Zagreb Noir by Ivan Srsen

Author:Ivan Srsen
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: ebook, book
Publisher: Akashic Books
Published: 2015-09-09T16:00:00+00:00

PART III

DOWNTOWN FFREAKS

Wraiths

by ZORAN PILIĆ

Downtown East

Translated by Ellen Elias-Bursac

Let’s sell this place and buy a house somewhere normal. Give it some thought.

What do you mean, somewhere normal? A village? We’d keep pigs and chickens, plant potatoes? I can’t handle that, woman, no way. I’d rather die, right here and now, than live to the age of ninety-five in some village.

It doesn’t have to be a village. Just somewhere outside of this rat’s nest, these buildings with their grimy façades, away from the maniacs, weirdos, hubbub, away from this chaos and the old people dying alone in their apartments and rotting there for days and weeks or being devoured by household pets, away from the piss-rank entranceways, the cracked walls, the rot, the moronic, pushy neighbors, the children whose shrieks pierce the brain, away from this hell on earth, please . . .

Forget it. I’m telling you, no way. I will never leave here.

* * *

Petar, who was born, attended school, grew up, and still lived and worked all within the same few square kilometers, could not imagine what tragic circumstances could move him out of Lower Town—the only place on earth where he felt reality the way you feel the warmth of the sun on your skin. There was a world beyond the borders of what he had always experienced as essential Zagreb, it would be silly to claim otherwise, but that was not his world. So anything east of Heinzelova and west of Republike Austrije Street, north of Ilica and south of the train tracks, was simply not acceptable to Petar. He could nod to the rest of the world, even see parts of it from the perimeter of his territory, but nothing drew him out, and for the last few years, with only a few exceptions, he had stopped leaving the center of town, the beehive in which life and death were constantly abuzz.

In his youth he’d had the courage to visit several places in the outer ring: he went to the coast, Florence, Venice, Budapest, Sarajevo, Belgrade, Vienna, Dubrovnik, Portorož, perhaps a few more places, but none of them impressed him much. Sure, fine, the sea was salty, the people were welcoming and relaxed, they lived in those sometimes even pretty towns carved of white stone, with planted palms, museums with phenomenal works of art, colorful sunrises and sunsets, the women were beautiful and alluring, the sky clear and the blue expanses just like on the postcards, yet his heart would start pounding only when he came back from these brief, pointless trips.

* * *

Katja left in silence.

While he stood at the door and waited for the love of his life to pack up her belongings, he pictured flinging himself to his knees and pleading: Stay, please stay—he pictured this scene stripped of all dignity, and knew he could never, physically, do such a thing. He would have knocked something over and it would have looked ridiculous.

From the start he knew their relationship would run its course in time.

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