pneumonia,’ she said.
‘Hmmm. Hmmm. Where does pneumonia come into it?’ I asked.
But we were already laughing at each other. Not that I really knew why. Part of our love (and understanding) thrived on nonsense. We could talk about non-existent drugs or make up the craziest of things.
I guess that element of the absurd helped us relax (‘after a hard day at work’). One of us would say something silly and the other would laugh and say: ‘Gawd, how stupid you are! Who am I living with?!’
We enjoyed exchanging those insults.
I think it was she who started it, long ago.
Her name was Sanja and mine – Toni.
‘What pneumonia?’ I asked again.
‘I watched a Serbian film,’ she explained. ‘A woman kept complaining:
My child will get pneumonia.’
‘I know that film,’ I said with a professorial air. I gave her a few smacks on the bottom, and she squealed and ran off.
Now we were supposed to ‘do it’ somewhere in the flat.
But, just so she knew who was the eldest, I made a face to show that I didn’t feel like playing those childish games.
* * *
What can I say, we met after the war, under interesting circumstances: I was Clint Eastwood and she the lady in the little hat who arrived by stagecoach in this dangerous city full of rednecks; she’d probably won the ticket in a draw. I watched as she climbed out, a fag between her teeth, and the smoke and sun got in my eyes and gave me a pained, worried face. She had a whole stack of suitcases, bound to be full of cosmetics, and I saw straight away that she’d missed her film and I’d have to save her in this one.
All right, sometimes I told the story that way because I was tired of telling the truth. Once you’ve told the same story a few times over you have to insert a few new elements – why else labour your tongue? Our first meeting never ceased to fascinate her. Whenever she got in a romantic mood she made me tell the story again. The beginning of love is magic. That self-presentation to the other, putting yourself in the best light, striving to be special... Flowers bloom, peacocks strut, and you become a different person. You play that game, you believe in it, and if it catches on – you become different.
How do you tell a story if everything is full of illusions from the beginning?
I had several versions.
One went like this: She had a red strand in her hair, green eyes, and was punkishly dressed, with emphasis on the dressed (that’s the version of punk which isn’t exactly cheap). It’s the domain of bimbos with certain deviations in taste. And that’s how she behaved, too, not quite upright, boyish, deviant; she looked a bit wasted, too, a look which I think trendy magazines called heroin chic. I took note of her – how could I not have – when she first came to the Lonac Café (or whatever it was called), but I didn’t go up to her because her pale face revealed an apathy and pronounced tiredness from the night before. You know those faces which still radiate pubescent contempt for all around and the influence of high-school texts with their occasional enigmatic, bright-eyed ladies, which gothic make-up just highlights; the nightly neon throws a final malediction on it all. People like that don’t want to live in a world like this, they can’t wait to cold-shoulder you when you come up – as if that’s what gives their life meaning.
At that point she usually thumped me on the shoulder – ‘Idiot!’ she said – but she loved it. She loved it when I described her, when I wrapped her in long sentences, when she was the centre of the story and the focus of attention.
‘Anyway, I didn’t go up to her. I just watched her out of the corner of my eye and blew trails of smoke into the night.’
She liked to listen to how I eyed her from the side. That refreshed the scene, a bit like when the country celebrates its national day and founding myths as retold through history and official poetry replete with lies. My language flowed – she loved my tongue and intercepted it with hers.
‘It was in front of the Lonac Café one day: I remember her crushing out her cigarette with a heavy boot, and then she turned in her long, clinging dress, with a little rucksack on her back, and looked at me with the eyes of a young leopardess. She stalked up to me as if she’d sighted a herd of gnus. That was the moment: she decided to make my acquaintance (emancipated as she was). Yes, she came straight up to me and said Sanja, even though my drawn features, as she later admitted, revealed an apathy and a pronounced tiredness from the night before, and she was afraid I wouldn’t react at all.’
Basically we were so cool that this crossing of paths was almost inconsequential.
Wotcher Ned, how’s them parsnips comin’ along? How’s the harvest goin’, cuz? Hey bro, where ya been? That’s how city kids mess around with mock swagger and rural ethos! God, when I think back... At times we had no idea if we fitted any of those roles. At home you’re someone’s child and you roll your eyes; you study at uni and you roll your eyes; then you go out into the world and become your own film star and you roll your eyes because no one gets your film and what you’re all about, and you pine away unrecognised in these backwoods of Europe. But you still switch films depending on the circumstances.
I acted in many films before they took me for my role in this serious life: I worked as a journalist and wrote about the economy. And her: she managed to become an actress with a capital A, which is just what she always dreamed of.
‘How was the rehearsal?’ I asked.
She waved dismissively as if she wanted to take a rest from it all.
A lot of stuff had happened in the meantime, you see. And right now she was taking things out of those plastic bags – you remember the ones.
I’d bought bread, cigarettes, mayonnaise, pancetta, milk, yoghurt, parmesan cheese, a bottle of wine, and so on; I’d been over at the supermarket and paid by card.
‘She’s ripped you off again!’ Sanja protested as she checked the receipt.
‘She can’t have.’
‘She’s typed in three yoghurts although you’ve only got two,’ she said, waiting for me to get angry.
I shrugged my shoulders.
‘I’m going to go over and have a word or two!’ she menaced, as bolshie as could be.
‘Oh come off it.’
‘Of course she’s going to rip you off if you don’t pay attention.’
‘I know –,’ I said, ‘but if I kept tabs on her I’d have to say: You’re ripping me off!’
‘That’s right!’
‘But the checkout lady is always so friendly.’
That sort of thing drove Sanja up the wall.
‘As if you were a millionaire!’ she sneered. ‘When you buy a flat they’ll charge you for a non-existent balcony and get away with it.’
