Zbornik Mednarodnega literarnega srečanja Vilenica 2004 - Ljudmila

Novica Novaković
That Night
That night as I was watching the world through my hotel room window
Saramago and Zagayewski suddenly spoke to me, with my head on the
pillow I tried to run away from them but their thoughts were too
powerful, they tore me from the embrace of ancient and most irrelevant
things which perhaps have not even happened, and branded me
with their seal, I sat up on the bed confused and dispersed, with
Saramago sitting to my left, telling me about blindness and the dirty and
scruffy blind who follow each-other through the slush of waste and
their own faeces, about the loss of respect and feeling for fundamental
values, and for a moment I saw myself in this world of the blind,
fighting rats and wild dogs for the leftovers, fondling with my erect
penis a blind woman I had coincidentally met, wiping my tears as he is
asking me what is the purpose of tears when the world has already lost
all of it’s meaning, I turn away from him and behold Zagayewski to my
right, telling me about Russia invading Poland, about fields and meadows,
flowers and laughter, about shrapnel and wind, about rivers,
mountains and bayonets, about how Russia and how it, like an arrow
pierced Poland’s back, his words do not shed blood although you can
feel it between the verses, at first warm and sticky, then cold, coagulated,
impersonal, I look at my hands – which are also the hands of
mankind and there’s blood on them, I look into my eyes – which are
also the eyes of mankind and there is hatred in them, I look into my
soul – which is also the soul of mankind, and there is fear in it, and my
broken heart cries once more, for all the boys who have died, for all the
murdered girls, for all the slaughtered children and Jose questions
me again about the purpose of tears when the world has lost all its
meaning, almost none, that is what I am learning from them, trying to
follow their cross examining questions about the value of the future
without the present, nothing, the mystery of what was always dying,
the question of time and, in this manner, it dragged on all thorough the
night until morning, when I stood by the window and watched the
world go by, caught in its rapids, on the fourth March in the year two
thousand, it’s snowing in the city of Luxemburg.
Translated by Spela Truden & Edward John Truden.
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