Aleksandar Tisma - The Book of Blam

*

“Look who’s here!” Krkljuš calls out, pushing Blam toward the door as it opens a crack.

The door does not open wider; it pauses, almost shudders, while a pair of narrowed eyes peers out of the dark.

“Come on, let us in,” Krkljuš says reproachfully, but then adds in a cheery voice, “Can’t you see? It’s Blam!”

The door opens, but the effect Krkljuš was hoping for when he asked Blam home is lost. He is impatient, even rough, pushing his friend into the entrance hall. “Go on in,” he grumbles.

Blam plunges into the semidarkness and bows to the minute figure of Krkljuš’s mother, who steps back to give him room.

“You may not remember me,” he says, apologizing more for Krkljuš than for himself. “I used to visit when you lived near the park.”

“You did?”

She sounds dubious.

“Of course he did,” says Krkljuš, stepping forward and closing the door. “He was a school friend of ours. Of mine and Slobodan’s both. We used to study together.”

“So you were a friend of Slobodan’s.” Her voice brightens in the dark. “You’re not with the courts, are you?”

“Really, Mother!” Krkljuš is annoyed. “The courts! That’s not why I brought him here! Blam works at the Intercontinental.” He pushes his mother aside and motions to a strip of light at the other end of the entrance hall. “Go on in.”

Blam does as he is told and steps into the bright daylight of a room with little furniture — a bed, a wardrobe, a table and chairs — but full of miscellaneous objects scattered about. He sees a guitar propped in a corner.

“Sit down,” Krkljuš says, offering him a chair with a gray sweater draped over the back. “No, take your coat off first. You can put it…” He turns and notes with a frown that there is no place for Blam to put it. “I was in a rush this morning,” he mumbles, taking Blam’s wet raincoat and tossing it over the bed frame. “There,” he says, turning back to Blam, satisfied.

“Did the workers ever turn up?” Krkljuš’s mother asks suddenly. She is standing in the doorway.

Krkljuš says nothing for a moment, as if caught unawares. Then he rubs his haggard, blotchy face with his thumb and index finger and answers reluctantly, “Not Stevo.”

“Did you send for him?”

“No. Janko was too busy.”

“You could have gone yourself.”

“I had customers.”

She sighs. “Where’s the money?”

He digs into his pocket unwillingly, almost disgustedly, and tosses a wad of crumpled thousand- and five-hundred-dinar banknotes onto the table. The wad swells, as if there were a toad inside it.

“Did the Popović woman pay up?”

“No.”

Sighing another loud sigh, Mrs. Krkljuš goes over to the table, gathers the wad of banknotes with her thin fingers, and leaves the room.

Krkljuš shakes his bowed head in despair. “The damned shop.”

“It’s a lot of trouble?”

“Trouble? No. It’s a plague, a catastrophe,” he says, rolling his tormented eyes. “It’s dragging me down. I can’t concentrate on anything. I can’t do anything of my own.”

“You mean compose?” Blam asks cautiously.

“That’s exactly what I mean!” says Krkljuš, moving closer to Blam and overwhelming him with the stench of alcohol. “I have all kinds of ideas, but never time to sit down and sort them out.”

“Some time ago, I can’t remember exactly when,” says Blam, recalling only that it was a long time ago, long before the last time he saw Krkljuš, several years, in fact, “I heard a song of yours on the radio. It was sung by a woman, a local.”

“Oh, it must have been ‘Return to Nature.’ ”

Blam spreads his arms to show he is at a loss. Krkljuš goes over to the corner, picks up the guitar, presses it to his stomach, and plays a melody that soars through the air. “Is that it?”

Blam nods.

“It’s one of my last pieces.” He drops the guitar on a pile of crumpled clothes on a chair. The strings twang softly. “It made it to the Opatija Festival. I was with the radio at the time, and they backed me.” He purses his lips.

“Why did you leave?”

“Come off it, will you? They fired me. I was one of Carević’s protégés. You know Carević, don’t you? You don’t? Well, he’s an idiot. A bureaucrat. One day I turn up at the studio slightly tipsy, and the first thing he says is, ‘I’m docking you.’ As if I couldn’t have stayed home and called in sick. I was so mad, I got plastered the next day and kept it up, day after day, until he fired me. But he didn’t last long himself. The Comrades got rid of him.”

“Couldn’t you go back now?”

“Now I have the shop to worry about. Mother takes care of the old man, and we’d never be able to live off my salary, so it’s out of the question.” He rubs his wrinkled forehead and closes his eyes for a moment. Then he looks over at Blam. “How about a drink?”

Before Blam can find an excuse to say no, Mrs. Krkljuš comes into the room, her tiny face twitching suspiciously, her eyes darting between her son and his friend, then alighting on the guitar, in the hope there is some business plot in the making. Disappointed, she settles her eyes on Blam.

“Do you live alone?”

“No. I’m married.”

“Children?”

“One girl.”

Mrs. Krkljuš heaves a deep sigh, as if Blam has confirmed her worst fears.

“I told my husband you’re here. He wants to see you.”

“Mr. Krkljuš?” Blam asks, getting to his feet.

“Wait a minute!” says Aca Krkljuš angrily, pushing Blam back into his seat and turning to his mother. “Leave us alone, will you! Blam’s here to see me! Me, understand?” The blotches on his face turn redder, and a quiver runs through his hollow cheeks. “Look, bring us something to drink.”

“I only have coffee,” she says with tears in her eyes but does not move.

“There’s no need,” Blam interjects to smooth things over.

But she does not seem to have heard and leaves the room.

Krkljuš bursts into laughter, but tries to suppress it by pressing his hand to his mouth. “Wait,” he says and, going over to the bed, stoops down, bends over, and comes up with a small green canvas suitcase. He opens it, shuffles impatiently through some magazines and notebooks, and pulls out a flat bottle with a yellowish liquid sloshing in it. “Have some,” he says, holding it out to Blam on his knees.

“I’d rather not.”

Krkljuš nods approvingly, then unscrews the tin cap, tosses his head back, and takes a few quick gulps. He exhales, lifts the bottle to his lips again, and takes one long swallow. Then he screws the cap back on and drops the bottle into the suitcase.

“Open the window, will you?” he says to Blam with a wink.

Blam goes over to the window and opens it. A few tiny raindrops graze his hand.

Krkljuš starts covering the bottle with the magazines and notebooks, but pauses. “Would you like to see some of my new things?” he asks hopefully.

“Sure. Let me have a look.”

Krkljuš takes a blue, a yellow, and another blue notebook from the stack in his hand and, still kneeling, lays them out, open, on the soft quilt of the unmade bed, but they close by themselves, so he bends one back and runs a trembling middle finger over the pages filled with music.

“These are melodies. All I have to do is arrange them.” He bends back the yellow notebook impatiently and taps his finger on a page where the notation is neater and in black ink. “This one I sent to Raka, and he wrote back that it was worth orchestrating.”

“Where is Raka?”

“In Germany, didn’t you know? Frankfurt, I think, for now. He’s got his own band! You can do that in Germany. The Germans have no time to make their own music.”