Here, the walls are not painted, they are hoarse and covered in dust which has been accumulating for who knows how long, and has made them gray, the floor is bare concrete, planks of various shapes are leaning on the walls, planks that would usually be found only in basements. That is what this place is. A basement. Subterranean flat is a generous name for it. This is a basement with a not-so-long and not-so-broad hallway through whose ceiling – which I could touch if I only raised my arm – rusted pipes pass. Part of a water supply system? Of a sewage system?
The darkness slowly retreats as my eyes get used to it. I want to get out at once, run away, and not call Vesna, and not admit to her that she was right, that nothing normal, or even modest, could be found for ten thousand euros. But I stay. I stay to explore the cave from the childhood stories that no one has ever stepped into, except fictional characters. And I. It is a way to justify the loss of my dignity, but there is also some truth in the fact that I continue because of another reason as well, a much more banal one – the cold. It is never too hot here, it seems, one can sleep peacefully, I will not wake up covered in sweat. Is that sufficient?
“Get up, get up, get up!” his voice comes to my memory, “wake up, you idiot, the baby is crying.” That is how he used to call our daughter – “the baby.” He always reiterates the same words over and over again, and has an explanation why he does that: “I will repeat them over and over again until they enter your thick head.” I looked at time on the cell phone, and realized I had slept for eleven minutes. “Get up! Get up!” I looked at the phone again, this time it was seven minutes. I have slept for eighteen minutes during the entire night. Which is a bit more than the previous nights. “Get up! Why are you watching the phone, do you expect anyone important, whose call are you waiting for? Get up, breastfeed the baby.” My inside is composed of pieces of broken glass. At that moment, the glass smithereens in my head change their position. The people around me, and myself, we all strike ferociously our heads and the others’ heads against the white walls.
Here and now, however, the walls are not white, and sleeping must be good in this freshness.
– This is the kitchen – Violeta opens the first door on the left.
The kitchen looks like a kitchen of a house abandoned and ruined long ago, where characters of a post-apocalyptic movie finally arrive. The oven, the fridge, the shelves, the drawers, they all have the same color, a nuance of gray.
– There are people living in these two rooms – Violeta says, pointing at the two closed doors on the right side of the hallway. Music is heard from the second door on the right.
The bathroom is straight ahead. If it can be called a bathroom. It is shared by the three rooms. There is a rod for a curtain, which (if it existed, as it does not) could potentially protect the floor from being wetted when a person stands in the imaginary bath cabin, unmarked with any lines or low walls. The toilet has a thin seat, the lid is broken and placed on the floor, leaning on the wall behind the bowl.
Then we enter my room. Why do I call it mine? I rush to ask myself, but it is already too late, I have already pronounced the word. There is a bed – that is all there is from furniture. The three windows with bars face the green lawn in the backyard. The room is spacious, and most of it is filled with wood for heating, and with eight car tires. Are these winter or summer tires, I wonder, as if it mattered. I do not ask why there are tires and pieces of wood in a residential room for sale. That is an important question, and my present disbelief is so intense that it allows my mind to only deal with irrelevant question. Where are four more tires for the third car?
I leave, or more precisely, I escape from here, still unable to believe what I saw.
The following day I buy the room. I am not even surprised by my decision, not that I had much choice. Several days later, I move in.
I do not know how to tell my daughter, Klea, about this, and I decide to call her right away, to get off with it as soon as possible, so that I wouldn’t have to pretend. She comes to see where I live. She stands speechless on the threshold of my new home. She does not want to say anything. She is waiting for us to go out on the streets of Crnče, and only then does she ask:
– Why don’t you go back home?
She does not mean the apartment where we used to live together. She means my village near Demir Kapija, the house where, after my parents’ death, only my aunt and uncle live.
Klea does not invite me in her home. She moved away from her father’s apartment after she had graduated several months ago in order to live alone, paying rent. I would not stay there even if she called me, I want to let her feel independent. Perhaps that is why she does not invite me. Or she does not want to live with me. Whatever the reason, I decide not to think about it.
– You mean, at auntie’s house? No way – I reply.
She does not object, she knows I would never live with my aunt.