Fužine Blues Read online

  That was twenty years ago.

  So it was like this. We go for the weekend, leaving Ljubljana early in the morning, and in the afternoon we shake and rattle along the dirt road to the rocky shore. The bay really was marvellous, sheltered by two small islands, the sea calm; it was almost deserted, with an emphasis on almost. There was a small, unofficial nudist camp there, and suddenly Adam and Jolanda had thrown off their clothes. Go on, Vera, said Adam, for once in your life be a nudie.

  I felt very awkward. But what could I do? Should I kick up a fuss like some spoilt child and demand we go elsewhere? Should I lie like a lemon among all the naked bodies with my costume on? I undressed, closed my eyes and stretched out on a flat rock. It was a strange feeling. I could feel the hair between my legs trembling in the breeze and from Adam’s gaze. I could feel him. I had the feeling that...

  And now, said Adam, who had stood up with a towel and was looking towards the two of us, Vera and Jolanda should warm their you-know-what’s in the sun, while Goran and I go for a beer. Okay?

  I was all ready to jump up and give him what for. I was ready to lift my head and throw him a withering look. But I had the feeling that a naked person cannot produce a withering look — they lack the necessary dignity. Especially if that person is not so young and sexy — if that person is forty-five years old and is lying on a rock and already has varicose veins appearing and is lying on a rock like... well, perhaps not exactly like Venus, perhaps like a starfish that some child has pulled out of its cold depths and has left lying there, warming itsyou-know-what in the hot sun.

  What if wanted a beer? Or a Coke? Perhaps even a grappa?

  That was twenty years ago.

  So far no resolutions.

  From the small table on the balcony you can see, between the balcony and the wall, a large cobweb. What can we conclude from that?

  At least that there lives here a neglectful housewife for whom cobwebs are not one of life’s main concerns. What else? At the very least, we can assume the presence of a spider. We can assume the possible presence of flies, on which the aforementioned spider feeds, as in their absence it would die from malnutrition. There is another possibility here, namely that it is a totally incompetent member of the order of spiders (spiders are an order, according to Adam, and belong in the same class, arachnids, as do scorpions), totally devoid of any talent for judging where flies may happen to buzz past.

  But comrades, sorry, colleagues, so far we have passed no resolutions whatsoever.

  A sip of coffee. I sit on my flat rock and I’m not getting off.

  Anyway, how can you expect resolutions from people who evidently lack even the most basic historical awareness? How the hell? It’s certainly nothing to boast about. They hold their positions in 2000, but they had their best ideas in the seventies and eighties, didn’t they? Today, they try to live off... What times are we living in? Is this what we fought for? What can we conclude?

  Adam also had his best ideas in the seventies. Or perhaps not — I don’t really know what ideas he had later.

  No precipitous conclusions, comrades.

  Yes, and who actually had this historical awareness? We can assume, those who lived in historical times. For if they hadn’t, how could they have functioned there (in historical times) — like headless chickens? Like me on that flat rock, which I would not get off, while the wind ruffled me.

  An example of a historical personage. Let’s say Jernej Kopitar. Mr Vienna from Repnje. He’ll do. He so hated the Ljubljana bourgeoisie, the alienated swarm, that he had to flee to Vienna and become a state censor. Five years ago we were on a visit to the cemetery in Repnje, to his family grave. It’s stimulating to lead students from one graveyard to another. Crosses, crosses, crosses — they lead us into the future, everyone’s definite future, each will ultimately acquire their own cross and will be burdened with it and will have to hold it up, so that no one grabs it and carries it home. But a saviour — Mr Vienna was no saviour. How was his historical awareness? Not so good, it seems. The way today’s historians deal with him gives the impression of a lack of historical curiosity. He redeemed himself with one thing: at the very start of his career he wrote an excellent grammar, the best for a century. Just as these current geniuses redeemed themselves at the end of the eighties for all their later idiocies. Kopitar has always been a shining light for all our students.

  What of our dear students? Our pride and our hope? A redemption somewhat too feeble to bring real joy, thank you. Which students were clear, twenty years ago, that the study of the Slovene language was a politicalstudy? That you had to be engaged if you wanted to get involved in linguistic issues? That it was necessary to reflect on language, and on another level, if

  When all’s said and done, why should I care? I sit on my flat rock and I’m not getting off. The problem is, my costume is in the bag, down on the other side of the pebble beach, and Adam and Goran are no longer around because they’ve gone for a beer. And I should get up and

  For example: in the eighties, when Yugoslavia was starting its fight against national rights — when they wanted to ban headphones from the federal assembly — the slogan was, in Serbia they sell Slovene Radenska, but they won’t allow us to sellKnjaz Miloš mineral water in Slovenia. And I ask my students, who already look totally apathetic, do you know what Knjaz Miloš is? They stare at me as if I am a total idiot. Another example: why did Roman Jakobson leave Prague at the end of the thirties? They all gawp, then one bleats: because of the Prague Spring? I thought I’d have a stroke.

  Vera, Vera, calm down... You said when you retired you’d stop worrying about certain things. Let’s move on.

  This girl student comes to see Dušan... Enough. What shall I wear this evening? That’s important. That’s much more important.

  First impressions are important.

  God knows what he’ll think. God knows what he thinks already. But I shall not think about that now.

  I’ll think about

  Car park saga continues

  Parking is a big problem in Ljubljana. I learnt to drive when I moved to Fužine, fifteen years ago, and then I realised what a problem parking is. One of the first things I did when I got divorced, when we sold the house, was to learn to drive and to buy a two-bedroom flat in Fužine.

  He must be near seventy now. Who knows how that kind of age shows on... He was always so thin.

  Acts, but no perpetrators

  And I receive a letter. I come home, open the post box, and inside is a fat, a really fat, envelope. I take it into the lift with me. I start to open it. One of my neighbours from the floor below is in the lift, with a bag of shopping in his hand. Also some spotty adolescent. I slightly tear the edge of the envelope and peer in. It’s packed full of small, flat objects, but I can’t make out what. I push two fingers in and get hold of something, pull it out.

  Between my fingers are three bright purple condoms.

  Oh yes.

  I just didn’t get it. I stared at them, then looked at my neighbour. But he was looking away with an indifferent expression on his face, pretending he hadn’t seen anything. Oh God. I wanted to shove them back in, but my fingers started to tremble and two of the condoms fell on the floor. Now the kid really did look down. The trouble with these immigrant kids is that they’re always so willing to help. He was about to bend down but I almost pushed him aside and dived on them. He straightened up and stared at the doors.

  How I racked my brains, trying to work it out. The envelope was addressed to me. It contained three hundred and forty-three condoms in different colours, shapes and flavours. Was this Goran’s act of revenge, because in our last conversation before the divorce I’d mentioned... No, of course not, this was too low even for Goran. Had some student sent it? Which student would buy, for a practical joke, three hundred and forty-three condoms, and send them to a teacher? That would take a whole term’s grant. And who knows, I might be pleased, and what kind of practical joke would that be? Perhaps it was some neig
hbour who had taken a dislike to me? Verbinc perhaps, who rented his flat to Sokič? But we hardly know each other, what could I have done to offend him? A warning from some psychopathic Fužine rapist? There was no accompanying letter, not a word.

  Two days later, Ana called.

  She was beside herself. She had found under the table the letter she’d intended to send.

  “Why did you send me three hundred and forty-three condoms?”

  She was taken aback.

  “Did you count them?”

  “Do you think I have anything better to do?”

  There was a simple explanation. Ana’s husband, at the age of forty-five, had had a vasectomy. They already had three children and had decided that was quite enough. She’d always had a large stock of condoms at home, because she got them at work, wholesale... And when she heard I was getting divorced she decided to send them to me. For a laugh, to cheer me up, to say let’s look on the bright side, now there’ll be more opportunities for... The bright side.

  And she put them in an ordinary envelope. If the postman had torn it pushing it into the mailbox and they had tumbled onto the floor, he would... he’d probably have thought that I’d got a new sideline and that I’d ordered the basic accoutrements from a catalogue.

  How to reduce the number of refugees

  Three hundred and forty-three condoms. If I was Snow White I could service each of the seven dwarfs every day for seven weeks without any of them getting jealous.

  Once, on New Year’s Eve, I inflated fifty of them and hung them around the flat, and then drank champagne in front of the television. But it didn’t feel very festive. And I was worried all the time: what if the doorbell rings, someone come to wish me a Happy New Year.

  And I have to go to him with such a request. For whom? For some students. Not even mine. For some students who don’t give a damn about studying. Not what I’d call students!

  A student, all dressed up and shining, a big smile on her face, comes to see my assistant Dušan and says that she has come to him for a seminar theme for sociolinguistics. The girl wants to study sociolinguistics and she doesn’t know that the seminar is led by Assistant Professor Dolenc. And this girl, who doesn’t even know who’s been teaching for the past month, wants to adopt an opposing position to that taken by the participants at the conference Slovene in Public.Can you believe it?

  For such students I am supposed to get dressed up and, wreathed in smiles, go to see someone I haven’t seen for fifteen years.

  I don’t know if he’ll be able to appreciate that things are as I present them. That’s the worst thing. It will seem too absurd to him. He’ll try to find some other reason. Some particularly stupid reason why I came.

  When I tell him, he’ll think that I’m making it up. Dear colleague, dear former neighbour, you could put some pressure on your Dean of Chemistry — you’re still in touch, aren’t you? — so that the poor...

  Why do I have to solve other people’s problems?

  Well, I have the feeling I’m being of help, at least from a distance. That I’m being of help to someone. That perhaps somewhere it will be recognised.

  No alcohol at night

  How will he look? He will think that I wasn’t able to resist, and that I had to somehow come and see him, to admire the charming, wise, retired professor. And what can I say to convince him? To create the right train of thought in his mind? Am I capable of that? I’m becoming scatter-brained.

  I should be able to find the right words. I have researched language all my life.

  This exhibition, for instance, the one I’m going to today — that should show what you can do with language. Slovene Grammars.The National Library has such interesting ideas sometimes. It is already four hundred and sixteen years since the first grammar — an eternity. How many have been written? These books show that language can do many things. Well, you know? That is to say that a grammar, let’s say the one by the poet Vodnik, shows what language can do. At least he knew about language, didn’t he? So did he tell us how that language functioned? Of course not. He knew very well what bricks he was building with. But how to undertake such a description — how? It’s like leaving sketches of fragments of a flying machine. Much worse than Leonardo’s. How does this work — where do I press? A guide on using fragments, their function derived on the basis of their — what? Shape? Size? Beauty? If we tried to describe the purple condoms in this way: their colour is indicative of — what? What can we conclude from the sumptuous taste of blueberries? It would be difficult without a devillishly strong theory.

  Best when they started to be overwhelmed

  I just hope the exhibition won’t depress me too much, professionally. There are so few things left these days worth seeing. I don’t go to the opera. The theatre — this year’s programme at the National is, you might say, something of a letdown. I don’t go to the Youth Theatre anymore since that idiot Živadinov and his gang for one evening’s performance drove us with rifle butts into a freight wagon and then leapt around above our heads for a good hour and, enthused by their heroic tales, scattered dust and cobwebs in our hair. I’m not against such ideas per se. I like it if someone has an idea. It was that he changed us into little more than serfs. I’ve got nothing against ideas, but it was damn uncomfortable. At some point I began to toy with the notion of giving one of those pretentious apes swinging above our heads in their sacerdotal robes a sharp poke with an umbrella. Let them see how it is if the oppressed raise their heads.

  Prague or Krakov

  Wasik. Evening in Krakov. Would you like to go for dinner with me? Yes, if you know some good... Of course, this is my home town. We sat in a small side room, red table cloth, candles. The post-socialist renewal was then in full swing. But from where did a Polish university teacher get the money for dinner in such a restaurant? Wasik didn’t seem in the slightest bit ill-at-ease, as if he was the most important person there. Beetroot soup. Salmon with herb butter. He had silver hair, which must once have been very dark. He laughed when I said I liked speaking Polish. I thought I had good pronunciation, I’d spoken quite nasally for some time.

  Then we spoke of linguistic literary stylistics. There’s very little of that in Slovenia, I told him. He looked as if he’d be interested in whatever I told him. After dinner he drove me to my hotel. He had a new Beetle, which again struck me as impressive for a Polish teacher, but also gave me an odd feeling of unease. Would I like to go back to his place for a coffee? He could show me the new Polish syntax we had discussed, he had a review copy. It’s not far from the hotel.

  What gripped me then? What in heaven’s name was it? That I didn’t have my three hundred and forty-three condoms with me?

  “Oh, it’s so late already,” I said, “and I’ve got to give my paper in the morning.”

  I sit on my flat rock and I’m not getting off.

  Novak’s deep defence fatal for champion

  Wasik smelt nice.

  At that point I did still have all three hundred and forty-three condoms. I remember now. It was forthat New Year that I inflated fifty of them. Perhaps for Wasik. Fifty. That offered the illusion of a good year.

  The last time I went to the Faculty of Education library to read the Journal of Applied Linguistics I saw some graffiti on the wall next to the main entrance: FIRST DEFINITELY CHURNING, THEN MAYBE LEARNING. I copied it into my notebook — all this material will come in handy one day, the linguistic characteristics of graffiti — with somewhat mixed feelings. Who am I collecting all this material for if young people care more about ‘churning’ than studying? Not to mention that I don’t even know what that is. Maybe I should ask the neighbours’ girl, Janina, next time we meet in the lift. If I really want to deal with this academically, I should forge better links with informants. I just know that it is something more important than learning.

  We are seeking to employ a warehouse clerk

  Want to run an attractive profit centre?

  Why does no-one ever publish a
n ad saying: do you want to become a warehouse clerk, in a company importing alcoholic beverages? A heady position. Definitely CHURNING. We shall have to wait for that.

  Today I shall see him again.

  In thirty-eight years the end of the world? Who knows. In three hundred and forty-three, perhaps?

  * * *

  Take me to the river and drop me in the water

  Dip me in the river, drop me in the water

  Talking Heads, Take Me to the River

  Well look at the little faggot, what’s he up to? Look at him standing there! Bleeding cops. Just my luck, turning in here! Where the hell am I supposed to stop? What now, you think I’m going to go racing off over these humps, or what? Little shit, nothing better to do. That really is too much.

  Fuck it, I turn straight after him onto Brodar Square, and so he doesn’t think he can screw me straight away I go a bit further towards the parking area. Little bastard’s trailing along behind me, like some school kid. There’s a space right near the beginning. I turn into it, he follows. When I open the door he’s already standing there, staring.

  “Planning to drive off, or what?” he says, and we both try out a cynical smile.

  “What?” I say. “Hang on. I’ll be right with you.” And I return to what I’m doing. I search through the glove compartment for a pair of sunglasses. Just enough so he doesn’t think he can jerk me about. He looks at me oh so superior, like an arse that thinks it smells sweet. “If I’d wanted to get away, you wouldn’t have seen me for dust,” I tell him. “I’d have turned into the emergency access, then round the back, given you the slip.”