‘The Adventures of Boris K.’ was already published in Serbia, but I’ve decided upon the expanded Kindle edition to have the cosmopolitan protagonist live through cosmopolitan fate, to have him read and loved not only in the isolated space of the Balkans, but also among the aboriginal tribes whom he, often, breaks bread with on his travels.
“Something is rotten in the state of Denmark”, From Shakespeare’s play Hamlet (1.4), Marcellus to Horatio.
Boris K. took the “Mens sana in corpore sano” mantra deadly seriously and was on his way to the nearest gym. Out of sheer excitement, he forgot the towel. Truth be told, Boris K. never really sweated, what’s more the doctors diagnosed him with some armpit gland defect. He wore his tracksuit that he usually wore when he went to the farmer’s market and had sneakers
on, clean, but with a tiny hole on their side.
The moment he stepped into the luxury space, akin to the gyms of Los Angeles where the Japanese Yakuza work out, the treadmill caught his attention. As he was running, green pastures went through his head where he soared as a child, running after a ball.
“Boris, get the ball!” he remembered the voice of his uncle Ivan The Terrible Fisherman, who often took him fishing.
He ran faster, catching the ball in his thoughts. Giggling, he lifted his arms up and whispered: “Death to fascism, freedom to the people”, respecting the house rules.
Luckily, others noticed the new workout guy, others who ran along the treadmill with light steps, wiping off the invisible sweat, exchanging many a word between one another:
“Sweetheart, I have discovered the Café Menstrualle. You pop one Café Menstrualle and no more ovary pain.”
“Such nice people, these folks”, he thought after a thirty minute cardio workout, ran his fingers through his odorous hair, with but a hint of sweat to it. He reeked of sweat and it felt good to him.
As he was fantasizing about making “Rocky VII”, a young man of 25-ish approached him, dark curly-haired, engulfed in a strong perfume, with buff arms, a square Lego torso and short legs, and he whispered into his ears words that almost froze Boris K. solid.
“Good evening”, he shook his hand with his own, dry chapped one. “I am Boris K.”
The trainer shook hands, unknowingly stepping away from Boris K., while down his tiny wrinkle on his young forehead, born out of constant frowning and grimacing, sweat poured.
“Forgive me, sir, but you stink. All the other folks that are working out are complaining about you.”
Boris turned around himself, sensing the sweat and the hostile looks. He shook.
“Male or female?” he applied logic.
“Both sexes.”
He felt being bathed in cold sweat. As if something had been crushing him bone by bone, his field of vision narrowed. Him? He never broke a sweat. Even when he had to go to the doctor’s.
“What?”, Boris K. looked at him nearly maniacally.
“Nothing”, he said and wiped the sweat of his forehead. Catching glimpse of this motion, Boris K. facepalmed, merely uttering that he did not bring a towel which he would use to clear any doubt-raising link between him and sweat.
“Mistah Trainah, I have never once in my life…stunk, not even had a hint of an odor…and even if I did – is this not the right spot for it?” Boris K. was pulling these and similar arguments while counting the seconds in his head, bouncing the words around under his tongue, gulping, until finally he bent the knee and admitted defeat.
He was certain that he did not break a sweat, but this young trainer, who was a bodybuilder for at least a decade, certainly knew everything there was to know about stench.
“I’ve been wrongly accused!”, a slight rise in his tone.
The trainer shrugged and clenched his fists. The other customers started approaching with menacing faces. Boris K. noticed that he’s in a pinch and tried to apply some strategy. He smiled, to which the customers stepped back. Boris K. noticed that the workout gear was unoccupied, seeing as the people using them were surrounding him, therefore nobody was there using them. He felt the uncalm and the desire to leave, but he couldn’t leave well enough alone. He had firmly decided to continue the discussion with the discount Tommy Gann here by any means necessary, come hell or high water.
He felt that he was about to cry any minute. He held himself with both arms, comforting himself gently as the trainer, his voice a chill, suggested that he brought a towel next time, more modern sneakers and a Dolce & Gabbana tracksuit, like the ones other customers had. For a while he trembled out of confusion, uneasiness, he even wanted to cry. He cursed all the towels of God’s green Earth. He shook away the invisible sweat off of himself as the in-full-make-up female customers, casting a glance or two in his general direction, glared at him scornfully. One observed the sole of his left sneaker. Rolling her eyes, she whispered something to the lummox next to her who looked at Boris K., as if ready to crush him. Boris K. was smiling. He went out into the street shook up, confused, disturbed and offended, realizing that there was a stench there and that the trainer was absolutely correct.
“I know what it was! It was the scent of rot!”, he concluded, and stepped into the dark streets towards a new comedy.
Tomorrow Boris K. purchased a café menstrualle deciding that, as soon as he gets the right opportunity, he would complain to other customers at the gym about the pain in his ovaries.
SLEEPING MATHILDE
http://casopiskult.com/kult/krik/uspavana-matilde/
The storm which will crush the fort of sven Orian will crush an existence, a world filled with fear, antagonism, selfishness. It will crush that which is not constant, all for that which is permanent and long-lasting.
Let us tear down castles! Let us stay with nothing to us, akin to Buddha or Jesus! Let us bravely trudge forth, with love for the self and the others, regardless of all the risks and perils that pop out at us, akin to Heracles or Odysseus!
„And God took а hаndful of south wind
And from it formed а horse,
Sаying, ‘I creаte thee, Oh Arаbiаn.
To thy forelock I bind victory in bаttle.
On thy bаck I set а rich spoil,
аnd а treаsure in thy loins.
I estаblish thee аs one of the glories of the eаrth.
I give thee flight without wings’.
For а time the Arаbiаn rаn wild in the desert.
Only the strongest аnd most intelligent,
The swiftest аnd most disciplined survived.
And then the story goes;
To Ishmаel, son of Abrаhаm,
God mаde а gift of the Arаbiаn Horse.
And Ishmаel wаs the first to tаme аnd ride him.
And from thаt time on the fаte of the Arаbiаn
would be woven into the history of the Western
World.”
„Arabian Horse Legend”
A TALE OF ORIAN VON AMERONGEN
“I was born in the old House of von Amerongen, as Orian Siegfried”, having committed this sentence on paper, Orian bit into the quill and, upset, shot a glance at the door. He had little time to spare.
“I was born in a wonderful castle on the slopes of the icy mountains of Norrbotten”, Orian sunk into the strange irritability of senses brought about by the sweet drowsiness of memory.
Leaning above the parchment, sensing that his time is running out under the increasingly faster swathes of distant steps, he gave himself up to the words of a cruel story while horror reigned over his body and senses. He wrote the following:
“I could not shake off the thought of Norrbotten’s conception. Dramatic imagery of clouds sucking up the rain, of blood dripping from the heavens, assailed my imagination.
“I would feel excitement observing the doleful side view of the land of Norrbotten out of whom I’ve strived to exclude my own castle, making it a creation of the most fantastic colors and images. With time, as the veil was falling over my eyes, I moved slower and slower, head hung low, until – and God knows what if anything I was thinking of – I had lost the boyish spirit and the gift of innocence, until I had lost the peace wherein any lord would enjoy himself selflessly. Until I’ve taken a bite of my mental wellbeing…
“’Let’s stop at the impossible’, I would say to father Larsen who piously ate his sausages in the chapel booth. Everything lasts in shades long buried. Enthusiasm does not easily let a poet go, quite the contrary, it anchors itself within him, galloping along the finest of nerves, inconsistently, vilely and hypocritically.
I felt that Norrbotten and the Hässe castle can in any other time period only induce revolt and anxiety, but also an unspeakable loneliness.
Then the Storm came and took it all. I, sven Orian, had been a guard, a cuirassier and many a thing more, upon whom this fiend descended upon, I am frightened. Memories come shrieking on this day of death when sven Olof rode to the castle and took Mathilde out of the shade.
From where did all the ailments of my life come? It is as if the Storm pounded them to the ground through the wind. You might be wondering whether a sober man thinks of his sins amid a storm. Oh, yes, exactly then, through the window, I observe the restless villagefolk and I take a listen of the revving of horses, for I am, if I must choose the object of my observation, a painter of nothingness.”
Orian stopped and gave the scar on his face a touch. Then he added:
“I touched myself on the crease in my face and felt it fork in tiny layers on my chin, out of which hardened, bloodied hairs stuck out. A wound from a duel. “
Orian swiftly turned to the door, but since he heard nothing, he continued, quill screeching, stating aloud what he wrote in order to ward off the ghoul.
“As a vampire I feasted upon lives of others. I never dug graves too deep. I piled corpses like firewood. I was building a human alley.
“I had increased my army thusly, reigning by fear.
“Gazing upon my own reflection in the gold enameled mirror, I saw (what I wished others had seen), a rove of shaded flesh, tight muscle and a smile of a noble whose dignity had essentially intertwined with a false modesty.
“But, that which had disturbed me in the darkest of forebodings were the decisions I had taken as a man used to get what he wanted and, empowered by his irreason, destroy that which was beyond his reach and his mind. Those were the initial signs of my curse.
“I had been an oppressor. I had been jealous, especially of the birds, the damned vermin, the vultures and eagles, knowing that they bear within them a germ of eternity. I had been but a grain of sand under the howling wind. And what is wind other than the coursing of time, against whose power of sudden destruction or slow consumption of substance, even the most stable of dwellings falls. “
The minister of culture and minority rights Cris Is Evayzhun was walking along the Phenomenonpublic boulevard with parliament member Iana Goatson (of GOAT – Government Approved Thou-shall-nots, as well as CleronationalVoxPIOUpuli ), his wife, and he plucked away from the rich history of Germany.
As the minister was shifting from one Nazi topic to the next, from the Big bang onward, out of the darkness crept Boris K. and with a swift “SiegHeil!” he tripped the minister who lay prostrate on the golden pavements of Phemonenonpublic.
“The minister is down!”
“They killed the minister!”
A trudge of steps ensued. A mass of people stood around the minister Cris Is Evayzhun,
“Help! An urgent republic matter! Dial 333-222. Assassination!”
Xavier, a gypsy youth, who begged for money in the graveyard shift, pulled a moist towelette from his bag with a swift motion and applied it to the spot on the minister’s leg which was sore.
Boris K. took a photo of this touching scene with his Motorola. The minister’s wife was thrilled.
“If I had a son like this, I would dress him up in the style of Albert, prince consort of Windsor”, she thought and much to her husband’s dismay she loudly blurted out:
“I want a son like this.”
Xavier responded:
“Ah, if only I had a mother like you.”
Boris K. remembered and told a touching story of the love one father had towards his son – one of the many tales he picked up somewhere during his life – as the foreign minister tried choking him.
The story went on for hours, until the Emergency vehicle came with a stretcher and took away the minister who was howling in pain and cursing the very name of Boris K.
A month later, coming back from the WIG Heil general tryouts, the minister and the minister’s adviser for the rights of minority Boris K. looked at a Gipsy woman sitting in front of the firecracker store and some cheap Chinese pyrotechnics.
“This Republic is going to pieces. An open market to any and all crap”, minister Cris is Evayzhun mumbled, looking at the Gipsy woman in a manner – was there any other, really? – not unlike that of a Nazi. “Nobody can control the quality of the merchandise (and people) which flows into our beloved Phenomenonpublic. While somewhere up there in Germany Berlin is on fire, I see everything around here!”
“Calm down and extend your palm”, the Gypsy woman smiled to the minister who was dreaming that he had his own panzer divisions in the Kriegsmarine. “In your past life you were a crazed SS commander”, the Gypsy woman started. “Now you are just a bozo whom an adopted child will make feel happy”.
The minister waved his head in disbelief. How can she know all this? He didn’t even giver her his palm.
The Gypsy woman continues palm-reading as if she were in a trance.
“We have to move to the front door ahead of a dangerous gang”, she spoke with a cracked voice. A few moment later there were gunshots. Boris K. and the Gypsy woman and the minister went into the front door, until the street situation calmed.
Six months later, the minister, his wife and their son – little Xavier – were walking along the boulevard.
Boris took the money from Iana Goatson, since she hired him to trick the minister. The Gypsy woman, Xavier’s mom was disguised as a fortune teller, got an apartment in the name of her remaining ten kids. Boris K. soon paid the fellows who were reenacting a mobster showdown, he purchased a luxury three room apartment for about a year and continued nailing the role of Hitler.
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