Artwork by Atif Khan / Damon Kowarski. Courtesy: ArtChowk Gallery.
By Alma Lazarevska
Translated from Bosnian by Celia Hawkesworth
1.
If I mentioned it, he’d say I was being petty and that was unworthy of me. He’d close his eyes and, as though he were speaking about someone who wasn’t in the room, he’d say:
‘I’ll count to three to make it go away. There, she didn’t say a thing. One, two three. Forgotten!’
That’s what he did when I pointed out that he was spreading the margarine too thickly on his slices of bread; when I remarked that he had given away almost the entire contents of the package of humanitarian supplies that the inhabitants of the besieged city occasionally receive. All he’d left us was a little packet of green mints. I once told him they reminded me of my grandmother who had died long ago — my mother’s blueeyed mother who was never hungry. It’s true that we still had the cardboard packing. It burns well, but we won’t use it. The inscription on it and the list of contents may one day feed some future story.
He closed his eyes and counted to three when he noticed … but I won’t say what. Maybe I’ll use that too, when the shame passes, to feed some bitter story. For the time being, let it be forgotten.
The room had lost its box-shape. The light of the thin candle didn’t reach its corners. It created a dim, uneven oval that shifted lazily if an unexpected current of air happened to touch its tiny wick. There was a transparent, trembling film over us. The few objects that were bathed in dim light, and the two of us, made up the inside of a giant amoeba. We were its organs, pulsating in the same rhythm, but not touching. Is an ‘amoeba’ that single-celled organism covered by a transparent membrane we looked at down the school microscope? If you touched the drop of water it was floating in with the tip of a needle, it would slowly curl up. Right now in the besieged city, where tonight no fiery balls are falling and no whistling bullets are being fired from the other side of the encircling ring, there are thousands of membranes hovering like this. The people in these bubbles of light are silent. Frightened, tired or indifferent, they are silent. Or listening. Hoping for sleep. To overwhelm them and spare them this vigil.
He had lit five cigarettes that evening and each time he used a new match. He put the dead match down in the saucer by the candle. In the ashtray lay cigarette butts and the narrow red band from the cigarette packet.
‘Why are you doing that?’
I sensed that sleep wouldn’t come for a long time yet. But, as I uttered the question I was aware that it was
He didn’t reply.
Now I had a reason to be angry and speak.
‘Why are you doing that?’
I didn’t care what was worthy of me and what wasn’t. He looked at me and waved his hand, as though removing invisible headphones from his ears. He’d put them down for a moment and focus on me and my impatience.
‘Doing … what?’
‘Using matches to light your cigarettes!’
‘What am I supposed to use?’
Now he was prepared to put his invisible headphones properly away. He was interested in learning something new, something he hadn’t heard before. He was expecting me to tell him where the sun could rise apart from in the east. That someone was killed every day on his daily route through town, that he already knew.
‘The candle! You know yourself that we don’t have enough matches. They’re hard to find. The candle’s alight, so use it for your cigarettes.’
There were already too many words in our silent bubble. Added together and expressed like this, they were all unworthy. Without them, we would just have been two organs pulsating to the same rhythm until they were overcome by sleep.
He looked at me as though he was standing in front of a stupid child who understood nothing and who had to have everything painstakingly explained to it.
‘I can’t!’
‘You can’t … what?’
‘Light cigarettes with a candle!’
‘Why not?’
‘Every time a person does that, someone dies somewhere in the world.’
Besides, whatever he did, at least one person died somewhere in the world every second. There were even cold statistics about that. In the books that the candlelight didn’t reach. That was why, suddenly and unexpectedly, his answer put me under an obligation, like a holy rule whispered into the ear of an unwilling novice.
2.
Maybe one day I’ll scatter all those matches into his hand and say:
‘That’s how many people you’ve saved from dying!’
Then red-hot balls will no longer be falling on the besieged city and people in it will not die from tiny pieces of hot iron in their bodies. They will again die of illness and old-age. There will be light bulbs again and no one will be obliged to light cigarettes from candles. That will only happen in films.
I’ve been collecting the dedicated matches for three days now. I put them into an empty Solea cream tin with ‘contents: 250g’ written on it. But even if it didn’t, I can assume from its size that it can hold another hundred or so matches. Sometimes I miss one and it ends up in the ashtray. In the morning I dig it out from under the butts. After that, the tips of my forefinger and thumb stink all day and the child frowns when I touch the end of his nose.
The matches he lays beside the saucer with the candle don’t stink. There is even something agreeable about the slightly piquant smell from the phosphorous tip that remains even after it’s extinguished. When I take the lid off the tin and count the matches, I’m aware only of the left-over smell of the cream. It is sweetish, like a woman’s deodorised armpit in summer. Huddling in them, resting, are the souls that have been saved. There are twenty-five of them for now. When I close the tin, they come to life. I listen in to the sounds they make while the tin rests on my hand. Twenty-five saved souls rest in my hand. Today in the besieged city fifteen people were killed by one fiery ball (sent from the dark hill where the bad people went). No one had wanted to save them. I’ll see their faces tomorrow in the newspaper obituaries. What about these saved souls in my hand? How old are they? What are their faces like? How much good is there in them? Do they know that there is a besieged city somewhere in the world with the saviours of their souls in it?
3.
I found out where this idea of the candle and the cigarettes came from. The morning was quiet, but as though damned. At such times I reach frantically for the books on the shelves. I open them, leaf through them, put them down. An old bill fell out of one of them. On the page it slipped out of, in the last line, it said that every time you light a cigarette from a candle, somewhere in the world a sailor dies. This was a book by Dario, our former neighbour. He smoked a lot, lighting each cigarette from the last. Now Dario is somewhere out there in the wide world. And the sailors are in a harbour, somewhere on the sea, in a ship, in a tavern, in the bought embrace of some lady of the harbour … Are there any sailors where Dario is living now? On the other hand, if you were to thrust that sentence published long ago back at its author, perhaps he would not remember that he had written it.
Like in that film … was it called ‘Night’? A man and a woman come out of a house after a long, barren night that has made them strangers. They sit down on the grass. Dawn is breaking. She takes an old letter out of her handbag. She reads it aloud. Emphasising every sentence. Declarations of love, words of tenderness, swearing devotion till eternity … When she has folded the letter, she puts it back in her bag and looks enquiringly at the man. He asks:
‘Who wrote that to you?’
‘You!’
Dario’s ‘somewhere in the world’ is now America. Everyone has his own troubles, even if he isn’t in a besieged city. But he doesn’t have to think about matches and candles. He can switch on ten light bulbs and turn the room into a dazzling operating theatre with no dim corners nibbling at the space, where painful questions nest. He lights his cigarettes with a lighter. The first one in the morning with a lighter, and then through the day, each one from the last. When he uses up his lighter, or loses it, he buys a new one. He can choose a new colour and trademark every time. And he’s left the all sailors’ souls to us. He has off-loaded all their weight onto our weary souls that even sleep no longer spares.
‘Do you know Dario’s address in America?’
‘Which Dario?’
 ‘The writer Dario, Dario the writer.’
‘The writer? No, I don’t. Why do you need it?’
‘No reason.’
4.
This morning I put only three matches in the tin. All three stink of old ash. There’s still room in the tin. When I toss it from one hand to the other, I hear cheerful sounds, the sounds of tiny souls sliding and bumping into each other. They are enjoying their loss of weight. Yesterday, when he saw me playing with the tin, the boy said:
‘You’re a child now. You’ve got a rattle. A really ugly one!’
Now I have to find a second tin. Until I find a better one, I’ll use the box that once held long, thick matches with yellow phosphorous tips. It says ‘Budapest’ on it. I was there once, but I don’t remember the building in the picture. It isn’t ugly. But it wouldn’t be worth going back there to see it.
This box won’t last long. It’s already worn at the edges. For the moment, there’s a little ball of paraffin wax resting in it.
He touches the little ball in my hand with his forefinger again. Now I feel the touch of his fingertip as well as the slight tickle of the little wax ball. In the morning I collect the little balls from the table and place them in a glass jar with the words Kompot švetsky on the label. There’s a picture of two blue plums under the first word. When I have collected a lot of little balls, I melt them into a narrow candle.
But this morning I also placed one wax ball in the box with Budapest written on it. That’s when it happened!
Nothing particular preceded it. It had been an ordinary day. He came home late. Not looking particularly tired. That silent membrane already covered the room. At around midnight he took a cigarette out of the half-empty packet, then put it to his lips, but before he had separated one lip from the other, he made the face people make when their nose is itching and their hands are full. He moved his lower jaw upwards and his lips moved towards the tip of his nose. His upper lip, comically pinched, touched his nose. Nothing special.
I don’t remember a single film scene where an actor did that before killing someone.
He reached for the candle with his right hand. He raised it, on its saucer, to which it was secured by a broad wax base. The saucer has a picture of a rococo lady in three colours on it. Grey, violet, gold. The lady is sitting on a swing and a long arc separates her from the young gallant who has, presumably, just pushed her away and is now waiting for her to come back. The wax base of the candle covered part of the picture. Part of the lady’s face was hidden. You could see her wig, with its comic curls. And the lady’s legs. They are painted violet and grey. Her feet are separated from one another and have little narrow shoes strutting on them. The little golden shoes of a rococo lady. When the picture is completely revealed and daylight reaches into the room everything looks somehow different. Deprived of colour and action.
The candle in his hand was raised to the tip of the cigarette. A trickle of wax ran down the thin stalk out of the hollow round the wick. It covered the lady’s left leg. For a time the leg could be made out under the little transparent pool of paraffin, until it cooled, solidified and became an opaque blot. Musing on the lady’s leg, I forgot the sailor standing on the deck of a ship sailing from one continent to another. He was pressing tobacco into a pipe with his broad thumb. He had turned his back to the wind. Did he strike a match? He raised it to his pipe. And fell. As though struck down. As when one player’s pawn knocks out his opponent’s and it is no longer in his way.
5.
He is smoking. He was away for three days and two nights. In the besieged city men have duties that keep them out of the house a lot. Should I tell him that the night before he left he killed a sailor? I’ll tell him. I’ll tell him tomorrow:
‘Put out your hands. Palms up.’
I’ll put the tin on his left hand, and the box that once held long matches on his right hand. I’ll step away and say:
‘Those are the souls you’ve saved and one you didn’t.’
Will he feel their different weight?
My God, in these giant amoebas, in their silent membranes, words and games acquire a weight that should be forgotten with the morning.
‘Give me a cigarette!’
‘Since when have you smoked?’
‘Since this evening ….’
He taps the packet lightly and a cigarette slides out of it. I take it with the fingers of my right hand, with my left I lift up the saucer with the candle. A trickle of wax runs down the thin candle and in an instant the rococo lady’s other leg disappears as well. Just the tip of one little shoe peers out, no bigger than the sharp end of a needle.
The lady is completely smothered by the wax base. Besides, her smiling gallant who is waiting for her to come back to him in an arc on the swing … There, he’s vanished. Their coquettish game has been stilled by the hard pool of wax.
Now we are tranquil. For a moment at least. I inhale the cigarette smoke inexpertly and cough. There are no more sailors whose lives and souls depend on our tiny actions and decisions, weariness and forgetfulness. There are no more ladies and gallants whose game is in our hands. Just the two of us, alone, waiting for sleep. Today more people died in the besieged city. Perhaps their names and pictures in the obituaries will one day feed some future story. Like wax which you shape into a little ball and when it cools, drop onto someone’s open hand.
I shan’t throw away those two boxes. I shan’t empty them. I’ll leave them somewhere, in one of the dark corners that gnaw at the square shape of the room. When this is all once again brilliantly lit up one day, shall I find them?
Shall I ask:
‘Who left this here?’
Shall I be able to say:
‘I did!’
Alma Lazarevska is a Bosnian prose writer and graduate of the Faculty of Philosophy (University of Sarajevo). Her work has been translated into French, German and English, and included in an anthology of women writers from East and Central Europe: ‘Voices in the shadows: women and verbal art in Serbia and Bosnia’ (Central European University Press, 1999).
Celia Hawkesworth worked for many years as Senior Lecturer in Serbian and Croatian at the School of Slavonic and East European Studies, University College, London. Among her many translations are two works by Dubravka UgreÅ¡ić: ‘The Museum of Unconditional Surrender’, shortlisted for the Weidenfeld Prize for Literary Translation, and ‘The Culture of Lies’, winner of the Heldt Prize for Translation in 1999.
Editor’s note: ‘How We Killed The Sailor’ appears in Alma Lazarevska’s collection ‘Death in the Museum of Modern Art’ (Istros Books, 2014, trans. Celia Hawkesworth), and is republished online with kind permission from the publisher.
