La Dame sans Camellias 4

Following quite a stubborn habit, the last page of the calendar exhaled a deep”Please, turn over” followed by a series of sneezing to reveal a wide blank Nothing. At this point someone had to substitute old scenes with new ones, cut early morning smoking off, change the haircut and colour, lose some weight? The snow cover in front of the Le Petit Bar on Cvetni Trg was set as a white field in a typewriting machine ready for the first tracks of high heel prints to hop joyfully straight into the 1st of January 200…and. And the silence around was as thick, as a Camembert under a glass bell lid. The movie reel had cracked to sweep last night’s laughter and all the notes of the inevitable brass band under the rag, recently known as the last day of December. The fuss had gone. Cunning champagne bubbles had glared into the face of a brand new abyss that had to be shaped out to look a part, decently to remind of a brand new day. Seven seconds’ stillness. Mia’s tousled hair had waved an uncertain Hello to the Big White Nothing ahead.

Pretending to serve the needs of a mid 30’s phonograph hand lever, Peter had been winding the same two phrases up during the past one hour and if it had not been for the people at the bar, they would have missed the must-have toast at midnight. Mia had been dead on two legs. An Olivier salad and unduly complicate main dish had brought her to pieces the other day. She had managed to rest for some incomplete fifteen minutes under the hydrating mask and the rest had been make-up and a party dress. She had sat, as they do it in the Russian movies, at the door waiting for Peter.

Faces of distant men had reeled a weird polka in her mind. Thinking of the one she would had spent the night with and later splash in the Nothing, she couldn’t see Peter among the long double row, but she had heard the distinct sound of his steps at the front door…”New Nothings”, she had thought and her sigh had open the door for Peter. Under the given circumstances, it had been quite improbable that she might had cut smoking her 120’s the next day…just because. Apparently, not giving up bad habits had been the first layer to start filling her personal abyss.

He might had passed a ticket to Mia saying excitedly May next year’s good wishes be sent from The Apple!”, his deep laughter had full stopped the scene and they had gone celebrating until six in the morning. A week later Mia had packed already to head southern…not the New York trail undoubtedly. With a cheek pressed a side the glass and feeling almost every bump on the road, she had been thinking of what may be considered a detour in life as it happens. She had remembered vaguely her father saying that women are supposed to smell good and avoid ladder running down their stockings for everything else could be found at Trade centre’s stores. The golden brown in a coffee pot emerged in her mind and she continued repeating the steps to a perfect delight a cup of coffee may be…

And it had perfectly felt like the bottom of the New Nothing for only the birds at the telegraph wires had sent Mia on her way south. She had heard Mladen’s voice in her head as it floated over the Požarevačka street and raised high over the Kalenić market, stopped at the Ceger café and dispersed in the dank corners of Vračar: “I felt this way in Milan back in those days...how’s that you can’t go home?“ A refined Balkan hospitality had been manifested right in front her eyes. “Everybody knows me at home, everybody...“

Quite a year!...wasn’t it? She had been sweating four hours to death at the fencing training, had gone through all impossible drills to forget a fencing trainer’s forced death thus putting into practice old people’s major belief that a fire had to be fought with fire. She had spent nights out, no bed and no roof above her silly head. She starved and had been dreaming of home and babies, never actually wishing the cosines of her home.

Nonsense!, she thought and she had prepared to stay still as a bamboo on the wind like Tagor had once advised in his books. Anyway. Mia’s path had been paved with rare acquaintances, a death of a good friend who had failed to become her lover and a couple of tricks to escape trouble on the go. Interestingly, this path had been leading to another wide blank Nothing…for the typewriter ribbon had gone loose until more inspiring days.

The End of Part 4

Part One
Part Two
Part Three