buggered off to, maybe Travnik, maybe Bugojno. I’m just, like, looking after the flat. You know, a Croat, so’s it’s occupied, if you get my drift. Last summer, before he scarpered, he got up the nose of the whole neighbourhood, the police were after him, you wouldn’ believe it. Vat made him mad, he didn’t expect that kind of reaction to his letters. It’s unreal, you know, ‘e’s a dreamer. I told him – give it a rest, bro, forget those jerks, mind your own business.’
I said that, in actual fact, it was Gale’s business. ‘He’s an artist, my dear, he has to interact with his surroundings, he has to change them.’
‘You’re kidding me, yeah? I’m an artist too. You must’ve seen those graffiti: I’m hungry, give me what you can, in front of the door, above the intercom? Right, you saw it. I’m not pretentious like some vat puts on an act, I’m more interested in reality.’
I asked him whether he was a gay activist, because it looked to me like gay graffiti although it had a socio-economic base. He asked, of course, did I want to find out and laughed: ‘how did I know it didn’t mean give me salami in my sandwich, for instance?’
‘You’ve got a dirty little mind,’ he said, grinning.
He said, Pironi did, that Gale had nearly got him in the shit with those letters, and something else about some business with explosives placed in a Split bank, because on the wall people had found the same sentences as in one of Gale’s letters. ‘They had him in, for questioning, twice,’ said Pironi, ‘but they couldn’t pin anything on him, because the letters had been sent to the whole street, several hundred copies.’ (Magnificent, magnificent)
But nothing concrete about where I might find Gale.
Last summer, the June before last, somewhat more than a year ago, in Dinko Šimunović Street some unknown lovers had made love loudly until dawn, waking the sleeping populace, and it was a hot summer, with daytime temperatures of forty-two and airless nights and many wide open windows.
Judging by everything Joe Pironi told me, and he told me a lot, disjointedly, I gathered the following: the letters that Gale had zealously dropped into his neighbours’ mailboxes had upset the whole street. They upset the street more than the reason they were written, although that too had sent sparks flying. I was agreeably surprised by their lack of indifference, even if it was negative. I was used to people here reacting only to football, which made Gale think them limited and worthy of contempt, but I was more tolerant and practical, because these were the people we had grown up with, I would have felt oppressed to think negatively about them or to think about them at all. Compromise, always compromise, well, I had to live with people or die alone.
In June of last year in Dinko Šimunović Street, Gale worked by night, so Joe Pironi told me: a well-known foreign, American, magazine had commissioned a strip cartoon from him, which was important to him – I presume it still is important to him – and noise interfered with his concentration.
On the tenth evening he, Gale, not Pironi, felt a powerful moral obligation to ask the overly-loud lovers to be a bit quieter (I don’t really believe that). But since, according to Pironi, he didn’t know who the moaners were, he wrote to almost everyone, working his way systematically, scattering letters into their letterboxes, but the groaning continued for three whole weeks, maybe even longer, into the second week of July. The street has this unusual cascading architecture, narrow buildings with hundreds of windows, and if someone is making love by the south-facing windows, high under the clouds, it is no simple matter to determine the source. It lasted for three whole weeks, maybe even longer, into the second week of July. Then it stopped.
And before Nightingale completed his game with the letters, which he had evidently entered into with his whole comical, idiotic and wonderful soul, a meeting of the tenants’ councils of the buildings nearest to the sighing in Šimunović Street was called:
the letters were collected and handed over to the police:
the police didn’t really know what to do with the material,
they warned Gale that he was causing a disturbance, threatening him with reporting him for violating the peace and public order,
‘Crazy stuff,’ said Pironi.
In short, as far as I could make out, they banned him from completing his ‘project’ of letters to the neighbourhood.
‘Banned him? What was craziest of all,’ said Pironi, ‘vey even accused ‘im that ‘e, Gale, was ve maniac groaning in ve night.’
Pironi didn’t believe that (nor do I), but he couldn’t confirm it, as he was at that time living with another friend in another part of town.
Pironi said: ‘What do vey mean ‘project’, honeybun, ‘e calls it artistic expression when ‘e takes a piss. Get it, it’s a question of morals how far you as an artist should invade people’s privacy. On ve other ‘and you keep invading it, ven it’s a question of packaging, if you get my drift. You ‘as to package it, mate, I say, but he doesn’t listen.’
‘He didn’t package it – that’s the problem,’ I say.
‘And did they discover who it was? Who was the doer of the debauchery?’
They didn’t, they never did, they calmed down. But it was madness, his bicycle had once broken down so he spent the night at Gale’s place while it was going on. ‘It wasn’t true,’ he said. ‘You see what this street is like, a million open windows, it reverberates: it could have been anyone.’ (It’s unseemly for people to go around at night banging on doors to check whether folk are fucking.)
Gale’s flat/bed-sitter stretched around me – I was looking for windows – a rather large room with no internal walls, different from the flat I remember, which did not seem to suit the Gale I had known, and that lack of recognition disheartened me (and maybe frightened me).
I said to Pironi: ‘ What kind of morals, don’t make me laugh. Someone’s letters really bug them. Matey.’
He said: ‘Hey, ol’ girl, take it easy, you’re gettin’ het up for nothing. I haven’ a clue what he wrote to ‘em, but it got to ‘em. You can ask Bogdan Diklić to show you the letters. He’s on the first floor. He’s not an actor, no way. Chair of the Tenants’ Council, that type. Shall I go? D’you fink I’ve got more chance with Bogdan Diklić than you?! Why, you’re a celebrity! You’d feel awkward. Ah, ha, so you’re not that famous. I get you, but there’s no fuckin’ way Diklić will give me ve letters. He takes it seriously. I mean seriously seriously. He’s fifty and he lives wiv ‘is mother, ‘e doesn’t even jerk off any more, ‘e ‘as to take fings seriously. Chair of the Tenants’ Council. Another smoke? Ok, ol’ girl, all ve more for me.’
Something along those lines. As he talked, Pironi’s verbal ping-pong balls skittered round about, bouncing off the rubber edges of my consciousness. After a while I became aware of an agreeable warmth on my feet.
Pironi yelled: ‘Corto, son of a bitch! Hey, ol’ girl, don’t be mad, ol’ girl. You’re ‘is now, ‘e’s marked you, now he finks you’re, you know, okay.’
Like hell.
I wasn’t angry. Joe Pironi went to the toilet to get a sponge and paper to wipe up the dog’s pee, but since he was taking his time, I used paper handkerchiefs and water from the kitchen tap. In passing, strategically, I opened a few drawers where Gale’s things ought to have been, in case I could somewhere catch sight of the boat’s
