Aleksandar Tisma - The Book of Blam

When the light came on, he was doubly shocked: by the way the room looked and by the way Čutura looked. True, the room was unchanged externally — it had the same bulky bed piled high with the same bedclothes, the same bare table with rings all over the faded veneer, the same chair with the loop-shaped back and white washstand with the chipped edge, the same enamel pitcher and basin, the same green curtain over the window — but there was no frivolous, love-tryst glow to temper its shabbiness. As for Čutura, his face — the thin nose, jutting cheekbones, dry, wrinkled skin around the mouth — was emaciated, almost deformed, and his eyes revealed such exhaustion — even in the shadow of the broad-rimmed hat, that Blam grabbed the chair and moved it over to him.

“Sit down.”

Čutura did not seem to hear him.

“Is this going to be all right?” Blam asked.

Čutura looked around him for the first time, and Blam, following his every movement, realized that the room was freezing and the smell of mold so strong that it was hard to breathe.

“Fine.”

“Can I do anything else for you? Are you hungry? Shall I run and get you a bite to eat?”

“I don’t need anything,” said Čutura with a shake of the head. “Just some sleep.” And slowly, sluggishly he took off his hat and laid it on the table, took off his heavy overcoat and dropped it over the back of the chair, unbuttoned his jacket, took a heavy pocket watch with no cover out of his trousers and placed it on the table. He was very deliberate, as if following a routine, but so listless as to seem absentminded.

“Come back to the gate with me now and lock up,” Blam said, “and leave the key on the table tomorrow morning when you go. Will you remember?”

“I will.”

“Good. Now follow me.”

He turned to go, but then, seeing that Čutura just stood there and stared after him with a glassy, distracted look, he turned back.

“Come and lock up,” he said.

“Oh. Yes.”

Čutura shifted his weight from one foot to the other, stretched an irresolute hand to the watch, picked it up with the tips of his fingers, and rubbed it slightly. Then, realizing the futility of what he had done, put it back on the table and turned to the door.

“Take your coat,” said Blam.

Čutura obediently picked his coat up off the chair and heaved it over his shoulders as if it were a sack of grain. Then he stood still.

“Are you sure you don’t need anything?” asked Blam.

“Positive. Just some sleep. You had to pay for the room, didn’t you?”

“Don’t be silly. Think of it as spending the night at my place.”

“Right.”

They plunged into the dark and made their way to the gate. Blam groped for the lock and stuck the key in.

“Lock up now. See you.”

“So long.”

They did not shake hands: their hands would not have found each other. Blam, having moved from the dark of the courtyard to the dark of the street, waited only long enough to hear the gate pulled to and the creak of the key in the lock. Moving blindly down Dositej Street, he recalled his last impression of light: the round glass face of Čutura’s pocket watch lying on the table among the pale rings. He had never seen Čutura with the strange, old-fashioned watch before, and although he had wondered how Čutura came by it the moment he set eyes on it, he had missed the chance to ask.

AT ALMOST THE same spot where he last met Čutura — in front of the Avala and opposite the windows of the Borac Restaurant, which is on the other side of Main Square — and at almost the same early evening hour (though it was September then and the weather was milder and the war was over), Miroslav Blam stands waiting for Janja Blam. Not that he draws any parallels with that encounter or with any of the numerous others he has had here since childhood either as a filmgoer or as a passerby stopping to look at the various posters or the bustle of the crowd, though his impatient eyes do fall on the pictures of the current attraction, skim over potential filmgoers milling in the street, and dart into the lobby, of which and beyond which he knows every inch. Blam’s eyes are now a decade and a half older than they were in the Čutura days, nor is his power of concentration what it was — nothing serious, of course, though basic facts from the past have been forced into deeper layers of his mind. They are still alive there and ready — should they be stimulated by, say, the chance similarity of a passerby to Čutura or Popadić or Vilim Blam — to rise to the surface and take part in the present. But as nothing of the sort occurs this time, they simply stir mutely within him like a mist.

Blam is plagued by this vague feeling whenever he waits for Janja, either at home after work or, as now, by arrangement, that is, in situations involving a deadline. He is not sure she is going to meet it, and his doubts — as his glance wanders from the Avala entrance to the windows of her restaurant — are perhaps fed by scenes of the past: Janja at the Matickis’ dances, flashing an unreserved smile at all partners; Janja at the gate to her house, neat and clean and every hair in place, about to let him know that she will walk with him or go to the pictures with him (or with someone else); Janja as an invisible presence in her kitchen, in the heart of her family, which is and is not she, both familiar and distant; Janja at the pump, hot and flushed; Janja in Popadić’s arms, observed from the tram, taking leave not of her lover but of him, Blam, as Blam looks on in mute admiration. All these scenes have been superseded by their life together over the years and dimmed by the years and by time’s various blows and disappointments; they have been blurred by thousands of later Janjas who did his bidding or made him wait, as now, Janjas in completely different circumstances, with different looks, at different jobs. Yet something basic, the uncertainty of the promised encounter, remains flowing just beneath the dingy, listless surface of reality.

Blam thinks that the reason for his anxiety today is that he agreed to wait for Janja not far from the restaurant. From here he can be seen not only by her but also by her colleagues. They will observe him standing here like a beggar, constantly looking for her, and they will draw what conclusions they like. Even though he suspects this is not happening (Janja is too sure of herself, too vain to let her colleagues look down on him), he cannot be positive, because he is here in the street, not there, and because the curtains covering the windows are transparent only if you press your face to them. Is anyone doing that? Can anyone do that in a restaurant full of customers? Blam recalls the picture he has of the place from his rare visits: a spacious but low-ceilinged rectangle with a dozen or so tables and a door at the far end for the white blouses and aprons — Janja, a small, dark woman, the plump, middle-aged head-waiter, and, less often, the chef, with floppy jowls and a white cap, and the chef’s smooth-cheeked assistant — the white blouses and aprons weighed down with plates of steaming food or congealed scraps, trays of clinking glasses or ashtrays brimming with black and white butts. “Menu, please!” “Here you are!” “Just a moment!” But he suspects that behind these orderly, almost military maneuvers a private, rebellious, pernicious life lies snakelike, barely discernible, a life of intrigues, disagreements, and thoughts never put into words yet obvious to all concerned. He suspects that behind the door that swings shut before the eyes of the customers there is a narrow passage where bodies slip by one another joking, tittering, touching hands, shoulders, and thighs, where one panting body can press against another and smell the onions and wine.