Absolution. Aleš Šteger

wheezing slightly. He has a plaster on his forehead and stares absently into space.

      Bely and Rosa Portero say goodbye. The president doesn’t respond to their words, but from the foyer the thick musk of the Arab business partners’ perfume creeps in and settles around him.

      I’m Not Cold When I’m with You

      ‘Nothing is as it seems. Everything is what it is, yet at the same time it’s something entirely different. When I was young I found this city beautiful. The park, summer at the Three Ponds or on the Drava, sitting around in front of the secondary school, growing up in the old city centre, which back then was still alive, full of people and hope. But today I see just what a mess it is. Sixteen years ago, all of a sudden, my city turned into my executioner. But today the roles have changed. All these people, all these destinies, clumped together into a single filthy ball. Sixteen years ago I was endlessly overwhelmed with anxiety; today I’m only endlessly apathetic,’ says Bely.

      He opens a tiny bottle and shakes it a little. A pair of blue pills land in his palm, then vanish behind his lips. Rosa stands beside him. She is dressed in her black hooded fur coat. She takes Bely’s hand in her own and looks at the scar.

      ‘Does it still burn?’

      ‘A little, but it doesn’t matter,’ says Bely and pulls his hand away.

      ‘With a wound like that it’d be impossible to read your palm. Your lifeline has been interrupted, and it’s unclear.’

      ‘So fate has no power over me? You mean I have time to change my future, at least until the wound has healed?’ Bely laughs and puts on his grey winter coat.

      Mounds of snow lay in front of the Hotel Eagle. Leaking gutters, voices from Castle Square, shoes drowning in slush, a few people hiding out under a rusty canopy. Udarnik Cinema, a poster for Cinéma Féministe. High-school students in front of McDonald’s. One of them throws a snowball; the girls giggle; an upside-down rubbish bin, a relic of Yugoslavia, dented all over from having been kicked so often. Overhead, plastic wires, small rings, mangled snowflakes hanging in the air, teddy bears, stars that won’t light up, not even at night. The New Year’s decorations haven’t been taken down yet; they still hover over the streets of the old town like a cobweb in the sky, holding captive all who walk beneath it.

      ‘The façades were so hostile I wanted to kill myself.’

      ‘How come you’re talking about façades and not people?’ asks Rosa.

      ‘You don’t get it; façades are people. But, unlike people, façades never lie. Even well-kept façades can be hostile, at times even more so than the dilapidated ones. It’s not about how well-kept things are, it’s about what the city radiates. See these bricks, the concrete, all that glass? There’re souls who live behind them, night and day, who keep them warm with their presence. Sixteen years later I look at this city and I know that, no matter how hostile it is, it can’t break me. Back then I felt threatened; I found myself in a life-threatening situation simply because I didn’t understand. Today I understand. We’re surrounded by possibilities, energetic potentials, dormant reservoirs of history and human fate. In the end it’s up to us to decide whether we want to activate these reservoirs and make use of them. But keep in mind that everything around these possibilities is subject to constant reconfiguration. The constellations never cease to change. Today will never come again. That may feel like a huge relief or a huge responsibility. The only thing to do is to persevere and wait for the moment that promises transition. A transition from one state into another. That moment has arrived.’

      ‘You never regretted leaving?’ asks Rosa, kicking at an empty can.

      ‘Never. Rationally, we never know for sure what we were chosen for. Why me and not somebody else? This knowledge is greater than us. Just think about it. Sixteen years! Who were you sixteen years ago? How have you changed since then? In the course of sixteen years I’ve learned about structures I hadn’t a clue about before. I’m talking about structures from the distant past that determine our present and future. I was desperate before I discovered this knowledge. Nothing I did, no matter how well-thought-out or well-intentioned, had the desired effect. Just the opposite. Before I left Maribor my life was a mess. Regardless of what it was, I never accomplished what I set out to do. Everything seemed to be against me, and I sank deeper and deeper into the sewer of this city.’

      A skating-rink next to Revolution Monument on Freedom Square. Some fifteen children, behind them a large mound of snow. Next to the rink, a stall serving honey schnapps, a pair of drunks, a group of workers in blue workman’s overalls and woollen hats; further on, three men in coats and ties. At the back stands a wooden pedestal; above it a huge inflated balloon, embellished with a black circle and a sign: MARIBOR – THE EUROPEAN CAPITAL OF CULTURE. In the brief silences when Radio City stops blaring, the sound of balloons inflating and children shouting can be heard.

      ‘Look at them,’ says Bely. ‘There’s your typical Maribor Mikado. You know that game of pick-up-sticks, right? Where the person who moves first loses? There’s a good chance they’ll waste their lives like that.’

      ‘I don’t know,’ replies Rosa. ‘They seem completely ordinary to me, the sort of people you meet in every city.’

      ‘I told you, nothing in this city is what it seems. I don’t want to moralize; I don’t know them. But if they’re from Maribor, and if they manage to remove a stick from the pile without anyone noticing, they’ll immediately stab the guy next to them in the back with it.’

      Rosa looks at Bely. ‘Don’t you think you’re exaggerating?’

      Bely shrugs his shoulders and gives her a forced smile. Rosa walks off to buy cigarettes. Bely waits, observing the people around him. It seems like it was only yesterday that he was standing behind this very bar. It was morning, before things got going in the theatre. Talking about performances, making megalomaniacal plans that were clearly unfeasible from the start, street chatter. Isn’t that man next to the stall one of the theatre technicians?

      Bely slips. For a moment he glimpses the yellow bulge of the sun, a rotten egg in the sky, then tumbles on to the compressed snow. When he looks up again, an old woman is leaning over him, her breath smelling of onions and alcohol. Bely looks around in confusion. No one cares that he fell. Only this old drunk woman holds out her grimy woollen mittens to him, her enormous mouth looming behind them. The black hole of her mouth is missing most of its teeth, with only a few yellow ones remaining on the sides. Bely shudders with fear. Death and putrefaction emanate from the chasm of the old woman’s grimy mouth, as if through it he could catch a glimpse of the other side, the dark side, where there is no life. In his confusion Bely takes the old woman’s hand. But instead of helping him, she pushes him away, so he falls once again on his back.

      ‘Alms for the poor, for the poor, sir.’

      Bely quickly gets to his feet. Realizing she will get nothing, the beggar woman spits at Bely’s feet and limps away. As he watches her go it hits him – his black briefcase – but it doesn’t seem to be damaged. Relieved, Bely dusts the snow off his coat. Rosa is back again. She lights a cigarette and loops her arm in his.

      On nearby Leon Štukelj Square a cold wind sways the lights that hang, slightly lopsided, overhead. The scaffolding of a concert stage. A woman leads a boy in a ski suit by the hand. The boy has a pair of enormous mouse ears and a mouse nose pasted on. Bored, he drags his feet as he walks. The woman is in a hurry; she is wearing a black hat pierced with an arrow. She drags the boy against his will towards the office building of the local newspaper, Večer. The boy resists, sticks out his tongue, but follows her anyway. Bely feels his chest beginning to itch, at first barely noticeably but soon so intensely that he unbuttons his coat and begins vigorously scratching himself between the buttons on his shirt.

      City Hotel. At the reception. The receptionist points them to the lift, fifth floor; the hotel smells of fresh paint and plastic.

      ‘You’ve got a stain here,’ says Rosa and cleans a mud stain off Bely’s coat with her glove.

      ‘It only seems that way,’ replies Bely.