Absolution. Aleš Šteger

must be kidding me. Not that Calvary. I meant Calvary, the hill above the city of Maribor. I thought you were from around here, but I see you know shit about it. I’m scared of Calvary and the power of the Great Orc.’

      ‘What’s the Great Orc?’

      ‘Great Orc, the thirteen guardians of secrets.’ Gram giggles again. ‘What’s so funny this time?’ asks Bely.

      ‘Some people don’t even know they belong to the Orc,’ replies Gram seriously. ‘Most of them don’t know who the other members are. The thirteen of the Great Orc run this city. They run it, but they’re clueless as to the whys and wherefores …’

      Rosa tilts back the bottle, takes a swig and places it back on the newspaper. Her cloudy brown eye hangs at half-mast.

      ‘You know a lot,’ says Bely.

      ‘That was my job, to know a lot. If I hadn’t known a lot I wouldn’t be here today.’

      ‘Namen. Wer sind Sie?’ Rosa cries out.

      ‘I can’t, the Great Orc, they’ll kill me,’ screams Gram, terrified. He begins to tremble, and the oppressive stench of pig emanates from him.

      ‘Don’t worry, we’ll save you,’ says Bely.

      ‘The Great Orc will kill me. No one is powerful enough to escape the Great Orc!’

      ‘Do you believe in absolution?’

      ‘I don’t know what absolution is. What do you mean?’

      ‘It doesn’t matter,’ says Bely. ‘Just keep in mind that you’ll be leaving here absolved. You’ll be alive, and the Great Orc won’t be able to harm you.’

      ‘I’m too old to escape abroad. Besides, there’s nowhere I would be safe.’

      ‘Don’t worry, we know of a place where you’ll be perfectly safe. You won’t have been so safe since the day you were born. Now, just tell me their names.’

      ‘I don’t know all of them. I only know a few.’

      Bely watches the needle on his measuring device. Now and then it swings violently to the left.

      ‘Namen. Wir wollen Namen!’ shouts Rosa. She dips her left glove into the drink stain feeding on the newspaper headlines, text columns and photographs and draws a big circle on the paper.

      Gram lists six names. ‘Tine Mesarič, Dorfler, Laszlo Farkas, Pavel Don Kovač, Anastasia Grin, Magda Ornik.’

      ‘More. We need all thirteen.’

      ‘That’s all I know.’

      The needle on the E-meter leans heavily to the left.

      ‘How can he be lying when he’s in such a deep trance?’ mutters Bely. Rosa pulls a cork out of a bottle with her teeth, spits it out, then tilts the bottle and smashes it against the table so the whisky splashes all over Gram. Gram remains motionless. Vitreous shards lie scattered across the drenched newspaper. Rosa sweeps them off and points at a photograph.

      ‘Ja. Him, too.’

      ‘What do you know about him?’

      ‘Too much. We used to play together as kids. Later on he was my room-mate at cadet school, which I failed to finish because of him. Somebody stole the director’s wallet and slipped it into my locker. We haven’t been able to stand each other since. When he was appointed mayor he tried everything to drive me out of the city. But I’m no easy target. I have my own information, which is why he lets me be now. He knows very well I could harm him or even bring him down.’

      Rosa looks at Adam.

      ‘Is he telling the truth?’ she asks in Slovenian.

      Adam examines the needle and nods. ‘Any more?’

      ‘That’s it. I don’t know any other names.’

      Bely and Rosa look at each other.

      Rosa turns off the Dictaphone and wipes it against the black orchids on her dress.

      ‘We’ve got something for you, old soul. Take it, and you’ll be absolved of all your pasts,’ says Bely.

      Rosa sets a silver compact on the soaked newspaper. It’s full of lightbrown oyster crackers.

      ‘For thirty years I’ve eaten only fish, no crackers,’ says Gram.

      ‘What’s thirty years compared with eternity?’ says Bely and shoves an oyster cracker down his throat.

      A few minutes later, the New World neon sign outside turns off. Two pairs of legs, one of them staggering slightly. Trudging through the fresh snow, which comes down as if it were going to consume the city, the whole world, once and for all. The bells strike three times. Posters of red crosses on black backgrounds. A cat dashes across the empty street. Midnight is fast approaching.

      Butcher

      ‘Mr President, the Austrian journalists have arrived.’ A secretary announces the appointment to Tine Butcher, director of Butcher Inc. meat products.

      In truth, Tine Butcher is not the president of a country, he is president of the board of directors of a meat-processing company. But Tine Butcher is a practical man, so, to facilitate communication with his foreign business partners, he changed his last name. And to facilitate association with the company, which he both directs and owns a majority share in, he changed its name, too. In this way the Agricultural and Food Processing Cooperative of Upper Drava Livestock Farmers and Meat Processors became Butcher, Inc. His employees are expected to address him accordingly with the proper respect, especially at the headquarters of the company over which he presides.

      ‘Please have a seat, gentlemen. May I offer you a cup of coffee, tea, juice?’ Butcher asks while signing a few documents on the desk.

      A bland, modern office interior: walls painted in somewhat incompatible shades of cream and rose, a tall Ficus benjamina in the corner, a gigantic plasma television, a desk with the company flag on it, leather armchairs on the other side of the president’s desk, the feeling that we could be anywhere were we not exactly where we are.

      ‘You’re local, aren’t you? I don’t need to tell you about the Maribor Automotive Factory and how they went under, do I? Anyway, it was on the site of that former industrial giant that we started our business sixteen years ago. Hitler himself ordered a factory to be built there, which produced aircraft-engine parts until the end of 1944. After the Second World War the same site boasted the biggest Yugoslav factory for the manufacture of truck and tank engines as well as light weaponry, mostly hunting rifles. But that’s all gone. We don’t manufacture rifles and aircraft any more, the way Hitler and Tito did. Today all we make are scrumptious local Kranj sausages,’ Butcher says confidently, as if he had trotted out the same sentences countless times before.

      With a nod of her head Rosa Portero thanks the secretary for the Coca-Cola she has brought her then checks the Dictaphone to make sure it’s actually working. Despite the grey winter’s day, she wears sunglasses and seems exhausted. Every now and then, during the president’s performance, Adam Bely leans over to her and quietly recapitulates his declarations in German.

      ‘You’ve mentioned Kranj sausage,’ Bely cuts in politely. ‘We are talking about the crown jewel of your product line, correct?’

      ‘That is correct,’ replies Tine Butcher. ‘Annually we produce about 16 million hand-skewer-bound sausages, first-class sausages. We export them to over forty countries worldwide. Our sausages travelled into space with the American astronaut Nancy Sing, who has Slovenian roots; and, if we’re lucky, it will become the first sausage ever to land on the moon. Negotiations with NASA are well under way.’

      ‘The Kranj sausage travelling into space has been covered by Austrian news media, but what I want to know is, what made it so popular? It doesn’t come from the city of Kranj, even though it’s named after it. It doesn’t even