Singer in the Night. Olja Savicevic

me, and he told me a lot, disjointedly, I gathered the following: the letters that Gale had zealously dropped into his neighbours’ mailboxes had upset the whole street. They upset the street more than the reason they were written, although that too had sent sparks flying. I was agreeably surprised by their lack of indifference, even if it was negative. I was used to people here reacting only to football, which made Gale think them limited and worthy of contempt, but I was more tolerant and practical, because these were the people we had grown up with, I would have felt oppressed to think negatively about them or to think about them at all. Compromise, always compromise, well, I had to live with people or die alone.

      In June of last year in Dinko Šimunović Street, Gale worked by night, so Joe Pironi told me: a well-known foreign, American, magazine had commissioned a strip cartoon from him, which was important to him – I presume it still is important to him – and noise interfered with his concentration.

      On the tenth evening he, Gale, not Pironi, felt a powerful moral obligation to ask the overly-loud lovers to be a bit quieter (I don’t really believe that). But since, according to Pironi, he didn’t know who the moaners were, he wrote to almost everyone, working his way systematically, scattering letters into their letterboxes, but the groaning continued for three whole weeks, maybe even longer, into the second week of July. The street has this unusual cascading architecture, narrow buildings with hundreds of windows, and if someone is making love by the south-facing windows, high under the clouds, it is no simple matter to determine the source. It lasted for three whole weeks, maybe even longer, into the second week of July. Then it stopped.

      And before Nightingale completed his game with the letters, which he had evidently entered into with his whole comical, idiotic and wonderful soul, a meeting of the tenants’ councils of the buildings nearest to the sighing in Šimunović Street was called:

      the letters were collected and handed over to the police:

      the police didn’t really know what to do with the material,

      they warned Gale that he was causing a disturbance, threatening him with reporting him for violating the peace and public order,

      ‘Crazy stuff,’ said Pironi.

      In short, as far as I could make out, they banned him from completing his ‘project’ of letters to the neighbourhood.

      ‘Banned him? What was craziest of all,’ said Pironi, ‘vey even accused ‘im that ‘e, Gale, was ve maniac groaning in ve night.’

      Pironi didn’t believe that (nor do I), but he couldn’t confirm it, as he was at that time living with another friend in another part of town.

      Pironi said: ‘What do vey mean ‘project’, honeybun, ‘e calls it artistic expression when ‘e takes a piss. Get it, it’s a question of morals how far you as an artist should invade people’s privacy. On ve other ‘and you keep invading it, ven it’s a question of packaging, if you get my drift. You ‘as to package it, mate, I say, but he doesn’t listen.’

      ‘He didn’t package it – that’s the problem,’ I say.

      ‘And did they discover who it was? Who was the doer of the debauchery?’

      They didn’t, they never did, they calmed down. But it was madness, his bicycle had once broken down so he spent the night at Gale’s place while it was going on. ‘It wasn’t true,’ he said. ‘You see what this street is like, a million open windows, it reverberates: it could have been anyone.’ (It’s unseemly for people to go around at night banging on doors to check whether folk are fucking.)

      Gale’s flat/bed-sitter stretched around me – I was looking for windows – a rather large room with no internal walls, different from the flat I remember, which did not seem to suit the Gale I had known, and that lack of recognition disheartened me (and maybe frightened me).

      I said to Pironi: ‘ What kind of morals, don’t make me laugh. Someone’s letters really bug them. Matey.’

      He said: ‘Hey, ol’ girl, take it easy, you’re gettin’ het up for nothing. I haven’ a clue what he wrote to ‘em, but it got to ‘em. You can ask Bogdan Diklić to show you the letters. He’s on the first floor. He’s not an actor, no way. Chair of the Tenants’ Council, that type. Shall I go? D’you fink I’ve got more chance with Bogdan Diklić than you?! Why, you’re a celebrity! You’d feel awkward. Ah, ha, so you’re not that famous. I get you, but there’s no fuckin’ way Diklić will give me ve letters. He takes it seriously. I mean seriously seriously. He’s fifty and he lives wiv ‘is mother, ‘e doesn’t even jerk off any more, ‘e ‘as to take fings seriously. Chair of the Tenants’ Council. Another smoke? Ok, ol’ girl, all ve more for me.’

      Something along those lines. As he talked, Pironi’s verbal ping-pong balls skittered round about, bouncing off the rubber edges of my consciousness. After a while I became aware of an agreeable warmth on my feet.

      Pironi yelled: ‘Corto, son of a bitch! Hey, ol’ girl, don’t be mad, ol’ girl. You’re ‘is now, ‘e’s marked you, now he finks you’re, you know, okay.’

      Like hell.

      I wasn’t angry. Joe Pironi went to the toilet to get a sponge and paper to wipe up the dog’s pee, but since he was taking his time, I used paper handkerchiefs and water from the kitchen tap. In passing, strategically, I opened a few drawers where Gale’s things ought to have been, in case I could somewhere catch sight of the boat’s log, but they were empty. I stuffed his writing outfit into my bag, deciding I had a right to it (as his former wife, my dear, I could always try that line). Corto followed me with his little pink tongue out. Unlike big dogs, which filled me with confidence, I’ve always been afraid of small dogs as of all other hysterics … I wagged my finger at him, opened the door, summoned the lift. Although it was the ground floor.

      Maybe I could have knocked on Diklić’s door on the first floor, but I didn’t feel like it. I was a bit high, peed-on, sweaty and hungry and not in a very good mood, and the chances of some zealous chair of the tenants’ council passing those incriminating letters over to me were, even without all the aforementioned, minimal. (What madness, who on earth would run away because of a bunch of letters.)

      On my way out, at the lobby door, I came across two thin little girls playing with a plastic doll. ‘I’m not sure I love you,’ one of them told the doll seriously and crossly, and then hid it from me. No one in the street, midday scorching heat, the town is still full of tourists at this time, down in the necropolis, in the centre, on the beaches, but Split district 3 is wonderfully empty as though the whole summer had lain down over it to rest a bit.

      My eye was caught by a grafitto on the flyover under which one could see the sea and on which someone had written in huge letters MEANING. In the distance I heard the honk of a ferry horn, the captain’s intrepid bass baritone. Oh Nightingale, where on earth are you? Where’ve you been my whole life?

      Before dusk fell, I went to the marina, to Woody Mary, our boat.

      She was swaying in the dark shallows of the harbour, bewitching as ever, at least to me.

      She was in the same place, at the same jetty, as before, but unlike his flat, Gale did take care of the boat: freshly painted, white and blue as in the song, brass and copper gleaming, polished, although a year had passed, and more, since the captain’s departure, and the boat’s teak – rosy, warm-blooded, and alive beneath my hand, and, seeing that there was no one near, I kissed it loudly.

      I hugged the good, constant, beloved Woody Mary like I used to, when I would throw myself down on the prow, carefree, wet and happy, like a young bitch.

      I sat on the stern for a while, airing my head.

      A light mistral breeze towards evening and a pink sky promising fine weather in the west. If I were to photograph or describe that scene it would be banal kitsch. Beautiful things have no need of art, which has already long been better suited to the half ugly or entirely vile.

      A producer once flattered me: that’s why people like your series, good-looking lovers, emotions, falling in love,