13.-22.08.2010
- And so, how was it? Whom did you go with? Where did you camp? And how about the prices? Who won? Tooooooo many questions!!!
I keep quiet. I'm just laughing. Isn't it trying to describe indescribable, explain unexplainable, tell unspeakable, put the extraordinary into the frame of usualness a complete waste of time? I'm just laughing…
But I'll try! In the name of all of you who lived, died and resuscitated each morning over and over again, along with three ill-connected beats of Gypsy trumpet; for all of you who got both the poison and the cure in one and the same bottle; in the name of all of your frantic attempts to make a deal with your own legs on the right steps of Uzicko, and speak English in inarticulate gestures… In your glory, I shall tell this story!
I'm trying to open my leaden eyelids; they seem to be welded. It burns. I don't like that the sky is of such a livid orange color. There is no Sun and yet it is so hot. I'm thinking- I must have fallen asleep in a sauna. The rest of the senses are slowly awakening, the sharp smell of naphthalene tells me I'm in a tent. Smile. Something in my throat is purring, gurgling. Lightnings-like, the pictures of the last night return, and though the sequence is a bit odd I'm trying to watch the movie. It ends quickly. Although I don't remember of having swallowed any cat, my throat is still purring. From the outside, I hear a female voice offering a coffee for 50 dinars . That's what I need! I try to call her. Big mistake. I woke the cat and the damn thing is now standing upside-down in my throat, with its claws plunged into my palate. It hurts.
The clamor outside. Someone's yelling that the cancer-cure is discovered. I know exactly what they mean and I run out. As if I was the only thing it was waiting for, a bottle with a pale yellowish liquid is running towards me. "Does it kill cats?”, I ask in a sour, husky voice. "I don't know bro, but it resets liver, that's for sure.", I get a satisfactory answer. That's what I need. I don't feel any taste but after a few sips I feel I killed the cat. Smile.
The tents are gradually opening. People, zombie-like rivers of old, black&white TVs are gushing out of them. "Picture-yes, tone-no!” as it used to be, at least 15 minutes after turning on... And everybody, as by default, are moving towards the same place..
A nearby inn. Cracked walls, plaid tablecloth, yellow metal ashtrays…A Purgatory.. After the first sips of coffee even the last cats are dead, and the TVs are regaining their tones. But they don’t know what to talk about. Next, the cameras are out and the brain defragmentation process begins…"Ouch, is that me?", "Who’s this purple chick? ", "Don’t tell me I got completely naked?", "Look at this guy licking asphalt", "I still had both of my slippers in this picture", "And where did we get this barrel?", "O man, you were kissing some grandma."…One can hear all kinds of things…Joy, misery, disbelief, disappointment… Out of the fridge, the waitress brings the bottle of rakija which we left last night for her to cool it. I come for a coffee and I come home drunk… We drink for the card towers made of memories which are now rebuilding again and, by the way, we promise each other we will memorize better everything we do today. We lie to each other…Well, that’s the reason we have cameras!
Rakija is already doing me, so off I went in a search for a cold shower. It's early and one should stand through the day and till the night. While I’m, in vain, looking for a shampoo and a shower gel all around my tent, I recall the yesterday scenes -ooo, so that’s how we made a river foam-party... Eh, what the hell, a cold water alone will be enough… The only thing that needs to be washed away is the beer rain which poured on my skin from all around… And cooling the head is also necessary..
On the way towards the center of the madness, we see along the road, further down the fence in a tall grass, one "superman". Police and emergency patrols didn’t spot him last night. We approach him slowly. Some girl puts her head on his chest. "It's ok, he is breathing! Let him rest for a little more!
On the crossroad down the road, a middle-aged lady, half naked is in a kind of trance, performing belly dance. She has a bottle of water on her head. There are no abnormal people in here but we still thought she isn’t all sane. Jeez, she could have at least put a beer on her head!
The monument is in hell. One of the many Dante's circles… Delije and Grobari (oposite football teams fans) are singing their songs together. Wine, rakija, beer, dust - all mixed and going into the same stomach… Djurdjevdan and Kalasnjikov enter the same ears…English, Spanish, Hungarian and Chinese spoken by the same mouths…Waltz and Moravac under the same feeth… Suddenly, a handsome blond distributing some flyers appears…We don’t even know what are those about but we are already running towards trumpeters and thrusting them into their pockets. Glowing, they play song after a song. Two trumpets on the ears! "Stereo godfather!"-shouting a Gypsy with an accordion. A little bit further someone arranged them into a circle. A man prefers a "dolbi surround" . Woofer, a Gypsy with a drum takes out of his pocket what we shoved to see "how good they are". He laughs. "You bastards, we play for you for flyers!"
A green-eyed brunette sells love-cocktails. Rakija - colored in rainbow specter. I take a green and a purple. I'm thinking - this one could sell me even the poison itself…… and then… only the gloom. Love in a tube - abortion in a head!
It's morning again. Someone’s still drilling inside my skull. And the cat is here.. Here we go again…This morning, the fragmentation goes significantly slower.. I use loza for resetting. It's ok now.
New day, new follies. God only forbids I get color-blind again, concerning the rakija… Around the monument there are promoters, pro-motors, pro-matures… I don’t remember the difference any more. And what smile they have… I pick… The most beautiful smile - the most beautiful rakija. Someone’s grabbing my wallet. "Hey, that’s enough! Those are small frauds, it's expensive, where’s your limit??? "Give mi a smile for all the money!!! Since then I got rakija for free… Later, the smiles too… A friendship was born… You know, there were all kinds of friendships there. Those short-term, till the last drop, and those, well I guess that last a lifetime, when the bottle or the tube is refilling over and over again… And we left a lot of those rakija tanks, to wait and be emptied in the festival to follow…
A new day, a new Dante’s circle… I no longer know which exactly it is… I should've counted the cats… Defragmentation… Blurry pictures… Last night, camera also drank out of the tube, I thought… A video clip: a free fall from the monument - the street lights as those in the Star Track-asphalt… The drunken camera fell from the monument.
Human brain is capable of inventing a thousands of stupidities! "How much for pissing in that toi-toi? "30!" "And how much for lifting it from the ground?". So we did lift it!
"Drinking out of the bottle isn’t that funny, right?" An asphalt hole! First comes beer and then rakija! Straws are brought from the coffee-shop. We're lying on the road , drinking from the hole!
"Let's compete and swim in the river, but upstream?!" "What do you mean man, it's ankle-deep!" "Well, free-style!" So we swam…
"There's a lot of cops! Let's drive around the square, drunk, without the license!" "Drive what?" "A beer-case!" And we drove it…
"I'm drunk. I can't walk to the camp! "Make a deal with the cops, so that they give us a lift in a cop-van!" Here: "Being a cop, it’s the saddest thing…." The lift fixed! But only around the block. We walked from there. Me half-sober, he half-bloody…
The dawn. The dustmen’s working day begins. "I'll be just lying here among these crumpled beer-cans and you sweep me, together with the thrash, along the street, all the way to the truck! The price isn’t important at all!" So the people with huge brooms, puzzled faces and full-pockets(now) swept him.
On the stadium-Dante again! Whether his name is Keba, Boban, Brega or Dejan it was all the same devil! In a different hell! And who cares who’s playing and which song it is! Everybody’s in a trance! Girls are pissing on our legs, beer's pouring on the sweaty foreheads, newly-born children are shaking their booties, mothers and ants are twining their bodies in the rhythm of the music, shirts are being torn in front and in the back…
And so on, ad infinitum, for all the money!!!
The last morning…The brain on the stand-by, the liver on the shutdown, the soul in the throat… Only the cat is here… That morning, we tried the untried. We drank water. We knew cats didn’t like it. And we were right. But we didn’t kill it, it ran to the stomach. And it was trying to force out everything we were diligently collecting in the past days.. And it was managing to do so... All day long! And the stomach was sizzling as a lime while we were sadly pouring water on it.
While we were leaving Dragacevo valley, for a moment, a sentence made us smile again. A hostess with plaits, in a national attire, warmed our hearts, saying in a squeaky voice: "Play you trumpet, for a long time, and only for the joy! Goodbye till the next festival! "
The trumpet festival was worth all the money. I'll sound like Master Card advertisement, but: "Gasoline for the trip to Guca - 2000 dinars, camp place - 3200, rakija and beer - 35000, summer memories - priceless!"
Three days later, after a tone of infusion, that necessary liver-chimney sweeper, I could still hear cocek in the quietude… I was off alcohol for a while, but never off a trumpet and a smile…
So that’s the story…And I'll still keep quiet, and laughing at your questions…
Darko MARJANOVIĆ
Markovac, august 2010.