Читать книгу The End. And Again - Dino Bauk - Страница 6

PETER & GORAN

A night-time telephone ring that harshly rouses a man from his dreams, with no compassion, always triggering fear. Fear of the news it brings, waiting in the phone for us to release it with the touch of a green button. There’s seldom good news at night; it is more patient and waits for morning, which seems too distant for bad and unexpected news. It has to get out right away. Peter’s mobile phone rang at the time of night when not one window in the whole neighbourhood was lit. Only the tightly spaced street lights. At that dead hour of night, they actually shine for no one. As if they were only there to declare this is city, not countryside. City people let thousands of such street lights and countless lanterns of various kinds burn even when they sleep, as if afraid of that genuine black night. You have to go past the city limits, to the countryside, where people always turn the lights out before bed, to experience a true, thickly woven dark night.

The neighbourhood where at flat 16, fifteenth floor, windows still dark, the mobile rang and roused Peter from his sleep, consisted of something more than thirty buildings. The lowest ones were only five stories, the highest ones up to twenty-five. All together they formed a unified terrain of iron and concrete. It was built in the early 1970s between three smallish villages on the edge of the city. When you exited the concrete terrain down concrete steps as if exiting some airliner or ship, you instantly found yourself with two feet planted in the countryside, without any fluid transition. You were suddenly no longer in the city but in a small, unspoiled Slovene village – houses with tidy balconies, a butcher, volunteer fire department, little church, and a small, almost full cemetery in which the last free spaces still await the very oldest members of the community, people who have been there since the city was still about an hour away on foot and who haven’t yet accepted the fact that at a certain moment, when they weren’t paying enough attention, it might creep right up to their village. Viewed from a distance, the neighbourhood looked like a huge spaceship that landed among the peacefully sleeping villagers like some Galactica, with innumerable small lights, and docked there for an undetermined time. It forever ended their flawlessly black nights and brought with it strange speaking beings from other planets who on the weekends at first cautiously, then more loudly and in larger groups, set out on exploratory hikes through their village and farther, into their fields and gardens, all the way to the Sava river and back.

The polyphonic melody of a recent hit Peter had loaded on his mobile didn’t immediately call him to a waking state, as some old alarm clock would undoubtedly have done. Each time he almost woke up and passed for a split second from sleep to reality, he fell asleep the next second; this was repeated several times until he forced himself to come to. The red numbers 3 and 25, separated by a colon, were flashing before his eyes. The first few seconds he couldn’t decipher their meaning. Ah, it’s time, the alarm, he thought. He hit the off button a few times, but the repeating melody kept piercing his ears like a long, thin drill straight to his brain. ‘Damn… the phone!’ After having wandered separately for a few seconds through his drugged consciousness, the fact that it was actually his phone ringing and the fact that it was only a little before 3:30 in the morning collided, and the collision caused a minor explosion of fear that spread first from his head to his rib cage and then to all his limbs, causing them to shake hard.

A forty-year-old, middle rank, office worker in the Ministry of Culture, Peter’s previous workday evening had ended almost the same way as all the other evenings of all the other workdays the past two months. On the way back from work – he went on foot now – he stopped in a bar where everyone knew him, drank two beers, ate a hot sandwich, then on the way home smoked three ultralight Wests and at the building entrance exchanged some pleasantries with a neighbour from the sixth floor who happened to be walking her Highland Terrier. She got in a conversation with him only to find out whether his divorce was final. When he confirmed that, she expressed surprise and sympathy. During the conversation, he decided that her bottom was really a little too large and her full breasts were slowly losing the battle against gravity, but that despite this he would gladly have at them if she offered him the chance. In parting he also invited her to stop for a cup of coffee sometime. Then, while getting in the lift, he once again saw his bald spot was growing and said, ‘Fuck, everything’s going to hell,’ and finally in his flat, while still in his ugly but practical windbreaker, hurled himself on the couch, picked up the remote, and turned on the sports channel, which was showing a league match. Two unfamiliar teams with difficult to pronounce names played for him, while at the bottom of the screen current results of all kinds of other matches scrolled by. He slowly dug crumpled bets he made yesterday out of a pocket in his windbreaker to see if he might have hit on any of his wagers. Already on the first two pairings his selections turned out wrong, so he didn’t bother to check further. He resignedly crumpled up the paper and instead of putting it in the bin, which was too far from where he was sprawled on the couch, he stuck it back in his pocket. It was obvious that the chances of him someday hitting the sports lottery were as good as him managing to get some decent sex in the foreseeable future. The last time, with Nataša from the finance office, was too great a catastrophe to really count. He tired of the fifty-year-old, whose husband had left her for someone twenty years younger, after five minutes of sex without foreplay, with her screaming and calling endlessly on everyone from God to her mother.

He rolled out of bed as the ringing became louder – something that was not that simple on account of the extra kilos he had progressively gained over the past fifteen years. For a few seconds he couldn’t actually locate the phone. He finally found it between three empty cans that he had left on an end table by the television the night before. He could allow himself such a mess after Tanja and the child had left. While he was looking for the phone, he was seized with fear that something had happened to little Luka. Soon after his birth, Peter became acquainted with a whole variety of fearful nuances that he hadn’t known before. Sometimes he would have an irrational attack of fear that something would happen to the little one. Then he was afraid something was wrong with him, or that Tanja would be a victim in some way. He never ever talked with anyone about these fears, because he understood them to be weaknesses, which he didn’t want to reveal. But when it seemed to Peter that his phantom impending catastrophes were going too far, he was able to comfort himself: they were only the first signs of a midlife crisis, and he would have to get used to them.

When he finally turned up the phone and read Goran’s name on the screen, he first breathed out and then sat down on the couch. He sensed the fear slowly receding, and anger taking its place. He had known Goran his whole life, so to speak. They grew up together on the North Side, where their parents had moved right after it was built. Goran was one of those people that you can’t remember first noticing or meeting. Goran was simply always there. All of Peter’s childhood memories were full of him. He was at all the birthday parties and in the school pictures. From pimply kids with yellow kerchiefs in the first photograph they turned into teenagers in jeans and heads covered with hair gel. The last one was taken at graduation in the school cafeteria, outfitted like a kind of dance hall for the occasion. They gradually lost touch somewhere between their thirtieth and thirty-fifth birthdays, when Peter got married, something that ended ingloriously not long ago, while Goran continued his bachelor life as a manager in a small factory. During the first year after the wedding, when Luka was born, Goran might call twice a week at similar night-time hours from his outings to bars and, drunk on whiskey and sometimes high on cocaine, explain all that Peter was missing while he was folding nappies. When one night Tanja boiled over and told him never to phone at such an hour again, the calls stopped.

‘What, don’t you have a clock on your fucking Blackberry?’ he answered this time, clearly unhappy about the late hour.

‘Heh, sorry, man, I’m, hmm, it’ll sound strange…’

This time Goran’s voice was different, and there wasn’t a loud mix of blaring music, clinking glasses, and numerous casual conversations. This time there was complete, pure silence in the background.

‘I can’t quite figure out, I, screw it... how to… OK, I’ll just say it: I’m in a tight corner and can’t get out.’

‘Where? Fuck! I know that. You don’t have to call me at this hour to tell me that.’

‘I’m not screwed like that! I’m in a suitcase, briefcase, in a fucking Samsonite! The workers lost the plot, they ran up to the offices, started raising a stink, where’s the money, and so on. I thought they were going to lynch me. I shit myself I didn’t know what to do, so I hid in a suitcase.’

More than the absurdity of what Goran was telling him, Peter was surprised at how quickly he took on the bizarre story as true. Actually, the whole thing seemed somehow unbelievable, but he didn’t long doubt the truth that his childhood friend was calling from his polyurethane business suitcase. While he was listening to Goran’s story, he started seeing the outline of events that supposedly took place that afternoon in a small factory at the edge of town, and a faint smile started playing over his face.

That morning, Goran was bargaining on his office phone with one of his clients for him not to send payment for a job to the company’s account, because the voracious government was waiting for it along with perpetually dissatisfied employees and a lot of lenders, but to send it instead to the account that he and the director, Stepinšek had quietly opened at a Liechtenstein bank, when he heard the security guard yelling downstairs, followed by the approaching pounding of many pairs of heavy work boots doggedly coming up the stairs. Fortunately, they went past Goran’s office and to Stepinšek’s first.

Jože Stepinšek had been the director of the insulation materials company for more than twenty years. During that time, he had risen, by means of some clever moves, from ordinary socialist director of a state-owned enterprise all the way to majority owner. He hired Goran as an intern as soon as the latter graduated from the School of Economics, at the request of his father, who during his years as an inspector often did audits at the company. Of course, the audits always ended up in Stepinšek’s office over exceptional single malt, expertly served in exquisite glasses shaped like tulips. And of course, Goran’s father, his tongue and throat soothed by the rich Lagavulin taste, had no thought of entering any of the blatant violations in his report. Stepinšek immediately took a liking to Goran because he was young and acted by the book, and soon Goran became his main confidant. The first several years, it went really well for them. The company was getting subcontracts on all of the largest projects in the country, and like a rising river, money filled its account and spilled over its banks. It was naturally Stepinšek who enjoyed the greatest share of the good years’ fruits. First, he built a huge villa on the edge of Ljubljana and then vacation houses on the coast and in the mountains. But old Stepinšek also allotted a respectable share of the success, which he measured exclusively by the number of zeroes on any given invoice, to his young protégé. Goran bought himself a modest penthouse downtown, which he turned into the debauched bachelor’s pad of his wettest youthful dreams. He parked his Mercedes SL 350, a two-seat sports convertible that Peter jokingly called a ‘gaymobile’ in his reserved spot in the garage under the building. Goran regularly brought women home in it – from those obviously fascinated with his possessions to those Peter would have without hesitation bet half his pay that they couldn’t have been taken with such empty invitations, and that they were after something completely different. The latter kept disappointing him when the next day Goran would report all the details of the evening, about every intimate corner of their bodies, every loud gasp, and the dirty words they let out as they neared climax.

After some weighty words from the rebellious workers, Stepinšek, genuinely enraged, raised his voice threateningly, convinced that the world outside his stylishly appointed office was still the same as he saw it when he came in that morning. Neither at that moment did Goran think too much of the commotion in the hall. He assumed that old man Stepinšek would handle the ingrates, say a few powerful words about loyalty, and chase them back to work. Up until now, the men in blue smocks and overalls would always return each to his own machine, turn them on without a word, and continue where they had left off – not satisfied, that is, but reconciled to the facts as laid out in Stepinšek’s sermon. The subdued hum of the machines again drowned out the music coming from the old transistor in the corner of the production room, and somewhere aloft in the atmosphere, blending in harmony with the clacking of the money counter’s motor that Goran heard every other week in the Liechtenstein bank’s vault, there played a hymn to him: to Stepinšek and other victors throughout history. That’s how things always fell into place.

But this time, the world in which gloomy men in blue smocks and overalls cast their eyes down and acquiesce when old man Stepinšek raises his voice, disappeared sometime between the start of the workday and lunch. When Stepinšek’s thundering at the rebellious men peaked, just when he was effectively to conclude his sermon, from somewhere, completely unexpectedly, totally out of the context of the established rules, as if in slow motion, there came a slap that changed everything. Goran heard it just at the door to his office, wanting to go out into the hall to see yet another of Stepinšek’s triumphant finales, after which the defeated troop of men in blue go back downstairs. The blow from a large, heavy, cold-swollen hand against the old director’s still soft cheek had a mighty, almost exaggerated sound effect. As if someone slammed the cymbals with all his might at the end of a wild rock ’n roll piece, the sound of the slap marked the moment when some irretrievable old era came to an end, one in which roles were clear and assumed by everyone present, and there was a transition to something new, and none of those present had the slightest idea what was coming, and no one understood how it would work out. Goran’s immediate instinct was to lock himself in his office, move away from the door, and circle the space nervously two or three times. Then he again approached the door and tried to make out what was happening in Stepinšek’s office. For a few seconds after the slap exploded, nothing at all could be heard. Just a menacing silence. He imagined the surprised looks on the faces of the shocked director and workers, who were probably somewhat terrified at their own actions. But only for a short time. When the minutes of fear and disbelief passed, the hinges finally came off. Blows started raining down on Stepinšek. None of them reached the sound effect of the first, historic slap, probably because the director hid his face in his palms, crossed over his face. The blows now sounded duller, because they were falling on the sleeves of his cotton jacket. They gradually increased, like a hailstorm preceded by one fat advance pellet. After several seconds of quiet, another falls, then a third and a fourth, and they increase mightily until the climax, and… silence again. The last blow could be heard after a short pause interrupted only by Stepinšek’s quiet groaning and the secretary Suzi’s somewhat hysterical sobbing. Goran then clearly heard a kick. The guy must have aimed it more at the parquet floor than at Stepinšek’s crotch, because you could hear his sole hit the floor, and the dull blow of his toe against the ball of the director’s curled up body was barely audible. Apparently at least one of the enraged workers took pity on the old director, had a hard time deciding to hit him, was almost too late, but in the end did give him a toned down one so as not to stand out from the incensed mob.

‘I knew they’d come for me next, but I couldn’t think how to get away. I could only get the fuck out the window and bust my… So I quickly started to make myself small, so small that I could close the suitcase. Now I can’t get out, the workers took over the whole factory, they’re in Stepinšek’s office drinking his single malt like it’s lemonade, the tossers, and they’re screaming at Stepinšek: ‘Go get the money you hid, you old pig!’ and so on. They’re taunting the poor secretary, Suzi, and grabbing her ass. You can’t believe it.’

‘So the guys in blue lost it, bravo’ Peter thought to himself. He was surprised at the malice he felt listening to his shaken and reduced friend, but he couldn’t help himself. He felt some perverse satisfaction, as if universal Justice had been done that morning in the small factory at the edge of town. He could only hope – he couldn’t be sure – that the sweetish feeling of satisfaction that crept into his voice even as he unsuccessfully tried to hide it was the result of his inborn sense of justice, not something more base, such as envy, which could have seized him in recent years due to the fact that he had been side-lined, shunted into some middling place in the bureaucratic pyramid, where an upward move was unattainable, and a downward one practically impossible, while not only Goran, but others too, even other more or less close acquaintances raced by him on the highway of success, decked out with all of its unmistakable attributes. He never drove that road. He explained to others that not taking part in the race was part of his unbending moral code, but if he were fully sincere, he would admit that for all those years he didn’t quite know how to even get on the road. Goran’s voice, now quieter and calmer, woke him from this brief contemplation.

‘Do you ever think of him? Of Denis?’

As if he sensed through the connection that he and his childhood friend were losing their shared frequency, Goran transported him some twenty years back with the sudden change of topic. The war had ended in time for them to enter the university without problems: Goran to study economics, Peter in the liberal arts, and Denis to art school. By then, not much was left of the long summer between the end of high school and the beginning of their studies. Who would have believed only two years previously that it would be possible to say something as bizarre as ‘the war had taken up the first half’. They wanted to spend the second half wandering the Adriatic coast, but they soon realized it wasn’t the same there as a year ago. From today’s vantage point, the war had hardly even started, but at the time it seemed it had exceeded all reasonable bounds, and its spirit would soon be squeezed back into the bottle, because of course it was clear to Both Sides that it was senseless, while it was everywhere, although at that moment still at a distance, beyond the Velebit, Dinara, and Biokovo highlands. The smell of war overcame the smells of pine trees, the sea, and girls’ skin. The echo of its drums brought new songs to the seaside terraces, ones to which you didn’t dance, as in past years, in a dim light, your eyes fixed on your partner’s eyes and her mysterious smile, across which a light breeze cast her unruly hair, but with arms raised high and eyes fixed on the sky, in a trance, showing your newly discovered allegiance to your tribe and menacing the other. Ritualistic dances replaced couples’ dances. That wasn’t what they had come for, so they returned home early to Ljubljana, in time to avoid starting to believe that at a moment when history was being made and nations were being made it was untoward to look for something as frivolous as summer fun and a little love. Home to Ljubljana! They couldn’t know at the time that the same, their Ljubljana would a year later mercilessly reject one of them, like a mountain rejects a climber who makes a small but fatal mistake on his ascent.

‘Why are you asking me that now?’

There was annoyance, almost anger in Peter’s voice at Goran’s question.

‘Is that a knock on my bad conscience? Don’t bother, because I don’t have one. What happened to him isn’t our fault.’

‘I know, I know we’re not guilty man, only damn: we didn’t do anything to stop it. We let the pigs take him away like a common criminal. We just stood there like two morons.’

A late autumn day in 1992. They were just leaving classes.