Belgrade Noir

Every so often in Belgrade a husband kills his spouse. The women have never looked better, every second one could be a runway model, but they get no benefit from their beauty. I say that some devil has entered into people, but no one gives a damn. Inspector Vasović gives me a barely perceptible nod. He goes to the market every morning, but when he’s not in his office he has no interest in what’s happening in the city.

I met an interesting young woman. The way she walked reminded me of Žana, my first love. She was going down the bulevar to the Vuk Monument and suddenly came to a stop in front of me. She addressed me as druže, “comrade.” She was tiny, with red hair and a ring through one nostril. She gave off an air of cleanliness.

“Comrade, will you sign my petition against trashy culture, schund?” she asked. Two pimpled teenaged boys stood behind her.

“Against schund?” I asked.

She nodded.

“I will,” I said, and started to get down from my stool.

She held me by my upper arm with both hands, she was afraid that I might fall and perish before I could fulfill my promise. I’m sure she didn’t think I meant to run away from her, it was obvious that I wasn’t hesitating. Who, Peppy, could miss out on an opportunity to settle accounts with rubbish?

As I took the papers and pen I noticed that there were already many pages filled with signatures. The campaign they had started had accumulated plenty of supporters. In addition to my signature, the girl wanted my personal ID card number. I pulled out my military service booklet, to this very day I have no other documents, and I copied the number from the first page. A photo of our little volunteer, um, paramilitary brigade was sticking out of the booklet, I pulled it out for a moment and looked at it. The girl didn’t like that, she made a face. Perhaps I could kill her went through my head.

The two hunched, pimply kids neither moved nor spoke. I thought they might be mute. I asked the girl what her name was, she said Ira. I decided she had gotten her nickname from the Irish Republican Army, and I liked that. Kombucha had moved on to playing Bob Dylan.

Belgrade, Peppy, has become a monster. Mothers here name their sons after famous criminals, politicians have run out of neglected relatives, so they put their house pets in government positions. Now our leaders moo, baa, bark, and meow at us from their official armchairs.

Anyone who’s dissatisfied with the condition of society can complain, the counter’s open every weekday from ten a.m. to four p.m. However, there’s always a long line, plus the computer has crashed, and you can’t get anything done without the computer. They say they’ve called the IT man, but he won’t show up, he hasn’t been paid for the last time he fixed things.

Thus, no one will be surprised when I carry out a murder. It’s a firm decision, Peppy. But who should I kill? At first glance, it seems easy to choose a victim. In Belgrade, no matter who you look at it seems that you wouldn’t be wrong to kill them. However, that isn’t so. Many of them aren’t worth the time or energy…

Yesterday, the Danube tossed up the lifeless body of an opposition party leader, last night a television magnate overdosed in the Intercontinental Hotel…

A couple of police are walking in my direction: a young woman and a tall, bare-chinned young man. Pairs of handcuffs jingling against their butts, the weight of their pistols pulling down their belts.

“The authorities have a tremendous capacity!”

I shout as loudly as possible. They don’t even look at me.

I can’t say anything wrong, the police never pay any attention to me, nobody mistreats me. People are tolerant of me. Both when I was shouting “Let’s clean up Serbia!” and when I stood at the intersection by the Lilly drugstore and directed the traffic, no one did anything to stop me. No one wants to get into an argument with me, Peppy. Probably because I’m crazy.

My health’s pretty good, I can’t complain. Sometimes I mix up the past and the present, but that’s not terrible.

Peppy, nothing’s terrible here, people quickly get used to everything. No one minds that they pour water in the gasoline, that they mix air into the natural gas, that they send your electric power at a low voltage. Babies don’t mind that their milk’s diluted, sick people don’t mind that their injections are diluted, drunks don’t mind that their rakija is diluted. Pedestrians don’t protest that the streets are dug up, that cars are parked on the sidewalks, they jump and fly like the Chinese warriors in the movie House of the Flying Daggers.

I asked Doctor Teodosić to prescribe me a higher dose, what I get isn’t enough for me, but he won’t. He thinks I might be selling my medication. Why would I sell my meds when I don’t even have enough? Doctor Teodosić asks me how it is I haven’t died yet — I ought to, if I’m taking everything he prescribes for me.