FAK - Hrvatsko Društvo Pisaca

Transcription

TIONS
Contents
1
Editor’s Note .....................................................................................................................................................................................................
3
Publisher
Croatian Writers Society
FAKtography .....................................................................................................................................................................................................
5
Editorial Board
POINT ZERO
RELA
RELATIONS
Literary Magazine
The Journal of Croatian Literature
1-2/2006
(Editor in chief)
Roman Simi} Bodroì}
Part I
FAK FROM THE INSIDE
Borivoj Radakovi}
What FAK is .....................................................................................................................................................................................................
9
Zoran Feri}
Croatian Writers Have Become True Stars ...............................................................................................................
11
Kruno Lokotar
FAK and Drugs and Rock Šn’ Roll .........................................................................................................................................
13
Robert Peri{i}
FAK has Become a Vehicle for the Media Promotion
of a Closed Circle of Authors ........................................................................................................................................................
19
Address
Croatian Writers Society
Basari~ekova 24
Tel.: (+385 1) 48 76 463
Fax: (+385 1) 48 70 186
www.hdpisaca.org
[email protected]
Price 15 3
Design and Layout
“Crtaona”, Ivona \ogi}
Prepress by
Kre{o Tur~inovi}
Printed by
“Profil”, Zagreb
ISSN 1334-6768
The journal is financially supported by
the Ministry of Culture of the Republic
of Croatia and by the Municipal Funds
of the City of Zagreb.
A LITTLE FAK READER
Stanko Andri}
The Encyclopaedia of Nothingness ......................................................................................................................................
Arbitration ¹23º, Reading ¹23º, Lycanthrophy ¹25º, Reality ¹26º
23
Rujana Jeger
Darkroom .............................................................................................................................................................................................................
29
Ante Tomi}
Life Does Have a Point .......................................................................................................................................................................
33
Miljenko Jergovi}
Stories .........................................................................................................................................................................................................................
The Library ¹37º, Diagnosis ¹38º, Gong ¹40º
37
Zoran Feri}
Blues for the Lady with Red Spots ..........................................................................................................................................
42
Borivoj Radakovi}
Relief ...........................................................................................................................................................................................................................
54
2
Contents
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Robert Peri{i}
The Convalescent ...........................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................
60
Edo Popovi}
The Club ..................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................
68
Jurica Pavi~i}
The Snake Collector ...................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................
72
Jelena ârija
Junk Food Kills, Doesn’t it? ..............................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................
84
Senko Karuza
It’s Hard For Me To Say ......................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................
89
Interview: Kruno Lokotar
FAK is not a political but cultural project ......................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................
92
Jurica Pavi~i}
Past Sumatra and Java – how realistic is the realist prose? .....................................................................................................................................................................................................
95
Jurica Pavi~i}
How We Entered Literary Capitalism ..............................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................
98
Dean Duda
The Bookends of FAK .............................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................. 101
Jurica Pavi~i}
Fourteen Untruths About the Croatian New Prose ......................................................................................................................................................................................................................... 106
Damir Radi}
Towards the Dictatorship of Mediocrity ......................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................... 120
Robert Peri{i}
FAK, Posthumously ..................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................... 123
Nenad Rizvanovi}
FAK (is) off ! ........................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................ 125
Ante Tomi}
AfterFAK ................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................ 128
Part II
FAK FROM THE OUTSIDE
Jagna Poga~nik
In FAKt, what was that FAK? ...................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................... 130
Velimir Viskovi}
FAKs Are Coming! ....................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................... 134
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Editor’s Note
3
Editor’s Note
It would be hardly possible to tell
any at all serious story about Croatian literature at the beginning of
21st century without a chapter on
FAK. On the other hand, it would
be hardly possible for any of these
chapters to have the same tone, to
put emphasis on the same places, to
come up with even remotely similar
explanations why in a matter of only
a couple of years of its existence one
literary festival turned into an (extra)
literary phenomenon that in many
ways marked one literature, and perhaps, to a certain point at least, one
culture.
From the moment it first took place,
in May 2000, until today, FAK has
not ceased to be a topic over which
domestic writers, literary critics, historians of literature, sociologists of
culture, etc. fight their (often losing)
battles. Many often passionate alliances pro et contra FAK, which can
be found with almost anyone who
has read a single book published in
the past six years, talk vividly about
the doggedness of the “problem”
even today, several years after the
cancellation of the Festival.
Actually, it seems that FAK functions very well as a litmus-paper on
which many things can be observed:
from personal literary and poetic
preferences of those discussing it,
over different kinds of cultural monopolies of newer and older date, to
many different ways in which the
people of culture in Croatia take the
pulse of the society they live in or
write about.
Without trying to be the sum of everything ever written about FAK and
even less trying to offer the final answer to the question what FAK actually is?, this issue of Relations will try
to present the “outside” reader with
(so necessary and too often neglected)
facts and chronology, literary texts,
but also the most interesting moments
of the polemic that raged around FAK
from 2000 to 2006. This issue, therefore, begins with FAKtography: the
listing of most important data and
the chronology of the Festival of A
Literature. The starting point of sorts
and the proto-manifest of FAK is the
text by one of its founders, a writerfrontman Borivoj Radakovi}. It was
published in Croatian press as an
announcement for the first edition
of FAK, which took place in Osijek’s
Café bar Voodoo at the time when
there was not so much as a hint that
in the next couple of years this festival would tour all over Croatia, be
the first one to organize Croatian
authors’ visit to Yugoslavia of the
day, and end up at the Royal Festival
Hall in London. The texts by Zoran
Feri} and Kruno Lokotar bring euphoric reports of “something exciting and new,” while Robert Peri{i}’s
text presents the most pronounced
and probably the most memorable
criticism of the festival, at the time
when there was almost no coherent
criticism. The central part of the issue is “the Little FAK Reader” which
brings texts by eleven participants that
can be used to measure all the criticism on poetic uniformity, realistic
tendencies, triviality, etc. of the FAK
prose, but given that FAK hosted
eighty-some domestic writers, the
selection of these texts and authors is
subjective and, naturally, only one
of many possible. The only interview featured in this issue is the one
in which Kruno Lokotar, the festival’s
Master of the Ceremony and a member of the triumvirate of selectors,
answers to some critics’ theses on the
media monopoly of the authors gathered around FAK and their connections with certain political and ideological positions. Dean Duda and
Jurica Pavi~i} engage in a harsh polemic that manages to spread much
further from the Festival itself while
Damir Radi}, a literary critic and a
writer, joins them in his commentary on Pavi~i}’s Fourteen Untruths
About the Croatian New Prose. Polemic texts by FAK’s founders and
participants (Lokotar, Popovi}, Radakovi}, etc.) that were published in
fall/winter 2003 in Croatian press
and that led to the decision on discontinuation of the best known Croatian literary festival are not included
here because we consider that they
would not shed light, but cast a
shadow, on the problem and therefore we decided to include the texts
by one of the initiators of FAK,
Nenad Rizvanovi}, and one of its
most popular participants, Ante Tomi}. Finally, the “outside” perspective and analyses from somewhat
larger temporal distance are the work
of two literary critics, Jagna Poga~nik
and Velimir Viskovi}, whose book
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Editor’s Note
U sjeni FAK-a (published in 2006, a
couple of years after the festival ceased
to exist) raised dust all over again.
It is worth mentioning that FAK,
during its existence, was followed by
several photographers, and for their
help with putting together this issue
of Relations we would especially like
to thank Ognjen Alujevi}, Pero Kvesi} and Sandra Vitalji}, who is also
the first among Croatian photographers whose work we are going to
present at these pages.
Our special thanks go to Kruno Lokotar, Hrvoje Osvadi}, Nenad Rizvanovi} and Borivoj Radakovi} for
their advice, data and materials they
shared with us.
Some of the texts included here were
first published in the following pub-
lications in Croatia: Europski glasnik,
Fantom slobode, Feral, Globus, Jutarnji list, Knjigomat, Slobodna Dalmacija, Zarez; while some of the translations were previously published in
the following books: Croatian Nights
(ed. by Tony White, Matt Thorne
and Borivoj Radakovi}; Serpent Tail,
2005) and When a Man Gets Terribly Frightened (Selection of Contemporary Croatian Short Prose, ed.
Boris [kvorc, Naklada MD, Zagreb,
Croatia and Croatian Studies Centre, Macquire University, Sydney,
Australia, 2003). We would also like
to express our thanks to the translators whose effort and talent made
this issue possible: Damion Buterin,
Marija Duki}, [ime Du{evi}, Boris
Gregori}, Celia Hawkesworth, Chris-
TIONS
tine Markovi}, Graham McMaster,
Mima Simi}, and Tomislav Kuzmanovi}, who also copy-edited the
issue.
Finally, we hope that this issue will
manage to convey to our readers,
who were not fortunate enough to
experience in person at least one of
the editions of the Festival of A Literature, at least some of the excitement that could be felt on the stages
and around them from 2000 to 2005.
For, as the rockers within us would
say, after it nothing was ever the same
again.
Roman Simi} Bodroì}
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TIONS
FAKtography
5
FAKtography
2000
February: Nenad Rizvanovi} and
Hrvoje Osvadi} initiate the idea of
co-organizing the Festival of Literature at Café Bar Voodoo in Osijek.
Initially the festival was supposed to
take place in Osijek only.
March: Osvadi} and Rizvanovi} invite Borivoj Radakovi} as the festival’s
selector and Kruno Lokotar as the
host. The idea of a festival where
only prose would be read begins to
take shape.
April: the festival gets its name – Festival Alternativne Knji‘evnosti, FAK
(Festival of Alternative Literature),
its e-mail address ([email protected]),
and web site (http://fak.ukrik.hr).
May: the first FAK took place on
May 13 and 14 at Café Bar Voodoo in
Osijek. Participants: Kre{imir Pintari}, Tatjana Groma~a, Boris Maruna, Ante Tomi}, Tarik Kulenovi},
Drago Orli}, Zoran Feri}, Zorica
Radakovi}, Edo Popovi}, \ermano
Senjanovi}, and Borivoj Radakovi}.
August: Magdalena Vodopija, the
director of the Dreamlike Book Fair
in Istria, agreed that the third FAK
takes place in Pula as a part of the
Sixth Dreamlike Book Fair in Istria.
Kruno Lokotar, Borivoj Radakovi},
and Nenad Rizvanovi} were listed as
the festival’s selectors.
September: FAK changes its name
into Festival A Knji‘evnosti (Festi-
val of A Literature). Dra‘en Kokanovi}, program coordinator at Zagreb’s
club Gjuro II, was invited to help
organize Zagreb edition of FAK.
October: the second FAK took place
from October 24 to 26 in Gjuro II in
Zagreb. Participants: Kre{imir Pintari}, Miljenko Jergovi}, Ante Tomi},
Senko Karuza, Stanko Andri}, Tarik
Kulenovi}, Jurica Pavi~i}, Neven U{umovi}, Drago Orli}, Robert Peri{i},
Ben Richards and Matt Thorne (UK),
Milko Valent, Zoran Feri}, Roman
Simi}, Zorica Radakovi}, Edo Popovi}, Goran Tribuson, \ermano Senjanovi}, Simo Mraovi}, Borivoj Radakovi}, and Franci Bla{kovi}.
December: the third FAK took place
on December 8 and 9 at KRM Uljanik
in Pula. Participants: Tatjana Groma~a, Simo Mraovi}, Drago Orli},
\ermano Senjanovi}, Laura Marchig, Borivoj Radakovi}, Kre{imir
Pintari}, Da{a Drndi}, Zorica Radakovi}, \ermano Senjanovi}, Edo
Popovi}, Miljenko Jergovi}, Roman
Simi}, Nicholas Blinkoe (UK), and
Zoran Feri}.
2001
January: FAKs, a special edition of
FAK, this time including exclusively
writers under thirty-five years of age,
took place at the Zagreb Fair as a
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Part I: FAK from the Inside
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\ermano Senjanovi}, Roman Simi},
Ante Tomi}, Neven U{umovi}; Laslo
Bla{kovi}, Zoran ]iri}, Mirjana Novakovi}, Mihajlo Spasojevi} and Vule
@uri} from Yugoslavia; Tony White
(UK), Peter Zilahy (Hungary), and
Igor Mandi} as a surprise guest.
November: Savi~ent. Participants:
Miljenko Jergovi}, Roman Simi},
Mirko Kova~, Senko Karuza, \ermano Senjanovi} ]i}o, Drago Orli}.
Kruno Lokotar and Robert Peri{i}
part of the Salon of Young Artists,
International Festival of Young Artists.
February: the collection of prose
pieces entitled FAKat published by
Celeber (Zagreb). The collection was
edited by Kruno Lokotar and Nenad
Rizvanovi}.
jevi}, Zvonko Karanovi} and Teofil
Pan~i} from Yugoslavia.
November: the eighth edition of FAK
took place at Gjuro II in Zagreb on
November 26, 27, and 28. Participants: Salena Saliva Godden, Goran
Tribuson, Rujana Jeger, Miljenko
Jergovi}, Franci Bla{kovi}, Gordan
Nuhanovi}, Edo Popovi}, Ante Tomi}, Vladimir Arsenijevi}, \ermano
Senjanovi} ]i}o, Ivo Bre{an, Roman
June: another special edition of FAK,
named FAKaj, took place in Vara‘din.
This edition presented prose written
in the northern Croatian kajkavian
dialect. Two guests read in chakavian.
April: the fourth FAK took place on
April 20 and 21 at Prometej Club in
Novi Sad, Serbia. Participants: Borivoj Radakovi}, Miljenko Jergovi},
Zoran Feri}, Ante Tomi}, \ermano
Senjanovi}, Edo Popovi}, Neven U{umovi}, Stanko Andri}, Roman Simi},
Kre{imir Pintari}, Ben Richards (UK),
and Aleksandar Ti{ma, Svetislav Basara and Vladimir Arsenijevi} from
Yugoslavia.
August: the sixth FAK took place in
Motovun alongside Motovun Film
Festival on August 1 and 2. The participants wrote scripts for short three
minute films that were shot and
screened during the festival. Participants: Ante Tomi}, Zoran Feri},
Miljenko Jergovi}, Borivoj Radakovi}, \ermano Senjanovi}. Boris Maruna, Goran Tribuson, Jurica Pavi~i}, Nenad Veli~kovi} (BIH), and
Vladimir Arsenijevi} (YU).
May: the fifth FAK takes place on
May 25, 26 and 27 at Café Bar Voodoo
in Osijek. Participants: \ermano
Senjanovi}, Miljenko Jergovi}, Borivoj Radakovi}, Zoran Feri}, Ante
Tomi}, Drago Orli}, Goran Tribuson, Kre{imir Pintari}, Juri}a Pavi~i}, Ivo Bre{an, Edo Popovi}, Stanko
Andri}, Drago Glamuzina, Franci
Bla{kovi}, Roman Simi}, Neven U{umovi}, Nenad Veli~kovi} (BIH), Matt
Thorne (UK), and Vladimir Arseni-
September: the seventh FAK took
place in Belgrade on September 28,
29, and 30. This time the festival
carried the title FAK-YU! Together
with Lokotar, Rizvanovi}, and Radakovi}, the list of selectors for the
festival included Vladimir Arsenijevi} and Teofil Pan~i}. Participants:
Stanko Andri}, Franci Bla{kovi}, Ivo
Bre{an, Zoran Feri}, Rujana Jeger,
Miljenko Jergovi}, Jurica Pavi~i},
Edo Popovi}, Borivoj Radakovi},
\ermano Senjanovi} ]i}o
Simi}, Zoran Feri}, Zoran ]iri}, Pero Kvesi}, and 10 authors who were
selected through the competition for
the best three page story with the
topic of Sunday. As a part of FAK a
reading for the hearing impaired was
held at Center for Training and Education “Slava Ra{kaj”.
2002
June: on June 21 and 22 the ninth
FAK took place at Café Bar Voodoo
in Osijek. Participants: Miljenko Jergovi}, Miroslav Kirin, Tahir Muji~i}, Darko Pekica, Vladimir Arsenijevi}, Ante Tomi}, Gordan Nuhanovi},
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Edo Popovi}, Vedrana Rudan, \ermano Senjanovi} ]i}o, Tobby Litt,
Borivoj Radakovi}, and Zoran ]iri}.
CD entitled Merack za FAK by Franci Bla{kovi} and Gori Ussi Winnetou
was presented at the festival.
August: a live promotion of Merack
za FAK took place on August 1 as a
part of Motovun Film Festival. Readings by: Matt Thorne, Ben Richards,
Borivoj Radakovi}, and Rujana Jeger.
Vedrana Rudan and Edo Popovi}
FAKtography
December: December 13, Nenad
Rizvanovi}, Borivoj Radakovi} and
Hrvoje Osvadi} inform the media
that FAK ceased to exist. On December 15 Kruno Lokotar agrees
with the discontinuation of FAK.
2005
The Serpent Tail and VBZ published
the English and Croatian edition of
Croatian Nights (edited by Tony
White, Matt Thorne and Borivoj Radakovi}), an anthology containing 18
new short stories set in Croatia. This
anthology features nine UK and nine
Croatian writers. To celebrate the
launch of this publication on 1 May
2005, a tour is organised.
April: Oxford Brookes University,
April 7. Participants: Gordan Nuhanovi}, Jelena ârija, Tony White.
Bristol on April 20, Cube Cinema.
Participants: Borivoj Radakovi}, Edo
Popovi}, Toby Litt.
7
Cambridge, April 21, Babylon Gallery. Participants: Zoran Feri}, Edo
Popovi}, Matt Thorne.
May: Cardiff, May 4, Millenium
Centre; Swansea, May 6, Dylan Thomas Centre; Lampeter, May 7, Lampeter Writer’s Group; Aberystwyth,
May 9 Y Cwyps; Bangor, May 10,
Tyler’s Academic Bookshop; Caernarfon, May 11, Black Boy Inn. Participants: Edo Popovi}, Jelena ârija, Borivoj Radakovi}.
Newcastle, May 17, Newcastle TBC,
Participants: Borivoj Radakovi}, Selena Godden, Niall Griffiths.
Warwick, May 18, Warwick Arts
Centre TBC. Participants: Borivoj
Radakovi}, Vladimir Arsenijevi}, Nicholas Blincoe.
Brighton, May 19, Brighton Library.
Participants: Borivoj Radakovi}, Vladimir Arsenijevi}, Ben Richards.
London, May 26, Voice Box – Royal
Festival Hall. Participants: Jelena ârija, Miljenko Jergovi}, Matt Thorne.
December: another edition of FAK
took place at Gjuro II in Zagreb, on
December 3 and 4. Participants: Niall
Griffiths, James Kelman, Miljenko
Jergovi}, Ale{ âr, Milko Valent, Edo
Popovi}, Rade Jarak, Andrej Blatnik,
Drago Jan~ar, Norma C. Rey, Gordan Nuhanovi}, Vedrana Rudan,
Jurica Pavi~i}, Dalibor [impraga.
December 5, Kaptol Culture Center
in Zagreb. Participants: Darko Pekica, Irvine Welsh, Pero Kvesi}, Ivo
Bre{an, Borivoj Radakovi}.
2003
June: Osijek, Barutana, June 13 and
14. Participants: Roman Simi}, Miljenko Jergovi}, Petar Lukovi}, Zoran Lazi}, Gordan Nuhanovi}, Zoran Feri}, Jelena ârija, Denis Peri~i}, Vladimir Arsenijevi}, and hip-hop artists Shorty and Grgi}-Pavlov
Duet.
FAK’s „British connection“ Borivoj Radakovi}
and one of FAK’s many reputable guests: Niall Griffiths
8
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Photo: Sandra Vitalji}
Sandra Vitalji} was born 1972 in Pula, Croatia. Received a BA and an MA from the Photography department at the
Academy of Performing Arts (FAMU) in Prague, Czech Republic, where she is currently also doing a PhD in history and
theory of photography. Exhibited in Zagreb, Pula, Sarajevo, Prague, Split, Ljubljana etc. Teaches photography at the
Camera department at the Zagreb Academy of Dramatic Art (ADU). ArtsLink Fellow (1997) and Fulbright Fellow (2006-7).
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Point Zero
9
POINT ZERO
What FAK is
Borivoj Radakovi}
Text was originally published without a
title, as the announcement of the first
FAK, May 13 and 14, 2000 at Café Bar
Voodoo in Osijek.
The chief organizers are Hrvoje
Osvadi} and Nenad Rizvanovi}, and
I was elected a selector who is, however, readily influenced, and thus
open to everyone’s suggestions. The
limit set is fifteen participants. The
selected writers are without a doubt
among the most representative contemporary authors writing in Croatian languages (I am, of course, referring to Shtokavian, Kajkavian and
Chakavian dialects of Croatian, as
well as local dialects and slang). Even
though each administration tries to
curb it, literature is more alive and
dynamic than the measures imposed
on it, therefore many important writers have not been invited this year,
but they will be invited in the years
to come – unfortunately we cannot
all be there at the same time. I myself
have in truth invited twenty authors!
A great number of writers avoid public readings, and I know why: there
are only a few authors able to capture
audience’s attention for an hour, let
alone two! And, believe me, literature is not just a text on the paper, it
is also the voice. The 1980s clearly
showed where literature created for
“reading” only will end up: in sterile
pseudo-academic constructions by
“technicians” and authors of minor
importance, ambitious university
professors who despite their supposed intellect create kitsch, plus our
own specialty, nationalist paroles
and fashirealist adulation. You can’t
read these kinds of things to people.
And surely not for two hours! Paroles are not literature; paroles are a
means of using literature to most
destructive – ideological and political – ends.
Notwithstanding some predictions,
even in this age of synthesized sound,
the age of electronic and hypertextual
literature, there is suddenly, again,
this need for live public readings.
Some authors are capable of combining various features of multimedia and thus delivering excellent performances. You will be able to see
this in Osijek.
In Great Britain there are some two
hundred literary festivals, and all we
have are the conference-like Goranovo Prolje}e Poetry Festival and a
few events organized around the socalled dialectal literature; all of these
are for poetry. In Croatia it is unthinkable to hold a single literary
evening where fiction would be read
for two hours straight, let alone a
whole festival hosting authors of fiction. Literary evenings, also, are most
often boring and stupid, and it is no
wonder one loses any desire to repeat
the experience of seeing a sterile hall
where deadly serious critic babbles
on, full of pseudoacademic phrases,
with the writer who, equally serious,
sits chaste as a Vestal Virgin, beaming, happy that (s)he is being talked
about, all followed by an actor who
is to read out loud what he has read
not more than five minutes ago for
the first time, doing his best to act
out some kind of art... I myself do
not attend those kinds of literary
events anymore, even though every
day I get invited to at least two of
them.
Some fifteen years ago Croatian audience was able to witness the reading of Allen Ginsberg – a three-hour
long show with a break not longer
than ten minutes. I have personally
seen and heard John le Carré read in
front of more than a thousand people,
and, hear this, he read fiction (!) for
three full hours! I have seen the Nigerian poet Chinua Achebe, sitting
in a wheelchair and reading for two
hours, in English and then in Ibo,
and yet I sat there, fascinated by his
appearance and his literature; even
the literature in the language I didn’t
understand. Similarly, last summer I
was in Cardiff, at a literary evening
where five writers spoke and read only
in Welsh. And, whatever happened,
10
the one whose reading left the biggest impression (for, sadly, I am not
sufficiently familiar with Welsh in
order to be able to follow it), was the
best writer in the group. I also saw
Doris Lessing, an eighty-three-years-old woman, Julian Barnes, Martin
Amis, Wole Soynka, Nadine Gordimer – all of these are famous names
of British and world literature, and
they are not interested in sitting on
Olympus, waiting for the audience
to admire them from the murky
readers’ depths. They all come down
to meet the audience, in a direct contact, direct communication... Not to
mention the masters of public reading performances, such as “underground” writers John Cooper Clarke,
Q, Salina Saliva Godden or Benjamin Zephaiah, who learned their
trade in pubs and inns! Benjamin
Zephaiah, for instance, is a dyslexic
who learned to somewhat read and
write at the late age of twenty, but
when he takes the stage and starts
reciting his rhythmical lines, you
think you are at a the Red Hot Chili
Peppers’ gig! And let me tell you
another thing: entry to literary evenings in Britain is not free: if you
want two hours of show – this, my
brother, will cost. But writers cost, too!
Our festival readings will last for two
days on end, at no less than two
Osijek venues. Each writer will have
two hours at his or her disposal and,
if needed, everyone will be flexible
and let it go on if it starts to roll. The
central venue will be the Voodoo Café,
the meeting place of the most spirited Osijek youth – and it would be
nice if Osijek Children’s Theathre
or Waldinger Gallery could also provide venues for the festival.
For the moment I can say that the
festival will host the following writers (in alphabetical order): Zoran Feri}, Tatjana Groma~a, Miljenko Jergovi}, Drago Orli}, Branko Male{,
Boris Maruna, Simo Mraovi}, Robert Peri{i}, Kre{o Pintari}, Edo Popovi}, Zorica Radakovi}, Delimir
Re{icki, \ermano Senjanovi}, Ante
Tomi} and myself, and we hope to
be able to synchronize the time and
our wishes to be able to also host
Dubravka Ugre{i}, Franci Bla{kovi}
and Viktor Ivan~i}. Some of them
we have actually not even invited yet,
but there’s time for everything. After all, this is an alternative festival.
We are only interested in literature,
and no one is representing anything,
the least the region they come from!
Accordingly, we also expect several
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renowned British and American authors to join us, and if they come,
they will come as individuals and
with festival as their sole purpose.
However, instead of telling you whom
we are expecting to come, I can only
say that, unfortunately, we will not
host Alan Warner, a Scottish author
who received highest British literary
awards for three of his novels, while
recently his novel The Sopranos has
been made into a TV show. But,
Warner is sure to visit us in autumn
because: Our festival is permanent.
It will last for 10 years in a row, and
it will have permanent annual festival venues. The central one will be
in Osijek, but no town will be excluded – Zagreb, Cardiff, Split, Rome, Dublin...
Festival’s funds are modest: about
1,000 beers, that is, $1,000. No institution stands behind the festival,
least of all the state or one of its
Ministries (for example, the Ministry of Culture) – the terms “culture”
and “state” are mutually exclusive!
We are not asking for a pittance, nor
would we give it!
Translated by
Mima Simi}
RELA
TIONS
11
Croatian Writers
Have Become True Stars
Zoran Feri}
Second Festival of Alternative Literature (FAK) held in Gjuro 2 club attracted
an unusually big crowd of media and
audience – a report by Zoran Feri}, recent winner of the “Gjalski” literary
award.
Last week Zagreb club Gjuro 2
hosted writers and sizeable audience
as a part of the 2nd Festival of Alternative Literature, the well-known
FAK. What made this so interesting
was the arrival of numerous reporters and TV crews, giving this literary
event a yet unseen, massive media coverage. This means that something is
changing in the status of literature in
Croatia. Writers have appeared twice
on central pages of Jutarnji List, the
official media sponsor of the Festival.
Three evenings in a row, writers
showed themselves to the audiences
in the flesh, some with more and
some with less of it. I noted they
could generally be divided into following groups:
1. Thin and elongated: Edo Popovi} and Robert Peri{i}
2. Smallish and fat: Drago Orli}
and Zoran Feri}
3. Funny: ]i}o Senjanovi}, Ante
Tomi} and Franci Bla{kovi}
4. Outstanding performers: Borivoj
Radakovi}
5. English: Mat Thorne and Ben
Richards
6. Exotic: Senko Karuza and Miljenko Jergovi}
7. Thin, medium sized and wellread: Stanko Andri} and Neven
U{umovi}
8. Sexy: Milko Valent
9. Interesting: Goran Tribuson and
Jurica Pavi~i}
10. Female: Zorica Radakovi}
11. Charming: Simo Mraovi}
12. Handsome: Roman Simi}
This broad division needn’t, of course,
mean that the fatties cannot also be
funny, the bearded ones interesting,
and females charming. Take, for instance, Drago Orli}, the poet who,
as he says, expresses himself in the
language of Istria. He is a typical
example of a bearded, funny and
round author who entertained the
audience during his well-designed
onstage performance, proving with
each line that he is closer to the English language than to that of Istria.
Kalemburs on Smoje
Someone might wonder what writers’ looks and stature have to do
with all this, when their head is far
more important than their beards,
and their insides more vital than the
outsides. But the idea behind the
festival was exactly this contact between writers and their audience at
the readings, which often turned to
be carefully thought out stage performances. Three evenings in a row
the writers made verbal and social
contact with the audiences, and the
program lasted from 8 p.m. until 2
a.m. – which is an oddity in itself,
considering all the lamentations that
no one cares about literature in Croatia.
I can recall many marvellous moments from these readings turning
the festival into a success and showing that it indeed made a lot of sense.
For instance, the moment when the
large audience closed their eyes and
sat there peacefully, yet not asleep.
This meant that Edo Popovi} was reading passages from his debut Midnight
Boogie. Pictures exploding, colours
gushing out. This was obviously the
kind of fiction that needs to be consumed with one’s eyes closed. When
Edo moved to more recent texts,
people slowly opened their eyes. Not
because they felt like it, but because
the text demanded it. The first one,
the closed-eyes prose, was the prose
of the eighties. The other one, the
eye-opening kind, was the prose of
the nineties. It is through this difference that the much-talked-about differences between the two prose con-
12
cepts can be best illustrated. The earlier – heavy, associative, lyrical; and
the contemporary – hard, open and
at times cruel.
The festival demonstrated the fundamental difference between the written and spoken word. Yet also the
power and the charm of literature
read onstage. It turned out, namely,
that texts that function well when
read for oneself “operate” completely
differently when the writer reads
them on the stage, in front of an
audience. I got the impression that
this form works best for the fiction
of \ermano Senjanovi} and Borivoj
Radakovi}, festival’s selector, who
closed the three-day event with an
excellent performance. \ermano Senjanovi} pulled off a major feat,
managing to get the audience up to
their feet at 2 a.m., in an extraordinarily electric atmosphere filled with
absurd kalemburs about Croatian
everyday life, Dora and uncle Smoje.
Borges’ metaphors
The excellent Ante Tomi}, whose
novel is about to be published, moved
audience to tears of laughter with his
stories about scarecrows and rural
mentality; one could hear someone
in the audience say: “Finally we have
a bestseller.” Miljenko Jergovi} was
fine and compelling as usual, aided
by his great writing and reminiscences
of childhood, cookies, cakes and
death. Robert Peri{i} was a little confused reading his poetry, but when he
moved on to prose the audience made
it clear that this was exactly what they
wanted and the whole thing went really well much to everyone’s delight.
After the fairy-like Frankfurt Book
Fair, this was another wonderful and
unusual experience. The mentioned
fair, namely, successfully combines
the famed metaphors of Borges,
which Umberto Eco used in his novel
The Name of the Rose: the library of
Babylon and the labyrinth. Walking
among the book stalls, you will easily get lost – either by getting lost
yourself or missing the person you
were supposed to meet – and you
will hear words and sentences in various languages. Suddenly you will
hear someone read in onr language,
and soon this voice will disappear in
a growing clamour. What Frankfurt
Book Fair, the biggest event of this
kind in the world, and FAK have in
common, is speech. Reading of literary texts and contact between writers and audience. True, I got the
impression that in Frankfurt writers
come into contact with an altogether
different kind of audience. There,
for instance, you can meet four categories of people. The first group
wears elegant grey suits, usually without a tie to appear casual, holding a
briefcase in their left hand and a
cellphone in their right. You can see
that they’re businessmen right away.
Once I saw a dozen of those, identical, in identical grey suits, as they
moved down the escalator each holding a cellphone on their right ear.
Others, older ones, wear jackets of
more colour, usually chequered with
leather patches on the sleeves, turtlenecks and rimless glasses. Those are
editors, critics and professors. They,
too, are handsome and smart. Those
in the third group are young, well
dressed, casual and nimble. That’s
the Fair staff, hostesses and all those
who offer logistical help for the first
two groups. The fourth group are
the shabbily dressed – their attire con-
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sisting of cloth trousers, tennis shoes
and greasy jacket. Or, a much too
tight dinner jacket and dirty jeans.
Those are the hung-over writers,
staggering about the pavilions, not
knowing where they are, where they
are supposed to be reading, and
which contract to sign. And when
they read, they can usually be heard
only by a narrow circle of people
crowded around the stall or in some
designated space. Their words you
can easily escape.
Literature out loud
It was different at FAK. You couldn’t
escape the spoken word. The space
was split in half. In the first half
there was a stage and seats where
audience listened to the readings,
whereas in the other half people chatted at the bar. But the words would
reach them, too, via the speakers.
They would follow you everywhere,
and it was good. This event was organized by Hrvoje Osvadi} and Dra‘en Kokanovi}, and the MC was the
superb Kruno Lokotar who, whether
he wore a plastic fish on his head or
strolled around hugging Tito’s bust,
as the night wore on spoke more
slowly and hoarsely, as if his words
were slowly falling into the blues.
The next destination for this nomadic festival is Pula. If these trends
regarding the audience and media
attention continue, they will have to
hold it in the Arena.
(The article was originally
published in Nacional)
Translated by
Mima Simi}
RELA
TIONS
13
FAK and Drugs
and Rock Šn’ Roll
Kruno Lokotar
S
omeone, perhaps it was me, said,
“It’s time.” People started getting
ready to go. They downed their glasses,
put out their cigarettes, pushed back
their chairs, put on their coats, and
the moment later I found myself
under the night Istrian sky, clear like
cat’s eyes, my face dipped into the
cold and, I think, the Bura. It was
definitely some cold wind – earlier
that day we barely managed to make
our way through the snow, ice and
salt of the Gorski Kotar – and here,
in the inland of Istria, on the Savi~ent
square with a medieval tower and
matching lighting, it could be felt
very well.
Jerga walked in front of me. He wore
his cowboy boots; the sound of his
heels, enhanced by the cold and stone
tiles, echoed throughout the square.
Wrapped in his long coat and almost
Asirian haircut and beard, protected
from gusts of wind coming from the
side, he walked directly toward our
goal – the ]uk Tavern.
Edo walked next to him, in his too
wide clothes; any clothes were too
wide for His Slimness, and in the wind
this was more than obvious, even
graphic. Somewhere near, his face
framed with Bacchus-like locks, wearing his blue Montgomery jacket, one
with the nocturno, softly and quietly,
younger than anyone else, walked
Roman. On my right, Sandra Vitalji}
Kruno Lokotar was born in Daruvar in 1967. He graduated in comparative
literature, history and library studies from Zagreb University. His critical
writing and cultural essays have appeared in various media. He was the editor
of Godine and Godine nove. At the Ivan Goran Kova~i} Public Library he
hosted a cult promo-talk show entitled K Lokotaru. He was a selector and host
for FAK. Since 2002 he is an editor in chief at AGM Publishing House. In 2004
he received the Society of Illustrators Gold Medal for his work as an art
director on Mirko Ili}’s cover for Vedrana Rudan’s novel Uho, grlo no`. In
2004 Lokotar received the Kiklop Prize for Best Editor, while in the same year
the titles published by AGM Publishing House won fourteen other awards
including three international prizes. Lokotar has been the editor of a section
entitled Marginekologija at the Vijenac magazine since 2000, and he has been
an organizer and a jury member for two Vijenac literary contests: Na vrh jezika
(poetry) and Prozac (prose). He published FAKat (with Nenad Rizvanovi}),
Celeber, 2001; FAK YU, special limited edition, 2002 (editor and designer); and
FAK JU (with Vladimir Arsenijevi}), Rende, Belgrade, 2002.
peaked out from the collar of her coat.
A huge camera dangled on her shoulder. Lenses on her other shoulder.
She turned her head to me and said
quietly, down the wind, otherwise I
would not hear her, “Like a band.”
And we were crossing barely 150
meters of open space, from the restaurant to the tavern. But – that was it.
The tavern was decorated like a stable,
with bales of straw in all strategic
places, it smelled of Chakavian TexMex and a good time; there were a
lot of people inside and – FAK was
ready to begin. Each of us would
play their number one single that
night and one nice, long-play evening
would take place. Oh, we were really
happy. In the end we started dancing
and everything turned into a party.
At some time of the night, exhausted
with adrenaline, we collapsed into our
beds. We slept late, then took our time
having our coffee and Biska brandy,
and then Karuza shone expectedly
and prepared a Mediterranean slowfood with some seven courses, each
calling for an essay.
At some point someone said, “It’s
time.” And on that second evening
everything was even better. We danced
again.
14
The scene could have looked differently, not necessarily like a strip of
spaghetti in a cinemascope. Anyone
could have happened there next to
me: seemingly the plainest man in
the world, a mustachioed jock with a
warm heart and a brain as unpredictable as pinball, ]i}o Senjanovi}, or
gray-haired and vivacious Signore
Bre{an who, without a doubt, even
in that wind would thread firmly
like an experienced hiker in a tempo
that reveals a good shape of a passionate aficionado of the Velebit.
Anyone who performed at FAK could
have walked into my field of vision:
it would have taken longer for me to
realize, perhaps one look wouldn’t
have done it and Sandra wouldn’t
have gotten it immediately, but nothing important would have changed.
FAK would have held yet another
evening of readings which, based on
the reactions from the audience, general atmosphere and tone, would
have seemed much more like a rock
concert.
There is nothing strange about this;
what is strange is that this kind of
interaction didn’t happen before,
because literature and rock Šn’ roll
have one thing in common: communication. True, unlike books, CDs
are not meant for strictly individual
use, but when it comes to live performance of literary texts, things need
to be viewed differently. Still, some
conditions that lend a hand to the
alchemy of transformation of individual experience into group experience need to be met for a successful
live performance of literature. It seems
that FAK, by all accounts, manages
to do just so.
Let’s start with what it takes to begin
– space and time. A good FAK requires a friendly space, space that
you visit gladly and without obligations, where you feel well, a space
you need a cover to get into because
you care about it and about what is
happening in it even if it is reading
literature. Then again, it needs to be
somehow open to all purposes, this
is a space where no behavior is proscribed and all possibilities are open,
a space in which politeness is a rather
individual category and where hope
for ecstatic conclusion of the evening
is highly probable. This is the space
of clubs and bars, the most important social venues where lonely hearts
meet.
FAK focused on this kind of spaces
already with its first presentation in
Osijek’s Voodoo, a café owned by
Hrvoje Osvadi}, the first manager of
FAK, who, along Nenad Rizvanovi},
is credited for the embryonic idea
of the project. This idea was then,
beside myself, most strongly developed by a man with great experience
of public readings from England, a
man virtually made for FAK, Borivoj
Radakovi}.
In Voodoo in May 2000 during that
first FAK a magic touch took place
and it made us all feel like rock stars
for the first time; in a country destroyed by war, privatization, primitivization, corrupted values and contempt for everything intellectual and
spiritual it gave us confirmation that
our little, autistic love that we practiced for our own health and honesty
– literature – had a go where we all
hoped it would have a go: in the
circles of young, normal, educated,
urban, curious people – amateurreaders. Those that usually hang out
in Voodoo, Gjuro II and similar venues. All it took was simply to approach them and offer them their
cup of tea. Or a bottle of beer. Walk
in politely, respecting the “sacredness” of those spaces. Especially their
key points: the bar and the stage.
An important element in what it
takes to host FAK is the bar which is
open at all times, but in such a way
that it does not interfere too much
with the reading, that is with the
attention of that part of the audience
which is listening to a reading. There
RELA
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is no prohibition at the bar: alcohol
deinhibits and relaxes and in reasonable quantities facilitates the communication between the audience
and the text. The bar is equally important to some of the performers
because it is the place to deal with
the stage fright. Typical backstage
activities take place around the bar:
people engage in conversations, make
arrangements and commentaries, seduce each other, stare, drink...
The stage should be elevated enough
for everybody to see the author and
use it as their fixation point for easier
concentration, but not too elevated
as to create an artificial barrier between the performer and the audience. The audience needs to be seated
very near in order to create good
interaction with the author. On the
stage and in the audience smoking
and drinking should be allowed. This
reduces stress with the addicts.
Light effects that follow FAK are
minimal and functional because listening is not about creating a visual
spectacle. One light falling on the
book is enough, it allows the author
to read; everything else is actually
redundant. It is also important that
the audience is in the dark, because
light disturbs concentration, it bothers the closed eyes, and listening
someone reading prose requires a
much higher level of concentration
than watching television. More developed lighting direction, stroboscopes and similar things, besides
being strenuous for the audience
would treat the author as a star therefore giving him the aura of being
untouchable, and such mystifications are not what FAK wants.
It is also very important that there
are no boxes, VIP areas and similar
stratifications within the audience,
just as there are no invitations for
FAK. We should care about the spirit
of democracy and equality of all who
paid their cover. After all we are in a
club where everyone stands an equal
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chance. In the night that makes one
cat just as black as another.
The second transcendental determinant cannot be separated from the
first one, and we usually call it time.
FAK happens at night, at a time
when we reset ourselves from everyday obligations and chores, when
pure leisure is at hand, a time when
we dedicate ourselves to ourselves,
when we do things out of pleasure,
without musts and shoulds, if at all
possible. The night is also the time
when our demons come out more
easily and when the way to our inner
selves is wide open. One can hide in
the night, it is easier to get lost in the
anonymity of the audience, and feel,
yes – feel.
FAK takes time, sometimes too much
time, and several times it ended up
in an encore that extended the event
until everyone collapsed. It is something like all stars night, many performers in one evening, compilation
of literary production of the moment. The compilation of authors
creates the effect of “the united small
producers”, synergy of all participants which is much more than all of
them put together.
But one needs to be careful with the
duration of the program. On one
hand, it seems fair to offer more to
the audience, but sometimes it happened that the audience was already
tired at the time the last participants
got their turn. Nowadays the participants have already learned that it
is often more effective to have a
shorter performance than to go over
the top and ruin the first positive
impression. At the same time, it is in
the interest of the whole program
that the individual performances are
not too long because it is the very
mixture of different authors and their
poetics, a kind of polyphony, what
makes the program interesting.
It is still important to understand
that FAK is a whole-night, main
event and not just one of the stops
on a night on the town. The last
FAK included after-party just in case.
The several hours long program is
usually conceived in sets. The first
set of authors performs, then follows
a pause, then another set of authors,
then a pause... The pause/intermezzo
is there so that people could catch
their breath – what is delivered to
them from the stage is not exactly
Brittney Spears – and focus their attention to a book fair that happens
alongside FAK by default. During
the last FAK we even sold our exclusive wine called Merack za FAK (Feeling like FAK) and we intend to sell
posters, T-shirts, and other souvenirs in hope that one day they would
trigger nice memories. During the
pause we make corrections on general or special conditions for the performance: sound system, lighting,
scene... The pause is my favorite part
of FAK nights.
Transcendental determinants of FAK
make it more similar to a usual clubbing or a concert than to an evening
of literary reading. Nominal and
iconographic determinants follow
the same path. FAK is the name that
first came into being as an acronym
for A Festival of Alternative Literature, where alternative referred to the
conditions in which the literature
came into being, but as the journalist kept interpreting this as “alternative literature”, we changed its name
into A Festival of A Literature. Now,
this made everybody scream, demanding to know about what gave us the
right to call our writers A-list writers. The objection is, of course, completely idiotic, because, if you want
it, what gives one the right to call
something an anthology, history, etc.
At the time of the “first name-change”
we were already sure that all this confusion around the acronym would
die out because FAK offered something new, a quality that set itself
free from the acronym and gave it a
new semantic meaning. Soon it was
15
enough to say, “FAK,” and everyone
knew what it was all about and no
one even thought of the initial offensiveness and lasciviousness the name
had as a phonetic, internationally
recognized Anglicism for sexual intercourse.
Soon it was enough just to put FAK
on a poster – the street’s most democratic media which literature relies
on only in exceptional situations –
and everyone knew what was at stake.
Posting their comment on the web,
someone said that the poster for FAK
Zagreb 2002, which was designed
by “Boèsa~uvaj”, looked surrealistic and fascistic. Out of all kinds of
uneducated, evil-minded and completely senseless objections FAK received this one is worth mentioning.
Personally, I would be happy if FAK,
or its designers, or anyone else, performed this miracle and managed to
bring together the differences the
surrealist and fascist movement had
between them on all levels. Nevertheless, it is important to mention
this comment in order to show that
posters, and radio announcements
for FAK, are an important part of
the whole project and modern media language which the targeted audience understands completely.
And there you have it, bit by bit we
described all of the (pre)conditions
for a good FAK. We had a warm
room, a large bed, a glass of wine,
dim light, a night at your disposal,
sexy underwear, meaningful glances,
sexually potent partners who show
interest, who have knowledge, but
don’t know each other all too well,
so it is still uncertain what FAK will
be like. Will that important thing,
that thing that is a part of every good
FAK – communication – take place?
Now it is necessary to bring everything closer, to warm up, to tease the
partners a bit. That’s where I come
as FAK’s host. If someone wants to
call me the lubricant, I don’t mind.
Anything for a good FAK! I intro-
16
duce the authors in an unusual light.
Besides a short glance at their literature, my intro includes some silly,
confusing, provocative questions.
Now the game begins through which
we see the author as “a person who
writes”, nothing more and nothing
less, and the fact that he is included
in FAK means that he writes – well.
The emphasis in the whole show is
on spontaneity. I usually don’t know
what I am going to talk about with
the authors, I prefer to let go to the
atmosphere and inspiration, context
in general. Something funny usually
happens then – that always works –
and the authors find their way out of
it the best way they can and this
spontaneity makes them look authentic while the audience sympathizes with them. This is an act of
demystification, creation of closeness, and disruption of any kind of
egoism. Once the framework has
been laid out this way, FAK is ready
to begin. I will jump in occasionally,
link the authors and their performances, but I feel happiest when I
can step back and let the program
unravel on its own.
FAK consists of a series of small, let’s
say, female orgasms, and it strives
toward a large, let’s say, male orgasm
that takes place at the end of the
evening. The authors follow one another in a classical dramaturgy of a
concert going for a grand finale.
People in the audience do whatever
they want: applaud, ask questions,
contribute, take a nap, walk around,
smoke joints, sigh... just as long as it
does not interfere with someone listening. The audience has the right to
provoke the authors, and the authors
have the right to get angry with the
audience, but that is, without a doubt,
counterproductive.
But we still have not answered the
question of how come FAK elicits
such enthusiasm, comparable to a
successful concert? Why is it so often
compared to rock Šn’ roll? Unfortu-
nately, I can only guess why it is so. I
don’t know what rock Šn’ roll is, and
I especially don’t know what rock Šn’
roll is today, so in tautological-phenomenological fashion I say, “It’s
only rock Šn’ roll, but I like it,” and
keep on guessing...
It is hard for me to imagine that
there is an audience that would come
to an event freely and readily, and
then remain indifferent toward all of
the very diverse performers who follow one another like on a good compilation CD, a hit after a hit. One of
them has to reach to it, open it, deflower its soul. Prose performed at
FAK presents an overview of contemporary literary scene which is –
depending on conjuncture and preferences of the selectors – dominantly
neorealist. This means that it refers
to general, current experience, that
is speaks directly and quickly about
something concerning life in general. The language of a good number
of younger writers mostly simulates
everyday, colloquial, direct language,
just as it is the case with rock Šn’ roll
lyrics.
Generally I think that neorealism
occurs in periods when there is a
great disparity between the imposed,
usually idyllic or largely idealized
image of the world, such as the image of Croatia in the 1990s, and the
real image, which we all live in. The
literature that puts its image of the
world in conflict with the “idyllic” is
by default provocative, sometimes
even shocking, although shock strategy tends to be good for one use only
and is therefore short-lived. This is
yet another thing in common with
rock Šn’ roll. Furthermore, people
care about these stories, they recognize their characters, see them in the
streets, read about them in newspapers, live them. This considerably
facilitates communication. Another
fortunate fact is that many contemporary authors pick the lock of the
soul using humoristic twist as their
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TIONS
tool and this gives a note of vitality
and directness to the whole situation
and rests somewhere within skepticism
and contempt for the authority.
Finally, FAK is hedonism, or at least
a quest for one, and probably most
quoted rock Šn’ roll slogan – sex,
drugs, and rock Šn’ roll – is pure
hedonism.
Unlike rock Šn’ roll, every literature
pays much more respect to its microstylistics; on the other hand, contemporary literature allows certain
unkemptness, improvisation, ellipsis and doubt in a much higher degree than a complicated microstylistics of a “high literature” which seems
to believe that not much can be said
in a plain language of an average
speaker and a voter. Contemporary,
and here I mean “rock Šn’ roll influenced”, literature seems to care more
about its macrostructure, impression
on the whole, and different kinds of
morals: paradoxical, emotional, ironical, more often multifold that rationally reductive.
Most of the writers who performed
at FAK took rock Šn’ roll culture and
mass media language and made it a
part of their nature, this is a context
that needs not be explained, justified
or discussed for them. The audience
is such as well, so it is no wonder that
understanding develops on the segments of nonverbal communication.
In our star system, generally speaking, Johnny [tuli} holds a higher
place than any Croatian poet. His
position in our star system belongs
to macaroonism turned into music
by Franci Bla{kovi} so we invited him
to perform with us which he accepted
and became one of the brightest moments of FAK.
Soon began the terminal stage of
FAK and rock Šn’ roll coming together. Franci asked me to get him
poems by FAK people and not to tell
them who ordered them and why.
As FAK is a festival presenting prose
authors, several authors wrote their
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TIONS
poems not knowing why, while Franci choose some of the published poems by other authors, even if they
were a part of other volumes. He
insisted on conspiracy because he
was afraid that, if they hear what his
intention was and who the poems
were for, they would write something in meter, something suitable
to turn into music, and he particularly wanted asymmetric, libertine
verses. The result of this cooperation
is Merack za FAK by Franci Bla{kovi} and his band Gori Ussi Winnetou.
For a good number of authors this
CD was a wish come true: they had a
chance to hear their verses set to
music by a master, accompanied by
wild guitars and the craziest of rhythms. It seems the circle somehow
closed now, the energy we drew from
rock Šn’ roll and music in general, at
least some of it, was given back. We
became fuel for rock Šn’ roll and
17
showed that, according to Zlatko
Gall, we are “not FAKing idiots.”
Someone said, “It feels like Woodstock here.” It was two and a half
years ago in Osijek, in café bar Voodoo, just before dawn.
(The text was originally published
in Europski glasnik)
Translated by
Tomislav Kuzmanovi}
Good Savi~enta vibes, November 2001.
18
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TIONS
RELA
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19
FAK has Become a Vehicle
for the Media Promotion
of a Closed Circle of Authors
Robert Peri{i}
Globus’s literary critic Robert Peri{i}
analyses the phenomenon of FAK (Festival of A-Literature), a group of established writers that no longer discovers
new authors and merely promotes its
members, although at the beginning it
seemed that their mission would be quite
different.
In 2001 as part of the Motovun Film
Festival another festival was held –
the Festival of A-Literature (FAK).
Both festivals are, in a way, symbols
of the new Croatian culture. We are
interested in FAK, an insufficiently
discussed cultural/literary phenomenon; still, even the culturally uninformed, who stare vacantly when the
names of Slamnig, Cvitan, or generational labels such as “Krugova{i”
or “Kvoruma{i” are mentioned, now
know about it. If you say “FAK”,
they will rouse and say: “Yeah, I’ve
like heard about it...”
The acronym was well chosen: it
commands attention, and when repeated enough in the media, it becomes a phenomenon. And even if
everyone doesn’t know what it exactly is, somehow they are certain
that it’s something desirable and exciting... This sole fact is significant
for Croatian cultural context, burdened by its representative role, so
that ordinary folk intuitively consider it not as something living, but
rather as something of an old ID
which is still, as it were, somewhat
valid. And this is where one will call
to mind the names of Maruli}, Gunduli}, Dr‘i}, Krle‘a – all those departed “vatreni” (the Fiery), whom
one can refer to if, far away from
home, one meets someone who hasn’t
heard of [uker.
It is to this kind of common Croatian
cultural perception that FAK introduced what evolutionist Richard
Dawkins would call a new “meme”,
i.e. a new cultural “gene”. This is the
gene of vibrancy, desirability, a promise of a feast – something that did not
exist as part of the idea of the socalled elite culture. FAK infested literature with the spirit of rock Šn’ roll
or, if you will, with rites of the “comic”
kind.
Technical check-up
Now, a little over a year into its existence, FAK is ready for a “technical
check-up”. So far we have witnessed
mostly conservatives’ “attacks” and,
in turn, FAK’s “defence” and “counter-
-attacks”. All this has been going on
for too long not to become predictable. Attacks from the right are politically banal, badgering from the
literary perfect is wearisome, and
FAK’s confidence in the “counteroffensive” does not get the adrenalin
flowing as it used to; it rather irritates as exhibitionism. The thing is,
they are no longer on the counteroffensive, where they once started off
as an “alternative” – now they lead
fifteen to nil, and so the whole thing
has turned into a never-ending exhibition match. The match to establish a new Croatian prose is won
and, as sports commentators would
say, “There’s only one team playing
in the field...” This team, however,
has not added a new task to its program, beyond the “promotion of fiction” through public reading, as one
of the founders, Nenad Rizvanovi},
explains the “idea behind FAK” in
the Motovun Film Festival booklet.
But, how to keep “promoting”, for
instance, fiction written by Feri} or
Tomi}? Somehow it seems – and
this is a compliment to the authors –
that it is no easy task. It is a different
story abroad, but in Croatia, where
they have been topping the charts
for months, further “promotion” of
20
their work would have to mean having their work introduced into the
educational curriculum or something
of the sort... It isn’t clear how to
promote Tribuson or Bre{an, who
also sometimes join FAK. They could
maybe be promoted into members
of the Academy, winning the “A” in
FAK yet another “promotion”.
Honourable elders
At first the function of “honourable
elders” and their participation was
clear. They were there to be shown
respect and admiration and, by attending, they were helping establish
the Festival of a New Generation.
Today, however, everything seems
far less obvious: they are established,
FAK is established, thus everyone is
established. And mere “promotion”
is still going on. If FAK were continually discovering new names, the
attendance of the established would
serve its primary function, but this
way it doesn’t.
With a well-coordinated team of
“star” players and failing to produce
new ones, there is a good chance that
FAK will become but an informal
institution of a new literary mainstream. In that case it will serve as a
vehicle for promotion only abroad,
while at home it will necessarily require another kind of “alternative”.
Besides, it seems that in its quest to
promote fiction and bring significant gains to it, FAK has altogether
abandoned the space of the real, deciding to rely exclusively on the media. In Motovun writers didn’t, as
far as I’ve noticed, sell their books,
which is the purpose of these kinds
of events in the West. The rule, upon
which FAK once insisted, that a ticket
for the reading be purchased, now
evaporated. Moreover, in Motovun
there were screenings of short films
based on FAK’s authors’ stories –
and there was no admission charged.
The film project is a visible symp-
tom of FAK’s disorientation. The
need for new material has directed
them towards film, instead of trying
to find new people and new poetics
in the field of literature. This resulted in worthless little films, the
quality of which can only partially
be blamed on the miserable production conditions. Except for Tomi}’s
script and, in part, the script by
\ermano Senjanovi}, the rest was
very un-filmic. Feri}’s script wasn’t
even filmed, it was “performed” by
actors, as if at a script-reading rehearsal, so what Feri} intended as
grotesque acquired an uninvited measure of silliness. The new prose, often cited as a counterpoint to Croatian film, was here instantly brought
down to its level.
Repeating names
All of these are consequences of structuring FAK as a group. Rare are those
arts festivals where the bulk of the
programme is known in advance,
and only background figures, or international guests, change, like Vladimir Arsenijevi}, dubbed “an associate member” in FAK interviews –
confirming thus the category of informal “membership”. This would
make some sense with new audiences
in new towns, but it makes none in
the media, where FAK keeps presenting the same names to the always-same audiences.
The constant repetition of names
necessarily demands that new matter
for media exploitation be sought out
on different levels, as was the case
with “FAK film”. On the other hand,
since FAK is so heterogeneous in
style – every internal discussion on
poetics is frozen. In this way FAK
“promotes” too much and develops
too little. The whole promotion business does not engender literary criticism, or any new points of orientation. Between the Motovun group
of selected author-readers, none of
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them, to my knowledge, has ever
produced a negative piece of criticism on the work of another. With
this kind of critical position within
the group, it indeed becomes some
sort of a vehicle for self-establishment.
Where does this idyllic situation spring
from, if we know that there are plenty
of differences between the participants
in FAK, de facto, literary worlds of
difference? On the one hand we have
declared adherents to convention,
like Jurica Pavi~i}, and on the other
experimentalists like Borivoj Radakovi}, who is, by the way, in this
sense practically alone in FAK. To
this question I see no answer but that
the need for inner cohesion demands
suppression of differences. This feature regularly appears in groups that
have an overriding, higher aim. What
this aim might be for FAK – having
already established new fiction – is a
mystery to me. We can only hope that
there is such an aim, but is kept secret.
The question “What kind of prose
needs promotion?” has evaporated.
At the beginning FAK knew the answer. Its original title “the Festival of
Alternative Literature”, under which
it was opened in Osijek (May 2000)
may not have been the best choice,
but it implied Festival’s function:
establishing what has come to life
outside the system during the 1990s.
The manner of promotion itself –
reading in an informal ambiance –
was indeed an alternative one.
A quick leap from “alternative” to
“A-Literature” (September 2000) introduced the problems FAK is facing
today. It reflected a strange lack of
self-irony, considering the “comic”
dimension of FAK. Had they asked
\ermano Senjanovi}, he would probably have suggested something like
“Anti-counter” or “Acclimatized” literature. Feri} would perhaps hope
for “Ambulance” to be introduced
into the title... Such a title would
have provided a long-term self-ironic
safeguard, combined with a mischie-
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vous acronym. However, this, it seems,
was never discussed either.
All decisions regarding FAK are taken
by the selecting trio (Radakovi}, Lokotar and Rizvanovi}). Mainly on a
voluntary basis, they have invested
most energy into putting FAK together, but ever since they have been
making astute moves only on the
cultural/symbolical level – as when a
FAK reading took place in Novi Sad.
As selectors, they are playing it safe.
FAK has not discovered anyone who
has not previously been critically acclaimed. All of this brought the level
of literary novelty down to a “reasonable” measure.
Game over
Beyond the symbolic and promoactivities, FAK steered clear of the
field of more specific literary initiatives – even those regarding the writers’ guild. Unhappy with how slowly
changes were introduced in the field
of culture, Borivoj Radakovi} waged
war against the Ministry of Culture
and Minister Vuji}, but he received
no support from the rest of the FAK
crew. In the end it remained unclear
“what FAK really wants” and cacophony took over.
At any rate, one game is simply over,
and a never-ending “fakking” by the
old rules would, after a sharp takeoff, lead to a numb and frozen prose
scene. Make no mistake, the cultural
score of FAK is still positive: it revived readers’ interest in literature,
as well as the interest of the media, it
created literary stars, tripled book
sales, introduced a “meme” of vibrancy into a mass perception of
Jurica Pavi~i}, James Kelman,
Niall Griffiths, Borivoj Radakovi}...
Audience and cameras of Croatian National
Television observe the action in Gjuro II.
At the same time,
you can get books, bicycles...
21
Croatian culture, promoted cultural
tolerance and a new model of literary communication. Very rarely have
things changed so rapidly in Croatian culture. And it is exactly because
the context has been altered so radically that FAK needs to change, too;
it needs to be defined more clearly,
its poetics, too. It needs some kind
of a new beginning... Something.
Finally, this text will also be interpreted as an “attack” on FAK, but
someone will, hopefully, understand
it as advocacy of cultural principles
that made it soar in the first place.
(The text was originally
published in Globus)
Translated by
Mima Simi}
22
Franci Bla{kovi} and Gori Ussi Winnetou;
musical trademark of the FAK.
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23
The Encyclopaedia
of Nothingness
Stanko Andri}
Arbitration
W
hen I was fourteen years old, I
used to think a lot about God. I
devoted all my free time to thoughts
about God. How demented all those
must be, I reasoned, who don’t believe in God the Creator of the World!
It’s sufficient to just look around
oneself. (Creatura glorificat creatorem,
the created glorify the creator, etc.)
Take any portion of the world, that
world which is made up of an infinite number of scenes and faces;
what’s not contained in, say, the banal scene of a kitchen table (metal
cutlery, which includes the evolution of table manners as well as the
mysterious history of metallurgy,
paper serviettes with worn-out cheap
decorations, which point to the degradation of symbols from divinity to
the kitchen, porcelain containers for
salt and pepper, in which echo the
distant sounds of the sea and which,
in a twofold voice, cry out to the East,
with the tinkling of the porcelain
and the intoxicating call of spices,
then various bottles with labels, in
whose form is preserved the long history of transformation – beginning
with baked Mediterranean amphorae
– of those valuable elongated objects
in which were stored olive and sun-
Stanko Andri} , prose writer, essayist, born on January 27, 1967 in Strizivojna,
by \akovo. He graduated in French and Latin Language and Literature from
the Faculty of Philosophy University in Zagreb, and received his Master s
Degree and his Doctorate from the Central European University, Department
of Medieval Studies, in Budapest. He works in the Croatian Historical Institute
(Slavonski Brod), where his area of activity is Medieval History of the aforementioned parts of Croatia. His works has been translated into the English
(The Miracle of St. John Capistran; CEU Press, Budapest, 2000) and German
language (Der Simurg, Roman, translated byKlaus Detlef Olof, Wieser Verlag,
Wien-Klagenfurt) . He was awarded the Josip and Ivan Kozarac prize in 1999,
and the Vladimir Nazor prize in 2000. Published works: Povijest Slavonije u
sedam poàra (Zagreb, 1992; 2001); Enciklopedija ni{tavila (1995; 2001);
ûdesa svetog Ivana Kapistrana, povijesna i tekstualna analiza (2001); Potonuli svijet, Rasprave o slavonskom i srijemskom srednjovjekovlju (2001);
Dnevnik iz JNA i druge glose i arabeske (2001); Simurg (2005.).
flower oil, vinegar, tomato juice, etc.,
etc.), or the yellow stain on the floor
created by a beam of light that penetrates into the room through lowered Venetian blinds, or the dried
petals of a flower or a strand of hair
found amongst the pages of a book,
borrowed that afternoon from the
library, or my table with scattered
playing cards, audio-cassettes, plastic cups, tubes of paper glue and face
creams and those for hands... In some
way, in those visual meditations of
mine, I’ve recorded some imaginary
photographs, photographs of randomly selected scenes, cuttings of
reality isolated and separated from
that reality, from that world, and
then those encompassed objects would
step out in front of me with some
new weight, the only one, the unique,
the absolute, and their photograph
would transform into an irrevocable
document, the document of God’s
existence. Do you understand? Click!:
a kitchen table; click!: the edge of a
road; click!: the corner of my room...
In such manner, objects that surround
me take on something fateful and
unrepeatable. G. Bachelard expressed
it this way: “Mythologists have taught
us to read the dramas of light in the
24
happenings of the sky. But, in the
cells of dreamers, familiar objects
have become myths of the universal.”
Today I no longer meditate with that
same amount of enthusiasm about
God, but to be preoccupied with the
realm of the arbitrary, with its image
and likeness, with that combination
of chance and the essential, that is
the lasting mark of my spiritual life.
It often happens that I find myself
concentrating on an object, a wrist
watch, paper scissors, the cubic packaging of milk, and I imagine it being
the only thing that survives a global
cataclysm: within it, then, would be
redeemed the entire meaning and the
whole strength of the lost and wipedout world, myths and metaphysics
would survive within and through
it. It would become the object of a
cult and some absolute religion, taboo and fetish, the incarnation of
divinity and a tabernacle of mysterious meaning, the stone of knowledge, the gold for whose transmutation the world was squandered. The
least significant object is potentially
interminably meaningful, interminably important. Perhaps that brown
pencil or that plastic tetra pack is of
crucial and fatal importance, perhaps
it is precisely one of them that conveys the Absolute to us.
I suspect that the truth of a being is
always beyond being. To name, that
is, to explain an object in the world,
can be done only by means of that
which is the most unexpected. In the
composition Aqua, along with the
gurgling of water and the roar of
waves, one can also hear a magnetic
sound, like the emptying of electricity in a liquid. What if the essence of
water consists in precisely that? What
if water is identified in that composition, from the other side of observation, from the other side, where
water is really water, where the water
is?
Elaborating an unusual visual spectacle, Salvador Dali included in it
the following astonishing part:
“To that spectacle I’ll add a beautiful old-fashioned bathtub in which a
live pig will be placed beforehand.
We’ll cover the bathtub with a transparent plastic slate, and then seal it.
Thus all the guests will witness the
suffocation of the pig.”
A. Bosquet : “And how long will that
charming torture last?”
Reading
Before me fall some letters; I can
describe it as the opening of a window through which I can see across
the street the opening of my neighbour’s window; my gaze stops at the
back wall of his room. That’s the
signified. Thus the signs of letters
only make possible the existence of
sounds, which again make possible
the existence of what is finally signified. At lightning speed the function
represses the purpose along the se-
mantic chain; from letter and sound
it takes away all corporeity, temporality: that means that every n is cancelled in a chain of n links. The signified is the substance, the signifier is
its existence. The act of reading
doesn’t have temporal dimensions.
Bachelard deemed that, “reading
words, we see them, but no longer
hear them.” One could notice that in
the word “clamour,” for example, it’s
not the hooked letters that clamour,
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Dali: “I don’t know yet. In any case,
we’ll position microphones there, so
that everyone will be able to increase
the agony of the animal according to
taste, and thereby spread fear amongst
all those present.”
Nothing is more erroneous, however, than to presuppose that this has
something to do with senseless cruelty. Dali, namely, continues:
“It’s by no means a senseless act:
with this I will only renew, in a new
form, my pleasures from childhood,
when I read the medieval mystics
and the works of St. John of the
Cross, in the house of my birth in
Figueras, which is located near an
abattoir. The grunting of hogs and
sows was a specific type of music
that served as a backdrop to my reading of the mystics. I’m quite faithful
to my past, and I will conscientiously
reconstruct that atmosphere.”
That explanation convinces us that
this really is one more case of metamorphosis, about which some things
have been said, that beneath the seemingly incidental circumstances of a
mystical experience there is actually
hidden the essential ingredient of
that experience.
but the sounds; or that the pathos of
an “o tempora, o mores” is not the
pathos of circles, but the pathos of
sorrowful vociferousness. One should
be cautious, however, that with this
argument we haven’t already trespassed into the domain of meaning,
into the substance of signs. Actually,
whilst reading words, we no longer
see or hear them. When I read the
word “bird,” that which comes into
being is neither a series of letters nor
a set of sounds, but the concept, a
pale feathery picture.
If the act of reading is temporally
subdimensional, then that means
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A Little FAK Reader
that the letter-speech-idea sequence
is completely arbitrary. That sequence
can be reversed at will. There is no
reason not to accept the scheme of
signified-signifier instead of signifiersignified. That fact is of utmost importance for the morphology of dreams.
Sometimes it happens to everyone
that they read in their sleep. How
can one describe that strange nausea,
that exertion to discern the lines of a
text which actually doesn’t exist,
which isn’t there at all on the other
side of the reader’s momentary consciousness, which isn’t in the world
(some world), as an object that is
given beforehand? Thanks only to
the fragile storage of memory can we
know how convoluting, how senseless, those nightly texts are. Only in
that short-term memory do they exist. So what, then, is reading really?
It’s an assumption which reads what
it assumes. With great effort we write
a text, having the illusion that we
read it with great effort. Writing is
masked as reading: that which we
bring we can’t distinguish from that
which we find. Do we bring something? Do we find something? How
to grasp whether we are reading or
writng, if we find the content of our
spirits simultaneously registered on
paper? What comes first, the thought
Lycanthrophy
The phenomenon of a person alter-
nating, at regular intervals, between
a man and a wolf. Pascal said that he
is “not at all in awe of the perfection
of one virtue, for example, courage,
if one does not see along with it the
perfection of the contrary virtue.”
Pascal further said: “Greatness is not
demonstrated by going to one extreme, but when both extremes are
reached at the same moment, thereby
filling in the entire space in-between.”
That can be understood as the recognition of the greatness of schizophrenics. Tormented by the excessive role of the creature of spirit, the
schizophrenic has an obsessive need
to transform himself, at least for a
little while, in some hours of the
night, into a creature of instinct.
In the Nordic Heimskringla, in part
six of the Ynglingasaga, it is written
that Odin’s warriors once “threw
themselves into battle without their
armoured suits; they were as enraged
as mad dogs, they bit and stung and
were as strong as bears; they killed
people, and the flame and the sword
could not harm them; such battles
were known as berserks.” (Similarly,
an unknown Byzantine, denoted as
Pseudo-Cesar, wrote about the ancient Slavs in his Dialogues thus:
“The Sclavs like to gorge on the
breasts of women, because they are
full of milk, and besides that they
smash unweaned infants like rats
against cliffs. They are wild, free,
without any superiors, since they
constantly kill their leaders, be that
at feasts or whilst travelling; they feed
on foxes and wild cats and boars,
and they call out to each other like
howling wolves.”)
At first glance, these disturbing lines
reminded me of something indeterminate and, so it seems, something
ancient: I realised, little by little, that
these were all those pulp comic strips
which I devoured in troops and read
with extreme excitement during the
days of my adventurous childhood.
25
or the written entry? What precedes
what? But we have just concluded
that neither precedes either, that there
is no sequence, we have just said: simultaneously. When we read, the
thought swiftly goes forth and overtakes the written entry; when we read
in our sleep, the written entry swiftly
goes forth and overtakes the thought.
In general, one watches and follows
the other with greatest alertness. Operative there is the world-creating activity of the word; here the conferring
of names, the graphic naming of
things. The world-creating activity
of the word and the naming of things
are the image and likeness of the same.
In one of those volumes I read a
frightening and dark story about a
remote forest settlement of a Viking
tribe, which isolated itself from the
world; deprived of all links with the
surrounding sea of Humankind, enclosed within itself, in its own fatal
endogamy, the tribe gradually became the object of unforeseen deviations, horrible psycho-physical metamorphoses: taking on the more defined anatomic and psychological
characteristics of wolves, it actually
transformed itself into a ghostly tribe
of upright wild beasts, a tribe of
werewolves in horned Viking helmets.
It’s not difficult to imagine what
dear joy I experienced today when I
discovered, standing in front of the
wide open book of Ynglinga Sagas,
that that antique story, embodied in
the violent sketches of weekly editions of comic strips, actually hid
irrevocable and solid historical truths,
the ancient truths of the World.
Ever since I can remember, wolves
have always absorbed me in a special
way. They’re very dignified animals.
It can’t be excluded that all my
present sympathies, mixed with an
26
indeterminate, but strong nostalgia,
actually stem from fears which once
persecuted me; because, as is well
known, Europeans have the unusual
habit of liking to scare their children
with wolves. Perhaps the instinctive
cunning, that there is one single path
to salvation, is born precisely of the
most electrifying moments of terror:
to join them. To join the creatures of
the Night, to join the terrifying creatures which, in the circle of flaming
eyes, threaten the person that is You,
to become one of them – in that, therefore, was that incredible idea. Wolves,
of course, are exceedingly untrustworthy, exceedingly shrewd, for one
to even entertain the prospect of con-
templating to delude them: to appear
there with a mask, with the lowly
intention of smuggling in amongst
them, a being which is still in actuality
a man – that would undoubtedly mean
to be torn apart at the same moment;
the only manner in which to gain their
confidence is to discard, without any
remains whatsoever, without any vestiges of regret, the being that you have
been hitherto. Then you will be able
to peacefully wait for the results: you
are actually (as you once wrote) “that
timid wild beast whose harmlessness
authorises it to claim the right to a
share of the benevolence of the world.”
At the same time, you’re a wolf.
Besides all that, wolves embody ha-
Reality
The discovery that you can notice-
ably improve your spirit, if you place
the joined palms of your hands behind your ears, is quite frightening.
You have thereby actually begun,
with one empirical breakthrough,
the dizzy relativisation of reality. If
we could embrace, with sufficiently
wide palms, some sort of peace-loving word which is spoken by an endearing creature, we would yield to
hearing the awful amorphous roar.
“In a theatre, the image of an actress
is seizable everywhere around her.
An image of her smile, her eyes, the
locks of her hair, is found on all
sides, whereupon the observant eye
can clasp them as a system of waves
or photons.” (Raymond Ruyer)
Thus also the sounds that reach us,
tame and endearing, are not, as we
tend to believe, reality. Reality is a
formless rumble of thunder from
which our speckled ears select one
thread of bearable sound. Human
beings, like all other animals, spread
around themselves terrifyingly large
quantities of sound. Owing to the
limitations of our knowledge of the
world, that true reality, fortunately
for us, is unreachable.
But what if the defence mechanisms,
upon which we have no influence,
and which are the senseless gifts of
some unfathomable grace, fail at one
moment just as senselessly? What if
the dams and armour suddenly burst
asunder, and the unbridled reality
dashes towards us, into us, the incommensurably vulnerable? Judging
by all this, if that happens, ruin
(Damocles’ Sword of Reality) will
come upon us in a very unusual state,
in the paradoxical situation of being
the convinced ignoramuses and retractors of that same reality. We
haven’t been brought into this position by means of some conjured up
manner, choice or a certain kind of
arrogance. This relates to the relentless sequence of necessary events, predestination, the inevitable state of
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tred of the world, the hatred of the
banished, which is an undignified
temptation that always seduces you
anew. In addition, they live in forests; they are acquainted with the
moonlight and snowy fields. The
only way is to get closer and become
kindred with the stench and the decay that follows them, those attributes
of death, which, in your literature,
you can only imagine.
In spite of everything, however, lycanthropy, in the strict sense of the
word, can never happen as you want
it to because, in your split head, there
gradually and slowly looms that third
something, like the Holy Spirit between the Father and the Son.
scientific solipsism into which we
have descended. The spectacle of catastrophe will, therefore, be exciting:
amused (in the lap of incommensurable reality) by strict performances
about the non-existence of the real
world, reality will, dashing in from
all sides, engulf, scatter, erase us.
Once, in a tram, I glanced at a newspaper held wide open by some gentleman. Next to the photograph of a
large crowd gathered in the main
town square, there was a notice saying that today, at two o’clock in the
afternoon, at a commemorative ceremony, the Vice-Roy’s flag will be
raised, etc. Today? Today at two
o’clock? Separating us from the event
were two-three hours, a negligible
interval, as though recanting the necessity of the distance between the
event and news of it, as though the
news and the event are simultaneous.
The news in the newspaper seemed,
furthermore, more coherent and more
real than the event itself. I thought
that it could easily precede the event.
Reality, it appears, is the ungainly
projection of a man’s representations, its belated reflection, a tattered
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copy. The effort is tiring, that duty
to reproduce it always, to act out this
decrepit theatre. And surely it’s already omitted somewhere; it will
soon disappear completely. There are
also more resolute, more heretical,
authors:
“In the West, however, all the more
pronounced is the view that the world
ceased to exist on April 23, 1888.
What remains of history is self-will
and inertia, supported by the blurred
propaganda machinery and in recent
times by the hallucinogens in cocacola and euro-cream, and by the incessant flow of television programs
which shrewdly repeat archival recordings of the world, sending them
in empty space by using magnetoscopes.” (S. Basara)
The roots of these global spiritual
deprivations reach down deep, deep
into the philogenetic and ontogenetic past.
A child, for example, asks: “What’s
the furthest country? Australia?”
A Little FAK Reader
The adult: “You mean the furthest
from us?”
The child: “Not from us, but rather
what’s the FURTHEST...?”
In this short dialogue, the Child represents the furthest as an absolute attribute of a thing, and not a mere
relation. Growing up is actually the
gradual subtraction of these types of
attributes of things. Things fade,
level out, and disappear. Consistent
structuralism, for which the “object”
is only the opposite of its opposite,
must conclude that what exists is
only that which can’t exist. Ergo,
God doesn’t exist. Ergo, the world
doesn’t exist. What exist are only
the deteriorating phenomena in unbroken metamorphoses.
This meaningless book also doesn’t
exist. But it intended to redeem itself
by perfidiously making an ideal from
that inevitability. It’s conceived as a
book about nothing; precisely about
the insolence, and even the imprudence, of minute things, about miss-
27
ing things that disappear if they are
observed for more than a single moment. A nauseating book in which
the sentences and chapters (turning
over and exploiting the majestic paragon of stones that went into the construction of the pyramids and ancient temples) will be assembled in
such a way that, before our very eyes,
there will, in the end, remain only
emptiness, evidently nothing.
(The translations were originally
published in a Selection of Contemporary Croatian Short Prose When a
Man Gets Terribly Frightened, selected and edited by Boris [kvorc,
publishers: Naklada MD, Zagreb,
Croatia and Croatian Studies Centre, Macquarie University, Sydney,
Australia, 2003.)
Translated by
Damion Buterin and Thea Goreta
28
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A Little FAK Reader
29
Darkroom
¹Fragmentsº
Rujana Jeger
Life is like a darkroom, says Kristijan. You never know who will
screw you and how, or whom you
will screw and how. But it is too
exciting for you to just walk out.
Write, says Kristijan, Write, I’m dying here. We laugh. Kristijan phones
at two in the morning to ask me the
name of the famous actor he was
necking with... in the elevator in
Rovinj in 1989. I tell him the name
and go back to watching the movie.
Boris asks who it was. Kristijan, I
say, He wanted some info from the
black box. Boris laughs, I feel cosy
and warm. Boris knows everything.
The Americans and Germans have
conspired to destroy what’s left of
Yugoslavia, says Granddad, slowly
peeling an apple with his penknife.
His hands don’t tremble, but his
veins have gotten thicker. He peels it
slowly, as if peeling away whatever
still ties him to life. Through the
window you can see the roof of the
Subotica Town Hall. Fin de siecle. I
dream that I’m walking down the
streets of Zagreb, he says.
Why didn’t you write down your
nationality? the Yugoslav Consul asks.
That’s what’ll determine whether
you get a visa or not. I don’t have
one, I reply with a laugh. If I did, I
wouldn’t be living in Munich right
now. What are your parents? he asks.
Dad’s a Serb and Mom’s an enemy
Rujana Jeger was born in Zagreb. High school education: media worker/
journalist. Graduated in archeology from Zagreb University. In 1991 she
moved to Vienna, Austria. Currently back in Croatia. Jeger has tried her hand
at all kinds of odd jobs as well as translating, teaching, and writing. She came
to realize that she just wanted to write. Rujana Jeger is a columnist for the
Croatian edition of Cosmopolitan, she writes for the Croatian edition of Elle,
Amelia magazine in Sweden, Emma in Germany, as well as Bunte Zeitung in
Vienna. Her first novel, Darkroom, was published in Croatia in July 2001, in
Germany in February 2004, and in Poland and Slovenia in 2005. Darkroom
received the City of Vienna Literature Appreciation Prize in 2004. Jeger’s
second book, Posve osobno, a selection of columns written for the Croatian
edition of Cosmopolitan from 1999 to 2003 was published in Croatia in
November 2003. She continues to write...
of the state, I reply. The Consul
laughs, I know I’ve won him over.
Grandma asks me how I’m going to
get to Yugoslavia. By train, I say.
The train is full of Serbs, she says.
Who’s Kristian? Granddad asks. My
best friend, I say. From where? he
asks. From school, from Zagreb. What
are his parents? Granddad asks. His
Mom’s a Muslim, his Dad’s a Serb
and he’s gay, I reply. Ridiculous, says
Granddad, concealing the twitch of a
smile.
I told your parents not to get married, love each other, I said, but don’t
do something stupid, says Granddad.
They came at two in the morning,
dirty; I let them spend the night. My
son got his student ID and thought
he knew everything there was to
know, says Granddad, visibly upset.
Her parents never gave any money.
We all squeezed into that apartment
and then my daughter decided she
was in a hurry to get married. Suddenly there were seven, and then
eight of us. Everybody stuck to me
like polyps, says Granddad. My son
was always doing something stupid,
says Granddad. That irritates me. If
he hadn’t, I wouldn’t be here now, I
think to myself.
San Francisco, March 14, 1986
We now come to the question of my
responsibility for you. As far as I
know, I am without a doubt your
30
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father, biologically speaking. It wasn’t
my intention at the time, and I really
don’t know if and to what extent
your mother meant to get pregnant,
so I’ll leave that aside. But I do know
that she (from the moment I learned
she was pregnant) wanted you very
much, seen from today’s perspective
of course. She wanted a child. I was
neither for nor against it, I was twenty
and loved studying. I used to read
120 pages a day for homework in
those days; I’d spend every cent I
had on books; I had straight A’s, I’d
read Marx and Gautama Buddha,
Weber and Kerouac, Hegel and Henry
Miller, Plato and Ionesco, Kung Futse and Che Guevara, Basho and statistics, Lao Tse and Lenin; I studied
the Glagolitic script and Roman law,
Zen Buddhism and methodology,
the Sumerian kings and Papuan savages, all with equal enthusiasm. It
was the sixties, the world was like a
corpse on its deathbed, I was part of
the birth of a new and good world,
Kali Yuga was coming to an end, it
was the Age of Aquarius. I practiced
hatha yoga, read raja yoga, and horrified my Krajina parents with the
curse of vegetarianism, that opium
of Serbs on the other side of the
river. A child? I had no reason either
for or against. New humanity, new
people, new children. In your case
there was never any serious doubt
about whether you’d be born, (later
yes, when you were born strung up,
the umbilical cord wound around
your neck, like someone being hung,
and I think you came out butt first,
like a butthead, a miserable little
thing weighing two kilos and 700
grams) ...
If anything happened to the children
that would be terrible, says Granddad’s wife who is not my grandmother, but if anything happened to
you, grandchildren, it would kill
your grandfather, she says.
Zagreb, February 1, 1971
the joy of a naked child;
what words of mine?
what haiku?
He never kissed me on the mouth,
says Erna, my granddad’s wife who
is not my grandmother. Your grandfather used to be a sexually very virile
man, but he never kissed me on the
mouth.
I’m sitting in a cafe, crying. The war’s
on, it’s 1992. Kristijan clipped an
item from the newspaper saying that
people who go to the shelters should
take along plastic bags to defecate in.
We’re in Munich. I go on crying.
What’s the matter, you want to shit
into a plastic bag?, says Kristijan.
I’ve had it, I’m getting on my own
nerves, says Boris. I wish I could walk
away from myself. Okay, leave me
the body, I’ll take care of it, says
Kristijan. Again we laugh.
I come home at five in the morning.
I slip into bed, but Mom hears me. I
had a fight with Mom, she says. You
did? I ask soberly. I gave her some
Valium, she says. How much? I ask.
My mother is the opening lesson –
for any potential study of psychology – childhood traumas. When her
mother enters the room, she changes
physically, she contracts, wrinkles
appear on her forehead. Vertical ones.
I simply switch off. I have a soundproof room in my head. Grandma
opens her mouth. I think of Boris
and feel warm. Sometimes my heart
actually skips a beat. Like in a cheap
novel. Like the ones my father used
to buy Grandma’s mother on the
seaside. She used to smoke secretly,
she’d read love stories and she was
fat. Dad says she would always make
him coffee. All I remember is a cloth
dog, its front and hind legs stretched
out, which used to lie on the backrest
of the living room couch. They all
just kept moving their mouths. Kiss
Mumsy, Grandma said. Mumsy died
of tetanus. Ceramic hounds stood
on the steps. They had our German
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shepherd put to sleep. He had bit a
policeman. Nobody liked him. Mom
and I would spend hours every summer removing ticks from him, and
then crushing them between two
smooth stones. It was all bloody. I
went to the seaside only because of
the dog.
..............................
Marko was crying in the school cafeteria. Tape recorder was playing
Boys Don’t Cry by The Cure. Kristian
sighed. Marko says it didn’t happen.
That’s one of my worst school memories. Marko says he’s trying to find
himself. He’s a conceptual artist.
And what do you do? Nothing, I say,
I don’t do anything.
What did you do before? Nothing.
That’s impossible, says the secretary
at the Munich Student Service, that’s
a typically female response. Whatever they’ve done, women act as if it
was nothing. The secretary is a Kraut,
a lesbian. She’s got a black little girl
and hairy armpits. She’s right.
Alexandar can’t sing. Alexandar is
often depressed. He laughs whenever I mention the bunny story. He
was depressed when I told him the
story about the bunny rabbit. Now
it’s enough for me to say bunny. He
immediately starts laughing.
Kristijan was in Berlin. While the
Berlin Wall was falling Kristijan got
the clap from Edvin de Vega de la
Pena who had a sister who used to be
a brother. A month later, Edvin de
Vega de la Pena landed at the Zagreb
airport. They wouldn’t let him into
the country. Kristijan was devastated. They stood across from each
other, almost touching. Standing
next to them was security. They’ll
escape via Italy, said the officers. Like
the Filipinos, they said. Kristijan was
a broken man. He interceded with
higher officials. He gave guarantees,
he begged. And in the end he succeeded. The plane was rolling down
the runway, preparing to take off.
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The security officer ran, waving his
arms. Kristijan ran behind him, his
white raincoat billowing. It was midnight. Seven days earlier he had completed his cure of antibiotics. He
thought he loved him. He came to
Gjuro. All of us were there. Zoran
and Dra‘en were hanging around
some girls. They didn’t know how
to approach them. Kristijan was drunk.
He kissed them both. He threw up
at the door. We drove him home.
When he woke up his mother said:
Don’t worry, I up fixed everything.
What? asked Kristijan. You know,
all that, said his mother. What? Kristijan asked bluntly. He had left a
trail of shit from the door of the
apartment to the door of his room.
He took the rabbit skin on the floor
by his bed. He wiped himself with
the bunny.
..............................
When we were in high school, Kristijan used to buy Erotika. He would
answer the ads. He once went to
Ljubljana to meet somebody who
had run an ad. They had a glass of
something to drink and chatted a
bit. When they moved to the bedroom, he sent Kristijan to get some
cream. Kristijan stood in front of the
bathroom mirror for a long time,
and finally opted for a foreign brand.
My face may not know the feel of
LÓreal but at least my ass will, he
said. That’s how he learned about
peeling cream.
You’ve got seven days to stop, said
Sanja. Sanja was Kristijan’s sister.
She wanted Kristijan to stop being
gay. Otherwise nobody would ever
marry her, she said. The Chinese
know how to treat that, said Sanja.
Look, it says so right here. She was
holding a selection of excerpts from
the foreign press. There was an article about how the Peoples’ Republic of China cures homosexuality
with electric shock treatment. Successfully. Sanja is still unmarried.
A Little FAK Reader
China opened up to the West a long
time ago. Hong Kong has been returned.
Ervin doesn’t love me, Kristijan
whined. Ervin doesn’t love me, Kristian moaned. Ervin doesn’t love me,
Kristijan sobbed. He went on like
that for months. At first we tolerated
it when he would appear at the door
with two bottles of red wine, which
he would then drink on his own,
moaning how Ervin didn’t love him.
But then we lost all understanding.
It had lasted too long. He would
come every other day. He would call
three times a day. Our tolerance level
dropped. We started fucking him
off. One day he called, as usual. Ervin
doesn’t love me, he said, as usual.
Call someone else, I said, unusually.
He called Boris, as usual. Boris told
him to call somebody else, unusually. Kristijan drew himself a bath.
Kristijan put on some music: Simple
Minds. Don’t You Forget About Me.
He opened a bottle of champagne.
He lay down in the tub. He withdrew a razor from his shaver. Not
something he could have done with
a Sensor Excel. He made his cut. He
drank champagne, listened to the
music and waited. The boiler was
only a fifty liter one. He added some
more hot water and waited. The water went cold. The record came to an
end. That could not have happened
with a CD. He finished off the champagne. He stepped out of the tub.
He dried himself off. He phoned
me. He asked if he could come over.
I rolled my eyes and said, Yes. He
came over with his hands bandaged.
He denied it. Boris came over. Kristijan denied it again. Boris undid the
bandages and snorted with contempt.
Next time call me and I’ll do it for
you, he said. You should have done
it lengthwise, he said. In between the
bones, he insisted. Kristian went
white. You should have stuck the
razor into a wooden chair or something, he said. And then you should
31
have aimed hard at it, with both
hands, he persisted with sadistic enthusiasm. Kristijan almost fainted.
Suicide is for assholes, Boris hissed.
He dragged hedonistically on his
Marlboro cigarette and took a long,
knowing slug of wine. He cut the
cheese into thin slices. He took out
the olives. Kristijan joined him. We
drank and ate. We smoked and talked.
Kristijan soon forgot about Ervin.
..............................
Once it was raining while you were
at school, Granddad said. I picked
up an umbrella and went to wait for
you. Your class wasn’t over yet. I
sent the monitor to your classroom
to tell you that I was waiting for you,
so I wouldn’t miss you. He misunderstood. He told you your dad was
waiting for you. You ran out smiling. It hurt me to see the disappointment on your face. You see me every
morning anyway, said Granddad.
You were ten, said Granddad.
I let my guinea-pig out on the grass.
He grazed. Suddenly a cat pounced
on him from the roof. There was a
squeal. The cat carted him away.
That night I leaned on Dad’s shoulder. His girlfriend leaned on his
other shoulder. We listened to sorrowful Russian ballads. I was happily sad.
..............................
I agreed with my sister, who cleaned
for the Italians bivouacked in various houses, to get a hold of some
rifles, smuggle them out in the bed
linen, throw them into the potato
patch, and then later, after dark,
bring them to the woods, said Granddad. The recording is of poor quality, his voice sounds deeper than it
is. You can hear him pouring himself a glass of water. I’m in the bathroom, putting on lipstick. The wrong
cassette. I certainly don’t feel like
listening to that right now. But curiosity killed the cat, as my Granddad
32
used to say... And that’s what happened. I got hold of the rifle and
approximately one hundred rounds
of ammunition my sister managed
to steal. When I grabbed that rifle, I
no longer saw those endless columns
of Italians and thought they had
won. I thought I could defeat the
whole world with that gun. Such elation! Such satisfaction! I had never
felt like that in my life. That’s what I
wanted to ask you, came the voice of
his second wife Erna, Did you feel
like that when your daughter or son
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were born, such happiness? No. No?
You were happier when you got the
gun? Happier, happier.
Translated by
Christine Markovi}
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A Little FAK Reader
33
Life Does Have a Point
Ante Tomi}
Toni Macaroni sells hairbrushes,
alarm clocks, tablecloth vacuum cleaners, knife sets, cosmetics, massage
kits, magnetic bracelets, slimming
teas and sunbathing glasses, leather
gloves, pens, car and house air fresheners, anatomical pillows and electronic address books. Macaroni is,
of course, a nickname, he’s had it
since childhood, and it has no particular meaning. Afterwards, we called
him Toni the Boa, and that was perhaps more to the point. The maniac
was as tedious as the diarrhea: he
would get hold of you by the hand
and not let you go for hours, in the
end your fingers would go blue and
numb from his grip. You might be
going straight to the emergency ward
for an amputation, and he’ll still be
standing there and, standing there,
just let me tell you this. But Toni
Macaroni or Toni the Boa came into
his own only as a travelling salesman.
Before, he laid parquet flooring, and
he did that very badly; he would nail
in two laths, and then get up and
start knacking on about ozone holes,
cabinet reshuffles, prices, fishing,
equipment for girls looking for a
husband, the educational system,
rheumatism, football teams. Whatever he got hold of was interesting to
him, and his favourite topic was how
unreliable tradesmen are today. In
the end, of course, he got a bad name,
and no one wanted him to work for
them. When he suddenly got in among
Ante Tomi} was born in Split in 1970. He graduated philosophy and sociology
from Zadar University. Tomi} works as a professional journalist in Jutarnji list.
He won the Croatian Journalists’ Association awards for the best reportage
(1996) and the best column (2005). His first collection of stories Zaboravio
sam gdje sam parkirao was published in Split in 1997. The second, expanded
edition of the collection under the title Zaboravio sam gdje sam parkirao i
druge pri~e was published in Zagreb in 2001. His first novel [to je mu{karac
bez brkova appeared in 2000 and has been published in eight editions thus far.
His book of essays Smotra folklora was published in 2001. Tomi} co-wrote
with Ivica Ivani{evi} the screenplay for Posljednja volja (directed by Zoran
Sudar, 2001), and with Renato Bareti} and Ivica Ivani{evi} the TV script for
Novo doba (directed by Hrvoje Hribar, 2002). He also wrote the screenplay for
[to je mu{karac bez brkova (directed by Hrvoje Hribar, 2005). The Croatian
National Theatre in Split staged Tomi}’s Krovna udruga (produced by Mario
Kova~, 2001), co-authored by Ivica Ivani{evi}. His novel Ni{ta nas ne smije
iznenaditi was released in 2003, followed by a book of essays entitled Klasa
optimist a year later and a novel Ljubav, struja voda i telefon in 2005.
the salesmen, the first thing he was
selling was, I think, some kind of
calendars and diaries.
And now, heaven help us, with his
annoying nature, of criminal dimensions, he sold more than anyone else
in the business. He bears down on
you with some sort of drivel until
you fall off your chair from exhaustion, the Chinese secret police very
likely have more mercy than him. A
normal person would be ashamed to
be such a pest, any one of us would
give up a hundred times, but not
Toni, no, he won’t let you go, he’s
like those pit bulls that bite and then
their jaws lock. In the end, you feel
ashamed for his sake. I once watched
him selling lipstick, he had got hold
of two old biddies, who had very
likely never put on make-up in their
lives, and was busy persuading them
of the quality of this lipstick, which,
apparently, didn’t leave marks on
glasses. Finally, the oaf himself put
on make-up – I tell you, put lipstick
on his own lips – and took a glass to
prove how indelible the stuff was.
And the old dears naturally bought
it, what else could they do? Just so
they didn’t have to look at him.
As he became more successful, he
widened his scope, until he started
selling just about everything that
34
salesmen can. At one time he even
employed people to work for him.
Later on he gave up on this. I think
he was hit most when he hired someone to sell knives. He had the fellow
sell knives, and he killed someone.
Really, he slew him like a rabbit. The
salesman went up to a customer on a
park bench and offered him the knives,
and the customer told him, excuse
my French, to fuck off. And the salesman got pissed and, without thinking twice, took the biggest butcher’s
knife from the fantastically reasonable priced set, and – oops – stabbed
the fellow in the chest.
Afterwards the police came around
asking Toni questions, how come he
didn’t know his salesman was a pathological case who, up until six months
ago, had done hard time for a triple
murder? And Toni asks how he could
know such a thing, as if who and
what someone is was written on his
face. The twerp had applied to sell,
and Toni, of course, let him sell. He
was a bit suspicious, that much is
true, when Toni saw that the man
had a tattoo of a scorpion on his
neck, but he thought, well, that’s his
business, why should he care if someone had his neck tattooed? Is that
how it was? If Toni had known that
he was a nut, of course, he wouldn’t
have given him the knives. He would
have had him sell anti-cellulite cream
or something like that. At that time,
when the police showed up at his
office, Toni sold one of the officers a
chess set with imitation ivory pieces,
and palmed off to another a book
called 101 Tricks That Very Young
Girls Fall For. That rat bag! If he’d
only wanted, he would have sold
Nelson Mandela a solarium.
But the other day he did catch it, the
way things were, the ape was lucky
to get out of alive. He went to Romance, a cafe belonging to a loan
shark they call Blunderbuss, to sell
small battery operated irons, for one
hundred and ninety nine kunas, and
you get one free as a gift. So Toni
Macaroni bursts into the cafe with a
great bag over his shoulder, as if he
were dragging an ox.
Tarted up, burgundy suit, tie knotted, shoes, shaved, everything hunkydory. He looked around him, thought
for a bit and went straight for a
table. There were a couple of layabouts there, with toothpicks in their
teeth, you could see at once they were
wise-guys just waiting for someone
like Toni to show up to get him
going.
But Toni knew what he was doing.
He told me that, when you get into a
group, the first thing to do is annihilate the mickey-taking knot of resistance. Instead of them fast-talking to
you, you fast-talk to them, and when
you can, the rest will come on a plate
with a blue rim.
“Good afternoon,” Toni approaches
them, “May I present to you this
marvellous little iron for every occasion, the price of which is more than
symbolic, just one hundred and ninety
nine kunas, and when you buy one,
you get another one as a gift.”
One of the wise-guys looks up from
the table to snap what the fuck he’s
going to do with an iron? Another
grins with satisfaction.
“Well, you see, that’s what my uncle
wondered,” says the trader pleadingly, not offended for a moment,
“and then he had to be present at a
business meeting, couldn’t call it off.
And what do you think happened?
His suit was all crumpled from sitting down all the time, as if it’s been
chewed by a cow.”
“And what if we like having our suits
looking as if it’s been chewed by a
cow?” asked the first mickey-taker,
unreconciled.
“What if that happens to be the fashion now?” states the second, and
laughs moronically again.
“Ha, ha, ha,” Toni gives a forced
laugh. “Allow me to demonstrate,”
he says, paying no attention to com-
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TIONS
plaints about crumpled fashion, and
turns on the iron.
“Just look how fast it heats up –
German technology. When a Jerry
does something – no messing about...
There, feel it. Go on, go on, feel it,
nothing will happen to you,” and he
offers the bottom of the iron to the
thicker of the two layabouts.
“Oh, fuck me, how it heats up,” he
agrees and is impressed, and Toni
knows how little he needs to have
them both in his pocket. He looks
round triumphantly, and everyone
in the cafe is already peering inquisitively over to their table.
“Let’s have a look then,” says the
dourer wise-guy and puts his hand
out towards the bottom of the iron
when suddenly...
Wham! Some blighter kicks in the
door of the cafe, storms in with a
pistol in one hand and a grenade in
the other, and without so much as a
good day or God bless you, shoots at
the ceiling: Pam! once, Pam! twice,
pam, thrice, pam! four times. Everyone in the cafe dives to the floor.
“Aaaaah!” screams the ape fearfully.
Only the cassette recorder can still
be heard in the dead silence: Mariaaaa Magdalenaaaa! Pam! The tape
recorder falls silent.
“Branka!” yells the fellow desperately. “Brankaaaaa!” he yells like a
wounded animal. “Yes,” is heard
from somewhere, very quietly.
“Branka, where are you?” he wails.
“Here I am,” pops up a skinny little
waitress from behind the bar. The
tough guy’s face brightens up.
“Oh, Branka, Branka, Brankaaaa!”
he sings out ecstatically, while his
eyes fill with tears and he comes up
to the bar and bashes his forehead,
with all his strength, on the marble
counter.
“Bitch, why don’t you love me!” he
yells darkly.
“But, Igor, I do love you,” confesses
Branka the waitress. “I love you a lot;
you’re my best friend.”
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“A friend!?... A friend?!... Aaaaah!”
yells Igor again, and again bashes his
forehead on the bar bench.
“I’ll kill you,” he says, lifting up the
pistol. “I’ll kill you, you bitch.”
“Don’t Igor!” whimpers Branka.
“Please don’t.”
“I will!”
“Don’t!”
“But I will,” insists Igor, “And that’s
the end of it. I’ll kill us both. You’ll
find it easier to bear. First me, then
you.”
“The other way round you mean,”
comes somewhere from the floor.
“What!?” says Igor disconcertedly.
“Ah-ha,” coughs Toni Macaroni.
“You said you’ll kill yourself first,
then her. Probably you meant to say
that you’ll kill her first, then yourself.”
“What are you sticking your nose in
for?” says the waitress crossly. “It’s
none of your business.”
“That’s right,” Igor agrees. “What
are you butting in for? If you’re interested in the right order, then I’ll
kill myself first, then you, then her.
How do you like that, huh?”
“Ah-ha,” coughs Toni again “You
have to agree that it’s a bit illogical,
but, praise the Lord, everyone has the
right to his own opinion, right? What
would it be like if we all thought the
same way? What’s much more important in all this,” says the salesman, getting some way up...
“Who gave you the permission to
get up?” yells Igor. “Get back on the
floor again.”
Toni goes down on his knees.
“How about this then?” he says.
“Let’s meet half way, so that it’s not
my way, not your way, but somewhere in-between.”
The man with the pistol in one hand
and the grenade in the other says
nothing, he’s confused, you might say.
“Igor,” starts Toni the Boa paternally, “It is Igor, right? May I call
you Igor?... You see, Igor, what you
were intending to do just now is re-
A Little FAK Reader
ally pointless. I’d like to tell you a
story that’s very much like yours.
My uncle, that is, just like you, wanted
to kill himself one day. His wife had
died, his son had gone to the dogs,
his pension didn’t come in, and he,
my uncle that is, what else could he
do, went to the railway line and lay
down on the tracks. Lay on the track
for the train to run over him, you
understand? Can you see how desperate he must have been to want
such an awful death? And do you
know what happened in the end,
huh? He didn’t kill himself. There,
he’s still alive today. You see, the day
my uncle wanted to kill himself, the
footplate union was on strike.”
“Are you fucking with me?” says Igor
nervously.
“No, no,” says Toni Macaroni hurriedly, “the union bit is not at all
important for the story, just keep
listening. What’s important is that
my uncle, since he had been lying
quite a long time on the track, waiting for a train that didn’t come, had
plenty of time to think about his life.
He thought about his late wife, my
auntie, what a nice time they used to
have, he remembered them being
young, buying their first little car,
moving into the flat, then going hungry to build their weekend cottage
on the island of Bra~, and my uncle
remembered his only son too, what a
good, clever boy he was, that damned
heroin, who had invented it... And
so, lying on the track, in the empty
part of the line, somewhere in some
wood...”
Weeyou-weeyou-weeyou, the sound
of the police siren comes in, and Igor
gets panicky.
“Police,” he whispers in horror. “They
won’t catch me alive,” he says and
puts the barrel in his mouth, closes
his eyes...
“Igor, Igor, stop!” pleads Toni Macaroni. “Stop, please, hear me out,
please, hear me out. Listen to the
true story, of how my uncle lay on
35
the empty part of the track, in some
wood, listening to the birds singing,
the sound of the wind in the trees
and the babbling of the brook, he
almost wept from the sheer loveliness of it. And then, quite suddenly,
a little, a very little, fawn comes out
of the wood, came timidly up to him
and licked him on the face...”
Igor opens his eyes in amazement.
“Igor, are you listening?” asks Toni.
“Did you hear me, Igor? A timid
little fawn licked my uncle all over
his grey stubble and he realised! He
realised, Igor. He realised that life
isn’t pointless... Igor, life isn’t pointless!” says Toni, getting up solemnly.
“Life does have a point. Life has a
point, Igor!” shouts Toni the Boa.
Then, moved, he adds: “Do you
know what the point of life is, Igor?”
Igor doesn’t make a sound.
“God,” at last says someone fearfully
from the floor. “God, maybe?”
Toni agrees.
“God is God, but I know something
better,” says the salesman. Then he
makes a dramatic pause and whispers exaltedly: “Life insurance!”
Igor takes the pistol from his mouth
and looks helplessly at the travelling
salesman.
“Yes, yes,” he says. “You heard me,
life insurance. If you kill yourself
now, which you won’t, what will be
left of you, Igor? Your life insurance
policy. Your old mum and dad will
spend the money that you leave them,
nobly paying your premiums every
month. Something of you would be
left in the world, then your existence
wouldn’t be completely pointless,
your spirit would live on in the not
inconsiderable sum that you left to
your poor old parents. Do you get it,
Igor? You do have life insurance,
don’t you, Igor?” says Toni Macaroni sternly.
“No,” admitts Igor contritely.
“Never mind,” says Toni simply,
“It’s a good thing you intended to
kill yourself in the very cafe I hap-
36
pened to meet you in. And then let
someone say there’s no such thing as
fate, when here I am, able to offer
you exceptionally reasonable life insurance with an Austrian firm, the
monthly premium is symbolic, so to
say, a mere fifteen Deutschmarks.
What’s fifteen Deutschmarks? Just a
round of drinks for you and your
friends,” says Toni Macaroni, and he
is already making his way over to Igor.
“Then,” he says, taking the weapons
from the unhappy man’s hand, “I
think the best thing to do is to go to
my place, I live just around the corner, and we can draw up a contract.”
Toni puts down the pistol and the
grenade, applause rings out in the
cafe.
A little later on, the police claps the
handcuffs onto Igor’s wrists and escorts him out to the paddy wagon,
Toni Macaroni with him.
“Where are you off to?” Detective
Vidak stops him.
“That’s my client,” says Toni.
“Are you his brief?”
“No, I’ve got to make a life insurance contract.”
“What life insurance!” says Vidak in
a sudden rage. “Come on, blessed
idiot!”
RELA
TIONS
“If you’ve got a moment,” says Toni,
delving into his bag, “Let me show
you this marvellous little iron for
every occasion.”
“What will I do with an iron?” asks
the policeman in wonder.
“Well, you see, that’s what my uncle
wondered, and then he just had to be
present at a business meeting...”
(The translation was originally published in a Selection of Contemporary
Croatian Short Prose When a Man
Gets Terribly Frightened, selected and
edited by Boris [kvorc, publishers:
Naklada MD, Zagreb, Croatia and
Croatian Studies Centre, Macquarie
University, Sydney, Australia, 2003.)
RELA
TIONS
A Little FAK Reader
37
Stories
Miljenko Jergovi}
The Library
You hear a whistle above your head;
two or three seconds of suspense pass,
and then down below, somewhere in
the city, an explosion erupts. You
can always clearly see the spot from
your window. At first it’s like a tall,
thin column of dust and then it
transforms into smoke and flames.
You wait several moments and then
you recognise what sort of apartment
it is. If the fire is slow and lazy, that
means the home of some poor person is burning. If it bursts into a
huge, blue fireball, then it’s someone’s
beautifully decorated attic with lacquered panel walls. If it blazes long
and unremittingly, the home of a
wealthy inner-city shop-owner, filled
with massive antique furniture, is
burning. But if the flame suddenly
shoots up, wild and uncontrollable
like the hair of Farrah Fawcett, and
disappears rapidly, allowing the wind
to scatter small pieces of ash over the
city, you know that someone’s private library has just burnt down.
Having witnessed such great, vigorous bonfires during thirteen months
of shelling the city, you imagine that
Sarajevo is founded on books. And
even if it isn’t, you want to say it is
so, stroking your still untouched
books.
In every private library there are
mainly unread books, those you pur-
Miljenko jergovi} was born in 1966 in Sarajevo. Jergovi} is a writer of poetry,
fiction, non-fiction and literary criticism, and one of the most translated
contemporary Croatian writers. His poetry has been published in the collections Opservatorija Var{ava (1988), U~i li netko no}as u ovom gradu japanski
(1990), Himmel Commando (1992), Preko zale|enog mosta (1996), Hauzmajstor [ulc (2002) and Dunje 1983 – izabrane pjesme (2005). His short
stories were published in the collections Sarajevski Marlboro (1994), Karivani
(1995), Mama Leone (1999), and In{alah, Madona, In{alah (2004). He has also
published novels Dvori od oraha (2003), Gloria in excelsis (2005), Ruta
Tannenbaum (2006); a novelette Buick Rivera (2002), and a play entitled
Kaè{ an|eo (2000). His books of non-fiction include Naci bonton (1998),
Historijska ~itanka (2000), Historijska ~itanka 2 (2004), and @rtve sanjaju
veliku ratnu pobjedu (2006). His first novel Dvori od oraha won the Jutarnji
List Book of the Year Award. He was also awarded the Mak Dizdar Award and
the Goran Award for Poetry, as well as the Veselko Tenèra Award for
Journalism (1990). His won the Ksaver [andor Gjalski Award (1994) and the
Special Erich-Maria Remarque Peace Prize, awarded by the City of Osnabrück
(1995).
chased because of the colour of their
covers, the names of the authors, or
simply because they appealed to your
sense of smell. You frequently pick
up such a book in the first days after
having bought it, open it, read two
or three lines and then put it back.
After a while you forget about the
book, or from a distance you glance
at it with mild disgust. You often
want to take it to the nearest public
library, give it to someone, get rid of
it in any manner conceivable, but
you never have the means to do it. It
remains as a strange confirmation of
your tendency to hoard useless things
which, in a painful, fiery moment,
will transform itself into the hoarding of memories. All those unnecessary and unread books will burden
you as you bid farewell to them. You
will almost understand the rapture
of the fire whilst it engulfed identical
ones down in the city.
Fewer are the books which you haven’t
returned to since childhood. They
remind you of a time when you still
didn’t know how to scan the pages
and read from the top left corner to
the bottom right corner. Those are
probably the only books you really
read in your life. All good children’s
38
stories have an unhappy ending, from
which you couldn’t learn anything
except that sadness is that place
wherein fiction becomes more important than reality. In John Huston’s
film The Dead, a woman bursts into
tears, and isn’t capable of explaining
why. As you watched the film, you
thought that that’s the way things
actually are, and you too felt like
crying.
The fewest number of books are
those you believed you would always
have by your side. When you read
one of them for the first time, you
constantly tried to postpone the end.
Later they excited you with both
their content and appearance. But
you will also have to leave them behind, just like all the others, with the
bitter conviction that in this city,
but in this world as well, a book’s
natural cumulative state is fire, smoke
and ash. To someone in the future
this will sound pathetic, but for you,
especially when you arrive in other
cities and in still living bookshops,
the flaming hair of Farrah Fawcett
will be the awful truth. Only manuscripts burn better, more beautifully
and more thoroughly than books.
With the smothering of the illusion
of the private library, the illusion of
the civilisation of the book is also
smothered. Its very name, in which is
contained just a Greek word, biblio-
theke, an ordinary word like all others, but which for you is linked to
the name of the Holy Scriptures, was
the occasion of your belief. But as
they disappear, fiery and irrevocably, one after the other, you stop
believing that there is a meaning to
their existence. Or perhaps their meaning was divined by that Sarajevan
author and bibliophile who last winter, instead of using expensive firewood, warmed his fingers on the
flames of Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Shakespeare, Cervantes... Following all those
deliberate and accidental fires, created was a class of people who, bitterly comprehending the way things
are, are prepared to watch the flames
rising from the Louvre tomorrow,
and not reach out for a glass of water.
There’s no point in preventing fire
to devour that which human indifference has already devoured. The
beauty of Paris or London is only an
alibi for the criminals on whose account Warsaw, Dresden, Vukovar
and Sarajevo no longer exist. But
even if they still do exist, then in
them live people who prepare themselves for evacuation at the height of
peacetime, already prepared to abandon their own books.
In this world, as it really is, there is one
basic rule, that which Zuko D‘umbur mentioned when referring to
Bosnia, and it relates to always hav-
Diagnosis
T
here are no such threats and curses
as in Bosnia. They plot them over a
long period of time, not to insult or
scare anyone, but to demonstrate
that their imagination is better than
that of the others. The best threats
and curses are those that go along
with the development of culture and
civilisation. That’s how, say, with
the mechanisation of villages this
curse came about: “God willing, may
your child be cut up by a chainsaw
and stacked in a cellar for the winter!”
The Chetniks cut up the wife and
RELA
TIONS
ing two suitcases packed. In them
you have to put all your possessions
and all your memories. Everything
outside is already lost. It’s futile to
look for reasons, meaning or justifications. They’re burdensome, just
like memories. Nothing is left for
you to do, except to orderly return
borrowed books, try to avoid or lose
the books you received as gifts, and
those which you wrote to send to
friends who live far away from one
another, so that the flame can devour them only on that day when the
earth returns to that state in which it
was in several million years earlier
You can neither list nor remember
all the burnt-out private libraries of
the city of Sarajevo. And there’s nobody to do it for. But like the flame
of all flames, and the consuming fire
of all consuming fires, like the final
mythical ash and dust, one recalls
the fate of the Sarajevo University
Library, the renowned City Hall,
whose books were ablaze a whole
day and night. That happened after
the whizzing of bullets and the explosion exactly a year ago. Perhaps
on the very same date you’re reading
this. Gently caress your books, dear
stranger, and remember that they’re
only dust.
Translated by
Damion Buterin
two daughters of Salih F. with a
chainsaw in front of his very eyes.
Then they shut him up in Manja~a,
let him croak there, but he didn’t
croak, he survived by means of some
sort of exchange. Then they sent him
to Gradi{ka, then to Karlovac, then
to the Czech Republic. There he
ended up in a refugee camp, amongst
unknown people, mostly Bosnians.
Illiterate and slow of thought, he be-
RELA
TIONS
came an ideal target for general fucking around. For days Salih F. tried to
put a stop to the provocations, fire
off an effective reply, devise something original. But he always came
off more and more idiotic. He fell
into a machine for grinding nerves,
from which you can extricate yourself in two ways only: either by putting someone else into it or by settling the matters with your fists.
That day Salih F. fought against half
the camp. He received an unprecedented beating, first from the Bosnians, and later from the cordon of
Czech police. After all that, handcuffed and bloodied, he was handed
an official order banning him from
all camps on the state’s territory. He
packed all of his belongings (which
he didn’t have), swore at the Czechs
and the Bosnians, at those who conceived them, and then set off for
Prague. After fifty-odd kilometres he
triumphantly walked into the city
and was immediately arrested. He
had no documents in his pocket besides the banning order.
The police took Salih F. to jail, but
after he spent the night there, they
didn’t know what to do with him.
He had to be expelled somewhere,
but no country would take him, a
Bosnian prone to fighting. The simplest thing would’ve been to return
Salih F. to Manja~a, but that wasn’t
technically possible, and it would
also contravene his human rights.
Some ingenious fellow from the Bosnian representative office in Prague
settled the matter. He proposed to
the police that Salih F. be taken to a
psychiatric hospital where he would
be pronounced mad and, as such, no
A Little FAK Reader
one could expel him. Once again
owing to human rights. The police,
when they told them the life story of
Salih F., concluded that this was a
thoroughly good idea.
In the hospital they welcomed him
like an emperor. He got a room with
a bed, a television, a cassette player
and an armchair. The doctors were
thrilled because a human specimen,
who had seen, with his own eyes,
how those closest to him had their
legs cut off, then their hands, then
their heads, fell into their hands. Every so often they would peer through
the spyhole into his room. He sat
calmly in his armchair, watched television, changed the channels and lazily ate grapes. He looked like any
other man in the world as he watched,
somewhat disinterested, the latest
footage from Bosnia.
The doctors believed that Salih F.
was actually in a state of shock, they
wrote long and comprehensive reports about him, prepared papers for
professional journals, predicted the
course of events and waited for the
soul of Salih F., wounded and battered, to finally grow cold. But for
months his condition didn’t change.
Salih F. calmly and courteously lived
his life, always gave the same answers
to the questions put to him, didn’t
want anything or asked any questions.
The doctors tried to drag Salih F.
out of his state of shock by giving
him a hobby. They offered singing,
drawing and photography to him.
So he could choose. He thanked
them and replied that he didn’t need
any of those things, and that they
didn’t present any type of satisfaction for him. The doctors insisted,
39
and Salih F. agreed to occupy himself with drawing. He didn’t know
how to sing, and he was afraid of
photography.
When it was time for drawing, he
obediently drew, and after than he
again watched television and eat
grapes. The doctors analyzed his
drawings late into the night. In a
woody brown he drew a barracks, in
a green the grass, and in yellow the
sun. On the sun he drew eyes and a
mouth. Salih F. had seen somewhere
that one draws the sun like that.
Sometimes, after drawing, he would
have to explain to the doctors what
he had drawn. They constantly smiled
and asked questions which the translator occasionally didn’t know how
to translate.
The day when the fate of Salih F.
would be decided finally arrived. The
doctors prepared only one question:
“What would you do if you got your
hands on those who killed your wife
and children?” Salih F. said that that
wasn’t possible because they were far
away, behind state borders, barbed
wire and artillery canons. The doctors insisted, assuring him that what
at first glance seems impossible was
possible. Realising that these people
were like children, and that it was
enough for them to imagine something and then immediately believe
that it was true, Salih F. replied: “I’d
kill them... Or I’d give them a piece
of paper and a pencil and tell them,
just as you tell me – draw!”
Doctors’ faces lit up, they took the
paper and pencils away from him,
and pronounced Salih F. abnormal.
Translated by [ime Du{evi}
40
Gong
A
t the bend, near the Hygiene Institute, tram drivers always rang their
bells; they probably didn’t know
what awaited them on the other side,
or an accident might have occurred
there once, or they were merely superstitious. Their ringing was of little
concern to anyone, the residents in
the surrounding buildings no longer
heard it, just as one doesn’t hear the
ticking of a wall clock; not even the
cats on the retaining wall at the army
storehouse twitched from their summer drowsiness. The years passed,
the trams would ring, beyond the
bend the same flat expanse would
yawn, all the way to Marijin Dvor
and the station at the intersection of
Tito and Tvrtko Streets.
The ringing likewise didn’t concern
the regular customers of the Kvarner,
a small bar in which, along with their
large Sarajevo or Nik{i} beers and
Badel cognacs, derailed generations
awaited cirrhosis. But one day Meha
the Parachutist brought into the Kvarner his army friend, a former boxer
from the Slavija Boxing Club in
Banja Luka, Mi{o, nicknamed the
Heart. As with every new guest, the
regulars greeted Mi{o the Heart with
two questions in their glances – how
much money does he have in his
pockets and will he disturb the blessed
Kvarner peace? Real drunks don’t
curse or smash things, they expect
silence, peace and contemplation;
every sudden movement agitates them,
at an excessively loud profanity pronounced they grab their bottles and
begin a brawl that is always erroneously reported in the crime pages.
They only protect their right to a
final drink.
Five minutes after Mi{o the Heart
entered the Kvarner the first tram
rang its bell. Mi{o the Heart mechanically raised his hands into a
boxing guard, directly in the face of
Velija the Footballer, and he, also
mechanically, grabbed an ashtray
and clanged the boxer in the centre
of the head. Meha the Parachutist
jumped to the defence of his friend,
Mirso the Ball Bearer fell off his chair
from surprise, Lojze the Professor
shouted, “Crucifix and crutiatus”,
Zoka the Barman let go of the glass
in his hand, Mi{o the Heart got up,
grabbed Velija the Footballer by his
biceps and said: “Sorry, buddy, it
wasn’t on purpose!”
Velija the Footballer looked at him
frighteningly and replied: “No problem, it happens.”
To make amends, Meha the Parachutist paid for everyone’s drinks.
But before the round of drinks arrived a tram bell rang again. Mi{o
the Heart nervously looked at Meha
the Parachutist and said to him: “Let’s
get out of here. These trams are
fucking with me.”
“We can’t go now, mate, you can see
that I’ve just ordered a round.”
Mi{o the Heart stirred on his seat,
Zoka the Barman brought over a
beer, the first gulps were drunk, again
a tram bell rang, Mi{o the Heart
raised his hands into a boxing guard,
everyone looked at him and everyone
laughed. Even Velija the Footballer
laughed who, they say, hasn’t laughed
since 1951 when, in the heat of a
football game, he ripped out the eye
of Pandurovi} from Proleter. That
zonked-out boxer, for whom the
only remaining thing in the world
was the sound of a gong in his ears,
somehow seemed likeable to everyone. On account of that, Mi{o the
Heart drank another free beer.
The next day he came alone to the
Kvarner. The regulars welcomed him
with knowing glances, Velija the
Footballer tapped him on the shoul-
RELA
TIONS
der, Zoka the Barman, wiping glasses,
blurted: “Hey, Heart Tremor, where’s
the tram?”
Mi{o the Heart looked at him conspiratorially and ordered a beer. The
first tram went by, it was the one
they were expecting, Mi{o the Heart
displayed his middle finger, but he
didn’t count on the next one passing
as well. His guard became tougher
and quicker than lightning with every new beer. The regulars knew this,
so they paid for his beers. His reflex
became a part of the daily ritual, but,
as the months passed, only Lojze the
Professor was sceptical that there existed a man who couldn’t get used to
a tram bell.
That, finally, was no longer important. In the Kvarner Mi{o the Heart
was like a cuckoo that cuckooed every hour, on the hour. On those days
when he didn’t come to the bar everyone felt a kind of emptiness, and
everyone had the impression that
they were missing out on something
good and important. Time slipped
through their fingers, beer lost its
flavour, cognac lost its strength. Evanescence, empty pockets and the silent threats of the coming war were
the only certainties. When Mi{o the
Heart would turn up the next day in
the Kvarner, people would wait for
the first tram with joy and optimism.
On the sixth of April, waiting for
them on the glass doors of the Kvarner was the death notice of Lojze
the Professor and the story of the
first shells that fell in Jar~edole. On
that day they drank less and spoke
more. With cold and clear heads,
Edo the Engineer, Velija the Footballer, Meha the Parachutist, Mirso
the Ball Bearer and Stevo the Thief
analysed the situation. They concluded that what will happen is what
must happen. Mato the Serf observed
that Lojze the Professor was probably the last one God had called to
himself, into paradise, because of cirrhosis, the others slouched their
RELA
TIONS
shoulders, and at the entrance Mi{o
the Heart appeared. He sat at his table,
lit a cigarette and, through clenched
teeth, said: “This match is going to
last one hundred and one rounds,
and my head won’t be knocked off
by trams, nor uppercuts, nor you
fucking around with me. This here
is going to kill me!”
He hit himself on the left side of the
chest three times with his right fist
and pointedly looked at those around
him.
“Mi{o’s not crazy, nor is the heart
like the biceps and so doesn’t understand. I know what you think when I
come here. Let me come through
these doors two more times and it
won’t be Mi{o the Heart any more,
but instead Mi{o the Chetnik. Fuck
you all, you heathens, what you are
and who you are has now come from
your arses to your heads, and while
the Šbrothers’ were sharpening their
knives you ordered me beers, one
faster than the other. Now Mi{o will
be the one to blame for you being
late for the train. Here’s my head, so
smash it, so that you don’t have to
think later, fuck you and fuck those
who conceived people like you!”
Mi{o the Heart plunges his head into
his fists, freezing out everyone present,
Zoka the Barman bewilderedly speaks
up, “Well, fuck it, Mi{o, I’m also a
Serb!” He doesn’t budge. Then Velija
the Footballer jumps in and the instant he says a word and lays his
hand on the boxer’s shoulder, Mi{o
jumps and, from his heels, extracts a
straight punch, the likes of which
Bosnia has never seen. Velija the
Footballer crashes to the floor, everyone jumps from their seats, and Meha
the Parachutist, his eyes full of tears,
says: “Mi{o mate, don’t, it’s a pity!”
“What for, you ape?” he howled.
“If you don’t know what for, what’s
the point of telling you?! It’s a pity,
you see, for the trams and the people,
and for you too, when you talk like
that.”
A Little FAK Reader
Mi{o the Heart jerks back, as though
something split him in two, some
tachycardia, and collapses back into
his chair, as pale as a wall, blank
expression on his face. It all happened in two minutes, not enough
time for even a tram to pass.
Zoka the Barman quickly pours a
cognac, takes it to Mi{o’s table, but
he doesn’t budge. Silence. Mi{o the
Heart wipes his eyes, the whole bar
gathers around his table. No one
knows exactly what to say. Bursts of
machine-gun fire and explosions in
the distance, outside, the trams go
past, but don’t ring their bells, souls
are migrating from body to body,
they become something else, something painful and unrecognisable.
That evening they parted without a
word. The next day a mortar shell
fell in front of the Kvarner, smashing the window, local scroungers ran
inside, they ransacked the inventory
and carried off drinks. The regulars
didn’t even go to the Kvarner to see
41
what remained of it. They scattered
around to other bars or simply disappeared from this story.
The former boxer from Banja Luka’s
Slavija Boxing Club, Mi{o, fell on
the bridge near the First Grammar
School. Some say that a bullet struck
him right in the heart; others say it
hit him in the head. The newspapers
wrote that criminal hands had cut
down another worthy sportsman.
And that would be all, except that, if
at all necessary, one could add that,
in the tram depot and along the
tracks, all the trams burned, struck
by incendiary mortar shells.
42
RELA
TIONS
Blues for the Lady
with Red Spots
Zoran Feri}
¹1. The hypochondriacº
In the waiting room of the AIDS
clinic of the Hospital for Infectious
Diseases “Dr Fran Mihaljevi}” on
Mirogoj Street, where HIV tests are
performed, there is always a particularly ugly woman among the patients. For everyone in this anteroom
of hell she is a mystery, and the way
she got infected is in the sphere of
the supernatural.
“Who’d fuck her?” asks the man
seated next to me, pointing at one of
those ugly wretches. As if I have an
answer to that metaphysical question.
Short, with thick glasses for the farsighted and a stooped posture, she
falls under the category of female
beings whose extremely large breasts
join up with their protruding bellies.
It’s no longer ugliness, but grotesque.
As if her genes have decided to experiment.
Her clothes tell the same story. Ungainly combinations support the natural ugliness of her body: a crumpled
grey skirt, gaudy white sneakers, and
a Puma sweatshirt instead of a blouse.
No doubt, this is not just an uglinessby-chance, but ugliness-by-decision.
And now I see that ugliness-by-decision explaining something to the
handsome businessman next to her.
I can’t hear what she’s saying because she speaks softly; she’s prob-
Zoran Feri} was born in 1961 in Zagreb. He teaches Croatian literature at a
Zagreb high school. Since 1987 he has published numerous works of fiction
and non-fiction in major Croatian magazines. He was awarded several literary
prizes. His fiction was translated into English, German, Slovenian, Polish, and
Hungarian. Short stories collections, Mi{olovka Walta Disneya and An|eo u
Ofsajdu were published by the Austrian publisher Folio Verlag. Mi{olovka
Walta Disneya also appeared in pocket edition in Munich while the collection
Blues za gospo s rde~imi madeì was published in Ljubljana, Slovenia in 2001.
His novel, Smrt djevoj~ice sa ìgicama is scheduled for publication in the U.S.
in 2006. Feri} also wrote Quattro stagioni (with M. Ki{, R. Mlinarec and B.
Peri}, 1998), Otpusno pismo (collection of columns, 2004.) and Djeca Patrasa
(a novel, 2005).
ably talking about her sexual adventures so that it would be easier to
believe in them herself.
Apart from ugly women, several categories of patients can be found in
the waiting room. First, there are the
anxious. Of different age, they walk
to and fro, sit for a moment on their
seats, and then again something
makes them get to their feet and pace
around the waiting room. Some, the
more anxious, follow the pattern of
the marble floor tiles. I notice that
skip over the black squares and stand
only on the white ones, as if playing
hopscotch. And they’re grown people.
Secondly, there are the homosexuals. They speak to each other, swapping experiences. Thirdly, you have
the emaciated. They’re typically in-
travenous addicts, the quietest ones.
And, lastly, you have those who have
rejected their own names. The clinic’s
administration allows patients to be
tested under a codename. And those
codenames, for a short time, become
their names.
The young girl next to me is called
Last Summer, and her friend is Lili
Marleen. I overheard them when
they registered. Last Summer and Lili
Marleen entertain each other by commenting on the patients. They continually snigger at someone, even
at me, as I make large steps to overstep the black tiles, as if walking in a
minefield. That probably makes them
laugh. Last Summer looks directly
in my eyes as if to say: “Hey, goatee,
when this nightmare’s over, I’ll blow
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you for twenty marks!” Lili is dressed
in black. An intravenous Goth who
in the anteroom of death feels as if
she’s in a kindergarten toilet. In other
words, free and spontaneous.
“Now, this I’d fuck,” reckons my
neighbour, fixing his eyes on Dark
Lili. I reply that I wouldn’t recommend it. At least not here. I advise
him to follow her reaction, and if she
leaves the doctor’s office with a smile,
she’s negative. That’s when she’s the
cleanest. She’ll certainly want to celebrate with a hit and he should offer
her twenty marks for a quickie in the
park above the clinic.
“I’m not crazy,” he tells me, “That’s
the Mirogoj Cemetery. I never wanna
do it in a cemetery.”
I explain to him that the cemetery is
an excellent place because there are
no people, it’s relatively quiet, and
the dark marble slabs get so heated
by the sun that even in spring they’re
very comfortable. He says he has
nothing against those things, but everything against cemeteries. In fact,
he works in Algeria for Industrogradnja, a Croatian construction company, and Africa is full of that devil’s
work. He means AIDS.
Suddenly, Last Summer comes up to
us looking for a light. My neighbour
from Industrogradnja lights up his
little Zippo for her. Their hands are
shaking, so the flame and the cigarette need a few seconds before they
meet.
“This one’s not bad either,” says the
guy after the girl has gone outside to
smoke the cigarette.
“And why are you here?” he asks me
straight out. His accent reveals a
Bosnian, and you can forgive them
anything. A construction worker on
his first encounter with AIDS. How
can I explain to him that, for me,
AIDS is primarily a psychological
illness? Any serious hypochondriac
from Manila to Brazil will confirm
that. So I tell him that I’m here because of a druggie chick, Marina,
A Little FAK Reader
who I recklessly touched at the wrong
time. A lot about this isn’t clear: in
my life I’ve slept with a lot of whores,
so why do I now fear only the one
I’ve loved?
“I knew straight away that you’re
not a fag!” says the guy with relief,
and the path towards friendship is
open. “I’m here because of my tongue,”
he says. “Look, my tongue is white,
and my local doctor asks me where I
work. I tell him in Africa and he
immediately sends me to Zagreb for
a test... But it’s only the tongue...”
I forgot about that symptom in a
flash, I think worriedly. Out of the
corner of my eye I notice Lili Marleen
rolling with laughter. The scene is
comical. The steel-bender sticks out
his white-spotted tongue at me, and
I back off as much as I can. Just in case.
The screeching voice from the speaker
calls Last Summer to room number
three. Everyone looks at each other
in hesitation. Those who are here for
the first time don’t know about the
system of codes and this syntagm,
Last Summer, sounds to them like a
surrealist joke. The voice from the
speaker repeats: “Last Summer, Last
Summer...”
The ugly woman steps on the scene
again. She quietly moves to another
chair and sits next to a skinny boy in
a black bomber jacket, with a baseball cap pulled down on his forehead
as if the strong light bothers him.
She offers her hand to him and the
young man unwillingly shakes it.
And then the woman starts to speak
softly. Her gestures are strange because she doesn’t look at the person
she’s talking to, but only mumbles
something in his ear while observing
the people in the waiting room. Presumably her next victims. What’s she
doing? I ask myself while she wipes
her glasses, and her tiny eyes resemble
horizontal buttonholes.
A mother and her little daughter suddenly arrive in the waiting room.
The girl is about eight years old. Ev-
43
eryone looks at them in astonishment. Are we talking about a transfusion or transmission from mother
to daughter? Meanwhile, the mother
is placid, and the daughter is happy
and seems healthy. I, who am experienced at waiting here, know it is not
a question of one or the other, but
rather a visa for America.
“And who did she fuck?” asks again
my steel-bending neighbour, aroused
by the entrance of such a finely dressed,
exceptionally beautiful woman. As
an experienced habitué of the waiting room, I explain to him that in
late spring and the beginning of summer you will find many people here
with children, and that they’re not
“those whose blood doesn’t stop,”
haemophiliacs, but those who are
travelling to the United States.
Meanwhile the spots on the tongue
are beginning to bother me. That’s
something I didn’t pay attention to
and now that my African steel-bender
has opened my eyes, I’m concerned
about my tongue. Unfortunately,
there’s no mirror around. I stand up
as if I’m going for a little walk and
the worm in my arse grows restive.
It’s that big, white, people-eating
worm that gorges on flesh under
tombstones; schemes in the arses of
certain types of people, plotting for
years, playing with their lives. So I
focus on the white tiles, playing hopscotch around the waiting room,
striving to forget the white worm.
Looking for a mirror in a panic.
Last Summer finally appears accompanied by the nurse who called her.
She’s still exhaling the last smoke from
her nose as if her final breath, and
with tottering steps moves towards
the room with the symbolic number
three. And I, like Alice in Wonderland, am still looking for a mirror.
Finally, I find one, while Lili Marleen
and the Bosnian steel-bender watch
me with unabashed interest. However, the concern about my tongue
conquers any shame. In truth, it’s
44
not a real mirror, but a small, darkened area of glass on the reception
counter. The reflection of the light is
such that you can see yourself quite
well in it. And so I stand in front of
this improvised mirror, my back to
the anxious crowd, and stick my
tongue out. I try to find any white
spots. But it’s not so easy. You can
see the contours of the tongue, but
not the details. I stick it out further
and pray to God to see the details, to
find the correct angle of light, but
I’m also glad I can’t see. I console
myself: “If I can’t see those damned
spots, then they’re probably not there.”
And then suddenly, through the contours of my tongue, instead of spots
I see glasses. First the golden frame
and then the face of the nurse who
belongs to the glasses. The face is
disgusted. Because it sees the idiot
with the goatee sticking his tongue
out at the reception counter. Her
nurse’s highness is dumbfounded,
but she says nothing. I apologise
clumsily and explain that I didn’t stick
my tongue out at her, and I kindly ask
her to forgive this slip of the tongue,
and that I need a mirror. And I ask
whether maybe she has a pocket mirror because in the bathroom, as she
knows, there is no mirror...
“Get lost!” she says and I humbly
withdraw. I’m no longer even wary
of the black tiles and I walk somewhat incautiously with a singular fear
in my heart: the whore will make me
wait till the end, after everyone, to
stew on a low heat, with the peopleeating worms wriggling in my derriere. Until the judgment day...
The only thing left is to use my
Bosnian as a mirror. I approach him
and ask him to check my tongue. I
stick it out, poke at it with my
thumb, and move it up and down,
while the Algerian steel-bender expertly watches on. I no longer take
any notice of Lili Marleen, who is
screaming with laughter. She’s probably stoned.
“Stick it out a bit further,” says the
Bosnian, “I can’t see well. There’s
something white up in the back, but
then it’s not just white, there’s a bit
of red...”
Red? I ponder. Is red good or bad?
Then I see Last Summer floating out
of the consulting room. Smiling from
ear to ear. Her smile has halved her
head and, beaming with joy, she
stares at her results, finally sure that
nothing dangerous occurred last summer and that a new summer is coming, and in all likelihood many more
summers because she’s healthy and
young so that, according to all the
rules of statistics, she’s already somehow booked for those future summers. And then she takes in with her
eyes all of us still devoured by uncertainty, throws a pityingly superior
glance, walks up to the dark Marleen
and shows her the printout of the
good news. And I know the looks of
the good news. When AIDS first
appeared in this country, with the
first infected haemophiliac, I immediately went to get myself tested, so
that makes me an old hand. But life
always brings pleasant surprises which
we later regret, so my first result soon
became irrelevant.
¹2. Strange charactersº
Two very suspicious characters now
enter the waiting room. One is short,
his head shaved, the other one is tall,
unbelievably skinny, macaroni-greasy
hair falling over his bony, hairy face.
“You can cut off my balls, if that’s not
THEM!” says the African steel-bender.
Meanwhile the characters really act
suspiciously. One stands at the entrance, the whole waiting room and
the entrance to the office in his sight,
while the other one leans against the
admission window so that the cobra
of a nurse can’t see what happens in
the waiting room.
I notice that the woman next to me
starts fidgeting, while the murmur
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TIONS
of the waiting room has died down.
Even the homosexuals, traditionally
the most talkative, have stopped talking. The well-dressed woman, whose
girl has been running around the
waiting room bringing us a newborn
link to life, has called her child in a
strong voice. And the girl stops playing and rushes to her mother. She
hugs her leg and stays there, watching
the dangerous guy with the shaved
head in front of the admission desk.
Only now do I notice that the guy
doesn’t have eyebrows. Or they’re so
light and thin that you can’t see
them. That’s why his face looks alien.
The other guy, the one by the door,
after he’s made sure that everyone is
quiet, takes another look around the
room and throws something black
on the floor. He does it so skillfully
that the thing slides on the marble
tiles until it stops close to the centre,
in front of the admission desk. I notice that now all the waiting-room
habitués are staring at this thing with
a mixture of amazement and light
horror. Those in the back rows, who
can hardly see the floor, stand up
from their chairs and look at what
the skinny one threw. Some, you can
tell, are ready to flee. They’re already
glancing at the window. They think
it might be a bomb or some other
explosive device. Suddenly my eyes
stop at the ugly woman’s face. She’s
calm and smiling. “What does she
know that we don’t?” I think, watching her blessed expression, as if redeeming us all.
And the guy at the desk takes something out of his back pocket.
“They’re now gonna shoot us like
rabbits!” says the Bosnian with the
gulp in his throat. I don’t take it
lightly either, but I look at it as the
finger of fate. If I’m negative, and
the bald alien shoots me through the
skull, it’s called irony, and this time
it goes to divine reckoning. The baldy
puts the object in his mouth. Maybe
he’ll blow his head up, I think, and
RELA
TIONS
A Little FAK Reader
he’ll spray all of us with his infected
blood. But, relieved, I recognise it’s a
mouth harp. I glance again at the
black thing on the floor and now I
see that it is some type of cap, a
shabby corduroy baseball cap, turned
inside out, full of grey wisps of dust.
And while the baldy begins a sad
melody, reminiscent of flat-bottomed
boats in the Mississippi delta, the
skinny one steps up in the middle,
and starts singing:
Carcinoma, sarcoma and melanoma
three brothers of lymphoma,
and AIDS their granny,
oh the torments vary.
This song of ours,
so pleasing to your ears,
let it keep you
from our brotherly fill
and any other ill.
And for that little coin
we thank you
from our heart.
Blues for the Lady with Red Spots
¹3. The deadº
Carcinoma, sarcoma and melanoma
three oma full of love
and their sister AIDS
red freckles all over her face.
People and ladies,
healthy or infected,
hear your singers,
your soul providers,
with our worn out trousers;
amid the smiles,
amid the cries,
our song
will make you strong.
Two singers
carrying virus,
your attention is our pay,
and your coins make our day.
Meanwhile, in the waiting room, silence. No one is waving his wallets;
we are all just staring in shock. The
silence lasts for longer than a minute
before the skinny one leans over to
grab his cap and moves from one
person to another. He thrusts his
face into theirs, sniffles, spits and
coughs. Now, whenever he gets close
to someone they only drop a coin
into his cap from a respectable distance. The skinny guy sees he’s created the right effect, so he returns the
cap to the floor. Those who have so
far given nothing grab the chance
and get up from their chairs or come
from the far corners of the waiting
room and donate a coin. So that he
won’t come near them.
But the guys continue:
When I turned unlucky thirteenth
of my lucky childhood, the age when
God makes us give the most extreme
promises for life, I noticed that I had
a small cock. That realisation didn’t
come at once, like thunder or an
explosion, but slowly, like a chronic
disease. On chance occasions, when
we were dressing or taking a shower,
I saw that my classmates’ penises had
overgrown them. If your penis “has
overgrown you”, it means that, when
stiff, it has more centimeters than
you are years old. By that measure
some of them were ready for the
freshmen or sophomore year of high
school, while I permanently stayed
in the seventh year of primary school.
I didn’t know then that this is a danger to one’s life.
Generally, it was a time of many illusions. For my birthday my mother
made a cake that we called “small
corpse.” Some type of crispy hazelnut biscuit. Sometimes she’d arrange
those small corpses in a cake mould
and smear them with orange cream.
These are the best memories of my
childhood. And as the cake gained
more candles, I thought, that much
more of my life was left. And that the
candles didn’t burn out to the end I
took, even as a child, to be a good
omen.
Anyhow, I needed sixteen long years
to resign myself to the dimensions of
my member. And that reconciliation
45
was denoted by many flirtations and
a certain psychic calm, up until 1987
when the AIDS pandemic cancelled
summer escapades. In the air, in the
rocks, in the sand, the fear was already felt. But we on the island tried
to live as if the disease didn’t exist.
That summer I met my last German
girl. Every morning she came to our
little beach. She followed the theory
that a book is the man’s best friend.
She would lie down and read, while
the bare nipples of her breasts fondled
the folds of the towel, or looked into
the clear blue heavens. I was sitting
with Ben on the bench beneath the
fig tree.
“How’re you going to do it?” he
asked.
“My way,” I said. That meant slowly
and gentlemanly. From the Fontana
I telephoned into town and the thing
began.
The beach lived its usual rhythm at
the end of August. There were less
people, the average age higher, and
the usual shrieks of children turned
into the occasional lonely cry.
“I’m really interested in what you’ve
come up with,” he said.
A light breeze that rippled on the
surface of the sea announced the
cooler days of September.
And then it all began. First, a white
Volkswagen Golf stopped on the
road between the bench and the small
beach. It raised considerable dust.
The people on the beach looked at it
with hatred. It didn’t fit into it the
peaceful post-season idyll. For a while
it just stood there and then the driver
emerged from the cabin carrying a
huge bouquet of roses in silver cellophane, decorated with ribbons. A
bouquet fit for an opera diva after a
premiere. The people on the beach
followed him with interest. This was
something completely special. The
driver approached the girl, knelt down
with confidence and handed her the
shrub and a note. She was dumbfounded. The bouquet was bigger
46
RELA
than the top half of her body, and
she didn’t know what to do with it.
She knelt on the towel, holding it
bewilderedly while the driver moved
away towards the Golf, and the sand
spilled from her tits.
“You’re an idiot,” blurted Ben, “How
much did it cost?”
“She’s the last one,” I said, “Ben, this
is a farewell.”
He stared at me as if he were unaware
of the seriousness of the situation.
In the meantime Karin had opened
the note and looked in the direction
of the bench. The eye contact was
powerful.
The flowers wilted relatively quickly,
but Karin blossomed. We sat in Fontana, had wine and sardines, and
talked. I learnt she was twenty-four,
a hairdresser and that before her vacation she had broken up with her
boyfriend, and had therefore come
alone. To spite everything. She was
not the type of woman who travelled
alone. That’s how our long walks
began: picking pine nuts in the town
park, visiting the monastery of St.
Euphemia at high noon, during the
strongest sunshine, waiting for the
lights of the express ferry at the port
in that unstable moment when twilight skids into night. But the whole
time she never kissed me once. On
the Piazzetta in front of the cathedral, she said in English: “Do you
know that I will not kiss you?”
“Why?” I asked. Things were getting
out of control.
“Because these are hard times,” she
said. “And I’m not ready.”
I knew two things: that she was afraid
and endlessly lonely. I was aware that
the moment of relaxation was coming when loneliness beats fear, and I
was waiting for that moment. And I
was afraid, but this was supposed to
be my last German girl. Despite the
fear, despite AIDS, despite the candles
extinguishing slowly, and the longgone passion for cakes with strange
names.
I bought a pack of condoms and
carried them in my shirt pocket. Ben
told me: “I’ve fucked a lot, but never
in armour. In fact, I don’t know how
to put it on.”
Neither did I. I was twenty-eight
years old and knew nothing of prophylactics.
It happened one night at the pizzeria
on old man Ico’s boat. After a litre of
red wine she touched me on the knee
with her bare foot. A strap slipped
from her fragile shoulder. I grabbed
a bottle of wine from Ico and we
headed towards the campsite.
On the way I tried to tease out her
tongue. I would attempt that when
we entered the circle of light created
by the streetlights on the winding
lungo mare, which I had for so many
years passed through without a care.
I followed the instructions of those
who were more experienced:
“First you tease out the tongue,” explained Ben. “Like, you’re making
out there in the open; your tongues
are out, the tips of them touching.
And you look. Observation. If it’s
white, it’s candida. Turn your heels
to the wind. If it’s all right, you go
on. To the next test.”
After that the tests followed in this
order: the lymph nodes in the neck,
the armpits, changes to the nipples,
swelling of the liver and knots in the
groin. After these tests, Karin was so
aroused that it flowed out of her like
a hydroelectric plant. It was time for
the condom. The first I bit in half
trying to open it, the second I opened
more carefully, but it became entangled when I unrolled it, and the
third she put on herself. It was the
first time I saw how it was done. She
placed it on my glans, the size of a
larger hazelnut, and unrolled it.
And that’s when there was a surprise.
Even though my friend was bursting
from excitement, that condom was
loose on it, like a sweater a couple
sizes too big. You couldn’t do anything about it. Before I could think
TIONS
of the consequences, she climbed on
top of me. I felt how a warm slime
was pouring alongside my bladder.
That was not good. And that’s how,
that night, Karin Bruner from Braubach fucked me in the moonlight,
while I lay there peacefully like some
cake to be eaten as sweetener. A cake
with a single candle, as if for a oneyear-old child.
And I didn’t feel safe.
Later, as we lay on our backs next to
each other, blankly staring at the
tents’ peak, I thought about irony.
Until now in my life I had slept with
a lot of women of various nationalities, religions and sizes, and all with
a small cock whose glans was little
bigger than the hazelnuts that my
mother, before she got sick with leukaemia, would put in a birthday cake.
I was worried about two things. First,
I didn’t check her out well and second,
during sex the condom slipped, so we
did it, in fact, without protection.
And I wasn’t afraid of dying, I have
to say. I was afraid of one sentence. If
I’d got sick and died, word would’ve
gotten around the island: He died
because his dick was small, his rubber fell off as he fucked an AIDS
woman!
And those who’d be washing my
dead body might feel pity when they
saw this little corpse on my big corpse.
And those people, those distant ones,
would perhaps not know that this
little corpse had courageously entered into many unknown regions,
just like Napoleon, and that it had
lived, worthily, the life of a giant.
When the candles on the birthday
cake finally go out, when darkness
covers the earth, the size of the dead
will be reassuringly relative.
¹4. Swan Lakeº
And then in the HIV waiting room a
contrast occurred. The ugly woman
approached the attractive one and
they now stand together, in a funny
RELA
TIONS
A Little FAK Reader
47
48
way upholding the contradiction of
this terrible place. I see how the ugly
one is saying something to the beautiful one, and is grabbing onto her
kindness so as to tell her what she
undoubtedly tells everyone. The Bosnian, meanwhile, is quiet and then I
realise that I’m looking at the ugly
woman while he looks at the beautiful one. The African steel-bender has
homed in on that gorgeous, nurtured
creation, and I see how he is x-raying
her: first as a chest specialist, then as
a gynaecologist. Then he says: “Fuck,
she’s beautiful... Like a ballerina.”
And then he tells me a story about
his friend Zoka from Sarajevo and
some ballerina. That was in the spring
of Š94, during one of the longer
ceasefires when the international
community attempted to force the
Serbs surrounding the city to leave
their artillery positions. Zoka had
come from the front into a city without electricity and water, burnt-out
facades and broken windows. But it
was a city nonetheless. People lived
and tried to entertain themselves. In
the tall building next to his someone
had turned the common area, where
once there were wood sheds, into a
bar that was mainly visited by UNPROFOR troops. For a while, before
going home, he would go there for
the last shot. Sometimes he would
meet his buddies from the front:
Dragan, Arif, Line and some others
regulars.
Zoka was a junior, studying literature, when the first shells hit Sarajevo. At that time he fancied a certain ballerina who used to go out
with older and wealthier guys. She
was a slender blonde with a gently
bent nose that gave her otherwise
normal face a special charm. In the
years before the war she seemed out
of his reach. One night he met her in
that bar. She’d lost her looks considerably since the last time he’d seen
her. But in spite of some wrinkles
and bags under the eyes, her beauty
was still discernible. She was sitting
alone at a table across from an empty
chair, with an empty shot glass in
front of her. His friend Arif sat at the
next table with some guys he didn’t
know. They were still in uniform,
muddy and drunk. He went over to
the ballerina, and she met him kindly
as if waiting for someone to fill the
emptiness in front of her. He ordered a drink and the conversation
began.
They remembered the times and
people from before the war. But in
their memories these were not the same
people, even if the names sounded
the same. He had at first, as though
accidentally, touched her forearm
with his small finger. She didn’t react. He then ordered the next round.
She liked that. Later, as he caressed
her hair behind her left ear with his
open palm, she leaned her head against
his hand and Zoka thought that war
had its good side. With the fourth
round she let him kiss her ear.
“My apartment is full of some old
grannies and aunties,” she told him,
“but we could go to yours.”
He paid the bill and quickly they left.
When they’d gone about fifty metres,
they could hear Arif shouting at him.
“Zoka, lend me twenty marks til’
tomorrow?”
Arif stood at the bar entrance and
waved at him. He went back those
fifty metres because Arif was a good
guy. Maybe his boots were pinching.
When he reached him, with the ballerina a decent distance away, Arif
whispered: “Look as though you’re
lending me the dough!”
Zoka rummaged in his pocket, and
then rooted out a twenty-mark note.
“Don’t go with her,” whispered Arif,
“she’s got AIDS. Got it from UNPROFOR.”
“How do you know?”
“That Latif from Grbavica told me.
She infected a young guy who got
shot a month ago. Supposedly, a
sniper on Tito Street.”
RELA
TIONS
“You’re fucking with me?” he said.
He was scared, but the ballerina
seemed unscathed, like before the war.
“Zoka, buddy, fuck that! Let’s get a
beer!”
“I’ll deal with it my way,” he said
after a short deliberation. “No worries!”
Arif took the twenty-mark note from
his hand.
“I’ll return it to you tomorrow,” he
said loudly and went back into the
bar.
That’s when the troubles began. He
hugged the ballerina and they went
in the direction of his apartment. He
didn’t want to hold her hand in case
he touched her bare skin. The whole
time it bothered him that Arif might
be telling the truth. The guys he associated with were mainly Muslim.
And during the war between the
Croatians and the Muslims, he had
remained with them to defend the
city. Only recently had he sensed that
they were looking at him strangely.
Now that he had finally got hold of
the ballerina, whom they had all desired before the war, this story had
come up. If they were lying, were
they just fucking around, envious or
doing it out of spite? Now they seemed
to give him advice, but tomorrow
when he shows up at the bar they
will shout and laugh at him: “He
who’s afraid of AIDS, in his hand his
dick stays!”
But then again, he also knew that
Arif wouldn’t repay those twenty
marks. And how could he ask him to
return it when he apparently saved
his life? The matter was pretty complicated.
When they entered the apartment, he
grasped a terrible truth: there would
be no sex because he surely couldn’t
get it up now, and also, naturally, he
didn’t have a condom... That night,
luckily, there was electricity so the ballerina could listen to music. As soon
as she sat on the sofa in the living
room, she reached after the CD player.
RELA
TIONS
“I’m going into the kitchen,” he said,
“wait here!”
Before that he grabbed her by the
shoulder and tightly hugged her. It
didn’t escape him that this was how
he had hugged the shoulders of the
mothers and fathers of his dead
friends.
In the kitchen he quickly took out a
bottle of brandy, there were still two
fingers left. Fortunately, the water
supply was not cut that day, so he
poured it into the bottle watching
the colour change. He stopped when
the bottle was half full. He sat on the
chair next to the window, covered in
nylon instead of glass, and slowly
sipped the disgusting, watered-down
brandy. He listened as the ballerina
played Azra and Dylan in the living
room. Songs from their youth. He
waited.
Only when he heard her heels stamping along the hallway leading to the
kitchen did he downed the bottle.
She entered just as he gulped the last
of half a litre of something resembling brandy.
“You’re drinking?” she said with some
sort of melancholy in her voice, and
then returned to the living room.
That night she slept on the sofa,
while he slept on the double bed in
the bedroom. In fact, he didn’t sleep
at all. All night he thought about the
ballerina, about how he deceived
with the cognac and how he pretended to be drunk. Before morning
broke he looked at her through the
slightly opened door. Her cheek was
flattened against the armrest of the
sofa, turning her face into a deformed
grimace. As if they were living in some
upside-down fairytale in which swans
were turned into ugly ducklings.
For the next three weeks on the front,
while the shrapnels from the mortar
shells danced around his head, he
thought about the ballerina and what
he may have missed out on. When
he returned after that to the city, Arif
told him that the ballerina had jumped
A Little FAK Reader
from the eleventh floor. No one, supposedly, knew why she killed herself.
That afternoon she’d been in the
bar. She drank four cognacs, climbed
to the top floor of the building and
jumped.
“They photographed her for the newspaper,” Arif said, “and then they took
her away. A pool of blood remained
on the asphalt, like a little lake. They
didn’t clean it up. Who in this city
still cleans up blood from the street?
After that, they say, someone saw two
cats licking up the coagulated blood.”
It never occurred to Arif to repay
him the twenty marks. He was drunk
that night and must have probably
forgotten.
¹5. Ukrainian fairytaleº
The way the beautiful woman listened to the ugly one told me that
she had lost all interest in what this
one was telling her, just as children
stop being interested in fairytales
once they reach a certain age. But at
one moment, as the beautiful woman’s
patience was wearing out, and this
became clearly visible on her face,
the ugly one fished out a bundle of
photographs from somewhere. I could
see the expression on the beautiful
woman’s face change from boredom, beyond surprise and enthusiasm, to complete shock. I didn’t miss
that she reached for the photographs
and stopped to look at them closely,
her hands trembling. What was on
the photographs? And what had so
excited her? Maybe it was some sort
of proof that miracles were possible,
and that fairytales were true? I know
from experience that there are situations that make people believe in
fairytales. It happened to a friend of
mine who was an ecologist by profession. At last year’s congress on
global warming in Kiev, all of a sudden he remembered, in the middle
of a lecture, that it was his birthday.
It was a crushing discovery. He would
49
celebrate his fortieth birthday completely alone in a foreign city, with
clear ideas about how to save the
world, but without any vision as to
how to save himself.
He felt, he says, a tremendous impulse to have children. He remembered the Russian or Ukrainian fairytale about the man and the woman
who, somewhere behind their seven
mountains, had long desired that
God bless them with a child. The
years went by, but no child arrived.
One winter, however, they felt lonelier than ever. A deep snow had fallen
and they, already an old man and an
old woman, left their house only to
perform necessary duties. Then came
Christmas Eve. They tidied their
small, humble peasant house, decorated the tree, roasted a turkey, and
sat at the festive table. They sat and
looked at each other. And then in
silence they ate dinner and retired to
bed. Some time after midnight, the
old man got up to put a present for
the old woman under the tree. When
he got there, he came across the old
woman, awake, putting a present for
him next to the nativity scene. They
both laughed, lit candles, and opened
a bottle of wine as red as human
blood. They smiled and unwrapped
the presents they had given each
other. She got a fur coat, and he a
new pipe made of cherry-wood.
That night they drank more than
usual. The whole bottle. Their blood
warmed. And then the old man said:
“Mother, let’s go outside to make
ourselves a child out of snow!”
So they went out and began to make
a child out of snow. They laughed as
they had never laughed before. Instead
of hair they placed straw, the eyes
were two pieces of coal, and the nose
was a coloured zucchini. The old
woman, laughing, went into the house
and returned with a lovely white hat.
“This is the hat I wore at our wedding,” she said. “It’s only right that
our daughter gets it.”
50
She then placed the hat on the snow
girl’s head. The old man brought
out a glass of wine and spilled it, as
was the custom to spill red wine on
the bed sheet after a baby was born.
And they went to sleep.
The next day, on Christmas, when
the old man had gone out to feed the
animals, on the doorstep of the house
he found a little girl of about five
years of age. She was shaking with
cold; her hair was as blonde as grain,
and her eyes as black as coal. She was
an orphan. Only a pile of snow remained of the snow girl, as if someone had smashed it during the night.
They fed the little girl and dressed
her properly. The old woman sewed
her new blouses, white as snow, while
the old man bought her some lovely
leather shoes in town. They loved
her as if she were their own daughter.
Then spring came. The days became
more beautiful, beneath the snow
you could catch glimpses of islands
of green grass, and in some places
catkins had also bloomed. The little
girl developed a cough. She suffered
from fever, and the old man and the
old woman worried. In mid-April
she was bedridden and became thinner, as if she were melting. Towards
the end of April, when the fruit trees
had blossomed and the birches had
sprung leaves, the little girl died.
They buried her in the garden, at the
spot where that snow girl had stood.
“When I think of that fairytale,” he
said, “I think of the greenhouse effect. Global warming. That’s how
we’ll all melt away one day.”
Anyway, after the lecture he went
down to the hotel bar to celebrate
that round-numbered birthday alone,
like some sad anniversary. Behind
the counter, he spied a bottle of
[ibenik Babi} wine, and it was as if
he had met a dear compatriot. Only
after his second glass did he have a
look around the bar. His ecology
colleagues were not there. Only a
pair of women sat in a booth. One
older, the other younger. The younger
one could have been about twenty
and she smiled when he looked at
her. He knew they were whores. He
took the bottle and sat next to them.
The older one was called Mina, and
the younger Laura. Laura had light
streaks in her hair, a small silver ring
through her nose, grey tights and a
top which exposed her bare stomach. Mina addressed him.
“You can have one or both,” she said,
“but you know... we’re not cheap.”
“Okay,” he said, “how much?”
“One hundred marks,” Laura said.
He was shocked that this was a big
sum of money for them.
“Two hundred for both,” Mina said.
He noticed her wrinkled hands.
Those hands were twice as old as her
face. He had noticed this asymmetric aging on prostitutes long ago, as
if God were punishing them only in
certain places.
“When you finish drinking, we can
go upstairs,” he told Laura.
“If you take only her,” said Mina,
“you won’t get everything because
her time of the month has arrived.”
“I don’t need everything,” he told
Laura, and took her to his room.
Mina stayed alone. She resembled a
caricature from Playboy that showed
an old prostitute leaning against a
lamp post covered by a spider’s web.
It didn’t escape him how it was funny
in the magazine, but sad in life.
In the bedroom he lay down on his
back, totally naked, and watched
Laura strip. She undressed carefully
and conscientiously placed her clothes
on the chair, as if they were going to
last her for decades. She stripped to
her panties and pressed her breasts to
his chest.
“I’m sorry you can’t get everything,”
she said. “But you won’t be sorry.
I’m good with my mouth.”
He felt the warmth of her breasts
and looked at the full red lips, like
that of a child. He noticed, meanwhile, two gold molars in her mouth.
RELA
TIONS
It was strange to see such a young
woman with gold teeth. They were
positioned next to each other, like
sad twins.
He took advantage of Laura’s distraction and shoved his hand into
her panties. She didn’t have a tampon. Even though he knew she was
lying, he wanted to check. He was
the exact type, he trusted facts. She
tumbled off him, lay on her back
and furiously gazed at the ceiling.
Like a child caught in a lie.
After a while she finally said: “I’m
scared of that disease,” she said. “I’m
terribly scared. I have someone who
can’t do without me.”
He immediately thought of the old
man and the old woman from the
fairytale, he says. Or were they some
other old man and old woman? Anyway, she got up and returned with a
champagne glass full of red wine.
She lay down on her stomach, rested
the bottom of the glass on his chest
and said: “And, I’m Alesja, not Laura.”
That’s when she began asking him
about his life. She was interested in
where he lived and whether he was
married. He said he wasn’t married,
but that he was living with his girlfriend in a house by the sea, on the
island of Cres. He lied. Who knows
what forced him to do that? He could
have said anything. Nonetheless, he
acknowledged that today was his fortieth birthday and that he was feeling lonely. She liked that. She allowed him to kiss her on the mouth.
But she became interested in his girlfriend, so he had to recall one of his
former ones. He described their life
together on the island, how he goes
fishing in his plastic boat and how
she spends the days reading in the
garden with her legs on the railing.
He described both her legs and the
railing to make everything seem convincing.
Alesja’s interest for details from his
life was strange. It seemed as if his
words were viruses that entered her
RELA
TIONS
head and produced an image in which
she wanted to immerse herself. It
went on like this for a while, and the
image was being constructed out of
tiny details, such as the picking pine
nuts in the park, watching the sunset, marking the dolphins that were
going to be adopted, filming a program about griffon vultures. Then,
probably having remembered why
she was there, she took his member
into her mouth. She sucked it slowly
and tenderly, almost friendly. Aware
of the fact it had to be done, he
allowed her to lick. He imagined her
in the morning, smiling and joyfully
bringing cakes to her elderly parents
who impatiently wait for her at the
large window of an old building
whose façade had long ago lost its
colour. The image brought him pain,
and pain is, unfortunately, arousing.
Later, when she returned from the
bathroom, she looked completely
different. The water had washed away
the make-up from her face and she
let down her hair, so now she looked
like a little girl. She couldn’t have
been more than seventeen years old.
If she melted now, he thought, only
those sad gold molars would remain.
In the morning, getting ready to
leave, she said: “Forgive me for lying! Ja lagunja.”
He gave her his open wallet and she
took out a hundred-mark note.
He paused for a moment, he says,
and then gave her all the money he
had. More than five hundred marks.
She looked at him in shock, and then
burst into tears. She stood in front of
him, one hand on her stomach, and
wept. He took her hand and sat her
on the bed. She kept crying. Then
she got up and slowly, as if walking
on broken glass, turned towards the
bathroom. On her way out, cleaned
up, she smacked her lips together, as
though blowing him a kiss, and disappeared.
A year later, on the eve of his birthday, the telephone rang in the Green
A Little FAK Reader
Movement’s office. A woman’s voice
on the phone said his name.
“Speaking,” he said.
“It’s Alesja.” A voice called at him
from the distance. “I called to wish
you a happy birthday.”
He didn’t find out where she was
calling from, or anything else. She only
said she had got his office number
from the receptionist who had the details on all the congress participants.
“I hope you’re not angry,” she said
and hung up.
It was something very special. The
world, it seems, possessed huge and
mythical reserves of the unbelievable.
As if suddenly a great heat spread,
melting a man away.
¹6. Leukaemiaº
And then a familiar face steps into
the waiting room, still echoing to
the rhythm of didactic blues. Mladen
[turli}, a friend from high school.
He moves with his head low, avoiding glances. Like a nun crossing the
whore street. He dashes across the
white tiles towards the reception desk
and the bald musician. The AIDS
troubadour, seeing [turli} so embarrassed, moves over and lets him
through to the cobra of the nurse,
who takes his Medicare card. Only
when he handed over his card did he
lift his glance, as if feeling that now
he is truly present. And in that glance,
he suddenly sees me. And that clearly
finishes him off.
“[tuka!” I shout. “What’s up, buddy?”
He turns around with unease, it bothers him that he’s been spotted, but
he is also glad to meet someone he
knows. I am glad too, I’m overcome
by a sentiment towards the HIV-suspect school chum, but I also enjoy torturing him. So I say his real
name out loud. “Hey, [turli},” I say.
“What brings you here?”
And [turli}, embarrassed, sits between the steel-bender and me, but
doesn’t extend his hand. He despises
51
shaking hands at these sorts of places,
even with old friends.
“I’m saving my marriage,” he says
and looks around the waiting room.
He’s probably looking to see if there
is anyone else he knows, as if we were
at our school reunion, and then says
in half-voice: “I did it with some
chick,” he says. “Nothing dangerous, but I can’t stop thinking about
it. I turn it around in my mind, you
know, how it all happened, who rode
who, how long it lasted and if she
was very wet. And the more I think
about it, the bigger the fuss.”
“And how long, my friend?” the
Bosnian steel-bender jumps in knowledgeably, like an expert on psychiatry, and not on concrete.
“How long what?”
“You’ve been thinking!” says the steel-bender with respect in his voice.
“Two years already,” snorts [turli}.
“In these two years I haven’t done it
with my wife. I’m scared of infecting her.”
The Bosnian is dismayed. I see him
sitting on his chair, but his glance
has gone into the unknown.
“Really, you haven’t done it in two
years?” I ask seriously and hope he’ll
confirm it. This means there are others like me, I think to myself happily.
“I think I’m damned,” says [turli}
hopelessly. “And that slut Lea Bara~
damned me, back in high school.
Remember that Bara~ girl?”
Lea was somewhat of a junkie, smoking hash, as many others at the beginning of the eighties. Pretty, apathetic and good at heart. [turli} fell
in love with her, and, like a dog,
followed her everywhere. He knew,
the wretch, that he didn’t have a
chance. She went out with older
characters who showed up before the
school with guitars and who rolled
joints. Meanwhile, she established
friendly relations with [turli}. Sometimes they went out together to the
movies or to the museum near school
to discuss fundamental questions.
52
[turli} even told her once that he
had fallen in love with a girl who
didn’t care about him.
“It’s just horrible that I can’t do anything about it,” he told her something like this.
“Of course you can’t do anything
about it,” Lea answered. “Love is
chemistry. You have to wait for the
elements to react.”
But [turli}’s chemical elements produced no reaction. He was miserable
for months and when finally May
arrived, a life-saving equation came
to his mind. In Greek!
Lea + khemeia = leukaemia
The first Saturday in May, somewhere
near the open air theatre on Tu{kanac, just to fuck around with her, he
told Lea that he had leukaemia. He
thought he’d declare his love in this
way. Lea, however, was shocked.
“That’s why you’re so pale,” she
said. “And you have no appetite.”
She thrust her head in his lap and he
could feel, he says, her shoulders
shaking with tears. He could smell
her hair and the shaking of her fragile body. He couldn’t go back anymore. Something had overcome him
and he began to kiss her hair.
“How strange,” he whispered, “I’m
dying, but I’ve never slept with a girl.”
Without a word, tearfully she took
him by the hand and led him to the
balcony seating of the empty cinema.
Later, he divulged the secret to a few
of us in the class, but someone spread
the story around the whole school.
For days we had to listen to jerks,
shouting behind her back: “Leukaemia! Gimme a blowjob, I don’t
feel so well!”
When, a few days later, four of us
from the same class ran into her in
the hallway, she said: “I hope pussy
will damn you for the rest of your
lives, you pigs!”
And we could see the foam gather in
the corners of her mouth. That was
at the beginning of the eighties. Soon
foreign newspapers began publishing articles about a new disease illustrated with photographs of skinny
and deformed human bodies. The
disease, in fact, was already among us.
¹7. Heavenly bodyº
“Look at this one!” says the African
steel-bender and I immediately notice a squat, big-nosed character nervously walking among the chairs. His
body is somehow falling apart as he
moves. Every part seems to move
autonomously: head, arms, left leg,
right leg. I think of neurological disorders, and then suddenly it occurs
to me that this disease drastically
demonstrates how many bodies there
are in a man. However, this one here
is, it appears, already a heavenly body.
A man-planet, orbiting, travelling
about the waiting room on the edge
of his own orbit and every once a
while goes past us. And here he comes
again, confidently leaning over us,
and says: “After two beers I’m not
afraid of death!”
We are shocked and consternated.
But he just tosses in while passing
and then again returns to his orbit.
We are completely lost, sitting there
with three big question marks over
our heads, and six small ones in our
eyes. Thank God, all three of us still
have both eyes.
“Fuck, this one’s gone totally nuts!”
the concrete expert tosses in, while
[turli} continues follow the big-nosed
planet, waiting for the situation to
develop. Big Nose, however, gets
near us again and says: “And when
I’m not afraid... death is closest. Not
like a skull, and, by God, not like a
skeleton, but like a good pussy.”
And again the orbit draws him in
and the acceleration forces him to
make another cycle, like the Earth
around the Sun.
“If he keeps this up,” I say. “It’ll take
him a couple of hours to say what he
wants.”
RELA
TIONS
[turli} and the Bosnian are overcome
by laughter, and that is enough to
draw the attention of the ugly woman.
She lowers her gaze on us and holds
it there for a quite a while, as though
studying us. She is still talking to her
opposite of the same sex, but she has
us in her sight. In her sights and in
her mind. But she looks with sympathy and pity at the orbiting Big Nose,
who passes us once again.
“Open face, long hair, blonde,” continues the big-nosed body, “I think
Špussy.’ Open up and down, made
for a groupie. And we, four horny
farts, get down and fuck her. Whenever someone gets on top of her, she
moves, the whore, like a snake, crawls,
screws. She has a viper tattooed on
her arse, and we all get a hard-on
looking at that viper.”
I notice that the planet has stopped
in its orbit and, as if giving a lecture,
tells us his story: “When the first one
cums, she, that bitch, whispers something in his ear and he jumps back
scared, small and depressed. And already the two of them sit there down
in the dumps, the third climbs on top
of her, and the other two are silent.
They don’t say what she told them...”
The planet takes a narrative break,
while we fret curiously.
“And?” the African concreter asks.
“Did she also tell you?”
“Hell she did! It was my turn, I rolled
on top of her, touched her, enjoyed
every minute of it, and those three
squatted in the corner, silent and sullen. And when I finished and she was
about to whisper it to me, an air raid
siren went off. Those jerks were
bombing Zagreb. What could we do
but get dressed and go to the shelter.
I asked them what she told them, but
they were silent. They didn’t even
speak among themselves.”
The Bosnian speaks up again, irritated: “Forget about them, motherfuckers, did she tell you later?”
“My dick she did. She fled to Canada. And the three of them wouldn’t
RELA
TIONS
tell me anything either, they kept the
secret. I would see them around the
city, lost, depressed, two of them
have divorced their wives, the third
one drinks. And that’s when it dawned
on me, about what she told them...”
“And that’s why you came for a test,”
[turli} guesses. “It took you a while,
didn’t it? It’s been four years since
the war. How come you’ve waited so
long?”
“Who says I’ve waited,” says the bignosed planet. “I got tested straight
away.”
“And?”
“Negative!”
“So what are you doing here?” asks
[turli}. As if he’s missed something.
“I’m getting tested.”
“Because of the same one?”
“Yes,” answers big nose, as if this
were understood. “I’ve had ten tests
all up. All negative.”
Once again we stare at him, question
marks over our heads and in our
eyes, and the big-nosed planet who
is no longer a planet, because he has
abandoned his elliptical orbit, leans
over and gestures with his hand to
move our heads closer because he
has something confidential to say.
“These tests are dicks in the wind,”
he says softly, but with dignity, with
trust. “I see this every day. And everyone leaves the examination room
smiling, everyone negative. Those
results, diagnoses, they don’t guarantee anything. The country is poor,
and the therapy is expensive. The
social services have no money. That’s
why everyone’s negative. Because
it’s cheaper. You need big contacts
around here to pronounce you positive. That’s what I’m working on
right now.”
At that moment the Big Nose returns to his restless orbiting and
[turli} indicates with his finger to
A Little FAK Reader
his head that something isn’t in order, I notice the metaphysical movements of the ugly woman. She’s
clearly in collusion with the planet
because they’re exchanging meaningful looks. She is now, you see,
turning towards us. With light steps,
not like bowed legs that resemble a
circle, zero and omega, she approaches
the damned three of us. She grabs a
spare chair and sits among us as the
fourth person.
“Jesus is good!” she says in a half
voice.
“I’m a Muslim,” says the African
steel-bender unpretentiously, just so
that it’s known.
“God is one,” says the ugly one.
“Jesus loves Muslims as well.”
While saying that, she recites the propaganda slogans of the Jehovah’s
Witnesses, wanting to set us, the sinners of the pussy, on the right path.
“Think of the terrible judgment,
confess your sins!” she says. She’s so
ugly that even sin doesn’t want near
her.
“Look here!” says the ugly woman,
taking the photographs from her
tracksuit pocket. I take them in my
hand, the whole bunch, and look at
them. They show cities, churches,
parks and cemeteries. By their chipped,
teethed edges I can tell that some of
them are very old, some even have
yellow coffee stains on them like
postmarks on large black and white
stamps. I shuffle them like cards,
carefully, hesitating. And then I stop
at a photo of a building that looks
familiar.
“Look closely!” says our ugly friend.
“You recognise anything?”
All three of us stare at the photograph, not recognising anything, and
she looks at us intensely, from her
position of strength like a fat African
goddess.
53
“Turn it over!” she orders firmly and
I slowly turn the photograph over.
On the back, in clear handwriting, it
says:
This is the photograph of the Hospital for Infectious Diseases from 1923,
the year it was built. You weren’t
around then because you weren’t
born yet. Do you feel pain or fear
looking at the time and place of your
nonexistence? Death is not the worst
thing that can happen to you!
Silence.
The spring sun that intensifies colours,
the bright clothes of people, the flowery shrubs in the park before the
clinic, the avenue of trees leading to
the Mirogoj Cemetery, everything
has, it seems, suddenly turned into a
black and white photograph, similar
to the past in films...
Then a voice from the speakers, like
a deus ex machina, finally says my
name and directs me to room number three. I move boldly along the
black and white tiles to get the results of my seventh test. After all, if
things go wrong, I’ll still have God.
Now I understand: I’m an atheist
who hopes he’s wrong. As I reach for
the cold door handle of the damned
doctor’s office, I hear a mouth organ
from the waiting room and the final
bars of the preventive blues:
don’t do it front
don’t do it back
your little darling’s got
devil in her womb.
54
RELA
TIONS
Relief
Borivoj Radakovi}
I’m sprawling comfortably in the
shade, with my feet on the railing.
Pero is sitting leaning his elbows on
his knees. He’s a bit subdued, he
doesn’t like heights. I always laugh
when I remember him once saying
that he likes height but only at a
distance. But my ninth floor is quite
normal for me. When I go down to
someone on the fourth floor, I have
the feeling that I would be able to
step out of the window and take a
walk, it’s so low down. I’m on holiday, Pero hasn’t had a job for the last
ten years... I’d far rather sit with him,
because we don’t have to talk, and if
I had gone to Crikvenica – no, I’m
not going to think about that now.
Mira is ... no, I won’t ... It’s summer
..., it’s good that she and the little
one have gone to the sea, they’ll both
have a good rest, and I’ll have a good
rest and get ready for the new school
year, I mean, fuck the bloody headmaster and some parents: let the children do this, let the children do that
– school’s not a parliament, for God’s
sake! You daren’t look a little sharply
at a child, these days, without its
parent storming in: ŠYou’re inhibiting my child!’ And the little genius is
already in the third year, and hardly
knows how to write a single letter by
hand! All they do is strum on a keyboard. Soon no one will be able to
write any more.
I take a beer from the table. I look
around. My Zagreb relaxes me. Maybe
Borivoj Radakovi} was born in 1951 in Zemun. During the 1980s he was the
editor of the culture section of a Zagreb based magazine called Oko. His
publications include novels Sjaj epohe (1990) and Virusi (2005); collections of
stories Ne, to nisam ja (1993/1999) and Porno (2002); a collection of plays
Plavi grad (2002); and a selection of prose works Jako (2003). He edited a
collection of lesbian poetry entitled Dvije (1992). Radakovi} is one of the
founders of Festival A Knjièvnosti (FAK). His translations from English include the works of H. Kureishi, W. Burroughs, B. Gifford, etc. Radakovi} is
considered a doyen of new Croatian literary scene and as such enjoys cult
status among younger urban audience and ’more intellectual’ readers favoring passionately playful language. His language is a fascinating magma in
which passion and ratio, tradition and invention permeate one another. A
special place in his polylinguistic passion is reserved for his interest in slang
and dialects.
because the view is always the same.
Apart from when they dropped those
two or three bombs. That column of
smoke by the theatre... They were
aiming at ballerinas, fucking bastards
... To the left and right: buildings,
high-rise; down below: the wood
around Bundek; opposite: the detached houses of Trnje; in the distance the green of Zrinjevac, the Cathedral, then Sljeme; then ... Europe,
then . . . the sky; then ... maybe a
black hole, why not? I always maintained that information was eternal,
everything is eternal, nothing is lost,
nothing is forgotten, you can’t destroy electrons. And electrons remember. Forever. And that guy’s
only now changing his theory, what’s
his name, begins with H ... The one
in the wheelchair, um ... Oh, fuck
it... On the left, above the Zagreb
hills there are a few clouds. They
could come to something. Please
God. Here – I’m only sitting, but I’m
dripping with sweat. It’s sultry. I put
the bottle to my lips, but I hear Pero:
ŠWhat do you think, what’s worse,
having your tongue or your eyelids
cut off?’
I think it’s a joke, so I laugh: ŠWhere
the hell did that come from...?’ but I
see that he’s quite serious.
ŠIt doesn’t matter, what’s worse: no
eyelids or no tongue?’
ŠNo tongue of course!’ I say without
thinking, but I see him screwing up
his face, so I hurry to justify my position: ŠImagine only saying: m, m,
m ... your whole life.’ I wanted to be
RELA
TIONS
witty too. I mean, that’s what you
have to do with these has-been lads,
you joke, you swear...
ŠAnd not being able to sleep your
whole life?’
ŠI think ...’ In fact I give up straight
away. I don’t feel like thinking about
it. And I don’t think about the fact
that there was something hard, almost aggressive in his tone. I’m feeling lazy. And it’s stifling. And outside nothing’s stirring. Not a breath
of air. Just two or three cars on Freedom Bridge, everyone’s left the city.
I nod my head towards Sljeme. ŠIt’s
going to rain.’
ŠWhen I was a kid I read about an
Indian torture...’
A bird flies past. A crow, or a rook,
or something. Like the one the kids
once caught behind the school. They
pulled its wings off, the monsters.
They were playing ŠAnimal Planet’! I
don’t think I’ve ever slapped anyone
so hard as I did little Hodak. And I
should have hit his father as well,
then let the dad and his son complain that they’re inhibited... This
one’s flying fast. I watch it go. I hear
Pero moving. He’s breaking the foil
on a little card and shaking a few
greenish pills onto his palm. His
hands are shaking.
ŠWhat’s that?’
ŠFrom the doctor.’ He picks up a
beer, takes a long swig.
ŠListen, beer and pills don’t really go
together...’
He puts the bottle down on the table,
still holding it with his outstretched
hand. He makes a face, as though a
pill has got stuck in his throat or he
wants to throw up. I want to ask him
why he’s taking them, but I say:
ŠBitter?’
ŠThat’s torture.’
ŠPills?!’
ŠBugger pills! No eyelids...!’ He’s
frowning, his face contorted. ŠI didn’t
sleep for nights because of that ...
Not now either ... I don’t sleep.’ He
looks up at me: ŠA knife, then they
A Little FAK Reader
take hold of your eyelid with their
thumb and first finger, stretch it and,
snip! The skin’s gone!’ He shudders. ŠLike circumcision!’
ŠWhat a comparison...!’ and I wonder
– where did he get the word Šcircumcision’ from? I want to tell him that
I was in Montenegro some years ago,
in Bar, and some guy was having his
son circumcised and invited 800
guests, and everyone brought a gift of
money, but he’s carrying on, as though
he’s moved away somewhere else.
ŠBoth the top and bottom lids. And
blood is pouring into your eyes. You
can’t wipe them to save your life ...’ I
imagine at once that I’m wearing a
rough woolen jumper, and raise my
arm to rub my eyes... ŠAnd you can
see everything around you. Try sleeping!’ He looks at me as though I was
arguing with him. ŠAnd the sun’s
baking ...! And the wind’s blowing
over your eyeballs, and dust is falling
into your eyes, and flies, all kinds of
shit sticks to them, a thorn jabs into
the white of your eye, into ...’ His
voice is increasingly hoarse, Šyour
cornea, into ... your pupil, into your
brain, into your fucking cunt. Into
your marrow ... I’ve been through
all that...’
ŠIn a dream, I’m glad to say ...’ I say,
getting up, and I put a hand on his
shoulder as I pass. ŠI’m going for a
pee.’
I didn’t realise he was so emotional.
It’s obviously really got to him, but –
what can I do. I’m surprised he never
mentioned it before. Okay, we haven’t
met up for a while, although we live
in the same apartment block – he on
the second, me on the ninth. I invited him up here for a beer, nothing
more, because ... there’s no one else
around. And he’s the best of men,
we’ve known each other ... forever.
We were at elementary school together. He didn’t get on at school,
but he got some sort of training.
Honestly, the salt of the earth, he’ll
do anything for you. Fridge, toaster,
55
short circuit, something needs to be
carried – just give him a call, he’ll fix
it. He never takes money, it’s got
quite awkward. We’re all like that,
those of us who’re left in the building, everyone knows something. I
come off worst, fuck it: I write their
funeral orations. I teach their children and I bury them. I always make
the whole crowd weep, and they like
that. I’ve already seen off six people
in our block. When poor Marijan
was killed on the Kupa, his was the
first funeral I spoke at ...
There’s a spider in the corner by the
toilet. Fuck it, if Mira was here ...
ŠGo on, little one, enjoy yourself,
we’ve got another ten days ...’ I’ve
told her a hundred times – don’t kill
spiders! I say I’m superstitious! I’m
not superstitious, but – let it be, for
God’s sake, it’s alive, what have you
got against it? My stream is stopping. I take a little piece of skin on
my cock between my thumb and
forefinger and rub it a bit. Then I
take hold of my eyelid, and stretch it
too. Identical! Where did he get that
idea? Hey, are you crazy, I say of
myself. Sometimes he really surprises
me. Like when he fucked Jura...
ŠHey, remember Jura ...’ I say when
I get back to the balcony. He’s staring straight in front of him. It’s all
quite black over Sljeme. ŠI can’t wait
for it to rain.’
ŠThe tongue’s nothing.’
ŠOh, that’s enough!’
ŠWhy won’t you let me finish?’
ŠI’m not stopping you, but ...’
ŠSo why are you interrupting me?
You always want everything your
own way. That’s what all the lads
say. And you haven’t a clue!’
What’s he mean Šall the lads’? Bugger
him, I, with my teaching diploma,
make no distinction between any of
them, I mean here I am with him,
having a normal conversation. I’m
not like Zac, or rather Dr Vidmar...
Strutting about, fuck it, he doesn’t
know anyone in the block any more.
56
I look at Pero, who the hell are you
to tell me I haven’t a clue...
ŠAbout what?’
ŠYou haven’t a clue what happens.’
ŠWhen?’
ŠWhen your eyelids are cut off.’
ŠOh, fuck your eyelids!’ I point to his
bottle: ŠDrink up and I’ll bring some
more and stop going on about it ...’
ŠThere, you see, you’re interrupting!’
I can’t stop myself, but I stare straight
at him, idiot that I am, and say: ŠIt
hurts. It takes a genius to know that?’
ŠYou see you haven’t a clue! First it
stings, then it hurts ...’
ŠSame bloody thing!’
ŠIt’s not the same bloody thing! It’s
all a process. First it stings.’ How
persistent he is, damn it. If he was
always so systematic, he wouldn’t
keep being out of work. He can only
hold out for a few days. A thought
flashes into my mind: once, long ago,
maybe in the eighth grade, I tore his
jacket. Accidentally, we were kids,
and I knew it was new, and they were
poor. He cried. That bothered me
for ages. Fuck it, I didn’t mean to.
Maybe he’s getting his own back?
Suddenly he hits me on the shoulder, startling me. ŠLook!’ He separates his upper and lower lids with
the thumb and forefinger of both
hands and stares at me. His eyes
bulge, the whites are suddenly large,
and in the centre the corneas are yellow, in fact for the first time in my
life I see that he has yellow eyes, and
as he stretches the lower lids downwards, they show their pink lining.
He looks like an idiot, sad and stupid at the same time. ŠAnd imagine
if you were like this, not for a whole
lifetime, for a week. That’s enough
... Try it, try it!’ He doesn’t move his
hands. ŠGo on!’ Then he leans towards me: ŠWell!’
ŠOh, come on, the kids in my school
do that.’
Š You do it! Come on, well ...!’ and at
that he kicks me in the shin under
the table.
It’s like an electric shock. All my
nerves flare, my body jerks, my blood
starts to race. He didn’t kick me
hard, but ...
ŠWhat the fuck?’
He’s still got that idiotic look – mad,
innocent, dangerous. He doesn’t seem
to notice that I have completely lost
it. Or he doesn’t care. Or is that
what he wants?
ŠWell?’ he says.
I look at him. ŠIs it because of your
jacket?’
ŠJacket? What jacket? What are you
waiting for? Come on!’ He kicks me
under the table again.
ŠWait then!’ Fuck you, what the hell
are you thinking of! Suddenly I don’t
want to stop myself, I take a swig
from the bottle, then bring it crashing down onto the table, close my eyes
tight, then open them wide and lean
towards him. ŠThere! What now?’
He leans his elbows on the table and
stares at me.
I stare back at him. Like who can
hold out longer? Just look at him:
he’s not stirring. Just staring like a
basset hound. In fact it’s as though I
was seeing him for the first time. In
fact, he has no expression on his face
at all. It’s stupid – this could lead
anywhere. Okay. We’ll do it, and
then we’ll go down to the bar. I
can’t stand insistent people. Besides,
it’s easier for him. The sun is lower
in the west now, and it’s glaring underneath the cloud straight into my
eyes. Well, that’s enough of that: I
turn towards the city. I can sit like
this for three hours. Sljeme has already disappeared. It’s going to be
some storm! I need to blink, but I
won’t. Out of spite! Bugger him,
since he’s driven me to it, then we’ll
keep going to the end! I move my
eyes rapidly from left to right. I can
feel him still gawping wide-eyed at
me. As though we’re in a madhouse.
And I’ve let myself get drawn into
this! I can cheat – how can he know
whether I’ve just blinked or not –
RELA
TIONS
only, what for? Besides, fuck it, it
stings, it really does sting.
ŠI’ve had enough.’ I want to pick up
my beer casually, but my hands fly
up of their own accord and I start
rubbing my eyes.
ŠYou see?’ He’s still holding his lids
open. He says hoarsely, ŠYou see how
it stings?’ His lips seem to be moving by themselves between his hands.
ŠAfterwards it burns as though lasers
were boring straight into your eyes.’
Only then does he lower his hands.
There are deep lines under both his
eyes. He closes his eyes tight, but
doesn’t rub them, just shakes his
head. He doesn’t open them. Tears
squeeze out between his tightly closed
lids and slip down his face. He doesn’t
wipe them. I turn away from him, I
can’t look at him like this ... I feel
uncomfortable, embarrassed. I hear
him saying: ŠIt doesn’t hurt till later,’
but in a muffled voice, he must be
wiping his eyes and face with something now. As though he was choking, or really crying. But I still don’t
check. I don’t like it when someone
dumps all their demons on my table.
Fuck you, mate, we’re not that close,
I’m not interested... But he carries on:
ŠThen your veins start exploding ...’
I glance at him again. He’s grimacing, as though his capillaries really
were bursting. ŠThen your eyes dry
out. Like dried figs ... like crackling
... like shit...’
ŠCome on, don’t give me all this
crap,’ I say, standing up abruptly
and collecting the bottles. I hear him
getting up, shouting after me:
ŠThere you see, you won’t give in!’
What the hell’s got into him? We’ve
only drunk a couple of beers ... Unless he had been drinking before he
came up to my place. And who knows
what sort of pills he’s on. Maybe he
can’t stand the air pressure. The biometerologists are right, it affects ...
But, that’s enough, no more funny
stuff! We’ll just drink this, then
down we go to Toni’s. I’ll buy him
RELA
TIONS
one drink, and then I’m off. I
don’t like it when you’re having a drink, and someone starts
snivelling.
I chuck the empty bottles into
the crate, take two new ones
out of the fridge and go back
to the balcony. To my surprise, Pero is standing by the
railing, looking down. I leave
the bottles on the table and
go over to him to see what
he’s looking at. Nothing. Just
then someone comes out of
the building. Oh, I know her
at once even from this height:
ŠLook, it’s little Iva,’ I say,
and actually I want to make
him think of guys’ things to
forget what we’ve been talking about. ŠDad’s an idiot,
but mummy’s ... Eh?’
Her mummy used to be a
stewardess. She never came to
parents’ evenings, but she always caught me in the lift,
like, listen, I know what your job’s
like, but Iva’s having a bad time, you
know, my husband... A mobile rings.
It’s not mine. Her husband got several years in clink. Some hanky-panky,
financial engineering. It rings again.
ŠYour mobile, Pero.’
ŠEh?’ As though he was on another
planet, fuck it.
ŠYour mobile.’ I point at his pocket.
ŠIt’s ringing.’
ŠEh!’ He takes out the phone. ŠHullo?’
Little Iva is already disappearing behind the block. She must be going
out, to town. I used to give her nothing but top marks, because of her
mummy. But now, not a word of
thanks, she doesn’t acknowledge me.
She’s a cheeky kid, she walks cheekily,
her hair swings on her head. Sixteen.
When I see her in the lift, those lowslung trousers, below the belly-button, thin skin, taut ... fuck me if I
won’t lose it one day and run my
hand over her flat little belly. It’s
unbearable! How do the boys man-
A Little FAK Reader
57
his profile towards me, he’s
staring out into space. ŠNo
one knows me.’ He’s nearly
shouting now.
ŠHang on a minute...’ I want
to tell him to calm down, because the neighbours, the next
door balcony, they’re the limit,
you can’t have the radio on
remotely loudly without them
calling and saying it’s bothering them. Pero’s looking at me,
but he’s saying into the phone:
ŠYou don’t know me, I tell
you!’
A different man. Cracked up.
Must be the pills. I have a
mind to take the bottles back,
but he picks his off the table
and drags at it. What on earth
was I thinking of, bringing
them...?
And what the hell was I thinkBorivoj Radakovi} ing of, when we met in the
lift, and I invited him to my
place for a beer? What have
age with them? And I don’t know we got in common, the fact that we
what I’ll do in two or three years went to school together – fuck school!
time, when my little one gets into He’s plastered, the slob, and he’s
that kind of thing... Who can look at drugged himself, and now ... OK,
that? Her little tits have already be- it’s better that he drinks it up and
gun. Like little Bibica Ban in the gets completely legless, then I can
second row of desks. Maybe I should shove him into the lift. Just look at
have gone with them to the sea, to him! Boy, are you drunk, you idiot!
begin getting used to it. That always A violent gust of wind. All of a sudgets me going, like now, I can feel it, den. I turn round.
my ears are burning, my cheeks are The storm!
tingling, I run my hand over my fore- Down in the little park, the trees are
swaying wildly. The wind is howlhead – I’m sweating.
It’s hot as hell. It’s hard to breathe, ing. Cartons and plastic bags fly
those cigarettes will kill me, bugger through the air. Just let the first drop
them with their cigarettes. When is fall, just let it start. It’ll do this fool
it finally going to rain! It’s already good as well. I look at the sky: get on
reached the Sava, it’s overcast, clouds, with it!
leaden. There’s no sun any more. This And: it starts! The first drop bursts
is the worst. And little Iva will get wet, on the ledge. If there had been a fly
mummy’s treasure. Or she’ll scuttle there, it would have smashed it, the
into some fool’s flat and have it off drop was so heavy.
ŠHey,’ I say. ŠIt’s started! Rain!’ I run
... She’s bound to have long ago ...
ŠYou don’t know me,’ I hear Pero my hands through my hair. ŠThat’s
say into the phone. I didn’t even good! See how much easier it is to
notice him sitting down. He’s got breathe,’ I say, inhaling. Ozone, fresh
58
air! Power! ŠCome on!’ I shout, into
the rain, as though all my problems
were solved. Downpour, deluge, horizontal rain, torrent. I turn round, and
shout delightedly: ŠHey, man, get
this!’ I stretch out my hand to encourage him to stand up.
But he goes on sitting as before. He
waves my hand away.
ŠYou don’t know me either ... You
don’t know anyone!’
He looks at me – viciously, damn it.
ŠWhat the hell’s got into you, enjoy
it, look ...!’
ŠYou’re a fool!’
Well, fucking hell! Suddenly something gives in me too. I’m aware of
it, but I can’t stop myself:
ŠYou’re talking crap, what the fuck
are you on about! You’ve been banging on sadistically for the last two
hours, some shit about eyelids, you’re
slobbering like an idiot, you’ve developed a whole theory ...’
ŠIt’s not a theory!’
ŠWhat’s “not a theory”? First it stings,
then it hurts. It’s a process...’
ŠI know that!’
ŠYou don’t know a fucking thing!’
ŠI know it!’ He roars! He looks at me
crazily. He’s shaking. Suddenly I go
numb. My body knows. I know what
he’s going to say. He speaks:
Š I cut a guy’s eyelids off! Like this!’
As he made the movement, I could
feel myself stiffen. He’s transformed.
ŠI took a prisoner of my own! I cut
them off! To see what would happen!’ Then, through his teeth: ŠSo
don’t you talk shit!’
I’m reeling. He gets up, like a zombie, knocks over the table, falls backwards against the wall, stops himself,
awkwardly. He’s grey. My back is
sodden with rain. He pushes himself
off the wall. He tries to hold himself
up on the table, but the table gives
way, he falls towards me. I grab him
to stop him falling, but he grasps me.
He disgusts me and I’m scared.
He’s saying something. I hear glass
shattering.
ŠMira will kill me if the windows
break!’ I grab the excuse. I push him
away with all my strength. I rush
into the other room: the windows
are wide open, the rain is pounding
onto the parquet floor. I struggle
with the curtains, my spine is tingling with fear, I turn round to see
whether he has followed me. I close
the windows. Bloody, fucking hell!
The floor is soaked. I run into the
bathroom for a cloth, there isn’t one,
I grab a towel. I don’t look towards
the balcony, the most important thing
for me is not to see him. The most
important thing is to pretend that
there’s no tension, that I’m carrying
out routine actions. And not to hear
him. I run back into the room, throw
the towel onto the floor and mop it
with my foot – I’m afraid of bending
down. Rain is beating against the
window. It’s suddenly stifling in the
room. I can hear my heart thumping.
ŠHey, you still alive?’ I shout, as
casually as I can, as I rush to the
bathroom. I throw the towel into the
bath, and use another to dry my
hands. I go to the kitchen, from there
I look onto the balcony, but – he’s
not there. A new wave of fear breaks
over me: he’s hiding! He’s going to
kill me, fuck it! I don’t know when I
farted, I can just smell it. He’s confessed to what he did, now he’s probably ready for anything. ŠHey, where
are you?’ I shout, but there’s no answer. A chill runs down my spine.
ŠPero!’ I glance frantically around
me, I’m burning.
Damn your eyes, are you lying in
wait for me?
I quickly take a knife from the drawer.
I’ll defend myself, fuck you, this is
my apartment, this is where I live
with my wife and daughter, and
you’re not bloody going to ... I’ll cut
your throat! Where are you?
I hide the knife along my arm, go to
the toilet, I think, maybe he went in
there while I was in the other room.
I lean against the door: ŠPero! You
RELA
TIONS
having a pee?’ I don’t know whether
he’s going to rush the door or leap
on me from behind. I shudder from
top to toe. I look round, then knock.
Then again. I hold the knife ready. I
open the door – he’s not there. I go
into the bedroom, then my daughter’s
room, I peer round the door, back to
the kitchen – he’s nowhere.
He’s gone, damn his bloody nerve.
You chose me to tell about the man
you killed, fuck it? I throw the knife
down on the table. I don’t give a
flying fuck for you or your eyelids or
the war or your nerves. Not in my
house. The knife is lying with its
blade upwards on the table. I quickly
put it back in the drawer so as not to
look at it. It’s a good thing he’s gone,
anything could have happened. He
could at least have let me know, bugger him, and not leave me shitting
myself with fear... My hands are
shaking as I take my mobile from my
pocket to call him, but then I say,
out loud: ŠBut who gives a fuck, you
idiot,’ you come here to tell me..., I
put my phone back in my pocket,
Šyou have to dump your crap in my
life?’ I light a cigarette.
I’m shaking all over as I pick up the
chair and table. It’s exactly like when
that Pole met me in the Underpass.
Afterwards I dreamed about him,
and now I’ll dream about this lunatic. His nose was running, but he
said that he had come to defend us,
and that we didn’t know how to appreciate that. A mercenary, fuck it.
That they had a graveyard where they
buried them. What did I care! He
held me by the arm and wouldn’t let
me go. Fuck off!
Now it’s pouring steadily. Calmly.
A summer downpour. I stretch my
arms out in front of me, palms up
and raise them to the rain. Drops
beat on me, exploding. I bend over
so that they fall on my head.
As though I’d been struck by lightning, as though I was weightless! Pero
is lying in front of the apartment
RELA
TIONS
block! Crumpled. I can’t see his
head. Several people are standing
round him, some are running out of
the block opposite. I hear an ambulance siren. ŠDon’t touch him,’ I
shout. ŠWait for me!’
But, this is my moment! I take a step
back from the railing. I stand calmly,
my arms by my sides and close my
eyes. I stand for a moment or two.
Then I step out decisively. I climb
onto the railing, straighten up, press
down on my feet, spread my arms,
breathe deeply, and one, two, three
and – there – I soar! I hold my breath
in my lungs until I feel secure. The
rain bothers me a bit, I haven’t flown
for a long time. I make a circle at the
A Little FAK Reader
same height. I enjoy the tension in
my shoulders. I shout from up here:
ŠNow you see you should have come
to school that day! Then you’d be
able to fly!’ I move a little away from
the building, then come back. On
the fifth floor, I pick some flowers at
the Markovic flat as I pass. The
ambulance arrives and a man and
woman in white slowly get out of it.
They are struggling to open an umbrella. ŠHey, Pero, don’t worry,’ I
shout. ŠI’ll speak at your funeral!’
The people in white have almost
reached him, so I drop down more
quickly. At the second floor, I slow
down. I spread my hands, my fingers, it’s a big effort, but I stop. Be-
59
fore they get to him, I throw him a
flower.
I stand in front of him, I yell: ŠDid
you jump on purpose! Did you fall
by accident?’ My legs give way, I fall
onto my knees in his blood diluted
by the rain and ask the corpse in a
whisper: ŠDid I push you?’
(The translation was originally published in Croatian Nights, edited by
Tony White, Matt Thorne and Borivoj Radakovi}; published by Serpent
Tail, 2005.)
Translated by
Celia Hawkesworth
60
RELA
TIONS
The Convalescent
Robert Peri{i}
U
gh! – this is how I stared at the
ceiling, at its never changing lines
and hues, every morning of the week.
To be sure, what we call morning
here is the result of the abnormal
way of life which I’m not to blame
for, but rather nature or God or
Spinoza or whoever it was that came
before me and wound-up (what a
word!) the time that we have today.
This is to say that in my private form
of capitalism twenty-four hours is
too short a period for to turn over
someone’s life. Thirty-six hours would
be the minimum, really, because my
time, the only money I have, and my
life, the only real capital at hand,
turn into one another so, so slowly,
extremely slowly, like death, you
know, slow. So every day I end up
with a couple of hours that, no matter what I do, I can’t turn into anything, this time simply remains time,
an apparent surplus of time, and who
knows what could become of it? Perhaps in a few thousand years (more
or less) it’ll become capital, and because of it they will pierce platforms
into the sea of time, just as today
they search for oil, ancient, forgotten oil. It’s hard to speak about it
today, but one thing is sure: due to
the aforementioned surplus, every
night (and this night we have to take
with reservations) I fall asleep a few
hours later than the night before and
then tomorrow I wake up later than
yesterday, constantly seizing into to-
Robert Peri{i} was born in 1969 in Split. He currently lives in Zagreb. Peri{i}
founded and edited two magazines for culture, Godine and Godine nove. He
works at the Globus weekly magazine as a literary critic. His works include:
Dvorac Amerika, 1995, poetry; Moè{ Pljunuti onoga tko bude pitao za nas,
1999, short stories; Uàs i veliki tro{kovi, 2002, short stories. In 2000 his
comedy of catastrophe Kultura u predgra|u was staged at the Gavella
Theatre.
morrow’s time, living in a permanent lack of time, wasting days.
I’d wake up and then again throw
myself back in the bed, I’d try to fall
asleep, read something, listen to the
radio, catch another half hour of
sleep, contemplate. It was around
eleven o’clock, midnight was near, I
got up – why know, fuck – made
some coffee, and quietly enjoyed the
desire (yes, my life was coming back
to me) and solitude for this night
and for the senseless morning feeling
when, nicely dazed, I’d play the pinball machine at a nearby cafe, observing the women at the tram station
through the café’s window, their warm
breath in the cold morning, the white
morning with factory smokestacks
in the distance, behind which you
glimpse something resembling a wall
or happiness.
But the room, man, ask me what I
was doing in that room since I’d
moved in?
I was staring. Always staring at the
never changing lines and hues on the
ceiling, on the walls, I was staring,
man, always staring at the same rippling of the poorly layered wallpaper, full of hatred, as if hypnotized, I
was staring at their infinitely complicated hues whose absurd pattern
preoccupies you so much that you’re
ready to follow it all the way to the
corners, where you finally come across
a disparity, an error, as though you
sought that in life. Because it’s all
poorly cut and unevenly layered and
if it weren’t for the healthy, wellmaintained cobwebs in those corners, those walls of mine, at which I
stare all the time, all the time I stare
at them, they’d just take off – wham,
bam, thank you m’am. Because those
errors in the corners are a debacle!
Either there’s order or there isn’t
one, and if there isn’t one... don’t
even mention it, at least while I’m
staring at those patchwork corners
every morning of the week. Do you
know what an effect it has on your
psyche? Imagine that. I’d give up
immediately. Nothing could move
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me, and for what? For what, when
it’s clear that any order, no matter
how perfectly conceived, infinite (like
every row on those wallpapers or
tiles, each and every one!), when every one of those infinite rows goes
only to the first corner. And in the
corner... nothing fits. A total failure!
That’s why I decided to change rooms.
Imagine that, you wake up at midnight and then you’d look for a
room. I looked for one with only one
colour, without wallpapers, with a
telephone, cheap, no problem, red,
blue, doesn’t matter, as long as it’s
one colour, one God and one bunk.
You would look for one. Maybe you
really would, maybe that’s how nuts
you are. Maybe you’re so full of
hope... but not me. No. Never. I
think that a room is a room. A room,
I think that I... well, it’s hard to
explain, I think that, fuck it, I exist
only in this room. I’m convinced of
it. A room is like a woman.
What woman now?
I turned on the radio. To settle my
thoughts. To hear what’s happening in the world.
Something must be happening. The
night program. I know this announcer:
he’ll read poetry.
But, okay, just as long something is on.
I drink coffee in my room in Rude{.
I stare at the walls, I’ve got used to it,
I think, that’s alright, so what?! I’ve
been here for a few months and it’s
good. No one visits me, no one bothers me, only if winter would let go a
little, spring will be great here, summer excellent, better than anywhere
else, I mean man, this is lower level:
it’ll be nice and cool. The only thing
is that my boiler doesn’t work, that’s
really screwed. It really is. I think
that I’ll go take a shower at the student dormitory, but I don’t feel like
it every single time, fuck it, it’s far,
then you catch a cold, go to fucking
buggery because of that.
We live here, the furnace and I. A
wood furnace with a porthole. You
A Little FAK Reader
can see the light, the coals. I often lift
the lid; see if there’s enough wood,
watch the fire. I feed it well. It’s nice
and warm. Even though the windows leak, and though it’s a basement, or lower level, I don’t know
what it’s actually called, doesn’t
matter, it’s... warm. When looking
from the inside the windows are...
high. But they are at the ground level.
That’s why I put up some red cloth
over. So you can’t see inside. In case
I ever bring a woman over. But you
can still see it, I checked. Not as
clearly, true, but when there’s light
inside and dark outside, you can see
it all, fuck it. But you can’t see outside from the inside.
But, I burn a lot of wood. That’s my
fancy. I just burn. You can’t describe
it, the furnace, it’s crazy, man, frost
all over, you go outside, you freeze
instantly, but the stove burns hard,
man, it’s warm, hot, the temperature reaches twenty-five, thirty, for
sure. But those fucking windows let
in the draught, so you have to feed
the fire all the time. You just have to.
But so be it, it’s fun.
I sit in my room in Rude{, I watch
the furnace. It seems to me I know
many things, things no one else knows.
This here. A room in the basement,
walls with wallpapers, leaky windows. This cooking under ground
with bad insulation, red cloth over
the window, inferno.
Silence. At moments such as this I
felt a great, huge distance between
myself and other people; it was a
feeling that allowed a man to experience all sorts of things.
I heard someone knocking.
Sometimes I imagine that I hear the
sound of knocking, nothing unusual.
Sometimes it happened I’d imagine
that I hear someone calling me, just
as if it was for real. That’s why I
didn’t move. I’d just lit a cigarette.
But someone knocked again. On the
window. It must be a raven. It happens. A junkie told me all about it a
61
couple of years ago. Later it happened to me too. It’s here to tell me
something horribly important, but...
I’m not interested. I’m through with
it. I don’t want to hear any message.
Yes, there’s that knock again. On
the window. It’s starting to really
piss me off. I mean, what? What?
I get up and go into the hall and
unlock the door. Because the window is difficult to open. Besides, I
fastened on that rag. In case I bring
over a woman.
I go outside. I climb the stairs, yes, I
see a silhouette behind the corner,
bent towards the window. He looks
at me and says: “Hey!”
It’s cold. Dark. I see a hairy guy. I’ve
no idea who he is.
“Hey, it’s me, Cifra.” For real, it’s
Cifra. Now, where’d he come from?
Our cigarettes glow in the dark. I
look Cifra in the face; he’s skinny,
too skinny.
“What’s wrong, you can’t recognise
me?” Cifra smiles nervously. He’s a
little pissed that I don’t recognise
him. I don’t recognise good old
Cifra.
“Where’d you come from?” When I
don’t know what to say, I always ask
something. It’s cold, how long will
this conversation last?
“Let’s go inside,” says Cifra, as though
I came to his place. Cifra is a master
for reversing roles.
“What do you want inside, you need
a glass of water?” I pretend to be
joking.
“Come on, don’t fuck around,” says
Cifra with a grin, because we dig
each another immediately. He digs
that type of humour. Crazy wacko
Sler.
And so we climb down the stairs.
Cifra first, then me.
And so Cifra’s already in my room,
sprawled on the armchair after moving a pile of dusty papers from it.
“What’s this?” he asks. He throws
his backpack on the floor, something’s
bothering him. He looks around fu-
62
riously, tries to find his cigarettes,
wiggles around until he reaches for
his back pocket; finally he grabs them,
looks at me with a request and with
understanding, and asks: “Have you
got a light?”
“I have.” I’m confused, I light his
cigarette carefully, like when you
have to nurse someone. All of a sudden you somehow become hospitable... A light, Cifra, all those things...
but Cifra is a fucker. I know.
Cifra looks around, then looks at
me, I notice that something is bugging him; he has a story to tell. The
story of a fucked-up life. Cifra knows
that I’ll understand. We’ve spoken
about it a hundred times. About shit.
“What brings you here? What’s happening down there?” I’m helping
him to get started. I haven’t heard
that stuff for a long time. C’mon.
“Well... I’m up to my neck in shit,
man. I mean, they sold me a story,
motherfucking cops. Like I was nicking things for dope. Whose things
are they? Well, mine, you dickhead,
whose are they gonna be, yeah, but
you can’t afford a video, look at you,
where did you get the computer, the
synthesiser, you don’t have the receipts and fuck it... I don’t have the
receipts and now what?” Cifra gets
visibly upset. He can’t accept the
injustice, no, he can’t. Everything is
against us. That’s why Cifra is livid.
I mean, he’s gotten over it a little.
He’s livid enough to understand. To
understand that he suffered damage.
That they squealed on him and fucked
him over. Everyone except us. You,
me, Pezo... and Frane, yeah. That’s
all that was left of the crew.
“Raaadio – activity – pam – pa – ram
– pa – pa – ram – pa – pa,” I quietly
sing and stare at Cifra. Where’d you
come from?
“You’re clean, right?” asks Cifra to
keep the conversation alive. He’s
pleased. “I mean, you got off, man,
and you were the worst of all. How?
In fact, it’s impossible.” Cifra doesn’t
believe it. He won’t believe unless
he sees it with his own eyes.
“I’m going straight too.” Well, that
is news. I tap his shoulder in a sign of
approval. Cifra is a miracle of innocence. Like a big blonde whore mourning for New York. Like sailors in the
harbour swimming in syphilis. The
moment the conversation got more
serious, like when the adult, mature
people converse, Cifra would be quitting horse that instant, he’s been on
it for, eh, three hundred months
now. “Yeah, that’s how it goes.”
“Man, I couldn’t find you for the
life of me.” Cifra can’t get confused
so easily. Like a bird he looks around
the walls with a totally empty gaze.
He is as high as a kite. “It’s good for
you here, eh?”
“Well, you know, I’m looking for a
room, fuck it. But, I’ve already paid
for this month, so I’m still here for
another fifteen days. Then I’m moving, I mean, I’ve had enough of this
room. Understand?” Cifra understands me one hundred per cent.
Cifra is still seemingly surveying things,
then says seriously: “Pure existentialism.”
Cifra used to read books, his sister
bought them for him. Sometimes
when we’d get stoned, you could see
Cifra talk about some things and how
a lot of it got muddled in his head.
He’d ask some fucked-up questions.
How come this, how come that?
Later, when he got hooked on horse,
he stopped doing that. Only sometimes, if he wanted to pick up some
chick, he’d mention Hesse, Siddharta
and Steppenwolf. And the like. That’s
why I’ve looked at him opaquely
when he mentioned existentialism.
“Bring anything to smoke?” I ask.
“Uh-huh!” It is clear that Cifra’s
been waiting for that question; I
regret it immediately. This means
he is accepted, shit is the admission
fee, that’s how it always was, and
Cifra immediately begins to roll a
joint. “It’s good, man. It’s first class.
RELA
TIONS
I thought you didn’t smoke anymore.”
“Well, I haven’t for a long time, but
it doesn’t matter.”
At that moment, then, I hated Cifra.
I hated him. Why? How was it that I
hated him? Since when? I can’t remember. But you start to hate a man
in an instant. Then you try to forget
so that you don’t think about it. But
you hate more and more, deeper and
deeper.
“Here, take it.” Cifra handed me the
joint.
There were days when I hated everything and everyone. I hated little children. The strong ones fought the
smaller, weaker ones, I saw kids become isolated, I saw how they became cunning, how they thought.
Perhaps hate isn’t the right word. I
simply... wished they didn’t exist.
They and all those stories around
them. All that moronic babbling and
totally senseless hope invested in
those children who, alone behind the
corners, scheme their revenge. And
all that wretched money that struts
around God knows why. That money
and those toys, and those memories
and all that. And this waste called
Cifra. Everything he says misses me
by a few metres. I speak and he
doesn’t listen to me at all. He’s always turning over the same shit. Always. He’s afraid of everything except his own shit. That’s the type of
a fellow he is.
“Can you feel it?”
“Uh-huh.”
“But it’s slow-burning, you know,
it’ll only begin to hit you now. Little
by little.”
“Slow-burning, eh?”
“Uh-huh.”
“This is slow dying for it. We slowly
smoke away its life, it burns in agony...
it’s dying. Understand? A slow death.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Only living things can burn.”
“Bah, all kinds of things come to
your mind.”
RELA
TIONS
A Little FAK Reader
63
64
“Well, only living things can burn,
only living, understand, has it ever
occurred to you?” I ask Cifra with fire
in my eyes. His eyes are murky green.
“It has, I’ve thought about that,” he
manages to negotiate over his tongue.
He’s lying. He simply wants to get
rid of me. Me and this topic. He
doesn’t want to think about that.
“You thought about it my ass! Can
you see how hot it is in my place, can
you feel it? Huh? Look how it’s
burning in here, look.” I raise the lid,
I want him to hear the fire, here at
my place it’s alight, man, listen to
the flames. “Look, listen to how it
crackles, it’s alive, everything.”
I throw in a log, then another one,
bigger.
“Only living things! And staring lizards can burn,” I say. He looks like a
lizard. A drugged-up cold animal.
“You’ve always been nuts,” Cifra
says, as if what I’ve said is funny.
Don’t get carried away, let’s get back
to where we’ve always been. Get
back to earth, that’s how a junkie
thinks. Zero. Zilch.
It occurred to me to throw him into
the furnace. If I could catch him and
throw him into some sort of big furnace, I’d surely do it. This furnace
was small.
“I’ll cut you up into pieces and throw
you into the furnace.”
“Come on, stop fucking around,
what the fuck...”
“Who’s fucking around? You’re
fucking around! You came here because you’re fucking around! Don’t
fuck with me, baby, when you’ve
already come into this heat. Look at
this furnace!” I couldn’t remember
how this conversation started. But I
was furious. Totally furious. Those
idiots say that shit relaxes you. Not
true. I always go crazy.
Cifra stared at the furnace. He was
silent. I watched him. After a minute
or two, he closed his eyes. He thought
that was the smartest thing to do. He
fell asleep.
I was beside myself, totally. I was
pathetic. Angry and crazy in some
basement somewhere in Rude{. The
devil that’s always behind me, the
devil who, like a military expert, inspects the map of the area, says to his
protégé: “Somewhere in Rude{.” And
with a red felt-tipped pen circles the
neighbourhood. They found me,
again. Cifra brought them. The devil
himself sent him, I knew that. I
looked at Cifra sleeping on the dusty
couch. In a half-lying position, openmouthed, saliva dripping, he was on
heroin and that was it. No further
discussion. The end, baby. The end.
I watched him, I remember, fuck it,
I always remember something, man,
I remember the haircut he had in the
first year of high school. In the second year he didn’t want to smoke
grass. He was scared. Nor in third
year, we used to smoke in the school
toilets, but not Cifra. He was timid
and good, he was gentle and fine, for
a long time he followed in those footsteps, whose footsteps I don’t know,
but, fuck it, he went, went, and then
suddenly he got totally fucked-up.
All of a sudden. He became the star.
All of a sudden. He dropped out of
music school and formed a band
which immediately became the main
act, everyone was aware of that. He,
a couple of nerds with glasses and a
girl, who squealed and screamed from
a distance, formed Kid Acid and they
were off their rockers non-stop. That
was their style. I mean, we were all
happy that we knew them. We were
all hopeless and unknown, pimply
and deserving of every passing scorn,
but Cifra was brilliant, brilliant,
people talked about what he could
do with a guitar. He dyed his hair
white. He and Hilda. The girl was
utterly mad. Totally. And the foureyed nerds, who came from military
families, they practiced day and night,
man, their old man would drill them,
at least that’s what people said. Kid
Acid appeared on television, on Stereo-
RELA
TIONS
vision and Hit of the Month, and I
explained to my folks, who never
believed me, that Cifra was my friend,
a great friend, even though I didn’t
have any great friends at the time.
“Who? Who? This one?” my folks
asked me, and they never remembered Cifra, they were all the same to
them. Everyone was painted white.
And dressed in black. Crazy.
“Not that one. This one’s Cifra.”
“But it says: Ozzy.” Cifra gave himself the nickname Ozzy, but it never
stuck.
“Yeah, Ozzy. That Ozzy, that’s Cifra.”
“And where’s he from? Ozzy?” my
folks wondered.
Now Cifra sleeps on my couch. It’d
be better if he were like the rest. So
that I don’t know or recognise him
at all. And not know where he’s
from.
That whole idiotic history: Kid Acid,
imagine that! Since then Cifra had
gone through numerous phases, Kid
Acid broke up, what else could they
do, that was seven or eight years ago,
and now I watch him burn. He’s not
burning, I’m only imagining it. Because Cifra was afraid of hell and
such things. Oh, sure he was! When
he first got hooked, that was just the
beginning, everything was still fresh,
memories of parents, responsibilities, those things, as I was saying,
when he first got hooked, he fell into
total panic. He almost went crazy,
he tried to make the situation look
drastic, he was a good actor. He knew
how to play the part. His parents
tried anything they could think of.
Talks, assurances, love, psychiatrists.
And... me. To his parents I was his
salvation. I was a fairly good student
and I wasn’t painted white. Let Cifra
hang out with me, everything will be
fine. I was wonderful. When I only
think about how sick I was then...
crazy. Cifra and his horse were the
last thing I needed. What obsessions,
what idiocy, what shit, what everything... I can’t believe that it was
RELA
TIONS
me... I mean, it is impossible I managed to survive. No, all of that is
gone now. Destroyed. Dust and ashes.
But at some point, thank God, Cifra’
parents realised that it would be best
for Cifra to be friends with an Jehovah’s Witness from our street,
whose name I don’t want to say. No,
I don’t want to conjure him up. I’d
conjure up anything else first. He
was as boring as death, something
the opposite of life; he constantly
repeated the same thing, which he
never understood. He was a Jehovah’s Witness and was proud of it.
He never proselytised to me because
he knew, because he felt it, I saw it in
his look and he couldn’t do anything about it – I knew that he hated
Jesus. He was afraid of Jesus. Once I
asked him why he hated Jesus and he
ran away. He ran away from me as
though I were the devil. Instead of
confronting me. That’s what a Witness would do.
I watch Cifra sleeping with his mouth
open here in Rude{. His father works
on the docks, he weighs one hundred kilos and in fact doesn’t know
how to talk because he feels something malicious in language, but Cifra
– his son, became a Jehovah’s Witness. No one was happy about it, but
everyone was abjectly satisfied. He
was with the Jehovah’s Witnesses, I
don’t know, about half a year. He
was the same as the rest, he was
strangely, unbearably, extremely wearisome. It was the period when he
began to avoid me. He told me that
there’s no Virgin Mary in the Bible.
I told him: “Stop bullshitting!”
Why did he avoid me then, but now
he doesn’t? Why? How’s that? But,
I remember, they told me, I was
living in Zagreb then, that he was
such a pain that three high school
kids from the neighbourhood beat
him up black and blue. They beat
the motherfucker out of him. And
no one moved one inch to save him.
When Cifra knocked on the door of
A Little FAK Reader
his, that is, my generation, he had to
promise to fuck off the Jehovah’s
Witnesses, and then Pezo and his
crew went off to kill the motherfucker
out of those kids. And everyone
jumped in to help them. This time
Cifra crushed a guy’s head as though
he were putting out a cigarette. That’s
how he stopped being boring. He
stopped being good too, he even became somewhat evil. At least when
he was hanging out with me. He
liked to do horrible shit, he thought
I respected that. I don’t know when
I began growing in his eyes, but at
some point he began to laugh at everything, literally everything I said. I
admit, I was perverse. Ironic. What
else could I do? But that good-fornothing laughed non-stop. Non-stop.
And he was with me all the time.
Later Cifra was in the war for some
five, six months, and that’s when he
lost all support from the Jehovah’s
Witnesses, who tried to help him for
a long, long time. That’s what he
told me. Of course, I almost died for
laughter. And then Cifra began to
laugh too. Fuck. When I look at it
now, those were totally screwed up
times. I was destroying myself systematically. That’s why this is no
longer me. That was the plan. Dust
and ashes.
Those were totally fucked up times,
sad times. When I think about it, it
seems that I’ve actually made progress,
that God protected me, that I was
the only one who managed to pull
out of that shit, and so. As I watched
Cifra, I thought the best of myself.
That whole world from which Cifra
now surfaced had already sunk into
the darkness.
Compared to that irretrievable darkness, I was completely okay, even
though I was actually in a really bad
condition, psychologically and physically and spiritually and materially.
That much was clear. I had no control whatsoever over my thoughts
and had no confidence in my own
65
body which, after everything, creaked
and dripped on all sides. I was afraid
of it and I always had a portable
pharmacy on me anywhere I went.
Everything I tried – and I tried almost everything – had no effect. For
months I would live on diets, without alcohol, cigarettes, whatever, but...
nothing. Illness after illness recurred,
and each had the intention to stick
around forever.
It would be funny if it weren’t true.
The whole thing was obviously somewhere in my head and in collaboration with my treacherous body, and
all of it happened without my knowledge. That’s mysticism. Physics. Paralysis. That’s why I no longer took
anyone’s advice. No help.
I lay on my back. The body, the
weight, the nervousness of the muscles,
I remember, somehow through a fog,
that once, long ago, I didn’t feel this
at all. This uneasiness in the body.
This horror. Once the body was a
beautiful and sweet house.
Close your eyes, that’s it. You know,
fuck it, but... Again, somehow, every
shit is sweet if it’s your shit. It disgusts you, it’s repulsive, it stinks,
it’s all disgusting and dirty, together
with you and your feelings, but, fuck
it, that’s life with Cifra, life with
lunatics and all types of wretches,
life like this and that, but yours nonetheless. And you wouldn’t change
it. I mean, you’d change it, yeah...
but: with whom? When you listen to
those guys saying this and that about
themselves, their typical, worthless,
tiresome, stale story, then listen, you
want to ask yourself: what the fuck?
What’s this all about? What were
they doing when we were throwing up
at three, four or five in the morning?
Where were they that they don’t remember anything? Lying in the ditch?
Forget it. Your childhood sweetheart... flying on a plane, somewhere
far, far away, long ago, far away, long
ago... her whole family is on the
plane, and she draws your portrait
66
non-stop. Approximately, like in a
comic book, but actually – it’s a spitting image of you. There were many
such pen drawings in her notebook.
As though you’re leaving. No, you’re
staying. You’re staying and watching yourself leave. Cifra is here with
you, he could help somehow. Then
Cifra buys drinks the whole afternoon, you started drinking long ago,
you drink, Cifra keeps them coming, fuck it. There’s some bickering,
provocation, Cifra takes care of it,
and brings more. He says nothing,
just keeps bringing more. Like parents who wish the best for you. But
they fucked everything up. That’s
how he keeps them coming. You
watch his face, you’re sorry for him.
You drink. Cifra says something, but
it’s like static from a radio, that’s
what that sound is like, like static
from a radio. You understand nothing and then some sort of elevators
start moving. Elevators. Some elevator you want to get out of. But it no
longer stops at your floor, no. It stops
nowhere. It stops somewhere high
up on the terrace. You’re in a small
glass box and you watch the city disappear, but where to? It’s going down.
The elevator is going down. All the
way down. To the basement. Down
there is a butcher’s shop. A hospital.
You get out. Everyone is waiting for
something. They’re buying something. You watch the elevators carrying body parts. Everything is scattered. They tell you where to go. You
want to buy something. Probably
something to eat. A chicken. A woman
holds a black chicken. What chicken!
A big, black chicken in the woman’s
arms. The woman speaks. She says,
here nearby, you can buy it here,
straight, then right, nearby, there.
You get out and search. The street.
The streets branch out. Where to?
Forget it. I open my eyes. Forget it. I
look at the ceiling. At the colours.
I follow the pattern, look at each
one, each colour, slowly.
I count. The same. The same. The
same. When I reach the corner, I’m
already used to it; I’m already addicted to the rhythm. But in the corner... nothing is right. I know. I stare
at that corner. A spider sleeps wrapped
up in its web. Wrapped up in his
blanket, I know it’s inside. Will I
ever see the sky?
Hope. I never mention it. It’s forgotten. No one speaks of it.
You know, everything must be different. Completely different. Everything
must be yours. Why did you ever
come here? Why would you come?
You could have died – I could’ve died
long ago, I could have, it would’ve
been easy.
I look at the table. The cutlery is set
on the table. The syringe is dirty.
From blood. Shotgun.
Really? Somehow I’m heavy and
light. I get up. It’s cold. The furnace’s
gone out. Somehow I’m old. When
I look at horse. I’m old; I’ve slept
for several years. Spasms in my sleep,
I’ve slept, and now I’ll stick in the
spike. Become one with the ground.
Like a lightning rod. Horse. The
ground is full of high voltage. The
deep, deep ground.
A childish wish. I touch the syringe.
Will it get into me beneath my skin?
Will you be me?
But, the blood? Where did it come
from, that blood? Whose dirty blood
is that? It’s black. Who?
Cifra! Cifra, you mother-fucker! I
began to shake. I’ll kill him! I’ll bury
him! I’m shaking. He left this for me
to shoot up. For us to become the
same. To become friends again. To
be in the same shit again. So that he
can stay here. If I shoot up. He’ll pay
me with horse. He’s got it. You give
me a shelter, I’ll give you horse. A
standard combination. Don’t refuse
gifts. You don’t owe me anything.
My treat!
Sure it is.
He’ll pay me! He’ll pay me, the
motherfucker! Where is he? Where?
RELA
TIONS
I get dressed. I’ll get out of here. I’m
getting out of here.
I’m trembling. I look from the door.
Horse, the needle. That needle shone
coldly for a moment, as though it’s
entering my brain.
The motherfucker! What will I do to
him? What will I do? I slammed the
door and left.
A foggy morning. Cold. I’m shaking, I’m shivering. With cold, the
cold deep in my soul and bones. I’m
sweating with that cold. The nerves.
Impossible! It’s impossible to live
like this. I’ll kill him!
I walk. I shove open the cafe door. As
if I’m coming from who knows
where. They look at me. Like a fugitive, from where? Panting. A coffee
and a double shot of brandy. I look
through the window. I drink. There
are two cops here. They watch me.
They’re talking about something
with the waiter. I see that they’re
observing me from the side. The cops,
the waiter and I. It’s early morning,
there’s no one, perhaps it’s a Sunday? They observe me; I’m immediately suspicious to them, motherfuckers, from the moment this shit
showed up, I’m suspicious to them.
You can see that straight away. I look
through the window. I see Cifra.
He’s walking out of the store.
“The police are after this guy,” I said.
I watch as Cifra takes out his ID.
Takes out yoghurt and bread from
of a plastic bag. He says something
to them, and they make a call on the
walkie-talkie. Verification. Waiting.
It lasts a while. Cifra sees me. He
doesn’t understand. Where did they
come from? He looks fucked-up and
suspicious. That’s it.
He doesn’t want them to work out
that we know each other. Then they’d
frisk me too. That’s what Cifra is
thinking. He doesn’t know where
this came from. He’s never had any
luck and he never will.
They cross the road and go towards
their car. They’re taking Cifra with
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them. He looks in my direction once
more. He doesn’t know anyone else
in this city.
They’ve left.
The waiter looks at me grimly, as if I
caused him some damage.
“What’s up, you worried about something?” I ask.
He looks away.
“Wasn’t he your friend? Do you
want them to check you up too?” I
laugh so loudly I can hear myself.
And I look at my eyes in the mirror
as if they belong to someone else.
The waiter is silent. He turns towards the espresso machine.
“We’re all friends, right? You want
to drink something, my dear friend?”
“I don’t,” he says through his teeth.
“We’re okay, but the cops are terrible. In fact, we’re pals, man. You
and I.”
He says nothing. He is messing around
the espresso machine.
“Hey, you’re not an anarchist, my
dear waiter? You hate the police...
and take care of bums? My God, you
A Little FAK Reader
are an anarchist, huh?”
The waiter looks very sullen and serious.
“Another one. A double shot of
brandy. Here, the money’s right here;
I can see you don’t trust me. But... if
you’re an anarchist, you can join me
and Cifra, you know, we’re the lunatics.”
The waiter is silent. Disgusted, he
watches this guy who, obviously,
works for the cops and who’s amused
by something here; who’s grimacing
in his face.
“Don’t look at me like that, my dear
waiter, or I’ll fuck your mother.”
The waiter moves in. He’s had enough
of drunks and their monologues.
And now the bastards call him names.
He swing and connects. Thump!
Right in the teeth. The guy hits the
wall. He sees surprise in his face. But
the guy lifts his leg and this surprises
the waiter. Thump! Right in the
balls, ouch, vicious motherfucker.
The waiter falls down and curls up.
The guy keeps kicking him. Wher-
67
ever he can. He kicks and hits like a
madman. As if he wants to kill him.
He howls like an animal. Will he
stop? He will stop, won’t he? Will he
ever stop? Never... he will never stop.
He’s curled himself up like a sponge.
It’s gotten dark. Everything retreats
deep inside, into holes, into small
holes... Blows. Deeper and deeper.
Blows. Distances.
Blows.
It’s over. It’s really over. The door
creaks. He hears him leave. He can’t
believe it. He remains lying on the
floor.
He’s not intending to get up. It’s
over. Thank God, it’s over.
Translated by
[ime Du{evi}
68
RELA
TIONS
The Club
Edo Popovi}
He had not been concentrating,
that was it. He had simply not been
concentrating. He had just not engaged his brain. You know, breathe
deeply, count to ten and think about
the situation. No. His hand had simply let fly, fuck it, and that’s why he’s
now sitting in the corridor of the
police station in Bauerova Street.
Instead of being at home or anywhere else, he’s sitting here in the
cop shop, with a blood-stained bandage round his head, waiting for his
turn. He’s worried, of course he’s
worried, there aren’t many occasions
when the idea of a cop shop is cheering. Mila’s already in the interview
room, making her statement. Ladies
have priority, don’t they? Just what
is she saying to the cop in there? Is
she saying: I heard a scream and ran
in and found the poodle on the floor,
then there was a fight... That’s not
enough, thinks Rudi, glancing towards the door of the room. The cop
might imagine all sorts of things and
draw all kinds of conclusions, if he
hears only that part. The last thing
Rudi needs is to be charged with
something. He’ll lose his job, for
sure, they told him over the last
bullshit that this was it, they wouldn’t
tolerate any more. Jesus, it’s not
good. But to get a proper picture,
you have to look at the thing on a
broad scale. On the broadest fucking
scale. Separate things, causes on one
side, and consequences on the other.
Edo Popovi} was born in Livno in 1957. He lives with his family in Zagreb. His
publications include novels De~ko, dama, kreten, drot (2005), Izlaz Zagreb jug
(2003), translated into Slovenian, English and German; novellas Plesa~ica iz
Blue Bara (2004) and Koncert za tequilu i apaurin (2002); short story collections Tetovirane pri~e (artistic collaboration with Igor Hofbauer, 2006), San
ùtih zmija (2000), Pono}ni boogie (1987); memoir-autobiographical fiction
Kameni pas (2001). Together with Igor Hofbauer he published five volumes of
illustrated short stories: Klub, Ako vam se jednom na vratima..., Gospa od
Bluda, Betonske pri~e, and Dvije pri~e. His trilogy composed of two novellas
Plesa~ica iz Blue Bara and Koncert za tequilu i apaurin and a short novel
entitled De~ko, dama, kreten, drot was published in 2006 under the title
Igra~i. His stories were published in numerous collections and anthologies
Krhotine vremena, Osijek, 1988; Uhvati ritam, Novi Sad, 1990, Po{tari lakog
sna, Zagreb, 1996, FAK-YU, Belgrade, 2001, and Goli grad, Zagreb, 2003.
It wasn’t fair to start with the poodle
on the floor. First there was an episode, then there was a consequence.
Besides, after the meeting in the club
she had caught him up in the street
and insisted that they go for a drink.
Let’s go for a jar, she said.
The word jar rang in his ears.
What do you mean a jar? A jar of
what?
Well, juice of some sort.
He told her you could only have a jar
of something specific.
And she said that veterans could have
a jar of juice, coffee, tea or something like that, they surely deserved
that much after all their hard work.
First they went to the little café in
Marticeva Street. He drank mineral
water, and Mila had an apple juice.
He drank his water as though it were
spirits, knocking it back in one go.
While she stuck to the boozer’s mode:
as she drank her apple juice, the elbow of the arm holding the glass was
exactly at the level of her forehead.
They hadn’t stayed there long. When
you’re not boozing, cafés become
boring places. Like churches. There’s
no action, just murmuring, just stupid murmuring. They must have
talked about something, he can’t remember exactly what. Probably the
usual crap. How rubbish reality is
and that sort of thing. Not for one
moment did he wonder what she
wanted from him. Why had she asked
him for a drink? It hadn’t happened
to him often in recent times, or in
life in general, that a woman showed
RELA
TIONS
any interest in him, and now he
hadn’t taken any notice. As though
it was the most normal thing in the
world, fuck it, he’d been so careless.
And then she had asked him to her
place.
He hadn’t found that suspicious.
Not in the slightest. When a chick
like that invites a guy like him home,
things usually end badly. He ought
to have known that, he had had
enough experience of these things,
bitter experience. But no, his brain
had stalled. And his instincts and all
the alarms. He fell for it like a kid,
like some fucking snot-nosed brat he
had hoped that miracles had finally
begun to happen even in his sphere
and that it was entirely normal ...
And Mila got down to business right
away. In medias res, fuck it. There
was no time for niceties. Immediate
action. There was this enormous bed
and a peculiar atmosphere in the air,
some kind of electricity crackling
between their two bodies...
And that poodle.
Rudi had never pretended to find
dogs appealing. Why should he have
found them especially appealing? He
ignored them whenever he could, he
simply didn’t notice them.
But that poodle was too obtrusive.
It sat in the middle of the room with
its tongue out, panting, whining and
jerking forwards and backwards as
though gathering momentum to leap
onto their bed.
Rudi couldn’t concentrate.
Things had been bad with his selfconfidence in that department lately.
He had stopped taking the tablets
that made it sag and slowed it down,
but he was still empty. Virtually dead
in that area. Technically speaking,
he wasn’t impotent, certainly not
that ...
A block, that was it. A fucking mental block. A few little glasses of spirits
would have fixed that block, for sure,
but ...
Plus that dog.
A Little FAK Reader
And he had asked her nicely to put
the dog out of the room and close
the door, but she hadn’t heard him.
She was utterly absorbed in what they
were doing, entirely inside herself,
and she was attempting to shove him
inside her as well. She tried, fuck it,
she really tried. She was sympathetic
to his state, it was probably connected with drinking and the treatment and abstinence, but it was as
though he was paralysed. It’s true
that he felt her fingers and tongue on
the little guy down there, and her
breath, and her soft hair tickled his
belly, but that information didn’t
reach the right place in his brain. It
simply went somewhere else, to some
other part of his brain.
In the end, she wasn’t angry, or disappointed, nothing like that.
It’ll be better next time, she said and
went to the bathroom for a shower.
And he lay there and gazed at the
ceiling and he must have dropped
off for a second, because he didn’t
remember hearing her come back in,
but he felt her tongue on the little
guy again and that warm breath and,
fuck it, this time the information
went to the right place. The little guy
began to get up. And Rudi reached
down to pull Mila to him and felt
those thick curls how come curls all
of a sudden and virtually simultaneously he heard Mila’s voice from
the other room and he gave a bloodcurdling yell and leapt up and the
poodle squealed and rolled onto the
floor and the ashtray was already in
Rudi’s hand and the next moment it
had found the poodle’s head and the
dog had collapsed soundlessly onto
the floor. And Mila had rushed in
with a towel round her chest and she
still didn’t understand anything, she
stood there staring at the dog, then
she knelt down and tried to get it to
stand up, but the dog was floppy and
dead definitively dead and then she
caught sight of the ashtray and picked
it up and began to scream and scream
69
as though she had gone mad murderer she shouted bloody murderer
while Rudi shouted it was licking me
why was it licking me and she began
laughing hysterically licking you Lord
was licking you and he went up to
her and tried to put his arms round
her but she was quite crazy murderer
you murdered Lord and tore herself
out of his arms and she took aim
with the ashtray right at his forehead
he didn’t try to protect himself at all
she was simply too fast ...
And then, instead of counting to ten,
taking a deep breath, one two three,
and considering the situation, no, he
raised his hand and hit her in the
face. It was adrenalin rushing through
him, a hundred percent adrenalin,
pure aggression, he saw red and lashed
out in fuck’s name, like when he had
beaten that guy up, they had barely
been able to pull him off, at least
that’s what was written in the statement, he hadn’t remembered anything, and the cops had taken him
straight up to the clinic, a criminal
record plus compulsory treatment
and all that, but that’s an old story.
Now he was sober, dead sober, but
there was blood everywhere, and she
ran shrieking out onto the stairs and
shrieked murderer murderer and the
next thing he remembered were those
cops, more cops fuck it, and he was
sitting on the bed holding some kind
of rag to his forehead, and Mila was
keeping on and on hysterically, and
the cops were sullen, they’d seen this
so many times before, the only novelty, perhaps, was the dead dog: Okay,
okay, get dressed and we’ll explain it
all at the station.
And now he was sitting in the cop
shop, and his terrible headache was
the last thing in the world that was
bothering him right now. He was
sitting there pondering what he was
going to say to the cops. What would
he say when they asked him why he
had killed the poodle and why he
had then broken the poodle owner’s
70
nose? He must have broken her nose.
A blow like that, fuck it, he’s lucky
he hadn’t killed her too. The nose
business, that’d be easy to explain,
they’d understand, that happens every minute in this town, he’d read
about that somewhere, but the poodle
thing was utterly idiotic. How could
he explain to the cop why he’d killed
that homo poodle? He’d have to tell
the truth, otherwise he’d look like a
maniac who went around killing
dogs. All right, he’d tell the truth.
You know, I’d just dozed off, and
the dog took advantage of the situation and began ... But fuck it, he’d
die laughing, the fucking cop would
die laughing.
And what was it the dog did to you?
They’d kill themselves laughing, for
sure, and they’d call the whole fucking
station to hear about the poodle.
And then when they heard that he
was a paid-up member of the club
for recovering alcoholics. And that
he’d been sent there forcibly for treatment. That’d be the last straw. They
wouldn’t be the least impressed that
he’d been sober for months. But really, not a drop. Even a recovering
boozer is just a boozer, they’d say.
And what could he say to that, when
that’s just what those shrinks said in
the alcoholics’ section. You’re an alcoholic undergoing treatment, they
say. What you see as a way of life,
they see as an illness. Alcoholism is
an illness, they tell you that. And
they explain why alcoholism is an
illness. You don’t get a lot of what
they say, but you do grasp that it’s a
terrible illness. Worse than the clap,
or TB, even cancer. No one expects
people who have suffered from those
illnesses to describe themselves as recovering from clap, recovering from
TB, recovering from cancer and so
on. But they do expect it of you. You
no longer have the right to feel a
healthy person. Regardless of the fact
that you don’t booze. That nothing
concrete has passed your lips for
years. Not a drop. You’re fucking
recovering. Not cured, but recovering. It’s an on-going state. You can’t
shake it off any more. You carry it
with you the whole of your life. Like
your skin colour. Or nationality. Or
sexual orientation. They force you
to remember what you are constantly,
fucking Nazis.
And the cop will be even less impressed that Rudi attends the Recovering Alcoholics Club meetings regularly. They don’t give a toss about
summits of recovering alcoholics.
And whether Rudi attends those meetings regularly or not. It had been
blackmail from the start. He couldn’t
get treatment without being a member of the RAC, and he had to have
treatment to keep his job. And he
had to keep that job because there
were fewer and fewer places needing
people like him. Pure fucking shameless blackmail. He hadn’t liked that
at all, but those were the rules of the
game. There were always some rules
or other, someone always had you by
the balls. Life? Well, you could say
that. And it had all driven him mad.
The Club’s President who read his
daughter’s sickly letters out at meetings. Or that woman who clapped
enthusiastically when people said
things like: ŠI realised that alcohol
had ruined my life.’ Or: ŠAlcohol is
the weapon of Satan’. And lots of
things like that. But he hadn’t had
any choice, he needed those signatures on his membership card. Besides, he certainly hadn’t gone there
for the company, oh no. Those people
there, fuck it, were all so fucked up.
So pathetic. They got such a kick out
of their misery. And it was all quite
normal to them. While he was beginning to dream up ways of just
getting through those sessions. And,
fuck it, he was that close to starting
to drink again, and then he had taken
a deep breath, counted to ten and
said to himself: Okay, you can’t
change anything here. Adapt or die.
RELA
TIONS
And he adapted. That’s called being
clued up, right. And he had really
begun to like those sessions. It seemed
it was starting to have a beneficial
effect on him, very therapeutic. The
fact that he really listened to what
those people were saying. Listening
to stories about shattered families,
careers, or whatever else they complained about there, he felt some relief. Relief that he wasn’t the only
fucked up person in this fucked up
world. He felt a sense of belonging.
And then one evening, on top of it
all, Mila had appeared. She hadn’t
looked at all like a boozer. She held
herself upright. Her step was elastic.
She looked you straight in the eye.
When she turned up in the club they
thought she must have got the wrong
door. That she was looking for the
gym at the end of the corridor. But it
turned out that she hadn’t mistaken
the door. She’d come to the right
place. And more than that. They had
all suddenly brightened up since Mila
appeared. All the despair, all those
failed lives and blown chances, it all
suddenly began to take on softer outlines. Some kind of meaning. They
all suddenly began to believe they
would be able to make use of the
chance they had been given. They
began to believe in something. To
believe, right. That woman was a
real miracle-worker, a real fucking
Jesus.
And to think it was me it happened
to, thought Rudi. And right now,
when everything was just beginning
to go right. Fuck it, what bloody bad
luck. If it had been anyone else, it
would all have ended okay. A little
sex, a little dinner, then they would
have watched television, or maybe a
video... And now look! Peckinpah,
as though fucking Peckinpah had directed the evening!
He sat there, waiting for that door to
open.
Translated by Celia Hawkesworth
RELA
TIONS
A Little FAK Reader
71
72
RELA
TIONS
The Snake Collector
Jurica Pavi~i}
It was March 13, 1992 when the
military summoner rang the doorbell of our house in Trogir. He interrupted my mother while she was having her Turkish coffee, and gave her
a piece of paper with an official
stamp. That is how the war started
for me.
The timing of this event was awkward. I know that there is no convenient time when it comes to things
like the draft, but in my case it really
came at the worst possible moment.
That morning when the summoner
interrupted my mother’s cup of coffee, five weeks had passed since the
opening of my store in Ka{tela. It
was a simple, small place where you
could buy ice cream, newspapers or
beach necessities. Not long before
that, I had also rented a bigger place
nearer to the seashore. I was hoping
to earn my first million by selling
wall tiles. Packages of Italian tiles
were already at customs when the
little white paper was delivered to
my house.
I remember that morning perfectly.
I had been painting the walls of my
new store, and I stopped when I heard
the two o’clock radio news. I washed
all the paintbrushes and went home
for lunch. My mother held out that
little piece of paper while opening
the door for me, and I thought to
1
Jurica Pavi~i} was born in 1965 in Split. Since 1990 he has been working as
a film critic and a columnist for various newspapers. He was awarded the
Vladimir Vukovi} Award for Film Criticism in 1992, the Croatian Journalists’
Association Marija Juri} Zagorka Award in 1996 and the Veljko Ten‘era
Award for his contribution to journalism in 2002. He made his literary debut
with a 1997 thriller called Ovce od gipsa. A crime story Nedjeljni prijatelj
(2000) dealt with social contradictions in Croatia of the 1990s. His short
stories have been published in various newspapers and magazines. His play
Trova~ica (2000) was staged at the Croatian National Theater in Split and it
won the Marin Drì} Award. His third novel Minuta 88 (2002) was shortlisted
for the Jutrarnji List Book of the Year Award. In 2005 and 2006 he published
novels Ku}a njene majke and Crvenkapica. His short stories and essays have
been translated into English, German, Italian, and Bulgarian. His novel Ovce
od gipsa has been translated into German and Vinko Bre{an made it into a
film, which received several awards.
myself: this is the worst possible time.
The seven-thirty news showed [ibenik
on fire, artillery attacks forcing people
from Zadar and @upanja to move
into shelters. It looked like war was
going to break out in Bosnia, too.
But I was not thinking of the Croatian
banner, my debt to it, the smile of
our beautiful homeland or its golden
fields of wheat1. I was thinking about
the rent of both my stores piling up,
and the one closer to the shore was
damn expensive. I was thinking about
@eljkica, the afternoon salesgirl in
my smaller store, who was filching
me, though I could not catch her
red-handed. I thought about all those
tiles being stuck right where they
were, at customs. They had really
drafted me at the worst possible time,
and Trogir was different from the
big cities; draft dodgers were talked
about and pointed at.
The notification required me to report to the mobilization center on
Suko{an Street in Split. No deadlines were specified, just an intimidating NOW, written in capital letters. I was not allowed to come with
my own car. My mother phoned my
uncle, explained everything and asked
him to give me a lift.
An ironic reference to a popular patriotic song, performed at a large Croatian Band-Aid in the early nineties.
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TIONS
In fifteen minutes, my uncle parked
his stojadin in front of our house. In
the meantime I packed a razor, toothbrush, jack knife, can opener and a
bologna sandwich. I also took a sleeping bag, and placed everything in the
trunk, which smelt of thinner and gas.
The building at Suko{an Street had a
large driveway riddled with shrapnel. My uncle turned off the engine
when we reached the entrance. He
put his hand on my shoulder. I looked
at him, then I looked at the gate, said
goodbye and got out. I had to continue on my own because there was
nothing he could do anymore.
...
The hallway was full of young, anxious machos. You could see right
through them: urban guys in Diesel
shirts, with earrings and dyed hair.
They were still playing tough, but
you could easily see how tormented
they were. Just yesterday they had
watched the news, swearing at those
Serbian pieces of shit. Now it was
different, they were involved.
“We could seriously use a truce now,”
said a guy sitting next to me, offering
me an Orbit. I suppose you could
have called him good-looking; he
had a yellow, messy mane. I refused
the gum. If I had put it in my mouth,
I would have thrown up all over the
garrison hall.
“I’m Edi,” said the yellow guy, taking back the gum.
“Dino,” I said, shaking his hand.
Some pen pusher collected our notifications and wrote our names down.
They took us to a room resembling a
classroom, only larger. After we waited
for some time, and it seemed too
long, an officer walked in and the
commotion stopped.
He had a rank sign on his shoulder, a
bunch of interlacing stars I could
not decipher. He was stiff, in a per-
A Little FAK Reader
fectly new uniform that was hiding
his round stomach. He greeted us.
We stared at him in silence.
“Let’s get one thing straight,” he
said. “This ain’t no military exercise.
You’re not goin’ to a maneuver or the
reserve forces. You’re going to war.”
As he said that, a sharp, cold pain
pierced my guts. It felt like someone
sticking a wire in my appendix.
“I know you wanna find out where
you’re going. You’re going to the
south, near Dubrovnik. The place is
called Hutovo, and don’t try to look
it up on a map Šcause you won’t
find it. The buses are waiting outside
to take you there. I have nothin’
more to say to you.”
He stood there in silence and then he
added, “Good luck. Some of you
won’t come back, but most will.
Keep that in mind.”
I glanced at the crowded classroom.
It was full of young men and the
officer scared the shit out of them.
That fatso talked like we were competing for some great job, or trying
to pass our SAT-s.
The buses were really waiting outside. There were a lot of uniforms
around – drivers, officers and military police. An unshaven driver stood
by a jeep, smoking.
Edi stepped up to him and asked,
“We’re going to a place called Hutovo.
What’s it like, is it bad?”
“Same shit,” said the driver, throwing the cigarette butt on the floor
and stepping on it. “Same shit anywhere you go.”
We went into the buses and sat down.
They were old and colorful; requisitioned from God knows which firm
that had gone out of business. I sat
there, staring at the back of Edi’s
yellow head.
I remembered again what the fatso
had said. Some of you won’t come back,
but most will. Keep that in mind.
2
A powerful armored vehicle with four-wheel drive, used mainly for military purposes.
3
Common card games played especially by people who live in Dalmatia.
73
I was bearing that in mind non-stop.
The only question, important and
final was – when the line is drawn,
which side would you be on.
...
We slept over in some village near
the Neretva River, in a school situated on a curve and surrounded by
silty water. Like that school, the
whole village was a trapped backwater of swamps, moist and dirty. All
around it shallow riverboats were
rotting away. As the night grew closer,
the water would reach the dark thickness of mazout oil and mosquitoes
would rise from its surface in clouds.
They drove us into the village in
pinzgauers2, at sunset. The children
gathered round us, amazed: we were
neither civilians nor soldiers – soldiers without uniforms. The children smelt of silt. They seemed to be
coated with a thin layer of dry, porous ocher mud. We saw the adults
later; their skin looked like that, too
– filthy and yellow.
We spent that night in our sleeping
bags laid on the parquet classroom
floor. I took a place underneath a
map of Asia that was hanging on the
wall, Edi settling right next to me.
“Look what I got,” he said, taking a
pack of cards for briscola and tresette3
out of his bag. He outplayed me: in
briscola he beat me four to zero.
Coldness woke me up before dawn.
The classroom smelt of mould and
burnt parquet. It was still dark outside. I was too frozen to get out of
my sleeping bag so I lay there staring
at the ceiling, listening to the snoring and breathing of thirty people.
At half past four I heard a car outside, then some voices. After that,
everything was silent again.
But not for long. The classroom door
opened and someone turned the light
on. Some uniforms walked in. “Good
74
morning,” said one of them, wearing
a beard and round-rimmed glasses.
He looked like a bookworm, a philosophy teacher.
“Get up!” said the philosophy teacher.
“You’ve got some white coffee and a
breakfast waiting next door. Then
we’ll give you the equipment.”
Edi’s appetite was unbelievable. He
gorged three chicken pâtés and a
quarter of bread. I drank some white
coffee (it was in fact ersatz with milk)
and tried to chew on a piece of bread
crust. When I left the building, I was
struck by the smell of silt, and I spat
the bread right out. I went to get my
equipment.
They gave us the uniforms, boots
and belts. The clothes smelt like seatcovers and the boots like leather.
Then they gave us the weapons.
When we entered the classroom, the
automatic handguns lay innocently
on a table covered with baize. Each
of us signed into the book and took a
gun. When the ceremony was over, we
stood there for a while like a bunch
of stupid kids, handling our new toys
with uneasiness. I remembered how
we used to play war when we were
little, hanging around the yard with
big, knotty mulberry branches. People
grow up and some things never change.
The philosopher got into the classroom, carrying a Kalashnikov himself. He said his name was Boris,
Major Boris, and that he would be
our commanding officer. “Is there anyone who can’t shoot from a ciganka4?”
he asked.
Everyone was silent. No one answered. Who wouldn’t know how
to shoot from a Kalashnikov? This
might not be a common skill in an
average Swede or a German, but here
– anyone can tell you how to take a
Kalashnikov apart, charge it and shoot
from it.
“Fine,” said Major Boris, and walked
out.
4
RELA
We got into the pinzgauers and took
a lengthy ride. At first we drove on
asphalt, and then the vehicle turned
onto a dirt road. I looked at Edi: he
winced back at me.
The asphalt was over. The normal,
civilized world was over – we were
there, the fucking middle of nowhere,
Vietnam.
...
The sector we were in charge of resembled a pair of buttocks: two rotund, small hills separated by a creek.
The road went through that creek,
winding down the valley and disappearing somewhere on their side of
the line.
We held our positions on one of the
hillocks. The trenches were shallow,
carelessly dug. Whether they were the
work of our men or theirs, you could
see that whoever was digging them
did not think he would be here long.
When you looked over the sandbag
barriers the view was beautiful. The
entire valley could be seen, the serpentine road to Dubrovnik; further
away the peaks of Herzegovina coated
with snow. The Montenegrin ditches
could also be seen, their tank entrenchment and camouflaged vehicles. We
watched them, they watched us, but
in most cases nothing happened.
We slept in an abandoned village, in
huts scattered among fig and chestnut trees. It was twelve kilometers
away from the high stands, which
meant a two and a half-hour walk to
the settlement. Major Boris told us
that it was the only suitable place,
considering the insecurity of the front
and the wandering squads.
We settled there at dusk. Edi and I
were sent to a hut formerly used for
drying meat. It was built of concrete
blocks, dirty with soot. Hooks, long
ago used for hanging homemade sausages and prosciutto, now dangled
empty from the wooden girders.
TIONS
When we laid down our sleeping
bags, the Major entered the hut. He
sat on a chopping block and asked if
everything was all right. He wrote
our names down in a notebook, and
asked us about our jobs as civilians.
“I’m an electrician in the post office,” said Edi.
I stated my occupation, too; and
asked: “What abut you?”
“I’m a professor,” said the Major.
“Philosophy?”
“No.” He laughed. “Biology.”
Then he stood up. “We’re neighbors. I sleep in the kitchen, right
next to you.”
...
The walk to the high stands took
three hours, and we took turns in
24-hour shifts. The soldier on duty
would wake the team whose turn it
was at four in the morning, so they
could get ready and reach the stand
before dawn.
It was a quiet period; the front would
be stale and calm for a while. By the
middle of the morning, the artillery
would start shooting on both sides;
tanks would leave their entrenchment and start fire – that was it, more
or less. There were no infantry attacks, and we hadn’t seen the enemy
for months. While the artillery was
roaring, we would bury our heads in
the shallow ditches and wait for it to
stop. The high stand was bearable.
The day was not our problem, the
night was. It would get dark early
and you had to stay awake; the night
before that, you had probably slept
just a couple of hours. Until then, I
was not aware of the pain brought by
sleep deprivation: real pain, just like
hunger or frostbite. It would make
us see things that were not there:
skeletons among the tree-tops, some
branch looking like a hand with a
grenade, mist taking the shape of
human bodies. The less experienced
Ciganka literally means “Gypsy woman” in Croatian. It was a common nickname soldiers used for an AK-47.
RELA
TIONS
would shoot the phantoms and throw
bombs at the mist covering the hornbeam grove. The whole front would
answer with a panicked thunder of
weapons, just like one village dog
waking all the others with his barking.
The road in the valley was not as
rough and rocky as the one we first
took when we came here. It was soft,
covered with dust and easy to sneak
onto. It was much easier than the
rocky ground that snapped loudly as
you walked on it. Professor Boris
told us that this dusty road was the
main reason we were there. “We
mustn’t let them pass this spot. Cause
if we do, they’ll get behind our backs
and we’re fucked,” he said. If one of
their squads got behind us, we would
be done. That is why we had to watch
the road.
The professor ordered a group of
soldiers to dig a ditch near the road
and place a counter-armor weapon
in it. The guys dug it in the soothing
shade of an oak tree. It faced a long
curve of the dirt road. A cannon was
dragged in. “No more shifts for you,”
said Major Boris to the cannon guy.
“You’re going to be here 24-7.” The
cannon guy did not object: it meant
no walking, no high stand, no dishes
and no camp guarding. He would sit
under the oak tree for the rest of the
day, wait for lunch and see that they
didn’t come near. The major pointed
his finger at Edi. “You’ll stay here
with him, for security. Go and get
your things.”
So Edi and the cannon guy were
there permanently. At noon the food
would arrive, and the Major would
send someone to bring them a backpack with cans of food and some
bread. Finally he decided it would be
me.
I did not like the idea. It meant two
walks a day, two walks during which
I could be hit by a grenade or get
caught in the middle of a mortar
attack. I was spared the high stand
shifts, though. I did not have to fear
A Little FAK Reader
possible infantry attack, and I would
sleep all night. But I walked the field
each afternoon carrying the food,
looking at the sharp-edged stones. If
they start shooting, each of these
rocks could be smashed into hundreds
of flesh-severing limestone shrapnel,
breaking vertebrae and limbs. I envied Edi: I would have traded places
with him, and lay in the shadow waiting for the phantom tank that would
never emerge behind that bend.
And so our days went by. In the
morning, we could hear artillery fire.
It was too far away to reach us, and it
would cease towards the end of the
morning. The lunch truck came exactly at noon. I would eat up quickly,
pack the food and carry it to Edi and
the cannon guy. I would pace hastily
along the soft, warm dust. Months
of war had chased away all the animals, so the valley was ghastly quiet.
I listened to the silence, fearing only
one sound: mortar fire.
The people around me were plain –
you could see them every day on the
bus or in the market, without noticing them or thinking about them.
They were young and old, fat and
slim, junkies and alcoholics, chickenshits and heroes. The older ones were
greedy-guts: as soon as the truck arrived, they would lurk for beans and
sausages, or an extra candy bar. The
younger ones would settle comfortably on the threshing-floor, take some
weed out of a plastic bag and roll a
joint, smoking and staring into the
clear blue sky. Every single one of
these people was plain. Except for
Professor Boris.
He was no regular guy, he was different: he rarely left the kitchen and never
drank one drop of alcohol, always
went to sleep as soon as it got dark.
He would read some huge book while
doing the night shift. The radio transceiver would crackle every once in a
while, sparkling like some device
from hell. Boris used it for reports
every morning and every evening; he
75
listened to it, read the big book and
made notes. Once, when he was out,
I used the opportunity and took a
peak at it. It was about insects. Drawings of maybugs, cockroaches, stag
beetles, fireflies and praying mantis
covered the pages; and the margins
were filled with professor’s tiny handwriting. I kept thumbing through.
The next chapter was about ants.
Each page showed a different kind
of ant, dozens of various sizes, colors
and patterns of behavior.
“They have wars too,” I heard a voice
behind my back. Professor had caught
me snooping around.
“You’re free to look if you want,” he
said as I put the book down timidly.
“People usually read novels.”
“I’m writing my MA thesis. Actually, I was.”
“On bugs?”
“Yes.”
“About their wars?”
“No, not that. Although it did cross
my mind, especially since this started.”
The light of the petroleum lamp was
shivering, making it seem as if the
room was moving. The radio continued to crackle and sparkle, reproducing fragments of orders and reports. We listened to scraps of conversations from other people in other
places. From an opened page, an exotic, colorful maybug was staring at
me. To someone else, we look like
that, I thought. Colored, foreign, a
bit repulsive. A simple race in a war
with another race similar to it, for
some reason only we can understand.
An object worthy of studying, a species handled with tweezers while thin
rubber gloves are cautiously protecting your hands.
...
A jeep arrived from the headquarters
in the middle of morning. It was a
brand new, shining Puch, obviously
not ruined by dirt roads and rocky
ground. It stopped in front of the
post and an officer got out. The pro-
76
RELA
TIONS
RELA
TIONS
fessor came up to him and saluted.
Since I had been mobilized, that was
the first time I saw someone saluting.
The driver opened the back door.
The professor and the officer moved
to make way, and then I saw the
privileged passenger.
He was a kid.
Not really a kid, of course. But he
looked like one: barely over eighteen, smooth-faced. He kept his shoulders bent, the obscenely huge uniform made him look ridiculous: it
seemed he had stolen it from his dad.
In spite of that, the senior officers
stepped aside like he was an heir, a
medium or a visionary chitchatting
with the Holy Virgin Mary on a daily
basis.
It was the Maluytka-guy.
The major had told us that he was
going to come. “The road is not secured well enough. A cannon and
two men are not enough,” he had
told us, adding that the headquarters
had already approved his request for
a Malyutka.
Anti-tank cannons were a common
thing, they were used practically everywhere. The Malyutka was special:
as peculiar as a rare insect, a precious
sort of weapon – there were less than
a dozen of them along the entire
Dalmatian coast. Its purpose was
similar to that of an anti-armor missile launcher: to destroy pillboxes,
tanks, trucks and all mobile and immobile targets. What made it different was the three-mile coil of resistant steel wire around it. The wire
was attached to the expensive projectile of devastating power. While it
sped to the target, it was attached to
the Malyutka and you could guide it:
there were no shortfalls, overthrows
nor miscalculations. You would look
at your victim through the screen,
drive the missile with something
similar to a joystick – and hit it. The
5
That is, a thousand ex-Deutsch Marks.
A Little FAK Reader
Malyutka was precise, exact, expensive and rare.
Everyone was talking about its price
as the main problem. One missile
cost a fuckin’ grand5, you can’t just
give someone fifty of Šem before he
gets a grip – they would say. So when
the army needed Malyutka operators, they would take the ones who
already knew it all – the kids. Video
arcade champions, boys whose hands
were used to operating a joystick,
were tested and recruited. They would
give them two or three missiles each
on the training area and that was it.
The younger they were, the better:
sharper eyesight and quicker reflexes.
The ones who spent most time in
front of their video games, killing
aliens and destroying purple booby
traps, were the right ones for the job.
The boy they had just drove in looked
like one of them. See-through and pale,
he looked like someone who had
never seen any light, except neon. His
thin arms gave the impression that he
could not lift anything heavier than a
beer. Then I looked at all the farmertanned dimwits hanging around the
post. Their complexion was clearly
the result of open air, homemade
wine, weekend ranching and olive
picking. The Malyutka-guy looked
like an ant that had wandered into
the wrong anthill.
“The kid kicks ass,” said the professor that evening, while Turkish coffee was being made on the post. “One
hundred percent efficiency in training. Hawk-eyed, his hand is one with
the joystick. We’re lucky to have
him.”
While I was having coffee that night, I
found out that they had given him the
spot right next to me; it was Edi’s old
place. When I went to sleep, he was
still tossing and turning in his sleeping
bag. I shook hands with him and said
my name. “Toni, the Maluyutka-guy,”
77
he said it as if the latter was his surname.
...
Edi and the Malyutka-guy became
constant tenants of the trench under
the oak tree. I brought their lunch
every day. I would usually start the
walk around noon and get there before three. We would eat together,
peas or meat sauce, and after that I
would spend a part of the afternoon
in the shade with them. Sometimes
we could hear artillery thunder from
the sea, and bursts of gunfire or
shouting from the hill. The afternoons got shorter as time went by,
and the battlefield was calm at night.
I used to greet Toni and Edi at sundown, just before walking back to
the village. I would listen to the
sounds that surrounded me. Whenever I heard the hiss of a rocket
launcher or the thudding of tanks,
that old feeling of raw fear would
grasp me for a moment – the same
feeling that overflowed me that morning in the mobilization center, only
to be washed away later by months
of routine.
One morning I reached the oak, carrying minced-meat steaks, some vegetables and rice in my haversack. As I
was putting the containers of food
on the ground, I noticed a white,
fleshy strip hanging from one of the
branches. It was a snakeskin, carefully peeled off.
“Look,” bragged Toni, the Maluyutkaguy. He was showing off like a fiveyear-old.
“I taught him how to catch snakes,”
said Edi.
“With a cleft stick,” added Toni.
The valley was crowded with snakes
and snake-lizards. All the other living creatures had already gone: the
foxes, pheasants and hares were chased
away by gunfire, and the birds flew
78
away from the forest fires caused by
missiles. Only the snakes were still
there – mostly harmless grass snakes,
rarely horned vipers. Bored soldiers
would break away pieces of the dry
stonewalls in the fields until they
found one. Then the hunt would
start. They would press its head down
with a cleft stick, decapitate it with a
pocketknife and skin it. I saw that
sort of recreation back home and
here, on the battlefield. Edi obviously had enough free time to acquire it.
I looked at Toni’s malicious device
in the ditch. The Malyutka did not
look like a weapon; it looked more
like some wicked, expensive geodesic instrument. The sight of it made
me respect the kid. He did not understand. He was too busy bragging
about his new skill – snake hunting.
That afternoon I came back to the
village earlier than usual. The major
looked at me and asked if the ambush by the road was all right. I nodded, remembering the white strip of
skin swaying from a branch. Has it
really come to this – sending the most
infantile teenagers to war?
...
I would find Toni and Edi in the
same position every afternoon: laid
back sluggishly in the trench, their
weapons and binoculars scattered
around like dead cattle. You could hear
gunfire and artillery from up the hill,
but here nothing ever happened.
Toni and Edi were lying, napping
and farting; sometimes they would
take a look at the road through their
binoculars. I knew Edi well enough
to see he was bored to death. But
Toni had found entertainment for
himself. He was crazed by the snakes.
The collection on the lowest oak
branch grew daily. By the end of the
week, there were about a dozen snake
6
Ammo jacket.
skins up there, mostly grass snakes,
some common adders and horned
vipers. Some were long and light,
some short, some black or stripy.
From a distance, they looked like fish
being dried by some weird Polynesian
tribe, or like women’s socks on the
washing line of some large household. In short, Toni was acting crazy:
as soon as I would show up in the
trench with the daily portion of beans
or meat stew, he would show me the
new acquisitions in his skin museum,
all the reptiles he had executed with
a cleft stick and a pocket knife. He
sometimes wandered too far from
the ditch in search of them, and Edi
was reasonably disapproving of that.
In those couple of weeks, Toni’s appearance changed. The sun had darkened his complexion, and the skin
on his palms and face got rough because of the fine, red dirt he was
lying in. He began to follow the trend
of Croatian warriors: a black bandana round his head, his ammo in
the net pockets of his prsluk6, his
sleeves rolled up to show his unimpressive, white hands – like a violin
player’s. Soon he began to decorate
his uniform with snake skins, hanging them around his neck and tacking them onto his belt. He was trying to look macho, and it made him
look ridiculous. Maybe that was why
he hunted snakes, maybe he just
wanted to leave his neon-lighted past
behind and become an Indian, a
tanned creature in touch with the
nature around him. He might have
wanted that, but I am not sure if it
was working.
One day Major Boris came with me
to supervise the outpost. While I was
ladling spaghetti bolognese, he observed Toni’s collection with fascination. I watched him, unsure whether
he was looking at it from the perspective of a biologist or a psychiatrist.
RELA
TIONS
He did not comment on it. He scolded
them for neglecting the trench, went
past the curve checking the landmarks and went back. I followed,
carrying a half-empty haversack of
spaghetti. “An impressive collection,”
he said right before we reached the
village. “That kid caught a lot.” Then
he added: “Be honest to me, has he,
like, gone mental?” I said nothing.
It was thundering as hard as hell that
night. As soon as it got dark in the
village, the artillery fire started from
the sea. It was roaring the entire
night. Around three I got nervous,
and got up. I could see the hilltops
around us were the red of slowly
burning, wet bushes. The front was
alive, something was happening.
I lay down and went back to sleep. I
dreamed of the Malyutka-guy, his
belt supporter decorated with snakes
– but in my dream they were alive.
The oak was black, scorched and
dreadful. I woke up early, with a
headache. It was five in the morning,
and the artillery fire had not ceased.
I walked through the village. Others
were nervously pacing around too,
listening to the drumming of the artillery and gaping at the leaden sky.
Anxiety was choking me, so I forgot
my dream of the snakes and the
burned oak very quickly. Who could
have known it was an omen of things
about to happen that day, things after
which nothing would stay the same?
...
Around noon, I took the lunch and
headed off to the ambush. The fire
had ceased by then. After an hour
and a half I got to the ruined chapel,
about two-thirds of my way. Up until then not a single grenade had
fallen near, although artillery from
the sea could constantly be heard.
I was barely a hundred yards from
the chapel when it exploded.
RELA
TIONS
It went off near me, although not
near enough to present any danger
to me. The bang was so loud I got
dizzy, and the buzz in my ears was
unstoppable. Immediately after that,
another went off right across the
road.
The worst thing about them was that
they seemed to appear out of thin
air. In war you can hear missiles all
the time. They hiss left and right;
their shrill noise rips the air. These
did not hiss. They exploded as if they
had been there forever, like someone
had planted them and waited. Soon,
the location of the third and the
fourth detonation made it clear: they
were aiming at the road.
I hid behind a steep rock and waited,
all ears. The grenades hit the field randomly, raising smoke puffs. When
one of them went off nearer to me, a
shower of tiny limestone splinters
would cover the rock I stood behind.
I did not know what to do. I could
not go back to the village, not only
because it was longer to it than to the
trench, but also because the detonations were going off in that direction. The shelter I had found was
less than lame: it protected me only
when I was lying on my stomach.
And if one hit the top of the cliffs
next to me, which was likely, I would
have been done for. I was choked by
a panic attack, but I managed to put
two and two together. I had to go
further, to Edi and Toni’s trench.
The shit could have hit the fan in
any case. But the fire was moving
away toward the village, and the
trench Toni and Edi were in was
deep and solid, the only decent protected place in the entire fucking
rock-covered valley. I only had to get
there, to run the last two and a half
miles.
So I started running. First I listened
carefully to the discharge. I would
run, throw myself on the ground
when I heard it, and continue to run
when the missile went off. I planned
A Little FAK Reader
to get to the trench like that, but it
was an illusion: the gunfire and the
artillery were coming from both our
side and theirs. Soon the explosions
and detonations from both sides got
so mixed up I could not count the
missiles nor know who was shooting
and from where. So I ran and threw
myself down by chance, trying to get
there as soon as I could.
After half an hour, I saw the silhouette of the hills and the creek that
reminded me of a butt. I could even
see the oak. What disturbed me were
the sounds coming from above: gunfire, shouting, flashes and detonation. I had never before seen an infantry attack, but this sure looked
like one.
I rushed toward the oak. The cold
air was tearing my throat and my
spleen was burning. The grenades
were hitting the ground all around
me, but I took no notice of them any
longer. I decided to run those last
hundred yards to the ambush without stopping. If it hit me, it would
just mean that I was out of fucking
luck.
I ran until the blurred image of the
oak tree got close, and then stopped
to see an unexpected scene.
Toni and Edi were not alone. Actually, there were so many men around
the tree you would think they were
waiting for a bus.
Edi and Toni were there, of course –
in their uniforms, their guns ready
to shoot.
The other men had camouflage uniforms too, only different: the yellow
pattern was brighter, the material of
lighter color, with different boots.
Edi and Toni’s company was made
up of soldiers from the other side,
their soldiers.
After months spent in the war, I saw
them up-close for the first time.
Luckily, it seemed like Edi and Toni
had everything under control. They
were pointing their guns at the disarmed intruders, who stood with
79
their hands over their heads. Their
guns and bombs were in a pile behind Edi’s back. Both of these crews
stood upright in the middle of the
skirmish, like there wasn’t artillery
roaring around.
“Look what we caught,” said Edi
when he noticed me. He said it perkily, like he was enjoying himself.
“Their patrol,” added the Malyutkaguy eagerly. He had his war colors on
– snakeskins, net prsluk and a bandana. I had the impression that the
Montenegrins were not sure whether
to be afraid of him or consider him
an utter nutcase.
There was three of them, the ideal
number for surveying or a smaller
sabotage. They seemed as scared as I
would have been in their place. They
looked hungry and run-down, too;
but I suppose they thought the same
of us.
One of them differed. He was tall,
terribly thin, and you could tell by his
long hair that he was a reservist. The
other two watched him like he was
their mentor or homeroom teacher.
They looked down; he did not. He
was looking straight at Edi, as if he
considered him to be our boss.
“Friend!” he said, addressing Edi cautiously, like taming a wild animal.
We were stunned. Not one of us
expected them to talk to us. When I
come to think of it today, I think we
were amazed by the fact they could
speak.
“Friend, listen to me!” he repeated.
“I’m not your damn friend!” replied
Edi crudely.
“Listen to me! It’s hell here, your
people and my people are gonna get
killed if we stay like this. Let’s get
down on the ground, and hide before we get hit.”
Edi looked at me. I nodded my head
so lightly it was barely noticeable.
“Okay,” said Edi. “Get down on the
ground, in front of the ditch! Hands
behind your head! You move – you
die.”
80
They did as he ordered them straight
away, sagging slowly to the ground.
They were frightened. Right after
they did that, a grenade exploded
near us. The three of us threw ourselves down, drawing our weapons.
We could hear gunfire and shouting
from up the hill. I looked up, but the
only thing I saw was the thick oak
branch with the snake skins hanging
from it. Toni’s snake lizards and grass
snakes were swaying on the breeze,
like they were trying to remind us
that this mess stopped being their
business a long time ago.
“What are you goin’ to do with
them?” I asked Edi.
“Fuck, it’d be best to kill the Chetnik
scum.”
As he said that, I looked at the men
still lying there. They had not moved
an inch. But Toni winced; I could
see clearly his self-satisfied smile
freezing.
“You won’t kill Šem,” I said. “We’ll
wait for this to stop, and then we’re
taking them to the village.”
Edi seemed relieved when I said that.
“True, we can use them for an exchange,” he murmured.
I took a look at the sky. We needed
to wait for the artillery fire to cease,
but it went on and on. The stony
field blossomed in little clouds of
gray smoke, a bang following each of
them. It was thundering and the end
did not seem to be near.
I looked at the Montenegrins. Their
faces were gray and tired, their wrinkles
filled with fine dirt. I thought that I
could find out about them if I looked
carefully enough, maybe find a hint
that would reveal them as bakers,
tire repair-men or teachers. But I
found nothing. They all had similar
faces, anxious and somber, looking
like they had been in the army forever and always would be. I remember perfectly well how I wondered at
that moment: do they see us the same
way, resembling each other like eggs,
no past and no unique characteristics.
The radio transceiver was under the
oak. It was buzzing. “Oak, Oak, this
is House.” It was the voice of Major
Boris. I was surprised by the way
that patronizing tone comforted me.
“Oak, can you hear me?” crackled
the radio again.
“We’re here,” answered Edi. He was
still watching the Montenegrins who
were lying on the ground.
“An infantry attack started up there.
Can you hear me? An infantry attack
started.”
“Roger that,” said Edi. The gunfire
from the hill was getting worse.
“We’re on the way, but it’s gonna
take some time. We got two guys out
already. You watch out, they’re gonna
attack the road too.”
“They already have.”
“What?”
“They already have. They sent raiders and we ambushed them. Three of
them. We captured them. What am
I gonna do?”
The radio was silent.
“What am I gonna do?” Edi repeated
in a louder voice.
The radio was still silent.
“Wait for us to come,” said the professor after a long break. Toni was
nervously tapping the breech of his
Kalashnikov. The Montenegrins were
still, but you could see they were all
ears. “He told us to wait,” said Edi, and
as soon as he did everything melted
away into light and earsplitting, unbearable detonation.
I’d never felt such pain in my entire
life. I howled like a madman, and my
right leg was burning from the knee
down like someone was breaking it
and skinning it with a metal comb at
the same time. The only thing I could
hear was the quiet, constant buzzing
in my ears. I looked at my leg. It was
still there. Bloody, according to the
pain, probably pierced through – but
still there. I was afraid that I would
see only torn muscles and a stump. I
could see my leg, and nothing was
more important at that moment.
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TIONS
I turned around. The Montenegrins
were still there, covering their heads
with their hands. They seemed okay.
Edi was down, his upper arm covered in blood.
I saw Toni. He was standing right
under the tree, the most dangerous
spot, completely intact as if he just
came from somewhere else, still aiming at the Montenegrins.
When I remember that afternoon
now, I usually get paralyzed by fear
again. The truth is that we were plain
lucky that day. That 60-milimeter
could have turned a yard or two aside
and hit the treetop. It would have gone
off somewhere among the branches
above Toni’s snake gallery. In that
case, the shrapnel would have fallen
down on us like steel rain – and every
one of us would be dead. Toni, who
was standing right under the tree,
against regulations, would have been
turned into an amorphous bloody
pulp.
But it hit the ground a bit further,
shoved into the sand and lost its
power. The Montenegrins were lying down so they got off easy. We
were kneeling and aiming at them,
so we got riddled by shrapnel and
stone slivers – but we were alive. Edi’s
shoulder was carved by a large knifelike piece of limestone. My leg was
hurt. Toni was untouched.
He suddenly snapped out of it and
hurried to help us; probably intending to bandage our wounds, stop the
bleeding or something. Edi stopped
him, mumbling a warning. “Are you
fuckin’ crazy? Leave the two of us
alone, watch them!”
We looked at the Montenegrins.
Only a split second would be enough
for them to get a hold of the weapons. Then we would become the prisoners, and they the jailers.
“Get on the radio. Ask for House,”
Edi barely managed to say and Toni
grabbed the transceiver. Everything
around us was echoing with the sound
of explosions. Only crackling was
RELA
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heard, and then professor’s voice
broke through.
“House, this is Toni, the Malyutkaguy.”
The professor sounded surprised,
“Toni, where’s Edi?”
“Down. Him and Dino.”
The professor sounded like he had
enough trouble already. “What happened?”
“It came down on us,” said Toni,
almost bursting into tears.
“What about the prisoners?”
Toni looked over his shoulder:
“They’re here.”
For a moment or two, only buzzing
and noise could be heard, and then
detonations from the other side of
the connection. Wherever the professor was, it was pretty bad.
“Toni!” Rustled the radio.
“I’m here.”
“Go to the high stand as soon as you
can! Can you hear me, leave as soon
as...”
“What about the prisoners?”
The professor was silent. Edi and I
looked at each other. Edi was lying
on his hip with a bloody arm, and I
was on my back. My leg was in a
sloppy, improvised bandage. We were
both aware of what was going on
and how it would end. Toni was the
only one who still didn’t get it.
“Toni,” said Edi, fighting for air because of the pain. “Toni, we gotta
get up there. Our men are up there.
The medic is up there.”
“What about them?” Toni was pointing at the poor bastards lying there
and listening.
“Toni, you can’t take Šem up there
during the attack. It would be bringing the enemy behind our men’s
back.”
“I’m taking them to the village, for
exchange.”
“You can’t get to the village. There is
no village. No one is there anymore.”
“I can’t just let them go...”
“Right. You can’t. They’ll surprise
our guys from behind.”
A Little FAK Reader
“What am I gonna do then – kill
them?”
Edi said nothing. I looked at the
Montenegrins and realized they had
given up all hope. Toni was still the
only one not getting it.
“I can’t do it to them, no.”
“My arm is crushed and Dino can’t
get up.”
“I can’t do it.”
“Toni, there’s no other choice,” Edi
answered patiently, like lecturing an
idiot.
Toni looked at me. I was silent very
briefly, and then nodded. I still
swear it was the hardest single sentence I had ever uttered. “There’s
no other choice,” I said, looking at
the Montenegrins.
The tall one stood up looking at the
ground, dignified and rigid. The
shortest one’s jaw started shaking
before he burst to tears. His fear gave
him color, in my head. I looked at
his light hair and thought to myself:
back where he came from, he might
be a teacher, a jurist or an accountant. He did not look like someone
who had a family, but you could not
tell that for sure. If he had, he would
never see them again.
“I can’t kill them. Not like this!”
Toni was sobbing seriously, almost
beginning to cry. “They have no
weapons, nothing.”
“Are you insane? What the fuck do
you want? You want us to give them
their weapons back? What do you
think this is, a duel, the OK Corral?”
Edi was outraged, and it did not seem
fair to me. Toni had a healthy hand
and he had to do it. It was hard
enough already; there was no need to
make it worse.
We stood like that, and all around us
was gunfire and chaos. The shorter
Montenegrin was sobbing. The tall
one was staring at the ground as if
trying to figure out some last, insoluble riddle hidden in the grass before he died. Toni was gasping with
horror; his gun aimed at them, his
81
eyes staring at us. Edi’s bled more and
more. We had to hurry and end this.
“House, House, this is Oak,” yelled
Toni into the transceiver, like it could
make a difference.
“Roger,” the professor’s voice encouraged Toni, who still had his
hopes up.
“House, I’m takin’ the wounded
and the prisoners to you.”
“Toni, go up to the high post.”
Toni did not answer at once. The
professor called out in a worried,
impatient voice.
“House, what will I do with the prisoners?” Toni asked for the last time.
“You know what,” said the professor.
“What?”
“You know what, Toni.”
Toni put the transceiver aside. He
was pallid.
I looked at the Montenegrins. They
were definitely convicted. The professor had condemned them although,
like everyone else, he never used the
“K” word. No one wanted to mention what was about to happen in its
true name.
I closed my eyes and heard the unnaturally long sound of Toni’s automatic; then silence.
When I opened my eyes the
Montenegrins were dead, Toni’s
Kalashnikov was on the ground and
he stood petrified under the oak. He
could not look away from what he
had done.
The three lay dead, expressionless,
like they were taking a break from a
job they would finish later.
I regretted looking at them. If I hadn’t
done that, I would not dream of
them now. But I do – not every night,
but often. I dream of the three dead
bodies watching the sky. I dream
their eyes looking, but unable to see.
They cannot see the clouds, the
branches or the dead snakes carelessly swaying back and forth in the
afternoon wind.
“Let’s go,” said Edi. “Let’s go before
another one goes off.”
82
Edi was the most self-possessed of us
all, or maybe the worst person. We
did as he told us to. We were alive,
and those who are will do anything
to keep on living.
...
I never went back to the oak on the
turn of the road. Toni went there
one more time, the morning after what
had happened, to get the Malyutka.
He told me that the bodies of the
Montenegrins were still there. One
of our men poured quick lime on
them so they would not smell. So the
quick lime smelled instead, which
was almost as bad.
That October morning, as they said
on the radio, we rejected the enemy’s
infantry attack along the entire combat line. Two days later, our men
counterattacked the Montenegrins
and forced them to draw seven miles
back. The trench under the oak became obsolete. It just stayed there as
a reminder of a stupid war that took
place a long time ago. Maybe it is
still there, filled with leaves, getting
shallower because dirt is constantly
filling it. I doubt that anyone covered over it: scars on people barely
have time to heal here, so who would
want to heal scars on the earth.
If the ditch is still there maybe the
snake skins of the Malyutka-guy are,
too. When I asked him about them,
he told me that he had just left them
there. They could still be swaying on
the wind, now black and dry. Toni
no longer needed them; he had become the hardened being of nature,
and the Indian he wanted to be.
It would be better if he hadn’t. It
would be better for him to push the
rewind button and go back to the
morning he stepped out of the jeep,
pale and slouching, with his hands
resembling a violinist’s. But you cannot rewind life and Toni can never
stop being a killer, just as I can never
stop being an accomplice.
Two days after the incident under
the oak tree, our soldiers counterattacked and made the Montenegrins
draw seven miles back. They call it
history. We were no longer a part of
that history. We were not there –
neither Toni, nor Edi, nor the professor, nor I.
I spent those two days at the medical
corps, where some pre-med took care
of my leg. I could move, so they sent
me to Split with the rest of our shift.
I limped over to the bus and took a
seat by the window. Through the
dirty glass, I could see Toni returning the Malyutka. He got on the bus,
saw me and greeted me with a melancholic nod. But he did not sit next
to me.
We traveled for a long time. Before
sunset, the bus hit the asphalt – it
was the same spot at which we had
said goodbye to our regular life. The
German engine was purring pleasantly and quietly, but it no longer
meant anything.
Late at night we went over the mountain and hit the bypass. The view of
Split and the bay opened in front of
us. From above Split looked like a
metropolis. Blast furnaces were burning, the spotlights of disco-clubs, the
airport, construction sites, the stadium. A wobbly cluster of a thousand lights burning together made
the city surreal, like some futuristic
habitat from Star Wars. The bus was
sliding downwards, to the sea, to the
epicenter of light.
Down there, people were eating, reading newspapers, sleeping, fucking,
watching movies, drinking cappuccino or wasting time among the medieval alleys. Down there was the
parallel floating of anonymous lives,
including my folks, neighbors and acquaintances. Down there nothing big
or important had happened: people
will read newspapers tomorrow, too;
@eljkica will filch me, my old lady
will solve crossword puzzles while
the coffee grounds are slowly clot-
RELA
TIONS
ting in her cup. To them nothing
had changed; but for us it had.
I glanced at the professor. He was
sitting in the front, his eyes closed
like he was meditating or praying.
Maybe he was asleep or writing his
MA thesis in his mind, thinking
about the thoraxes and antennas of
coleopters and maybugs; all the species mating, growing and waging
wars, guided by the plan and reason
they do not understand nor question. Perhaps he was thinking about
the three bodies covered in quick
lime – although I doubt it.
Toni was thinking about them. He
was sitting at the front of the bus, at
a safe distance from me, his accomplice. He was staring at the darkness
of the Dalmatian autumn. I was positive that, through the dark, he could
still see those lifeless eyes gazing at
the sky.
I knew what was going to happen
when we reached that light down
there. The buses would leave us at
the dockyard parking. Free, the soldiers would crawl all around the city
in their dirty uniforms. The alcohol
deficit in their blood would soon be
recuperated in bars, with shots of
Stock or grappa with herbs. They
would drag themselves, smashed, to
the nearest peep show. Then they
would lustfully watch the plump
stripper from the safety of their cabin.
That was the purpose of war for
middle-aged men – the last breeze of
adventure, a respite, a break from
their fat wives and daily routine. War
was good for that, even better than
evening classes, chorus singing or
fights with soccer fans of the opposition.
The problem with Toni was that he
was not middle-aged, he did not have
a fat wife and a bunch of kids, and he
had never spent the New Year’s Eve
with his family, built a weekend cottage or grilled a pork roast. When we
hit the light hatch, instead of going
to a peep show Toni would go to his
RELA
TIONS
teenage room with posters over his
bed.
I was not comfortable thinking about
him. I closed my eyes, trying to think
of soccer, sex or fried fish. But the
eye-trick was no good. As soon as I
closed my eyelids, I would see the
A Little FAK Reader
thing I was running away from: bodies covered in quick lime and black
snake skins swaying back and forth
under the gray sky.
What I saw, Toni saw too. That was
what made us unique, lonely specimens in this bus – a bus full of ordi-
83
nary people rushing to their ordinary homes, their sanctuaries and
their happiness.
Translated by
Marija Duki}
84
RELA
TIONS
Junk Food Kills, Doesn’t it?
Jelena ârija
If this were a screenplay for a film,
it would start like this:
EXT. STREET IN FRONT OF THE
ŠJUNK FOOD’ FAST FOOD RESTAURANT IN ZAGREB – NIGHT
Two girls get out of a taxi. They are
laughing.
The TALLER one is twenty, has loose
red hair and hides her excess two and
a half stone by wearing black clothes
and high heels. The SHORTER one
is an exceptionally pretty thirty-year
old. She has dirty blonde hair, which
falls over her large blue knitted shawl.
Under the shawl we can make out
the body of Pamela Anderson.
SHORT: (to the taxi driver, slamming
the door of the taxi) Good night!
The taxi drives off into the night.
The Short one opens the door of
ŠJunk Food’ and lets the Tall one go
in first.
INT. ŠJUNK FOOD’
– CONTINUOUS
A stereotypical fast food restaurant
with sandwiches, neon lights, nonalcoholic beverages, ice-cream and
photographs of famous actors hanging on the walls. Waiters wearing
yellow shirts with the firm’s logo.
Of the roughly fifteen customers, ten
are the most typical white trash. We
see only one member of the gentler
sex, about twenty-five years of age,
accompanied by a young man.
Jelena ârija was born in 1980 in Split and now lives in Zagreb. In 2002 she
won an award for her unpublished novel Klonirana, subsequently published to
great acclaim. The novel was originally written as a film script, combining
fantasy, trash, sci-fi and autobiographical elements. ârija is currently studying production at Zagreb Drama and Film Academy.
Our heroines enter confidently. Under the neon lights we see the remains of their evening make-up. The
ten representatives of white trash
weigh them up from head to toe.
They pass by a waiter and greet him.
SHORT: (quite softly) Good evening!
The waiter forces himself to respond.
He hates his job.
WAITER: Good evening!
They go down the stairs leading to
the basement section of ŠJunk Food’.
INT. BASEMENT – CONTINUOUS
All the tables, eight of them, are
empty. The two of them sit down at
a table in a booth opposite the toilets.
They look at the price list and choices.
CLOSE-UP – UNDER THE TABLE
The Tall one takes off her high heels
and stretches her toes.
BACK TO SCENE
TALL: I’m hungry.
SHORT: (with a slight foreign ac-
cent) I’ll have a toasted sandwich
and a Coke. And a vanilla ice with
caramel, maybe.
TALL: (looking at the menu) I’ll have
... I think I can’t see to read at all.
I’m drunk.
SHORT: (confidentially) You’re not
drunk, my dear, your contact lenses
are just too weak. That’s why you
can’t see.
They both start laughing. The girls
start a conversation with the waiter.
Their voices merge with one another
in the lively exchange.
WAITER: Good evening!
SHORT AND TALL: (together, laugh-
ing) Good evening!
WAITER: (looking down his shirt)
What’s funny?
SHORT: (without stopping laughing) Nothing, we’re just having a bit
of a laugh.
TALL: There, we’ll stop now. She’ll
have a toasted sandwich, so shall I,
two Cokes ... (looks at Short) Diet?
In the background a YOUNG MAN,
thirty years old, nearly six feet, fourteen stone, in a garishly coloured
RELA
TIONS
tracksuit, with a thick gold chain round
his neck – comes down the stairs.
SHORT: Diet? You crazy? Ordinary, regular ...
TALL: (holds up two fingers) Two
Cokes ...
The Young Man comes up to the
table and stands silently beside it.
The girls take no notice of him, they
think he has come because of the
waiter.
TALL: So, two Cokes and ice-cream
... vanilla with caramel, twice again.
(Looks at Short) will two ice-creams
be enough for us?
SHORT: (in an I’ve-thought-of-aclever-solution tone of voice) Well
... two of every kind.
TALL: (to the waiter) How many
kinds of ice-cream are do you have?
WAITER: Five.
SHORT: (looks at Tall) Twice five,
i.e. ten ice-creams!
TALL: (to the waiter) What kinds
are they?
WAITER: Vanilla with caramel, vanilla with chocolate, vanilla with forest fruits, vanilla with lemon cream
and vanilla with tropical fruit.
SHORT: Bring two of everything.
The waiter looks at them fairly
blankly because they’ve ordered ten
ice-creams.
WAITER: Ten ice-creams? Two of
everything?
TALL: (nods YES) And oh yes, bring
us two Cokes each, we’re very thirsty.
(Laughing) So that you don’t have
to come twice!
The Young Man suddenly joins in
the conversation.
YOUNG MAN: (to the girls) Something’s funny?
TALL: No, we’re just ordering icecream.
YOUNG MAN: (ignoring her answer) So tell me too, what’s funny?
SHORT: We’re just ordering icecream. (To the waiter) So, two toasted
A Little FAK Reader
sandwiches, four Cokes and ten icecreams, two of each kind.
WAITER: Very good.
The waiter is about to leave.
TALL: (calls to the waiter, the waiter
turns back towards her) And a glass
of water for me! (looks at Short)
Want one?
SHORT: (directly to the waiter) A
glass of water for me too!
TALL: (to the waiter) Sorry to be
such a nuisance, but we haven’t had
those eight glasses you’re supposed
to drink in a day.
WAITER: (with a smile) Anything
else?
SHORT: No, no, sorry to be a nuisance, that’s all, thank you.
The waiter leaves.
YOUNG MAN: (addressing both
of them) Would you like to join me
and my mates upstairs?
SHORT: We’d love to, but we’re
really tired.
YOUNG MAN: But why not? We’d
really like you to sit with us. It can’t
be much fun for you here on your
own.
TALL: No, maybe another time.
YOUNG MAN: There won’t be
another time! I’m here now, I’m going to Holland in two days’ time. It’s
now or never!
SHORT: Sorry, but we really don’t
feel like company.
YOUNG MAN: (quite agitated by
now) You think I’m some sort of
idiot? I earn 500 marks a day! I’m in
the fitness club every day the whole
day and I have a great life, I’m not an
idiot from a building site.
The girls look at each other. Why is
he telling them this? Tall hunches
her shoulders.
TALL: You’re nice, but we really just
want to be alone.
SHORT: (to Tall,) How do you say
Šwe’ve got nothing against you’ in
his language?
85
TALL: Nothing personal.
SHORT: (looking at the Young Man)
Nothing personal.
YOUNG MAN: (even more agitated) I understand what Šhaving
nothing against you’ means, but I really don’t understand why you don’t
want to have a drink with us. We’re
not tramps!
TALL: (jokingly, with a light laugh,
looking at the price list again) We
don’t like anyone watching us when
we’re eating.
YOUNG MAN: (in a dangerous
voice, to the taller girl) Are you laughing at me?
TALL: (looks at him, confused, apologising – she hadn’t expected such an
aggressive tone) No, no, forgive me.
We’re a bit ... I’m looking at the icecreams.
The shorter girl takes the taller one’s
hand across the table, protectively.
SHORT: We’ve had a bit to drink
and we’re having a laugh.
YOUNG MAN: You’re having laugh
and you don’t want to sit with us?
We haven’t got the plague!
SHORT: Look, I’ve just arrived from
Australia, I’ve been travelling for
twelve hours, this is my niece, we
haven’t seen each other for nearly
two years, we simply want to be alone
for a while, chat and have a sandwich.
Another time ... (shrugs her shoulders)
... with pleasure. But this evening we
really want to catch up a bit, talk
about the family and all that, we
haven’t seen each other for so long...
The Young Man looks at them, angrily. He rubs his nose on his sleeve.
YOUNG MAN: You’re both mental.
TALL: We’re sorry, don’t be angry,
but we really don’t feel like company.
SHORT: You can see that we came
down here, beside the toilets, we simply want a little privacy.
YOUNG MAN: OK. You’re just a
pair of sad wankers.
86
The Taller and Shorter women look
at each other.
ing them two at a time as though she
were flying.
SHORT: Some other time.
The camera stays downstairs – with
the Taller One. She puts her hands
to her head in disbelief. Her expression suggests that she probably thinks
she is drunk and that she is imagining everything that is happening and
she turns quite ashen.
The Young Man moves away from
their table. He seems to have got the
message.
The girls lean across the table towards one another.
TALL: (in a whisper) What a loser!
SHORT: (in a whisper) Cocaineaddict! You can see it at once!
Suddenly O.S. the voice of the young
man talking at the top of his voice on
the first floor.
YOUNG MAN: They’re just two
whores, down there. Just great whores!
The girls looked at each other, astounded. HAD THEY HEARD
RIGHT?
The Young Man keeps on talking.
LOW SHOT
The Young Man’s feet and lower
legs reach the floor under a bar stool
by the bar.
BACK TO SCENE
YOUNG MAN: Two stupid whores!
The older one’s just about OK, but
the younger one keeps tittering like
an idiot... but I know what she needs.
(pause)
She needs to be screwed, then wasted!
The fawning, approving laughter of
several men.
The Shorter One makes a movement
as though she is going to get up from
the table, but Tall grabs her by the
hand.
TALL: (whispering) Leave him, he’s
a cretin! He could kill us!
The Shorter One struggles out of the
Taller One’s hands which are trying
to restrain her across the table, with
such force that she pushes the table
away and completely alters her expression. She charges upstairs, leap-
INT. ŠJUNK FOOD’, FIRST
FLOOR – BESIDE THE BAR
The customers and the waiter look
up inquisitively.
SHORT: (furiously) Apologise!
YOUNG MAN: (feigning incomprehension; smiling) Who to?
SHORT: (even more furiously) To
my niece! No one fucks with my
family! What you said about my kid,
that she had to be screwed then wasted,
apologise!
YOUNG MAN: (into her face) And
what will you do to me, if I don’t,
bitch?
Malicious male laughter in the background.
The sound of a powerful slap rends
the air.
I stood beside the table, watching
part of what was going on through
an opening in the thick blue-painted
concrete wall, at the moment when
my aunt gave the guy in the garish
tracksuit an almighty slap, the hardest I had ever seen anyone get in my
life. There was silence in ŠJunk Food’.
He hit her back. She knocked him
off the bar stool where he was sitting.
He fell onto the floor. I saw her feet
wrapping round his neck and kicking him. My aunt’s former husband
had been a regional champion in
some sort of martial arts. I saw the
flash of astounded looks. That little
woman had knocked that body-built
guy to the floor? I know, I look a
huge coward in this story. I remember standing and watching, I couldn’t
RELA
TIONS
believe it – this must be that state of
shock which follows immediately
after a car accident when you can’t
believe that you’ve had a crash and
that your car’s a write-off and that
you’ve been lucky to escape death
and that your co-driver’s in a coma,
and the passenger in the back seat is
dead. I was expecting someone to
react, that a good fairy would prevent this shit with a superwave of her
magic wand, that some man would
get up and say: ŠHey, don’t hit that
woman, leave her alone’ or that the
waiters would do something useful.
SOMETHING! SOME FUCKING
THING! Didn’t the price of toasted
sandwiches, Coca-Cola and vanilla
ice-cream include some little figure
for our safety in this fucking place? I
stopped believing in any kind of
safety when I saw my aunt sailing
through the air. Her body hit the
ground, to the right of a circular
indent in the wall. The wall shook. I
had the feeling that I was going to see
pieces of her brain as I climbed up
the stairs. I had the feeling that we
had accidentally become characters
in a Tarantino film.
She is lying on the floor, her spine
bent, her head leaning against the
ŠJunk Food’ wall. She is dead. My
aunt is dead. My aunt came from
Australia to Croatia and was killed
the very first evening! My aunt is
dead because some shit said he wanted
to rape me and kill me! My aunt is
lying dead on the floor. Junk food
really does kill! Some twenty people
are looking on, the waiter’s mouth is
wide open, the madman and his two
friends are standing calmly by, my
aunt is lying dead on the floor, no
one stirs, as though someone had
frozen time, nothing happens, my
aunt is lying on the floor, I can’t
believe she’s dead, I met her at the
airport today with a bunch of white
roses, two minutes ago we ordered
sandwiches and Coca Cola and ten
ice-creams, and now I’m looking at
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her corpse! I want to go to her, I
want to jump on the man who killed
her, but my legs have disappeared
somewhere. I’m drunk, I assure myself that this isn’t real, they must
have put a drug in my drink, I’m
hallucinating. My aunt is lying on
the floor, dead. This must be a reality show, she can’t be dead, although
it looks as though her spine has been
fractured, although her eyes are closed,
although she’s not breathing. On
the other side of the ring stands the
son of a bitch who killed her, watching, looking at the dead body of the
woman he had been chatting up a
minute before. All the witnesses to
the murder are horrified. In their
eyes I can see that in court they will
say they hadn’t seen a thing. My
dead aunt opens her eyes. My dead
aunt raises herself onto her left arm.
My dead aunt gets to her feet with
the sudden movement of a cat. My
dead aunt turns into a killer tiger.
She leaps onto her murderer, the
murderer is shocked by the resurrection of the dead woman and the appearance of the tiger, everyone is
shocked, I stand on the stairs, I feel
myself beginning to cry and I haven’t
got a clue what I’m doing on those
stairs, I feel – I should get involved as
well, I ought to start beating that
vermin, but I can’t find my legs, I
can’t move, something is rooting me
to the spot – and my eyes are looking
at the most beautiful thing they have
seen in their life. I’m looking at a
woman who is ready to die just because some cretin said something
horrible to me. I’m looking at my
aunt’s love for me, which has left her
body and, as in some myth, turned
into a tiger. But I’m not the only one
to see it. I know that everyone sees it!
All the waiters standing at the bar.
All the men in ŠJunk Food’ who have
permitted some nerd weighing fourteen stone to beat up a woman of
seven, in front of their very eyes,
those dozen big men who allowed
A Little FAK Reader
my aunt’s head to hit the concrete
wall. They can all see that tiger. Dear
nerds, who approved and grinned, is
there anyone who would be prepared
to become a tiger for your sake? Is
there anyone who would be prepared
to hit their head on a concrete wall
and die outright? Look, gaze, admire!
You have to admire what you haven’t
got. I see the garish, patterned tracksuit
of the guy who I thought had killed
my aunt. At this moment I know, he
can’t kill her! Who could kill a tiger
like this? Why had I thought she was
dead when I saw her with her eyes
closed, after her head had cracked
against the wall? Why, he could have
been three times six feet tall, he could
have weighed three times fourteen
stone, he could have had ten times
more muscle and a twelve times
smaller cock – but he could not kill
her. My aunt is Artemis, a mythic
tiger, Love and Energy. He is shit.
Shit cannot kill Artemis, a mythic
tiger, Love and Energy. Never.
I’m standing on the stairs. The shit
takes my aunt in his arms and throws
her. Throws her towards the stairs.
The shit really does want to kill my
aunt! He throws her at me, because
he wants to kill me too! Everyone
watches the tiger flying through the
air, the tiger falling at the top of the
stairs, the tiger who is going to fall
down the stairs, the tiger whose body
somersaults, the tiger who is about
to break her back on these bloody
stairs from the first floor to the basement. My aunt’s body hits me in
flight, I lose my balance, my body is
going backwards, but somehow –
I’ve no idea how – I clutch the banister with my left hand, and with my
right I manage to grab her hair... I
feel I’ve grabbed her savagely, I see
the skin on the crown of her head
bristle as it recoils from my clutch, I
feel that my body is crucified between my handhold and clutching
her body, I feel that I am crucified
on a medieval instrument of torture,
87
I feel happy because I caught her
before she broke her neck on the
stairs, I try to get my balance, I hug
my aunt and look at the shit who is
watching us. His look says he’s not
used to women fighting back, when
he hits them. The shit is scared shitless
and leaves. His mates follow him
like his henchmen.
My aunt pushed me away from her
and headed back up the stairs. I
grabbed her. She hit me to make me
let go, she shrieked that she was going to find him and kill him, she
shrieked that she’d find out what he
was called and that he’d die under
torture. The shit had disappeared
from the scene, I saw him turning to
look through the glass door, I heard
him quickly starting his car, I could
imagine his astounded face, distorted
by the fact that he had not managed
even to knock an ordinary little
woman out, let alone kill her!
ŠI’ll find him,’ said my aunt in front
of all those people. ŠI’ll kill him like a
rabbit!’
We looked for her shoes. At that
moment, the only girl in ŠJunk Food’
began crying loudly. She cried for us
and for herself – the same thing could
have happened to her if she had refused to have a drink with some ugly,
unshaven nerd.
And she was crying because at that
moment she had realised that her
sweetheart was nothing but the most
ordinary nerd – he had let all this
happen. All girls burst into tears
when they realise they are involved
with losers.
We didn’t dare walk home after all
this.
The taxi driver was one of the men
who had been sitting in ŠJunk Food’.
Repellent at first glance, but we had
no choice. I told him the name of the
street parallel to mine. I wanted to
cover our tracks. My aunt and I
started talking between ourselves in
a whisper. I could feel her heart
pounding. She could feel my heart
88
pounding. Her hand was in mine.
The driver drove at about 90 miles
an hour on a road where soft rain
was falling, some irritating music was
playing on a half-broken radio-cassette, I felt the driver’s eyes in his
rear-view mirror, but I thought that
in the circumstances that wasn’t at
all strange... My aunt was telling me
something and I her, we told each
other that everything was going to
be okay, she told me how much she
loved me, I told her how much I
loved her, she told me everything
was going to be okay, I told her that
everything was going to be okay, I
noticed that the driver was taking us
the wrong way, rain was beating
against the taxi window, but I thought
the man was just adding kilometres
so as to charge us more, maybe he
wanted to enter that parallel road
from the other direction to help us
cover our tracks, the meter, I could
see, was working according to a special tariff that Zagreb taxi drivers use
when they want to rob someone, but
I didn’t say anything because I didn’t
care about the money at all. I didn’t
give a damn about money. We just
had to get home and lock ourselves
behind the burglar-proof door of my
flat. The driver’s mobile rang. My
aunt and I held each other’s hands.
We kept chanting that everything
was going to be just great.
ŠI’m bringing them both,’ said the taxi
driver. I thought I had heard wrong.
My aunt made a face. What the fuck
is the man saying, I wondered.
ŠThey’re both with me in the car.’
ŠDo you hear what I hear?’ whispered my aunt.
ŠWe’re on our way,’ said the driver.
ŠWhy, I said I’d bring them both,
here they are in the back.’
My aunt took her heavy fob of keys
out of her handbag. I have no idea
why she had those keys in her bag,
they were the keys of her house and
car in Australia... like a dues ex machina
a grasshopper had leapt into her
hand. She opened the fob and placed
it under the driver’s chin.
Š STOP!’ she yelled at the same moment as I screamed ŠSTOP THE CAR! ’
He stopped. We fell out. Ten minutes later, hiding in the doorway of
an apartment block several hundred
yards from the road, I called the police. We had to wait about forty minutes. They came, grinning, and asked
us who had stolen our shoes and why
we were all muddy. We told them
what had happened. They didn’t
believe a single word.
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TIONS
That was definitely one of the toughest nights of my life. A simply terrible, appalling night. But even so,
that night in ŠJunk Food’ I had seen
my tiger, furious and blazing with
love.
(The translation was originally published in Croatian Nights, edited by
Tony White, Matt Thorne and
Borivoj Radakovi}; published by
Serpent Tail, 2005.)
Translated by
Celia Hawkesworth
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TIONS
A Little FAK Reader
89
It’s Hard For Me To Say
Senko Karuza
Lost, this is a tough word, yet it
gets as light as a crumb when I try to
say how it felt. Nothing went as I
wanted, and, what’s worse, everything went wrong. I’d warped out of
shape with despair. I could not even
cry, everything was dry. Even to
make myself disappear would’ve been
a mistake, no doubt.
Everything was mixed up. My wife
paid no attention to me, whenever I
needed her, she always happened to
be somewhere else. She’d get appalled if I even tried to hug her or
kiss her; she had no desire for me.
My friends only watched for my mistakes, like hawks, and I couldn’t
count on my children anyway. I almost bought a dog, I fell so low. I
never went anywhere, I only went
away. Ran away.
Back then I liked going to the woods.
I’d imagine I was a caveman, sneaking and hunting. I even did collect
berries. Sorrow.
The most comical was my attempt
to revive a relationship from my student days. We met at a small café
where we used to hang out then. She
was beautiful, that woman. But she
watched me somehow from a distance, with pity, as if she knew I only
wanted instant help. She opposed
everything I said. I told her I couldn’t
forget her and that I loved her. It
sounded like a sob. I watched her
face getting pregnant with scorn.
“You shouldn’t have ruined twenty
Senko Karuza was born in 1957 in Split. He spent his childhood on the Island
of Vis. He was educated in Vis, Split and Zagreb. He studied philosophy at
Zagreb University. His writings have been published in many newspapers and
magazines. He was included in various anthologies, reviews, and selections of
short stories; his texts have been translated into several languages; and he
participated at several literary festivals in Croatia and abroad. Karuza is the
founder of the informal Multimedia Mobile Center for Research of Alternative
Ways of Survival on Small and Distant Islands. His publications include:
Busbuskalai (1997), Ima li ìvota prije smrti (2005), Tri krokodila (with Branko
êgec and Miroslav Mi}anovi}, 2005), and Vodi~ po otoku (2005).
years of nice memories just like that,”
she said. She paid her bill and left,
maybe forever.
I did not have the strength to start all
over again. I meant to kill myself
with alcohol.
But two months later it was spring,
we met again at some exhibition
opening. Smiling from a distance,
she opened her mouth to tell me
something, she waved, but I just
turned my head away and left her
hang there in that ridiculous pantomime. I talked to people, chatted
about paintings, drank, and cruised
around, avoiding her constantly. She
was inside me again. By then I had
enough strength to fight against the
desires that were killing me.
An hour later, I don’t know how, we
happened squeezed against each other
on the back seat of someone’s car
driving a group of us to an afterparty at someone’s place somewhere
outside the town. She tried to appear
offended, I could tell by the way she
tried to make me invisible. She talked
to people making it clear that she
didn’t know me.
When we arrived, someone remembered to introduce us. She offered
me her hand as if seeing me for the
first time. I accepted it and even said
my name. “Come again,” she said
and I repeated my name, and then
she told me hers. We nodded and
smiled at each other. We were left
alone, on the mercy of each other.
“I haven’t seen you in this company
before, but I see that you know everyone here,” she said and looked at
me curiously, as if she had never met
me before.
“Would you like a shot of whiskey?
Or whatever they have here?”
“With lots of ice, please.”
I managed to make my way through
the crowd and pour us two glasses of
90
something. Without ice. As I was
coming back, I saw that she moved
away from the chaos and now stood
pressed against the wall.
“To our new friendship,” she said.
“And to meet more often at places
like this,” I said.
We clinked our glasses and downed
our drinks. I shook a little, she didn’t.
I liked that, so I went to get us another drink. This time the glasses
were fuller.
“Can I ask you what you do for a
living?” she asked.
“Why do women always want to
know what a man does for a living?”
“Ah, ok, forget it,” she said.
“You haven’t answered my question.”
“Oh, do I have to?”
I smiled and raised my glass up in
front of her face. We clinked and
then downed our glasses. Our conversation went on at this comfortable distance, and we slowly warmed
up for a new game. I felt as if I was
hitting on her for he first time –
that’s how she played it on me.
It would be an understatement to
say that I drank and she followed.
We were not giving up on our little
rescuing game and we enjoyed discovering things we already knew about
each other. There was something
devilish between us. We’d already
gotten a little drunk so we began
leaning toward each other, whispering and touching with our heated
cheeks. We could care less for anyone.
Then we staggered around the house
looking for the bathroom. We entered together. She removed her panties with her hand under her skirt,
pulled the skirt up a little, and sat on
the toilet. She glanced at me and
spread her legs allowing me to see
the flow coming out of her bush. I
came up to her and unzipped my
pants – I wanted us to pee together.
She gave me some room and I felt
more confident, but anyway I wet
her. We laughed.
“You should aim better when you’re
peeing with a lady,” she said.
“I apologize! I don’t know you well
enough to ask you to help me,” I
answered, positioning myself in front
of her face so close that I was almost
touching her.
“You could have,” she said, planted
a smooch on my dick, and pushed
me away.
I don’t know whether her push was
that rough or I lost my balance because my pants were down, but I
couldn’t manage to stay on my feet.
I fell down and hit my head against
the door. Nothing serious. I remained
lying on the floor and waited for her
to come. She was approaching slowly,
holding onto anything within her
RELA
TIONS
reach. She sat on me and took off her
panties, she almost ripped them off.
She lifted her skirt high and spread
her legs wide; I could see her white
belly dangle as she crushed me.
Someone knocked on the door and
begged us to open it. We paid no
attention until he threatened to break
in if we didn’t answer. We couldn’t
think of anything to say. But he
didn’t mean it after all. We went on
undisturbed for a while and then she
started vomiting, first on me, then
all over the bathroom, until she finally managed to put her arms around
the toilet. She was suffocating with
her head inside the toilet bowl and I
went there to help her. I must have
come too close or it was the stench,
or maybe compassion, who could
tell, but I too started to vomit all
over her hair, trying to find room in
the toilet bowl next to her. We puked
our souls out and with them everything else that was wrong with us; we
laughed, contorted with pain, hugged,
and then puked again.
When we raised our heads, kneeling
next to the toilet, I could see through
the fog of my drunkenness – she
could probably see it too – two exhausted warriors, who fought on the
side of the enemy.
Translated by
Tomislav Kuzmanovi}
RELA
TIONS
Ivo Bre{an and Edo Popovi}; different poetics
and generations meeting within the FAK.
91
92
RELA
TIONS
FAK is not a political but cultural project
Interview with Kruno Lokotar
•
F
AK was often criticized for a
kind of media abuse, namely its
most prominent representatives are
journalists and critics from major
Croatian newspapers and therefore
their writing favors the whole thing.
Is this true; or in other words is
FAK a media product?
Kruno Lokotar: Let’s see what the
situation looked like before. All those
little gatherings and promotions that
brought together friends, relatives
and a few critics and journalists who
their editors sent there to report on
the occasion were exclusively a media fact. Exclusively in its media echo
no matter how pathetic it was. This
was a pure simulation. FAK stepped
before the masses and faced the readers/audience. What is a media product: the enthusiasm of a couple hundred people or today’s feed from the
Poet’s Festival (which no one ever
heard of) during which, under the
auspices of Croatian Writers’ Association, poets read to their colleagues,
and in the end everything gets shown
in the Daily News? To make it clear,
regarding the attention and minutes
given to various media space and
media time manipulators, FAK is
neglected and, often using Goeringlike methods, libeled in the media –
as it was the case with Half an Hour
of (supposedly) Culture which showed
edited footage claiming it to be documentary.
so of sleep or to enjoy a local specialty at some restaurant than to look
for some cyber café in panic in order
to send their report back to their
office.
In short, FAK is a media product in
the sense that it brought together
media literate people who understand the laws of genres and it offered attractive material that no sane
editor would refuse. The conformation for all this can be found in the
numerous audiences.
•
On the stage
Further, it is true that a good portion
of contemporary writers engages into
criticism which sometimes evolves
into polemics. But this complaint is,
in the mildest sense of the word,
uneducated. Krle‘a and Mato{ exchanged polemics with their contemporaries, right? I don’t even have to
mention a whole line of writers-critics. There is nothing new about this.
On the other hand, the fact that FAK
participants were often forced to
write about FAK themselves is simply caused by the newspapers economic calculation. I mean, an economical editor does not want to send
another journalist to one of FAK’s
excursions because he already has a
journalist there, in most cases his
best one. FAK participants would
surely prefer to have another hour or
Is your explicit refusal – here I mean
you and Borivoj Radakovi} as project
coordinators of FAK – of any kind
of ideology or poetic doctrine also a
kind of ideology?
Kruno Lokotar: Let’s start at the bottom, inductively. When we analyze
the concrete titles that meet our quality
demands, we see a whole line of poetic and ideological traits. Roughly
said, each book has its own immanent poetics and ideology which it
more or less successfully realizes and
which more or less successfully corresponds with the time in which it
came into being, or more often with
its fragments. It is not possible to
squeeze the whole spectrum of one
literature into a unique poetic and
ideological uniform, no matter how
comfortable it is. It is obvious that
we would never sign our names to
many of these books, that we are also
RELA
TIONS
Novi Sad, April 2001.
jealous of some of the writers, but all
of it is completely irrelevant for participation in FAK. Strict ideological
and poetic credentials would have a
very reductive effect. It would be
hardly possible to put more than two
writers under the same hat or haircut.
One really has to be very superficial
and intellectually challenged to declare
FAK a poetic, ideological, generational or lobbyist conspiracy, herd,
stampede or whatever it was called,
even on the pages of this very magazine (Zarez). I think that a good part
of the public was confused by this
very fact; the fact that the project did
not lean on the usual categories and
offered normative poetics. This probably conceals a pragmatic approach
to the whole project: this is the only
way to bring together enough different but still good writers.
Still, on the other hand, it is clear
that, at least in the West ever since
the poststructuralist era, one cannot
stand outside the ideological position. Whatever developed in theory
and in laboratory in the vacuum
would have referred to the vacuum.
There is still a significant difference
in the degree of ideological explicitness, between po-et(h)ics and ethics,
and finally between complicated re-
lationships between poetics and ideology. In this sense FAK adopts the
fundamental civilization and ideological points that can be found in
the Croatian Constitution, and the
question why it does not take them
seriously and put them in practice
should be directed to someone else’s
address, not mine.
•
Some people perceive FAK as analog to the political project of January 3, 2000, particularly taking
into consideration its explicit departure from ideology.
93
Kruno Lokotar: This question inclines toward the one above. It actually offers some circles’ conviction,
which I can agree with only to the
degree to which I answered to it in
the previous question. I can only
point out that FAK came into being
independent from all institutions (its
first name, A Festival of Alternative
Literature, wanted to show that it was
alternative by its origin and financing, but the journalist were not able
to communicate this), out of love, as
it is usually the case with good project,
and that it has absolutely nothing to
do with the January 3 change of government, as it had nothing to do
with the previous one, and the fact
that it appeared in 2000, after the fall
of the Croatian Democratic Union
(HDZ) is just a coincidence.
But the difference is simple: FAK is
not a political but cultural project,
and, I repeat, it is political only to the
degree to which this is inevitable. In
this sense, it falls under the authority
of poetic and not political police.
•
Do you expect some “dough” from
the government in 2003 and what
are your plans for this year?
Kruno Lokotar: FAK never asked for
any funding from the government
At FAK’s Zagreb headquarters, Gjuro II club
94
so in that sense it was never able to
offer it one. We prefer the “dough”
from our sponsors or local government institutions ready to support a
good project. When it comes to sponsoring excursions outside of our borders, by the very nature of things, the
state should show some interest. In
the near future we are planning an
excursion to Slovenia; we have again
been invited to Yugoslavia – or whatever is the name of that country now
– we are talking about a spectacular
co-production with the English writers, and an event or two in Croatia.
We should work more on presenting
Franci Bla{kovi} and Gori Ussi Winnetou’s excellent CD, called Merack
za FAK. Franci honored us all by
setting our poetry to music.
•
RELA
Do you as a project coordinator
and a host have some personal benefits – financial or symbolic – from
the whole thing; have you gained
reputation or can you get something without waiting in line?
Kruno Lokotar: Money wise, I’m
losing considerably, when it comes to
symbolic benefits, I cannot tell – oth-
TIONS
Kruno Lokotar and Roman Simi} share the stage and a shirt
ers decide on this – but I have to
admit that on two occasions people
approached me and asked me what
was going on with FAK and when
was another reading taking place,
because it was great. Interestingly,
both times it happened I was in a
toilet, and the people who addressed
me stood over the urinal next to mine.
The first time was at a concert in
Tvornica and the second in Mo~vara.
And, yes, the other day a waiter said
to my four-month old son, “I saw
your old man on TV,” but he still
charged my wife the full price of the
coffee.
When it comes to waiting in line, I
always wait, anyhow.
(The interview was originally
published in Zarez)
Translated by
Tomislav Kuzmanovi}
RELA
TIONS
95
Past Sumatra and Java –
how realistic is the realist prose?
Jurica Pavi~i}
No more Sumatras and Javas –
“
Croatian literature is finally speaking
about our own reality!” exclaimed literary theoretician Ante Stama} in an
interview in the early 1990s. This
programmatic sentence of the renowned theoretician and political
conservative was uttered at the time
when cannons thundered over Croatia:
people were dying all over the place,
people were staring at the TV watching the news, magnetized, and every
patriotic poetaster was contributing
a sonnet sequence to our cause. In
those times of army-garde and lyrical recitals in army barracks, a victory
over “Sumatras and Javas” proclaimed
by the Zagreb professor seemed like
a much-coveted triumph of the aesthetic conservatives. After decades of
narrative experiments, genre-oriented
and feminist prose, metafiction and
self-referentiality, with first cannon
fires of those early 1990s, Croatian
literature returned to – reality. Poets
wrote elegies on torched villages; literary outsiders wrote impressions
from bomb shelters, and war veterans with PTSD (and sometimes a
piece of shrapnel embedded in their
skulls) wrote fierce war memoirs.
It was the time when, in Croatian
literature and film, two falsehoods
were held true. The first was that this
new realism was the result of our
endemic circumstances, i.e. war. The
bloody social environment, as the
popular critical and publicist myth
claimed, became so exciting and relevant, so “novel-like” or “film-like”
that Sumatras and Javas – fantasized
hetero-cosmoses of postmodernist
fiction – indeed stood no chance.
The other falsehood was that the victory of this new realism was the victory of the conservative, nationalist
culture. Both falsehoods would soon
be exposed.
When the gunpowder smoke cleared
in the second half of the 1990s, the
new Croatian literature turned back
in wonder and realized that it found
itself in the midst of a literary trend,
unawares. In other cultures, too –
those that had no lines of fire or
poets composing war quatrains – literary pendulum swung from fantastic prose and metafiction to verism
and narration. It happened both in
film and in fiction, partly because
literary tastes always push each other
out on the basis of contrast, and
partly (as was the case in Croatia)
because the period itself was important and exciting. New realism was
no Croatian invention – it was rather
a legislatory global trend that we –
isolated, cowering in trenches and
shelters – came up with on our own
(instinctively?).
The other falsehood/mistake that
was exposed was the one that this
new realism signified the victory of
the conservatives; that “cosmopolitan”, “de-nationalized” Sumatras and
Javas were now dumped in the sewer
once and for all. The literary right
never knew what kind of a snake it
had bred in its own nest. For the new
post-postmodernist literature suddenly turned against the idyllic picture of the victimized Croatia epitomized by broken crucifixes and flowery meadows. Nationalistic aestheticists must have regretted the “denationalized” literature a thousand
times, because in its place they got a
“masochist”, if not “treacherous” one.
Croatian dark wave rose: dozens of
literary newcomers suddenly started
writing about drugs, tycoons, war
crimes, ethnic cleansing, dealers, deserters, delinquents, football hooligans and state-founding hypocrisy.
Croatian literary establishment was
chasing a fox and chased out a wolf:
it found itself facing a literary (and
sometimes, even though rarely, a cinematic) model which was openly heretical and oppositional, and which
aimed straight at the heart of the
social lie. It was masochistic, audacious and deliberately dark. The gallant conservative would put it in
these words: it was a literature that
96
“disappointed the mission of literature and its ideals, denied hope, provoked just for the sake of provocation, and was blasphemous.” The
new realism was attacked for being
ideologised, pessimistic, blasphemous,
vulgar, negativist. It is paradoxical
that the whole time it was completely
the opposite. The greatest weakness
of the Croatian “new verism” was the
fact that the picture of society it offered was selective and – beautifying.
Sounds schizophrenic? Yet it was so.
Today Croatian literary public is
thrilled with the book @ivi i mrtvi (The
Living and the Dead) by the BosnianCroatian author Josip Mlaki}, who
was awarded the lucrative VBZ literary prize for this novel. The novel,
which is also going to be filmed (directed by Kristijan Mili}), intrigued
the public not only because of its
quality, around which there is common consensus, but also because it
deals with the chapter of the Croatian
newer reality thus far not taken up in
literature: Croatian-Bosnian war told
from the Croatian perspective. Mlaki}
took up the same subject in his earlier, excellent book Kad magle stanu
(When Fogs Lift), and those were
possibly the only books that spoke of
Croatian war experience beyond the
“good guy-bad guy” divide. This absence probably would not be so strange
if not for this constant discussion
about a “less compromising” and
“more naturalist” social literature. It
would not be so strange if on this
side of the Una River they would not
constantly gloat over the fact that in
Serbia there are so few good books
about the recent war. The Serbian
war literature indeed is not as substantial, hinging on a few more familiar titles (Olenjin’s Slavonski krvolok;
Jovanovi}’s Idemo na Zagreb), but it
is just the case with Croatian war
literature about “that other”, more
shameful war. Here, just like across
the Danube, the literature will not
discuss events where author would
not be able to position him/herself
without much discomfort.
If this mechanism were at work only
when it came to war literature, it
wouldn’t be half as bad. Kids are fed
up with the war and war vets’ legends anyways, and the thunder of
the early 1990s is echoing throughout our everyday life anyways, thus a
little bit of social oblivion would do
us good. However, the same mechanism which is at work in war fiction
is also at work elsewhere. Croatian
“realist” fiction talks about the reality that it does not find uncomfortable, the reality that does not bring/
cause disapproval and cultural ignominy.
The new Croatian verism is thus full
of drug dealers, delinquents, punks,
junkies and ravers. In it war vets are
romantically screwed up, Zagreb resembles a megalopolis in a glamorous,
decadent “down”, fictional neighbourhoods are peopled only with
boys from Kneìja, everybody speaks
in a perfect, and thus very literary
slang of Zagreb, or Split. If people
swear at someone in this literature,
they swear only at those who deserve
it: politicians, tycoons, priests. There
may be some sex in this literature,
but this sex is not clumsy, painful,
causing shame, frustration and discomfort. It is good, passionate and
uninhibited. This literature speaks
about the world that is highly artificial, resembling real urbanity just as
Tarantino’s gangsters resemble real
criminals, or as characters from
pastorals resemble 16th century cowherds. In this literature people are
rarely hell to one another, the innocent are not affected, nobody hates
the wrong people, there is no confusion, there is no myth or ideological
mayhem. It is, in short, very different from Croatia. But underneath this
fictional neighbourhood of Trnsko,
this punk-like, urban, and wellasphalted Croatia, there lies another
one, which literature has not cov-
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ered yet. This is the Croatia that
was last week shockingly revealed in
public opinion polls. It is conservative, full of idolatry, kneeling before the fetish of the nation, permanently longing for a surrogate father, a patriarchal political leader.
It is the Croatia whose idols are
Zlatko Sudac and Marko Perkovi}
Thompson, Croatia that listens to
Severina and the Narodni radio (Folk
Radio), goes to Mass on Sunday, and
on Monday bribes and is being bribed.
This is the real Croatia – neither village nor city, but suburbia, “grey
mass that slopes down from Trilj to
Split,” and that, as Nenad Popovi}
writes, “holds us hostage.” It is our
silent majority, Croatian version of
the white Midwest. In Croatia they
hang in clusters around the urban
centres of Split, Zagreb, Zadar or
Slavonski Brod; their tastes are shaped
by Ton~i Hulji}; their voices burst
from the election boxes every four
years. This Croatia is absolutely nowhere represented symbolically: you
will not read much about it in the
papers, no TV series or dramas are
made about it, the “realist” literature
keeps quiet about it (with few exceptions – such as the writings of Gordan
Nuhanovi} and Ante Tomi}). Young
film authors also keep quiet, firmly
dedicated to the asphalt and complete/
full/absolute urbanity. This keeping
quiet is so stubborn and so absolute
that it smells of taboo.
And this is why that famous Croatian
literary bohemian was wrong when
in a recent interview he stated that
the “urban-peasant literature will be
the death of us.” Croatia has no “urban-peasant literature” at all, although
it is a nation of urban peasants. Our
mindless, clerical Midwest does not
have its Sam Shepard who would
demonstrate how these rural, Balkan
dimwits live their tragic emotions and
their dramas around their kitchen
tables. Possessed by schizophrenia
because it’s half-Balkan, half-anti-
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Balkan, cultural Croatia cannot manage to overcome its cultural shame
and narrate about the face of its nation, which it despises and which it
is ashamed of. This, of course, is not
a must for any a writer or film director. Good books and good films have
been made and will be made about
the exotically non-everyday things
as well, about the things that have
nothing to do with the outside word
and society. However, when there is
so much talk in a literature about its
“realism”, “verism” and “naturalism”, and yet it so persistently keeps
quiet about the mainstream of its
own society, then this says nothing
about the literature itself anymore,
97
but rather something about a deep
cultural discomfort and fear of the
abyss of truth about its own (miserable) identity.
(The text wasoriginally
published in Jutarnji list)
Translated by
Mima Simi}
98
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TIONS
How We Entered
Literary Capitalism
Jurica Pavi~i}
Stephen King, the most prolific,
most published and (no less importantly) the richest American author a
few weeks ago received the fairly
prestigious American National Book
Award. The decision of the American book-people to present the author
of The Shining and Dolores Claiborne
with the Medal for Distinguished
Contribution to American Letters
suddenly became one of the most
heated debates of the contemporary
literary culture. The fact that someone who “had it all” (money, numerous editions, movie adaptations, etc.)
now reached for what so far had been
“ours” – legitimacy of the high literature – enraged the vestals of literary
taste. Something nobody expected
was thus revealed: King, an immanently “trivial” writer, was actually
pain in the neck to the silent literary
culture.
The debate about the National Book
Award was joined by a well-known
Croatian name – Dubravka Ugre{i}.
In a series of public appearances on
the occasion of the release of her new
book entitled Thank You for Not
Reading, the renowned essayist and
scholar of Russian language and literature fiercely attacked the canonization of the American fabricator of
horror. “We live in a book paradise!”
said Ugre{i}. “More books are being
produced than ever. Bookstores were
never more attractive or diverse. Writers never had such opportunities to
become global stars as they do today.
So why do I grumble? Because the
book has become a product like
any other – that is the price of the
marketization of culture. Unwilling or unable to put time and effort
into educating ourselves about our
options, we end up buying what everybody else buys.” Ugre{i} goes on
to say, “If Stephen King had found
himself in the Stalinist Russia, he
would undoubtedly have gotten the
Stalin Prize. King’s award is not a
surprise but a logical consequence of
contemporary literary professionalism, which – like socialist realism –
demands that a writer clench his
teeth and write within the framework of the given norm or else end
up, if not in a prison camp, then in
his own personal ghetto of anonymity and poverty. The symbolic meaning of King’s award is the Fall of the
Literary Wall: a final unification, not
of good and bad literature but of
literature and trash.”
I have to say that I am no a particular
fan, nor an expert on Stephen King.
I have read but three of his books,
two of which were good, and one
was not. The Body is one of the most
beautiful stories about growing up
that I ever read, worthy of Salinger.
Dolores Claiborne is a serious novel
about male violence, much more mature than those by, say, Vedrana
Rudan. Apt Pupil is an utterly stupid
novelette that demonstrates that King,
just like the majority of Americans,
does not understand the source of
political terror. The Shawshank Redemption is a much better and darker
story than the brainless film based
on it. The Shining is an intriguing
novel, and it was no coincidence that
it occupied the imagination of someone like Stanley Kubrick. I am not
qualified to defend King, because I
am no expert on his writing, but it
seems to me that neither are those
who are attacking him. What bothers them most of all is the fact that
King belongs to a cosmos which they
a priori hold to be less worthy – the
realm of popular fiction. It is an aspect of Ugre{i}’s stand that I dislike.
Yet another aspect that I find objectionable is the elitist jargon of a
priestess defending the temple of literature from the merchants. It is absolutely understandable why I have
an aversion to this kind of discourse:
mostly because it could be heard
(with slight variations in lexis) for six
or seven years, from the more conservative Croatian critics’ quarters,
the silent academic majority and the
so-called old writers, often those who
would not sit in the same bus with
Ugre{i}, divided by great ideologi-
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cal, political, national and cultural
ramparts. However, these differences in worldview disappear when
it comes to the sacred war against
literary capitalism.
The story about Stephen King and
Dubravka Ugre{i} is a perfect illustration of the situation we have had
in Croatia since 1997. Just like in
the U.S., our publishing industry is
slowly blossoming, we have more
bestsellers, and writers are drawing
prize-winners in the “Dorina” chocolate prize competition. Just like in the
U.S., this conjuncture has “democratic” consequences: the best of writers are not always the authors of the
best books, and there is much trash
among the bestsellers. The question,
of course, is – what is the alternative?
Should elections be suspended just
because they can be won by, say, the
right? Should people be prevented
from liking Vedrana Rudan – a tragically poor writer, who has, however,
found the right social button, the
segment of audiences who needs her
literature?
The problem is that in Croatia – just
like in the U.S., obviously – there are
two confronted, equally dogmatic
systems of belief. The first has confused the facts of marketing and
common sense and almost taken for
granted that all of the new Croatian
prose is good. This reasoning is childish, just as it is childish to believe
that the detergent they have advertised just a moment ago is the best
one. The other system of belief is
based on the assumption that the
whole of the new prose is fabrication
of the young capitalist economy, and
for this reason a negation of the sacred literary space, which is above
market relations.
This claim is extremely dangerous.
It is true that not so long ago there
was a time when literature was above
market relations. This was the time
of communism. But what was the
price? The price was that writes lived
as parasites of the public sector, got
sinecures in encyclopaedias, editorial boards and radio stations, went
on summer vacations in guild resorts, and their books were published
through generous funding. A great
number of these authors were fervent
anti-communists. However, they accepted this system of benefits for the
consecrated, and today they openly
grieve for it. In the whole of my generation this parasitism produced a
permanent feeling of disgust towards
the “loftiness” of literature. If I can
choose, I’d rather choose capitalism.
In this dispute about the new Croatian
literature both opposed dogmatic parties have something in common: they
have not devoted any effort to reading. A process of a closer, more critical reading, had not accompanied
the imagined accumulation of new
literary stars. Moreover, when it did
occur (i.e., when Boro Radakovi}
analysed the writing of Vedrana
Rudan), all hell broke loose.
But the other side did not do the job
of close reading either. None of the
critics of the new prose myth (including the most thorough of them
all, Dean Duda in The Feral Tribune) took up the red pencil, spit on
their palms and say, “Here, I think
this book is bad”. Just as I am not
convinced that Dubravka Ugre{i}’s
aversion toward King is founded on
her reading of his hundred or so novels, I am not convinced that the critics of our literary present have thoroughly examined the literary pro-
99
duction they hold to be “overstated”.
Although there is a myth that a cohort of critics-hagiographers used to
follow FAK, so far there have not
been any in-depth critical articles on
Feri}, Jergovi} or Tomi}. Although
there is a myth in the cultural folklore that the FAK crew stole the show
from “somebody else”, nobody ever
wrote about those others who should
have been fêted, but the pedestal was
taken away from under them.
FAK’s opponents often accused FAK
of wanting to popularise literature
(thus supposedly trivializing it). This,
in fact, was truly so. I think that I can
say, in first person plural, that we
did it consciously, intentionally, and
we planned it. What we all had in
common was a terrible fear of death
of reading. Against this probable death
we fought with the tools of the dominant culture, media culture. Unfortunate side effects were inevitable, of
course. In this sense Robert Peri{i}
was right when he dubbed paraliterary
phenomena such as Vedrana Rudan
“FAK’s unwanted children”. Still,
this is the world we live in, we write
for it, we are part of it, and we communicate in its language. To yearn
for the virginal literary Parnassus
without this kind of side effects is
the same as wanting to return to
childhood, or yearning for cities in
which there would be no cars and
their noise. But, once there was a
man who ordered cars out of the
cities and brought on absolute silence. He lived in Cambodia and his
name was Pol Pot.
Translated by
Mima Simi}
100
RELA
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Lokotar, Simi}, Orli}, Kova~ and Popovi};
talking, reading, tasting, dancing...
RELA
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101
The Bookends of FAK
Dean Duda
The wake is still going on. Speeches
are delivered over the open grave.
Vultures are gathering. As some are
weeping, others are gloating. Whilst
some are sad, licking their wounds,
others have mustered up a little bit
of provincial courage typical of the
heroes from the last echelon and now
they are booting, drawing conclusions and pretending to be smarter
than they have ever been in their
dusty lives of the literary or media
reserves. And the chances are that
the cacophonous orchestra of this
surrogate – which has again taken the
place of the just opened serious discussion about contemporary Croatian
literature – will gurgle like water in
the toilet tank and send off, without
the well deserved farewell, that which
is better than it is, where it doesn’t
belong. Yet, such are the power relations. When the media becomes fed
up with the stage-oriented reproduction of literature, when they find
better material for the continuing
manufacture of the spectacle, those
still fascinated by the matter will, as
always, turn to the safe haven that is
the pub.
I don’t know which of the children’s
bestsellers by Mato Lovrak would be
the most appropriate byword for the
latest dramatic episode from the
neocapitalist life of Croatian literature.
Perhaps Dru‘ba Pere Kvr‘ice (Pero
Kvr‘ica’s Company). So, at first no
one in the village gave a damn about
Dean Duda was born in Pula in 1963. He studied comparative literature and
philosophy at Zagreb University, and earned his MA (1992) and PhD (1997)
from the same university. Since 1990 he has been working at the Department
of Comparative Literature at Zagreb University. His interests range from
theory of literature, cultural studies, pop-culture, travel culture, history and
narrative theory. His publications include Pri~a i putovanje: hrvatski romanti~arski putopis kao pripovjedni ànr (Matica hrvatska, Zagreb, 1998) and
Kulturalni studiji: ishodi{ta i problemi (AGM, Zagreb, 2002); he edited an
anthology entitled Putopisi (Rije~, Vinkovci, 1999); and co-authored Mali
leksikon hrvatske knjièvnosti (Naprijed, Zagreb, 1998) and Lektira na dlanu
(Sysprint, Zagreb, 2001-2002. Duda is a contributor for Miroslav Krleà
Lexicographic Institute; he worked as an editor at Zarez magazine; and writes
for Feral magazine.
the old mill. But then Pero scratched
his little nose, came up with an idea,
gathered a gang, and then the little
boys and girls, as Jurica Pavi~i} explains in one of his at least three
regular Saturday sermons (Jutarnji
list; more specifically: Magazine; even
more specifically: Culture, December 13), “consciously, intentionally”
and having “planned it”, swung into
action. What they “all had in common was a terrible fear of death” of
the old mill. That’s why Pero and
his gang used “the tools of the dominant culture”, which simply meant
that they took up hammers, saws,
shovels, paintbrushes and cans of
paint, fixed the old mill and put it
back to use. They threw the finishing party, everyone joined in the celebration as they showed the domi-
nant parental culture how to jointly
work for common good. However,
in the end they realized that they had
fooled themselves, that “we live in
such a world”, that they would be
facing “unfortunate side effects”, because someone had “stolen” their
“show”, and that the wider social
community, defined for the most
part by the “two confronted, dogmatic systems of belief”, is not really
worth their efforts.
Or maybe a more illustrative example
would be the story about Ljuban and
the little co-oppers, about their troubles
on their return trip to the city following the visit to the printing house
of the Smilje magazine. The teacher
fell ill, the train got stuck in the snow,
before long they ran out of sandwiches, soda and crisps, and agitat-
102
ing in the co-operative ranks there’s
the proverbial bad guy, a spoilt rich
little brat and a cunt. And everywhere around them there’s only chill,
hunger, and “a terrible fear of death”.
Only unity and effective organization can bring the machine back to
life. Only a strict application of
Pavi~i}’s dictum can save the day.
Thus, one needs to go in action “consciously, intentionally” and having
“planned it”, complemented, needless to say, with the experience enriched by the movie evergreen whose
refrain “when our little hands come
together, they can do anything, anything...” is familiar to every frustrated
son of socialism but, apparently, not
every daughter.
It doesn’t take great imagination to
picture Croatian literature before
FAK in Pavi~i}’s interpretation (rhetorically enforced with his habit to
speak “in first person plural”) stuck
in the snow like the train from the
story. Snowbound in desolate wasteland. All around it snowdrifts, frost,
dead cold and the confronted, dogmatic systems of belief. They start off
as one, full force. They start out victoriously; with tools of the dominant
culture in hand, for, naturally, what
brings them together in this inseparable unison is the “terrible fear of
death of reading”. And, as the result
of their charitable efforts and aspirations in this frightful border situation of “the fear of death”, the train
starts moving; it whistles, roars, rushes
and thunders. Books by Croatian
authors are suddenly found under
every, even the shabbiest tree, whereas
authors are on the train with their
fans, reading, and reading for hours
on the trot. Again, there’s no end to
their happiness, although, understandably, “unfortunate side effects”
are “inevitable”.
I wouldn’t be bringing up Lovrak,
Pero and Pavi~i} this much if the
sweet diplomacy of the discourse about
recent Croatian literature hadn’t fi-
nally been broken. And, as soon as it
was broken, the infrastructure collapsed, and (notwithstanding the assessment of weight of arguments put
forward by some) exposed the problems because of which, for instance,
in but a week’s time FAK transformed from a movement into a
party and, finally, dissolved. And I
really don’t have a problem with
FAK, quite the opposite; only with
Pavi~i}’s interpretation which, unlike other contributions to the polemic written in first person singular, loudly, from the hill where wise
men of the democratic centre dwell,
preaches in the glorious “we”-discourse worthy of a political commissar in command of the right and left
turns.
The endless procession of Jurica’s
“wes” (of Croatia, of the other Croatia,
of the liberal Croatia, of this and
that Dalmatia, of this and that Split,
of the civic option, of middle class,
of the chakavian speakers colonized by
the shtokavian standard dialect etc.)
was this time enriched by two new
items. First was the “we” of the generation disgusted by the “parasitism”
of the socialist position of the writer,
his sinecures “in encyclopaedias, editorial boards and radio stations”, his
“guild resorts” and subsidized books.
The other “we” was the “we” of FAK.
Although the thesis about the “funded
books” is still existent today in a
somewhat more sophisticated form
of “cultural politics of subsidizing
and purchase of books” on part of
the appointed ministry (and there is
certainly a lot of room for discussion
about this circular market in which
the state is both the investor and the
buyer), the crucial element of Pavi~i}’s
article is the way he, after such a long
time, reintroduces totalitarian jargon
into the discussion about literature.
Sentences such as “this claim is terribly dangerous” and phrases such as
“two equally dogmatic systems of
belief” or “opposed dogmatic sides
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in dispute” belong to the discourse
one needs to take a crash course in,
in order to be able to grasp. If any of
its former practitioners are still among
the living, there’s a chance to fatten
up their pension check.
And the tragedy, it seems, was born
exactly from the spirit of the market. A
typical marketing motive from the
realm of book industry, in the form
of the Book Fair in Pula, turned out
to be a detonator. Thanks to the socalled sideshow, which supplies the
book industry with some aesthetic
make up and adds it a tad of ethical
dimension, revealed were the segregative book-market politics of a worthwhile manifestation tastelessly entitled “Dreamlike Book Fair in Istria”.
At the same time, a polemic was
opened in which rather interesting
theses were advanced and where my
article “Croatian Literary Fable-Machine” (Feral, September 20) was
mentioned several times. When it
was published, let us remember, only
Velimir Viskovi} reacted. At first nobody made mention of it, dragging
it (with a good reason, probably)
through the mists of the telecommunicational and pub metaphysics,
and then elbowing it in nicely packaged allusions in the newspapers,
treating it like a blister caused by a
new pair of shoes. And then, at last,
in these “new conditions” they were
given the opportunity to say, or write,
something out loud. In this sense
Viskovi} turned out to be a hotshot,
indeed the coolest guy on the block,
because – although he had failed to
understand anything – he reacted at
once. It was exactly those subsequent
reactions to “the fable machine” and
references to it in new contributions
to the media history of Croatian literature that revealed the (not too fascinating) mirror traces of reception.
Viskovi} thought the article was about
him, while Pavi~i} and Rizvanovi}
read it mostly as a discussion about
FAK. Moreover, in Jurica’s inter-
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pretation I was promoted into the
“the most thorough critic of the new
prose myth”, whereas, like many others, I never “spat on my palms”, took
up the “red pencil” and, like a stern
teacher, said what was good and what
was not. Pavi~i} did the exact thing
with Vedrana Rudan, the “person”
whose writing, according to him, is
“tragically poor” and which he, referring to Robert Peri{i}, placed on the
“paraliterary phenomena” shelf. What
makes Vedrana Rudan a “paraliterary
phenomenon”, whereas Jurica Pavi~i}
or, say, some Dean Duda, isn’t? Because they’re not bad writers? As this
differentiation is not the solution,
but rather part of the problem, this
leads us to the first cause of the
abovementioned infrastructural collapse. It was the “pissing all over the
territory”, i.e. the operative definition of literature which we draw on
in order to legitimize our own position.
On the other hand, Vedrana Rudan
and Arijana ûlina can hardly be the
“unwanted children” or “unwanted
sisters” of FAK. Their literary legitimacy was but a side effect of their
media legitimation. If once a week,
in a classical genre of populist snobbery, you expose yourself to (potentially) millions of TV viewers, or if
prior your “literary debut” the audience have familiarized themselves
with you via the media machinery
(radio, dailies, weeklies), then you
already have yourself a huge potential
audience. What is at work here is a
reverse order of legitimization, which
only demonstrates what place literature has in active cultural articulation. In the newly established arrangement of things, in most part
literature is a by-product of media
politics, but this is hardly the matter
for the “conspiracy theory” discourse.
The fact is that the media job market
of today is incomparable to the commonly cited example according to
which most Croatian writers “at the
beginning of the century” lived off
journalism.
Doesn’t this stance on the “paraliterary”
reflect the very thing Pavi~i} fumes
over in his parallel slalom between
Dubravka Ugre{i} and Stephen King?
Let me remind you: “I’m not qualified to defend King, for I’m no expert on his writing, but it seems to
me that neither are those who are
attacking him. What bothers them
most of all is the fact that King belongs to a cosmos which they a priori
hold to be less worthy – the realm of
popular fiction. It’s the aspect of
Ugre{i}’s stand that I dislike.” Why
does he, then, cite the paraliterary as a
differential characteristic of Vedrana
Rudan? Or, perhaps we will, when it
suits us, be populists, and when it
doesn’t, we won’t? But I suppose we
are legitimised by the “terrible fear of
death of reading”, which Vedrana
Rudan probably doesn’t share, much
like she hasn’t taken up the enlightening stance particular to the great
males of Croatian cultural history.
Another important cause of infrastructural collapse stemmed from the
fact that FAK was not only a literary
phenomenon, but also a phenomenon
of club culture. This, also, was its
fundamental surplus, and not just
due to it crossing the borders of the
dominant provincial concept of literary life. Economy of club culture
relies on specific capital known as
“subcultural”. Several of its characteristics were present in the case of
FAK: 1) it didn’t fully translate into
categories of economic capital (gusto,
high time, cutting up, fooling around,
spontaneity); 2) in the process of
defining and shaping it everyone involved took part (the audience, authors, organizers, club owners etc.);
3) it therefore offered the illusion of
classlessness and equality (democratization of literature) and 4) its circulation was predominantly managed by the media (and here we
found ourselves in the realm of me-
103
dia reproduction from the “fable
machine”).
Although it seemed that everything
was functioning perfectly, it turned
out that this duality of the literary
and the popcultural was difficult to
keep under control. Popular club
culture does not issue vouchers for
literary value, namely; it is not governed by refined critical distinctions.
In media circulation of subcultural
capital there are no “serious analyses” or “exhaustive critical texts”.
Nobody will pat your little head and
say you’re an author with a big A.
Popular culture is simply not the
place where history of Croatian literature is being written, because our
critical and methodical tools are the
way they are. Popular culture, for
the most part objectified and stereotypical, is not the place where we can
discover who we really are; it’s not
the sacred space in which the truth
of our literary experience will be revealed to us. It is the theatre of popular desire and fantasy, the space where
we expose ourselves and where we
hide, the place where we play with
our identities, where we are symbolically produced and represented – not
only to the audience who watches us
or listens to us, but above all to our
own selves.
That is why, in the good old manner, the certificate of worth we have
to seek elsewhere – among the privileged experts of elite provenance. But
how, if they have been there within
the institutional division of literature and knowledge about it, in the
time span from the cradle to the third
age, where there’s no second? Well,
that’s the logic of that element of the
“literary” in the aforementioned duality which, obviously, was not elitist because of high standards or
sociointellectual imposition, but because of the address where it sought
approval, licence, certificate of its
own quality. And the collateral damage was the audience of FAK subcul-
104
ture, who changed from participants
into a transitional stopover on the
road to academic heights and laurel
wreaths.
So, the elitist quality of FAK was not
located in the assessment of the text
with which such an attribution would
agree, but in the approval sought
from the privileged, most often academic position, which, despite FAK’s
declarative alternativeness of attitude,
was to give definitive judgment on
FAK’s value, guaranteeing a place in
eternity and triggering off small manufacture of BA, MA and PhD theses.
This combination was tacitly built
on the contradiction of the literary
and popular as its founding principle, which was best seen on the fact
that difference in value surfaced only
after centimetres for greatness were
ascribed by the authority of Slobodan
P. Novak’s The History of Croatian
Literature. The idea of square space
in heaven suddenly whetted some
appetites, the need for distinctions
and the need to define the field of
literature.
Since I’ve already mentioned the
problem of tools in the analysis of
literature and popular culture, I
shouldn’t fail to note that discussions about the so-called trivial literature can’t be held solely in the
academic field of getting some dry
PhD in the genre but they ought to,
and I repeat, ought to, in the contemporary cultural articulation be unavoidably connected with the active
field of popular culture, that is, everyday life, neocapitalism and its
media field. Each analysis relying on
the crumbs of knowledge nibbled on
in courses on literary theory twenty
years ago, or in Stanko Lasi}’s book
on Marija Juri} Zagorka (which had,
presumably, once and for all defined
the thing), is but calling for one’s
own euthanasia in a presumed dis-
cussion. Yet it’s all, as it is whenever
we are discussing literature, I repeat,
only a part of the problem, although
it could rhetorically be represented
as the solution. It’s not about old
problems packaged into a new market-friendly theoretical terminology,
but about essentially new instances
in creation of the field we have been
taught to call literature.
Finally, the third cause of collapse,
closely bound to Pavi~i}’s question,
goes along these lines: who did the
FAK crew “steal the show” from, and
where were those “who should have
been fêted” and from under whom
the “pedestal” had been taken away?
Nobody and nowhere, of course.
For, it was not the matter of a stolen
show, but rather of the definition
and control over literature. That’s
why I would like to rephrase Pavi~i}’s
question in a somewhat different
form: Who stole the show from the
FAK crew? There are at least three
addresses in the answer to this question: a) the media, which enables
circulation of subcultural capital; b)
traditional institutions dealing with
knowledge about literature, from
which certificate needs to be obtained; c) FAK itself, i.e. its policemen who defined the field of literature in order to confirm their own
legitimacy. So, the media because of
the type of reproduction; the mentioned elitist position where they
asked for credentials of value; and
FAK itself because of its inherent
inner lack of criticism, which was a
logical choice whilst sharing the fear
of death of reading. When the criticism finally arrived, the train was
stuck in the snow again.
The first two addresses are characterized by perfect cynicism, and the
third by hypocrisy. The first two act
from the position of power, and the
third one is built around vanity and
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is completely understandable. Cynicism of universities and literary institutions is prevalently a matter of
disposition and tools. And the cynicism of the media, if I must refer to
it, is reflected in the, say, bestial tabloid games with facts about transfers
of authors from one publisher to another, whilst the media transfers, several times higher in amount than the
literary ones, are regularly overlooked.
I see no reason why a newspaper
should at the top of its voice discuss
each financial transfer in the field of
literary publishing or in the freshly
ignited television field, and yet keep
silent about the occupational whereabouts of their own employers, or
the employers of the next-door or
rival media houses. It is, I suppose, a
matter of professional ethics and
something that’s clearly nobody’s
business.
This is how those who take up tools
of the dominant culture, thinking
they could become its constituent
part, usually end up. That’s how
Radakovi}’s “punks” (his own designation) ended up, when from “Alternative” they switched to “A-class”,
and demanded their value to be estimated by some royal music institute,
whilst all the renowned tabloids gossiped about them. According to the
cultural model, FAK had never, in
fact, been an alternative cultural phenomenon but rather an oppositional
one. The logic of an oppositional
cultural phenomenon is that it wants
to replace the dominant one. And
that’s where problems arise. It’s a painfully simple equation. Regrettably.
published in Feral Tribune)
Translated by
Mima Simi}
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Irvine Welsh and Pero Kvesi} in action;
Zagreb, KCCK, December 2002.
105
106
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Fourteen Untruths About
the Croatian New Prose
In defense of the Croatian literary phenomenon
of our time or – parting with FAK
Jurica Pavi~i}
I
n a famous scene from Peter Bacso’s
film “Crown Witness” the communist functionary, comrade Bastion,
comes to a provincial agricultural
facility in order to honor the success
of the socialist economy – the first
Hungarian orange. For local functionaries troubles begin when on the
eve of festivity, a girl steals the orange from a platter, peels and eats it.
In dire distress, the leaders of the
facility decide to sneak in to comrade Bastion a lemon instead of an
orange. In the comical climax, Bastion climbs to the speaker’s podium,
bites into the fruit and with a visible
grimace quips: “Even if small, yellow and bitter – it still is ours, a
Hungarian orange!”
Anthological Bacso’s line is possibly
the most concise description of the
strategy of success making typical of
all the communist societies. But, that
sentence also aptly describes Croatian
relation towards its own culture and
its relevance. In the provincial mentality where the object of serious fascination becomes Dante’s grandson
who was in Zagreb as sweet-goods
merchant (or that Croatians are mentioned in one line of La Divina
Commedia) and where Croatian literary criticism and science are for
centuries immersed in searching for
the “greatness of the small”. Precisely
the phrase “the greatness of the small”
coined by Antun Barac (and with
which until recently joked Zoran
Kravar), becomes dominant for the
mentality of entire Croatian studies.
In that mentality, literature sometimes boils down to the hurdles race
in which caption of the origin of
some modernist tale or the stream of
consciousness novel, becomes a substitute for relevancy.
That type of strategic thinking about
literature – frankly speaking – for
decades produces nothing but tedium and boredom. Worn out by
the making of Croatian literary oranges, our educated elite has until
recently looked down on domestic
literary production as necessary evil
that must exist inasmuch as ballet,
protected eagles or the honor guards.
Instead of domestic books, the Croatian
reading minority even some six or
seven years ago read Latin Americans and Viewegh. The copy editors
rolled their eyes upon receiving a
piece of literary criticism or news bit
about some literary event, regretting
in advance the wasted space. Literary
criticism and science persisted in
production of the literary oranges
that interested nobody. Those few
prose writers that were worth the
money, grew silent, emigrated or
changed their careers. At the book
fair in Frankfurt we sold writers whose
copyrights expired 400 years ago and
we enviously peeked over the fence
where the Bosnian war letters thrived.
That’s how it was, folks – almost
until yesterday. Those that forget it, a
famous HDZ flyer should be quoted:
“Think, Remember...”
Has something changed? If that’s
how it was then, how is it now? There
are different opinions of this “now”,
one of the typical ones could be best
described by the following sentence:
“Croatian literature... it looks it has
definitely changed its older countenance and, on the wings of the creative wind, bravely earned itself a
well-deserved status under the stingy
domestic neo-capitalist sun. Legions
of new authors, publishers’ feats,
reading festivals, literary awards, new
magazines, serious distribution, allpresent bestselling lists, seasonal trans-
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fers, waiting lists in public libraries,
film scenarios, stardust and limelight
and, lastly, the public consecration
of the young creative lions and lionesses on the pages of the latest history of Croatian literature, are only
but the few more palpable elements
of change...”
Despite the fact that the ingredients
of this description are mostly factually correct, the author of the quoted
text, framed the quoted description
as deeply ironical. Because, the author of the quoted text – literary scientist, theoretician and an expert on
cultural studies, Dean Duda – belongs
to not a small group of Croatian literary men and women who consider
the myth of our literary Renaissance
to be precisely – a myth. The festivals, the waiting lists, the limelight
for Duda and many critics of our literary everyday life (Borislav Mikuli},
Milan Jaj~inovi}, Jasen Boko, Lada
@igo, Milan Ivko{i}...), are not mere
innocent albeit welcome facts, but
symptoms of a deeper, not nearly as
innocuous condition. For Duda and
those that think alike, again we have
at work the production of “Hungarian oranges” where “the greatness of
the small” is being measured by sports’
fans magnifying glass. But, the production this time is not motivated
by patriotic but by marketing reasons.
In the new, capitalist and postmodern
universe, there’s a conspiracy at work
whose goal has become to make and
defend a consensus which Feral names
“the Croatian literary fairy-tale ATM
machine”. The factors of the conspiracy are the media, publishers and
the government: the government that
like comrade Bastion adorns itself
with the success of a five-year plan,
the publishers that rub their hands
because they have sold the product
and in the process swiped a fat subvention money, the media that have
sold a colorful little tale and managed to push into the hall of fame
their randomly chosen darlings. All
these powerful, imperial factors are
being harnessed into the making of
the consensus. The truth, point out
the opponents, differs. The truth is
that the “new writers” are inflated,
that they have “pissed the space”
(Dean Duda) and that because of
them one cannot see the other and
different good literature. The truth
is that these new writers do not respect tradition and older writers, because they want to chase them off
the lucrative market table. The truth
is that the new writers are the marionettes of the government that came
into power on January 3rd, directed
against the Croatian Writers’ Association (DHK) and Croatian classics. The truth is that they are literary conservative populists not inclined towards the experiment and
true literary adventure. The truth is
that they are a well established network of insiders that cuts out from
the proceedings everything that differs, women in particular – Vedrana
Rudan or Arijana ûlina, for example. For the opponents of “the
literary fairy-tale ATM machine” all
of it is nothing but the media concoction because the new writers are
almost all journalists and therefore
the newspapers are backing them up
as their own. Europa Press Holding
leads the way here because most of
them are employed in it, while this
media conglomerate also sponsors
the major literary prize. Seated in the
first media row, these new writers
write criticism of each other’s work
and, as if that is not enough, serve as
editors and publishers to one another, thus imposing themselves on
for the marketing and economic reasons. To maintain such media attention, they reach out for the low, unliterary blows: they tend to provoke
with shocking naturalism and political cheek, which leads to the profanation of literature which gets pared
down to the level of bombastic mass
entertainment. The result is sudden
107
enrichment for the few overblown
stars whose immoral profits rest on
fat state subventions. The side effects
are also entertainment and trivializing,
the malign phenomena that culminated in the form of the FAK festival
where literature is being sold to the
inebriated audience, in bars, between
two music acts. With all this in mind,
the cues in bookstores and occasional
distribution spike can no longer be
seen as the benign gains of a revolution, but a perfidious, anti-literary
scam that breaks the threshold of
relevancy and submits literature to
the whimsical taste of the plebs.
Which of these truths is real? The first?
The second? Or both? Of course, everyone has their own opinion about
it, but to the majority of them the
common element is that they do not
care about the empirical grounding.
In the culture that loves so much the
doctrinaire and that despises the inductive thinking so much, everything is already known in advance,
so that the true facts are of interest to
only the few. Still, if we shake the
inevitable facts, we will soon realize
that none of the typical objections
against the new Croatian prose can
sustain the empirical check up. Let’s
start at the beginning.
1. The uncritical consensus
made around them
“They”, of course, are the new Croatian
prose or, more precisely, the FAK
writers. If a consensus of the media
and critics exists around them, then
nothing in the history of any consensus has had so little of the consensus in it. Because the real and verifiable truth is that these prose media
darlings get rough hide treatment in
the newspapers. On each rare and
mostly timid example of the media
pumping up, we will find ten examples of the busy harangue. The
harangue that began from day one.
A week after the project FAK blasted
108
out of its anonymity (December 2000,
after its second, Zagreb edition...), it
was attacked nowhere else but in the
leftist Zarez. From then on, it has
been attacked and is being attacked
and the denial brings together such
antipodes as Feral and Ve~ernji List,
Zarez and Vijenac, Quorum group
and Ivan Aralica, feminist writers and
Milan Ivko{i}. The moment Boro
Radakovi} interrupted the omerta
with his text about Vedran Rudan
and spoke of literary quality he was
buried under the unprecedented media avalanche. In the first three days
four major dailies and their writers
Rade Dragojevi}, Andrea Radak,
Milan Jaj~inovi}, Borislav Mikuli},
Velimir Viskovi}, Branimira Lazarin
and Mirjana Juri{i} launched attacks
against FAK and Radakovi}. So much
for the “consensus”.
When FAK writers are in the question, the mystified “consensus” exists in fact only around one writer:
Miljenko Jergovi}. Even with him
the consensus was reached only after
he had written a thick historical novel;
that is a book that by its outward
manifestations fits under the typical
definition of Croatian classic. And
even then, the consensus around
Jergovi} stops at the threshold of the
political Right. As for the other leaders of the new prose, we move even
farther away from the consensus.
Zoran Feri} was first recognized by
people from the marginal academic
sphere (precisely – Josip Uàrevi}),
the critics hardly accepted him by
his second book, while they promptly
rejected his third one. Ante Tomi} is
the lightning conductivity rod of
public hatred that unites feminists,
conceptual artists, gynecologists, actors, sporting journalists, and poets
as such and even in that consensus
that portraits Tomi} as an entertaining reactionary from Imotski, the
critics also chimed in. Croatian critics treat Josip Mlaki} with patronizing tolerance, as some sort of pro-
tected beast from some wilderness.
Tomislav Zajec is being fearfully
avoided, because the critics understand neither what nor why of his
writing. Damir Karaka{ is treated like
a whining outsider. Boro Radakovi}
goes on everyone’s nerves, only the
reasons change – some are bothered
because he is a punk rocker, some
because he is male, some because he
is not a Croatian. I can say something about the “consensus” from
my own experience: from the founding of FAK I have had one play performed (Trova~ica) and one novel
published (Minute 88). Consensus
about the two was so firm that to my
agent in Germany, for her press clipping, I could not send one single
positive sentence.
2. They are a closed circle
outside of which everything
is being ignored
This is Duda’s claim and he adds
that “into the agreed and pissed area
nothing is admitted that does not
belong to the system.” Similar theses
can be found in other critics of the
new prose. Jasen Boko in Vijenac
thus asserts that “besides all the noise
around FAK, it seems as if nobody
else writes prose.” And Lada @igo
furnishes a similar thesis, with the
list of the ignored ones, in the same
paper. The problem is that the quoted
assertion is in itself a logically closed
circle. For, in order to assert that
some closed circle does not admit
anyone from the outside, the circle
must be enclosed, thus it has to have
some clear outlines. In the case of the
new Croatian prose such outlines are
not quite clear. Inside the media consensus as to the conspiracy theory, it
is usually assumed that “the circle of
the privileged” is fixed and locked
around the FAK writers. However,
more than 80 writers participated at
the FAK festival, plus some 30 foreigners. What is more, FAK regu-
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larly hosted the select domestic classics. Despite that, the circle of the
privileged and the FAK label is always being stuck to the narrow circle
of authors.
Jasen Boko thus names Ivo Bre{an as
an example of a writer who stayed in
the shade of the insistent FAK writers. The paradox lies in the fact that
Bre{an participated at FAK more often than the majority of the notorious
“FAKers”, say Feri} or the author of
this text. And still, Bre{an is not a
FAK writer, while Feri} and myself,
as it happens, are. The membrane,
however, gives in to the other way
too. In the new prose there are many
interesting writers that never read at
FAK, either by selectors’ omission
(Julijana Matanovi}, Damir Karaka{),
by circumstance (Josip Mlaki}), or
because they did not want to (Tomislav
Zajec). But still, when there is talk
about the new prose boom and its
profiteers, as a rule there is talk about
these writers as a part of the privileged monopolistic gang, the happy
few, pampered by the media. And
these writers doubtless profited from
the improved image of the Croatian
book, from the increased sales, newly
found prizes, the crowding in a library. Are these writers thus on the
inside of the pissed circle or on the
outside? If on the outside, where is
the monopoly? If inside, who then is
outside?
In that respect, among all the critics
of the new prose, the most honest to
me appears Lada @igo who, by grilling Ante Tomi}, strung out the list
of authors who should become stars
instead of him, adding Dunja Kalili}
to the list. I have not read Dunja
Kalili} and do not know if she deserves to be a star like Tomi} (I would
like an affirmative answer). But it
seems to me that precisely one such
gesture is what constantly lacks in all
that grumble about FAK. Step out,
brother, with the names! Show us
your Dunja Kalili}! Say – whom did
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we chase into underground and yet
deserves the limelight with his unnoticed genius? Vedrana Rudan perhaps? Without such no-holds-barred
taking sides, any discussion about
“the closed circle” remains a priori
senseless.
3. No respect for tradition
Another fabrication was created by
the mix of selected facts and ideological blindness. If FAK exists at all
as a collective entity (which is dubious), that collectivity showed its choosing of the tradition by inviting to the
festival Ivo Bre{an, Boris Maruna,
Goran Tribuson and others. Each
member of the “new prose” declared
himself by invoking a certain tradition, either spoken or in their writing. It is hard for me to fathom what
is so “anti-traditional” in the writing
of Jergovi} and Mlaki}, so imbued
with Andri} and Selimovi}. It is hard
for me to imagine a writer with bigger traditional grounding than Tomi},
the prose writer essentially determined by Hrabal, [kvorecky, Carver
and Twain. Edo Popovi} is unimaginable without Bukowski or Fante,
but also Eastern European jeans prose.
The majority of authors of the new
prose spend more time reading literature than academic citizens that
assail them. Most of them in the corpus of tradition possess a conscious
and affectively shaded horizon. The
blame of the “new prose” thus does
not consist in its lack of respect for
tradition, but in its lack of respect
for Tradition as hierarchical and
ideological system.
Such prescribed system is being imposed as necessary to the new prose
from two opposing directions. On one
hand, the new prose is expected to
respect Tradition as an explicit referential frame which is being thematized
in the text, it thus “winks” at the
educated viewer. This is the horizon
of expectation of the postmodernist
dogmatics. The horizon of expectation of the national dogmatics, comes
to the new prose bowing down to the
tradition as a homogenous and conflict-free body of national culture and
literature, thus the type of the tradition evoked by Alexander Sokurov
in his shameful film Russian Ark.
The new prose has little in common,
but one common thing it has is that
it rejects both of these imperatives. It
rejects the post-modern terror of tradition because it believes that literature should not be an object of primary interest to itself, but a living,
active observer, commentator and analyst of human condition, situations,
and society. A number of the critics
object to the new prose that it has
rejected “pure literariness” (Borislav
Mikuli}, Slobodna Dalmacija) and
became a servant of the documentary. Quite the contrary: by refusing
to deal solely with itself, the new
prose expresses an ambition (possibly in vain) to again become important and central spiritual activity in
which people will be able to recognize their own situations, problems
and conditions.
As to the objection to the new prose
that it does not kneel in front of the
temple of national Tradition, they
are even more senseless. Most writers of the new prose believe that such
Tradition is an ideological construct
in order to deny and mask poetical,
ideological, sexual and regional contradictions of a culture as the dynamical system. Also, in such objections the notorious fact of each period of Croatian literature is being
left out – that its key authors valued
more input from abroad then from
home. To the new prose writers the
important referential frame were and
still remain Carver, Bernhard, Hrabal,
Tom Waits, Salinger, the New Puritans, Nick Cave, Little Odessa or
Blade Runner, more than Marinkovi}
or Krle‘a. But in the same fashion
their own tradition was made by all
109
relevant Croatian writers, from Dr‘i}
and Mato{ until today.
4. They pushed out the “old”
writers
Indeed, so it seems. To the ever more
abundant batch of names in the new
prose, on the opposite side of the
media scales, we can place only a
handful of names. As if “old” writers
retreated into deep media defensive.
But who, after all, are these “old”
writers? Do they exist? Do they write?
We do not have to think twice to
realize that the so-called old prose is
nothing but a phantom, an empty
group. One part of the old ones
(Ugre{i}, Drakuli}) have emigrated
and do not participate in Croatian
literary life. Some have grown silent,
perhaps for good (ûi}, Novak).
Some fell into creative crisis and lost
some of their reputation (Pavli~i},
Vrkljan). Some moved from literature into waters of the didactical 18th
century prose (Aralica, Horvati}).
Ivo Bre{an was “incorporated” by
young ones so to the old ones he
suddenly lost interest as an argument
in the debate. Two liveliest among
the so-called old ones are Veljko
Barbieri and Goran Tribuson, but
the first writes gastronomical, while
the second memoirist-humorist essays
which, in a traditional system of values, are not being perceived serious
enough as to be the answer to the
“young ones”. In the end, on the scene
remained only Nedjeljko Fabrio, a
middle-aged classic who writes in the
canonical genre of Croatian literature
(historical novel). Thus it does not
surprise that so much nervousness
exists around Fabrio, that so much
ado was made around his false Nobel
Prize, literary awards and every published critique. Fabrio today remains
the only cavallo di battaglia of a generation that believes it has been wronged.
Unfortunately, in the story about the
conflict between the “new” and the
110
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“old”, the new prose writers are also
guilty. We should not hide from the
fact that the new writers came up
with the non-extant group term: the
“old writers”. Fencing off the ideological and social implications in
which Croatian literary guild embroiled itself, the new writers perceived the Old literature as an invented Other, a grape of negativity
which does not carry reference but is
an empty group. The old literature
they fictionalize in the end boils
down to only one name – Aralica.
The rest of the Old literature trims
down to a dispersed group of individuals that do or do not write, that
write good or bad. An ideological
construct that the new prose itself
created in its political writings turned
against it, so that today it serves its
critics as a waving flag.
5. They are the product
of January 3rd government
This assertion is frequently made in
the circle of the national literary right
wing: it was uttered by Aralica and
Josip Pavi~i}. The largely uninformed
Milan Jaj~inovi} expressed such political construction in his funeral cry
over the cultural politics of January
3rd government. In his commentary
regarding the demise of FAK he claims
that the cultural politics of Vuji}
mandate was led by the followers of
the “alternative culture” Branko Male{
and Branimir êgec. In that way
FAK became a representative governmental art, writes Jaj~inovi}, “a
miracle of Croatian literature” instead
of a “miracle of the Croatian Naive
Art” and classics like Tadijanovi}
suddenly found themselves on an even
keel with youngsters like Nuhanovi}.
Better connoisseurs of the true literary mise-en-scene can only laugh bitterly at these constructs. The relationship between the New Marketplace and new prose was never harmonious, while the relationship be-
tween FAK and people who created
the book politics (that is those mentioned by Jaj~inovi}) in certain periods was openly hostile. Contrary to
all the similar previous initiatives,
FAK attempted its projects without
the support of government money,
exclusively through sponsors and local resources. Some of the leading
names of the new prose were not
averse to heated assaults on Antun
Vuji} and his government. In the
insider circle, the former minister
did not spare them in return. The
improved material status of the books
for which this administration was
objectively responsible had the least
impact on a writer: what is more,
they kept only leftovers from the divided cake.
6. They are conservative
in a literary sense
The corps of the new prose is too
thematically and poetically dispersed
in order to bring it under one poetical model. True – the crowning genre
of the new prose is short story, but
novelists like Zajec and Mlaki} are
also there. True – majority of the
new writers fall under the definition
of “critical mimesis” (Kre{imir Bagi})
but where is then the grotesque
fantasist Feri}? For their themes the
new prose writers use contemporary
setting, but Jergovi} and Tomi} wrote
historical novels. The new prose is
mostly urbane, but perhaps the most
fascinating book of the entire generation is Kino Lika by Damir Karaka{
– one hundred percent rural. To
many new prose writers’ linear narration is distinctive, but Feri} is characterized by the entire compositional
arsenal of post-modernism: mise-enabyme, Chinese shadow boxes, recursive knots. The new prose writers
are characterized by simple and functional style, yet Zajec, Ko{~ec and
Rizvanovi} have written thick, difficult modernist novels.
111
But even if we force the material and
declare as dominant model short
story or novel with a critical-mimetic
theme, linear-narrative composition
and easy spoken language that does
not imply that the model is conservative – it can mean that only from
a provincial, bucolic perspective.
Belgrade writer Vlada Arsenijevi}
with bitter irony once asserted that
he was accused of “selling out” and
“conformity” by the critics whose
values were made in the institutional
nucleus – the academic environment.
It is similar in Croatia. In the alleged
war between the “modern” and the
“conservative” ones, the “modernist” in fact defend the taste that is
official and was built institutionally.
And the new prose appears “conservative” only to someone who for full
ten years plugged his ears to everything that came from abroad, like a
good portion of the autistic Croatian
studies and literary criticism. It seems
that hundreds of relevant books that
are annually published in Croatia
have not stripped an inch off of this
bark of indolence. Because, those
that object to the new prose “conservatives” the way it is being done in
Croatia, apparently do not inhabit a
world in which there exist Dogma
95, the New Puritans or New European cinema, and obviously have not
read Franzen, Moody or McCormack,
have not seen Tillsammans, Movern
Callar or Magnolia, listened to Aimee
Mann or Barenaked Ladies. For a
long time we all believed that turning towards the fact and mimesis in
new Croatian prose is a result of endemic and local circumstances – more
precisely, the war. When these dark
clouds dispersed, we understood that
this whole time we were in the thick
of a trend and yet we did not know it.
7. They exclude women
The theme of a misogynist nature of
the new prose appeared in an early
112
FAK history. Aware of the objection, the festival selectors attempted
to invite women authors to various
editions – including Rujana Jager,
Norma C. Rey, Tatjana Groma~a
and, let’s not forget, Vedrana Rudan,
that is a person because of whom the
project indirectly fell apart. Personally I hold that the mistake FAK
made was that among women writers
they did not invite Julijana Matanovi}
and this is the only such omission I
can think of.
The moment some of the new prose
authors expressed their negative opinion about the literary quality of the
Rijeka writer, a tumult arose. Most
of the commentators – some more
(Rade Dragojevi}), some less (Velimir
Viskovi}) – claimed that this exposed
the misogynist and patriarchal nature of the new prose coterie. “All
the masks have fallen,” exulted the
columnist of the KIS webpage, “it
was proven that the democratization
of literature matters as long as the
others don’t sell better.”
The paradox was that none of the
FAK misogyny critics observed that
very same Vedrana Rudan participated at the Osijek festival a year
before. It is an even bigger paradox
that the critics of the Rijeka author
were thrashed precisely because they
had done what it was constantly objected FAK did not do. In a context
in which the festival was constantly
criticized that it cares for entertainment and not quality they spoke of
quality. In the environment in which
there was a constant gnawing that
the new prose was uncritically covering each other they honestly wrote
what they thought of a colleague.
The deep cynicism of Vedrana Rudan
defenders was reflected in that not
one of them – and they were many –
in their often overlong texts did not
include an important sentence that
would allow them to make sense.
That sentence reads: Vedrana Rudan’s
books are good. You will not find this
sentence with Dragojevi}, or Lokotar,
or Radak. They did not write it because they knew it was not so. They
defended a principle, a woman, the
minorities, the theme – but not with
one single wink did they reveal what
they thought of the real quality of
Vedrana Rudan’s writing. Precisely
such stance reveals its double criteria. And for me that is what is misogynic. That type of patronizing
cynicism that reveals a real contempt
for women, especially those that write.
8. They are journalists, so the
newspapers support them
The fact is that good number of the
new prose members in their civil life
and occupation practice journalism.
In that, this generation differs from
all those after World War two, but it
is thus similar to the literature of the
1930’s: Kozar~anin, Cihlar, Goran
Kova~i} and Marko Uvodi} were
journalists. It is no surprise: today’s
media, like the media of the 1930’s,
are the media of a society in the making, the arena of conflict and the
stage of doubts. In that sense, today’s
newspapers differ from the monologue and conflict-free papers of the
communist era. Moreover, in an open
society where literature does not any
longer have its place on the pedestal
and its network of sinecures, the
newspapers are simply natural place
for a writer who thinks of earning his
bread and butter. In this sense, Duda
is right when he conciliatorily asserts
that in “today’s workplace media
market compares to the role that once
had the mines of Ra{a or Labin.”
And yet, the fact that many writers
are also journalists to some remains
shocking. With the two theses being
clear: first that the position in the
newspaper allowed the new prose
writers acquaintance with editors,
the media consideration, or (in a soft
variant) the better understanding of
media landscape which helped them
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swim to the surface; and second that
these writers “sold themselves out”,
that is that they cashed out their literary reputation by working for the
media moguls. According to this
criticism, the writers’ position in regards to Nino Pavi} or Ivo Pukani}
equals that of a musician on the court
of a Dresden count or an English
king. Bypassing the romantic revolution and Promethean artistic autonomy, “the new writers” bring us
back to the feudal servitude of Bach
or Handel. Few have noticed that
these two objections are logically
contradictory. The first, namely, implies that journalists should first be
journalists in order to be writers, and
the second that only literature has
made them important to the papers.
Among these objections thus exists
an essential contradiction. But, it is
perhaps more important that both
assertions are easily refutable.
The fact remains that today’s writers/journalists built their newspaper
reputation before they became writers, or independently. As if it is forgotten that Miljenko Jergovic received the Veselko Ten‘era Prize for
Journalism when he was twenty-three,
when virtually nobody in Croatia
knew he published two collections
of poetry in Sarajevo. Ante Tomi}
was beloved and widely read reporter
long before he published his first collection of stories, which remained unnoticed for the longest time. Karaka{,
Popovi} and Nuhanovi} worked as
journalists for years before they published their first volumes. And I am a
film critic, not quite the worst in the
world. Everyone who thinks that the
publishing princes are paying us because in the newspapers they want to
have flashy writers does not offend
our literature, but underestimates
our journalism.
The claim that media favoritism gives
wind to the back of the writers-journalists is easy to refute by proving
that non-journalists also receive simi-
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lar enthusiastic treatment. Josip Mlaki}
is an engineer, Ko{cec professor of
French, Feri} a teacher at a high
school, and Julijana Matanovi} an
academic in Croatian studies. Yet,
Feri} became an editorial firebrand,
Matanovi} has her picture on the
front page of Globus. Despite their civil
profession they were all touched by
the changed media status of Croatian
book. Thus, it is not the matter of
guild sectarianism, but of something
much broader: the view of literature
in the media scene has changed for
the better. Which leads us to the
next calumny.
9. They all work for EPH
The media conspiracy constructs particularly happily grate around the fact
that good portion of the new prose
professionally operates in the Europa
Press Holding editions. With some
critics, Jasen Boko in particular – this
fact becomes the ground for the conspiracy theory according to which the
new prose is the EPH’s marketing
peg. To me this logical jump seems
silly: it is an equivalent of accusing a
soccer club that by goals of its scoring
striker wants to draw audience to the
stadium. But, let us look into the socalled “facts”. Because, “the facts” show
that among the new prose, in EPH
their bread earn Jergovi}, Tomi},
Nuhanovi}, Peri{i}, on occasion
Popovi}, and the author of this text.
Is this really such a representative segment of the new prose, keeping in
mind that it includes dozens of names?
And – how does the fact that precisely
EPH critics, Jagna Poga~nik and Robert Peri{i}, were almost as a rule the
sternest critics of the new prose explosion fit in the conspiracy theory? What
is conspiratory about the fact that
competing papers such as Slobodna
Dalmacija and Nacional were more
welcoming to FAK festivals and social
actions than the EPH main pillar Globus? Or the fact that the Jutarnji List
Prize three times went to the writers
outside of the EPH, even though
each year one of the main competitors was one of the “court artists”
(Tomi} to winner Feri}, Nuhanovi}
to Kirin, Jergovi}, Peri{i} and the author of this text to Davor Slamnig)?
And finally what does the conspiracy
theory have to do with the fact that
not lesser number of the new prose
writers – precisely Feri}, Vedrana
Rudan, Drago Glamuzina and Karaka{
– worked or still work for Nacional or
Vecernji List, papers with which
Jutarnji and Globus have a competitive, sometimes even openly hostile
relationship? With what magic and
charm did FAK writers manage to
reconcile Globus and Nacional, two
tribes at war as much as the Capuletti
and Montecchi families?
In the blindness of their construction the theoreticians of conspiracy
fail to note deeper reasons why new
prose is suddenly popular in the media. There are at least two rational
reasons. The first has to do with the
character of that prose: by its theme
and activist relation towards society
and its audience it simply offers a
newspaper story. If we would like to
be vulgar, it simply sells papers. Other,
more important reason is the change
of the stand in Croatian journalism.
At the editorial posts of most Zagreb
media it came to the age turnabout.
Gone are the members of the postwar journalist generation that was
shaped in the political journalism of
a closed political system in which
culture was a necessary albeit unattractive attachment. They were followed by baby boomers, forty-some
year olds formed in the alternative
press, men and women to whom
books are a part of their generational
inheritance and culture (particularly
Western and popular one), much
more interesting than politics. If thus
an element of the inflated domestic
prose and its uncritical mystifying
(which is not quite certain) exists in
113
Croatian media space, then it should
be regarded more as wishful thinking
of the generation dedicated to reading, than to a conspiracy bent on
particular gain. The objection that
we the authors of the new literature
“prostitute” ourselves in the newspapers is often being made by young
authors, often students. I would say
that this is the case of a basic, contextual misunderstanding between their
generation and the generation to which
the majority of the new prose writers
belongs. What essentially makes us
different is that we like adult, conscious beings have lived in the communist era while they have not.
As the conscious denizens of the
communist country we were collectively, as a generation, contaminated
by the system of sinecure with which
the regime at that time corrupted
literature. Literature and its main
protagonists lived on government
dole through entire network of fictional workplaces in encyclopedic
departments, publishing houses, cultural rubrics of the newspapers, on
radio or television. If you were a
writer and wanted to be one, sooner
or later you would be granted a “work
place” where thanks to writer’s status you would be given an easy living
until retirement. That keeping of literature on the pedestal of parasitism
was suspect and immoral to the majority of our generation, and many
among us believe that literature owes
the bad reputation it had until 1990
to that system. And just as children
of the alcoholics usually do not drink,
we built suspicion towards any parasitism depending on public money.
Most of us keep reservations towards
the government work and prefers to
fish our own meal. From that stems
the basic generational misunderstanding: to today’s youth it is immoral
that we “sell to the tabloids”. To us,
with our generational perception, it
would be immoral hanging on to a
government budget.
114
10. They write criticism
to each other
Of all the untruths about the new
prose, this one is easiest to refute and
yet it seems incredible how often it is
repeated. Among thirty or so prose
writers that in the last several years
gained recognition in Croatia literary criticism was written only by
four: Robert Peri{i}, Rade Jarak,
Nenad Rizvanovi} and the author of
this text. I quit writing about books
precisely because the pressure of the
“conspiracy theorists” became unbearable. Rizvanovi} also quit because of the conflict of interest. Jarak
is a writer for the low-circ, specialized press. Only Peri{i}, who being a
critic by vocation took a distancing
position towards the new prose collective, remains. It should be recalled
that Peri{i} only once read at FAK
and that he was an unexpected guest,
while the key figures of the new prose
– Mlaki}, Jergovi}, Tomi} – received
relatively icy critiques from him.
Peri{i}’s distancing from FAK provoked certain grumbling among some
of the new prose writers. I believe
this was unjustified because such attitude was the only way in which the
Globus critic could honor his breadwinning job.
It is a paradox that the new prose was
attacked on the ground that it controls and creates a discourse about
itself, while the truth is precisely contrary: the biggest sin of the new prose
is that it does not do it at all. The
new prose is the first generation after
the Second World War that does
not have its generational critics who
would follow, defend and explain
their work to those that are not in
favor. In the generation of Krug magazine the work was done by Vlatko
Pavleti}, of Razlog by Stama}, Mrkonji}
and Maroevi}, for the “fantastic” writers the critics were Velimir Viskovi},
Ljerka Mifka and Boè @igo, for Quorum Vlaho Bogi{i}, Kre{imir Bagi}
and Julijana Matanovi}. After a string
of generations that went hand in hand
with their peers, partisans and critics, the “new prose” showed as black
sheep. Its authors were mostly praised
by older critics (Zima, Viskovi},
Primorac...), veterans with several decades of experience on the amplitudes of Croatian prose. On the other
hand, generational critics (Marko
ûsti}, Ton~i Valenti}, Damir Radi},
Robert Peri{i}, Gordana Crnkovi}...)
did not hide their antipathy to the
better portion of the new prose and
its poetic postulates. Instead of selfexplaining, of promoting its own
views on literature, its value system,
the new prose under the self-promote accusation labels, retreated into
silence. It produced works, but not
the reflection on literature. Kre{imir
Bagi} was correct when he criticized
the new prose, albeit from the different perspective: “I object to the prose
of the 1990’s because it does not
sufficiently write and think about
literature. Of itself it has not written
one serious text, thus in the end
such a text has not been written at
all. For me literature is a serious
matter of which one should talk seriously.” Bagi} was correct: the new
prose’s sin was not that it oversaw
the discourse on itself, but that it
had it completely neglected. It did
so partly because of the anti-theoretical atavism, partly in defensive
flight, in fear of being accused for
monopoly. The Radakovi}/Rudan
affair showed that such fear was not
groundless: the moment the “monopolists” spoke for the first time
about literary quality, the feathers
began flying; common sense perceived it, namely, as an infamous
indiscretion, poor manners.
This, of course, was no excuse for
silence. The new prose gave up on a
rational speech about itself, a literary
task that was its duty. It was a lateral
sin that has to be admitted.
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11. They are the product
of marketing and marketplace
This is the key argument from Dean
Duda, until now the most serious
taking apart of the new prose. Duda’s
arguments should be examined in
detail. He writes: “Literature is experiencing the renaissance of interest...
but also a new form of media articulation that, unfortunately, remains
systematically ignored. Thus it seems
to me entirely proper to ask the question of whether literature or the industry of literature flourished. And
these are, no matter how seemingly
close, after all different moments.”
Asserting (correctly) that the theoretical apparatus of our criticism and
theory is not prepared for the phenomena of the capitalist cultural production, Duda claims that the myth
of the new prose boom is in fact a
media simulation, a marketing strategy so typical and symptomatic for
an inflamed literary market in which,
through marketing techniques, the
process of power recomposing and
pushing out of the competitors’ “articles” from the reader’s hands takes
place. In brief, the new prose is being
artificially made and traded, as if it
were Spice Girls. The problem is that
Duda confused cause and effect; he
also from the ground up missed to
recognize the real interest mechanisms of Croatian publishing.
The fact is that in Croatia book runs
are poor, were poor and will remain
poor. In such circumstances, publishing is a low-budget home manufacturing in which main activity is,
as a rule, financed on the back of the
lateral (imports, textbooks, book
preparation, printing...). In such socalled capitalism, with the exception
of several big companies, the publishing segment depends on small
government subventions and these
provoke the anti-market mechanisms.
More precisely, the publishers’ have
an interest in making a book pricier,
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an interest to mystify their problems
as much as possible in order to complicate the situation and fake a crisis.
The only thing that publishers got
from the post-FAK boom are troubles:
to the first rumor of “awakening of
literature” the government announced
it will take off its support for belles
letters, with witch FAK directly spoiled
the publishing sector’s accounts.
The fact is that a good portion of the
FAK writers (though not Jergovi},
Tomi} and Feri} – that is the tree
most established writers!) publish for
the “heavies” of Croatian book publishing such as Profil, V.B.Z., Znanje
or Mozaik. However, this is the result of another process that began
with complete publishers’ blindness.
First, it was necessary for a media,
literary and market turnabout around
FAK to occur so that the completely
agitated publishers could grasp that
there might be money to be made. It
was touching to see how the strongest publishing houses almost simultaneously, and in panic, sought
young critics offering them editorial
posts in order to become a gauge
through which they could suck in
some of the new “black gold” that
until yesterday stuck to their shoes
and provoked indifference. The truth
is that the new prose boom found
publishers utterly unprepared, but
according to the logic of capitalism
they have restructured themselves.
The results, let’s be frank, are not
brilliant. The writers’ fees are somewhat better, mostly because even in
1999 the fees as such did not even
exist. The runs have jumped only in
rare, special cases. Most of the publishers (but not writers!) still existentially depend on the government
subvention. The only place where
one can sense some action around
the new prose are the libraries where
on some authors of the new prose
there are month-long waiting lists.
But the publishers gain nothing, neither do the writers until we implant
the western institution of the loan
rights. In the meanwhile, even the
best Croatian prose writers sell six to
eight hundred copies, and the entire
new prose euphoria is, in its financial aspects, nugatory. Duda’s “literary industry” is an industry without
money or market.
12. They earn well from the
government subventions
This is a thesis defended by a philosopher and essayist Borislav Mikuli}
in a series of texts in the cultural
rubric of Slobodna Dalmacija – it
needs to be said that Mikuli} is a
man to whom a simple extended
clause presents an insurmountable
obstacle. Hardly literate, Mikuli}
still likes to peak in the purse of those
that are more literary endowed.
His oft-repeated claim is that in
Croatia there is a writers’ fees boom,
an unbalanced rise in profit for the
literary stars, the rise that is not a
result of the market reality, but of
pumping up of the publishing by
subventions. The examples are the
hit-makers such as Vedrana Rudana,
Arijana ûlina and Veljko Barbieri,
as well as the V.B.Z. literary prize.
The alleged fees’ explosion would be
terrific, if only it were real. Someone
who frets over the fact that writers
nowadays receive money for their
books, instead of (as it was the case
until yesterday) give it to a publisher,
obviously as his ideal entertains the
opposite situation: a situation in
which genius writers die of tuberculosis and drink in a moldy room,
begging the philistine editors to buy
them a drink. This pseudo-romantic
mythic image has possibly died with
fin-de-siecle, so that a society like
ours must really remain dismally provincial, that it perceives such situation as desirable.
The fact is that today several people
in Croatia can truly live nicely on the
account of their books, what until
115
yesterday was not possible. Thank
god for that as it means that capitalism has come to life in at least a small
cultural corner. There are, however,
no more than four or five such occurrences in our literary constellation and even in their case it is the
matter of pure market relations: they
had the percentage contract (seldom
over 10 per cent), the books sold
well, thus they made money. The
rest earns more than yesterday, but
hardly a claim that they earn well.
When, this fall, began this big talk
about the explosion of literary honoraria, the numbers around the “boom”
evolved around15 to 20,000 kunas
for novels of the most prominent
prose writers. If we look at it in the
context, we will see that that is still
less than a quarter of the amount
received by a screenwriter for the
domestic future-length film, or approximately even to the amount an
opera director receives in Croatia,
and that for a rerun. With that you
have to keep in mind, that opera and
film in Croatia are absolutely antimarket phenomena that entirely depend on public support, while public support in the matter of belles
letters in fact boils down to two hundred bought out copies. In such circumstances, only a truly narrow circle
of writers with some market prospects can count on that fee. Likewise, we have to keep in mind that it
is quite normal for Croatia that a theater director remains on the theater’s
pay list for twenty years even though
he does not work. The same applies
to TV directors and actors, members
of those acting groups that receive their
paycheck every month even though
they refused the offered work. In
such constellation, writers are the
only ones that do their work without
even a penny of advance money; also
they are the only ones whose work is
most closely tied to the marketplace.
As a corrective to this situation comes
the fabled buyout: if the government
116
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buys 200 copies of your book that
costs 100 kunas, you will at most
receive 10 per cent of it, that is, 2,000
kunas. Truly, blessed is the country
that whets the appetite of its literary
stars with such small amounts of
money.
13. They attract attention
by naturalism and shock
According to this thesis, the new
prose attempts to win its pre-eminent position in the media and cultural landscape by deliberately choosing provocative and shocking themes
and methods: invective, sex, crime,
pushy politicizing. In other words,
profane digging at the bottom of reality in order to provoke the public
and attract the media attention. The
new Croatian prose, according to
this thesis, is analogous to Saatchi’s
new British art in which artists in
their media exhibitionism saw off
cows, fill up intestines into formaldehyde, and paint a Madonna with
elephant dung. This perception of
the new prose is often repeated in the
media and it was uttered by a wide
spectrum of critics from the conservative Bo‘e @igo to theatrical radical
Branko Brezovac.
Of all the calumnies against the new
prose, this one seems to me the most
insane. Because, truly, can the new
prose offer anything more shocking
than the things that until yesterday
occurred around us? Is that truly
“shocking” in a country where until
recently there was ethnic cleansing,
the villages were being burnt, people
thrown out of their homes, other
people’s VHS players and cows stolen, in which factories were being
grabbed, in which old women had
bullets put in the back of their heads,
where factories were bought without
money, where people were fired with
a “God and Croats” signature, in
which marriages dissolved because
of the political ideas and people were
left without anything overnight or
were beaten in prisons? Instead of
objecting to naturalism and shock
value of the new prose, the critics
should have reason to object to its
lack of social authenticity. Because,
the so-called reality prose has too
often boiled down to urbanity petrified by literary convention and its
constant iconographic repertory such
as beer, soccer fan clashes and slang.
This codified urbanity lost its touch
with reality, by becoming “realistic”
much as Renaissance pastorals were
in relation to farming of the 16th
century. The real problem of the new
prose was the opposite: the problem
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was that in its negative fascination it
averted a gaze from those events that
were not cool and that provoked
shame. In that prose there is no place
for the suburbia, fascist youth, people
who listen to Severina, patched up
houses, no place for Jole and Danijela,
young couples who live with their
parents and usher in the New Years
by watching TV. The entire Croatian
civilization with its half-rural, halfurban seal and its deeply Balkan-like
cultural emblems is exterminated
from such prose with absolute pedantry because not even the new prose
knows how to comfortably position
itself in such reality. Thus one of the
biggest problems of the new prose is
not its surfeit of “reality” or its negative fascination by bad, but the contrary, the lack of reality, and a positive fascination with universal, acceptable, narcissistic urbanity.
14. They turn literature into
entertainment
True – the new prose turns literature
into entertainment. Its protagonists
read prose in bars and resort places,
they read to the audience that drinks,
howls and often pays no heed to it.
Its protagonists draw the Dorina
chocolate prizes, their books are being promoted by Cosmopolitan editors, they pose for the front page of
Arena, they give interviews, readily
talk about their children, sexual life
or book fees. They do it on purpose,
no holes barred, but not without the
lack of shame. I can say for myself:
every time in front of the FAK microphone I felt I was doing something against my introverted nature,
something that caused me deep sense
of unease. But, I have done it because I had to do it.
This entertainment was an entertainment as a form. We attempted to
gain space, iconography, communication channel and receptive mechanism of the popular culture by win-
ning the audience which understood
the code system, and which more or
less gave up on literature. The intention of FAK was never that the entertainment of form follows the entertainment of content. From the very
beginning, FAK mostly gathered those
writers that the selectors considered
the best. Public reading has its own
logic and inevitably it happened that
perhaps the best authors (Jergovi},
Feri}) fared worse on stage than humor writers or savvy showmen. The
chasm inside FAK happened at the
moment when people who were interesting to the media or who were
“good on stage” were invited to the
festival. Some of the festival creators
– and I joined them here – felt that
this was the betrayal of the festival
source, the betrayal of a principle on
which FAK was to serve literature as
a holy thing. Let’s be frank: one of
the divisive points was precisely
Vedrana Rudan.
The Rudan case showed that the critics of FAK profaned literature more
than the festival itself had ever done.
It was fascinating to read Andrea
Radak’s article in Slobodna Dalmacija
where she criticized those that deny
Rudan’s literary value on the grounds
that “the borders between the trivial
and high literature had been eradicated long since.” In this naively
post-modernist theoretical leap the
fact that there is no more a chasm
between the “trivial” and “high” literature suddenly generates another,
apparently consequential fact: that
there is no longer any difference between the good and the bad! In that
theoretical mess, it was completely
forgotten that there is a good popular (albeit not “trivial”) literature as
well as poor “elitist”. According to
this typology and description Rudan
surely is not a trivial writer, but neither is she a good one. It turns out,
that the critics and commentators of
FAK understood the new entertainment form of literary expansion as a
117
call to liquidate any criterion of value
evaluation, something that the festival never dreamed of. And then FAK
is being accused of making relativistic literary value!
Here it is necessary to explain where
does such exhibitionist impulse to
expand prose by channels and methods otherwise pertaining to pop music or alternative culture comes from.
Some of the commentators, namely,
persist in their belief that the motive
for such attitude was bare exhibitionism or a desire for the media
promotion. I can only say this: we
did not make monkeys out of ourselves on “stage”, in order to promote ourselves instead of others on
the market. We did it because we
fought against the book oblivion and
slowdown of the perhaps inevitable
death of reading as such.
If there is one thing in common to
such a diverse group of writers, such
as those of Croatian new prose, then
such fear perhaps is the death of reading. With that fear we wake up, go to
sleep, turn on our PCs, write. The
fear is not without grounds. Take,
for example, Franjo Markovi}: how
is it that back in the 1870’s this
undoubtedly educated man had not
seen that epic poetry and heroic tragedy were condemned to inevitable
death and that the reality of that time
belonged to novel and bourgeois
drama? How is it that the last pastoral writers did not see they were laboring and suffering with dying genre,
writing texts that tomorrow will interest nobody? Aren’t we doing the
same? Aren’t we practicing a dying
medium, a medium whose time is
up? Will the linear literary narrative
interest anyone in twenty or thirty
years? In short – will the prose die as
inevitably as the dying poetry?
For the academic theoreticians like
Duda, Mikuli} or Valenti} this is
only a question of principle and
speculation. For a writer this is a
deeply existential question because
118
the reason for many hours of daily
labor depends on the answer to it. Is
there any sense in turning on the
computer? Is there any sense in telling the story in prose and not as TV
drama, video-game or musical video?
The protagonists of the new prose
decided to believe that the answer to
that question was positive. And the
way to make their daily labor make
sense is only one: to struggle for every remaining or new reader, in every way possible, through all the
media, on every occasion. If we did
not do it, we would be tossing into
wind all that sweat we pour over the
keyboard, while taming literature –
a job quite often bumpy, nauseating
and exhausting. And this is true explanation as to why we agreed to
every type of entertainment, even the
most shameful one. We do not do it
for the money, market and media
exposure which to us (at least to me)
are unbearable and unpleasant. It as
an act of desperate men who want to
postpone the inevitable death, the
twilight of reading, the moment when
the medium we love will forever sink
into eternal obscurity for at least a
decade, at least one generation.
***
The new prose had its sins. I am
neither its unconditional apologist
nor defender. I would concur with
Veljko Barbieri who said that among
the new prose writers there are four
or five good ones, and that is already
a lot. With these four or five, inevitably stuck many merely solid ones,
and a handful of bad ones. We were
mistaken about many things. Horrified by the political, moral and literary profanation of certain older writers, we fabricated an ideological phantom, which never existed as palpable
entity, around DHK or the entire
“older” literature. In an attempt to
move away from the theoretical hypertrophy of the Quorum generation
we produced an atavistic anti-theoretical atmosphere. Pushed by the
objection that we self-promote, we
missed to describe ourselves, to make
our own poetical project, critical anthology, to express our own credo.
In our “critical mimesis” we stopped
half way through, incapable of overcoming the shame because of the
condition of Croatia, thus we were
incapable of describing it. Surrounded
by intense, constant and vociferous
attacks, we drew together and defended each other in mutual solidarity. The fierce nature of the attack
slowed down the centrifugal force
that otherwise would normally have
dislocated this generation into worlds
as different as we were as writers. At
the end, we parted several years too
late, when the goals that brought the
forces together were already established and the bitterness accumulated.
Now, when the story of FAK and the
new prose is on its inevitable decline, I still think that we did more
good than bad and that we had significantly more virtues than shortcomings. We attempted partially to
extend the passion for reading for at
least half of a generation. We salvaged Croatian book from the moral
abyss in which it had been thrown by
the demagogues, regime bootlickers
and turncoats. We imposed literature as theme to the media and a
writer as a factor to be respected by
the publisher. We improved the
starting point for those that would
come after us. The positive change
might be felt even in the following
generations.
For this very reason I feel hurt because of the malicious exultation
with which Croatian public followed
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the break-up of FAK and its fall into
the sewer of mutual accusation. Even
if for a short time, there existed a
group of mostly gifted individuals
who were willing to orchestrate their
egos into promotion of a common
cause, into spreading of a good vibration and of a medium that they
love. The fact that a group of people
could join talents voluntarily without ego, as if it were, was thorn in the
side of Croatian mentality which in
its colonial, reactive susceptibility,
everywhere saw conspiracies, “what
are they doing to us” rigged games
and carefully concealed egoism. The
moment the FAK’s idyll retreated in
front of the petty polemics, the cultural common sense could not restrain itself from jubilating over it.
Finally, even the FAK writers began
behaving the way citizens and cultural workers of this country always
do: by being argumentative, destructive, egotistical, and vain. “We knew
you were just like us, you were the
same shit,” exults domestic demon,
happy over the fact that the desirable
exception did not take place. We are
all together back in the stands. We
throw muddy snowballs of vanity at
each other, we tear down each other’s
sandcastles – thus, we live in Croatia.
As for the audience, circulation runs,
festivals – in a word all that commentators today describe as the side
phenomena of a literary boom – they
will also disappear, very quickly too.
If that happens, we shall remember
the times of FAK as golden era, regretting the better yesteryear.
published in Fantom Slobode)
Translated by
Boris Gregori}
RELA
TIONS
November 2001, Gjuro II;
Selena Saliva Godden, Borivoj Radakovi},
Miljenko Jergovi}, Igor Lasi}, Edo Popovi},
Simo Mraovi}, Rujana Jeger...
119
120
RELA
TIONS
Towards the Dictatorship
of Mediocrity
Damir Radi}
Q
: Why is everyone in the field of
culture trying to expand, enlarge the
market, and stimulate more people?
Isn’t the matter of cultural consumption actually a matter of a deeper
understanding, a matter of a more
intense concentration, isn’t reading
a work of a good author actually a
privileged sensation? Here we must
by all means stress that for some of
their marketing, advertising and festival moves many partakers in our
scene had an excuse of aiming to
popularize literature. Hasn’t this discourse about popularizing literature
replaced, i.e. diverted attention from,
something more interesting and
deeper, which is the discourse about
literature itself?
Damir Radi}: In the long run, expansion of the field of literature is a
positive thing, yet one, of course, has
to bear in mind that the so-called
cultural market is not a homogenous
category, and thus, especially in a
short period, can (moreover, it always does to some extent) result
(also) in undesired consequences for
the real or the professed enlighteners.
Specifically, with their infantile enthusiasm, the FAK crew in Croatia
insisted on the market as the criterion of artistic quality, although each
of them was bound to know, from
Yugoslav and Croatian, as well as
Damir Radi} was born in Zagreb in 1966. He is a prominent film and literary
critic and a poet (Lov na risove, 1999; Jagode i ~okolada, 2002). He received a
degree in history and comparative literature from Zagreb University. Radi}
was awarded the Vladimir Vukovi} Prize for the Best Film Critic (2004) and the
Annual Kvirinovi pjesni~ki susreti Prize for the Best Book of Poetry for authors
under thirty-five years of age (Jagode i ~okolada). His poetry was included in
the anthology of Croatian postmodernist poetry entitled A melankólia
krónikája (Pécs, Hungary, 2003) as well as a review of Croatian literature and
culture entitled Widzie} ChorwacjÍ e (Poznań, Poland, 2005), while his prose
was included in the anthology of Croatian erotic fiction entitled XXX Files
(Zagreb, 2002). Radi} co-authored the monograph Ante Babaja (Zagreb,
2001); and his debut novel Lijepi i prokleti is about to be released. He edited
the film segments of the first eleven volumes of Enciklopedija op}a i nacionana
u 20 knjiga (Zagreb, 2005-2006); he is a columnist at Nacional Weekly and
the editor of radio-program called Filmoskop aired at Tre}i program Hrvatskog
radija.
from global experience, which values fare best on the cultural market.
Of course, the history of art witnessed moments and eras in which
creative quality coincided with success on the market, when, simply,
the best ones were also the bestsellers
(The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, and
one should also not forget that the
punk movement i.e. the new wave
also had excellent market potency.
Moreover, Tomislav Brlek claims
that even Sterne’s Tristram Shandy,
a paradigm of literary experimentalism and one of its foundational icons,
was in the second half of the 18th
century an extremely popular novel).
But the dominant state of the matter
is that in which the so-called mass
taste diverges from what the spiritual elite i.e. elites regard as high art.
So the FAK crew, with their concept
of equating quality with market success i.e. with their faith in the socalled ordinary reader, made the mistake of believing that in this country
the job of enlightenment had already
been done and that now they were to
approach cultivated recipients or that
it would be them alone who would
serve as instant enlighteners (before
them the same mistake was made by
RELA
TIONS
film directors Hrvoje Hribar and
Lukas Nola who were self-confidently conjuring up “audience-oriented film,” but their film projects,
based on this assumption, flopped
thanks to the very same audience
they established as the main criterion of quality). In any case, with the
FAK crew and their aforementioned
filmmaking predecessors, we see the
works of, on the one hand, a combination of incredible ignorance about
the nature and mechanism of the
cultural market, and, on the other, a
rarely seen calculation driven by lust
for fame and will to power. In other
words, a combination of naivety
(sprung from ignorance) and greed.
(...)
Thus, it is in everybody’s interest –
or in the interest of the majority employed in the field of culture – to, in
one way or another, expand the market, stimulate as many people as possible because it would create a more
interesting context for action and a
better atmosphere. It goes without
saying that the artist will, following
his/her “deep instinct”, create this in
any and every context, but for me
personally it’s more interesting if I
work in the environment where there
is a greater and more intense interest
for the form of art I engage in. Under Miroslav Mi}anovi} the Quorum
literary magazine completely deteriorated, publishing some kind of
devoted patriotic pieces; Hrvatsko
slovo, under the rule of a truly interesting poet Dubravko Horvati}, mostly
engaged in hysterical spreading of
chauvinism; and Vijenac, first with
the boring editorial concept of the
arrogant Slobodan P. Novak, and
then in a far more dynamic variant
lead by the not such an impressive
poet, but an experienced editor, Vlado
Gotovac, made small steps towards
becoming an interesting paper, which
it would truly become only during
the mandate of Andrea Zlatar.
So, the context and the atmosphere
were depressing enough, but at the
end of the 1990s things slowly started
to change. It was the time of Mati}’s
Motovun Film Festival, the aforementioned Vijenac headed by Zlatar (immediately followed by Zarez) and
Peri{i}’s Godine, in which the hard
core of FAK was to sprout. It was in
this pleasantly refreshed ground, with
the arrival of the new century/millennium, that FAK (supported by
the strongest printed media: Jutarnji
list, Globus, Nacional), let’s be fair,
as much as we might not like it, most
contributed to reviving the dead literary scene and forming the atmosphere in which (Croatian) literature could become the topic of the
day and gain (more) permanent social relevance. (...)
Should one sacrifice one’s dignity in
order to popularize literature? In his
article entitled “Fourteen Lies about
Croatian New Prose” (Fantom slobode,
1-2/2004), Jurica Pavi~i} wrote how
they, the FAK crew, “made fools of
themselves” on stage, not to enforce
themselves on the market, but to
“fight the book-amnesia and perchance slow down the inevitable death
of reading”. So, as Pavi~i} claims,
they did it with a “higher” purpose,
with an obvious, earlier mentioned,
messianic and enlightening pathos.
Ante Tomi}, however, once stated
something completely different: he
would appear in commercials, draw
prizes on TV, only for his book sales
to grow. The more prosaic and practical Tomi} obviously doesn’t espouse the same ideals as Pavi~i}; he
wants to cash in on his literature as
much as possible, whatever the cost.
Besides, this once-interesting storyteller – in his beginnings together
with Jergovi} the most talented writer
of his generation – actually wrote
some more exciting texts than the
novels with which he later gained
popularity. So, he sacrificed his own
literature to become a “star”. Why
121
wouldn’t he then “make a fool of
himself” on stage and wherever else
necessary? I, of course, believe that
literature shouldn’t be popularized
through such means for there are
other ways which don’t necessarily
divert attention from the artwork itself or from what you call “the discourse about the literature itself”.
Therefore I’m not against popularizing literature/art/culture, but I don’t
support popularizing it at any cost,
whether its aim was Pavi~i}’s messianic mission or Tomi}’s profit and
fame. The value, creative quality of a
piece of art, is always primary; everything else is secondary, although welcome, for I, naturally, don’t regard
money or popularity as something
bad in itself. It’s understood that
everyone should be free to choose
their own way and I have nothing
against the populist strategy of Tomi},
Jergovi} or Julijana Matanovi}, as
much as this strategy might get on
my nerves (for in this self-promotion none of them has any of the
style of Lucija Stama}, who, in turn,
unfortunately, hasn’t got much literary talent), but I have something
against it when manipulation of the
media with the aim of unscrupulous
self-promotion results in confusion
of criteria, a priori equalizing popularity with quality. Actually, saying
this I feel terribly out of place because I believe these things should be
self-evident, yet Croatian reality, the
reality of the Croatian cultural scene,
disproves me. Here I don’t think that
the problem lies with writers who
crave media promotion, but with the
critics. I repeat, Tomi} and alike have
strategies I regard completely legitimate, but I don’t regard as legitimate the practice of our critics who
should, in the end, have some kind
of ethic obligations towards their
profession. What should I think about
Croatian critics when Velimir Viskovi},
at the Zarez round table on Croatian
contemporary literature, utters how
122
he admires Jagna Poga~nik because
she dares to write a negative review
in such a small literary world, where
everyone knows each other? When
such a defeatist statement comes from
a critic of such caliber, it becomes
clear where we’re at (incidentally,
Jagna Poga~nik actually didn’t write
that many negative reviews; the most
negative was the one on Milko
Valent’s novel Fatalne ‘ene pla~u na
kamionima, I imagine not primarily
because of the “misogynist” charac-
ter of the work, but rather because
just before her article came out Valent gave a fierce anti-FAK interview
to Edo Popovi} in Jutarnji list, which
couldn’t have left Jagna Poga~nik
cold, considering she was the main
critic-promoter of FAK). You might
ask, where does this lead? I’d say,
towards the dictatorship of mediocrity. Following the dictatorship of
the proletariat and the dictatorship
of the nation on state level, we will
now have the dictatorship of the
RELA
TIONS
(small) bourgeoisie mediocrity in
culture, which, however, is nothing
new, what’s new is that they needn’t
be directly serving a particular ideology, which still, it seems to me, does
not truly make things any easier.
published in Knjigomat)
Translated by
Mima Simi}
RELA
TIONS
123
FAK, Posthumously
Robert Peri{i}
S
hort story collection Croatian
Nights was first published in London
by Serpent’s Tail, and is something
of “FAK after the FAK”, providing a
motive to look back at it from a
distance. Borivoj Radakovi}, Matt
Thorne and Tony White edited the
book, and the authors included were
9 British guest-writers, 8 Croatian
authors, plus the “naturalized FAK
author”, Vladimir Arsenijevi}. This
“co-production” took our authors
on a tour of Britain and received
favourable reviews in main British
papers. Before I say anything about
the book, it needs to be said that the
mere fact of its publishing was, sadly,
a great success. I say “sadly” because
Croatian literature in Britain is practically non-existent, whereas Britain
is no exception, since our presence
abroad is dreadfully weak. This is so
because in Croatia we have this amazing custom of, say, attending book
fairs without literary agents who’d
represent authors... That’s where
things stop making sense, but what
can you do when it’s a custom. I say
this because from today’s perspective the most important legacy of the
FAK was the fact it changed some
literary customs.
For instance, we had this custom
that each promotion of literature
would turn into endless “introductory” tirades by critics until the audience would suffer nervous break-
down waiting for the speech of the
author who, on the other hand, would
sink in the chair, frightened to death
by those critical thoughts on his
work, fearing to say something lest
he make a bigger ass of himself than
he is. Those kinds of “orgies of support guests” still persist: last year I
attended the promotion of a Frédéric
Beigbeder book in the Gjuro club,
where domestic presenters – as if we
only came to see them – spent an
hour of the allotted time before they
let the vivacious French star speak,
who ended up sounding like a shadow
of himself, because atmosphere is a
contagious and is transmitted through
air. This trait of atmosphere FAK
used in a positive way: instead of the
introductory presenter, MC was the
“euphoric” Lokotar and the new concept made writers come to life. Secondly, in this “informal” atmosphere
authors could no more nurture that
old media custom to speak for nobody to understand them. Of course,
there’s a lot more: recently in Vijenac
I read an interview with the otherwise
important poet Ivan Rogi} Nehajev –
and since I am relatively well-versed
in literature I broke a few codes and
got a few names, but I am still far
from breaking “the Rogi} code” and
understanding what it’s all about...
So, the FAK broke away from the
literary customs that affect audience
like war gas. Writers showed them-
selves to be “real characters”, a new
generation emerged – a generation
that had already been writing modern and readable fiction. And (this is
the third thing), without those “protective mechanisms” that “hid” them
from the public, writers could now
also end up seeming “stupid”, i.e.
banal, but what can you do: the approach is individual...
However, FAK was here faced with an
insoluble problem. The thing is that,
having rejected the “academic” approach – FAK didn’t succeed in creating its own minimal literary discourse.
Rejecting the “academic harassment”,
it also rejected any “theorising” and it
refused to define itself in literary
terms. This way FAK de facto dropped
out of literature in its narrow sense.
This is why we can’t treat it as a literary
movement (which defines a certain
style of writing), but rather as a literary
promotional phenomenon. It taught
writers how to perform in public
(and in the media), whereas literary
models, as well as critical guiding
principles, were being born outside of
the FAK. So, the important changes
(in terms of a new concept, as well as
the changes in custom and their effects) happened at the very beginning. The follow-up was “brushing
up” and whirlwind... To sum up, in
an important sense, FAK was almost
a momentary event. Literature unleashed... and then each his own way.
124
(...)
As far as the whole phenomenon of
FAK is concerned, it proved the importance of atmosphere in culture.
When foundations are already laid,
something that – in the context of
literature – happened before the FAK,
sometimes it’s enough to take a few
steps for the avalanche to break. Effects of this avalanche were, however, beneficial for Croatian literature. This is particularly evident when
one looks at the state of Croatian cinema, which has been producing rather
RELA
TIONS
good films lately, but has not found a
promotional formula to mend its image in the minds of the audience.
(June 2005 – excerpt
from a Globus article)
Translated by Mima Simi}
RELA
TIONS
125
FAK (is) off!
Nenad Rizvanovi}
A
ll of this is a well-known fact today: books by Croatian publishers
look better than ever, more editions
are published; production is increasing, there is a large number of new
authors, transfers of writers from one
publisher to another is shockingly
expensive, there are two new prestigious literary awards, waiting lists in
public libraries are now a common
phenomenon – in other words, everything a literary idealist could recently (say, in early spring of 2000)
only fantasize about has now happened. A fantasy, for it seems as such,
but maybe it was something else,
something that Feral’s literary polemicist Dean Duda would dub “Croatian
literary Šfable-machine’”.
Now that FAK – the first real Croatian
writers’ festival – has been publicly
terminated, it would certainly be interesting to investigate what it meant
in this fantasy or, perhaps, in this
“fable-machine”. In a recent electoral
campaign we saw some serious, selfappointed candidates attempting to
take credit for this new state of affairs, but probably nobody would
deny FAK’s important, if not decisive, role in the whole story. During
the four years of its existence much
happened, but the majority of authors who took part in FAK will, I
believe, fondly remember the incredibly positive, ebullient vibrations
spreading in the audience during
almost every reading. Today this will
Nenad Rizvanovi} was born in Osijek in 1968. He graduated in Croatian
language and literature from Zagreb University. He was the editor at several
newspapers, literary magazines, and literary platforms. Today he works as an
editor for VBZ Publishing House. Rizvanovi} published a book of short stories
entitled Trg Lava Mirskog (Zagreb, 2001), a novel Dan i jo{ jedan (Zagreb,
2003), and a collection of stories entitled Zemlja ple{e (Zagreb, 2006). Trg
Lava Mirskog has been translated into Slovenian and Polish, and some of his
stories have been translated into English and German. Together with Kruno
Lokotar he edited the FAKat anthology (Zagreb, 2001) and with Jurij Hudolin
an anthology of contemporary Croatian poetry entitled Norji po{tari stopaju
v mestu (Ljubljana, Slovenia, 2005).
perhaps sound insufferably sentimental, but even the hardest, sworn
individuals among the writers could
not ignore the appeal of the unexpected sense of togetherness. It was
like this at the beginning.
Far from idyllic
The ending, however, hardly resembles
an idyll, it seems. Yet, a lot of things
around FAK have not been idyllic
during those four years. Many people
tended to get incredibly upset at the
mere mention of the acronym. Everyone had their own theory about
FAK, which most often meant thinking about FAK exactly what they
wanted to think, not what was the
truth. The basic idea behind FAK
was the idea of a literary festival,
nothing else. There was no talk of
launching a new generation of au-
thors, nor of some new poetics or a
manifesto, as could often be heard –
least of all getting involved in any
kind of media muddle. Just a literary
festival with an aim to benefit quality writers, regardless of their style
and poetics. FAK was envisaged as a
means of popularizing literature, not
as an end of popularization. But it
seems that at one point this is exactly
what happened.
And everything else that happened
perfectly illustrated the theory that
language in its widest sense (including the media) creates reality, and
not vice versa. The public created
terms “the FAK crew” and “realist
fiction”. Finally, after it became evident that FAK was a successful project,
the public created an absurdly negative atmosphere around it. It is difficult to trace all the reasons for these
rising animosities. Maybe it had some-
126
thing to do with the familiar story
about how difficult it is to be successful in Croatia, and during those
four years some of the FAK participants had to learn how hard this
really is through their own experience. Animosities were inevitably
wrapped in a thick layer of most barefaced lies, prejudice, treachery, insinuations! The kinds of things that
were attributed to the FAK writers:
that they didn’t respect Croatian
literary traditions, that they wrote
panegyrics to each other, that they
trivialized literature by popularizing
it, that they wrote brutal, realist fiction, that they were a product of 3rd
January parliamentary elections, that
they had, as Dean Duda would say,
“pissed all over their territory, so no
other good literature could enter the
scene”, that the media fanatically
supported them thanks to their “connections”, which also presumably
explained their success, that FAK was
actually an Europa Press Holding’s
media project and so on – in short,
lies which gradually became truth.
And how did they feel?
This is a very important detail. It is
on the example of FAK that one can
learn how a timely lie can be taken
for a general truth. Finally, FAK became an ideal target for the spit of
those most pathetic scribblers who’d
never in their whole lives dare engage in a polemic with any of the
FAK writers face to face. And those
writers who eventually became “the
FAK crew” were actually not that
many: Borivoj Radakovi}, Miljenko
Jergovi}, Ante Tomi}, Zoran Feri},
Edo Popovi}, Jurica Pavi~i} and, at
one point, \ermano Senjanovi}. Each
of them could wonder if another attack of, say, Milan Ivko{i} in his
“Obzor”, was aimed at them personally. And, let us not forget: in this
endless Sunday paper quasi-literary
never-ending debate, a whole choir
of Croatian literary dignitaries – from
Vlatko Pavleti} to Jak{a Fiamengo –
took a dump on FAK.
It is interesting how nobody wanted
to examine the other side of the story.
Did anyone ever think about how Ante
Tomi} felt while he went through a
collective media thrashing in the time
of TV series Novo doba and the play
Krovna udruga? Or Borivoj Radakovi},
while he fought for better contracts
and fairer fees for writers. Or how
Miljenko Jergovi} felt when Ivan
Aralica’s Fukara was published. The
media didn’t find this particularly
interesting. On the other hand, the
things that the media probably would
have found interesting were not discussed in public. I’m sure that each
member of the so-called FAK crew
had to ask themselves at least once
what the hell they needed that damn
FAK for, and could they not have
had a more peaceful and less stressful
literary career.
Whether it was the case of “Croatian
literary fable-machine” or not, much
has changed in Croatian literature
since then. Before FAK, everyone but
the writer was the star on the literary
scene – the stars were, most of all,
publishers, then scholars, critics, journalists, politicians, and at one point
even Matica hrvatska. FAK finally
pushed the writer onto the stage and
FAK really fought for writers’ rights.
Before FAK it was a common thing
for a publisher to instruct a writer to
find a sponsor, if (s)he wanted to get
his/her book published, or even blatantly ask the writer for money. In
the 1990s several renowned Croatian
publishers arrogantly and distraughtly
declared that Croatian writers should
not be paid out of principle. Which
principle this was still remains unclear. I presume these publishers would
not be as bold to state such a thing
publicly nowadays, but the idea that
the writer, unlike the publisher (or
other artists), has to be poor, is still
rather firm.
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We didn’t write reviews
of each other’s works!
For the philosophers of Borislav
Mikuli}’s rank a 3 15,000 literary
award is still an outrageously high
sum. During its whole mandate and
up until this year Vuji}’s Ministry of
Culture generously supported only
publishers, indignantly rejecting proposals concerning funding of writers,
and, as could be expected, funding
was not, in the end, granted this year
either.
It would be difficult to instantly dismantle all the lies that have been
woven around FAK, but now that
FAK is really gone, some of them
need to be commented on. The most
incredible of all the lies was the one
about disrespecting Croatian literary traditions. The FAK authors may
have not respected tradition as an
ideological construct, but it was a
completely different story when it
came to Croatian literature itself.
The works of writers gathered around
FAK can be read as a succession of
expressions of open admiration for
the wealth of Croatian literature. Anyone who ever read Sarajevo Marlboro,
Angel Offside, Porno or I Forgot Where
I Parked will know this. The list of
Croatian writers whom the FAK writers referred to, and celebrated, is
long: Janko Poli} Kamov, Miroslav
Krle‘a, Ulderiko Donadini, Marin
Dr‘i}, Ivo Andri}, Nikola [op,
Slobodan Novak, Danijel Dragojevi},
just to mention a few! One should
wonder where this blatant, disgusting and monstrous lie sprang from,
and if it in fact indicates a total pollution of the literary environment.
Another lie that became a universally accepted truth was that the FAK
writers wrote reviews of each other’s
works. It is tragic that even those
who had always been benevolent towards FAK (like Kre{imir Nemec)
unthinkingly cited this lie. The truth,
however, is that after FAK was
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launched only Jurica Pavi~i}, Kruno
Lokotar and myself sporadically wrote
literary reviews, in papers of small circulation (Zarez, Vijenac and Nedjeljna
Dalmacija). The situation, thus, was
quite the opposite. FAK WRITERS
DID NOT WRITE REVIEWS OF
EACH OTHER’S WORKS! Everyone
should ponder on the depth of this
lie, particularly if it sneaks into histories of literature that are being, or
will be, written. FAK didn’t even
have its own critic, someone who
would have established new writers
in the way that Velimir Viskovi} established “Fantasti~ari”, a group of
Croatian fantastic prose writers. And
as for Jagna Poga~nik, too often did
she write scathing reviews of the FAK
writers’ books (this, of course, is not
to be objected) for her to be dubbed
FAK’s own critic.
Finally, FAK – at least formally –
was not a closed circle of writers. At
the FAK’s public readings – and
there were seventeen altogether – some
seventy writers performed. Many were
given a chance. The fact, however, is
that the writers who didn’t read so
well, or whose prose was more hermetic, were ultimately disadvantaged.
Unfortunately, at one point brilliant
writers like Stanko Andri} or Neven
U{umovi} stopped reading at FAK.
And sadly, again, in a later phase
FAK was less and less daring and
pioneering, and too often mostly concerned with what audiences might or
might not like.
Approval to follow
Finally, it is interesting to note that
critics almost nowhere discussed literary aspects of the FAK literature,
so it remains unclear whether the
FAK writers were authors of good
literature or not. Are Radakovi},
Jergovi}, Tomi}, Feri}, Popovi} or
Pavi~i} good writers or not? So far no
clear critical consensus exists about
these writers’ value – except maybe
127
when it comes to Jergovi}. It is paradoxical that their value is yet to be
proved by their new books. We shall
see whether they will have it easier or
harder without FAK.
FAK was really a reaction to a newly
established state of affairs; call it “new
capitalism”, “transition”, or something else. The FAK writers realized
that in these new conditions the fact
they were writers – Croatian writers
– was no advantage, and that they
had to somehow win some ground,
facing much fiercer media competition – film, music, the Internet, even
theatre. FAK simply tried to draw
potential audiences’ attention, and
make them realize that there were
some new writers around, and that
what they wrote might not be that
bad or uninteresting. And at this it
succeeded, at least in part.
Translated by
Mima Simi}
Friday night, the FAK organizers issued the following diplomatic statement:
“Exactly four years ago we met at the Kruge café in Trnje in Zagreb and decided to organize a literary
festival whose objective, above all, was to promote Croatian fiction, stir up the literary scene and spark
public’s interest in Croatian contemporary literature.
The first FAK was held in Osijek on 13 and 14 May 2000 at the Voodoo café, followed by 17 other events
held in various towns. (...) More than eighty Croatian, and over twenty international authors from the UK,
the US, Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Slovenia, and Hungary took part in FAK.
As a purely informal group of enthusiasts, FAK did not have a centre, or a leader, and thus it did not have
any kind of dogma, but was open to diverse types of literary work.
(...) We would like to thank all the writers who participated in FAK and all those who supported us. Special
thanks goes to Kruno Lokotar as the MC, associate and often a selector.
(...) Currently several projects are being developed by the original organizers of FAK and these projects will be
carried out. Any other use of the name FAK will be regarded as usurpation.
Hereby we proclaim FAK terminated.”
Founders of FAK
Hrvoje Osvadi}, Borivoj Radakovi} , Nenad Rizvanovi}
128
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AfterFAK
Ante Tomi}
What I will always remember the
most is the laughter, how much we
used to laugh at FAK. Two years
ago, one morning in a Belgrade hotel, still drowsy, we were drinking
disgusting espresso and only Ivo
Bre{an, the “youngest” among us,
was in the mood for lengthy discussions on aesthetics.
Enthusiastically he was drivelling on
about Dostoevsky to Franci Bla{kovi},
who with his bloodshot eyes indeed
somewhat resembles Raskolnikov,
when Rujana Jeger entered the scene,
all dressed up, made up, gorgeous.
As we stared enchanted, she said:
“What’s up boys, boys? Well, I ain’t
no Jesus to feed you all with one
little fish.” Bre{an gawked in disbelief. He lost his train of thought.
Pure joy
I could recount dozens of such episodes. This FAK was pure joy. If you
ever visited one of the happenings
you know what I’m talking about.
You must have felt that buoyancy.
Writing is lonely, often exasperating
work, sometimes you hate yourself like
a dog and you have no idea what
you’re doing it for. But at FAK all of
the labour would be rewarded a hundredfold. Writing felt wonderful at 1
a.m. at the Voodoo bar in Osijek, when
laughter rang though the crowded
backyard as ]i}o Senjanovi} read, or
when everything went silent as Jergovi}
narrated something terrifying. At
FAK we really felt like kings.
This summer in Osijek an incredibly cute student came up to me and
asked me to write “Marija, I love
you” for her, and sign my name. My
legs went numb. However, I also had
to take on a lot of hatred. If I was to
measure, FAK brought me as much
hatred as it did admiration. If it
hadn’t been for FAK I would probably never have found out how many
people can’t stand the sight of me.
All sorts of scoundrels were lashing
out at me in various papers and
sometimes this would make me feel
really bad, but all wounds would heal
the moment I’d sit before the patient
and grateful FAK audience. To these
wonderful people (I am not deluding myself) I was a better writer and
a better man than I truly am, and I
am awfully sad it’s over. I am going
to miss it terribly much.
More luck than brains
It makes me angry me that the whole
thing is ruined. Before I used to get
angry, to be honest, with the people
who – thanks to FAK – started feeling important. Fools intoxicated by
applause... and, making it more absurd, fools of least importance... how
they turned up their noses and finally spoilt all the fun. I will not
name names publicly, as I intent to
settle this in private, with a baseball
bat in a dark alley. The fact is, what
happened to this little festival was
bound to happen. We had more luck
than brains, and this lack of brains
we had to pay for.
Could it have been different? Maybe
we could have split in two factions:
FÂK, or Festival ~iste A knji‘evnosti
(Festival of Pure A-Literature) on
one hand, and FAK 1861 on the
other? And perhaps it wouldn’t be
such a bad idea to abandon the name
completely and go under another. It
would be fun if we would dub ourselves “Goran’s Spring” and meet
each year on the day that Ivani{evi}
won Wimbledon. I don’t know. All
sorts of silly things spring to my
mind, but in fact I really feel awful.
Translated by
Mima Simi}
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129
130
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In FAKt,
what was that FAK?
Jagna Poga~nik
From today’s perspective, three years
after its breakup and termination, one
can write about FAK from at least
three positions. A few months ago,
writing for future Encyclopedia of
Croatian Literature, which is being
industriously prepared at the “Miroslav
Krleà” Lexicographic Institute, under the editorial hand of Velimir
Viskovi}, I managed to bring FAK
down to some thirty lines of a lexicographic entry. I turned off my emotions and impressions, kept all the
grapevine and gossip to myself, and
spelled out the FAKts. Those thirty
lines planned for the FAK hardly
managed to take in everything that
happened to FAK and with FAK from
May 2000 until December 2003. I
had to list the names of all the selectors and founders of this festival of
literature, mention the names of all
the writers that participated in it,
remember all the places in Croatia
and abroad where they performed,
record the publications that happened alongside FAK (such as the
“FAKat” collection or the bilingual
“Croatian Nights”, the co-production with the Motovun Film Festival
or Franci Bla{kovi}), carefully talk
about the reasons for its breakup and
termination, and finally reach a verdict on it relevance for history, which
in this case read as follows: “First
Jagna Poga~nik (1969) graduated in Croatian language and literature and
South Slavic philology from Zagreb University. She has worked as a freelance
literary critic and translator since 2000. Since 1989 her literary criticism,
essays and polemics have been published in numerous newspapers and
magazines as well as on Croatian Radio. From 2000 to 2003 Poga~nik was a
literary critic for the TV program called Knji`nica at Croatian National Television. She was the editor for Rijek and Zor literary magazines. She wrote about
a dozen prefaces and afterwords for books by contemporary Croatian writers.
Since 2000 she works as a literary critic for Jutarnji list and writes weekly
reviews of domestic prose production. Her critical work has been translated
into Slovenian, German and French. She published a selection of Croatian
fantastic fiction, Prodavaonica tajni (2001); a collection of literary criticism,
Backstage (2002), and a selection of new Croatian fiction, Sex & Grad (2004).
Together with Milovan Tatarin she wrote a textbook for fifth grade of elementary school entitled Pssst! Knjige govore (2003). She mostly translates contemporary Slovenian writers and for her translation work she was awarded
the International Kulturkontakt Prize by the City of Vienna. Poga~nik is a
member of the Croatian Writers Society, the Croatian Literary Translators
Association, the Croatian Freelance Artists Association and Matica hrvatska.
and foremost, its importance lies in
the complete change of Croatian literary scene, the establishing of new
kinds of relationships between the
writers and their audience, and the
affirmation of Croatian prose, especially in the media. For these reasons, without a doubt, it left a mark
in the Croatian prose at the beginning of the new millennium.”
Those cold statements, of course, do
not tell us much about FAK, except
perhaps giving us some facts. Reduced to a lexicographic unit, FAK
will not be able to convey any of its
energy and the real truth on what
was it all about to anyone in the
future. Because, already in its origin
FAK had in mind future lexicographers and historians of literature to
whom it sent a message – we are not
one of the generations you will easily
fit into one of your drawers. Lexicographic style will not be able to ex-
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press what really happened in those
clubs where FAK took place, how its
host, Kruno Lokotar, treated the
classical introduction matrixes with
irony and turned them upside-down,
nor why during their performances
the writers had bigger audience than
their books. Charges of energy, similar to those at rock concerts, atmosphere, and loads of good vibrations
are the categories that do not need
any additional explanation. Those
who never witnessed FAK have no idea
what was it all about, even though the
media very diligently reported from
the scene. To write about the nights
at Zagreb’s Gjuro II or Osijek’s
Voodoo – as some of the international participants did when they returned home, like a Slovene Andrej
Blatnik who managed to express his
enthusiasm in a couple of newspaper
articles glorifying FAK and who, as
many times before, showed that he
simply “digs” why there are no longer
high fences between popular culture
and literature – would classify as personal writing, which on this occasion in this kind of a dossier on FAK
no one expects from me. But, this
second position of writing about
FAK would perhaps be the most effective today. Still, there is the third
position, and it observes FAK from a
wider perspective, from the critic’s
angle, and attempts to see it as a
phenomenon that marked Croatian
fiction and whose results by far surpassed the smoky clubs and stages on
which Croatian writers and their international friends read their pieces.
Everything about FAK was made
known almost immediately – it
rumbled like an earthquake from
Osijek, via Zagreb, all the way to
Great Britain; it introduced literature to venues it never stepped into
before; and it turned its participants/
readers into stars whom the audience called back on the stage for an
encore, and whom that same audience began to read. It is also known
Part II: FAK on the Outside
that its unfortunate epithet “alternative” was replaced by letter (and a
mark of value) “A”, and, regrettably,
that FAK, just like any other interesting initiative in our culture, divided Croatian cultural public. FAK
was truly one of the most important
literary phenomena of this decade
and although the reason for this was
simple enough, unfortunately there
were those who were unable to understand it because their mind-sets
saw only political conspiracy or media manipulation in it. Namely, FAK
was nothing more than a festival at
which writers of different generations and poetics read their work,
and the audience that listened to them
had a chance to see that literature
was not some kind of boring endeavor
reserved for a handful of masochists.
Those who never had it before, and
this needs to be acknowledged by
anyone who cares about literature,
finally got Warhol’s fifteen minutes
of fame; and they got it without playing it to the audience. The audience
showed higher degree of maturity
and interest than anyone ever dared
to admit, and in that sense FAK truly
tore many prejudices about the infamous author-book-reader triangle.
However, FAK literature, a phrase
journalists and critics often used in
their articles, is the result of the inherent need for “drawers”, but it is
exclusively an abbreviation that can
be legitimately used only when the
number of lines one’s disposal is limited, so one reaches for an “auxiliary
denotation.” FAK literature as some
kind of common poetic denominator does not exist – here we are talking about literature of authors around
FAK or authors who performed at
FAK, with a remark that first there
were authors and their fiction, and
the festival came as a consequence.
Nevertheless, it is true that the writers who began publishing their works
in the nineties did not have their
own (“generational”) magazine, which
131
came almost as a rule with previous
generations of Croatian writers, so it
is possible to see FAK as a transformed “engine” of literary development, some kind of oral magazine
for promoting the culture of writing, reading and listening fiction.
What average readers and visitors at
FAK understood under the above
was actually a new Croatian fiction
or the fiction written from the midnineties on. Most of the writers gathered around FAK published their
first or second book of fiction in the
nineties therefore introducing novelties in Croatian fiction, but also
introducing liveliness which the same
prose had not had before. If we take
“FAKat” collection as our only example, those seventeen writers included clearly demonstrate that FAKwriters do not have any common
poetic characteristics, so any remarks
about FAK-writers as a coherent group
are completely wrong. Even if one
reads only the said collection, not to
mention the books of the included
writers, it becomes apparent that the
statements such as FAK-writers are
good writers, but bad journalists or
vice versa, are completely wrong. Of
course, it would be much easier for
all those who are supposed to come
up with the final assessment of the
mentioned writers and their books if
the situation were different, but literary life, thank God, never turns
out the way those who write literary
histories want.
The writers gathered around FAK
were a heterogenic group, just as were
the Quorum-writers and other X- or
Y-writers, and the only, but very
important, fact is that FAK managed to bring to its festival ranks the
best of new Croatian prose production. Of course, they made an occasional blunder of including or notincluding a certain writer, but this was
something completely understandable
and even anticipated in this line of
business. The answer to the question
132
about final results of an X-ray image
of the FAK fiction could hardly fit
into these few lines. Nevertheless, a
step away from postmodernism was
evident and it demonstrated itself
most clearly in the dominant prose
model – the one that reached into
reality, social topics, topics of urban
marginae, postwar themes, and in
this sense often approached journalistic discourse. This most frequent
type of prose, which we often call
neo-realistic or real-life prose, saw
the return to narration and to real,
healthy humor which we often distrusted and, lacking a better idea,
dubbed “Czech humor”. Even those
writers, who continued the heritage
of Quorum style poetics, or tended
to wander into unrecognizable geographic and temporal coordinates or
into fantasy, showed, even though
modestly and between the lines, interest in reality. It can be said that
the only writers not included in FAK
fold were mostly “escapists,” “the
Quorum children,” or “autobiographers.” However, the venues i.e. clubs
also carry some responsibility for this.
The objections that the selectors did
not include this or that good writer
in FAK (it is important to take into
consideration that some of the writers, such as Dubravka Ugre{i} and
Slavenka Drakuli}, often received invitations but never managed to join)
do not stand because it would be
hardly possible to invite to FAK nights
those writers who showed inclination
toward, for example, hermeticism,
and whose prose could hardly be followed with enough concentration even
when completely alone, with a pencil
in one’s hand, or some women-writers who advocated life philosophy
directly opposite to that of urban
clubs. And it, that is urbanity, is actually the only thing all “FAKs” had
in common, be it in their poetics or
their way of presentation.
Besides the fact that these new writers opened themselves to readers and
audience at their public readings not
only through their “mediagenic quality” but through their writing, which
they did not want to be boring or
impenetrable, but readable and enjoyable, they also caused some tectonic movements on the map of
Croatian fiction. In addition to the
above mentioned liveliness and the
opening of the scene, FAK-writers
offered domestic solution for coming out of the dead end street of
postmodernism, regardless whether
they still questioned or completely
negated its postulates. At the same
time their writing offered a strong
answer to real life impulses – even
when their prose allowed the reality
stimuli through it and when it remained completely closed off to it;
this closedness after all could be read
as an eloquent reaction. Therefore, I
support the thesis that at the given
moment FAK was a much stronger
motive for writing than, let’s say,
membership in any association of
writers or working with those few
literary magazines. In the autistic
Croatian literature of the nineties,
whose condition could hardly have
been treated with any known method,
FAK made such positive steps forward that its final “score” is still very
much positive. By this I mean the
writers and their books stepping up
on the stage, before the audience, in
the media and on the bookshelves of
readers who actually began buying
“home-made” books. “You haven’t
read Feri}?” was a sentence an average Croatian student could use even
when choosing a potential date, without fear of being considered a dork.
Domestic fiction, thanks to FAK,
created a scene and an atmosphere of
positive competition which resulted
in writing, publishing, and reading
Croatian fiction. Better and worse fiction, but the scene was there. Namely,
FAK’s influence on Croatian fiction
could be compared to the “New
Wave” influence on our rock scene
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in the eighties. Neither then, nor
now was everyone great and flawless,
but the atmosphere was in both cases
uniquely stimulating, no matter how
short it all lasted.
True, disputes among the founders,
selectors, and participants that happened just before and immediately
after the breakup of FAK left an ugly
stain on the whole phenomenon.
Therefore, today we can make a claim
that FAK did not use up all of its
potential and that it ended up in the
tones of “the comrades splitting up”
and not being ready for reforms.
Even before the breakup one could
feel that the lining FAK had at its
beginning slowly began to fade; this
is completely logical and can be compared to the feeling you get when
you play your favorite CD for the
hundredth time and it seems to you
that you should put it down on a
shelf for a while. With the exception
of British guests who gave great impulse to, let say, the last FAK in
Zagreb, many things were seen many
times before, and regular visitors
could read together with the writer,
because they already knew the prose
by heart. FAK needed to reinvent its
selection policy in order not to become a jukebox or a group of always
the same writers that moved from
town to town and work more instead on the international appearances of the “A” kind. Or, on the
other hand, it could have been turned
into an annual, lavish festival of international and domestic writers. But
this never happened, and the story
ends here, and any other speculations are no longer needed.
But, even though the story around
the festival of literature which, in
those rather lethargic times, initiated
the acceleration of Croatian prose
scene and its media presentation,
ended up in a quite sad and ugly
way, its founders, Borivoj Radakovi}
primarily, in the end delivered a
smart punch, that is, concluded the
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FAK story the way it deserved – with
a bilingual, Croatian-English collection entitled “Croatian Nights,” with
roughly the same number of Croatian
and British writers. Namely, from its
very beginning FAK was envisioned
as a literary festival where domestic
writers and their writing would be
brought face to face with their foreign colleagues; Croatian editions of
the festival always included international guests among which, besides
the writers from former Yugoslavia,
British authors showed up in greatest numbers. Radakovi} made connections and acquaintances on British literary scene through his work as
translator and he extravagantly presented many British writers in Croatia
and initiated translation of their books.
Of course, these were writers he himself, as well as a colorful group of the
FAK-writers, felt certain poetic closeness to or at least had similar ideas
on what was prose today and what it
should look like. British New Puritans (who introduced themselves in
Croatia with “All Hail the New Pu-
ritans” collection in 2000) were a
group of British writers who established literary (and drinking!) brotherhood with FAK-writers, and when
it comes to questions of poetics,
Croatian-British connection rested
on tendency to escape postmodernist
games, write about the present and
insist on the clarity of narration,
which were just some of the postulates the Puritans listed in their manifesto, and which, accidentally, most
of FAK-writers shared.
Now that the tensions have finally
settled and the whole phenomenon
can be looked at calmly, FAK dossier, for which, almost three years
after its breakup, I write this text,
without a doubt once again raises
the question of FAK’s legacy. Literary readings, which “FAKs” started
(although they did not invent them),
remain a model without which, it
seems, no literary festival, book fair,
promotion or any other literary event
can go without. The writers who
participated at FAK were definitely
not just the selectors’ fabrications;
133
meanwhile each of them published a
few more books and confirmed their
key positions on the map of new
Croatian writing, regardless of FAK
itself. Rock Šn’ roll atmosphere and
urban, club-like feeling at Croatian
FAK nights were fascinating, even
for those who came from the country where something like this is considered a standard and according to
whose model everything was made –
the British. Even if this was all it
done, bringing all those foreign writers to Croatia and creating a dense
network of personal contacts is more
than many other, “official,” and
“quasi-official” channels between
countries had ever done, and perhaps this is already a reason enough
for us to close an eye to all those
bruised egos which caused FAK’s
demise maybe even before its real
grand finale.
Translated by
Tomislav Kuzmanovi}
134
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FAKs Are Coming!
Croatian prose at the turn of the Millenium
Velimir Viskovi}
The end of the nineties represented
an era of changes in Croatian literature. They played out in the turbulent social context: the authority of
Tu|man government caved in along
with its most faithful aesthetic expression found in Ivan Aralica’s novels, in his political and activist essays, in Jakob Sedlar’s films, and
“state” literary organs such as Hrvatsko
Slovo (Croatian Letter)...The years
marked an emergence of a new generation of writers born in the sixties
or early seventies; unlike their older
colleagues they were not overwhelmed
by Tu|man’s nation-state rhetoric
on the thousand-year old dream of
Croatian statehood. They saw a different reality (despite the cover up of
megalomaniac phrases about historical mission): corruption of the political elite, unemployment, tycoon
phenomenon, collapse of moral standards, intolerance towards the minorities lifted to the level of official
state politics...
The unadorned social reality entered
into the focus of the new generation.
Their writing took a side glance at
the reality of its time, offering its
critical commentary, taking the position of a small man in the turbulent times. It was not surprising that
poetical markers for these new writers became terms such as neo-real-
Velimir Viskovi} was born in 1951 in Dra{nice near Makarska. In 1973 he
graduated in Yugoslav languages and literature and comparative literature
from Zagreb University, where he earned his MA. Since 1976 he has worked at
the Miroslav Krleà Lexicographic Institute in Zagreb. He was the member
of editorial committee for several lexicographic editions (Enciklopedija
Jugoslavije, Filmska enciklopedija, Hrvatska enciklopedija). Viskovi} is currently the editor in chief of Hrvatska knjièvna enciklopedija. He edited
several literary magazines; from 1985 to 2002 he was the editor of Republika
literary magazine. He is the president of the Croatian Writers Society. He
won numerous awards for his literary and lexicographic work: the Mate
Ujevi} Award for Lexicography, the Antun Gustav Mato{ Award for Literary
Criticism, the Strossmayer Award for Science; the Krleìna Povelja for
Krleìjana, etc. Since 2000 Viskovi} is the editor in chief of a new edition of
Miroslav Krleà’s collected works. In addition to lexicography and literary
historiography Viskovi} engages in literary criticism. His publications include:
Mlada proza (1983); Pozicija kriti~ara (1988); Pripovjeda~ko djelo Slavka Kolara
(1996); Umije}e pripovijedanja (2000); Sukob na ljevici (2001); Krleòlo{ki
fragmenti (2001); Nova hrvatska proza (anthology, 1988); U sjeni FAK-a
(criticism, 2006).
ism and real-life literature. From the
beginning of the seventies and the
emergence of the so-called Borgesians
Croatian literature was permeated by
new mannerist poetic modes that approached literature as ars combinatoria,
but remained more or less disinterested in the social reality. The Quorum generation of the eighties did
not move away from that point of
view. The group further radicalized
formalism of the postmodernist po-
etics of the former generation: fragmented narratives, a technique of literary patchwork, intertextuality, giving up on social mimesis. In comparison to the generation from the
seventies, there was greater consciousness of intermediality (even though
such methods could be found in the
prose of Tribuson, Ugre{i}, Pavli~i}...).
Talking about influences, at the end
of the decade, there was an interest
in Raymond Carver, later for the
RELA
TIONS
absurdist Harms, while some of the
Polet group (Popovi} and Ba{i}) were
under strong influence of Charles
Bukowski. As a whole, the Quorum
group, did not produce a prose writer
that had deeper impact on Croatian
prose writing. The most prolific
among these, Damir Milo{ and
Borislav Vuj~i}, but their often selfreferential investigations (resulting
in certain hypertrophy of form) did
not find greater audience, nor particularly positive critical reception.
In the second part of the nineties, it
came to radical change in the dominant poetic ideas. The postmodernist
escapism lost its attraction among
younger writers; they needed literary
concept that would deal more directly with the turbulent post-war
realities. An interesting case was that
of Jurica Pavi~i} who in the nineties
wrote a brilliant study on the Croatian
fantastic writers. Based on that one
might have expected that he would
have followed a similar genre concept; however, his novels became the
most consistent example of the socially critical, realistic prose.
Social and Political Context
The attitude towards the national
myths that, at the onset of the nineties, became deeply ingrained in the
mainstream of Croatian culture, also
changed. The nationalist, xenophobic pattern of public behavior that
became social convention with the
rise of the HDZ (Croatian Democratic Union) party abated. The attitude became legitimate during the
Croatian War of Independence, when
Serb chauvinist politics posed the
real threat to Croatian statehood;
even those disinclined to chauvinist
ideas accepted nationalist rhetoric as
a type of self-defense.
However, nationalism itself did not
serve only as protective or self-protective means: it also became a new
fashion on the market. The nation-
alist public appearances helped boost
careers in the new regime, while the
media – both state-run and private –
found a new market interest in hunting down and prosecuting “yugonostalgics” and “enemies of the
people”, despite always wrapping it
in the “nation-building mission”.
The most extreme example of the
war-mongering weekly paper was
without doubt ST (Slobodni Tjednik/
Free Weekly) in which, at the beginning of the decade, collaborated some
journalists and writers who in the second part of the nineties, transformed
into “hard-core liberals”. The atmosphere from the beginning of the
nineties, best illustrated the example
of an influential magazine Globus
which in 1993 published an article
against the five “Croatian witches”
publicly denouncing two well-known
Croatian writers Dubravka Ugre{i}
and Slavenka Drakuli}. The noted
intellectuals were accused of their
hostile stance towards Croatia in the
foreign press, first of all because they
openly spoke against the nature of
the new regime. The attack was the
indicator both of the growing militant nationalism and also of the patriarchal restructuring of society that
expressed its anger particularly against
the feminist-oriented women. By the
end of the nineties, however, the circumstances changed to such extent
that Globus became magazine in which
liberal-leftist ideas predominated; paradoxical was the fact that one of the
leading domestic political commentaries was now being signed by one
of the formerly denounced “witches”
– Jelena Lovri}.
The decisive moment in the change
of mentality on the nationally selfaware intellectual and literary scene
came in 1997 when two autobiographical works about the Croatian
War of Independence appeared. Kratki
izlet (A Short Excursion) by Ratko
Cvetni} and Glasom protiv topova
(Voice against the Cannons) by Alemka
135
Mirkovi}. The books were well-written, especially the Cvetni} work characterized by exceptionally polished
style. Topically both books did not
question the official take on the causes
of war in Croatia: the exclusive guilty
side for the war remained Croatian
Serbs that put themselves in the service of the Greater Serbia ideology
and joined Serbian aggression against
Croatia. But, their naturalistic conviction indirectly gave witness to the
complex picture of war; especially
drastic was the depiction of the contrast between the frontlines against
the civilian life in the rear. Cvetni}
used memorable irony in his observations about the political scene and
its protagonists; the irony of which
it could not have been said that it
was “inimical” or “yugo-nostalgic”
because it was told from the frontline position, from the position of a
patriot who idealistically joined the
defense of his homeland. Some were
shocked by Cvetni}’s depiction of
war cruelty against the captured enemy but the book showed that our
boys sometimes went overboard as
well.
The same year came out the first
novel of Jurica Pavi~i} Ovce od gipsa
(Alabaster Sheep). Until then known
only as journalist, film and literary
critic, Pavi~i} bravely shed some light
upon a tricky subject: violence in the
rear against a Serb family (in which
many of course recognized direct allusion to the known case of the Zec
family in Zagreb). For the defenders
of dogma of Croatian a priori innocence in the Homeland War, this
was a new and unexpected situation.
To write critically of violence despite
its national emblems was not only
tendency of the “traitors” from Feral
Tribune and Arkzin, bought off by
(as Tu|man called it) Judas’ money,
but also young men who spent time in
the trenches, like Cvetni} and Pavi~i}.
The stronger awareness that the war,
in the rear or on the front, was ac-
136
companied by crimes (in the second
half of the nineties the press dealt
with them more than writers), finally led to the change in perspective
of some more prominent narrators
who were also depicting the war. It
suffices to compare the position of
Nedjeljko Fabrio towards the war in
his 1994 novel Smrt Vronskoga (The
Death of Vronsky), where he gives a
mythic-poetic depiction of the war
sharply dividing the good from the
bad guys, while in Triemeron, 2002,
he rather bravely embarks upon the
treatment of Croatian war crimes.
The Magazines
To what extent did literary magazines contribute to the new poetic
concept? In the history of the postwar Croatian literature it was customary for the writers to link their
collective appearance to various magazines: which had such a formative
that the writers often got their name
after the magazines they grouped
around: Krug (The Circle), Razlog
(Reason), Quorum... In this case there
was no such central magazine. In the
second half of the nineties, a group
of younger writers and critics gathered
around the magazine Vijenac (Wreath)
published by Matica Hrvatska. Their
radical critique of Tu|man politics,
the exposure of Croatian involvement in Bosnian war (Branko Matan)
and distancing from the revisionism
in the interpretation of the second
world war, provoked strong reaction
from the right-wing oriented older
members of Matica. In 2000 this led
to a conflict, split and resignation of
an almost complete editorial group
led by then editor-in-chief Andrea
Zlatar. It led to the creation of the new,
more radically profiled, biweekly cultural magazine Zarez (Comma). However, Zarez soon turned into an exclusive voice for a group of essayists
and critics who engaged in various
areas of contemporary theoretical
thought, from feminism to cultural
studies and such articulate outlet
provided little space for actual literary production. Besides, the rise of
FAK, its Barnum-style advertising,
media manipulation, and evident
exploiting of their newly found fame
opened up a gap between Zarez and
the new literary stars. This became
apparent in the special “round table”
issue that the magazine published in
lieu of the breaking up with the FAK
group when editorial board spoke
about the FAK phenomenon with
great critical distance, if not irony.
It should be added that Vijenac, after
the dissidents left, continued being
published under the editorial hand
of Mladen Kuzmanovi}, who wasn’t a
priori against the FAK group. He even
managed to keep his paper outside
of the sphere of direct political misuse, so that gradually some of its former
collaborators returned to Vijenac.
Shortly after, the regular collaborator-editor became one of the FAK
selectors, Kruno Lokotar, who in his
column systematically promoted writers of the newer generation.
Of the literary magazines serving as a
means in forming the new literary
sensibility, we should also mention
Godine (Years) which after its clash
with the governing body of its then
publisher Studentski Center (the main
obstacles were the poor state orientation and unwarranted preference for
the cosmopolitan contents), changed
publishing hands and was re-named
Godine nove (Years New). The magazine was headed by Robert Peri{i}
and Kruno Lokotar, two exceptionally prominent figures for an articulation of the ideas of the new generation and the contributors were virtually all the key players that later gathered around FAK. However, the
magazine was published irregularly,
with wide gaps, so it never quite became dynamic, generational literary
forum.
RELA
TIONS
The role of the press
By no means should we omit the
important role of the so-called informative-political media whose powerful influence on the writing scene
even surpassed the influence of pure
literary publications. Journalism was
once scorned at in writing circles and
the fact that Antun Gustav Mato{, Ivan
Goran Kova~i} or Ivo Kozar~anin
plied the news trade was taken as an
example of the poor social status of
Croatian writers who had to write
for newspapers in order to survive
(at the expense of the true and worthy
writing – verses and artistic prose).
The new crop of Croatian writers
did not consider journalism degrading or necessarily opposed to literature. They regarded journalism equal
to their writing, equally creative; they
also evolved stronger awareness of
the importance of mass media, of its
power in contemporary society; thus
showing desire to exploit its power
for the sake of literature itself.
This went against the grain of elitist
isolationism of literature, yet on the
other hand it brought these writers
wider audience. At the end of 2003
within the FAK group developed a
polemic as whether the presence of
writers in the public eye, even on the
pages of pulp tabloids – was beneficial for writing: did the best writers
receive media acclaim or simply those
that were most crafty in their media
manipulation. Disparaging epithets
such as show-biz hijinks, media manipulation, trivialization, etc. came
into the picture as well.
The fact remained that there were
never before as many journalists among
writers and writers among journalists.
Never before were the newspapers so
influential in the process of literary
life and writing itself. The nineties
were also the era of great restructuring
of the press as a whole. On one hand
the process of privatization (which gave
possibility to new initiatives), on the
RELA
TIONS
other hand the regime’s attempt to
keep the media under its thumb, either by direct involvement in the editorial policies of the state-sponsored
media or by guided privatization
through which media came into the
hands of the ruling party’s sympathizers. Such political pressure ruined some of the most prestigious
publications –the leading news-magazine Danas (Today) and once leading
dailies such as Vjesnik (The News)
and Slobodna Dalmacija (The Free
Dalmatia), Split, were put under the
regime control and professionally
degraded. However, the liberty of
private initiative was impossible to
control completely. One of the reasons were constant warning of the
international agents regarding the
media situation. Even in unfavorable circumstances, despite the pressure, in the inimical environment, the
independent media emerged and survived in marketplace and public life.
The emergence of Feral Tribune,
newspaper that began as independent weekly in 1993, was of particular importance. Its founders, Ivan~i~,
Luci} and De‘ulovi}, at the time
weren’t much concerned with the
idea whether their work had or had
not any literary ingredients. They
never signed their satirical pieces individually, showing that they did not
particularly care about the cult of the
literary authorship. However, Viktor
Ivan~i} later collected some of his
satirical writings in his book Dnevnik
Robija K. (The Diary of Robi K). The
book that certainly functioned as one
of the best short story collections in
the nineties. (In 2005 Ivan~i} published an extremely artistically directed novel which showed that his
literary self-consciousness was not so
extrinsic as it had appeared at the
beginning); De‘ulovi} will, at the
turn of the millennium, appear with
his novels and poetry, while Luci}
published a collection od poetic parodies. The best pages of \ermano
Senjanovi} appeared in Feral Tribune, while the list of regulars included
such names as Smoje, Lovrenovi},
Stoji}, Bareti}, Diki}, Jergovi}, Lasi},
Peri{i}, Groma~a, Rudan, etc. It
should be bore in mind that critical
pieces from Zima, Mandi}, Makovi},
Viskovi}, Duda and others also appeared in the newspaper.
A great influence on the shaping of
the literary scene in that period had
the cultural column of Jutarnji List
(The Morning Paper), especially after
the establishing of its literary prize
given for the first time in 2001. Besides rather hefty amount for the
Croatian circumstances (soon to be
supplanted by the VBZ’s award), the
prize provided both the winner and
those short listed with great publicity. At the onset the cultural pages of
Jutarnji List were rather marginal,
but after hiring of Ivica Buljan for its
editor, the cultural space expanded,
even introducing weekly cultural
supplement; soon the literary critique columns by Jagna Poga~nik
(prose) and Kre{imir Bagi} (poetry)
became paper’s standard fare. Critics, journalists, the editor, even members of the prize jury, followed the
younger segment of the literary scene
with special affinity.
The orientation became even more
pronounced when Ante Tomi} and
Jurica Pavi~i}, two already established
younger writers, key figures of the
FAK group, transferred to Jutarnji
List from Slobodna Dalmacija, Split.
Particular significance for FAK’s popularizing had Ante Tomi}’s successful,
humorous writings in which he sometimes reported on FAK performances
and the atmosphere that surrounded
these events. Given that the Europa
Press Holding Group’s weekly Globus took Peri{i}, Jergovi}, De‘ulovi}
and briefly Bareti} from Feral Tribune
(while the hyperproductive Jergovi}
often wrote cultural columns for
Jutarnji List), suddenly rose a sense
of concentrated group of younger
137
writers around the EPH. The impression that FAK-writers became
home writers of the EPH concern,
became evident in the summer of
2005 when Jutarnji List published
new novels by eight prominent FAKwriters. That gave some ground to
those writers and journalists who disliked the idea of FAK to speak out
against it, saying that FAK was in
fact a product of the EPH media
machinery and manipulation.
Interestingly, the group received similar acceptance from the weekly competitor Nacional. Certainly crucial
role here was played by Nacional’s
editor Drago Glamuzina, himself a
gifted poet, who in his paper began a
segment dedicated to erotica (which
resulted in the story collection Libido) and who got involved with FAK
public appearances. Besides great reports from the public readings, in those
days Nacional followed the events
from the scene with numerous interviews with writers of the younger
generation. The paper showpieced
regular columns by two FAK-writers
Zoran Feri} and Vedrana Rudan,
which without doubt contributed to
the growth of their popularity.
The public had an impression that
media support for the FAK-writers
was unison. In fact, the opponents
of the group were numerous, but
even their critical writing only increased interest in group’s work. For
example, journalists and commentators of Ve~ernji list (The Evening Paper) followed the whole phenomenon with marked reserve. The culture pages of Vjesnik treated it as
artificially created media phenomenon
sub par to the classics of Croatian literature. In that aspect, the comments
regarding the Italian prize won by
Miljenko Jergovi} were indicative of
something that turned into a polemic
between the journalists of Jutarnji List
and Vjesnik. Rijeka’s Novi List (New
Paper) has at the beginning (mostly
through its writer Rade Dragojevi}),
138
supported FAK but by the end of 2003
there was an open conflict between
Dragojevi} and Boro Radakovi}.
Negative comments followed in the
popular TV program Pola ure kulture
(Half An Hour of Culture) hosted by
Branka Kamenski. The commentary
provoked reaction from Zorica and
Boro Radakovi} who publicly protested, demanding the “strippingoff” of the program – which only
proved that FAKs were not willing
to spare their gain-sayers.
The clash between the supporters
and opponents of the group only
furthered public interest. Their opponents created an inner drama with
a succession of insider confrontations, small scandals which all lead
to a final great gunfight of the main
actors, all exceptionally intriguing
for media exploitation.
How the FAK was made?
What is FAK? How did it come into
being, had did it end? What if anything, had been so new about it that
it should have been differentiated
from other standard forms of public
appearances? The initiative for the
literary festival came from a critic
and prose writer Nenad Rizvanovi}
and the owner of an Osijek art-cafe
Hrvoje Osvadi}. They were joined
by Borivoj Radakovi} as the Festival’s
selector and Kruno Lokotar as its
host. The first event occured on May
13 and 14, 2001 in Osijek’s cafe
Voodoo. In front of Osijek’s mostly
younger audience their works read the
following: Kre{imir Pintari}, Tatjana
Groma~a, Boris Maruna, Ante Tomi},
Tarik Kulenovi}, Drago Orli}, Zoran
Feri}, Zorica Radakovi}, Edo Popovi},
\ermano Senjanovi}, and Borivoj
Radakovi}. The interest of Osijek
youth for the long reading, an atmosphere of informal club meeting and
very positive media reception gave
an idea to the organizers to transfer
their event to other cities, even though
it should still be held each May in
Osijek, its birth-place.
The abbreviation itself, FAK, was an
acronym of its initial name Festival
Alternativne Knji‘evnosti (Festival of
the Alternative Literature. Why did
“alternative” appear so attractive at
the beginning and it later became so
suspect? The attraction of the alternative for the participants and creators of the concept was at first certainly the fact that they recognized
themselves as an opposition to the
literary mainstream, and the culture
of Tu|man era in general. I have
already mentioned the idiosyncrasy
which this new generation felt towards the ideology on which Croatian
art and whole public life of nineties
were based upon. It meant resistance
towards the stately pomp and circumstance, to white uniforms and
sashes, to megalomania and mythomania of the recalling of Croatian
tradition, “from the century the seventh” to the Tu|man birthday bash
in the HNK theatre with its pseudoKrle‘a poetry recitals. They were fed
up with phrases that their generation
at last realized dream of the centuries
old dream of the Croatian people.
They were not interested in such vertical continuities so deeply rooted in
Croatian history. They cared about
the individual, a real man and not
some ideologically constructed perfect Croatian ready-made to fit the
grandiose occasion. The vertical continuity of these writers replaced the
horizontal: by seeking unity inside
the generation that spent its war years
in basements during the air raid alerts,
in battlefields of Croatia, and in
Bosnia, the generation that spent the
nineties in poverty, with family salaries of hardly 200 Deutsch Marks
(those that had money at all). And in
the inflation of grandiose words coming from political and church pulpits, in the atmosphere of school system made by the precept of the then
minister Ljilja Voki}.
RELA
TIONS
FAK opted for the descent of literature from the monumental down
among the youth, into cafes and
disco clubs, into venues where the
alternative youth gathered involved
into art concepts and such. All of
this was certainly helped by the climate of the January 2000 elections
which ended the ten year rule of the
HDZ (Croatian Democratic Unity).
Suddenly there were hopes that
Croatian society will rid itself of its
patriotic folklore and rhetoric with
which generals and politicians have
made their careers. FAK-writers were
generally urbane types, rockers, they
generally despised politics, they were
apolitical and if political at all than
of anarchist tendencies.
It was not coincidence that the new
liberally minded Minister of Culture in his public appearances announced that he was particularly interested in promoting the alternative
forms of culture as opposed to the
HDZ model which was based on
pampering to the petrified cultural
institutions which had produced
anachronous cultural products. With
all that, the Minister gladly recalled
his youth when he edited youth papers an alternative to the official,
“adult” press. However, the Minister backed down quickly from his
passionate praise of the alternative
ways, because in Croatia traditional
institutions became deeply ingrained
into the system and loved to present
themselves as the backbone of Croatian
culture, the keeper of national identity. The Minister should not have
toyed with that if he wanted his party
to preserve the image of a decent
nationalist party (“nationalism with
human countenance”).
So, despite obvious sympathies, the
Minister soon had to give up on his
literary protégées, the literary alternatives. The direct cause was the
group’s visit to Serbia. Behaving on
principle of an alternative to the
HDZ concept of ethnically cleansed
RELA
TIONS
culture, FAK expanded its activity to
the neighboring state. They appeared
in Novi Sad on April 20 and 21. According to the Minister, it was too
soon, the war wounds were still fresh,
while Serb museums haven’t even
yet returned some of the spoils of the
war, etc. It was apparent that writers
could not be controlled, especially
that Radakovic whose trap couldn’t be
shut. It also became apparent that more
harm than benefit came from the
close contact with the group (especially with regards to how those events
could reflect in the still dominantly
nationalist-wired public). That’s how
the short-lived affair between the
government and FAK ended.
Meanwhile, FAK changed its name.
The acronym remained but the alternative literature became literature
with the capital “A” before it. It indicated change of ambition of the whole
group. It became burdensome to declare oneself alternative, while the
Minister proclaimed his liking of the
alternatives; some even maliciously
began calling them the regime writers! The change of the name also had
a certain narcissist dimension: “No,
we are not alternatives (those on the
margin socially speaking). We are
the A of literature! The premier league
of Croatian literature!”
Carried by such stance, encouraged
by media attention, the FAK selectors began wielding their power and
influence: “Who should we let into
our circle so he could become famous too?”
The FAK Summary
The FAK writers created a rather exclusive club to which the criterion of
acceptance was not only quality, but
primarily the question of age, sex,
lifestyle, and only lastly that of literary style. FAK was essentially generational, mostly comprised of the
writers born in the sixties, with some
youngsters (such as Simi}) born a
few years later. Of course, the leader
himself, Radakovi}, was born in 1951,
but for him it was understood that
he remained young in spirit. They
also let in some old rockers (such as
Franci Bla{kovi}, Goran Tribuson,
Petar Lukovi}), and the writers of older
generation that in the nineties criticized the Tu|man era (Ivo Bre{an,
Ivan Mandi}, Boris Maruna).
From May 13 and 14, 2000 until December 14, 2003, when the founders
Radakovi}, Rizvanovi} and Osvadi}
announced the closing of FAK, under its auspices there were altogether
seventeen happenings. Outside of
Osijek, FAK took place in Zagreb,
Pula, Motovun, Rijeka, Novi Sad,
Belgrad, Vara‘din, Svetvi~ento, and
Stari Grad. Some eighty domestic and
twenty guest writers participated from
Great Britain, Serbia-Montenegro,
Bosnia-Herzegovina, United States
and Hungary. However, there existed
a core group of readers that comprised
Zoran Feri}, Miljenko Jergovi}, \ermano Senjanovi}, Simo Mraovi}, Edo
Popovi}, Ante Tomi}, Jurica Pavi~i},
Roman Simi}, Kre{imir Pintari}, Tarik Kulenovi}, and Neven Usumovi}.
Somewhat unexpectedly, the leading
stars of FAK live events became Senjanovi} and Mraovi}, because of their
sense of humor, good understanding
of the club atmosphere and spontaneous interaction with the audience.
Those with longer memory might
be surprised by the fact that among
FAK-writers there was no room for
Milko Valent, a writer who in the
eighties was somewhat of a rolemodel to Radakovi}; Valent was certainly a FAK precursor. His frequent
public appearances in the seventies
turned some of his readings into
memorable performances. It was expected that the experienced performer
would have become a star on the
FAK team. Possible reasons for the
absence of Valent was likely the unfavorable stance of Radakovi} who
meanwhile backed away from his
139
former guru. The rare appearances
of one of the most relevant prose
writers of the middle generation,
Robert Peri{i}, who was poetically
close to the realist poetics of the
group, was also noticeable. After his
initial experience with FAK, he backed
away from the entire project, especially from its self-promoting and
media-manipulative dimension. This
was the first “insider rebellion”.
FAK was rather genre exclusive: poets were seldom invited; if they were,
it was preferred that they should read
their prose. Critics were unnecessary,
except as an audience; no need for
the middle man between the writer
and the audience, the critics, as parasites, were unwanted. Kruno Lokotar
with lots of invention and charm
hosted the events and that sufficed,
any more pretentious critical discourse in the relaxed club atmosphere would have been out of place.
FAK was not too open either to
women writers. It could almost be
said that it was nearly misogynistic:
greater trust was given only to Zorica
Radakovi} and Tatjana Groma~a,
while other writers had only onceonly guest appearances.
The absence of the neo-mannerist
writers who were completely excluded
from FAK, even though they belonged to the same generation, was
also noticeable: for example, the FAK
readings never included the acclaimed
Marinko Ko{~ec or the Croatian PEN
president, Sibila Petlevski. No matter how much the FAK-writers presented their case as a group of poetically variegated writers, it was somewhat felt that they gathered around
the common literary ground.
From the start, the group was in conflict with the Croatian Writers’ Association (Dru{tvo hrvatskih knji‘evnika)
which during the nineties became nationalists’ fortress. With the fall of
the HDZ, among the great portion
of the members arose consternation;
“statehood forces” tried to turn the
140
Association into parapolitical organization on the extreme right positions that was to become center of
resistance against the leftist-liberal
government. For that reason, many
younger writers avoided becoming
members and waged war against its
leadership mocking the dated type
of organization and ideas the Association represented. When on the
election assembly of the Association
in June 2002, again prevailed the radical right option, part of the membership resigned and started the Croatian
Society of Writers (Hrvatsko dru{tvo
pisaca). This group was joined by
nearly all the writers around FAK,
thus their antagonism against the
DHK got institutionalized.
In the public eye arose the notion
that FAK helped these writers become well known and famous, the
media stars, which tremendously
boosted their book sales. True, in
FAK years the bestseller charts were
largely occupied by domestic authors. However, I am not certain that
FAK contributed to that success to
such an extent. Only Ante Tomi},
Zoran Feri} and Miljenko Jergovic
had larger sales; to this list we could
also add Goran Tribuson with his
nostalgia-tinged memoirs, everyone
else remained in the zone of standard issues of the Croatian book
market. Even the aforementioned
four could hardly thank only FAK
for their success. Largest sales in that
period, actually, belonged to authors
who weren’t connected with FAK,
Arijana ûlina, Julijana Matanovi},
and Vedrana Rudan who appeared
only once in a FAK event causing the
quarrel among the FAK selectors and
group’s subsequent demise.
In its initial period FAK, especially
Radakovi}, like a speaker of the movement, insisted on the fact that they
tended towards the direct contact
with the audience. The book market
has been talked about and Radakovic
had praised even Ivan Aralica as a
writer who fares well in the market,
and communicates with his audience
equally well.
Certain letdown certainly came in
the moment when it was realized that
the good atmosphere at FAK gatherings did not have too much of an
impact on book sales and that, ultimately, prose authors such as Arijana
ûlina and Vedrana Rudan were far
more skilled in communication with
the audience, more intriguing to the
media and far more popular among
the readership. So it came to the paradoxical turnabout: a former advocate
of the marketplace, Boro Radakovi}
turned into a big warrior for the
“high-brow literature” as opposed to
the trivial, “low-brow” represented
by Rudan and ûlina.
RELA
TIONS
With that collapsed the whole three
year old doctrine of FAK that had
struggled for the more open concept
of literature, offering its audience
recognizable themes, every day speech,
club informality by rejection of preciosity and hypermodernism. Now,
suddenly, Radakovi} extolled the
high-brow literature and high artistic
criteria! From all of this arose heated
debate in which principal actors on
one side were Radakovi} and Rizvanovi}, while on the other stood Lokotar
as an advocate of Vedrana Rudan;
the polemic occurred mostly on the
pages of Jutarnji list, but it spilled
over into other media, and I had somewhat become its collateral victim.
Because of this I cannot claim I remain utterly unbiased. I had no ambition of becoming either a participant or a chronicler of FAK. However, in those days, mostly in Feral
Tribune, I followed the new books
and phenomena of Croatian prose
which in the end resulted with my
book U sjeni FAK-a (In the Shadow
of FAK), thus I have somewhat become the critical witness to this colorful phenomenon of the newer Croatian
literature.
(The text was originally published
in U sjeni FAK-a, VBZ, 2006.)
Translated by
Boris Gregori}

FAK - Hrvatsko Društvo Pisaca

Transcription

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