Crumbs (20 page)

Everybody tried to stand out in his own way. According to their best abilities and means. To be different.

I was hoping the Hadžipuzić brothers would soon send me the Cartier.

Ibro pushed through the crowd. In a new suit and shoes. He'd fulfilled my expectations.

He'd bought a suede jacket and trousers with a fringe running from the shoulder down in horizontal lines with ten centimetre gaps between each line. On his feet, huge winkle-pickers with raised heels. Polished to a perfect shine.

He'd pinned a tin sheriff's badge to his chest. They were selling them at the toystore for children to play cowboys and Indians. His hat came from the same set. Made of cardboard, covered with shiny blue plastic.

He stepped towards Sheriff's table. He was looking around, obviously pleased with himself, judging by the smile on his face.

I waved to him.

‘How's Selim?' I tried to shout over the noise.

‘He's all right! He was at work today!' He shouted back, and then ordered me a beer.

A new wave of people coming in engulfed me.

Somebody said hello right next to my right ear. Selim.

He squatted next to my table. We looked each other in the eye. He was saying something. Quietly. I couldn't catch a word.

I felt terror creeping from my stomach up along my back. I jumped up and fought my way to the bathroom. I locked myself into a stall and leaned my head on the door.

I was getting an attack. The first one after quite a few years. I started shaking with fear. I bent over into a foetal position, sliding down onto the tiled floor. I was falling. Into fear. Into nothingness. I wasn't there anymore. I didn't exist. I was nowhere. In nonexistence.

A terrible feeling of horror pulled me out. Sobbing ‘no no no no no no,' I jumped up and became aware of my surroundings. I stared at the shitty toilet until the terror went. I felt myself with my hands. I was wet.

Drowning in sweat. I put my head under the cold tap. It helped. I wiped my face in my jacket and joined the crowd.

I knew the attack was brought on by Selim's eyes. I remembered where I'd seen them before. They were my own eyes. When I'd straightened up and seen them in the mirror, before I… shit! Oh God, was I really going to have to be present when somebody else went down the path I'd already been on?

‘What do I look like?' shouted Ibro and pushed a beer in my hand.

I drank the whole bottle in one long gulp.

‘Awesome,' I admitted admiringly.

‘Have you invited Ajsha?'

Only then I remembered my promise from the day before, well, half a promise really.

‘I have.'

Ibro wanted to kiss me. At the last moment a space
appeared behind me, into which I retreated.

Another beer found its way into my hands.

‘You're a real pal,' he said, slapping me on my shoulder enthusiastically.

I noticed a plastic light blue belt covered with stars. The holster for the toy pistol was empty. Beneath it swayed three tassels.

LONESOME RIDER was written on it in gold letters.

‘You'll see! Today is going to be a day like no other,' Ibro half-sang prophetically.

Four big guys were pushing their way towards the exit and carried me with them. I stopped at the other side of the bar and finished the beer I'd been given. Selim was nowhere to seen.

Two policemen were making their way through the crowd, asking somebody for an identification card every half a metre. I turned the other way and stared at the ads and notices on the wall. I sneakily turned around to see if they'd gone past. We looked at each other. Twenty centimetres apart.

They didn't say anything. As if I wasn't there. They continued shoving their way to the bar to pester the waitress for giving alcohol to those under age.

Karla must have done something. I'd have to go and thank her tomorrow.

I made my way out. Had a piss against the wall of the bar.

The dance had already started. Music could be heard.

I set off for the school. It was only a hundred metres away.

Selim was standing on the corner. He was looking before him with the look of a man who'd already seen everything and could no longer be surprised by anything.

I went over to him and lit a cigarette.

‘I'm waiting for Ibro,' he said.

‘Has he gone for a piss?'

I pointed to the bushes growing at the side of the building.

‘No.'

He sighed deeply.

‘What's he doing then? Shitting?'

‘He's putting aftershave on.'

He looked at me as if I were to blame. At least partly.

‘Selim, I don't put mine on in the bushes. I don't quite understand what's going on.'

‘Ibro was listening to that ponytail in the bar, what do you call him?'

‘Hippy.'

‘Yeah, that's the one. He was telling us that there's this species of frog, where the male's sperm madly arouses the female. Once they smell it, they run for kilometres to reach the male. He added that the scientists have observed the same in people.'

He sighed again.

I started laughing. In a malicious, nasty sort of way.

‘You're saying that Ibro is now in there all on his own,' I pointed at the bushes, ‘anointing himself with his semen?'

‘Yes,' he said, ‘he's putting semen on himself.'

‘Where?'

‘Behind his ears.'

Selim didn't join in my laughter. He seemed exasperated with the stupidity of the world. I stopped laughing.

The branches of the bushes were moving rhythmically.

I took a last puff and flicked the cigarette high along the wall.

I sighed.

‘You're right. I should really cry, not laugh. But even if it's true, there's a fundamental flaw in what he's doing. Once you're close enough for a girl to be able to sniff behind your ears, it doesn't matter anymore whether you've got spunk there or not. So.'

‘But he has bought some aftershave as well.'

‘Oh yeah, which one?'

‘The only one they had at the news-stand. There's a black cat on it, if I remember rightly.'

We stopped talking and observed the crowd rolling towards the school.

The bass drummed monotonously.

Selim broke the silence.

‘Do you think it'll break him?'

He was referring to Ibro. To the wild enthusiasm with which he was getting ready to seduce Ajsha. We both knew he didn't stand a chance.

‘I don't know. He seems like a man who sees everything on the bright side. It'll be hard, that's for sure. If this doesn't fuck him up, nothing will.'

‘It would be for the best if she didn't come at all.'

I remembered that I had invited her myself that morning. I started regretting it.

‘Yes, it really would be for the best if Ajsha didn't come. But everybody sobers up. Sooner or later.'

I looked at Selim sideways. These words could've referred to his love for Nastassja, too. But he didn't seem to get it.

I looked up. Over the rotten gutter into the sky. It was littered with stars. Not even the smallest fragment was missing from the moon. From the road, women could be heard laughing. It was Ajsha with two friends.

Selim slowly released his breath from his lungs.

They went in.

Ibro came laughing from the bushes.

‘I've bought some aftershave, too,' he immediately let us know.

‘Oh really, which one, show me it.'

He showed me it. The bottle was still full. Maybe there was still time to talk him into leaving it like that.

‘Has she come yet?'

We shrugged our shoulders and shook our heads.

‘Come on, let's go inside. She's sure to be there.'

We went in, Ibro in the middle. He was clicking his heels and held his elbows out with his thumbs tucked into his belt. His every step was accompanied by the quiet rustling of the fringe on his cowboy outfit, similar to the sound of brushes in a slow jazz blues number played in a sleepy bar. Just before the entrance, I slowed down and peeped behind his ears. His hair prevented me from seeing what I was looking for.

‘What's the matter? Are you afraid to go in?' he asked me, full of confidence. The absolute boss. I hoped I wouldn't be the one to walk him home.

‘Let's go,' I said and put my hand on the door handle.

‘Wait a moment.'

He pulled the bottle of aftershave out of his pocket, screwed off the top, and splashed it in his hair. There was a smell of cheap chemistry.

He grabbed his jacket collar and pulled it away from chest. Poured in the second third of the bottle. He used the rest for consecrating his armpits and between his legs. The bottle flew into the night.

‘Now we can go in.'

He opened the door.

The glass bottle rattled on the gravel.

We stepped inside. The corridor was full of desks. In the middle, by a narrow passage, stood a schoolboy collecting the entrance fee. We looked through him. Pushed in side by side. Moved the table and the doorman sitting on it. He didn't say anything. A clever boy.

We made our way through the corridor and into the gymnasium. We didn't go to the dance floor. We stood in what looked like the locker room, judging by the hooks on the wall and the mirrors. We watched the crowd through the door. Somewhere in the middle, it seemed, people were dancing. Or at least swaying rhythmically. Along all four walls there was an unbroken rectangle of people sitting on the exercise benches.

Among the constantly moving bodies crammed against each other, I noticed Ajsha sitting with her two friends.

‘There she is. She's here,' whimpered Ibro. His confidence had all but evaporated. He'd gone soft, and it seemed as if he would just melt onto the floor between us.

‘What do I do now?'

He clung to me like a drowning man.

‘Nothing. Ask her for a dance.'

‘Yes, I will. Just let me calm down.'

He shuffled from one foot to another. He shook every now and again and he probably really would have calmed down. Eventually, sometime in the early morning. Alone in the gym.

‘Well, go on.'

I pushed him into the stream of people milling around the dance floor. Mainly men looking at women sitting on the benches. Like in a market. I followed Ibro. Pushing away the elbows and the backs, I made slow progress.

Near Ajsha, Selim joined us. I was staring at something in the middle until we went past her. I didn't want to see
her. I didn't want to be Ibro's scapegoat.

He didn't ask her for a dance. Slowly we made a circle around the gym and jumped out of the crowd into the locker room. I'd had enough of this joke. I went to the bathroom. There was a queue in front of the stall, so I had a smoke.

While looking at the stream of my piss I noticed three coins in the toilet. I zipped my fly. I couldn't tear my eyes away from the coins. I sang
Three Coins in a Fountain
loudly, from beginning to end. I stepped out of the stall and everybody moved respectfully to let me out into the corridor.

A man who sings like that is capable of anything.

Ibro was in the locker room. Selim wasn't there.

Ibro reported, ‘She's turned quite a few away already. She only danced one dance with somebody and then sat down again. She's waiting for me.'

I nodded and swam into the stream again.

I saw Magda with her boyfriend among the dancers. She said hello. I said hello. That's all that was left.

I stopped by the storeroom where they kept exercise mats. I lit a cigarette and looked through the glass door into the little room where they'd put the amplifiers and the rest of the equipment. Three schoolboys sat next to a cassette player, drinking wine from a bottle.

Somebody bumped into me. I turned around and exchanged looks with a boy in a black leather jacket. His chest covered in badges.

‘Fuck off,' he hissed.

I stuck my tongue out at him.

There wasn't enough room for a blow. Or at least that's what I was counting on. He kicked and missed. The hobnailed boot hit the wall.

I looked around to see how all that space could have suddenly appeared. I was standing in the middle of a semi-circle of his buddies. The local punks. Young boys, most of them around fifteen. I knew them by sight only.

‘Egon!' The shout came from my left.

We fell into each other's arms. The leader of the group.

We held each other's shoulders, cursing each other's mothers.

‘Have you got a band?' he asked.

I shook my head and we unearthed a memory or two. The boys were whispering in each other's ears, and their fists returned to their normal position.

They looked at me respectfully. Punky and I were old friends. We'd often been beaten up together. The worst beating came once when our band went to play in some godforsaken village. I'd been talking to Hippy before leaving. He too used to used to have a band, and years earlier they'd been to play in the same village, with their long hair and beards. The local short-haired young peasants went mad when they saw them. They beat the shit out of them.

And then, years later, we went. With crew cuts, dressed in leather. The long-haired young peasants went mad when they saw us. They beat the shit out of us.

And so another small circle in time was completed.

Suddenly Ibro made his way through the circle. He wasn't paying any attention to whose feet he stepped on or who he pushed away. He fell onto me.

‘Egon, help me!' he said in a croaky voice.

The punks looked at each other, trying not to laugh.

The neck of a bottle was sticking out of Punky's jacket pocket. I gestured to him. He gave me the bottle. It was schnapps.

I offered it to Ibro. He drank a third of it in one gulp. I gave the bottle back to its owner. Ibro was gasping for air.

‘Are you all right?'

He nodded.

‘Now I can do it. Just one more thing. Have a look, is it straight?'