Catherine the Great and the Small by Olja Knezevic

Author:Olja Knezevic [Knežević, Olja]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: novel, Croatian
ISBN: 9789535203209
Publisher: Istros Books
Published: 2020-10-06T00:00:00+00:00

12.

The project eventually had to wind down. We woke up from the dream and again saw poverty all around us, misery actually, because misery also refers to a state of the spirit. How did this happen?

Well, like all things do: Little by little, and then all at once.

People no longer had money for shoes. All money is spendable, but the kind that melts away the fastest is our Balkan cash, acquired in just a few years from looting and kidnapping, not through a lifetime of hard work. The West did not support the reformer Ante Marković. They couldn’t care less about a bunch of tribes somewhere in the corner of Europe: so what if they killed each other, the West decided, they’re useless anyway.

The advertising posters and the first billboards in town − with Milica’s lovely figure, stretching contentedly on the beach, on the grass, on the parquet floor, surrounded by shoes and sandals – faded and began looking like a cruel joke, a sad reminder of the many possibilities for which we were still too backwards, unprepared.

Our country was coming apart at the seams from an illness whose cause I didn’t understand; it was as if I were reliving the loss of my mother. “So then let’s fall to pieces,” I said to everyone. We’ll fall apart together in this hellhole, to a soundtrack of turbo-folk and lyrics about women pining for their unfaithful menfolk.

Milica refused the trip to Belgrade and the offer to pose for more ads for the department store. I sensed a crash coming. She was in bed again; she’d run out of steam. Plus Belgrade had become hellish, showing its ugly face to the world: who, besides refugees, would want to start a new life there now? Aunt Ceca had moved into foreign currency exchange, big-time.

Every day she called and begged me to visit, and on showing up I often heard screaming as I approached the apartment door – Milica, announcing theatrically for all to hear, “I’ll carve myself up with a knife, here, look, I can’t go on.” Then the door would open and out would come Radoš, escaping, often without even a hello. I would enter, go directly to Milica, tug at her arm. She’d taken to bed again, darkened the room, stopped changing her underwear and bathing. She was talking in a code I didn’t understand, and I would tell her so, that I thought she was putting on a show out of fear, that she was scared of death. “And you’re scared of life,” I would tell her that, too.

“It’s not that,” she answered. “This is the way I talk when I’m being honest. You don’t understand. In the depths of your existence you find light. Waiting for you at the very bottom is this tiny glowing ball and you take it in your hands and bring it up to the surface. You’re a mermaid, but not me. I dive deep and I find only more darkness, a bottomless darkness, and

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