Jela Krecic Read online

  ‘But,’ Matjaž came to her aid, looking at her, shaken.

  ‘But I think I’m a lesbian,’ she sighed, covering her face with her hands.

  He looked at her calmly. ‘No big deal, I don’t have anything against lesbians.’

  ‘I know, it’s just with men . . . I just can’t.’

  ‘What a coincidence! Nor me!’ he said, trying to ease the situation.

  She laughed. They drank whisky. Matjaž asked her if she thought that she’d ever be able to try whisky with him again. She replied that she could try, but that it probably wouldn’t change anything.

  ‘But what about all those conversations that we haven’t got caught up in yet?’ he asked her.

  ‘We can always squabble, Matjaž . . .’ she said, looking at him with a clear, sad expression that unsettled him. ‘But I got the impression that you only accept what women have to say on the proviso that the words will at some point dry up and be replaced by something else . . . and I understand that.’

  ‘You are quite correct in saying that,’ Matjaž said, deep in thought. He looked away. Then he didn’t know what to say. He thought that he saw tears in her eyes, but before he could wipe away the first she quickly got dressed and murmured a goodbye.

  ‘A lesbian?’ Aleksander was confounded when he met up with Matjaž in the near-deserted Sunday billiard hall.

  ‘Yes, a pure-blooded lesbian,’ confirmed Matjaž, tilting his glass.

  ‘Maybe she just didn’t like you, but didn’t want to admit it,’ Aleksander tried to console him.

  ‘Yeah true, it hurts a lot less if you just tell a guy you’re a lesbian,’ Matjaž said ironically.

  ‘OK, well what’s the answer then? Are you sure you didn’t do anything to put her off?’ Aleksander was absorbed in thought.

  ‘Are you trying to say that she became a lesbian because of me? Thanks very much. That’s just what every man on the trail of new love needs to hear,’ he replied sarcastically.

  ‘Well, nothing unusual can be ruled out as far as you’re concerned,’ Aleksander began to apologize.

  ‘I was under the impression that that might sometimes be to my advantage, especially with this last one.’

  Aleksander thought for a moment, and said, ‘I wouldn’t bet on that.’

  ‘And you tell me this now, when she’s already a lesbian!’ Matjaž said, getting offended.

  ‘Maybe she’ll get tired of it at some point,’ suggested Aleksander in a conciliatory tone.

  ‘Well, I don’t intend to hang around waiting in the meantime,’ he said with a roguish smile.

  POKER QUEENS ON NEW YEAR’S EVE

  Katja

  How was it possible to cram fifty people into thirty square metres? That was the question occupying Matjaž’s mind on New Year’s Eve. At a small kitchen table he sat observing the guests at Suzana’s New Year’s Eve party, who were showing visible signs of enthusiasm over the fact that one unit of time was coming to an end and another was beginning – as if this carried some deeper existential meaning besides a banal certitude of the calendar year. As if there were something magic in the figure 00:00, which proclaimed the last day of December – or rather the first day of January.

  He knew a few people at the party; some of them even used to be his close friends, once upon a time. Of those he was seeing for the first time, he wondered whether Suzana really knew them, or if she had generously invited them over while in one of her enraptured states at Metelkova, and now pretended to remember the first-class dialogue over beers that had bound them for life.

  He was smoking his cigarette, and just at the moment when he could easily have become melancholic, as the shy snowflakes began to scatter outside and he remembered the previous New Year’s Eve spent at home with Sara watching all of the Die Hard films, Katja sat down beside him. For a few seconds they stared together into the night, which was perforated with increasingly aggressive snowflakes. Then the round-faced young woman with short dark hair and dark eyes could hold her tongue no more. ‘What are you thinking about?’

  ‘What’s it to you?’ blurted Matjaž, as if she’d awoken him from a pleasant dream.

  ‘All right, sorry!’ she said, looking at the floor and making Matjaž feel a bit sorry for her. ‘I thought we were friends.’

  ‘We are, hence why I can snap back at you so politely,’ he said, trying to comfort her. A minute later he was already regretting his compassion. She started lecturing him on friendship, on years of building relationships, on the meaning of those years and of the people who stand by you even when you’re at your lowest point.

  Her monologue concluded even more melodramatically, ‘Friends are important, Matjaž. You don’t realize that. Why are you pushing me away when I’m trying so desperately to help you?’

  He looked at her in astonishment and, gathering all the honesty he could, said, ‘My dear friend, on no account must you make such an effort, OK? Maybe it’s time you accept that it’s a lost cause.’

  ‘How can you say something like that? I’ll never give up on you!’ she said emphatically, clearly oblivious to his indifference.

  ‘Oh my God,’ muttered Matjaž, to himself more than anyone else. He then looked deeply into her eyes. ‘Katja, I’ll do anything, really, I’ll be nice, kind, but please just don’t try to help me!’

  Katja burst out laughing, thinking he was trying to be funny. Before she had a chance to say that he could never stop her enduring friendship and kindness, he excused himself to go and get another beer. ‘But the beer you’ve got is still full!’

  ‘OK, well then I’ll get a beer for you . . .’ he replied.

  ‘But I don’t drink beer,’ she called after him, but he pretended not to hear.

  He was surprised to catch sight of Gašper on the balcony. They’d been friends at secondary school, best friends actually, and together they had got up to all sorts of possible and impossible mischief. It was with Gašper’s help that Matjaž had driven his parents to seek psychiatric help, with him that he tried weed for the first time and they both nearly choked. Together they discovered the bars on Poljanska Street, next to their school, and tallied up an inexcusable number of hours watching and teasing girls. From the girls’ reactions they judged who was witty or convincing enough in their anger to earn a place in their gang, and in this way they accumulated a varied group of boys and girls – among whom were Sara and Katja. Their gang of friends focused on the ‘research of life’ – as they called their lack of interest in the curriculum – and Gašper and Matjaž dictated what kinds of stupidity took place during break times, and in more intensive forms over the weekend.

  They went skiing together during the holidays, and sometimes to the seaside, too. They’d pretend to be studying together while they were actually playing Nintendo. Even ten years ago they were completely inseparable; in the first year of uni they’d meet for a beer after lectures in Žmavc – until it turned out, of course, that attending university was a completely superfluous chore amid the rest of student life. Every day the two of them would dissect the insignificant details of their everyday lives – in good health or ill, alone or in a group, when they felt like it and even when they didn’t. Occasionally this conversation would be peppered with analyses of socio-political situations at home and abroad – if only to show how far they had come after only a few months of studying. In doing so they failed to notice how they still made fun of girls, just like at school, and how they still enjoyed putting them to the test – to see if they were resilient enough, had a good enough sense of humour, or were at least quick-tempered enough for them to be worth engaging with in further dialogue.

  They shared the same taste in clothes, watches, games and films. Back then they even shared girls most of the time; they would realize time and time again that their friendship was worth more than long legs and cleavage. Matjaž couldn’t exactly remember when all of that came to an end. When career goals became a priority over an afternoon beer, when girls became more important
than playing games, and when their taste in films started to differ so markedly that they stopped going to the cinema together. As always – just like with the Beatles, he thought – women were to blame. Although he conceded, for the first time, the women who rouse that masculine core are indeed more valuable than the Beatles.

  ‘How are you doing, Gašper?’ Matjaž greeted him eventually, when he’d awoken from his flashback.

  ‘Whatever mate, you’re no friend of mine,’ he snapped, taking a deep drag of marijuana into his lungs. ‘You haven’t called me in about a hundred years. That’s not friendship, you get me? Friends call each other, call each other at least once week, mate, they don’t wait until New Year to tap you on the shoulder.’

  ‘What about you, mate, don’t you have a phone?’ Matjaž snapped back at him.

  ‘You know what I’m talking about . . .’ said Gašper, in a more conciliatory tone.

  ‘I’m not sure if you know, but I’ve been really down and out for quite a while,’ Matjaž said, realizing that Gašper’s silence during his most difficult time had obviously hurt him.

  ‘Yeah, well then, especially mate, especially then!’ his friend smirked.

  ‘You mean I could always easily slot myself in somewhere during your lunch break or at the end of the working day, just before you have to run off to put your daughter to bed at seven?’

  ‘You’ve no idea what it means to be a mate!’ said Gašper, blowing smoke into the cold night.

  ‘Not least how much time and energy it takes to work in the best, biggest, most prestigious law firm in Ljubljana,’ Matjaž added with obvious sarcasm.

  Gašper didn’t notice his friend’s jibe at first, and just affirmed, ‘Exactly mate, exactly!’ A second later he registered it and continued defensively, ‘But I’ll tell you something. They’re really sound. It’s a lot of work and all, and at the start I still had to study like mad to keep up with the work, but when they see that you’re a hard worker and they know that clients like you, then they also know how to reward you. That’s how it is, mate. Honest work for honest money.’

  ‘Hmm, aren’t you specialists in tax avoidance for the rich, in how to transfer assets abroad . . .’

  ‘Where did you hear that?’ Gašper asked indignantly. ‘We simply take care of foreign investments.’

  ‘And of course that involves the investment of capital in foreign banks – for example, Swiss banks.’

  ‘Oh no, no mate. We don’t work with Europe at all any more, it’s too – risky,’ his friend corrected him.

  ‘Well, the main thing is it’s an honest salary,’ Matjaž said ironically, already somewhat weary of the stoned Gašper and baffled about what happened to the person with whom he shared the most formative years of his life.

  ‘Honest, honest!’ he heard him say again, after he’d set off towards the throng of partygoers.

  When he got back to the small kitchen table Katja was still sitting there. She was propping up her head with her hands and looked rather down.

  ‘What’s up with you, girl, does nobody like you?’ Matjaž said jokingly, but his words had the opposite effect to the one he’d expected; she began to cry, to sob in fact. He looked around for help – someone like Suzana who could take control and calm her down – but at that moment she was dancing with some curly-haired hipster and was oblivious to her surroundings, so he had to help his friend himself. He tenderly gave Katja a hug.

  ‘Hey, come on, it’s not so bad. I’m here!’ he said, patting her clumsily on the shoulder.

  ‘Yeah, but you’ve come back without the beer you promised,’ she complained.

  ‘Oh I see, there’s too much blood in your alcohol. I’ll take care of that immediately,’ he said, and swiftly took a beer out of the fridge for her. His eagerness to be a good friend calmed her down somewhat. She wiped her tears away and blew her nose, then opened her beer and sipped it in silence.

  ‘Is that better now?’ Matjaž asked her.

  ‘Yes, it is,’ she said quietly. Completely out of character, Matjaž thought.

  Again they fell silent, but then Katja starting talking, now in her usual piercing voice, ‘Matjaž, you have no idea how cruel you are, especially to those who love you.’

  ‘Oh I know that all right, don’t worry,’ he laughed wickedly.

  ‘But it hurts people!’ she said, now looking up at him with her sad expression.

  In a reconciliatory tone he said, ‘Katja, my dear friend, we have known each other long enough to know that the only reason we’re friends is because neither of us has ever had to change and we can carry on being harsh towards one another when we feel like it.’

  ‘But I don’t know if that’s good for me,’ she said, sniffling.

  ‘I can understand if my coarseness is a bit much for you, but I’m not demanding that you love me or put up with me,’ Matjaž kept on.

  Katja was deep in thought. Tears came to her eyes once again but she held them back. She looked up and the pain in her expression almost melted him. ‘I know, maybe that’s what hurts. But not just that . . . ever since you broke up with that . . . that . . . cow, who clearly had no idea what she had, it seems you’ve become even more ruthless. That you’re even more shameless and arrogant and on the path to self-destruction.’

  ‘But maybe Sara was just a period in the middle of my ruthlessness, maybe that’s just how I am, maybe that’s all that’s in me.’

  ‘I won’t accept that!’ Katja raised her voice.

  ‘Why not? Because life seems a little less meaningless to you if you can tame the beast, if you can make his pain go away? That’s nice, Katja, I’ll give you that. It’s entirely nice and kind, but also totally misguided. If I say that I don’t need someone to save me, I’m being entirely serious, without any kind of self-pity. Everyone has their own way of dealing with things when they find themselves in chaos, either internally or externally. First and foremost I do not want to become the pet project of some woman hopelessly searching for a sense of order and meaning in her life.’

  Even he was surprised at the words that came out of his mouth, which he washed down with beer as they were still reverberating in mid-air. Katja pondered, and then said, ‘But I just can’t accept that the world is meaningless, like you say, and that there is no meaning to human existence. Everyone is here for a reason!’ Clearly she was unsettled by Matjažs spontaneous ontological outburst.

  ‘I don’t think this is the right environment for a teleological debate, although admittedly I’m not sure I’d be capable of leading one even in the right environment.’ With this last statement he laughed a little, but Katja looked at him seriously. He had to continue, ‘I can’t pretend to be disillusioned by my recognition of the emptiness and meaningless of life, of my existence or yours – you know me too well for that. But there’s also a big, fat lie in all the gloating over the meaninglessness of everything – that I admit, too. I just think that people should be honest about what they are. And in my case there is no point pretending; I know that most of the time, and in most of the things that I do, with most of the fleeting relationships I have, I am completely nothing. Don’t look at me so suspiciously. Just because you’re doubting me doesn’t make it any less true. It’s a huge relief, because things and people can’t disappoint me, because I know what I am – or rather, what I’m not.’

  Katja gave him a piercing look. He could see the surprise in her gaze; she wasn’t used to such long sentences coming from him. In fact, she only ever remembered him making one-line jokes.

  ‘But you didn’t feel like shit with her, with her you felt like you were something more,’ she eventually said.

  ‘No, I wouldn’t say that. It was more that with her, in us, I, uh, how to say this, I escaped myself. I don’t know if this makes sense but I was happy that I was completely submerged in a relationship and not alone with myself so much,’ Matjaž said, once again surprising himself on this New Year’s Eve. He wiped his sweaty forehead. ‘Now please, can we leave th
is? Look what you’ve done to me. Soon I’ll be starting to suspect that I’m not a complete idiot after all. And that would be fatal for my self-confidence!’

  He was trying to be funny, but Katja had once again started to cry. ‘I’m just such a nobody! My existence is so stupid, so meaningless, so pointless. And I can’t handle it that nobody likes me! I can’t go on like this any more!’ Now Matjaž was surprised. Such a genuine, totally honest Katja wasn’t recognizable to him. To him she was just a chatty airhead, incapable of any kind of self-reflection, full of handy but utterly meaningless clichés for every occasion. Looking at her reddened cheeks and smudged mascara, something stirred in him. He stepped towards her and hugged her tightly. At first she resisted, but then relented. Just at that point Suzana, no doubt ironically but also with the intention of offending most of her rock- and metal-loving guests, put on Bon Jovi’s ‘Always’ Matjaž, who wouldn’t normally pretend that he knew the way to a woman’s heart, at that moment felt his humanitarian calling. He took Katja by the hand and led her to the cramped and improvised dance floor. Her head was lowered, but she didn’t resist. At first they were both awkward and reserved. Then they laughed at their clumsy moves. ‘You never did know how to dance,’ she laughed at him.

  ‘Don’t tempt me, I can stop at any time!’

  She pulled him towards her and held him in an embrace. ‘No, this dance is mine!’ She did it so decisively that he indulged her, shrugged his shoulders as if to say OK, as you wish, and the two of them continued in their clumsiness. At first they made fun of each other and their own ineptitude, but at some point they gave in to their ridiculous movements, their unskilled bodies, and made the dance floor their own, letting themselves go. They received quite a few disapproving looks, especially as they flew all over the place into other dancers, but Matjaž simply responded to their irritation by sticking out his tongue. He couldn’t have reacted to their annoyance any differently, because in that totally inept physical shifting of two untalented people, a very tender moment of friendship emerged.