www.DrazanGunjaca.net

CHAPTER I

The gloomy, boring autumn rain was doggedly watering the dilapidated roofs of the old part of the city of Pula [1] that 1991, while I drearily looked through the window of my apartment in the attic, trying to pick out something in the twilight that would lift me from my lethargy, that would give some kind of meaning to the evening. All in vain! If ever you feel that time stands still, then it is on such rainy autumn evenings, particularly if you are alone, as I was. I had turned off the television, trying not to insult the little common sense that had remained to me after all these years, and especially after the events of the past few months. How can a normal man watch some foreign comedy series, which continue to alternate with reports from the front lines, series with characters and plots that at this moment had not a single thing in common with the events hanging over this Balkan region, where the talk was only of war, hatred, pain, suffering, and everything else accompanying with such social events intrinsic to these regions. In any case, how could you concentrate on the story of such a series when just at the funniest moment (at least as could be concluded from the canned laughter of a crowd, as if they were actually following the series), a banner appeared on the screen announcing something like air raid warnings or general war threats have been declared for Karlovac, Gospic (sorry, wrong, for Gospic it is given only once a day, as it usually doesn't cease there at all), and other towns in this most beautiful country on earth, at the moment at war. Admittedly, in this fairy tale country a state of war has not yet been declared (if it will ever be declared), but this is no obstacle to the daily destruction of everything and the killing of all that the "liberators" get their hands on. Luckily, for who knows what reason, Pula had so far been spared destruction (probably thanks only to divine providence, and in terms of human merit for this, probably after this undeclared war a sufficient number of those who saved the city from this evil will make themselves known, as if they had not existed, naturally, we or rather the city would not be here).

Never mind, let them leave it alone, let them not destroy it, and as to who will hand out and receive kudos for the worthy, well, will that matter to anyone then? Presumably not!I put on some old Pink Floyd and poured myself a brandy. French, a cheap variety of "Napoleon" cognac. It at least looks good, and I don't drink it straight anyway, so I am hardly fit to judge. An ideal night for a little contemplation of the past, and naturally, this has to be accompanied by alcohol, as who in the Balkans can think in a completely sober state about their own past, or God forbid, about the meaningfulness of the future. In fact, it is now several years since I have stopped drinking, so that the first glass has the same effect as the former fifth, sixth, or who knows which. Depending on the occasion. And I have changed my drink, if it could even be said that I drink anymore, given that the occasional half celebratory glasses that I drink here and there definitely represent an insult to the majority of grown men born anywhere in the Balkans. Oh yes, once I drank vodka, and it could be said in considerable quantities, to say the least. Now I can't even look at this once valued drink, just as I cannot understand how I could even have drunk it, and even less in what adds up to hardly negligible amounts. But this is only part of a problem which can colloquially be placed under the working title: how to understand your own past in a section of it which is now unacceptable for who knows what reasons. Impossible, as the problem lies in present reasons, and not in the past itself. So how can you even consider someone else's past?

That's it! As soon as I reach this state, I begin to be distracted by the sterile lifestyle philosophy of my own everyday existence, which is as fruitless as the majority of my relationships with women. Women! For the first time I remember them this evening. I start out well with them, but finish even quicker. But, more about this later. Women in a state of war are in the background, are they not? Not every evil is bad (come on, try to resist being a male chauvinist when you are given a war as an excuse, even an undeclared one).

Men! Friends! Front line! My God, where are all those various characters now? Nice, wonderful, devoted, corrupt, hypocritical... all types had filed past me during all the years I had spent in the uniform of the Yugoslav Navy, [2] and also after my resignation during the last year from the YN, when I had finally become a "civilian".

Some are dead, in fact several, but they took care of this before the war, with no monuments. I had spent my youth and numerous sleepless nights in the company of Toni. He had slept through one such night; too many drugs for a tired body, a good-bye note that I regularly read once a year, on the anniversary of his death, of course, when I regularly get drunk and cry to myself, with no witnesses and as if at the beginning. As the years go by, I cry even more on that day and think even less of Toni. The only constant is the drinking to mark the occasion.

Aca, short for Alexander, my best man, [3] or in fact I was his best man, is a non-commissioned officer in the Yugoslav Navy, or whatever it is now called. He has a great heart, like his native Vojvodina, [4] and is the only person I know who accepts all the evil of the world with a Buddhistic nonchalance, because, as he says, what the hell, it had to happen, what can you do, forget about it. Even this best man business was nothing to write home about, he got divorced quicker than he married, but we remained best men. As far as he is concerned, I was only his best man, not his wife's, and so the fact of divorce had no effect on the further development of our friendship. I haven't heard from him for days, for months, he is stuck in the barracks at the base and they won't let them out until their ships leave for Montenegro. [5] They can't even phone. Nothing!

Boris, of "mixed blood" from a marriage between a Serb and a Croat, born in Belgrade, uncommitted, no longer belonged anywhere. He had only been in Pula for three years, having signed a contract for a temporary position (this was introduced by the already former armed forces just before the breakup of the country, as an attempt to reorganize and modernize, although in fact it all boiled down to the fact that they no longer had sufficient candidates for the military academies, and thus no later lifetime soldiers; no longer did they have sufficient numbers of those crazy enough or those forced to choose military schooling followed by a lifetime of modelling military uniforms). His parents divorced, he was left to the streets, and found a way out in the army. At least temporarily. Nothing original, but effective, as our new president Frankie would say. [6] And, naturally, such types always glue themselves to me. From the most varied motives, of course.

Dino is teaching sociology somewhere in Slovenia. He exchanged his uniform for a university department. I'm not certain that his choice is exactly perfect, but who can ever understand Slovenians? They are too close to the Austrian border, so that the broad-hearted Slavic soul suffers detrimentally from Germanic influences. But then again, when I think of female members of that nation, somehow it seems to me that they retain some kind of balance with the rest of us, and on average they are nonetheless acceptable. At least the ones that I have met.

Rinnnng! Telephone! Who thought up this damned contraption that as soon as you turn thirty only rings when you least need it? I'll have to get some quieter phone, this one that I have could be used, knock on wood, as an air-raid siren for my entire neighborhood. Never mind that in this part of the old town you can no longer alarm even the rats when you accidentally step on them on the stairs in the early morning, when most of the esteemed inhabitants are sincerely trying to find their own front doors.

"Yeah", I barely muttered into the phone.

"Sima here. Robi, is it you?"

"Sima who?"

"Sima, man, from intelligence. What the hell's the matter with you, don't you recognize my voice?"

"Oh, it's you. Hey, what's up, Simke, how are you doing?"

"Don't fuck around. Listen, I have something very serious to tell you. As a friend. Are we still friends or have you gone over to the other side?"

"The hell with it, Simke, what's the right side?"

"Come on, Robi, you're a normal guy. A little crazy, but an honest man, and I would be unhappy to see you suffer. That's why I'm calling. My lot are farting around with something, you're seriously getting on their nerves, 'cause you're organizing all the paperwork for your Croats that are fleeing from the army, writing some kind of requests, encouraging them, and all that stuff. Okay, what the hell, you were doing that even this summer, and we knew that, but now before they leave, they're going on about it, they probably saw you on television, at some ceremony where the Croatian hymn was played, and you standing to attention and God knows what else. In any case, whatever happens, I told myself I had to call you, tell you to take care these few days. Hell, we drank entire seas of stuff together, it wouldn't be right for me not to tell you."

"Oh my Simke! Fuck it, what can I say? Thanks. Tell your idiots that we trained together, at the same training grounds, and if they want to come, then come. You know what they say in Dalmatia [7] where I come from: you can't kill anyone twice! You know how I like company, and I have no intention of going to heaven alone, so let them come. Who gives a shit for them anyway, how are you doing?"

"Forget it! My wife and kids left for fucking miserable hell, on a boat to Montenegro, with all the furniture, I haven't the faintest where they are. If they survive, and my wife is indestructible, then somehow they'll make their way to Poûarevac, to my parents, and after that who knows. Oh yeah, I already lost all the furniture. You know that horse's ass Mirko from the auxiliary ships. Of course you do. Well, see, he was on the same ship, and somewhere around the island of Vis, just in the middle of the Adriatic, he had a nervous breakdown, and before they packed him into the strait-jacket, he threw half the furniture into the sea. Only at Vis did he figure out that he was leaving Croatia forever, and the guy just snapped. Of course, it stands to reason that the half of the furniture he tossed overboard included mine. But so what. I don't understand half of what is going on today. In fact, I don't understand a thing. But him I understand."

"And you? What are you going to do?"

"Well, I'm going to try to get myself involved in some kind of paperwork, you know the drill, become some kind of desk-jockey, find a way around this shitty war. If I succeed, fine. If not, fuck it. No deal."

"Hey, where are you calling from? You're not at headquarters, are you?"

"Are you nuts? I'm at the apartment of a friend who already left for Serbia, and gave me the keys. I don't know what I need it for, but what the hell. I can't go to my own apartment; who knows who is using it now. You know, we spooks can still manage to get outside for an hour or two. Special commando units from Niö have been sent in, supposedly to guard us from Croatian fascists, and they won't let anyone out. Man, they're crazy, I swear. Kill you like a dog. And when they eliminate you, you're a deserter. Pack you in a suitcase, send you to Serbia, and bury you with full honors. You try to understand it. What a crazy nation."

"Simke, thanks again, and get back safely. I don't want to have you on my conscience."

"Hey, just let me ask something! What was going on with that hymn when you were on television?"

"Nothing. We were organizing an officer's committee."

"What?"

"An officer's meeting"

"What does that mean?"

"Well, its something like the former Union of Veterans of the People's Liberation Army, the partisans, you know. An organization of officers. Officers from all former Croatian armies, from the National Guard, the Ustasha, [8] the partisans, the French legionaries, and even us in the Yugoslav armed forces. They're from all over. Average age of sixty years, no barefoot children. Speaking of the average, even you can join if you want."

"I could? How?"

"Simple. You merely state that you don't give a flying fart for Yugoslavia, that you have always felt like a Croat, but you have just realized this. A bit late, but hell, better late than never. Or you can stay a Serb if it means so much, but you feel that Croatia is your homeland, as in Serbia you have no one except your wife, and children, and the rest of your family, who've given up on you anyway, which is exactly what you could expect of them. Just don't declare yourself a Yugoslav, that a little advanced for this day and age. And being uncommitted in the Balkans has always involved a high risk factor. And, of course, that if necessary you will sacrifice your life for..."

"My ass, I'll sacrifice myself!"

"For the love of God, see the point! Today you can neither be a Serb nor a Croat if you are not prepared to sacrifice your life, so it's all the same. And in any case you're going to lose that crazy head somewhere, but at least you don't have to travel very far. Less expenses."

"You know what? When I think about it a bit more, you Croats are really crazy. You Dalmatians especially. And you in particular."

"Look who's talking. A member of the most reasonable nation on the planet and beyond. In any case, in terms of the television, I didn't even know they were filming until I turned up that evening on the late news. Christ, my legs felt cut off from bravery when I recognized myself, standing so rigidly. I knew that your lot would immediately become interested in my health, so for days already I've been sleeping with a pistol under my pillow."

"What a good way to begin a war of liberation. And why do you hold your hand over your heart when the hymn is playing?"

"I haven't the faintest, just like today I don't know what half the shit was for when I worked for the army."

"Now that's true. Listen, buddy, what can I say? Hold on, keep far away from the battlefield. Don't let them give you some damned commission, you're a goner. You can't avoid the front then. You're trained for all kinds of stuff, so you know you're screwed. Oh, yeah! Listen, I'll tear up your personal file in the command center, and you save yourself from those who know something about you as you best can. In the end, you've been a civilian for quite a while, so they might well leave you in peace. Hey buddy, you hold tight. I could talk to you for hours, but I have to go. I don't know, somehow after this conversation everything seems a bit easier. At least one thing hasn't changed. You are always the same. You know what, who gives a shit, it was nice while it lasted. I'm leaving these days, so if we don't hear from one another again, we'll continue our talk in some other life."

"Absolutely, man. Those of us born in the Balkans are guaranteed a second life, 'cause the first one doesn't count. Written off in advance. Take care!"

"Hey, wait! When you mention the Balkans, I hear that your lot in power claim that Croatia isn't in the Balkans. Where the hell is it then?"

"My dear Simke, your problem is of a double nature. On the one hand, you're an intelligence officer, and according to the nature of your work you shouldn't understand it, and on the other hand, you're a Serb, and in the nature of things you can't understand it. This is a fine distinction between political and geographic concepts, which you will perhaps understand only in another life. Just don't bother asking me if I understand it."

"Ha, ha! I won't ask, and I'm not certain that I will understand in any life. Hey, Robi, do you believe in God? I mean all this stuff about the afterlife, and so forth."

"Hey, man, relax and sneak back into the barracks. You're a disgrace to the entire communist movement. The late Jozo, if he heard you, would be spinning in his grave at Dedinje. [9] Where did all the ideals and stuff disappear?"

"Fuck ideals, you see where they got us. Who in the Balkans can still have any ideals! Here, this can only last from today to tomorrow, but in the long term, no way. Sometimes this short term can be pushed to last forty years, but in the end everything goes strait to hell. But really, do you believe in God or not? I'm asking seriously!"

"My old friend, you have obviously already realized, despite being a spook and a Serb, that there are no unbelievers in war."

"That's what I thought. Now I really have to go. Goodbye, my friend."

"Goodbye!"

The line went dead. I put down the receiver on the telephone and dully stared at it. One more person disappearing from my life. With dignity, at least towards me. Towards others? Who am I to judge for others? And what did he say, that I hadn't changed? My God! He wasn't even aware how much we or all around us had changed. And how can you remain the same at all when everything about you has changed? You can continue to act "yourself" for your surroundings, as you had otherwise done constantly prior to that, just adjusting the grimaces and vocabulary to the new conditions, you can paint over the façade a bit in line with the new winds that are blowing, and that's that. Always the same! How could it be the same? What was I like before, and what am I now? It is unbelievable how little in fact we know one another, you can spend years and years together with someone, and in fact you know nothing.

Momentarily, it again seemed to me that people don't change at all, that everything that we note about them tomorrow, that surprises us, that we didn't expect, we suddenly recognize that it had long ago existed, and just for who knows what reason we had not seen it. They didn't show it, we didn't recognize it, it didn't interest us, it's all the same. Wherever you turn, in the end it turns out that we know nothing about anyone. Starting with ourselves, and working outwards.

If we further place this in the context of the region in which we live, then it is truly hard to say whether this should be called a change in a person or merely a simple adaptation to the conditions with which he is faced, most often independently of his own will, in which each person will cope as he can, where the rules of behavior have not been set in advance, where the only goal is to survive to the next day. And tomorrow we wake (if we awake) exactly where we were, with all those immensely objective social circumstances that directly effect our fate, on which we naturally can have no effect whatsoever. We will either adapt or we won't. It seems to me that the most adaptable living species in the Balkans is human, under the condition that all relevant specimens had been born and grown up here. Other members of the human race, no matter where they come from, have never nor will ever adjust themselves to the Balkans, nor will they ever understand its peoples They cannot understand the strength of our innumerable historical truths, the even more numerous living myths, and the current fallacies that no one is even counting, all of which form such a firm weaving that it is difficult to establish a boundary between them. More exactly, it is impossible. We were born with this, we live through this (whether we want to or not), and one day it seems that all is clear from the very beginnings of the world, and on another day something occurs that no one ever, even in their second thoughts, could think would occur, and the entire cycle is reconsidered from the beginning. And how can you understand it when you live one part of your life according to one truth, a second part of life by a different myth, the third part of your life with a third fallacy, and this is how life passes. You're born under one hymn, live with another, and only God knows with which one you will die. And you try to find, from all these endless international aspiring geniuses now circling through the Balkans and teaching us that it really isn't quite democratic to massacre your neighbors (is it our fault everyone else is so far away and won't come fight us?), even one who will understand this. "Malo morgen" (fat chance), as Slobo put it. [10] You can't find two natives in the entire Balkans that would have even approximately the same viewpoint about such things. It doesn't matter to which nation they belong. And when they don't have common viewpoints, well war is only a different manner of carrying out politics, isn't it?

The hell with it, I'm digressing. As things stand, tonight I could really get drunk for a change, listen to old records, and remember a time when I didn't bother my head with things like this. A time when I thought about things the rest of the world that was not at war thought of, about women, love, parties, hanging out, friendships that seemed as eternal as the youth in which they originated.

Midnight had already passed when I took stock and found that I had drunk almost half the bottle of "Napoleon", and that it had gone to my head. When I started putting on records of homegrown bands, then I knew I was in trouble. I don't listen to them in what could be called a "normal" state. And when I do listen to them, then I start with Oliver, then various other Dalmatian troubadours, and after several hours, I turn to folk songs. I listen on headphones, naturally, as today you can't know when some enlightened type with the wrong provenience will pass by the apartment, hear the music, and shoot. To hell with music accompanied by explosive effects in the near vicinity!

I took off the headphones to change the record, when the doorbell went off. Who knows how long it's been ringing, I think, since while I had the headphones on my ears, the could bomb half of Pula, and I wouldn't hear a thing considering the volume of the music. K-r-r-r-k. I must take this occasion to note that the doorbell has an exceptionally irritating tone, which happened during its mutation from a normal sound into this rattling, which was again a result of my former not highly conscious activities. At least as far as I remember. See, several years ago, in a fit of passion, I spilt it into pieces with a single accidental blow; the next day, when both passion and the hangover had passed, I tried to put it together from parts that I gathered throughout the apartment. Since then, for years halfway put back together, it tries to ring (if such a sound can be described by that verb), each time letting me know that it is on its deathbed and that this is one of its last attempts to tell me that it wasn't guilty for that unhappy blow, and even less for all that went before it. For some unknown reason, I continue to listen to it, although I long ago bought a new bell that waits to be installed. I can't do it. I keep waiting for this one to die by itself, in peace, then maybe my conscience would bother me less. But it won't. I know it won't.

I quickly hopped into my room for the pistol, reloaded the breech, and moved towards the door. I stood to the side and asked who is it.

"It's Aca, for God's sake, open the door. I've been ringing for half an hour. Are you deaf?"

"Aca, is that you?"

"No, it's my dead grandfather. Open the fucking door already."

A million thoughts raced in a moment through my head, which was already ringing from the drink and the too-loud music (when I have to put on headphones, then I crank up the volume). What was Aca doing at the door, in the midnight hour? Maybe they had put pressure on him, maybe the others were there with him, preparing something for me, should I ask him if he's alone... Oh hell, how can I ask Aca if he's alone? Did he come... If I can't trust him, then who can I trust? But then again, why turn up just now, when I haven't heard from him in months? Oh well, what the hell, if I have to lose my head, then let it be poetic, let it be with my best man with whom I have spent half my life. Now I really have gotten combat fatigue. I unlock one of the two locks on the doors, first the old one, then I go on to the other security lock, which I had installed a few months ago at the urging of several friends. This second lock is so complicated that I would always succeed in unlocking it only at the third or fourth attempt, and several times I had already, usually in the early morning hours, drawn a pistol for a quick removal. I still haven't, but thank God, there still is time, I'll take care of it. Finally I succeed in unlocking it and opening the door.

Aca and Boris stood in front of the door, both fairly wet from rain, looking at me like... I don't know how to describe it, so that it wouldn't seem horribly pathetic. It should be mentioned that Aca and a large mountain bear from Lika, [11] in the dark, at a distance of thirty feet, would be hard to distinguish. This must be because his parents had been from Lika, and had only moved to Vojvodina after the second world war. Aca simply flew through the door, fell into my embrace, grabbed me and walloped my back (this is where the bear comparison comes in handy). Boris stood to the side and waited. Well, I thought, he is smaller, maybe I'll live through this, as long as I somehow move this mammoth away. The same ceremony was then repeated with Boris.

"Where the hell have you been, damn it?," thundered Aca in his baritone.

"Here I am, guy, just as always. Where have you been? I've been trying for months to get to you. Are you truly alive?"

"Alive, fuck it, what do you think? You can't get rid of your "godfather" so easily. What the hell is all this on the doors, my God," he asked, staring in wonder at the shafts of the other "security" lock, that extended along the entire door. "Fuck me, you've made a fortress of your apartment. Ha, ha, ha! Hey, this is really good. If someone comes to snuff you, while you unlock all this shit, they'll give up. No one would have the nerves to wait until you unlocked all this stuff. What idiot talked you into this?"

"I can see that all those drinks still didn't succeed in totally destroying your powers of observation," I laughed, noting his reaction to my lock.

"Speaking of drinks, what can you offer us?," he asked. "I'm as dry as gunpowder, and you know that I'm not really at home in such a state."

"Napoleon brandy, on the table".

"Well, well, we're going French. That sounds good."

Aca went into the kitchen, took two glasses, for himself and Boris, and returned to the table. I discreetly hid the pistol in the drawer of a chest next to the door, so they can't see it, and joined them at the table. Boris was still standing to the side and holding his tongue. He was unnaturally pale and looked as if he would start to weep at any moment.

"What's with you, why are you so frozen?," I asked him.

"Nothing," he forced out.

"Jesus, they almost took us out when we were getting over the barracks walls," Aca jumped in. "Those crazy special forces troops. The kid almost peed in his pants."

"I pissing myself from fear?," yelped Boris, and finally he also sat down at the table where Aca had already lifted a glass. "You were the one howling on the wall like some wounded animal, and not me! For God's sake, they must have heard you all the way to the Arena, [12] you were yelling so much, not to mention those fools at the watchtower three hundred feet away."

"Naturally, you idiot, when my balls were caught on the barbed wire on the wall, and you were on the other side of the wall pulling on my leg like crazy," returned Aca. "Imagine, my friend, this Serbian tragedy. I am hanging on the wire, my left ball halfway punctured, fellow Serbs shooting at me, and all of this so that I could see my Croatian best man. And this Yugoslavian fool is hanging on my leg, and tugging on it, tugging. And shouting at me to get down, as if my greatest wish was to remain on the fence to the end of my life. And how could I get down until I had released myself from the wire. And how could I release myself when this fool was pulling my leg down and not letting go. And as he was pulling down, I was roaring with pain from the bottom of my heart. I cursed the mother that birthed this cretin, and all his other relatives, which is surely normal in such a situation, I shout for him to let go of my leg, but hell no, he doesn't care. He keeps on pulling like a horse in a yoke."

"And how does this Serbian tragedy end, for God's sake?," I asked.

"Elegantly," answered Aca. "The trousers split, half my leg was sliced, blood dripping off my big toe, and I haven't yet taken a look at my ball. Something probably remained of it. From the barracks to here, I've been giving it a wide circle while I walk."

"We almost lost our heads because of your seventy pounds extra weight," Boris added half maliciously, who had quickly drank his first glass and poured another. "And in terms of walking, thanks to your inbuilt elegance, no real difference could be noted."

"You shut up. I've been totally fed up with you these past few months", complained Aca.

"Okay, fine, let me see what you left on the wire, and what you brought with you," I told Aca.

Aca got up and showed his leg. Truly his left leg was all ripped up, and traces of blood could be seen everywhere on the trousers. I had at first thought that this was all a joke, or at least that everything had been exaggerated, to cheer me up and get me in the mood, as he had always done. He accepted everything in life with a dose of healthy humor, always in this manner watering down reality, making it somehow more acceptable to himself and others. His motto was that it can never be so bad that it can't be worse, and if this is the way it is, "...fuck it, we should live with what we have". And for this reason he was accepted by everyone, including me, from the first days of long ago 1974, when me met for the first time in the military school in Split. However, judging from the traces of blood, this time he had really fixed himself.

"Come on ,man, let's put some alcohol on that, so it doesn't get infected."

"Forget it, we came to see you, then we're off."

"Stop talking nonsense. Come over here. I have some moonshine. [13] Put it where you cut yourself."

I pulled Aca from the living room (which is also the entry hall) to the kitchen, where I had a bottle of some kind of homemade brandy that someone had given me who knows when. Aca took off his trousers, opened the bottle, poured some brandy into his palm, and slapped it onto the cut in his leg. The effect was momentary and shattering. He began literally to jump about the kitchen, while tears of pain ran down his face.

"God damn it!" he yelled. "Where the hell did you get this? You couldn't even use it to wash windows without protective gloves! You can't use it to doctor mutilated deserters! You're warped! I knew that I would perish tonight, but not from brandy! Yow! It burns like hell. Yow!"

"What a hero," threw in Boris from the living room. "For three days you've been convincing me to come, no problem about the bullets, we'll pull through somehow, and now you're wailing about a little brandy."

"Listen, kid," responded Aca, "if you don't pull in that insolent tongue, I'll massage it with this brandy and you can serve as a flame-thrower, which might come in handy for our return."

"You're going back?," I asked, although it was immediately clear that they had broken out of the barracks just because of me, to see me one more time this night. "Why not run away completely, for ever?"

"To hell with for ever," cursed Aca, who was still holding his hand between his legs where he had put the most brandy. "We ran away just to say goodbye to you, no matter what it cost. Tomorrow we sail for the Bay of Kotor. [14] The time has come, we're off, fuck it! What can you do, we have to go."

"Well, how do you intend to get back onto the base? Now when your lot see that you are missing, they'll spread the alarm, and what will you do then?" I asked.

"The hell they'll see," answered Aca, trying to smile. Evidently the first effect of the brandy was wearing off. "The idiots shoot at night at every sound. Even the mice no longer dare to walk by night around the base. If anything moves, the brothers let loose, and the next day they report that Croatian fascists attacked from all sides. Fuck it, the army as usual. You don't really think they know that we've left. No way."

"But did anyone shoot at you," I wondered.

"How should I know," answered Aca in a voice that more and more resembled his usual nonchalant way of speaking, since in the meantime he had recovered from the first shock caused by the medicinal brandy. "They all shoot, mostly at night, so you just guess who has a finger on the trigger."

"Hey, our idiots really eat shit," added Boris. "They shoot every night, and it's only for us. To frighten us. Like there are hordes of Croats everywhere around us, just waiting for us to peep out so they can slaughter us. In fact, they are trying to frighten the few of us who are still left so that we don't run away. Nothing more."

"All the same you were shitting yourself from the barracks to here," laughed Aca. "Man, his eyes were as big as pumpkins. He just stared all around and sputtered."

"Hey, it's reasonable to take care," returned Boris, slightly insulted. "How do I know what fools are walking around and what film is playing in their head. We had to escape in uniform, so we changed to civilian clothing in some woods there by the wall. After that it was easier."

"And then when we met those three guys," Aca reminded him. "Good evening, boys, how's it going? And then putting on an Istrian accent. Jesus Christ, you don't even know Serbian that well, much less Istrian."

"What a fool you are," returned Boris. "What was I supposed to say? That I'm an officer of the Yugoslav Army who has just run away from the barracks with another idiot so we can breath some fresh air, huh? You people from Vojvodina are truly screwed, it must be from the endless plains and the monotony, immediately after birth you fall into nirvana and you spend the rest of your life partying. Hey, fuck you and this subject, listen Robi, do you have that Prljavo Kazaliöte [Dirty Theater] tape, with the song "Ruûica" [Rosie] so I can hear it." [15]

"Damn you and your Rosie to hell and back. A few days ago the idiot got drunk, took a tape with that song on it, and let loose full blast. You can imagine in the middle of the barracks when that song started, when it got to that bit about "the last rose of Croatia", or however it goes. Everyone came running, and Boris OTEFTERIO the tape player, drunk as a skunk and crying like a rainy year. I barely got the idiot off. I had to bring them his birth certificate so they could see that his mother is named Rose, that he was crying about her, that he had heard that she was very ill, otherwise he would have gone to fucking hell along with the tape! Imagine what would have happened had his mother not been named Rose [Ruûa]. Even God wouldn't be able to save him. And then, drunk as he was, he started going on about you, about friendship, about brotherhood. What can I tell you, the shit was on its way to the fan!"

"Oh, and you didn't cry, right?," Boris interjected.

"Sure I did, but when all of the others had left," Aca answered. "You fool, they don't understand a thing, they've been stuffed full of stories about horrid Ustasha, and they are merely waiting to find someone to slaughter. And homegrown traitors are the tastiest."

"And later you wanted to kill yourself," continued Boris.

"Because of you, you idiot! If I had had any intention of snuffing myself for personal reasons, I would have done it long ago, and not wait for this crappy time," Aca snapped at Boris. "Fuck it, before dawn, ground to air control, I was so wasted that I didn't know my own name," Aca continued in a small voice, as if he were speaking of something that embarrassed him. "And this idiot constantly was playing with his pistol and going on about how it would be most honest if we shot ourselves and solved everything in this manner. Non-stop he kept on yelping in my ear that we had remained without a land, without friends, without a life, that we couldn't even go into town to get a drink, to see you, to see some bimbo he became infatuated with before this shit began. Man, everybody watches the fucking television, they're shooting everywhere, and he falls head over heels in some forest at Stoja, for that girl from Umag, you remember his girl because of whom we couldn't walk around at night in case we ran into her, from fear that our hearts would stop, hey well, she was a winner compared to this one. And at such times, I see red, and when this cretin for the hundredth time mentioned that girl from Stoja, I grabbed his pistol and said to myself, that's it, fuck this kind of life. I simply couldn't bear it any more."

"And what else?," I asked, as Aca had stopped.

"Nothing," replied Boris, "I took back the pistol and then we continued in a duet to drink and cry till the morning. The next day we slept all day, and in the evening we got drunk again. The day before yesterday we slept again...shall I continue?"

"No need, I got the idea," I replied. "And when did you sober up?"

"The day before yesterday was the first day," Aca peacefully replied. "We had to plan our escape from the base, so we got ourselves a bit in order. We paid a bit of attention to the behavior of these new heroes that had arrived from Serbia, where they go, and so forth, and we concluded that they are shitting from fear ten times more than we are. And then this Yugo-strategist chose what was to be the easiest place to cross the fence, and you see how I came through."

In the meantime, Boris had found the tape he was looking for, and the sounds of Dirty Theater and their song filled the apartment.

"Hey, strategist! Just don't start crying again," Aca told Boris.

"Fuck off," Boris replied.

"Home upbringing in the Serbian way, Belgrade section," was Aca's peaceful comment. "Forget him! Listen, my friend, we came to say our farewells to you. I arranged with this idiot here for there to be no mention of any political shit, no convincing, we went through all that a month or two ago, when we last saw each other. That's the screwed nature of life in the Balkans, the time comes when everyone has to take their own path, what can you do? We should just say our farewells as men, as close friends who have gone through half of life together. Tonight fuck the army, the state, the nation, here it is just us and the last fifteen years together. I don't care if you are a Croat, an Eskimo, or a Frenchman, you are my friend and best man with whom I have spent the finest days of my life, and I want to bid farewell to you as a man, so that I can say to your face before I leave: "Man, I love you, you're my best friend in the world, and I shall never forget you." And if there is a God, then this crap will finish, we will again meet, as friends, as best men, and not as members of this or that nation. And then let us drink to this, as friends! You agree?"

"Yes, I agree," I force out between my teeth, while my throat tightened. I drained my glass of cognac, so I wouldn't cry. "I agree, although..."

"Although you have to tell me I'm making a mistake, that I should remain here, and so forth. Don't start from the beginning, I beg you! You know that my marriage fell apart quicker than it was put together, that the bitch left Croatia last year with my child, and my aged and sick parents are alone in Vojvodina, and that no one wants to see me here for at least the next several light years. And if anyone did care, they couldn't show it, because they would also be screwed, leading to the same fucking end! Who would dare to hire me when they heard my name? What would I live from? I could get citizenship here easier if I had came from some UFO than from Serbia. Fuck it, that's the truth. This poor bastard," Aca looked at Boris, "what can he do? He's only been two or three years here, no apartment, no job, no nothing! No choice exists, it's only a question of how many bottles you need to become reconciled to it."

"If bottles are your measure, you won't be reconciled until death," shot in Boris, who had already played the same song three times.

"This kid has gone completely to hell since you left the army," Aca complained. "And in the last three months he has aged thirty years. Even my late grandfather Marko had more lust for life than him."

"Your grandfather didn't exactly have a Serbian name," Boris spat.

"See that?," Aca looked at me. "The kid has become walking poison. The Chetniks [16] that have been sent to guard us are going to kill him. They already call him little Yugoslav."

"Screw them," retorted Boris. "Chetniks slaughtered my grandfather in World War II, so why should they love me now?"

"Hey, hey," I broke in. "Listen, buddies, let's get it straight. I have another bottle or two of cognac. Some woman brought them a month or two ago, she found them on sale."

"See, you idiot," Aca grinned at Boris. "This is the kind of woman you have to find, and not your scorpion from Stoja."

"Now that's really enough!," I again broke in, seeing that Boris intended to answer in the same style. "You, Boris, have always played disk-jockey at my place, so you can do it now. Screw Chetniks, women, scorpions, and other charming life-forms of this planet! We will listen to music, drink, and talk about the old days. And speaking of the old days, Aca, do you ever think of Toni? I was thinking a bit of him before you came, he seems to come to mind frequently these days."

"Me, too," answered Aca in a quiet voice. "I often think that he's the only one that left in time, while it was still worth it to leave. The most important thing in life is to leave on time. Now there's no more leaving, just running. Jesus Christ, you can't even kill yourself, and have someone notice it. Who gives a shit. The two of us cried more for Toni than everyone together will for us, if we get screwed in this crazy war. Statistics, as our crazy generals say. If one dies, that's news, if a hundred thousand die, that's statistics. Toni was news, and we'll be statistics. Fucking Balkan statistics."

"This fool has already buried us," Boris noted. "Robi will survive, as he isn't crazy enough to put on a uniform again when he succeeded in getting rid of it on time. Me, too. As soon as we get to Montenegro, I will go to visit my sick mother in Belgrade, and then, hop, over the border. I have some contacts from earlier, some relatives in Germany, and whoever wants to go to war, good luck. I'm not going to shoot at anyone. I don't give a fuck, I didn't create this state, so why should I try to save it? And you," he turned to Aca. "You will certainly give up the ghost. Without a bullet, of course. Fuck it, how can someone with that many extra pounds and such agility survive any war?"

"I'm gonna kill him, I swear on my mother's grave," muttered Aca, looking askance at Boris.

"Leave him be! What about the others that stayed on the ships?"

"Hell, who stayed," answered Aca. "Everyone ran. Tomorrow a tug is coming to tow us, 'cause we don't have enough people to sail the ship. The older ones have already escaped, people have families here, they've spent their whole lives in Pula, no one even knows them anymore in Serbia, and where are they supposed to go? They all ran off from the base. Your lot slipped off earlier. All that has remained is a couple of screwed up cases, we who have nowhere to go, and are all calculating how to strip off the uniform as soon as we go south, to the Bay of Kotor. Man, who am I supposed to fight with? Who am I to shoot at, damn it to hell! At people I have spent half my life with? Then again, on the other hand, as I tell this young fool, if we see the shit start flying, it's better we stay in the navy, playing the fools aboard the boats until the war passes, better than that we take off the uniforms, they catch us, mobilize us, and we end up on the front lines, and then we're really screwed. Go ahead, try to be clever now. We'll see when we meet in hell how things worked out. Sajo offed himself, you know that."

"Safet!," I exclaimed. "When? How? I hadn't heard!"

"You don't know," for a moment Aca looked at me in wonder. "Oh hell, how were you to know? A piece of stupidity squared. One night we all got seriously drunk, he went to his cabin, put on that Bosnian folk song "Don't Rattle with Your Clogs", [17] some idiot came by from the new (Serbian) guys, said something like, go to Bosnia if you want to hear that shit, he pulled out his gun, that big pistol, placed it against the forehead of the music critic, and forced him to listen to the song twice in a row and sing along with him. The idiot shat himself. And then we arrived. Come on, Sajo, calm down, all that stuff. Sajo put on the "Clogs" song for the third time, and somewhere in the bit about the old mother, he turned the pistol around and blew his head off. God, what a horror. Blood everywhere, we were all in shock. The next day his remains were packed and taken off. We don't even know where."

"Poor Sajo." I could barely get it out. I knew the man quite well. In his forties, he drank a bit, always cheerful, marriage problems. Déjà vu. I was really sorry about him. He was dear to me in a way. I wasn't particularly close to him, we were from different generations, but we had known each other for years. And worked together. Damn! What a fate!.

"What are you going to do?" Aca awoke me with his question. He had evidently already come to terms with Sajo's fate, and didn't attach that much importance to it. "Have your lot caught you?"

"Nothing yet," I answered. "I don't know what to tell you."

"Nothing, let it be," Aca responded quickly, evidently not wanting to dwell on the subject. "Whatever has to be will come to pass. Hand over that drink, blockhead," he called to Boris. "Man, this human sponge recently has been drinking alcohol at the speed of light. If he keeps on this way, soon he'll be able to fly, 'cause his liver will resemble a wing, it's been developing so much recently. If you aren't careful, there's no chance to get wobbly next to him. Fuck him! You know what, Robi, all day long I've been thinking of what I want to say to you tonight, and now I have nothing to say. I simply don't know what to say."

"Well then, try to shut up," cracked Boris.

"Truly, I don't know what to say," continued Aca, ignoring Boris' heckling. "Probably we've already said everything through all these years. Well, cheers, long life to you..."

It was somewhere around four in the morning when we finally drank the third and last bottle to the end (I comforted myself with the thought that the bottles were fifths, not quarts, so it didn't seem so terrible; and in fact, in comparison to those two, I hardly stood out in consumption). The cognac disappeared, and Boris wanted to continue with the brandy used for disinfecting Aca, which the latter, having learned from his earlier experience, refused with indignation, declaring he was not a war criminal that he needed to be punished in that manner, and that he was hardly imperiled enough to drink that poison.

Aca and I retold events from the past for hours. Boris tuned out (he hadn't been with us then on the boat in any case), put on the earphones and listed to Dirty Theater for probably the hundredth time, with his head turned towards the window, so that I don't know whether he was crying or not, as I couldn't see, but Aca whispered several times to let him be, let him cry if he wanted to, who knows when he will hear it again. Maybe never, as one morning he had thrown all his tapes into the sea, even the one with that song. And only God knew what awaited him in the future, as he was not as strongly tied to the navy as Aca, and they could transfer him wherever they wanted according to his contract. Boris truly worshipped his mother, a woman from Dalmatia who one sultry summer became attached to his father, who later took her to Belgrade and left her with two young children. His mother Rose had raised him and his younger brother, working day and night in some firm in Belgrade, so when this song first came out, he had become inseparably attached to it. And this was truly because of his mother, but try to tell that today to some commando from southern Serbia who had just arrived a day or so ago in Pula. Since God had made him obstinate and hot-headed, I could easily imagine all the trouble he could get into. As Aca said, the idiot commandos cannot understand that he will listen to this song even if it costs him his head. Given that I myself was a child of divorced parents, I could easily understand Boris, and a firm friendship was quickly formed, interwoven with shared nights, drinks, women, stories, understanding. The majority of Belgradians (at least those that I knew, and I knew quite a few) have a weak spot for people from Dalmatia. For some inexplicable reason, they like Dalmatians, probably because of the temperament, the Mediterranean madness, the unpredictability, who knows what. As soon as they spot you, they usurp you, and you cannot get rid of them anymore. And this was especially true of Boris, who was half Dalmatian himself. He often said that the only happy memories from his childhood were tied to the rare visits to his mother's relatives in Dalmatia. Ah yes, of course, I am talking about a state before the war. A state when at five in the morning an entire chorus in Skadarlija [18] sang "Marjane, Marjane" [19] (in fact, thanks to me and a bet, as none of the musicians there wished to believe that a Dalmatian could play the music for a specific Serbian wheel dance, and on the bass guitar, too. You learn all kinds of things in the armed forces.) With relentless drinking, of course. Now! I don't know. Now there probably only exist Serbs and Croats, Belgradians, Dalmatians and other ians, the latter a little different from other different ones, they will perhaps pop up a year or so after the war. Perhaps! Until then, some of them will preserve in their memory some of this, and see what will happen after the war. Depending on what each of them goes though in this war.

"Robi, it's time, we have to go," said Aca, stammering a bit from the drink.

"Hey, Robi," Boris appeared. "Before we go, take your guitar and sing "I Grew Up Next to the Danube" [20] for this fool. He's been pestering me for days that he has to hear this one more time, how you sing it for him, no matter what happens,"

"Really?" I glanced at Aca.

"Fuck it," sighed Aca. "I would like to hear you sing it one more time, but better not. Someone could hear, and you'd be screwed. Or if you can, sing it quietly, sotto voce, soulfully."

"Oh the hell with it. Anything goes. No one lives twice, not even me," I muttered.

I got up from the table, somehow sorting out my heroic legs, I went to get the guitar, I sat next to Aca, and we began to sing quietly.

"I grew up next to the Danube,

Next to the good old fishermen,

I caught carp, I saw off the boats,

And I dreamed wonderful far dreams.

Oh, Danube, Danube, my heart remains with you,

Oh, Danube, my heart remains next to you..."

We finish the song. Our eyes had fogged up from tears, drink, emotions, a bit of everything.

"Sing for this fool kid "Forgive Me Father" by Oliver. For his old man, who's a Serb, he listens to Dalmatian songs, and for his old lady, who's a Dalmatian, he listen to Serbian songs. Completely screwed up, but sing this for him, and then we're off," Aca said quietly.

"Okay," I answered and continued with Oliver and his song.

It was around five in the morning when we got into my Opel, so I could drop them off near the base, and they would then somehow make their way back in. In fact, they didn't want me to drive them, in case someone saw me with them, but I insisted. In any case, I was so drunk that it was all the same to me. Anyone could have seen me at that moment, anything could have happened, everything was anyway beyond logic and reason. Quite simply, on that rainy autumn night, it was all the same. I slowly drove through half-lit, wet, and empty streets towards the base. Aca told me to turn off into a small woods about three hundred yards from the barracks, that they would get out there, and I should go back to my apartment. I turned an stopped. I turned off the engine and the lights. All three of us got out of the car. The rain continued to drizzle relentlessly. We stood under the shelter of some tree, in the dark it looked like a branching pine, but I wasn't sure.

We looked at one another. Then first Aca hugged me, and then Boris. We stood and quietly wept. I don't know how long. Perhaps a minute, perhaps an eternity. Then Aca barely muttered something.

"What did you say," I asked.

"I told the kid let's go. Come on, kid, unglue yourself! Let's go!"

He took Boris by the arm and tugged at him. They disappeared into the dark. I remained. I sat on the hood of the car, lit a cigarette, staring into the dark, into the bushes where they had disappeared. A huge emptiness like a tidal wave spread through my body. It hit at my chest, my head. I lit a second cigarette. The silence was disrupted only by the sound of the rain. Everything looked so absurdly empty. Everything was so senseless. And empty as well, but what hurt was the horrible strength of the absurdity that so easily dominated our fates. I tried to think of something reasonably, to turn, to get back in the car, anything, but it was impossible! I sat on the hood, completely lost, while my mind simply refused to react. Nothing! I simply stared blankly ahead and listened to the rain as it fell. The second cigarette became drenched halfway through. I threw it on the grass, crushed it with my foot, and then uncontrollably I struck the hood with my right fist at full force. A terrible pain went through my entire arm. I sat, falling down next to the car, on the wet grass, put my head in my hands and began to weep aloud.

CHAPTER II

Two days later, I was sitting in the café located on the ground floor of the building where I live. The café is owned by my friend Mario, who had returned to this after a dozen years, using it more for personal purposes and the needs of close friends than for those of other guests. In fact, in terms of appearance and the makeup of the guests, it looked more like a military canteen than the kind of coffee bar usual in this town. Only the two of us were in the bar, as was often the case in the late afternoon hours of this autumn. I had met Mario many years ago, immediately after arriving in Pula, when he was the owner of a sort of boat-café, which would best correspond to the concept of a "whorehouse", if that term could be used publicly in this country. Or the one before it. In terms of the quasi-morality and horror expressed over the appearance of such things, nothing had changed with the establishment of a new state. To the contrary! In these regions, shock was mainly expressed to the present over everything except shooting at our fellow creatures, no matter who they might be (if we ignore the occasional periods when all were brothers, although it seems to me that so as to understand such brotherly love uncharacteristic of the average human being it would be very worthwhile to study the mental status of the creators of such an odd phenomenon). Or it was a stereotype typical for this clime. And if so, then it had become terribly topical in the recent period.

In any case, Mario's business with this boat had fairly quickly entered bankruptcy (which was a logical result of the fact that Mario himself was the most prodigal guest of his own place), had then gotten married, to have that marriage also fail (he did not succeed in adjusting in time, but considered that he very nearly had), and afterwards had gone somewhere in Austria or Germany for several years, where only God knew what he had been working at, and that summer he had finally returned to "help the homeland", as he put it. As a start to "liberation" activities, he had chosen this café, rented it, and hung a large Croatian flag in it (more exactly, he had covered the entire ceiling with it, and as far as I remember, he had to wait an entire month to get it, as it could not be mass produced given its size, instead someone in a moment of inspiration had sewn it according to his wishes). Volunteers leaving for or coming back from the front hung out there, while he was preparing every day to leave himself. He had not yet left, but as far as I knew him, it was just a question of time, as the savings that he had invested a few months ago in the café had almost all been drunk up (what he had drunk himself, or the selected company that gathered after closing time, when only patriotic songs were played, and when, naturally, the alcohol flowed like water, free of charge, of course!), so all the conditions necessary for him to put on a uniform and move to the battlefield were fulfilled. His life was otherwise always lived from today to tomorrow, and the years had simply passed by his mental make-up, not touching it, but they had come into their own in terms of appearance: fairly gray and partly thinning hair, while the numerous lines on his face spoke for themselves. Nonetheless, along with Toni, he was the person with whom I had spent the most time in my early twenties talking about life and its meaning, considering that he had been fairly eloquent and well-read, not to mention his wide experience of life. At least it seemed so to me from my viewpoint at that time.

He poured himself a double tequila, as he had preferred this drink since he came back from abroad, considering that with this he had become partly Europeanized, emphasizing the undoubted difference between tequila and the local rot-gut brandy that he had drunk earlier, at the same time ignoring the fact that its country of origin was far beyond Europe, emphasizing that at the moment in the rest of Europe tequila was momentarily in fashion, and we should definitely follow any positive European trends. Especially if one started from the fact that we are one of the oldest, and, oh yes indeed, on the basis of this one of the most cultured nations in Europe, as he would say, or more accurately repeat what he could have heard at least ten times a day in the media (radio, TV, and similar media). In fact, he listened to them so much that some originality could even be attributed to him in this. Here and there in vain I would point out Krleûa's [21] desire that God should preserve us from Croatian culture and Serbian heroism, and that perhaps it would be more clever to choose some other European trend that was not necessarily tied to hard drink (that is, if all this stuff about tequila was true, about which I expressed my most sincere doubts), but he still remained faithful to his principles. There would be time for other trends, when we free ourselves, become democratic, then we can worry about the other stuff, if we really have to (I added the stuff about having to, as a formality, as it somehow seemed to me that the transition from this to other trends would hardly go so easily, but let the war just be finished and then we will somehow grab onto these new European winds). So much about European trends.

"Do you want some coffee, too?," he asked, shoving a cola across the bar, which was what I had been drinking lately.

"Just a cola. Enough coffee today, I must have drank at least twenty. Even the cola is too much, but I must drink something."

"Hey man, I'm still wondering how you succeeded in stopping drinking! I just can't, and to tell the truth, I don't really have any reason to stop. What for? Everything I had in life I spent on parties and women, now I just have to pay my debt to my country, and I no longer have anything to complain about. If, on the way out, I come across a few blondes under twenty-five, then I have God by the short and curlies. And you? Hey, you screwed up your marriage and all. Two marriages, by what I hear! Way to go! I always thought that you would never be caught, and then two marriages in a row, and you fuck up both of them. What the hell did you need that for?"

"Who knows," I answered noncommittally. "Let me answer you in the order you asked. Hmm. Well, I stopped drinking or mostly stopped because it simply wasn't fun anymore, it bothered me. Really! Naturally, every once in a while, I get stuck in some company, and I tie one on, and then I'm sick for days. You know when you need to stop drinking? You don't know, of course, because you've never stopped. Nor do you intend to in this life. In any case, you need to stop drinking when you awake the next day, falling apart and hung-over, and you physically cannot drink that famous extra glass with which you stabilize yourself, the "fight fire with fire" system, as the proverb goes. And when that happens to you several times in a row, you simply cannot drink."

"Why can't you?" Mario asked worriedly.

"You can't," I answered. "You just can't and that's it!"

"That's really awful," Mario said with understanding. "Brrr!," he shivered, "really awful."

"I'm telling you," I laughed at his worried face. He evidently was thinking what it would be like to find yourself in such an uncomfortable situation. "In terms of parties and women, you know yourself how we lived. To tell the truth, I don't regret a single minute of the past. It seems as if everything we did then had some kind of sense to it. The partying and the women and the drink and everything. It simply goes along with youth. Today! Well, maybe I'm a little tired. I guess I no longer have either the strength or the will for such a life, nor do I think it's possible anymore. At least not in the way we once did it. You simply stop doing something when the beauty of it disappears. Now I live, or I don't live with some woman who luckily isn't here in Pula, in some kind of non-binding relationship; for a time we're together, and then we aren't and that's the way it goes. The only valuable thing that has remained is two children, one from each broken marriage, a son and a daughter, whom I adore, and I hope this is mutual. I have my heirs and what do I need with marriage anymore? I'm joking, but that's almost the way it turns out."

"How did you even get involved in marriage? What were you thinking?"

"The same as you. You tire of life, the lost nights that were exchanged for slept-through days, women whose names after several days you can't remember even if your life depended on it, and you see others around you who live normally, whatever that means. You get bored with waking in strange beds or alone in your own, or in the best case with someone whom you sincerely want to forget before they get out the door. And in such a state, one day you crack and you say to yourself: I can do that, when other people can, I can too."

"That part I know," he cut in.

"No doubt. And then God sends someone who seems different from the others and you say to yourself: that's it! You try, it goes well for a while, a child comes along, and then it just breaks. You cleverly conclude that in fact it was not the real thing, that this was all more tiresome, at least twice as much as what went before, as naturally, in the meantime you had forgotten, repressed, the bad side of what went before, in any case you mostly conclude that you are only physically in a marriage, you don't hear your dear little wife any more, you don't listen, you just nod your head and wait your chance to go out. When you no longer have the strength to nod, you simply go."

"And you went through this twice!," he noted.

"Just in case," I muttered. "That's how to make sure. What's certain is certain. Actually, the first time you think that maybe the mistake was in the choice, in the woman, so you try once more. Then you realize that the problem is in you and not in them, which by the way is a fairly devastating realization, you comprehend that as far as marriage is concerned you are screwed for life, that you don't have sufficient nerves to live together with someone to a copper anniversary, much less a silver, golden, or whatever other anniversaries exist, and that is that."

"You seem to have significantly simplified your philosophy of life in comparison to your youth," he laughed. "Somehow this all sounds too simple, too easy, particularly since I knew you from before. As far as I remember, the majority of your relationships then lasting longer than seven days regularly turned into minor dramas, and you always had at least three answers to every vital question. And now?"

"Well, it seems that all three were wrong," I answered. "You know, when you're young, you always think that you have hundreds of possibilities. As the years pass, one by one they fall away, the choice is ever narrower, and this continues until the choices cease to exist. Some soon, some later. You expect less and less and you hope less. A proportional relationship. And then one day you stop hoping, and it all becomes the same to you, because you simply have nothing left to lose."

"You always have something to lose. Always, the question is just if you are aware of this or not. Especially you. You can't have reached a phase where you have nothing to lose," he said worriedly. "Hey, man, you're only thirty something."

"No, I haven't, naturally, but you are asking me for a slightly more complicated explanation of what happened, or really, what is happening, and so, that's what I'm doing. And I honestly hope that I am not yet near a state where I have nothing to lose, although if you were to ask me at the moment what matters greatly to me, it would be difficult to answer coherently. Except for the children, of course, but fuck it, I don't live their lives, nor they mine, despite all the interweaving and mutual connections of those lives. It seems to me that thanks to super wise decisions in life, I have found myself in the classic position: I know what I don't want, but I don't know what I do want. Well, you need to learn to live with small everyday things, and then everything is easier. At least that is what they all say! If you constantly wait for something major and important to happen to you, you spend your life waiting. And how are you to recognize this major and significant thing if it happens to you, when you don't know what you really want?"

"I don't believe in such major things," he said, pouring another tequila. "First, if something major happened, I am so screwed that I probably wouldn't recognize it if I fell over it. Second, and this derives from the first, it is better that this doesn't happen to me, as I would understand too late, as usual, just like everything else in life that was worth anything, and then nothing would remain but to increase the quantity of tequila, so as to survive and keep on going. Third, which is also of considerable importance, I have already pushed the tequila to a risky point of danger, and thus both first and second are unacceptable."

"Well really, any commentary to your little addition would just seem second rate, so I'll refrain from elaborating the fourth reason," I replied.

"Hell, the times have passed when I could sell delusions to myself. You know I have no gift for trade, and especially such types. In the end you become reconciled, just that's the way it is. But listen, I was thinking in terms of you. You somehow seem relatively normal, and so I think that you would have succeeded had you found the right woman," Mario attempted to console me.

"Which of the words are you singling out?" I asked him, laughing. "The word "relatively" or the word "normal"? Whichever, I agree with you, so I accept that I would have succeeded had a found the "right" one. And what else can I do? Why should I publicly admit that the problem is mine. I don't want to admit that to myself, much less to others. I prefer to wait, like all other mere mortals, for God to surprise them pleasantly for once."

"Then how can you tell me, if you're not prepared to admit it to yourself? What does that mean, you consider telling me to be like talking to a wall, or what?" he asked in a half quarrelsome tone.

"If you say so. Whether or not I told you, it changes nothing, right? It certainly won't have any great effect on you, nor will you wonder whether or not I am right, quite simply you have had quite enough of your own failures, just as you yourself said a bit before. You'll probably forget this conversation as soon as it is over. Am I right?"

"You probably are," he conciliatory muttered.

"There, you see? But if I said that to some eager creatures, for days they would be bothered by this, for God knows what motive. Or perhaps they wouldn't be, perhaps this means nothing to others today, but you must agree that at least it is a highly unusual theme for breaking the ice. But if we start from the point that someone would nonetheless react, and additionally, God forbid, that this would be a female, and that she would get the idea that she was just the one who would finally prove to you that marriage definitely makes sense (with her, of course), then all the possibilities exist for you to start again from the very beginning. And that is the most difficult thing. As time goes by, I need increasing more of it to believe in miracles, and increasingly less of it to be disappointed in them afterwards. Each beginning bewitches you, the seventh heaven is promised, sometimes more and sometimes less, only to have monotony creep in afterwards, unheard, almost stealthily, followed by its logical results in the form of satiety, and suddenly you wake up in the ninth circle of hell... In fact, it is always that beginning that takes you for a ride, leading you to a wrong decision that you later pay off in the form of child support, a division of property, and other similar attractions of post-married life. When this is the way it is, then you at least attempt to live without the latter pleasures. Somehow it seems easier."

"Fuck it," he grumbled, "it seems to me that we all merely float along the path of least resistance. As soon as something isn't to our taste, and hardly anything is, we run for our lives. You know what my ex always said? In marriage, what you give is what you get. And given the amount of effort I put into my marriage, I never got around to taking anything, much less to giving anything. At the end, she called me an emotional cripple and left. Completely rightfully, of course. I could even add a few epithets by myself, but I'm ashamed. Fine, fuck her, it could have been anyone, but if you don't give anything, if you don't make an effort, it's normal that they tell you to fuck off. And then we leave like some kind of victors! Fucking hell," he sighed, "if that's a victory, what does a defeat look like? Listen, this conversation is depressing me, and we long ago knew in advance how we would end up. At least I did. You can try once more, in line with the proverb "third time lucky", although I am not exactly sure that in your case the saying would stand. Maybe the seventh or eighth time, when you would no longer have a choice. Oh, the hell with all this. Hey, do you know that I am leaving for the battlefield shortly?"

"You're a genius," I laughed. "Simply a genius! You know, I have always admired your ability to change a difficult subject for an even worse one. A man can relax talking with you so much that afterwards the entire manufacturing industry of liquor and other means of unwinding wouldn't help. No, I didn't know you were off for the battlefield, but I could assume it."

"Because of what?" he asked suspiciously.

"Just..." I answered vaguely. "I guess you're ready for it. After the many bottles of tequila that you have drunk these months, after the thousandth version of "Jure and Boban", [22] you are ready either for the front or a madhouse. And since the majority of Napoleons and other nut cases have already been let out of the insane asylum for long weekends that they spend on the battlefield, there's no reason for you not to go there, too. Pretty logical, isn't it?"

"Fuck it, it's why I came back," he said. "And I've already pissed away most of the money, so what am I still doing here?"

"You could start charging for drinks, for a change," I noted.

"Oh, you know me," he said resignedly. "How can you charge the boys for a drink when it might be their last one?"

"Stop bullshitting," I muttered between my teeth. "For some of them it isn't their last drink, instead you will have them on your conscience because they became ill at your place, they became lifelong alcoholics. Even God couldn't cure them."

"Oh, who gives a shit," he replied and poured himself another. "You won't have anything? Okay. Listen, I wanted to ask you, but I just can't get a word in edgewise