This book follows the life trail of Lila, who lived and is fascinated by her home, but even more by her abroad; however, she is not torn at all as it is the case with big part of the Macedonian books, where the distinction here : there is most often deadly for the characters. She does not fear her I and her Home in the European metropolises; on the contrary, the absence from Home helps her find it in: the discussions on Romanian literature in the breaks between the lectures in Bucharest, in the rice bowl in Taipei, in the smell of Lenor softener in Vienna, in the hotel room in Stockholm, in the body of her beloved husband A. from Ljubljana. Nevertheless, there is an ironic opposition between the West and Lila’s “country”. In the first part of the novel, Lila’s hidden camera tells about the first encounter with Vienna, where the children from the Balkans, Lila and her friend Vesna have a tour around Vienna with the couple Vera and Ismet who are small smugglers of coffee for Yugoslavia. The opposition between their clothes made by “Crvena zvezda” and “Čik” (the official trademark at that time) and the clothes coming from the West, Slovenia, as “Slovenia šport” and “Montka 501” is given. This opposition of there and here is accompanied by the comments of the adults, who utter the phrase “rotten capitalist society” when they speak of the western European countries in the novel.
There is also intense irony in the Hamlet-like dilemma of Lila when she wakes up in Vienna for the first time, that is the second time, not as a child, but as a professional writer, who was founded to stay in Vienna to write a novel about “her abroad”. Her dilemma is “Good morning, Vienna? Ajvar of jam, that is the question?” This dilemma of the selection between the Balkan ajvar or jam, as a “synecdoche” of the cultivated western European meal put Lila before a choice, to remain herself or to put on a stranger’s skin. From her previous experience we know that you can feel the new home a home only if you melt in it and in the crowd. That is why she chooses jam. This dilemma of hers seems to be borrowed from the Slovenian movie “Kajmak in marmelada” of 2003, directed by the well known dissident Branko Gjurić – Gjura (Top lista nadrealista). There too, the “Balkan mentality” in the Slovenian “Europocentric” codex is shown in a comic way.
Besides Lila, there are two more fellows of the foundation in this Vienna apartment, the Pakistani ethno-musician Joseph and the Albanian photographer Edlira. The main “link” of the Vienna foundation, the Austrian Klaus, who takes care of his fellows, starts asking questions at the very beginning about their family histories of dissidents and the reasons for their coming to a western European state. The depersonalization of the artists is obvious with Clauss, for he is more interested in the origin and the political background of the grandfathers of the fellows then in themselves. Lila does not remain uncritical about this. Joseph is the only one who has somebody in is family who had left for France for political reasons, while Edlira is a granddaughter of a close associate of Enver Hoxha, the big Albanian communist dictator, who kept his land in a severe isolation until the 80es of the 20th century, when Albania was opened for the world after his death. But this girl only seemingly enjoyed the privileges of the communist system among the elite. With Lila, the story is even more frustrating that he she can not choose a side if Yugoslavia or Macedonia after the independence was better. At a deeper level, it is seen that she is still not indifferent about this. Her teachers on couple of occasions made her write a poem about the healing of comrade Tito, and after her child’s surprise about why not writing about her grandmother and grandfather who are also sick, she is “deservingly” published and insulted. In another occasion, they made her read the poem “Jama” by Ivan Goran Kovačić, not dressed in her long expected pink clothes, but in a black dress and white shirt, as ordered by her teacher, which leads to interruption of the event. The hidden camera even gives episodes from the childhood in a kindergarten, at the time when the cars drive in odd and even days8F, and the children went to the kindergarten in odd and even days. It seems that Leibniz “binary system” was also present in the kindergartens. On the day of grief on the occasion of the death of comrade Tito, on 4 May 1980, the dentist refuses to take out little Lila’s sore tooth, telling her that she should not have had a toothache on that day, since everybody is in grief, and that tooth is supposed to hurt, when everybody is in grief and sorrow because of president’s death. These small episodes make Lila be lot a large extent critical about the former system, but she does not do it by choosing a “quasinationalistic” side (typical today for a big part of the yesterday’s devoted communists who became nationalists and capitalists via an incredibly “expedite mimicry”, such as the case with Lila’s father, who becomes a devoted opponent to the communists after the 1991 independence, although he was a sworn communist); on the contrary, she does it with a cosmopolitan patriotism, certain enough about who she is. Only such a person is practically capable of cultural exchange and cooperation, of meetings with cultures and civilizations. For Lila, home is any place where literature and her A. are. The home of the poet is where his/her verses are. That is why the poets live their exile as a creation. Therefore her fascination with the works of Cvetaeva, Brodsky, Nabokov and many other poets who found their literary “sanctuary” in exile. In an occasion, Lila says: “If somebody asks me about a definition of poetry, I shall say: Poetry, my dear brother, is a memory inflammation, nothing more or less”.9F The nomadic nature, the encounters and people met are the things that create the arsenal of our writing. Almost all characters that Lila encounters in her travels are open people, who on their free will learn about Lila and the Macedonian culture. But there are also examples of xenophobia in the novel by some characters.
The paid art of the Albanian Edlira in Vienna is to photograph the coffee grounds from the emptied cups. This modern type of art for her comes from her childhood. If we cite the “abject art” (with which I was acquainted in the book Sanitary Enigma10F, which helped me make some “new readings” of the novel), to find the artistic in the rest, we shall agree that the coffee grounds with Edlira is related to the episodes of her early childhood, when she was forced to go to another room with her sisters and be quiet, while her communist grandfather (collaborator of Hoxha) was sitting with his collaborators discussing politics. After these suspicious guests left, only the cups with the coffee grounds would remain on the table in the guest room. Deep in her psyche, the grounds was related to the “dirt” of the acts of these people, and in this way her liberation from the communist regime resulted in a fascination with the dirty coffee cups. The childhood prohibition to touch the coffee grounds is now replaced with the freedom to photograph them. After the end of communism, the grounds is already a democratic abject that can be reviewed, and even treated as art. The parallel is clear:
– drunk coffee grounds with
– the rage that is left after the “important” guests have left with
– the stains after the “feast” of the people whom nobody has seen, except being warned about their presence.11F
#b
8. Тука интересно е даден детскиот аспект на „полигамијата“. Во еден од оние денови (во периодот познат како „стабилизација“) кога Лила не смеела да оди во непарен ден на училиште, затоа што претходниот ден бил „нејзиниот“ ден за на училиште, ја чувале разноразни тетки и комшики, кои според нејзините кажувања, секојдневно ја „ветувале“ за своето комшиче или внук. Интересно е како преку ваквите шеги во младоста полесно се преминува преку „ бенигниот промискуитет“ кој дури и се одобрува, за подоцна моралот и јавното мнение во патријахалните средини ја гушат оваа во младоста антиципирана „слобода“.
9. Димковска, Лидија: Скриена камера, Магор, Скопје, 2004, стр. 206
10. Котеска, Јасна: Санитарна енигма, Темплум, Скопје, 2006
11. Мораме да имаме и предвид дека талогот од кафе и фасцинацијата од него, е присутна и во голем дел од муслиманскиот свет, но и Балканските држави кои долго време биле под турско – ориентално влијание. Гледањето на кафе е важен ритуал и ден денес, како еден вид на домашен секојдневен Тарот, за фрлање поглед во блиската иднина, најчесто кон темите на љубов, пари и здравје.