DREAM OR SOMETHING ELSE

Exit in order to see the procession of Queen Lob! If the kingdom does not exist, the name of the queen does exist. The dream. In the middle of the carriage carried half by slaves, half by dogs, there was a wooden column and around it a coiled snake. All gazes were turned to the snake. The gazes of the people and of the servants, of those who were part of the procession and those who were not. The snake performed stylized poses from point to point.

The configuration of signs stunned the observers. The indentations are worked out: an indentation between the shoulder and the nape of the neck, an indentation between the back and the hip, an indentation between the thigh and the calves, an indentation on the foot. Indentations on the column. Queen Lob with gaze directed ahead, where there is nothing, because everyone is to the side or behind. The snake wound itself around the shoulders, in the lap, the embrace. The crown of the penis.

Three raging big men entered my sleeping chamber and said that birds live in it. Could that really be? We're obliged to put them in a metal cage and to hang them above your head. But there is no wall here, the room is open as a burgled jewelry box. I don't like your intent. Eh, so much for a response to us. Therefore we'll prevail. I don't want canaries, nor parrots, nor nightingales, none of it, neither live nor drowned. I don't want birds over head. Put them somewhere further away, please. Be unheard, be invisible in your power...

After the lovely meeting there was no place for anger. However, he stood with obvious rage and went off to the gambling house. With a gambler's passion. It is always open: working time, eternity, the illusion. So it is underground. Hell. At. Atum. Fatum. The guards are armed, dangerous and swarthy. They don't allow me not even by chance to enter. Those who are inside invest, lose, murder, play, but I search. Someone. That is against their Order. Stinks of a bureau for lost labors.

Repeatedly I am at home. He, miraculously, is waiting for me. But, nothing is the same. Why are you silent?
"I have the impression that I've accidentally entered paradise, " he says. "But then I'm afraid in case somebody notices me and chases me out. I don't make any sign that I'm here, that I might not remain as long as possible..."

Resting for a while in a mountain clearing - a fine filly, surrounded by open countryside in nature and the luxurious growth of vegetation, I gazed toward the heavens. Instead of sky, I saw the earth upside-down, mirrored in it, placed wrong way up. Everything stood transparent and illuminated. And the shadows of the trees and of the ridgetops fell uphill, but as if in the depths of the sea. The water was floating. Watching out. July calm. The longest day. Heavenly ramblings.

A group of tourists came by, monks or only individuals who impersonated monks. They were suspicious. Rather than on the earth, they rested as if in a heavenly vault. They plotted. They considered murder. An act. They remembered an underground. A Sicilian-ritual, necessity, a weapon, truth. Blamelessly peaceful clergymen. Skillfully they position themselves or play-act on the Earth. All of that happened "in heaven," of course. They rang the bells. The rock group Pink Floyd. The dark side of the moon. Turn to the other. Bring back the earth. Free the heavens.

I need to get out of this whole town and its environs in order to find him. I never believed that I would be in the courtyards of the Pantheon. He was sitting in front. Before the remains of the one-time edifice. The columns of the Pantheon are visible in the background, overgrown with gloomy plants: those that creep along the walls, those that snakes and lizards peer out from beneath and everything else that crawls far and away. The shadows of the columns fall obliquely. It wasn't quite noon yet. The columns and the shadows of the gods in the background blocked my way. Before announcing myself, I encountered all of the things and shadows beyond him and placed them aside. One to the next. I tried to be gentle. Beneath the fingers, on the shoulder-blades, and the busts I could feel the turbulent unrest of the living and dead things. I didn't like the move. They were, in fact, upset by the hasty shifting of the light, by the swift sunset. That was the best way for the internal perspective to disappear from sight and for my friend alone to remain, unrealized. And the premature dusk upset him as well, the disappearance of the shadows of the past across his shoulders. When he saw me, he asked, did something happen to the Pantheon? I also have the impression that the gods are cool toward me. No, I said, it is only that some relationships between you and the shadows are changed. He didn't move. Around his neck stretched unnaturally the large phallus. He gazed at me with trepidation. As if he was aware of the unnaturalness, his, ours , and of all the rest. I touched him. Tell him to get up, I said to him. Why have you sat there like a statue! And I touched him again. Otherwise I can't, answered my friend, while his phallus beckoned with its head as if it definitely understood. There are times when I can't be human. I suffer from an excessive need for unnaturalness. When I remember that my mother truly is dead, it occurs to me to turn myself into marble: I sculpt myself, all the while it doesn't satisfy my desire to disappear from this world or for a while not to grow tired of emphasizing my unnaturalness. Then I wait for a long time for some woman to come and revive me. Women are skilled at that, in returning me to reality. Endless sex is unnecessary for us. Nothing unreal.

I dreamed about the great poet as the ailing hero Bolen Dojchin. The Black Arab as a Black Arab. The path was sloping and muddy. He fell and crawled. I took him by the hand and helped him on his way. So that he could cast off his dirty clothes and change into others, he urged me to bring him new clothes. I did that. When I returned, he was lying down wrapped in white bandages. By him were other men as well in hospital pajamas. It smelled like the Skopje hospital rooms. It occurred to me to hold my nose and to get out into the fresh air as quickly as possible. He must have heard something said about him. We were silent, we the others. Then he stood, he dressed and he told me in confidence that his entire fate is determined by the word "barrier." It is essential for you to get way from here, I told him. Go home. He is not free in every way.

He entered the apartment, took off his coat and came to bed. There he rolled up in a ball in the shape of an embryo on the wall, in his own natural grandeur and he became stiff. He was dead for a significant time. Deceitful death! I touched him: dried out cypress. I tried to place him on the bed, extremely upset. I was afraid that he might break apart while I shifted him to a horizontal position. The backbone will break. Then what if he revives in the meantime? I didn't let him out of my sight, but I took up my knitting needles, the wool, the small stool, I sat and I began to weave my collection of poems. The needles clicked, the colors blended, they created sounds from colors and stitches, in the room existed something that had its own significance, outside of mine or his. He sensed the reality of the new, it trembles and germinates. Over and above that it was not a lithographic print, not a beginning.

Life is tragedy, says the Woman, a person becomes mature because he accepts that. In the irreconcilability of misfortune and some "kinds" of life, begins the tragic.

The hall for meetings is not appealing neither when it is full nor when it is empty. He opens his bag and takes out a mirror and lipstick. He applies the red lipstick, lady-like. He notices me later. He pulls at my hand. He was holding it for a long time, but I didn't react at all. He'll go to Belgrade. I won't go to Belgrade. He will go to America. I won't go to America. He has a map. Airplane tickets. Subway tickets. I don't. Neither provisional or permanent. We had to leave the hall together. But I wanted so very much to fall out through another door, that I opened it to the outside wall. I seized the branches of the quaking aspen, the "I-hiccup." As at home the branches of the figs, the cherries or the apricots. There was no fruit. The branches were supple, alive. Then I scrambled up to the parking lot. All matured.

My deceased uncle chose to return to the village, to the very house of his birth. He took a small stool and sat below the house in the yard, there where no one alive normally sits. He was sitting when I saw him, he was sitting after that for yet a long time while it was still daylight. The sunshine suits him. He served to remind us that something unreal was happening. Maybe natural. At dusk, he told those present that he was looking for me. Nobody tells where I am. But he saw for himself. Sometimes it is good to be silent, not to speak the truth, not to meddle in strange business. My uncle and I had such business in which others did not wish to take part. Not so much because he is dead, as that he is dead among us. It is one thing to see a dead person, but it is something else to have him seek you out, to come to you in the house, to look over the rooms, to open the chests of drawers. Only daddy can save me. But, he doesn't exist. I call him by name, as if the name will help. I wake up, my uncle has curled up under the coat rack by the old chest full of clothes that haven't been worn in years, nor thrown out.

They gathered all of us who were dead and guided us to a joint meeting. Everyone of us knew that we were the living dead. Someone organized us. The thought of that Someone was repulsive to me, just as the dead repulsed me. That type people. I wanted them to include the living among us, to be more interesting, maybe better-looking. But it is strictly forbidden to have contact with the living. But, they could serve as a consumer good. This evening we will begin with one. Tomorrow we'll see whether we'll raise the price. Everything depends on the demand. It's as if the music is all the same. It plays as well for some as for others. And even for those who have thought everything out ahead of time.

The tree served as entertainment for some. Then usually you won't be content by yourself. The people and the branches were quite thin. Fragile. The one who is most afraid of it would climb the tree. That was me. They were exceptionally spiteful so that I say "no." Knowing that they were choosing: the thinnest shoot at the top. I would concentrate my mind for the purpose of taking away my weight, and to restore my strength. Calm and collected. And I climbed up. I almost took delight in the climb. Then, in the look down, at their consternation, envy and dissembling. And when I thought I would jump in order to fall down, ^ policemen came, firemen and countless planners and they put an | enormous sturdy safety net below me. So that 1 can expect to stay alive after jumping from up high. My weight returns to me again, my legs are severed off. And I lose the dream, suddenly, I ...

• • •

And today is a day. So I thought when I heard the voice of my friend, dead already two years. That strange girl had to listen also, because she suddenly became jealous because I was allowed, she wasn't, to enter his apartment. It is situated two floors below you, the girl verified for me. Before leaving, I went to the toilet. The bowl was hidden beneath a funeral wreath. I removed the wreath and sat down. Terror seized me at the thought that I was sitting on a grave. I stood up. With a heavy stomach, with an agitated face, I put on shoes woven from forest wildflowers, shoes that smelled of cranes bill and chamomile, of saints grape and woodland mint, and I unlocked it. When I wanted the key to put in my pocket I realized that I didn't have it. And, how can I recall what happened afterward, if what happened was death. Only the key remains, abandoned like a person.

At first, we looked in the direction from which airplanes come, all-purpose military ships, identified and unidentified flying objects. In this case all dangerous. And foreign. Some thought that they were involved in military exercises. Ceremony. But, that was the start of war. The disposition of weapons is completely murderous. To vanquish right away. Without error.

We retreated into our homes when the attack began. I took a long time to put on some high heels. I looked for a handkerchief for my nose. Deodorized napkins for external use. I couldn't tie the laces on my shoes at all. Outside a cannon roared. I am trying to be calm. I look for chamomile. I put compresses over my eyes. In order not to see, not to listen, not to participate.

One word rings out continually: we must. A word that I hate. I don't run, I don't hide. The door is open. They come, temptation. They roust us from home. We're all out on the street. An unknown language. European? I don't know. Probably.

At the very beginning of the sea, on the seashore, a person and in him a dolphin. A storehouse of figures: a person in a dolphin, a dolphin in a person. The inside of the person, the outside of the dolphin. One in another - one. A convergence. A trap. A ball. A joint. An outlet: an inlet. Cast your gaze toward the sea's breadth, a pleiad of dolphin-people. Foam-fish. Deep breathing. The waves reach me. The dolphins will also arrive. What to do with the people? The faces? The souls?

from the book Drugo vreme. Kultura, Skopje, 1989.
Translated by Michael Seraphinoff, 1998

© Katica Kulavkova, 2001-2007.
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