alkalaj opened just then, and though I would have liked to go over to Margareta, I walked the other way. His face, closer up, looked like the cracked bed of a dried-up river, his eyes were bloodshot, his lips blue, his eyelids wrinkled. His hair was plastered with sweat, he was breathing with effort, raggedly, as if fighting for each breath. I tried to congratulate him on the show, but he dismissed this with a wave of the hand. A Pyrrhic victory, he said, nothing more, no point in wasting words. I asked whether the police had come up with anything. Did I really believe, Jaša asked, that they would? I said nothing. To some questions there is no other way to respond. Two older women approached Jaša, so he just said that I should come to his studio later to celebrate the opening. Fine, I said, and with the tips of my fingers brushed off the sweat that had pooled above my upper lip. Now that I was used to the vanishing, I didn't believe I'd catch sight of Margareta again, but there she was, standing in front of the same painting, sipping juice. I went over and stood by her. The painting she was looking at was nearly all black; in the upper-right-hand corner was a window from which light shone like a beam from a lighthouse; the light illuminated a cloud in the sky, and on that very spot, partially hidden by a curly wisp, was a triangle in the center of which was an eye; the eye was blazing, the fire had already caught the eyelid, and the flickers rose from the lashes as they rose from the candles in the menorah pictured in the pupil of the eye. If God's eye burns, Margareta spoke up as if she had been waiting for me, then it's all over, what use is a blind God? God didn't have to see, he saw without eyes, from within, with the heart, I said, or with who knows what. No one's perfect, said Margareta, not even God. Her sentence had a vaguely sacrilegious ring. I didn't know the Kabbalah well enough to be able to say that the Kabbalists doubted God, but didn't the Zen Buddhists say that Buddha had to be shit, just as he had to be all other things? In other words, he who desires to be perfect must also be imperfect; he who desires to be in everything must be in things he doesn't want to be a part of. God is either all or nothing, there is no third possibility. I stood next to Margareta and stared at the burning eye, and all I could think of was that the pain must be excruciating. I would like to know, Margareta said, what the painter really had in mind. We can ask him, I said. We'll ask him later, said Margareta, no rush. She finished her juice and looked at me: You see him now and then, don't you? Yes, I said. And you? She nodded. I didn't know you two knew each other, I said. You never asked, said Margareta. So, I asked, how long? hoping the tinge of jealousy in my voice would not be audible. Forever, said Margareta. Jaša's my father. There are situations in which we suddenly catch on to a word or concept, the real meaning of which has been eluding us for years. There, in the Jewish Historical Museum, standing in front of the painting Jaša Alkalaj had titled Fire, as listed in the catalog that I brought with me here, though there were many more important things that should have found a place in my modest luggage, I understood the meaning of the phrase "out of the blue." For a moment I could no longer feel the lower part of my legs, as if I was standing on my knees, my lips trembled, I shook all over, electricity raced through my body and instantly drained from me. I raised my eyes to Margareta, and in her face I saw the lines of Jaša's face. I couldn't believe I hadn't noticed it before, though I know that no matter how much we look, we don't see what is most obvious until someone literally points a finger at it. From the moment she told me that Jaša Alkalaj was her father, I saw nothing but a growing resemblance. I noticed the same mild twitch of the left corner of her lips when she talked and a tiny quickening tremor in her anticipation of an answer. Who knows what Margareta was seeing in my face. She said she knew it would surprise me, though she hadn't expected it would surprise me so much. She emphasized the word as if it were a legitimate measure for surprise, a unit for calculating the extent of incredulity. My lips were dry, I thought of sandpaper. I asked Margareta to wait and went into a room where a woman wearing glasses with blue frames was pouring juice and sparkling water into glasses she had set out on a tray. I had some juice, then sparkling water, then rejoined Margareta, who was still there, confounding for a second time my expectation that she would not be. She suggested we leave, she wouldn't be able to breathe before long, she said, there was so little oxygen left that it wouldn't have surprised her if the fire on the eyelashes of her father's canvas went out. Her father's canvas: the words sounded strange to me, unreal, untrue. But they were true, I later ascertained with the help of people I knew, who checked in the records of births, never admitting to her that I held on to the suspicion for so long. Apparently I didn't even admit it to myself, nor do I understand why I resisted the simple fact that one person was another person's parent. One more question I can't answer. If everything comes down to questions, then is an answer a question? I am not thinking of the oft-repeated story of how Jews like to answer a question with a question; that doesn't mean that a second question is an answer to the first, though sometimes it may seem that way, and besides, I am not a Jew and cannot claim as my own something that is not mine. I can only assume that some people manage to tell their story in such a way that it is understood as an answer, or as an opening to an answer, while others, among whom I clearly belong, turn the story into a question, or as Marko said, into evading an answer, as if they want to say to the person listening to them, or reading them, that the question is here, but that all the rest is up to him. Or her, if the listener or reader is a woman, and more likely it will be a woman, judging by the latest statistical data, which unequivocally confirm that women dominate as readers and that the number of men who read is rapidly declining. Hence, say the experts, the growing number of books of family chronicles, culinary novels, full of recipes and stories about a search for existence based on diluted Eastern philosophies. Even if I wanted to introduce a recipe into this text I wouldn't be able to because I never learned how to cook, and I am in such awe of Eastern philosophical teachings, as of all others, that it would never occur to me to abuse them in a novel or a short story. I have long since acknowledged that it would be better for me to occupy myself with something other than writing. If your heart is not in what you do, give it up. I don't remember who said that, but there is truth in it. I know that it is now considered old-fashioned to talk of the human heart, as if modern man no longer needs the human heart for anything but heart attacks. Whenever I mention the heart, someone pushes under my nose a cross-section of the striated muscle and asks if I see anything other than ventricles, atria, veins, and arteries, and I tell them that this is precisely what I don't see, even if the image were so large that it covered the entire surface of the sky in the west. I also know that many feel the heart to be the concern of the cardiologists, not the writers, and there is some truth to that, so it would be wisest to say that both are concerned with the heart, each in their own way, because all of us must accept certain limitations in the job we do and take care not to step over into another's territory. This sounds as if I see myself as a writer, since I'm certainly no cardiologist, but I would never go that far. I don't know whether I'd be able to define what a true writer is. Wherever I start from, I get lost halfway. Yet again a moment when Marko's advice would have been useful, but Marko wasn't around. I called him repeatedly: no one picked up. I went to his apartment: no one came to the door. One morning it occurred to me he might have left the country, so many people were leaving, why wouldn't he, though it seemed incredible that he'd leave without saying goodbye after all the years we'd spent together. Who knows, maybe it's best to leave that way, without a word, without a farewell, at night, sneakily, like a criminal, even when there was nothing anyone could blame you for. That was the way Margareta and I left the exhibition, I mean a departure without goodbyes. The police car was still in front of the hotel; the other that had been parked in front of the grocery store was gone. Several police officers, one of them a woman, talked and smoked in the hallway. There were two guns on a small table by the entranceway, gleaming in the feeble light of the stairwell. We went into the street and set out uphill toward Student Square. The air was not cleaner outside than it had been in the museum, but it was fresher, and an explanation from Margareta didn't seem nearly as urgent. I'd been struck by lightning, I could wait. We were among the first to arrive at Jaša's studio; we were also among the first to leave. There weren't as many people there as had been at the opening, but the crowd was too large for my taste. The commotion made any serious conversation impossible, and all talk was reduced to shouting single words in someone's ear. Isak Levi somehow managed to convey to me that the police had arrested the people who'd broken into the building of the Jewish Community Center and vandalized Jaša's paintings; they'd apprehended three minors and a young man of about twenty, he shouted, spraying tiny droplets of saliva on the curves of my ear. Then I saw Jakov Švarc heading over to us, which spurred me to ask Margareta whether she was staying or leaving. I put my hand between us to stop the spray and leaned close to her small, finely shaped ear, with a dot on the lobe. The hair around her ear was moist, and between the slender locks you could see the fragile whiteness of her skin. I had to hold back from pressing my lips on that whiteness and running my tongue along the curving paths of her ear. She merely nodded and pushed her way toward the exit, while I was imagining leaning my ear to her lips. The pushing took time; many people wanted to say hello to her, shooting questioning glances my way, and I stood there, shifting from foot to foot and grinning foolishly. In the end we gave up trying to find Jaša and made it to the front door. Some people stood on the landing by the door, others sat on the stairs, and making our way to the elevator required additional hopping over legs and arms. I pressed the button and the elevator appeared obediently. We got in, shut the metal doors, and started down. When the elevator stopped, it was dark. The wan cabin light left the entrance to the building in shadow, and behind the glass door, we could make out a silhouette. I could feel Margareta tensing. We stepped out of the elevator and slammed the door. The dark grew denser, the silhouette clearer, Margareta's breathing slowed, my heart was pounding hard. If she heard it, Margareta didn't react. The silhouette didn't react either, it turned out to be an acquaintance of Jaša Alkalai's, waiting for a taxi, which, he said, was to take him to New Belgrade. He offered to give us a ride if that suited us, and so Margareta and I found ourselves on the back seat of the cab, while Jaša's acquaintance got in front and immediately struck up a conversation with the driver. We had only gone halfway, and the two had covered the entire political scene, criticizing the government and leading politicians, they had agreed that everything was wildly expensive, that it was a true miracle, the taxi driver said, that people had anything to eat, then moved on to sports, to the value of the American dollar, to the fact that half of Serbia had moved to Canada, and here I stopped listening and dedicated myself to the little finger of my left hand, with which I was lightly touching Margareta's thigh. I didn't move the finger, I didn't steer it, I simply let it follow the jostling of the motor and the darting of the taxi. The Belgrade streets are full of cracks and bumps, and the taxi was lurching in fits and starts, with sudden braking and accelerating, so my finger was shaking and shifting, sometimes resting fully on Margareta's thigh. Meanwhile Margareta was dozing or else meditating, her eyes were closed, and only when the taxi crossed the Sava and my hand crept under her thigh did her eyelids flutter, and she stretched out her right hand and dropped it into my lap. I looked up at the rearview mirror, hoping the taxi driver was too preoccupied with the conversation to notice. Margareta's hand didn't move. It lay in my lap, relaxed, resting gently on the belt buckle. And just as I was wondering whether I should slide my hand under her thigh, Margareta leaned against the backrest, raised her body, and my hand slid deftly into the warm dip. I managed to flip my hand over before her body flopped down on the seat, my eyes anxiously on the rearview mirror. The conversation in the front seat was still in full swing, and they were now discussing delays in the payment of pensions and the scandalously low social welfare disbursements to invalids and other beneficiaries. While the driver was citing examples, Margareta wriggled and squeezed my hand with her buttocks. I moved my fingers, she sat up and spread her thighs, my fingers slipped between her legs. We're almost there, announced the driver, as Margareta increased pressure on my arm. The taxi turned toward the Intercontinental Hotel, then on to the Hyatt, and then it dipped into the web of New Belgrade streets and passageways where I could never find my way. When I first saw a map of New Belgrade, I was impressed by the relatively simple urban layout, the geometric structures of blocks and streets that intersected at right angles. In reality, this simplicity was lost when, on foot or by car, one ventured into the interior of individual blocks or started searching for a house number. Here is fine, said Margareta. The taxi stopped, and after a brief round of thank-yous, Margareta and I got out. I looked to the left, I looked to the right: I had no idea where we were. Zemun is over there, said Margareta, and gestured as if Zemun were somewhere in the sky. I wasn't sure whether this was a hint that I should depart, or whether it was merely information, an orientation of sorts, like the North Star or moss growing on a stump. Once you know where Zemun is, you know where everything else is. Who said that? I couldn't put my finger on it, though there are times when I see, with my inner eye, of course, a shimmering page with those very words inscribed on it. A page, like any page, that could come from any one of a thousand books, and all that is left for me is to hope that at some point in my life a certain detail will turn up that will take me to whoever wrote it. That won't change anything, of course, but why would knowledge always be tied to change? For example, one person might learn the names of the ten Sephirot in order from the largest to the smallest, so: Keter, Binah, Hokhmah, Gevurah, Chesed, Tiferet, Hod, Nezah, Yesod, and Malkhut, and remember them merely as a fact, while someone else, learning about the same ten Sephirot, might ascend higher and higher in his soul, and, ultimately, undergo the desired transformation. I was still standing next to Margareta, indecisive, as she ran her hand through her hair. Then I remembered that I hadn't finished the piece for Minut and it got easier. We agreed to meet after I handed in the piece, I wished Margareta a good night, kissed her lightly on the cheek, and set out for Zemun. The triangles are opening, I thought as I walked away, and, suddenly elated, I started whistling an old Beatles tune. The walk to Zemun was not strenuous, but for a body unaccustomed to walking several hundred meters, let alone a few kilometers, it is exhausting. At least, I consoled myself, nothing disgusting awaited me by the door to the apartment. That there might be people waiting never crossed my mind, a consequence of an enjoyable taxi ride and my fine mood, the whistling and occasional singing. I started with the Beatles, then I continued with hits by the Kinks, Manfred Mann, the Dave Clark Five, and Cream, then thought of the song "We Gotta Get Out of This Place" by the Animals. I didn't know all the words and I kept repeating the refrain, until suddenly I stopped and heard the Danube slapping the shore with crystal clarity, though I was still some distance from the promenade. The fear that someday I might flee "outta this place" and not hear the sound of the river didn't last long, and I reverted to whistling and singing, focusing on the songs of Marianne Faithfull, with whom, if anyone even cares, I had once been desperately in love. I went into my apartment, took off my shoes, drank two glasses of water, and attempted to rest in the armchair in front of the television, stared for a while at the dark screen, then went into my study and switched on the computer. I read the piece again, made minor changes, added a paragraph about the opening of the show and the symbolic gesture of the critic who felt it his obligation to join in solidarity with the threatened artist by committing an act of violence against his own text. Maybe we should all follow his example, I wrote, and in solidarity destroy something we have created before someone else destroys it for us. The Danes, the story goes, saved their Jews in World War II by wearing yellow armbands, so perhaps we could save our Jews and ourselves by joining them as victims of violence. That was it. Even if I had wanted to say something more, I wouldn't have been able to, the piece was already too long, and as I printed it, I braced myself for the battle with the editor the following day. At first, when he saw how long it was, he didn't even want to look at it. Cut it, he said, then we can talk. I thought of Feliks the cat but was reluctant to use him again as a means of persuasion. Instead, I urged the editor to read the piece and then decide, and I would abide by his decision. It turned out that I'd done the right thing: the editor's secretary told me that Feliks had disappeared, or was registered as having disappeared, because he hadn't come home for five days, and the editor, she claimed, was in distress, and who knows how he'd have reacted to my inquiries. I sat in her office, on the plastic chair by the coat rack, while behind closed doors the editor read my piece. Then the door opened and he summoned me in. I got up, looked at the secretary, she winked, and I slowly closed the door behind me, like someone saying farewell to the world. The editor didn't offer me a seat, so I stood by the door, my hand on the doorknob in case I had to depart in a hurry. Let me say right away, the editor said, the piece is good. I breathed a sigh of relief: I could let go of the doorknob, and even smile. But, said the editor, you should cut it so it fits the space designed for the column. The smile, of course, vanished from my face. So now what? I asked. Do I roll up my sleeves and cut it down to size? The editor scratched his chin and ran his fingers through his hair. Whether short or long, he said, it is equally dangerous, so dangerous that I am not sure you understand how dangerous it is. He looked at me without blinking. I didn't blink either. The overt naming of names, said the editor, no one likes that, the church especially. The hard line is in fashion these days, he said, which means that reactions are unpredictable. He asked me whether I had all these elements in mind when I wrote the piece. I'd thought of nothing, I said, except the truth. I felt, I confess, like one of the protagonists in the Watergate affair, though what I was doing exposed no political or ethnic plot, brought down no prominent politicians or public figures, revealed no intentions or secrets. It was simply drawing attention to a state of the collective spirit, which could be explained by the historical context and the long isolation of the country from the mainstream of the world, but which becomes a threat, like certain diseases that become chronic and therefore incurable and ultimately a potential source of something far worse. Hatred is a disease, and it occurs when the normal functioning of the individual and the collective spirit is disturbed. To hate another you first need to hate yourself, your own lack of power or ability, we don't seek the culprit in ourselves, where it truly lies, but in someone else, and not in just anyone else, but in a person visible enough and, most important, powerless enough that he can't hide or defend himself. In brief, my intention was not to encapsulate that surge of hatred, though hatred should, no doubt, be branded at all times; what I meant to do was warn of the dangers that threatened if the cracks in the collective spirit were not attended to and if individuals and groups who adeptly use those cracks for promoting their own aims were not stopped. Now I know that I was unsuccessful, or my insights came too late. The spiritual scale was overloaded, the needle was skewed, and this breakdown, if I can call it that, was beyond repair. Besides, who could have thought that only a year later, the country would be deliberately sacrificed, the collective spirit encouraged in its most depraved incarnation — blaming others with a paranoic fervor, denial of the guilt among those who were to blame. I was unaware of that while I stood there with my hand resting again on the doorknob, anticipating the editor's decision. He looked up at me. I felt a drop of sweat forming behind my ear and starting to trickle down my neck. This is a typical no-win situation, said the editor, if I publish this, I'll regret it, and if I don't publish it, I'll regret it. I didn't say a word. I raised my hand and with my index finger brushed away the drop of sweat that had trickled halfway down. We go with it, said the editor, and looked away, as if ashamed of his decision. We go with it, he repeated, come what may. Nothing will come, I said. If nothing comes of it, he glanced over at me, then why are we publishing it? Nothing bad, I answered, that's what I meant. And that was what I meant. Who could have foreseen the storm and everything that followed when the pace of events picked up, getting stronger like soup that has cooked for too long? But if we were to know everything in advance, would life have any meaning at all? Hence the prophecy system, such as that of the Chinese Book of Changes, doesn't speak of the future as a pattern that can be learned, rather, it lays the groundwork for the unpredictable things that will nevertheless crop up. Yin and yang alternate, whole lines break and broken lines heal, after the spring comes the summer and winter follows the autumn, but no one can say with certainty which days will bring rain. So during the rainy season the prudent person carries an umbrella, while the reckless person does not and, of course, gets wet when it rains. Prudence is not precise knowledge, but a willingness to adapt to circumstances in the shortest possible time. I go on and on; I am probably remembering the thrill I felt when the editor announced his decision, and the thrill was the kind that gets one talking, just as I had talked to the editor's secretary on my way out, then to two women and a fat man in the elevator. Don't worry, I told them, it's just that I'm happy. That was when they looked genuinely alarmed. Happy, in this day and age? said their looks. I stopped talking and started whistling. The fat man gaped at me, while the two women crossed their arms over their chests, which was probably meant to signify extreme disapproval. I turned my back on them, there was nothing more I could do, but I went right on whistling, though softer, and through my teeth, first "Yellow Submarine," then "I Want to Hold Your Hand." When the elevator stopped, the door slid open, the women hurried out, the fat man went panting after them, and I, still whistling, thought I should reward myself with a glass of boza and a cream puff, and slowly, through the center of town, I set out for the pastry shop on Makedonska Street; Marko called it the last oasis, one of the rare places in Belgrade that had held on to the spirit of the old days. Again I wondered what Marko was up to, why he had vanished, if indeed he had vanished, and then I stopped whistling. When you miss someone it's hard to whistle. Your mouth turns dry, your heart sinks, nothing comes out of your puckered lips. I drank the first glass standing by the counter, then ordered a second