Aleksandar Tisma - The Book of Blam

BLAM SPENDS HIS mornings at the Intercontinental. He sits there like a bump on a log, like the fossil of a long forgotten age. Which he in fact is, having been blown there by the wind of an extinct climate, the harsh, merciless, climate of the Occupation, though it was slightly milder for a Jew who had converted to Christianity and married a Christian and was therefore exempt from annihilation.

In those days the Intercontinental was still a minor branch of the Budapest-based Úti Travel Agency. Since Hungary was at war and her borders were closed, it dealt entirely in local train and bus lines and had only two ticket counters and two desks in a single Main Street office, and it was here — in the farthest corner, in the penumbra of accounts payable and outstanding correspondence — that Blam holed up, hoping to escape the public eye and ill will. Although this imposed isolation made him something of a martyr, although the stamp of martyrdom meant he could welcome the change in regime with open arms and a clear conscience (he and he alone remaining, all the other employees — starting with Ferenci, his boss — having fled), or perhaps for these very reasons, the Intercontinental even in peacetime was still a place of seclusion, depression, and alienation for him.

All that had changed were the externals: the witnesses and agents of his condition. After the enterprise was reformed and restructured in the postwar period, it was headed by Slavko Jurišić Juriš—former partisan, former municipal clerk, and former student of theology — whose virile allure, significantly enhanced by the gun at his waist, attracted half a dozen girls from newly founded patriotic organizations. The premises proving too small for so large a staff, Jurišić gradually expanded the operation (which municipal headquarters voted to give its new, internationalist name) by requisitioning apartments in the back of the building. And whether Jurišić had intended it or not, the newly converted office space led in turn to an expansion of the Intercontinental’s activities: before long it was dealing in all kinds of travel and tourism, with a bevy of pretty and accommodating women behind glassed-in counters and, in the background, an army of glowering administrators, bookkeepers, and drivers.

Blam, the longest witness of the growth, follows it with distrust, a distrust that grows in proportion to the general increase in demand for travel, action, change in a world drunk on peace. The son of the enterprising, devil-may-care Vilim Blam, whether from bitter family experience or out of rebellion, tends toward severity and moderation, so whenever the Intercontinental is about to take a risk on a long-term group of package tours, say, or the purchase of a vehicle on credit, he feels wary, close-fisted, and if anyone asks his opinion, he will advise against it and predict the direst of consequences. But package tours are the rage, and with more and more money in circulation, interest rates have gone down. Bitter, almost disappointed, Blam retreats. The lack of moderation on the job and in society at large is at odds with his nature. He refuses to take on complex tasks, sticks to billing and filing at his old desk off to the side, out of the limelight, and plods his stubborn way through boring work.

Jurišić, who has a soft spot for Blam because they have worked together since the beginning, is concerned. “Poor old Blam,” he says, sighing a gently reproachful sigh and giving him a warm, anxious look. He sits down opposite the calculating machine, no longer in uniform or carrying a gun but with a heavy coat over his shoulders, having been plagued for years with an inflammation of the kidneys. “You don’t understand how things work nowadays,” he says in the intimate tone he uses only with Blam. But when Blam merely shrugs his shoulders, Jurišić’s concern gradually blends into confession and ends in self-pity. “Maybe you’re right to act the way you do. You’ve got your peace of mind, and that’s what counts. Look at me! I’m a wreck!” He launches into laments over how much work he has and how bad his health is. Then, encouraged by Blam’s silence, he delves into the complications of his private life, which Blam, alone among the employees, can grasp immediately, having witnessed how they came about. “The witch has sent me the kids again.” The “kids” are the children from his first marriage, which fell apart when, in the process of taking over the office with pistol still at his side, he set his sights on one of the ticket-counter girls. Now he is supporting both women, and both are always demanding more. “You’ve got a nice, quiet life. Not very exciting, maybe, but no problems.”

Blam nods. Then, confused, he shakes his head: he doesn’t want it to seem that he is confirming Jurišić’s problems. Blam’s problems are nothing like Jurišić’s — they are not nearly so obvious and tangible. What gets Jurišić into trouble is his willful character (something Blam has never had to worry about). Blam pities him. No, admires him. Admires his impetuosity, his refusal to acknowledge hardship and danger, his impulsive decisions, his disregard for the voice of reason and doubt. In the man’s simple-minded rashness Blam feels a power alien to him, the power of risk-taking; he feels an animal warmth emanating from Jurišić and engulfing him, especially when Jurišić opens up to him so completely and about such intimate things. As miserable, ill, shivering, and jaundiced as Jurišić is, he draws Blam in, draws him to the oneness of people who think and feel alike, who belong to the same generation and share its experiences, and eventually to the oneness of all people living on the planet.

It is this intimacy that has kept Blam at the Intercontinental through the years despite the burden of past associations and his disapproval of the way things are run there. He has nothing else. The fact that Jurišić sits down at Blam’s desk to let off steam when he quarrels with his wife or gets a warning from the courts or discovers a new pain, the fact that employees on their way to Bookkeeping remark how cold or dark or smoky it is at Blam’s desk or request a piece of information only he can provide, the fact that the typists and clerks congregate not far from where he sits hunched over his papers, sip their coffee, and discuss their dressmakers or the prices they have just paid for the meat or fruit bulging out of their net bags, not noticing that they are disturbing him and blocking his light, the fact they do not notice not noticing him, which means that they accept him, take his presence for granted, take it as a real and logical thing, the only possibility at that place and time — none of this is a source of annoyance; it is a source pure and simple, a stimulus pure and simple, a way of feeling something genuine, concrete, vital. It is a stimulus that keeps Blam from considering himself invalid or unnecessary or nonexistent.

BLAM SPENT HIS school years between Aca Krkljuš and Ljuba Čutura. A coincidence? Yes, but like any coincidence not without its reason. Though tall, Aca Krkljuš had ended up on the second bench, to Blam’s left, so that he could be near his elder brother, Slobodan, who was a year behind because of a hearing problem and had been given a seat up front. Čutura sat to the right of Blam — they were separated only by the space between the desks — because the two were approximately the same height. In any case, this coincidence corresponded to a certain reality, the absentminded and solitary Blam representing a kind of transition between the musical, restless, loose-jointed Krkljuš and the slow but steady, thoroughgoing Čutura. If there was anything extreme about Blam’s character, it was in the affection he felt for both friends.

In their fifth year they had a Russian-émigré German teacher by the name of Yevgeny Rakovsky. Rakovsky was short, thin, and of a sickly constitution, and he wore thick spectacles that made him look bewildered. He nonetheless strutted about the classroom, back straight and head high, and if, carried away by his motion and deceived by his glasses, he bumped into a bench or tripped over the podium, he would turn pale, regain his balance, puff out his chest, fling his narrow head back, and burst into raucous, broken, nervous laughter. What was he laughing at? Himself or the obstacle he had overcome? No one knew. In any case, the class would take advantage of the opportunity for a break and loudly second their teacher’s laughter, laughing to the very limit of decency.