La Dame sans Camellias
Part One:// Presents
Mia strode deliberately and heavily over the leaves in Balkanska street – exactly as she did once in her childhood when she would wade in one of those puddles on her way. Since she was a girl, she would choose one not so muddy – she liked her stockings. She loved them still. Stockings, flowers and perfumes…and all kind of stuff in violet. The one who got the heart of it, got the key to Mia’s heart. When it came to presents, she would mainly get one of the things from the shelves above. Nobody loved to make faults with Mia. She was good with the saber and also that good in running a small bureau for marketing and branding services in 28 Resavska street, right next to the St. Marko church – one of the most beautiful architectures in the town.
Nights. Before the heavy curtain of yet another day of toil should fall, Mia would stop at the church to light a candle in front of the forged copper sarcophagus of Tsar Dušan, the Mighty. She talked to him a lot. She beaded questions before him like popcorn strings and silently waited for answers about Vladimir and lately about her grandmother. Pushed by the heavy silence and the obvious lack of news from the other side, she would slowly leave in the hope that they were all very well somewhere in the fields above.
2001 Harrods swayed in jazz vibes.
2001 Harrods swayed in jazz vibes.
The air in the bureau was stuffy. The heating season of 2009 had already started. Mia pulled out the warming hugs her mother had made for her from one of the cabinet drawers. Among them was an Old Rose coloured wide winter scarf that could be wrapped around one's shoulders at least three times. Such a jewel could be bought at Harrods in 2001 for 40 pounds and the idea of such a baleful expense that exceeded all known waste of funds brought her mother to the edge of complete indignation to the extent that she produced a hand-knitted one, Harrods could only sigh at the look of it, in just two night shifts at the hospital.
As a matter of fact Mia had a half-done sweater with Goofy on the front that her mother never succeeded to finish. Cute. Among all Mom-things, the shape and taste of the cakes mother used to send them back in the academy days emerged as a must. Mia was stuffed with it then and craved for it so desperately now. With a flick of the wrist she handled her phone and dialed the prefix for Greece to ask for the recipe. She baked the cake in the afternoon. It began to look a lot like Christmas…
The town bathed in lights and decorations as an Opera Diva, befittingly glaring as a place that is setting its fast-start to the bright European house. It was all the same to Mia. Mladen and Biseniya dropped a line to pass greetings for the Christmas Mia celebrated rebelliously earlier than the Orthodox one. Tonight she would be alone. She would incense the meals on the table and call the Lord for dinner. Many hours later in the face of the New Year, she would ask Him to be alone again. Such a curious wish! By that time her bed would be occupied by a man who wouldn’t be very keen to go back home at the piles of work that have been waiting for him there for ages.
Mia opened the chromium-plated top of her Dell and in a couple of minutes she was drinking her chocolate with the same hectic vigour, with which she swept away the last night’s spam in her Inbox. Don’t I have a Undo button for some of my actions in the real world?, she was catching a distant thought on the run. What a “Good-morning”! The people in the bureau and the flying to all sides around papers of contracts, memos and presentation drafts accumulated their number gradually in pace with the wall clock counting the minutes to 11. Onze Minutos, she thought and the words that appeared on the brim of her mouth were quite another:”Boys, let’s get our holiday bonuses pinned!” Outside the heavy rain drops got the beat of the drum in a galley. Its sound became more intense with every muscle of the rowing men that would pump to the beat.
The Košava came around the corner. This blasted sharp wind would never observe the prescription of its symptoms and obediently last not more than 21 days. A Romanian on-the-Danube import rasped the temporal bones with such a diligence as if it had to make a hole in one’s scull. An inevitable evil! Mia felt like crying out loud ”Boys, let’s get our first winter in North Africa earned!” Any warmer land would do…indeed. Not that this was completely impossible. The telephones rang. The people were buying New Year trips around the world. Other type of people outside foraged in the filled to the top waste containers to find any decent Christmas dinner leftovers from the tables of those who were now pushing their suitcases to the exit in the airports on their way to Brazil. Ironic, wasn’t it!
And the exit was where?
Mia was working. Thoughts about her arrival in the town made piles in her head that she would have to break later as they were Tetris blocks in her mobile phone. The feeling was heavy, completely disgusting as if somebody a very over weight body has sat on her chest. She remembered a number of nights spent under dark skies and this had nothing to deal with the ordinary romantic evenings out. Stuffed hotels and other disasters, you know. Yet it was quite possible during the summer days. The winter she spent across the river was sad and loathsome as a disease. He was the old repulsive mole and just like in the story of Thumbelina, she could barely get rid of him. That was the Chief of the moles who makes spider webs of good turns just to strangle you better… It was full of people at Dragan’s – “Friends”, the 7th season. He lived by night and loved to help her. After that he loved the opposite.
The days went by, slowly traveling like dry yellow leaves on the blazed surface of lazy waters. Dragan thought the mole was suffering the Oedipus complex and the mole blamed Dragan in wasting the best time of his life away. Mia and her colleagues counted the days according to a particular calendar from a Book Fest to another and so forth until the Big Fair in October – the Christmas of all kind of books and their authors. This was the ultimate event the reading population of the town has been awaiting since the first page they have ever turned over in their lives, and they waited for it grasping their last breath patiently.
This was the time when paper packages and hands could be seen flying chaotically, in no particular order in the air filled with expectations and longing that covered like a circus dome the area at Beogradski Sajam. There was a buzz in this same air and people’s voices were raising over that particular noise like a wave at the World Cup Championship. We were selling books. We invited all these people who have been fasting the year around in the name of the Great October Fest, when they would get home with 10 or more titles. They would buy old nostalgic monographies for the relatives abroad, hit sales from the biggest publishers, Kusturica and Johnny Štulić...Those October days the enthusiasm would flush and hit the ceilings of the Fair from 8 to 8 o’clock all week long. A couple of books and a couple of hearts in love would be all that Mia usually had to bring home at the end of the book events…Presents, as they call them. Mia’s heart was already taken and this was a secret. A light smiling secret, lighter than the Mona Lisa’s smile.
I love your story! I wish i had the same brain as your hahahaha... i love how your brains works!
Oh, it is such a lovely opinion of this. I'm so glad you like it and I hope I deserve every single of your words! Thank you, @maquemali!
Of course.. i haven't even stalk your other posts yet hehe..
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You're very welcome to do so! I, myself, love a couple of them. Still, @dreemsteem could recommend something suitable for sure. She knows them well :-)
Before im used to reading novels.. but i rarely read these days for I have just given last year and I cant find the time to read a book other than bedtime stories.. hehe.. so i miss reading a lot..
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You'll catch up, don't worry! :-)
I pretty hope so.. 😍
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She's back! hehehehehe i've missed you dear <3
sending you a DM now ;)
Thanks, love! I hope you liked it.
They have enlisted the help of the @alliedforces!
We gladly answer your call!
(@alliedforces is a collaboration of witnesses @jatinhota & @enginewitty)
Have you supported your favorite witnesses?
Thanks, @energywitty and @alliedforces! Love to see you around!