Olja Savicevic - Adios, Cowboy

There are lots of workers in the street, they look as though they don’t know where to go: I see them through the train window, men and women. They’re not so much carrying their placards as dragging them along.

No one shouts or bursts into song like in the old textbooks.

The engine driver has to slow down and whistle because some of the workers are strolling across the track as though they weren’t remotely concerned about the train. In the end, the train stops before we’ve even properly got going.

It looks as though we’re being driven by strikebreakers.

The woman in the compartment doesn’t notice what’s going on or else she pretends not to; she’s taken off her black leather jacket and made herself comfortable as she carries on reading. On the front page of the tabloid she has in her hands it says STRIKE and something else hidden by her fingers.

She looks only a few years older than me, but there’s something about Mrs. 0 that would make even older people prefer to remain on formal terms with her.

“Do you like trains?”

“Not particularly.”

“I like trains, regardless of the bad air. What precisely is it that you don’t like about trains?”

“Someone close to me threw himself under one. So it’d be stupid for me to say I like trains. Otherwise I don’t have anything against them.”

“I’m sorry. Now I feel awkward.”

“I understand, but there’s no need.”

“Peter Pan threw himself under a train, as well, did you know? Peter Davis, actually, on whom Barrie based Peter Pan. He didn’t fly, the poor flying boy — or flying granddad. He was already an old man up to his ears in debt. Although some say the fact that he killed himself had something to do with his brother Michael who had drowned very young, deliberately, out rowing with his boyfriend. Romeo and Romeo. Poor Peter, apparently, never got over it. Sometimes I wonder, hypothetically, whether it wouldn’t have been better for poor Peter to have done it straight away, rather than wait all those years, for his wife and children to fall ill, to get into financial trouble, and so on. In a word, for all those things to happen that it’s virtually impossible to avoid.”

“A very sad story. A bit absurd.”

“It depends how you look at it. Are you very sad?”

“I was. I’m not sad now.”

“But you’re not happy either?”

“No, I’m not happy, but I’m calm.”

“Can you explain?”

“The person I lost was my brother Daniel. I believed that we were very close, but he didn’t ask for my help. It seems I didn’t know him that well. Can one get over that, Mrs. 0? Or does one just become dulled to an extent that’s bearable. I went back to the Old Settlement in order to discover the truth about him.”

“And? Was the quest successful? Did you find the Holy Grail?”

“Well, I’m just trying to tell you, I found some of his letters and discovered that his heart was in the right place. Unfortunately, for a while I hadn’t been sure of that. But there’s no question, my brother wasn’t selfish or bad. He was a fine boy. He could have become an astronomer or a poet, not everyone can do that.”

“What does bad mean for you?”

“That he wasn’t bad? Treacherous or violent, he wasn’t that. All vicious people are one or the other. One shouldn’t have anything to do with such people. He was sound.”

“And is that some consolation?”

“Not really, is it, but it helps nevertheless. One day at a time.”

“What was your brother like?”

“Different. Everything about him was over the top. Too much fog in his head, our sister would say. It seems he wanted to be an astronomer, he knew a lot about stars, but one could also say he could have been a poet — but I didn’t know that until a few days ago. What else. He had lots of animals and took care of them. On the other hand, he wasn’t brilliant at everyday things. In school he was slower than the others. His teachers said he didn’t concentrate… he played at being a cowboy. That’s charming when you’re nine, but not really after that.”

“Like Shane?”

“Yes, like Alan Ladd, James Stewart, Gregory Peck, Kirk Douglas, Charles Bronson, Burt Lancaster, Yul Brynner, Steve McQueen, Gary Cooper, John Wayne, Clint Eastwood, James Coburn, Terence Hill, Lee Marvin, Lee Van Cleef, Montgomery Clift, Ned Montgomery.”

“You’ve got a good memory.”

“I like lists, they’re amusing.”

“I’d completely forgotten about cowboys. Gold diggers, cattle rustlers, and law keepers. Mythical fellows with honor, balls, a swagger in their step. What posers, don’t you think?”

“Some just look like cowboys, but some really are.”

“A shame they’ve lost their point. Wonderful posers. How did you put it? With their hearts in the right place, well centered.”

“Yes, and with balls. In the right place.”

“Do you know any?”

“Cowboys? They exist, for sure,” I say.

“Like life in space,” Mrs. 0 smiles. “Don’t be cross,” she adds. “I believe in life in space.”

Suddenly she moves over to me. She sits down by my feet and plays with her fingers.

“Have you other family?”

“I’ve got Ma and my sister.”

“How do you get on with them?”

“I want my sister and Ma to be happy and well, more than anything, but I can also live without them.”

“One day at a time, is that how you live?”

“That’s one way. It can be one minute at a time, as well.”

“You mention your mother and sister. No one else. Don’t you have anyone else close to you? Aren’t you in love, for instance?”

“No. But I’ve slept with several men and I cared for them then.”

“And now?”

“There was a young man I liked, but he turned out bad.”

“Bad in bed?”

“In bed we were one. That doesn’t happen with everyone, I thought that meant something.”

“So the young man is, how did you put it — vicious? Violent or treacherous?”

“He was in a group with violent people who mistreated my brother and he didn’t tell me. He hurt me.”

“Treacherous, then? Is that why you’re leaving?”

“That’s just one of the reasons I didn’t stay.”

“That’s your revenge?”

“I don’t know, I don’t think so, I didn’t have a choice. Revenge includes choice.”

“You know what they say: revenge is best served cold. It’s not an empty phrase. But if you ask me, it’s also excellent hot. But you’re tepid. Some would say — lukewarm. If you ask me, you ought either to have stayed with him or killed him at once, as soon as you found out. Shoot him, and that’s the end of it. Hypothetically: if his life depended on your word, would you take revenge or save him?”

I say nothing.

“You forget about the good side of death. Death redeems,” she adds.

“To be quite honest, I don’t give a damn about the good side of death.”

“I thought as much,” says the writer 0 and smiles.

The police come and order the workers to get off the tracks and let the train through. A woman shouts, but soon the strikers withdraw, still carrying their placards at half mast. Some have stuck theirs in garbage bins. “At least people used to be alarmed by them, but now no one gives a flying fuck,” my sister had said a few days earlier when the shipyards were on strike.

Mrs. 0 keeps smiling and clicking her fingers.

“They’re ignoring them,” she says as though she has suddenly noticed the people outside.

“What do you think’s going to happen?” I ask.

“When they’re hungry enough, they’ll take up arms, then people will have to take notice. They’ll be given some money or the angry will blow them to smithereens.”