He locked himself in his room for days and nights on end. He didn’t go out, at least during the time I was at home. Jaglika, near the end of her days and on the verge of dying, with thoughts and memories that were twenty years old, or fifty, and then twenty again, asked: ‘Where has my Dankitsa gotten to? I haven’t seen him since he was only this big, you know?’
And then came a switch: for the whole day, when I was off at the library, he sat with Jaglika; and when I came home he didn’t budge from my side, until late in the evening – he’d fall asleep in my bed with his head squeezed up against my back. In the morning he’d be awake before me, and a long while before Jaglika would start to shout from the other side of the house: ‘Lidiaaa!’
As if he hadn’t slept at all, his eyes were opaque and yet again, too big, prominent.
‘In which bedroom can I take cover?’
‘Huh? Danilo, you’re in a bedroom.’
‘You don’t get it at all … Anyway. What room do I go to? Don’t play the fool here.’
‘Danilo, I’m in a rush to get to work. Go to sleep.’
‘But really, Lidiaaa… I’m asking you. What’s wrong with that fat old bag-lady in there?’
‘What are you ranting about? What fat lady?’
‘Don’t even pretend like you don’t know, Lidia!’
‘Listen, Danilo, I’m gonna be late for work.’
‘You’re always urging me to love people but I can’t love them and that fat woman can’t do it either, just so you know. Not even grandma can stand it anymore, in case you were wondering.’
‘I’m in a hurry, Danilo. Good grief. I’ve got no time.’
‘Why are you shouting, why are you always shouting, Lidia?’
‘Put a sock in it, you idiot. Go see what Jaglika’s doing! Off you go now.’
‘Hold on, Lidia. I told you, and Baba will tell you, that she’s not going to put up with that naked fool any more, just so you know. You’re always dragging them into the house and nobody can stand it any more. And by the way that woman’s a whore.’
‘Stop it you jerk that’s enough!’
‘Why are you screaming…Why are you screaming?!’
‘Go check on what grandma’s up to…’ and with that I slammed the door behind me; Danilo’s yells followed me to the front door of the building, and as I was running across the street, I could hear him, probably from the balcony now (I didn’t turn around) as he roared and cursed.
III
‘There will never exist a person who possesses definite knowledge of the gods and of the matters I am talking about. And even if this person were in a position to tell the whole truth, he or she would know that this wasn’t the case. But all people get to have their own imagination.’
– (R.P. Lo4 [X of K.] J.B.)
‘Hey listen, Lidia, last night I had another dream about that riot of colours; first they ran, and then they jostled each other, golden yellow, purplish green and stale wine-red, and dark red, too, and that beige like Mira’s skirt, and a blue, a thin blue colour, you know the one, Lida, it always whizzes by like lightning, my head starts aching from it, it’s like a whistle, Lida, it whizzes and flashes and then goes boom – that’s all she wrote – Lida, are you listening to me?’
I nod my head and think to myself how dead certain I am that Danilo is devouring at least two bars of chocolate at the same time when he chomps and spits so unbearably like this, with saliva running from the corners of his mouth. I go on picking up the newspapers strewn about and say to him: ‘I’m listening to you. Go on!’ And he says: ‘I dreamt that Mira came, with an enormous towel around her head, as if she’d been washing her hair, and all at once everything on her started to drip, like an ice cream cone, just like that, Lidia… Then, behind her, there appeared that guy from a few days ago, the guy with the three sweaters on, d’you hear, Lidia, the guy who slept with that naked fat creature, the one that Grandma said she couldn’t stand to see any more, and she came, too, only I didn’t see her right away; it was only after Mira and the guy got undressed and lay down on that towel from her head; it was like they were cadavers, Lidia, they just lay there and didn’t move any more; and Mira, she was hideously thin… then I saw that fat, naked lady; actually, she came up to me from behind and plugged my ears with some pinkish plugs, terribly hard, and she started rubbing me here, behind my earlobes and then eventually my eyelids, Lida, just imagine that. She was so rude, Lidia! Lidia, is she always so rude? When she started to undress me, it was so unbalanced, by that I mean all from her side, as if she’d gone bonkers, she was shaking all over – she broke the belt loop on my pants and Lidia the moment she touched my zip I went half-crazy and when she unbuttoned me down there I came like a rifle, all over her, Lida, I splattered her everywhere, and she just seemed lost in thought, she pretended that she didn’t see. Afterwards that beige colour spread over us, beige darkness, you understand? Nothing was visible for a while, like looking through watery sand, right up until the pent-up colour came hissing out of Mira’s eyes, with interruptions, like when you pee and have an irregular stream, very similar… Afterwards I saw that you were standing off to one side and you were, like this, look, Lida, on your middle finger like this you were spinning a pair of nail scissors and behind you Jaglika was hopping around, whispering something to you, and then came the worst part with the colours, Lida, are you listening to me… and Lida, stop that now, stop it, Lida, sit down…’
Danilo wasn’t actually munching on any chocolate, but he did, however, have something in his mouth, and that’s why he was talking so slowly; and an enormous lie was rolling around on his palate, between his teeth, and burst forth from under his tongue, Danilo’s speech was unintelligible, Danilo was lying, sizzlingly, spraying on all sides like Jaglika – who ever since that day was no longer able to walk, as if her legs had been hit by a thunderbolt (Jaglika, sweet Jaglika, she knows that the devil himself had sent some invisible boulders rolling down, and that’s why she couldn’t move), or perhaps that blue colour that Danilo never ceases dreaming about, the blue thin one, flashes, goes bang and that’s all she wrote… But all of it together, a phantasmagoria in Svetosavska Street. Danilo and Jaglika, the heroes of a cartoon in fiery blue, with a devil who bombards people with stones, and with Mira’s ice-cream tan skirt.
‘Danilo, it looks like you’ve become unhinged.’ He was looking at me with a crooked smile, like a crook (am I imagining this?), but the very next moment, with his eyes half-closed from fear (I could see quite well the tiny white particles of rheum in between his eyelashes) and with his head turned aside just a touch – out of fright – it was as if I was holding a whip in my hands, and not his moist smelly shirt. I yelled: ‘You told my dream… my dream – and you distorted it completely, you idiot. Idiiiot… You made up half of it… My dream, you animaaal!’ But Danilo wasn’t scared any more (that was also my imagination) but rather dejected and embarrassed, Danilo the five-year-old boy, Jaglika’s most beloved little grandson, using this for a moment to garner all the security he could – from the very fact that everybody else loved him more than me, and that all of them (all of whom?) at that moment were standing at his back and with composure, and a taunt of sorts, he says, ‘But Lida, calm down! Everybody all around can hear. I had that dream, I dreamt it last night, Lida, calm down, I beg you… Just drop it… Lida, really, I…’
I’d had enough: I ripped his shirt; once more he gave me such a weird