Leeches

by David Albahari

  ΔT (x,y) + k2 T (x,y) = 0

  where

  is the Laplace differential operator, and the function T (x,y) satisfies a Dirichlet boundary condition: T (x,y) = o along the legs of the triangle. Lamé's solution to this problem, the letter went on, was based on a very broad discourse on the geometries that lead to characteristic functions expressed with the help of sines and cosines. The most incredible, and for me the most intriguing aspect of this figure, the letter continued, is that characteristic functions expressed using combinations of sines and cosines ordinarily appear in rectangular geometries, and not in the triangle. In fact Lamé, and here I'll finish, didn't prove his formula. Pinsky did, using the technique of functional analysis, and there still is no final proof, though it's a matter of days now. And that was it, no signature, no real explanation, at least not for someone who, like me, understands little of mathematics. I read it through once more just in case. I still didn't understand a thing, and I doubt that anything would have changed even if Lamé had been investigating acoustic tunnels with hard walls. I can't believe the letter is serious, I said to the person who had run into Dragan Mišović from time to time, because if it were serious, he would've at least made a stab at articulating things in a manner accessible to ordinary mortals. That's what he's like, the person said, adding that she was certain he was sincere in his response. He simply sees the world his own way and doesn't understand that no one else sees it as he does. In other words, I said, he genuinely believes what he wrote. Just that, said the person, just that. That was how he was, she added, before I moved up to Banovo Brdo and lost touch with him, though there is no reason to assume that anything has changed in his life. We're often inclined, she said, to assume, when we feel like changing, that everybody else is changing too, just as she was convinced, because she had moved to Banovo Brdo, that Dragan Mišović was no longer taking his regular walks near the former underpass, where she had run into him from time to time, or that her neighbor from the building where she used to live had stopped emptying ashtrays out the window, which was, of course, a delusion, because even when we have left a place, nothing changes there, the cigarette butts continue to fly from the fifth floor, the ashes waft through the air, and Dragan Mišović cautiously paces the streets, skirting the puddles, the litter, the cracks in the pavement. So what now, I thought when the conversation ended, what path should I take? The question was, in fact, the wrong one, because I saw no path ahead. I could have gone back and walked along the pathways I had abandoned, but that looked like a futile ritual with no value other than the very act of repetition. So I decided to stay at home for a few days. I got up early, had coffee and read the paper, worked on the translation of a Pinter play in the morning, wrote or at least tried to write stories in the afternoon, and in the evening I sat in the armchair, in the dark, and listened to recordings of John Martin, Tom Waits, and the bands Weather Report and Steely Dan. I smoked hashish and watched it get dark outside. The lights flicked on in apartments, in some places you could see people sitting at tables or in front of television sets, the streets emptied, there was a longer interval between buses coming and going. On Sunday I wrote a new piece for my Minut column. There was nothing specific in the text, it was more a description of a condition than of any one event: I started with gloomy sentences about our helplessness to grasp fully the horror of the times we were living in, and went on in even gloomier terms about the helplessness that swamps us when we can't find a way out of the nasty situation we're in, and finally in terse sentences I invoked the void that awaits us. The last word, which stood alone, was "nothing." The editor was doubtful. When spirits are low, he said, people need encouragement, and you're pouring salt on their wounds. Exactly, I replied, but sometimes flagging spirits and a total absence of will become the most alluring alternative, and a new shock, no matter how jarring, can jolt people into shedding the snakeskin of helplessness. The editor thought about this for a minute, then looked again at the text, nodded, and sent me off to Payments. As I left the building it was raining, one of those irritating light rains that you can't protect yourself from. I walked across the square, past the statue of Prince Mihajlo, and all the way to the Café Majestic. I sat at a table by the window and ordered tea. When the waiter brought the tea, I ordered a slice of fruit tart, and when he brought the tart, I ordered a double espresso. The rain picked up and at one point there was no one left on the street; people were huddled in entranceways. The tea tasted terrible, as if brewed from reused mint tea bags; the coffee was better. I turned to look for the waiter, so I didn't see who opened the door to the Graphics Collective Gallery across the street from the Majestic, but when, after vainly twisting and gesticulating, I turned to the window again, I caught sight in the gallery of a woman who, from a distance, looked a lot like the woman who had been slapped on the Danube riverbank and had staggered into the mud. The doors of the gallery swung shut and the reflections on the glass surfaces made it impossible to see what was happening inside. I got up, grabbed my jacket, found the waiter, and paid. The raindrops were ricocheting off the pavement, brimming rivulets coursed down the curbs, and the few steps required to cross the street were enough to get my feet completely wet. I pulled open the gallery door and went in. There was no one inside. Wet footprints led into the back, to a staircase leading to the next level of the gallery, which served as an office and portfolio storage. I studied the art, feigning a lively interest, but perked up my ears to hear if anything was happening upstairs. Only one voice was audible, a woman's, and she must have been on the phone, because she repeated patiently, several times, information about the price of paper, the cost of making calling cards and catalogs, and the stores where you could still buy good-quality pigments. I walked to the other part of the gallery to see who was up there, who was talking, but no matter how I stretched or stood on my toes I could not see over the edge of the railing. Finally I opened the door and started up the wooden staircase. When I reached the top, the woman sitting at the desk moved the receiver from her ear and asked what I wanted. A friend of mine, I said, came into the gallery not long ago, I spotted her from the Majestic, and now I can't find her anywhere. The woman covered the receiver with her hand as if she was about to tell me a secret. No one had come into the gallery, she said, for the past forty-five minutes, which surprised her, she went on, because the gallery was usually thronged with people when it rained, no matter what art was on display, but this time, though it really had been pouring, there was no one there, and even her sister wasn't there, the woman added, though she was supposed to be there an hour ago, way before the downpour. She waited for me to say something, but I said nothing, so she brought the receiver back to her ear. Sorry, she said, though I couldn't tell for whom this was intended. I turned and went down the stairs. I considered pointing out the wet footprints to her, but when I stepped into the gallery, I saw they had been overlaid by my own prints. I left and looked across the street at the illuminated window of the Majestic. Where I had sat, another man was sitting now. He was reading a newspaper, and as though he had felt I was looking at him, he lifted his head and turned toward me. If I couldn't see his eyes from where I was standing, how could I have been sure whom I had seen going into the gallery, provided somebody had gone in? Whatever I try, I said that evening to Marko, winds up being a dead end. I'm getting nowhere, I'm stuck, I added. Listen to this, said Marko, Miles Davis was never finer than in this recording. He didn't say which record he was referring to, and to be perfectly frank, at that moment I didn't care: I inhaled from the pipe he passed and hoped that by the time I opened my eyes I would have forgotten it all. I didn't, of course, forget a thing, and the next day I set out again for Zmaj Jovina Street, but no matter how hard I looked, I couldn't find a single sign. First I thought the rain might have washed them away, then I was alarmed by the idea that it was not the rain, but that someone was regularly, carefully wiping them away, removing any trace. Someone was drawing the signs, I thought, to warn someone of something or to ale
rt someone to an event, and once the event had occurred, the signs are destroyed or concealed, thereby reducing the likelihood they would be misused. It is possible, I thought as I stood at one end of the Zemun market, that the same person was doing both, but more likely two different persons were involved, or perhaps more, and a third was coordinating, scheduling the time for the new signs to appear and to disappear. The air was humming with the bustle of the marketplace while my head spun with images of mystical gatherings of a secret society, where everyone wore masks or, at the very least, dark glasses, and conversed through the deft movement of their fingers. These visions, of course, were silly, but I could think of nothing else. I went through the section of the marketplace where dairy products were sold, and I tasted the farmer's cheese and sour cream at three or four stalls, then went back to Zmaj Jovina and bought a crescent roll at a bakery. The poster for the beginner's class in tai chi was still hanging on the old wooden gate, but now there was no symbol on it. I ate the roll, pushed open the heavy gate, walked through the passageway and into the courtyard. Everything was just as it had been before: the bench, the flowerpots with the barberry bushes, the water pump with the curved handle, and when I sat down and shut my eyes, the silence enveloped me again. This time, however, I heard no music, but someone, a man or a boy, singing. He sang in a soft voice, in a language I didn't know, and the voice faltered, as if at any moment he might sob. The song was not sad, but not happy either, and it spoke, I was sure, of some terrible event, an immeasurable loss, but one over which there was no point in grieving. I could have stayed there forever, eyes shut, given over to that voice, but someone coughed, the voice was gone, and when I opened my eyes I saw the woman from the riverbank. I saw her; she apparently had not seen me. She walked across the courtyard as if moving through some other space, separate from the space I inhabited. This fact, if someone's invisibility can be called a fact, struck me dumb, though everything in me was straining to speak. In several strides the woman crossed the paved courtyard and faded into the twilight of the passageway toward Zmaj Jovina Street, and when I finally pulled myself together and hurried after her, she had disappeared among the people on their way to the marketplace or returning with their arms laden. I went back to the stone courtyard. She probably came out of the building facing the courtyard, I later told Marko, though the roster of tenants listing ages and professions showed that pensioners or couples with small children lived in all the apartments. Marko took a drag on the joint and handed it to me. What would have happened if she had seen you, he said. I don't know, I said, and passed the joint back, maybe we would have talked, and maybe I would have finally learned her name. A name means nothing, said Marko. As far as that goes, call her what you like. No, I said, because it's one thing if her name is Violeta, and something quite different if her name is Marta. Her name cannot be Marta, Marko protested, who is called Marta these days? You would be surprised, I said, this spring I actually met three women called Marta. Marko stared at me, burst out laughing, then turned very serious. Life is short, he said, you know? I shook my head. We will live forever, I said, but I could see he didn't believe me. I didn't, in fact, believe myself. What had been happening around us the past few years convinced me that my life was, for all intents and purposes, over, that I was now living at a later time, in a life with no life. The war, inflation, poverty, political terror, hatred, all of that confirmed the berserk nature of the world that was supposed to be my home. Marko was right: you couldn't imagine living like that forever. Forever dead, possibly, but at its best life was an accumulation of fragments, a makeshift raft barely afloat. Am I sinking, I asked Marko, or does it just feel that way? Marko didn't answer. He closed his eyes, leaned his head against the wall, crossed his hands in his lap. With the tip of his tongue he touched his upper lip. All I want, I said, is to understand what's going on. Not the war, I hurried to add when I saw Marko's raised eyebrows, not the war, I will never be able to understand that, I gave up trying long ago, but the thing on the Danube, the reality or absurdity of the slap, the meaning of the circle around the triangle, the song I heard in the courtyard on Zmaj Jovina Street. Marko sat there, silent. Nothing exists alone, I said, everything is interconnected, everything is part of a larger or smaller web, which in turn is part of ever larger webs, and so it goes, until the whole world is woven together, and the one who weaves that last web knows the structure of all the others, but the ones who are creating the smaller webs know nothing about them and get snared in them, not realizing what they mean and where they are leading. In its own web, Marko said, a spider is a spider, but in someone else's web that same spider is just another fly. True, I said, except that I am not keen on being a fly or a spider, and the sticky web of our reality from which no one seems able to break loose is all I can handle. I'm with you totally, said Marko, and shut his eyes again. I wondered where the joint had gone to: had Marko swallowed it? The door opens for one who knocks, said Marko, and one who rends the webs will pass between them. He straightened up, turned toward me, and I saw the joint: stubbed out, squashed, slightly matted in hair, tucked behind Marko's right ear. Maybe, I said, just maybe it's wrong to say she went by as if she hadn't seen me, maybe she genuinely didn't see me, maybe back there in that corner I was invisible, hidden who knows how from the rest of the world? You're crazy, said Marko, though I understand the urge to become the invisible man. Better the invisible man than Batman, I replied, and slipped out the door to avoid Marko's tirade about comic book characters and their symbolic meaning. The chill darkness awaited me outside, or I would have gone straight to the courtyard at Zmaj Jovina. Early the next morning, it may have been before six, the phone rang, and continued to ring so insistently that I had to get up and stumble over to the side table in the living room, but when I finally lifted the receiver, there was no one there, and a few seconds later I heard the click of the connection being broken. I went back to bed but couldn't sleep. I tried to read; alas, that magical formula for falling asleep works only in the wee hours, not in the early morning. Actually, the book I had picked up to read, which described the system of German concentration camps during World War II, made me even more awake. I finally got up at seven with a grinding headache, dressed, put water on for coffee, went down to buy my paper. Hardly anyone bought the newspapers anymore because the news they carried and the accompanying commentary were so predictable, but the morning reading of the paper with a cup of black coffee was a ritual I could not relinquish. It was better than watching television, which never ceased to be a source of official propaganda, a parade of bizarre creatures often of stunted intellectual capacity. The newspapers were different: you could always skip the first pages and focus on the sections about life in the city, practical advice, and sports; on the other hand, even in the first section, there was the chance that a journalist might slip in a subversive twist, a tiny signal that reality was not what the government claimed it to be, and the search for those twists provided an appealing intellectual game, as long, of course, as the reader didn't have a headache. So I gave myself over to the pages with the obituaries, neutral enough for the pain assaulting my forehead and temples. Death, judging by the obits, was busy those days, as usual discriminating in no way among gender, age, or place of residence. The faces, old and young, male and female, even children, looked me straight in the eyes, as if it were my fault that they were there, offered briefly to a world that had never cared about them. I sipped my coffee and turned to the section with the personals and classifieds. The small number of readers meant a small number of ads, and under the heading Miscellaneous there were only two. The first offered a universal product for the cleaning and repair of scratched autobodies, which, it said, was not the only way this product could be used. The second ad read: Sometimes a slap can change the entire cosmos—Code Palm. I stared at the words, unable to believe my eyes, though I was certain they were written for me alone. Again I saw the woman stagger and the man say something savage, which, I sensed, had startled her. Something had been
set in advance, had not gone according to plan, and at that moment the cosmos had begun to collapse for all of us, to shed the skin containing it. One question, however, still begged to be answered: Why was all this being played out before me? What could I possibly mean to the people who had devised the game? I was not caught up in any political shenanigans, I had no friends in high places in the government or cultural institutions, I had no ties to international humanitarian organizations, at times I didn't even know my own name. Perhaps this was all a mistake, it suddenly hit me, as I was still poring over the ads page, maybe they had confused me with someone else, an important writer or professor, someone they needed to communicate with or draw into a tangled game from which, in fact, it would be best to flee, and fast. I poured more coffee, sipped the cold liquid, and sat back in the chair. Even if it's a mistake, to whom should I report it? If I don't know who made the mistake, how can I tell that person to stop bothering me? I looked at the ad. My headache had meanwhile receded, leaving only a small knot on the right temple. I pressed my index finger to it, and the dull throb made me suck in my breath. Then I stood up and went over to the computer to write a message using the code word Palm. After thinking about it at length and after several dozen trial sentences, I wrote, I know what a slap that can destroy the entire cosmos looks like. I was there, and I heard the sound that the cosmos releases as it dies. I haven't told anyone, I lied, because some things must never be said out loud, but now I am convinced the time has come for the cosmos to be renewed. I gave my phone number, tucked the message into an envelope, and sealed it. My message, I had to admit, sounded ridiculously naive and immature, but that, I consoled myself, was how the ad had sounded too. It wouldn't surprise me, I thought, if in the end aging hippies, equipped with sticks of incense, showed up with stories about good vibes and disturbances to the equilibrium of the world. The slap from the ad suddenly sounded like the question about one hand clapping, one of those essential Zen questions that had a huge influence on the hippy movement. I lifted my hand and stared at the palm. Marko laughed when he heard my story. I stopped in to see him after I had dropped the envelope off at the Politika personal ad department. If he understood correctly what was going on, Marko said, I was obviously slowly sinking into madness. Either that woman, he continued, scrambled your brain, or you scrambled your own brain and are making up stories, which, no matter what happened, treat everything as if it were part of a big plot. Either everything is interconnected with everything else, I replied, or nothing is interconnected with anything; there's no third way, but if I had to choose I would choose the former, because even if it were plausible no one could keep the latter going, and faced with that level of chaos, I said, we would collapse. You just might think about not smoking, Marko said, and passed me the joint. Drunks see white mice, and people who get hooked on cannabis see conspiracies. Sometimes you talk too much, I said. Marko closed his eyes and stretched out on the couch. That's because, he said, I haven't found anyone to be silent with. Not long after I heard his deep breathing, I found a blanket, covered him, switched off the light, and left the apartment, pulling the door shut behind me. It was raining outside and I made my way slowly through the pedestrians with umbrellas, so it was much later—I'd nearly made it home—when I realized that as I'd left Marko's building I passed a man in a black trench coat. When I spun around there was no one behind me. If he was following me, the man in the black trench coat was exceptionally clever. I stood a while longer at the entranceway, surveyed the street, but saw no one wearing a black trench coat or taking an interest in me. The damp crept under my clothes, invaded my body, and robbed me of my warmth, but I waited patiently until my teeth were chattering. The next days I didn't venture out. The damp and cold did their work, and I had to surrender to aspirin and hot tea. Colds usually put me in a vile mood, but this time I was glad to stay home, because that way I could be sure not to miss the call of the person who had placed the ad in Politika. Three days later, with the cold letting up, I began to doubt the call would ever come, so I was all the more surprised when on Tuesday, I think it was, a man's voice at the other end of the line said he was calling in response to my response to the ad. He was curious, he said, about where I had heard the sound of the cosmos dying. On the riverbank, I said, where else could I have been? And the sound, he asked, what was the sound like? Unique, I answered. I understand, said the voice, which had suddenly gone still; then he asked whether I was sure I'd told no one. No one, I lied again. Not even your parents? the voice insisted. My parents are dead, I said. The voice went still again, then apologized in case he had upset me, adding that then I indeed did know how the cosmos dies. But now the moment has come for it to be reborn, I said, hasn't it? The voice asked how I would do that. I'd be gentle, I said, and I would never raise my voice. Good, said the voice. For a moment I thought he would not speak again. Might you, the voice inquired, go to the same place this evening? Sure, I said. At eight, said the voice, and hung up. I held the receiver to my ear a little longer, as if the pulsing of the telephone signal could explain something. Beyond the signal, somewhere very far away, I could hear inarticulate fragments of a conversation, and then they too faded. I put down the receiver and looked at the clock. I had more than two hours until the meeting, if we were thinking of the same place, that is: the quay next to the playground. I didn't want to believe that this might be a misunderstanding, a different slap altogether and a second, or a third, cosmos, so when the time came to leave, I grabbed my jacket and headed for the quay. The promenade at that time of day was full of people, despite the black clouds careening through the dark sky, which made it all the more difficult for me to keep an eye out for the person I was supposed to be meeting. The man I had spoken to on the phone sounded like someone who was getting on in years, though that impression might have been wrong, he could have been a young man with his voice altered by an old or damaged phone. Of course I might sound, and probably did sound, entirely different over the phone, and so the feeling of mutual betrayal was only to be expected. For that reason, and perhaps out of insecurity, I decided to go around the high-rise and approach on a transversal the shabby merry-go-round, from which came the sound of children shrieking, through a dark parking lot and between rows of cars. Along the bank, among the trees, as well as near the apartment buildings, especially by the high-rises, there were oases of dark shadows in which it would be possible to hide, though I could not imagine why someone who wanted to meet me would want to hide. I got closer to the playground, stepped onto the path, and turned right, toward the bench on which I'd sat then, and the bench, like all the rest, was taken, so I decided to stand right there, staring at the river and the glow of Belgrade, and wait. Fifteen minutes later I told myself I was crazy, and still I didn't budge. Meanwhile a group of teenagers got up from one of the benches, shouting and swearing, leaving a semicircle of spit on the pavement. I waited for them to move off, then walked over, wiped the bench with a tissue, and sat down heavily, as if I had been walking for days. I threw back my head and looked up at the sky. Straight above, between the clouds, I saw two stars. A moment later, a cloud moved and I saw a third star, and then, right behind my head, I heard a voice asking if the seat next to me was free. When I looked to the side, I saw an old gray-haired man, slightly stooped. He was holding a large envelope. He looked at me, cleared his throat, put the envelope down on the very edge of the bench, rested his head on his hand, and fell asleep. Marko didn't believe me, I saw it in the way he shook his head. I didn't dare move, I said, and I wasn't even breathing, just as I probably hadn't blinked, convinced that even the softest sound or the least jostle would wake him, which I sensed would have had catastrophic consequences, like the beginning of a new ice age or the ripping of the universe like a tattered handkerchief. Then I heard a voice by my left ear instructing me, gently, ever so gently, to take the envelope because it was time for me to go. I turned: no one was there. The voice went on whispering in my ear, though I could no longer distinguish the words. My head
drooped, my eyelids shut, and when I opened them again, I was amid the stalls at the marketplace, in the darkest night. I was holding the envelope, which contained pages of a manuscript. When I tell Marko about all this, I thought, he will demolish me. And indeed, when I'd finished the story, Marko nearly fell off his chair. All that masquerade, he laughed, just to hand you a manuscript, hey, they could have delivered it to you at home, man, why waste your time on the quay, do these people know what century they live in? I'd wondered that myself, but I didn't say anything. I waited for Marko to leave. There was a limit to how much I could take of his commentary, and I was not prepared to push the limit that evening. For the same reason I neglected to tell him that as I placed the manuscript on the table when I first got home, I saw on the envelope the faint impression of that same geometric figure, but later it was gone. For me this might have been magic; for him it would have been one more chance to ridicule such thinking and to talk about the chemical reactions that could make a text visible or invisible, on request. I could not allow him to get to me. I had had disappointment enough when I had arrived home, cautiously opened the envelope, and pulled out the thick bundle of pages printed on someone's laser printer. I don't know what I'd been expecting, exactly, perhaps a mysterious inscription or a copy of a precious document, but I certainly had not imagined a computer printout. I leafed through it quickly, then slid it back into the envelope and dropped it into a drawer in my desk, where it stayed until Marko came over to hear what had happened to me. It was not until after he had left that I could finally give the manuscript my undivided attention; it looked different to me, it even felt heavier. On the first page there were only two words, The Well, while on the next page was written, A dream uninterpreted is like a letter unread. I didn't know whether the whole manuscript was an account of a dream—the writer's or, perhaps, why not, mine—but I did discover when I examined it more closely that dreams were central to it. If someone were to ask me to describe the manuscript, I am not sure I could. It started off as an historical narrative, then turned into a history of dreams, followed by a collection of Kabbalistic exercises, furnished with an assortment of lists of people and events and material expenditures, books and artwork and porcelain bowls, and the lists were followed by verses, anecdotes, and dramatic dialogues, supplemented by a brief epilogue and, at the end, a detailed index, which, I later established, had little to do with the manuscript itself. This suggested that there might be other parts to the manuscript or that it referred to parts, as Marko said, that had not yet been written. Maybe this is how all books should be written, Marko went on, because the index is their essence, and if one knows the essence of what one wants to write, it is easy to fill in the spaces between the entries and establish the connections. The manuscript reminded me of the infinite book of sand that Borges had so desired: each time I opened it, the manuscript changed, with a new beginning or a new end, and none of these beginnings or ends broke the continuity, rather, they became part of a whole. This is it, I remember saying to Marko as we leafed through the manuscript together, this is what I've always wanted: a text to which I can dedicate my life. Everything changed then, and if this were a book, only now would it begin to engage the reader, but this is not a book, it is a confession, which I am speaking into the wind at the edge of a forest, so that the words, threadbare as always, are vanishing, mingling with the nitrogen and oxygen and who knows what else, and even I, as I'm speaking, can't hear them. I should mention, however, that despite formal differences between some portions of the manuscript, two subjects dominated throughout: one was the history of the Zemun Jewish community, which originated in the first half of the eighteenth century when, after Belgrade again fell into Ottoman hands in 1739, Jews stayed on in Zemun in slightly larger numbers, while the other was a collection of several Kabbalistic threads that kept tangling and untangling, though for me, quite frankly, they always represented a perfect knot. There were other themes in one or, at the most, two of the chapters, though it may also be that I hadn't recognized them elsewhere in the manuscript or that I had simply not been able to grasp them. This didn't bother me, because those other themes played no role in the change that I mentioned, which could clearly be tied to the central themes of the manuscript. When I realized I would need to learn more about the Jewish community, I turned to the Jews I knew, the writer Isak Levi and the historian Jakov Švarc, who to begin with took me to the Jewish Historical Museum in Belgrade, where I was given copies of various writings about the Zemun Jews. While we drank coffee and nibbled matzos, Isak Levi went next door to take a call. When he came back he told me the call was from Jaša Alkalaj, a painter who dabbled in the Kabbalah, who, when he heard of me, had suggested that Levi bring me to his studio. At the time I assumed the invitation was impromptu; now I am convinced it was not: Jaša knew I was at the museum, and I tumbled easily into the trap. We spent that entire night at his studio, cluttered with paintings, candlesticks, and colorful things he'd picked up on the streets. Isak Levi was the writer, but Jaša Alkalaj could tell a story, and once he'd started, he showed no inclination to stop. His answer to my first question, which had to do with the presence of Kabbalists in Belgrade, took nearly two hours. Then he went looking for another bottle of brandy and brought out a plate of cheese and olives, but he never stopped talking, though it sounded more like mumbling, like a person talking to himself. Just don't ask him about the Hasidim, Isak Levi and Jakov Švarc warned me, because then he won't stop talking till dawn, but by accident, if anything ever happens by accident, I brought up Martin Buber, and that's how we ended up staying at the studio till dawn. Isak Levi was snoring on a low sofa, Jakov Švarc was barely able to keep his bloodshot eyes open, and my head was about to burst when Jaša Alkalaj apologized; he could no longer talk with us, he had to run to the Art Academy where his students were waiting for him, but whenever I wanted to, he said, I could get in touch or, better still, drop by the studio, no need to call ahead, a key was under the mat, just lift the right or left lower corner, though sometimes it slid over to the side, but not often, he said, and I could unlock the door, go in, and wait. The only thing I mustn't do while I was waiting was paint. At that point we were standing by the door to the studio, Jaša Alkalaj lifted the corner of the doormat, we leaned over to see the key. Isak Levi started snoring again, leaning against the door frame, Jaša Alkalaj dropped the doormat and a little puff of dust rose, and we all hurried into the elevator, as if we were fleeing a sandstorm. Two days later, once I'd completed my piece for Minut, I went back to the studio, this time resolved to put several clearly formulated questions to Jaša Alkalaj, about the people and events mentioned in the manuscript, to prevent him from straying into his meandering associations. I rang the doorbell, but there was no response. I decided Jaša wasn't there and, following his instructions, I looked for the key under the mat. Then I changed my mind, pulled my hand back, and set the mat down. I couldn't go in, I told Marko later, because I am incapable of entering anyone's apartment in the owner's absence, so I walked to the elevator at the other end of the corridor. While the elevator was on its way down, it occurred to me that I should have left a note, but by then it was too late; and besides, it is better, in terms of fending off bad luck, not to retrace one's steps, or, in this case, to use the same elevator, and I was not about to walk up to the fourteenth floor. I thought about waiting for a bit at the entrance to the building, because who knows, I said to Marko, maybe he'd just stepped out to the supermarket or a liquor store, or to the corner kiosk, and would be back in no time. A boy in a leather jacket was perched on the entrance steps; he was staring, head bent, at a magazine spread open on his knees. I probably wouldn't have noticed him, or maybe I would have just glanced at him while pacing back and forth in front of the building, but he looked up, and his eyes opened wide in an expression of disbelief. I took a few more steps, and only then did I stop and turn. The boy, his back to me, was punching numbers into his cell phone. When he put the phone to his ear, he turned around. We looke
d at each other, and though I don't know why, as I told Marko, I started for home right away. I didn't look back, I didn't want to find out whether the boy was following me or still standing at the entrance, listening to what they were telling him to do, so I lowered my head, hunched my shoulders, and walked faster, and the only thing I could think about was that I couldn't think. My head was a vast, deep void in which the blood throbbed painfully, and where, despite the void, there was no room for thought. It was only after I'd crossed several streets that I had a clear thought: I'd escaped. Then I turned, looked to the left, looked to the right, and decided that no one was following me. No one is following me, I thought, but I wasn't sure. I'm not sure, I thought. I entered a shop and stood by the display window. Several people walked past in the street, but none looked like the boy. I ought to give Jaša a call, I thought, and then I remembered he wasn't home. He is not home, I thought, which was irrelevant since I didn't have his phone number. I went back into the street. The boy was not after me, I could breathe a sigh of relief. That is when I noticed, as I told Marko, that I was no longer thinking in sentences, single words were all that was going through my head: house, for instance; I thought "house," and not, as you might expect, "I am going home," then I thought "joint," though I wanted to think "I could use a joint right now," then I thought "solitude" and then I knew that what I'd really been thinking was "one of these days my solitude is going to cost me my mind." And how long, Marko asked, did that go on? When I got home, I said, I thought "water," though I wanted to think "I'm really thirsty," and after I'd gulped down a glass of water, everything reverted to normal. In the bathroom, looking into the mirror, I even smiled at my fears, but my hands, no point in hiding it, were shaking. If you had told this to anyone else, Marko said, they'd think you'd gone off the deep end or that you suffer from paranoid delusions; first the man in the black trench coat, then the mysterious ad, then some crackpot manuscript, and now this boy getting instructions on his cell phone. And you, I asked, what do you think? I'm your friend, said Marko, and handed me a new joint, and friends don't ask, they know. The next day, however, he shook his head, he didn't know how something like this could ever happen, he said. Scrawled on the front door to my apartment in heavy black marker, in letters of all different sizes, were the words THOSE WHO KEEP COMPANY WITH JEWS WILL BE SWALLOWED BY THE NIGHT. The message started in the upper-left-hand corner, the first three words were in the top row: the word WITH, written smaller than the previous words, was in the second row, alone, probably because of the desire to make sure that JEWS was prominent and suitably visible; that word took up the third line, but for some reason it was on a slant, as if aiming for my doormat; it was followed by the first part of the warning, written in what were surprisingly regular and even letters, almost pleasing to the eye; and then everything dispersed with the word NIGHT written in erratic letters, probably to convey the horror of the night. Around this word, like little celestial bodies, floated swastikas (three), stylized skulls (two), penises (two), various symbols I was unfamiliar with (four), and one eye, which Marko claimed was a drawing of a vagina. I didn't wish to discuss this any further, since we were soon joined by neighbors, and each had a suggestion for what I ought to do. The neighbor from the apartment across the way started rubbing at one of the letters with the tip of his forefinger. If it smudges, he said, no problem, it will wash right off, if it doesn't smudge, that means they used permanent ink, and you'll have no choice but to paint the whole door. The letter he was rubbing was the initial J in JEWS. It smudged and we all breathed a sigh of relief. That filth should be washed off right away, said my ground-floor neighbor, and that very instant I was about to go and get water, detergent, and a rag. I was stopped by my upstairs neighbor, who insisted that the police should be called first, or at least a picture taken of the door, otherwise, he said, we would be considered co-perpetrators with these evildoers, giving them the go-ahead to commit more reprehensible acts. Fine, I said. I brought out my camera, clicked twice, it didn't work the first time, then went to get my washing paraphernalia. While I was dragging the rag across the door in broad sweeping motions, I listened to my neighbors and Marko berating and cursing the government, and then someone spotted a rat in the stairwell and the conversation took off in a new direction, following the trail of filthy, overflowing garbage bins, neglected parks, unswept streets, and the general sense of things falling apart. Meanwhile I finidied wiping the door. The letters were no longer visible, but the door was a shade darker, like a patchily erased blackboard on which the curving path of the sponge and layers of chalk are still visible, despite the class monitor's best efforts. Now that's better, said Marko. Go ahead and call the police, said the upstairs neighbor. Next time use more detergent, said the ground-floor neighbor. Those idiots should be put to death, said a neighbor I'd never met. Vim works wonders, said the ground-floor neighbor. It is astonishing that I didn't hear a thing, said the neighbor from across the hall. Scum of the earth, said the neighbor I'd never met. I would send them all straight to the quarry, and then you tell me if they'd ever do something like this again, said the neighbor who lived in the converted laundry room. Only a maniac would do something like that, said the neighbor I'd never met. Worse than maniacs, said Marko. Damn right, said the ground-floor neighbor. I took the rag out of the bucket, wrung it, and wiped the door once more. The stain turned a little lighter. The neighbors began to disperse. If you need anything, said the neighbor I'd never met, you know where to find me. I didn't, but I was reluctant to say so. Marko also had to leave; he had a date with a dealer near Hotel Slavija, and he was running late. In no time I stood alone in front of my messy door. I picked up the bucket, walked into my front hall, shut the door behind me, locked both locks, hooked the chain. I poured the dirty water into the toilet bowl. I went into the bathroom and washed my hands. Then I returned to the front hall, undid the chain, unlocked the locks, and opened the door. The stain looked darker, but otherwise nothing. I closed the door, locked the locks, and hooked the chain. I looked through the spy hole: the hallway was empty. The phone rang. It was Jaša. He wanted to know when we would be getting together again. I told him what had happened, and after a brief silence, he said that, sooner or later, everybody shows their true face. What mattered the most for me, however, he went on, was that I should pay no attention to that silliness, but stay on track. So which track is mine? I asked. In the Talmud it says that if you don't know where you are going, he said, any path will take you there. But what happens, I asked, if you know where you are going? Then the path doesn't matter, said Jaša, and hung up. Something stinks here, mumbled Marko. We were sitting in a pastry shop on Makedonska Street, across from the Youth Center, eating cream puffs and drinking boza. A woman sitting at the neighboring table gingerly raised a cream puff to her nose and sniffed it. An equation with too many unknowns, I said, is no longer an equation, but chaos. That's something for your friend the mathematician, said Marko, and ordered another glass of boza. Why not? I thought, though not just then but several days later, when I found a slip of paper in my mailbox with a yellow star and superimposed on the star, a fat black swastika. That morning in Minut a piece of mine had appeared about the necessity of tolerance if a civil society is to succeed, and I was sure that the clumsy drawing was in response to my suggestion that we should not suspect someone simply because he or she is Chinese, gay, Jewish, or a social outcast, for to doubt them means to have no faith in ourselves, it means having nothing. The mathematician, my former schoolmate, had nothing to do with this, but I hoped he could guide me. We learn sometimes from those we least expect to learn from, or from whom we expect something entirely different. However I didn't feel like chasing him around his high-rise, so I called the woman who had run into him from time to time before she moved to Banovo Brdo, and asked if she could somehow find Dragan Mišović's phone number for me. We all have phones nowadays, I said, he cannot possibly live without one. If he can wear a winter coat in midsummer, she said, he can live without a phone
. She promised to call people who went to school with us, and whom she had seen more often before she had moved. She mentioned several names, but none of them rang a bell. Maybe you weren't in the same class, said Marko when I told him about it. He, said Marko, knew the first and last name of every single classmate of his, even the desk and row each of them sat in. I can draw you the layout of my entire classroom, he added, and if he had had a piece of paper and a pencil with him at the time, no doubt he would have done just that. The woman who used to run into Dragan Mišović got in touch with me the next day. She had managed, she boasted, to get his phone number from the first person she'd called, because she, meaning the other person, had organized our most recent class reunion and had everybody's phone numbers. She dictated the number to me, cautioning that Dragan Mišović seldom answered his phone and that I would have to be persistent and call repeatedly until he finally picked up. I called him immediately. My name meant nothing to him, and only when I reminded him of the interpretation of the circle and triangles did he remember who I was. That's not why I am calling, I said. So, said Dragan Mišović, everything's clear? I said nothing. I understand, said Dragan Mišović, sometimes mathematicians get a little carried away, like most professionals, though I should tell you, he said, that I later thought I might write you an addendum, because the next day, that diagram reminded me of the initial step in the iterative process of construction of one of the first known fractals, called the Sierpiński Triangle. Sure, I said. What else could I say? I won't get into the whole story, said Dragan Mišović, but that fractal grew from a random toss of a die, and many theorists of dynamical systems were entranced by it, believing that this procedure demonstrated how order comes from chaos, which served the members of the Brussels School of Ilya Prigogine as proof that the universe didn't have to obey the Second Law of Thermodynamics, or that the system need not ultimately end in chaos and collapse, but instead at a certain moment it would begin to organize itself into another form. Sure, I said again. Of course, Dragan Mišović said, I don't believe that at all, for the simple reason that it's extremely naive, even when expressed in this reduced form. He stopped talking, and for a while we were both silent. I could hear him breathe, just as he could probably hear me breathe, though I tried tucking the receiver under my chin, away from my mouth. Then Dragan Mišović coughed, and said, If that wasn't it, what did you want to ask me? I coughed too and asked, Is the number of unknowns in an equation limited, I mean, what happens with an equation in which there are too many unknowns? Those are two separate questions, said Dragan Mišović. The answer to the first question is simple: no. What about the other question, I asked, the same answer? Depends, said Dragan Mišović, on how you define "too many unknowns." I don't define them at all, I said, that's why I called you. Take, he went on, equations with two unknowns, you probably remember those, they describe many curves in the plane, so the set of pairs (x,y) that satisfies the equation f(x,y) = o makes a curve. For example, x 2 + y2 = I is an equation for a circle with a diameter of 1 and its center at origin. In other words, said Dragan Mišović, that phrase of ours, "too many unknowns," represents a key idea of both Descartes and Fermat, which ties algebra to geometry or the equation to the curve. Your question, he said, contains analytical geometry in all its dimensions, and I would need several hours just to get started. Oh, I said. That's the reason, Dragan Mišović continued, it would be useful to know why you're asking me, because then I could be more precise. Let me put it this way, I said, over the past few days I have come up against a multitude of unknowns, and I am eager to understand just one, because if the unknowns keep multiplying, I said, soon it will no longer be an equation but sheer chaos. Sometimes chaos can be an equation, said Dragan Mišović, but we're better off not going there, let's try to look at it in a different way, or else, he said, let's assume that among those unknowns only one is a genuine unknown, the rest are its parameters. If we do that, he continued, it gets easier. I didn't know why it would get easier, but tacitly I agreed. Of course, that is possible only under certain technical conditions, said Dragan Mišović, which are given by the Implicit Function Theorem. Maybe, I mused, maybe I should never have called him. Don't worry, he said, as if reading my thoughts, I won't trouble you with all the particulars, and besides, I remember how much you loathed math in gymnasium. That's not true, I protested, it's not that I loathed it, it's that I wanted nothing to do with it. You can put it that way if you like, said Dragan Mišović, but memories are a lot like chaos, so it's better for us to leave them be. In this case, he continued, I will only say that this theory tells us that in the corresponding set of equations some of the variables are defined as functions of other variables, on condition, of course, that the Jacobian is nonzero. Sure, I said. So, said Dragan Mišović, if all those conditions are met and we isolate a single unknown in your equation, which we will call the privileged unknown, and we proclaim all others to be its parameters, then we arrive at a new function, we will call it function G, which satisfies the initial equation, even though, and this is the niftiest part of this whole business, we have no idea what that function is or what it looks like. In other words, and I'll conclude with this, said Dragan Mišović, there is a solution that can be expressed as a function, but nothing that tells us how to formulate it more closely. So you know, I said, yet you don't know. No, said Dragan Mišović, you don't know, yet you know. I don't understand a word of this, I confessed. It is pretty simple, he continued patiently, choose one among all the unknowns, and when you solve that one, the others will open. You mean to say, I asked, that they are interconnected after all? It is late for a conversation about paranoia, answered Dragan Mišović, then cleared his throat and hung up. I listened for a while to the white noise coming from the phone cables, then hung up. Did you really expect, Marko asked when we took a stroll the next evening, that he would give you a straight answer? No, I said. The promenade was packed with people, children were shrieking, girls zipped by on roller skates, boys whistled and shouted. Restaurant barges rocked on the water and blasted loud music, from turbo folk to reggae. The days were getting longer, and the sun hung motionless on the western rim of the horizon. I suggested to Marko that we buy ice cream on a stick, but he said he'd rather not, confessing to his fear of getting a splinter in his tongue. That can't happen, I said, but I got us ice cream cones. We perched on the steps going down to the Danube and licked our ice cream in silence. The steps continued into the water, as if descending into Atlantis. The river surface was covered in ripples, and small waves splashed soundlessly against the concrete. Someone at the top of the stairs called out, Look at the sky, it'll rain tomorrow! Everyone is a weatherman these days, Marko said. Two boats passed by slowly, on their way to the marina by the high-rise, and water splashed noisily in the corners of the steps. I think I knew what he wanted to say to me, I said. Marko raised his eyebrows quizzically. First of all, I said, my heart pounding, I must accept the possibility that everything is interconnected, that nothing exists in isolation, that everything is part of a whole, which means that what I don't know and don't understand, the questions and dilemmas I am up against, are also interconnected. Marko persisted in his silence, sticking his tongue as far into his cone as it would go. A white mustache took shape on his upper lip. Another boat passed by, moving along the river toward the high-rise, and again the wavelets gurgled in the corners of the steps. Just tell me, said Marko, how you'll decide what tie there is between the slap on the quay, the sign on the sidewalk, the manuscript on the Kabbalah and history, the anti-Semitic threats, this place that behaves as if it is a hole outside of time, and whatever else, I mean, how will you establish from which of these the others originate, or into which they flow, which is more or less the same thing? I said nothing; I didn't know. Even today I don't know. Jaša Alkalaj, however, didn't hesitate for a second when I asked the same question several days later at his studio. The Kabbalah, he said. Isak Levi sighed, and Jakov Švarc dismissed this comment with a wave of the hand. Ignore them, s
aid Jaša Alkalaj, they are slaves of linear logic, for them it can only be one thing or another, they can never embrace the notion that something may be both one thing and another, at one and the same time. For them the glass is either full or empty, he said, and they don't understand that an empty glass is also full, just as a full glass is also empty. Nonsense, countered Isak Levi, if that were the case, you would be able to answer the question of what happens when I drink half the liquid from a full glass: is the glass then half empty or half full? Both, said Jaša Alkalaj, how many times do I have to tell you? He turned to me: This is how they torment me, he said, like true unbelievers. Who? chimed in Jakov Švarc, us—the unbelievers? You are the only one of us who never goes to temple. My body is my temple, said Jaša Alkalaj, what do I need a synagogue for? That's why the Jews are in trouble, said Jakov Švarc, instead of coming to God, they expect God to come to them. Isak Levi pounded the table, Are we going to argue, which we can always do, or are we going to listen to this man who in coming here is risking his life? If nothing else, he said, we ought to respect that. Sure, sure, said Jaša Alkalaj and Isak Levi, then both looked at me, probably expecting me to say something. Nothing came to mind. I thought it might be good to go out on the balcony and see if anyone shifty was hanging around the building entrance, but I didn't want to unsettle them. They were already worried by the anti-Jewish messages scrawled on my front door; they wanted, like that neighbor of mine, to go straight to the police, and I barely managed to convince them that this was not called for, but I had to promise I'd write about that subject in my column in Minut. So, said Jakov Švarc, what's going on? I licked my lips, sipped a little of Jaša's brandy, rubbed the tip of my nose. If the essence of everything is contained in some aspect of the Kabbalah, I said, how do I get to it? And how, I added, can I be sure that this is the right way, since if I don't know what it is I am looking for, how will I know I've found it? It is not easy, answered Jaša Alkalaj, but it's possible. He smiled as he said this, which stirred doubts in me, and Isak Levi noticed my distrustful look. Trust him, Isak Levi said, even though he may not strike you as the kind of person who merits your trust. Sometimes such people are more trustworthy than those who look trustworthy, Jakov Švarc backed him up. Fine, I said unconvincingly, then I will ... If you have doubts, Jaša Alkalaj interrupted, then don't bother to begin. Doubt at the outset, said Isak Levi, is the same as defeat at the end. He who doubts early, chimed in Jakov Švarc, sheds his doubt late. If we spent the entire evening talking in this rhythmic pattern, each sentence of mine followed by their tripartite commentary, would I burst out laughing? Perhaps we sound silly, said Jaša Alkalaj, and winked, but that's because we have been together for so long, and we know exactly what each of us is thinking. How long? I asked. They looked at one another. Five hundred years, said Jaša Alkalaj, if not longer. I lifted my shot glass and sniffed it. Who knows, I thought, what they're drinking. Of course, Jaša Alkalaj continued, we can't remember everything, so our earliest common memory is our years in a prewar Belgrade gymnasium. Having said that, said Jakov Švarc, some graduated and some didn't. The man is interested in the Kabbalah, protested Jaša Alkalaj, not in our little differences. At any rate, he added, the only purpose school serves is to distance children and young people for a few years from their anxious parents who are running themselves into the ground to make ends meet. Let's leave school and the education system out of this, I said, let's talk about the Kabbalah. First of all, Isak Levi spoke up as he took hold of the brandy bottle, no point in being impatient. Let's start here, said Jaša Alkalaj, as he walked over to a stack of paintings in the corner, then came back with one. It is called The Cloak of the Soul, he said. The painting portrayed a genderless human, barefoot in a grassy clearing, a generous variety of symbols hovering around it. The symbols were probably all Jewish, I recognized a six-pointed star of David, a menorah, the aleph, and other Hebrew letters. Some parts of the body were exposed, as if in an anatomical atlas, so that the body's cavities were clearly visible, though they contained no organs, or else the organs were not depicted, instead the entire insides were lit with a radiance that came from within, from a central point located in the general vicinity of the bellybutton. A transparent glow permeated the interior and was visible at some of the orifices, but it didn't extend beyond the body layer, meaning the skin, and that space, the buffer zone between the body and the radiance, was filled with a second body, if the word body applies here, that was transparent, and identical in all but its transparency to the body above it. In short, this genderless body seemed to include three bodies, each tucked into the next, like Russian dolls, except that Russian dolls are all made of the same material, and the three bodies were not. I painted this, Jaša Alkalaj continued, after I had read the interpretation of Chaim Vital, a sixteenth-century Kabbalist and student of the celebrated Yitzhak Luria, that God, when he places a soul in a human body, has to insert an intermediary between them, an astral body of sorts, because if there is no shield, the radiance of the soul will scorch everything. Therefore, when a person wishes to speak with his soul, he said, he doesn't invoke the soul, for it would scorch him; rather he communicates with his astral body, which joins the reflection of his soul and the reflection of his body. But to see the astral body, and even more so to communicate with it, Jaša Alkalaj said, one must reach the highest level of purity. Then his eyes open to the beauty of God's nature, and he sees, he said, how beautiful he too is in his purity. So, now two things matter: first that one be cautious when invoking the astral body, for many cases have been recorded of invocations that took people to the side on the left, as it says in the Kabbalah, meaning the side of evil, while the other thing to keep in mind, he said, is that one's shadow is actually a projection of his astral body, which is why the Bible says our days upon the earth are as a shadow, which means, he said, that they are brief because every shadow lasts only a short while, but they are also a reflection of our astral body, in which are recorded all of our days, and everything that has been, and, most important right now, everything that will be. The prophets were people, he said, who could invoke their shadow, or, more precisely, their astral body, whenever they wished to, and it would tell them what was to come. But how does the astral body, I asked, know all that? By descending at the moment of conception with the soul, said Jaša Alkalaj, as its cloak, and in it, in the astral body, is registered the figure of the new being and everything that the life of that being will be in the days and years to come. In other words, chimed in Isak Levi, he who sees his shadow will see the course of his life. And he who learns to converse with it, added Jakov Švarc, will learn all he wants to know. It all sounded rehearsed, and for a moment I thought it would be best for me to leave, but then Jaša Alkalaj, turning away from me, said, One needs to doubt, but one needn't believe in doubt. I swallowed and sniffled. Is there any more brandy? I asked. When all the shot glasses were topped off, Isak Levi raised his and invited us to drink to the shadows. I waited until the bite subsided on my tongue, then asked, How long does it take to learn how to invoke one's shadow? I watched the three of them exchange glances and shrug. Twelve years, said Jaša Alkalaj finally, sometimes longer. To this day I don't believe that to be a true figure, and at the time I felt my mouth drop open in astonishment. I looked from one to the other and tried to decipher whether they were joking. There are those, said Jaša Alkalaj, who manage it in six years, but they are the gifted followers who have already succeeded in ascending the stages of the Kabbalistic Sephirot. If they need so much time to see the shadow, I said, how much time do they need to see the body that casts that shadow? The body is always visible, answered Jaša Alkalaj, as is the shadow, but they are looking with the wrong eye. Only when one learns to see, he went on, only when the eye is pure, can the body be seen as it truly is, but the shadow is no longer a shadow then but a cloak for the soul, a cloak that is acquired during conception and added to by the weaving of the days and the good deeds one performs in a lifetime. Isak Levi poured the rest of the brandy
into our shot glasses. Things cannot be hurried, he said, and what needs to happen, no matter what it is, will happen when the time is right. For instance, he added, in this glass I am holding soon there will be no brandy. He raised the glass to his lips, downed it in a gulp, turned it over, and not a drop dribbled out. Jaša Alkalaj offered to open another bottle. Jakov Švarc was nodding in approval, so I quickly announced my departure. The brandy I had drunk, and I had had more than usual, had softened my knees and dulled my eyes, and I didn't want to test the reactions of my body to even more alcohol. I deflected their efforts to persuade me to stay and soon found myself in a taxi, which drove through the poorly lit streets to Zemun. There was no one at the front door of Jaša Alkalaj's building; no car followed us; no one was standing in front of my building; the stairs were deserted, the door to my apartment was locked as it should be, the doormat had not been touched. By then I was barely able to move, and all I wanted was to drop into bed and sleep, which I promptly did. When I opened my eyes again the clock next to my bed showed exactly three o'clock in the morning. What had woken me? Was it someone snooping around my door? I got up and padded out to the front hall, I leaned my ear to the door, held my breath: not a sound. I unlocked the door, opened it a crack without undoing the chain, and peered out into the corridor. There was no one crouching on the doormat, no one's eyes gleamed in the dark. I locked the door and went back to my bedroom. I went over to the window, checked out the street and the buildings across the way: the street was deserted, all the windows were dark, only the yellow of the traffic lights blinked patiently. My mouth was bitter and dry, which I had not expected from the brandy, I admit. I ate a piece of Turkish delight in the kitchen and drank a glass of water. The clock showed that seventeen minutes had passed since I got up. I watched the clock face until the big hand shivered and moved a notch, then I remembered what had woken me: I'd been dreaming that I was standing on the bank of a rapid mountain stream, so different from the slow Danube of the plains, and that a voice was announcing numbers: seventeen, thirty-five, forty-three, ninety-eight. At the final number, on the river a woven basket swept by, in which sat, instead of an abandoned baby, the manuscript given to me by the mysterious old man. I reached for the basket, my foot slipped on the damp grass, I flew face forward toward the river, and as the water splashed my face I woke. Now it was nearly three-thirty. I went to my study to get the manuscript, repeating the numbers I'd heard in my dream. On [>