Translated from the Slovenian by David Limon, read by David Mildon
Jani is a struggling writer and comic book artist living hand-to-mouth with his wife and young son Simon. He's just received a mysterious call from a publisher interested in his work …
I knocked but there was no answer. I waited a moment and then tried again, but nothing, so I went in, as his name was written on the door. There was no one there, but it was obviously the secretary's office and she had gone somewhere, I don’t know where; in the next room, the boss's, there seemed to be someone in there, so I knocked.
"Yes," and then some mumbling and "come in."
I opened the door and there was a guy sitting there, underlining something on paper, which he was holding in place with his other elbow, while the hand held a banana.
I opened the door and there was a guy sitting there, underlining something on paper, which he was holding in place with his other elbow, while the hand held a banana.
"Hello," I said and that I was Jani Bevk.
"Aaaa, so you're the one!"
He stripped the banana to get to its beginning or rather end, as a banana grows from the bit we hold in our hand, from the stalk or whatever it is, when we peel it. Like a monkey, Simon would say, if he wanted his banana peeling so that the peel was still partly in place, so that he could eat it like the monkey he had seen in some cartoon. If he was in a bad mood he first asked for it to be peeled completely, then he would whine about it: "Like a monkey, I want it like a monkey!" Once when he did this I stuck the banana back in its skin and sewed it in place with a needle and thread. The kid looked and looked, stopped crying out of sheer surprise, and then: "Holes, I didn't want holes…" That was what he was like on a bad day, or more accurately a bad moment, because he could change in a flash, but if he had got out of bed on the wrong side, then that didn’t matter, because you could count on something like that at some point during the day. If he was tired and so on. That was what I was thinking when this guy was stuffing himself with the banana, which wasn't a good thing to be doing, because it was confusing, but I couldn’t help it.
"So you're the one," he said again, stuffing the rest of the banana in his mouth and, excuse me, hmmm, excuse me, he swallowed it and wiped his hands on a paper towel.
"Sit down, sit down. Can I offer you anything?"
I said no thanks, but he got up anyway and yelled through the door Majda, Majdaaa! so that the secretary appeared from somewhere and stood there looking awkward, as if I'd sneaked in between her legs. It was probably her who had called me the day before, when it said unknown number and I thought what shall I do, shall I answer or play dumb? Because unknown numbers are never good news. People don’t usually call to give you something. But then curiosity got the better of me and I answered anyway.
"Hello, Mr Jani Bevk?"
"Yeh," I said and wondered what the fuck this would be and that I shouldn’t have answered, and if they give your name and surname it's usually a bad sign, it's usually the police or someone you haven't paid, the nursery school or library or some such. But they don’t say Mr, so perhaps there was nothing wrong.
She could have been his mother, this secretary, I mean of the director, and she'd been there since socialist days, for sure. In these modern times most of them would have tried to get rid of her, or move her into some department where even the devil himself wouldn’t notice, into some cellar to rearrange the shelves, move folders around …
"Coffee?"
Once in secondary school a schoolmate and I had been on work practice at the municipal offices and they stuck us in the cellar where the archives were. There was this guy worked there who we thought must be related to Hitler. He had the same black hair and moustache, the narrow type, and his face was as white as chalk. He was also the right sort of age to be him, or perhaps his older brother, and he moved around like a ghost. He suddenly appeared behind you, indicating with his finger what you should do. That folder there, take it out to the rubbish or somewhere. Even if he did say anything he was impossible to understand. If he was still alive he'd be a hundred, but he's not, for sure.
"Would you like a coffee?"
I waited for them to finish. The one with the banana wasn't showing any signs of concern, he wasn't bothered that he was being looked after by some old dear and not a young one in a miniskirt and jacket and clouds of perfume and a Brazilian wax and five foreign languages, so that everyone asks themselves if he's shagging her, because it's cooler and funkier to have a secretary from the old days, from communism, who has a Karl Marx bush. In that case it doesn’t matter, what do you care, for instance, what your aunt's pussy hair is like. Of course, it was quite possible that he didn't think like that, that he saw her as a secretary who shuffled paperwork, answered the phone, made coffee and so on, and that I was nervous, so my thoughts were running away with me.
"Coffee?" he said again, and I thought it was odd he was repeating himself and then I got it.
"Ah, sorry. I didn’t know you meant me."
"Who, then?"
"Well… Then I will, yeh, black, if possible."
"Black. Water for me, Majda."
Majda said of course and vanished.
"So it's you," he said and I was unclear what I was. Majda had only asked for me to call by, that it was about some work, that she didn’t know much more than that, and I had said that I could.
"The author of Superfucker."
And then it was clear who I was. In my time I had done quite an assortment of things, including
illustrations for children's books, and I thought it would be something like that, not a comic strip. If they call you from a serious publisher that's what you expect. I had drawn Superfucker three years and three months ago. I know that because then Simon was born and I didn’t draw any more comic strips, and even this one I thought only my friends knew about, no one else. I think they only printed a hundred copies, plus twenty, let's say, however many it takes for the machine to stop. I said I was the one and that I was amazed, because I was.
"I was in the comic shop the other day, having a look around and I came across it," he said. "I almost died laughing."
Once more ha, ha, ha and I smiled too, although Superfucker wasn't supposed to be funny. I'd wanted people to be disgusted, offended, but these days that's hard to achieve.
Communist Majda brought coffee, black, sweet, and I don’t like sugar in coffee. It's better than white coffee, which makes me sick. Sugar destroys the taste of coffee, makes it watery, I don't know why people drink it like that. But at least it gives you something to do with your hands and I gratefully picked up the sweetened cup and waited for him to tell me what he wanted.
"Is the coffee all right?"
"Yeh, great," I said and was angry with myself immediately, because why did I have to say great? Yes would have been quite enough, but that's how it is when you behave as if you're not used to something, you come out with things just like that.
And then he began talking and I tried to follow him, but you're screwed if you're thinking of bananas and pussies and this and that, coffee and sugar, but anyway, something about their publishing house setting up some kind of subsidiary or something like that, because they wanted to publish different things to what they were doing now, and I said aha, because he'd stopped again.
"I used to play punk," he began and asked if I'd ever listened.
"To you?"
"Not to me, to punk."
I said that I had, although I'd been a bit late for that as I'd been born later, in the period of Majke and Motorhead, as far as rock goes, and before that Boney M, but then, when I was still little and they came out with Nightfly to Venus. If I think about it, punk was still around then, but I was still a brat and I preferred Brown girl in the Ring, sha-la-la-la-la, and By the Rivers of Babylon, where we sat down ... and such like. But I said, yeh, Pankrti and the Dead Kennedys, because these were the only ones whose names I knew. He said a bit more about punk and such things and about his job, while I drank the coffee and watched it disappear and wondered then what and at the same time tried to pay attention.
"Anyway, I've been here quite some time actually and I'm a bit tired of being … respectable, if I can put it like that."
"Aha ...
And that this alternative publisher, his idea, would deal with the production of odds and sods, also comic strips, including filthy ones. Those little, provocative diversions that the times now called for.
Something like that. And there I was out of coffee. I only had the glass of water left, but the problem was that coffee you can take in small sips, you put your lips on the rim of the cup and sip, sip, sip, but water you can’t drink like that, because coffee is in any case thicker and clings to your teeth. Of course, you can take sips of water but it still goes quicker. One, two, three and there it goes.
"And I'd like… Your comic strip, something like Superfucker… a book, a comic strip, some bloke with a guitar…, a gig.… and as a supplement to some newspaper and so on. And if anything comes of it, fine, if not, then okay."
A short pause. And the water is also gone. What did he want? A comic strip?
He opened the drawer and pulled out a picture book and turned it towards me and I saw it was that Slovene classic Martin Krpan. Then he was silent and I was silent because I thought he'd continue, but he didn’t and I had to say:
"Sorry, I'm not clear…"
"I was thinking that you could illustrate Martin Krpan."
"I don't follow," I said. "What am I supposed… I mean, how can I illustrate it when it is already illustrated?"
"Take a look at it, read it and illustrate it how you think it should be. In colour."
I took the book, flicked through it, and there is Krpan lifting his horse out of a ditch, and another of him arriving in Vienna, which is empty and with black flags everywhere, and then breaking weapons, some lances and swords, and then cutting down a tree, and some broad, the empress if I'm not mistaken, holding her head… I knew that anyway, everyone knows that.
"There's no need to use the same themes, although it might be good because they're established, well known. Or perhaps not. Imagine that instead of Krpan, there is… I don’t know, one of your heroes who does things his own way. But I don’t want to suggest anything. It's up to you."
I said aha, although I didn't know what I would draw. I mean, it was clear to me what my superhero would do in this book, but I still didn’t know if that's what he meant, what he had in mind. My Superfucker would lift the mare from the ditch, but not with his hands, if you get my drift, and I didn’t really know who would publish that, because I had done Superfucker for a joke, for friends…
"But," I said, but when I'd said it I didn’t know how to continue and I stopped so that he would continue, but he didn't and so I had to. "But how hardcore could it be?"
“I don’t know…"
He doesn't know?
"Shall I do it like I did… in that comic strip?" Fuck me, I was embarrassed to say Superfucker and I was the one who wrote it. "As far as I remember, I mean… like that?"
"If you have to hold yourself back, you mean?"
"Yeh," I said, "I mean, who is this for?"
"No, you don't have to… if you think that is the right thing to do."
I thought a bit about what he had said, because I still wasn't sure what he wanted.
"I don't know. You're the commissioner," I said.
"I don't know either. We'll see. It depends on you and them out there," and he pointed out the window. I followed the line of his finger and it wasn't particularly clear to me. There was no one special in sight. A street like any other, with a newspaper kiosk in front of which two guys were standing waiting for, I don’t know, cigarettes or the newspaper…
"Let's say you show Krpan having intercourse with, let's say, the empress or someone like that," and he emphasised in-ter-course so that it was clear he was joking, "and we put that in the bookshops, what do you think will happen?"
"I don't know," I said.
"Levstik's ... , Slovenia's ... Martin Krpan, who is, for instance, screwing," and he emphasised the verb, "let's say, a princess or, god forbid, her highness the empress herself?"
I shrugged. “I don’t know.”
"See, neither do I."
"Aha…"
"Yeh."
Then we fell silent for a fraction of a second.
"But that's not your problem. I'm the lightning conductor.. . If anyone, I'm the one who'll pay the price… What can happen to you? Have you been working a lot recently?"
"Not really," I said. "I've got a kid, and so on…"
It was clear that the bastard knew I'd had nothing.
(c) Tadej Golob / David Limon (2015)
Tadej Golob was born in Maribor in 1967 and grew up in the small north-eastern Slovenian town of Lenart. After studying journalism he worked as a contributor to various magazines, but is known in Slovenia chiefly as an alpine climber. His debut novel Pigs' Feet won the Kresnik Award in 2010.
David Mildon is an actor and playwright and was a founding member of Liars' League. His stories “Worms’ Feast” and “Red” were performed here and appeared in Arachne Press anthologies London Lies and Weird Lies. His play The Flood was produced at the Hope Theatre Islington in 2014 and his short play Second Skin was performed at Theatre 503 in February 2015.
This event was part of the European Literature Night VII, 13 May – 9 June 2015, www.europeanliteraturenight.co.uk, organised in partnership with EUNIC, Czech Centre, Goethe Institut, Lithuanian Culture Institute, Embassy of the Republic of Lithuania, Polish Cultural Institute and Republic of Slovenia Embassy in London.
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