CEREMONIAL YELLOW
I felt as if no fire could warm me up
further. It was warm. I was stuffy and warm, and the time spun in circles
like a drunken tango. There was no bar, and there wasn’t a drink for
hundreds of meters around. I checked. They stood and watched in front, a
bit up from the stage, which held their gaze, made them endure. I smoked a
lot and got thirstier and thirstier…
"Have a cigarette?"
"Uh-huh."
"Thanks."
I walked through the crowd, was greeted here and there. In my
pocket I had a package of condoms. I knew I wouldn’t use them.
The bar was small, and that’s why I hadn’t seen it. I got
some drinks. A lot of drinks. It was a problem getting through the crowd
with all those drinks in my hands. I didn’t care about the crowd. I wasn’t
afraid of it. I didn’t want to control it. I didn’t want to be part of it.
It didn’t matter to me.
We drank and lazed, leaning against a wall. The alcohol ran
through me, draining into my shoes. When it started coming up my ankles, I
said I would go. They followed me.
We drank a lot, we drank fast, and it reached my hips. My
waist served me well and I stood fast on the tiles of the bar, and I lifted
the bottle as one of them tried to bite my ear. One of my friends passed by
me with a motorcyclist’s helmet hanging on his elbow. A shiny, metallic
helmet. I saw my reflection in it, a funny grotesque reminding me of a
pleasant childhood reflected in a Christmas tree decoration. Then I
remembered him lying in his bed, exhausted from alcohol and the layers of
debris from horrid childhood scars, the unwanted and always guilty son who
runs scared through the crowd of life. And there is no telephone pole that
can support him; the boulevards are new and glittering; the asphalt is new,
black and glossy; the mannequins in the new shop windows shine in suits
that somebody else will wear, maybe his younger brother. The hell with the
family and with work, he needed salvation from those bruises, which would
never heal, and more fire to burn off all those bad memories, because they
wouldn’t let him go to a doctor when he fell off the tugboat and was
drenched with the Danube for eternity. The country was faced with one of
those attacks from domestic and foreign enemies. The alarm was always
sounded but it never happened, and people did not know whether to rejoice
at the false alarm, or to curse because it was all in vain, because it
would be happening again. To burn off those memories, because he was beaten
for his younger brother’s mistakes, when he was 9, and then lay on his
stomach for three days while his mother brought him soups and stews and
left as quietly as she entered. To burn everything, also that his best
friend was found in the garage with a hose shoved through the car window.
And that they never found out who did it, so they put him in the suicide
file, and he knew there was no power that could have made him do it. And
that they always found his hidden bottles, and they took them in front of
him as if they were exposing his shame, and he kept quiet, and with the
little healthy heart that he had left hoped that the bottles would not end
up in the trash, because only he knew how he got that cheap brandy. Strange
shadows awaited him when he woke up, and he didn’t know how to escape them,
until the day he surrendered himself to them, and then, with fear in his
soul, he heard them telling him how it happened: strong cramps that tear
apart everything they touch, and awful screeches that wheezed through his
frothing mouth, while his wife’s family tried to pry open his jaws so he
didn’t swallow his tongue, and his children leave the room as if nothing
has happened, trying to forget at that very moment what they would remember
all of their lives.
I see him entering the dance hall, the most handsome young
man this city has ever seen, in a dark tailored suit and black tie on a
starched white shirt. He enters as if he owns that world, but the crowd
scares him, and he stops for a moment, something’s caught in his throat,
and his heart starts thumping like a town crier’s drum, and the news being
announced concerned his inability to be self-confident and leave the
bruises where they should be left. His palms were damp with a traitor’s
sweat, and he left for the bar, and there was where everything began.
She wants to bite my ear, for a thousandth time this night,
and with my free hand I place her on the floor by the bar. She sits there,
her legs spread and a stupid expression on her simple face. Who wouldn’t
smile in such a situation? Somebody said something, and I remember the
violinist grabbing me under my arm and taking me out. He was rescuing me
from a fight again.
"Are you OK, you piece of trash?"
"Mmm. It’s up to my waist."
"What?"
"The fire."
The waiters and the owner stood at the door of the bar and
waved at us as we went somewhere.
"I’ll take you to my place, OK?"
"I’ll walk myself…"
"Wanna have a party? Come on, we haven’t…"
"Let’s."
"Gonna call someone?"
"Mmm."
"I’ll call someone, wait for me here."
"Bring me a drink."
"Have any beer at home?"
"No, but I have a cooler."
I bought some beer and some snacks, and we set off through
Skopje to his place.
I sat in the kitchen. I found a good table to sit on, because
there were no chairs, and I opened the beers. They were sitting in one of
the rooms listening to techno and shit like that. I went in, switched off
the music, and somebody offered me a joint. I asked who wanted a beer, I
brought some and then went back to the kitchen. They turned on the "music"
again. I rolled up the blinds. Wide open. Somewhere on the left, too close
to the north, the day came in violet waves. The dawn appeared in red shoes,
and it came out completely upside-down, with its head down. I looked at the
colors, they went from running streaks to thick masses, the day was coming,
and I felt like the sculpture of some screwed-up surrealist. I went into
the room.
"They’re cool." There were academic painters, academic
musicians, writers, playwrights, directors. I wondered how a violinist
managed to collect so many crazy people in one spot. Then I thought I was
no better either, so I stood in front of one of them, somebody I knew for
many years, and I told him to stand up.
"Hey, don’t please, calm down."
"Come with me. I want you to see something."
He followed me, and I went into the kitchen and stood in
front of the wide-open windows.
"Fuck you, fool. You’ll freeze here!"
"Shhh… Do you hear?"
"…"
"…"
"I hear nothing…"
"Listen, the day is coming."
"I can’t hear it."
I thought of his poems. The critics glorified them, readers
were crazy about them. I didn’t see how he managed it. I thought he was as
empty as a sack.
"Tell me, when did you last see such colors?"
"Let’s go back into the room, huh? There it’s great, don’t
sit here alone, OK?"
"Shit."
"?"
"That music is shit."
"Come on, put on whatever you want, nobody will say
anything."
"I’ll come, you go."
I sat at the threshold of the terrace when I heard the
kitchen door closing. I bowed my head.
The one who wanted to bite my ear and another one I didn’t
know knelt in front of me. They stroked my hair.
I looked at them. They knelt on the cold terrace and looked
at me. Sweetly.
Somebody entered the kitchen. My friend. She touched my back.
"I dreamt about you," I said.
The girls stood up angrily and jumped over me. I heard the
door closing.
"You saved me, you know?"
"Come here, you’ll freeze…"
We entered the room. Some of them looked at me strangely. I
sat by the music and picked something out. After a while they started
leaving. My friend brought me a beer, and when almost everybody had left we
stayed on the floor of the room. The ear-biter was sitting in an armchair.
The violinist looked at us as if he wanted to say something. I looked at
the parquet floor, the sun entered from everywhere and everything was
ceremonially yellow. It was nice. The song of birds entered the room
together with the sunbeams. We were somewhere in the city and the day had
started with all of its force.
The silence was white, it matched the walls of the room.
"Hey, don’t leave me now." he said.
We kept silent, looking somewhere far through the walls.
Nobody had any intention of going anywhere.
"I don’t want to stay alone again… It’s awful to wake up
alone, nobody to have a cup of coffee with, to say hello."
"Don’t worry. I won’t leave you. I’ll stay here until noon,
that’s for sure."
Something warmed me up from inside. I turned toward the sun
and closed my eyes. Red and violet spots behind my eyelids. Moving red and
violet spots. A great speed. My head started spinning. The light was too
strong, but still I couldn’t help but like it.
"This bastard took my most beloved girl," the violinist told
the ear-biter. He had me in mind. The ear-biter was not especially
interested: she turned over the cigarette butts in the ashtray and mumbled
something through her pursed lips. She sat folded up in the armchair and
she fiddled with the ashtray as if it were the only thing that could be
done at that time of day.
"What was that?" My friend wanted to know.
"Something, nothing. Many years ago
I was with a girl, without knowing he was with her, and she stayed with me
later, but she couldn’t stand it long, she started losing her nerves, I
don’t know whether because of me or something else, and the two of us
started drinking together, and I often introduced him to my other girls…
And he saved me from being beaten once, when I forgot my name because I so
smashed. Something like this also happened tonight, or am I wrong?"
"You asked the guy for his ID. Ha-ha-ha." He laughed.
"?"
"I told you I didn’t like the
guy, and you went to meet him. Then you argued about something. He was
buying a drink, and you asked for his ID after each bottle of beer,
ha-ha-ha."
"So, did he show it to me?"
"What were you thinking when
you slammed me down?" the girl playing with the ashes asked me.
"Good question…"
"Why are you like this?"
"I’m warming up… Now I’m
warming up…"
"The whiteness matches the
walls of the room." That’s what my friend thought.
"You’re stealing from my short
stories again," I told her. I felt glad for it. It became warmer.
