Fužine Blues Read online

  “You want to know what’s become of Irena?” Yeh, course I wanna know. I hope ’er tits haven’t sagged too much. “Well, Irena’s in computing,” says the woman. Whoops. “They maintain financial software… She and some colleagues have got their own firm.”

  “Really?” Fuckin’ hell, it’s hard to believe. Fuckin’ computin’? The Irena I fuckin’ know, at some party put a frozen bread loaf in the oven still in its plastic wrapper. And it all melted and stuck to the crust. And we had to eat plastic bread. That’s how technical Irena was.

  “Irena doesn’t live at home any more. Not for seven years now.”

  “Could you give me her number?”

  She doesn’t hear me. She’s on a roll now, tellin’ me things I haven’t even asked.

  “She’s married now,” she says. “Seven years. They’ve got a child… Her name’s Humar now.”

  Irena Humar. Irena Humar.

  It’s so fuckin’ hot today. Hot as a cunt.

  I’ll have to lie down a bit. I can do, I’m at home aren’t I? Anythin’ wrong with that? You’re tired, so you lie down. I’ve got a bed in the bedroom, designed specially for occasions such as this.

  Tadam-tadam. Tadam-tadam.

  I close my eyes.

  It’s a long day today, so fuckin’ long

  Tadam-tadam

  I jump up all sweaty. Heard something in the kitchen. A noise. I’m sure of it, my head’s completely clear. There’s an intruder in the kitchen.

  Tadam-tadam.

  It’s pretty dark in the room. There’s an intruder in the kitchen. There’s no doubt about it, you can smell him. Irena and I are alone in the flat and Irena is dead. She’s lying on the bed in the next room, her hands together on her chest. She’s staring into the dark, totally unseeing. Kaput, nothing could wake her. And now this intruder.

  I sit on the bed listening. Silence. Seems as if there’s nothing moving in the flat. Course, intruders are careful. They know how to find their way in the dark. They know how to walk so they don’t make a sound. But the parquet in the hall will give him away for sure — the parquet will creak when he’s on his way out. Now he’s in the kitchen, real quiet, sliding about like oil, feeling inside the drawers. What can I do? Nothing, nothing at all. There’s no weapon in the bedroom. I don’t know any martial fucking arts. If I’d known before. He’s sure to be armed. I’ve no choice but to wait. Wait and wait.

  The door handle suddenly shakes. The handle. It stops for a moment as I stare at it, hypnotised. There’s someone in the hall. It moves again. It slowly moves downwards. The door slowly opens. This is no intruder. An intruder wouldn’t open the door like that. So cool, like he doesn’t give a shit. And I’d hear him. No, this is someone else. The intruder’s definitely still in the kitchen. This is Irena.

  Yes, it is.

  She stands in the doorway. It’s dark outside, in the hall, but her unseeing eyes are glowing at the back like a cat’s. The intruder. He even woke up Irena. That’s too fucking much. I mean, what one stupid fucking intruder can achieve.

  Irena, I whisper quietly, trying to sound convincing. Irena, there’s an intruder in the kitchen. Keep quiet.

  She looks at me blankly, without expression. I dunno if she’s caught on. She’s dead, she doesn’t usually get anything. Just lies there on the bed quietly, limply, like a heap of spaghetti. I have to make sure nothing happens to her. The world is not too kind to the dead. They’re stuck in wooden coffins and buried under the ground. They’re burned in furnaces and their ashes stuck in an airtight container. Can’t let that happen to Irena. But she doesn’t give a fuck — just stands there in the doorway staring at me, while an intruder barges about the kitchen. Irena, keep quiet.

  Irena opens her mouth wide so that a black hole appears in that white patch of a face of hers.

  Suddenly, a totally wild, heartrending sound emerges. At first, she looks as if she might be going to moan, but then her voice breaks and goes higher and a howl travels across the room, raising all the hairs on my body. Irena stands in the doorway, one hand on the handle, her head slowly tilting back and screaming, screaming into the air as is something was unravelling from inside her body, and spurting out through her mouth. Her eyes are shut and in the dark you can only see the pale shape of a face and the gleam of teeth that are slowly moving further apart as if the corners of her mouth are shifting towards her ears and her face looks more and more like some freak’s. She’s screaming as if inside her thin body something is tormenting her, burning her, eating away at her, as if she needs to howl this terrible pain out of her. I stare at her. Irena, I whisper, but my voice doesn’t get through her yelling, which is disturbing the air in the room like an aeroplane propeller. This is too fucking much, this is crazy, I can’t listen to it no more. Irena! The intruder will HEAR you! Then he’ll COME here!

  But there’s no stopping her. Her eyes are closed, her mouth wide-fucking-open, and there’s nothing I can do about it. I’ve been on a first aid course — got the fucking certificate to prove it — but there’s nothing I can do, she’s dead and they didn’t teach us how to deal with the dead. The dead are beyond help, you can’t even protect them from their enemies. It’s just I can’t take this no more, there’s an intruder in the kitchen, he’s standing at the kitchen door listening to this terrible screaming coming down the hall. No, there’s really nothing I can do except sit on the bed and stare at the face in the doorway and wait to hear from somewhere behind it the creaking of the intruder, louder than the screaming. Irena catches her breath for a moment, then starts to howl again. It’s getting louder, beginning to sound like a siren. No, there’s no way we can hide from this intruder. He knows. He’s standing in the kitchen listening. He’ll decide soon. Very soon. He’ll open the door and step out onto that creaky parquet.

  * * *

  The philosophy and metaphysics of property ownership in Ljubljana, for fuck’s sake.

  “On Rusjanov we had one pay the final instalment,” says Zoki. “And we nearly had the crazy bitch asking for it all back, after that last shooting…”

  Beno’s looking kind of thoughtful. As if he’s got something important on his mind. Not bullets in Fužine.

  “How are flats in Fužine selling these days?” he asks. Zoki and I look at each other. I don’t want to start going into details of how business is recently. If I even think of Mirković I really start to lose my rag.

  “Like usual, really,” I say.

  “Cheap, probably?” says Beno, more a statement than a question.

  “Of course, cheap. For such new blocks.”

  Beno thinks some more. Then he suddenly says: “Have you ever thought that this here Fužine is a total failure?”

  Just listen to him. What’s he going to come out with now? A failure? Let him move to the BS3 flats then! Fuck him. Or to Zupančičeva, fucking concrete jungle. Then he’ll see what a failed project is. What does this genius know about flats?

  “I mean, architecturally,” says Beno. Just listen to him. “Okay, there’s a lot of open space and green areas here — more than elsewhere…”

  “The neatest place in Ljubljana, Fužine!” says Zoki. I only look at him briefly.

  “It’s just that the architect has never noticed that there’s a river here,” says Beno. “Did that ever strike you?”

  “How do you mean?” says Marjan. As if he gives a shit.

  “Well, the Ljubljanica may as well not be there. You know what kind of infrastructure you could have? A real waterside development. Cafés and terraces by the river, renting out rowing boats, swans, fishing… Whatever comes to mind. Just think what sort of image the place would have. The fanciest place in Ljubljana. Like a health spa.”

  In fact, he’s right, if you think about it. If I think of the kind of prices we could ask — prices would go through the bleeding roof. And right here, not in some rotten Zupančičeva — I wouldn’t even dream of living there, really, even if they were giving places away. If I got one for free I’d rent
the fucker out. Let someone else hunt cockroaches.

  “Yeh,” I say, Beno does have some okay ideas sometimes. “They really screwed up, here.”

  “They screwed up most when they gave you a flat here,” says Zoki.

  Hello, Zoki’s trying to be witty. Of course. What is it with him today? He’s always snapping at my heels.

  I quietly sip my whisky. It’s already my fourth — or fifth. I’ll have to think about going on to beer, this whisky goes too quickly. Eats into your wallet, too. But one thing’s becoming obvious. Increasingly obvious. You don’t have to be any kind of genius to see it. But anyway. All the signs are there. Zoki’s obviously jealous of me. He’s green with envy.

  Yeh, he’s just jealous. It’s pretty clear. For some time now. Listen — when he was a doorman, I was a driver. Okay, there’s no great difference in pay, but he had to wear himself out all day sending various useless individuals here and there, had to hang around on Saturdays and Sundays opening doors for various bleeding idiots and picking up the phone. The pits, really. Okay, even I thought I’d crack some days, but at least there were some interesting stories to tell from time to time. I always had some tale to spin, how some moron had screwed up on the road, driven too far out at a junction, how we got stuck on the narrow streets through the centre, how I screwed things up for idiots who were trying to get a free ride. He was even fucking jealous when they stabbed that kid on my bus. The height of adventure. No need for him to be. What’s more, he’s jealous of me because I’ve got a daughter. A lovely daughter. Him and his wife have nothing. Don’t know why. I know they went to see various doctors about it. Zoki would love to have children, but he’s never said what they found out. I don’t even know if it’s him who’s not producing the goods or if there’s something wrong with his wife. He did say to me once his wife said she thought they should adopt. He was horrified. That he’d have to look every day at someone else’s kid. Either from his balls, or nothing.

  And that bleeding wife of his. If he had a daughter that took after the mother there wouldn’t be much benefit. Great big gut, wanders around in an apron. Goes to the shop looking like I don’t know what, showing him up. And that’s another thing he’s jealous about: Mira, who still looks good at forty-five — when she’s done up, you’d say she wasn’t much over thirty.

  He’s even jealous about the dog. The Old English. That’s why he’s always mouthing off about it. Fuck him and his Rottweiler. Wife, daughter, dog — is there anything more family than that? In that respect, Zoki is a right fucking Yugo. They set great store by family. But he’s got none of that — just an empty flat and a wife who breaks his balls about not bringing enough money home. Spends half his dosh on whisky when he’s drinking with me and doesn’t want to look bad. What else?

  Why the hell does he study the Advertiser andCar Weekly and such shit all the time? So he’ll be smarter at something? Okay, but why all the bullshit? He is smarter. I know that, I wouldn’t even try to deny it. Though I’d never tell him that, even if he dragged me by the balls along the river. Why would I say something like that to him — I’m not some faggot, to be giving him compliments. He was the one who came up with the idea of flats, of an agency. Of setting up a company. What do I know about shit like that? I just had to trust him. I learnt from him a bit. In this kind of business we’re in you’ve got to trust people. But what’s this now — the kinds of things he’s saying make me wonder what’s happened to that trust. At least his trust towards me. Does he not trust me, or what? I’d give the shirt off my back for him, I would. That’s comradeship. I’m not going to go back on my word.

  And I’m thinner than him, too. If we’re being frank, Zoki is a bit of a barrel. Him and his wife make a right pair on family photos — like two barrels. I don’t think any amount of aerobics would help.

  “What did the blonde with the tampon behind her ear say?” asks Marjan.

  “What?”

  “Where did I put that fucking pencil?”

  Zoki grins. Beno needs a while before he gets it. Sounds like an old one to me.

  “Now I’ll tell you one,” I say to Marjan. If we’re telling jokes, let’s go for it. “What’s the difference between a broad who gives out, and one who doesn’t?”

  “No, what?” says Marjan, still grinning at his own joke. He pulls his cigs out of his pocket and puts the fuckers on the table. What manners.

  “The one who does is a whore, the one who doesn’t is a fucking whore,” I say, and pull out my lighter. Let someone at least be good mannered, even if he doesn’t know how to be.

  “Ha-haaa-haaa…”

  Yeh, I know it’s a good one.

  “What muck are you spreading around now, Igor?” I hear from behind my back. When I turn round, Rade’s standing there. Hey.

  “Oh-ho,” I greet him. I’m really pleased to see Rade. Won’t do any harm if there’s slightly more of us, if it should come to… Rade’s an ex-cop, though thank god he was no longer in the police when I go to know him. Otherwise it wouldn’t have gone so well. But he wasn’t. He’d been suspended the year before for beating up some druggie. Bleeding socialist times then, when little wankers like that were afraid of the police and they could have the shit beaten out of them and no-one would squeal. Not like today, when every drunken thirteen-year-old thinks he can take on the cops. But Rade was unlucky, ’cause he’d beaten up the son of some lawyer, then driven him in the back of the van at a hundred an hour so that he’d been thrown around like a rag doll, then he’d worked on him more during the night. These kids had smashed up some fruit and veg kiosk, so it wasn’t strange that Rade had lost his rag. Hm, for bringing the people’s militia into disrepute. These things happen.

  So, thank god, when we met he was a security guard. I took the piss out of him sometimes on account of it. Told him stories about the traffic police. But he didn’t mind. He was just allergic to kids racing around. He only drove like that when he really had to. Nice lad, Rade.

  But fuck me. I don’t have long to feel happy. As soon as I open my trap to say something to him I see he’s looking past me, through the window. At the entrance. And I see that Zoki’s looking, too. So that I have to as well. I don’t need to look for long. Rade stretches his arm past me, just a little, not too much to make it obvious. He points at the guys who are coming in.

  “Look at that,” he says. Three guys. Yeh, interesting company.

  * * *

  When I get off the bus the heat engulfs me once more. It is really is hot today. Summer’s definitely here. I see Ščinkovec crossing the road, going towards the bar. He looks very pleased with himself. He probably sold another pig in a poke today. There are very few people about. Football, football the opium of the urban masses. Thank God for football — without it, what would be left apart from a daily drink in the bar next to the supermarket? I’d better get inside as soon as possible, before the firecrackers start raining down on me.

  When I reach the entrance Pašković’s daughter Janina and one of her friends are standing in the doorway. They’re just opening the door to go in. When Janina sees me, she pauses for a moment and holds the door to let me pass.

  “Thank you,” I say and try to get past as quickly as possible so as not to be in their way. Janina doesn’t say anything. I don’t expect her to.

  Why does that girl always look so miserable? But not only her — why do all young girls always look so miserable? They give such a bad impression, even when they’re being neighbourly — unlocking the entrance door, holding the lift, saying hello — they always do it in such a negligent way, as if it was some unavoidable duty. Is this modern politeness or what? All these youngsters are convinced they are so clever, that they took in all the wisdom of this world with their mother’s milk. And that milk has long gone sour as far as we older ones are concerned. They get nothing from us. We’re here just so they can open the door for us. To maintain the order of things.

  In fact, all these youngsters from southern backgrounds are terr
ibly traditional. No-one is more traditional than they are! Not even country yokels. Forget the cool appearance, the make-up, the earrings, the long hair. When they’re surrounded by boys, they all start to flirt so innocently, laughing at what they say, drinking in what the clever boys say. Absorbing their pearls of wisdom. And they’re happy in the end when they’re shown their place. They’ll all end up eventually with husbands who spend their days hanging around bars and casinos, coming home drunk and beating them up, giving them one child after another. They will dedicatedly boil green beans, roast red peppers and meat, and make beanprebranec. Yes, they’ll know exactly where their place is. No-one has ever shown me mine. They will either be patient victims or harpies who have to constantly try to evoke their husbands’ sense of guilt. Day after day — isn’t that damned exhausting? Janina will probably be the second kind. How patterns repeat themselves in families. In twenty years, they will all be overweight and have perms, and none of them will remember how clever they were years earlier when they wandered about with long dark hair and carelessly looked around and slurped Coca Cola. Oh, no.

  It’s terrible when such cases — still proud and careless — appear in the lecture theatre. They sit there, majestically staring into space, chewing gum. Then when it comes to the exam there’s a complete transformation: they sit and stare, their eyes vacant, complete confusion behind them. It doesn’t work any more. Where is that majestic carelessness now? One such as that appears before me and I ask her something completely straightforward: why was standard Slovene in need of reform at the end of the 18th century? Why? Yes, why. She simply looks at me, her eyes wide, as if I’m pointing a gun at her and insisting she buys a brick. My retired colleague Brezovec comes into the office. He still comes to the department quite often, researching material for a dictionary. A living legend when it comes to Slovene is Brezovec. He can hardly walk, but he’s here early every morning, sitting at his books. Do I want to end up like that? I don’t know. A wicked thought enters my head. I’m going to be a bit cheeky. If this girl doesn’t know… Let’s see what that I-don’t-care attitude can cope with — what lies behind it.