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She is alone in Belgrade, the days are long and hot, the air humid. The city is deserted, people have gone to spend time by the sea, in the mountains, anywhere but here. She wakes up. The sheets cling to her skin. She rubs sleep out of her eyes and keeps still for a while.
Motionless under a jet of cold water she thinks about a photograph of a showering girl. Her thoughts drift further, heavy as the murky landscape she’s emerged from. Arms limp by her sides, legs straight.
She chooses a T-shirt, puts her jeans on, picks up a packet of cigarettes. As she walks out light floods her, bleaches her eyes. The T-shirt is an empty screen.
In the Tesla Museum, there is a big image on one of the walls. Nikola is sitting in a chair, reading by the light of an electrical storm above his head. The sign under the picture reads: Tesla in his Colorado Springs laboratory, 1901. She thinks about the white gloves he wore, the platform shoes that insulated him.
There is a brass ball in one of the rooms, an urn that contains his ashes. It is lit and surrounded by black velvet. The light is dim –the air so dusty – that it seems impossible to focus on the object.
Later, she will sit in a café, and think about the meaning implied in its name: Plato, but also plateau. This is where she starts to write, on a paper tissue, with a pen she borrows from a waiter, who thinks she is flirting with him and keeps asking if that’s all, if she needs anything else.
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Tesla's idea about energy transfer, she writes. The fact that the characters form a stable field, disrupted by travelling and distance. The fourth one is missing – the replica emotionally inadequate – the narrator takes it unto himself to recreate the fourth. These attempts cannot be successful and that is why it all falls apart. What happens to the Jelena invoked in the narrator's body?
What happens to the three of them when she takes over?
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The next morning, Jelena writes, I woke up from a dream in which I was passing through a landscape made of trees and grass melted like candles then left to harden. By the time my eyes opened, it felt like I’d spent lifetimes drifting. I lay in the bed for a while, in and out of sleep, trying to prolong the sense of peace.
The room was filled with light. My thoughts went back to the river and the swim. Maybe it got warmer overnight and we would be able to relive the first day? The white curtains dispersed the light, made the room hazy. I pulled myself up. For a while I sat on the bed, looking at the wardrobe, at the door I never bothered to close, at the narrow gap. Even in this brightness, the gap remained impenetrable.
I caught a glimpse of my reflection in the mirror, all three frames at the same time. It didn’t make sense. The three framed images, offering three different angles, held someone else’s body. I stood up and walked to the mirror to inspect the headless figure, the detail of a female body.
I woke up. I opened my eyes and looked at the cupboard to my right. I turned around and stared at the cotton curtains, the light they revealed. I got up and walked to the other side of the bed (where no one sleeps) and put on my jeans. I walked past the mirror, opened the door, went downstairs.
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Aleksandar's mother had left a cake in the fridge; heavy, dark, made of ground walnuts, butter and chocolate. There is a memory of his mother, years ago – the first time I came to his hometown – forcing food on me. This time she is not there but I keep eating long after I am full; a phantom hand holds the plate and I have to keep eating, I have to be polite. The more I eat, the more I crave the sugar, the chocolate. The smell of walnuts. I don't feel bloated, I don't get sick, I keep eating.
The hand of compulsion is external, someone else's, someone else is making you do the things you do. You are merely to obey and observe, if you are lucky.
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An image of Jelena, her eyes blue and hard (she hides behind them). There is also the bearing of her shoulders, the rigid axis that connects one to the other, traversing her chest, cancelling out her breasts.
There are photographs from Africa, I am four or five, a skinny, happy child. I don't recall any of this but maybe the body remembers.
On the fourth morning I walked into the kitchen and found the two of them already there. They ate in silence, and I said I would photograph them as they were. For some reason I can’t recall now, I asked them to look away and the photograph is faceless.
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They went for pizza that night, Jelena writes. Aleksandar wanted to take the car, even though the place was only a couple of minutes away. He drove down the street, turned a couple of corners and they were there.
They’d parked in the same spot the day before. A dog had circled the car and Marko and Tanja sat inside keeping an eye on it, waiting for Aleksandar to come back from the grocery store.
Now it was dark and quiet. They went across and into the pizza place. It had narrow, inbuilt benches and there were no people inside. The waitress brought a small, laminated menu and patiently waited for them to order their drinks. They decided on the food and smoked in silence. The booth was in the corner and the air didn’t move in that part of the room. The smoke rose from Aleksandar’s cigarette and inscribed pale curls in the air, which lingered above their heads.
Life should be filled with excitement, Marko said.
Should it? Aleksandar smiled.
You just don’t know where to look, Tanja said.
The waitress brought the pizzas, which were small and charred around the edges.
They ate.
We went for pizza that night. He wanted to take the car, even though the place was a couple of minutes away on foot. He drove down his street, turned a couple of corners and we were there. He parked right opposite the restaurant, we had parked there the day before. The place had narrow, inbuilt benches and was empty. The waitress brought small, laminated menus and waited for us to order our drinks. She was impossibly patient. We decided on the food and smoked in silence as we waited for it to arrive. The booth was in the corner, air undisturbed. The smoke rose from my cigarette and inscribed curls in the air, which remained suspended above my head.
After a while the pizzas arrived. We ate. I picked at the fragments of onion rings that weren't listed in the menu. We ate quickly and left, leaving our plates half full.
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There is a poster of Marilyn Monroe in the living room, a page ripped out of a calendar. It’s a close-up, platinum blond hair, arched eyebrows, pouting lips, the beauty mark. A thin, curled moustache has been drawn above the upper lip.
I read a book once, in which the heroine had an image of Marilyn Monroe in her room and identified with it. I recall Aleksandar’s obsession with Marcel Duchamp and the recreations he did of Rrose Sélavy.
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There was a surprise visit from Aleksandar's sister. We were sitting behind the house, drinking coffee, eating cake. She declined the food and sat there. Unlike her brother, she had a strong northern accent. She spoke slowly, deliberating; her body barely moved.
There was a similarity between the siblings, except her eyes were lighter, greener. Aleksandar hadn't been looking good lately: his skin was dry and lined from smoking. Tanja had transformed into a woman and the traces of discontent disappeared when she smiled. Aleksandar’s sister looked oddly smooth. Her face revealed little.
The most interesting photograph I took of him was at that table behind the house. He looks young, his expression is mildly questioning, and calm. He is waiting to see what will happen next. He is looking straight at the lens.
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There is a main square in the town and a shop window in the square. Marko spends time taking photographs of the mannequins. They have perfectly smooth faces, chiselled cheekbones and delightfully empty eyes. Opposite the shop, there is a building from the 1970s, it’s the decade they were born. Metal pyramids cover the façade and the signs have fallen off.
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The staircase is the heart of the house, it is the link between the floors. Marko sleeps in Aleksandar’s parents’ bed, where the pillows are stained yellow and smell of old skin and unwashed hair.
The staircase begins and ends with an empty corridor, in which no one resides. Downstairs, the corridor is where you can hang your coat; at the end of it there is a door that leads into the living room (it is locked). Upstairs, the corridor is sparser: a few light switches on the walls, a couple of cracks above door frames.
It’s the staircase carpet pattern that makes them laugh: the material was cut randomly and the dark stripes at its edges do not follow the geometry of the stairs. Those were hard times, Aleksandar says.
The journey from Belgrade started with an absurd image of the minister of culture, naked on a beach somewhere. The belly of a politician (who was once an actor) spilling onto a towel. Nothing more, really: they were waiting at the bus station for the bus to come and take them to Bečej. They looked at the newspaper stand and there, on the cover of one of the tabloids, was the minister.
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They opened the door and walked in. The first thing they noticed about the house was the absence of smell. As if the rooms had been drained of air and what was left was a something you could breathe and never notice the lack. This was the air they would breathe for the next five days, forgetting to count exhalations, each of which pushed them further away from that first morning. The house took over and inhaled them until they became someone else, other people.
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