Читать книгу Absolution - Aleš Šteger - Страница 8

Off-Stage

Deep in thought, Bely paces the hotel room. Squeaking floor and a mild scent of decay. Beyond windows, solid greyness. Rosa sits on the bed, earphones in her ears, rewinding the recordings. She turns off the Dictaphone.

‘I don’t know. This could be a big mistake.’

‘What do you mean, a mistake?’ mutters Bely under his breath.

‘We didn’t get enough information from them. It was impossible to get anything out of Ornik this morning, with her colleagues next door, so we should’ve been that much more thorough with Gram.’

‘Don’t go there! Further interrogation would’ve been a waste of time, trust me. No one in the group knows all thirteen members,’ says Bely as he scratches his neck. ‘They’re linked through small pieces of information, which they don’t even know they have. What we’re dealing with here is the truth that is of a different mental dimension and is only regenerated directly through the past. We’re talking about the truth that’s stored elsewhere, not within our brain, not within our physical bodies.’ Bely keeps going and then flops into a chair. ‘We could’ve quizzed them for many more hours, but we’d get nothing but little bits from their current and previous lives. To reach deeper we’d have to perform a radical regression, which requires time and numerous sessions, otherwise we’d be at risk of losing their souls forever.’

Bely discovers the little bottle with his pills on a table. Two pills slide down the bottleneck and out into his hand.

‘A soul breaks away into this interspace, and nothing can bring it back,’ mumbles Bely while swallowing the pills.

‘This interspace you mention, is it the same as the space that the souls we absolve go to?’ asks Rosa as she readjusts her gloves.

‘That’s a whole different story,’ replies Bely then resumes pacing the creaking carpet of the hotel room. ‘Listen. The body of every single person, including yours and mine, is inhabited not by a single soul but a number of souls. Quite insignificant if you consider the number of souls that are trapped in those who comprise the Great Orc. We’re talking thirteen human bodies who are weighed down by the unbearable weight of the past.’

‘Are these the souls from our previous lives?’ asks Rosa with a quizzical gaze beneath her brow.

Bely stops and looks closely at the abrasions on the hotel room door. ‘We have all lived many lives, we all were many in the past, but that’s not what’s crucial here. That’s obvious to all who have ever experienced déjà vu. Over many thousands of years you and I met on many occasions, we both know that. We met in different physical shapes, different genders, in different relationships and at different times. And to some degree, with special techniques, we can trace our pasts. But don’t forget, our souls are comprised of many souls, which are much older. So when we perform absolution we absolve these ancient souls that were brought here millions of years ago and have roamed aimlessly ever since their bodies were violently murdered. It is these ancient souls that determine who we are here today.’ Bely halts at the other end of the room and looks out the window. The firewall of the adjacent house grows invisible as the grey of the day yields ground to twilight. The shaft in front of Bely’s reflection in the window fills with thick, fluffy darkness.

‘In Scientology we dedicated a lot of our time to interviews that they call auditing. But that would require time we just don’t have. But yesterday, when we entered the New World, we launched a series of processes. At this point the only way forward is to pick up every little piece of information from all the names we have before these processes have the last word. We have six more names on our list. They must give us the names of the other members, all of whom we must find and absolve before it’s too late.’

Rosa puts down the Dictaphone and sits on the edge of the bed. ‘And that’s where you got your E-meter?’ she asks, pulling out the cigarette case, which she then places on the desk next to the Dictaphone.

‘You mean from the Scientologists?’ Bely asks.

Rosa nods.

‘Yes, it’s the only thing I took from them, which is nothing compared with what I left behind. But that’s how it’s got to be. I absolved them, too. Generally speaking, the worst thing that we can bring upon ourselves is to drag our past with us. I disagree with many things in Scientology, now that I’m not biased and can look at it from a distance, but they had a breakthrough in one thing: we must get rid of our own baggage, especially that which we’re not aware of.’

‘Ah, Bely, from your mouth everything sounds so simple. I’ll never be able to the forgive people who tried to kill me,’ says Rosa, lighting up a fresh cigarette.

‘Do you have to smoke in here?’ asks Bely.

Rosa steps to a window, opens it slightly and puffs out into the fresh air. ‘Listen, these socialist hotels far surpass all that capitalist opulence in one thing – they’re so impregnated with tobacco smoke that nothing can make them stink any worse. And this one doesn’t even have smoke detectors.’

Bely shrugs. ‘Rosa, you say that you’ll never be able to forgive. But that’s the only way we could have met. We should be grateful to those people who made our paths cross. Without them we wouldn’t be sitting here.’

‘Bastards,’ Rosa hisses and flicks her half-smoked cigarette into the night, white smoke pouring out of her mouth. With her blunt metal grip she grabs hold of the window handle and twists it shut.

‘Yesterday I dreamed about the swamp again. I couldn’t get back to sleep afterwards. That absent look on Gram’s face when you gave him the cracker. He just wouldn’t leave me alone, but after a while I finally drifted off. Leeches everywhere, little tadpoles crawling all over me, and I couldn’t run because my legs wouldn’t move. Horrible.’

Bely looks at the clock. He reaches for the little bottle again, spills two pills into his hand and swallows them.

‘You’re a pill-popper, you know that? You stuff yourself with this shit way too much.’

‘They’re not pills, only a dietary supplement,’ replies Bely, scratching his abdomen.

‘And look what they’ve done to you, these dietary supplements of yours. They’ve turned you into a walking skeleton. In the month I’ve known you, you must have lost at least five, six kilos, in spite of eating normally. It’s must be the pills. What else?’

‘These pills break down fat cells in your body. I believe that it’s much harder to identify souls that inhabit corpulent bodies as opposed to slender ones. Fat acts as their shelter, it’s where they become unidentifiable and hide, out of sight. Human fat is the source of their food. It’s no coincidence that clarity of thought can only be achieved through fasting. When we starve, we deny these souls their chance to hide, to pollute our minds, to subdue us.’

The moment Bely utters his last word, Rosa nervously grabs the bag on the table. In it are two large bottles of Coke, crisps, a packet of chewing-gum. She pulls open the bag of crisps and digs in. Bely looks at the clock.

‘We should leave in twenty minutes. I’ll just go to my room quickly. I’ll knock when I’m ready. OK?’ Bely takes the little bottle and drops it into a pocket in his coat.

Rosa steers her hand full of crisps towards her mouth. The residue of small yellow potato flakes and sparkly crystals of salt are embedded in her glove. Anxious and munching away, she watches him leave.

Once in his room, Bely first takes off his shirt, then his undershirt. He lights up the room and observes his reflection in the cracked bathroom mirror. Lush body hair across his chest, moles, large and small, scattered everywhere. Bely leans closer under the light above the mirror. His fingertips travel carefully across the upper part of his body. He lifts his left arm, feels around the armpit, turns around and examines his neck and back, leaning towards the source of light to ensure that nothing remains unexamined. Nothing, nowhere, nothing.

‘Strange,’ mumbles Bely, ‘really strange.’

Rosa is already in the corridor when Bely steps out of his room. Outside, the sky flickers in the white snow. Hastily, Rosa lights up a cigarette, takes a deep puff and swings her hand under Bely’s arm. Together they trudge along Gosposka Street, once one of the city’s most élite thoroughfares, but today a harbinger of the old city centre’s impending decay. Feeble street lamps, closed stores. Above their heads the web of gloomy New Year’s decorative silhouettes dips ominously low from the snow that adheres to the wires. Passers-by are few. On the corner a man with a radio on top of a cardboard box. Dalmatian folk-songs intertwined with static. In his hand, a marionette soldier dangles off long, translucent threads. The marionette promenades, floating above the soiled snow. Glittering in the night. In the middle of a square further on stands a Baroque plague column. Behind it, another balloon featuring the unusual sign, beneath which stands the inscription: EUROPEAN CAPITAL OF CULTURE. Squealing, the snow-stifled sound of the balloon-rotation mechanism, the roar of the puffing air that keeps the balloon aloft.

Slippery bridge. Falling snowflakes, moisture, the banks of the Drava River, cars pulling invisible cloaks of noise and lead, the rustling of the river, the icicles trickling off the cast-iron rail. Bely stops in the middle of the bridge. He leans across the rail, above the drifting darkness. Lamps flicker above Rosa and Bely. Snowflakes now hurriedly plunge into the depths to be swallowed by the river, the hallucinogenic attraction of its current, the feeling of its inescapable power.

‘He plunged in somewhere around here,’ says Bely.

‘Who?’ Rosa asks.

‘This guy. I knew him pretty well. The same generation. We grew up together. He was a performer and a songwriter, and I was into theatre. Anyway, we both had a huge crisis at about the same time. He lived with his mother, while I was already renting an apartment. He stayed at his mother’s, and I ended up fleeing the city, which probably saved me. Had I stayed like he did …’

Bely stares into the depths. The wind picks up his hair and tousles it.

‘Who knows …’ Bely adds quietly.

‘What happened to him?’ asks Rosa and swipes the black curls off her cheek.

‘He jumped off this bridge. On a wintry day, like today, early in the morning. They tried to save him but couldn’t. Since then, he’s been coming to see me every now and then. He toys with me, tells me I’m still irreversibly egotistical. I say that’s positive egotism, but he pretends that he doesn’t understand. Some things never change. Ever the cheapskate, always short of money, but in company he was the big-hearted genius who never had it easy in life. Me, the one who actually made some money, I was always the cheapskate, the geek. We spent a lot of time in Off. It’s been nearly twenty years.’

Rosa lights up a new cigarette, inhales and flicks the cigarette over the bridge. They see it fall, a tiny light smothered by the night and consumed by the devouring rustle of the river.

‘I don’t feel like smoking tonight,’ Rosa says and cuddles up to him again.

‘Let’s go’, he says, ‘to Off, that sub-culture club right behind the city hospital. Some time ago I read in the Austrian newspapers that this is the best hospital in Europe, at least in terms of successful resuscitation. An interesting piece of trivia. People who have long been destined to die are more often brought back to life in this city than anywhere else. Although coming back is not up to those who are dying. It’s decided on by the souls that inhabit them. The souls of people here aren’t interested in leaving; they want to stay in an environment where nothing ever changes, like here in Maribor. Every soul was subject to radical brainwashing. They’d be in pain if they found out who they are and how they got here. Millions of years ago people were not only killed – by which I mean their bodies, that’s the easy part – they also found a way to manipulate their souls. You can’t kill a soul, but you can dispossess them of their self and reduce them to shadows with no future. Our souls, the way we perceive them, aren’t real souls. They’re only the remains of the manipulated souls of our ancestors. Our souls are only sad remains, which cling to each other out of fear of being forever lost.

Bely notices Rosa’s covert laughter. ‘Why are you laughing?’

‘I’m not laughing. I believed in souls myself when I was a child. Then, for about two decades, I was convinced that there’s no such thing as the soul and that we only get one chance at life. Then something changed my life forever, split it in two, and suddenly I believed in souls again. The question is, do we believe in them because we fear that there’s nothing out there? Or because we’re helpless? I don’t know.’

‘But, Rosa, they do visit you, don’t they?’

Rosa nods. ‘Yes, they’re with me the entire time, and that’s why I believe in them. Tell me, though, are some souls really scared of being destroyed, even when they’re here with us?’ Rosa asks doubtfully.

‘Not the souls that are self-aware, not them. It’s the phantom collage of our souls that’s scared. Why else would they be so determined to keep their shells alive? Life in this city can’t be so damned wonderful that the fully conscious souls would want to stay at any cost. Of course, there’re other things to consider here, but we’ll discuss those later. We’ve arrived.’

The courtyard of the old industrial complex, graffiti, above a door a sign that reads OFF. The round door recalls that of a submarine. A couple of guys, leather, cigarette smoke, each holding a bottle of beer. Out of the night a pack of dogs emerges. They sprint across the whitecoloured courtyard and chase the scent of a bitch. The men follow them with their eyes then turn their gaze to Rosa, who walks past them and in through the door.

It’s spacious and chilly inside. A roughly chiselled log bar, behind which a girl in a red turtleneck eavesdrops on a conversation that is being held across the room. Some twenty people sit in the corner, involved in a heated debate. One of them rises and tells the rest that he opposes maintaining a gradual increase in pressure on the mayor and that immediate resistance should be employed, and that strategic stalling is no longer an option. The chair of the meeting listens carefully, and while acknowledging these concerns as legitimate he advises that they’re in it for the long haul and that they all remain thoughtful and persistent. He puts it to a vote and is backed by the majority.

‘The next public protest against the wastewater treatment plant construction at the base of Calvary will be held on Friday next week in front of the town hall. The organizing committee will meet again on Monday to finalize the details of the protest. The public will be kept informed via the usual channels, principally through Facebook. That’ll be it for tonight,’ says the chair.

Everybody rises, some change tables, others step out into the fresh air. The speakers crackle with death metal.

‘I must be dreaming! Adam Bely! Are you still alive? I can’t believe it. I’d never expect to see you here!’ The chair of the meeting shakes Bely’s hand and pats him on the back.

‘Meet Ivan Dorfler, the legendary boss of Off. This is Rosa Portero, my colleague from Austria. Rosa’s working on a radio piece about Maribor, so I thought I’d show her around Off a bit. I’m guessing that few journalists head straight for this place.’

‘You’d be surprised, Adam. We’ve hosted a bunch actually, especially over the last year. This is a hipster joint, not an old hole-in-the-wall any more. Come, let me show you to my office so we can talk. It’s too noisy here.’

Books and CDs everywhere you look, total chaos, dozens of semidisintegrating binders strewn across the table, portraits of Tito, Mao Zedong and the Virgin Mary with a hammer and sickle piercing her heart. Next to it, a poster of the dove of peace with an olive branch in its beak. The air is warm, stale with cigarette smoke. Empty bottles are scattered across the floor; two worn-out leather sofas, a table and an ashtray, cigarette butts, stains all over the table.

‘Adam, I haven’t seen you for ten years, maybe more.’

‘Sixteen,’ says Adam as he takes a glass. Dorfler pours them each three fingers of whisky. They toast. Rosa gapes at Adam as he empties his glass. She can’t believe her brown eye. Never since they met has she seen him drink alcohol. Dorfler refills their glasses. He offers them cigarettes. Dorfler and Rosa light up.

‘I can’t believe my eyes. You’re thinner and you’ve gone grey, but otherwise you look exactly the same. Where’ve you been hiding, for God’s sake?’

Bely reaches for his coat, pulls out his bottle and flushes down his pills with more whisky.

‘Well, I moved to Austria. First, I was in Graz, then Leoben. I do visual communication now, ads, marketing and stuff like that.’

‘And theatre?’ Dorfler provokes. ‘Since when have you been able to live without theatre, Adam?’

‘I’m better off without it,’ responds Bely, draining his glass.

Dorfler tops it up again. ‘I can’t believe that. Your friend here’, says Dorfler in German as he turns to Rosa, ‘is the biggest theatre fanatic I’ve ever met in my life. And, believe me, I’ve met a few. Back in high school he sold his soul to theatre, the worst of devils. And now he claims that he no longer cares about it. What happened? You wouldn’t know anything about it, miss, would you?’

Rosa smiles and lights up a fresh cigarette.

‘I’m all right, no worries. What about you? It seems that the revolutionary Eros hasn’t left you even after all this time.’

‘The people you saw outside, they’re a wonderful group. Intellectuals, very erudite, proactive youngsters who are fed up with this neoliberal shit. Have you heard what’s going on in the city? Huge deals, that’s what’s going on. All while people are starving. We must put an end to it. This city is rife with discontent; every other person here is unemployed. And all they do is show scorn for us and steal from right under our noses. Do they think we’re stupid, that we’re blind? The group you saw is the core of the organizing committee in charge of protests against the corrupt city administration. No politician in the entire country is as corrupt as our Mayor Voda, if you ask me. He cut money for social support to build this art palace down the street from us. Have you been? A useless gallery with an enormous hall at the top, a private elevator, an office and a private Jacuzzi. All for the price of a hospital. Do you know what that means? You know how things are built around here, what public money is spent on. A truck full of bricks, potholes strategically located in front of every politician’s house, the truck bounces and hop, one by one, the bricks disappear into their courtyards until finally the truck arrives at its destination empty. They deserve nothing but the gallows. They’re crooks. We’ll let them have their carnival.’

‘I see you haven’t changed at all,’ Bely smirks at Dorfler’s fiery speech.

‘Of course I have! Last time we saw each other I was only a teaching assistant, and now, now I’m a dean,’ grins Dorfler. ‘I’m not kidding. We must put an end to this neoliberal theft. The worst is yet to come. Just today the city council confirmed the “rebalancing” of an investment worth two hundred million euros, which exceeds the annual city budget. And for what? For a wastewater treatment plant in a protected water area, which is right next to the old city centre. According to our calculations, such an undertaking should cost no more than one tenth of their estimate. But no, in order to clean shit they plan to release wastewater into the ground under Calvary. They’ll burrow into the hill and, oh-by-the-way, they’ll also erect a garage for the mayor at the bottom, near Pyramid Hill, and an apartment building or two for all of his sweethearts. And since the porous ground can make building into a hillside unpredictable, the investment will rise and rise until its value outweighs all the souls that still live in this city. No. We need revolt, we need change, and we need it now.’

‘Nice to see the intellectuals of Maribor taking pleasure in such activist ecstasy. So, you’re done with 2 × 2 × 2?’

Dorfler smirks.

Rosa notices an unusual expression on his face. ‘Was bedeutet zweimal zweimal zwei?’ she asks.

‘That was a traditional game played by the young intellectuals of Maribor,’ explains Bely. ‘It requires two players. They get locked into a room where they have to stay for two whole days. Their goal is to assume the mental age of a two year-old as quickly as possible, not only in terms of their speech but also behaviour, from walking, crawling and thumb-sucking to floor-licking. Sooner or later the players relax so much that they fall into some sort of state of regression, taking off their clothes, looking at their genitalia or chewing on each other’s bibs. Jostling for toys and the pooing of pants is normal. They’re allowed to do everything, as long as they stick to the purpose of the game. They’re being filmed the entire time, so that they can see themselves in action once the game is over. If they recover, of course.’

‘Some people still play the game, although it’s lost its popularity. Internet’s a bitch these days. The recordings began slipping into the wrong hands and were easily used for blackmail.’

Dorfler pulls tobacco and some cigarette papers out of the desk. A big piece of hash licks the lighter flame. Dexterous crush and roll. Dorfler fires it up, inhales deeply and passes it on to Bely. He holds it for a while without taking a puff and hands it back to Dorfler, but Rosa’s white gloved hand intercepts it. She inhales. She passes it on to Dorfler, who studies Rosa from above his round spectacles.

‘Adam, you’ve got an interesting young lady here. Where do you come from, Rosa?’

‘From Graz.’

‘I mean, originally?’

‘My father is from Havana; my mother is Austrian. I never got to know my father. We came to Austria when I was five, but my father left us soon after that. My mum always said he’d gone back to Cuba to dance salsa. I never saw him again,’ she smiles scornfully.

‘And you work as a journalist?’

‘Yes. I’m working on a radio piece for Austrian radio about Maribor as the European Capital of Culture.’

‘This is the European capital of nepotism and neoliberal manure, not culture. All the people hired to put together the European Capital programme are, as you’d expect, hirelings from elsewhere, from Ljubljana, who came here only to rechannel European money. If they were at all impartial, they would distribute the funding equally among every Maribor cultural worker. A thousand, fifteen hundred per head. At least that way we’d know where the funds were going. That would be the only fair model of democratic culture, not these golden plumes in operatic performances for élites. Although it’s also true that culture should become more democratic and show more solidarity. The true cultural workers and intellectuals these days are proletarians, nothing like these self-professed art élites, these self-complacent, capitalist arse-licking cliques.’

Dorfler sways gently, stands up, scours through a pile of paper on the desk and pulls out a newspaper.

‘You journalists should be the voice of the people’s conscience, and not the herald of capital. Look at this! Look at the today’s front page. “Mother sent to court because she had her one-month-old baby tattooed without the father’s approval”. What’s this world coming to? Seriously, is this a headline that deserves the front page? As a progressive democratic society, you’d think we’d be enlightened enough to protect not only human rights but also the autonomous parental rights to a liberal upbringing. The Mother tattooed her baby with the Maribor football-team logo. What in God’s name is wrong with that? Do we really have to call the fire brigade for something like that? Do we not label our children from birth onwards? What about personal rights? And what, a tattoo of Jesus on a cross would be fine? You two will say that this is just a matter of nomenclature. Very soon we won’t be able to name our own kids any more. I’ve got a son. But there’s nothing I’m allowed to say to him. He doesn’t so much as look at me when I say something, he’s glued to his iPad, firing away. Pirates, militiamen and sometimes Martians. All day long without interruption, shooting. Boom, boom, boom. For real? Are we really supposed to worry about a purple stain on a baby’s butt, oh please! Shouldn’t we instead focus on the wastewater treatment plant that’ll gobble up babies’ shit, not to mention our money, for the next five or six decades and mess up the entire ecosystem of Calvary? Or on money that was lost to the construction of the Marx Centre? Talking about your friend Andreas, the dream vendor, we just got rid of him, we threw him out of this city, and before you know it he’s back with this developmental-cultural centre of Maribor called Marx. You get me, Adam. You worked alongside him for so many years, or at least you tried to. And do you know where he drew inspiration for this name, Marx? The name that defines this city’s culture? From his wife’s skunk. You don’t know about the skunks? Yes, three. He’s got three. Marx, Groucho and Harpo.’

‘OK, but as far as I know there’re many people here in Maribor who have skunks as pets,’ says Bely.

‘I’ve got nothing against them, don’t get me wrong. My sister owns them, too. She had their glands removed, but they still stink. They make me sick to my stomach when I step into her apartment. They’re all over you, those creatures, they crawl under your trousers, your shirt, they climb onto your head. Horrible. And what’s even worse is that you have to trim their claws so they don’t destroy your furniture. It takes at least two to trim the claws of a stinky-arsed skunk. You cut, while the other person holds the animal down. I love my sister, there’s no question about that, but holding her skunks every Tuesday afternoon so that she can trim their claws, that’s one step too far.’

‘What does Evelyn do?’

Dorfler gets up and fills the glasses again. From beyond the walls comes the sound and rhythm of dull and steady blows accompanied by groans. From the other side of the soundproofed door leaks the softened sounds of booming death metal.

‘She works at some firm in investment management,’ says Dorfler curtly.

‘I see. Didn’t she work at a bank? What firm does she work for?’ asks Adam Bely and pulls a fountain pen out of his pocket.

Rosa straightens her back, her gaze firmly fixed on Dorfler’s exaggerated fumbling.

‘She works for the town hall. Not for the mayor, not for that scoundrel. She’s the head of the investment department that deals with social services.’

Sighing and groaning, louder and louder. Banging on the other side of the wall.

‘These aren’t easy times; it’s a struggle for all of us. The college is in complete disarray, a total lobotomy. You can’t imagine the things I must do to retain my autonomy there. We were cut from the city budget years ago. Now we’re on our own. Some income comes from the café and some from rentals.’

The banging against the wall gets harder and faster. Laborious breathing, followed by a wheeze. Now only soft death metal from beyond the door on the other side of the room.

‘You’ve got some lively tenants,’ says Bely as he swings his fountain pen back and forth.

‘You’ve got no idea. There’s a swingers’ club for pensioners back there, possibly the most profitable club in Maribor right now. All the ordinary brothels have gone bankrupt but not this one. They’ve gone about the business professionally, with discretion and business ethics. It doesn’t bother me. We’re all liberal, right? And we’ll be members before you know it. That counts for something.’

Dorfler forces a smile, rummages through his jacket, pulls out his wallet, slides out a credit card then a plastic bag. He shakes some of the white powder on a newspaper. Chopping motion of the credit card, lined powder moving back and forth across the paper. Rosa looks on intently. Bely tries to attract Dorfler’s attention with his swinging pen.

‘Come on, Bely, you don’t think you’ll hypnotize me with that pencil of yours?’ Dorfler jokes. ‘Here, have a line instead.’

Bely puts the fountain pen back into his jacket and scratches his thigh. He takes the little tube that Dorfler has just rolled out of paper and brings it up to his nose. The thin line of white powder disappears up Bely’s nose like water in the desert. Dorfler offers the other line to Rosa, who shakes her head and lights up another cigarette. Dorfler snorts the second line and clears his throat. The third line vanishes into Bely’s nose again.

‘Why did you come back, Adam? What’s your real agenda here?’

‘I’m here to help.’

‘Who, me?’

‘You, too, Ivan.’

‘No offence, Adam, but we don’t need your help. You’re no longer one of us, Adam. You’re Austrian now. Go back to where you came from.’

‘Exactly my intention, but before I go back I’ve got something important that needs tackling.’

‘You’ve always found everything important. In fact, so important that you didn’t give a damn about who was going to pay for your mistakes.

You left me hanging; everything was set up. With your support I would’ve made the Maribor Theatre Board. Instead, you gave your vote to your dear Andreas, who was nice enough to abandon you in return. Bely, Bely, you’ve got a bright name, but lots of black under your nails.’

‘You’re drunk.’

Dorfler jack-knifes up in outrage. The glasses tremble on top of the rasping table, cigarette butts fly through the smoky air. Drifting confetti through the grey mist of the carnival ball. Dorfler lands on Bely and grips his throat. Surprised, Bely wheezes and flaps his hands, resists, but Dorfler is stronger and determined.

‘You call me drunk? You rat, you’re calling me drunk? You should never have come back, do you hear? Never!’

Bereft of breath and strength, Bely stares at Dorfler’s flushed face, coldly intent eyes that bulge even more from under his magnifying spectacles. On the ceiling above Dorfler’s head he sees a crack. It winds like a snake, like a road on a secret map. What a banal end. Who would have thought? Any moment now he will close his eyes and throw down his arms.

Suddenly Dorfler releases him. Bely catches his breath, coughs. Dorfler kneels on the filthy floor next to him. He gasps with pain and crouches over the table. He looks like a criminal just disarmed by the police. Rosa Portero rises above Dorfler, her left hand clutching the back of his neck. Big Dorfler tamed by a tiny woman, bizarre. Tears of pain pour down from under Dorfler’s glasses.

Bely picks himself up, pulls the E-meter out of his bag, forces the cylindrical electrodes in Dorfler’s hands and turns on the device. The banging against the wall picks up again, sighs, hard breathing.

‘Ivan, why did you attack me?’

‘I knew that you were coming and that nothing good would come of it. Your chatter here got me thinking about our past, about everything you did to me and my sister.’

‘Evelyn? I did nothing to your sister.’

‘That’s what you think, Bely. Sometimes doing nothing is the worst of all crimes.’

‘You’re taking this too far.’

‘Could be. Surely prigs like you know how to be impartial about these things.’

‘What does your sister do?’

‘I told you, she works in the municipal administration.’

Bely keeps his eyes on the E-meter needle. The wall is struck and shudders harder and faster. Clenching her teeth, Rosa keeps Dorfler pinned to the ground. She seems to be unbelievably strong.

‘Ivan, tell me everything.’

‘Fuck you.’

Rosa squeezes Dorfler until he moans.

‘My sister and I run a company. Actually, it’s run by the two of us and Don Kovač, the ECoC director. But the owner is somebody else.’

‘What sort of business?’

‘A retirement home. A specialized retirement home.’

‘Specialized in what sense?’

‘It’s a luxury retirement home.’

The needle on the E-meter swings hard. Bely nods at Rosa, who pinches Dorfler even harder. Her grip is like a vice.

‘We perform euthanasia for those who want it, even though it’s illegal. We relieve the weak of their suffering. Adam, would you let go of me already?’

‘Is that all?’

‘Yes.’

Bely refers to the needle, which sways all the way to the left. ‘You’re lying.’

‘Well, we allow the relatives of our clients to express their interest in euthanasia. Most of the time they’re the ones who are really interested. You know how it is, Adam. You never wanted to take care of your demented father. We try to resolve such predicaments in a way that’s very discrete.’

Adam Bely whitens. He kicks Dorfler in his abdomen with all he’s got. Dorfler collapses.

‘You’ll never mention my father again. Do I make myself clear?’

Dorfler spits blood. He nods and pulls himself to his knees. Bely hands him the electrodes.

‘Have you heard about the Great Orc?’

‘I know nothing about it.’

‘You’re lying.’

Bely kicks him again, this time in his crotch. The E-meter cylindrical electrodes fly under the table. Dorfler doubles over with pain.

‘I don’t know who the rest of them are. All I know is that sometimes the select members gather in the city theatre for the premières. Maybe you should ask the theatre director?’

Dorfler utters these last words with unusual contempt. The banging against the wall comes faster. Screaming. Soft death metal.

‘Pass me the oyster crackers.’

‘Schön jetzt?’ asks Rosa.

‘Give them to me.’

Rosa pulls out her silver compact.

‘Not those. Give me the dark ones,’ hisses Bely excitedly. ‘Are you sure? Wouldn’t you prefer …’

‘Just do it!’ shouts Bely.

Rosa nods and opens up a special compartment in her compact. The oyster crackers there are like the rest, only a shade darker.

Bely picks one up. ‘Let your souls be absolved,’ he utters and slips the cracker under Dorfler’s bloody lip. His body starts shaking uncontrollably. For a moment Rosa feels as though she can see shadows that scatter through a thick curtain of smoke hanging in the room. Dorfler catches his breath again. He looks like he is about to fall asleep, when suddenly he opens his eyes, gets on to all fours and starts licking Rosa’s boots.

‘We must leave as quickly as possible,’ says Bely.

They slow down only once they are halfway across the bridge. Snowfall sparkles by the lights of the Marx city gallery. Rosa points straight ahead. Beneath them, swaying from a long rope, inflatable human-sized dolls with the mayor’s picture on their faces.

‘They were put up by Dorfler’s activists while we were in there,’ comments Bely.

Back and forth, the plastic dolls rock in the breeze like human beings, eerily yet effortlessly.

‘Swinging souls,’ says Bely.

‘You shouldn’t have had all those drinks. You don’t take alcohol well, let alone cocaine,’ Rosa says.

He doesn’t reply. After a few minutes’ silence, he says to Rosa, ‘As a student Dorfler had a special fetish for the ashes of dictators’ dead wives. One night he stole the fresh contents of the urn that belonged to the wife of a former head of the Slovenian Communist Party. He loved to cook. We often went to his dorm for dinners, and on special occasions he would whip up his special dish with a pinch of his sacred spice, the ashes. Then, one evening, we’d drunk a lot, he accidently spilled the precious content of his small saltcellar and, to save some of the ashes, he threw himself on the floor and licked up as much as he could.’

Rosa lights up a cigarette, the breeze blows away a few sparkles, tiny ghosts, into the darkness.

‘Adam, why did you decide to give Dorfler a black cracker? How is it different from others?’

‘The black oyster crackers take effect right away; there’s no delay. In terms of their final effect they’re no different from the lighter version,’ says Bely. ‘The souls get informed regardless of the colour, and it’s only through being informed that they can move up a level. The body shell preserves its physical functions, but without the souls it’s caught in a mental programme that’s formed in early childhood, if not before, and is specific to each individual body.’

Bely stops talking. A gust of freezing wind steals the scent of Rosa’s hair in a twirl of snow. Fatigue slowly seeps through every sinew of his body. Newly whitewashed empty streets unfold before their eyes, as they carefully tread the slippery pavements back to the hotel.