Belgrade Noir

I have an unusual tomcat. This cat has proven to have seven lives. In his first life, while with me, he caught four mice. He butchered all four and threw them at my feet to show off. Then he died. I kindly ask the owner in a distant future, with whom my cat now lives his seventh life, to take good care of him, and closely watch his movements. In his first life, my cat had his own little house. In his seventh life, he certainly also has one. I propose that I, the cat’s owner from his first life, and the unknown owner from his seventh life, sneak into his little house and ambush him.

Initially, the night editor didn’t want to accept the ad. He dismissed the text as gibberish. Had he not been a well-known detective, moreover a relative of the frightening Sergei Golubjev of the Special Police, the night editor would surely not have run the ad. But he had to. The typesetters were laughing while piling the letters into their short rows.

“A cat who has a little house.”

“Owners to move into the house and ambush the cat.”

“Ha-ha.”

But Miodrag Mika Golubjev knew what he was doing. He pictured his colleague of the distant future reading the ad. By then, Germany would have certainly won on all fronts. The new Europe would have emerged. Hitler would have died long ago and his successors would have since taken turns as führer, serving a monarchy called “Hitler.” Berlin, now called Germania, would have become the city of all cities — a megalopolis covering larger portions of Germany and Austria, boasting uninterrupted boulevards along which hundreds of kilometers of impressive structures would stand. Gazillions of people would wait their turn for years to see Germania; the luckiest would win it through a lottery.

Certainly, all of this was not apparent in 2019, but a paper yellows with time.

It took three weeks for detective Jovićević at the Majke Jevrosime Street police station to stumble upon the ad in Opštinske Novine from 1942. Actually, this was the work of a clerk at the National Library who reprinted this unusual ad in the September 11, 2019, issue of the daily paper Politika.

It didn’t take Slobodan Jovićević long to figure out that this was like a message in a bottle, floating for three-quarters of a century until he had discovered it. He had to hurry though.

In 2019, he already had evidence: seven mice caught. The theater canceled performances of The Lower Depths, Electra, and The Balkan Spy, stating that the cancellations were due to “actors’ illnesses” (incurable, one should say). As a result, the number of people murdered by Dr. Hetzel, alias Sweeney Todd, rose to eleven, including the four corpses of 1942.

What could Detective Jovićević do? He rushed to the boiler room, stocked up on food and water, and settled in. He didn’t bathe, so what? Policemen do not like water, anyway. He also had rotten teeth. A cavity in his upper molar bothered him, so what? It didn’t smell too bad. The stench of fuel dominated the boiler room, anyway.

Detective Jovićević waited for more than a week. In darkness. In silence. Alone. Eating the last remnants of food prepared by the loyal officer’s wife.

On the ninth day, he heard echoes of footsteps. At first from afar, but then ever closer.

I don’t understand. I can’t believe my eyes. I am opening the door to the boiler room on the 1942 side, but, instead of the street, in front of me is the boiler room of 2019, with a detective tapping a stick against the metal pipes and pulling out a gun. I turn around — breathless and distraught — again I pass through the door of 2019 and back again, yet there in 1942 stands another detective, the Toothpick, clanking some chains. Both men want to see me finished, without judge and jury — me, the god of the National Theater, who has selectively killed only talentless actors. In desperation, I turn and run to the wall. I think: better to bust my own head than allow them to catch me in either 1942 or 2019. And what ensues: instead of shattering my skull, I fall into the wall — simply fall through it. I smell mortar in my nostrils, brick dust in my lungs. I realize that I’ll remain a part of that wall forever and no justice will ever reach me, yet there is no exit.