Swimming in the Dust

/, Literature, Blesok no. 71-73/Swimming in the Dust

Swimming in the Dust

161.
The bus stops, the doors open and I step in the hot Belgrade morning. Snežana wears a silk shirt and shorts, she gives me her hand, her squeeze is firm and her palm is soft and pliant and it lifts me up.
In the tram to New Belgrade we sit opposite to each other and she keeps on chatting happily. She is home alone, we have three days for ourselves only, she says. Then she describes Dubrovnik, Pelegrin, all the places where she’s been that summer. I notice that sometimes we were really close, only hundred or two hundred kilometers away, but it seems as if we had to wait for the end of August to see each other. After all, it seems as if have separated several minutes ago. I like it.
While I shower, she prepares meat. Quite calm, I feel at home, I choose the music, I go through her books, through the notes on her desk, though her clothes… I walk around her room and I look at all the things around. She is in the kitchen; I hear her singling along with the music. All of a sudden I stop, and I see myself standing in an apartment in Belgrade while some woman cooks for me. How much courage do you need, Isakovski, to stay in this apartment for more than couple of days? And how much patience will she need? To accept you with all of your silly flaws. Sometimes you avoid the questions, but that is not the way in which honestly lives. “What kind of wine do you like?” she shouts from the kitchen, it refers to you, Isakovski, and you yell back “Black.” as if you can not go to the kitchen, but nevertheless you can’t because you are standing and trying to speak to yourself. Don’t blame her for interrupting you in your paranoid analyses, anyhow now she just cooks for you and for herself, and she can’t always be in your head. So, get rid of that mean smile, because you yourself don’t know what you could see with the menace inside you. That’s part of you, yes, but let it stay where it is, because it’s good like this and you were calm just a minute ago. But, now you’re not…“Black.” you whisper as you sit by the window, and you look outside at the windows of the neighboring skyscrapers. The city is wrapped in sun, there are shutters down on each window, and you realize how many people hide in their homes. Now from the sun, another time from their neighbors, the third time from the sky above them. Their heterodoxy is reflected in the barrier that they put between themselves and the sky, and most of them have icons and lamps in their concrete residences, as a justification before themselves and their own religion. I didn’t have that religion. I tried to create my own. It was hard, of course. It felt that nobody believed in it, except myself. Sometimes it felt that even I didn’t believe in it. I easily fell under pressure; it only needed someone to leave me get crazy for love. And I should laugh at at. Fix it. Try to persevere. Memorize the past, and not live in it.

162.
I took her on all places, I took her with all of my body and when we did not eat we made love. I started thinking that we have discovered a way how to skip sleeping. We made love with our eyes closed, slowly as two snakes under the hot sun, we breathed rhythmically, we tossed around in our juices and we spoke with all of our senses. I started sensing her heart pulsating through my body, through my whole body and my mind, and everything that she said was so wonderfully close to truth, it was as we have emerged in water, in a strong big water, and as we dissolved in it to all of our parts, to all of our parts to the smallest in us, and we became a part of the great strong water that reflects the world in its endless movement.

When I think of it now, I understand how normally I took all things. It is normal as it is normal to breathe to live. It is strange how people easily take all the goods that are being offered to them; as if it is quite usual, as if it is for granted. It seems that nobody thinks of fighting for what they have; we all try to keep what we lose.

163.
Maybe one should remember that life consists of small efforts, of going a step more forward. Of fixing the details. Of accepting the failures, enjoying the achieved. To make life better. To please the close ones and enjoy it. Otherwise, we can easily turn into reptiles, leaving our eggs in other’s delivery, changing our skin without a particular justification, not out of habit, but out of a wish to fit in, to be mimicrical.
One should not neglect the honesty with himself. Of course the questions peck in us and disrupt our usual everyday order of things. But if we leave them to sink deep enough though us, the pecking will find its pray, it will dig out the deeply buried failures one by one, small and big, and then we are only to face them, chew them with appetite, spit out the stale poison and breathe easier, more cheerfully.

164.
She kissed me as we stood in front of the bus. We smiled. We shall see each other again, our eyes were saying. I ran my fingers down her cheek. She took my forefinger in her mouth and sucked it deeply. I got a hard on. Almost immediately.
“We’ll see each other again.” I said.
“Mhm.”
I sat on the co-driver’s seat and all the way to Skopje I looked at the white and yellow lines on the motorway.

165.
They waited for me at the station, Turk and Mars. I had no idea how they knew when I was coming. I didn’t even know if they knew exactly where I had been. Still, it was nice that somebody was waiting for me.
“Hey.” I said.
“Hey.” They said.
“I’m here.”
“Good.” Said Mars.
“Cousin, how come you’re here?” said Turk.
Fuck it, they did not wait for me.
“I’m coming home. You?”
“We’re waiting for some records from Belgrade.”
“Nice. I thought you were waiting for me.”
“Huh, not really. But tomorrow we’re going to Budapest. Wanna come with us?”
“What’s in Budapest?”
“Bowie’s concert. We need one more person to buy a group train ticket.”
“I don’t really have any money…”
“We’ll find something.” said Turk. My brother. My cousin. My bro…
“You didn’t go to the army?” asked Mars.
“I’m waiting for the invitation these days.”
“They took your passport?”
“No, they never asked for it.”
“We leave tomorrow at 7. ”
“AM?”
“Yup.”
Early as hell.

166.
We entered Budapest two days later, eager and cheerful. At that time, in 1990, for Hungary we were rich men. With little money we spent all day in restaurants and museums. We ate caviar for breakfast at Váci Street. I had never tasted caviar before. It associated of champagne and wealth. Loads of money. And since, as you know, I had no money, caviar was crossed out of menu for all the past twenty years of my life. Now, at Váci, the most famous street in Pest, Turk, Mars, myself and several other people from Macedonia ate caviar and showed off. At least I felt I was showing off. Nicely baked bread, butter and all other paraphernalia. And a bit of vodka, to start the day. Frozen Stolichnaya. A half a liter bottle. It sled down.

We crossed the Lion bridge early in the afternoon and we walked around Buda. Then we returned to Pest, across another bridge. And back again. As starlings in the spring. I like Pest at first sight. It rarely happens with the cities, but it was really beautiful. The autumn sun was pleasant, the Danube brought fresh wind, a small million of people sat and walked in the small squares. The girls didn’t wear any bras. I saw beautiful girls without bras everywhere, in light shirts and T-shirts, relaxed and damn well aware of their beauty. They had a very cool background for this promenade: old, imperial buildings. Constructions with high pillars, decorated balconies. Framed with concrete filigrees. High windows. And one here and there that was different. Those buildings were also good, the different ones.
In Buda, we found a small park near the river. In the park, there was a big, perfectly rounded rock. It looked like a giant black-gray ball. I sat on the rock and I looked at the river. I was crossing it all day long, but I saw it now. A beautiful, large river. How does it look when it is not surrounded by quays, I thought. Somewhere far, against the flow, I saw a green island. It seemed that there were some buildings on it. Something white, in any case. In the end, I gazed at the sky. It stunned me. I literally startled. I had seen open skies, but after all kilometers that summer and spending time in the streets and squares of the city that afternoon, the sky seemed open as never before. It was sparkled with remains of feathery clouds, it was blue and I saw its depth. I sat on the rock, smoked and stared upwards. The fingers on my right hand danced. I wrote a poem. Sky. My first sky in Budapest.

2018-08-21T17:22:54+00:00 June 30th, 2010|Categories: Prose, Literature, Blesok no. 71-73|0 Comments