VAMPIRES & A REASONABLE DICTIONARY VAMPIRES & A REASONABLE DICTIONARY ŽARKO RADAKOVIĆ AND SCOTT ABBOTT punctum books ! brooklyn, ny VAMPIRES & A REASONABLE DICTIONARY © Žarko Radaković and Scott Abbott, 2014. Published originally as Vampiri & Razumni rečnik (Bel- grade: Stubovi kulture, 2008) http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-ncnd/3.0/ This work is Open Access, which means that you are free to copy, distribute, display, and perform the work as long as you clearly attribute the work to the authors, that you do not use this work for commercial gain in any form whatsoever, and that you in no way alter, transform, or build upon the work outside of its normal use in academic scholarship without express permission of the author and the publisher of this volume. For any reuse or distribution, you must make clear to others the license terms of this work. First published in 2014 by punctum books Brooklyn, New York http://punctumbooks.com ISBN-13: 978-0692022238 ISBN-10: 0692022236 Library of Congress Cataloging Data is available from the Library of Congress. Cover artwork by Nina Pops, with permission of the artist. Facing-page drawing by Heather Masciandaro Creative-Editorial Team: Sarah George, Christy Koester, Natalie Lapacek, and Mary McCormick Since the country in which I was born has disintegrated, and since it is still in the jaws of a machine that cuts it and shapes it, I live like a being with a broken memory. Žarko Radaković, Vampires It’s done. The divorce. I’ve cut my moorings. I’m adrift and ner- vous as hell. I think I’ll be okay, unless the International Mone- tary Fund or the U.N.’s International Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia or the Federation of Concerned Mountain Bikers de- cides to take a hand in molding my character. Scott Abbott, A Reasonable Dictionary TABLE OF CONTENTS 8 BOOK 1: VAMPIRES Žarko Radaković SUMMARY // 1 §1: THE SUNRAYS WERE ALREADY SLANTED // 3 §2: WHEN WE GOT TO THE UNITED STATES // 57 §3: THE DAY I LEFT FOR BELGRADE // 83 8 BRIDGE Žarko Radaković and Scott Abbott // 97 8 BOOK 2: A REASONABLE DICTIONARY Scott Abbott A REASONABLE DICTIONARY // 103 8 BIOGRAPHIES & ACKNOWLEDGMENT // 169 VAMPIRES ŽARKO RADAKOVIĆ TRANSLATED BY ALICE COPPLE-TOŠIĆ b to no one b SUMMARY Listen, narcissists are always convinced that they are right and nothing can disprove them, not even torture! Of course, nar- cissists are asocial. Of course, they go from one misunder- standing to another. And that’s painful. And since they never admit that they are wrong, all that’s left is bitterness. Narcissists end up in isolation and embitterment. Ottmar Kontzen, in conversation at a psychotherapy session One summer at the end of the 20th century, a man in his forties accompanied by a younger female traveling companion, ten years younger, spends a short vacation in the south of a neighboring country. They sleep in a different place every night. They walk through the landscape, wander through city streets, leisurely sit in the gardens of empty houses. They have long meals in half-empty restau- rants . One night in a hotel on the seashore, after a late television broadcast of the film Fog, the man calls a friend in his homeland. During the brief conversation, he finds out that seven years after their divorce, his ex-wife has been put into a mental institution . During the night the man talks to his mother on the phone and finds out that another friend has tried to commit suicide and is currently “in a serious state,” “lying in a hospital” . On the way home the man runs over a cat and then loses control of the car. When it happens he is listening to Bill Frisell on the radio . Once he gets home the man experiences numerous changes . He “hooks up” 2 ŽARKO RADAKOVIĆ with a much younger woman who tries to bite his neck during sex, after which he turns rough . He attends the meetings of a “secret organization” . He does not sleep at night . Walking through town he breaks the window of an apartment where the light is turned on . He decides to change his place of residence . One night he goes to the movies and sees Vampires. It strikes him that this is one of the most important events in his life, which is already quite shaken up. That same evening he makes an important acquaintance; there are exciting adventures; long hours of talking, arguing and fistfights . Absorbed in images from daydreams . Battling with insects . Attacking a gas station . Nocturnal noises in the hotel . Orgies . Pallor . Bleeding gums . The man calls his mother and tells her he is going back to his hometown . After a raid in a restaurant in the center of town, he injects himself with a medicinal serum . He spends some time in a village where a pig is slaughtered at a celebration, he confronts substantial changes . He meets enemies . He meets friends . Long conversations . A battle for details. §I: THE SUNRAYS WERE ALREADY SLANTED The sunrays were already slanted when we climbed to the village on a rise above a gorge. The house where I was given some honey (or rather, bought it) was like a Protestant church: not too gloomy but narrow, decorated with bouquets of flowers, equipped with a “solid” sound system. The woman in the house (like a den or hen-house) was a priestess of my time: tall; attractive; slightly long nose; hair pulled back and tied in a firm knot; wearing tight, bright green panties; bare, pointed, rather small breasts; wireless ear phones in her ears and a navy blue belt around her waist where an empty knife holster dangled; she stood in the frame of the kitchen door; on the floor were brown Nike sandals, slightly apart. When I asked for a glass of water, she brought a pitcher, of course, from the kitchen; I sat in an arm- chair for a while and read the newspaper; she kneeled on the floor and polished the doorknob on the bedroom door; it was terribly hot outside, the cicadas were making an indescribable racket. Not long afterward, a man came into the room wearing Bermuda shorts. I looked at him discreetly over my reading glasses. His shoul- der fell with a jerk. The woman was in the bedroom sorting men’s underwear on the bed: underpants, short socks, undershirts, knee socks. The sound of a spinning washing machine drum came from the bathroom. The rotor had just moved to centrifuge. The noise in the kitchen was louder, too: the kettle started to whistle. I crossed my legs. Later, I saw the man on a bench in front of a telephone booth on a plateau above a broad field. He was the personification of a monk of our times: barefoot; torn pants; bloody eyes staring blearily into the 4 ŽARKO RADAKOVIĆ distance; requisitely bald; a revolver stuck in his belt; with a half- empty bottle of local wine; a wedding ring on each finger of his left hand; a t-shirt with the coat of arms of the national football team; a cell phone on the bench next to him of course, the eyes of “that guy” were caressing the gentle slope of a nearby hill; of course, there is a mountain bike leaning against a tree next to the bench; at one point the man licks a clearing on the slope; combs his fingers through the crowns of the chestnut trees; slips his tongue through the top of a tree and sticks the tip into the crack of a nutshell; silence; holy peace; the monk of our times starts to whistle; a fly lands on his knee poking out of his torn peasant trousers; the monk spits; the compact spittle flies a good two meters and then falls on a tree stump with a slap and a dozen flies land on it immediately. Later, in the early evening, a crazy ride through the desert. With the last rays of the day, the blood-red sun scratches rough spots on the skin of god-fearing earth. The stubble fields glisten in the last spasms of the evening orgasm. Spectacular nature. The road leads to a magnificent gorge with a face of its own: full of pimples, full of wrinkles, acne, wounds, pockmarks and claw scars; this face is roaring with laughter: a raspy voice calls from the abyss of a crater. Down at the bottom of the cirque (in the well-known tourist village of Navacelles) is a protestant church, of course, with several houses around it, close together in a herd. Tourists are gathered on restaurant terraces. Illuminated by the last sunrays, each one manifests a perverse being: the first breaks matches between his fingers; the second stares with blinking eyelids; the third caresses the table leg; the fourth chews without letup; the fifth is silent; the sixth yawns; the seventh is reading a book; the eighth gratifies himself with a fork over an empty plate; the ninth is drinking beer; the tenth looks over the eleventh’s shoulder; the eleventh is writing a postcard, etc. This sight frightened me, of course. I wanted to vanish into thin air. “As far away as possible from religious and ideological indoctri- nation!” “As far away as possible from ethic cleansing!” The uphill road had dangerous hairpin turns. It was a menacing and truly unpleasant wasteland. The earth below was dark and the sky threatened flames. The drive became that of a rider of the apocalypse. The hotels along the way looked like hospitals or prisons. “As far away from here as possible!” I shouted! And then I ran out of gas (I thought).