The Book of Blam Read online

  Blam did as he was told. Instead of walking around the Avala’s rectangular courtyard, gazing at the posters of coming attractions and immersing himself in the temporary security that they and the people who came here for pleasure afforded him, he cut through the crowd and proceeded along the narrow passage between the walls of the cinema and the courtyard apartments. The squeaky sound track of the film showing inside filtered through the bolted doors, but the passage was dark and deserted, the people in the apartments having withdrawn behind their curtains to have supper or go to bed. Not since Blam had become obsessed with death had he ventured into a place so isolated and unfamiliar, and he felt extremely uncomfortable. Stumbling on in the dark, he sensed more and more that Čutura had descended upon him when his defenses were down and was dragging him into something against his nature.

  Čutura wanted to spend the night at his place. Blam could not imagine how that would work, it was impossible, and seeing how impossible it was, he saw all the more starkly the impossibility of his own situation, of his life as it was. In a series of disjointed images he pictured Čutura entering the Mercury and climbing to the mansard; he pictured himself letting Čutura in and explaining to Janja who he was and Janja, perhaps suspicious, perhaps accepting, giving him something to eat. But through those images, he felt, more, Čutura’s penetrating eyes on them, assessing the new things Janja had brought into Blam’s life—Janja herself among them—conjecturing what their relationship was like, sensing the discord, the division, deducing from a word in passing what Janja’s new job was and perhaps even who had obtained it for her, the editor-in-chief of the collaborationist Naše novine and the Blams’ former tenant. And thus Čutura would pronounce a pitiless sentence on Blam’s life. Blam did not want Čutura to condemn his life: he wanted that life to disappear without judges or witnesses; he wanted the shame of that life to disappear with him.

  Thinking these thoughts, he reached the far end of the Avala. Here the narrow passage broadened into a street of sorts—one side consisting of apartments not unlike those in the courtyard, the other of scattered hovels and ramshackle workshops—and the sound track, fading, was replaced by other, closer sounds: the banging of a less than firmly closed door each time the wind blew, a child’s voice calling out. Blam stood still. What was he to do? How could he go back on his word? He turned to survey the passage, now as black as an abyss, and the dimly lit courtyard beyond it. Not a soul in sight. No Čutura. Had he walked too fast despite Čutura’s instructions? Yes, of course he had; his unpleasant thoughts had driven him like a fugitive, and he now remembered having all but run over the uneven cobblestones in the passage. But, then, he could indeed run, race through the next courtyard and vanish without a trace by turning down one of the side streets. It was an attractive possibility. He stared into the dark and through the dark to the far-off lights, seeking the figure of Čutura, seeking a decision, and saw that the lights did not come from the courtyard, they came from two windows above it, in other words, the windows of Naše novine. You could easily get there from here in the dark without anyone’s seeing you, avoiding the square. Had Janja ever sneaked in like that? Maybe he’d see her instead of Čutura, see her scurrying along the passage, still flushed from her parting embrace. But no sooner did this thought flash through his mind than it was replaced by another: the thought, no, the picture of the parting embrace of Janja and Popadić, and not here but down by the customs office, a definitely more cozy and less conspicuous meeting place than the editorial offices of Naše novine. He could just picture it, a room in an apartment belonging to a friend of Popadić’s or specially rented for the purpose, their naked bodies intertwined . . . and suddenly the image of the room with the enormous peasant bed and dark-green threadbare curtains came back to him: his own little love nest on Dositej Street.

  Something moved in the darkness of the passage. It was Čutura’s hat, bobbing in and out of the light behind it. Even as Blam pondered whether to wait there for him, he knew he would let Čutura down, go back on his word, but he decided for now to follow Čutura’s instructions. He turned and proceeded through the courtyard, this time walking very slowly, trying to show Čutura by the sway of his gait just how slowly. At last he heard Čutura’s footsteps approach and waited for Čutura to catch up with him.

  For a few steps they walked wordlessly side by side, like friends accustomed to strolling together in silence. Blam could hear Čutura’s breath. It sounded unnaturally loud for their slow pace.

  “You go ahead when we get to the street lamps,” he whispered. “I don’t want anyone to see us together. I’ll follow at a distance.”

  Now Blam had the excuse he was looking for. He slowed down even more, hoping to give a credible imitation of surprise.

  “No, that won’t work,” he said, carefully choosing his words to make them sound spontaneous. “I don’t know if you’ve heard, but I live in the heart of town now.” Then he added in a more positive tone, “I have a better solution. A place you can go without a chance of being seen.”

  “Where? Who does it belong to?”

  “Nobody,” he said, with an almost inaudible laugh at his own joke. “It’s a sublet. For bachelors. You know, a love nest. That’s what makes it unobtrusive.” He was on tenterhooks. Would Čutura object?

  “Is it far?” came the wheezing response.

  “No, not at all. A five-minute walk.”

  “All right, then, take me there. But you first. The way I said.”

  His caution was justified, because the lights along the street were now brighter. Blam picked up speed, while Čutura maintained his slow pace and gradually fell behind, thus giving possible onlookers the impression of a man out for a stroll who just happened to be going in the same direction as the man in front of him. Only the two men knew of the invisible thread connecting them, and that knowledge, which had been such a burden to Blam back in the Avala courtyard, now brought him a certain relief. What ran through his mind now instead of nightmarish images of shame were the words and gestures he would use to ensure Čutura’s safety. He knocked at the gate of the familiar Dositej Street house. When his former landlady appeared, as hunched and plodding as before but also as eager, he reminded her who he was and asked whether his former room was available, and although she shilly-shallied and pointed out that the bed was unmade and the stove unheated, she let him into the courtyard as she spoke. In the kitchen she removed his former keys from the steel key ring in the cupboard drawer and handed them to him, accepting a folded banknote in the same hand without a word. He then left, closed the door behind him, and went out into the street, where Čutura stood waiting behind the nearest tree. He showed Čutura in, locked the gate, and unlocked the door to the room at the far end of the courtyard.

  When the light came on, he was doubly shocked: by the way the room looked and by the way Čutura looked. True, the room was unchanged externally—it had the same bulky bed piled high with the same bedclothes, the same bare table with rings all over the faded veneer, the same chair with the loop-shaped back and white washstand with the chipped edge, the same enamel pitcher and basin, the same green curtain over the window—but there was no frivolous, love-tryst glow to temper its shabbiness. As for Čutura, his face—the thin nose, jutting cheekbones, dry, wrinkled skin around the mouth—was emaciated, almost deformed, and his eyes revealed such exhaustion—even in the shadow of the broad-rimmed hat, that Blam grabbed the chair and moved it over to him.

  “Sit down.”

  Čutura did not seem to hear him.

  “Is this going to be all right?” Blam asked.

  Čutura looked around him for the first time, and Blam, following his every movement, realized that the room was freezing and the smell of mold so strong that it was hard to breathe.

  “Fine.”

  “Can I do anything else for you? Are you hungry? Shall I run and get you a bite to eat?”

  “I don’t need anything,” said Čutura with a shake of the head. “Just some sleep.” And sl
owly, sluggishly he took off his hat and laid it on the table, took off his heavy overcoat and dropped it over the back of the chair, unbuttoned his jacket, took a heavy pocket watch with no cover out of his trousers and placed it on the table. He was very deliberate, as if following a routine, but so listless as to seem absentminded.

  “Come back to the gate with me now and lock up,” Blam said, “and leave the key on the table tomorrow morning when you go. Will you remember?”

  “I will.”

  “Good. Now follow me.”

  He turned to go, but then, seeing that Čutura just stood there and stared after him with a glassy, distracted look, he turned back.

  “Come and lock up,” he said.

  “Oh. Yes.”

  Čutura shifted his weight from one foot to the other, stretched an irresolute hand to the watch, picked it up with the tips of his fingers, and rubbed it slightly. Then, realizing the futility of what he had done, put it back on the table and turned to the door.

  “Take your coat,” said Blam.

  Čutura obediently picked his coat up off the chair and heaved it over his shoulders as if it were a sack of grain. Then he stood still.

  “Are you sure you don’t need anything?” asked Blam.

  “Positive. Just some sleep. You had to pay for the room, didn’t you?”

  “Don’t be silly. Think of it as spending the night at my place.”

  “Right.”

  They plunged into the dark and made their way to the gate. Blam groped for the lock and stuck the key in.

  “Lock up now. See you.”

  “So long.”

  They did not shake hands: their hands would not have found each other. Blam, having moved from the dark of the courtyard to the dark of the street, waited only long enough to hear the gate pulled to and the creak of the key in the lock. Moving blindly down Dositej Street, he recalled his last impression of light: the round glass face of Čutura’s pocket watch lying on the table among the pale rings. He had never seen Čutura with the strange, old-fashioned watch before, and although he had wondered how Čutura came by it the moment he set eyes on it, he had missed the chance to ask.

  AT ALMOST THE same spot where he last met Čutura—in front of the Avala and opposite the windows of the Borac Restaurant, which is on the other side of Main Square—and at almost the same early evening hour (though it was September then and the weather was milder and the war was over), Miroslav Blam stands waiting for Janja Blam. Not that he draws any parallels with that encounter or with any of the numerous others he has had here since childhood either as a filmgoer or as a passerby stopping to look at the various posters or the bustle of the crowd, though his impatient eyes do fall on the pictures of the current attraction, skim over potential filmgoers milling in the street, and dart into the lobby, of which and beyond which he knows every inch. Blam’s eyes are now a decade and a half older than they were in the Čutura days, nor is his power of concentration what it was—nothing serious, of course, though basic facts from the past have been forced into deeper layers of his mind. They are still alive there and ready—should they be stimulated by, say, the chance similarity of a passerby to Čutura or Popadić or Vilim Blam—to rise to the surface and take part in the present. But as nothing of the sort occurs this time, they simply stir mutely within him like a mist.

  Blam is plagued by this vague feeling whenever he waits for Janja, either at home after work or, as now, by arrangement, that is, in situations involving a deadline. He is not sure she is going to meet it, and his doubts—as his glance wanders from the Avala entrance to the windows of her restaurant—are perhaps fed by scenes of the past: Janja at the Matickis’ dances, flashing an unreserved smile at all partners; Janja at the gate to her house, neat and clean and every hair in place, about to let him know that she will walk with him or go to the pictures with him (or with someone else); Janja as an invisible presence in her kitchen, in the heart of her family, which is and is not she, both familiar and distant; Janja at the pump, hot and flushed; Janja in Popadić’s arms, observed from the tram, taking leave not of her lover but of him, Blam, as Blam looks on in mute admiration. All these scenes have been superseded by their life together over the years and dimmed by the years and by time’s various blows and disappointments; they have been blurred by thousands of later Janjas who did his bidding or made him wait, as now, Janjas in completely different circumstances, with different looks, at different jobs. Yet something basic, the uncertainty of the promised encounter, remains flowing just beneath the dingy, listless surface of reality.

  Blam thinks that the reason for his anxiety today is that he agreed to wait for Janja not far from the restaurant. From here he can be seen not only by her but also by her colleagues. They will observe him standing here like a beggar, constantly looking for her, and they will draw what conclusions they like. Even though he suspects this is not happening (Janja is too sure of herself, too vain to let her colleagues look down on him), he cannot be positive, because he is here in the street, not there, and because the curtains covering the windows are transparent only if you press your face to them. Is anyone doing that? Can anyone do that in a restaurant full of customers? Blam recalls the picture he has of the place from his rare visits: a spacious but low-ceilinged rectangle with a dozen or so tables and a door at the far end for the white blouses and aprons—Janja, a small, dark woman, the plump, middle-aged head-waiter, and, less often, the chef, with floppy jowls and a white cap, and the chef’s smooth-cheeked assistant—the white blouses and aprons weighed down with plates of steaming food or congealed scraps, trays of clinking glasses or ashtrays brimming with black and white butts. “Menu, please!” “Here you are!” “Just a moment!” But he suspects that behind these orderly, almost military maneuvers a private, rebellious, pernicious life lies snakelike, barely discernible, a life of intrigues, disagreements, and thoughts never put into words yet obvious to all concerned. He suspects that behind the door that swings shut before the eyes of the customers there is a narrow passage where bodies slip by one another joking, tittering, touching hands, shoulders, and thighs, where one panting body can press against another and smell the onions and wine.

  It is a life alien to him, the life of instinct, the life uncontemplated, dependent solely on the body—one’s own and others’—on its movements, excretions; an ordinary life, a life beginning in the mother’s womb and with mother’s milk and proceeding to the first stirrings of curiosity, the first misdeeds, curses, and spankings, and on to speech and its structure beyond the meaning of words, in spite of words almost; a life free of conventions, agreements, reason, a life opposing reason, conquering it with a giggle; a life of restaurants, pubs, city streets, waiting rooms, trains, buses, and trams, but going on outside such meeting places as well, and against them, serving the carnal vices, such as drunkenness, debauchery, and hate, with the shouting and brawling born of the violence and despair that circulates in the blood. Blam wants no part of a life run by a force that cannot be controlled, predicted, or even measured, the same force that set in motion the bodies at the dance school, that gathered up the young men from the streets and armed them with leaflets and guns, that made Janja hurry back to the house from the pump with the bucket of water and choose her most attractive dress for Sunday dates, the force that once carried him along too, but only once, when he felt strong, because he believed he had the courage to perish with the pack, with the others.

  Now he feels completely cut off from that force, abandoned. It has dropped him, betrayed him because he betrayed it: he only pretended he belonged to it, he never really felt at one with the city, the street, the air, the soil. He still goes through the motions, mimicking people’s voices, accents, phrases, deeds, but the current that once flowed in him has long dried up: he stands alone. He stands alone in the street, surrounded by senseless commotion, shouting, signs, dazzling colors, letters, by the white of the curtains in the Borac Restaurant, curtains transparent to everyone but him and therefore concealing a
secret from him, Janja’s. The secret of why she rushes off every morning to her restaurant without breakfast and eats with the other waiters and waitresses, with the chef and his assistant, with the bartender and the supplier. Perhaps it is for the warmth, pleasure, distraction, easy talk, easy money, an easy way to kill time. So banal, so shallow, the allure offered by the restaurant, and he often wonders how he might win her over to some other interest. But what? Wherever he turns, he sees work, order, and reason acting as fronts for the same old profligacy, the same old vanity, the same dull gusto, pointless passion, frenzy, fuss. It withstands all rules and regulations; it comes up out of the body, out of the earth, out of an all-pervading and all-powerful desire that distorts and deforms everything; it makes Janja peer through the curtains at him standing there waiting for her while with a smothered giggle she lets a bloated hand grab her breast or dive between her legs. Yes, it is perfectly possible that that is just what she is doing while he lifts his long-suffering face to the sky to avoid staring at the opaque, motionless curtains. And then she will appear, neat, cool, and collected, running her bright eyes over him like an object, judging how usable, how useful he is to her at the moment, the way she appraises things when they go shopping together. Or will she instead rush out of the restaurant unkempt and disheveled, her cheeks bright red, her mouth half open, her eyes wild, and run breathless in the opposite direction, away from him, to another appointment, promise, folly, with her hot blood and cool love for someone else? By now Blam is almost hoping for the latter. At least he would know where he stands. Two images come together: Janja doesn’t return from the pump to change for her date with him; she falls into someone else’s arms and never sees him again, thereby putting an end to his suffering and confusion amid all the loose, lustful, instinct-driven bodies. He turns and leaves, goes off on his own, but where? To death, most likely, to a peace beyond understanding and confusion, beyond acceptance and rejection, where everyone is equal, no one apart and lonely, where there is no wisdom or folly, no joy or suffering.