Simic Bodrozic The New Croatian Short Story

1. Auflage 2012
ISBN: 978-1-908236-64-7
Verlag: Istros Books
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: Adobe DRM (»Systemvoraussetzungen)

E-Book, Englisch, 150 Seiten

Istros Books proudy presents a wonderful collection of the very best stories from the very best writers working in Croatia today. Not to be missed.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Simic Bodrozic, Roman

Leseproben

MAJA HRGOVIC

Zlatka

My head was hanging over the hair-washing basin like a weighty pistil. With her soft, sensually slow circular movements Zlatka made her way through the wet mass all the way to the roots. Pleasure spread down my neck; I closed my eyes. Naturally, the tips of her fingers were seductively certain of their experience.

Later, she sat me in front of a large mirror. In it I caught sight of well-thought-through clips of scissors snipping at the split ends of my hair, and two crinkles incised into the corners of Zlatka’s mouth as she said: “I’ll get that mane of yours in order.”

* * *

I lived near the train station in a neighbourhood built many decades ago for the families of railroad workers and machinists. Like tombstones over grave mounds, hardened chimneys rose from parallel rows of elongated one-storey buildings. Decaying, hideous buildings made of concrete, separated by narrow tracks of municipal ground and an occasional wild chestnut, shivered before sudden passes of express trains from Budapest and Venice.

My apartment perfectly blended in the sorrow of the neighbourhood; it grew out of it like a twig from a knarled old mulberry tree. I had two rooms at my disposal, but one smelled of damp so badly that I gave up on it. I slept, read and ate in the other, larger room, in which I was – perhaps because of a red futon, the only new piece of furniture in the apartment – less often taken by the feeling that someone had recently died here. The wardrobe seemed like a vertically placed coffin into which someone very clever had installed shelves. A large square window opened up to yet another horrible one-storey building and let in just enough light to give me a sense of missing something. The cold crept in through the worm-eaten window frame and it made, as I breathed, the air evaporate from my nose in light little clouds. The space seemed impossible to warm up. I sat next to the radiator, wrapped up in a blanket.

Although I lived alone, I could feel the presence of others: every word of the neighbours fighting reached me through the porous walls, and in the evening when they made up and fucked, I could tell who came first by their muffled or piercing screams.

* * *

Through the poorly ventilated underpass, gleaming with neon signs and small shop windows, in gushes, unstoppable like viruses, working people and students hurried downtown. At the station at the entrance into the underpass, the rattling buses that had brought them here from the suburbs gathered their strength for a new ride. Homeless people with their red noses dragged around with their plastic bottles and hauled their heavy stench behind them. Loudspeakers whined advertisements for prize contests, perfumes and meat product sales in the supermarket on the basement level.

That winter life spun around in circles of drunkenness, hangover and sleep. Despite the no-crossing sign, I crossed the railroad next to the switchman’s box. I pulled the legs of my pants so as not to get them dirty with the black grease that covered the rails – and jumped across looking left and right. I stayed at the Railroader’s until closing. When I dragged home drunk, I paid less attention to the grime on the rails: after a few weeks in the new neighbourhood, the legs on all of my trousers were soiled with the black substance that wouldn’t come off in washing.

* * *

I met Zlatka on that day when DJ Scrap played at the Railroader’s. I wanted to see the concert; not so much because I craved the Balkan Drum & Bass, but because I feared the loneliness that would have most certainly skinned me to the shuddering, sad core had I stayed home that evening, alone with myself, with all those sober thoughts and the moans from the apartment next door.

Again there was no warm water. My hair had been greasy for days. I walked into the first hairdresser’s salon I came across: it was actually a larger glass kiosk. The salon was called Rin Tin Tin and it serviced both men and women at discount prices.

Zlatka was alone in the salon. When I entered, she crushed her cigarette against the side of the ashtray and put down the magazine she’d been leafing through. “How can I help you?” she said. The beauty of her face – prominent cheekbones and large, dark eyes, her nose and lips, eyebrows, fringe, chin – did not fit the salon’s interior. In the cabinet, which looked like someone had stolen it from a landfill, there were plastic boxes with curlers, scissors and shampoos, two little dried-up rose bouquets, a frame with the price list and a photo of a laughing dog. Faded posters of women with their puffed-up hairdos decorated the glass walls.

I was embarrassed because my hair was dirty and I felt sorry for Zlatka’s fingers slowly making their way through my greasy curls under the stream of warm water. She told me I had split ends and they needed to be trimmed. I told her to go ahead and do it; their prices were sensationally low anyhow.

* * *

An early, gentle winter evening at the Railroader’s doesn’t mean much: the light of day doesn’t make its way through the windows darkened by painted canvases; sitting in booths always feels like being deep inside the catacombs. I twirled a lock of my hair, shiny and squeaky from washing, around my finger and let the waitress pour mulled wine from a large pot into my cup; she did it using a ladle as if it were a soup. Behind my back, DJ Scrap was pushing a metal box from one end of a small stage to another, dragging the cables that came along with the box, and every now and then stopping by the microphone, tapping it lightly and saying: “Check, check, one-two, one-two.”

Someone was throwing a birthday party; drinks started flowing faster, the atmosphere loosened slowly, sentences became funny and amusing. Someone complimented me on my hairdo; it was strange to take a compliment; perhaps I might have even blushed a little. Time rushed forward and when I glanced behind my back again, the club was already to the brim, strobe lights pierced the darkness and the voice of DJ Scrap, who had finally arranged all the props around the stage, confidently took a hold of the microphone and released a salvo of loud kisses at the crowd. He promised them, in a thick Serbian accent: “Tonight, we party!” and that made the first lines scream as if at a group bikini waxing session. And when the too loud music started, the groaning of admirers intensified together with uncontrollable scattering of limbs all over the dance floor. Soon the ventilation problem again made itself obvious: the passion of DJ Scrap’s admirers, condensed into drops of sweat, gathered on the ceiling and slimed down the windows.

I downed yet another shot that someone, when I wasn’t looking, had placed in front of me.

She sprung out of the crowd and elbowed her way next to me at the bar. She waved at the waitress with a crumbled bill and yelled in a raspy voice: “A beer! Large!” I recognized her immediately although now her hair was rowdy, her mascara beautifully smeared under her eyes. I couldn’t take my eyes off her.

“Hey, ciao!” I howled in greeting, trying to out shout the noise. She gazed at me as if she was nearsighted, but that lasted only a second; the next moment she offered me a wide smile, leaned toward me and in a cracked voice asked what I was drinking. I pointed at the steaming caldron and she got me a cup of mulled wine and sat next to me. “You’re alone?” she’d asked and that was enough to start with, to fill the silence with trivialities. She was alone; she came to the concert straight from work. She didn’t care much about DJ Scrap, had never heard any of his songs, she only felt like going out. She told me that there had been a competition on the radio and that she had made the call, gave the wrong answer to the prize question but had won two tickets anyhow. She couldn’t get anyone to come out with her, because it was the middle of the week, her friends had children, worked, didn’t feel like it... she had almost given up. Still, she was glad she was here. By the way, her name was Zlatka. “That’s such a nice name,” I said, and it sounded sweeter than I wanted.

That dreadful guy in a leather jacket approached us when the fuse blew. There must have been a short out or something, the lights went out, the music stopped, the crowd grew restless. The problem was solved in a couple of minutes, Scrap screamed into the microphone a little, fiddled with his cables, and as soon as he found his bearing, he again cranked up the volume to the max. Whipped by strobe lights, the dancers screamed gratefully.

The guy in the leather jacket, as soon as the power came back again, leaned over us; he wanted badly to stand at the bar right between Zlatka and me. He came to us from the back and put his arms around us as if wanting to share his deepest thoughts and fears with us. I took my drink and stepped away. I expected Zlatka to do the same.

But she didn’t move. She let him sit next to her, on my stool, and she even moved closer to him. The greasy leather jacket was screening her from me. Still, I could see her smiling flirtatiously, enjoying his attention.

Standing alone behind her back, I felt rejected and insecure. I approached the edge of the dance floor and danced a bit holding my cup, then I downed it to get it out of my way and let the dancing crowd suck me in. In a moment I was jumping all over the place and screaming into my clenched fist meaningless chunks of verses that...