We cannot burn the oceans. Despite sparks from the horizon. I walk along the shore for days on end, ruminating about this. I picture myself as a bullet in the belly of the sea. Snows, which is absurd, I imagine snows and black kids in them, black kids’ songs are heard in avalanches.

*
      This is about epiphanies: they spring from my stomach. I get weary, the body I find myself in is too heavy. I take frequent breaks and divide ideas with a stick in the sand. My mornings are hungry, my wife is gone, she said something, I have forgotten what (or I didn’t get it), however, I wouldn’t say she didn’t know what she was doing. I will ring her at Christmas and sing her something. If not her, my son will certainly want to hear me. He is young and stupid and impressionable, may he be blessed as long as he is like this.
      It’s been six months since that happened, I left for work, the stock market had collapsed in silence and I gave up. My wife abandoned me, I did everything else. I yearned for an excuse and it arrived when I least expected it. Such are God’s ways, and his messages.
      At the travel agency I requested a seat on a half-empty plane for an African country. The women working there told me a poignant story about the dead season , the story which shortly fluttered away from their hands and I gathered that the two of them had successfully de-masked the general cruelty of global economy, so I added a word or two about emulsifiers from the pseudo-natural blackberry juice they’d offered me, saying all that was carcinogenic, like the season they were talking about, that travels were cancer in color, and that we all would return from them sick to death, but I knew this, I accepted reality and I wouldn’t sue the agency when I returned, if the agency existed then. I even said I didn’t want to come back. Just in case, I left the keys to my apartment to one of them, explaining to her that there was no one there, that she could wait for me if she wished, that she could freely get married before that, and sell the apartment if it was necessary to deal a lethal blow to the cancer of recession with money. Should my wife drop by, shoot without warning, this was the last thing I said.

      As the plane landed, my ear bled. In order to avoid thinking about the pain, I occupied myself with the physiognomies of the other passengers, which disconcerted me. The less time man spends with other people, the better for him.
      At the airport in a place called Monastir, I delivered a little performance: I took off my shirt and I kept beating my chest vigorously with my fists. I shouted: Hello Africa! Tell me how you’re doin’! , and Hello Motherland! Tell me how you’re doin’! The performance wasn’t welcomed wholeheartedly, as is often the case with products of the avant-garde, so I was apprehended by the airport police and spent the following hours in the company of a guy who insisted that he earned his crust at football stadiums across well-to-do Belgium. It took so long for them to believe him, a haggard Arab brandished some sheets, which purportedly said that so-and-so ran over so-and-so somewhere in Germany, so now he wasn’t welcome in their democratic country. They regarded me with suspicion, and I openly attempted to interpret the essence of my artistic blunder, which was supposed to contribute to the promotion of pan-African unity.
      Then everyone got fed up, the Arab let out a furious moan, gesticulating with his finger that we piss off, all of us, and all of them, and all people at large. The heat was oppressive and I commiserated with him. Standing aside was a black man in gaudy dresses, adorned with primitive jewelry, he twisted in a trance, rolling his eyes and pointing derisively towards the airport door. That witch doctor, he it was that hypnotized us, what he was uttering I heard as come in, get out, come in, get out, come in, get out , I wouldn’t say I was mistaken, for everything was the same as anything else and for this reason I stepped forward bravely, disheveled and intent on putting away my luggage, all that I had, in a dark cave and forget it for good.
      The hotel was an ornate fortress dazed by aromatic fumes of divine gardens, I recalled the yelling cries from the brochures, Before you, here stayed Wilde, Bowles… , and all seemed to me to be rotting away and that it was easy to get lost in everything. A wonderful trap, this is how it looked to me.
      At first I acted as a voyeur. Hidden on the balcony, I feasted my eyes, brimming with naked bodies in the hotel swimming pool. It was boiling, in that lake of chlorine, and I was writing my long poem Purgatory . When I finished it, I signed it as Hieronymus Bosch, of sound mind, and pure heart . For a little heap of night minutes I was euphoric. I fell asleep proud and woke up inspired, I rang someone from the room below and read the excerpt on epiphanies. Thrilled and spirited, I swayed from joyfulness, and the woman who answered had a cattish voice. She didn’t endure long enough, her dream swallowed the text, and I looked for this woman over the following days, at the crack of dawn, without success.
      Rousseau, I have always known, delighted in the benefits of immense luxury. That’s why I woke up before the sun and took strolls at the water’s edge. Casual walks along the world’s membrane entail indifference and absence of practical interests. Rousseau and I are a couple of apostles of lethargy. In fact, I am merely a little buffoon.
      At night, the sea spews up tonnes of rubbish through which I determinedly push my way later on. The rubbish waits to be sucked anew into the quivering azure. The case is the same with me. I wish to overcome the horror of living with myself.
      One morning I chanced upon a ruin of apocalyptic dimensions, a deceased hotel. A complex of benumbed, white buildings, where distorted shadows loomed. I approached the wall encompassing the ruin and listened. The ghosts were enraged, my presence distracted them, I existed and disturbed them. I strived to reconstruct, to compensate for what was no longer remembered, to re-think and assemble all that suffocated uproar, incessant movement, people with smooth bodies, words of welcome, falsified poignancy of leave-taking, carnival feverishness, travelers who pounce voraciously on their eleven days (ten nights), and all of a sudden I felt nauseous. I looked back and surrendered myself to the feeling of the freedom of adventure. I felt relieved. I thought of my wife. Out of the wet sand emerged a seagull. It buried its beak into a dried jellyfish.

*

      Spend a couple of days in the Sahara, don’t miss the opportunity of sleeping in the desert , repeated the agency representative. She was sitting in the lobby, blissfully waving the unrefusable offer. Did you by any chance plan… , and I replied that I did have some plans, which were thwarted, I insisted on this word. Thwarted . And she kept nodding her head, acknowledging the nothingness. I accepted, and I didn’t explain to her how come one could accept everything, I accepted because I didn’t think I had anything else to refuse, since any refusal entailed an attitude, and I refused to have an attitude, which was still refusal, but… Eventually, I consented to sleep in the desert. I even paid for this pleasure.
      We rode in large, white jeeps, I was left alone (since everything was odd and leap ), the others heaved a sigh of relief when they realized I was isolated and thwarted in every sense. I didn’t complain, I had a vehicle all to myself, the driver’s name was Memi and he reminded me of the king Husein. He spoke French, unlike me. Or rather, he spoke, and I didn’t, which I found relaxing, all that Babylonian nonsense. He looked happy, entrenched in the language of detestable colonizers. He sobbed and wailed, turning up the radio at the surge of his favorite melodies. We covered hundreds of kilometers, I lay in the back seats, only now and then glancing through the window. Somehow I explained to him my desire to lag behind our caravan, and that he could take a break wherever he wished. It was midday when he pulled over in front of an inn in an unusually stinky seaside village. There was a trail of decay from the open sea, turned partially into a plantation of horrendous black shells. The narrow belt of the seashore between the highway and the sea was an open stretch of land, an exhibition space, where various European artists presented themselves, predominantly modern sculptors. Their monstrous works rotted away in the African heat, burning and sizzling nastily. I went down to those grotesque monsters, passed through a wood of metal freaks, the legacy of pretentious lack of talent. The ground vibrated from the interior boom and I was frightened. Of all those gigantic monsters, ugly beasts, signs of other people’s torn souls. I jumped into the jeep hastily, not looking back. I was cold. Memi had returned, babbling tirelessly. Before we moved on, he took a photo out of somewhere in which he was embraced by a woman and two girls. I thought a long, hollow thought.
      We didn’t see: the Colosseum, Berbers, roadside inn toilets, camels prowling about the stunted vegetation, stage sets left behind after The Star Wars , we saw nothing, I decided so, and we reached the Desert Gate first. It was behind an oasis. We got there in time to dream.
      The hotel was a mirage, it was clear to me, Memi got inside the heart of the mirage, exchanged a word or two with the phantom of the man at the reception, and went on along an open corridor, like a dancer in paved no-man’s-land. We were to sleep there, in front of the Desert Gate, Memi said the others would ride away on their camels towards the sunset, after which they would return richer for a miraculous and beneficial experience, eat well and retire to their cozy little rooms, happy from exhaustion and exhausted from happiness. And no one would know anything about tiny, distraught rodents, haughty and vile scorpions, about existence in livid desert nights and about the disappearance of all traces before daybreak, the Sahara burying under itself all traces of one-day histories.
      On the door of my room was a gaping zero. I might not have shut it, I don’t know, I went into the cramped bathroom, took off my clothes and squatted down, opening one of the hotel little shampoos, the hot water from weak desert springs boiling down my back. I might have stayed there for hours, before I slumped on the too-short bed and doubled up. I don’t know. The air conditioner howled above my head, inside which frantic chimeras raised hell. Perhaps I desired painfully to think other people’s thoughts. I don’t know. Tireless travelers and their wives cuddling and chirping. This was outdoors.

*

      I waited for the night to come to sneak out. This is how I do it. I pushed my way through the hubbub and smiles, sun lotions, fragrant, tempting cocktails, swimsuit straps on round hips. They didn’t want their dreams, those vultures of pleasure, they wanted never to cease, such as they were that night. I paused in front of an ice-cream freezer, barefoot and hungry. A flock of stray sirens were stretching in the swimming pool. A young man lost in thought handed me an ice-cream, and I asked him if he had a son, and when he said yes, I replied that the money was for him, that cute little boy. He was confused, and I vanished, lighting a new cigarette enthusiastically. There was no music. They probably didn’t want to desecrate the dead silence of the desert. I sat down on the pool edge, dipping my legs into the water and my heart into the whirl of the velvety accents of thousands of human kingdoms. I wished Memi was there, I would have asked him if in that photograph with his wife and the two little girls was everything he lived.
      I watched a gracious silhouette immersed in the water. She was edging closer lazily, noiselessly. Some were leaving, to wait for the day. The silhouette’s contours kept stretching from the silent strength. A glass fell and broke. No one paid heed. Then she emerged, heavy lividness spilling out of her eyes. I hoped that she would be startled. That she would be excited because I was there, so close. Because I was not afraid. I hoped I would exist for a little heap of her minutes. The slow Russian heaved her breasts, it was thirsty and sticky, words kept shattering and melting down her neck as her chin slightly quivered. I put my hand out towards her, looking about for anyone who could also see her, but I instinctively plunged into blurred contours. And I didn’t understand her, the vowels stretching over millions of r’s, I leaned my fingertips onto the silver tiles. She didn’t want to leave, which was enough for me, the staying there, the acceptance, no matter what, I could no longer lie under the evil barking of the air conditioner, it was tearing me apart, time with too much of oneself in time, this phantom haunted me, the cackle of death older than death.
      I took her hand and rose to pull her out of the water into the dark, the rare lights plummeting down towards the hotel room windows. And when I first touched her, I touched nothing, it was easy, transparent, warmth on the palms, the body’s fumes under the small, black swimsuit. I lowered my head to look at her, everything between the painted toenails and slightly slanted eyes groaned and strained, bursting, and I wondered what one would do with all that. She left, I followed her because there was nothing else I could do, it was late and everything condensed, without any difference of choice and without any thought of what was not. Nothing remained and this was all that remained.
      She kept bending, picking up glasses and ashtrays from the stranded tables, took a forgotten lighter, brought it close to her face, hesitating, wanting to swallow the flame, to suck it into herself while I was there, and then she changed her mind and leaned back onto a discarded lounger. I stood still, I couldn’t go any further, thinking about the breath of a lonely man with a saxophone, I wanted to tell her about paradoxes of music, insane theories of re-composition of essences which it was worth hoping for, I am not sure if I also talked about my wife and son, I wanted to, I really did, I would have knocked myself down like an aging and decaying trunk, if I only could, I would shout about that now, how much I wanted. If only I could. If only.
      And she lit her cigarette, puckering up her face, circling her hand rhythmically below the navel, closing her eyes carelessly, soaked to the skin, gleaming under the distant desert stars. I wondered whether she did the same for others, whether she was such for others too, who are you?, that is what I wanted to ask her, where did you come from?, why?, I wanted all this, I cared, I seemed to know what to do with the answers, but certainly I wouldn’t understand, I would pack her words, carry them with me, something had to be carried, the past, the cross, one had to arrive with something. And there was also a monotonous tone there, an incessant thread of sound, not around us, she couldn’t hear it, if she could, then everything was filthy witchcraft and no one had anything to themselves, and I lay on that tone, abandoning myself, I found it easy to do so, I delighted in being powerless, letting others make decisions, I stuck my nails into this sound and floated, floated…
      Then she called me, saying nothing, and I knew she was calling me, and yet I looked around, unselfish and ready for defeat, I took off my shirt and lay beside her, anticipating the end of the world. I felt so many things passing through the embrace, and I knew there was nothing behind. I felt a gush out of this woman, and the desert not far away from us swelling, lava burning dunes from inside, images kept returning into the pre-natural chaos, into the original freedom of joyful omni-belongingness. I didn’t dare to look at her, I couldn’t bear it, no one could, she kept whispering, repeating some words in ecstasy, I knew I mustn’t forget, I couldn’t forget, because in that case I would have nothing to remember.
      She drew my face towards her stomach, and I doubled up and trembled, my hair full of her fingers, my face and lips scratched all over, I wanted to explain to her, to tell her about duration, about time, and she kept twitching, wriggling and panting. Suddenly this all faded away, as in the frightening moon mountains. She pushed me away and rose, and there was something majestic, luxuriant in that. And as she undressed, it hurt. Then it especially hurt. There, before the Desert Gate. As she stood with her neon shoulders. That flash, sharp, the slit face of the night. I didn’t want to ask anything else. Not even why. Not even that. I wanted nothing else. Light. Happy. And as she was leaving, how much life elapsed as she was leaving! And as she regarded me, for the last time, before the Desert Gate. And after that. And now. And always. And after all.

*

      I told him to pull over. I got out. It was just after noon. I took off my hat and started to burn. I got worried. I told him to leave. He didn’t listen. I told him once again. He too wanted to get out. He thought of his wife and children and gave up. Around us was the expanse of the seabed which had died. Reddish salt. We arrived in hell. Cracked platform of reddish salt. No man had ever set foot there. I knelt down and glanced at the sun. He put his hand out to me and started to weep. My heavy head bumped into the scorching ground.

*

      We cannot burn the oceans. Despite sparks from the horizon. I walk along the dead sea for days on end, ruminating about this. I picture myself as a worm in the eye socket of the desert. Snows, which is absurd, I imagine snows and black kids in them, black kids’ songs are heard in avalanches.

About the author

Srđan Srdi? (born 3 November 1977 in Kikinda, Serbia) is a novelist, short-story writer, essayist, editor and creative reading/writing teacher. He has published two novels ( The Dead Field and Satori ), two short story collections ( Espirando and Combustions ), and a book of essays ( Notes from Reading ). He has contributed as a writer and/or editor to numerous short story collections and literary magazines. Srdic was editor of the international short story festival Kikinda Short from 2008 to 2011. He is now a co-editor in the literary magazine Severni bunker and was one of the editors for The European Short Story Network. He won a prize for the best prose work at the literary contest organized by the magazine Ulaznica in 2007 and the Laza Lazarevic Award for the best unpublished Serbian story in 2009. In 2010 Srdic won the only Serbian literary scholarship from the Borislav Pekic Foundation. For his second book, a short story collection called Espirando , he was awarded the Biljana Jovanovic Prize and the Edo Budisa Prize. Srdic’s prose has been translated into English, Albanian, Slovenian, Polish, Romanian, Ukrainian and Hungarian.