Fužine Blues Read online

  I don’t really get what this guy sees in him. Okay, someone like that Franci, or Cvrle, some sort of crook or dealer or whatever. But Mirsad, or Jaro. Lazy sods, their greatest ambition is to lie in bed all day and then find some totty who’s going to tell them what a big man they are. Their idea of something criminal is to nick a bottle of Stock. And they can’t even drink that without ending up drunk in some ditch, you know?

  And they’ve no idea what it’s like having an uncle like Mladen. It really is better to act dumb, likećale. There’s one story I could tell about stricMladen, then see if these wankers want to go near him. Or come near me.Better keep it to yourself, girl.

  This friend of a friend of Mladen’s that I met at some family party told it me quite by chance. He’d been drinking a bit, the moron, and started talking to me, maybe to make an impression. He didn’t. I think the story’s true. It sounds like Mladen, and I dunno how someone could come up with something like this about a friend.

  Anyway, this is how it was. Mladen and his friend, Gregl, apparently some former police detective, now a Mafia type in a cream and black suit, go to see this Slovene guy, a small fish. Seems he borrowed fifty thousand marks off them to set up some kind of business. Probably something shady, otherwise why borrow off someone like stric Mladen? Only this business doesn’t go too well. And he ends up with no business, and no dough. Mladen wants his money, the guy says he hasn’t got it. Mladen says to him, okay, you sell your car, pay the first instalment, and we’ll sort something out for the rest. I’ll need a favour or two, maybe you can drive me somewhere from time to time. And this idiot says no way. He even says how he’s got some powerful friends. Mladen busts his mouth and asks why he didn’t go to these powerful friends of his to borrow money. He gives him till tomorrow to pay him back.

  The guy disappeared for a couple of days, but Mladen and Gregl didn’t worry. They sniffed out some information instead. They found out the guy has a weekend place, you know? They go there and find him there cooking burgers on the barbecue. They grab him, bung him in the boot of his car and drive both cars out into the wilderness, somewhere where there’s only deer and bears.

  They tell him to sign over his car to Mladen, and then they’ll leave him be until he finds the money or until Mladen needs a favour. It’s the least they can expect in return for the fifty thousand. He says, no way. His wife’s in love with that car, or something. They beat the shit out of him for half an hour but he won’t give in. Then Mladen freaks out, pulls a petrol can out of the car and soaks the poor sod. Then he lights up and, cig in mouth, starts to pummel the guy. But he still won’t give in. The guy had character, you’ve got to give him that. They stuff him back in the boot and go for a drive. The poor bastard is nearly suffocating back there in the heat and petrol fumes: when they pull him out somewhere down by the River Sava he’s almost hallucinating, you know?

  And then they beat him up a bit more. I mean, if people knew how many folk’d come to a sticky end in those woods by the Sava they wouldn’t be so happy to go swimming and fishing there. Someone might even reel in a body. They beat him to a pulp and he passes out. Then they get back in the cars and drive off, leaving him lying there in the woods. Gregl sent his car down to Bosnia to be sold; they got a lot less than they would if it’d had all the right documents, but at least they got something. The poor unfortunate managed to drag himself out of the woods — he told his wife and the police he’d been robbed by total strangers — and they were back to see him a week later. Surely you don’t want us to sell your daughter where we sold your car?

  Anyway, to cut a long story short: the guy cracked up. Topped himself. Hung himself on a tree near his house. Mladen went ballistic ’cause he’d lost his dough. At least he was human enough not to go after the widow. Bad investment, fuck it. Professional risk.

  And now Jaro’s enchanted by this nutter. Though it’s not surprising — Jaro’s even enchanted by Dragana.

  “That punk, that randy cow, was snogging him,” she’s complaining, with a nasty look on her face. Probably some chick making out with a fella she’d set her eyes on. “She was so lucky, her hair ’ll stand on end for a month.”

  I look at Miran and roll my eyes, but the guy doesn’t get it. He’s just ogling Dragana. Mamicu mu, I could do with at least one kindred spirit here. Daša, you silly cunt, where are you? These guys can’t see past Gordana’s tits. And who looks at mine — that old fart, Ščinkovec. There’s no justice. Maybe if I made myself up like some old drag queen then Miran would take more notice if I rolled my eyes.

  “I know at least one totty who’s hair’s gonna stand on end,” says Miran ever so slow, like. “A whole month.”

  We all look at him, but it seems he’s not gonna continue. For fuck’s sake, Miran. I think of Samira and her gentle type and all that — but fuck gentleness, I’d rather even a fella hit me, like, than be so fucking slow the whole time. You go mad before you get anywhere.

  “Yesterday I saw this bird snogging this bloke outside the Eldorado,” he goes on eventually, but no faster. “The bloke was really pissed.”

  “That’s nothing new Miro,” says Jaro, grinning. Course, Jaro, with you it’d have to be her who was pissed if you wanted to get as far as shoving your tongue down her throat.

  “Yeh,” says Miran, “but these two were going at it hammer and tongs, then her cheeks kind of puffed out, got bigger as I was watching, and she kind of knocked this bloke’s head to one side and he threw up all over the fucking pavement, over her, everywhere... Right fucking mess,” he concluded. Dragana’s eyes are like fucking dinner plates, jebo jo Bog. Jaro starts to laugh like crazy, then I have to join in, though more at Dragana, Miran’s story was more likely to make you cry.

  Well, maybe I’m being too heavy. After all, Miran’s not such a bad type. One of the more honest ones. I remember how worked up he was when Samira got messed about by some of the others. And they weren’t even a pair then. It was her birthday, but she had to go on work experience in the afternoon. They said to her to buy a crate of beer. She gave them the money then they fucked off somewhere down by the Ljubljanica. Trobevšek was behind it all, rotten bastard. When she came looking for them they were nowhere to be seen.

  In fact, Miran was one of the ones who fucked off into the woods with the beer, but he felt like shit about it. He told me the whole story later, how he had a real bad conscience and that, you know? One of them at least, but he couldn’t do anything on his own against Trobevšek and Gordan and Bobi.

  Anyway, the lad finally goes off. Samira’s waiting. Samira, my darling. When he’s already walking he turns round and waves. Waves to me! He actually waves to me, this gentle, honest dope.

  “I may give you a call if I decide to come round,” he says. I just look at him. Can you fucking believe him? Mamicu mu!

  * * *

  When I first step out of the National Library I’m blinded by the sun. It’s going to be a hot summer. It is a hot summer. I’m constantly surprised how time flies. I’m right on schedule. Enough time for lunch. The Ljubljanica. Let’s go along the river. It’s a nicer walk, although perhaps slightly longer.

  The exhibition isn’t bad at all. I’ve never seen some of those books before. And it’s not depressing, thank God. It might just be depressing that there’s almost no-one there, to reflect on things a little. You’d think there would be, with all the slogans we have to listen to. Everyone’s goes on about the national spirit, the national essence, but when four hundred and sixteen years’ worth of reflection on that essence is gathered in one place who’s there? Just a few old biddies like me.

  I’ve got to see him again today.

  On the other hand, perhaps they’re right. Who wants to look at old paper?

  Yes, perhaps they are. What did we say about flying machines? When it comes down to it, grammar is not a matter of books. Nor is reflection on it. Mr Osole, my grammar school teacher, would have said: grammar is life. Mr Osole. WHERE ARE YOU? — I’M A POET TOO. Mr Osole al
so wrote poetry in Latin and breathed life into the grammar of that dead language. Not that any speaker of Latin would benefit from such artificial respiration. An interesting example. In fact, Mr Osole, what a cliché, grammar is life, language is a living organism — come on, an organism, like a rabbit or a cactus. An organism indeed! People create language, including you and your Latin. This exhibition reminds you of that if you think about it. And specifically what happens when a particular grammar is published. Grammatical gene, innateness — are you Chomskyians crazy? As if this organism, like some kind of amoeba, was floating in some murky primeval brain swamp — as shown by post-publication spats, perhaps. Pohlin’s grammar more than any other poses the question of where language happens, where is it? All around us, like the water round those rocks in Bale. Undermining it for centuries already. Something that surrounds us. That is always waiting for us with someone else. That happens to us. That lies in wait for us. That embraces us all. KILL BEEZ That we can poke at a little, stir with our spoons, swallow, and which can then stick in our throats, choking us. Yes, Bohorič choked on it, four hundred and sixteen years ago — he found enough colloquial passion in his stuffy Latin world to respond to the coarse peasant speech that managed to escape from its confines... Count Janez Nepomuk Edling had an even worse time with it — a German who decided to translate a text book for teachers into Slovene. How strange it must have seemed to children to come to school and hear the teacher speak exactly the same language as mum and dad at home (well, almost the same) — I mean, he omitted the guttural German sounds. In the mouths of teachers his own language sounded strange, bizarre. Like a Slovene seeing groats on a plate in China, garnished with diced chilli and oyster sauce. It would burn his mouth.

  Metelko choked on it. At the age of twenty-eight he became the first ever head of a university department for Slovene, and went on to create new symbols for the sounds that existed only in his language. What kind of visual talent do you need to come up with a squiggle to mark your voice? GET IN TOUCH (SLEEPING BEAUTY) The linguistic illiterate who has hung a sign saying JEWILER outside his shop is struggling with it. A sign of the times perhaps. For whom do taxpayer-funded national academies and well-paid editors produce dictionaries, if people don’t even know which language a word comes from so that they can look up how to spell it? By the way, there are 41 graffiti between the Golden Ship and Makalonca, 51% in Slovene, 2% in German, 20% in English and 27% in various semiotic codes. Some are impossible to make out, probably just ciphers without a trace of semiotic value. So the language situation in our street culture is not all that bad. We still enjoy a majority when it comes to pure condensed expressiveness. SUCK ME OFF He choked on it and it also suppressed that strange priest Škrabec, who said that 16th-century pronunciation should be our yardstick, although in the 16th century no-one thought of standardised pronunciation XX + XX = a class of is own Schönleben specifically wrote: Scribamus more gentis, loquamur more regionis. Or in Carniolan: Write as is the custom of the generation, speak as is the custom of the region. That eccentric journalist, who by displaying his elevated sociolect supposedly built individuality, also grapples with it. And, truth be told, actually did build it, because the standard language became artificial in the 19th century, the expression within it of different social groups at most an individual stylisation. It was only in the late eighteen-sixties that Professor Bajec finally succumbed and wrote that the yardstick for pronunciation should be educated citizens of Ljubljana. Kopitar buried his face in his hands. He exuded indignation. DIP ME IN HONEY AND THROW ME TO THE DYKES No, sir, if it can’t be the peasants then let the model be the 16th century. Although peasants would be better, I can tell you that.

  Stop it.

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

  With that kind of approach how could you even think about some kind of standard? Of course, people need standards. A common identity. The identity of nudists on Bale rocks. There’s a constant struggle among people for the right to be defined by groups. No, I’m thinking of somecommon standard. What else can hold us together?

  This for instance: ICH BIN SAD. A completesemeion? Divided in two, just as Bakhtin himself would have wished. Two codes with one identity. Schizophrenic sadness, the greatest there is. When your soul is cleft in two. Enough of this philosophising.

  When I go into the restaurant garden, guess who I see. None other than Romana Jarnik. A lecturer in Romance languages. We haven’t seen each other for a long time. Probably a year. Probably at some linguistics meeting. Or at the conference of the European Linguistics Society? Yes, then it’s definitely been a year. She’s sitting on her own and clearly waiting for someone — the menu is beside her, open. She’s scanning it lazily.

  When she sees me she smiles, although it seems rather forcedly. I’m not really sure she wants me to join her.

  “Hello, Vera,” she says. “Here for lunch? Have a seat.”

  “Yes,” I say, and somehow can’t decide. Perhaps it’s just an impression. In any case, I can’t say no. What reason would I give? That I’ve no time? And go elsewhere. To the Mexican? It’s too hot for chilli. I don’t want to change my lunch venue now. I had a plan and plans should be followed. I’ll eat here. Perhaps she’s just tired. “Waiting for someone?”

  “I’m waiting...” she says and waves her hand, “just for today to end, that’s all. I must go back to the faculty. I have a department meeting.”

  I sit down.

  “Department meetings,” I say, “how much I miss them now I’ve retired.”

  We both laugh as I sit.

  “What about you?” she asks and looks at me. Weighing me up, it seems. I don’t know, perhaps I should unravel her first look before I take on this one. You’re a bit out of practice at recognising other people’s signals, at experiencing others. You’re on your own too much. Your social skills are rusting.

  “I’d actually rather go to a department meeting today,” I say honestly and signal to the waiter who has just appeared in the doorway. But he turns and goes back in. Ah ha. It’s expensive here, but there’s still room for improvement.

  “Why?”

  Then I remember that Romana knows Adam.

  If I’m not mistaken, they were members of the academic titles committee together. A duet. The academic titles committee is an interesting mix of people. Adam tried as hard as he could to convince me that the humanities are not science. At the same time he vehemently defended the academic title of Associate Professor of Kayaking.

  “I’m going to see Professor Zaman today,” I say. Romana smiles.

  “I see.”

  This reply somewhat confuses me, God knows why. “What do you see?” I ask, and regret it immediately. Whenever something flusters me I respond with a severity that seems funny even to me. I sound somewhat professorial. Like that student, when I told her she would have to go away and prepare once more for the oral exam, saying that it was obvious she didn’t understand, while she persisted with but I do, give me another a chance, to which Dr Vera Višnar replied with WHAT do you understand? Romana also knew how strict I could be and was now looking a little flustered herself. Evidently I haven’t lost my grip, even with adults. After all, I am older than her: when I was a full professor she had barely made it to the lower rungs. And those discussions at the linguistic circle ... they can be, well, very temperamental.

  “Oh, nothing, I thought...” she says, and suddenly it seems she’d like to change the subject. “Zaman can be very difficult. Though I haven’t seen him for three years, since he retired. I hear he’s married now, to someone much younger.”

  Married? Well, that is interesting news.

  When I called him to ask if I could come and see him he said I still live on Malča Beličeva. I, first person singular.

  The singular can convey some interesting things. The possibility of direct transition to the dual form in Slovene. The first person dual — very exclusive. Much more expressive than the plural in languages without a dual form
. You never know who’s hiding in we. We twoare talking, we two are interested, we two are going to meet. An appendage of some kind, perhaps a wife. But I live here, you are coming to my place. What then?

  I’m even more aware now that I needn’t have reacted so irritably — what could Romana be teasing me about, after all? Why should I be nervous about Adam, especially if he’s married now? I’m also somewhat reassured. She couldn’t have misinterpreted my over-reaction. Better that she attribute it to my temperament, than to...

  But still, after

  “I didn’t know” I replied casually. “I’m seeing him about work. Or rather, about something to do with his successor, you know?”

  She didn’t.

  “My doctoral student teaches Slovene at the Translation Department.”

  “Oh... that young man...”

  “Rodošek.”

  “Of course, I see.”

  I think she saw that if the Translation Department were involved then it must be a real mess. But for my taste, she’s a little too fond of I see.

  “They wrote to the Chemistry Faculty asking if they could allow them to use some of their lecture rooms,” I said, “and they’ve been waiting a month for a reply. There’s a new intake next year, another 120 students, and they’ve only got three rooms. And they’ve only got the one office. It’s true, they sent the request right in the middle of exams, just before the holidays...”

  “And you’re going to see Zaman...”

  “To ask him if he can move things along a little and put in a good word.”

  “Ah ha,” she said. “Because you were...”