SINGER IN THE NIGHT
Olja Savičević
Translated from the Croatian by Celia Hawkesworth
First published in 2019 by
Istros Books
London, United Kingdom www.istrosbooks.com
Copyright © Olja Savičević, 2019
First published as Pjevač u noći in 2016
The right of Olja Savičević, to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988
Translation © Celia Hawkesworth, 2019
Typesetting: Davor Pukljak, www.frontispis.hr
ISBN
Print: 978-1-912545-97-1
MOBI: 978-1-912545-15-5
ePub: 978-1-912545-20-9
This publication is made possible by the Croatian Ministry of Culture.
This book has been selected to receive financial assistance from English PEN’s “PEN Translates” programme, supported by Arts Council England. English PEN exists to promote literature and our understanding of it, to uphold writers’ freedoms around the world, to campaign against the persecution and imprisonment of writers for stating their views, and to promote the friendly co-operation of writers and the free exchange of ideas. www.englishpen.org
Part One
LETTERS TO LOUD LOVERS
‘Here at last is a true lover,’ said the Nightingale. ‘Night after night have I sung of him, though I knew him not: night after night have I told his story …’
Welcoming letter
Dear citizens, householders, close friends, fellow townsfolk, mild and attentive civil servants and waiters, courageous and patient nurses, magicians’ secretaries, dressers of abundant hair, eternal children in short trousers, seasonal ice-cream sellers, dealers in intoxicating substances, drivers who brake on bends, gondoliers of urban orbits, captains on foreign ships, foreign girls on captains, neighbours – agreeable disco gladiators, neighbouring proto-astronauts and everyone else in Dinko Šimunović Street, not to list you all,
I am writing because before I leave I want to tell all of you that we live in the loveliest street, in a wonderful city, in a country without match or peer!
The sun rises at five, warms us, and sets at eight, sometimes at nine, and at night, without our knowing it, cascades of meteors pour over our heads, while down below, in front of our doorways gleam the little golden stars of apartment bells, caper flowers close their calyxes filled with heady aroma, and the quiet air refreshed by nocturnal moisture is riven only by lovers’ cries. Summer in the city is rainy and hot and plants from ground-floor gardens beside the root and trunk of skyscrapers grow as far as the birds, up to the tenth or fourteenth floor. Some may find that monstrous, but it’s beautiful. Towards evening, cats awaken, and go scampering along the branches of the climbing plants, they fly over the narrow sky-filled gaps between apartments, with the occasional curse flying after them, which makes the image real and protects us, up to a point, from madness.
It may be like this also in other towns on the meridian and further afield, but do they have such tall and proud men, modest champions with powerful thighs and such well-built women with ponytails and long nails, somewhat impudent, in the way that a thorn on a rose or bramble by the road is impudent, do they have such aromatic pines constantly under their city windows, such melodious voices, such healing sea and such a street, a cheerful torrent, a musical ladder, a flight of steps travelling into future memories, into incorruptible childhood? And are they aware of it?
Because, if you do not know how lucky you are, then you really are out of luck. Enjoy it all, even unthinkingly!
With love from your neighbour,
Nightingale,
35 Dinko Šimunović Street.
Two weeks had passed since that event, and I had set out in search of the man who wrote the letter. After a brief visit to Split, I decided to turn off the motorway onto a side road and to speed off into that steppe-like landscape where even a goat would go hungry, towards his native village.
Even then I was aware that I was finding it increasingly hard to concentrate and that my thoughts were slipping away. I could not recall the meaning of a road sign: a consequence of my state of mind, or perhaps ordinary emotional excitement. (Maybe both). That’s why I’m going to record them – those thoughts and letters – so that my notes about everything that was happening or was going to happen in connection with all this would remain preserved for me (primarily for me, yes) and maybe for someone else, my dear.
Mitrovići, Nightingale’s village, in the hills where the frontiers of Croatia meet Bosnia and Montenegro, has a small U for the Croatian Ustasha and a sticker of the Hajduk football club logo stuck beside the name of the village, above the name is a stop sign – you have to stop (although there’s never anyone there) before continuing on your way.
His mother met me in front of the bell-tower plonked in the middle of the village. The clock on the tower, black hands on stone, was fifteen minutes late and pointed to midday. She was alone, she and several flies, and she had not sat down but, large and round as she was, she was rocking from one foot to the other. She had wrapped a black scarf with bright pink roses on it round her head: her face blossomed into a smile when she caught sight of me. The beginning of September is hot, but not in that lethal July way. September is summer after ecstasy, lazy, stupefying and discreetly illuminated in the moment before everything that has just ripened begins to rot. Everything has been brought to its height, in tastes and colours, and then subdued into an over-rich tenderness, melancholy.
She said ‘Bloody ‘ell you looks great, better than on telly!’
She said that and kissed me on both cheeks, then took my arm and led me into the house on the square.
I looked dreadful, after two days’ driving with a broken air-conditioner (the fact that the car is a convertible didn’t help) and after I’d been peed on by a dog, but I didn’t say so, after all that I was glad of that moment, that compliment.
‘Nothing from Gale,’ I say, taking out his last letter. ‘I was given this by the lad who’s looking after his flat, living there. (I didn’t mention the other letters.)
She took a carob pod out of her apron pocket and chewed it. Then offered me another. ‘More scribbling, damn ‘is eyes. I can’t read it any more. So tell me – no one knows where he is. What do we do now? How’re you going to find him? And what if he’s not in Bosnia? You’d do better not to look for him.’
She’s called Josipa, Nightingale’s Mum.
She flapped her hands over her thighs a few times – I shrugged my shoulders. ‘Don’t worry, my dear,’ I say. ‘I’ll find him. The world is limited, but time is infinite.’
She looked at me quizzically as though I had spoken in Chinese and swatted something with her hand.
‘It’s a quote from a graffito, my dear. Gale wrote it,’ I say. I didn’t want her to think I was making fun of her. I felt stupid and in my awkwardness I downed in one gulp the brandy she had poured for me.
She put her hand out towards the letter. ‘So, let’s have a look!’
She read slowly, her lower lip forming the letters.
‘He