Absolution. Aleš Šteger
the banks of the Drava River, cars pulling invisible cloaks of noise and lead, the rustling of the river, the icicles trickling off the cast-iron rail. Bely stops in the middle of the bridge. He leans across the rail, above the drifting darkness. Lamps flicker above Rosa and Bely. Snowflakes now hurriedly plunge into the depths to be swallowed by the river, the hallucinogenic attraction of its current, the feeling of its inescapable power.
‘He plunged in somewhere around here,’ says Bely.
‘Who?’ Rosa asks.
‘This guy. I knew him pretty well. The same generation. We grew up together. He was a performer and a songwriter, and I was into theatre. Anyway, we both had a huge crisis at about the same time. He lived with his mother, while I was already renting an apartment. He stayed at his mother’s, and I ended up fleeing the city, which probably saved me. Had I stayed like he did …’
Bely stares into the depths. The wind picks up his hair and tousles it.
‘Who knows …’ Bely adds quietly.
‘What happened to him?’ asks Rosa and swipes the black curls off her cheek.
‘He jumped off this bridge. On a wintry day, like today, early in the morning. They tried to save him but couldn’t. Since then, he’s been coming to see me every now and then. He toys with me, tells me I’m still irreversibly egotistical. I say that’s positive egotism, but he pretends that he doesn’t understand. Some things never change. Ever the cheapskate, always short of money, but in company he was the big-hearted genius who never had it easy in life. Me, the one who actually made some money, I was always the cheapskate, the geek. We spent a lot of time in Off. It’s been nearly twenty years.’
Rosa lights up a new cigarette, inhales and flicks the cigarette over the bridge. They see it fall, a tiny light smothered by the night and consumed by the devouring rustle of the river.
‘I don’t feel like smoking tonight,’ Rosa says and cuddles up to him again.
‘Let’s go’, he says, ‘to Off, that sub-culture club right behind the city hospital. Some time ago I read in the Austrian newspapers that this is the best hospital in Europe, at least in terms of successful resuscitation. An interesting piece of trivia. People who have long been destined to die are more often brought back to life in this city than anywhere else. Although coming back is not up to those who are dying. It’s decided on by the souls that inhabit them. The souls of people here aren’t interested in leaving; they want to stay in an environment where nothing ever changes, like here in Maribor. Every soul was subject to radical brainwashing. They’d be in pain if they found out who they are and how they got here. Millions of years ago people were not only killed – by which I mean their bodies, that’s the easy part – they also found a way to manipulate their souls. You can’t kill a soul, but you can dispossess them of their self and reduce them to shadows with no future. Our souls, the way we perceive them, aren’t real souls. They’re only the remains of the manipulated souls of our ancestors. Our souls are only sad remains, which cling to each other out of fear of being forever lost.
Bely notices Rosa’s covert laughter. ‘Why are you laughing?’
‘I’m not laughing. I believed in souls myself when I was a child. Then, for about two decades, I was convinced that there’s no such thing as the soul and that we only get one chance at life. Then something changed my life forever, split it in two, and suddenly I believed in souls again. The question is, do we believe in them because we fear that there’s nothing out there? Or because we’re helpless? I don’t know.’
‘But, Rosa, they do visit you, don’t they?’
Rosa nods. ‘Yes, they’re with me the entire time, and that’s why I believe in them. Tell me, though, are some souls really scared of being destroyed, even when they’re here with us?’ Rosa asks doubtfully.
‘Not the souls that are self-aware, not them. It’s the phantom collage of our souls that’s scared. Why else would they be so determined to keep their shells alive? Life in this city can’t be so damned wonderful that the fully conscious souls would want to stay at any cost. Of course, there’re other things to consider here, but we’ll discuss those later. We’ve arrived.’
The courtyard of the old industrial complex, graffiti, above a door a sign that reads OFF. The round door recalls that of a submarine. A couple of guys, leather, cigarette smoke, each holding a bottle of beer. Out of the night a pack of dogs emerges. They sprint across the whitecoloured courtyard and chase the scent of a bitch. The men follow them with their eyes then turn their gaze to Rosa, who walks past them and in through the door.
It’s spacious and chilly inside. A roughly chiselled log bar, behind which a girl in a red turtleneck eavesdrops on a conversation that is being held across the room. Some twenty people sit in the corner, involved in a heated debate. One of them rises and tells the rest that he opposes maintaining a gradual increase in pressure on the mayor and that immediate resistance should be employed, and that strategic stalling is no longer an option. The chair of the meeting listens carefully, and while acknowledging these concerns as legitimate he advises that they’re in it for the long haul and that they all remain thoughtful and persistent. He puts it to a vote and is backed by the majority.
‘The next public protest against the wastewater treatment plant construction at the base of Calvary will be held on Friday next week in front of the town hall. The organizing committee will meet again on Monday to finalize the details of the protest. The public will be kept informed via the usual channels, principally through Facebook. That’ll be it for tonight,’ says the chair.
Everybody rises, some change tables, others step out into the fresh air. The speakers crackle with death metal.
‘I must be dreaming! Adam Bely! Are you still alive? I can’t believe it. I’d never expect to see you here!’ The chair of the meeting shakes Bely’s hand and pats him on the back.
‘Meet Ivan Dorfler, the legendary boss of Off. This is Rosa Portero, my colleague from Austria. Rosa’s working on a radio piece about Maribor, so I thought I’d show her around Off a bit. I’m guessing that few journalists head straight for this place.’
‘You’d be surprised, Adam. We’ve hosted a bunch actually, especially over the last year. This is a hipster joint, not an old hole-in-the-wall any more. Come, let me show you to my office so we can talk. It’s too noisy here.’
Books and CDs everywhere you look, total chaos, dozens of semidisintegrating binders strewn across the table, portraits of Tito, Mao Zedong and the Virgin Mary with a hammer and sickle piercing her heart. Next to it, a poster of the dove of peace with an olive branch in its beak. The air is warm, stale with cigarette smoke. Empty bottles are scattered across the floor; two worn-out leather sofas, a table and an ashtray, cigarette butts, stains all over the table.
‘Adam, I haven’t seen you for ten years, maybe more.’
‘Sixteen,’ says Adam as he takes a glass. Dorfler pours them each three fingers of whisky. They toast. Rosa gapes at Adam as he empties his glass. She can’t believe her brown eye. Never since they met has she seen him drink alcohol. Dorfler refills their glasses. He offers them cigarettes. Dorfler and Rosa light up.
‘I can’t believe my eyes. You’re thinner and you’ve gone grey, but otherwise you look exactly the same. Where’ve you been hiding, for God’s sake?’
Bely reaches for his coat, pulls out his bottle and flushes down his pills with more whisky.
‘Well, I moved to Austria. First, I was in Graz, then Leoben. I do visual communication now, ads, marketing and stuff like that.’
‘And theatre?’ Dorfler provokes. ‘Since when have you been able to live without theatre, Adam?’
‘I’m better off without it,’ responds Bely, draining his glass.
Dorfler tops it up again. ‘I can’t believe that. Your friend here’, says Dorfler in German as he turns to Rosa, ‘is the biggest theatre fanatic I’ve ever met in my life. And, believe me, I’ve met