Jela Krecic Read online

  ‘It’s Matjaž, isn’t it? There’s no need to leave now, when we’re just getting to know each other.’

  ‘When then, if not right now?’ he asked, without a trace of guilt on his face, and once again he tried to step aside. Her hand became more determined.

  ‘If I thought you were Zoki it means you must really look like him and that’s why I like the look of you so much. Stay here,’ she said suggestively, her blue eyes sparkling. Fine, thought Matjaž. This would be the last good deed of the day – he’d give this annoying girl one more chance. At the end of the day she was a very pretty redhead, and if he was being honest with himself it seemed that he owed it not just to himself, but to the whole of mankind, to test out a few stereotypes about this ginger species.

  ‘So then, Maria,’ he said. She laughed, took him by the hand and led him to the kitchen, which was now the quietest corner in this flat of celebrations. They sat at the table and were silent for a while. Matjaž went first. ‘So it seems your future looks pretty promising now,’ he said, saying the first thing that came into his head and regretting it immediately.

  ‘Well, we’ll see. You know how it is with these things,’ she said, acted modest.

  ‘What else are you into, apart from studying?’ he quickly threw in, and he shuddered under his own unbelievable lack of soul.

  ‘Travelling!’

  ‘Oh, travelling,’ he sighed wearily. He looked up towards the ceiling, and asked for Maria not to start explaining about all of the places she’d ever been to. But as he was looking pleadingly upwards, she’d already set off on her travels. First they visited India, which impressed her not only with its exoticism and cuisine but also with its friendly people who were in touch, so in touch, with life, with the land, with nature. Then they went on a small tour of the Asian continent, first to the south, to the islands of Indonesia. In Thailand they enjoyed the excellent food and shook off stereotypes about excessive prostitution. That’s just Thailand, prostitution is a part of their culture, what can you do – who were they to judge another culture, Maria mused. With that, Matjaž looked up to the ceiling once more, looking for a sign of hope. Then followed Vietnam, Cambodia, where the people were a little more reserved, a bit more rigid, maybe . . . Or could that have been her distorted perception, as it was right there she was poisoned and got diarrhoea. It happened in a village. She lay there helpless for several days, while the villagers brought the shaman to her. And a miracle. Then she recovered, and the journey to Japan didn’t take too much out of her. But she was not going to be lost for words about Japan. It was clean, beautiful, and organized . . . with a subtlety towards everything that was beautiful. Their gardens were simply divine and who couldn’t admire the beauty of bonsai trees?

  ‘People who force trees stay small are just torturing them,’ Matjaž remarked, but Maria wasn’t listening to him.

  They worked through Europe quite quickly, just long enough for Maria to study French in Paris and German in Berlin, and then in Barcelona – she already knew Spanish from secondary school (‘It’s so worth it, investing in languages – it’s invaluable!’) – to go on a course to become a tour guide in South America. And they were on their way again. Peru, Chile, Uruguay and Paraguay, Argentina and to Colombia, Brazil and finally Mexico. Maria couldn’t speak highly enough of South America, where the countries and people differed so much, but were at the same time so similar. They were the lands of open hearts, temperamental men and extremely white teeth. The infinite passion that flowed from their food and music just belonged in South America. Every night was full of life and joy. ‘You’ve only got to think about tango. Can you dance the tango?’ She didn’t wait for his reply. Obviously she’d learned to dance the tango in Buenos Aires, she could show him – it wasn’t actually that difficult, even for beginners, the basic step was really simple. How many great, friendly people she had met at tango lessons, how many beautiful, forthright men had seduced her on the dance floor – with such fire, with such charm. Oh, Buenos Aires!

  Matjaž started to sweat in torment. He feared these travels would never end. He feared North America, Canada, he feared Australia. He wanted to go back home, he wanted to go back, back, back to Suzana’s flat, to the New Year’s Eve party. Any moment now it would be midnight, and he still had two entire continents to discover and – heaven forbid – Central America. For a minute he thought that Maria was getting restless, that in her travelling stupor she was going to jump from one of the earth’s poles to the other. He could see no way out. For now they were staying in Mexico. ‘I simply just adore Mexico,’ he heard her tell him, dreamily. ‘Little villages with friendly people – it was unforgettable. Spectacular nature, I could have started writing a novel there. Really, it’s a completely different world to the big cities there. They’re dreadful places, you know. Did you know, that by number of kidnappings, ninety per cent of which end in rape, Mexico ranks highest in the world?’

  ‘Interesting,’ smiled Matjaž.

  ‘If I think about the danger I was in some nights – on some significant enough road in Ciudad de Mexico, right by one of the main roads, what do you call it now . . .’ She thought for a second.

  Matjaž came to her rescue. ‘Did they mug you?’

  ‘Yes they did, yeah,’ she said, with hurt in her voice.

  ‘Did they rape you?’

  ‘No,’ she shook her head.

  ‘Some people, hey,’ he said seriously. Then he stood up and left, so he didn’t have to wait for the appalled look on her face.

  Suzana

  Midnight was behind them and Matjaž was visibly relieved. He wrote a nice text to Aleksander, saying he hoped that he and Karla would be able to meet up with their best, most handsome friend as much as possible. ‘We don’t know anyone like that,’ Aleksander replied.

  He thought to himself – this year will be my year. Last year was not his year. Not from any angle could last year be considered his year, and he was happy to see the back of it. But this year would in many ways be mostly the same . . . he’d try to smoke as many cigarettes as he felt like and drink even more beer, he thought. It shouldn’t be too hard now. He’d meet many more stupid girls, and if they happened to be very persistent and dedicated, who knows . . . Maybe he’d be taking Sara for a coffee once more. That’s it! This year he’d take Sara for a coffee. Perhaps, if everything went well, for a beer, too, and maybe, no, he mustn’t get his hopes up, maybe even to dinner. That would be nice: a dinner, although not necessarily a proper dinner, they could just go for a burek, or a sandwich, a salad, olives, peanuts . . . whatever. He shuddered at that thought and looked around. The drinking-game team was still very lively, although somewhat diminished, and the clear winner in terms of alcohol consumption was Suzana. Saša was kissing Šeki in the corner, who meanwhile had his eye on a girl who was flicking through an environmental magazine. Well, that relationship wouldn’t last long.

  Katja, Gašper and a few others were rolling a fresh joint and eagerly debating bars in Ljubljana – how Bar Žmavc was now ruined because of all the unruly teenagers, how much better Daktari was, how Metelkova had had its day and the only reason it was still going was because it was open until the early hours of the morning. Although only if you were lucky, of course, as Katja pointed out.

  Matjaž looked at his phone. The New Year messages were flooding in, even from those people whose numbers he’d lost long ago. Suzana came over to him and gave him a kiss on the cheek. She had clearly grown tired of her little crowd; either that or they were all exhausted. She was no longer paying attention to the volume or the quality of the music; she’d left the playlist in the hands of anyone who felt like winding up the nervous guests and the neighbours, who were surely ready to complain at any moment. After all, just because it was New Year’s Eve did not mean the whingers and whiners on duty had any reason to stop now.

  ‘Anything interesting?’ asked Suzana, when she noticed that Matjaž had his phone in his hand.

  ‘Loads of people writ
ing something along the lines of “Happy New Year” . . . Is today some sort of special day? Maybe you know something about this?’

  Suzana smiled, looked at him through squinted eyes, offered out her hand, and with a suggestive smile said, ‘Come and dance with me. This is our song.’

  Matjaž heard the opening chords of ‘November Rain,’ looked at Suzana and said, ‘Since when did we have our own song? And if we do, who in God’s name decided on ‘November Rain’?’

  ‘Ah you’re such a pedant. From now on, this will be our song.’

  ‘Why are you punishing me like this? What did I do to you? Or do you have no musical shame?’ Before he could finish his insult, she was already dragging him to a small space in among the other dancers and winding herself around him. He tried to help her with this but was unsuccessful; she had placed her soft hands around his neck and started to sway her hips, which had some interesting effects upon Matjaž. He looked around, then said to himself, sod it, and let go. They danced and danced, spun around. Suzana looked at him adoringly and said something that to Matjaž sounded like, ‘Can’t you see how good we are together?’ Fortunately the music sufficiently stifled the romantic charge of her words, and there was still enough alcohol at the party to ensure that one of them would forget such declarations, which were always something of a threat to the preservation of friendship.

  When Matjaž next opened his eyes, still standing in Suzana’s embrace and pressed against her swaying hips, it was six in the morning and most people had gone. Some random was dozing on the sofa and Katja had fallen asleep in the bath. Gašper was just heading home.

  ‘Mate!’ he called out, launching his body on to him in a hug. ‘So good to see you again! We must, really must, do it again soon. I’ll give you a call tomorrow, we’ll go for coffee!’ He was full of enthusiasm.

  Matjaž just smiled and nodded. ‘Course, mate!’

  Suzana was more hot-tempered. ‘No, stay a bit longer . . .’

  ‘Suzana, I’m tired, I can’t . . . the kids and all that, you know how it is,’ he said as he opened the door and quickly ran down the steps. Suzana and Matjaž watched him leave, closed the door and sat down on the dusty carpet.

  ‘What now?’ Matjaž asked.

  ‘We’re going to sleep.’

  ‘To sleep?’

  ‘Yes, I’m sure you’re familiar with that human habit. You get undressed, lie on a bed in a horizontal position, cover yourself with a duvet, close your eyes and then – yayyy – you’re already away!’

  ‘But . . .’

  ‘No buts. Just come.’

  She took hold of his hand and led him to her small bedroom. She undressed him carefully, making sure that he was thoroughly covered with kisses. ‘This is how to start a New Year,’ he thought to himself, but aloud he said, ‘This is not going to end well.’

  Suzana continued her indiscreet activity. Things became heated and Matjaž began to return her kisses. He laid her down on the bed and, with all the tenderness available to a man after hours of drinking, he entered her. Freely she gave herself to him, and he moved into her willing vagina. He closed his eyes and enjoyed the repetitive rhythm of sex. He had never imagined that Suzana’s body could bring him so much pleasure. She had always been a friend, always just . . . He surrendered himself to the love-making, and at certain points it felt as if he were falling into a trance with the repeating movements of pleasure. Until, that is, he was stuck by a resounding ‘Snnnhhhhrrrr’ that had not come from him. He opened his eyes, looked beneath him and saw Suzana, who was peacefully snoring with a smile on her face.

  ‘With friends like these . . .’ he thought to himself, and decided that not even Aleksander would get to hear about this episode.

  STELA

  It was one of those evenings where everything came together: when the waitresses at the Billiard House were friendly, when Jernej told new jokes, when Aleksander preferred to gossip rather than discuss politics and Karla didn’t pull him up on it, when the beer slipped easily down your throat and every cigarette agreed with you. It was what Matjaž called a good Friday. Such Fridays always like to turn into early Saturdays. So when the Billiard House closed, the most dedicated of the night-time enthusiasts had to do something about which they wouldn’t be so enthusiastic the next day. Call it a last cry of youth, hope, faith in destiny or even just alcoholism, but they had to go on. And so they went: Jernej, Aleksander, Matjaž and Karla, to Metelkova. At this time of year, in January, there were not exactly a lot of familiar faces. Even Suzana had decided to spend the evening at home with Katja and a few friends, where it was warm. Matjaž dreaded the thought of such a claustrophobic evening, the sort much preferred by women, where they share their feelings with no scruples at all and slag off men.

  No, the youth were reigning over Metelkova at this time. The same youth who believed Friday evening was the definitive entrance to a parallel universe, where school and parents faded into the background and where they started to live their own lives, with people their own age. They drank how they wanted, they loved who they wanted and they debated new trends they’d seen on social media. They complained about how quick adults were to write them off as the generation that lived and existed only online without aspiring to anything else, while they nevertheless felt – and were aware of feeling – its presence everywhere, constantly, including within all of their thoughts. Yet for these unfortunate inhabitants of Metelkova, for whom fate had dealt the humiliation of currently existing in the interspace between being young and being adult, they had to at some point say goodbye to those rare moments of freedom and take the last bus, or an early taxi, to join their family – who didn’t even notice from the look of their faces on Saturday morning that they had arrived home a little more experienced in word and deed the night before.

  If the age of mortals was determined by the time they left Metelkova, that night Aleksander would have been a typical teenager, too. He was ordered by Karla to go bed, right away, as he really was no longer even a shadow of his former self. On the other hand, Matjaž and Jernej decided that as definite shadows of their former selves they were grown up enough – or childish enough – to hang around in Metelkova. They roamed around practically everywhere that was still open within the maze-like complex, and with each new unit of alcohol in the different bars – Jalli Jalli, Gromka, Mariča – they got the feeling that somehow they hadn’t quite found what they were searching for. This probably had something to do with the fact that they had nothing left to say to each other and they saw each other as a unwelcome reminder of where an otherwise solid Friday night out could lead.

  Jernej eventually decided that he would find the meaning of his existence at home, asleep. Yet Matjaž was somehow still unwilling to accept that the evening was drawing to a close, and he decided to persevere. As such, without knowing how or why, he ended up in another one of Metelkova’s bars. It didn’t take long for him to work out, although he was tipsy and far too optimistic, that the atmosphere in this place had livened up. His drink was good. The music was loud, full of dynamic energy – just the sort he needed right now to keep him awake . . . As he took a brief glance around the room, he was happy to see that the club was incredibly diverse. Students, old tramps, roguish youths with chiselled bodies, pretty girls on the lookout, and full-blooded mature women getting annoyed at any old thing – a long queue at the bar, let’s say – but that’s just one of many unpleasant consequences of women knowing what they want.

  If he tried really hard to focus through the overcrowded space of dancing bodies he could just catch sight of a very attractive young woman with dark skin and black wavy hair, a delicate figure and a pretty smile. He watched her, he watched her for quite a while; and for once, all of a sudden, luck was on his side. Even in his semi-conscious state he didn’t have to approach her – she just walked straight up to him and said, ‘Stela’.

  ‘Stela, as in A Streetcar Named Desire. Nice,’ he said with a stutter, as he felt the firm touch of her hand. Sh
e didn’t hear his remark over the loud music; either that, or she just pretended not to. She was wearing a skin-tight red dress that, even though it concealed her cleavage, was much more generous in its long split up to the thigh, which revealed lovely smooth legs. Her face seemed unusually large, but then again every aspect of her was tall and elongated. This pretty girl with big, brown, searching eyes smiled at him, and all broke loose within him.

  The words ‘So what are you doing here?’ came out of his mouth.

  ‘Celebrating,’ she replied with a secretive smile.

  ‘Oh, happy birthday! How many springs, autumns, summers do you have behind you?’

  ‘Oh it’s not my b’day. I’m celebrating Friday,’ she said, coyly stroking her hair.

  ‘Is it a special Friday?’ He had to make an effort to concentrate.

  ‘Every Friday’s special for those who work, and then new faces and new challenges await them here.’ With that she blushed and looked down.

  ‘Friday!’ Matjaž said, almost shrieking. ‘It’s true, Friday really is a big cause for celebration. I’d say I’m one of its most devout worshippers and admirers, so congratulations once again!’

  They clinked glasses, he with his pint of Laško and she with her cocktail of unknown extraction. Matjaž felt the urge to make some grandiose statement about Friday, to celebrate the fact that it stands at the end of the week, therefore before the weekend. Then he thought he’d rather celebrate the fact that Friday gets so many young, lively people out on the ground, making Ljubljana almost seem like a capital city. All that eagerness to think exhausted him, then he remembered that it was Saturday, the papers were printed, the market was practically open already . . . he lost his train of thought, and Stela was still looking at him expectantly. When he made no sound, she eventually said, ‘And what’s your name?’ He decided that he wasn’t going to judge her personality on her rather unusual voice. This time he was going to focus on what was important, get to the heart of it. So he took a chance on a more challenging, provocative answer, which would demand an unambiguous, meaningful reaction.