You. Zoran Drvenkar

TAJA

      You don’t exist anymore. When you move, the air around you is still. Not a breeze. You speak, and silence replies. You’re there, without being there. And even though you don’t believe it right now, it’s a pleasure to meet you at last. You’re always present in the thoughts of your girls, but we’ve learned as little about you so far as if you didn’t really exist.

      Don’t worry, you don’t need to talk, you don’t need to think or, for a while, exist, we’ll find out everything about you anyway. Why you became a shadow, why you don’t want to exist anymore. Invisible. We’ll open a window into your life and let the light in, and we’ll shake you awake until you scream with fury. But there’s time for that, that comes later.

      The table in front of you is vertical, but nothing’s falling off it. Not the glasses, not the magazines or the ripped bag of powder. Even the hand-knitted tea cozy doesn’t move. Every time you look at it you wonder where the teapot’s gone and how small you have to be to live in a tea cozy. Between sleeping and waking you see your phone vibrating, it quivers from left to right before freezing again. The walls stay horizontal, the light comes, the light goes.

      Your nose runs all the time, sometimes it’s blood, but mostly it’s just snot. You smell urine and the acrid smell of vomit. But that’s nothing compared to the stench coming from the kitchen. You shut the door because you thought it would help. Closed doors don’t keep out flies. They come through the cracks, they come from all around and make straight for the kitchen. They’re everywhere. You don’t want to think about it. You take a sip of water, and a few seconds later it’s as if you hadn’t drunk anything. You wish it would rain. Your mouth is so dry that you’re wishing it would rain in the middle of the room. You don’t have the strength to sit up, you can’t even stretch out your arm to reach for the edge of the table. You try, and you think you can hear the sinews in your arm creaking. Your fingertips touch the edge of the table. You give up exhausted, you pull back your arm and fall asleep again.

      You believe in time. You pray to time and hope it hears you. Just a bit, go back just a bit, you think and know how absurd the idea is.

       Still …

      Sometimes you stare at the clock above the fireplace, at your dad’s awards. Platinum—gold—gold—platinum—gold. And in between the clock, like a special prize for …

       Nothing?

      You concentrate. Sometimes you manage to make the hand of the clock pause. It lingers. That’s all you can do, whatever you try, the hand never moves backward. It’s like arm-wrestling with the world champion arm wrestler. Eventually there’s no juice behind your will, and the hand unfreezes and ticks on a bit.

      And another bit.

      And another.

      And time is time again and laughs at you in seconds and minutes and hours. You hate it for that. At the same time you yearn for it. You can’t be without it, and you want it to disappear forever.

      Time is your new religion.

      Sleep is traveling inside your head. No packing, no waiting, just being there. And that’s what your There looks like: a house on a cliff, water below you, sky above you. You’re sitting by a fjord. Even though you have no memory of the place, you know: I was born here. It’s a gray day. Snow falls and turns the valley walls into Japanese ink drawings. An icy wind scratches over the water. That’s where you are, that’s where you want to be. On a terrace, wrapped up in several blankets, on your right a table with a cup of tea, in the background the silence of the house. You pick up the cup, you feel the heat of the tea through the china, your palms warm up.

      There’s nothing more, nothing more is needed.

      You wake with your face buried in the sofa cushion and sneeze twice. Blood drifts down onto the pillow like a fine mist, you feel dizzy and lay your head back so that the blood flows down your throat like a gentle lava flow, feeding and warming you. Everything in your body hurts and throbs. Your thoughts are sore. Your hand claws onto the back of the sofa, you inch your way into a sitting position. The table turns horizontal, the walls vertical and your legs tremble, even though you’re not standing. You set your feet down on the floor and try to get the shaking under control. You stay like that for a while. Your face in your hands, the trembling in your legs. You look between your fingers at the powder and feel the stinging in your nose like far-off longing. You know what will ease the pain and let you sleep again. It’s as simple as that. As if the thought has reached your legs, they stop shaking. You lean forward, pick up the teaspoon, and stick it into the plastic bag. You scatter the powder on the tabletop and use one of the brightly colored straws. It doesn’t take long, it hurts and your senses greet the bitterness of the drug with jubilation, then you feel like retching, you fight it and fight it and sink back, draw your knees up to your chest and become a warm, pulsating ball.

       … at last …

      Sleep.

      This time it’s a different There. You’re not at the fjord, you’re with your friends, time has been merciful and taken you along. In reverse. It’s right after school, you know the day and the year and it’s reassuring, because you also know what’s going to happen. It’s absolutely certain. And right now you would give your soul for a little certainty.

      You’re in a freeze-frame. Your girlfriends are frozen in that moment that has already been and will never be again. You’re sitting in Ruth’s room. You know that Coldplay’s first CD is going to play through the speakers at any moment. Ruth has all their albums, but is only allowed to put on this one, because you’ve decided that Parachutes is authentic and everything else is just homespun pop for teenyboppers. Whatever you are, you’ve never been teenyboppers. Or as Nessi once put it: We’re far too old to be young.

      You’re lying stretched out on the floor with your head in Schnappi’s lap. Above you is the moss-green ceiling that you painted together; sometimes flakes fall down on your heads because you had to go and apply the paint too thickly. Schnappi looks at you like a photograph that only comes to life when you let it.

       Soon.

      It’s autumn, it’s a good nine months ago. Your hair was long at the time, then before Christmas you went to the hairdresser and for the next few months your girls called you Frenchie. Yes, your hair has grown since then, but you keep it short because you’ve always thought it ridiculous that you’ve all got the same hairdo. Long, long, long.

      Schnappi with her hair that’s like black silk, Ruth and her blond fringe with which she tries in vain to hide the pimples on her forehead, Stink who’s dyed her mane dark red as long as you’ve known her, and Nessi who looks like an angel and makes you sigh every time she piles up her golden hair and shows her neck. It was a good step on your part to change your hairstyle.

       In a minute.

      Ruth sits cross-legged on the bed with a magazine in her lap, she’s flicking through it, her tongue peeps out between her lips. Stink sits opposite her on the windowsill with a cigarette in her hand, even though smoking’s forbidden at Ruth’s house, but Stink can’t help it. You remember she actually squeezed out a tear when Ruth told her she couldn’t smoke. Stink is no smoker, but on the other hand she doesn’t like anyone telling her she can’t do something.

      You know what she’s going to say next. She’s going to ask you what’s so funny about her not wanting to have anything more to do with that guy. You know your reaction, too. All thoughts and words are still frozen. Cigarette smoke floats like a charcoal line in the air.

      You breathe out.

       Now.

      “… so funny about it?” Stink asks defiantly. “Axel’s an idiot, do I look like someone who wants to be with an idiot?”

      “For three months now,” says Ruth.

      “That was never three months!”