Belgrade Noir

“Why would I die, doctor?” I act surprised. “A person quickly gets used to everything here.”

There’s always someone outside his office who’ll make a fuss that I’ve cut in line, but I don’t pay any attention to those losers. Maybe sometime I will, when I have a weapon on me. “The authorities have a tremendous capacity!”

If only Kombucha knew about all the pills I have, he’d shove me off my footstool, snatch my key, and hotfoot it to my apartment. Nothing would stop that guy, whose nickname comes from fermented mushrooms, from robbing me. As it is, whenever he lands on hard times he brings his books and sells them cheap. It’s mostly philosophy, Kierkegaard and crap like that. Sometimes I buy one of his books — to be honest, philosophy relaxes me.

The woman whose husband hit her with a beer stein has passed away. The doctors fought for her life, but the hospital didn’t have enough units of blood on hand.

Peppy, we never have enough of any of the blood types. Every day more people die a violent death here than are born. Death drives an electric lawnmower and clears out the streets of Belgrade, if you aren’t a killer then you’re a victim. Neutrality has lost its foothold, the laws are the same as on the battlefield. Perhaps that’s why I’ve succumbed to the general atmosphere, the euphoria so to speak, and have firmly resolved to kill someone. I probably won’t be punished for the crime, which gives me additional motivation to carry it out.

Peppy, the Belgrade police don’t chase criminals anymore. The detectives and killers sit in kafanas

at the same table and eat dinner together, criminals practice shooting at the police gun ranges. If by some miracle a person is arrested, and at the end of a marathon trial is convicted, they don’t go to prison because there’s no room. The prisons are packed: it’s those who don’t pay off their bank loans, who owe for parking tickets, who don’t pay their cable bills, who are serving prison sentences. Farmers who didn’t respond to the order to root out ragweed are serving sentences. There’s no room for long-term prison sentences.

Last night on Vračar a well-known lawyer’s Jeep was blown up; this morning a bank guard was killed in Čukarica…

In Senjak this morning they found the lifeless body of a sixteen-year-old girl, on Zvezdara some teenagers locked a homeless guy in a shaft and left him there to die without food or water…

I can hardly wait to kill someone myself, for the adrenaline to flow through my veins. I’ve been useless for so long, it’s time for me to take my place in society and come back to life a bit. I just have to figure out what criteria the victim must fulfill; I’ve suddenly become conscious that I don’t want to spill just anyone’s blood.

A line of police cars rushes down the bulevar, the sirens wail. They’re simulating a major kidnapping.

“The authorities have a tremendous capacity!” From time to time someone looks at me in an unfriendly way, they probably take my words as a provocation. Then I start shouting with all my strength, and I myself marvel at my throat’s power. “While you were all sleeping, I guarded you!” After I shout that, one turns his head away and picks up his pace — an airplane wouldn’t be able to catch up to him, he’s so fast.

Do you remember, Peppy, how our own fighter planes accidentally bombed us, the volunteers, as soon as we crossed into Croatian territory? It happens, the commander explained to us later. The important thing was that we suffered no casualties, only that fat guy with the crossed bullet belts lost some of his hearing from the explosion. But in any case, he died in the first skirmish after that. What would good hearing do for him in the grave?

I recognized her immediately, even though this time her hair was blond with some multicolored streaks. She still wore a ring in her nostril. She stopped near me and squatted so she could look over Kombucha’s books. Her T-shirt pulled upward and on her back, just above her butt, she had a big tattoo, a five-pointed star with a hammer and sickle in the center.

The pimply teenagers were standing behind Ira, they were her bodyguards. I called them Tom and Jerry, after the cartoon characters. I wondered whether I should consider killing one of them. But I quickly rejected that idea. I didn’t want to separate them, and I considered it too much to kill both of them. It’s not good to overdo things, nor to throw your weight around unnecessarily. One dead person is quite enough, it would satisfy my requirements. Besides that, I sensed that they didn’t fulfill my requisite criteria for a victim.

Kombucha stopped playing his guitar and started chatting with Ira. I felt jealous, as if that tiny girl belonged to me. I could hardly restrain myself from interrupting them and acting ignorant. Ira was delighted when she saw a Kropotkin book and an issue of a literary journal devoted to Bakunin.