Tihomir Levajac:
Here We Go on Trial Again

1. Story
2. Story
3. Story
4. Story
5. Story
6. Story
7. Story
8. Story
9. Story
10. Story
11. Story
12. Story
13. Story
14. Story
15. Story
16. Story
17. Story
18. Story
19. Story

Verdict

The Prosecutor thoroughly exhausted the seventeenth Story during the course of the inquest. He forced it to tell the incriminated story every day, for he found out that the defendant could barely make its way through the story. That was due to the fact that it identified with the protagonist, feeling exactly the way he felt.

The Prosecutor also found out that the defendant mistook its own destiny for that of its double, often finding it difficult to distinguish between the two. In such cases, the defendant’s double played with the creator of his destiny. He persecuted, accused or punished the one who was in the process of making it up, thus making it suffer what he was suffering.

It was as if the Story played the part of a living man, so that whatever happened to him in reality, happened to it as well.

The Prosecutor also found out that the Story did not know which one of them was disguised and which one real, which one was hidden and which one visible, who was whose double, who was using whom and for what reasons. However much it wished to make the character come alive, bring him under control and present a picture of him, that same character wished just as much to turn it into something else.

The Prosecutor had found all that out in time and made the defendant tell the same story every single day; he made it suffer the same pain every day, so that the defendant showed up at the trial exhausted and crushed. It came to the trial all broken, with chunks of text hanging under the titles that resembled bags under one’s eyes more than anything else, with sentences dragging along like spaghetti and bleary-looking thoughts.

Although the defendant had asked for medical assistance before entering the courtroom, it was withheld for humanitarian reasons.

It was not a corporeal entity, they told the defendant, but a spiritual one, and spirits were not entitled to medical treatment!

Although the courtroom the defendant was led into was nicely furnished, the Court building was enveloped in thick fog, apparently due to a difference in temperament between the North Sea and the continental mass it lay next to.

That was why the air in the courtroom was heavy, sickly and putrid, which made the defendant feel even worse.

The air was putrid and the Prosecutor heartless, for he demanded that the defendant tell its story in the stuffy courtroom, whereupon he would bring up charges against it.

The defendant tried to counter this, claiming that it did not feel up to it, but the Tribeurinal Board would have none of that.

Nor would the Prosecutor, for that matter.

How come the defendant was unable to tell its story before the Court when it had done so on so many previous occasions?

When the defendant saw that there was no other way about it but to comply with the demands of the Prosecutor and the Tribeurinal Board, it started gathering its strength, but found it rather difficult to do so. It was difficult because, once the story had got under way, the defendant could not be entirely certain whether it was telling the story or whether it was the other way round.

If its friend, the Teacher, maintained that death had always been only too ready to oblige in the region of Krajina, particularly in times of war, the defendant could never be entirely certain whether it had conferred the right to do so on the Teacher, in order to prevent the story from getting overly sentimental, or not.  

Or maybe it was shifting the responsibility for inept plot-making to the Teacher by having him say that death came to visit the Town Amidst the Rolling Hills more and more often even though there were no military operations or devastation in the town itself.

The war had reached such a level of intensity and so many people were getting killed in battle that it was as if legions of the dead were marching through the town.

Every so often helicopters flew into it from the front line, bringing wounded, maimed, bleeding or dead soldiers.

Every day the “Glas srpski”[1] daily printed four pages of obituary notices containing photographs of the soldiers killed, every day the bells of the local orthodox church tolled, announcing somebody’s death, and at noon there would be freshly dug graves, crowds of people around them and gun salutes fired by the guard of honour resounding above them.

Everybody retreated before the onslaught of death, resigning himself or herself to it as something inevitable. Everybody retreated before the recurrent death, trying to get used to it somehow, the way one was used to nightfall. Too much death tended to produce a saturation effect; one became insensitive to it and could not share the grief of others.

When one heard that somebody’s son had got killed, or brother or father, that a fellow who had been living in the same street or building had got killed, one could only register surprise at how indifferent one had become. One was just astonished to discover that one no longer had the strength, desire or willingness to share the grief of others.

The Teacher, too, had become insensitive in that way, the Story said in a pained tone of voice.

But when he found out that Željko had got killed, he was simply shaken out of joint.

When he heard of Željko’s death, he felt a spasm inside, something like internal haemorrhage.

He could not believe that Željko, who had been a pupil of his some fifteen years before, had been killed and buried in the Serbian cemetery next to the Sports Hall. That he had been killed inside a tank on Bijelo Brdo some fifteen days before and now lay buried in the local cemetery.

Although he read obituary notices in “Glas srpski” every day, the Teacher never came across Željko’s name there. He could never have found out about it in that way because Željko’s father wouldn’t allow a notice to be published there: he didn’t want fellow-citizens of Croatian and Muslim nationality to gloat over Željko’s death should they come across his photo in the paper. He didn’t want them to comment maliciously how another Četnik (even though Željko came from a well-known Partizan family from Kozara) was gone.

And buried.

He wouldn’t let them have that pleasure to add to his own pain.

Željko’s father wouldn’t let a notice be published in the local paper and his mother wouldn’t let any be posted on the town’s walls and trees. She couldn’t bear the thought, said those who knew what lay behind all this, of having to watch her dead son’s eyes pierced through on one chestnut tree after another as she walked to the cemetery. She couldn’t bear to see her dead son’s eyes pierced on the obituary notice, or the thought of the notice being torn off, thrown upon the pavement and trampled upon.

Believing that a mother’s heart was not broken enough when her son got killed, Muslims and Croats did things like that.

That was why Željko’s death passed unnoticed, one of the many that autumn when chestnut trees were full of obituary notices.

When the Teacher found out about Željko’s death, quite accidentally, from a colleague of his in the teachers’ room, he felt he had to get out of the school immediately. He pushed his way through a crowd of pupils to take out the pain that had started welling up inside him.

He walked the streets, purifying his feelings. But it wasn’t easy. There he walked, and Željko’s image kept appearing before him, sunny and cheerful as he used to be, so that their steps constantly intertwined. In between the steps, he heard Željko’s words, so loud was his death in its silence. He heard his voice, which had a way of resounding, as if from a stage, in one of the theatrical performances the Teacher had staged with his pupils.

The Teacher just couldn’t shake Željko’s presence off, so he spent the evening with him in his flat, before his wife’s very eyes. And when he went to sleep, Željko appeared to him in his dream.

In the dream, he appeared playing all the characters he used to play, reliving all the lives he used to live.

When the Teacher woke up from that nocturnal theatrical performance, Željko was with him again. So much so, that the Teacher couldn’t go straight to school from his flat but went about the town in circles just to pass by his house. He went from Hiset to Čaire, then under Pobrdje, as if going to meet someone.

As he walked thus, it seemed to him that all the buildings he walked past were in the wrong places. That they had just been stuck haphazardly into the earth or asphalt.

He walked thus, looking like someone searching for something he’d lost, something that could no longer be found.

It was as if a part of him, having been broken to pieces, had disappeared into nothingness along with Željko.

If that was the way he felt about it, God only knew how those who had created him out of love felt, those who had brought him into this world to live on through him, who had brought him up, seen him through school and cared for him, who had done everything to make him a man, who had lived only for him because he had been their only son.

As he passed by Željko’s two-storey house, he could not see his mother. She had totally surrendered herself to sorrow. After the tragedy, she became so overwhelmed with grief that she could not resign herself to the fact that her Žeki was no longer in this world. Her grief was beyond repair, and every day she went to the cemetery to visit Željko’s eternal abode.

When she wasn’t there, she was at home.

No other places existed for her any longer.

She got up several times every night and went to Željko’s room to cover him properly with a blanket lest he should get a cold; during the day, if her husband was about the house, she kept following him and saying over and over again: Look, Radovan, my hands are empty!

What she said to Željko while she sat next to his place of rest, talking to him, the Teacher could not even imagine.

If she behaved like that now, how would she behave when her back began to stoop more and more with the passing of time?

As he could not imagine that either, the Teacher decided he couldn’t think about it any longer.

As opposed to Željko’s mother, her father appeared in public, so the Teacher saw him standing in the doorway. He stood on the concrete pavement, talking to a man.

Although the Teacher and Radovan had never met, the Teacher recognised him because he resembled Željko so much. The same facial features, the same complexion, the same posture, the same sort of build, only he was taller than Željko...

As if he were Željko’s double, only larger.

While he stood in the doorway, talking and pointing to a pile of logs in front of the garage, he did not look like a man living under the shadow of his son’s death. He looked like a man resigned to his destiny.

As Radovan shrugged his shoulders from time to time, as if to say: God’s will, the teacher thought that maybe what could be seen on the outside did not quite coincide with what lay hidden inside. That Željko’s father was not going about any business in particular but merely following his own pain. That he obeyed no rules of the sort that ordinary mortals obeyed.

Maybe he was living a double life? One that his wife, relatives, neighbours, friends and acquaintances could see, and another one known only to himself?

After that accidental meeting the Teacher could not get rid of a vague pain, not even when he arrived at the school. He went from classroom to classroom, entered lessons in the register books, explained world-famous works of literature to his pupils, but behind everything he said and did, Željko’s image glimmered in those classrooms, where he used to sit so many years ago, like a reflection of a reflection. 

Like a jewel in the dark.

When he got back home to his flat on the eighth floor, thoughts of Željko and his parents just wouldn’t leave the Teacher, they ran on like ground waters beneath the level of consciousness. They ran all evening, all night, disappeared for a while only to resurface again, and when morning came, burst in with renewed intensity in full daylight, so that the Teacher could not go to the school without passing by Željko’s house.

On that occasion, he saw Željko’s father through the half-open door of the garage, chopping up logs. Sitting on a stump, the man took one log after another, placed it on another stump and split it in two with a small axe. Having done that, he took the two halves in both hands, looked them over, uttering some words that the Teacher could not hear, and then, thinking that nobody could see him, beat his head with them. At regular intervals, before tossing the chopped-up bits onto a pile by the car that nobody drove any longer, he beat his head with them.

There were a thousand ways of dealing with pain – this was the one he had chosen. He used the bits of wood that the Army had sent them, to help them out because their son had died fighting for his country, to beat his head with them.

The Teacher was very much shaken by that scene.

The day before, it had seemed to him that Željko’s father had managed to rise above the tragedy that had befallen them; today, he came to the sorrowful conclusion that every father was weak.

None were strong when it came to that.

Only those who had never had any children were strong.

When a father, let alone a mother, loses an only son, then the life he or she is supposed to go on living is one of desperation. 

The Teacher could not, for the life of him, get that scene out of his mind, so the next day, as if returning to the scene of a crime, he went to Željko’s house again. This time, he found Željko’s father standing on the lawn in front of the house, not in the garage as the day before. He was standing next to an autumn rose, explaining something or other to a woman, pointing towards the garage and the logs. His gestures were lively and the expression of his face serious, so that he looked like a perfectly balanced individual although reddish scars could be seen on his forehead just below the hairline.

Although he stood upright, although his bearing was dignified, the Teacher was unable to intercept his gaze.

It kept retreating into the distance, away from the woman he was talking to.

The next day, however, the Teacher found Radovan in the garage again.

There he was, sitting on one stump, chopping up logs on another.

The Teacher then found himself a spot in the street where he had the best view of the inside of the garage. Standing there, he watched intently what Željko’s father was doing. Radovan chopped up logs into little pieces; then, when it was time for him to toss them onto the pile, he held them in his hands, looking them over like someone who was about to pray. It looked as if he was searching for a bigger piece, or a more gnarled one, and when he came across such a piece, he beat his head with it, holding it with both hands. Sometimes he used one and the same piece to hit himself on the head several times, at regular intervals; only then did he toss it onto the pile beside the car.

After that, the Teacher came to Željko’s house every day to witness the same scene. A pile of logs in front of the garage, Željko’s father behind the half-open door, in the same spot and the same pose as the day before. The only difference was that the father’s movements were so practised that they bore an unbearable resemblance to a religious ritual. The father did not move his arms but his head. His head swung towards his raised hands holding a piece of wood in an unvarying arc, as if the ritual was unfolding according to very strictly defined rules.

As if the father was doing what he was doing in the shadow of the garage in some sort of a mystical trance.

As if he was performing a cult ritual adhering to some strictly defined norms. Since the ritual admitted of no deviations from the routine, he totally immersed himself in the act, an act which would be rather difficult to explain.

As this scene was ritually repeated every day, the defendant started repeating itself, more and more slowly, because the story it had been telling had so exhausted it that its voice grew increasingly faint, until it fainted in the middle of the courtroom, in full view of the audience.

Startled, the Chairman of the Tribeurinal Board jumped up from his seat and demanded that a doctor be summoned, but the Prosecutor wouldn’t allow it.

The defendant, he said, was just pretending! The judges should not believe it and fall for such cheap tricks! All they needed to do was pour some cold water over it and see how soon it would recover!

Soon enough, some people dressed in clothes that made them look like street cleaners, or possibly those who paint street crossings, rushed into the courtroom carrying buckets of water; they poured whole bucketfuls of water over the defendant, to no avail.

It just wouldn’t come round.

Then the prosecutor took mercy on it and agreed that a dowser should enter the courtroom and establish, using his rod, whether the defendant was truly unwell or not.

Indeed, a dowser soon entered the courtroom and did as he was told. He circled the defendant, swinging his rod above it; when it started swinging of its own accord, trying to break free, as it were, he was pleased to state that the defendant seemed to be perfectly healthy.

Everything was all right with it apart from its sex.

He couldn’t quite determine what it was.

It seemed to be bisexual.

Or maybe asexual and, as such, very convenient for cloning.

Everybody expected the Defence Counsel to jump up from his seat and protect his client in the line of duty. Protect it from being insulted, humiliated and called things that had nothing whatsoever to do with the trial itself. However, he remained sprawling in his chair that resembled an armchair, with his paws crossed on his belly, licking and cleaning his fur with the poise of ancient Greek philosophers. He didn’t want to play the role of a bear dancing in a political circus any longer, but licked his fur making loud slurping noises.

When all is said and done, everything comes and goes. Tyranny and injustice, the International Court of Justice, the Prosecutor and the defendant.

Everything comes and goes, only the story remains.

Everything passes, only the story remains.