“Celebrate what?” Boris asked, fumbling with an ice cube he had just caught with the pink shovel.
“I’ve just been fired.”
Boris dropped the ice cube on the floor.
“Why?” Johnny asked.
“Officially, they say they are restructuring the cultural section of the evening news because of the war. Unofficially, they are cleaning up. They kicked a whole group of us out. Eleven from our department. We still don’t know what’s happening in the other sections. We’ve all spoken publicly against Milosevic at one time or another.”
“You could sue them,” Boris offered.
“Yes, and we will, but we don’t stand a chance. They don’t want to make martyrs of us so we’re only ‘suspended’—we’ll all continue to receive our salaries until further notice. No one will understand what our problem is if they pay us every month.” Sara went to the cupboard and took out a shot glass and a bottle of brandy, poured a drink for herself and returned to the armrest. Johnny patted her hand.
“Good for you,” he said.
She took a swig. “It is, in a way.”
He got up to change the disc in the player. Boris looked at Sara, head down, playing with her watch. Her lips curved up naturally, so that even when she was upset she looked as if she were smiling. Her heavy hair, almost black, framed her face tightly, making it appear narrower than it was.
“Why don’t you write for a magazine?” Boris said. “You do terrific interviews—that always sells.”
“Everyone is taking sides, Boris. Can you think of a single independent magazine that has lasted more than a month? You know that as well as I do—how many galleries would even think of exhibiting the project your group is doing? Two? One? Your space is shrinking. So is mine. Independence is expensive.”
One gallery, only. And even that one only because its owner was the brother of one of the artists from Boris’s group. The soundtrack of their lives: sad stuff, ballads. Their movie: grey frames in slow motion.
A gust of wind carried in the scream of some small animal caged across the street.
Johnny shook his head. “We can’t play in Slovenia now, or Croatia, or Bosnia. Half of my audience is in Croatia. The other half, here, is worried. They don’t have time for music.”
They all froze in their thoughts, leaving Van Morrison to fill the void.
“Do you have any plans?” Boris asked Sara.
She stopped fiddling with her watch and looked him in the eyes. “Are you worried about me?”
“No,” he said. “It’s just so sudden. I don’t know what I would do if I were you. I’ve never worked full-time so I don’t know how it feels …”
Sara smiled. “I’m furious at them. And I will fight the idiots. You know me that much. But some of us who were suspended today are not that good. That’s another trick they use, to mix it up a little, to cover their tracks. There are only maybe four of us who have a chance to get our jobs back. Even if they lose, they still win. It will last for months and even if they have to take the four of us back, it’s still not that bad. They will have eliminated seven people.”
She took another swig from her glass. This time her shoulders stayed level.
“Perhaps I’ll put on a miniskirt and high heels and go to the office from time to time. That’s the language they understand. That will give them some sleepless nights.”
PAYBACK TIME. November 5, 1992
November started with cold rain. The northern wind, sliding down the Danube, occasionally added sleet to the mix.
Boris’s exhibition had turned into a non-event. The crowd at the opening were mostly artists who all knew one another. The media scribbled down a few notes about it and that was that.
The book he was reading now was Charles Bukowski’s Erections, Ejaculations, Exhibitions and General Tales of Ordinary Madness. He had brought it with him from Amsterdam the previous summer. He liked Bukowski but had bought this particular book because its title summarized the feeling he had that summer—and throughout this war, for that matter.
To finance the trip he’d sold a painting—he’d decided that he needed to remove himself from the overheated political noise. He chose Amsterdam because he knew the city, and it had always been good to him. But on the first day of his stay, he ran into two of his colleagues from Fine Arts and realized they both had emigrated—they were talking about how to find a job in welding or picking tulips. From their perspective, every sane person should leave Belgrade immediately. After parting with them, he went back to his hostel and opened his backpack. Two shirts, three pairs of underwear, two pairs of socks, sandals, three T-shirts, a sweater, a pack of condoms, five painkillers, and a bar of milk chocolate. Definitely not enough painkillers to emigrate. Bukowski’s book was all he brought back.
Now he was reading it again because he needed a dose of reality. Life inside its covers was full of stench and love and passion and oblivion and madness. It soothed him. There was so much hypocrisy outside, so much distortion, he found it good to get down to the basics. Screw the high philosophy. His other antidote was Van Morrison. Boris played mostly Poetic Champions Compose, especially the instrumentals. He loved that album so much he bought a copy for Johnny so he could listen to it when he went to Johnny’s place. Which was usually every day, but not now. Johnny was in Novi Sad recording with some local musicians and Sara was visiting distant cousins in Macedonia.
Boris looked at the absurdly large wall clock hanging above his desk. It was almost eleven and he put the book down and zapped through several channels trying to find a movie. Instead, he stumbled upon news on a satellite channel. Flashing images of Earth exchanged places with pictures from big cities of the world. The anchor was a prototype, probably a legend in German or Swiss journalism. Boris did not speak German, so he muted the box and reached for an ashtray and the notebook that lay next to it. Before he could light a cigarette, the telephone rang.
“Are you asleep?”
“No. Where are you?”
“Are you alone?” There was urgency in Johnny’s voice.
“I am. Why?”
“Not over the phone. I’m back in Belgrade. We need to talk.”
“Come over.”
“I’ll be there in twenty minutes, okay?”
Johnny hung up, and Boris put his small red phone back on the hook. He went to the kitchen and opened the window. He took out a few eggs, some cheese, and the remains of assorted salamis he found in the fridge behind the milk and set them on the counter. He put the frying pan on the stove and turned on the burner, then started mixing everything he had found in a bowl. When the oil in the pan started smoking, he emptied the bowl into it and let it fry for a minute or two. He removed the pan from the stove and set the table for two.
He opened the door to the small balcony and went outside, propping the door open to allow the fumes out. The street below was almost deserted. That was another thing that had changed with the coming of war. Normally, Belgrade was alive at any time of night, except maybe around four in the morning, when the night owls would be withdrawing before the skunks of day. A cab stopped below him and Johnny got out.
“I thought you were supposed to be in Novi Sad,” Boris said, taking Johnny’s old, long coat.
“I thought so, too. But people have other plans for me.”
“What people?”
Johnny looked at him, not yet ready to talk.
“All right, let’s eat. I made a little something. Wine?”
“Anything to warm up, it’s biting outside.”
As Johnny sat down at the kitchen table, Boris poured some red wine into the water glasses he’d grabbed from the sink. Johnny took a long gulp and Boris refilled his glass.
Johnny stared at his plate, then pushed it away. “You eat, I’ll keep you company.”
“What’s going on?”
“Well, it seems that we pissed someone off with our concert in the square.”
“I’m sure we did,” Boris said, chewing on his omelette.
<
br /> “Yeah, but it’s payback time. At least for me.”
Boris reached for his glass.
“Last night we worked ’til two in the studio. It was good so we stayed a little longer to celebrate. When I got back to my hotel, there was a message for me. It said, ‘Call Mr. Stosic, extension 517, whenever you get back to your room.’ It was past three in the morning and I don’t know anyone by that name so I ignored it and got ready for bed. The telephone rang. I was rude, but the guy cut me off—he was from State Security, he said. He suggested that I meet him in the morning in the hotel restaurant. At first I thought he was pulling my leg but then I realized that the guy knew I’d just returned to my room so he could have indeed been a cop.
“This morning, I’m downstairs having my breakfast, and the guy comes to my table and sits with me. He doesn’t look anything like a cop. He was our age, jeans, leather, all that. Big shoulders. Snake eyes. He orders a coffee and gets right down to business.”
“Where was the good cop?” Boris said.
“This guy was both. You know—a little hot, then a little cold, slaps you with his left hand, pets you with his right.”
“What did he say?”
“That there is a war going on, and although Serbia is not part of it, we have to be ready to prevent it spilling over the border. So the military is doing exercises to keep people awake. All reservists are to take that seriously, and at the moment they are not. I am a symbol, he says, so popular and important, and he’s here to tell me that for the good of Serbia I have to go to one of those exercises.”
“What?”
“Yeah. He said the purpose of his visit was to warn me not to fool around when I get the call. He said that if I cooperated, they wouldn’t use me for direct propaganda. You know, no pictures of Elvis in uniform, no haircut, nothing. But I am in deep shit no matter what. Because we both know that even if Elvis doesn’t pose, selected journalists will be told that I am fulfilling my patriotic duties. And they will publish it. Otherwise, why am I so important as a symbol? And then I can go play at weddings and funerals. Or just funerals.”
“What happens if you don’t go?”
“I could end up in jail.”
“For what?”
“He showed me pictures. You, me, and Sara smoking pot.”
“No!”
“Yes.”
“Where?”
“I’m not sure, but I think it was at a party last summer.”
“The guy with the pool?”
“Probably.”
“I didn’t know he was a snitch. Jesus, Johnny, I took you there.”
They remained silent for a while, Johnny spinning his glass slowly, Boris smoking.
Boris sighed.
Johnny continued to spin his glass without looking up.
“I’ll talk to the General,” Boris said.
VANILLA. November 9, 1992
His mother was chirpy as she announced that she’d serve coffee in the living room.
The living room, and not his study? Of course: generals negotiate on no man’s land. Boris put down the book he was holding and said, “Thanks, Mom, I’ll be right there.”
“You know he can’t stand waiting,” she whispered, her back keeping the sound of her voice from spilling into the hall.
Boris sighed and stood up, glancing around. When he had arrived at the apartment half an hour earlier, his mother had ushered him here into his old room to wait. Entering, he had expected an avalanche of barbed memories, but it didn’t come. The space looked smaller. As soon as he had moved out, they had turned it into a guest room. Not that they ever had any guests.
He followed his mother down the hall. The General was sitting in his usual chair, and though the newspaper was open on the table in front of him, Boris knew that he was not reading. The glasses sitting low on his father’s nose were just an excuse to hold his head in a position from which he could not see him entering.
“Hello, Father,” Boris said.
“Hello, Boris.”
It had been three and a half years since he’d seen his father, except on television. His hair was still black, aside from some grey in his sideburns and at his temples. There were two deep lines at the corners of his mouth that Boris didn’t remember, but his grey eyes had the same edge as always in the same square, masculine face that Boris had hoped for when he had entered puberty, and didn’t get.
Boris glanced at his mother. There was nothing new on her face—they met for coffee once or twice a month, always at her request, always in the same café—but it seemed that she had acquired some of her husband’s aspect. He saw it only now, with the two of them next to each other: the same stiffness of their necks, their lips thinning with age and turning downward at the corners, their eyebrows somehow lighter and readier to lift.
It had taken her three days to soften up the old man enough for Boris’s visit.
The coffee was bitter and strong, served in large cups, just the way the General liked it. Only Mother’s cup was her usual small one. Look, husband, even my coffee cup is smaller than yours.
They each took a sip. There was no ashtray on the table. The General did not allow smoking in his home. It was like meeting an old love: the breakup was painful but time does its tricks, and you sit down over a coffee, hoping that everything will be like it used to be, but then she puts three cubes of sugar in her cup, the thing that always drove you crazy, and you start with, “So?”, the word she hated with a passion.
“How is it going?” Boris asked.
The General looked at him over his glasses, then took them off, slowly, methodically, folded them and put them into a narrow leather sheath.
“Swell, as always,” he finally responded. “You?”
“Not bad.”
Mother pushed the plate with vanilla cookies she had baked towards them. “Boys,” she said, “have some, they are still warm.” Neither responded.
The scent of vanilla filled the room.
“Look,” the General started, “this must be difficult for you, I can gather that much. And you are my son. I don’t want to make it harder.”
Had Mother prepared him? Did she know something? From whom? Will this be that easy?
“The times are good for bad people, and awful for everyone who has some brains.” The General sighed. “In such times, we have to help one another, otherwise we are immoral. I think it is great that you are here. I salute that.” He allowed himself a smile.
“Thanks,” Boris said.
Dear Mom. Dear, dear Mom. He hadn’t told her why he wanted to talk to the General, but perhaps she had talked to Sara, or even Johnny—who knows?
“Your mother told me about that attack on you. Those men must have been on drugs, or insane. In any case, you should put it behind you.”
“I already have.”
“Good.”
“His new exhibition has just opened,” Boris’s mother said.
“Mother—”
“No, no, she’s right,” his father interrupted. “I should go see it. It’s been too long since I saw any of your works. There are no silly pictures of us this time, I hope?” His father’s face actually softened into another smile.
“No,” Boris said, “these are sculptures.”
“Good.”
All three of them sipped their coffee.
“Have you heard that your old friend Maestro, the theatre director—?”
“Yes, I know who—”
“He became a secretary in our party.”
Boris raised his eyebrows.
“Precisely,” said his father. “I had the same reaction. I mean, he’s dedicated to our cause, that’s fine, but he doesn’t have any sort of political experience.”
Why was the General telling him this?
“Many people do not realize that we have much more power than it seems from the outside. Milosevic and his party are running the show, but our party was founded by his wife, and she has huge influence on her husband.” The General’s
tone was content. He ran his fingers through his hair. “We don’t hold too many important positions in the current power structure, but it suits us—most of us prefer to be guerrillas, as you know.”
Guerrilla? He had been an army general.
Boris’s father reached for the plate and took a cookie.
“We don’t need propaganda, we need people who know how things are done. Some separatists in Bosnia and Croatia want to destroy our country, and we have to protect it. It is a very simple, very clear situation.”
Boris knew his father enough not to interrupt him. Instead, he looked at the bookshelf behind the General, and it looked the same as always: the same set of lonely virginal books that will never know the pleasure of being held open. Except … there was no Gulag there now.
“What happened when the Fascists came to power in Spain?” The General raised his finger to underline his words. “All the leading intellectuals lined up against them. The international brigades. You learned about it at school. When Hitler signed the pact with the Yugoslav king, all our leading intellectuals took up arms. Poets went to the woods, painters, sculptors! Now there are hundreds of people volunteering to go to Bosnia and fight. People of all ages and backgrounds.”
“Now, now,” Mother said. “Don’t get too excited, your gout will flare up.”
The General looked at her, incredulous, then turned to Boris: “That’s your mother—we are saving the country, and she doesn’t want me to aggravate my gout.”
In spite of his words, he reached out to pat her hand. Boris thought that he should remember that detail.
“I was very angry when your mother told me about that attack. But I have to tell you that you were in the wrong place, in my opinion. I don’t understand those musicians. Against the war! Against what? Against the fight for freedom? They are blind. Their friends are somewhere in the mud losing limbs for their country, dying, but they don’t want their guitars to get rusty—they have to play their music. It’s pathetic.” The General waved his hand, dismissing them all as hopeless. “And, of course, the criminals and lunatics and junkies came to give their support, and attacked you.” He spread his arms wide: a perfectly logical explanation.
Diary of Interrupted Days Page 5
