Belgrade Noir

This apartment must be far from where we got married because we drove for a long time — at one point we even changed cars. I was nervous because I’d never been alone with a woman except for my mother, but she didn’t count, and hadn’t been in a car that often. But then on the side of a wall, I saw a large painting of two men whom I recognized from the news, probably presidents, and somehow they made me feel safe. I thought nothing bad could happen if those two were watching. We drove around until it got dark and started raining. The city lit up with a thousand lights. I saw tall houses pass outside the window, one after another, one street after another, the windshield wipers made screeching noises and puddles reflected the streetlights. Finally, we stopped in front of this building and took the clanking elevator to the sixth floor. There was no name written on her mailbox and I wanted to ask what her full name was, but I still didn’t have the courage to speak.

When we were inside the apartment my anxiety took over. My little mickeybob was dead stiff and achy in my pants. I did know what you’re supposed to do on your wedding night, and that’s what made me so nervous. Maybe I wouldn’t know how and she’d lose interest in me. I started making the bed with Mom’s sheets to give me something else to think about. Una stood in the doorway of the bedroom. She was wearing a black sheer lace dress and tight red boots. She was so devastatingly beautiful I could barely put the pillowcases on the pillows — I was so distracted. My wife!

After I finished making the bed, she told me in a low voice that it was time for us to start, that for years she’d dreamed of this moment. She told me to lie down on the bed and clicked my hands into the cuffs and then to the headboard. Then she took out an ugly rubber mask from under the bed, I’d seen them in old war films, as well as a long, thick whip and knives wrapped in soft velvet. She licked her lips with her red tongue, smiling and breathing heavily. She told me again that she loved me, then she put on the mask and began.

How To Pickle a Head of Cabbage

by Vesna Goldsworthy

Knez Mihailova Street

The temperature had been hovering around freezing for days, dipping below for a few hours at a time, just long enough to turn relentless rain into milky, snotty sleet. Even at midday, it was so dark you might believe that Belgrade was somewhere above the North Pole, and not in so-called Southeastern Europe. People bolted out of doorways and scurried along under the eaves like wet mice. It was the sort of weather that would drive an Islamic holy man to slivovitz. The few fools who bothered to open their umbrellas found them instantly turned inside out, like black flowers, unfurling only to be broken by the icy gusts of košava

, the worst of Serbia’s meteorological horrors. There are many more destructive winds around the world, but none that can match its malignant squall.

I spent my spare time smoking, feeling even more claustrophobic than usual, and daydreaming about Olga’s demise. All that black ice, a town full of slippery slopes, and who could guess where her osteoporosis might take the two of us? A broken rib, a pierced lung, acute pneumonia, then goodbye world: mission accomplished. Or, days of changing smelly adult nappies and wiping her shriveled little ass while she smiled quasi-apologetically and I thought of a plan B.

This particular contract was taking its time. Three years into it and dear old Oggy was beginning to seem indestructible, while I edged toward two packs a day, hypertension, and permanent irritability. Every sound she made infuriated me — even something as quiet as the shuffling of cards, an activity she indulged in for at least four hours a day — yet I had to pretend I enjoyed her company. That was the deal. My line of work, looking after old crones in exchange for an eventual right to their property, consisted of a species of tantric prostitution for hors d’oeuvres, and death and housing for dessert. In this impoverished city where the distressed elderly had only their homes to offer, lots of people dabbled in the business. Very few were my equals.

Olga owned an apartment in Belgrade’s epicenter, three floors above Knez Mihailova Street, on a block situated more or less diagonally across the road from the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts. Her building was pretty enough on the outside, with a faux-Habsburg yellow facade and chubby cherubs holding garlands of flowers above each window, oozing Central European ideas of grandeur. Inside, it was a honeycomb of crumbling passages and Dostoevskian courtyards inhabited by geriatrics who had known each other since they were toddlers, long before the Ottoman conquest of the Balkans. I am exaggerating, but not by much. You have to see the funny side when you are dealing with Dracula’s little sisters.