Ivan Dobnik - Vilenica

Ognjen Spahić · 275
in an ashtray that had the ocean and several cypress trees portrayed on its
bottom. Only then did he slowly look up and observe the wall. The place
were the hands had hung was framed by a rectangle the color of ash and
dust. He felt his stomach turn; the blossoming of some dark substance, he
thought, that slowly spread throughout his body, announcing finality. He
looked at the absence on the wall and tried to assign a meaning to it. He
heard the north wind rushing through the pines and felt a steely cold in his
very bones. Tiny drops of sweat gathered on Andrej’s brow. With his right
hand he wiped his forehead, and then he quite precisely turned the sleeves
of his white shirt up, raising them above his elbows. He squeezed his fist
and observed the flexing of the muscles beneath the tightened skin. He
had powerful hands and a lot of blood had flowed through them. With a
cigarette between his lips, Andrej filled another glass of whisky and turned
on the heater. The rising heat made the iron expand and pop. He returned
to the armchair and closed his eyes.
The speed with which it all took place surprised him. First he felt a pleasant
warmth on his right palm. The pain came only a few seconds later:
when he opened his eyes, when he raised his right hand, when he dropped
the shining blade from his left. He didn’t believe that he could cut so deeply.
The cut was now lost under the rhythmical spurts of blood that flowed
out and left dark spots everywhere. He got up and walked slowly toward
the wall. With two fingers he pressed the wound and pressed his smeared
forearms into the outline of the frame, trying not to betray the original.
The similarity defined metaphors that he had not managed to express in
words. Then red lines slowly ran down the white surface of the wall, and
the only thing Andrej thought at that moment was: that the picture was
coming out of the frame, that it was finally being liberated, revealing its
true nature, defining some kind of meaning. He suddenly felt a heavy
drowsiness. Small green sparks glittered before his eyes. Each blink of his
eyelids changed their color, and among those colors Andrej believed he saw
the black limbo of some ancient warmth that would suck up his body at
any moment. When he took his arms from wall, the outlines of his hands
remained within the outline of the frame: steady and eternal, he thought as
he tried to control his steps. He staggered over to the armchair from where
he could look at the wall in peace, along with the new meaning on it. He
wished, in addition to all of that, that he could hear a gentle whispering:
a calm voice explaining phenomena and things. He tried to keep his eyes
open but when he tried to rub his eyes he realized that his hands were lying
with their palms facing upward. He looked at them as if they were objects
someone had taken from the wall and accidentally placed in his lap. Like
just-painted shapes that were slowly drying. After that thought, Andrej
inhaled and exhaled seventeen more times.
Translated by Randall Major