Farewell, Cowboy by Olja Savicevic

Author:Olja Savicevic [Savicevic, Olja]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Peter Owen Publishers
Published: 2017-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

There were some interesting objects on the set. Colourful as a circus, a whole world within another, and both of them in a third; horses, cameras, and people.

I glanced all around to see whether I could catch a glimpse of Ned Montgomery.

I imagine the cowboy as he is on the poster in my bedroom – a tough guy of unshakeable resolve with a cobalt gaze and eyebrows of wire, a great white hero. Although, to be honest, in all the more recent pictures in the newspapers he's already old and crumpled, with a very red neck.

‘He doesn’t come here,’ said Angelo.

‘They say he was a great actor,’ he added.

‘Right,’ I nodded. ‘For some, maybe the greatest.’

Hen-extras of various colours were wandering about, so the trampled, scorched grass was full of chicken shit. I kicked several little balls away with the tip of my trainer.

‘The Indians use it to make us tea,’ said Angelo, squinting unobtrusively at my boobs, I observed.

‘Oh sure,’ I said for the sake of saying something. He laughed again, displaying his teeth, small and white, like milk teeth.

In front of one tent sat a magnificent witch doctor resembling an extinct bird with yellow, red and white feathers. a gloomy, proud wizard, a priest of flora and fauna. ‘Oniric being,’ my sister would say.

‘That’s the old Gippo, the one who begs round the boutiques,’ said Angelo.

She appears in one scene as the tribal witch-doctor, he explained. Her heavy feathered headdress rests on her shoulders, a shawl like wings, she has a red mark on her forehead.

‘Let’s 'ave a look,’ said the Gypsy as soon as I approached, taking my hand and looking at my palm. I drew it back and shoved it into my pocket.

‘The Gippo doesn’t have panties under her skirts and if no one gives her anything in a shop, she stands on the threshold and pees down her legs, as though it’s nothing to do with her,’ Daniel had once said, I recalled. But now she was wearing trousers. Her great, luxuriant tits were confined in a richly embroidered waistcoat.

‘You 'ave night in your soul, I can read that from your brow,’ the Gypsy told me crossly and spat into the dust.

‘You guessed right,’ I said and put both hands on my hips. ‘But I have a warm and sunny heart,’ I said, as a joke and because of Angelo.

Her eyes widened – two drops of pitch – then narrowed to dark spark.

‘Well, you may ‘ave a ‘eart, but if you ‘ave a heart, you can’t ‘ave panties,’ said the Gypsy wizard, dragging her feathers of Paradise through the dust among the sparrows and scavengers.

The sun was now high above us, but its metal glare was softened by the approaching autumn. Some stars from the soaps that Ma watches emerged from the wigwams, I recognized them. They greeted Angelo. We walked along beside the façade of a building made of plasterboard and plywood, somewhere in the Wild West.

My new friend was in a good mood, my words stuck in my throat.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.