He decides to truly explore what it's like being one of the others. He watches the news every evening and reads Politika every day. Stjepan Mesi? should have become the presiding member of the presidency but didn't. Edith Cresson was elected the first female prime minister in French history. On the nineteenth Croatia will hold a referendum on independence. The Serbs in Krajina have announced a boycott. I can't, I can't!

         In the dimness of the entryway he collides with Tanja's father, who is dressed in a camouflage uniform about a size too small. Milan utters a brief hello and begins to climb the stairs but Mr. Jaukovi?'s short, greasy fingers get a hold of his elbow. His breath smells strongly of plum brandy and sausages. "Did'ya get your reserve call-up, Junak?" Milan silently shakes his head. "If ya wanna be a volunteer, let me know. I'm personally training a small group. To defend Serbdom—screw their ustasha mothers!" Mr. Jaukovi? lifts the end of his camouflage jacket revealing a pistol crouching in its holster. "I'll let you know," Milan responds and runs to his attic.

         From the bottom of his backpack, he pulls out all twenty-two pages of Sand and Eternity. This whole business with Marija has interrupted his train of thought. He wonders if he should give it one more try. His relationship with Marija, that is. He puts the manuscript over on the bookshelf. Soon, I promise, he writes across a page with Thursday, May 16, 1991 written at the top. Then he slaps his forehead: He first telephones aunt Danica, but nobody picks up, then he calls home. "Hey… I'm sorry… happy birthday! I meant to call yesterday but didn't get around to it. I was busy…" "No problem, kiddo," his father responds. "Trust me, they get worse with each new year."

         "Don't ever call me again," says Marija and hangs up. Milan leaves the telephone booth and walks over to the river. He walks a long time, all the way to Zemun, protected and slightly dazed by the drugs he's taking. The trees and the grass are releasing aromas that tickle his mucous membranes ever so slightly. In the garden of Hotel Yugoslavia he orders an ice cream and a glass of mineral water. He watches the Danube flow by, seemingly sluggish, seemingly evaporating history into something like the steam rising off a horse's urine. He's apologized, written four love poems, taken flowers and a card he painted himself over to her house. He doesn't understand why Marija won't have anything to do with him.

         He kicks down the tall grass from which swarms of bugs fly up. The sadness crouching in his heart is softened by the warm aromas of plants, made more easily digestible by his own juices that spring has reawakened. At the Museum of Modern Art he examines the collages of Serbian surrealists. One of them contains an entire poem that begins with an unclear, yet seductive line: With the River I House the Wall. Milan imagines a building whose walls flow over in streams of translucent mortar, each drop representing a house inhabited by a blind bird. Isn't that sufficient evidence that the human spirit is capable of transcending limitations imposed on it by the material world? Is Marija unable to realize that the moment in which she saved him from the savage dog is just as valuable as the moment in which he could have saved her? The fact that each of those moments is locked in its own parallel plane of reality confirms his claim that he didn't actually leave her in the lurch but had run off to get a stick to defend her. Her plane of reality was the first to intersect with the unpredictable axis of time, thereby creating a seemingly reliable sequence of events. Can't she imagine a moment in which he saves her? Does she really think he would make up something like this only to justify himself?

         Aunt Danica still isn't picking up. He hopes she and Jelena are okay. He's almost out of clean underwear. If Tanja were here, he would be able to do the laundry at her place. This thought of Tanja surprises him, as does the fact that it leaves no trace in him. He remembers autumn a year and a half ago, when, totally smitten with her, he responded to an ad for an apartment in her building. The fact that the apartment was actually a loft three floors above her lent the whole undertaking the illusory appearance of fate. She would sneak out at two in the morning so that they could watch pink clouds through the skylights in his loft. I was born to make love, not war, Milan says to himself, and feels a shudder coming on.

         "My dear boy, we were out of town," chirps aunt Danica. "We got a chance to take a quick trip down to Malta, didn't even have time to pack properly. It's a beautiful country, though. Beau-ti-ful! "You should come over, to see the pictures!" Milan makes the trip to New Belgrade, a bag full of smelly clothes bouncing off his knees. "So what are you saying? Did he really start writing that ode of his to wine labels?" his aunt wonders in disbelief as she pours him a glass of some bitters from northern Italy. She also can't believe that Marija would leave someone like him. "She'll be trying to make you out of mud, mark my words," she says with conviction as she stuffs his undershirts and socks inside her washing machine. Jelena returns from the market bearing heavy baskets with fish tails and the green ends of various vegetables sticking out. "Milan, son, one eats the best in the spring. I'll fix up something right quick…" she says to him as she makes her way to the kitchen. Her voice soon disappears in the sounds of water coming out of the kitchen faucet, banging dishes, and a knife scraping across the silvery fish scales.

         Sprawled on an armchair, sipping his bitters, Milan discusses the influence of politics on everyday life with his aunt. She doesn't hide her fear for her loved ones or her deep admiration for Mirjana. "She's very smart, and brave. You're different, you know. Even when you were little, you always had your own little world. Always engrossed in some books. And women, my dear, swim through reality much better anyway." Alcohol, combined with sugar and antihistamines, makes Milan feel good, despite the fact that he's obviously not considered "very bright" or "brave." Besides, he doesn't need others to see him that way. His aunt seems to be the only one who understands him, respects his right to be different. He agrees with her on another matter: he doesn't believe the fighting in Slavonia can spread to other places. Everything he's been able to glean from the press and television indicates that neither Russia nor America nor the European Union will allow war in the middle of Europe. As a matter of fact, his aunt and Jelena met some members of the British House of Commons in Malta. They happened to be staying at the same hotel. They're members of the Labor Party and don't support violent changes to the borders. The Balkans, they say, are too dangerous to be retailored. The father of one of them visited Tito with that Englishman who wrote that book that was being distributed in schools—he still remembers everything.

         For the first time in several dry weeks Milan can finally taste food. This time it's soup made with fish from the Danube, steamed chard, quiche Lorraine with smoked salmon instead of ham, and a bottle of famous Krsta? wine. For dessert—baklava, the only edible thing that doesn't fall under Jelena's jurisdiction. The two of them sit next to each other on the sofa, curled up like two elderly, well-groomed cats. (Milan doesn't like that idea: he crosses it out almost beyond recognition.) The washing machine is spinning the third load of his laundry as he rocks backs and forth, dozing, the taste of baklava and Nescafe in his mouth. His aunt has put on a Zvonko Bogdan record, which suits his mood surprisingly well. A drawn-out, mildly rolling melody, with lyrics about farms and women drinking wine, and the Danube, which someone wants to stop flowing—at least for a moment, at least until the song ends.

         A whole lot is happening in the world: some ten days ago, the Croats voted for independence. Shortly thereafter, Rajiv Gandhi was killed. Already last night, Milan had to avoid drunk fans of the Zvezda football team on the streets, who were celebrating some great victory won on penalties. Today is an important day. Milan steps into a university building, for the first time after the January exam period. He's enveloped by the nearly forgotten smell of chemicals that the porous mortar and wood have been absorbing for decades. He tries to make himself invisible, but there's no need, as no one recognizes him. He leaves his grade booklet at the Office for Student Affairs and gets an enrollment form in exchange. He hurries outside, feeling free at last. He celebrates quietly, on a bench in the park, nostalgically looking at the signature of his homeroom teacher on his high school diploma. He makes another trip to New Belgrade. His steps echo harmoniously in the halls of the Theater and Drama College. What do I need to enroll in the film direction program? The lady behind the desk is very friendly. She says he has about two weeks to prepare for the entrance exam.

                                        ****


New Orleans, May 10, 1991

Hey, Junak!

I thought I'd drop you a line from this place as well, which is unlike any other place, trust me. I almost feel like apologizing to you for my previous letter, perhaps I should have prepared you in some way. But, as you can imagine, I wasn't quite myself. Haven't slept properly for weeks. Images of Irene's horrible death haunted me wherever I went, and as you know, there aren't very many places on a ship where one can escape. Some of those Audis remained in Brazil, only for the richest, of course, and we brought the rest to the United States. Here are my impressions, in three parts:

Part one: General locations
New Orleans, the dream of every sailor and American lit student (I assume), bears some resemblance to Mediterranean cities. All streets in the old town have a Spanish and a French name, and are usually full of Yanks from the backcountry who are deliriously happy to be allowed to drink in the streets. (Someone told me this is mostly prohibited in the US. Imagine how such a regulation would fare in our country…) Of course, we have barely docked and already half the crew had laid siege to the bars, started drinking and lying in ambush in front of the strip-tease clubs. I can't say I wasn't interested, but at least I waited until it got dark. By the time it did, it was impossible to walk down Bourbon Street without stepping into some kind of substance of human origin. Those naval architecture students from Ohio were simply unable to control the amount of cocktails they were pouring into their weak bodies, and have had four or five of those that are served in elongated plastic cups, the bottom of which looks like an M75 hand grenade. Afterwards I saw them explode around the corner. Not a pretty sight, trust me.

Part Two: Circle
The place is called the Circle Bar, and it's about a half-hour walk from the French Quarter. It is practically underneath the highway, on a roundabout next to the monument to General Lee, you know, the one from the Civil War. I didn't feel like company at all so I sat at the bar eating peanuts, waiting for any kind of music to begin. Grieving for Irene was obviously not enough, so during my nightly surfing through the radio channels I had to find a news program that said that real slaughter has begun at home. Don't know what you think about that, my friend, but I'm afraid that someone over there will open the gates of hell and push the whole poor country in. Even my parents managed to divorce each other without bloodshed despite the fact that he's some kind of Croat and she some kind of Serb. (By the way, I talked to both of them when we arrived in Rio. Vinko claims the army will fall apart like everything else. He managed to get early retirement and is now building some kind of addition to my grandparents' house in Konavle. Crazy. Mom is still in Valjevo, she says they've "discovered" arthritis in her joints.) This is what was on my mind when I started chatting with the guy sitting next to me. Little by little I found out that he was a Croat by origin, that his ancestors had arrived in America 60-70 years ago, and that there was some village near New Orleans where all the inhabitants are descended from those Croats. His name is Steve Popovich, and we are related: he says his grandfather was from the vicinity of Dubrovnik, from some village that starts with "K". My cousin Steve farms oysters and has never been outside Louisiana but has heard of the HDZ.

Part Three: First of all
First of all, I need to say that I've now sailed across the source of the Gulf Stream, which is also the source of that good old geography lesson. It was fun imagining that we were turning off the engines and letting the water carry us all the way to Scotland. We arrived near the city at dusk. The air was so humid that a kind of fog was forming above the surface of the water. Dark-purple clouds had gathered above the shore and one could see that it was pouring cats and dogs there. From a distance, New Orleans looked like a model of a city made of clear plastic. I knew that the Mississipi flows into the ocean somewhere nearby; I don't know where I got it from, but the number of tones of brownish silt the river deposits in the gulf each day flashed through my mind. Then I remembered the view of the Danube from the fortress of Petrovaradin and from Kalamegdan, and the dark-purple clouds you and I saw from the math classroom that one time; it was also in May, May of 1983, I think. Then it grew dark. The sky above us was mostly clear and full of bright stars. Before us, the lights of the city, behind us, the oil rig platforms.

         As can be concluded from the above, I've been suffering from the worst attack of nostalgia in the last two or three years. I have arranged with my captain to get off in Bari and then I'm coming home, so that together we can reconcile the warring parties, get drunk, and play chess.

         Death to fascism (and tell your sister I said hi),

         Vojin aka Popovich

                                       ****

Friday, May 31, 1991 I feel like listening to a requiem, any requiem, but I only know one well. Requiem aeternam dona eis, Domine, that's how it begins. Then follows Kyrie eleison. Performed by the Academy and Chorus of St Martin in the Fields, conducted by Sir Neville Marriner. On the sleeve, a picture of a funeral carriage with nobody walking behind it. In the distance, a bell tower of a city, but who knows: it could be Heaven, Hell, or Vienna. Vojin brought me the record, from his first voyage. My imagination is irrevocably poisoned by Hollywood images, and I cannot resist the impression that the casket contains a body wrapped in a white sheet. The knotty hands of funeral workers throw the body into an unmarked grave and cover it with lime. A sweaty actor with tons of powder on his face contorts in a convincing last gasp. Strings. Carriages racing through the night. Strings, choir. Whoever is coming will be late. Confutatis maledictis.