I am a dictator. So, giving up on me is not necessarily a bad idea. Passing a vote of no confidence, starting an uprising, allowing a military junta to take over the leadership – was that what was looming in my private banana-republic? Between my four impenetrable concrete walls?
There was a curious intersection between my private existence and the political situation in the newly established state. That is to say, the death of Franjo Tuđman fundamentally altered my love life. Two satellites found themselves in the same orbit and got caught up in the interference of their imperfect space transmitters. Since then I no longer live in the intimacy of my Zagreb apartment and I am increasingly afraid of the evening news which gives detailed information about the state of the collective consciousness.
So, ever since Croatia’s first President Tuđman departed this world, my kitchen and bedroom lost forever the naive ignorance with which they had defended themselves against external misfortunes. Breathing, feeding and nurturing were suddenly oxidised, washed by a merciless political downpour which is still engulfing the iron heroes of my world. I remember, early that morning when I got up and prepared to go to Dolac market, the news about the President had not yet broken. I packed the checked plastic bag in which I usually haul food for the whole week back home and set off for the centre. I had arranged to meet Vanja, but only after shopping. It was a gloomy day, clouds the colour of graphite had settled heavily over the city. The tram drivers were sweating in their Zagreb Electrical Transport winter uniforms and cursing the half-wits who had not bought tickets at the kiosk. I went round the stalls quickly and reluctantly – I needed a double espresso to restore my blood pressure and my mood. If I said I heard a magpie caw, I would be lying, but I am sure that there was an ominous sound in the air everywhere.
Vanja came into the Mozart Café out of breath and dropped her weekly booty clumsily onto the floor. The bags opened – a river of muddy potatoes, red and green cabbages, carrots of various shapes and sizes poured out – stopping between a pair of shoes belonging to an unknown man who was sitting in the corner beside us. She swore. Then she looked at me through her untidily combed hair that had fallen out of its pony tail while she was gathering up the runaway food.
‘Have you heard that the old man’s kicked the bucket?’ she asked.
‘I can’t say I’m that fussed,’ I drawled. ‘Easy come, easy go. I mean, I’m grateful to him for the state, and everything …. You know I don’t bother much with politics.’
‘I can’t believe that it really doesn’t affect you at all,’ she said, startled.
‘No, it does,’ I resisted the suggestion that I was hard-hearted and folded the already crumpled morning paper, ‘but not in the sense in which you’d like it to affect me.’
‘You’re incorrigible,’ she waved her hand and sat down on the edge of a seat. ‘Don’t you realise that this is a unique opportunity for us finally to stop being a banana-republic?’
‘Banana or democracy, I don’t care,’ I said, ‘all I care about is what’s going on in my courtyard. Anything further away is a waste of energy.’
‘All right, if you don’t care, I can tell you straight away who to donate your vote for the salvation of the state to.’ Vanja stopped with an eyebrow raised. ‘I mean, to save you wasting energy in too much thinking.’
We drained our coffees quickly and then, to indulge her, I went with her towards Ilica where people were standing stock still in the rain, waiting for the answer to the question: what are we going to do without our Franjo? Surely we weren’t about to cry the way our parents cried over Tito, I thought, and began to hurry her along by shoving her gently from behind. We won’t cry and nor will we pile up supplies of food in the cellars in case of another war. Presumably after fifty years our brains deserve a bit of a break and we get a chance to concern ourselves with more serious matters. The shop windows were blocked with heavy bodies that sighed, scowling, when we tried to thread ourselves through their dense weave. Who’s that disturbing the hypnotic ritual of the final farewell from the weary sceptre, that had flagged in the face of the laws of mortality? We were on the threshold of an uncertain future, Vanja announced significantly. Free, but shitting ourselves with fear.
When I got home and switched on the live transmission of the funeral, a flood of tears spurted out of me after all. I no longer know why. It was all sad, just so woefully sad. The pain of the state broke out of the TV screen into my living room, onto my couch. The skin around people’s lips had sagged as they waited for the funeral procession. Even youngsters’. The arcs of their eyebrows drooped like unwatered flowers in pots. A sobbing woman’s voice paid homage to our historical hero, which made me weep still more loudly and desperately. Perhaps simply because of the nature of the mass media, I felt that it was expected of us, viewers, to believe. If you do not support me now, the announcer’s trembling voice suggested, I could lose my job. History could pass us by unnoticed, our mark on the temporal sash of European civilisation could vanish without trace. I used my sleeve to wipe the bodily fluids that were dripping from my eyes and nose and merging in the slight hollow above my swollen lips. What could I do in the face of this collective lament? I had to admit that Tuđman’s long expected death had affected me. When my drowning in my tears surpassed the decibels permitted in our house, my husband’s tousled head peered out of his study. He had been sitting glued to the computer for some days now, designing a private company’s logo. Pushing his greasy hair off his brow, he rolled his eyes and snapped, with the greatest possible scorn:
‘You really aren’t right in the head.’
He dragged himself off to the kitchen in his slippers that were falling apart. He turned on the tap and swore:
‘Why isn’t there ever any cold water in this bloody kitchen?’
Then, unceremoniously, he began opening pots which spread the aroma of lunch through the solemn atmosphere of the flat. That was too much. That lack of respect for my cooking and crying. I increased the volume and tone of my bitter sobbing. Cooking in a Zepter pot, I had explained a hundred times, should not be interrupted by taking off the lid. It’s sacred!
‘OK, so why are you bawling because of some musty old fool?’ he shouted, slurping soup from a ladle.
‘What’s it to you? If I feel like crying, I’ll cry.’
‘Please yourself, as long as I can’t hear you,’ he mumbled more quietly.
He broke off a piece of corn bread absent-mindedly and put it in his mouth. A few dry crumbs caught in his unkempt beard. I followed the trajectory of their movement as his jaws ground the starter assiduously, waiting for them finally to fall. I shed a few more tears. The crumbs were still hanging on. I didn’t tell him. I had lost the will. What he had done had been the final slap in the face of our shared life. If someone does not have the decency to wait for Saturday lunch, to sit down at the table, properly, he was not worthy of me.
Three months later we divorced. He packed his things and moved out of the flat. Sorting out the papers took a bit longer. We agreed about everything for, fortunately, there was not much in the way of shared property.
My mourning for the lost President was just temporary, and I returned gradually to my state of political apathy. After all, I was drained by my amorous misfortunes. I had to protect myself from additional efforts, and the best medicine for that was complete lack of interest. Nobody succeeded in convincing me that the 3rd of January 2000 was going to alter Croatian everyday life. Vanja and her crowd went piously to polling stations and voted for – who else, but the former communists. For a change, they said. We need liberation from this dictatorship. I forgot my promise that I would cede my vote to those who understood the political situation better than me. It was rotten of me to leave my friend in the lurch after she had spent so much time brainwashing me. Nevertheless, I was offered another opportunity to redeem my sins. I went to the presidential election that followed, convinced that, wherever I put my cross, I would not ruin the country. I was demonstrating my readiness to become politically enlightened. I voted for Mesić. But that was a mistake of procedure, at least as far as Vanja was concerned. Completely resigned by now, she abandoned meaningful argumentation and gave me an indecorous dressing-down in front of our friends, calling me a sentimental idiot.
‘You’ve really broken all records for female submissiveness,’ she said during a pre-election silence.
For days she did not take off the yellow T-shirt she had got from the Social-Liberal Party headquarters in Zrinjevac.
‘It’s not OK for you to insult me,’ I replied calmly, but firmly, ‘I just have different criteria for judging people.’
‘People,’ Vanja explained to the rest of the group, while a mischievous smile quivered on her lips, ‘the woman voted for Mesić because he’s got nice hands! What was it you said? Trustworthy. That’s it. Trustworthy hands.’
‘That wasn’t the only reason,’ I protested, ‘he’s also my neighbour. There’s a special kind of familiarity between us. We meet almost every day in Ilica Street.’
In the spring, during the dizzy ascendancy of Račan’s social-democratic government, I met my second husband. If I thought of the first one as the Boor, then I could certainly have called my new man the Righteous One. Croatia had opened its doors to international influences which treated us to free lessons in democracy – just as Vanja had done piously with me. We all agreed that the previous state had been a dictatorship. We nodded our heads to show we understood and gave a few foreigners jobs in UNHCR. Croatian war crimes had to be investigated.
The first spark ignited between the international Righteous One and me was a quarrel over the political order in Croatia. I did not show much interest in condemning Tuđman’s totalitarian climate. Alive, dead, father of the homeland or fraud – my only memories of the former president were connected with my amorous upheavals. Why was this so sweet face, these masculine hands, this succulent body tormenting me with political questions about which I did not give a toss? But the Righteous One would not give up. He was in a far better position than Vanja. What my friend did in her spare time, was this man’s life’s work. He did not take me to bed until he was convinced that I had mastered the first chapter on civil society. Human rights, you understand, he said, in an excited voice while his hand crept up under my skirt to my pussy. He had gentle, warm fingers whose non-violence drained all the juice from the over-ripe oranges of my femininity. And when I think about it, it was not remotely so hard to distance myself from one-sided, rigid convictions as I had imagined.
‘You’re right,’ I whispered as he kissed my breasts and tickled me on the belly with his curly hair, ‘Tuđman was a dictator.’
‘Of course he was, baby,’ he took off my panties. ‘Croatia escaped from historical darkness at the right time.’
‘Do you think that Račan will show more respect for human rights?’ I asked with interest, slowly losing myself in the pleasure that was spreading from his hands into my groins.
‘I’ll take care of that, my little rascal.’
We turned over in bed in a tight clinch. When I found myself on top of him, I raised both arms in the air and, in keeping with the criterion of satisfaction in my sentimental inner being, I shouted self-confidently: ‘Long live democracy!’
Vanja shook her head in disbelief. Her ten years of effort to turn me into a zoon politikon appeared to be entirely futile compared to the Righteous One’s baton under which I broke. She could have gone on pounding the rock of my lack of interest for centuries. In the end a male flourish demolished that stubborn hillock. Erotic energy gushed unexpectedly from my warm lap into my naive head. I sniffed social changes wherever I went. I wrote enlightened articles about minorities, the problems of women’s representation in public life and the backward cultural stereotypes on which the social-democrats’ supporters had suddenly declared war.
Every Wednesday, after he had leafed through the culture section of the newspaper and seen my picture next to a provocative text, the Righteous One would assign me an abundant quantity of sweet sensual satisfaction. I developed something like a Pavlovian reflex: as I wrote about democratic changes in the country, I felt my panties moisten and my nipples contract. My intellectual insights came straight from between my legs. They were raw, unbridled forces that no dictatorship could any longer stop. In our flat, the walls rang with the purposefulness our aroused bodies rubbed themselves against. Amalgamated in an infernal rocket, our perfectly synchronised orgasms would light the fuse in the foothills and shoot us into the world to which we were bringing truth and liberation.
‘Freeing the mind, baby,’ said my taut husband, ‘is the highest aim to which humanity can strive.’
In the last year of the Righteous One’s mandate, the faint hope of democratic order in the Balkans was extinguished. Some politically unenlightened idiot had killed Đinđić, announced a supporter of the Social Liberal Party in our group. The news reverberated in the announcements on the evening news, the newsreader looked more serious than at other times, forgoing the brightly coloured jackets with which she normally filled the television screen. I shrugged my shoulders again. After three militant years and exhaustive lectures about the geostrategy of South East Europe, the Righteous One had not succeeded in arousing my interest in the space beyond my intimate borders. My knowledge of conditions in Serbia was precisely nil. As was my interest in broadening my horizons.
‘The region is the future for Croatia,’ he explained as slightly frothy toothpaste trickled down his chin.
‘I still don’t see why you have to go there. Especially so suddenly,’ I protested, with a down-turned mouth.
‘Remember what I taught you,’ he opened his sponge-bag and started to fill it with his numerous preparations for preserving his youth, ‘all people and events in the world are connected. Đinđić’s death ought to worry Croatia. Of course I have to go.’
‘When will you be back? Is it just a business trip or will you have to move there,’ I gazed devoutly at him, hoping for absolution.
‘I don’t know, it depends on the situation.’
‘Not a reassuring reply.’ I went on packing his ironed clothes in the open suitcase on the floor.
‘It’s the only one I can give you for now.’
After that I was left to my own devices. I was unfulfilled and dejected. But because of a glimmer of hope that Serbia would come to its senses and my Righteous One return to the Croatian chaos, I continued with my civil action. I listened in, followed events, wrote, had an opinion about everything. So it was quite by chance that I began to doubt, to express myself in Vanja’s words, the soundness of my female submissiveness. Had I not shared political indifference with my loutish first husband? I had. Had I not been a sentimental fool who cried for Tuđman? I had. Had I not then left that same Lout because he mocked my bitter tears? I had done that too. And then what did I do? With every new man I had retreated from my inner state order. I would admit my rigidity and exclusiveness, and then immediately call a parliamentary election. Viva democracy! Liberation from one led me into the shackles of another. Because, at least my husband had taught me this much – there is no order which is democratic for all social groups. It’s always totalitarianism for the poor. Or the uneducated, like me. So how am I to distinguish which I is the dictator, and which I is the voice of liberty? The more I think about it, it seems to me that parliament sits night and day and that borders are erased and moved without much reason. There is always a better form of existence into which I must grow. That’s what they tell me, while they squeeze my flanks tightly and enjoy my female constancy.
Recently I even buckled under Vanja’s invitation to reject prejudices. I did not dare say no as the people we were with would have crucified me. I agreed to go swimming in the Mrežnica river.
‘But this time you have to get in properly,’ she warned me. ‘Not like last year.’
Last year I had been sitting on the bank of a greenish river that was sliding slowly along its muddy bed. Sufficiently slowly not to carry away the water lilies and dark brown river snakes, coiled up on the nearby rocks. Without stopping to consider, the people I was with threw themselves into the arms of the cold current on whose surface lazy insects were resting. In the places where it was shallow, they stood up and walked on the moss-covered bed. The sweetish smell of bulrushes and withered greenery reminded me of tasteless food that clenches the stomach to the point of nausea. For me the only water is the sea, I said. How can this opaque morass have the same healing qualities as the sea?
‘Not healing,’ they shouted, ‘but entertaining.’
‘The sea disinfects wounds and fungi,’ I justified myself and remained rooted to my little grassy peninsula.
They waved and swam away. They had a good time, they said. I’ve got a photo somewhere, the six of them wading through waterfalls and waving at the stubborn fool who volunteered to look after their things.
Well, OK, it’s her birthday, I encouraged myself. Then the Righteous One started persuading me as well, playing with my radical attitudes. Ever since he moved to Belgrade, I had been trying increasingly to amaze him with my personal progress, not daring to spoil even one of our shared weekends. I took a gulp of air and splashed into the murky river. Under the surface, I shut my eyes tightly because the mud from the bottom was swirling round my mistrustful body. My much missed teacher of democracy was already swimming ahead of me, leading me towards the idyllic waterfall which he wanted to occupy. A torrent of water poured over the stone obstacles and slapped me in the chest, carrying me away from my aim. Nevertheless, it was the only clean place in the river, in my assessment. With all my strength I reached for a rock poking up beneath the waterfall. How unusual – it was not slimy. I discovered that both river and sea rocks are equally rough to the touch and there was no danger of my slipping away into the unknown. I flapped my body a few times like a salmon and hauled myself into a little nest filled with river water. Where it broke over my feet, it was clear. You see, I told myself, you really are a benighted idiot. I leaned against the Righteous One’s firm body and abandoned myself to the healing embrace of the river.
‘Are you still sad, baby,’ he asked. His beard scratched my shoulders, but I did not protest. I was hungry for him.
‘It can’t pass that quickly.’
‘I know,’ he tried to show understanding. After all he was a teacher of non-violent communication.
‘Ask me again at the end of the summer,’ I said mournfully, remembering my tragic abandonment.
‘All right,’ he smiled, encouraged. ‘But you know that it’s work and that I don’t have much choice.’
‘To be honest, I find it hard to see your moving away in that light,’ I wrapped my tired arms round my knees and slipped out of his embrace.
‘You don’t presumably think that I am someone who settles down in every country he works in? But I have to spend time with the men around me,’ he paused, ‘and women. Without their help my hands are tied.’
‘Because, of course, the struggle for democratic order in the region is the most important thing in the world,’ I snapped, looking at him out of the corner of my eye.
‘What’s that tone supposed to mean?’
‘Forget it.’
‘Baby,’ he took my face in his hands, ‘remember everything we’ve done. We are an invincible team.’
‘But what’s the point if we don’t have an aim?’
‘We always have an aim,’ he said self-confidently, ‘the way we look at the world. We are two unshakeable warriors for good.’
‘That’s complete rubbish.’
‘I’m prepared to travel every weekend to see you, what about you? You reject everything that doesn’t fit in your little world,’ he pushed me away angrily and stood up. After that all that was left in my field of vision were his big feet, misshapen under the deluge of the torrent of water.
‘I accepted countless new ideas that did not fit into my then World. Because of you,’ I sniffled and scooped up some water to wash myself.
‘Then accept this one as well. It’s not forever. Just a few months.’
‘How do you know it’s only for a few months,’ I suppressed my joy at the thought that this could be true.
‘Well, I don’t actually know,’ he admitted. ‘It’s all quite unclear. Can you accept that?’
‘Yes,’ I raised my voice meaningfully after a short pause, ‘if you promise that you won’t team up with a new woman warrior for the good of the world.’
‘Baby,’ he stroked my face, ‘I’m glad you haven’t lost your sense of humour. I adore you, do you know that?’
He took hold of both my arms and pulled me out of my comfortable rocky throne. The river poured once again in an uninterrupted fall. We ran into the cool current that carried us far away from the thin children’s voices. The sun was slowly setting on the mirror of the river’s surface. I swam slowly, unencumbered by the leaves that came to meet me. In front of me, the river-bed was becoming ever wider and the flow ever slower. I approached the watery beds of the lilies whose yellow cups were already slowly falling into sleep. I broke one off, carefully so as not to get my legs wound up in its underwater roots. The sunset was enveloping the countryside and the tired swimmers who would soon make a fire and roast meat.
Where is our togetherness, if we don’t live together, I thought. Then one of the parliamentary representatives began explaining to his colleagues that the state was swimming towards liberation. I cast off everything that limited me and became pure energy. Something tightened in my chest – cold or tiredness – I knew that this time I would not be able to do it. What kind of infernal democracy was it in which all the layers of society did not have the right to a vote, shouted the crybaby inside me. I could not give up. Not from weeping. That was my constitutional right. And it was just as well that it was not a direct broadcast of a sitting of Parliament because the discussion was heated and not at all decorous. The machos insulted the women, calling them sentimental geese, the women gave as good as they got, using academic jargon that the guys did not understand. The electronic vote-counting system gave out – the count was done by ear and intuition.
From the bank, the Righteous One waved and blinded me with the flash of his camera. Smooth little drops of water slipped from his curly dark brown locks and followed the contours of his smiling face. He loved me, not doubting my devotion to the common cause. My cheeks continued to shine under his gaze, although something in me was dying. He zoomed in on the yellow flower of the water lily that I had stuck behind my ear as a joke. He still has that historic picture in Belgrade.
Translated from the Croatian by Celia Hawkesworth
Story © copyright Andrea Pisac
This translation © copyright Celia Hawkesworth.
(From the collection of stories Until Death Do Us Part or I Kill You First, Zagreb: Algoritam, 2007)
Andrea Pisac Andrea Pisac (1975) was born in Croatia. Her work has been pubished in numerous literary magazines in Croatia and other parts of former Yugoslavia as well as the United Kingdom. In 2001 her first collection of short stories, Absence, received the award for best debut by the Croatian Student Union. 2007 saw the publication of her second collection: Until Death Do Us Part or I Kill You First. Pisac’s writing focuses on the collision between different languages and cultures. Pisac currently resides in London, where she is taking a PhD degree in literary anthropology. Until recently, she was in charge of English PEN’s project that aims to bring world literature to the attention of the English-speaking world.
