Category Archives: proza

proza

BERNARD”S HOURS, The story of a schismatic misanthrope, Leila Samarrai

img086

image found here

BERNARD”S HOURS

The story of a schismatic misanthrope

“The basis of hatred is fear” – Friedrich Nietzsche

Part I

00.00
I have always hated people. Always or after one woman stabbed my heart with a knife? I have no excuse, because hatred is a gift we receive upon birth and not some acquired imagination.
They hated me too. But, I was exceeded by the persistence of my disbelief and my hatred which was, contradicting even their own, pulsed stronger. Petty illusions were bringing short term relief, so I would, at times, mercifully get carried away to awaken love in some woman. When you are a dark hero, you are not pure in your soul and the demons pursue you. You see evil in everything, or something special in which evil lays (perhaps the handsomeness of evil) When there is no longer any tenderness within you, it is a feeling of a constant thwack. You are cold, and some mute perpetrators are ripping the clothes off your body, again and again. While they are doing that, hatred and disgust is clearly visible on their faces. In the imagined laboratory of my mind, heavily lit and full of rats, there is plenty of poison and weapons, and you, the common humans which I hate, are the main experiment of the Great Scientist. Like a dead drummer, I yawningly hit the little drums while walking the streets of some dark city. You are present in it, and I am like a hollow tree trunk among blossoming trees bearing exotic fruits. I am not saying that an occasional exchanging of warm words or touch does not feel good. A cold coffee is just as drinkable as the hot one. Sometimes, a woman with an hourglass body makes me feel like a man, like everybody else does, directing herself in waves towards my genitalia. But, you cannot believe the same lie twice. It is a black sun that only glows partially. At times it manages to replace the suns of other people and the ways in which that luminous trickster shines to them. Those moments last short, therefore I am my own sun, at the same time a shadow, I – the used puppet who observes the remains of the humorous theater play from which he was removed, by having his legs and arms torn away from his limbs. He is angry at the actors of the play. By the course of time, a lot of water gathered between me and other people.

00:23
Maybe my hatred was born 23 years earlier when I have met a boy with curly hair, near a murky body of water, during a very dark time of my childhood. It was warm and dry. The sun fried with its whips. Like the golden mask of Medusa, it grinned above the forest of my childhood.
– You are the one whose father hung himself? – said the little leader of the gang, whom they called Dirty Josh, and touched me with a stick.
– You are already five minutes late. I hope you brought them.

I did not answer. I offered him the lead soldiers.
– Here is the replacement for life.
He took them and lined them up on the wooden bench, surrounded by trees the color of ebony. His hands were sweating while he was arranging them into the little battalion.
– This is my battalion and that one is yours. Since you were late, the punishment for defeat will be death. Don’t ever forget it. Let us see who is stronger.

With the best of my strength, I would charge his figurines with mine. Perhaps you think I shouldn’t have shown so much zeal? I would act differently now. I would spit on him or cut him with a knife. From this other thing, I always feel a tingling in my stomach and realize it is disgust, mixed with fear. From MY soldiers he picked all the strongest and prettiest ones (my father carved them before his death, but not all of them were equally pretty). Some of them were really badly made, but it would depend from how much did he drink that day. When a soldier was done, my father would stick him into the ground and say:
– Son, this is your army. And your strength for life..

When he was making Achilles and Spartacus, he was drinking moderately. So they were, even thought Josh’s soldiers were prettier and greater, my Achilles and Spartacus, successfully protecting the flank, so I won the fight for an equal battle with my effort (or perhaps hatred). I could only imagine how much agitated was the evil boy because of it. Seeing he wanted to show himself in front of his gang, and that he chose the strongest soldiers, he could not lose. His were, in tense expectation, drenched in sweat. That is when I realized that human greed, hatred (and sometimes lust as well) smell like salt, a salty bath in which a woman lays with her open legs and the smell of her sex, like with animals, merges with the stench of fear and salt. All hatred begins in childhood. You have not been lied to. Innocence can only produce crime, because within what lies the vanity of the crime if there is not some nostalgia in it due to innocence lost. I am convinced that the man does get born clean. People become evil in time. And all are, with no exception, evil. Crooked and evil.
I showed Achilles to the small man:
– Yesterday his tooth got chipped, so he is not well, otherwise he would slaughter your entire battalion . Just HIM ALONE. If he was well, he would’ve done it already. If only his tooth was not hurting so much. It still hurts him. You see. He is great, strong, powerful.
– Ah, like that! Ah, like that!
Dirty Josh wrenched it out of my hand, and while giggling, threw him onto the loam next to the bench, because he thinks he is powerful. And he stepped on him accompanied by the laughter of the play actors, until, with his torn limbs, sweaty and satisfied, he pardoned him. That is when the evil boy threw Achilles in the dirt, into the murky water, far away from himself. Dirty Josh laughed. That is when I saw he was also missing a tooth. His corpse was found three days later, in the murky water, wormy from piss, dirty from blood and mud, with the lead stick figure stabbed into the center of his forehead. The wound hole was too big, almost grotesque. The spike, once corded inside, had layers of the brain mass stuck to it upon being pulled out.
I still keep Spartacus, and I never made a new Achilles. All hatred starts in the childhood. You have not been lied to.
Sometimes I hear tapping on the door. I first thought it was the rain. But no, it is Achilles. In the robes of a strong, Greek hero with bare, hairy feet, slowly stepping into my home. He looks at me and I look at him. We are cold, we do not speak and we eat fish.

00:46
I am never late. I posses an enormous collection of antique clocks. A pile of beige boxes full of the second hands, some pocket watches with monocles, huddled into order, peeks from a Victorian jacket. My hours is what defines me. No moment is worth more than that bare notion. The tick of the clock industriously warns that I am already five minutes late to the opening of my own store. Then, with the speed of a rabbit who heard a hum and trembled and leaped, I exit for the street with a smile. My antique shop is located in the trade area of the K. city, in one solidly built house with walls out of brick.
On the board, hanged upon a fir door, a headline reads “RARE BOOKS” (photographs, postcards, old charts, maps and musical instruments). Modern electrical heating under the porcelain panels and economical stoves are in the kitchen compartment. Vis-à-vis to the kitchen and the small bathroom (actually, it is composed of a single lavatory and a soap selvage) is my work desk with a computer. The work room has a low ceiling, and the sockets are on the Spanish wall, for phone and the satellite dish. The work room exit leads straight into the room for welcoming customers in which there is a big stall behind which I show antiques to customers and receive money.

7:23 AM.

Today somebody wished me death. Like a dog’s grimace in the corner of a yard that’s not his own. A short shriek over the phone and wheezing:
– Die!
It was an open invitation, a desire for neck breaking. What should I answer? How should I defend myself, so it never crosses their minds to call again? I stop before the gate, then open it indecisively and enter a narrow field that surrounds the hovel. I kicked the dog, but gently. The dog moved away, and then fixated on me with his eyes. Right next to the window frame, I sneak a peek inside. A darling character used to be huddled in the bed, covered over his head, and the sheets above him swollen from breathing. A naked void is under the covers now. The sheet does not give away someone still breathing and thinking under it. Like a corpse. I imagine how the sheet stands upright, the corpse fills with semen, pullulates and sprouts, grows up to the muscles, tissue, blush, luxury of cheeks, an eyeful glow. A young girl, with her face dirty and yellow from some hidden melancholy, gets up from the bed, takes the full laundry basket, and then beats him with a stick. That there is a mother! I extended my hands to her. My hands miss and touch the icy cold air. She passes through me and claps her hands, spins and dances while observing the miniature paintings lined next to the barrels in the yard. I sit on a stool and with smooth moves of my fingertips I touch the masonite. Then only a whisper is heard and that wheezing, the crying, wailing. The dog begins to howl.
– Who are you? What are you doing there? – the old man from the house next door points his slim finger at me. Then he recognizes me, spits on the side, opens the bottle which he uses to refresh his face. He refreshes himself on top of the empty snow. Then looks around, at least it seems so to me, the endless sky, stretched into nothingness. That infinity can never be remembered and neither could SHE ever paint it fully. The snow sticks to the inner part of my suit. Sticks to the skin. I entered the cold shanty of my once home, and observing the paintings mother painted, I knowledgably distinguish patterns and colors. I notice some of them were done rather badly, or perhaps are not so close to me anymore. The old man and I light our cigarettes and look at each other. He watches me through the window. While he watches me, he murmurs into his own beard and raises his head to the sky again. Then, like a defeated peacock, he bends his head into the wet snow, where the peace of death reigns. I hear some kind of a people buzz, but it is too far away from me. I am amid the cold, vacant garden, surrounded by paintings, wet laundry, dirty glasses and broken mirrors. I flip everything that is dirty, touch it gently with my hand, move the dust and put a few miniatures into my bag.
– How will you clean this?
– What?
– How will you clean all of this, now that all of your kin has died? – the old man asks.
I am completely close to the wall, and then, leaning through the low window, I throw the dirty glass over the fence, directly to the old man’s wall. It shattered, and dark, greasy liquid sprayed out onto the wall. The old man ran away frightened. After the old man leaves me alone, I become concentrated enough to spot the gramophone which I came to pick up. It was, certainly, very old, with a handle. The mechanism is completely upstanding, and it has a special record compartment as well, I will tell to a customer on the same day. I wash my face with cold water over the dirty lavatory and I play Beethoven’s violin concert in d minor, which spills through the room through the whirl of Poe-like terror. I pick books. I flip pages of each of them and rip them one by one. Not for sale. Can a man be more alone?

7:46
I see myself among skyscrapers; they grow me like I am a plant. I was ripped from the surrounding smoke, but I am sprayed by it. I stagger around like the poisoned sewer water. The asphalt is hit in the middle. Cloven. Like on the clavier, my feet mingle the sidewalk. Eyes are gripped into the darkness of the glasses. Here and there, I hear a bat of footsteps behind me. The head of the people orchestra is the Kapellmeister whose massive truncheon, like thunder, hits the naked, pissed on concrete. The world can be horrible, but not dirty. In all that disgust, I kept my good taste. During all this time, the sun was, wanting to fulfill its primate at any cost, trying to pierce through the curtain of smoke. Devouring, intoxicating sun pierces into the softness of the morning, whitened sun, a powdered ball. I noticed the way it twirls, how it rises and powers the sky like a giant, yellow bug on batteries. Like some clock, the sun measures the hours with ancient precision and swallows the passerby with immeasurable fever of eternal existence. You are nobody and nothing, and the yellow bug crawls over you, and each of her prong points a finger to you, accusing you of transience, of tardiness. It often exists like counterweight, but also a help to the grayness of the clouds who are like bulletproof vests. One selvage of metal pulses with a glow and illuminates the parts of the overcast architectonics of the city. Sometime later, the city is filled with moonlight and the light lasts deep into the night. Arctic star, as enormous as a plate with two curious eyes, will soon crack in the sky. Eternal light, the eternal peace that bothers me, for I demand the darkness that brings me joy.

This story will envelop further….

Standard
proza

THE FEAR, by Leila Samarrai

THE FEAR
By Leila Samarai

Healthy urban man, one of the numerous tenants of the New Building, decided to lose a certain number of kilograms, for it was known that in the newer buildings there was only a certain number of kilograms allowed per floor. The calculator was deciding the correlation with height, to prevent occurrences of dislocation, deviation, turning into men-frogs or spider crabs.

The calculator was clearly showing that he needs to lose 5 kilograms, 2 grams and 10 milligrams. But, in order to lose that alarming number it was necessary to leave the New Building every night exactly at nine o’clock and run the route of five of stations of the forty-two bus then stop in the street which leads to the station of the bus number fifty-nine.

All of these numbers made sense, especially for Pythagoras.

Just as he left the building, Healthy urban man realized that the New Building, even though overpopulated, is flawlessly clean. After he thought about it he realized that he saw the tenants, who lived peaceful and quiet lives, very rarely, except in front of the buildings entry, while they were unlocking the door and after that disappearing down the ghastly empty hallway into unknown directions.

He thought about all of this, Healthy urban man, while he was returning from his jog and unlocking the entry door of the building. The light turned on automatically, welcoming him.

“My life is perfect,” he thought. “Everything slides like down the light…” this one thought, like well-oiled, while caressing the key and gently tracing the lettering on the metal relief.

“Permil by permil.” He thought while climbing step by step.
“Permil then a stair, a stair then the door, key then lock.” he was thinking while inserting the key into the lock.

Then, however, something unexpected happened. He shivered, while his hands shook from fear. The key was stubbornly refusing to open the lock. He was agonized, he tried and tried and finally realized he will have to ask help from his neighbors. He checked the display of his cell-phone. “No, it is far too late.” Besides, they will think he is crazy. They will cuss at him, perhaps even hit him. With fear he looked into the spyhole on the next door.

He was relieved after seeing the number 9.

“That means, that means I’m healthy. “he thought . “And that I merely wandered off in my thoughts, missed my floor. Ha ha ha ,” he laughed with relief. “I was just confused.”
But his brain worked and steamed with a speed of the comet which whipped the dinosaurs: “It looks like I was trying to break in into an apartment. By mistake, ofcourse, but they can accuse me in court. They can move me into the Old Building, with those misfortunates, the hunchbacks of the Silicon valley.” He turned around and smiled like a lucky thief.
When he entered the lucky apartment 13, he went to bed, content.

A few days later, in the apartment number 8, a corpse was found, of an old lady, standing upright. She lived alone, without any kin. It was told that she did not leave her apartment for years , nor received any visitors. Maybe she escaped the Old Buildings and was by mistake given an apartment in the Newbuild. Her stiff mouth was forming the letter ‘O’, as though she is calling someone for help. She was gripping the lock, like she was fighting someone from the other side of the door, a burglar most probably. That is how she died. From fear.

Standard
proza

TELEPHONE, Leila Samarrai

I always loved to be on the phone.
The telephone and the cable wire are like curtains that hide someone’s enormous eyes, a covert that splits the worlds like an old canopy splitting someone’s room. At times the voice from the other side is like song that started suddenly, or perhaps with a pleasant whisper of a ghastly-sweet taste, and sometimes the voice simply trembles. During the conversation, while I am embracing the headphone, comfortably laid on the sofa, relaxed, tucked inside my work cabinet, I find dear those moments when silence shortly breaks through the syllables. Like the interlocutor, the masked actor, hid behind the covert, searching for the text, the lines, by flipping the pages of an invisible script. Voices meander through the wire like the winds scream and rage during the storm. To people like me, who like to be on the phone, a little amount of things remains undiscovered in our daily lives – when the five hours long conversation ends (to which I was prone and for which I was considered a freak) there was little left to be told. . .
I especially loved old phones, those used little, even those half functional. How can I explain it? If I was, with my imagination, discerning through the voice the kind or the monstrous spirit in every living being with whom I would converse, that same imagination discerned me the existence, figuratively speaking, of the unused prints of such melodious, and yet so unloving, parallel world which I felt was hiding behind the clusters of wires. Voices not yet revived, which are yet to rush, buzz, roar and call, which make each nerve in the body shiver. I was attracted by the dark, unexplored worlds in which the strong current of darkness threatens to suck in and pull all of humanity towards the corpses of eons, worlds from within which would breach towards me, protected by the telephone wire, the polyphony of murmurs, screams, roars from the purple mouth of the Dark, the seed that erodes the bowel of life. Did they have faces? Even if they did, those would be dark curves of circles in Nothingness itself.
Those would be screaming, maddened medusas with horse necks and with bodies of the bull. . .
I studied the biographies of those who scratched the disc of Dark, who flipped the pages of the atlas of Death by painting the titans of madness who, hungry for red meat, search and grab, swallow, storm, crush with their feet. Among them were Dario Argento, H. P. Lovecraft, Clive Barker, Salvador Dali, Alexander Graham Bell. . . All, without exception, loved to telephone.
Perhaps all these thoughts were swarming my mind because I was an established painter, always treated with respect and kindness. I did not appreciate it much, because I have, through the dark art of Ernest Sabato, the blind hater, like Huan Pablo Castle, despised the various “professional” painter societies, as well as the words “Eminent” and other academic plagues, events attended by academic monsters. Same was for exhibitions, music festivals. Even for camera concerts. . . The fear unclear, mixed with loathing, was crumbling me, while I, seemingly in one piece, sleek and socially acceptable, was squeezed inside one of those crowds, because there is something inconceivably disgusting in the way the human beings cling, jostle and intimately mingle their voices while attending an exhibition or a book signing, at the same time swallowing the headlines of the hanged paintings with wide eyes, in the ambient of some “in” gallery in town.
Once, during the ceremonial opening of my exhibition The feast at Sipil, where I exhibited at least fifty paintings of a dismembered Pelop, like conspirators, taking both floors of the gallery, all of them the same, ape-like babblers, vermin like rats who gnaw the flesh of their petty interest and plump up, cheerful and hastily, seemingly cultural walking integrals made of blood, meat and malice, were standing before the paintings of the spilled intestines of Tantalus son, with small wrinkles on the foreheads made by being tucked within the depth of meaning, whispering between themselves, while a vivid pain ripped my guts:
„Splendid…“, „A work of mainstream…“or „He hit the form so well on the vein of the pecked liver”.
Tantalus of realism!
Followed by phrases like: bodies dismembered in artistic ways and the transcript of antique nostalgia, I abandoned my own exhibition, called a cab and went home.
Suddenly peaceful, I enter the filled space of the room. My view lands on the telephone over whose dial I softly fly with my eyes. I undress and cover myself with a moss colored blanket. I put the telephone atop my stomach, I close my purple lids, the dream presses me and I fall into the abyss of oblivion free, while a malicious shadow flies out of me.
But, let me say a word or two about myself before that. . . before . . .
Ah, is it even possible something like that even happened?!
It is not widely known that I am a descendent of the knight Ambrose Takach, prince of Budapest, the commander of the austro-hungarian war fleet who was my grandfather’s father, famous for the mass liquidation of Serbs and Jews, after joining of Hungary to Hitler’s regime. His son, and my grandfather, was one of the chetniks of the Nazi regime in Hungary, as well responsible for mass slaughters. Only my father, a Hungarian composer and pianist Frantz Ianosh of Esztergom, a man of visible nobleness of the spirit, cut with that virtue the thread of curse which stretched all the way to Arpadovac, joining the forces of SSSR after the Second World War, entering the coalition government. After the revolution in the year 1956, when after the student demonstrations in front the government building he met my mother, he abandoned politics completely and as one of the 200.000 refuges left Hungary. The remaining part of his life he spent teaching harmony at the Musical conservatorium in Novi Sad, where he himself was born, under the same name as my father.
About the other two, all the documents have been destroyed, as a sign of respect towards my father for his credits earned in Magyar Dolgozók Pártja.
The fact that they have caught my great-grandfather with a girl in his arms under whose throat he held a knife and after which he was treacherously murdered, was also hidden.
My grandfather was caught stealing valuable jewels from a German tank officer and he was executed in 1944. It was said it was a desperate move to pay of his gambling debt. . .
The hid with uttermost care the horrible, dark rituals performed by my family since the times of Arpadovci in the impassable Hungarian forests copulating with ghosts of the Forest and who they were naming Great Elders and for who was told they could summon the Lord of Darkness. With dancing and singing in the name of ghosts, dressed in the fur of the leopard , they would stare into the face of the Forest Colossus offering him a rare specie of an alpinist mammal which reminisced a clumsy rat when he was walking the ground, by biting strongly into the living flesh of the mammal until the blood would shower the face of Gods.
About my father, his penchant for introspection, clumsy perfection, as the body so as the mind, raciness, sharp mindedness and knowledge of the piano skills in that amount that he could perform godly tones on the most rustiest piano, contributed towards him staying a favorite among people until the end of his life. If fame can be passed on through generations, my father certainly made it so, Even though I was perceived as a freak, while I would walk by, they would murmur with respect and heads nodding, leaving behind them an echo:” It is Frantz’s son. Of that famous man.”. My art exhibitions were one of the most visited in the city, and I would often be stopped in the street or the coffee shop where I was often drinking coffee alone (I have always feared people discovering my true origin and I have also been a shy and withdrawn man), and encouraged to go out with them and attend with them some fun nights and entertaining dinners (this was about women and what they can do to a man), to which I would answer with wearing my hat and leaving abruptly with an excuse, leaving them wondering with an open mouth.
Perhaps I was a little bit alike by two ancestors. And the ancestors who danced under the reflection of the dark fire that illuminated the darkness of the historical Forests for which they claimed vanished centuries behind. . . In the ghastly forests the pagan gods lived tho whom my ancestors bowed to during their bloody historical voyage. Their meetings were woven with horrible rituals performed in magnificent temples built on the outskirts of the mysterious oak forests of the Hungarian mountains. Dedicated to the wiccans and the undead, on the slopes the pierced the grounds, like forks into soft meat, with bronze statues dedicated to the God Cernnunos and other mystical deities, statues chiseled like phoenixes outstretching far above the tips of malicious temples.
But, the nobleness and the horror were connected by, inconceivably, one thing. Absolutely and unchangeable, like time. Perhaps the primal vein through which a seed of cursed blood passed, vein as fat as the cable of my telephone, through which perhaps flows blood, and not the electrical signals – I thought suddenly. It was a vintage, black phone, as lonely as the creature of the past ages in his final destination of the morgue, lasting as a dream of a dead man, for it was in the family collection for at least two centuries since the moment in which, dear readers, I am writing this to you and unskillfully transmit, while words persecute me. Passed on through generations, it has traveled, from the table of my evil great-grandfather to my even worse grandfather, so my father, the hero of SSSR who finally confronted the patrons of the same in the famous revolution and who died by losing his both legs while fishing with explosives, given it to his son who carried the heritage of his demonic ancestors in his genes.
I was not dong anything out of the ordinary on that day. I was painting. Nearly arranged canvases to which I would toss my view on occasion were decorating the corner of my room. They were painted with various motives: the Iron Man, the cog of the science fiction machine of the future, falling out of his cockpit of the mighty starship of civilization 4 that circled the galaxy until it crashed for inexplicable reasons into the Kalahari desert. Among them was the used Medusa, as well as the satirical painting Belobog proposes to the Boogey, with her scary face and open jaws with no teeth. Even though Belobog is in love with her, knowing is not vile, she frightens him by making him believe she wishes to be cheated on. Hercules, of strong chest and muscled arms, embracing his lover Jolaj, Hercules searching for Persephone, Hercules versus the giants, even a portrait of Julius Cesar, the brilliant roman commander to whom I have unusually admired – besides that I could not resist paining my vision of the battle at Farsala, where undoubtedly on Cesar’s side I shown Pompey’s troops to ride donkeys. Pompey had the head of a mule which came to be by crossing the Pompey optimate, who once led the main word in the Senate, and Pompey, a simple plebe by birth.
I worked with devotion, tossing the colors to the canvas, adjusting the beret which I, a little bit out of joke, a little bit out of respect for Mone, wore alongside the assemble of colors I used to decorate the canvas. This painting I envisioned as the crown of my work. History, mythology, astro-science, merged together by unique archetypal expression, with striking color schemes about which the others only dreamed. I was immodest and irritably officious! I was mostly officious to myself.
After I finish Black Fairies, how I titled the painting, I decided I shall lay low, paint for my own soul. . . When, the phone rang. I put off the peg unwillingly. I have just captured the moment in which the shy Dryad , after discovering a mighty spaceship in the gorge habited by the Black Fairies, she sees one of them, completely naked, while her face is drenched in water because an erotic desire spread through them. Sister Dryads desperatel extend their hands towards her, begging her to return, while the cruel Fairy, with sensual lips and heavy moaning, a voice as sweet as honey, invites her to her cosmic ship to try the fruits of forbidden passion. . . Should I be interrupted now while I pour her face on the canvas PR Dokovic must have already explained to the Corveta museums director why I have so abruptly left the exhibition. Like crazed! Well, he must have had to make an urgent call!- I could hear the witty explanations of Dokovic in the sense of skillfully passing the ball into the opponent’s yard, the eternal undefeatable forehand, in which he was more skilled than the famous tennis player. What does he want from me now? I tossed the rag doused with thinner over the palette, mixing the carefully separated Russian white with the others, and ruining it!
– Ah, to Hell! – and with the dirty hands of the artist I grabbed the black telephone, soiling it with color. . .
– All right Dokovic, I know you are entertained by the looks on Katanic’s face, or the Zlobiberovic’s one, but must I. . .
I was interrupted by a shrieking voice, which could very well belong to a drowning man calling for salvation. Hysterical, sharp, demanding with a note of mocking.
– What’s happening with the Dryads? They want a bit of passion too? And about Hercules, you could’ve painted an orgy scene for the visitors of the exhibition. Him, Jolaj, and Megara, who should actually turn out only as Megara, no donkey allusion, oh no, that continuum of linguistics is highly unnecessary! You donkey! What kind of a damn cockpit you are painting that is yet to be entered by a masked science fiction Aphrodite! That one will be the first one to fly towards the handsome Cockpittians! Cosmic love is at stake, is it? And that Ironman of yours, he must be rusty already! Alas, worry not, I will now correct all your mess. Look now how the paintings are beautiful. Turn around, son of gods! The Portrait of Boogey Gray!
– Who is this making a joke? – I roared.
– Have you found your expression yet, painter man? And one not thought of before, like you did!– a chilling laughter rang while my body shivered.
– How… Can I hesitate after this? To turn around O, yes. And I will see there is nothing there. Nothing, but the closure of the joke by an anonymous bastard. I turned around with force and with a wild expression on my face, I took a second look. . . The paintings changed!
Frightened to the brink of madness, I dropped the telephone, but it was still loud in my ears. It was a horrifying, inhuman laughter coming from the telephone not yet closed, which like a hanged man hanged on the wire.
I had a sight to see. The view was a thrilling, diabolical blow, an illustration of horror itself, a dreary encounter with a supernatural jest.
I saw, with a proud full – horrified posture of the creepy old woman with a horn on her head, an expression of defying dignity It was the Boogey in a fancy suit, worn by the pretentious Dorian Gray in Wild’s novel.
The phone rang, even though it was not yet closed from the previous call..
I grabbed it with the speed of a devil in run..
– How do you like my handy work? And you should see her when she was not sinful. Young and beautiful, all teeth in pla…
– Stop! Who are you and what d you want from me? How are you doing this?
– How? Well I paint, a little, when bored. I sing too. Tenor, Pavarotti told me from the grave. But, the drama one, not the lyrical one! By the way, I thought of enriching your dilettante work with one more tinsy-tiny detail. Tzap, poof, abracadabra, doo! Look now! – the Telephone smiled.
Am I crazy? And how can a man get crazy, all of a sudden? I was not even melancholic or in a bad mood like I usually am… Perhaps that is the reason!
I turned around obediently, like a man on his death bad who is at peace with the inevitable..
Boogey was in the same position, but the painting was once again changed. She was now on the phone.
– She is talking to her best friend, Baba Yaga. They go on for hours – the Telephone was explaining to me in a most serious tone, almost filled with respect towards its masterpiece of horror.
– Mhm-mhm… yes, that expression… yes, now a little bit of the Indonesian style, he-he… – no, don’t turn around just yet, I have to center it better. I recommend you „olio di papavero“. When you are capturing a detail such as this, you can’t do well without Italians, although it is not the pure Italian oil . It is not even from flax!
– What is it then? What are you talking about, man?
– Man? Do not insult me, Ferentz. I will get mad and I will no longer talk to you, nor will I show you how to paint.
– But, I do not need your help, nor do I want to talk to you.
– Neither do I.
– Why are you calling me then?
I came to peace with the madness taking me under its wing. I was consoling myself that it must be because of the toxic fumes of the thinner, The hallucinations will pass in a few hours, They say Francisco Goya experienced the same thing while he was cutting the ear. . .
– You have only one assignement, Hercules, and I will leave you alone. Be blessed! Hercules had 12!
– What do I need to do?
– To bring me back Persephone from Hades. My dead darling. To her I want to phone, like before, when we lived with your Nazi grandpa.
I have gone mute. It is an intelligence officer who must have got his hands on the documents I thought were destroyed. It was probably a blackmail. What is it that he wants?
– How much money? – I asked calmly. All of it that was within the borders of the human mind was not foreign to me, although I was confused by the mysterious method by which this militant was altering my paintings. Perhaps he had someone else in the room. An accomplice! While I talk with my backs turned to it, the accomplice who is hiding in the closed on which my paintings are leaning, comes our and replaces the canvases. But, would I not hear that? No! They are counting on my fear, my bewilderment from fear, when the senses are dull. Besides, it must be BIA or CIA, they are highly trained, this is nothing for them.
– I feel no guilt, nor do I consider to have anything in common with the great-grandfather who did evil. My name is Frantz, not Ferentz – I hung up the phone.
I approached the closet with determination and opened it. There was nobody inside. O, those bastards are truly skillful.
Although shaken to my core, I returned to my work. I had an unusual passion towards painting with the Flemish technique. They spoke of my colors as if they were magic, the secret of the master trade which I kept solely to myself, What do they want? The painting is gone! There is no more Frantz. There is no Ferentz. Bastards, why do they not leave us alone. It is CIA, understandably. That is the purpose, a turmoil of fear, followed by catharsis. They are giving up. But maybe they have placed on every spot the living eye of the camera to study my every move, at least until they finish the investigation. The apartment should be cleansed from spy satellites. Immediately!
I was a passionate lover of baseball, so this rude joke reminded me of the offence of the guest team. Unprepared, I was not wearing gloves, and I was not in the phase of offence, for I was not even participating in the game. But, I will change by bad tactic. I will run all four home bases, by using their lack of attention in the defense. I was certain I will find various devices that CIA uses for tracking and eavesdropping. With the speed of the baseball player I was winning the bases one by one, until I was interrupted in my senseless search through the apartment by the dreadful ringing.
– „Force play“! – he laughed harshly. That is when I screeched..
Beaten by the magic of these CIA ghosts, I stared off into the distant, chosen spot like a catatonic man, while the Telephone laughed loudly.
– Come on Frantz, snap out of it, look at your Black Fairies. Perhaps I am a little pushy, I know, but how else can I make you do what I ask you to do? I don’t know how to do it slowly. I don’t think you are a bad guy. . .
I firly decided not to look around, while I sat on the floor dirty from colors. I observed the pulsing veins of my hands, visualizing the razor which would lightly slide inside its lively depth. I saw them open and I saw ponds flowing from within them, mixed with Russian white color, and Russians and veincutters don’t save on the pigment.
But, If Frantz shall not come to the Black Fairies, the Black Fairies will then come to Frantz.
– Black Fairies. What a stupid name! Like you are talking about lawn mowers! Is it some theme from the agricultural life? Not that I have anything against reaping or pricking the hay with the pitchfork, and black one too, besides the so fine Russian, white, oily. But, you are a bourgeois, descendant of Arpad. Frantz, you are no host, you have not even offered me with a cup of coffee. And we drank the coffee from the thermos. Unbelievable! Back then! Like in Picnic on the Hanging Rock! Or was that tea. . .
All of a sudden, it was like some woman stood before me, but it was not a woman, but the painting came alive. Boogey, in dandy clothes, walked up and down the canvas, while bloody shadows danced around her.
– Watch my children, Yaga, while I am in the portrait. I do not care! Switch to vegans. Do not dare touch my children!
And following her, the glorious Caesar telephoning with the same damn, black telephone while gambling with Titus Labienus – ALEVA KRATKA JEST! Brutus, I have nothing against the Republic, but you must also think of those less fortunate than ourselves! Give my greetings to Servillia! Where were we, Labienus?!
Only to be followed by an appearance of the third in which two nymphs were caressing each other, but each in her own corner of the canvas. While telephoning to each other, they were self-pleasuring themselves in loneliness.
– Dri, you excite me so, dear!
– By Aphrodite, when you talk like that, you awake the fire in me. I am all burning!
– There – concludes the Telephone – this is what you should exhibit. Masterpiece par excellence!
I nod my head and I fainted. Telephone burst out laughing and hung up.
That is when I dreamed a dream in which he told me his tragic tale.
This is what happened, and what unbelievable history I heard from the hellish Telephone, of course, by picking up to stop the senseless ringing, with the number pad sparking, in the deaf time of the night, while thunders were burning the sky for it was a storm outside. . .
I picked this misfortunate hour for my vengeance, when the sky is bloated with gray clouds, and the rain does not drip drops, but bubbles like cursed membranes!
He coughed, and that sound was alike giggling of the piped of the radiator vent and the sizzling of the fortron power adapter.
– This is how it happened…
– How?
– Well, like this: Five kilometers away from Salgotarjan, under the wooded Cerhat mountain, beside the shore of river Ipelj, that twists through Nograd, my darling and I were bathing under the sun, under the beautiful summits of naked Hungarian mountains overlooking the river and our wetted bodies. The forests of Nograd, under the tooth of mountain, squeezing the juice. Threatening cliffs woven with deciduous forests crokked over our Eden.
– Eden?
– Yes, painter! May your coloring book be golden! Smearer! House-painter, dyer!
– Don’t insult me!
– Shut up Zoltan!
– I am not Zoltan, I am Diš Piš.
– Zoltan, you mason! The rotary of buncerberger order with no coming, hear and take the unknown history even by the Black Pope, when it is so solemnly given to your ears.
We ate the malt of Salgotarjan from the baskets full of oranges, my darling Isabel and I.
– Telephone-lady?
– Only while it rings. At night, when the moon warms, she turns into a winged girl.
– Were you not on Salgotarjan during the day?
– But it was a vampire day. The primal templars shone their reflectors upon us, from the casket of Oath which they carried over from Ethiopia, for from within it the bones of Arthur, the Celtic Brit, screamed from heat. He rises at midnight and walkes around with the Holy Grail in his hands, cursing Dan Brown and Geneviev. The watched us from the round table while voting how to bring queen Geneviev to life, and my love, the immortal Ilona,. . ah. . . Elbowed on the round table they spun their swords, turning their heads sideways, as to look at her better from all sides. Then upon the river shore a heavy cavalry and three hundred peasants with Excalibur stormed, and the fangs . . . click click click! I have not seen her since than, she merely calls me from Avalon.
– What connection do I have with the Rotery masonry and primal templars? Why are you hunting me?
– Because your grandfather was the marshal responsible for the sacrificial ritual, weapons and horses, as well as for the orchestrated centers of power of the hellish music players! Your chevalier pored my Ilona to the altar, and took the remains to Avalon on black horses. Before that, he cut her wings and pushed a stone from the Wall of Wails into her mouth. Since then, there hollows a hole in the Holy city and no brick or stone can fill it. Except for the painted woman on the Wall of Wails, a sound isolator was built into the stone wall, to silence the cries! .
Look, really, what am I to do with myself? Where? Towards? How to escape this hellish Telephone?
It is the mind toying with me. The illusion of horror swims out, bowing my pulsing forehead. Maybe this is too much. It is not easy for me. I am under pressure. Everything can be rationally explained. I do not want to became like those guys, the anonymous addicts of black phones. And so I chastised myself for my superstition.
– I took all of this far too seriously..
Brener. Brener will fix all of this, this absence of reason. Or, even better, the cistern – The thought about the telephone being sucked in into the toilet, by the elegant pull of the water cistern’s string, like a boat sinking into the inexorable sea, developing the mind like a roll of “film noir” (as black as the damned phone).
He is watching me!
On him, apparently, there is nothing out of the ordinary. Perhaps he spoke by accident?
The tiny veins of my mind in my head made a Gordi’s knot. All of it is delirium. All of it is to be buried in the depth, silence and darkness, into the dreamy eternity of death.
In the evening, around eight o’clock, I rushed towards the phone cable with the desire to end my misery. I ate two slices of pizza from the local bakery and like a condemned man, I prepared for my death. I wore my grandfathers war vest, my great-grandfather’s dandy coat and half-cylinder and my great-grandfather’s father’s shoes laced with camel hair. Because, the telephone, eternal as the dream of a dead man, was passed on through generation from my great-grandfather to my grandfather until my father, the war hero, who lost both of his legs while fishing with explosives, gave it to me.
Out of the blue, the cable whipped my back, like I was a horse. I realized: I have awakened the ghosts from the Forest of Shadows where the brother of my great-grandfather’s father hid the remains of the magical Telephone-lady, the true bride of Dracula, who was dieing of old age.
– I was a newer model. Yet I loved her – the magical Telephone spoke..
– Go into the Forest of Shadows, dig up my beloved, call somebody from Telecom to connect us digitally, so we may exchange our signals to eternity – thus spoke the enamored Telephone
– Your screw trew drew great-grandfather was warned. He hired a coachman that stormy night, the coachman was whipping the horses far worse than the pale man from Nosferatu. The horse stopped two hundred meters from the forest and began to whine. It cannot be went further.
– On foot from here, sit. You woke the ghosts.
And the coachman flew into darkness. Your ancestor was left alone.
– The Forest of Shadows.. What lunacy. Superstition of peasants. I am not afraid of specters, of those I made for my myself. I am the sculptor of my curse, my destiny. Everything is in my hands – I was comforting myself.
Besides, what can a Telephone do to me?!
Those are devices which can be assembled after they are broken. Yes, yes, like in life. Again. . . again. . . Where is this philosophy coming from? I am tired. I am in the dark.
– I will light your way – said the Telephone and enflamed himself. I screamed and closed myself in the bathroom. It was dark, for the light bulb was broken inside..
My thoughts were like an instrument badly tuned which gave of tones more resembling the heaving of a well paid slut, than those of a well composed harmony. . .
It felt like nobody was behind the door. Complete silence, until… slowly the Telephone crawled out of the toilet and head towards me, while cables flew like unseamed gray hairs…
I realized I was whimpering. Inconsolably. It is over the image that was invading me was overcoming me, my face was numb, my hands lost all power. .
I waved my hand: It will pass. Tiredness. Maybe not even that. A mere caprice of the mind. Fear of the dark. But, the force of death stepped out of the toilet, from its depth where nothing but blackness exists, the undeniable end of the road. Yes, he is near. . .
I ran through rooms, not finding an exit. At the end, I closed myself in a tight, small room. One by one, all light bulbs snapped. A beastly growling was thundering from the dark. I Zoltan and so on, lover of telephones, surrounded and alone, have barricaded myself. Should I call for help? That would, in any case, mean I would have to make a phone call!
– I am not afraid of you, Telephone! I am not afraid. I have a hammer and a brener.
(Run away as far as possible. Maybe to Tasmania.)
Tired, I laid on the wide ottoman and hugged a pillow. I lit a candle.
How scary it is inside here, in this dark. It is very cold. I rubbed my hands to warm myself and from within the drawer of the night-stand I took out the godly magnum. . .
But, the darkness would not be darkness if it would not birth the soft, pulsing shrieks.
– Good evening – spoke someone in the corner of the room. I screamed: Aaaaaa!
– Who is that?
– It’s me. Your Telephone. You can call me Mister Bell.
I pointed the pistol into the thick darkness – my eyes got accustomed to it in the meantime. The room was illuminated by the light of the candle. I thought I saw a shadow flying past. Ah, there he is! On the bed, next to it! Watching me. And grinning. I pointed the magnum into the darkness tingling with the soft light. The chair which was supposed to have a man sitting on it was empty.
I spun like a whirling around the small room, half-insane, with a gun in hand, firing shots while the volcano danced around, releasing joyful screams. The force spun me so strongly that for a while I was pinning around all points, the X one, but as well the Y and the Z ones, until I felt something invading my head, the pain, the long ago pain perhaps with which I was mustering the strength to explain my numerous friends that I am more of a “telephone type”. Now I knew that the Telephone was subconsciously sending me obscene messages, in order to fulfill his vengeance – the great-grandfather who broke the Telephone bride “accidentally” fell of a horse. He did not survive the fall. My ancestors all died with a chilling, unexplainable death, suddenly, one of them even while in a passionate embrace of a courtesan – He had a heart attack from excitement – the gentlemen told. That lady also loved to telephone. It was told Alexander Graham Bell was one of her orderly customers.
– Inbreed! – I growled towards the telephone while madness sparked from my eyes.
– It is not my fault. I will buy you a pink telephone to keep you company! – I moaned.
– Hm-hm-hm… – the specter was changing places, from one shadow into the other, so that „hm-hm“ finaly canonized together with the ghastly laughter. I have more felt than saw the cable that like a whip whipped the worn floor of the room. Something on the floor appeared and it looked like blood.
It looked like to me as I was seeing a trace of a female foot walking the room. The roared, the uncompromised hammers of revenge.
With my last flinches, I fired a shot into one corner of the room. The bullet only startled the rocks in the wall and stuck inside like a gluttonous, determined thought of me-the-insane.
I was tortured by that ghastly ventriloquist, maddened me to death, acting slowly like a poison that got his hands on my mind.
– You have to hurry up with the decision – Telephone spoke mercifully. – Shall we dig her out together or…?
Of course, you will live with us and pay the phone bill each month. And then we will find you friend to who you can telephone to. Oh, you cannot even imagine what kind of conversations is awaiting you . . . ones of multiple hours. . .
And I understood. I heard the growling, wild voiced of my ancestors, murderers, thieves, gamblers (it was told also that my great great great great-grandfather was the brother of Dorian Gray’s uncle, for who the generations of school kids believe was a fictional character, thanks to the skillful propaganda of the French novelists who still remember the one hundred year war).
I saw the faces of the past that flew above, whose voices come to me from Samara’s well and twist through the black veins of the torturer, the creatures I belonged to and to whom I will always belong to, with them together, I. . . will continue to grow and rot, forever separated from the knotty womb of all that is human, never again in the routine of existence, a marionette who will be etched by the ghosts in their hands and blind to never see the day and night again with the mute stars.
A sound alike a scream spilled through my skull and that is when I saw myself – under the light of a waning candle, my extinguished eyes. A shadow in a gray hoodie towered above me. Evil tears spilled from my eyes after knowing all is well.
The demon told me something. It was a thought that cut through air, after being spoken. Or everything got mixed, and I heard a word, followed by the thought. All I know is that the unreal, maddened eyes (whether mine or of the Creature) sow fear followed by a raging disease and death!
– Everything is all right, Zoltan, or how hmm was it… – he felt the cold touch of the telephone cable. He turned around, grabbed him savagely and choked him with the telephone wire.
The hero of this story, with a thousand names and in the advanced stadium of madness, during the two days he spent in Senburn, tore out at least two, tightened with strong belts, straight-jackets. He was finally saved, thanks to the mysterious call from the house of this incurable, violent madman.
– Cursed inbreed! He phoned to the Ambulance just to torture me! Aha! Just so you know I will not carry a singing shovel for your darling, you will have to dig her out yourself!
– Who are you talking about, sir? Who phoned? You live alone, Your neighbors … We have information that you do not leave your house for years, that you only talk with the trained androids of Telecom. Did you not, after so many years, not even drink a coffee with any of them?
– You! Rotarian! King Arthur, ha-ha-ha! How so! Telephone! He phoned the ambulance to save me!
The doctor gazed into the distant, blue clouds. The day was coloring itself the colors of the evening. The changing of the seasons was at the horizon.
He felt a stinging pain in his stomach – like it was being pressed by a flaming egg. During his twenty year long practice, he truly sympathized with his patients, especially the lost cases. He opened his notes and wrote in the final verdict:” He does not see the body, but he hears the voice. May the Lord have mercy on his poor, over stimulated psyche”.
– No doctor, the madman do not go to Heaven – he got startled by the deranged madman who right lip was twitching to the side.
He hesitated for a moment. During his practice, he realized that the misfortunate, lonely people, forever trapped within the world of obscene hallucinations, develop some sort of telepathy with those who treat them – those are, like ticking of the clock, painful blows within their heads. Whispers, demonic whispers. . .
– Sir, it is impossible that happened. Intrigued by Your story, I made sure to order a thorough examination of the telephone. A weird model, I must admit. . . 1866. . .It honestly intrigued me. . . But, that which removes all doubt. . .
– What? What? How did He trick you? Oh, that sleezy…
– Sir, the telephone was not at all connected into the wall, it in fact. . . does not even operate on electricity. . . and the dial is missing. . . you know. . .
The last scream broke through Senburn. I died three months later. My last words were:” Give me back my cable, doctor”.

 

Standard
proza

Leila Samarrai: THE ROAD, “THE SECOND BIRTH OF TRAGEDY”

An excerpt from a long narrative poem “The Road”, dedicated to the Truth

5.

Ecce Veritas

Mystics listen to her
Cynics vomit her
Midwives truth-birth her
And since always
Welcome her on hands
That insidious trash
To fill their pitchers
With her feces.
Born from the spirit of pride
From the spleen of law
From the blood of forefathers
From the womb of lies
From seventy seven
Forgiveness
The fools loved her
Saints like a knick – knack
Showed her on the fair
Liars about her
Sexually fantasized
Ecce veritas
Spends her life next to Dionysius ,
Bloodless turkey cocks and donkeys
Smell her sacred beak.
Crowned with laurels
Permeated with boredom
In the tasteful asylum
And she sings in blood
To dampened strings
While watching her reflection
In the lavatory of Hades
Remembers
Progenitrix
Now already an aging whore
Arose from the dream
To maintain the dream.

Standard
proza

Leila Samarrai: THE SECOND BIRTH OF TRAGEDY, To Myself

TO MYSELF

To my emotive Seshat, the goddess of cosmic intuition and writing

You were born in the wrong time.
You should have been born in the age of
Emperor Trajan
Or the age of Scorpion kings in Egypt
In the age before pharaohs which went to mystery
Sometime before mythology.
If you were in Troy when the Mycenae waged war,
Perhaps you would be the one
Helena…
You and I are Thoth and Seshat,
We follow each other through centuries and times,
Realism forces „formality of the movement”;
Formality of human movement…
Unscrewing of the universe… scene in a drama.
We are not made for short-term dramas;
Immortal tribute
Gives us longer era.
You are the lady from Poe’s stories;
Ligeia – the alchemist
Reincarnation of Isis, goddess of mysterious knowledge
Of the teacher and male student in that story.

And the ancient Greek dramaturgy…
There is, my lady… true depth.
Aesculus, Sophocles, и Euripides…
Remember…
„Oedipus Rex” by Sophocles,
the syndrome which destroyed even the lineage of Obrenovic
Dear* „proxy” mama
She too was Seshat, but nobody knows it
For the astronomer
Nut, the bed spreader of the universe
Is Seshat who searches for her Thoth.
Dream that I send you
Metaphysics of one century into another
And we shall find each other, does not matter
In which time.
What matters is
That we were inside the same moment and the same time,
In the garden of splitting ways.

* Draga (meaning Dear or Precious in English also known as Queen Draga, was the queen and wife of King Aleksandar Obrenović of the Kingdom of Serbia.

 

Standard
proza

For that, Marcus Aurelius, whenever you look at yourself…, The darkness will understand, Leila Samarrai

552575_163869130402371_100003378556183_223135_1335172012_n

14
How fast the shadow passes said Marcus Aurelius
Soul is temporary, isn’t it, he hoped
Banded with demons for the third time
The guilt his pustule, man a sacrifice and life a sub specie of a boil

Discontent is what is perfect
Since ancient times you cannot lose what you did not have
Ponder

If you separate yourself once
If you learn about the inherited justice of pain
Can poison and arson be useful
Have you not become too lenient Marcus Aurelius
Before divisions and longings
Provoked on purpose

Today things are completely open
Until the bloodthirsty wind knocks them down
And carries them away into tomorrow which will not be

For that, Marcus Aurelius, whenever you look at yourself
Remember if the shape is an obstacle to the essence
And answer who is the bigger liar
The dream or the shadow in the mirror

 

Standard
proza

Leila Samarrai: Duševna hrana, “Avanture Borisa K.”

http://afirmator.org/leila-samarrai-dusevna-hrana/Layout 1

Tog snežnog popodneva, gosti su, kao sleđene seni, nadirali kroz masivna čamova vrata otmenog restorana. Nosili su vunene kape, prekrivene kupama od snega. Kako su skinuli kape, tako su se kupe topile. Ledene kapi kvasile su kapute i prskale pod. Gosti su trljali dlanove ne bi li se ugrejali, smireni i ušuškani, pod svetlošću staklenih lampiona. Razgibavali su promrzla tela, prozeblim prstima otresali sneg sa kaputa, gunđajući sebi u bradu:

„Prokleto vreme!“
„Dugo ne bi ovakvog kijameta!“, uzvikivali su mračnog izraza lica kao da recituju poemu sa melanholičnim krajem.
Sve se osećalo na viski.
Gosti posedaše nasuprot proćelavog čovečuljka koji se razbaškario za stolom, odmarajući se kao sultan u nosiljci. Pažljivom oku nije moglo da promakne da je bio isuviše umoran da bi mogao da zaspi i opusti se.
Boris K. beše, pre dvadeset i kusur godina, ambiciozan i revnostan čovek bez početnog kapitala. Jednog dana setio se kako bi mogao da zaradi novac: zaposliće se kao proizvođač ideja. Ali, od ovog posla ne vide ni cvonjka.
Svejedno, proglasiše ga patentologom, stručnjakom za ideje koje je prodavao u bescenje — ponekad i za najobičniji đevrek.
Oni mu ipak omogućiše povremene poslove poput posla kafe kuvara u poludržavnim firmama, što je bio Borisov ideal. Tako se, između ostalog, prihvatio i gomile drugih zanimanja: od taksiste, preko teoretičara socijalističkih ideja Mao Ce Tunga, do poslanika, glavne arterije u telu fenomenopubličke Skupštine. Kršeći izazove snagom dvehiljadugodišnjih vojnih strategija, pun optimizma, oran i spreman da se kao budista ponovo rodi u formalinu, Boris K. je tačno znao šta želi.
Ali, pored toga, Boris K. je krio i jednu veliku tajnu.
Samo je on znao kako pravilno da se smrša, a da se pri tom ne oseća glad. Uredno je deponovao patent u Zavodu za intelektualnu svojinu. Jedan od tih patenata upravo je primenjivao u pomenutom kafiću. Gosti opuštenih stomaka radoznalo su ga posmatrali želeći da odgonetnu tajnu njegove vitke linije.
„Ima bar deset godina kako ga nisam video da nešto žvaće!“, šaputali bi, dok bi prolazio restoranom ka unapred rezervisanom stolu.
Tajna nikako da bude odgonetnuta. Mnogi bi odustajali, tvrdoglavo odričući:
„Jadnik je naprosto poludeo“, gledali su besno jedni u druge.
Boris K. je podgrevao radoznalost gostiju otmenog restorana za intelektualce, samim svojim prisustvom. Rešio je, iz nepoznatih razloga, da otkrije tajnu baš tog snežnog popodneva.
„Kao i obično“, zapovedio je odsečnim glasom, a potom je ispustio jedno „Ah!“, proturivši ruku kroz prazne džepove. Uzdahnuo je, a zajedno sa njim i svi prisutni, još radoznaliji, gladni svete tajne koju je ovaj čudak krio ispod čela.
„Od čega li živi? Da li jede?“, ispitivali su kuvara Japanca, bliskog prijatelja Borisa K.
„Oh, nema on da plati. Ali, uvek se dobro najede“.
„Kako to?“ Kuvar bi odbijao da daje dodatna objašnjenja.
„Da li je u pitanju čudo nauke? Fenomen?“ Svet je bio na pragu novog otkrića. „Čovek koji ne jede dvadeset godina, ako ne i manje, ako ne i više, a ne slabi i još priručnike o zdravoj ishrani piše! Da dodamo još i da je načitan, a znamo da je teško čitati praznog stomaka“, govorili su. I to je bila istina.
Kako je Boris K. seo i naručio jelo, tako su upali novinari. Kamere su zazujale, a blicevi sevnuli. Gomila sveta nagrnula je u restoran da odgonetne Tajnu vitke linije.
„Živeti, pisati recenzije, a pri tom ne ždrati! Da nije možda ovo nagoveštaj apokalipse?“, govorili su vernici.
„Trik, nema sumnje“, govorili su skeptici.
Ali, svi su želeli da vide jedno. Čudo! Kuvar dostojanstvenog izraza lica s pregačom oko stomaka, donese ajncer u levoj ruci. Dok je Boris K. govorio, kuvar je u blokče revnosno zapisivao:
„Znači… kao i obično. Predjelo: Gde si Puškine? U sosu sa Harmsom. Za glavno jelo: Pohovani Kaligula sa prelivom Nekronomikona i to ona najkrvavija priča. Možda nešto za popiti?“
„Sva vina iz Starog zaveta.“
Vernici uzdahnuše i prekrstiše se.
„Nećete Novi? Ima i tamo finih… Nešto sa menija apostola? Imali su fino posluženje…“
„Ne. Radije bih glodao Sartrov Zid. Kažu da u cigli ima proteina na izvol’te“. Skeptici aplaudiraše. Egzistencijalisti se guraše u prvi red, dok Kamijevci smatraše da je sve to apsolutno besmisleno i napustiše prostoriju.
„Šta ti je duševna hrana…“, uzviknuo je neko, a ostali uputiše krike odobravanja. Potom svi krenuše da naručuju raskošna jela sa trpeze, sledeći primer Borisa K.
Ispostavilo se da se Boris K, pre dvadeset godina, podvrgao jednom magijskom ritualu u hramu Šaolin, posle kojeg je dobio fatvu da umesto hrane jede samo visokomoralna intelektualna dela.
Otkrivši ovu veliku tajnu, građani Fenomenopublike postaše najtvitkija nacija na svetu. Apetit je prešao sa stomaka na mozak: ako se čita loša literatura, svima mora da pripadne muka. Tako je nacija morala, ne samo da jede ono što čita, već da jede isključivo dobru literaturu.
Tako su dela uglednih književnika sa šeširima i širokim osmesima, koji su se često pojavljivali na televiziji, završila na deponiji. Knjižare su zamandalile vrata kada su građani Republike navalili, tražeći ukusne korice gospodina Mana u izdanju „Riders Dajdžesta“.
Tako je odjednom, u knjizi Borisa K, pronađen lek za osteoporozu koji samo tvrd povez Tragedije genija može da izleči. Bilo je tu još začina, a jedan od njih sadržao je lek za rak. Srčani bolesnici konzumirali su isključivo poeziju, jer im je proza u sosu bila strogo zabranjena. Začin a la Pirandelo i piletina a la Dvorska i druga posla postala su već pomodarska jela od kojih se pomalo moglo i ugojiti.
Tada su knjige, jednim potezom svemoguće ruke, zbrisane sa lica Zemlje.

Standard
proza

Leila Samarrai: Književnost u Srbiji postoji samo na nivou trača

Leila Samarrai: Književnost u Srbiji postoji samo na nivou trača

Leila Samarrai mlada je književnica koja, reklo bi se, tek stasava na našoj književnoj sceni, iako iza sebe ima objavljenu zbirku poezije i zbirku kratkih priča. Kako se na književnoj sceni snalazi, kako prolazi, postoji li uopšte književna scena kod nas, ispričaće nam mlada autorka, stoga – pripremite se…

Kako doživljavaš poeziju?

Kao vrstu šamanske bajalice sposobne da razgrne mrak u nama.

„Poeziji je namenjena uloga spasavanja sveta, ponovno vraćanje u celinu svih razdrobljenih stvari.“ Da li se slažeš sa ovom Hamvaševom tvrdnjom i zašto?

Čovek ne može a da se ne složi sa Hamvaševom tvrdnjom da je novija istorija oduzela čoveku/čovečanstvu mnogo toga svetog, te umesto kraljeva i dostojanstvenika itd. imamo na njihovim mestima razne surogate, “sumnjiva lica”… Ostao je pesnik, i sam pod obrazinom sumnjivog lica, živi svoj život pod maskom (ne više dvorske) lude… Te ako je reč ono što odvaja čoveka od životinje, od poživotinjavanja u ovo varvarsko doba, ko je taj koji će reč(i) dovesti u sklad i iskupiti čoveka, ako ne pesnik? Ali je pitanje i: ima li među pesnicima ljudi dovoljno jakih, čiji je magijski jezik dovoljno gromak da bi se čuo u sveopštoj kakofoniji koja nad nama vlada?

Kako se poezija uklapa u (tvoj) svet? Ili se, možda, svet uklapa u (tvoju) poeziju?

Čovek je u svom mikrokosmosu kao u nekoj svojoj zasebnoj kutiji, čiji je poezija poklopac, kojim se od sveta može zaštititi; koji se može otvoriti u želji za upoznavanjem nečeg šireg nego što je lični domet.

Kako doživljavaš odluku mnogih izdavačkih kuća da ne objavljuju zbirke poezije?

Realno, to je samoubistvo.

Čemu nas uči poezija?

Razmišljanju, izražavanju. Samilosti. Ima kod Hajnea jedno mesto: “Čemu ta jedina suza? Samo mi pogledu smeta.” Poezija daje dublji uvid onome što bi nam možda u svakodnevnoj strci promaklo; verujem u čoveka, zato kažem možda onde gde bi sigurno trebalo da stoji: da.

Može li se bez poezije?

Ako možemo bez suza/smeha, dana/noći, zombirani pod neonom, ispred svog televizora, ili u dimu i buci, možemo i bez poezije, učenja i mišljenja, neka drugi misli za nas.

Šta je za tebe poezija?

Prilika da ostanem sama sa sobom i svojim mislima… Prilika da stvorim nešto što ću, jednom pozvana, moći da pokažem kao sopstveni doprinos svetu.

Kako bi definisala poeziju?

Kao staru mudru zmiju koja tek ponekad izađe da se osunča (i plaši ljude).

Koliko su korisni književni festivali i radionice, mogu li da opstanu danas, u vreme sveopšte nemaštine, i može li se na njima nešto naučiti?

Učenje je pre individualna stvar, želja zapravo…

Šta je pojava interneta donela a šta oduzela piscima?

Svakako, veću primećenost, u širim krugovima… koji ipak mogu da rasplinu suštinu. Internet je Vavilon kome svaki pisac može i da doda i da oduzme ciglu, zavisno od afiniteta.

Svesna si da u tvom poslu (pisanju) nema „hleba“ (ili ga sve manje ima), pa opet istrajavaš. Zašto?

Za poeziju je potrebno biti “zaluđenik”, to je van svake sumnje, i van svake isplate; da se od poezije živi nešto baš i ne može, a uspeh je, vidno, varljiva kategorija. Što se mene lično tiče, prirodno mi je da se izražavam u stihovima, a da sam daleko od svake vrste priznanja, jesam… S druge strane, u ovoj zemlji biti priznat znači pokupiti svu malograđanštinu iz sebe i oko sebe i objaviti je. Stoga, želim biti priznata van granica, jer to jeste priznanje – pravo.

Kakve su, po tebi, generacije pisaca koje dolaze?

Poetski i prozni svet podeljen je na raznorazne sekte koje jedna drugoj kvalitet i poetski pristup ne priznaju. Šta će od svih za sto godina da ostane, bojim se i da pomislim.

Kako izgleda današnja književna scena?

Kada pogleda čovek šta se sve objavljuje, bez ikakvog kriterijuma, onda je jasno da naša književna scena postoji samo zbog novca. Mi mrdnuli nismo iz komunizma. Gde smo bili u književnom smislu, tu smo i sada, samo što je tržište mnogo manje, a intelektualna i svaka druga beda mnogo veća. Ne postoji ni srpska književna scena, niti joj se dozvoljava da postoji. Kritičari na svojim pozicijama, etablirani pisci na svojim pozicijama, najpre političkim, potom i književnim, ili umetničkim. Ukratko, književnost u Srbiji postoji samo na nivou trača.

Kod nas je totalno rasulo, a bez poštovanja i autora i autorskih prava, neće biti boljitka i Srbija će ostati književna crna rupa, bez obzira na veliki broj ljudi koji imaju šta reći i napisati.

Pesničke knjige se ne objavljuju, jer su neisplative. Zna se: autor mora da plati da bi izdao knjigu, tu je početak i kraj. Izdavača dalje ne zanima. Ukoliko autor nekim čudom “stekne ime”, onda će ovi bespravno štampati autora, kršiti autorska prava i tvrditi da oni čine autoru uslugu time što ga objavljuju. Samo štampanje je jeftino. Nečija npr. zbirka aforizama ili priča može da se prodaje preko neta, ima je u knjižarama, a pisac o tome uopšte nije obavešten, niti ima bilo kakav uvid.

I samo izdavaštvo je svedeno na novac. Imaš kintu, izdaćeš knjigu. Ukoliko nekim čudom “stekneš ime“, objavljivaće ti knjige, ali sav “kajmak“ će kupiti oni, izdavači, i još će ti reći da si srećan što te objavljuju. Dakle, autorska prava su totalno nezaštićena ili ne postoje. Izdavače briga za kvalitet, pa oni to i ne čitaju, ili prelete očima. Sve se svede na novac, to jest, keš, i seks. Što je, opet, dobra tema za neku priču ili roman, pa i za publicistiku i kao sociološki fenomen, na kraju krajeva. Obeležava jedno vreme i jednu zemlju.

A šta reći na temu mizoginije, tretiranje žene, pametne, lepe i privlačne žene kod nas, koja usput, sjajno piše. Ukratko: tretman mesa u srpskoj književnosti. Jeftina trgovina i svođenje žene-autorke na komad mesa, seksualnog objekta koji nema pravo da misli, već da se pokorava. Možeš da budeš pametna koliko god želiš, ukoliko ne radiš ono što ljigavac želi, nema objavljivanja, nema karijere, nema života od onoga što najviše voliš i najbolje znaš da radiš. Kada smo se već dotakli raznoraznih šovinizama, zašto prećutati i ovaj. To su, po meni, kompleksaši koji ne mogu na normalan način da dođu do seksa ili ljubavi, ili šta im je već potrebno, i tu kreće ta bolest, ucenjivanje. U normalnim okolnostima, znaju da ne mogu doći do lepih, pametnih i talentovanih žena, i koriste prividnu moć da bi se dokazali pred sobom i sličnima. To jeste jeftina trgovina, i verujem da je ženama, u tom smislu, mnogo teže nego muškarcima. O tome se malo piše, malo pominje, a to jeste kancer života u ovoj i ovakvoj zemlji, u ovakvom sistemu bez sistema i kriminalizovanom društvu. Još uvek verujem da ne mora nužno biti tako, ali sada ukazujem da književni svet nije šareni i nežni leptirić u koji je posuta sva lepota sveta. Talentovani ljudi odlaze iz zemlje, gubimo intelekt, gubimo ljude koji bi mogli zemlju da pomere iz blata. A onda se čudimo kada Mrkonjić i Ilić postanu ministri. Jasna stvar: nasilje i seks, okosnica rijaliti šou programa, potpuno preneta i u sferu književnosti, što bi, trebalo da bude, bastion pred poplavom kiča i primitivizma.

Razgovor vodila

Tamara Lujak

Standard