Zbornik Mednarodnega literarnega srečanja Vilenica 2004 - Ljudmila

Aleksandar Prokopiev
front of him, now and then replaced by her hair-curls getting in his face.
And vice versa.
– Shall we go and see Mishkec? suggests Ivan, the most lively of his
friends in spite of his 90 kilograms. - I don’t know if we’ll be allowed to
visit him. He hesitates. – Oh we will, I’m almost certain. And if necessary
I have some connections... Ivan concludes, with sudden self-confidence.
And in fact they have absolutely no problem entering the hospital building.
Mishkec is the only patient in Room 07 of the Surgical Department.
He lies covered to the waist; a cream-coloured woollen shirt can be seen
under his pyjamas. His parents are there at his bed. The father - whose
moustaches are dyed black - is on a chair by the bed and the mother, with
an absent look in her eyes, at the bedside. Her hands are ice-cold when he
shakes them.
Mishkec’s head is covered with a kind of square mask, linked by two
tubes to a tall machine with a transparent bowl on top of it. A sound of
slow dripping can be heard from the one of the tubes - drop after drop -
and Mishkec is breathing through the other one, also very slowly. Almost
immediately the air in the room becomes very thick and it’s hard to
breathe. It seems to all of them that this air will inevitably run out and
they will suffocate, while Mishkec, linked to the machine, continues to
struggle for his life.
He touches the rubber chimney-sweeper in his pocket and images come
to him from somewhere - while air vanishes with a whistle down the
tubes and from the visitors’ throats, vacuum-sealing the room - images of
the portraits of the dead Camille by Monet and of Schiller’s dead Klimt,
the beloved woman and the beloved teacher each painted only a few hours
after their death.
Finally the lift stops at the fourth floor. Until the next ride, neighbour! –
Goga, in her jeans and her faded blouse, waits for the grey lift door to
open, then pushes the outer one aside like a heavy curtain behind which
the voices of fourth-floor neighbours can be heard: a couple with a blackhaired
daughter who hails her - Hello, Auntie Gordana!
Letting the water flow from the tub, he washes the sperm on his knee.
- We’ll wait, the couple smile. - Our daughter has to go to the bathroom.
He pushes the button for the second floor. The metal door closes, but
through the small window of the lift he can see your concerned, pretty
face, although it has a shadow on it.
This isn’t the end, he manages to form a thought. Only it’s somehow
different.
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