Shpëtim Selmani

Translated from Albanian by Elsa Lici

PART ONE

‘Gods be blessed, for the book you gave me!’

Tomaž Šalamun

1. Strip Depo

For years I have tried to wake up early and sit like a king on one of the chairs at the Strip Depo. More often than not, I do manage to wake up early. I live my mornings as if they were the same. Perhaps they are all the same. But who gives a fuck! When I sit down, I take a jumper or a coat and throw it over my poor knees. My fucked-up apocalyptic knees. Rule number one: always try to give warmth to yourself, then the others will find shelter in you. The world is a broken fridge. This is the first seed of knowledge. War looms large in the beginning of each book that the gods have given us.

2. Lola

When I was working for the Centre for Cultural Decontamination in Belgrade, I got to know a fantastic woman. Her name was Lola. She would call me her baby. Let me be frank about it, she was born long before I was. I was born long after she was. Just for you to know, our whole triumph is to be born at the right time. But to achieve this, one must really have big balls. I suffer because I was not born at a different time. I weep in silence and punch myself in front of the mirror. I want to destroy myself because of my inability to be born at the right time. All human history is the testimony of submission, of this stupid philosophy. Lola had amazing bangs. While I was working for the Centre, she would take care of me, making sure I was well fed, I had beer at hand, I had no headache, I liked dancing, I hungered for suxhuk* in my beans. Lola kissed me twice, as she would kiss her baby. Belgrade is meaningless with-out her. The city seems dead without Lola. It seems miserable, like a beggar who pees under the bleak bridge of centuries. All I want to say is that I really miss her. I just want to listen once again to her story of the Mediterranean lover getting cold in front of the Hotel Slavija. I want to prove to her what she always used to say, that I am a big baby who, in a way, belongs to her. Only to her, heart and soul.

3. Izabela

Tirana. I am in Izabela’s house. After making love to the divine darling, I keep quiet. Naked, I enter the big room of the depressive loners. I wonder about the essence of vanity. She bites me in the chest. She tells me something holy.

“I am happy.”

I deliberate about that. What on Earth is this happiness that brings souls into the vast meadow of life? Perhaps it is an avowed servant of the devil. An optic illusion that conquers hope. Of course, I feel happy that she says that. I want to see her always happy. The whole creature in front of me, always happy. But my little dove does not stop at that. She says something else that the whole world would love.

“I am at peace.”

Now, I cannot resist the temptation of asking a question. I want to be the owner of peace, the Lord of peace, so that I can spread it out over the field of anger, of hatred all over the world. And beyond that. I imprint the indelible marks of my lips on her forehead:

“With yourself or with me…?”

I get out on the balcony to read. She does her daily chores. The birds twitter and they know why they are doing it. They put an end to all the literary dilemmas. The weather is lovely. Everyone loves this weather. The children’s cries echo like celestial bells. A voice coming from a loudspeaker announces that the world will be governed by Bruce Springsteen. My girl brings me strawberries, and finely chopped banana. So precisely chopped! In the afternoon, I lick the sun on her face like a spoiled dog. I chew the heart of happiness. I spit it out and see how it crashes on the street below.

4. Miller

I am the only one with a book in my hand. I look ludicrous. An amazing classical remnant. I don’t give a damn about anything. I am an empty insurgent. I fight against an empty thing. I don’t believe in heroes, neither do I believe in fate, nor in the open window. People can betray themselves at any time because they find it impossible to escape their epic tragedy that envelops them. Demons have their legendary lairs in the tempted hearts that march towards blood. I am a shadow who strongly believes that this is our most glorious epoch. Who needs the truth? That frightening beast that munches on human flesh. I read and drink up the still water from the glass. I am faded and sad from the contest of my fast feet, an artist body and soul, not selfish at all. Like a Henry Miller with an expiry date. Spiritually dead, physically alive. Morally free.

5. Suicide

It crossed my mind again today to commit suicide, to stab myself into the eye, to take the poison of lab rats, to jump in front of a moving car on the highway, to stick my neck in the noose of a dirty rope, to jump from a high hill. It is surprising how many ways there are to fuck yourself. Even more surprising than that is another thing: the tolerance and the liberal God towards his colossal creation. How many options He has left in our hands! I wanted to write a letter: Fuck you all! I have had enough of you! Of course, I did not do it. I am at the threshold of my thirties, and when I look at the faces of people I have always known, my dirty soul weeps like an animal in hell. I can see them growing old. I can see them. Human beings sliding down the slippery slope of age. I realize that something unusual is happening to us. As a wicked masochist, I rejoice, and I regard as natural this whole situation that smashes the womb of the absurd, and all the weak and crazy absurdist individuals. The sun humiliates us from the early morning. We must do something, but we are not capable of that. If I were a God, God help us! I would offer a gift to all the people, one gift only: their own selves, and then I would abandon them for good.

6. War

Year 1999. From mid-April of that year to April 2016, I feel stretched out like a chewing gum. Fiery and traumatic to the very end of all the epochs that have deafened my butt.

7. Darkness

I have opened the windows. The sound of the gurgling river flows in, along with the birds’ songs and the drone of distant cars. It reeks of cow dung. Darkness slips into me. The lights of four houses twinkle, and then lose their shining power. I am lonely. A happy butterfly getting burned in the light. Apolitical. Atomic. Modern. The moon is dead, and idiots like me stick their long fingers into the eyes of the night. Then, in silence we do what we have always done. We are happy, body and soul. We bite our nails, watching from the window how human beings use their wings while waiting to come into this world.

8. The Sun

I was coming back from Pristina. The sun was hammering upon the windshield of my Opel. I felt something unusual. The whole world was revolving around me. I made some weird grimaces. I felt a burning sensation in my chest because, even after thirty, I did not know the reason of my existence, and of everything around me. I was a vulture, loyal to the unchangeable flows. I made grimaces in an attempt to get an answer, but I simply could not succeed. I was mentally incapable to solve that. Someone waved at me. The bald head of a tractor driver in front of me was blurring my sight with it glaring shine. A puppet with its intestines sprawled on the white line on the asphalt caused tremors in my head. I was living only for Izabela and my family. Everything outside us was weird, shaky, threatened by the beast of reality. Someone waved at me again. O travelers tempered by the fire of concern; my body is a tree that flourishes in winter. Happiness is God’s defiled servant. We stand in line, one after the other, to sell ourselves as we watch the smoke of centuries-long wars. But the day was lovely due to the sun. I still could not grasp what I really was. I still could not grasp what I was articulating everywhere in the presence of other faces. 

I had become a huckster following the style of the minds that run the world. I turned on the radio and a song from Gillespie** burst out. I felt like a Motherfucker. Sha, la, la, la, la. Sha, la, la, la, la.

PART TWO

I know what I eat, and I know what I digest, but I do not know what I create.

Salvador Dalí

9. Easy

I was sitting on one of the Easy Jet seats like a giant. I was drinking red French wine and beating my brains in the sky. I was not afraid of flying any more, perhaps because of the strong wine, my thoughts up in the air and the new streak of thoughts in my life. The important thing was that my fear was gone. It is always good when we get rid of whatever form of fear. When we kick fear in the face and say: Move your ass from here! Izabela was sitting in the first row. We had changed our seats. She is pregnant. I will become a father. When she broke the news to me, I had just come back from a rehearsal in the theatre. I dashed into the house. She accused me of taking off my shoes without kissing her first. She told me that she would share with something important. She took my hand and led me to one of the armchairs in the living room. She sat on my lap and showed me a small piece of paper with her womb printed on it. Something in her womb. Our baby was growing. I shivered. I could not believe that. What innumerable feelings broke loose within me! I could not describe that moment accurately. I would become a father. I could not sleep all night. I was weeping in silence as Izabela was sleeping. What was going on? Would I be a good father? In what world was I bringing this child? All the truth about it was related to a certain frightening mysticism. When I was twenty-four, I had serious problems with my father. I wanted to quit my studies and elope to Denmark with a woman who was thirteen years older than I was. My father had sent me an email, because he believed that it was impossible for us to discuss the matter quietly. Of course, he was against the idea. He had told me that only when I reached thirty, I might understand what life really was. He believed that I was living a devil-may-care type of life. However, he had an explanation for that, for that phantom concept that had set on my head like a crown. And here I am, at this age that crown has fallen, that concept is gone as I am about to become a father. Someone was fixing the order of things, that ancient cycle of the human development. We are all the heirs of suffering, and we humbly serve the suffering. Even when we do not want to, we kiss the feet of suffering. This was the only truth among wicked truths. The old leaves their place to the young. Suffering demands fresh flesh. God wants to refresh the game field, or He just wants to escape the boredom that His creatures give Him.

10. Berlin

Our baby’s first flight was to Berlin. I had never been to Berlin. I have always wanted to visit the city, but journeys are unlikely to be as they used to, when I was drinking all the time. I was responsible for Izabela and what she was carrying in her belly. She eats a lot and wants to sleep all the time. At times, she unleashes her flow of nervousness and wants to bite my head off. Ok then, let me share something lovely among other lovely things: I have always been lazy. The curiosity for big cities has never gotten the better of me. I love hotel beds. To me, they are better than any museum, any square, any statue, any theatre. The bed stands at the top of the hierarchy of things that have been offered to human beings. Izabela had booked us into a hotel that was run by two Russian women. One was continuously talking over the phone, the other one would bring us toilet paper when we had asked for a steam iron. But I do not want to complain. The area was quiet. It seemed like an area for old people and auto mechanics. That was my first impression. We had just entered our room when Izabela let out a beautiful fart. Margarita, my ex-girlfriend, had let out a similar fart when I had visited her at her place in Lund, Sweden. More or less, it happened like this. After having closed my bulging bag of clothes with some difficulty, she said: “Amazing” and while becoming red in the face, she let out a lingering fart. Izabela’s fart was simple, lovely, like a cat running under the table. I did not believe that I would hear a better fart than Margarita’s. Like Izabela’s, that makes your heart rejoice. But life is full of surprises and never-ending good things. You only need to give time to things. Plunge yourself into the beautiful things that people make and you will see.

* Local type of sausage

** Indie band from Pristina