Belgrade Noir

Miljana is sitting on her folding chair and selling handicrafts. Drago is begging so he can buy rakija, Kombucha is playing Van Morrison. Employees of the university library have been erasing Ira’s graffiti for a whole hour, supervised by their glowering director. I shout: “Vlast je obezbedila ambijent!” Today I’m shouting that the authorities have created a great ambience, and I admit with regret that I’m not capable of killing anyone. I’ve decided not to carry my pistol anymore. I don’t need it. I’ll make peace with my lazy fate, I’ll continue vegetating. I’ll leave the action to other people.

Citizens lynched an old man who had groped a girl on a public bus, robbers broke into an apartment on Banovo Brdo and tortured a whole family until they handed over their jewelry and their life savings…

Today Strongman came to see me and threatened me. He said that not a hair on Ira’s head may be harmed. With his two fists resting one on the other, he mimed the wringing of a goose’s neck.

I didn’t go to the Iron Butterfly concert, I was wondering where Strongman could have gotten the idea that I wanted to kill Ira.

Dear Peppy, my hands are bloody, but I’m not satisfied. I keep feeling that the person I was trying to kill might still be alive. It seems likely that I’ll have to go to the penitentiary.

By the florist’s wall, at the place where Miljana always sits, there was a stone. I bent down, picked it up, and struck Smiley in the head with all my strength. He all but flipped over, along with his wheelchair. His head was completely covered in blood, but he didn’t give up. His body flailed, I could hear wheezing from his throat.

The streetlights were on, cars were racing along the bulevar

. Fortunately, the sidewalks were empty. It was a cold evening, you could sense autumn.

I hit him in the head several more times, but awkwardly. I wanted to pound him in the temple, but I missed, I nailed him in the forehead, the chin… His face turned into a bloody mess, his eye hung out of its socket, but his limbs continued twitching; I also heard that gruesome rattle. The drivers were minding their own business, they didn’t look to the side, but even so I screened Smiley with my body. I had to finish him off as quickly as possible and clear out of this place. I struck him with all my strength, the blood spurted, pieces of bone flew. Smiley fell out of his seat and slid down on the sidewalk, with his back leaning against his wheelchair. Then the chair moved and he lay down on the sidewalk. His body kept on twitching. I kneeled beside his shoulder, took the stone in both hands, and hit him on the head twice. He didn’t go still. I grabbed him around his chest and lifted him, his blood soaking through my clothes and touching my body. It was hot, it seemed that way to me. I put him back in his chair. His head was the wrong shape, he had a black hole in the crown of his skull.

Cars were racing past us, not one slowed down. At the trolley stop across the street several people had gathered. They were watching the tires go by or staring at their cell phones, deep in thought. They didn’t notice anything out of the ordinary, and even if they had they wouldn’t have wanted to get mixed up in things that had nothing to do with them. I held the rock under my jacket and went down a side street, less well lit than the bulevar. Smiley remained sitting and waiting there, dead, for his brother. Blood was flowing out of him and making a black puddle around his wheelchair.

It was inevitable that the night would end like this. Did he want something from me when he approached or did fate draw him to me?

Around ten p.m. he called his brother to come get him. Then he told me nonchalantly that his brother had been in the same unit with me. I looked at him in an unfriendly way, he had to notice that.

Peppy, you know we weren’t in any kind of unit, the officers acted as if they hadn’t even heard of our regiment, never mind seen it in the vicinity of the regular army.

I kept quiet, I didn’t contradict him. Sometimes words aren’t the right means, you have to express yourself in other ways. But Smiley didn’t keep quiet, the devil wouldn’t leave him in peace.

“They called you Peppy,” he said. He wasn’t asking, he didn’t doubt, he concluded.

I saw in his eyes that he wouldn’t believe me if I told him I was a different person.

Black Widow, White Russian

by Muharem Bazdulj

Translated by Jamie Clegg

Palilula

She was beautiful and instantly reminded me of Nastasya Filippovna from Dostoevsky’s The Idiot. She had blond hair and dark eyes. She acted like she was thirty years old and, as it turned out, was exactly that. She looked a bit older than she was, in fact, but not in a bad way. She had a kind of alluring maturity, an aura that said that she hadn’t been a kid for a while. Said her name was Nađa. I wondered what she was doing at my apartment door.