bag, deciding I had a right to it (as his former wife, my dear, I could always try that line). Corto followed me with his little pink tongue out. Unlike big dogs, which filled me with confidence, I’ve always been afraid of small dogs as of all other hysterics … I wagged my finger at him, opened the door, summoned the lift. Although it was the ground floor.
Maybe I could have knocked on Diklić’s door on the first floor, but I didn’t feel like it. I was a bit high, peed-on, sweaty and hungry and not in a very good mood, and the chances of some zealous chair of the tenants’ council passing those incriminating letters over to me were, even without all the aforementioned, minimal. (What madness, who on earth would run away because of a bunch of letters.)
On my way out, at the lobby door, I came across two thin little girls playing with a plastic doll. ‘I’m not sure I love you,’ one of them told the doll seriously and crossly, and then hid it from me. No one in the street, midday scorching heat, the town is still full of tourists at this time, down in the necropolis, in the centre, on the beaches, but Split district 3 is wonderfully empty as though the whole summer had lain down over it to rest a bit.
My eye was caught by a grafitto on the flyover under which one could see the sea and on which someone had written in huge letters MEANING. In the distance I heard the honk of a ferry horn, the captain’s intrepid bass baritone. Oh Nightingale, where on earth are you? Where’ve you been my whole life?
Before dusk fell, I went to the marina, to Woody Mary, our boat.
She was swaying in the dark shallows of the harbour, bewitching as ever, at least to me.
She was in the same place, at the same jetty, as before, but unlike his flat, Gale did take care of the boat: freshly painted, white and blue as in the song, brass and copper gleaming, polished, although a year had passed, and more, since the captain’s departure, and the boat’s teak – rosy, warm-blooded, and alive beneath my hand, and, seeing that there was no one near, I kissed it loudly.
I hugged the good, constant, beloved Woody Mary like I used to, when I would throw myself down on the prow, carefree, wet and happy, like a young bitch.
I sat on the stern for a while, airing my head.
A light mistral breeze towards evening and a pink sky promising fine weather in the west. If I were to photograph or describe that scene it would be banal kitsch. Beautiful things have no need of art, which has already long been better suited to the half ugly or entirely vile.
A producer once flattered me: that’s why people like your series, good-looking lovers, emotions, falling in love, happy end, all that life denies them and that contemporary art cannot give them. That’s how one producer flattered me (not Kalemengo, Kalemengo is a decent guy), but one who wanted to have it off with me, in which in the end he succeeded, probably because at that stage of my life I was denied all of the above: good-looking lovers, emotions, falling in love among other things.
And to make matters worse, that poor dreary slob of a producer who produces productions was right.
People needed a lot of cheap, quick emotion, they needed it in greater quantities than it was possible to produce, teams of typists banged away on keyboards, churning out total nebulousness, without investing an iota of passion in it, just angry typing slaves’ sweat, but out of that sweat germinated and bloomed abundant, copious magnificent gunk which in turn generated laughter and tears, loves, fears and passions and moved people like the best works of art.
Let’s face it, gunk has moved the vast majority of people and filled their thoughts probably more than the best work of art ever could.
Oh no: oh yes. That’s the way it is.
At the end of that day, my mobile showed twenty-four unanswered calls (a dozen from Kalemengo, two from my brother, and – to my surprise – two from Bert), but not one I felt like replying to. When it rang again, I wondered how it would be to throw the phone into the sea and watch it sink, dumb and deaf. It would be like a small victory. However, that momentary relief would have brought existential complications, and I had already decided to return to Ljubljana as soon as day broke. So instead I switched the mobile off until morning (sleep, sleep little master).
When I finally unlocked the door of the boat, moved aside the hatch cover and slipped under the prow where I was to spend the first night of the journey I am writing about, things changed: Although I rummaged through everything, I didn’t find the boat’s log in the boat either, but under the mast, on the table, carefully laid in a box, those letters of Gale’s awaited me (I shall read some of them here).
The difference between Gale and a lunatic lies in the fact that Gale is a worker, truly Japanese in his craft. Had he engaged in any slightly more lucrative occupation with as much zeal, who knows, my dear, he would be a wealthy man. So, I crawled in under the prow and read until my torch battery gave out – since I didn’t have a clue where the electricity cable was.
LETTER FROM A WISTFUL DOG
Distinguished people, canine friends and others,
I believe you are familiar with the little acoustic scandal that has been rocking our neighbourhood in recent days, or perhaps you are the very ones who have been filling our silent nights with decibels of passion – whatever.
Whether you make love quietly like dogs or loudly like cats is not the main issue, I am addressing you with the desire, prompted by the aforementioned events, to share with you a dog’s thoughts about love. In this appeal, I ask just one thing of you: that, caught up in a vortex of passion or exasperated or astounded by feverish cries from the darkness, you do not forget that as well as feline love that screeches there is also canine love that whines. Remember that at least in the morning, when the common sense and innocence of a beginning briefly reign, toss a bone or two to those genuinely hungry for love and meat.
This letter is also a study of unrequited loyalty – it is well-known that loyalty is inherent in canine love. But loyalty, contrary to widespread and superficial conviction, is not always monogamous, just as monogamy need not always be loyal or devoted, with either humans or dogs.
You may remember, perhaps, the handsome mixture of schnauzer and who-knows-what dog from our street, whom you called Shakespeare-in-love? That shaggy fellow (we’ll go on calling him Shakespeare, so there’s no confusion), at the time of the banishment of a certain little bitch Gara from the district of Mertojak, would run away from his comfortable home in Šimunović Street, to settle himself outside her gate. For three years in a row, he exposed himself to peril by dashing through the busy streets, for two weeks he would be without a roof over his head, hungry and thirsty, dependent on charity; he sat outside her courtyard resolutely, like a hairy monument, waiting for Gara to show her little tail.
Barking intrepidly and baring her teeth, she drove all other dogs from her hindquarters, which was not easy, because, we all remember, when her mistress took her out for walks, she would return at a run, with her little dog in her arms, accompanied by insatiable Alsatians, Labradors and Dachshunds which had broken their chains and, driven by their senses, roamed through the streets wordlessly and furiously pleading for a partner.
But only one, outside that hypnotised pack, made a suitable mate for her and as soon as her mistress looked away, little Gara would leap over the fence, lift up her tail, and Shakespeare-in-love would readily lock on.
Once, when they were locked like that, blinded like an amorous Janus, the unfortunate happy couple spent hours outside the back entrance to the building, and your children tugged at them and threw stones at them – but they were unable to part. That can even happen to humans, sometimes a timorous heart can block the nether regions, let
