Fužine Blues Read online

“I suppose that’s true,” he says, a bit more humbly. Yes, I’d say it is, just so you’re clear what’s what, you little prat.

  A warbling sound comes through the window. Birds, the little shitters, can hardly wait for you to park under the trees. Anyway, then the usual formalities. Licence and registration. For fuck’s sake, here. Licence and registration. Why should I give a toss if someone wants my licence and registration. I haven’t stolen anything. Let him look. But it takes forever. For Christ’s sake, I’m in a hurry.

  He gawps at them for ages. Illiterate moron. Should I read it out for him? Igor Ščinkovec. Pregl Square 12. Three hundred metres from here. But no, that’s not enough for him. No, he’s determined to fuck me about, he wants to look in the boot.

  “Hey listen, I’m in a hurry,” opening it in any case. It’ll be over quicker. “I’m here on business.”

  “Ah?” he says, staring into the boot as if he’d never seen one before. “Where are you going?”

  It would never have entered my head to answer him, if I hadn’t wanted to shake him off as quick as possible. And it really got on my tits, I mean, the way he asked. As if he thought I was some piss artist or something. How dare he, bloody clown in his blue outfit. Nowhere special, officer. I’m taking a client to view a flat. Some of us have rather more serious work to do. In any case, more serious than standing on the corner waving a lollipop like some little faggot.

  “Ah-ha,” he says, finally giving me the documents back. Thanks for nothing. “Say hello to your client from me. Good luck,” he says, and goes back to the corner.

  I just didn’t get it.

  “What did you say?” I call after him. But nothing, he’s already standing at the corner waving his lollipop.

  I’d really like to go over there and ask what exactly he meant by that, my client and good luck. Good luck to me? Do I need anything from you? Or my client? I’m supposed to say to him the police say hello. For fuck’s sake. What kind of luck does the guy need? Are you really trying to fuck with me? Is there some kind of misunderstanding here? Would you like to go and see if my client is waiting for me, perhaps? What a little shit. If you ask him straight he pisses off. If your gob’s big enough to get something like that out, then it’s big enough to explain more precisely what you mean. That’s what I say. I tell you what, I feel like going over there and sticking one on him. At least he’d have something to mouth off about at the station, what a dangerous place Fužine is. But it’s a pointless game. It’s not worth getting into a fight with the police. At least not first thing, before work.

  Zoki and I are supposed to meet in the bar. I’d like to get another one down me before the viewing, get the circulation going, I’m still half asleep, it’s eight o’clock. What allowance do you get for a viewing at eight o’clock? Zoki said it was some weirdo. I can believe him, although Zoki likes to lay it on a bit thick. I mean, I think to him everyone’s weird. If anyone told him he was weird he’d be deeply offended.

  I stood for a while watching that cop. He bleeding well knew I was watching him. He was all slimy and chummy with the next one he stopped, guy with a moustache in an old Mercedes. Okay, right, I think he got what I was trying to tell him. Ščinkovec is not going to kow-tow to some twenty-year-old kid. I quickly crossed the road to the Oasis.

  Zoki’s not there yet. He’s always fucking late. Some time we’ll have to have a serious chat about work habits.

  Zoki is actually okay. Bit lazy when it comes to work — but he’s got drive. In that respect, you’ve got to hand it to him. Always on the hunt for information. His speciality is second-hand car prices. A potential money-maker at the weekend he’s always saying to me — the car market. It’s easy peasy. You look for some poor little sod who’s peering around as if somebody’s going to jump on him any moment. You go up to him, he’s asking three thousand, you slag off the bodywork, lift the bonnet, slag off everything in sight, offer one thousand, go round again. After three rounds you buy it for one and a half thousand. Next week you fix it up and sell it for four. Easy peasy.

  I really fancy the idea. And I trust Zoki one hundred per cent, he’s got things under control. But where would I find the energy after tramping round strange flats all week. He’s got the drive. Whenever you see him waiting in some bar he’s got the paper open in front of him, studying the ads. I don’t know anyone who knows more about it. Look how he screwed Beno when he bought that Uno. Last time I saw him he had the prices of old cookers and washing machines written down, you know? Although I’d probably call that a waste of energy. Whatever, if business ever goes down the plug hole then at least I know what Fixed Properties Ltd can turn its hand to.

  I drink my coffee and whisky at the counter by the window. I never sit down in the morning because then the whisky goes straight to my legs, and the coffee to my head. I just stare out and play with my black lighter. The cop’s still standing on the corner, only now he looks a bit bored, as if he’s not sure whether to stop someone or if he’d maybe rather go for a beer.

  And then I see the bleeder. Fucking Mirković!

  He comes marching out of the block of flats. My cig even falls out of my hand. Damn the bastard. I lean across the counter and watch. Shit. It has to be now. Just now, when there’s a cop standing on the corner. Bloody hell, he’s a lucky one, though you can see he’s just a dumb peasant. And he was coming straight towards me. No, it’s not possible. That would be too beautiful.

  If he’d gone past the cop and across the road past the Oasis, I’d have been straight outside and I’d have had him. Collared him. I’d have given him something to think about, the little shit. If the fucker ever turns up in the Dynasty, he’ll get what’s coming to him! I’ll teach him not to fuck with me.

  Nah, I knew it, not my lucky day. Instead of crossing over he stopped in the car park, a few feet in front of the cop.

  He unlocks his car.

  At least that’s something. At least I know now which is his car.

  He bleeding well knows that I’m selling flats in Fužine. And what does the bastard do? Two months I’m selling this flat for Režonja, take along a young couple, some old dear, some tramps who won on Who Wants to be a Millionaire, families with kids and some strange Mafia types. And this Mirković, he appears out of nowhere and tells the guy that his colleague from work or his cousin or some such dick-head will buy the flat. And whoever it is goes and talks to Režonja, puts down a hundred and fifty thousand marks, just like that, no commission. As if I’ve never been involved. Then Režonja buys Mirković a bottle of whisky. I’m just here for decoration, or what? Two sodding months, for fuck’s sake!

  Režonja gets rid of the flat, of course, and buggers off to Jevnica or somewhere. And Mirković has the cheek to wander round Fužine, so I have to keep seeing his ugly mush. I mean, fuck it, it’s just not on.

  Zoki. Zoki’s standing outside tapping his watch. I look at mine. Shit, five past eight.

  “I’ve just seen Mirković,” I say as we hurry towards the entrance to the flats. Zoki is creasing the contracts folder under his arm.

  “Mirković,” he says suddenly. “It’d probably be better if you left Mirković alone.”

  What the fuck do you mean, leave him alone? Surely Zoki’s not going to shit himself now, is he?

  While we’re on the subject, Zoki, as well as being smart, is also a chicken.

  He explains. Ha. He says that the guy who Mirković sorted out the flat for is Pašković’s brother. Not a colleague from work or a cousin or a dick-head. Pašković’s brother.

  So what? Pašković is my neighbour. Pašković is just a nobody with some crummy little job at the Petrol company. He wouldn’t hurt a fly. He’s got a daughter, Janina, fifteen or sixteen I reckon, a right juicy little piece. Pašković wouldn’t dare say boo, even if I offered to give her one for a tenner. His wife would scratch my eyes out first. But according to Zoki, the brother is a different kettle of fish altogether. He’s into very different games. He’s a big noise in Koseze, has the wh
ole area under his control. There are some funny stories circulating about him. And now he’s moved into Režonja’s three-bedroom flat in Fužine.

  So he’s moved to Fužine. As if we didn’t have enough home-grown fucking hard cases here already. I wonder how long he’ll last before his front door takes a few shots? A Pašković?

  “Can a Pašković really be such a tough guy?” I ask.

  “As far as I can understand,” says Zoki, “if the older Pašković is an Old English Sheepdog, then the younger one is a Rottweiler.” Alright, Zoki, take the piss if you have to.

  Ever since my wife got me an Old English Sheepdog and he saw me with it at Fužine Manor the prick’s never let up about it. As if it’s anything to do with me. Bitches and dogs, eh? She said what a wonderful dog for kids. I said, who’s going to take it out for a piss — the kids are so little that it’d drag them around in circles. Obviously I will, she said. Who else? Of course. And now, naturally, she’s always out and about somewhere, and leaves the fucking dog behind. She’s got to go into town, she’s got to go to the hairdresser’s, she’s got to go to her bleeding mother’s. Take him with you, I said. I can’t, she says, he’d flake out in the car from the heat. What do I care, I thought, you’ll see, and the first time I left him in the flat and went out for a drink. When I got back there was dogshit everywhere. Okay, she cleaned up the mess, I mean it was her fault, but the bleeding flat stank like a latrine for the next two days. So the next time she went trolling off, I took him out. I felt like a walk anyway. Then Zoki saw me. I thought he was going to piss himself. I looked liked a total — I don’t fucking know — like some bloody schoolteacher with this Old English, or so he said. If it was at least a real dog, an Alsatian or Stafford Bull Terrier or something. Now I keep having to listen to the same crap. One day I’ll sort that sodding dog — a rope and a rock, into the river with it. I need peace and quiet to be able to function. When am I going to get things sorted, for fuck’s sake. Get things as they should be.

  “I’m glad to be here in Fužine,” says the guy in shorts and a battered straw hat who shakes our hand at the door. That’s the way. Not like those pricks who, when you tell them you have a well-appointed two-bedroom flat in Fužine, look at you as if you’re mad. They daren’t even come for a viewing, as if, I don’t know, someone’s going to jump them as soon as they get out of the car. “These flats,” says the guy, looking up at the tenth floor where we’re going to take him, “these flats were built when I was in Polje.”

  Zoki and I look at each other. I think about it for a few moments. Well, I mean, perhaps I misunderstood what he said. Of course I have. After all, Polje’s quite a big place, maybe he doesn’t mean the loony bin. If it was true, it’d hardly be the first thing he’d want to mention when he went to see a flat. Unless he really had escaped from somewhere.

  The guy happily signs a form agreeing that he can buy the flat at Brodar Square 7 only through the good offices of the company Fixed Properties Ltd. We know all these tricks. If only Režonja had signed something like that. We’d have him up in court now, and that dick-head Mirković alongside him.

  Fucking Mirković. I can’t get what Zoki said out of my head. Mirković. Pašković. Old English Sheepdog Pašković and Rottweiler Pašković.

  Zoki’s comparison gets on my tits. It’s hard to see Pašković as some kind of Old English Sheepdog. Not that they’re all that different as far as build goes. Just the face. Pašković is a stocky type with a moustache, whose wife has got him under her thumb — she just blinks and he comes running. When he goes down to check the post he has to go in his slippers, so that he doesn’t scoot across the road to the Dynasty. Pašković has a black moustache, a black chest rug and a black look on his face, as if to compensate for being such a pussy. He certainly doesn’t look like some drugged-up shaggy dog with its tongue hanging out. Where did Zoki get this Old English Sheepdog idea? It’s just so he can show off how he knows the names of all the breeds, the prick.

  On the tenth floor, Iršič answers the door. He’s wearing a tracksuit and looks half asleep. Where he gets the dosh for a new flat is beyond me. Mangy long-haired git, whenever I see him he looks half asleep. Eight in the morning. When we’ve talked he’s never mentioned any kind of job. He’s most likely selling drugs. But not in Fužine, he’s not tough enough for that. Probably around the schools.

  While Zoki takes the guy round the flat, I sit at the kitchen table. I could really use another bloody coffee. It would be nice if Iršič offered me one, but he just stares. Leans against the wall and stares into space. As if he was high, the creep.

  “Ready for the footie this evening?” I ask, just to get a conversation going. Though Iršič doesn’t exactly look the football type.

  “I’ll probably go to the Oasis” I’m surprised to hear. Then he brings up something else altogether: “The water’s probably off round your way today, isn’t it?” I have to give it some thought.

  “So I hear,” I say. “They’ve got to fix some pipes or something.”

  “A really good time, in this heat,” says Iršič. Yeh, a really good time. Thank god there’s plenty of drinks in the fridge.

  Zoki and the oddball return to the kitchen.

  “It’s pretty quiet way up here, isn’t it?” says the oddball. It’s only now he takes his hat off and holds it in his hand. He’s got quite long greasy hair. At least he’s got something in common with Iršič.

  “Yeh, it is really,” replies Iršič. “In this part of town it’s worth something being high up.” Good job he doesn’t mention that if you’re so high up the sun’s like a furnace, the mangy git. “Some people get worried about being so high up,” he says, as if he already knows what the guy’s going to ask next. They’ve got quite a routine going. “But in all these years, it’s never happened that at least one of the lifts isn’t working...”

  “It’s important to me, that it’s quiet,” says the oddball. “I’m living with my mother at the moment, in Dravlje, just above the ring road. When I lie down in the afternoon, worn out after my injections, there are lorries roaring past my window.” So, I was right in the first place. “That accent — you from Koroška?” he asks. “That’s my neck of the woods.”

  “No, born in Mozirje,” says Iršič. The guy looks at him kind of suspiciously, as if he thinks he might secretly be from Bosnia or somewhere.

  “Ah,” he says. He looks past Iršič, somewhere towards the cooker. “I’m from Mozirje, too,” he says so suddenly I almost choke. Fucking hell, this is more serious than I thought. Iršič doesn’t even react. He looks at him kind of thoughtful like, as if he can see right through him. What’s this all about, eh? Some sort of weirdo strategy to get the price down or what? Act so crazy nobody dares answer back.

  “But there aren’t too many Yugoslavs on this floor, are there?” he says then, and Zoki and I look at each other. I grin at Zoki, so the oddball doesn’t see me. When all’s said and done he’s a Yugo too, though he’s fully house-trained. I usually don’t even think about it — only when someone says something like this guy. I’ve nothing against southerners, if they’re civilised like Zoki is. If they speak good Slovene and don’t have one of those wa-la-la singers booming out of the car stereo under my window.

  “You know, it’s not true what they say about Fužine, that you never hear Slovene here,” I say. Someone’s got to salvage the situation. “This used to be public housing, way back, but the last ten years it’s all private...”

  I look at Zoki, but he’s keeping schtum, as if he’s decided he’s not going to be dragged into this discussion. Good job, too. We want to make some money out of this, after all. But the guy carries on as if he hasn’t heard me, goes bravely forward like a tank.

  “I looked at the names on the buzzers at the end of the corridor,” he says, “and I don’t think there are any Serbs or Bosnians there.”

  Well, you’ve got to hand it to him, the guy’s brain may be raddled by all the injections, but his patriotic spirit
is still intact, solid as a rock.

  “Yeh,” says Iršič, his eyes suddenly narrow, “thank god those skinheads next door have sorted them all out.”

  Here we go. How can you do business with such people? Zoki is a southerner and says nothing, while this one is now suddenly a fighter for their civil rights. Bleeding nutters.

  Iršič and the other guy are made for each other. I remember the tales he spun when he showed me round. The place has its own little history — but not the kind for fucking commemorative plaques.

  I remember saying that the wall next to the bed in the spare room wasn’t very well painted, that there were stains showing through. But he just stared at it and said it’s better not to tell the buyer some things. Ha-ha, you dick-head, I thought, but at least you tell the agent, you’ve got to trust your agent. Where do we end up otherwise? My lips are sealed. Except of course to the crowd in the Dynasty, if there’s anything worth telling.

  So he tells me about it. A couple of years before he had a lodger, a student of philosophy or theology or anthropology, I don’t fucking know, one of those spiritual things. Profoundly spiritual. The guy seems to have knitted his own underpants. Out of wool. Don’t know why, some sort of penance or something. To drive away impure thoughts. Though if I had woollen underpants on my naked balls, there’d be impure thoughts, all right — I’d be scratching my groin on every street corner, for fuck’s sake! Anyway, this guy slept in the spare room. And like all students he was a little skiver, preferred to gallivant about than study his spiritual affairs. And one night, when Iršič was already asleep, he came home at two in the morning with some sixteen-year-old bit of skirt who’d run away from home and had nowhere to go... And she’d found a good Samaritan — our poor, profoundly spiritual Janez... well, let’s just call him Janez. Our Janez had taken pity on her and said that she could spend the night in his room, he’d sleep on the floor.

  Anyway, she could have had more fucking sense than to spend the night with some guy she’d never set eyes on before. And that some weirdo who knits his own fucking pants. But she was a sly one as well. She told our Janez she had an ampoule of some drug, I don’t know which, and that she would sell it the next day and give him the money, because he’d been so good to her... Anyway, all seemed to go as agreed, she slept on his bed, and he went to sleep on the floor — didn’t try to jump her or anything. He was a deeply spiritual lad.